Standardized Testing

by Ivy Hearne

  Ms. Hush was the most likely of all the instructors to believe me. And I wanted her input before I raised the alarm. Reo could do whatever he needed to do in terms of contacting the Council. I would do my part the way I could.

  In her office, Ms. Hush stared at me open-mouthed as I finished telling her about the darkness I saw coming for us. “Are you absolutely certain that this was not the Lusus Naturae?”

  I nodded. “Positive. The Lusus Naturae have their own feel to them. I saw them, too. This was different. And Ms. Hush, it’s coming for all of us. Not just the hunters. Not just the Lusus Naturae. All of us.”

  She tapped one finger on her desk, frowning. Then she nodded as if coming to some decision. “Agreed. Let’s see what we can find out.”

  I heaved a sigh of relief. I hadn’t realized how anxious I’d been that Ms. Hush wouldn’t believe me.

  Standing, she opened a desk drawer and pulled out a velvet bag. “If you’re willing, I’d like to gather a group of magic users to cast with. Together, we should be able to retrieve your memory of the darkness. I think it will be more effective if there are several witnesses.”

  “Sure.” I didn’t really want other people to go digging around in my head—the Lusus Naturae had done plenty of that on their own—but I trusted Ms. Hush.

  She glanced at her watch. “Good. Meet me back here in an hour.”

  Chapter 4

  I spent my hour grabbing food at the Rathskeller pub.

  I had just ordered a hamburger when Tony walked in.

  Usually, the Rathskeller was where upperclassman—students who were older than high-school age—and faculty hung out. At this time of day, though, it was the only place open that served a full meal. I hadn’t slept well on the plane, and it had been a long time since that package of pretzels. I needed something to keep me going.

  Anyway, I assumed that was why Tony look surprised when he saw me—I didn’t come here alone, as a general rule. I waved, not sure that he would come over to talk to me. After all, our last real conversation had involved me telling him I wouldn’t go to the Valentine’s Day dance with him, and him getting upset.

  Not to mention the fact that I had pulled magic directly out of him—and everyone else—to put the school back together.

  I was surprised when he came to sit with me. “Hey,” he said.

  “Hi. How was your spring break?”

  He shrugged. “It was okay, mostly. I stayed on campus.” He glanced around at the mostly empty restaurant and out the window at the strained faces of people walking by.

  “I think it might’ve been better if everybody had stuck around for a bit longer. Seems like maybe people would get over everything faster if they just faced it head-on.” He gave me a hard stare, as if his words meant something more than they said.

  I decided not to delve too deeply into what that additional meaning might be.

  “What about you?” Tony asked. “Rumor has it you went on some kind of big monster hunt with your hunting partner and his brother.”

  He was trying to hide it, but a sneer underscored his voice when he mentioned Souji and Reo.

  “Reo called it a practice hunt,” I said, reciting the story Reo had suggested we all tell. “It was a sea serpent down in Florida. Mostly a chance to hang out on the beach.” I shrugged, acting as if it had been nothing serious at all.

  He grunted a response that might have been, “Cool.”

  It seemed like forever ago that Tony and I had been out on a date. Then, he had seemed friendly and open. Interesting.

  Now he was shut down and angry. Closed off. And a lot of that anger seemed to be directed at me.

  Okay. Most of that anger. We stared at each other. I had forgotten how pretty his eyes were...

  My order arrived, the Academy food-service worker who delivered it sliding in between me and Tony. As she did, I snapped out of what I realized was some sort of minor trance. I blinked twice, hard.

  With a muttered thanks, I waited until the waitress left. Had she done that on purpose? I glanced over to find her watching us carefully.

  Yes, I think she had. It hadn’t occurred to me that even the people who served our food at the Academy had some kind of supernatural ability—though it would make sense that they did. At any rate, she had stopped whatever Tony had been doing.

