Bertrum didn’t appear to appreciate the point, but Rake wasn’t wrong. We would have stood there until lunch if we’d left the task in Bertrum’s hands, and what was really getting his goat was that he knew it.
Rake kept moving. Bertrum knew where we were headed, but Keegan and I had no idea. I kept looking for a view of Paranormal Public, but I couldn’t see it through the buildings and the trees, not to mention the fence. I was surprised that the town felt so removed from the school. I had imagined them right in the middle of each other, but that didn’t turn out to be the case.
“Just wait until this is a college town like all the other college towns, and the eighteen-year-olds will be getting stopped by real police for different reasons than we were today,” said Rake, chuckling to himself as he said it.
“I’m seventeen,” I said.
“I didn’t mean you. Obviously you’re never going to get into trouble for anything,” said Rake, his amused grin returning.
Bertrum snorted. “There,” he said, pointing to an unassuming building that stood alone, apart from its nearest neighbors. It looked brand new, as if it had been freshly set in place that very morning. Footsteps made patterns in the dirt; apparently no one had had time to plant grass or lay sod since the building had opened.
“Awfully depressing-looking,” said Keegan.
“Well, it doesn’t have to be pretty to function and produce Through Ports, now does it?” said Bertrum. He pulled his suit jacket together and straightened his shoulders. Rake again suppressed the urge to laugh.
“Just wait,” said Bertrum. “You won’t be laughing once we’re inside.”
Rake rolled his eyes as Keegan and I followed Bertrum, while Bertrum bowed his head, his chin coming into close contact with his shoulder. “Sip told me that it is not always advisable to throw my weight around. Even if I believe that I am in the right, sometimes it is best to sit quietly.”
“That must really kill you, right?” Rake smirked. But the exchange was interrupted by the fact that we were now inside the building.
The offices didn’t fit at all with the paranormal world I had come to know; they were strange and sterile and they reminded me of robots. I glanced at Rake and Bertrum, but they didn’t seem to think there was anything odd or out of place. Clearly they had both been here before, or at least Bertrum had. This project was his baby, and he was immensely proud of both the idea and the execution.
“The new Power of Five logo is looking good,” said Rake with approval. I had the impression he was trying to pay Bertrum a compliment, but Sip’s assistant was too lost in his own personal cloud of grumpiness to notice or care.
“Why did they redesign it?” Keegan asked. He had been turning his head back and froth, trying to take everything in. He had spent even less time in the paranormal world than I had, and he seemed to be finding everything about Surround fascinating. He didn’t want to miss anything, even the unaccountable emptiness of the TP office.
“A fresh paranormal world required an updating of the logo?” Rake mused, clearly trying to get Bertrum’s goat. “A rebranding, if you will?”
“Marketing the world, one new logo at a time,” said Keegan, shaking his head.
Bertrum was quiet for so long that I didn’t think he was going to answer. In fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had gotten down on his hands and knees and used a microscope to examine the carpet, so concerned did he look with the state of the TP office.
“Of course the Quest government needs to be marketed. She’s a politician. She must be liked, or she will not be able to continue the good work that she does and that we all believe in so strongly. Branding is everything. One must have something to believe in. Symbols are that something.” It was only then that I noticed the faded purple color of the logo.
“In other words, Sip wanted a new beacon of hope,” Rake translated. He gave Bertrum a slightly exasperated look, but he didn’t say anything further.
“I bet she thought that’s what the citadel would be,” I mused. Hunters had blown that up.
As soon as we were inside the door, the woman who seemed to be running the office leaped up from her chair and disappeared into a back room. Sitting smack dab in the middle of her desk was a memo stamped with an official seal. At the top it read, in letters so big I could read them from across the room: “To all paranormal government identification personnel.”
Intrigued, I moved closer to the desk to see if I could read the rest of the document. It wasn’t hard, and I wasn’t the only interested party; my companions edged toward the desk too. In smaller type the document continued, “Hunters are to be denied official documentation. If a Hunter presents himself or herself please remain calm. There is no benefit to confronting a Hunter . . .”
