by Lucy Auburn
"Oh, I don't need Wyatt to keep you in this room." Grayson raises a coy eyebrow, and I go cold all over at the reminder of his presence in my head just this morning. "I can make you do anything I want whenever I want. So let's not pretend otherwise."
"What the fuck do you want?"
"What else? To know the future." He looks over at Mason, who's staring at his shoe and frowning. "My friend over here is being coy about what you two saw the first time around. Instructor Abarra forgot to ask. Your second vision was quite boring, but the first seemed to shock both of you in its intensity."
"It's none of your business," I tell him, stiffening as his eyes narrow in my direction. "And don't think you can just take the memory from my head. That didn't work out so well for you last time, did it? I'm keeping it to myself. You'll have to make Mason tell you."
The illusionist's eyes come up, and he frowns at both of us. "I'm not getting in the middle of this. Not again." To Grayson he says, "If we're truly Ellen's Conduits, we need to learn how to get along. That means you have to start playing nice—or at least pretending to be nice."
"I am nice," Grayson snaps. "I once brought you a whole apple tart from the dining hall when you were studying in the library all day."
"That was nearly two years ago," Mason says mildly, and I wonder how the fuck he's still friends with the prick. "Wyatt and I have already agreed that we want to work with Ellen, not against her. Anything else is stupid. You two should get on board—we're only going to survive to graduate together, after all."
Grayson looks over at me, and I can tell he's thinking the same thing I am: get along, with that one? Never. Still, Mason has a point, and it's one that's been on my mind since initiation. I have to find and kill four Marks in a little over two years—and I'm supposed to do it with the Fuckfaces, whether I like it or not. The sooner we bury the hatchet, and not in each other's backs, the better.
Levi says, "I just want to graduate. If holding some girl's hand can do that, all the better. There are worse things we've had to do during training."
Grunting, Wyatt carefully points out, "We weren't ge-getting very f-f-ar on our own."
A grimace passes over Grayson's face, and he shoots Levi an annoyed look. No doubt he thought that he'd at least have one ally in the hating Ellen game. But the poisoner is surprisingly unperturbed at the thought of working with me, even though just this morning I nearly destroyed his ankle.
I guess when you go to a university full of killers, you learn how to let go of a little bit of maiming and torture.
Looking to me, Grayson says in a resigned yet stubborn voice, "I'm not going to stop investigating you. If I find any evidence that you killed your family—anything more concrete than a stale memory in one guy's head—I'm bringing it straight to the Shadow Fold. I don't care if you're of the Brutus line and have four Affinities. This place isn't for the type of reckless killer who takes out their own family. We have strict rules and traditions for a reason, and I won’t see them broken by anyone.”
His words annoy me, but I have to admit that I see now where he's coming from. He thinks I'm just like the little brother he killed, the one who destroyed his entire family. People don't get over that kind of trauma easily—I would know. I still sometimes wake up in the morning with a tremor in my hands because I dreamed of Jack's voice or relived the memory of taking his body apart bit by bit.
That other Ellen, the one who lives only to kill, haunts my dreams and makes me afraid Headmaster Shu is right: if I don't learn to control my baser impulses, they'll start to take over, and one day there will be no other option except my death.
"We'll train together," I tell Grayson, "but it's not like we have to enjoy each other's presence." My eyes skitter away from Mason's gaze, and I swallow. "After all, each one of us is a killer. Trust doesn't come easy. So let's do what it takes to make it to graduation in one piece, and by the time we're done, maybe we'll be able to stand being in the same room without all this tension."
He snorts. "Fat chance."
But he puts out his hand, and I shake it, ignoring the thrill that goes up my arm like a shiver. Desire flares deep in my abdomen like a living thing, and I don't know what it wants more: the power that Grayson's touch promises, or the darker things that flare to life in his ice blue eyes as he smirks at me knowingly.
Snatching my hand from his, I get Wyatt to step aside and rush out into the hallway, forcing myself not to look back over my shoulder. I try not to think too hard about what it means that a single brush of each of their hands against mine wakens something primal inside of me.
