“He didn’t think she would survive long enough for us to wait for help.”
“I know. I also know that he was in love with her, and there are few things less rational than a teenager in love.” The hard lines of Bard’s face softened. “But High-Four though she is, there is not a Cape in the Free States who would have willingly traded Shane’s life for Ishmae’s. And now, even that trade seems moot.”
“What do you mean?”
He loosened his tie, and sank back into the chair. “Ishmae has chosen to leave the Academy.”
“She what?”
“She just killed an innocent man, Mr. Banach. And not a stranger, but someone who cared for her, and who was himself destined for great things. That is the sort of weight that has broken older and stronger people than Ms. Naser.”
“That’s total bullshit,” I growled. Bad enough that Shane had died because of her… now she was going to quit?!?
“It is also none of your concern,” said Bard. “Particularly when you have problems of your own.”
It was my turn to sigh. “What do you want from me, Bard? I’m doing my best. Hell, I even helped catch those two Shifters.”
“Yes, you did. You’ve shown occasional flashes of potential. At the same time, I’ve received over a dozen complaints about you, the majority of them coming from your fellow first-years.”
“That’s bullshit too,” I decided. “I haven’t done a damn thing to any of them, unless you count bleeding all over Paladin and Orca. And the Viking. And Alan Jackson,” I added after a moment’s thought. Sometimes I thought the central theme of Nikolai’s class was me getting my ass kicked. “Most of them hated me from the moment they found out what I was.”
“True enough.”
“That’s all you have to say? True enough?”
“Hatred is something that every Cape must deal with, believe it or not. Powers are fundamentally different from the rest of us, and humanity has a long history of hating those who are different. Capes are the key to our nation’s survival, but public sentiment is a fickle beast. It’s the reason every Cape team has a public relations office, and it’s the reason we pour funding into Cape vids and merchandising. It’s also one of the core reasons this Academy even exists; to teach you control, so that you can fight without leaving a swath of death and destruction in your wake. It’ll be years before we recover from what happened in Palo Alto last year. Another catastrophe and everything that has been built in this country over the last seven decades could slip away.”
“I get all that. Amos has told us what it was like in the days after the Break.”
“And you were actually awake to hear it?” Bard shook his head in mock astonishment. “Clearly, the rumors of your academic inattention have been exaggerated.”
I rolled my eyes. “I know why normal people might fear or hate those of us with abilities. But the first-years are Powers too. So why do they hate me?”
“Of all people, you must understand why people would fear a Crow.”
“Because we’re insane, murdering assholes…. sure. But you saw what Ishmae did. She could’ve killed thousands of people when Shane woke her up—would have if her fire hadn’t mostly gone vertical—but for some reason I’m the one everyone is terrified of. How does that make any sense? I see ghosts. She incinerates fucking cities!”
“A High-Four is terrifying, Mr. Banach. A Full-Five even more so. But Dominion and Grannypocalypse … in the end, they can only kill you.”
“And that’s a good thing?”
“It’s a reality the world has adjusted to, post-Break. Life is precious, but it is also fleeting. There’s a reason the concept of an afterlife holds such sway. Heaven, Valhalla, even the great wheel of karma; each suggests that physical death is not the end, but a gateway to something greater beyond this broken plane of existence.”
“I have no idea where you’re going with this,” I admitted.
“What happened to the souls of those Lord Bone raised? What happens to the spirits that the Crimson Death consumed?”
“I don’t know.”
“Nobody does. That’s the point. As awe-inspiring as other powers might be, they can only destroy the body. A Crow—and only a Crow—can do more.”
“What about the Singer?”
“A Power who can literally sing someone out of existence?” Bard rolled his eyes. “The Voidsinger is a myth, Damian. Crows, on the other hand, are all too real.”
“So the first-years are…what…? Worried that I’m going to snack on their souls like synth-rations? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard!”
“Says the eighteen-year-old who threatened to kill someone, raise their corpse as a Walker, and send it home to murder their family.”
I shifted uncomfortably on the gurney. How the hell had he heard about that? “If you know I’m sleeping through Amos’ class, you also know that whole threat was a bluff. I can’t do anything like that.”
“Not yet.”
“Even if I could, I wouldn’t!”
“The two Shifters didn’t know that.”
“No shit! That’s why the bluff worked!”
“And how many of the first-years do you think that same bluff would have worked on?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. A handful, maybe.”
“I think you’d be surprised. We fear the unknown, Damian, and you remain an unknown to most of your classmates.”
“Yeah, well… that’s on them, not me.”
“Is it? If it weren’t for your history project, would you have spoken to any of your classmates other than Shane?”
I fixed my eyes on the ceiling. “If you have a point, please just say it. My head is killing me.”
“When you graduate—if you graduate—you will join a team. You will need to trust the people on that team and they will need to trust you. For the next two and a half years, the class of 76 is your team. None of you have the luxury of remaining isolated. You’re going to have to make the other first-years see you as more than just a Crow.”
“That wasn’t part of our deal.”