  This time, I gave him a hard look. “It’s been nice talking to you, Tony,” I said. My voice stayed firm. “I’ll see you around.”

  It was as clear dismissal as I could muster. Tony understood it, too, and knew that he’d been busted doing whatever it was he’d been trying to do. He glared at the waitress, who crossed her arms and leaned against a barstool, meeting his stare coolly.

  “Guess I’d better be going,” Tony finally said.

  “Take care,” I called out brightly, as if we were parting as friends—but I think we both knew in that moment that we weren’t.

  As soon as he was out the door, I dropped my shields and sent a tiny thread of my power questing out toward him.

  “Don’t,” the waitress said sharply.

  Startled, I spooled the magic tendril back into myself. I turned to the waitress and frowned my question at her.

  “There’s something dark going on with that boy,” she said. “I’ve already sent a report in to Dr. Novak.”

  The cafeteria and other food service workers had a direct line to the headmaster?

  I was beginning to realize that everyone on campus was almost always under surveillance of one kind or another.

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

  That’s not true. I knew that it was better than falling to the Lusus Naturae.

  And if it helped in any way with the darkness that was coming for us all, I welcomed a little surveillance. The darkness would wipe us out. It wouldn’t just watch us. It would end us.

  WHEN I GOT BACK TO Ms. Hush’s office, I was surprised to find four other people there, too.

  Colette, Erin’s best friend, was a strong magic user, but she didn’t much like me. I was a little surprised she’d show.

  Erin herself was there, too. I don’t know if she had been recruited by Ms. Hush or if she had just been with Colette when Ms. Hush found her. In any case, I was glad to see her there.

  Dr. Novak stood in one corner, his arms crossed, looking as still and dead as only a vampire possibly could while remaining upright.

  And finally, Mina, the fairy who had recruited me to the Hunters’ Academy in the first place, stood chatting with the headmaster.

  I gave Mina hug when I saw her. Somehow, she always made me feel better. I wondered for a second why she was there if the goal was to gather together some of the best magic users on campus. Then I remembered the way she had touched my forehead and made my migraines recede the first time I met her, turning my pain into a violet haze that left me feeling more sleepy than miserable.

  As I finished hugging Mina, a fifth person walked in—Matthew Gibbs. He had been my partner in psychics class my first semester and had helped me after I’d fought with my tutor Shane, who’d turned out to be an agent of the Lusus Naturae. Matthew and I hadn’t really talked much since then—but I knew he was both a powerful psychic and a good guy. I was glad to have him there, as well.

  “Okay,” Ms. Hush said. “We are ready to begin.”

  Her office was small. With all of us in there, it was also crowded. But she directed everyone to find a place to sit as she moved around, lighting several candles and turning off the electric lights. “We will remain in a circle around Kacie.” She turned to me. “Kacie, you should lie down on the carpet.”

  It felt strange to stretch out among a group of people who are all sitting around staring at me—except Dr. Novak. He continued to stand in the corner, his arms crossed as he stared down his long, thin nose at me.

  Ms. Hush poured a circle of salt around me—well, more like an oval, but apparently the general shape was good enough. Then she handed each member of the spell circle a small metal bo
wl.

  “Everyone has different herbs,” she explained. “We will light them, then blow out the flame to invite protection. We sit at the five points of a pentagram, to offer our own spiritual guidance.”

  She folded herself down to join the circle by my head and demonstrated, taking a long, thin taper and lighting it from one of the candles.

  “Sage, for purification,” she said, lighting the herbs from the taper.

  She handed the taper to Colette, who sat to her left. Colette waited until Ms. Hush had blown out the flame on the sage and was waving her hand above the bowl to disperse the smoke throughout the room. Then Colette lit her own bowl of crushed herbs. “Clove, for protection.”

  “Cinnamon, for love,” Erin said.

  “Comfrey, for safety,” Mina continued.

  “Ginseng, for psychic ability,” Matthew finished.

