Chapter Eleven
“You again!” I cried, as Keller walked towards us. The more nervous I am the more awkward I get, and I had come to the uncomfortable realization that Keller made me nervous.
Lisabelle and Sip, who had been slower to turn around, were just realizing that Keller was the one who would be helping us.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded, crossing my arms over my chest and glaring.
“Sometimes you rival me for sweetness,” said Lisabelle.
Keller handed me a mop. “Stop it,” he chided. “I haven’t done anything to you.”
I blinked and fumbled to take the mop from his outstretched arm. He was right. He hadn’t.
I felt my face turning hot and looked away from everyone.
“Aw, come on,” said Keller. “Apologize to me. You know you want to.” He smiled.
“Sorry,” I mumbled into my shoulder, wishing I could disappear. “It’s been a long week.” Just once I would like to be as confident as Keller seemed all the time.
“It must have been,” Keller commented. “Otherwise there’s no way Cynthia would have asked me to help you three out.”
“Who is Cynthia?” ask Lisabelle, Sip, and I in unison.
Keller grinned. It lit up his whole face as if someone had turned on the switch in a room. “The President,” he said.
“You call her by her first name?” I asked, incredulous.
“Of course,” he answered, leading the three of us up the overgrown path. “What else am I supposed to call my godmother?”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Lisabelle, hurrying so she could walk next to him. “That old dragon is your godmother?”
Keller laughed as we reached the front door. “Yeah.” Somehow he was more relaxed here, away from the glare of the school and all the other students. She had asked him to tutor me. I should have known she would ask him to do this as well.
“Why you?” I asked.
Keller lifted his shoulders. “She trusts me.”
He pulled out a large metal key and fitted it into the lock. Just as the four of us entered Astra, a cool light mist started to fall.
Inside I felt warmth and comfort surround me. It was a feeling I hadn’t had since I’d come to Public. The whole week I’d been stressed and worried, but inside Astra Dorm I felt happy and oddly relaxed. I must just be glad to be away from the main campus, I thought.
“What do you think?” Keller asked. His blue eyes, which never seemed to miss anything, were directed towards me.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, looking around. The floor was some sort of white stone, covered in blue carpets. The furniture consisted of a table with a large lamp, another table in front of a silver-edged mirror, and two armchairs that stood next to a winding staircase. Everything in the room was covered in a thick layer of dust, but even the grime couldn’t obscure Astra’s magnificence.
Keller walked past me and set down the cleaning supplies. As he moved we brushed shoulders, and I was conscious of the touch long after it was gone. I watched as his back bent and stretched. He was always graceful. Maybe it was a fallen angel thing or maybe it was a Keller thing. Afraid of getting caught staring, I quickly looked away.
“So, this is the dorm,” he said, straightening up. “Sip and Lisabelle, I was thinking you two could do the kitchen,” he continued, pointing straight ahead. “It’s probably in the best shape and with two of you it shouldn’t take very long.”
“How often is this place cleaned?” asked Lisabelle, running her hand along the edge of the mirror. It came away covered in dust.
Keller shrugged. “Every couple of weeks. Any time the President catches a student doing something wrong, so it’s pretty often.”
“We aren’t in trouble,” I said.
“No,” said Keller. “Of course not. She just sent you down here to help me clean out of the goodness of her heart. Oh wait, she’s the President of Public, she doesn’t have a heart.”
I felt my face flush and occupied myself by examining the wall.
“Where’s the kitchen?” Sip asked. She’d already gone over to the cleaning supplies and picked up a pair of latex gloves. She put them on and smacked her hands together. “I’m ready to do some damage.”
Lisabelle rolled her eyes. “To what? Dust? You can’t damage dust.”
“Sometimes I think you’re too literal-minded,” Sip said to her.
“Better to make sense than be you,” said Lisabelle, grinning.
Sip threw a towel at her, but Lisabelle ducked out of the way.
“Are they always like that?” Keller asked me, watching.
