by Zara Zenia
We held each other, half undressed and sweating like spent animals as we breathed heavily to recover the air that was knocked out of us in our love making. It was nice then too, kind of like being the only two people in the world— the only two people involved in our relationship. I liked to think in those moments that we were a normal couple and she wouldn't be with anyone but me. Later I left, not wanting to keep her up late.
"I'll miss you," I said as I held her and looked deeply into her eyes.
"You too," she said with a kiss. But I knew she wouldn't miss me the same way while I headed out the door and it closed behind me.
Okay, I didn't know for a fact I was the best she was having. That kind of drove me crazy, but it also made me want her all the more. Was I crazy for being willing to participate in this scenario? Maybe, but at this point in time I was too far in to be able to drag myself away from the situation, and I wouldn't have wanted to even if I could have.
As I left, feeling entirely satisfied and pleasantly drained in a physical way— I couldn't help but wish that I was staying the night with that beautiful young witch. To be able to hold Marina in my arms as she drifted off asleep and stayed asleep, and then follow suit, would be my idea of the perfect moment. A rush of temporary sadness hit me and threatened to ruin my elation. But I had never been the type of guy to let melancholy overrun me, so I hopped in my car and took off to the hotel I was staying in while visiting Marina for a few days. Things were good. I was starting to feel certain that I was in love with Marina. Why ruin that wishing for more?
3
Marina
I had to admit that my final week was going wonderfully. That first test where Thomas had been present was nothing compared to how they ramped things up throughout the week. I had really been underestimating how intense things were going to become, to say the least. After that, we were pitted against each other in illusion tests that required us to try to fool our own friends and even family members. That's right, they had organized ahead of time to have people come to the tests so they could be special guests and help out. Just having people we knew there and actually taking part was enough to get anxiety levels soaring high for most of the students.
We knew there would be physically exerting tests involved, but no one was expecting an obstacle course out in the fields at the edge of Sleepy Hollows. When our lead assessing lecturer for that day arrived to greet us and told the body of attending students to follow him outside, it's safe to say that people were starting to worry already.
There were lots of different examples of the ways the teaching staff came up with to throw their students off their game. I honestly had been trying not to think about all that though. The only sure way I had found to achieve top results was to maintain focus. Thinking about what's ahead of you was essential.
Some of the other students in my year thought it was kind of a dirty trick to throw us such random curve balls. I thought about it for a bit and decided that if we weren’t ready to take the unexpected and deal with it on our toes, then we're really not ready to be studying to become elite members of the paranormal community when we graduated, right?
I'd been managing to do just fine on the tests, but the atmosphere of resentment from some of the students was palpable. It was starting to have an effect on the feeling of goodwill and positivity that we all had as a community toward the start of the finals.
We were waiting outside of the school gym for a test— the final one we were going to have to endure. If I could just make it through that, things were going to be smooth sailing until next semester. "If you can all move inside the gymnasium and take your places, you will find your name places situated around the building. Stand in front of your own and face the opposite wall from you."
We all did exactly as we were told. Soon there was a room full of roughly fifty first year students, in lines that were parallel to each other, with each of use facing the other line. Looking around I could see just about everybody was as worried as me about what exactly this test was going to be.
"I wonder what this is all about," I heard the girl next to me say. She was a shifter, if I recalled correctly. On the other side of the room in the opposite line of students, that girl was facing another shifter. As I looked around and took notice of where the other students were and who they were, I realized that we'd all been paired off against the same type of paranormals. Opposite myself was another witch. I knew her, since we had more in common with sharing lots of witchcraft and wizarding related classes together.
The girl I faced was gifted with magic revolving around levitation, and mind control. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach.
My powers were based around luck, charms, and curses. I didn't put it lightly when I said it was very difficult resisting the urge to use powers like that in everyday life. They were a lot more practical to use in our modern society than, say, being able to turn into a big bear like some shifters could; vampiric abilities were powerful as all heck, but they weren't exactly the kinds of things that could help you pass a job interview or win the lottery. I loved my powers, but I was starting to become worried about this exam.
"As many of you have no doubt already realized, this is going to be a head-to-head contest. As your final, final exam, I don't need to tell you that it will have a huge impact on your final grades." That was one of my magic teachers, Mrs. Farrow. She was a generous and supportive woman, but when things were serious like this, she could become quite overbearing.
It seemed that the situation was already starting to make her forget that this was still only a contest between students. It was common knowledge that she liked to push the students to their limits. That was always done in their best interest and she was never a cruel teacher. I just, I didn't know ... had a bad feeling that something was going to go wrong here.
"This is a combat-magic based contest," she then announced with her best booming voice, not only so that everyone in the massive gym could hear her. It was clearly also done to give an air of grandeur to her words. They definitely had that effect on the students. Each of us had wide eyes, the smiles gone from many of my peers' faces if they had them there in the first place. Some people seemed frightened, while others were grinning with predatory looks on their faces. This didn't seem like the modern, humane, logical setting that Sleepy Hollow had always had for me. This was something more primal altogether; savage.
