by Cora May
The Anam looked wide-eyed with terror, and Addy knew she was too scared to keep talking. She tried to make her body move backward, to take one step away from the scared Anam, but her legs didn’t seem to want to cooperate. It was like she was stuck in a really bad dream. She was there, conscious and watching, but there was nothing that she could do to stop what was going on around her. The Anam had begun to blubber, and she was wondering if she would ever get the information she needed. The seconds were ticking by, and as each minute went, the knife would come down ever so slightly more.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
The Anam’s eyes grew twice as wide as they already were, fully understanding what the words meant.
Addy let go of herself, giving control back to whoever was fighting for it. She had lost the battle with the knife, she knew that long ago. Now she was only giving her muscles the relief they needed.
That relief would cost the Anam her life.
The knife was aimed directly over her heart, and Addy watched with terror and revulsion as it came swiftly down and plunged itself into that heart.
She had closed her eyes just as the tip touched skin.
That didn’t stop her from hearing the sound. The Anam didn’t scream—in fact, the entire Realm fell silent, save for the squishing sound of flesh and blood as the knife lodged itself into the organ of the dead being.
Addy didn’t open her eyes as she felt the body slump to the ground.
The next time she opened her eyes, the sun was peeking through the windows and she was stretching out her toes. Going to the Realm of Light seemed like a dream to her, distant and unreal. She woke up in the warmth of her bed and with the peaceful mind of a deep sleeper. She didn’t want to get out of bed, but it was Monday, so she knew she had to go to class. She stretched out one last time.
Her arm touched the cold metal of what she knew by now to be the blade that she had used to kill the Anam, and she instantly froze. It wasn’t a dream, then, and she was sure to be covered in the silver blood of the small childlike Anam.
She bolted upright in her bed and looked across the room. If the stabbing wasn’t a dream, then the information must not have been a dream, either. She looked for her friends.
The top bunk was empty, still neatly made as if no one had slept in it the night before. The bottom bunk was a mess, sheets thrown everywhere, but Addy couldn’t remember if it had been that way when she went to sleep. Was Chanta good at making her bed daily, or had she simply neglected that chore yesterday? Was she there last night or not?
She got her answer when the door opened, and a thin white figure crept inside.
“Chanta!” Addy sighed with relief. “Where’s Brin?”
Chanta didn’t seem to be aware of Addy at that moment. She was wide-eyed, with a sort of glaze over her pupils. If it was possible, the girl looked even worse than she had before. She looked like she had just seen a ghost.
Something was wrong.
“Chanta?” Addy asked quietly.
She covered the mess on her bed and tiptoed to her roommate. She put her hand on Chanta’s shoulder, an action that caused the girl to start. It got her attention, though.
“Chanta,” Addy began softly. “Where is Brin?”
A broken sob escaped her mouth—followed by the unbelievable story of how she opened a portal in the bathroom, and how Brin rescued her by falling into it herself. Chanta told her of a power she wasn’t sure of, that she wanted to test it out, and that Brin took the fall for it. Talking about it seemed to bring Chanta back to reality, and tears spilled over her cheeks.
Addy listened with wide eyes. Her stomach was twisted and getting tighter and tighter with each new word that came out of Chanta’s mouth. She didn’t understand how any of it was possible.
“We have to rescue her,” she finished, “but I don’t have enough energy to create another portal.”
Addy chewed her lip, ignoring Chanta’s plea for understanding. She didn’t hear the last words at all. Her mind was already busy thinking through possibilities.
“We have so much to do,” Addy said with a resigned sigh. “We’ll talk after class. Your schedule was dropped off yesterday,” she said, going to the dresser and retrieving a piece of paper which she held out to Chanta. “I was supposed to show you around last night. Sorry. You’ll have to figure it out yourself—the other students will help you. We have to go to our classes like normal, and at the end of the day, I’ll have a plan. I’m not sure what else to do, really.”
Chanta was staring at her with a closed mouth. Arguing was something she didn’t have the energy to do at that moment.
Addy herself didn’t have the energy to do anything at all. She had just killed another Anam—bringing her count to something much higher than she wanted to admit even to herself—and she was still sore from that, then she had awoken to the news that her best friend was stuck somewhere in a Realm that was not meant for humankind. She still had to go about her day as if everything was okay, and even that she didn’t seem to have the energy for.
She would get in trouble for not showing Chanta around. She would be questioned when Brin didn’t show up to her classes. She would most likely be questioned by Nessi, too, in regard to the missing girl.
She had to clean up the blood, too, because their room would surely be the first place to be searched when Brin didn’t show up to classes. The evidence in her bed was damning, as well as what was on her clothing.
“Go and take a shower,” she told Chanta. “And then go to class. Don’t tell anyone what happened to Brin. As far as anyone needs to know, you and I went to bed last night, but Brin never got back after she went to see Jace. You know nothing else. Got it?”
Chanta’s eyes were still wide as she nodded her head quickly before disappearing out the door and down the hall.
Good, Addy thought. She seemed to be placated and cooperative for the moment.