“I’ll let you know,” I told him. For some reason he found that funny.
“So,” said Lisabelle, now that she was done harassing Sip, “kitchen?”
“Through there,” Keller said, pointing to a plain wooden door. It had a wheel with four spokes carved into its center. “I’ll get Charlotte set up, then come check on you.”
I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of being left alone with Keller. I was left alone with him enough when he was tutoring me, and now through my own foolishness I was forced to spend the weekend with him too. But Lisabelle and Sip ignored all of my pleading looks and walked away.
“Come on,” said Keller, motioning for me to follow him. “This way.”
I followed him through a maze of rooms, each one we passed through more beautiful and distinct than the last. We walked past what had to be sitting rooms, a classroom, and even a game room in the shape of a diamond. Most of the furniture had white linen thrown over it.
“Why are all the rooms so different?” I finally asked.
“Most elementals specialized in Earth, Air, Fire, or Water,” Keller explained. “A few could control all of them, but the ones who couldn’t had clear affinities for certain things.” That explained the different colored towers I had seen when we came in. Keller pointed around the room we were in, which must have been decorated by a fire elemental. The walls were a red that you mostly saw on fire engines, and over the mantel was a picture of a field alight in flames.
“Charming,” I said. Our feet hitting the stone floor was the only sound, which should have been creepy, but even the silence was strangely comforting here.
Keller shook his head. “These were very powerful mages. They commanded respect.”
“What do you mean?” Even when he wasn’t tutoring me he was tutoring me. The professors at Public were good, but they obviously thought all the Starters needed to know about were the basics. And I wanted to know more.
“It’s obvious,” Keller said. “Fire is essential to a fire elemental, so they’re going to surround themselves with as many representations of fire as they can. If nothing else, it’s comforting.”
“That makes sense,” I replied, still looking around the room. “Do you know what happened to the elementals?” It was something I had wanted to ask, but the topic had felt taboo.
When Keller didn’t answer immediately, I lifted my hand to poke him in the arm. Then I caught my breath. I couldn’t bring myself to actually touch him. I dropped my hand.
“I don’t know what happened to them, really,” said Keller. His voice sounded wistful. His back was turned so he hadn’t seen me freeze. “It’s not something a mere student tutor gets told. But it was bad. Really bad.”
“You mean no one knows?” I asked. I was walking around the room, inspecting the walls and furniture. I wasn’t sure what had piqued my curiosity, but now I wanted to know everything I could.
“Oh, no, I’m sure someone knows,” he answered, “just not a lowly sophomore at Public. Everyone knows it was the demons, but that’s about it.”
“You’d think it would be common knowledge how one of the power branches of paranormals became extinct,” I commented.
“What makes you think they’re extinct?” Keller asked. His blue eyes were following me around the room and I tried to not let it make me nervous.
I glanced a
t him with surprise. “Do you see any elementals here?” I asked, waving my arms around.
Keller smiled. “No, but I think the professors and all the senior paranormals are hoping that there are still elementals out there.”
“Because of the demons?” I asked.
Keller’s face hardened. He scuffed his foot on the floor and pursed his lips tightly shut before answering. It was the first time I’d seen him show any major emotion that wasn’t rooted in sarcasm. “Yeah. Because if there aren’t we just might be doomed.”
Then he turned on his heel and headed down the hallway. “Come on,” he said, and I hurried to catch up. He reached out his arm to grab a door handle. I watched the muscles in his arm flex as he moved.
“Through here,” he said, opening one of the doors.
I followed him into the grandest room I’d ever seen. Most of what I’d seen at Public had been beautiful but modern and practical. The classrooms weren’t decorated, they didn’t have strange magics going on in the corners. None of the paranormals flaunted their abilities. But this room looked like it was fit for royalty. It was lit with sconces in the walls and had massive floor to ceiling windows.
