by Abbie Lyons
I stopped listening, because I was looking at the rest of the team. And now I did recognize someone.
A guy with white-blonde hair.
Funeral Guy.
My world went sideways, cantilevered. There was no mistaking it was him, just casually wearing that stupid uniform and walking across campus like any regular guy. Or any regular guy on a magical angel sports team.
My pulse roared in my ears, my heartbeat a thundering staccato. The parchment of my class schedule went clammy in my hands. The team was gaining distance, their long strides putting them far from us, and by the time the ringing in my ears subsided, I could barely make out what Lucy was saying.
“So anyway, that’s the stadium, and that’s the auditorium.” She pointed ahead and to our left, the opposite direction of where the team had gone toward their stadium.
“Auditorium” was a total misnomer. Also in the tradition of California architecture, most of the “buildings” were detached and outside, so that going from any one campus location to another involved walking through open air, and the auditorium was basically just a bunch of stone curved benches with a flat stage in the front, like an Ancient Greek theater or something. I half expected to see someone in a toga.
We took our seats, the stone still a bit warm from the sun even though it was darkening outside and all the light was coming from floating blobs that bobbed up and down in the air like sentient lanterns. Around us, the benches were packed, some students already in uniforms, some still freshly arrived in street clothes, everyone seeming full of energy.
So these were guardians, huh.
Onstage, a tall guy with long, pale hair waved his hands for silence, and with another wave, summoned an elaborate carved ivory podium in front of him. Behind him were seated a bunch of others in dignified shades of blue—the faculty, I realized, because among them was the pink-haired Tavi who’d met me back at Fisherman’s Wharf, what felt like a lifetime ago. She was one of the younger ones onstage; the rest were decidedly more professorial, AKA old. But she still had the teacherly dignity thing down.
The crowd quieted, and the long-haired guy stepped up to speak.
“Students,” he said, his voice sonorous and resonant, “welcome to Elysium. To our returning students, welcome back, and to our first years, welcome to your new home.”
Sure. I didn’t buy any of this fake warmth, but whatever. I folded my parchments into a small, uneven rectangle, and jammed it into my back pocket. I scanned the crowd, but Funeral Guy was nowhere to be seen. Presumably the team got to skip the assembly to do...team things, I guessed.
“There will be much to learn in the days to come,” the guy continued, “but perhaps the most important is my name.” A few giggles. “I am Dean Serathiel, head of school.
“Balance, as we all know, is our purpose here. We as guardians are tasked with the enormously important job of maintaining the balance of the universe. Along with our colleagues at Hades Academy, we strive to teach the rising generations to create joy and fear, hope and terror, love and lust, and thereby to keep the world free from Chaos.”
Something about the way he said the word Chaos just seemed...capitalized.
“We’ve seen all too recently what the effects of Chaos can be,” he said, his voice more solemn. “Though it has been years since the reemergence of Abaddon, the memory of the Vanishing is still raw. I know there are some of you here today who lost friends and beloved family on that fateful day. The loss was—and remains—senseless. So before we go any further, I’d like to take a moment of silence to honor our lost.”
The auditorium area went quiet. Only the gentle breeze could be heard. I had no idea what the Vanishing was, but I could tell it was something big. And just because I was antsy as hell about finding Funeral Guy and seven kinds of exhausted didn’t mean I wouldn’t take ten seconds to bow my head with everyone else and memorialize people who died.
Senseless loss—you don’t just forget that.
After a moment, the dean raised his head. Beside me, I heard Lucy exhale hard.
“Now, with all due respect to our demon friends,” the dean went on, a small smile on his face, “their zeal for their work requires they think on balance to justify things that are, frankly, terrifying. Necessary, but fearful. We, however, as guardians, have what is the better job, if I do say so myself.” The faculty behind him all smiled. “We are the guardians. We protect humanity. We guide humans to their higher callings. We make two humans fall in love. We heal. We encourage. We inspire. And I like to think that, at Elysium, at least, we have a little fun.”
