by W. J. May
“Dad?” Devon glared at him. “What the hell’s going on?”
“Sorry, Devon.” The Dean glared back at his son. “I found no other way to make myself clear.” He crossed his arms over his chest, disgust clear on his face as he looked at Rae and Devon. “You’ve been officially evicted. You no longer have a home at Guilder.”
Julian and Rae looked on in shock, but Devon took an angry step forward. “Is that really how you’re going to play it? You’re actually kicking me out? How freakin’ old are you?” He stepped toward the room but his father blocked him. “Where the hell’s all my stuff?!”
“Your things have been placed outside the Guilder gates,” the Dean replied stiffly. “You can collect them as you leave. Or not. It’s not my problem.”
Devon’s eyes flashed dangerously. “If you think for one second I’m just going to—”
Julian stepped neatly in between. “Devon can stay with me.” Like Molly and Rae, he and Devon lived just across the hall. Julian spoke calmly, but he leveled the Dean with almost lethal-looking eyes. “Surely you don’t have a reason to kick me out of Guilder.”
“Or he can stay with me.” Rae matched his glare. “Surely the golden son who has fallen from your good graces won’t be homeless. You want an excuse to kick me out too?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I just gave you one.”
The Dean looked ready to explode.
Devon snickered. “I can just imagine what Headmaster Carter’s going to say. Or how the Privy Council’s going to react when they hear Kerrigan’s been kicked out.”
The Dean glared at all of them before he finally shook his head. “Fine! The boy can stay with Julian.” He stomped angrily down the hall, muttering something about a staff meeting to save face.
Julian stared after him for a moment, before clapping Devon on the shoulder. “I’m going to go get your stuff. Here’s my room key.” He tossed Devon the key and then headed down the same stairs as the Dean, leaving Devon and Rae alone on the landing.
Rae watched Devon carefully, unsure what she should say, but he was in his own world, staring at the empty room like he couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Come on, Dev,” she said gently after a moment. “Let’s go to Julian’s room. Or better yet, let’s go help him. Heaven forbid he has a vision while carrying your stuff.”
Devon didn’t budge. He just stared into the room. “I can’t believe it,” he muttered, wide-eyed and lost. “My own father? I just can’t believe it…”
Chapter 12
The dreaded day had come and past. The notorious Guilder finals were finally over. Truly, finally, over. She was done with school. No need for A-levels, or college courses. Everything she would need from here on out would be taught at the PC training facility.
Rae could honestly say the exams were exactly as hard as she’d expected, maybe harder. At seven a.m. sharp, she and her friends trotted across the lawn to the cafeteria where they spent the next six hours slaving away over a test booklet the size of a small tree. As it turned out, each of her friends had their own way of coping with the stress. Halfway through, Molly had to ask for a new calculator because she’d fried hers with a jolt of nervous electricity. Haley’s hair kept blowing around her with a self-made gust as though she was sitting outside, and poor Rob—whose ability to shift into an eagle was one of Rae’s favorites—kept molting feathers.
But despite the difficulty, Rae set down the test booklet thinking that she had done just fine. Over the last few days, she’d finally started to get a handle on Ellie’s tatù—and the extra boost had come just in time. With the exception of a few absurdly outlandish questions (advanced thermo-dynamics, anyone?), she’d been able to summon most every subject to memory. She’d found the essay portion of the exam particularly amusing.
‘Pick one historical figure from Guilder’s formation and explain how said person’s contributions have affected you today.’
She wondered if Carter had a hand in picking the question. Perhaps more importantly, she wondered if he would be the one to grade her answer. She doubted her sarcastic prose and cheeky responses would make much sense to anyone else.
So, it was with a sense of great relief that she pried Molly away from her desk—surrounded by a graveyard of burnt pencil tips—and joined the rest of their class as they walked out into the sun. Now that they’d completed the written part of their testing, the only thing left was the practical application portion of the exams. And that was something that everyone was looking forward to.
