Cursed Academy (Year One)

by Holly Hook

  I should have told Wendy that. Shame heated my cheeks. She wasn't like Ronin. Wendy was real revenge and real hatred.

  "Wishful thinking," Wendy says, turning away and hitting Serena over the head with her staff. Great friend.

  Maria and I grimaced at each other. It was Friday. So that was why Ronin wouldn't train me tonight. He'd ditched me. And for a moment last night, I dared to think something would start between us.

  Ronin would be at that party and I'd be hanging out in my room or inside campus with the first years because we were just babies. I thought of saying something to Max and getting Wendy in trouble, but I'd never survive that.

  So I let it be.

  "Don't let Wendy get to you," Mikey said later, once we got out of lunch and went to Divine History.

  "Is it that obvious I'm having a bad day?" I haven't even told you about everything else yet.

  Mrs. Allenson spent the class talking about the rivers of the Underworld. I tried to listen and take her approved notes, but my thoughts kept turning to the absence of Ronin tonight. Why didn't he tell me there would be a party?

  "...the river Styx is named after a nymph of the same name and carries the power of solemn oaths. It is by this river that the gods and free titans swore, twenty years ago, to divide their descendants into two academies, to keep the peace between each other, and to join the modern world. The river Lethe also flows through the underworld, and the dead are said to be required to drink from it, which erases all memory of their past lives. Of course, I have not seen confirmation of this myself." Mrs. Allenson turned back to her slideshow. "The river Acheron is the river of pain and misery and said to border this world and the Underworld..."

  Fitting. Thinking of how Ronin ditched me was the perfect backdrop to this lecture.

  But when class ended, and I told Maria and Mikey I wanted to go lie down for a bit, I found a tiny piece of parchment paper sticking out from under my door. Fumbling with my key card, I opened the door to find a note, written in blocky, but strong handwriting. Though it wasn't signed, the last line told me who had written it.

  There's a blue second year robe in the laundry room for you. Three, in fact. Look behind the last washing machine on the left. Meet me down there at eight. I've got a surprise, baby.

  Chapter Fourteen

  "Is he serious?" Mikey asked as we climbed down the steps to the laundry room, which was the basement of the Cursed Academy building. I'd been here lots of times because students at Cursed did their own laundry. The only good thing about the laundry room was that it wasn't guarded and there was no staff. Oh, and you didn't have to pay to use the machines.

  "Why else would Ronin want to sneak us out of here on a Friday night? We're going to the party," I said, unable to contain the tingles. "And second years are allowed to go out. At least until I become a second year."

  "No kidding," Maria said.

  The laundry room was long, with a plain linoleum floor and white walls. One of the washing machines was going, rumbling and squealing like it was about to fall apart, but the last one on the end was off. Reaching behind it, I closed my hand on a canvas bag and pulled it out with Maria's help. Ronin had jammed our disguises back there good.

  "He's right. We're out of here tonight," Mikey said, pulling out a blue robe. He took off the purple one, revealing jeans and a T-shirt, and threw on the new robe. It hung over his feet a bit too much, but it wasn't that noticeable. Ronin had done his best.

  He even wanted my friends to go along, though he hadn't spoken to them much.

  Maria and I did the same. We tossed our purple uniforms over a washing machine since people did that all the time during the weekends.

  Finally. No combat training. A break. Maybe Ronin was getting too scared of my powers and had decided I needed to cool off. Well, I wanted to. And I hadn't gotten out of here in weeks, unless I counted the trainings.

  And he arrived a few minutes later, not in his white toga uniform but in tight jeans and a leather jacket.

  "Ronin," I gasped.

  He smiled and stuck out his chest in that perfect Ronin manner. "Well, ready? I don't have a vehicle, so we'll be riding with Cal. He gets to borrow an Academy van."

  He looked amazingly hot. I glanced down at my uniform, but I knew it was necessary to get off campus without causing a scene. On Friday nights, we had extra guards around the building. Kids liked to try getting out, and they had to make sure none of us first years did.

  "Ready," Maria said.

  "I've heard about Cal," Mikey said.

  Ronin led us out of the front doors.

