Paranormal Public

by Maddy Edwards

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sip was asleep when I got to my room. I was relieved because I had a lot to think about, and I knew that if Sip were awake, she would want an explanation of where I’d been all night. I couldn’t ignore that demons had appeared inside Public grounds. None of the professors had said anything to me about it, but I knew it was bad. In one of Professor Zervos’s lectures, he had explained how Public had strong protective spells around it, put there by the combined five powers. If the demons were breaking through those, we were all in trouble. The question was, how were they doing it? And why had the demon gone after two students? I wanted answers. I just wasn’t sure how to get them.

  The next morning I woke up to Sip shaking my shoulder. “Where were you last night?” she asked, sitting on the edge of my bed, just like she had in the Infirmary on my first day at Public. Her hair was tousled from sleep, and she still wore her nightgown.

  I pushed myself into a sitting position and told her everything that had happened the night before. She gasped and covered her mouth, but she let me finish without interrupting. When I got to the part about Keller teasing me because of the October formal, she slapped her hand to her forehead. “I totally forgot to remind you,” she said.

  “People have been mentioning it for weeks,” I said. “I’d just forgotten about it with everything else that’s been going on.”

  To my dismay Sip loved the idea of my spending even more time studying with Keller. “He’s the best,” she said. “You really couldn’t ask for someone better.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s at the top of his class,” said Sip, as if it was obvious. I hadn’t known that, but since he was so good at Dash it didn’t surprise me.

  “I wish you could be my tutor,” I told her.

  Sip laughed. “Yeah, but I don’t know enough. Keller’s a sophomore. I know he’ll help.”

  Now that I had seen a demon on campus, it felt as if everything had changed. But it hadn’t. My morning classes went by as usual. None of my professors had been among the ones who had found me the night before, and no one gave any sign that they knew that anything out of the ordinary had happened.

  There was one class, though, that wasn’t anything like the way it had been. Once I got there I kicked myself for not anticipating the changes. A History of Hellhounds and Demons was completely transformed.

  Many of the other students in the class were eyeing Professor Zervos with a mixture of wariness and worry. Usually when I came into class he was behind his desk, reading a paper or book, but not today. Instead, he was pacing around the room, moving furniture out of the way and barking orders at a couple of students who had had the misfortune of being asked to help him.

  Sometimes I forgot that Zervos was a vampire. Not today. His fangs were out. His skin was pale. He looked up and his bloodshot eyes locked on mine, then he went back to madly stamping around the room. I went to stand next to Lisabelle. My nerves were humming. She was against the wall, next to one of the windows, by herself. Keller hadn’t gotten there yet. He and his friends, Nate and Marcus, usually showed up right before class was about to start, or right after it had started. Not that he ever got in trouble for it.

  “Who lit a fire under his ass?” asked Lisabelle.

  “Don’t sugar coat it or anything,” said Lough, who had come to stand next to her. Lough had gotten over some of his fear of Lisabelle, even if he still shook a little whenever she addressed him directly.

  Lisabelle glared at him. “Zervos is acting crazy, and he was crazy before, so this is bad,” she informed him. “On second thought,” she said after a pause in which she stood there idly twirling her wand, “this is going to be great!”

  “Look, he’s even taking everything off the walls,” said Lough. All of the maps and weapons and scrolls that had hung around the room were being removed. Some of these objects professor Zervos placed carefully on top of his desk. Others he simply flung behind him.

  One of the students helping Zervos was Evan Drapper, the vampire Starter from our first night. As I watched, he fumbled a map of the eastern vampiric provinces from the fourteenth century, and it went clattering to the floor.

  Everything in the room came to a halt as we waited to see Professor Zervos explode at Evan’s clumsiness. It was a vivid reminder of the morning he had thrown Lough into a wall for asking a question. To our great shock, Professor Zervos simply looked at Evan and said, “Well, what are you waiting for? Pick it up and keep working!” He continued to charge around the room.

