by Abbie Lyons
Camilla snapped to standing. “Oh, so now you’re being all high and mighty? Little Miss Hot-for-Teacher?” She narrowed her perfectly-lined eyes to slits. “As if a professor would ever date a human skank like you.”
As far as Camilla went, I’d been doing my best just not to engage her, because conflict was clearly what she wanted. And I’d certainly had experience with my fair share of bullies. Ignoring her was the most logical thing to do.
But I wasn’t feeling logical.
“Just shut the fuck up for one moment of your miserable life,” I said without thinking.
“Excuse me?”
Her shopping bag dropped to the ground with a soft thud. Her emerald-haired friend rushed to defend her, but Camilla all but elbowed her in the solar plexus to stay back. Teddy, for his part, gasped.
My heart rammed into my ribs, my hands curling into fists. If I had badass demon powers, powers like I was supposed to have, powers that that stupid exetasis with Wilder was supposed to reveal, I would have blasted Camilla into a blonde-tinged smudge of ash on the wall.
But you don’t, I reminded myself. So are you gonna back down or stand your ground?
“You heard me,” I said, my voice reverberating against the polished shelves of the store. “I want you to stop talking shit on me and my friends, or I promise, I will fuck you up.”
“Oh yeah?” Camilla said. “And how are you planning to do th—”
I might not have had any demon powers to show off, but I had something just as good—the fury of a tough New York broad when she’s been wronged.
Her words got lost in the slam of my Doc Martens heel.
Camilla shrieked, and fell backwards onto her two cronies. I’d all but missed her—grazed her, really—but a thin trickle of blood trailed out of her perfect little ski-jump nose.
“Why, you...” She righted herself to a fighting stance, white flames erupting around her arms and shoulders. “You dirty human slut. I’ll burn you to—”
“Duck!”
I ducked. Camilla didn’t. From somewhere behind us, an orb of black smoke cannonballed its way across the store, dousing Camilla’s flames and clouding the entire area.
“Bloody hell,” came Morgan’s voice. “Was that Teddy?”
“What is going on?” An unfamiliar woman’s voice—the shopgirl, I realized—cut through the noise and confusion. She emerged as a shadowy form to our left, snapping her hand and sucking all the smoke out of the air and vanishing it. What it left behind was one bitchy blonde with a nosebleed, one amateur kickboxer with Jersey trash hair, one bewildered nerd in glasses, and one Brit with her mouth in a perfect O of surprise and delight. Somewhere in the back, Camilla’s Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum were cowering with their own bags of shopping.
The shopkeeper, a tall, pretty black woman with green box braids and a septum piercing, stalked over to us. “Out. Now.”
She pointed at the door.
“But—” Camilla mewled.
The woman pointed again, the edge of her fingernail glinting like a blade. Which, I realized it was.
Camilla huffed, then pushed herself to standing and motioned for her henchgirls.
“You’re fucked up, you know that, right?” Her voice still cut even with a bit of the confidence drained out of her. “I’d bet my family’s entire fortune the kyrioi are here after you.”
“What?”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t play dumb. You humans all think you’re...whatever his name is, Montana Jones. But newsflash?” She leaned in, so close to my face that I was worried she was legit going to scratch my eyes out, but all she did was part her lips and blow a single, perfect black smoke ring. The smoke broke over my skin, smelling woodsy and burnt.
“We’re actual demons,” Camilla finished. “You can’t steal our relics that easily.”
With that, she turned on her heel and swept out, the Plastics in tow, leaving Morgan to help me, and then a gaping Teddy, to our feet.
“All right, all right, Teds, cool off,” Morgan said, brushing dust from the shoulders of his jacket. “Just a catfight. No need to get all hot under the collar. Or belt.”
“Too late,” Teddy breathed. “I mean—no—not that. Just...” He blushed, and stared at his palms as we hustled out of the store. “What was that?” he said softly.
“I don’t know,” I said, my pulse still hammering, “but you saved my ass. Thanks, dude.”
