The dae were rubbing off on me, especially the werewolves. I had picked up their habit of growling when annoyed. I had to admit it was pretty satisfying. I’d never have a deep voice; I was a soprano—or would be, if I could carry a tune in a bucket.
My bucket had a lot of holes. I thought my speaking voice was pleasant enough, a little smokey, and with a good range. Who needed to sing?
Music, like most things, belonged to the elite.
“Mommy?”
Woolgathering was becoming a bad habit. I sighed and showed Colby the cooler. “I got this so you can hide in the bigger bag if you need to. It should keep you nice and cool. It fits with plenty of room to spare. I don’t think anyone will go looking through my stuff, but if they do, hide in here for me, okay? It’s important, Colby. They’re collecting the more unique dae, and you are definitely not like most of the ones I’ve seen.”
If the dean found out I was hiding an exotic dae from him, I’d probably be expelled—or worse. My fate would be far kinder than the one my macaroni and cheese would face.
“Mommy,” Colby whined.
“You will hide in the bags or you don’t go tomorrow,” I said, setting the cooler inside the other bag and tossing them into the corner of the kitchen out of the way. “That’s final. I’m not letting you get turned into some stupid test subject for the elite.”
“Mommy.”
I decided it agreed so I wouldn’t have to try to have a very one-sided argument with it. “The elite run everything. They’re the bosses. People like me do what they say. Usually, you’re stuck with whatever caste you’re born into, but it can change. If you’re an elite because you’re rich, you better stay rich, or you’ll be kicked out of the caste. If you’re born into the elite caste, though, you stay that way for life. They’re the ones who really rule the roost.”
I still wasn’t sure if Kenneth had earned his wealth or if he had been born into it, but if Colby was going to be going with me, it needed to know about my boss. All things being equal, confessing my sins to a dish of macaroni and cheese ranked fairly low on the strange scale.
“It won’t necessarily be safe coming with me. Right now, the college has me interviewing dae who want an easy ride into the elite caste. Dae who are strong enough are being elevated. If the elite have all of the strongest dae, no one will be able to fight them, I guess. To make things even worse, I’m supposed to be doing some work for Kenneth, but once he finds out his stupid list burned yesterday, he’s going to be pissed. He’s not a nice guy, Colby. If Kenneth’s around, I don’t want him finding out about you.”
To Kenneth, Colby would either be in the way or a bartering chip against me. It was bad enough when he threatened me, so I tried to keep my relationships with others to a minimum.
I didn’t want to make manipulating me easy. I didn’t have the courage to tell Colby that, however.
Growling at my cowardice, I shook my head. I held my breath to cool my temper. “Kenneth deals drugs, and I find people who owe him money. I sniff out dirt for him. I’m one of his stupid little hound dogs.”
In so many ways, by ruining lives at his command, I was just as bad as my boss. No matter how often I said I didn’t bite at his command, I still barked and flushed out his prey. Most of his victims walked away with their lives, but enough didn’t.
My hands weren’t clean. Sometimes, I wondered if my allergies were punishment from some god for my sins. Many people believed in one god or another—usually one of the ones the elite approved of, although a few other religions still existed within the United States.
The smart believers, however, didn’t make a fuss about their spirituality. I certainly didn’t. My lack of faith was as much of a crime as a Catholic discussing their beliefs to the wrong person at the wrong time.
“Mommy?”
“Damn it, sorry, Colby. My head is in the clouds today. Kenneth is the biggest problem. He doesn’t have much in the way of patience, and I’ve been tied up with the college work. Once things quiet down, he’s going to be after my ass for trying to change castes under his nose. It’s not really a good idea to be associated with me right now.”
“Mommy.” The scorn in Colby’s voice surprised me.