Next we had to take turns facing off against each other, going down the lines one at a time. The first student would be instructed to launch an offensive spell from the pool of limited ones we had been learning that year. These were things like force pushes for those who were capable of doing those, speed dashes too that involved actually striking a student, and even curses or bad luck for those who were capable there. I had to say that it wasn’t as horrible as I was expecting, but it was grueling, nonetheless.
The shifters beside my place in the lineup gave an amazing performance. They were first instructed to shift, and the one who managed to do so faster was given the first attack. The girl beside me, in her large canine form, was given the first go. She charged at her opponent, who had taken on the form of a raven all too late. The dog shifter was fast with her dash, creating rings of white magical aura in a trail behind her as she bolted forward at lightning speed. It was impressive, but the raven shifter managed to evade her just in time to avoid being hit. They weren't allowed to try to attack or defend until the whistle was blown by the overseeing lecturer.
The raven shifter won simply because she was better at defense and eventually got lucky with landing an attack before the dog shifter was able to do so. Next was my turn.
Mrs. Farrow came up beside us and quietly said so only we would hear. "Now girls, don't worry about your safety. As I've told everyone else, our good volunteer Mr. Geraldo is creating the protection barriers for us this semester. And I assure you that he is more than capable of preventing any real harm from coming to you."
"Ohh!" I let out involuntarily
. I felt a bit silly that I had actually thought they might let us be injured but looking around I couldn't see Mr. Geraldo anywhere. Then I noticed him hiding in the corner almost completely hidden by a partition. Were they trying to scare us while we were waiting for our own turn to compete?
"Okay, are you both ready?" she called out.
We nodded.
"Very well." She flipped a coin and had me call it. I chose heads. It was tails. Immediately, I wished that I had used my luck to affect the outcome, but that seemed like cheating. Mrs. Farrow then said to my opponent, "Launch a force push against Marina, who will try to block it with a basic magical shield. Ready?" She then blew the whistle.
I put my hands out in front of me just like we'd practiced many times and created a shield. Only, I didn't! Instead of casting the simple spell and stopping the force push—I created a rose out of light energy. That was just a simple little parlor trick that even kids could do. The force push hit me, but it didn't hurt. I was just knocked back a few feet without even losing my footing properly. The protective spell was good, or I would have been knocked down and possibly even injured.
"What the heck?" I uttered in disbelief.
"Too bad, Marina. You have to remember that people are able to use their other powers against you at any time, whether you are waiting for it or not," said the lecturer.
That bitch! Oddetta had used her mind control powers on me clearly and made me do the wrong spell just at the last split second. I realized that this wasn't going to be a 'fair' fight at all if I didn't do something a little more underhanded. Next was her turn to attack me, so I focused my luck power on myself while being fully aware it would defer bad luck onto my opponent.
"A basic momentary forget curse, please Oddetta," said the lecturer. That was crazy. Mrs. Farrow was fully aware that I was an expert in curses and charms in comparison to anyone else in my year. My bad luck must have been successfully transferred then.
Looking dumbfounded, the other young witch prepared herself mentally. The whistle blew and she cast a spell, but then she began to look around the room like she suddenly had no idea where she was. I had countered her without even breaking a sweat, naturally. It didn't seem like fighting fair to have affected our luck that way, but I wasn't the one who brought in this whole dirty fighting thing.
We had to face off against another opponent each, and then another. After that, our scores were to be totaled up and our results given later as with any other exam. That was grueling to say the least, but I was so happy everything was over. And I won all three of my matches! That would put me up near the top of the class, which was a result I couldn't be happier about.
But I didn't have much time to celebrate my success, as a loud sound started coming from down the hall. A bunch of other students were already running to the source of the sound when screaming started to ring out from one of the lecture rooms that had been set up for use in finals. "What happened?" a boy from a year above me asked. He had a sickening look of concern on his face as I came through the door.
"Oh my—" one of the other freshman girls sobbed as she turned and ran from the room.
There it was, something I never thought I was going to see ... a corpse. And it wasn't just a person who had stopped breathing and was now lying down, as horrible as that would be. "Oh no, how did this happen?" I asked myself out loud.
"She was asked to set that log on fire, just the log. This isn't possible," said a lecturer who must have been overseeing the exams. The look of terror, and guilt, on her face was palpable. I couldn't' imagine how terrible she must have felt feeling responsible for this. And was she responsible? Was this an accident? It just couldn't be real.
"What about the protective spells?" asked another student.
"Exactly, what about that?"
"Are any of us safe?"
"I'm getting out of here. I can't take this!"
Students were talking faster and louder, building up into a thrum of frightened questions and statements; accusations.
