Paranormal Public

by Maddy Edwards

  Chapter Seven

  I looked around to see if the other students looked as uncomfortable as I felt, but most of them were vampires. Since Professor Zervos was also a vampire, they looked as relaxed and happy as ever. Besides Keller and Lisabelle, Camilla, the nasty pixie from breakfast, and Lough, Sip’s friend whose power I wasn’t sure of yet, were also in the class.

  “Can anyone tell me what darkness is?” asked Professor Zervos, his face twisted with amusement.

  Lisabelle’s hand shot up. Well, she would know, since she was a mage of darkness. Professor Zervos ignored her and kept looking around the room.

  Camilla, who had given me a dirty look when I came in, raised her hand.

  “Yes, Camilla?” Professor Zervos smiled. Apparently he liked Camilla. Could this class get any worse?

  “Darkness is all black magics. Every mage or vampire has some darkness and is therefore considered a threat to join the demons,” she explained, her dainty green hands folded neatly in front of her and a smile her face that was so smug I wished I could smack it off her.

  “And who are the demons?” asked Professor Zervos. He ignored the sort of squawking noise Lisabelle was making next to me.

  “Demons and hellhounds are the natural enemies of paranormals,” Camilla explained. “Hellhounds are loyal to demons. They are normally known as scouts who do a demon’s bidding, but they are dangerous. They are more powerful than any regular dog and are more a match for a werewolf,” she said. “They seek the powers of paranormals. If the paranormals are destroyed there will be no one to challenge the demons’ dominance.”

  “Exactly,” said Zervos. “Which is why we have been fighting them for centuries.”

  “Wait,” said Lough. He was sitting next to Camilla. “Aren’t we losing our fight against the demons at the moment?”

  Professor Zervos glared at him and Lough’s face got a shade redder. “We aren’t ‘losing’ exactly. We are just not as strong as we have been in the past. We….”

  “Why?” Lough interrupted. I could have told him that Professor Zervos didn’t like questions, or students, but Lough either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care. Why Zervos was a professor was beyond me.

  He growled. He was sick of Lough. With a flick of Zervos’s wrist Lough came flying out of his chair. With a cry he jerked back, and with a sickening smack he slammed against the back wall. “Because we do not have all five dorms at full strength. The loss of the elementals has fragmented the other paranormals,” he barked at Lough’s crumpled form.

  Silence hung in the room like a heavy weight.

  Lough slumped on the floor. Without looking at Zervos I got out of my chair and went to help my friend up. He was dazed, but conscious. “You’re pretty when you’re blurry,” Lough muttered to me. I wondered what he thought I looked like in focus.

  I was afraid to look over my shoulder at Zervos. Luckily, he was distracted.

  “Or really any strength at all,” Keller was saying. I glanced sideways at him. He sat back in his chair, looking relaxed.

  “Because, Keller Erikson, the Astra, or elemental dorm, is dormant. It is more difficult to maintain magical blocks against the demons without them,” said Professor Zervos. “Which you know very well.”

  “All five dorms have to work together?” Keller asked, sounding surprised. A flicker of a amusement moved across his face.

  Zervos ground his jaw together. “The paranormal powers complement one another,” he explained. “Without one, particularly one as potent as the wielders of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, as the elementals are, it is more difficult to fight off the demons. But do not fear, we have been fighting them off for many years without the elementals.”

  Lough started to ask what had happened to the elementals, which was exactly what I was wondering, but he didn’t get a chance to finish.

  Zervos was tired of the topic and cut him off, saying, “This is not what I had meant to discuss today. I simply wanted to give those of you who are dumber than wood an overview of what you will be up against. You will be expected to train hard, to learn your talents and specialties (assuming you each have one), and to learn them to perfection. Anything less could prove fatal.”

  “Now,” he said, stepping around his desk so that he could pace back and forth in front of us, “the demons have two classes, the Upper and the Lower. The hellhounds are loyal to both, but of course the wishes of the Upper take precedence.”

