See These Bones

by Chris Tullbane

  Expectations. They’ll fuck with you every chance they get.

  Kind of like people, I guess.

  After a brief wait in a sitting room similar to the one outside Bard’s office—minus Agnes and her weapon-grade death stare—I was called in. A low couch, wide enough to lie on, faced a wooden desk. A bronze nameplate on that desk read Dr. Gibbings, and a handful of degrees dotted one wall, with a landscape in pastels occupying another. Thick curtains covered the windows behind the desk, but the free-standing lamps that ringed the room gave it a homey feel.

  All of that more or less fit what I remembered from Bakersfield though. Higher quality stuff, sure, but mostly the same.

  It was the doctor herself who was different.

  She sat behind the desk, quiet and tall, her pale skin the only thing about her that wasn’t black. Black hair, black eyes, a crisp black blouse and—I was willing to believe, even if the desk made it impossible to know for sure—black pants and black shoes. Even the bracelet around one wrist was a circlet of black, unpolished stones.

  “Who died?”

  She cocked her head, like one of those seagulls Los Angeles was famous for. Her voice was slow and smooth, like caramelized sugar. “Most recently?”

  I coughed. “It was a joke. Your clothes…”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “Bard didn’t say you had a sense of humor. That’s a good sign.”

  “It is?”

  “I’d like to think so. People who can’t laugh at life… well, you just know those fuckers are going nuts.”

  I blinked and double-checked the diplomas on the wall. The doctor watched me do so, her smile a simple twist of the lips, gone before it had even fully formed.

  “My name is Alexa, and as you’re no doubt aware, I’m your school-appointed counselor. Given the number of years you spent in the system, I assume I’m not the first psychologist you’ve seen?”

  “Second,” I admitted.

  “Then I’ll start by telling you what I won’t be doing in our sessions. I won’t be sitting here taking notes in a little book—even a black one that matches my outfit.” Again, that smile flashed. “I won’t be asking about your mother or father, or what you saw or heard or felt on that day. You can tell me if you want, of course, but that’s entirely up to you. I won’t be showing you slides of inkblots and asking you what they look like, and I damn sure won’t be playing word association games with you.”

  That pretty much eliminated everything the Bakersfield shrink had bothered with. “So what will you be doing?”

  “Listening without judgement. Offering advice should you want it.”

  My scowl deepened. “Aren’t you supposed to decide whether I’m batshit crazy or not?”

  “Is that something you would like me to do?”

  “It’s what Bard said this whole thing was about.”

  “I’m well aware of the dean’s thoughts.” She regarded me steadily, as still as a painting, and somehow pretty without being at all attractive. “However, he isn’t my patient. I’m asking what it is you want.”

  After a long moment, I shrugged. “To stay sane.”

  “And if that’s not possible?” I’d been in the office for minutes now, and she hadn’t blinked once.

  “Then I want someone to recognize it, and to stop me if…”

  I didn’t finish the sentence, but she nodded as if I had. “I can do that.”

  “Cool.” I swallowed past the lump in my throat and shrugged again. “So what now?”

  “Now, you take a seat.” She motioned to the couch. “You can stand if you’d rather, but after your first week at the Academy, I imagine you’re even more exhausted than you look.” She waited as I collapsed onto the couch. “Great. Now… just talk.”

  “About what?”

  “Your classes, your fellow first-years, what you think of the city. Anything.”

  “Seriously?” This was so different from my Bakersfield shrink experience that I was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “Seriously. It’s the talking that matters, not the subject. Silent, brooding guys make for great vid stars and reasonably good one-night-stands, but in real life, they’re right there with the humorless assholes, waiting in line for their nervous breakdowns and prescription of crazy pills.” Her black eyes met mine from across the room. “Just talk, Damian. We’ll see how things go from there.”

  So I told her about Ethics class. Kind of funny; complaining about a teacher who saw everything as black and white to a woman who fit that same color scheme.