I looked up and up to the cathedral ceiling stretching high into the distance. More silver-edged mirrors hung along the walls, interspersed with elaborate tapestries. The images were of what could only be elementals, battling against demons and hellhounds. One showed an elemental standing in the ocean, water swirling around her, as demons came down from all sides.
“Wow,” I breathed. “Giants could fit in here and still have room for a couple of elephants.”
“Right?” said Keller. “None of the other dorms have this.”
“Why do the elementals?” I asked. I didn’t dare to leave the doorway in case I disturbed anything.
“Because this wasn’t just a dorm. It was also where the senior elementals had their headquarters,” Keller explained.
“So they entertained here?” I asked. Out the windows was the far side of campus; the forest met a gentle sloping lawn. All the colors from grass to sky were enhanced and brighter-looking thanks to the recent rain.
Keller nodded. “All their power was concentrated here. If you were an elemental, at some point in your life you would definitely visit. Maybe just to see it. Maybe to meet with the elemental King or Queen.”
“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” I said, running my hand along the wall. The room was painted in every shade of blue, red, brown, and green. “How do you know so much?” I asked Keller, still looking around in awe.
“I like to know where we came from. It helps understand where we are now,” said Keller.
He cleared his throat, “Anyway. The quicker you dust over there the quicker we can all get to Dash.” He headed towards a glass case at the opposite end of the room, and I was forced to move from my spot by the door and follow him in. The glass case was filled with ancient-looking artifacts, from scepters to something as seemingly simple as rocks.
Keller pulled out another key, this one tiny and silver. He fitted it into the lock on the front of the case, and as he did so he quickly said words under his breath in a language I’d never heard before. Around his fingers was a quick spark of blue.
The glass doors swung open.
Keller handed me a rag. “Be careful,” he said. “When you’re done just come back into the front hall.”
I looked at the rag in my hand. Normally I wasn’t a big fan of dusting; well, of cleaning in general. I liked stuff to be clean, I just wasn’t good at making it that way. But somehow the prospect of cleaning this case wasn’t so bad.
“Where are you going?” I asked Keller.
“To clean the upstairs,” he said. “It won’t get finished today, but there’s always next week. And the week after that. Luckily, I have lots of help.”
Once he had left I examined the glass case. The objects were evenly spaced, but they would have to be moved if I was going to dust around them.
I gently started to pick up every object and dust around it. I used my thumb and index finger to pick each one up and move it over just enough so that I could also dust under it.
Once that was finished, I dusted the object itself. I was working my way through the case when I came upon an elemental ring. It looked to be made of twisted white gold, with blue and white jewels running along the edge.
When my hand touched the metal, sparks flew from underneath my fingertips. The jewels on the tiny ring blazed to life. I hadn’t noticed how dull the blues and the white had been before I touched them, but now they glowed brightly out of the dark, illuminating everything nearby, humming with power.
Without thinking, I reached out and touched the ring again. This time, not just that ring but every other object in the case came to life in a triumphant song. The scepter lit up, showing off a rainbow of color. The rock came to life, but it wasn’t just a rock anymore. It was mass of crystals, with reds and blues embedded in its depths.
I yanked my hand away. I had no idea what I had just done, but it couldn’t be good. I stared at the crystals in the case. All I wanted was for all of them to just stop shining. If I got caught messing with elemental stuff I’d be kicked out of Public for sure. I checked over my shoulder, but there was no sign of Keller, so I made a move to close the case and get out of the room as fast as I could.
But before I could even get the case closed, the mirror lying on its back in the center of the case came to life, and I was horrified to see an image forming in what had been, a breath before, clear glass.
All I wanted to do was run away, out of the ballroom, but I couldn’t. If I left the case open, anything could happen. I had to stay. Steeling myself, I took one step closer, my eyes locked on the mirror. I could feel sweat forming on my forehead. I clenched my hands together to keep them from shaking.
Rising out of the mirror was a thin curl of mist. As it cleared I could easily see the image that had formed there. It was of paranormals, standing in a circle on open grass. There were four of them, clasping hands together. All around them were other paranormals, screaming in fear.