  I was busy scribbling this down madly when Professor Zervos said, “Here is an image of what a hellhound commonly looks like.” I finished writing and popped my head up to see the picture displayed across a large board at the front of the room. My eyes locked on the picture and I let out a loud scream.

  Instantly the room went silent. Lisabelle reached over and clapped her hand over my mouth, whispering “Don’t be pathetic” in my ear.

  Lisabelle smelled of wet wood and warm nights, and somehow it calmed me enough so that I tried to take a breath, but her hand was still covering my mouth. I pulled it away and sucked air into my deprived lungs, but I could feel waves of panic racing over me, and I tried to get them under control.

  When I finally looked at Professor Zervos, I saw that he was beside himself with rage. His eyes were bulging out of his head, and his face was turning a bright red color.

  He pointed an imperious finger towards the door. “Out,” he intoned. “Now.” At least he didn’t slam me into a wall.

  My face bright with shame, I gathered my things. Professor Zervos slammed the door open for me and I scurried through it and out into the hall.

  “If I have anything to say about it,” said Professor Zervos before he closed the door in my face, “you will never attend another day of classes at this school.”

  I felt the whoosh of displaced air as he closed the door in my face and left me standing alone. Once he was gone I sank against the wall and stared at the floor. The picture Professor Zervos had shown me was of the dog that had been following me for the last few days I’d been at home. Only Professor Zervos had called it a hellhound, not a dog. But that didn’t make any sense. I remembered the mist and my fear, I remembered feeling as if I was being followed, but I had never thought that it was anything paranormal. I had just thought that it was a stray dog that had taken a liking to following me around at night. Now I saw that my mother’s warnings of danger hadn’t all been crazy talk. Apparently everything my mother had told me was true.

  I wished she were around to help me. If she hadn’t died I wouldn’t be at this school without a clue about what was going on. But she was gone, and I had to figure it out on my own.

  Zervos’s class would be letting out soon, and I still had a full schedule of lessons for the rest of the evening. It was an odd schedule and one that would take some getting used to, but at the moment all I wanted to do was get through the rest of the day. Given how Zervos’s class had just gone I was pretty sure it was going to be a challenge.

  But the rest of the day didn’t go as badly as I had expected. The other professors were pleasant enough, and not one of them mentioned that I didn’t know my paranormal specialty and was on probation.

  Still, by the end of the day I was exhausted.

  At dinner that night I sat down next to Sip, with whom I hadn’t had one class all through the second half of the day. I was mortified when Lisabelle joined us and, before I could say a word to Sip myself, gave her a detailed recap of my screaming in the middle of class, everyone else’s shock, and Zervos throwing me out.

  Sip covered her mouth as she listened. “I can’t believe you screamed,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, I did,” I said dejectedly. “And Zervos will probably get me kicked out for sure now.”

  “He doesn’t have that authority,” said Lisabelle. “It’s not like screaming violates your probation.”

  Not wanting to talk about it, I asked, “What happened after I left?”

  “Nothing,” said Lisabelle, shrugging. “Camilla started to t
alk shit about you, and Keller finally told her to shut up.”

  “Keller didn’t strike me as that nice,” I said.

  “Telling someone to . . .” Sip couldn’t bring herself to say “shut up” so instead she said, “. . . do something like that isn’t nice.”

  “Don’t look now,” said Lisabelle, “But the round-faced boy is coming.”

  “You know his name is Lough,” said Sip, glaring at Lisabelle.

  “Yes, but his face is SO round,” said Lisabelle, laughing. Catching Sip’s stern glare she said, “Sorry. I’m sorry.” But she continued to grin.

  “What’s his talent again?” I asked Sip.

  “Dream giver,” said Lisabelle instantly. “Rare. Strong. He comes from a family of them, but it’s sort of a useless talent.”

  Sip looked ready to argue, but Lough had reached our table.

  “Hi,” he said, coming to a full stop and smiling around. He even smiled at Lisabelle, while she glared daggers back at him.

  “Mind if I join you?” he asked, oblivious to Lisabelle’s hatred.