No duh, I thought. But reading about the conflict in the paranormal world couched in that bloodless officialese made me realize something I hadn’t thought about before. It was funny, and a little sad, that the only inter-type cooperation that was going on in the paranormal world was among the bad guys. As in, Hunters seemed to be coming from all the paranormal types – except for elementals, of course. Somehow, they got along well enough to put aside their differences in support of a common goal, in ways that the paranormals on the side of the Quest government had so far not been able to do.
The memo continued: “Hunters can be any paranormal type. There is no test that can be administered” – they did love their tests here in a Bertrum brainchild office, didn’t they? – “to judge whether any given paranormal is in possession of a nasty personality. Officials are to use their own judgment when denying TP.”
“Did you write that?” said Rake, pointing to the paper and looking at Bertrum. The presidential assistant’s eyes flared, and even though it wasn’t his desk, he moved a stack of papers to hide the memo.
“That is none of your business,” he sniffed. “At least we’re doing something to fight the Hunters, even though they cannot possibly be a serious threat.”
“Don’t start that again,” Rake groaned. “Someone helped Charles attack the Citadel.”
“There will always be radicals,” said Bertrum. “And opposition. That doesn’t mean they are organized, and it doesn’t mean that all Bounty Hunters, the best of whom is the uncle of the current darkness premier, have become dangerous.”
Just then the woman who belonged to the desk bustled back in, saying breathlessly, “Sorry, it took me longer that I thought it would. Funniest thing . . .” She was holding two multi-colored and very thin strips of wood and shaking her head prettily as she came back into the room. A sharp elbow to my ribs made me look at Keegan, one of whose eyes was on our escort. The woman sashaying toward us had turned Bertram bright red the instant she appeared, so that his face was suddenly the same color as her lipstick. Her tight dress didn’t leave much to the imagination, even though there wasn’t any exposed skin. Keegan himself swallowed hard. Rake was the only one of them who was immune to the woman’s charms.
“Was something wrong?” Bertrum squeaked out, sounding concerned and more than a little like a love-sick poodle. “All of the TPs should be ready to go when the students arrive,” he added, sounding sterner once he had settled into lecture mode. “We can’t get backed up with details or mistakes. We have a very small window in which to get everyone checked in, Ms. Cernal.”
The pretty Ms. Cernal faltered, but only for a second. “Yes, everything’s just fine,” she said with a bright smile. “Each of you hold out your right arms, please.” She smoothly skated over whatever mistake had taken place in the back room, and given how widely Bertrum was smiling, I wasn’t even sure he remembered that there might have been one.
“Yes, well, wonderful,” he said.
Rake coughed loudly.
“Something in your throat?” Bertrum asked.
“No, nothing like that,” the big vampire said, smiling, which made Ms. Cernal melt a bit.
Meanwhile, Keegan’s arm shot out as if from a cannon. He grinn
ed like an idiot at Ms. Cernal and said, “I’ll go first,” as if it wasn’t already obvious that he wanted to.
Ms. Cernal was pretty, but she wasn’t my type. I just didn’t care, so I had no objection to Keegan going first. Ms. Cernal gave him the same bright smile she had been flashing since we walked in, then applied the colorful wood to his arm. Keegan’s nose twitched and he said, “I’m usually a baby about stuff like that, but that wasn’t so bad.”
“Oh, like I said, it’s no big deal,” Ms. Cernal said, still smiling.
Keegan nodded back, and now it was my turn. I didn’t like this at all.
“I thought I was just going to be holding a piece of paper,” I said to Bertrum. “I don’t want this to mess with my magic.”
“You can’t mess with your power,” said Bertrum. “Besides, this is government-sanctioned. Sip’s government.”
“Yeah, she wouldn’t have sanctioned it if she’d had to do it herself,” I said with assurance. Ms. Cernal waited expectantly through this exchange, which surprised me a bit. Normally when Sip’s name was thrown around on a casual basis, other paranormals had a reaction, but Ms. Cernal didn’t look impressed.