“You saved your ass,” Morgan crowed. “Does Professor Kawasaki know you’ve got moves like that?”
I couldn’t think about Introduction to Combat Skills right now. My brain was racing. First of all, someone was stealing relics. Or was trying to. That much I trusted Camilla to know. And it would make sense why Dean Harlowe wouldn’t tell me the truth—from her point of view, it wasn’t something for me to worry about.
Not if I didn’t have any powers.
And, I realized, if Camilla was really the one who Collum and Aleksandr were talking about in the hallway, the one who’d been so especially pissed about the security from the kyrioi...then maybe she had something to do with it.
And maybe she wanted to make her least favorite half-demon classmate take the fall for it.
I made a mental note to discuss my theory with Morgan and Teddy as soon as we got another moment of privacy. But for now, I was too exhausted to get up to any more plotting.
“Is there anywhere to get some food around here?” I said. Low blood sugar wasn’t necessarily the biggest threat to my survival right now, but it sure as hell wasn’t helping. “And I mean normal food, not the kind that literally burns your tongue.”
“That sounds wonderful,” Teddy half-said, half-moaned.
Morgan sighed theatrically. “Fine. But just a quick break. Because we’ve got serious business to attend to.”
“What’s that?” said Teddy.
“We’ve got to get you a suit.” Morgan said, raising an eyebrow at me. “Right, Noves?”
I grinned. “Oh, absolutely.”
Chapter Fifteen
“You sure you’d rather just be boring and sit here all by your lonesome?” Morgan asked. It was midnight, and she was planning to go to the common room for some snacks and socializing.
“It’s fine, really!” I protested. “I’ve got lots to study. Latin is kicking my ass, and I better catch up if I’m ever gonna learn Sumerian or Old Norse, or whatever other languages we’re supposed to know eventually.”
The truth was that my Latin was actually beginning to come along quite well. But I just wasn’t ready to say “well my first exetasis session was a complete failure, so now I need some alone time to do some sort of weird meditation thing that I don’t quite understand,” even to somebody as close to me as Morgan.
“Fine, have it your way,” she complained. “Feliciter velim. That’s Latin for ‘good luck.’”
“Cella scansoria,” I replied. For some reason, the Latin for “elevator” was all I could remember.
When she shut the door to leave, I realized I could probably count on one hand the amount of times I’d been in a room all by myself at Hades for more than a few minutes. In New York City, I’d been surrounded by millions, but spent most of my days and nights completely alone. Having other people constantly around was still new for me. In my old life, I wouldn’t have had to make any excuses to go off on my own and quietly “channel,” as Dean Harlowe called it.
It felt like I should be somewhere calm, and quiet, and probably drenched in moonlight, since demons seemed obsessed with the power of the moon. So I slipped out of our room, in through the common room, and out a side door into one of the back gardens. It was cold, but my academy sweater over the white blouse was enough, and the sky was a clear, endless kind of deep blue. Obviously, given all that moonlight superstition, there wasn’t a curfew per se at Hades, but I still felt a little illicit walking down the pebbled path that wound through trees to the cloister garden. Apparently herbology and what Teddy called “cooking curses” was an elective course w
e’d be offered a semester or two down the line, but the beds were still bursting with all kinds of winding vines and blooms in almost every color of the rainbow.
After I’d walked what seemed to be sufficiently far, I took a deep breath. Then another. Then I sat down.
I wasn’t even quite sure what I was supposed to be doing. If all the stereotypes of meditation I knew were something to go by, I was pretty sure the first step was to sit cross-legged. Maybe make a little circle with my fingers on my knees. After that I was probably supposed to close my eyes, relax, and clear my thoughts.
God, what does it even mean to clear your thoughts?
I was pretty sure my head had never been clear of any thoughts since I’d left the womb. Is that even how demon birth worked? If my mom was a demon, was there some sort of special birthing process I hadn’t learned about yet? Demon Sex-Ed didn’t seem to be a class that was on offer here at Hades.