With that, he clapped his hands, and the air around us dissolved into sparkles. The floating orbs burst into confetti-like showers of light, and the crowd oohed and ahhed appreciatively.
Then, in the upper air above the stage, seven figures zoomed into flight.
Winged figures.
The philodiscus team from earlier.
Whatever the hell this sport involved, it was something acrobatic. The guys did all kinds of flips and acrobatics, tossing a glowing disc back and forth in exact formations and rhythms, to the delight of the crowd. It was basically a guardian pep rally.
“Let’s have the best year ever!” the dean called over the noise. Which was a hell of a corny slogan for an angel. I was actually about to remark as much to Lucy, but when I turned to face her, her face was stricken and tears were streaming down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I have to...”
She pushed past me, out of her seat and away.
Around me, the crowd hooted and cheered, the music getting louder, and then the dean dismissed us into the night.
Even in the sea of people, I felt incredibly alone.
Chapter Seven
I didn’t know what I was expecting in a dormitory, but it wasn’t this.
Five stories of alabaster stone soared up in an intricate façade above me, with crenellations at the very top where the building crested against the evening sky like a legit castle. The windows were giant and glowing gold with a cozy inner light, and the entrance—a broad wooden door with a peaked top—was flanked by two crackling torches of faintly pink fire.
Pink for the girls’ dorm. Very cute.
It all seemed like way too much for a bunch of teenagers who were probably going to trash the place, but then again, it’s not like San Francisco real estate was any different. There wasn’t literal magic involved, but still plenty of kids wanting the latest and greatest and fanciest in digs that they’d treat like crap and be ungrateful for.
I slipped in through the groaning wooden door and immediately craned my neck upward. The inner hallway was narrow but tall, with a curling spiral staircase that, with its glossy marble steps and no railing, made me nervous about falling and cracking my head. Around me in the air, small clusters of white flowers drifted decoratively, like bouquets that happened not to need vases to stay in. I stared for just a second before remembering how badly I wanted to get out of a public space and into somewhere I could catch my breath. And then hopefully—finally—take a goddamn shower. To my right was a display carved out of matching white marble to look like an unfurled scroll—a directory. I hustled over and scanned it, and my heart sank.
“What the hell language is this in?” I muttered. There were a few As and Ls and other recognizable letters, but the rest were a total mystery.
“It’s Greek.”
I turned around to face a striking, tall girl about my age with brown skin and shoulder-length hair the color of an amethyst—so purple it almost looked black. The Elysium uniform looked casual and easy on her, while her face looked blank and almost bored.
“Oh,” I said. “Little help?”
She brushed past me and stared at the list. “What’s your name?” she asked, without looking back.
“Quinn.”
By way of reply, the girl pointed at a line somewhere in the middle of the list. Room 306.
“Thanks,” I said, “uh...”
But she had already headed for the stairs. Not wanting to do that awkward following-just-two-steps-behind-you-but-not-actually-talking-to-you thing, and definitely not wanting to talk, I just kind of hung out, admiring the space for a good ten minutes until more students arrived. Other girls were trickling in, pounding up the marble stairs like they weren’t at all nervous about slipping and cracking their necks, and I jolted myself back to life and followed them. I shouldn’t have spaced out. If my roommate was among these girls, or already in the room, then what precious alone time I’d been fantasizing about to figure out why the hell Funeral Guy was here would evaporate.
To my surprise, once I mounted the stairs, I felt totally secure, and I didn’t even look down once as I rounded past the first floor landing and then the second. More vase-less flowers drifted in the air as I ascended, with the occasional cluster of crystals functioning as a kind of midair, ceiling-free chandelier.
Finally, I made it to the third floor, and immediately booked it toward my room. As I passed each of the sweeping, pale blue doors, I realized they each had the names of the occupants on the outside in glowing gold letters...glowing gold Greek letters. I should’ve actually paid attention to what my name looked like. Dammit.