“It is now.” Bard rose to his feet. “You can start with the two first-years waiting outside.”
He was halfway to the door when my voice stopped him.
“Was Olympia’s family really in Reno?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus. Why would you put me in her class?”
Bard’s tone was almost wry. “You may recall that I had very little choice in the matter.”
“You could’ve said no.”
“And risked my funding when the budget comes up for renewal next year? True enough. If you hadn’t convinced me otherwise, I might have done just that. But I chose to believe that you could be more than your power.”
“I am.”
“Prove it to your classmates. Prove it to Olympia Kennedy. Help her move past the blind hatred and fear that could derail her career before it even starts.”
“That’s a hell of a lot to ask.”
“Welcome to life as a Cape, Damian. There are no easy missions.”
CHAPTER 40
I was still chewing on the dean’s parting words when my next visitor came in. When Bard had said there were first-years waiting to talk with me, I’d assumed one would be Vibe, looking for a little bit of emotion-deprivation time, and the other would be Silt. With Unicorn dead, they were the closest things to friends I had left on campus.
Instead, I looked up into the bearded face of my roommate, Jeremiah. “I brought a change of clothes,” he said, waving the stack of grey sweats in his hands.
“What?”
“I figured you’d rather not walk back across campus half-naked.” He nodded at my bandage-covered chest. Given the mess I’d made of my back—again—they’d had to cut my sweatshirt right off of me.
I eyed the fresh clothes warily. “Where did you get them?”
One bushy eyebrow went up. “From your closet, obviously.” Stonewall shook his head. “I’m not sure
where you put the rest of your clothes. All I saw in there were school sweats… and a couple of old t-shirts.”
I pulled myself up to a seated position, ignoring the way the skin on my back pulled. “Stay out of my stuff. Stay out of my fucking life.”
He tossed the neatly folded clothes down onto the foot of my gurney. “I guess gratitude was too much to ask for, huh?”
“You think I should be grateful?” Just that quickly, Bard’s words of advice were forgotten. I gripped the edges of the gurney to keep from doing anything stupid, feeling the metal edges biting into my palms. “To you? After the shit you’ve pulled?”
“What the hell are you talking about, freak?” In six months, I’d never really seen Jeremiah angry, but from the way his voice had dropped to a low growl, that was about to change.
“I know, you asshole! All about your group project. That you’ve been fucking researching me!”
Someone as dark as Jeremiah Jones can’t really go pale, but he took a half-step back. “How—?”
“Because I’m not a fucking idiot, that’s how! I’m not an idiot, and I don’t want your fucking charity.”
“They’re your fucking clothes, you asshole. This isn’t charity.”
“Then what is it?” I sneered.
“It’s me protecting the campus from being blinded by your lily-white ass,” he shot back. “And maybe letting you know that nobody thinks you had anything to do with Shane’s death.”
I rolled my eyes, but before I could say anything, he just kept on going.
“And sure, you’re right about our project being on Crows, and that you were originally a part of it,” he continued angrily, “but we decided a few days ago not to use you in our presentation.”
That sucked some of the fire out of my anger. “Why?”
“Because we’re training to be Capes, you asshole! Capes save people. They don’t make things worse for them. Even when those people are dicks who really, really deserve it.”
“Capes save people?” With all that had happened over the past few days, it took me a moment to place where I’d heard that before. “You’ve been talking to Kayleigh.”
“Vibe? No. It was Poltergeist who put her foot down.” Jeremiah shifted uneasily. “She was right though.”
“Yeah, she was.” If I lived to be one hundred, I was never going to figure Tessa out. “None of you had any right to dig up my past.”
“It’s public information,” he began.
“It’s my life! My family. My history.”
“I know.” When someone Jeremiah’s size sighs, it’s hard not to hear it. “I get it. I’m sorry.”
For a long moment, the only sound came from the big man shifting his weight and shuffling his feet. It was my turn to sigh.
“Whatever. It happened and it’s over with. It’s not like killing your whole group will change that.” I rolled my eyes again as he swallowed hard. “That’s a joke. I’m pretty sure someone would stop me before I could get all of you.” That was also a joke… but apparently he didn’t see the humor in it. “So you’re sticking with the project topic?”
“Yeah. There isn’t time to find a new one—”
“Fine.”
“—and we’ve already spent weeks on our presentation, and…” He trailed off. “Did you say fine? You?”
“My dad killed my mother.” It was the first time I’d said those words aloud since arriving on campus, and they hurt. The fact that I was saying them to someone I didn’t even consider a friend just made it worse. “And he’s nothing compared to the real Black Hats. I’m here so I won’t go nuts… so I can maybe even do some good, but nobody knows whether that is going to work. Likelihood is, any Crow you encounter in the wild is going to be a frothing-at-the-mouth, corpse-fucking asshole. Knowing how to spot them… knowing how to stop them, even…” I shrugged. “Why would I be against that?”
“It’s not like we came up with some sort of guide to Crow-killing or anything,” said Jeremiah. “They’ve all been different, and they’ve all been put down differently too. We’re just trying to give a historical overview of the big names.”
