Chosen for Song, Volume 1

by Delia Stewart

  Chosen for Song

  The Chosen Academy Series: Book 2, Volume 1

  Delia Stewart

  The Prophesy

  When time is worn and thin as air,

  When man looks forward, forgets to care,

  When worlds of old rise up once more,

  When ancient evil taints the core

  The cold ones sip at purest blood,

  And slither dark through filth and mud,

  The women turn to hear His voice,

  The one will come to make Her choice.

  Be she though untested, unwise,

  Her allies gather to help her rise.

  The one must learn to use her sight,

  Through terror and battle to restore the light.

  Chapter One

  Music drifted through the ancient stone hallways of Schola Celata. It was the first thing I heard when I stepped from the dark dank subway tunnel into the school with Alex and Vance, and there was something strange about it. Something unsettling. My stomach tightened, my awareness spiked. Part of it might have been the darkness—though the tunnel was always dim, coming back to school at night was unusual. But Vance needed something he’d forgotten and we agreed to come with him to pick it up.

  The music was coming from a stringed instrument--a violin, maybe? And the melody it played was eerie and compelling, wrapping itself around us, winding between us.

  "What is that?" I asked, taking comfort in the way Alex held my hand tighter, the way Vance walked just a little closer.

  "Grace," Alex said, his voice dark.

  My mind was growing darker with each note, with each step forward. A sense of dread grew inside me, and my stomach turned. Moments before, outside the tunnels in the bright sunshine of Riverside Park, I'd been fine. Happy even. But at this moment I wondered if I'd ever be happy again.

  "I thought she was only supposed to do that when no one was around," Alex said, his voice a low growl.

  Alex was never a bright ray of sunshine, but he seemed darker than usual suddenly, the fingers of the music pulling us all forward.

  "Grace!" Vance shouted, shocking me. I felt a little like we were in church, like we needed to stay quiet, respect the melody. "Grace! Quit it!"

  The music stopped abruptly, and I felt my mood lighten immediately. "What in the..."

  We pushed through a doorway into a room I'd visited once or twice--the music room. Inside, Grace sat with Mrs. Keller, the music teacher she studied with.

  "Jeez," Vance said, walking in easily, striding across the floor as if he owned the space.

  I was less confident, still feeling ill at ease, even though the music had stopped. "That was you playing?" I asked Grace.

  Mrs. Keller rose as Grace put her bow and violin back inside a velvet-lined case. "That was very good, Grace. Progress."

  Grace nodded, her dark face serious as she watched Mrs. Keller leave the room.

  When the door shut behind the teacher, Grace's face relaxed, her eyes widening slightly as she smiled at me. "You rescued me."

  "That was good, Grace," Alex said, squeezing my hand and then letting it go, moving to examine the sheet of music on Grace's music stand.

  "I didn't know you guys were coming back,” Grace said. "Sorry."

  I looked between the boys who still held so many secrets I felt I might never be on the inside of, wondering what they knew that I didn't today. It was always something. "Why does that matter? Why are you apologizing?"

  Grace picked up her violin case and walked toward me, her smile easy and wide now. "I'll explain that," she said. "But can we do it over food? I'm starving."

  "Totally," Vance said. "But we came in because I need to grab my algebra book. Left it yesterday and I've got a test."

  "You're actually going to study?" I asked, laughing. Grades were not Vance's focus most of the time.

  "Wanna help me?" He asked, giving me a smile that was all suggestion.

  "I doubt my freshman math skills would be much help," I told him, feeling the blush creep up my cheeks even though I should have been used to Vance's flirting by now.

  "Any math skills would help," Alex said, his voice dark. Despite his usually menacing attitude, Alex loved Vance and you could see it in the way his eyes glittered when he looked at him as he delivered this line. They weren't brothers, not really, but they might as well have been.

  Vance left the room then, heading for the student lounge where he'd left his book, and soon we were all back outside in the park, leaving the hidden halls of Schola Celata behind and becoming--as far as any passing New Yorker was concerned--just a regular group of teenagers heading to grab a slice of pizza on the Upper West Side.