“What? It’s true. If I push many more of Kenneth’s buttons, he’ll probably get rid of me one way or the other. I was supposed to sniff out information on Terry Moore to get his stupid drugs back—and his money. But, Terry went and got himself eaten by a bloody werewolf. Now I don’t have any idea where to even start looking for Kenneth’s drugs, and with how things are going, I’m not going to be able to sneak off long enough to find out. He’ll ruin me if I don’t get the job done.”
Whining wasn’t going to help me, but the words bubbled out of me. “If ruining my chances to get out of the lower castes isn’t enough, he’ll end up leaving my body in an alley somewhere. That’s just how it goes. If I play the game better than him, I win. If I don’t, I lose. If I’ve outlived my usefulness, I die. I’ve known things would be that way for a long time. If I can get through my Bach studies, I can transfer cities. Kenneth only works Baltimore. Sure, he could hire out a hound to chase after me, but what’s the point? If I do well enough in my Bach studies and get accepted for Master studies, he can’t touch me at all.”
I’d be too valuable to other elites if I became a Master. It didn’t matter what subject I was assigned. As long as the dae didn’t completely overturn society, there’d always be a need for the highly educated. I wouldn’t be easy to replace, and not even Kenneth would escape punishment if he pursued me at that point. If I proved I was smart enough, it wouldn’t matter if I couldn’t breathe fire, change shapes, or do anything else powerful dae could do.
“Just avoid Kenneth Smith,” I warned Colby, hoping my accidental macaroni and cheese roommate would listen. Maybe it was weird, but I liked it.
I didn’t want Colby to be hurt because of me.
I regretted my offer to take Colby with me to work long before I wrangled the casserole into the cooler and stashed it in my gym bag. While packing the laptop, extra gloves in case my first pair was ruined again by a dae’s demonstration, and my various medications, I tried to figure out a reason to leave my roommate behind.
I delayed until I was late for work, which I’d shamelessly blame on yesterday’s burns. It wasn’t that much of a lie; reaching the middle of my back to apply the cream had been tricky, uncomfortable, and frustrating. Sighing my surrender, I picked up my bag.
Colby wasn’t all that large, but damn was it heavy. I grunted, settling the bag’s strap over my shoulder. Normal women didn’t talk to their bags, so instead of complaining about how much it weighed, I trudged out of my apartment.
Rob was waiting for me, leaning against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. When I froze in the doorway, he checked his wrist. “If you take the steps two at a time and dive across traffic, you’ll only be five minutes late.”
I stepped into the hallway just far enough to close my door and lock it. The sight of the man in his clean-cut suit, dark blue with a pale gray shirt and a light-blue tie to match his eyes, annoyed me so much I growled. I really needed to break that habit.
Unlike the werewolves, I didn’t have an excuse for it.
Ignoring the dae was my best option, so I set off down the hall towards the staircase without acknowledging him. He fell into step with me, sliding his hands into his pockets.
“I could make certain you face no rebukes for being late, you know,” he said.
I reached the staircase, shouldered open the door, and slipped through. If luck was with me, it’d smack him in the face. It didn’t. He pushed through without missing a step, following me down the stairs.
Colby weighed enough I didn’t risk hopping down the steps two or three at a time despite my awareness of being late. The thought of owing anything to Rob, who already viewed me as property, drew another growl out of me.
“You aren’t a dog, nor are you even something as interesting
as a werewolf or shifter-kin. You probably shouldn’t growl like that. Most of them view it as a come on. I’m pretty sure I already told you several times that you belong to me.”
In my worries about Kenneth, I hadn’t considered Rob and the possibility he would prove equally detrimental. Rob also knew about Colby, and the thought worried me into coming to a halt.
If Rob told Kenneth about Colby, we were both screwed. “What do you want, Rob?”
“You, of course.”
“Do you see a price tag on me, Rob? No, you don’t. I’m not for sale, nor am I your property.”
“Oh, you are.”
The calm, confident way he spoke infuriated me enough I spun on the step to face him, completely forgetting about the basic laws of physics. My gym bag whirled with me, cracking into Rob. It kept going, and with a startled cry, I tumbled down the last four steps to the next landing, smacking shoulder-first into the wall.