  “Please do,” said Sip, scooting over so that he had room.

  “Thanks,” he said. “There’s only one other dream major and he’s always busy,” he said, pointing to a blond guy over in the corner. At that moment he had his face glued to a girl’s face and he didn’t appear to have any intention of coming up for air. “He has a girlfriend,” added Lough. “That would never happen in a high school cafeteria.”

  “Thank you, captain of the obvious,” Lisabelle scoffed. “What’s wrong with dating? Or, not dating?” Lisabelle’s eyes were locked on him.

  Lough went bright red. “Nothing,” he muttered.

  “Stop making him uncomfortable,” Sip chided Lisabelle.

  Lisabelle raised her black eyebrows and kept eating.

  “Are you okay?” Lough asked me. He looked genuinely concerned.

  “I’m fine,” I told him. “Thanks.”

  “Hellhounds are scary,” he said. “And thanks for earlier. You took a risk helping me.”

  “Yeah,” I said. It didn’t feel like I had taken a risk. It felt like I was the only student here who was a fish out of water. I was a dolphin swimming in a sea of sharks. There was no way I was going to tell him about the night Cale walked me home.

  Thinking of Cale reminded me that he and I still hadn’t had a chance to talk. I wanted an explanation for what he was doing at Public. I also wanted an explanation for why a hellhound had been following me. I looked around, but I didn’t see Cale anywhere. Instead I saw Keller, who was watching me again. I was tired of it. I had had a really long two days and nothing had gone well. Now this kid was always watching me and laughing with his other fallen angel friends. But I wasn’t something to be laughed at. College was hard enough without people you didn’t know giving you weird looks when they didn’t think you were paying attention.

  Making up my mind to do something about it, I pushed my chair back and stood up.

  “Excuse me,” I said to my friends. Lisabelle frowned at me, but Sip and Lough were busy talking to each other and barely acknowledged that I was leaving.

  I marched towards Keller. He was sitting with a group of his friends; I recognized two of them as guys I saw him with often. I’d had a class with each of them, and I knew that their names were Nate and Marcus. Nate was tall and thin, while Marcus was short and stocky.

  Keller watched me coming, but it took him until I was almost to his table to realize that I was headed right towards him. His smug smile faltered.

  I put my hands on my hips and said, “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

  His smile instantly returned. My irritation level skyrocketed.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, folding his hands in his lap.

  “I mean,” I said, “you’re always harassing me. Leave me alone!”

  “I’m not always harassing you. How am I?” He watched my face closely. His smiled broadened. “Right?”

  “Hey, Charlotte,” said Cale from behind me. I got the distinct impression that he wasn’t happy I was talking to Keller.

  “What?” I snapped. Then, realizing how rude I sounded, I said, “Sorry, long day.”

  “So I hear,” said Cale, eyeing Keller.

  “I can tell you from my firsthand experience that she handled herself admirably,” Keller offered. Somehow even that sounded like he was making fun of me. His smile had disappeared, though. He was about as happy to be talking to Cale as Cale was to be talking to him.

  “I just wanted to see when you wanted to get together and catch up,” said Cale, looking at me and ignoring Keller.

  “Um, yeah, any time,” I said, trying to smile.

  “How about breakfast tomorrow?” asked Cale. He had turned his back to Keller’s table and refused to look at him.

  “Sure,” I said. “That’d be great. I need to hear all about how you ended up here.”

  Cale’s face reddened. “Yeah, it’s not that interesting.”

  “You sure your girlfriend’s okay with you having breakfast with, well, a girl?” Keller asked, raising his eyebrows at Cale.

  “My girlfriend doesn’t control me,” said Cale, looking at an invisible dot somewhere on the wall behind Keller. I could see his chest puff out and his shoulders square as he said it.

  “Who’s your girlfriend?” I wanted to know. Given how Cale had acted around me, I had been picturing him as single.

  When Cale took too long to answer, Keller very casually said, “Oh, you don’t know? Camilla Van Rothson. His girlfriend is Camilla.”