  Yeah, the front doors. He walked all confidently as he pushed the one with Medusa's carved face on it open. He nodded to the guard like it was nothing and walked towards a parked black van that had Cal behind the wheel.

  My heart raced as I stepped out after Ronin. The guard, a woman with hands slightly less hairy than the male werewolves', nodded to me and surveyed my blue robe. I read the name on her black security uniform. Tiffany. Yeah. Her arm patch said she was from the Wolf Guard, which I'd heard were the magical equivalent of rent-a-cops. I hurried past, trying not to look too worried or obvious, and climbed into the van.

  None of the guards at the front doors bothered to check Mikey and Maria, either.

  "We should just keep these uniforms," Mikey said once we'd reached the van.

  "Hey, guys," Cal said, looking back at us. "You must be Maria and Mikey. Yeah. Keep those robes. Ronin says you two have been working harder than you have to in order to sneak out at night."

  "Thank. You," Maria said. "But the guards haven't been that hard to get past. Prometheus needs to up his game."

  "He can't," Ronin said, sitting beside me. "Cursed Academy doesn't get the funding Olympian does. I mean, I know why they do it because training Cursed students is a lot more expensive, but sheesh. The Lower Order is out there. And they like to recruit people from Cursed."

  Maria and Mikey occupied the back seat and Cal took off the moment the doors were all shut. For the first time in weeks, I rode through the squeaky front gate and to the real outside world. The sun was setting, casting an orange glow on everything, and though the trees were getting bare, everything looked beautiful.

  Ronin was sitting just inches from me.

  But when I caught him grinning at me, he turned his head away.

  "We're among friends," I said in a low voice. You don't have to be a jerk right now. "And how come you're taking me to the party when you don't even want me seen over at Olympian?"

  Ronin flinched. "Because you need a break."

  He was taking a big step. "But we're still obviously Cursed kids."

  "For now." He didn't elaborate.

  But the way he grasped his jeans told me he was nervous. I also noticed the bulge of my dagger in his deep jeans pocket. He'd brought my weapon.

  "You worried about something?" I asked.

  "This is a just in case measure," Ronin said, patting the hidden dagger.

  Cal drove us through Marchamp, which was as busy as I remembered, and my mood lifted just from being off the campus grounds. I realized how much I missed civilization, despite growing up in Colton Corners where nothing happened. Cal didn't stop in the downtown area, but drove through a small, well-kept neighborhood and then into the country. At last, he stopped at a huge, brick mansion that clearly came from piles of money and pulled into the long driveway. The yard was huge, more of a field, and surrounded by woods. Rows of vines on posts spread out in the vast backyard, and lots of sheds stood everywhere. Cars clogged the front yard and people stood everywhere.

  "Whose place is this?" Maria asked.

  "A descendant of Bacchus owns a winery here," Ronin explained. "If you look behind the building, you can see all the grapevines. The woman's daughter goes to Olympian, so of course it's her responsibility to host all the parties. We come out here all the time."

  A nervous flutter started in my stomach as I realized what kind of party this would be. Ronin
lifted an eyebrow at me like he was trying to gauge my reaction.

  My heart raced.

  Could I be cool enough to have fun tonight?

  Without tripping everywhere?

  Did I want to?

  "This is awesome," Mikey said as Cal parked. People stood around the house, some in white togas and others in normal dress, and despite all the red plastic cups going around, it looked like what I imagined your average party would. Yeah, people were drinking fine wines out of plastic cups. Loud music boomed somewhere.

  "I've...I've never had wine," I blurted.

  I waited for Ronin to make fun of me—this would be the perfect opportunity to call me a wimp—but instead, he frowned and whispered, "If you're not comfortable, you can get away with not drinking."

  Huh?

  Then the meaning of his words hit me. Everyone would be watching Ronin at this party. I was a Cursed Academy kid. If I didn't act cool, no one would care.

  "Now's the time to go in plainclothes," Ronin said. "So it's not obvious where you came from."

  Maria leaned back and hit me on the arm. "Come on." She pulled off the blue robe and ditched it. Yeah, that was probably a good idea. I did the same. At least people wouldn't know right away that we were Cursed kids.