Chapter 19
It turns out that I was an optimist to think that I could ever stand being in the same room as Grayson Hughes. The same hand that shook mine belongs to a traitorous bastard, one who looks like he'd sooner crack me open and see what's inside me than help me with anything.
Training with someone who can read your mind is torture. Especially when taking their hand and trying to use your powers together forges a connection that lets them inside your head, searching and scrabbling for your secrets with all the determination of a bull terrier.
"Stop it!" I hiss at him. "I thought you weren't supposed to use your powers on other people outside of a match."
"Technically, we're training." His voice is smug; on the sidelines, Instructor Abarra is getting impatient, no doubt wondering when my supposed connection with Grayson will produce results. "Also," the asshole adds, "I'm looking inside your mind, not actually controlling you. If I were, I'd keep you from ripping that fart you're trying to hold inside. It's not much longer before..."
To my everlasting shame and embarrassment, the thing I've been desperately holding in makes its escape at the end of his sentence. It's not a silent one, and it's not scentless either. As Instructor Abarra makes a face, waving a hand in front of her nose and mouth, I dare to glance over my shoulder at the other guys. All three of them have their heads turned, their noses plugged, or their faces screwed up in disgust.
Levi says, "If I knew you had that kind of poison inside you, I wouldn't have bothered using my Affinity at all. I would've just sent a breakfast of beans over to your room yesterday morning and let the rest just happen."
Bright spots of embarrassment heat my cheeks. Wyatt does his best to look unbothered, breathing through his mouth, while Mason wraps his braid around his face and gives me a bit of a grin, like it's some kind of joke. I'm starting to think my so-called foresight is totally broken, because no man will fuck a woman like that when she just did what I did.
Grayson is the only one who looks undisturbed, probably because he's too smugly above it all to inhale fully. I frown at him. "Even I can smell that, and it's not great. Why aren't you passed out right now?"
"I'm just telling myself there isn't a smell in the air." At my puzzled expression, he clarifies, "I can control my own mind too, in little ways. A side affect of all the meditation we do in Mental Class training. It's helpful in moments like these. You'd know that if you'd bothered to show up to class today."
Ah, classes. The thing I was supposed to do today, now that I've been fully initiated into the university. Instead I slept in, and no one showed up to wake me from my slumber.
"A side affect of showing up to school while on the run from four Fuckfaces is that you wind up without amenities. I didn't have an alarm set to wake me up." I don't mention the part where I woke up in time for my afternoon Mental Class and decided that I'd rather jump off a cliff than show up. "Besides, this is graduate school. Is attendance really necessary?"
"This is graduate school for professional killers. Skip enough classes and find out."
He has a point. I should probably get that whole lack-of-a-cell-phone thing smoothed out this weekend, when I'll hopefully be going home to attend Mom's funeral and convince my dumb stepbrother I didn't kill our parents. Maybe Eve can help me get on her plan; my credit score and bank account can't exactly afford a smart phone right now. That shit is for people who don't
have the last name of one of the trashiest states in the nation.
"Alright, alright. Let's get back to business."
Instructor Abarra claps her hands to get our attention, and I realize with a start that I'd somehow forgotten I'm still holding Grayson's hand. It all floods back to me at once, and he cuts his eyes in my direction, amusement written on his face. He knows my thoughts—uncomfortably well. If I'm not careful, I'll let a stray thought come to the top of my head, and he'll know more than he should about what my powers have shown me.
Better to concentrate on the training drills we're supposed to be doing. Turning towards the targets, I try what I did before, with Mason: thinking about one person or another. Supposedly I can summon the spirits of the dead, but if you ask me, it was all some kind of freak accident.
"That's not going to work," Grayson says, irritating me with his knowledge of what's going on inside my head. "You'll have to think about people who are dead to summon them."