They were to meet in the Oratory, one by one, for some sort of tatù demonstration. The details had been sparse, and when Rae asked Devon about it, he was rather fuzzy on the specifics himself. All he’d said was that it wasn’t something she should be at all worried about, in fact, he knew personally she would rather enjoy it.
It was with this sense of jittery anticipation that she waited outside the Oratory with the rest of her peers. They’d been lined up alphabetically, but the second she’d found her place behind Rob, she’d been pulled out by a teaching attendant who simply said, “You go last.”
“Great,” she turned to Molly doubtfully, “they’re going to crucify the infamous Kerrigan after all. Graduation antics and sweet revenge for all the trouble I’ve caused.”
“Oh yes,” Molly said practically, smoothing down her skirt, “we’ve all been planning it for months. I’m to bring the kindling.”
Rae snorted and gave her friend a shove as she was called into the room. Everyone exited from the far door, so she hadn’t been able to grill anyone on what was going to happen. And before she had the sense to switch into Julian’s tatù and simply look ahead, her name was called.
“Kerrigan, Rae.”
She shot the attendant a look as he barked it out. They were the only two people left standing outside and she looked around comically before turning back to him.
“Really? ‘Kerrigan-dash-Rae?’ You see a lot of other Kerrigans out here?”
He rolled his eyes with a long-suffering weariness. “Just get inside, Rae.”
She saluted with a grin. “Yes, sir.”
“And try not to hurt anyone…”
She heard him say it as she stepped inside, but before she could ask what he meant, the door shut behind her with a loud click. There was something abruptly startling about the sudden silence that followed. Rae didn’t think she’d ever heard the Oratory so quiet. It was meant to be a noisy place. Full of laughter and strong echoes. As her eyes quickly adjusted to the dim lighting with the help of a certain fennec fox tatù, she took another step. Then, all at once, the lights flashed on and it took a moment to readjust her vision, but what she saw, for the first time, was what she was up against.
“Wow…” She couldn’t help but laugh. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Almost every seat in the house was full. Folding chairs had even been pulled out in front of bleachers, giving the huge room almost an arena feel. All the lights were pointed at the circled space in the middle. And there, standing at the center of it all, was Devon.
Rae caught his eye from across the room and he smiled. “Sorry. I couldn’t tell you more,” his soft voice was echoed off the domed ceiling and came back to the audience tenfold. There was a titter through the crowd as Rae walked out to meet him. “You did mention Guilder was a bit sketchy on the details.”
“This is my demonstration?” she asked incredulously, gazing out at all the familiar faces.
As it turned out, the rest of her peers weren’t dismissed when they were finished. Instead, they were sitting amongst the rest of the students and teachers. Even a few alumni had arrived early for the graduation banquet just so they could watch.
Watch the nefarious Kerrigan at work, Rae realized with a sudden chill.
Devon’s eyes kept it light, inviting her to ask the questions she so badly needed to know.
Keeping a casual grin fixed on her face, she summoned Maria’s tatù so she could speak to him telepathically.
Is there more to this than meets the eye?
He glanced up at the ceiling, then back down at Rae. A discreet nod to the affirmative.
How much more? Are there members of the PC here? People who want to know how ‘dangerous’ me and my tatùs really are?
“Not to worry, Rae,” he teased lightly. The audience laughed, but only he and Rae knew what he was really talking about. “It’s a Guilder tradition—everyone goes through it.”
But they saved me for last.
Under the guise of stretching out his arms, he gave her a casual shrug.
Why?
“Must just be my lucky day they picked you to go last, and me to push the envelope,” he continued, to the entertainment of the crowd. “Do me a favor, huh? Don’t go easy on me.” Their eyes met. “Show them what you’re made of.” Then, turning his back to the audience, he gave her a little wink.
A wide grin spread across Rae’s face. They wanted a show? She’d give them a show.
The next second—she was gone.