  When the circle was completed, the room swirled with smoke and the sound of people breathing. It made me dizzy, and I closed my eyes.

  Almost instantly, I was swept into the darkness.

  Chapter 5

  I shouldn’t have kissed Souji.

  It was the first thing I thought when I slipped into the darkness.

  Which was interesting, since I had worked very hard to push the memory of it aside entirely. We had been in Florida on the beach, and he’d been in his human form. And right in the middle of the most amazing kiss of my life, a sea monster had ripped him out of my arms.

  That’s what hooking up with your hunting partner can get you. It’s just a bad idea, all the way around.

  All of those thoughts whirled through my head in an instant, in the few moments it took me to realize that I was no longer at the beach, long enough to remember that before I was swept back into the darkness.

  A voice echoed all around me, reverberating through me like my own thoughts. It’s all your fault. People die and you can’t save them. You might as well join the dark. You know we are going to win.

  Part of me knew what the darkness told me was a lie.

  But the more the voice repeated it, the more I believed it. People died and it was my fault. I couldn’t save them, no matter what I did. It was true.

  But then...

  Come with me.

  It was a different voice entirely.

  No, wait! This way!

  The sound was light and feminine and utterly unfamiliar. I spun about in the darkness trying to find my bearings.

  Here.

  A hand grabbed mine and pulled me. I popped out of the darkness to float inside tiny bubble of space barely big enough for the two of us. A girl about my age held my hand. She had neon-blue hair and a mischievous gleam in her eyes.

  “I only have a minute, but I need to talk to you.”

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “My name’s Jolie. And I have something you need.”

  “Where did you come from?”

  “Never mind all that. I need to get something to you. But you have to meet me out in the real world. And we can’t get caught by either of our headmasters.”

  “What do you want to give me?”

  “It’s a weapon. One you can use against the darkness.”

  A weapon to use against the darkness? That could be helpful. Unless this was another trick of the dark’s.

  “Why can’t we tell anyone?”

  She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Because I am Lusus Naturae, you idiot. I’m at our campus training to fight against hunters.”

  Wait. The Lusus Naturae had a training campus, too? Why didn’t I already know that?

  No. I would worry about that later. “Why should I trust you?”

  “Because I used the stone to open this space for us to talk. But I can only access a tiny part of its power. You need it. It’s made for a gorgon to wield.”

  I snapped around to stare at her. “The Lusus Naturae know I’m a gorgon?”

  The black, undulating walls of the darkness began to close in around us.

  “I don’t have any more time.” Jolie spoke quickly. “I can meet you in the town outside your campus tonight. I’m bringing my hunting partners, but no one else. You can bring yours, too.” She reached out and shoved me back toward the darkness, but in a different direction than the one we’d arrived from. “You need to go. Don’t fight—let him save you.”

  I didn’t know what she was talking about, and then it was too late to ask—I was back in the darkness, sinking.

  The darkness was still singing to me. Join us. We can give you what you want. Peace.

  This time, when the darkness flowed over me, it was more like a warm blanket. It was comforting, soothing. Not like thrashing in the water as it closed over my head.

  It was acceptance and completion and—then something grabbed my hair and jerked me out.

  I sat up in Ms. Hush’s office, choking and coughing. Black sludge poured out of my mouth as Souji yanked me to my feet and bent me over his forearm, giving my back a thump as he pulled up against my diaphragm in something like the Heimlich maneuver.

  The sludge on Ms. Hush’s carpet writhed, stretching out tendrils toward people in the circle around me. They all jumped up and scuttled away from it.

  “What is that?” Colette shrieked.

  Ms. Hush didn’t answer. She was too busy waving her hands and chanting a complicated incantation.

  Matthew raised his foot as if to attempt to stomp the puddle of darkness in front of him. I pushed out my hand to shove him off-balance. “Don’t touch it,” I managed to choke out just before heaving up another globule of the stuff.

