Chapter Ten
I turned around to look into the cold black eyes of Professor Zervos.
“Just what do you three think you are doing?” he asked, his voice sounding silky and dangerous.
Before Lisabelle could say something that would get us in even more trouble, the door to the President’s office came flying open.
“What’s going on here?” Her eyes locked on the three of us, cowering in the shadow of Professor Zervos, and her brow puckered. I could see dark circles under her eyes that hadn’t been there the last time I’d seen her. She was tired.
“I found these students eavesdropping on your conversation,” explained Professor Zervos. “In your offices. I was handling the situation.”
The President looked at Professor Zervos. “If they were listening in at my door then I should be the one to handle the situation, don’t you think?”
Professor Zervos let out a noise that sounded like a balloon popping.
“You three, come in,” she said. We started to follow her into the room, with Professor Zervos bringing up the rear until the President said, “No, Thads, not you.” I wasn’t sure who she was talking to until Professor Zervos came to a halt. I could see his nostrils flaring as he tried to get control of his rage.
“Fine,” he snarled. He turned on his heel and stalked off.
With a thin smile, the President opened the door for us and we walked in. I was surprised to see that the room was empty.
“Didn’t you hear voices just a second ago?” I muttered to Sip.
“Quiet,” she hissed. “You too,” she said, glaring at Lisabelle.
“Please sit down,” said the President, gesturing toward the open chairs. “I do believe you have some explaining to do.”
She settled into her own chair, cradling a cup of what looked like tea.
I wondered what exactly was going on. The last time I’d been in this room I’d been threatened within an inch of my life. The President had not been at all kind to me. Now, when all she should be saying was “Pack your things, you’re expelled, dummy,” she was sitting calmly behind her desk, waiting until one of us spoke.
“We didn’t mean to,” Sip burst out, clutching the President’s desk.
“We really didn’t,” I added.
“Didn’t mean to what?” asked the President, raising her dusty gray eyebrows.
“Eavesdrop,” said Sip guiltily.
“So, you did hear the conversation?” she asked. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
“Not exactly,” said Sip. “I mean, we heard a couple of sentences, but we didn’t understand them.”
“What did you hear?” she asked again.
Sip told her everything we had heard.
“Did you have to recap it word for word?” Lisabelle murmured to her. No wonder the President was concerned.
But all she said when Sip had finished was, “I see.” After a pause she added, “Well, there’s only one thing to do.”
“Don’t expel us,” I said, unable to help myself.
The President looked at me sharply. “Why ever would I do that?”
“We broke a catalogue of rules . . .” I started to give her a list of all the rules we’d just broken, but Lisabelle kicked me under the table to shut me up and whispered, “You two suck at getting caught.”
“Ouch,” I said, rubbing the injured area.
I looked at the President. I was sure she was trying to hide a smile.
“Never mind,” I muttered.
“You girls will not get into trouble, provided that you speak of this to no one,” said the President. “All I ask, instead of a punishment that would draw attention to the catalogue of rules you broke – as you said – is that you spend every Saturday morning for the next month cleaning Astra Dorm. I may even assign you there again, as I’m sure this is not the only time you’ll be breaking the rules.”
She looked down over her spectacles at the three of us. Her eyes lingered on Lisabelle. I wasn’t sure if she was joking, but I had to admit she was probably right.
“You want us to clean?” Sip asked incredulously. “That’s our punishment?”
“You can always rely on her for the worst timing in the world,” Lisabelle muttered to me.
I was about to grin when I caught the President’s eye and thought better of it.
“I do,” said the President. “It needs cleaning. This is all to the good for all of us. Plus, Charlotte is on probation. She most certainly should not have been outside at night.”
“What about Professor Zervos?” asked Lisabelle.
“What about him?” The President’s voice had gone quiet. “He is not in charge here. I am. Although I am grateful to him for bringing this matter to my attention, I have now dealt with it in the way I see fit. As is my right.”
“Now,” she continued, before Lisabelle could interrupt again, “you are to report to Astra Dorm first thing after breakfast Saturday morning. I will have someone there to greet you and show you what must be done. Good night.”
She offered Sip a token. I recognized it as basically a permission slip that said we were allowed to be out of our beds at that time of night. “This is so that you get back to your dorm without further incident,” she said as she ushered us out of her office.
“Oh, Charlotte, one more thing,” she added.
I looked back at her. This was it, where she’d tell me not to bother showing up at Astra Dorm because I’d been expelled.