“Shit.” In my bag, Colby giggled. “Quiet, you,” I hissed through clenched teeth. I grunted and straightened.
Unlike me, Rob hadn’t budged despite my bag colliding with him. He smirked down at me, his hands shoved into his pants pockets. “If you were trying to knock me down the steps, Miss Daegberht, you’re going to have to try a lot harder than that. Really. If that’s the extent of your self-defense skills, you should beg for my forgiveness and accept the fact you are mine. It would make it much easier for me to protect you, since you don’t seem capable of protecting yourself.”
“Bite me,” I snapped. Adjusting my hold on my bag, I stomped down the steps to the next floor.
I saw the blue of his suit out of the corner of my eye, and aware of the steps, Colby’s weight, and how the bag swung on my shoulder, I twisted around. Grunting from the effort, I slammed Colby’s cooler into Rob’s midriff.
The breath left the dae in a pained wheeze.
“Mommy,” Colby hissed, and in its voice, I heard its satisfaction.
It was good to have an ally. I sniffed, lifted my chin, and glared at the dae. “I don’t need anyone covering my ass, thank you very much. I fucked up, so I’ll deal with the consequences. Who would want your help anyway?”
I made it halfway down the next flight of steps before I came to a halt long enough to say, “I’m not your property. Slavery was abolished in the eighteen hundreds during President Lincoln’s term. Go back to whatever prehistoric hole you crawled out of and leave me alone.”
Humming a merry little tune, I left the dae panting on the steps. Maybe I was late, but some problems could be solved with violence, and Rob seemed to be one of them.
When I did finally reach the college, one of the police directed me to the dean’s office. I tapped on the door, waited for the order to enter, and let myself in. When the dean saw me, he straightened and frowned at me.
“You’re late.”
While I said I would deal with the consequences, I had no intention of going out without a fight. Accepting Rob’s help was out of the question, but I had no scruples about using him as a scapegoat.
Fair was fair.
“I was delayed by an elite, sir. He wished to speak with me at my apartment. I apologize for my tardiness, sir.” With Colby’s weight affecting my balance, I didn’t dare bow. Dipping into a curtsey while wearing jeans was weird, but I did it anyway.
“I see. And this elite? Who was he?”
“He called himself Rob, sir.” I described the insufferable dae, right down to his sky-blue tie and his watch. “I’ve seen him around the college before.”
Huffing, the dean shook his head and waved his hand to prevent me from saying anything else. I clacked my teeth together and waited for the verdict.
Losing my temper with the man who ran my college wasn’t wise or smart. I focused on the memory of smacking Rob with my bag, which made it easier to stand still and wait for the dean’s decision.
“You’ve done well with the interview process so far,” he said, although I got the feeling he wasn’t too happy about having to dish out a compliment.
“Thank you, sir.”
“It is fortunate your tardiness doesn’t affect things today. The first set of interviewees will arrive a little over an hour from now. These individuals are from the fringe and have been specially selected by their employers for evaluation. Some of them are children, so you may have to coax them into demonstrating their abilities. Here is a rundown of the candidates and everything I have on them. Send the ones you think are worth additional evaluation to my office. The police will take care of the others.”
A chill ran through me. It shouldn’t have surprised me; the elite evaluated children all the time. It had happened to me, and it happened to every other kid in the fringe, too. However, aptitude tests didn’t include a high risk of self-immolation. Was there anything worse than self-immolation?
I didn’t know, and that worried me even almost as much as the thought of witnessing a second Claudia.
“Yes, sir,” I murmured.
The dean gestured to a stack of papers on his desk and returned to his work. Taking his refusal to further acknowledge my presence as a dismissal, I picked up the stack, curtsied, and left.