There was a gasp from the audience and Devon spun around in dismay. “Invisible?” he called, shaking his head. “Really? Too scared to face me head on?”
A sweeping kick knocked his legs out from under him and he fell to the ground with a startled gasp. A second later, Rae shimmered into the air above him. “Aw Dev…” She leaned down. “I thought you knew me better than that.”
There was a shriek of applause from the audience as the two of them spun around to face each other. Friends and strangers cheered. Rae didn’t miss the money being exchanged as bets were placed. Only Devon and Rae’s closest friends, sitting in the front row, refused to gamble. They happened to know them a bit too well to side against either one of them.
Devon pulled off his jacket and grinned, tossing it to the side of the floor. With a wicked grin, he started circling her, taunting her with a “come-hither”, using his fingers to beckon her to fight.
Rae bit her lip to restrain a smile. It wasn’t unlike the things he’d done just the night before.
“All right Rae, let’s have it.” He beckoned her forward. “Show them what you learned.”
She cocked her hip to the side as she pretended to think about it. “Hmm…so many to choose from. Maybe a little of this?” A crackling stream of electricity sent him leaping backwards.
Devon touched his head, trying to smooth down his sudden static-ridden hair.
“Or maybe…we’d like a little privacy.” In a flash, two rivers of fire poured from her hands, circling both of them before evaporating as quickly as they’d appeared.
There was a sudden hush from the crowd, a few of them even looked a bit nervous. In the front row, Rae’s friends simply pulled up their shoes to avoid the flames, looking almost bored.
Then suddenly, there was a shout. “Use my tatù, Rae!”
Both she and Devon looked up into the crowd. It was a girl in her third year. One who could make her skin as hard and smooth as metal. With an answering smile, Rae held up her arms and watched as the silvery substance coated her entire body.
Standing just two feet away, Devon winced almost imperceptibly.
You’re going to want to duck, or this is really going to hurt.
She swung out with all her might, but Devon was no longer there. He’d jumped over her body and kicked her square in the back, sending her sprawling forward onto the floor. He ran towards her as she rolled to a stop, but before he could reach her, she was on her feet, using a handy leopard tatù to pick him up and send him flying into the wall.
He hit the mat with a muffled crunch and slid down, panting but grinning all the while.
“I told you,” he murmured as the crowd erupted again, “don’t take it easy on me.”
Rae grinned. “You asked for it.”
The next second, she was sprinting towards him as fast as she could. But rather than staying on the ground, she switched into Ethan’s tatù—summoning things that she needed. One by one, brick stairs flew up in the air in front of her, vanishing the second she’d climbed one and reached the other. Devon watched in dismay and the crowd looked on in amazement as she literally ran up into the air—catapulting down when she was over Devon’s head and felling him to the floor. There was another deafening roar and Rae could pick out Ethan’s voice among the throng as she bent down to help Devon to his feet with a smile.
Only—again—Devon was no longer there.
Rae had literally blinked and missed him. There was a whisper of air, and the next second, she was on her back, staring up in surprise as he pinned her shoulders to the ground.
“Sorry honey.” No one could hear him now with the level of noise in the room. “Do you need me to slow down? Give you a moment to catch your breath?”
“Actually, no,” she grinned coquettishly up at him, “this is giving me the greatest flashbacks from last night.” Turning her head ever so slightly, she couldn’t help but throw the Dean a little wink as she got to her feet and dusted herself off. His face turned the color of a boiled lobster as he fumed in silence.
“Seriously though,” Devon cocked his head to the side, “even footing. My ink versus your, which is my, ink. What have you got, Kerrigan?”
Rae’s body switched back to the fennec fox tatù with a familiar hum. “Let’s see, shall we?”
What happened next was a blur of colors and sounds. Things were moving too fast for the crowd to see the details, but every now and then, someone would get thrown to the side, or launch down from the ceiling and they would cheer once more.
