I frowned at the corner I’d backed myself into. “That wasn’t my point. Just tell her she kicked my ass fair and square.”
“And that you want a rematch on Monday?” Silt nodded, her dirt eyes sparkling. “Got it.”
CHAPTER 30
The sleek Stalwart was still on my mind an hour or two later, as I lay on my bed, tabbing through my latest reading assignment. As much as I hated to admit it, the fight with Orca had gone differently than the one with Paladin, and it hadn’t been just a matter of fighting styles. I’d done my best against Nadia, just as I had against every other opponent over the past few weeks, but I’d also been aware that it was only a training exercise. I’d kept my temper, I’d tried to utilize what Nikolai had taught us, and when she’d put me down, I’d stayed down.
I was certain I hadn’t used my powers in the fight against Paladin. Hell, I’d been at the Academy for three months, and I still didn’t know how to use my powers. But maybe Orca had a point. Anger had gotten me through thirteen years at Mama Rawlins’. It had gotten me through a good portion of the fight with Paladin. The combat techniques we were learning from Nikolai and Jessica were cool, but we were all learning those. Maybe anger was the only edge I had.
If Orca wanted a real fight, I’d give her one.
Weirdest way of flirting I’d ever heard of, but it’d been nine months since my last time with Alicia, and I was starting to get desperate.
On his side of the room, my roommate was getting ready for another Friday night, his deep black skin doing a stellar job of hiding the bruises he’d acquired in his match with Paladin. Like me, Nikolai had been pairing Jeremiah up with the better fighters, and he’d been losing more than he won. At this rate, neither of us was going to make it to second-year.
Jeremiah finished buttoning his dress shirt—this one a deep maroon, though the jeans beneath it were the same ones he usually wore out—combed his beard and cracked his neck. I waited for him to leave but he turned my way instead.
“The second-years are having a party tonight; normals and Powers. Do you want to come?”
I blinked. Those two sentences almost matched the total number of words Jeremiah had said to me since becoming my roommate. “Nah, I’m okay.”
“Suit yourself.” He shrugged, and then paused again, one hand on the doorknob. “Pretty sure Orca will be there though.”
Maybe it was because she’d been on my mind since the fight. Maybe it’s because my crush on Gabriella had mostly fizzled out. And maybe it’s because my mind was suddenly conjuring an image of the sleek yet curvaceous Stalwart wearing something other than grey sweats…
Whatever the reason, I found myself on my feet before I even knew I’d changed my mind. I coughed. “Actually, maybe I’ll go after all…”
Against the darkness of his skin and beard, Jeremiah’s smile was brilliant.
First party I’d gone to all year. Hell, first party since I turned five and my parents invited some of the neighbors’ kids over for cake and ice cream.
Could’ve gone better. But I guess if it had… well, maybe other things would’ve turned out worse.
•—•—•
“I did tell you that Orca would be there, didn’t I? And other girls?”
I looked over—and up—at Jeremiah. “Other than Ishmae, they’re all eighteen; it’s okay to call them women. But yeah, you told me. Why?”
He waved a large hand at me. “Don’t you want to wear something nicer?”
Dressed in my Paladin tee and the cleanest pair of grey sweatpants that I owned, I looked like a college student trying to sleep off his hangover, not one headed out for a party. Not that I had much choice in the matter. This was the nicest set of clothes I owned, but if Jeremiah hadn’t realized that in three months of being my roommate, I sure as fuck wasn’t going to tell him.
“Women hate it when guys try too hard,” I said instead.
“I’ll take your word for it,” I barely heard him mutter.
The second-year dorms were next to ours, but we went in the opposite direction, heading to the south side of the campus, where one of the original Academy buildings had long ago been repurposed for student use. According to campus legend, it was the class of 59 that had pooled their money and paid to convert the place into a bar, The Liquid Hero. Since then, the responsibility for operating the bar had been passed down to each second-year Cape class.
“Why’d you invite me out tonight of all nights?” I asked my roommate, as we wove past students headed in the other direction.