Then again, the doors were only on one side of the hall, so 306 would have to be the sixth one down, right?
Feeling way more satisfied than I should have for some basic math skills, I almost skipped past the first three doors, my mind spinning with all the possibilities of what it could mean to see that guy here, of what it meant about me, about what happened to Scott—
I skidded to a halt in front of the sixth door. There were two names, just like all the others, and I could not for the life of me figure out which one was mine. But even if I couldn’t read Greek, I could count. I seized the cool brass scroll handle and pushed.
“What the hell?!” yelled a female voice.
I immediately pulled the door back shut. For fuck’s sake. I hadn’t seen much, and I had never lived in an actual dorm room, but I knew enough to know what a glimpse of a hookup in progress looked like.
Great. I had the horny roommate.
Behind the door, a series of muffled thumps and bumps, with the occasional clang, sounded, with whispered voices—one high, one low—and the scrape of furniture being rearranged. I closed my eyes and squeezed my fists, cursing my bad luck. Your only other home burned to a crisp, I reminded myself. You literally have nowhere else to go.
Ten seconds later, the door flew open again from the inside, and I found myself face-to-face with...
Marius.
“Meladryne?” he said. He did not sound happy.
Oh no.
“Uh...” The phrase I can explain ran through my head, but I honestly wasn’t sure that I could. Fortunately (or unfortunately), I didn’t have to think very long, because the next thing I knew, my roommate appeared just behind Marius’s broad shoulder.
The amethyst-haired girl from below.
Great.
“What are you talking about?” she said. A few purple strands were sticking to her forehead, but she didn’t seem at all fussed about it. She turned her gaze to me. “Sorry, I thought you were—”
“It’s fine,” I said, not wanting this conversation to get far enough to reveal my actual name. At least Violet seemed remarkably impassive.
Marius was back in his regular school uniform, no longer Mr. Team Captain, but his shirt was decidedly unbuttoned. He seemed to realize as much, because a slight flush of pink colored his sculpted cheeks and he turned away to hastily button it back up. Violet discreetly shut the door, I took the opportunity to inhale.
When the door opened again, it was just Violet.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “My boyfriend was just helping me get settled.”
If you say so. I gave her a you-know-I’m-not-buying-that look and stepped inside. As I was scoping out every corner of the room, I realized something: Marius was gone.
“Where...did your boyfriend go?” I asked.
Violet shrugged. “Back to his room, probably.”
I stared at her. “How?”
She stared back. “Magic?”
Right. I’d forgotten where I was. Something about the presence of normal teenage hormones made me neglect the fact that this was all going down in a school for magic angel beings in charge of saving the world. Or whatever.
“Right,” I said. “Duh.”
“I already took one of the beds,” Violet went on. “I hope that’s okay.”
“Sure,” I said, because at this point, any bed was fine by me. I took another step in and got a proper look at my new living quarters.
All my notions of a cramped mildewy space like in a movie went right out the—giant, stained-glass—window. The room was enormous, the size of our old dining/living room, but with much higher ceilings. On each opposite, gently curved wall was a four-poster bed made of brass and draped with sky-blue coverings and sheets, flanked by a nightstand with its own free-floating arrangement of white lilies. On one side of the beds, near the windows, were two matching white desks, and on the other was a white birch wardrobe each. I snorted, then felt my heart sink a bit more. I literally had only the clothes on my back. A bit forlornly, I opened one of the carved wooden wardrobe doors a crack, and felt my jaw drop. I threw it the rest of the way open. The thing was full of clothes: not just uniforms, but also jeans, tops, shoes...
I turned around, stunned, but Violet had disappeared into what I assumed was the bathroom, a dark blue door across the room from my bed. I shut my mouth and the wardrobe door. I had a feeling that if I asked where all this had come from, the answer would be “magic.”