  Probably should’ve made a joke out of it.

  I’m pretty sure Alexa would’ve even smiled.

  CHAPTER 25

  In Bakersfield, winter stays late and summer comes early, meaning spring barely qualifies as a season. Hell, some years, it doesn’t even qualify as a week; a few days of pleasant sunshine before the stifling heat comes rolling in to take up residence for the next four months, cooking vegetation and people alike until people are so fucked up they find themselves actually missing the fog.

  Dad wanting to move to Bakersfield should have been Mom’s first clue the asshole had gone nuts.

  Los Angeles was different. Different when I’d arrived in early March, different in April and still different as we pushed into mid-May. Cool breezes blowing in from the ocean I’d only seen on that first trip into town. Temperatures hovering around the mid-seventies. Women in tank tops and mini-skirts or shorts, hanging around outside instead of scurrying for climate-controlled buildings. One hill just past the Graduation Games field had been converted into an impromptu “beach.” Green grass instead of sand, but plenty of men and women in practically nothing, getting some sun, listening to music on their Glasses, and generally having a grand fucking time.

  I almost wished the Academy was located in a place like Bakersfield. At least then, everyone would have been as miserable as us first-years. Eight hours of classes a day, plus homework and meals, didn’t leave much time for relaxation. Or fun.

  It didn’t help that the Control classroom had floor-to-ceiling windows along one wall, or that Ms. Stein had us facing those windows during our daily exercises. I think she wanted us to feel like we were part of the world or nature or some sort of peace and balance shit, but all it meant to me was that I got to see what I was missing.

  It also didn’t help that, after two months of school, I still didn’t have the faintest clue what my powers did, how to use them, or what exactly I was supposed to be learning to control. Other than my one fight against Paladin—which I was starting to think had been the result of a concussion rather than any kamikaze Crow abilities—the only evidence that I was a Necromancer at all was Mom’s ghost… and nobody could see her other than me.

  I swallowed a sigh and tried to regulate my breathing. Again.

  Our class was split between two studios, each equipped with dampeners similar to those in Nikolai’s pit. These dampeners were dialed down to be less restrictive, allowing the first-years with external powers to manifest their abilities without accidentally killing us all. Having half the class in a separate room, even if that room was only one door away, had its pluses and minuses. On the positive side, the wall between the two rooms muffled Tessa’s constant bitching and kept us from getting frostbite from Winter’s miniature ice storms. On the less positive side, they’d split up our Stalwarts and our Pyros, and the other room got both Orca and London—the two hottest women in our class, as far as I was concerned—leaving us Paladin and Ishmae.

  Fucking Paladin. If anything was going to drive me crazy, it would be his constant presence. With a passive power set, he didn’t have much to do in Control class, but seemed content to meditate the hours away, back straight and arms placed just right, no trace of irritation, impatience, or humanity disturbing his perfectly composed expression. In the other room, Orca was no doubt doing the exact same bit of nothing… but looking a hell of a lot better doing it.

  Ishmae, on the other hand, had a wisp of fire
hovering in the air above her and was leading that flame through increasingly complex loops and patterns. I’d seen her do the same with as many as ten wisps, each of them tightly braided, moving in their own patterns and burning steadily. Word was, London had only managed two wisps so far, and the second one had a tendency of drifting off of its own accord. Kind of like Winter’s blizzards.

  Seated next to Ishmae—always next to her—Shane spent most of his class time just watching the young Pyro. The only person in the class unaware of his painful, soul-devouring crush was the object of said crush. Ishmae had turned seventeen in April but showed no interest in anything beyond school and the cultivation of her power. Supposedly, a lot of High-Fours were like that.