  And then we got out. The music got louder as it blasted out of the house.

  "Hey!" A brown-haired girl in a white toga marched towards Ronin, letting the wine in her cup splash all over the place. She swayed as he moved. "Ronin!"

  Ronin immediately put on his hot jerk face and flexed all his muscles for her. "In the flesh! And don't get any ideas, baby." He turned to me as if I were an afterthought. "Giselle, this is Pamira. She's the winemaker's daughter. Pamira, Giselle. I met her in town."

  What? I was now just a regular person from town? I knew he was trying to protect me from stuff, but sheesh.

  "Oh. Hi!" Pamira swayed again before looking at Ronin. "You're late. The game. Come on." She tugged on his sleeve.

  "Sure thing, baby."

  I glared at the back of Ronin's head as he followed Pamira into the house. Hot jealousy welled up inside me and tears threatened to spill. The door opened, belching out loud music before closing again. More people stood inside, and someone was carrying one of those neon funnels across the room.

  "From town?" I asked Cal.

  Cal shrugged. "It's better this way. He just wants you guys to have fun."

  Ronin brought me here.

  And then walked off with another girl.

  "Oh, Giselle," Maria said, and that made it more real.

  Another burst of icy, electric darkness swept through me. I closed my eyes, only to see the void—to see Chaos—swirling with anger back at me. The ground seemed to vanish. I stumbled, and someone grabbed my arms and shouted my name. The low groan filled everything.

  "Giselle. You haven't even started drinking yet," Maria said, tightening her grasp on my arms.

  "Snap out of it," Cal shouted.

  I opened my eyes. Strength filled my limbs. If I wanted, I could throw Maria. Our gazes met. She flinched as the low groan got louder and the ground turned uneven. Cal looked down. Maria shuddered and backed away from me.

  A crack into the void slowly opened under my feet, spreading from two feet long...three feet...four...I had the power...air funneled into the crack...

  "Giselle?" Mikey asked, grabbing onto the van. "Giselle! Stop trying to kill us!"

  He snapped me out of it. With a blink, I let out a breath and shook my head. The crack vanished and the ground crashed back together with a low rumble. Dizziness and terror swept over me. This was what I'd done that other night. Why Ronin and Cal shouted at me to stop. Stomping my feet, I turned in a circle. The ground stayed solid. But Maria turned her head, trying to look at my face.

  "Oh, crap," I muttered.

  "Let me see something." Maria grabbed my cheeks, forcing me to face her. Mikey and Cal, instead of running, shuffled closer to me. She studied my eyes while I tried to pull away. My rage and hurt brought out the power. Every time.

  "I didn't mean to do this!" I shouted. At least we were standing far from everyone else.

  "I know you didn't. But your eyes. While you were standing there, you looked out of it, and while you were opening that crack..." Maria said, releasing me. "Your eyes looked different."

  "Different?" My throat dried and my teeth hurt. And Ronin wasn't even here to help me through this moment.

  Cal's jaw dropped. "For a second, you had flecks in your eyes."

  I blinked. Yeah, now that I'd cooled down, I felt normal again. "Flecks? The golden flecks?" Chaos wasn't a deity, was it? It was more of a place, a force. The first force, in fact. Or maybe it was.

  "Purple," Maria said.

  I stood there, staring at my friends and forgetting all about Ronin. "Purple?" Then I rubbed my eyes as if that could give me answers.

  "It was weird," Mikey said. "Cal?"

  "I've never seen anything like it," he said. "Nobody in Olympian has that. A few are titan descendants, but they have green-flecked eyes and that's it. What Giselle had was different."

  Ronin might have known what it meant. But he was gone, pretending I was some ordinary girl he gave the privilege of bringing to a party. Trying to catch my breath, I yanked open the door, barely missing my nose, and stormed into the house.

  Breathe. Don't bring that back.

  Ronin was nowhere to be seen, mainly because the huge living room was packed with people. Someone in the middle—Pamira—was on the receiving end of the funnel as a guy poured a pinkish liquid down it. The air reeked of booze and loud music made it impossible to bother with talking or shouting. People chanted. A smiling couple, hand in hand, walked up the stairs.