  "So the music," I began, watching Grace fold a wide piece of pizza in half so perfectly it might have been a geometry assignment. Maybe Grace should help Vance study. "You're amazing. But what you played today. It was so sad." I couldn't quite find the words to explain that whatever she'd been playing hadn't just been sad. It had made me feel like the soul was being sucked right out of my body. Like I might never smile again. Like there was no hope for anything at all.

  "It's a sad piece," Grace agreed.

  "But," Alex interjected, raising an eyebrow at Grace as if to tell her to continue.

  "But, that's not why you felt sad." She put her pizza down for a second and straightened up, narrowing her eyes at me. "Wait. You did feel sad, right? Maybe hopeless, even?"

  I glanced around. Was that the normal reaction of people who heard Grace play? "Like my life might as well be ending."

  She grinned triumphantly.

  "Congratulations on making me want to die." What the heck was this about? And why did anything having to do with Celata surprise me at this point?

  She laughed and took a bite of pizza.

  Vance bumped my shoulder with his own bigger one and smiled his bright sunshine smile at me. "You already know Grace can plant suggestions and ideas in peoples' minds."

  I nodded. Thanks to Grace, my mother and brother had cleared out a few weeks ago so that my father could host a demonic dinner party of sorts in our house.

  Life had been pretty weird since we moved to New York City.

  "Yeah," I said, drawing out the word to indicate that I needed a bit more to go on.

  "She can do the same thing with music," he said. "Only it's more potent. It's like the music sets the mood, opens the mind to suggestion, and then Grace can direct thoughts from there."

  "So you were playing something to make people want to kill themselves? Charming skill," I said, only half joking.

  "I was practicing," Grace said, unapologetic. "I usually only practice happy pieces when people are around."

  "Good to know," I said, relieved when the conversation shifted gears, turning back to the upcoming homecoming dance at Tate, our aboveground high school. Now and then, I liked to pretend we were just a regular group of kids, not a bunch of supernatural freaks with a set of powers we were told would be the key to saving civilization from an evil greater than we'd ever known.

  Tate High School was a special kind of hell at the rare moments when Alex and Vance were not around. Though I'd managed somehow to make a pretty tight group of friends, most of them were older, and Grace and I had just one class together. I had another class with Ann, the tall blonde shifter who also spent some of her time at Celata, but aside from those moments of peace, I was on my own.

  And by on my own, I meant I was evidently wearing a target on my back, no matter what I actually put on my body in the morning. The mean girls didn't actually care what I wore. It was more about me as a person. From the moment I'd set foot inside the historic private high school near my family's Upper West Side brownstone, they'd made my life at
Tate less than pleasant.

  "Still having trouble with the smoky eye, huh?" This came in a sharp whisper from Helen, whose locker was right next to mine.

  I turned to look at her, only to find her standing with Carmella and Dora, the newest addition to the mean girls' club. The worst thing was that I couldn't seem to escape Dora, since she was also the newest student at Celata. And she was equally mean no matter where we were.

  "Maybe it's because her eyes are so squinty and small?" Carmella peered closer at me, examining my not-at-all squinty eyes. I had my mother's eyes, and they were big. And blue. They were my best feature, and I was not going to let these girls make me wonder about that.

  "Some people just don't have an aptitude for things that require focus," Dora said, lifting an eyebrow at me.

  "Was there something you actually wanted?" I asked them, pushing myself not to crumble, not to become angry at the sheer unfairness of their attention. What had I done to deserve this? I couldn't think of a single thing.

  "From you?" Dora laughed. "Hardly."

  The girls formed a tight little knot and moved away from me, whispering and laughing. Helen threw a glance over her shoulder at me that I wished I hadn't seen. It told me I was hated. And promised more attention.

  I let out a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding. It was nothing specific they said. It never was. But they managed always to make me feel small. Insignificant.