"I didn't even know your whole family was dead yesterday," I point out, which makes him look away for a moment, proving that he's not as in control of his mind—or his emotions—as he claims to be. "There wasn't any kind of thought or action that triggered whatever that was. At least not on my part."
"So you weren't trying to figure out ways to weaken me?" He raises a dark brow, narrowing his icy eyes at me. "You almost broke my wrist in two, you know. It took the healers ages to get it back together. They said I could've wound up with another permanent injury."
"Gee, what a tragedy that would've been," I snap. "It's not like you weren't going to hurt me if you could. You should've stayed out of my head if you wanted to be left alone—and you should stay out of my head now!"
My voice has risen in volume enough that the others can hear us. Until now we've been speaking in low voices, half strategizing about my powers, half nagging at each other. I can't keep my anger at bay, though—just standing next to Grayson riles me up somehow. I want to smack him in his smug, pretty face, to make him do something besides look down at me and claim he knows who I really am. He knows nothing about me—and the sooner he realizes it, the better.
"You're a piece of work, Ellen Arizona," he mutters. "There's no way someone with a temper like yours could possibly be a true Brutus."
His words echo Jack's the day that I killed him, when he said no one would believe me if I told them he abused me, all because I hit him once. He used to tease me about my temper—in jest, once, when we were a couple in love, and then later as a way to put me down, insist he was better than me.
Hearing those words out of Grayson's mouth makes me want to shove him. I can still feel him in my head, and know he's hearing or seeing whatever it is I'm thinking and remembering about Jack. It's not fair—all of those moments, my terrible shame, the things I let myself be put through because of love, are mine to have in my head, and share when I want. I don't want him in.
"Get. Out. Of. My. Head." I narrow my eyes at him, while Instructor Abarra is frowning at us both, her training baton resting against the floor. "If I wanted you inside me, I would invite you in."
"Accidental double entendre?" He smirks, and my blood boils. "I know I'm handsome, Ellen, but you don't have to be so wanton about it."
His words make my mind veer towards a memory that I really don't want him to see, of the vision I had with Mason yesterday. Snarling, I shut the door on that particular part of my mind, and watch in triumph as he winces, almost like I've shut a physical door. Then I walk through the halls of my mind and imagine shutting a dozen more doors, pushing him out with each one, until his eyes flutter closed and he grimaces.
"Fine! Have it your way," he snaps, as the instructor paces towards us, clearly deciding her hands-off approach won't work today. Grayson mutters, "I thought maybe if I could sense what you have to do to summon the spirits, I could help you repeat it. But clearly you don't want my help."
I snort. "You, being helpful? I doubt it. You're the one who thinks I'm a murderer."
"If you'd just let me see that night—"
"Something wrong here?" Instructor Abarra's voice is sharp, and I can tell she's fed up with our bullshit. "It's been twenty minutes, and nothing has happened at all. Perhaps a fresh approach would be wise—after a break."
I snatch my hand out of Grayson's, glad for the chance to get away from him. Something about his face, his voice, his hand on mine, even the mint-and-evergreen smell of him next to me, sets me on edge in ways I didn't realize were possible.
Walking over to the refreshments table against the wall of the training room, I pour myself the biggest glass of lemon water possible and drink it all. Grayson, who must know what's good for him, chooses to take a seat on a bench all the way across the room—maybe he senses even now that I'm thinking about what it would be like to break all his fingers and pull the teeth from his mouth. Let's see him smile smugly then.
Wyatt joins me at the table, watching me with those warm brown eyes of his. "You're mm-mad."
"Yeah." I put my empty glass down on the table and wipe my mouth, wishing it had been whiskey instead of water. "Being around Grayson Hughes tends to do that to people. Especially when he roots around inside your thoughts." Shaking my head, I ask him, "How can you be friends with him?"
He looks over at Grayson, who's having an animated conversation with Levi. I can hear the latter's footsteps all the way from here; even his gesticulations seem to make noise.
Wyatt says, "Grayson saved me."
This is new information. "From what, not being annoyed all the time?"
"No." A little smile lights up the corners of his mouth. "He saved my life."