  Just before the bell rang Keller and his friends came sauntering in. I gave him a hard glance, but he looked just the same as he always did, tousled black hair framing clear blue eyes. He tilted his head toward Zervos and raised his eyebrows. I just shrugged.

  I forgot all about Keller when Professor Zervos swept dramatically into the center of the room.

  “Form a circle around me,” he ordered as he swept his black cloak more tightly around his body and glared at us.

  “Now,” he said. “I was advised against doing this, but I believe that circumstances call for it.” He paused, looking around at all of us as if he wanted us to realize the gravity of the situation. “You are already aware that the demons are a danger, but now they are getting stronger.”

  No one said a word, so Professor Zervos continued. “What worries me, and what worries other professors, is that none of you are learning practical ways to defend yourselves should you come across a demon.”

  His eyes flicked to Keller, who was standing between Nate and Marcus, leaning his shoulder against the wall. I couldn’t read Keller’s expression.

  “Which is why,” said Professor Zervos, “from this moment forward that is what this class seeks to teach you.”

  At Professor Zervos’s words a murmur went up around the room. I looked over at Lisabelle, standing motionless next to me, and saw that her face had gone paper white and her nostrils had flared. Possibly for the first time since I’d met her, she looked excited. An image of the demon flashed in my mind, and I wondered how excited she would have been to run into it last night. It should have been Lisabelle walking with Keller instead of me, I thought ruefully.

  “Quiet,” said Professor Zervos. He didn’t say it loudly, but sometimes quiet commands are more effective than yelling. Instantly, all noise stopped.

  “It is unlikely,” he said, “that any of you will run into demons. The school is very well protected.” Is it? – I couldn’t help but wonder.

  “And it is better protected by the day,” he continued, and this time I couldn’t help but think that his eyes had flicked my way. “But,” he continued, “you will not always be at school, and we may not always be this strong.” At that several students protested. For some of them, it seemed that it was still completely out of the realm of possibility to consider a time when the paranormals were in real danger from the demons.

  Professor Zervos ignored the interruption. “It is unlikely, but if we are to always expect the unexpected, we must be ready. We must be knowledgeable, and most of all, we must be ready to fight.”

  Many of the students were looking at Professor Zervos with the sort of rapt attention usually reserved for the chocolate display case in a candy store.

  “This school does an excellent job with the knowledge. We do an excellent job with your minds, teaching you how to think, giving you all the information you could possibly want,” he explained. “But there comes a time when knowledge may not be enough, because knowledge is only part of what you need. The other part, the physical part, is the main tool you will use to fight, be it with your fists” – he balled his hands in front of his face and shook them – “or with magic.” In the blink of an eye he was standing in front of Lough. Lough tried to step back, but he was against the wall.

  “Lough,” he said, “strangle your friend Lisabelle.”

  I felt like a weight had dropped onto my shoulders.

  “Yes, sir,” said Lough, in a colorless
tone that sounded nothing like the happy, kind Lough I knew. Lough turned to Lisabelle, who was glaring at Zervos, and reached for her neck.

  “Stop it,” I cried, jumping between them. “You can’t do that!”

  I had come face to face with my friend, but I hadn’t been prepared for what it would feel like to look into his eyes. They were blank and out of focus. When his eyes met mine I became dizzy and disoriented, staggering a little. I was dismayed when Professor Zervos caught hold of my arm.

  “I was not going to let him harm your friend,” he said. “The idea of anything bad happening to Lisabelle is too painful for me to even contemplate.” He fluttered his eyes. I scowled.

  “Don’t make me blush,” Lisabelle murmured. The only sign Professor Zervos gave of noticing Lisabelle’s mouthing off was the slight curl of his lip.

  He released my arm and I rocked on my feet for a second, then returned to stand next to Lisabelle. I looked at Lough. “Are you going to release him from that spell?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said Professor Zervos. With a snap of Zervos’s fingers Lough went staggering backward. He almost fell. His breathing came shallow and hard.

