“Oh no,” he said brightly. “That’s alright. I like it here, with the books.” He ran a loving hand over one of the shelves as he said it.
I smiled and left quickly. That had not gone as I had expected, not at all. Unfortunately, more unexpected news awaited me. Ms. Vale wanted us all to meet her the next evening in the center of campus, where the pens had been. She had an announcement to make.
Chapter Twelve
I tossed and turned all night. At first I started out back in the library, only Sigil wasn’t a kind, slightly eccentric ghost but a mace-wielding darkness mage. Then I transitioned back to the lake where my mother had appeared, before finally reuniting with Keller back on the grassy hill with the sun shining.
“Can’t I stay here forever?” I whined to him as I sat in his lap, his arms comfortably looped around my waist.
He chuckled into my ear. “You can try. Wouldn’t you get bored with me?”
I snorted. “No, never, but Lisabelle might come and wake me up. She has a habit of doing that when I’m dreaming.”
“Lisabelle just wants what’s best for you,” said Keller. He was so close to me that his warm breath tickled the nape of my neck and I shivered with pleasure. “But she understands danger. And danger likes her. You are not Lisabelle, and you should still fear it.”
“I wish you were here,” I murmured. “It’s lonely at Public without you.”
Keller’s arms tightened around me. “Like I said, I’m always there. It’s just hard not being able to protect you. I keep having visions of. . . .” He broke off and I didn’t ask him to finish. We could both imagine what the Fire Whips might do if they were angered.
“Do the paranormals know they’re biding time until they find the artifacts that are hidden at Public?” I asked worriedly, squinting up at the sun. It was moving fast across the sky, meaning we didn’t have much time together.
“I tried to tell them that’s what I thought, but they don’t believe that we’re meeting in dreams. The artifacts were adjudged to be a myth long ago. That Elam is supposedly searching for them means nothing. All the paranormals care about is keeping the Nocturns down and keeping their children safe. They think that giving Ms. Vale what she wants will accomplish that. Or something.”
I shook my head in frustration. “Don’t they realize that nothing will accomplish that?” I demanded hotly. “The Nocturns take and take until they can’t take any more. If we give an inch they will take a mile. There’s no getting around that.”
Keller nuzzled his nose into my neck and I giggled.
“Stop that,” I said, swatting playfully at his leg, but I didn’t really want him to stop. He was trying to distract me and it was working.
He sighed. “I’m waiting outside the gates. Lough is with me. He’s as mad as a poked beehive, wants to march right into Public and demand his friends. He can’t figure out why Lisabelle didn’t bring the place down around all your ears when she was captured; not that he blames her.”
“I’m not sure she can,” I said. “Maybe.” I stared off into the distance, thinking of my powerful friend. The sun was rising higher and I didn’t want to lose a moment with Keller.
I turned to face him. The worry line that I had become familiar with between his eyebrows was smooth. I kissed the spot anyway. His mouth was relaxed and not in the hard line it had been in when he saved us at Locke. I kissed each side. Eventually I found his lips, and the tingling sensation I felt whenever we kissed spread all the way to my toes. I sighed happily and once again hoped I would never wake up.
Unfortunately, before we could get to the evening’s announcement we had to get through the day of classes. I had been assigned a class with Zervos, and it was the worst possible subject. He was teaching “How to Spot a Traitor Paranormal,” and Sip, Lisabelle, and I were in the class with Camilla, Cale, and Rake - the large vampire who had helped us last semester. Trafton was also in the class, having mostly recovered from the wounds he had received on the night when we were “re-appropriated to the student body.” For Ms. Vale, of course, stating the obvious - that we had been captured and essentially imprisoned - would have been too easy.
This was our first class of the semester with Zervos. Professor Z, as we sometimes called him behind his back, had been scheduled to teach something else, but under the new regime, this is what he had ended up with. The first class had been taught by a Fire Whip, which had made it terrifying. He had gone through a list of traits, like dark hair, that might identify you as a friend of the demons. Of course, Camilla had a field day with the fact that Lisabelle was sitting there with her black hair, and the Fire Whip had just ignored her.
