Chapter Twenty-One
The next week went by in a blur. It didn’t take long for Lisabelle to come back from her talk with the President. All year I had thought that she had a temper and was quick to anger, but that was before I saw her that Sunday afternoon. Now I realized that up until then she had been remarkably calm – for Lisabelle.
When she walked into Sip’s and my room she was livid. She’d been put on dorm arrest. The only time she could leave Airlee was to go to class, and then she would have to be escorted by a professor or the President herself. When Lisabelle had demanded to see the proof of her involvement with the demons and therefore a justification for why she was being treated like a prisoner, the President had just laughed.
After the dance the paranormals were even colder to each other. In some classes they silently competed to see who could answer the questions first. In other classes all students refused to answer any of the questions in a bid to get each other in trouble. The professors would eventually get fed up and start yelling. At lunch there was jostling and at times downright violence. One werewolf got a black eye from a vampire, and a pixie’s bag of magical dust went mysteriously missing.
My relationship with the pixies had gone from bad to worse. They now hated me with an unbridled passion that they made no attempt to hide. I couldn’t walk past one of them in the halls without being attacked. They tripped me, used pixie magic to disorient me, or just screamed at me. The one time a pack of them caught me alone I ended up with a split lip.
After that, Lisabelle and Sip took to walking on either side of me. I was lucky. Everyone, except maybe Keller, was afraid of Lisabelle. If the pixies saw that she was with me they would veer off in a different direction. If Lisabelle noticed, she would usually send a tendril of black magic snaking after them. “It’s the little pleasures in life,” she would sigh.
When I wasn’t with Lisabelle I was usually with Keller. The next week we had midterm exams, and since I could hardly afford to fail, he had decided that he would tutor me every day. Twice. We would meet once before breakfast, and once again after dinner. He had decided to focus on the first half of my studies, the non-magical half, in an effort to make sure that my overall grades were good enough that they couldn’t expel me.
Exams meant that all week the whole campus was tired. Even Dash was canceled because all the exams were scheduled for Friday and Saturday. The professors were giving us Monday off, which meant that we had a long weekend, but we couldn’t take advantage of it because of the exams. The campus was subdued. Between the fear of the hellhound and the late nights spent cramming, no one was getting much sleep. The only benefit was that the pixies were too tired to spend much time tormenting me.
Finally, on Wednesday night, I had had enough studying.
“This is stupid,” I said, pushing my Intro to Para Studies textbook away. Keller pushed it back toward me.
“You need to work harder,” he informed me. “And not complain.”
He sat back in his chair and eyed me. The first floor of the library was filled with students, but since that was the floor where talking was allowed, no one looked up to silence him. Despite all our time together, he had been cool toward me since the dance. I always insisted we meet in a public place. I don’t know why, but meeting in one of our dorm rooms felt too intimate. He had suggested meeting at Astra, the elemental dorm, but I’d realized from Saturdays spent cleaning there that the place made me uncomfortable and somehow sad.
On top of everything else I hadn’t been sleeping, and I thought Keller could tell. Lisabelle now slept on the floor in our room. We wanted to give her an alibi in case there was another hellhound attack, but it meant that one of us always had to be awake. One night, when I was particularly tired, Keller touched my shoulder after we finished studying. “Be careful, Charlotte,” he said quietly into my ear. Then he walked away.
I had put my hand up to my shoulder where he touched me before I realized how silly I must look. Sometimes Keller would touch me and I would hardly notice. Other times he would touch me and I had a hard time not rubbing the spot where his hand had been.
Lisabelle, Sip, and I still hadn’t figured out who had let the demon in or why it was there. Lough had heard rumors that the demons thought there was one last elemental and would stop at nothing to find him or her, but that didn’t explain the demon’s presence at Public. There were definitely no elementals at Public.
Lisabelle, though, was a powerful darkness mage, and we were sure that the demons would like to get her on their side.
The worst part about midterms was that we still had class. Walking into Professor Korba’s class the day after Keller’s warning, I almost screamed when he said that we were visiting not only Cruor, the vampire dorm, but also Volans, the pixie dorm.
“Since Professor Zervos has returned, we can no longer visit dorms during his class period. So, I have made room for it in my schedule.”
Lough’s hand shot into the air. “But we don’t have the same students in this class.”
Professor Korba raised fine eyebrows. “Yes, Lough. It’s a good thing you pointed that out. Otherwise we accomplished professors, with decades of experience under our robes, might have missed that fact.”
A dull red color spread across Lough’s face.
“Professor Korba made a joke!” Lisabelle murmured to me. “I didn’t know he had it in him.”
First, Cruor. I knew that since it was called blood dorm, it was going to be gruesome. Add to that the fact that the vampires were fearsome and violent, and I would have preferred to stay miles away. But Professor Korba was having none of our protests.
Luckily, since this was a first-session class, all the vampires were still in their coffins. Even though the vampires didn’t hate me like the pixies did, I still thought it would be better not to get on their bad side, and since it seemed like all I needed to do to get on someone’s bad side was to show up, I felt lucky they were all still under the sun.