  “But I don’t want oatmeal for breakfast,” he cried, clutching his head. He looked around the room, and when he realized that he hadn’t just awakened and wasn’t alone in his dorm room, he went bright red. “What just happened?” he asked.

  “Professor Zervos attacked you,” said Marcus.

  “That’s right,” said Professor Zervos icily. “I attacked a student in front of a classroom full of students, and ordered him to attack someone else, and the only one of you who did anything to protect either of them was the magicless wonder over there, otherwise known as our probationary student Charlotte.”

  “If that’s his idea of a compliment I wish he’d keep them to himself,” I whispered to Lisabelle. She smiled a little and nodded.

  Professor Zervos shifted back into the middle of the room. “Volunteers?” he asked, looking around at all of us.

  When no one moved he repeated, “Volunteers?” Only it sounded like more of a threat than a question.

  “What are we volunteering for?” asked Keller. He hadn’t moved from the wall, and though his pose looked relaxed, I knew he wasn’t.

  “I’ll tell you exactly what you’re volunteering for, after you’ve volunteered for it,” said Zervos. “But since you so obligingly spoke up, you may be my first volunteer. Charlotte,” he said, looking back toward my group, “so kind of you to be my second.”

  Lisabelle sprang forward like an arrow released from a bow. “She didn’t volunteer.”

  “Lisabelle, it’s fine,” I muttered, conscious that everyone was watching.

  “It’s not fine,” Lisabelle hissed. “You don’t have a handle on your magic yet. Keller will kill you.”

  I held my breath. Keller wouldn’t hurt me. I didn’t think.

  “Are you going to take her place?” he asked. He reminded me of an attack dog about to pounce.

  I grabbed Lisabelle’s arm, trying to keep her back while I went forward. I could do this, and I wanted the chance to try. But Lisabelle shook me off. “I’m doing this,” she said. The look in her eyes stopped me in my tracks. “On the bright side, if I kill him, you won’t have to have him as your tutor anymore.”

  She stepped forward into the ring with Keller. Keller’s stance was easy, confident. He didn’t look worried to be facing one of the strongest mages on campus.

  Lough put his arm around me and said, “Don’t worry, Charlotte, there’s no oatmeal.”

  “Great, Lough, thanks,” I said, but my eyes were fixed on Professor Zervos. I wondered if he had planned this: that my friend and my tutor were about to fight.

  “This is bad,” I said to Lough, but he was too out of it to understand what I meant. What had just happened to Lough made me worry. If Professor Zervos could do that to him so easily, what could a demon who wanted to kill one of us do? It gave me a new perspective on what had happened the night before and how important it had been for me to be with someone like Keller, who could defend us. It also made me angry. I didn’t want to be some helpless Starter, unsure of her powers. I needed to be able to defend myself even if I was alone.

  Lisabelle faced off against Keller. I didn’t want to watch, but I forced myself to keep my eyes on my friends. Only for a moment did I look at Professor Zervos. What I saw sent waves of cold cascading down my spine.

  Professor Zervos’s eyes were bright with anticipation, and his breath came in sharp bursts. This battle excited him. As if a weight had been dropped into my stomach I realized that this was what he had wanted all along. He wanted Lisabelle, the only darkness mage in school, to get into a fight in his class. And who better than the model student of Public to fight with her?

  I tried to step into the middle to stop it, but Lough wouldn’t let me.

  “There’s nothing you can do now,” he said quietly.

  “Now,” said Professor Zervos, “the problem with demons is that they are very fast, hot, and unpredictable.”

  “That’s three problems,” muttered Tale, the vampire, but Professor Zervos was no longer listening to his students, he was lost in his own world. “Which means that I want these two” – he pointed to Lisabelle and Keller – “to fight without any rules.”

  Gasps went through the watching students. “But he’s a fallen angel,” someone cried. “And a sophomore. He’ll kill her.”

  The weight in my stomach made it hard for me to draw breath.

  Professor Zervos swept to the side, leaving Lisabelle and Keller alone.

  “Begin,” he said.