  It tasted like pure evil in my mouth.

  Erin and Colette stepped up to either side of Ms. Hush and joined their voices to hers.

  It was clearly a spell that I had not learned yet. But I couldn’t help, anyway. My job was to clear the last of the darkness’s hold on me.

  “Let me help,” Souji murmured.

  He took my hands in his, and I felt him pouring his strength into me.

  I grasped at his power like a lifeline, and it swept through me, illuminating every last part of my soul.

  When I was certain the darkness was out of me, I closed my eyes and since Souji’s magic—the parts that that I hadn’t used, anyway—back to him.

  When it was over, he and I stood with our hands clasped, crossing at our chests, our foreheads touching.

  I opened my eyes, not having even realized that I’d closed them, and discovered that the dark blob on the floor had been encircled by a magical shield. The blob slammed against the walls of its enclosure like a wild animal trying to break free.

  Everyone stared at it in horror.

  Then, for the first time, Dr. Novak pushed off from the wall where he’d been leaning the whole time. Reaching into an inner pocket of his suit, he said, “Drop the shield.”

  His voice was deep and serious, and it brooked no argument.

  Ms. Hush flicked her fingers toward the force field, and as it dropped, in one smooth motion, Dr. Novak pulled a dagger out of his suit and knelt to drive the knife into the darkness. The dagger’s blade was shining so brightly I could barely look at it, and it seemed to suck the darkness into it.

  The blob let out a screech almost too high to be heard, but that echoed through my head, leaving my ears ringing as the piece of the monster shriveled and died and finally fell silent.

  There was nothing left of it. It was gone, simply drifting away like smoke. We all stood staring at each other.

  “That’s what’s coming for us,” Dr. Novak finally said. He stood up and brushed imaginary lint off the dark pants of his suit. “We have much to prepare for, and not much time to do it in.” With a grave nod at Ms. Hush, he moved toward the door, pausing before turning the knob. “I’ll be in touch.” His glance swept over everyone in the room. “With all of you.”

  And then he was gone, moving delete that using his vampire powers to so quickly that I never even saw him leave.

  “What now?” I asked.

/>   No one replied.

  But I already knew the answer.

  I had a meeting to keep with a member of the Lusus Naturae.

  Chapter 6

  “Kacie, are you okay?” Ms. Hush finally asked.

  I nodded, not trusting my voice to remain steady as I answered.

  “I’m going to take her back to the dorms,” Souji said. “I think she needs a break.”

  Ms. Hush nodded, a little distracted. But as Souji pulled me toward the door, she spun around and pointed at me. “Do not do any magic without assistance,” she ordered. “We can’t afford to lose you. You’re the only one who really knows anything about what we are facing.”

  Her last words kind of negated the apparent concern of her first words. I wondered if she would have given me that instruction if the hunters didn’t need me.

  That’s not fair, Kacie, I chided myself as I walked out the door. Souji followed close behind. We exited the building, and he reached out to take my hand as he moved up to walk beside me.

  “There’s something more I need to tell you,” I said quietly. Souji leaned his head down toward mine to hear me better. “We need to tell Reo, too. Let’s call him and see if he can come back.”

  The look Souji cast my direction was worried, but he nodded and pulled out his cell phone. He chatted for a few minutes, and when he hung up, he said, “We’re on. He’s coming through into the upper-level dorm in five.” Without another word, we swung around, changing directions to meet Reo.

  When Reo strode through the portal into the hallway, his expression was grim.

  “No luck with the Council?” I asked.

  He snarled. “I might be the senior hunter on campus right now, but apparently I am too young and stupid to know what I’m talking about as far as the Council is concerned.”

  “Where is Laxmi?” Souji inquired after Reo’s hunting partner. “Maybe she could help.”

  Souji huffed in irritation. “I met with her while I was there. She’s decided she’s going to do an internship with Counselor Solange. She told me I should find a new partner.”