“Dunno. Just seemed like an opportunity.” He shrugged uncomfortably. “Truth is, after all this time as roommates, I don’t know much about you.”
It was my turn to shrug. “As far as most people are concerned, all that matters is what I am.”
“Yeah. Don’t know much about that either. Crows, I mean.” We rounded the corner and our destination came into sight, along with the small crowd of people hanging around outside.
“I am a Crow, and I barely know anything.” I wasn’t sure why my roommate was being nice all of a sudden. Maybe Orca kicking my ass was helping break the ice? “As far as I know, I’m the only Crow in the city.”
“Did you grow up here?” A small line of people was snaking through the crowd and into the bar, and we attached ourselves to the end of that line.
“No… Bakersfield.”
The big man winced. “Ouch.”
“Fucking tell me about it.” As we neared the front of the line, I saw they had a Titan out front, taking money and handing out entry passes. “Oh uhm… I left my wallet back at the dorm.” My empty wallet, but that didn’t seem worth mentioning either.
“No worries. First-years get in free tonight. Guess it’s the second-years’ idea of a meet and greet.”
The Titan was even bigger up close; Nikolai’s size, if not larger. He turned to Jeremiah. “What’s up, Stonewall? Who’s this?”
“Hey Hektor, this is my roommate, Damian.”
“The Crow?” Hektor brought his enormous fists in front of him and slowly cracked each knuckle. “We’ve heard about you.”
“Half of it is lies,” I told him.
“Sure, but which half?”
Since I didn’t know what he’d heard about me, I just shrugged.
“As first-years, you both get in free tonight. Start any trouble though, and I can promise you’ll pay plenty.”
“No problem, man,” Jeremiah said with a smile. “Stop by and have a drink when you’re off shift?”
“Will do.” Hektor turned to the next people in line, and my roommate and I headed inside to be greeted by a blast of music.
“Stonewall?”
“What?”
I raised my voice. “He called you Stonewall. That’s your codename?”
“Yeah. Stone-shifter, so I figured… what the hell? No need to get overly creative or anything.”
The Liquid Hero was larger than I’d expected it to be. Most of the floor was open space—or would have been if it weren’t crowded by people—but a wooden bar stretched to our left, shelves of bottles behind it, and a handful of booths occupied the opposite wall. High tables at the far end of the room flanked a staircase leading up to the second floor.
There were people everywhere. The crowd was mixed; both normals and Capes, and I was surprised to realize that the latter were easy to spot… and not just the Titans who were half a foot taller than everyone else. I’d always assumed that the hyper-fit Capes in hero vids were simply propaganda, but after three months under Nikolai and Jessica’s tender mercies, many of the first-years were starting to trend in that direction. And the second-years? They made us look like children.
Most of the men, Capes or otherwise, were dressed like Jeremiah, in some variation of button-up shirt and jeans, but I caught a few in shorts, and a handful more in tees like me. I was the only one rocking Academy sweats though. As for the women…
“I’ve been spending way too much time doing homework,” I breathed.
One look around the bar told me that not making it to the so-called “beach” was just one of my many sins over the past three months on campus. There were a lot of women in the bar… an awful lot of those women were cute… and the vast majority were dressed to kill.
Not literally dressed to kill. That’s a whole different sort of dress code, one that usually involves body armor, Kevlar or… well, skintight leather, in the case of Her Majesty.
There was no body armor in sight, although one woman had paired combat boots with the smallest and tightest miniskirt I’d ever seen. There was plenty of leather, a variety of skirts, an even more impressive mixture of tops, and—best of all—a fantastic amount of bare skin on display. After so many weeks with the same twelve first-year women, all of them dressed in dull grey sweats that even London and Nadia had to work at making sexy, a roomful of women in party clothes was enough to blow my mind.
If Orca really was wearing a dress, I was going to lose that mind entirely.
Jeremiah nodded to the stairs. “We’re up top.”
