by Sadie Moss
I even have time to do something as boring and regular as go to the infirmary and talk to one of the healers about birth control. She gives me a potion I’ll have to take once a month, and that’s that.
As I leave the now too-familiar infirmary building, a little thrill makes butterflies flap in my stomach. The guys and I talked, and none of us are interested in inviting anyone else into our relationship or exploring our options outside of it. We’re all together, exclusively, so now that I’m on the potion, there’s really no need for extra protection. Plus, the whole smuggling condoms around in every pair of pants I own thing is getting a little ridiculous.
On a Saturday morning in early February, I call Maddy to check up on her.
“Your school sounds calmer than mine for once,” she jokes when I finish relaying everything to her.
“What do you mean?”
I’m lying in Asher’s bed, propped up on pillows, letting him try to change the color of my magical toenail polish for some kind of project on the use of refracted light in enchanted objects.
No, I don’t get it either, I just let my boyfriend turn my toenails pink and don’t ask questions.
“The whole Unpredictable issue is really ramping up here,” she says. “I mean, for you guys, it must kind of be quieter since you’re all Unpredictable and you know where you stand, right? But here it’s like—like the school’s split in two or something.”
“Are you okay? Do you feel safe?”
Maddy’s fellow students know I’m Unpredictable. She made a point of telling them, letting them know she’s proud of me and accepts me, but now I almost wish she’d kept it under wraps. I don’t think any of her classmates, even the most virulently anti-Unpredictable, would go after her when I’m the one they hate, but… you can never be sure.
If my sister gets hurt because of me, oh, you bet I’m burning down the motherfucker who did it, and I’m taking the rest of the world down with me. You don’t touch my baby sister.
“I should be asking you that!” Mads protests. “You’re Unpredictable and I’m not. It’s fine, just a lot of stress. Everyone’s tempers are really high. The one good thing is that the people who hate Unpredictables might be getting louder, but so are the people who support them. Justin, the friend I told you about—he led a sit in at lunch to protest the anti-Unpredictable movement.”
My sister’s voice changes when she speaks about Justin. I don’t think she even notices it, but she gets a little more high-pitched when she mentions him, and her voice gets a little strained, like she’s struggling to control it and keep it from becoming all giggly and noticeable.
Newsflash: I raised that kid. She can’t have a thought without me knowing about it.
But I let it slide. I’m sure as hell not one to talk about bottling up and denying having feelings for someone, and Maddy might still be unsure if she wants to pursue anything with this Justin guy—which is a good thing, because first I need to interrogate him and run a background check. Maybe she doesn’t want to talk about it until she sorts out her own feelings.
Whatever her reasons for holding back, I trust her, and I’m going to wait and let her tell me about Justin when she’s ready. Until then, my big sister instincts lie dormant.
Waiting.
Ready.
We talk for another twenty minutes about random, stupid stuff and then say goodbye. As I hang up, Asher finally pulls away from my feet, muttering something about divergence and… I don’t even know what the last word is. Chroma-something.
“Thanks for holding still,” he says, jotting down some notes on his notebook.
“That’s what she said,” I quip, waggling my eyebrows.
He gives me a fond but exasperated look.
Cam bursts in, dumping his backpack on the floor by his bed. He had a morning study session with some people from one of his senior seminars. “You feeling up for a run, Sin?”
On school days, we get up early for our runs, but I like to sleep in on Saturdays, so Cam and I haven’t gone out yet today.
“Yeah, sure.”
I crawl toward the end of the mattress and give Asher a kiss before hopping off the bed to grab my running clothes.
We take the path that leads toward the weird ruins again. I still don’t know what they are—or were—but I like this path a lot. It feels nice and remote. Private. Like there’s nobody else in the world except me and Cam.
We’re both in a competitive mood, pushing a little harder, a little faster, trying to out-edge each other. Cam grins breathlessly at me as we set a hard pace, and I grin right back.
Exercise helps clear my brain, but it doesn’t stop my mind from wandering a little as we run past the ruins and continue on down the path, going farther than we did last time. I glance back over my shoulder at them as they recede into the distance behind us.
Why are those ruins here? What were they supposed to be?
I mean, they fit the atmosphere of the Griffin campus pretty perfectly. This whole place has sort of an ancient, otherworldly vibe, and Wellwood Hall definitely looks like a magical school. It’s like someone combined a 14th century Scottish castle with Versailles and then added a haunted Victorian manor house for good measure—there’s no rhyme or reason to it. Maybe the same architect who built the school building started other projects around campus that never got finished.
We push ourselves past the ruins, and the path slopes upward, making for a hell of a run. My lungs are burning and so are my legs, each breath of cold air stinging—but I love it.
We reach a fork where the path starts to merge into another, more popular path, and our footsteps slow.
“Want to turn around?” Cam asks, breathing heavily.
“Probably a good idea.” I put my hands on my lower back and stretch, letting my heart rate slow a little.
“Race you back,” he offers, a twinkle of excitement glinting in his gorgeous blue eyes.
I grin. “Oh, you are so on.”