At first I couldn’t see what they were afraid of. But when I squinted, I saw hellhounds coming at breakneck speed out of nowhere. My whole body shuddered as I saw what was following closely behind: demons. Hundreds and hundreds of demons, hopelessly outmatching the paranormals huddled on the grass.
I gasped as one demon swept in, picking up a young-looking paranormal and flying off into the night. The sounds of screams and the smell of wet dog and fear were pungent in the air around me. The young paranormal who had just been carried off by the demon reappeared, falling through the sky. He hit the ground with a wet thud and lay still.
“Do something!” I cried to the paranormals in the circle. They were trying frantically to perform a spell, but it was clear that it wasn’t working. Paranormals had started to turn; vampires bared their teeth, and pixies hopped into action. Humans turned into werewolves and fallen angels spread their wings and took flight.
It didn’t matter. There were too many demons.
But the paranormals were clearly determined to stand there and fight. They were going to hold their ground, and I could see what the result would be: death.
Tears were running down my cheeks as I started to sob. Suddenly, the four figures in the middle gave off a burst of pure power. I gasped as beams of light struck out at the attackers. Blackness turned to sunlight and hellhounds gave howls of pain. The knots in my stomach eased.
But I couldn’t tell yet if it would be enough. The battle wasn’t over.
Just as the demons and hellhounds came on in a fresh attack, the mist that had covered the mirror reappeared. Floating lazily forward, it covered the glass, obscuring any view.
I darted forward, trying to push the vapor away. I desperately wanted to know what had happened. I wanted the paranormals to keep fighting. But once the mist cleared, the images were gone. The luster of the mirror started to fade
.
For a long time I simply stood there. I didn’t even bother to wipe the tears from my face, and soon they dried in streaks. At last, when I felt like my breathing was under control and all of the artifacts in the case had gone back to their dull colors, I gently shut the glass. Slowly the colors faded out of the jewels, leaving them looking dark and dusty once again.
Without a doubt I had seen a battle between the paranormals and the demons. What I didn’t know was whether it was real. Maybe the mirror only showed our fears, or maybe it showed the past. Maybe it was the battle that had killed the elementals, but I wasn’t sure if any elementals had been fighting. I wondered who the hooded figures were and I wondered where the fight had taken place. Most of all I wondered why I had been the one to see it.
I hoped that Lisabelle and Sip wouldn’t notice how upset I was. When I was out of the ballroom I stopped to scrub my face, taking away all traces of the panic I had just felt.
At first I had thought that the jewels lighting up was strange, but that paled in comparison to the mirror. Not that I knew anything about elemental magic, but could the mirror really have lighted up for anyone who touched it? Was I special? I pushed the thought from my mind.
I briefly wondered if Keller had known that the jewels and the mirror would do what they had done, if he’d sent me in there to clean the case as some sort of joke. I walked slowly through the dorm, trying to collect myself, but it wasn’t easy. What I had seen had felt real, as real as the white t-shirt I was wearing, as the mist outside. If it had already happened, then there was nothing I could do. But what if it hadn’t? What if that mirror showed the future? It was not a future I ever wanted to happen.
“Thanks for doing that,” he said. “They really needed to be dusted and I knew you’d take good care of everything.”
When I didn’t answer he peered at me more closely. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “It looks like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“No,” I replied. “Still just a little tired, I guess.”
He nodded. His concern evaporated like the mist from the mirror. “Don’t worry. Dash will fix that.”
“Yeah,” I said, as Lisabelle and Sip joined us. I wasn’t about to tell any of them what I had done. That was not the way I was supposed to prove that I had magic, and if the President, or worse Professor Zervos, found out I’d used it on elemental artifacts I’d be finished.
Quietly I helped Keller gather all the cleaning supplies and leave the dorm. I was so preoccupied with my own thoughts that I didn’t notice how closely he watched me.
“Come on,” Sip finally said, skipping ahead of us. “It’s Dash time.”