The class was in the basement of Cruor dorm, just for an added bit of terror. The vampire dorm was dark and forbidding, and although the pixies were more hated on campus, the vampires were both feared and respected.
There were not as many vampires in Cruor this semester as there usually were, because many had stayed behind to help Queen Lanca with her transition to being the ruler of her realm. The basement was above the crypt and entirely devoid of furniture. We had been forced to drag old school chairs and dilapidated desks down into the wet stone room. There was hardly any light, but when Lisabelle offered to start some lamps, Camilla had a fit, ranting about how Lisabelle was trying to take over the school and kill all the pixies.
“Half true,” Lisabelle had muttered to Sip and me.
“Which half?” I had asked, earning a grin from Lisabelle.
“Lisabelle,” said Sip tensely. “You can’t joke about that stuff right now. They might hurt you.”
“They might try,” said Lisabelle confidently. We had noticed that the Fire Whips, despite the fact that they nurtured a convincing impression of violence barely held in check, gave Lisabelle a wide birth whenever possible. The only exception was Ms. Vale.
We were all seated and waiting patiently for Zervos to arrive when we had another surprise: Daisy and Dobrov Validification walked in.
Daisy came first, Dobrov having held the door open for his twin sister. Her burst skin and hate-filled black eyes flicked to me and then away. She was dressed in a black jacket, black jeans, and black boots, looking for all the world like an otherworldly motorcycle-riding chick.
Dobrov, behind her, looked beaten down. His neck hung so low I thought his chin might be resting on his chest, and his black hair, missing in patches from the burned skin, hung over his forehead, almost entirely obscuring his face. Sip started to say hi, but one look at Daisy’s face inspired her to think better of it. Instead of sitting with us, Dobrov walked quickly to the back of the room. Daisy, for her part, gave Camilla a bright wave and hurried over to join the pixie. Lisabelle looked at me, her face scrunched as if she smelled something rotten, and shook her head. Sip, on her other side, leaned forward on her desk and mouthed. “Now we’re all in for it.”
I had to agree. If Daisy and Camilla were friends, all we needed was Faci to show up and we’d be in for a far worse time than we were already having. Luckily, Faci was locked away in a Locke jail cell because of his part in Dirr’s death. I hoped his father, Castov, was in the cell right next door.
“Could this get any worse?” I whispered to Lisabelle.
Before I finished speaking, the door to the dungeon clanged open and Zervos stormed through. He looked furious. His face was contorted with rage and he breathed through his nostrils. If he had been a dragon he would have burned us all.
He held in his hands a stack of old books, all bound in black leather. He slammed them down on his desk, then disappeared back out the door, only to reappear a moment later carrying another stack of black books, which he also slammed down. He repeated this process several times until his desk, which we had found on a junk pile and which I was not remotely sure would hold that much weight, was sagging in the middle.
Zervos returned with the last stack and slammed them down, only to pick up one book at a time and almost throw it at each of us. I caught mine, but barely. Some of
the edges of the pages were bent awkwardly as the book almost fell out of my hands.
Other students were not so lucky. Vanni didn’t get her hands up quickly enough and the black book Zervos threw at her hit her full in the face. She cried out as the room was filled with a dull thud.
“Luckily, she’s a fallen angel,” Camilla sneered, her eyes cold. “Even at her low skill level she should be able to heal that right up.”
“Ms. Rollins, would you ever so kindly tell me the name of the book you are holding?”
“Paranormal Traitors of the 20th Century,” I said, feeling ill. To be fair, Zervos’s specialty was history, and this was a history of sorts. But all it would serve to do was further turn the paranormals against each other - exactly what the demons wanted.
“Thank you ever so kindly,” he hissed. “Now, since I’ve just taken this class over, do allow me to set some ground rules before we begin.
“First, I am the only one who is allowed to be late. Should any of you not arrive at least five minutes before the designated start of class you shall receive a failing grade for participation for that day. I do not care how much you talk after that.”