“As long as I’m left the fuck out of it.”
“You will be. I already dumped the data we managed to dig up.” He paused. “I know it’s none of my business, but… I am sorry about your mom.”
“Yeah.” Off to the side, Mom’s ghost was swaying back and forth, her faded sundress clipping in and out of the nearest gurney. “Everyone’s sorry except the asshole himself.”
He stood there awkwardly for a bit longer, then shrugged. “Anyway. See you around, Skeletor.”
“It seems likely.” Silt still hadn’t explained that nickname to me. “Thanks for the clothes.”
•—•—•
My second visitor wasn’t Silt or Vibe either, but I was way happier to see Orca than I had been Jeremiah. It helped that she was still in the dress she’d worn to Shane’s funeral.
I know I’ve talked a lot about Nadia. Some of you are probably sick of hearing about her by now, but considering that I’m the one telling this story, I’d say you’re all shit out of luck. Drag your incorporeal asses back into the afterlife if it bothers you so much.
What’s that? Still here? Imagine that. Must suck knowing that I’m the only show in town.
Anyway… Nadia Kahale, codename Orca. Flawless olive skin, dirty-blonde hair down to her waist, and eyes the color of sea foam. Seeing her poured into a little black dress made suitable for a funeral only by its color was enough to make me forget Caleb’s sucker punch.
Almost.
“Nadia? What’s up?”
“Not much.” Her pale eyes flickered down my bandaged form for just a moment as she made her way over to the gurney. “I came to apologize.”
I’ve always had good eyesight, but somehow Orca got prettier with every step she took. She walked like she fought; all smooth, flowing motion, like water rushing downhill. Up close, whatever perfume she had on cut right through the stale odor of dried blood and gauze.
By the time she’d reached me, I was starting to think I actually owed Caleb my thanks. First time Nadia had spoken to me all year, and she was in something other than Academy sweats. A (briefly) broken jaw was so worth it.
“Apologize? For what?”
“I misjudged the depths of Supersonic’s motivation,” she told me, the words slow and lightly accented, “and allowed him to break free as a result.”
“Yeah. And…?”
A small vertical line appeared between her eyebrows. “And that’s why he was able to hit you. That’s why you’re here.”
“If it hadn’t been Caleb’s weak-ass punch, it would’ve been tomorrow’s class with Nikolai.” I shrugged. “Gladys says I spend so much time here, I should just move my stuff in and stay.” As if I’d needed further confirmation that the old Healer had a thing for me.
“Gladys?”
“The head Healer?” I frowned. “Have you ever even been treated here?”
“Not yet.” She shook her head, sending dirty blonde hair slithering over one shoulder. “I have high hopes for this week’s match with Paladin though.”
“Well, a trip to the medical ward isn’t a big deal,” I said. “Hell, the last time you and I sparred, I ended up here with way worse than just a busted jaw.”
“That’s different.” She colored slightly under my incredulous look. “That was a fair fight. You had ample time to call on your power like you did against Matthew, but decided not to. You deserved your beating.”
“I didn’t decide not to. I seriously have no idea how to repeat whatever that was. Assuming it was something at all.”
“If you say so. Anyway, we’re straying from my point. I’m sorry for failing to subdue Supersonic, and for the damage you suffered as a result. Even though you did provoke him into action, my responsibility in the matter was clear.”
I puzzled my way through that tightly packed apology before offering up a shrug. “Don’t worry ab
out it. Like I said, I’m fine.”
“Okay.” She nodded once, then spun on her heel, heading for the door.
“That’s it?”
She stopped, looking back over one shoulder in an unconscious echo of Bard’s pose fifteen minutes earlier. “That’s all I wanted to say. Was there something more you wanted to talk about?”
“Not really. I just…” In that little dress, she looked even better leaving than she had coming in. Before I could catch myself, I heard the words slipping out. “Do you want to get some coffee and hang out sometime?”
She gave it less than a second’s thought. “Not at all.”
“Oh.”
“But if you do remember how to trigger your power,” she continued, “I’d be more than happy to spar again.”
Stalwarts are their own special brand of crazy.
•—•—•
Between the fight with Caleb, Bard’s unique combination of pep talk and lecture, and being completely shut down by Orca, it’s fair to say my mind had managed to focus on pretty much anything but Shane’s death for the better part of a day. But as I left the med center and made my way back across campus, all those other distractions fell away again.
Whatever the next few months held, whatever my roommate had done or would do, whatever my future as a Cape or Black Hat might be, there was one truth that was inescapable: Unicorn was gone, and despite the dozens of people currently crisscrossing the school grounds, the Academy felt empty as a result.
The faculty were having their own memorial service, attended, no doubt, by the majority of first-years, but I headed for my dorm room. Bard’s advice could wait for another day. Improving relations with Olympia—however the fuck I was going to manage that—could wait for another day too. All I wanted to do was sleep—and grieve—in peace.
The common room was empty, like I’d expected. My dorm room was too, but I’d been on my bed for a minute at best when a knock came at the door.
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