Cruor was the only dorm that could be seen from the Tower. I liked to think it was so that the professors could keep a close eye on what was going on there. Since the vampires were in their prime at night they had a lot of time on campus when the rest of us were sleeping.
And it wasn’t just the vampires themselves who were formidable. They also kept dangerous pets. Their strix were fast and unforgiving. Commonly known as owls, they were bred to inflict maximum damage. Their cages were kept in a barn-like building at one end of Cruor, and if you passed there at night you could hear them cooing and rattling around. I always walked faster after that. Most students did absolutely everything they could to avoid passing Cruor at night.
The dorm itself was a miniature castle made of black glass, complete with a drawbridge, moat, and walls of black stone. The drawbridge, which the professors insisted always stay down, hung over black, limp water. Dead fish floated on the surface. Several students gagged and were forced to cover their noses as we passed. Inside, the courtyard wasn’t much better, and that was because the courtyard was a graveyard. I gulped. Cruor wouldn’t have made it onto any college tours, that’s for sure.
Lough raised his hand as we walked.
“Yes, Lough,” said Professor Korba, walking along with his back to everyone. “Yes, those are real gravestones.”
Lough lowered his hand.
Lisabelle, who had been first in line, fell back to walk next to me. Putting her lips close to my ear she whispered, “This is a powerful place. Demons would live here happily.”
“That’s great,” I told her. “Thank you for sharing.”
I knew Lisabelle was conflicted about her life at Public. Her parents were steadfast supporters of paranormals, but a lot of darkness mages couldn’t say the same. They were already on the demons’ side. I knew Lisabelle felt that pull, and being treated like a leper since she arrived probably wasn’t helping.
“When are you going to take your Starter test?” I whispered back to her, realizing that she
was the only other Starter who hadn’t taken it. Well, she and Lough.
Lisabelle gave me a pitying look. I hated that look. “I actually took it before I got here,” she told me. “My parents spent a lot of time training me, since they knew no darkness mages were professors here. I just got it out of the way before I came to campus.”
Lisabelle said that like it was no big deal. I knew that to every other paranormal it wasn’t, but being reminded of it filled me with jealousy. I didn’t have much time to dwell on my frustrations, though. We were entering Cruor.
Cruor wasn’t exactly what I’d been expecting, mostly because I’d been expecting blood soaking the walls and dead bodies hanging from the ceilings. In reality, the only signs of death were the gravestones. I tried not to think about how those people had died.
As I walked through the glass front door I was still feeling cold, so I rubbed my arms for warmth, but I still felt chilly. The room beyond was massive. Unlike Astra, where you entered an ornately decorated hallway, in Cruor you entered a living room. Everything in the room was black except for the sofas and chairs, which were red. There was also a massive red rug in front of an empty fireplace. The room smelled slightly of something tangy. I hoped it wasn’t blood. On the walls were black frames, but no pictures.
“Lovely,” said Lough, coughing. Professor Korba swept around to face us. He was shorter than everyone else there, even Sip, but he commanded attention when he wanted it.
“This is Cruor,” he told us. “It was the second of the paranormal dorms built on this campus. We have discussed vampire powers, their ability to shift into mist, command strix, and drink blood. We have also discussed that they can protect themselves from sunlight for short periods of time, which allows them to attend classes here. It is, in fact, the first thing a vampire learns. Can anyone tell me anything else about them?”
“They are one of the five powers. They are a key part in counteracting demon magic, because vampires share some of the same darkness powers,” offered Lisabelle.
“Exactly. Fallen angels are all white, bright magic. Alone, they could never defeat demons. But with the combined strength of the other paranormals, the demons can be defeated.”
“I hear Keller did a pretty good job against the one that attacked Charlotte,” said Lauren Bells.
Professor Korba nodded. “Keller is talented and the demon was alone. It is kind of you to reference the accomplishments of another paranormal.”
We continued to explore the dorm. Disturbing didn’t even begin to describe it. The halls were painted black. At first I’d been relieved that there wasn’t any blood spattered on them; somehow I thought that was an improvement from the bodies I’d been imagining. But I soon realized that my first impression was wrong. Around every dark corner a creak or a whistle made me jump. I was positive that some of the older vampires, or worse, Professor Zervos, were just waiting to come out after us.
Finally, it was time to move on to Volans. After that, Professor Korba explained, at some point we’d have to find time to visit Aurum, the fallen angel dorm.
I could see the relief on one face after another as we returned to sunlight. Professor Korba, ignoring our worried looks, led us to Volans.
I had never even seen Volans, because it was set off in a glade of trees all its own. The pixie dorm turned out to be nothing like Cruor. Instead of black walls rising into the sky, the stones were light and almost shining. There wasn’t a moat, just a shimmering lake. No matter how hard I looked, there were no dead fish in it. The pixies were too stuck up to have dead fish floating in their lake.
Inside the dorm, the walls were painted a tasteful yellow and the floors were a blistering white marble, which matched the all-white furniture. I had thought that the pixies were stuck up before, but here was proof.