But all she said was, “Be careful.”
She closed the door in our faces.
No one said a word as we walked back to Airlee. Real college wouldn’t have been like this. At most normal colleges, like the one I had planned to go to, there wasn’t the threat of murderous demons hanging over everyone’s head. As I understood it, you could come and go as you pleased. You didn’t risk getting yelled at or need tokens to get you safely back to your own house. Stumbling around campus drunk was an accepted practice at a lot of places.
Still, I thought the President had let me off lightly. I was on probation. Usually that should mean that if you step out of line you are in a lot of trouble, but I had gotten the same punishment as my friends. Yeah, it’s fun to have an adventure and risk getting caught, but neither of the others was on probation, and they were both very clear about their powers. Lisabelle could just twirl her fingers together and she had magic flying everywhere. And tonight Sip had demonstrated that she had an excellent grasp of her werewolf skills.
Lisabelle, who now had a room of her own at the end of our hall, went there and closed the door without a word.
I pulled the covers over my ears and turned out the light on my nightstand. As I fell asleep I repeated to myself over and over again that I was still a student at Paranormal Public. They hadn’t gotten rid of me yet.
The rest of the week flew by. Professor Zervos was extra miserable to me now. I felt sure he had thought the President would expel me, so when I walked into class the next day he was bitterly disappointed. Every chance he got he asked me questions he knew I wouldn’t be able to answer. Each time, I just sort of sat there and stammered out a reply until he made some cruel comment about how stupid and untalented I was and moved on to one of the pixies.
Camilla was another one who took every opportunity to make my life miserable. During my first couple of days at Public it had been nice to see Cale around, but now that I knew he was dating Camilla I tried avoid the two of them at all costs, with mixed success. I couldn’t go to the bathroom alone any more because one of Camilla’s pixie friends would follow me in there and either lock me in a stall or dump bucketsful of water on me. I didn’t help my case with Professor Zervos when I left his class to go to the bathroom one afternoon and returned sopping wet.
And as for Keller, I couldn’t even bring myself to look at him. He still sat with all of his fallen angel friends, but at least he wasn’t one of the ones who made fun of me. I figured he must be embarrassed to be “tutor
ing” me; I wasn’t good at anything.
At one point one of the pixies in Zervos’s class said, “Let’s get the Probationer to do it. She’s expendable.”
As usual, Professor Zervos pretended that no one had said anything. But if I replied in any way he would suddenly get his hearing back, and I’d be the one who would get detention. So I kept my mouth shut.
“Nice that you let harassment go on in your classes,” said Lough. I sucked in air, sure that Zervos would hurl Lough against another wall for defending me.
But Professor Zervos just shrugged and said, “As students in college you must deal with your own messes. It is not for the professors to intervene.”
To my great surprise a warm male voice said to the pixie who had taunted me, “She may be on probation, but she’s still more valuable than you. Does that bother you?” I snapped my head around to look at Keller, who was, as usual, sitting slouched in his chair. He never looked at me.
“You better watch what you say, Erikson,” said the pixie. It was one of Camilla’s friends, a senior named Kevin. “You never know when you’ll need to watch your back.”
All traces of humor disappeared from Keller’s face. “Are you threatening me?” he asked, leaning towards Kevin.
I was fascinated to see that Kevin backed off a little. I hadn’t thought that the pixies were afraid of anyone on campus, but now I had seen that Keller was an exception to that rule.
Professor Zervos smoothly cut in before things could get out of hand. I gave Keller a small smile of thank you. He had just defended my honor. Of course, he still ignored me.
By the end of the first week I was exhausted. I had wanted to stay at Public to make my mother proud, to follow in her footsteps, and to learn what I was born to know, but it was looking less and less like that would be a possibility. Given everything that had happened, there was no way the President was going to let me stay.
And why should she? At the end of the first week I still hadn’t done any magic. I was hopelessly outclassed in every subject, and all of the professors simply shook their heads when they saw me coming. They meant well, but they knew just as well that you couldn’t teach a student paranormal magic when the student couldn’t DO paranormal magic.
The weekend couldn’t come soon enough, but first I had to get through classes on Friday.
A History of Your Paranormal Type, with Professor Anania, was in the first section of classes. Today she wanted to talk about our paranormal rings.
“Can anyone tell me what exactly they do?”
Sip’s hand shot up. “Yes, they enhance our power and identify which paranormal we are.”
“Exactly, and how do they enhance power?” she asked.