Addy waited for the door to click shut before turning to her bed and cleaning the evidence. It didn’t take her too long before she was running to the showers to finish cleaning up the remaining evidence that was on her skin and clothing.
By the time she was done, Chanta had already left in search of her classes. Addy was glad for the reprieve from human contact. It gave her time to think before she went to class.
The hall was quiet. She was too lost in her own thoughts to realize just how quiet it was until she had already gone down two flights of stairs.
The hustle and bustle of the students getting ready for the day was not present. In fact, everything seemed a bit somber, almost eerie. Noises were echoing off the walls, but she couldn’t make out words… Just noises. She crept down another flight of stairs, and another, until she came to the class floor.
She was greeted by the sound of human emotion. Sniffles and offerings of condolences, to be specific. They were clear now that she had left the echoing walls behind. Many of the students were sitting outside their classrooms, huddled in groups, with multiple students in tears. Addy carefully went up to the first group sitting to her left. There was one girl in the middle of them—Anita, a Communicator—who was holding a tissue to her face as her breath hitched in sobs. There were about six students crowded around her, who’s faces Addy did not care to recognize, all patting her on the back and whispering words of comfort. Addy slowly came up behind them and mumbled her own words of sorrow before turning to the closest student—one she truly did not recognize.
“What happened?” she whispered to the student, whose face appeared to be very empathetic, but not distraught for himself.
“Her sister was murdered,” he whispered back. “She found out this morning.”
Addy’s heart sank for the girl, but some part of her also felt relief. The dread she felt coming down the stairs—the guilt and fear—all seemed to dissipate.
“How awful,” she said. “Did everyone know her?”
She made a nodding motion with her head at the other groups of students tha
t were gathered on the ground as they cried and comforted.
The student slowly shook his head, his face pale. He grabbed Addy’s bicep and led her a little ways away from the ears of the criers.
“Anita found out this morning,” he told her quietly. “She was trying to communicate with her sister but could not reach her. Her sister was an Anam Solas, you know—she was the one who Blessed Anita with Communication to begin with. They were very close, and Alice died when she was only eleven years old. She was pure of spirit and given the ability to Bless right away. She couldn’t bear the thought of being away from Anita, and thus, a Communicator was made out of her.”
Addy’s heart sank again. She knew the story well, though it didn’t occur to her immediately. Everyone knew Anita because she was such a great Communicator that she would locate and converse with anyone’s Anam, anyone’s dead family. She healed a lot of people in a way that a Healer never could—because she gave them peace in their heart. She gave them the assurance that their loved ones had made it to their destination okay.
So she could piece together the situation of this morning quite well. The Anam Solas that she had killed last night must have been Alice. The description fit well enough—she knew she had killed a child Anam.
“Anita tried to talk to her sister this morning,” the boy in front of her continued, “and instead had to reach out for another Anam. This Anam, too, was in mourning and confessed to Anita that her sister had been taken from their Realm last night.”
“Did all these students know Alice?” Addy asked. That seemed to be the least traumatic reason for everyone’s tears.
The student looked at her with sadness and fear in his eyes.
“No,” he said somberly. “Once news got out, students began to suspect the reasons for silence from their own Anam loved ones. They sought out a Communicator and… Well… There was no one to communicate with. Many of these students, and far more, have found out that their Anam were hunted and murdered.”
Addy slowly looked around the room as he spoke. She wondered just how many of these students were directly affected by her own actions—how many of their Anam had she had a hand in murdering. The guilt reached the bottom of her soul as she realized that she had no idea how many Anam she had hunted. She could very well have killed them all.
“There is an epidemic in this school,” he told her. “Make sure you find someone who will reach your own Anam. Someone cared enough to Bless you—make sure you care enough to see that they are safe.”
He turned away from her then, walking slowly back to Anita and putting a hand on her shoulder.
Addy turned away from them all, facing the stairs from which she had just descended. A tear rolled down her cheek. She could no longer watch the sorrow in this hallway. She could not live with the guilt of what she had done.
She had killed Alice, and she knew it.
A sob had begun to form in her chest as she listened to the sounds around her. She wanted to run away from the noise, too, but she could not tell her legs to move. She was paralyzed. But she knew she deserved to hear the repercussions of what she had done.
A rough hand suddenly grabbed her shoulder, twisting her body and forcing the sob to come out.
“This way, Miss Kindred.”
She recognized the voice of Professor Reiter before she turned to recognize his tall, wide figure. He was the most imposing professor, built like a Jasper Warrior should look, despite the fact that he was an Amber Soother. Her eyes were already brimming with tears, but that didn’t stop her from seeing the big, round biceps and shoulders that were bigger than her head as he led her away.
And of course, she allowed him that. What else was she to do? Fighting him was definitely out of the option, Warrior herself or not. She would get kicked out of school. She could have run, she reminded herself. That wasn’t aggressive at all. Surely not something that would warrant expulsion.
However, it was an admittance of guilt, she realized, and that would mean she would have to stay away from the school anyway, lest she be hunted and caught by the professors of the School of the Blessed. No, she had to cooperate and play nice. At least until she learned what they were after.