That's unexpected information. It's hard to imagine someone so selfish, snarky, and consistently smug as Grayson Hughes going out of his way to save somebody. Moody, I point out, "I bet he was the one who put your life in danger in the first place."
He shakes his head, mouth tightening with a little tension. "No. Not like that. Gi-give Grayson credit." Wyatt looks frustrated suddenly, like he wants to say more but can't. "Just try."
I open my mouth to tell him that I am trying, then abruptly close it. The expression on Wyatt's face is so earnest and sincere that it's hard to believe it's coming from a six-foot-five hulk of a man. It seems unfair that he could be so strong, yet also handsome and endearing on top of all that brawn. Without the stutter, he'd basically be a Greek god come down Mount Olympus to Earth to make mortals tremble as they worship him.
Yeah, I studied the myths. I was a theater kid—Shakespeare and Greek tragedy were my bread and butter, next to Broadway shows and David Mamet.
"I'll try," I tell Wyatt. "And by try, I mean that I won't stab him, and I'll give him the benefit of the doubt when he's being an asshole. But he's going to have to try too, or I rescind my offer."
Wyatt considers this, then nods. "I'll make him. Try."
"If anyone can do it, it's you. May I suggest holding his head underwater for a minute or two? Maybe four or more?" Wyatt chuckles. "I'm serious. Oxygen deprivation might be the only thing to get through to him. That's why I farted earlier—I was hoping to tame him with my offensive odor."
Nose wrinkling, he shakes his head. "You're lucky yo-you're... cute."
The last word is said so carefully and slowly that I'm sure he was trying not to stammer around it. A little playful smirk is twisting up one corner of his mouth, and he's leaning against the drink and snack table, making it clear that he would be the suavest man in the world if he had the ability to speak without stammering. Even with the stutter, he's smooth—charmingly so.
Shaking my head, I tell him, "The world is lucky you have a weakness, or you'd be stealing girls left and right."
Despite my compliment, his face falls, and I realize too late what I've said: I implied that because he stutters, he can't get women. I open my mouth to tell him that's not what I meant, feeling like the one with the twisting tongue, when Instructor Abarra cuts in.
"Alright, let's get back
to work!" Surveying the five of us, she announces, "Since the Spiritual Affinity seems to be shy, let's move on and try something else. Wyatt, you step into the ring. Let's see if we can figure out her Emotional Affinity."
Grayson pipes up. "Be careful, Wyatt. You might get bird shit on your head."
"Or the taste of rank filth in your mouth," Levi adds. "That woman has a gut on her."
I purse my lips and blow him a kiss, which just makes him roll his eyes, pushing silvery blond hair away from his forehead. At least my unintentional fart had one good side affect: it's thoroughly driven the Fuckfaces away from me. The last thing I need is the entanglement of my heart or loins getting involved with another asshole—after Jack, I've had enough love for one lifetime. I just hope that I haven't hurt Wyatt's feelings too bad with what I said; it was cute that he was flirting with me, but I'm spoken for.
Lady Misery has my heart, and she's never unhanding it.
Still, I don't like the way it feels to be responsible for the frown on Wyatt’s face as he steps up to face the target wall and holds out his hand. Instead of clasping it, I lean in and tell him, "I didn't mean it like that. I just meant... you're pretty great as is, and I bet anyone who gets the chance to have a whole conversation with you would fall a little in love. So don't stop talking on my account. I have chronic foot-in-mouth disease. It tastes terrible—really."
He looks over at me with that handsome, million-hearts-crushed face of his, and gives me a little tentative smile. It softens up the tension in the air, and I reach out to grab his hand, wondering what's supposed to happen next.
The instructor opens up a little velvet bag and dumps a woolen ball onto her hand. "This is an Emotional Class sensor. It'll warm up when you use any powers in that class."
"Too bad we don't know what those powers are."
"We have a guess. According to the report Mr. Hughes filed of the encounter you had at the riverbank, you brought crows down on everyone's head."