We didn’t stay long in Volans, because the pixies were at home and they glared at us as we passed. Professor Korba, a pixie himself, acted like he didn’t notice, but he still took us out quickly.
“Very well, students,” he said once we were walking back to our classroom. “Why did we go through that fun little exercise? Any ideas?”
“You have a twisted sense of humor?” Katie Bells offered. Professor Korba just waited.
I raised my hand.
“Yes, Charlotte?” Professor Korba asked, eyeing me over the heads of other students.
“We have to be able to understand each other,” I told him.
“Yes, yes. Expand on that,” he suggested.
“Well,” I said, “if we are to fight the demons it’s pretty clear we have to do it together. We’ve all been fine as long as the demons didn’t have much strength, but now they’re getting stronger. As you just said, we can’t fight them off on our own. We have to fight them off together.”
“Very good, Charlotte. We will make a paranormal of you yet,” said Professor Korba, nodding his head. “This school has too much in-fighting. You are all students here and should all get along. The fact that one student is a vampire and another a fallen angel does not give one the right to fight or bully the other. Dash goes some way in the right direction by bringing competition out in a healthy way, but we must do more. This,” he waved his hand behind us, back to where Volans was now hidden in the trees, “is more. Remember. And think before you fight.”
“Now,” he continued. “I believe you all have studying to do before exams start.” He fluttered off, leaving us all staring after him.
It was now cold outside and time for dinner. Sip, Lisabelle, Lough, and I headed to the dining hall. Right after dinner I was supposed to meet Keller again, this time on the Dash field, where I was actually supposed to practice magic. I had informed Keller that he’d be safest if he brought armor with him.
Keller found me in the dining hall just as I finished eating. He had a sixth sense for the best times to swoop in and make me practice my magic; this time he showed up just as I had shoveled a particularly large bite of broccoli into my mouth. My face turned a bright red as I tried to chew. Lisabelle snorted into her milk.
The two of us walked toward the Dash field in the vanishing light. It was like a large vacuum in the sky had come and sucked away all the sun’s rays. This walk with Keller reminded me of the first weekend we’d walked over to Dash together, before I knew what it was, before I knew how much fun I was missing. Remembering that time, I glanced sideways at Keller. You could tell he was well-muscled, but I wouldn’t expect him to be the best Dasher at school; it was Cale who looked more like a Dasher. But I had to shove thoughts of Cale out of my mind. I was pretty sure he was going to go back to Camilla, which was going to ruin our friendship anyway.
“Did you bring protection?” I asked, then blushed furiously.
For a second I thought I saw Keller’s mouth twitch, but all he said was, “I won’t let you hurt me. Or yourself.”
“You say that now,” I informed him, “but you aren’t all-powerful.”
“No,” he acknowledged, “but I can defend myself from an out-of-control mage.” He hadn’t called me a Probationer.
“You hope,” I muttered.
We spent the next two hours practicing. When it got too dark, Keller was forced to create a bobbing globe of light. What I learned quickly was that I still had no control over my magic. I had the uncomfortable feeling that Keller was studying me, although I wasn’t sure why. He spent most of the time with his dark eyebrows furled over his blue eyes. At different points he would give me directions or suggestions, the main one of which was to point my magic toward the trees and away from the school, and him.
It didn’t matter where I pointed it, though. No matter where I tried to send it, the magic didn’t come.
Tired and angry, I pointed my ring at the ground and ordered it to strike. I don’t know what I expected, but a searing burst of blue fire lancing out of my hand was not it. I gasped, staring down at the scorched ground in front of me. Keller came racing over, breathless. “What was that?” he demanded. “You killed t
he grass!”
“Blue fire comes out of my hand and you’re mad about the grass?” I demanded. I knew I was being hostile, but I was too upset not to be. The bobbing globe cast half of Keller’s face in shadow, but I could still tell he was looking at me.
Then, instead of just looking, he came toward me. He was a foot away, then he wasn’t even that. The whole time, he never broke eye contact. When he was close enough, his long fingertips closed gently around my hand. He looked down to examine my knuckles.
“Are you alright?” he asked, his head bent over my arm.
“Yes.”
“There’s something very strange about your magic, Charlotte Rollins.” He brushed his fingers over my ring. Our eyes met again. His eyes and my magic were both blue. I wasn’t breathing. Then he released my hand.
He spent a long time staring at the hole in the Earth I’d just made. He waved his hand and fixed it. I looked at him, startled. He shrugged. He was still standing close to me. “Can’t have your craziness getting in the way of Dash, can we?”
“I’m not crazy,” I retorted. “Or if I am, it’s in no way you’ve ever seen.”
Keller raised his eyebrows, and I blushed again.
“Come on,” said Keller turning away abruptly. “We have exams in the morning.”
“Is what I just did a mage thing?” I asked. “Is it an Airlee thing?”
Keller’s eyebrows came together. He sighed and said, “No, that’s not the dorm that was known for that sort of thing.”