Of course, Professor Reiter led her straight to Headmistress Prisanni’s private office.
The office was huge, decorated with golden carpeting and deep blue walls, gold picture frames with sepia-tinted portraits of people who must have been family, a Victorian-styled desk with a giant chair to match it behind the desk and a smaller one in front of it. Professor Reiter guided her—gently, she realized gratefully—to the smaller chair and motioned that she should sit down in it. She did.
In the chair across from her was, of course, Headmistress Prisanni. Standing at her left side was Professor Nessi. Addy wasn’t sure why, but she had never pictured the two of them working together on something like this—at least not since she had joined Nessi’s army. Nessi had made it seem like the two were exactly opposite in stances regarding the goings-on of the Province of the Dead. Though, she supposed, Nessi had always been Prisanni’s second in command before Addy knew about all the army stuff, and all that army stuff was evidently hidden from Prisanni. So it made sense, in a way.
Addy realized her mind was drifting. She was losing focus because she was nervous, but the professors were letting her. Reiter had turned his body so that he could look at her face, and that’s what all three professors had been doing. Just. Staring. It was almost creepy. What were they waiting for? Did she look innocent enough to them? Her mind stopped it’s meaningless wandering and began to panic, wondering what was appropriate for her face to look like.
Finally, Prisanni cleared her throat.
“Do you know what this is about?” she asked gingerly. Her body was relaxed, all except her eyebrows, which looked way too high on her face for someone who should have been angry. She looked… concerned? Could that be right?
“Um,” Addy began, seeing that everyone was waiting for her to say something. But then she stopped. What should she say? Did she know what this was about? She wasn’t so sure anymore. “No?”
That was a good answer, she decided. Innocent until proven guilty, after all, right? She just had to deny everything. If she kept doing that, they would have to work harder to prove anything, and she would have a chance to run.
Because they had to be looking for her, right? They had to know that she was the one who killed the Anam, right?
Addy flared up her Jasper. Just in case, she told herself. Just in case.
“Can you tell us,” Prisanni began after a slow breath, “where your roommate is?”
Immediately, her Jasper waned a bit as she looked at them with shock. She wasn’t sure why she was too surprised, though—hadn’t she warned Chanta of this?
“She’s… In class?” Addy said with a shaking voice. “I know I was late getting up today. I didn’t see her leave. I must have been very tired last night—I went to bed before I saw her.”
“And when you woke up this morning,” Prisanni finished for her, “you didn’t see her still?”
“Right,” Addy confirmed. “Well, I saw Chanta briefly—I gave her her class schedule, but she had to leave before me and—I’m sorry—I never showed her around,” she admitted with feigned sheepishness. “I had to tell her to ask around.”
“That’s quite alright,” Prisanni said. “There are plenty of students to help her out. And what of Miss Brinziel?”
“No, I haven’t seen her at all since before class yesterday.”
Prisanni studied her for a moment before nodding slowly. Addy let her sit in silence for a moment as she prepared her own acting skills.
“What is this about?” she asked after a silence had passed. “Where’s Brin?”
“I’m afraid,” Prisanni said, “we are not entirely sure. We do not mean to alarm you. I’m sure she’s fine, wherever she is. Perhaps you should return to your classes. I’m sorry to have disturbed your day for nothing.”
&nbs
p; “No,” Addy argued, knowing full well that if she truly did not know where her best friend was, she would not give up so easily. “You just told me Brin is missing. What do you know?”
“Unfortunately, we know less than you at this moment. Perhaps you could fill us in, though, on a few more things, if you are not ready for class.”
“Yes, okay.”
“Would she go back home?”
Addy thought for a minute.
“I guess it’s possible,” she allowed. “She is very close to her dad, I know that. She talks about him a lot. But I think she would have told me if it was her plan to sneak off to see him. And I don’t think she would have ever snuck off. That’s not like her.”
“And her boyfriend. Jace? What do you think of him?”
Addy’s eyes slipped to Professor Nessi, who was standing quietly in the background still. Truth be told, she didn’t know what she thought of Jace anymore. She wasn’t sure she liked any of the students that were in the army. However, this situation had nothing at all to do with Jace. In fact, should he be asked the same question about her, he would be right to incriminate her.
“I like him just fine,” she answered. “I don’t think he would take her or anything, if that’s what you mean.”
Prisanni slowly nodded as she mulled over Addy’s words. Addy shifted uncomfortably. She was ready to leave now.
“The best we can assume,” Prisanni told her, “is that, as a Communicator, Brinziel has made a discovery similar to the one young Anita has made, and perhaps ran off somewhere secluded to cope with her loss. Although that would be a horrible circumstance, should it prove to be the one that is true, we cannot let her wander by herself. I am responsible for you children, you know. Her father would have me exposed if he ever found out I had lost his child. I wish we could leave her alone in order to let her cope, but alas, we must begin the search for her.”
So there would be a search.
“Please,” Addy said, grateful for her earlier actions, “you are welcome to our dorm room, search for any clues in there. And let me know if there is anything I can do to help.”