These are exactly the things you don’t need to be thinking about right now.
I steadied my breathing—another meditation cliché. I tried to imagine all the errant thoughts I had slipping out of my head and floating away. The moon shining bright through a rift in the steely clouds felt genuinely peaceful against my skin, so I tried my best to just focus on that peace. I focused on balance, harmony, all that hippy shit.
And, of course, nothing was happening. It still just felt like I was sitting with my eyes closed, and I was pretty sure if anyone suddenly walked by and saw me there like that, I’d sink a few more rungs down the social ladder.
Again, I admonished myself, these thoughts are not necessary. Clear your fucking head, Nova.
Easier said than done. I was a complicated person, and complicated people must by nature have a harder time just thinking of nothing at all. Camilla and her air-headed friends could probably channel with the best of them.
Yeah, you really don’t need to be thinking about her right now. Especially if she turns out to be some kind of demon master thief.
I tried to do what I was best at—trust my intuition. I’d let my gut instincts guide me through this whole weird process, because they’d never steered me wrong before.
The minutes passed. Very slowly my thoughts began to steady. They were still there, sure, but my mind had gone from “racing” to “moving at a gentle, leisurely pace.” Maybe just because I was getting bored. Or maybe that was about as empty as my brain could get for now.
Okay. No need to try too hard my first time doing this. Now, I could focus on allowing new things into my mind—revelations, insights, powers. I hoped for powers.
And then, I could feel it.
I wasn’t quite sure what it was, but it was as if something had entered into me, just a sliver of a sensation that melted over my brain. As crazy as it sounds, I could feel its weight, however slight. Obviously, I could’ve been imagining it into existence, because I really wanted this channeling business to work. My fate here at Hades might’ve depended on it. But it felt real. Like a smoothness that was buffing my mind from the inside out.
For the first time since I’d arrived at Hades, I couldn’t put something into words.
Then, as quickly as it crept in, it dissipated, like a spritz of water on the wind. Disappointment settled in its place. I opened my eyes, and the weight that had entered me vanished completely. Totally back to normal now.
“Nova.”
Except not at all normal.
Raines was standing over me, arms crossed, casting a dark shadow with his body. I shivered, even though it wasn’t that cold out.
“What the hell?” I said, trying to keep the shock out of my voice. “You’re blocking my moonlight.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if Raines was the one who threw off my vibe. And if he had, I was pissed. Raines didn’t apologize, of course, but he shuffled out of the way.
“Okay, now you’re just looming over me,” I said. “Not much better. And I know you’re just going to bust out with more weird stares and/or cryptic remarks, but honestly, you can save it. I have way too much going on already.”
I expected him to stalk off, or snap some witty rejoinder, or even flare those red eyes at me, but he didn’t. He crossed one ankle over the other and sat down.
“Nice night for channeling,” he said in a low voice. “How’s it going?”
I was taken aback. So much so that I didn’t even think to lie. “Not great.”
Raines nodded. “Yeah. Personally I think it’s a bunch of bullshit.”
I snorted. “The mighty Raines, skeptical of Hades Academy practices? Color me surprised.”
“The issue isn’t us. It’s the world around us. That’s the whole point of this fight against Chaos, right? That it’s about more than just us as individuals. Or, sorry, was I quoting Wilder too directly?”
He must have sensed he’d gone too far in mentioning his half-brother, because his expression softened. Then he grinned. “So you roundhouse kicked Camilla in the face, huh?”
My face got hot. “Yeah. What of it?”
Raines shook his head. “Nothing of it. Except that I like it.”
“I didn’t do it so you’d like it,” I retorted. “I did it so she’d stop messing with Teddy’s head.”
Raines’s wicked grin returned. “Fine. Just know that hearing about it gave me an inordinate amount of pleasure.”
Man, what was it with him and Wilder saying “pleasure” like that? And then, to make matters worse, he laid down on his back, hands behind his head, like he was stargazing. The edge of his button-down rode up an inch on his torso, and it took all of my humanly—or demonic, I guess—willpower not to look for longer than a second.