The second floor was basically an oversized balcony, wrapping around three walls of the bar and leaving open space in the middle so that you could look down on the dancers below. Two legs of the resulting U were too narrow for anything but stools and high tables, but the last leg was large enough for three long tables and a shitload of chairs. Sitting at one of those tables, the Viking was easy to pick out. I also spotted Winter’s distinctive hair, and Olympia glowing like a fucking Christmas light.
For those of you from the distant, pre-Break past, Christmas is a day where adults get shit-faced, slobber about how much they love each other, and end up passed-out in a puddle of their own vomit. Remembrance Day without the presents, basically. No clue how or why colored lights got mixed into the tradition, but given that I was raised in a fucking orphanage, I’m guessing I missed out on the backstory.
Our arrival didn’t cause as much of a stir as I’d expected. Olympia’s light flickered a bit, but either those Control classes were paying off or the three empty beer bottles sitting in front of the Lightbringer had gone a long way to drowning out her usual terror. Winter had a single glass of white wine in her hand—because of course she fucking did—while the other first-years all had beers like Olympia.
It wasn’t until she looked my way with a scowl that I even recognized Tessa. She’d pulled her curly black hair back and away from her face, and was wearing makeup that almost disguised the bruise she’d gotten from her own roommate, Ishmae, in Thursday’s fight. Black, multi-layered skirts made her look a little bit like a witch—a real one, not a Weather Witch like Winter—but her burgundy halter top was low-cut.
Like… ridiculously low-cut.
Poltergeist had tits.
It’s one thing to know it—I mean, she was technically female, so of course she had to have them—but it was another thing entirely to see them for myself.
“Looking at something, Crow?” At least her voice was the same, just the right combination of sarcasm and disdain to shake me free of my stupor.
“Yeah… I think it’s your belly button.” I was too busy pulling my eyes up and away to take any pleasure in her own hurried glance down and the resulting, equally hurried adjustment of her top.
Jeremiah cleared his throat—which, from a man his size, came out as a cross between a foghorn and an avalanche—and herded me over to a couple of free chairs on the very far side of the table from Poltergeist. I dropped into the suggested seat and took my first real look at who else was sitting around our table.
The Viking was half-naked—an all-too-common event in the guys’ wing of the dorm—showing off an abundance of carefully flexed muscle, tanned skin, and golden hair. At least someone had made him put on pants. They weren’t jeans, but something looser, dyed an incredibly bright Day-Glo yellow.
Erik-fucking-Thorsson had never lacked confidence.
In a little black dress, Olympia would’ve looked good next to anyone. Seated next to the Viking, she looked good and classy. She kept her silver-eyed gaze carefully fixed on something that wasn’t me, and I returned the favor by not checking out her dress. The revelation of Tessa’s tits had been enough of a mindfuck for one night.
London was chatting away with Santiago, the two of them a matched pair—and god I hoped that was purely coincidental—in deep green. Now her I could have stared at all night, but even I knew there was a line between appreciative and offensive. Plus, just because she lacked Ishmae’s potential as a Pyro didn’t mean she couldn’t still light me on fire.
On the other side of Santiago was Paladin. Like the other guys not deluded enough to think themselves real-life Vikings, Matthew was in a button-down and jeans, his blonde hair perfectly parted. Unlike the other guys, he had a glass of something clear.
Anyone else, and I’ve have said it was vodka. Fucking Paladin though? Something told me it was water.
Next to Paladin was the aforementioned Tessa, and next to her was Winter, tall and thin and all in white to match her hair. Then Caleb—now going by Supersonic—followed by Erin, and Freddy.
I was the only one in sweats. Only one in a t-shirt too. Nobody said a word about it though, even if Paladin’s jaw did go tight at the sight of the shirt. Try and pay respect to a guy’s father, and he gets all pissy for some reason…
Anyway, nobody said anything about my bar clothes. Nobody said anything about anything, really… the whole lot of them working as hard as they could to ignore my presence. Most of them were less obvious about it than Olympia, but nine people not making eye contact tends to be a little bit obvious.