“I’m sure the paranormal president thinks this is wonderful technology,” she said.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I said. Then I took a deep breath and rolled up my sleeve, revealing one pale arm. Keegan was right, the application didn’t hurt. Breathing a sigh of relief that it was over, I rolled my sleeve back down.
“It was very nice to meet both of you,” she smiled. “Best of luck at Paranormal Public University this fall.”
Chapter Seven
Bertrum hurried off after the TP office visit, saying he had urgent business to attend to. Rake was so happy to be rid of him, he didn’t even make a sarcastic comment. The big vampire then took us in hand and headed straight to Public.
We had no trouble using our TPs to get into the grounds. One of the new features of the reopened university was a fence that ran all the way around the campus, reinforced by the Power of Five. There was one gate, at which two large guards checked our TPs and let us through without incident. But as Keegan and I stepped ahead to enter the campus, Rake stopped.
“You aren’t going to come in?” I asked. I had expected him to visit with Charlotte, and I was surprised that he was saying good-bye at the gate instead, as if he had never intended to come any further.
“I’d love to, but work calls and there are artifacts to find,” he said. With a smile and a nod he was gone, and Keegan and I were left to enter on our own.
There were several other students passing through the gate right then, but they pointedly ignored us. “What makes fallen angels so cool, anyway?” Keegan asked.
“I think it’s me,” I said wearily. “Ever since it became public that Keller married Charlotte in a secret ceremony, they’ve been angrier than ever with him. They think he chose her over the fallen angel way.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Keegan. “Love is love.”
The trip and the TP office had taken so long that we barely had time to put our stuff in our rooms before the opening ceremony and dinner. I didn’t want to miss any of it, not least because I was famished; we hadn’t eaten at all on the journey. But also, President Valedication would be making his opening remarks, and I wanted to hear Dobrov speak.
“See you soon,” said Keegan with excitement. I agreed and hurried off to drop my bags in Astra.
The dorm looked familiar with its five stone towers: blue, green, red, and brown, plus the black one in the middle. It looked an awful lot like home. I had pelted Charlotte with questions about what my living situation would be like, but she had sidestepped them all, merely saying that as soon as I got to campus I should take my stuff to the dorm I knew so well. Now I did as the last elemental suggested and returned to Astra.
Chapter Eight
I was aware of being blazingly hungry, but what I hadn’t noticed in the excitement of arrival was that I was also extremely tired. I found my room in Astra with no trouble, dropped my bags, and told myself I’d just sit down for a few minutes before changing out of my travel-worn clothes for dinner. That was my plan, anyhow; what actually happened was that I nodded off to sleep. It wasn’t a deep sleep; I tossed and turned as though I was still on the road. But it was deep enough for a dream.
My dreams lately were getting stranger, going from death to witches to something else entirely. This time I saw a man, thin and with a well-trimmed beard. Everything about him spoke to exactitude and a desire for order. In short, from his pressed collar to his perfectly shined buttons he was a neat freak. His eyes were clear, with surrounding pools of black. It didn’t surprise me that there were no laugh lines in his face; I would have been shocked if this paranormal knew what a joke was.
On his breast was a nameplate. William Fallgrabber came from a long line of protocol officers. He worked for the government as a poetic accompaniment to the government’s important rules and regulations. He cared deeply for the law and for making sure it was followed to the letter. He had learned these habits of mind and action from his father, who had learned them from his father before him. The family tradition was to help and serve. As a legacy, he was better equipped than most for the post at Paranormal Public University. When he received it, he thought his life’s joy had been realized. Never had he experienced such an honor as he did on that day.
Of course, he had known that the post was coming open. He knew they couldn’t just restart Public, the most revered and respected of paranormal universities, without a protocols officer, especially with the divisive character of the hybrid Dobrov Valedication at the helm. No matter what else was happening in the world, protocols must be followed.