“Secondly, do not speak unless I call on you. I do not want to see raised hands at any time. That goes especially for you, Quest,” he said, glaring ferociously at Sip, who sank in on herself just a bit, a phenomenon I had never seen before. Zervos clasped his hands behind him and paced back and forth, talking fast and low. “If you raise your hand I will be more than happy to get one of the Fire Whips to chop it off.” His eyes moved to each of us in turn. I couldn’t tell if he was kidding, but from the coldness in his voice I imagined he might not be, and I had no doubt that the Fire Whips would welcome the chance to attack us overtly.
“My word here is law,” he seethed, coming to a halt. “If you want to argue, go elsewhere. You will learn to spot a traitor paranormal this semester. We will practice by discussing what traits are present in each of you that most exemplify a traitor, AND, for the student who we decide, by the end of the semester, is most likely to be a traitor, you will receive a failing grade for the class and I will turn you over to Ms. Vale to do with what she will.”
A surprised cry went up from some of the students, mostly Airlee. You had to assume that Zervos would not fail a vampire, even though they had darkness in them. And the pixies walked around campus now with so much swagger they were clearly safe. That left Airlee and Astra.
“You might all be wondering what the point of this class is,” Zervos continued into the silence; no one had made a sound. “The Nocturns want you to turn on each other. They want you to see the faults instead of the light. If I have my way you will do just that. Trust no one. Not your friends and certainly not your enemies. You are now officially alone.”
I gulped. Zervos met my gray eyes with his black ones. They deepened to dead looking opals.
“Nothing will save you now,” he murmured. Although he said it to the entire class, I felt like he was saying it just to me.
Chapter Thirteen
“That was miserable,” said Sip as we left Zervos’s class and the Cruor dungeon. “And we all have some experience with miserable.”
“At least the class is in a cool spot,” said Lisabelle. “Not too hot, not too cold.”
“Just too evil,” said Sip darkly. “I’m famished. This porridge diet is going to be the death of me.”
“Me too,” said Trafton, sidling up to us. “A growing young man needs more to sustain himself.”
“Like dirt magazines and surf waves?” said Lisabelle sniffing disdainfully as she led us back into the weak winter sunlight.
“No, darling, just the love and affection of a good woman,” said Trafton, grinning at her.
“What do you think the announcement is going to be about tonight?” Sip said, running her fingers through her short blond hair.
“No idea,” I said. “But it can’t be good.”
As we walked, I continued a debate I had been having with myself about whether to discuss Sigil with my friends. Under normal circumstances I would have, but I didn’t want to get him in trouble by taking the risk of having him discovered, and I was worried about eavesdroppers.
We entered the dining hall with Sip still grumbling. With the school on lockdown, or “Re-calibration to make us better paranormals,” we were no longer getting the Tabble. I thought that was mostly good, because Mound was still spewing his vitriol about elementals, meaning me, but it also meant that we had no links to the outside world. “I miss Dacer and Lough and Keller,” she muttered. “At least if they were here it would lighten the mood.”
“I’m not light enough for you?” Trafton asked comically. “Here, try to pick me up and see!”
Sip grinned and shook her head. “Glad you can retain your sense of humor.”
“Dobrov’s here somewhere,” I said, looking around the room. Some things didn’t change. Pixies were with other pixies, vampires with other vampires. I half hoped Dobrov would join our table, but I saw him sitting with his sister, his head still bowed, and I realized that it was not to be. But even though he didn’t seem able to leave her side, she was totally ignoring him, intent on the Contact Stone she held in her hand. So, I thought, Daisy is allowed a Contact Stone. I should have figured as much, even though the rest of us weren’t allowed to communicate with other paranormals in any way. Dobrov looked up and met my eyes for the briefest of seconds and I gave him a slight nod, but he just lowered his head again. When I saw Daisy’s head start to turn I quickly looked away. I didn’t want him to get into any more trouble than he already was.
