by Eva Chase
He made a humming sound. “No one could even really understand what we’ve shared. I know you’ll stay on your toes. You know better than to trust the kind of assholes that end up at Roseborne.”
Calling Ryo and Elias assholes hardly seemed fair—but then, Cade had been around them for months longer than I had, so he’d know things I wouldn’t. It wasn’t as if I’d planned on depending on them anyway.
“No point in trusting anyone except each other,” I said, repeating the mantra that had become more true with each year we’d been together.
Cade smiled—and his stance went rigid. “Time’s up,” he said roughly, pulling away from me. “You’d better go. I don’t like you seeing this.” His shoulders twitched, a spasm running down his body.
My legs locked. How could I just run away from him? “If there’s anything I can do that’ll make it easier…?”
He shook his head. “You can’t save me from this. No one should have to be around me when the monster takes over. It’s fine. I’ve gotten used to the nights alone. You don’t even need to—”
I cut him off before he could say anything more. “I’m coming back. Every night. You don’t have to be alone anymore, I promise.”
“Baby Bea,” he said, in what could have been a thank you or a plea. His voice trailed off before he could take it in either direction. His back hunched, his limbs jerked at odd angles, and he let out a frustrated sound that could only be called a growl.
“I’ll come back!” I said again, and forced myself to hurry away from him like he’d asked me to. My hands clenched at my sides as I strode back toward the school.
Roseborne’s staff would pay for what they’d done to my brother. I didn’t know how, but I wasn’t going to back down until they had.
Chapter Five
Trix
Math class wasn’t half as stressful now that I knew what to expect—and now that Elias wasn’t going out of his way to avoid me like I had some kind of contagious deadly illness. He gave his lecture, some of my classmates made their attempts at working through the calculus question on the board, and like always, the figures shifted here and there of their own accord to completely throw us off.
It was annoying, but when you were prepared for it, not quite as unsettling as when I’d first noticed the weird changes. Elias still let out what looked like a restrained sigh at the end of class, looking at the string of calculations that, also as always, hadn’t managed to reach an answer.
From what I’d gathered, these hopeless classes were part of his punishment. Not all of it, he’d indicated. I had no idea what else Roseborne was putting him through.
But while being set up as one of the teachers didn’t give him any special exemptions in that area, I was hoping he had at least a little insight into his theoretical colleagues. When I brought my textbook up to his desk, I lingered there as the other students filed out.
“What can I do for you, Miss Corbyn?” he asked, with a glint in his dark eyes that turned his formal address into something more teasing.
He was in an okay mood, then, despite the frustrations of the class. I wouldn’t mind getting to enjoy some of those higher spirits. I folded my arms loosely over my chest and gave him a wry smile in return. “I feel like I need a little extra instruction. Do you have time to go over a few things with me?”
“I’d be happy to see how I can assist.” He glanced around, a shadow crossing his expression. “Maybe we could take the discussion outside? A change of scenery and fresh air can help keep your mind alert.”
And also keep us farther from the prying senses of the regular staff. “Sounds good to me,” I said.
He left a professional distance between us as we walked down the stairs and out onto the lawn. Elias didn’t appear to be all that much older than me—mid-twenties, I’d guess from his looks—and while he was technically a teacher, he wasn’t actually marking me or exerting any authority over my actions. I’d seen a glimmer of attraction in his gaze more than once when we were talking. Still, he seemed determined to stay restrained.
This time around, anyway. I had glimpses in my head of that chiseled face softened with laughter—and with something like adoration. Sometime in a past cycle, we’d gotten a hell of a lot more entangled than any real teacher and student should.
Now, he didn’t speak until we’d made it halfway to the forest. “What’s on your mind, Beatrix?”
Not as formal as using my last name, but definitely a way of putting up a bit of a wall between us. I decided not to hassle him about it, since I was about to ask him for a favor anyway.
“I mentioned yesterday that I wanted to get a better understanding of how the staff here operate,” I said, lowering my voice. “I was thinking one way I could work toward that is by making myself a sort of teacher’s pet to one of them, offering to help out and acting like I’m impressed by their methods… Maybe flattery will make them less cautious about what they let slip.”
Elias nodded slowly. “I’m not sure how far you’ll get taking that approach, but I can’t see how it’d hurt either. Since I ended up here, I have seen students try to suck up for special treatment. You don’t want to go overboard or they’ll get suspicious, especially considering your history here, but they might like the idea that you’re finally giving in. Whatever they are, I’d bet pride can still cloud their judgment.”
Having his approval for the plan settled some of my nerves. Elias was definitely the most practical and focused of the three guys I’d found myself connecting with. Back in the world beyond Roseborne, he’d been building his own company from the ground up—and effectively.
“Do you have any idea which of the professors would be easiest to target?” I asked. “I mean, they all seem hostile toward us, but some of them definitely act more vindictive than others.”