  "Ronin!"

  He was nowhere.

  What if he'd taken a girl upstairs? There had to be tons of bedrooms. The thought turned my stomach even more than my friends' sightings of the purple flecks. Or the fact that I'd opened a crack in the ground.

  "All right, everyone. Out back!" a dreadlocked guy shouted into a megaphone, raising a solo cup over his head. "Out back, right now! We're in for some more games!"

  Games?

  Cheers went up. A flood of people crushed against the back doors of the enormous house, trailing outside. The huge living room and kitchen cleared, leaving just a bunch of discarded solo cups and chip bags on the floor. I pitied whoever had to clean this house. And it probably wasn't the family.

  Ronin would be outside now, wouldn't he? Maybe he'd gone to the backyard to fulfill his duty of being the life of the party.

  "Giselle. What's going on? Where did everyone go?" Mikey asked behind me.

  "Oh. They play Drunk Tag a lot," Cal explained, coming in behind me.

  "Drunk Tag?" That put a picture in my head. "Does Ronin?"

  "Yes. He wins most of the time, too. It's tag, and whenever you're tagged by whoever's 'it,' you have to take a shot, and then you're 'it,'" Cal explained. "It gets messy fast. When whoever's 'it' falls over or can't run anymore, they pick another person at random. Last person standing gets a stupid wreath to wear around their neck."

  "I thought shots were for hard liquor," Maria said.

  "We make do," Cal said.

  "Ronin would play that for sure," I said.

  Cal snorted. But I turned away, crossing the living room and crunching a red cup under my feet. The music continued to blast, and I turned it down just so I could think.

  I was becoming something other than human.

  I could feel it.

  And not only was I going to corner Ronin and demand he get me into the library already, even if he had to fight his father to do it, I was going to demand answers about something else, too.

  "I'm finding him," I said.

  "But it's Drunk Tag," Cal warned.

  Fine. I'd deal. My growing fear of my powers trumped my fear of getting caught up in Drunk Tag.

  Outside, no music blasted, but people stood in a big circle around the backy
ard, in front of the giant grape farm. The guy with the microphone had climbed to the top of a storage shed to overlook everything. Spotlights shone everywhere, making things bright. Other sheds stood in a ring around the field, along with buckets, farm equipment, and spare boards. I even spotted a tent that might be a tasting area. And near the shed, a table with a bunch of corked wine bottles sat. I gulped.

  And Ronin stood on the far end of the circle, nearest the vines and the farthest away from me. As if I were a shame.

  "I'm not playing Drunk Tag," Mikey said, appearing beside me. "My powers will not help me here."

  The guy with the mike beat on his chest. "Okay, everybody. I get to choose who's 'it,' first." He scanned the area, sweeping over the circle of two dozen people who were participating. "The rules are this. No entering the woods, or you are out of the running. You fall down, you're out. You may use magic but please don't kill anyone. Now I choose who's 'it.'" The guy paused on a dark-haired girl in black jeans and a super tight T-shirt who stood to the right.

  Wendy.

  She also sneaked out, as promised, and come to the party. Like us, she ditched her purple uniform and wears all black. Wendy stood beside Serena, Percival, and Duncan. I knew why she was here and the reason started with R. But I'd worry about that later.

  Ronin lifted his gaze to me. His mouth fell like he couldn't believe I followed him out to Drunk Tag. I raised my hand and waved.

  "We have a volunteer!"

  Ronin face-palmed.

  Oh.

  I faced the mike guy and lowered my hand. "I didn't mean—"

  People giggled in the circle. How many had Ronin told I'm just a girl from town?

  The shed guy climbed down a ladder and motioned me over to all the bottles. "Come and take your shot! This should start off quickly."

  More people laughed.

  Translation: I was about to be the laughingstock of the party.

  "Giselle!" Maria said, slapping her hand to her face. She backed against the sliding doors of the house.

  I watched in horror as the guy uncorked a bottle and poured a red liquid into a shot glass, filling it to the rim. "Down the hatch!"