Even with her superior reflexes, Rae had to admit, it was taking everything she had to keep up with Devon. Without the benefit of her extra powers, when they were just regular fighting one-on-one, he was a force to be reckoned with. She’d turn one way—he’d feint another. She’d block his attack—he’d have one more right up his sleeve.
Fortunately, she’d had a brilliant teacher. And she had a few tricks up her sleeve as well…
In a tangle of limbs, Devon was suddenly on the floor. He looked up at Rae straddling him and blinked slowly before his lips curled up in an appreciative grin. “All right Kerrigan, you got me.”
The explosion that followed almost took out Rae’s eardrums. She helped Devon up and waved at the screaming crowd before stepping behind him self-consciously. She instantly switched out of his tatù so she wouldn’t hear them full blast. In fact, she wished she could switch on Cassidy’s and once again turn invisible, but she didn’t think that would send the right message. She had just gotten a few more disbelievers on her side. Now was not the time to lose them.
She smiled politely as Carter stepped forward and formally dismissed them. The practical part of the exam was over. Finals were officially complete. There was another grand cheer following this pronouncement and the horde got to their feet, filing noisily out of the building to get ready for the graduation ceremony.
Rae saw her mother in the crowd and grinned as Beth made a beeline for her. “That was quite the show you put on, honey.” She hugged Rae tight, winding a hand behind her neck as she whispered in her ear, “And we both know, it’s not even half of what you can do.”
Rae pulled away, blushing. “Yeah, well, you know. No need to make everyone jealous. It was enough just to kick Devon’s ass.” She punched him good-naturedly and he shook his head.
“Doesn’t matter. I was technically your mentor. So, whenever you win, everyone knows it’s thanks to my teaching.”
Rae’s eyebrows shot up as she laughed. “Really? Is that how you’re going to play this off?”
Beth chuckled and shook her head. “Speaking of mentoring, I think some kids want to talk to you.” She cocked her head behind her at the gathered group of first years still waiting on the wings. “I’ll let you guys get to it. But Rae, I want you to stop by my cottage before you head out for dinner tonight. I have a graduation gift to give you.”
“I will.” She kissed her mom on the cheek and waved the first years forwar
d as Beth disappeared out the door. “All right minions, what do you have for me?”
“Well, it’s actually a presentation,” Ellie said importantly.
Rae chuckled as Julian and Molly joined them in the center of the floor. “Hey Julian, I thought you had a date today?”
He blushed. “Apparently something came up.”
Devon laughed. “She stood you up, mate?”
“Shut up,” Julian muttered.
Ellie cleared her throat. “We’d like to do our presentation.”
“Now?” Molly asked in dismay. “Rae, we’re going to need some serious time to get ready for tonight. I don’t know about you, but I’m hoping my date’s going to end really, really well if you know what I—”
Julian cleared his throat loudly and glanced at the kids.
Molly followed his gaze with a sigh. “Fine. But make it quick, kids. Clear and concise gets an A.”
“Molls…” Rae smacked her arm.
“What? Like there’s anything they’ve discovered that we haven’t already been over with them anyway?” she said under her breath. Then she raised her voice a bit louder. “Except for Noah, of course. He gets an automatic A.”
Rae rolled her eyes and motioned Ellie forward. “What do you have, Ellie. Dazzle us.”
The tiny girl launched into a rather gripping tale, considering how boring most of the subject matter was.
She began to pace and narrate, as if reading their paper but not actually looking at it. “To the outside world, Cromfield lived a normal life. At least, as normal a life as he could whilst serving the King. He had been tasked with creating Guilder as a safe-haven for people with powers in the hopes that one of these people could help the King have a son. While none of them had that particular ability, the school remained long after both men were dead,” Ellie paused dramatically before continuing, “at least, both of them were thought to be dead, transforming into the academy they all knew it as today.” Ellie summed it up nicely—giving the broad strokes version of the paper in her hand. She covered the places he went, people he saw, and laws he put into action. She wound up the grand speech with the last place he was seen.