Elias tipped his head in thought, his mouth curving into a frown. “I’d avoid Marsden and Roth,” he said after a moment. “They take too much enjoyment out of physically hurting us. Filch has always seemed very closed off to me… Ibbs has an outright vicious side if you rub her the wrong way… I’d probably go with Hubert or Carmichael, whichever you feel more comfortable talking to. They’re more focused on emotional experiences, and I haven’t seen them go out of their way to harm anyone otherwise.”
I had Composition with Professor Hubert this afternoon—and while her approach to our writing assignments made my skin crawl, she had seemed more fascinated by our discomfort than vengeful. Professor Carmichael had left me with a chillier impression.
“All right,” I said. “That helps a lot. Thank you.”
The corner of Elias’s mouth twitched upward. “I’m glad I can put my strategic thinking skills to some kind of use.”
He should have been able to put them to all kinds of use. Looking over at him in his well-pressed suit with his commanding presence, I could easily picture him standing at the head of a boardroom, telling this person and that how to get their act together, laying out some inspired plan he’d been up half the night perfecting.
He glanced at me, catching me studying him, and the heat I’d noticed before flickered in his eyes. It sent an answering ripple through me. I suspected it was awfully enjoyable to have that commanding energy turned on you with the intent to please and pleasure, even if I couldn’t remember much of my own past experiences with him.
With that thought came the memory of Cade’s warning last night, his comment about the guys being assholes. Elias hadn’t hidden his shame about his history. He’d admitted to me that he’d been cutthroat in his pursuit of success—that he’d stepped on people and shoved them aside to get what he wanted, and that one of those people had died because of his actions. Even if he regretted that now, I couldn’t really know that those instincts wouldn’t come out again if provoked.
And the memory brought up another question. I shifted my path so we’d skirt the woods rather than continuing into them and tipped my face to the thickly clouded sky. The faint sunlight that penet
rated the gloom barely warmed my cheeks.
“Cade said you’re the only one who’s gone out to see him recently,” I said. But it hadn’t sounded as if my brother considered this guy a friend. “Why’s that?”
Elias was silent for long enough that I started to think my question had offended him. Then he said, “I suppose it just happened that way. I go off on walks most nights to… to get away from the school. Our paths would cross. We didn’t really talk much even when he was himself for more of the night, but sometimes I’d bring him leftovers from the kitchen.” He paused. “I’m not sure I can say even that was totally selfless—it was something to distract myself with, something that made me feel I was doing things differently from before.”
The things he’d done that had gotten him trapped here. I couldn’t fault him for wanting to make a change from that.
Hearing him talk, another question I hadn’t realized I’d want to ask itched at me. “Did you know the whole time, after I first came here, that he’s the guy I was looking for?”
“I knew his name. It wasn’t hard to figure out.” Elias exhaled sharply. “You have to understand it’s difficult to talk about the things that happen to us—ourselves or the other students—because of the way the powers here work. I couldn’t have simply walked up to you and laid it out. And we all learn pretty quickly that it’s easier not to get involved in anyone else’s concerns. I did tell him that you’d come to the school.”
“And he didn’t want to see me.”
“He didn’t want you seeing him like that,” Elias said. “I think he figured the staff would send you away eventually, and that you were more likely to go if you still weren’t sure he was even on campus.”
Which was true. Maybe I’d have done the same thing if our positions had been reversed. That didn’t stop the sinking sensation in my gut, knowing Cade had been roaming around the woods for months aware of my presence here but never reaching out. Why hadn’t he known that I cared about him enough that I’d keep searching until I found him, no matter what?
I’d show him how much he mattered to me. I’d make good on all the promises I’d given last night and then some.
“Thank you,” I said to Elias again, my emotions too stirred up for me to want to take the conversation in another direction, and drifted back toward the school.
The one upside to restarting from scratch every time the staff felt I was becoming too much of a nuisance was that I got to skip a certain amount of work due to theoretically being a newbie. Composition class could be as harrowing as anything else the school threw at us, with Professor Hubert’s constant encouragement that we “dig deep” into her themes that always touched on horrible moments from our pasts. From the reactions I’d seen when a student’s offering disappointed her by sticking to less fraught ground, she punished those failures with a stomachache—or maybe worse.
During today’s class, as she had everyone except me go up and share their tales of treasured objects that’d been broken, I eyed her as she watched each speaker. She really did light up to a sickening extent whenever any hint of anguish came into the student’s expression or voice. You’d have thought she delighted in that misery.
Maybe she did.
Violet, who’d ended up in the same class as me for this iteration, went up to deliver her piece last, telling the story in her unexpectedly sweet voice of how she’d once dropped a piece of pottery she’d spent several art classes working on, and her classmates had done nothing but laugh while she’d swept up the shattered pieces. I might not have thought that attempting to blow them up was a proportionate response, but they did sound like jerks. The scarred girl kept her words steady, but her fingers gripped her notebook tight enough to crease the cover.