  I shoved my books inside my locker and went out to the courtyard for lunch. Once I was settled at the now-familiar table with Vance, Alex, Grace, and Ann, I let my shoulders slump.

  "What's up?" Alex asked, ducking his chin to meet my eye. He scooted closer, dropping a hand to my thigh.

  A thrill of excitement whipped through me at the touch, but there was comfort there too. I knew part of the reason those girls targeted me was because of the easy acceptance I'd been given by Alex and Vance--boys that didn't seem to have time for other girls, but who always made room for me.

  "It's nothing," I said, feeling better already. "Just stupid school stuff."

  "I hate stupid school stuff," Vance agreed, grinning. "Like tests."

  "Oh yeah," Grace said, poking a French fry at Vance. "Your test. How did it go?"

  "No one wants to hear about that," Vance said, shaking his head. "Can't we talk about interesting things? Like burritos, maybe? Or how Gwyneth Paltrow is hot but also like really crazy and kind of old? But still hot?"

  Grace threw the fry she'd been holding.

  "If we talk about that, I'm leaving," Ann said.

  "What about the dance?" I suggested. I'd been wondering for a while if there was a chance Alex might actually ask me. Or maybe Vance, or even Colton, another friend who spent more time at Celata than Tate lately.

  The boys exchanged a look I didn't understand.

  "No one goes," Grace said.

  "But maybe we should," Ann said.

  Grace made a face at Ann. "I'm not allowed to date," she said. "Until I'm at least forty. Not like anyone's asking."

  "I'm asking," Ann said, squaring her shoulders. "Go with me."

  "Like... as friends?" Grace wrinkled her nose.

  "People do that," Ann said. "Right guys? People do that."

  "Losers do that," a voice said from over my shoulder. I didn't even have to turn my head to look. It was Dora. I knew by the cloud that drifted into Alex's already dark eyes as he looked up at her from where he sat beside me at the round table.

  "What do you need, Dora?" Vance asked, a false cheer in his voice.

  She cocked out a hip, making her short uniform skirt swing to one side as she held one hand in front of her mouth, a finger tracing her bottom lip like she was thinking hard about something. She wrinkled her forehead, her dark brows coming together for a second, and then she laughed, a sound that actually sent a chill through me. "Well," she said, walking around the table behind us until she stood just behind Alex and could look right at me. "I thought I'd see if Alex had any plans for the dance." She dropped a hand to his shoulder, and something inside me twisted in protest.

  A few beats later than I would have liked, Alex shrugged off her hand. But he just stared down into his food. He didn't say anything, which made the churning in my gut worse.

  “He has a plan,” Grace said. “His plan is to avoid girls who live to make other people miserable," she finished, her voice surprisingly venomous.

  Dora spit out a laugh, unfazed by Grace's words or her tone. I heard Helen and Carmella tittering at a nearby table. Alex sat still as a stone, his dark eyes focused on the pasta on his plate. "Whatever," Dora said lightly, taking a moment to examine her fingernails before finally turning on her heel to go back to the pit of vipers where she belonged. "Think about it, Alex," she called back, her voice a lilting song that made me feel even more nauseated.

  "Dude," Vance said, socking Alex in the shoulder. "What the hell? You just sat there. Now she thinks she has a chance with you."

  Alex finally looked up, but he didn't say anything, just met my eyes with a searching gaze before standing abruptly. "I need to go study for physics." Alex left us, each of us watching his back as he moved away, carrying his tray.

  "What was that?" Ann asked, her long blond hair falling over one shoulder as she swiveled her head back to our table.

  "That was weird," Vance told her. He narrowed his eyes, looking over at the table where Dora sat huddled with the other mean girls, sharing evil secrets or doing whatever it was they did.

  Grace cleared her throat and looked at Ann, straightening. "I'll go with you. To the dance. I mean, unless there's a boy you'd rather ask."