But Baron Boner, I can almost hear you say, didn’t you just describe ten people other than you and Stonewall at the table? Right you are, oh anonymous ghost who should fucking know better than to interrupt me when I’m reminiscing… but I wasn’t counting Freddy in the list of people ignoring me.
Guy wouldn’t be making eye contact with anyone, given he was passed-out drunk.
CHAPTER 31
Hour or so later, and there was still no sign of Orca. I’d had a few sips of beer, decided I preferred the rotgut tequila Alicia had once smuggled out of her old man’s liquor cabinet, and switched to water almost immediately after.
Two people drinking water in a bar. One of them in a Paladin t-shirt, one of them actually named Paladin. Has to be a joke in there somewhere.
But anyway, an hour later and still no Nadia. Still no eye contact from most of my beloved class members either, although Winter and Tessa occasionally pulled their shit together enough to shoot me grey and green eyed glares, respectively. No Nadia, no drunken flirtation, no real action—of any kind—and no alcohol worth drinking. As parties go, this one wasn’t living up to the hype.
What I did have was conversation. Not with the nine first-years who were busy pretending I didn’t exist, of course, or with the one first-year who remained passed out in his own drool. No, the person talking my ear off—the only person talking my ear off—was my usually stoic, frequently threatening, always-quiet roommate, Jeremiah.
On the one hand… not worrying that your Shifter roommate is going to come over and stomp you in your sleep is kind of a good thing. Wouldn’t do a damn thing to help me sleep better—not after all those years on a cot in Mama Rawlins’—but still… kind of nice.
On the other hand, it was starting to feel more like an inquisition than a conversation.
“So when did you first realize you were a Crow?” the big man asked for the second time. The music was a lot quieter upstairs, but still loud enough that I’d been able to carry off pretending like I couldn’t hear him on occasion. Since we’d sat down, he’d been peppering me with questions about my power, as if his curiosity had been building up over the past three months and he was now just letting it all go.
I shrugged. “I was fucking the cute redhead that lived next door to our house. Her parents and older brother were gone so the two of us were out back on a blanket. Neither of us knew the family that l
ived there before had buried their beloved dog in that yard. When I came… well, so did the dog.”
“You mean…?”
“Yeah, burst right out of the ground, all dirt and bones and a few scraps of flesh. Hell of a way to ruin an orgasm.”
Total bullshit, but you already know that. Norm and Sue. Jeremiah didn’t get that truth. Didn’t deserve it, far as I was concerned. My childhood had sucked, but it was mine, and fuck if I was going to give it away to anyone who asked.
Plus, making shit up was kind of fun.
“That’s rough.” He shook his head. “What did your parents say when they found out?”
And just like that, fun time was over. I waved Jeremiah off and went over to the balcony to look down at the first floor. If Nadia didn’t show up in five minutes, I was going back to the dorm. Hell, maybe I’d even do homework or something.
There were still a lot of people down below, but no sign of a dirty-blonde Stalwart with ocean-colored eyes.
I started to turn away, then stopped and looked again.
A smaller woman with electric-blue streaks in her black hair was making her way through the crowd. Even from the balcony, I could see Vibe had her eyes scrunched shut, her face pinched as if she was trying to block out the madhouse of people around her. She took another step, then stumbled, half-collapsing to the floor before her legs firmed up beneath her. Whatever momentum had propelled her into the bar had already dwindled to almost nothing.
Can’t think of many places worse for an Empath still learning to shut out emotions. Kayleigh was a lot of things, but dumb wasn’t one of them. She wouldn’t be here for no reason.
I left the other first-years sitting around the table and hurried downstairs.
•—•—•
By the time I made it down, one of the second-years—a Wind Dancer whose name started with an A, I think—had pulled Kayleigh over to the bar, and was doing his best to calm her down. Because nothing calms an Empath like having someone up in her space. She was still standing, if barely, curled in on herself like a ball or one of those armadillo things from Silt’s homeland.
See These Bones Page 15