“We can use them as a focus if we know how,” Sip replied.
“Do they do anything else?”
Lauren Bells, one of the werewolf twins, said that as we got more experienced our activities would be finely etched into the rings, to make them unique to us.
“Can they hold power?” asked Professor Anania.
The class chorused that they could.
“Alright,” said Professor Anania. “Hold out your rings.”
Every student stuck out a hand.
“Now, put a little bit of power into it,” she said. She was holding out her own ringed finger and watching it start to glow the deep silver of the fallen angels. I stuck out my hand and waited for my ring to light with the white light of Airlee. I concentrated on the metal surrounding the clear stone, waiting for light, waiting for anything. In the corner of my eye I could see little lights starting to flicker in front of the other students. All of their rings were lighting up. My classmates were moving their powers into their rings. I gulped and focused harder. Somewhere, deep within me, I felt power start to coil and rise. I encouraged it, as gently as I could, towards the ring, but nothing happened. I gasped in frustration and Professor Anania looked up sharply.
“Get it together, Charlotte,” she said. “Try harder. If all of your classmates are capable of such simple magic then surely you don’t want all of them to be better than you.”
I glared up at her. Re-focusing on my ring, I tried to concentrate. I ignored my classmates and their brightly glowing rings, filled with power that I desperately wanted to control in myself.
After several minutes of letting me try, while I worked so hard that a fine sheen of sweat sparkled on my forehead, Professor Anania stopped me.
“Congratulations, Miss Rollins. Again you have managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory,” she said.
I slunk back in my chair and crossed my arms so that my ring was covered. I didn’t want to see it. I felt miserable. I’d been there a whole week and I couldn’t even do the most basic magic.
I collapsed into bed Friday night, not at all looking forward to cleaning Astra Dorm the next morning. But at least it would get me a day off from Keller. My lessons with him weren’t going any better than the rest of my schoolwork, mostly because Keller never even mentioned magic.
What he always talked about was history. At one point I had accused him of not being able to teach me any magic because he was a fallen angel. In response he had gone into a long explanation about how all of the magics were interconnected and good students understood parts of all of them, because that allowed them to work together more effectively against the demons. Basically, as usual he had made me regret asking. I’d never met anyone who handled all of my rapid-fire questions with such ease. I found it unsettling, but since we’d be cleaning Astra Dorm and it was the first day of Dash, I was pretty sure that for once there would be no time for torture al la Keller.
On Saturday morning Sip and I met Lisabelle in the hall outside our rooms and the three of us stumbled blearily down to breakfast. We had to be at Astra Dorm by seven because at eleven the whole school was gathering in the sports fields for the first Saturday of Dash. I would be on the sidelines because of my probation, so all I could do was cheer Lisabelle and Sip on.
After breakfast we headed outside. The day was gray and it looked like it was about to rain. I zipped my dark blue fleece up to my chin as we walked.
“Do you know who’s meeting us?” asked Sip. She was walking between Lisabelle and me, her head bent low to avoid the wind.
“No idea,” said Lisabelle. “I just hope it’s not one of the pixies. Can you imagine Kia ‘helping’ us? Charlotte has us in enough trouble with them.”
“It’s not my fault,” I said irritably. I was tired of feeling like everything was my fault. I hadn’t spoken to Cale since that breakfast. I had planned to avoid him, but not ignore him when he actually walked past me. Now whenever I saw him around campus he turned the other way. Cale’s ignoring me made everything else that was going on worse. I should be the one ignoring him; he was the one who hadn’t told me about Camilla.
“Why would a nice guy like Cale date a girl like Camilla?’ Sip asked.
Lisabelle opened her mouth to reply, but Sip whirled on her. “Do NOT make a joke about guys and their blood-flow.”
Lisabelle doubled over laughing. “You said it, not me.”
Sip went bright red.
We walked in silence until Sip said, “Here we are.” As we rounded a bend in the path, Astra Dorm came rising into view in front of us. Without even realizing it, we had arrived.
There was no other way to say it, Astra Dorm looked cool. As the oldest dorm on campus it was built entirely of stone, and each corner of the building had a tower. The towers were different colors – green, blue, white and red – which represented Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. There was also a larger tower in the middle painted black.
“I was wondering when you three would show up,” an amused male voice said from behind us.
I turned around and stared into dancing blue eyes. Keller Erikson was standing in front of Astra Dorm. My tutor was also the one who would help us clean.