Meanwhile, I was still curious about two men who were now seated at the high table alone, but who had sat on either side of Ms. Vale on our first night back. As I watched I noticed that every once in a while Ms. Vale’s eyes would linger on her children and her features would soften just a faction.
“Who are those two men?” I said to the table at large.
They were bald and mustached, and although they were small they were compact. The way they moved reminded me of Vital, Queen Lanca’s personal bodyguard and the best vampire fighter in the world. They stepped carefully and were never off-balance. They took in their surroundings without disrupting them in any way. They were fighters and not just Fire Whips. They were also dressed casually, in slacks and leather.
“I heard their names were Purhogan and Perspi Baxter,” said Trafton. “They work for Vale.”
“They look mean,” said Sip, eyeing them once she’d gotten her ration of grits for lunch.
“Let’s not find out,” said Trafton, looking away as if he was trying to put distance between us and them.
Once we had all finished eating, Ms. Vale swept in. I was just cleaning my plate, and was fighting the temptation to lick it clean because I was so hungry. I had a feeling that licking it would attract attention I didn’t want, so I resisted the urge and sighed.
“Afternoon, students,” she chirped, throwing her arms wide. She gave us a big smile. Unlike during her takeover, she was no longer dressed simply. Her face was piled with makeup, even more than Dacer might wear, and she wore robes of the finest silk that draped perfectly over her body. Today’s robes mixed a deep purple with a light blue, topped off with gold chains hanging from the cuffs and hem.
No one said a word. The twins, Purhogan and Perspi, stood to let her breeze past them. “I’m delighted that the first week of classes is behind us. I do hope you are learning and growing as young minds should. Of course, we have a very exciting announcement for you this evening. I do hope you can all join me, but I wanted to say a little something now.” She clasped her hands together, her eyes shining as she looked at each of us in turn.
“I’ve decided to make the Baxter brothers here my seconds-in-command. Hopefully none of the Fire Whips will be jealous. I just wanted you all, dear students, to understand that their word, like mine, is law.” She looked around meaningfully at all of us, while most of the students in front o
f her stared at the two bald men. Purhogan and Perspi still sat, impassive, their faces unreadable.
She beamed at all of us.
“We really might not last the semester,” Sip mused. “Technically, we’re all prisoners. I don’t know what the other students think about it, but if they realize. . . . I don’t care what deal was struck.”
“You don’t think they’re going to give up running the school once the semester ends?” Vanni asked, her voice small. She had been quiet until then, and I looked at her with pity. Maybe she hadn’t heard about the artifacts, or maybe she just believed that all the darkness mages really wanted was a bargaining chip, but either way she apparently didn’t realize that there was no way the Nocturns intended to let any of us leave Public alive at the end of the semester.
From somewhere else in the hall there was a murmur, louder than Vanni’s whispered question, and Ms. Vale paused, her eyes growing cold and bright.
“Who just spoke while I was speaking?” she asked quietly. The room grew so quiet I felt sure I could hear Ricky off in Maine playing video games. I looked around. Ms. Vale’s eyes were trained on something that was past my head, but Daisy, her mother’s daughter, rose to her feet and pointed. Dobrov never looked up.
“That girl,” said Daisy. “No, not you,” she said, hissing violently at a paranormal who had apparently thought she was the one being called out. “That one, the brown-haired girl!” Daisy smiled at her mother as she laced her fingers in front of her. Ms. Vale inclined her head toward Daisy. “Thank you so much, darling daughter of mine. Most helpful. I command the offending party to please stand up.”
None of us moved. I stared hard at my food, not daring to turn around, but I heard the scrape of the chair and then suddenly a sob.
“Look at this,” said Ms. Vale, clucking. “This wretched girl, poor thing. Her parents never taught her manners,” Ms. Vale said, smiling now. “Well, I would be more than happy to do so in their place. Easy enough. First, I want everyone to watch. Let this be a lesson to you about what happens when you are not polite to your elders and betters.”
Elemental Fire (Paranormal Public Series) Page 9