The girl was on the floor at the front of the lecture hall, just like the burnt log should have been. The smell hit me, and I realized that I had been breathing in the tiny particles of her burnt flesh the whole time. I gagged and then wretched, covering my mouth and making for the nearest bathroom to be sick.
4
Thomas
I had heard about what happened, just like probably every other student, teacher, and parent in the state. Or maybe they weren’t doing their best to keep this quiet and actually having some success, but I doubted it. Either way, I found out that one of the students from Sleepy Hollows University had been killed during her finals. Dead, and seemingly at her own hand. I drove well over the speed limit to get there as fast as possible. The sickening feeling in my stomach didn't go away for even a split second as I thought about what the cause of this could be. Was Marina okay? If so, was there any danger that something could happen to her at any minute.
Mom had ordered me to return home and cut my visit short; not to go there or else. Well, fuck that. I had a girlfriend who might be in trouble. And at the very least she needed me by her side to keep her from panicking.
She was in her dorm, like the rest of the students had been instructed. I knocked on the door, assuming it would be locked. "Come in," called Marina's roommate. I opened the unlocked door and entered.
"You should really have this locked," I scolded.
"Hello to you too, Tom," said her roommate.
She was a tall, athletic girl with short silver hair. Quite attractive I had to admit, but she couldn't hold a candle to Marina as far as I was concerned.
"Hi, Laurie," I said, feeling bad about being a bit of a jerk to her. "Sorry, I'm just worried about your safety is all, both of you." But then I walked by her desk and over to where Marina was standing by the single window. She wasn't alone though.
"Oh, Hey Colin..."
"Hello," he said back to me in a wary tone. Colin MacAran was a seelie Fae, one of the supernatural types that were actually another race entirely. He was tall, slim, and very pale, with long red hair that I personally thought made him look more like a girl than he already did. As he turned away from Marina, who seemed frozen with her gaze outside the window on something, those bizarre silver eyes fixed on me and kind of gave me the creeps. Okay, I didn't really like the guy all that much. But who could blame me for holding something against him? Not only was he a second year student who was nineteen and older than me, but he was dating my girlfriend.
And then the implications of Marina starting to take the pill dawned on me. Of course, she would want to get herself some more heavy-duty protection—— she was fucking three other men who weren't me. I told myself to stop thinking of it that way. No one had forced me to agree with this situation.
Marina then turned around and it was like she'd only just realized I was in the room. "Oh, Tom! I guess you heard what happened then?"
"Well, I found out pretty easily. It's not often something like this happens. But why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't want you to come ... no, please don't look at me like that. It's just that you're from our number one rival school."
"Are you saying you think that I might have had something to do with this?" I looked at her in disbelief for a moment, then briefly at Colin and his stupid barely hidden smirk, then over to Laurie who was sitting on her desk chair near her bed. She shrugged and shot me a sympathetic look before answering.
"No one thinks you had anything to do with this, Tom. But now that you're here, it's going to look pretty bad to the other students, don't you think?"
She was right, and I was an idiot for not even thinking about that.
"Oh, shit," I replied.
"Now that you are here though, I'm so glad. Come here," Marina said as she came over to give me a hug. She kissed me too, open mouth like we would if there was no one else in the room. It was only a short kiss, but I could feel the burning eyes of Colin on me as we did it and I became very
self-conscious. My cheeks were sure to be flushed with redness because they were feeling hot. Marina drew back so she could look up into my eyes, now holding my hands and very close to me. She smelled so damn good it almost made me forget what had happened.
She said, "I'm sorry for not reacting when you came in. I've just been watching out the window in case something happens. You have no idea how terrible it was. I've never seen a dead body before, let alone one that had ... Oh, Thomas!" She rushed forward and buried her head in my hardened chest, quickly creating a warm spot where her tears soaked the spot where her face was against me.
"It's okay now," I said. "Holy shit, you were there?"
"She didn't actually see it happen, but there was a big noise and everyone in the area ran into the finals room to see what had happened," said Laure. She was doing a better job keeping her composure, but she just looked so solemn that it was also heartbreaking to look at her. "There are councilors visiting the dorms of everyone who'd been present, and then they're going to talk with anyone else who requests it after."
Colin walked over to stand a little to the side of us so that he could talk to me. It bothered me the way he looked at me, like he could maybe think that I had something to do with this. "They detected the presence of mind magic," he told me with a carefully raised eyebrow and his head tilted back slightly. It was easy to read the expression as one of suspicion— interrogation. "Do you know anyone who specializes in mind magic?" he then added.
That almost set me off, but I maintained my cool. This guy didn't have to be my enemy unless I allowed that to happen. I was in control of how I responded to his shitty comment. Holding Marina there as she tried to comfort herself in my embrace, I had to remind myself why Colin was even in this dorm with us: Marina cared about him. Well, if she thought he was worth caring about, that was going to be good enough for me for now.