  To the left, Erin Pearson—our near-ginger Wind Dancer—was guiding a small cyclone about in a slow and stilted dance while Olympia used her own powers to shoot darts of light through the cyclone. Past those two, Prince was humming something under his breath, the chunky Siren’s tones too quiet to affect the emotions of anyone around him. Caleb, one of a handful of first-years with dual powers, was hovering an inch or so off the floor, tossing a fistful of coins high into the air and then catching them again just before they could hit the ground, his angular features set in concentration and his hands alternating blurs. Silt had a handful of dirt in front of her and was glaring at it as it formed into a lopsided bowl, then a cylinder, and then something that was supposed to be a duck.

  As for me, I sat, breathed, and waited for class to end, like I’d been doing every day for the last two months. Even my crush on Ms. Stein had faded under the relentless tedium. I’d known being a Crow would suck. I hadn’t know it would mean I was going to be completely useless at everything.

  I wasn’t the only one losing patience. The Viking, as he’d loudly proclaimed on more than one occasion, thought meditation was for pussies. The two Shifters weren’t loving Control either. Something about shifting being an all-or-nothing proposition and the dampeners being still set too high for them to transform. Alan Jackson was in the other room, intimidating the fuck out of everyone around him, but Jeremiah was in our room, doing his best not to fall asleep.

  Then there were the stranger members of the class.

  Freddy was our Switch, one of that rare breed who could affect the abilities of Powers around him. He was an Amplifier, which basically made him every first-year’s favorite person. Nullifiers were significantly less appreciated… except when a Black Hat needed stopping. For Freddy, Control meant increasing the range and duration of his abilities, and one day being able to affect multiple targets.

  With the way she blurred from one end of her mat to the other, Wormhole might have passed for a Jitterbug, but that was more a function of the dampeners and the enclosed space than anything. Whereas she and Caleb could both move from point A to point B in a flash, the button-nosed brunette was actually skipping everything in between. In their own way, Teleporters were even more badass than Flyboys or Wind Dancers.

  What I couldn’t figure out was why Wormhole ended every class noticeably heavier than she’d been at the start. It was like she was detouring to the donut dimension with each teleport. Even harder to understand was where that extra weight went; by the time History rolled around in the afternoon, Evelyn would be back to her petite self.

  And then there was Kayleigh Watai. Five feet tall and golden skinned, I’d never heard her speak a word. She shunned the rest of the first-years every bit as much as they shunned me. In most classes, Kayleigh sat as far from the rest of us as she could, but in the tighter quarters of Control, there was nowhere to go. While everyone else was breathing or showing off, she was just twitching, head down, arms wrapped tightly around her bent knees until she was a small ball, rocking back and forth.

  It reminded me of Nyah and how she would sometimes wake up after a nightmare at the orphanage. Maybe even of how I’d been in those first few months at Mama Rawlins’, before Fat Joey taught me the value of staying quiet if I didn’t want a love tap in the ribs from his size nine shoes.

  I made it through all of four classes watching Kayleigh twitch before I went to Ms. Stein for help, but the lovely teacher had just tucked a strand of fabulously silky hair behind one equally fabulous ear and told me to focus on my own problems.

  That might have been the moment my crush on Gabriella Stein started to fade.

  A couple weeks later, I spoke to Alexa instead. First time I’d talked to her about anything that really mattered, anything that wasn’t just a recap of my last few days of classes. She’d listened, fixed me with those unblinking black eyes of hers, and informed me that the faculty was well aware of Ms. Watai’s difficulties, that those issues were related to her power, and that they would step in when and if it was necessary.

  Didn’t make me feel any better but it didn’t leave me much recourse either—especially since I’d torn up the class roster that first day and had no idea what power Kayleigh even had. Some of the other first-years knew, no doubt, but it’s not like I was on speaking terms with any of them except Shane, and the ginger Healer had an annoying habit of not spilling other people’s secrets.

  Shortly after my talk with Alexa, I’d watched Paladin try to speak to Kayleigh after class, but she’d shrunk away from him like he was Grannypocalypse or the Singer himself. If perfect-fucking-wonder-boy Matthew Strich provoked that kind of reaction, I didn’t even want to think what someone like me trying to help might do. So instead, I sat and breathed, a little bit jealous of people like Ishmae, a little bit grateful that I wasn’t like Kayleigh, but mostly just frustrated that I was utterly useless on two different fronts.