We each take off, our feet pounding the earth, but for once my size is in my favor. I’m littler and faster than Cam, who’s built like a fucking linebacker, and I pull ahead. The downhill slope we’re on now helps, and my body gets to that point where I have to keep running to maintain my momentum, or I’m going to go head over heels and kill myself.
Okay, maybe not literally kill myself, but at least eat shit.
The ground beneath my feet evens out, and I head for the clearing, pumping my arms a little harder as—
What the fuck?
I skid to a halt, and a second later—before I can even think to shout a warning about my sudden stop—I feel Cam slam into me from behind, knocking the wind out of me.
His arm is around my waist in an instant, holding me up and keeping us both from falling over.
“You okay?” he pants, craning his neck to take a look at my face. “What happened? Was it a deer?”
I point behind him, because really, there aren’t words.
Cam turns around, and his jaw drops open.
The ruins have grown… taller. Another layer of stone has been added to them.
Those stones look heavy, and we were only gone for, what, twenty minutes, maximum? A team of workers probably couldn’t manage that, and if they did, we would’ve heard or seen them. Even now, the clearing is eerily silent. I can’t even feel the winter breeze.
My skin crawls, an icy tingle running up my spine, and I grope for Cam’s hand, squeezing it hard.
Something very strange is going on here.
Chapter 9
Thank God pretty much everyone who works at Griffin Academy lives on campus. It’s so isolated here that the staff, administrators, and professors can’t just live in town and drive up for classes. It would be way too much effort to get here every day.
And it means I know where Hardwick lives—in a special house on the southwest side of campus designated for the dean. It looks kind of like an English cottage, and even though it’s sort of on the outskirts of the mai
I’ve never asked him about it, but I’m pretty sure Hardwick’s an avid gardener. His rose garden is huge, although right now all of the flowers are covered against the cold. It’s kind of cute, and it reminds me that our professors do have lives outside of taking care of us students.
Not right now, though.
Weekend or not, Hardwick needs to know what we just saw.
Cam and I rush up the path to the door and bang on the heavy wood. “Dean Hardwick?” Cam calls.
The door opens, and Hardwick stands there in, of all things, a cozy sweater and jeans. He blinks at us, his brows drawing together. “Elliot. Cameron. What can I do for you?”
This is the most casual I’ve ever seen the older man look, except for the night we found Roman standing over Trevor’s body in the men’s dorm. Hardwick usually wears three-piece suits at the school. Seeing him outside of “dean mode” throws me for a second, but then I shake my head and step forward.
“Ah, we—um—I think there’s something strange going on in the woods.”
Hardwick straightens up at once. “Come in.” His voice takes on its usual authoritative tone.
The house is cozy inside, with what looks like a cat bed in front of the fireplace, and a pile of Dean Koontz thrillers on the coffee table next to some copies of National Geographic.
“Please excuse the mess,” Hardwick says, ushering us toward a comfy-looking couch. “Now, sit down and tell me exactly what happened.”
Cam and I take a seat, perching on the edge of the sofa as we relay what we saw—how we stumbled upon the ruins on our earlier run, and how the stones somehow had another layer added to them today. Hardwick listens patiently, and as I say the words out loud, I start to worry that they sound crazy. Is this really the kind of thing we needed to disturb him on a Saturday for? An old ruin? A stack of rocks in a circle?
But when we stop speaking, the dean doesn’t laugh at us. His expression is serious as he nods. “Thank you for informing me. I’ll get a team on it right away. You two should stay here for now; I’ll return shortly.”
Well, all right then. If you insist.
He leaves us in the cozy living room and shuts the front door gently behind him as he goes to gather his team.
The owner of the cat bed turns out to be a gorgeous gray tabby named Cleopatra—at least, that’s what the tag on her collar says—and she loves me and hates Cam.
I lord it over him until Hardwick comes back with Tamlin and a few others in tow. Tamlin shoots me a curious glance as we gather outside the dean’s house, but neither she nor any of the other professors are laughing at us either.
Guess with all the shit that’s gone down over the past few semesters, anything out of the ordinary is taken seriously.
“If you could show us to the stones, please.” Hardwick gestures for us to precede them down the path.
We lead the group out to the woods, which takes a little while now that we’re leading a large group and not running at top speed. I half-expect something else to have changed while we were gone—either something sort of mundane like another row of stones being added on, or something horrible and macabre like a dead goat head mounted on one of the carved gray rocks.
Instead, the stones are just standing there. The added layer still rings the top, but nothing else is different.
“These aren’t supposed to be here,” Professor Goldstein says at once, adjusting her cat-eye glasses. “No building has ever stood here before, and there aren’t any rocks like this nearby. However they got into this clearing, they came from a long way away.”
Tamlin draws a small wand-like device from her pocket and uses it to start drawing some runes in the air, running her own kind of magical tests—probably a field version of the tests she ran on me last semester to see if I was the one stealing magic from people.
The beautiful, mocha-skinned professor has always been kind to me, even when she’s had every reason to be envious or bitter. I know she still has feelings for Roman, even though she hides it well. And here I am, this random girl, a student even, and I’m the one he wants to spend forever with instead of her.