Same went for the various lotions, perfumes, hair oils, and fluffy white towels that covered a vanity just next to the wardrobe. And the royal blue set of silk pajamas folded neatly on top of my pillow. And even the drinking glass that instantly filled itself with sparkling water as soon as I picked it up off the nightstand.
I sipped it. Grapefruit, I thought, as the bathroom door opened and Violet slipped back out. Nice.
Violet sat at her own vanity and started rearranging her brilliant purple locks, smoothing them back from her face, and I stood there sort of stupidly. I hadn’t expected to be besties with my roommate or anything, but between the interrupted makeout session and the fairly cool reception I was getting now, I felt a tiny bit out of place in what was supposed to be my own bedroom. I sipped my magic grapefruit water and sat again on the edge of my bed. There was no way I was going to be able to puzzle through the mystery of Funeral Guy in here—I felt like I was being watched. And even though I wanted to take it on good faith that anyone at Elysium was, by definition, not a bad guy, I still knew better than to trust anyone blindly.
“So where are you from?” Violet said, almost startling me.
“Bay area,” I said. “You?”
Violet’s brow creased. “Like the city?”
“Yes?” My hackles were raised. I didn’t like the tone of that question.
Violet pressed her lips together. “Sorry. I just didn’t realize you were half. That was rude of me.”
“Half?”
Her expression tightened. “Half-guardian,” she said. “Half-human.”
My spine stiffened. “I’m not,” I said. “I’m all human.”
Violet opened her mouth, then closed it again. Something about this whole interaction was rubbing me the wrong way.
Then my stomach growled, and I realized I was starving.
I chugged the rest of the water—or as much as I could before it insta-refilled—and cleared my throat.
But Violet beat me to the punch.
“Look, I feel like we got off on the wrong foot. I’m really sorry about...earlier.” She swallowed. “But just so you know, I am going to a party tonight, so I might be coming back late. I’ll try to be quiet, though. I promise I’m not going to be that roommate.”
I didn’t believe her, but I also ulti
mately didn’t care. This Violet chick and I had very different agendas about Elysium Academy.
Who knew if I’d even stay here once I figured out what Funeral Guy was all about.
“I’m sorry,” Violet said, with a little shake of her head. “You were about to say something.”
“Yeah. Where do we go for food around here?”
Violet paused her hair-doing and gave me a smile, and a not-unfriendly one at that. Still, though. “The refectory’s just at the other end of the quad. Big greenhouse-like thing? You can’t miss it.”
TWO MINUTES LATER, I was back out on the quad and headed for what was, indeed, basically a giant greenhouse. My mind was buzzing.
Of course it was fine if my roommate had a boyfriend. And it was probably also fine if that boyfriend was Marius. But something about the whole incident felt off-kilter, and not just in an awkward in flagrante delicto way.
Between my mile-a-minute thoughts and staring at the magnificent glass structure, I was so caught up that I actually tripped over something.
“Outta my way!”
Or someone.
“Sorry,” I said, jumping back a bit. “I didn’t see you th—”
There didn’t appear to be anyone in front of me, though. Then I looked down. A squat, balding guy with silver hair and thick, black-rimmed glasses and a sour expression was dusting off his pale blue robe.
“Freakin’ new blood,” he muttered. “No one watches where they’re goin’.”
“I said I was sorry,” I said, doing a palms-up. “Do you need a hand?” I offered one, but the squat guy brushed me off.
“Hell no.” He fixed his gaze on me. “Just keep your damn toes away from my shin!”
He stomped off, muttering some more, and I slunk the rest of the way to the refectory.
Inside, it was like a tropical paradise, complete with literal fruit trees and fresh vegetables everywhere. The inner floor was set with long stone tables with white wrought-iron chairs, where students clustered and chatted, tucking into all kinds of healthy-looking but somehow still delicious-smelling food. I did a brief 360 of the place, just in case I could spot Funeral Guy, but no dice.