  Should’ve gotten an A in that class just for not snapping, throwing a chair through the enormous window, and never coming back. Now that’s real control for you.

  Finally, our latest session came to an end. Kayleigh was off the floor and out the door before Jeremiah had even woken up, and long before the rest of the first-years filed in from the second room. I was still trying to rub feeling back into my legs and feet when Caleb spoke up.

  “What’s that, Gabriella?” Caleb and Santiago both insisted on addressing our teachers by their first names. Some teachers took it poorly, but Ms. Stein was one of the less prickly professors. The Jitterbug was pointing at the back of the room, where a door that was normally closed had been left partly open. Within, we could just vaguely see some sort of machinery.

  “Oh, I didn’t realize I’d left that open.” Ms. Stein looked to the open door and then back to us. “I suppose there’s no harm in showing you.” She opened the door wide. “This is the Maze.”

  The Maze wasn’t actually a maze. If anything, it reminded me of the machine used for my testing… only someone had fused the machine with a chair, so whoever sat in it would essentially be placing their head into the heart of the device. Two armrests terminated in copper-wrapped handles. A basket of copper and steel wire to the side was designed to be lowered over the occupant’s head.

  “The Maze,” Ms. Stein continued, “is one of the challenges at the Graduation Games. Not as flashy as the more physical challenges, I suppose, but for those us who prize the perfection of control, it’s by far the most exciting.”

  “How does it work?” That was Penelope, aka Winter, taking a rare break from the assumption that she knew everything.

  “Well, in a way it’s similar to the apparatus used for your initial testing—”

  Ha! I’d totally nailed it.

  “—but where that device simply measures the classification and magnitude of your power, the Maze evaluates your level of control by implanting challenges in your brain and measuring your attempts to meet those challenges.”

  “Can we try it?” That was Tessa.

  “Oh heavens no!” Ms. Stein shooed us away from the door, then closed and locked it. “The Maze is intended for third-years, and even then, only for the top two or three in the class. It’s not a toy, and it can be dangerous.”

  Anything that put shit directl
y in your brain was best avoided, in my opinion, but whatever Ms. Stein saw in the other first-years’ faces had her concerned.

  “As in burn-your-powers-out-and-leave-you-a-vegetable dangerous. Once you’ve made it to third-year, if any of you are interested in trying the Maze, you can come speak to me, but for now, you should all forget you even saw it.”

  That was easy enough for most of the class to do. A few stories circulated about past winners—and losers—and then everyone got on with their lives.

  Almost everyone… but we didn’t find that out until later.

  Until it was way too late.

  Someone should have fucking seen it coming.

  CHAPTER 26

  The sun was setting somewhere in the sky ahead of me as I picked my way through the small woods that filled the campus’ western border. I still had homework to do—assigned by both my real teachers and my tutors—but for the moment, I was focused on a different kind of problem.

  I still wasn’t sure what to think of the monochromatic Dr. Gibbings—and I sure as hell didn’t fully trust her—but I’d finally let go of my pride enough to mention my own failures in Control. Alexa had looked at me for a long moment in silence. Wasn’t all that out of the ordinary for either of us. For a relationship that was supposed to be about talking, we spent an awful lot of time doing anything but.

  Finally, she let those unblinking eyes drift off to the left and nodded. “There’s not a lot we know about Necromancers, Damian, including whether Gabriella’s techniques even apply to someone like you, but…”

  “But?”

  “Have you thought about practicing outside her classroom?”

  “There aren’t any dampeners outside the classroom.”

  “Exactly my point.” She had her hands steepled in front of her on the desk, the black stone bangle on the right wrist today instead of the left. I was sure that meant something… but had no idea what.