For years Fallgrabber had labored on obscure projects, always hoping for the recognition he knew he deserved. Now he had finally received his due. His head held high, his shoulders straight, his eyes forward, he reviewed The Manual, the book of protocols that had been added to and updated throughout the years. He had the same copy his grandfather had carried, with annotated updates, of course. His prized possession, his copy of The Manual was one of only a handful left in the world; the others had been lost long ago. His was the first Manual of Protocols for paranormals and he carried it as he would have carried fragile glass.
In my dream he was reading out loud from the book: Deep breaths for calm. You are the code. You are vitally important. Without you, the paranormal world would crumble. You hold the fate of any and all paranormal in your hands, in these words, in these pages. This is all and everything. Good luck good sir, and may the paranormal gods always look upon you with an eye to the straightness of your tie.
Somehow, in dream fashion, I knew that the last bit had been added by his grandfather. He read it whenever he felt as if he was losing his way and moving too far from the Protocols in the Manual.
I woke with a start and glared around my room. I knew who to blame for that dream, but not what the point was. Martha, the embodiment of Public’s power, must have wanted me to know something about this William Fallgrabber, but why she wanted that I had no idea. I threw off the covers. It was time to go to dinner.
President Valedication did not particularly want to address large crowds of students. He wasn’t much for speaking in public – he preferred writing – but it had been perfectly clear when he accepted the post at Paranormal Public that speaking to large numbers of paranormals was part of the deal. He had to speak with students, professors, staff, donors, alums, and many other paranormals, not to mention the government officials who were helping to get the school restarted.
According to Charlotte, he had decided that if he was going to do it he should do it right, so he had signed up for an elaborate training for public speakers where among other exercises he had practiced putting on his imaginary bravery cloak and standing up in front of an auditorium full of students.
On our first evening at Public, when he stood up in front of all of us, he looked like a se
asoned professional. I would never have guessed that he needed bravery and a vision of himself as some other paranormal in order to stand straight in front of us, his hands resting calmly at his sides and his eyes drifting placidly around the room.
Finally, he took a breath. He was ready.
“Good evening, and welcome to the inaugural class at the rebirth of Paranormal Public University. It is a new era, and I am proud that we are gathered here together.” He paused for a moment to allow the polite applause to die down.
“You will notice that you were all assigned seats. That was intentional. Get comfortable at the tables where you’re currently sitting, because you will be at them all semester, maybe for all your years here.”
I saw grumblings go up around the hall and couldn’t blame some of the paranormals; many of them had come in with lifelong friends with whom they were not sitting. I felt lucky to be sitting next to Keegan, all the more since I knew virtually no paranormals my own age. Taking note of the discontent among the students, I also took the chance to glance at some of the professors. Many wore robes, but a few didn’t. One stood out to me, a thin man with clear eyes. With some surprise, I realized who he must be, but Dobrov was still talking and I couldn’t keep my attention on the thin man for long. I quickly forced my eyes back to Public’s president.
“I guess this means we’re in the same group,” Keegan said quietly. I nodded. Small blessings. I crossed my arms over my chest and waited.
“You will have classes with your group,” continued Dobrov, “and you will eat with your group. You will also have classes with other members of your dorm, since obviously there are skills that vampires, for instance, can learn, that others never can.” Slight murmurs went up again and some of the paranormals looked relieved. Most of the groups and pairs of friends who’d come in together were obviously from the same dorms.
President Valedication went on. “Your group will be your everything. If you have a problem, you will go to your group, who will all be from your own year. In rebuilding the university, we did make the choice to have sophomores, juniors, and seniors here as well as first year students, but they will be on an accelerated program and very busy. Many have been keeping up with their education to some extent and will have tests to take. Only those of you Starting will not have to go through the rigors of these tests. Be relieved. They will not be easy, because we do not allow you to say you’ve gotten a degree from Paranormal Public without doing the work. Trust me, you will do the work.”
Elemental Havoc (Paranormal Public Book 11) Page 5