That’s got to sting.
But Tamlin has accepted it with poise and class, and she even tried to give me some advice about how to handle Roman’s darker side. I like her. If we weren’t professor and student, I feel like maybe we could be friends. She’s completely unlike me, but hey, the principle of opposites attract works for friends as well as lovers, right?
After a few minutes of walking around the stones, drawing her runes, checking her equipment, and muttering, Tamlin walks back to us. Professors Perkins and Vela stand ready, probably called in to back up Tamlin if the stones did something dangerous like try to leech her blood.
Can stones even do that? I shiver. Who knows.
“Okay.” She turns the short rod sideways and takes a deep breath as she reads over the results. “It looks like the structure itself isn’t dangerous. It isn’t doing anything. But magic is being done to it. Someone or something is making this happen, making the stones gather here.”
“Can you tell us anything else?” Hardwick questions.
Tamlin looks disappointed in herself as she shakes her head. “Not at this time, sir. No.”
The dean sighs, looking like someone’s just placed a heavy weight on his shoulders. Then he straightens up and nods briskly. “Well, we don’t have time to waste then.”
Another assembly is called that afternoon, and right away, I can tell everyone’s expecting the worst. Probably wondering if another student was killed or had their magic stolen. Everyone’s on edge, and the relaxed mood that was starting to seep into campus has vanished completely.
I know it’s not my fault—Cam and I didn’t do this to the stones; we just found them, that’s all—but I can’t help but feel a bit responsible for ruining the mood. Of course, no one knows what the person behind this is planning to do with the rocks. It could be nothing. Maybe it’s just some weird side project a Griffin senior is doing to procrastinate on their final project. But somehow, I don’t think so. And if it is something sinister, then I know it’s a good thing Cam and I found it.
Still…
I sit with the three guys in our usual arrangement, while Roman gathers with the professors up on the stage behind Hardwick.
The dean looks extra put together today, like he’s trying to project an air of strength and calm. My heart goes out to him, honestly.
“Students, I’m sure you’re all wondering and very likely worrying about why I called you here,” Hardwick begins.
Speaking in a level voice, he explains where the stones are, how they were found, and the tests that were conducted.
“We’re cordoning off the area. No one is allowed to approach. We’re well aware how tempting it might be to want to get a closer look at something like this, but since we know so little about how or why they appeared, we can’t take any chances. We’re monitoring this closely. Nobody wants to close down the school, but if anything dangerous or threatening presents itself, that’s what we’ll have to do.”
Everyone in the crowd breaks out into whispers. There are seniors protesting that they can’t shut down the school when they’re so close to graduating, and there are freshmen and sophomores protesting that this is the only place they feel safe, and there are still others who are demanding that more aggressive action be taken and that the stones be removed from the school grounds.
Yeah, it’s kind of chaos.
No one’s yelling or shouting. I can tell the students want to be respectful, that they’re trying to keep their shit together—but they just can’t stop themselves from expressing their opinions and fears.
“It’s just stones in a circle,” one student whispers. “That’s nothing compared to the last time.”
“Silence, please,” Hardwick says, raising his hands. “I don’t want this academy to be shut down any more than the rest of you do. It is of utmost importance that Unpredictables have a safe haven to learn how to use and control their magic, and I believe in this school and in all of you. You and your predecessors have done Griffin Academy proud since this institution first opened its doors, and I’m well aware that there are no other training options for Unpredictables in the country.”
The auditorium goes quiet as the reality of his words sink in. Hardwick’s expression is pained, but he continues speaking into the silence.
“However, our number one concern is your safety. Taking care of you. And I made a promise to your parents and to each of you that when you were here, you would be safe from harm. So far I have failed at that. Students lost their lives a year and a half ago, nearly lost their lives again this past fall, and during the Trials, a fanatic sent one of our star students into a coma. I cannot, in good conscience, risk any of you further. Now…”
As Hardwick begins to wrap up, someone—one of the groundskeepers, I think—hurries through the crowd, down the aisle, and up to the stage. He whispers to Hardwick, and the dean’s face goes pale.
He straightens back up, gripping the podium in front of him with both hands. Even from where I’m sitting in the audience, I can see his knuckles going white. “Ah, my dear students, I’m afraid I’ve just had some further distressing news.”
“A dead body was found ritualistically sacrificed in the stone circle?” Cam whispers.
I elbow him, although I honestly don’t even know if he was joking or not.
“Two more stone circles have been found on school grounds,” Hardwick announces.
The crowd doesn’t erupt into whispers at that. In fact, everyone seems to be holding their breath.
It sounds so… harmless. Whoop-de-doo, a stone circle. Right?
But somehow, just hearing that these two new circles have appeared without warning, randomly, in our place of refuge…
It’s terrifying.
I look around and see that everyone nearby us is either pale or red in the face. A lot of people are holding hands tightly, either with friends or with their significant other. Tandy is gripping hard onto Erin and looks like she might faint. Even Alyssa, Cristina, and Megan are huddled together.
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