“What are you doing?” I glared at him. “We’re not friends hanging out. You interrupted me, remember?”
“Are you telling me to leave?”
I thought about it. A cool nighttime breeze blew through my hair, carrying with it the spicy smell of rosemary and marjoram from the herb garden.
“What do you do to get your hair like that?”
I whirled around so I could properly stare at him. “What? What do you mean, what do I do?”
Raines shrugged, his shoulders brushing up and down the grass. “Just that the other girls have spells or charms or whatever. You don’t think Zelda has naturally green hair, do you?”
“I don’t think a lot about Camilla’s bodyguard’s hair,” I shot back. “And I don’t do anything to mine. It just grows this way.”
“Hm.” Raines didn’t move, or sit up, or even so much as look at me directly. “Yours is better than theirs.”
I couldn’t tell if that was supposed to be a compliment. “That’s just because I can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
I waved a hand over my head. “Charm it, or enchant it, or whatever. I can’t do shit. That’s why I’m out here in the middle of the night. That’s why I literally kicked Camilla’s ass instead of, I don’t know, fireballing her. Because I can’t.”
I didn’t realize how close I was to tears until I finished my rant, but my throat felt tight and my eyes pricked. I bit the inside of my cheek, hard. The fleeting feeling of smoothness felt like a dream more than a memory.
“I’m not even sure I belong here,” I said, in the barest, softest whisper.
Raines sat up, sat fully up so that he was facing me and looking in my eyes. “That makes two of us.”
I blinked at him, from under my curtain of non-enchanted hair. “What?”
“I almost didn’t come here. This year, or maybe ever. It’s...It’s a long story, and I don’t really want to get into it, but let’s just say that Wilder being here is only the tip of the iceberg.” He breathed out hard, through his nostrils. “I’m kind of fucked up in more ways than one, and I really don’t trust people easily. Especially not...” He nodded at me.
“What, humans? New Yorkers?”
“Girls,” he said roughly.
Oh. It hadn’t even occurred to me that Raines might have some kind o
f...emotional romantic baggage. Not that it was too surprising. I mean, look at the guy. He probably had girls throwing themselves at him since middle school.
“Anyway, when I heard what you did to Camilla...I don’t know. It changed something for me. That, and...” He shook his head.
My mind’s eye flicked back to our encounter outside the Dean’s office.
“And whatever’s on my hand,” I finished.
Raines narrowed his eyes at me. “And whatever’s on your hand.”
“Which is?”
Raines exhaled hard.
“I’m not, by the way,” I said. “Since you asked.”
“Not what?”
“Asking you to leave.” I wrapped my arms around the tops of my knees. “But only because you like my hair.”
Raines made a growling sound—I think of approval.
“Sun line,” he said shortly. “On your hand. When I had my exetasis...well, let’s just say I figured you and I might have that in common.”
I opened my palm. “So show me.”
Raines met my eyes, hesitation in his gaze. But I wanted to know. I wanted him to show me.
I wanted him to touch me.
So I thrust my hand out again.
Raines swallowed. “Here.” He held the back of my hand gently, pointing at the top of my palm with a long finger. “Your sun line is strong, even though your fate line is variegated.”
“Which means?” God, getting information from him was like pulling teeth.
“An uncertain path, but the potential for great power.” Raines glanced up into my eyes. “They call it the ‘outlaw’s crossing.’”
“Really?” I blinked. “How come I didn’t hear about this in my exetasis?”
Raines stared at me, as if the answer was obvious. Which maybe it was.
I pulled my hand back. It was strange how gentle it was to touch him like this now, compared to the other day.
Raines cleared his throat, straightening his collar. “Gods, they make these things so uncomfortable. Anyway, my point is, I realized maybe I’d been too harsh to you. So tonight, when I saw you leave the common room, I followed you. And now I’m here.”