Hubert beamed at her when she’d finished. “Good, very good, Miss Droz. That wraps up our time here. Make sure you all bring open minds and willing pens to our next class.”
I dawdled in picking up my purse and fitting my notebook into it, giving my classmates a chance to leave like I had in Math earlier. Then I ambled over to Professor Hubert’s desk near the door. It took a concentrated effort to relax my grasp on my purse strap.
Sucking up to people wasn’t really my strong point. Over the years, I’d learned to be a little more careful about saying exactly what I was thinking, but that was a far cry from actively buttering up a teacher who was probably psychotic and also not entirely human.
The professor glanced up at my approach. Her hand darted over the heap of cocoa-brown hair styled haphazardly on top of her narrow face. Her gaze turned piercing.
“This was a really interesting class,” I said quickly, launching into the best spiel I could come up with before she could assume other intentions. “I’ve never seen a teacher get people thinking so much about their experiences. It seems like a great way to bring out our writing skills.”
I didn’t think Hubert cared about our actual skills at all, only about mining whatever angst she could, but she brightened a little even though her eyes stayed wary.
“I do try my best,” she said. “You’ll have the chance to experience the process yourself if you stick with us.”
I let out an awkward laugh. “I’ll admit I’m a little nervous about that, but I’m also kind of looking forward to seeing what comes out. Do you… have any tips for how to pick a topic that fits the theme and makes the most impact?”
Her expression was starting to relax. “Actually, I do. For the most part, it’s about letting your emotions guide you rather than your thoughts. The logical side of you will want to avoid unpleasant recollections. If you can ignore that and simply sift through your memories to see what provokes the strongest response, that should guide you well.”
“Ah.” I widened my eyes as if struck by a revelation. “That’s where people went wrong today, isn’t it? Some of them talked about situations that hadn’t affected them all that much, and then the stories fell flat.”
“Exactly.” Hubert looked downright pleased now. “It seems you have a good instinct for this sort of work already.” Her fingers slid along her neck, fiddling with a gold chain I hadn’t noticed before beneath the high collar of her blouse. A charm flashed at the V above the top button: a bird with its wings spread in flight. I only saw it for a second, and then she jerked her hand away, making it drop back out of sight.
“I guess I’ve always been interested in how our past shapes who we end up becoming,” I said, and decided I’d laid it on thick enough for one day. Time to slip in the offer I’d been leading up to and get out of here. “It’d be cool to see how you decide on the order of themes and that sort of thing—even the ones from before, so I’m not getting a sneak peek at what’s coming up in class—if you ever have time for that. But I’ll get out of your hair now.”
“Well, I suppose we could see about that,” Hubert said, and even gave me a slight wave as I stepped out of the classroom.
I resisted the urge to shake off the tension that had been building inside me. When I turned toward the staircase, I found that Violet had lingered near the banister. She was standing close enough to the classroom doorway that she’d probably heard that entire conversation.
She considered me with her hazel eyes: the one on the left surrounded by regular olive skin, the one of the right partly buried in the mess of half-healed burns. Her punishment for her crimes seemed to be that some of those wounds never totally healed. A couple of patches glared raw under the second-floor chandelier.
“What do you think you’re doing, newbie?” she said, her melodic voice low enough to be almost menacing.
I stared right back at her, wondering how much I’d be screwing myself over if I let on how much I remembered, starkly aware of the power flowing through the rooms around us from its source two stories below.
“Is there some rule against talking to the professors?” I asked. “It’s not as if anyone else has been all that helpful since I got here.”
“There’s talking and then there’s making a
fool of yourself.”
I caught myself before a totally snarky comment could slip out, although the one that did emerge might not have been that much wiser. “I don’t know. I think what would be totally foolish is trying the same old thing over and over expecting to get a better result this time.”
Her eyes twitched. Violet was pretty sharp—she’d probably caught the implication that I wasn’t just talking about the two days I’d spent here so far.
Before she could push any harder, I strode past her and down the stairs. I could use some space to breathe while I waited to see if any of the seeds I’d planted in the last couple of days would grow into something real.
Chapter Six
Ryo
The guy at the slick black table next to mine knifed over to vomit into his sink. The putrid smell of half-digested food and stomach acid rose up to join the horrible bouquet already emanating from the table in front of him, where another of our classmates was now simply clutching her belly with a pained expression. The girl in front of me was shaking with erratic spasms that had nearly knocked her off her stool.
And our Tolerance teacher, Professor Marsden, was watching this all with pursed lips and an approving gleam in her eyes.
The guy next to me tossed back the mixture of chemicals he’d been instructed to combine, his shoulders rigid. I was next in line after him—time to get started.
I sucked a breath through my mouth, which didn’t do much to reduce the stink, and focused on the instruction sheet in front of me. After three years here at Roseborne, I’d gone through a full page of “observational exercises” and was now heading toward the end of the second set. This one involved three different test tubes of unknown liquids, a sugar-cube-like chunk of some grainy substance, and a packet of pale blue powder.