  "I asked you," Ann pointed out, and she smiled at Grace with such clear admiration, I wondered if I was missing something there. Ann had never said anything to me, certainly, but I wondered if her admiration for Grace was more than just friendship. There was so much about my new friends I still didn't know.

  "Alex will take you," Vance said, leaning into my shoulder again. "If you want to go to the dance."

  I blew out an uncomfortable laugh. "I don't think it's up to you," I told him.

  "We'll both take you," Vance said, grinning.

  I stared at him, looking for the joke, but he seemed to be serious. With any other guys, I'd question it. But Vance and Alex were two halves of a whole in some ways, and our relationship had never been clear. I found myself drawn to both of them, in different ways and for different reasons, but each was equally compelling, and neither seemed complete on his own. Stranger still, they seemed completely comfortable with this situation, and neither of them appeared to be looking to change it.

  Though now I wondered if Alex might be tiring of me.

  Why hadn't he turned Dora down? He'd let her believe there was a chance, and that possibility made me feel sick and confused.

  "Okay," I told Vance. "I'd like that."

  Chapter Two

  Alex and Vance still lived across the street from my house, boarding with Mr. Richter. Only now that Mr. Richter was just a regular guy, I was allowed inside the house to see the rooms they rented, and had even had dinner with Mr. Richter once, who looked like a completely different person now that he'd recovered his life from the demon that possessed him.

  The boys had fallen into the routine of picking me up for school almost as soon as my family had moved in, and they waited for me now at the bottom of the steps. I watched them for a moment from the window in my room as they talked to one another with serious looks on their faces, their heads bent close. They were such a contrast--Vance's jaw-length blond hair and bright green eyes, and Alex's olive complexion and close-cropped dark hair. Light and dark, day and night. It was part of their connection, part of their power. I didn't know how they'd been linked in the first place--they weren't actually related, I didn't think.

  "You going to stare at your boyfriends all day or actually go to school, Carls?" Ethan leaned in my doorway, and I cursed little brothers in my mind.

  "I'm going." I didn't both
er denying the multiple boyfriend thing. I had no idea how to tell Ethan he was wrong, and what would be the point? "You should talk, by the way,” I added. “How many girls have been over to 'study' this week? Three? Twelve?"

  "I can't help it if I'm popular," Ethan said, smirking at me as I pulled my bag to my shoulder and pushed past him to grab something to eat in the kitchen. "Seems to run in the family anyway."

  "Hardly." I thought of Dora and Helen, of how they seemed to live to make me miserable. "Everyone automatically likes you. That's not how it works for me."

  "Not everyone likes me," Ethan said. "You, for instance." He winked as he reached past me to pick up a green apple, and I socked him in the side lightly.

  "I like you. You just drive me insane," I told him.

  "That's his job," my mother said from where she sat at the table in the kitchen. "And I'm going to be late to my job if you don't both get going to school." She stood and moved to put her coffee cup in the sink, pausing to wrap an arm around each of us and pull us close to her. "I love you guys," she said.

  I let myself melt for a just a second into the warmth of my mom's embrace. I was lucky. I had a solid family, even if my brother did drive me nuts and my father was keeping more secrets than a magician. At moments like this I wondered how much Mom actually knew about Dad, and about me. But he'd made it clear it wasn't my place to ask. So instead, I just let myself be hugged and then told them both goodbye. Ethan and I went out the front door together, and after fist bumping both Vance and Alex at the bottom of our steps, he headed off in the opposite direction.

  "He figure it out yet?" Vance asked me as Alex slid my bag from my shoulder so he could carry it.

  "Figure what out?" I asked.

  Alex's voice was low, warning. "Dude. Enough."

  I whipped my head to look up into his stern face. "What?" I looked back at Vance, wearing the same smile as ever. "Are you guys keeping secrets from me again?" I stopped walking. "I'm not doing this today. If you know something, you tell me. I can't stand any more secrets or things I need to figure out in my own time. Just spit it out. Especially if it has to do with my little brother."