Chapter Eleven
When the dean had said some of the candidates were children, I had been under the impression they were the minority rather than the majority. I propped my feet up on the table, leaned back in my chair until I balanced it on two legs, and went to work flipping through the sheets to get an idea of what I faced.
Playing with fire meant someone would get burned, and the elite in charge of the fringe knew it. Of the sixty children and five adults I needed to interview, forty-three were fire-breathers. One was a shifter, although her type wasn’t listed. The rest were unknown entities.
“Mommy?” Colby whispered.
I glanced around, holding my breath fearing someone had heard my macaroni and cheese call out for me. The police kept their distance. While some of them were shifters, I doubted they would overhear me. They were too busy talking among themselves to pay much attention to me.
Still, I lifted my papers to obstruct my face before I replied, “Fire-breathers.”
“Mommy.” Colby didn’t sound happy.
“I’ll keep you out of the blast radius,” I promised. Behind my chair was probably far enough. With it hiding in its insulated cooler, it’d probably be okay. If I had known I would be dealing with a lot of children, I wouldn’t have brought Colby along.
I had no idea how dae powers worked, but after witnessing Claudia’s death, the thought of asking children to demonstrate powers made me want to throw up. The aptitude tests to apply to primary school had been brutal enough; examiners asked questions so fast there was no time to think about the answers. The quick passed. Those who needed time to process the questions and think their answers through failed.
In a way, failure was a mercy; children who didn’t make the cut to attend primary school entered apprenticeships suiting their abilities. Some became craftsmen. Some became laborers. Those who could be taught useful and necessary skills had everything they needed provided for them.
They were the lucky ones. They lived in the fringe, but some parts were nicer than others, and those who didn’t attend primary school were usually too dense to understand they were repressed and trapped in the system.
They went to work, they were given good food to keep them healthy, homes they shared with their families, and small stipends for their pleasure. Too often, that pleasure ended up being drugs through no fault of their own.
The real problems started in primary school, and judging from the list of children, most of them had either qualified or were already attending classes. Year-to-year, they fought for the right to stay in school. The highest graders, like me, progressed to the next level. The rest began apprenticeships.
Unfortunately for them, they became the true lowest of the low. They knew the basics of writing and math, but they couldn’t use their knowledge. They were too skilled for ma
ny of the basic jobs. The good positions were claimed by the children who hadn’t dedicated the early years of their lives training in hope of advancing their studies.
For each class of fifty, twenty wouldn’t last through the first year. The remaining thirty would be whittled down to twenty by the following year. Only two or three would graduate to secondary studies.
Most kids were either forced into the aptitude tests or were guaranteed admittance into primary school. Before my parents’ deaths, I had fit the latter group; I couldn’t remember what caste we’d been from. When they died, I went to the fringe, and I slipped through the cracks.
Kenneth had found me, and for the next few years of my life, I sniffed around for him, a puppet tied to his strings. In a way, it was ironic.
Without Kenneth, the police never would have caught me poking around in places I shouldn’t have been. Without Kenneth, I never would have undergone aptitude testing. Without Kenneth, I wouldn’t have waltzed through the questioning. My drug dealing, murderous boss had taught me everything I needed to know to qualify for primary education.
Schooling had been vice and hope; because of what Kenneth had taught me, I had kept it secret from everyone except my instructors and fellow students. I came to Bach studies late, but I had made it.
Being the one testing the children, firing questions at them in a barrage to judge their ability to think on their feet, was a role I didn’t want. Did the elite responsible for the aptitude testing regret their decisions when determining a child’s fate?
I already regretted the choices I had made, and the adult dae had been willing. If I could find a way to help the children without betraying what I was doing, I would. No child, human or dae, deserved to be a tool of conquest for power-hungry elite.
Unlike with the adults I had interviewed, all of the children were brought to me at one time, although they were separated into small groups. I didn’t have a bodyguard, which wouldn’t have bothered me if the police had been willing to stand near my desk instead of running and hiding like cowards.
The Dawn of Dae (Dae Portals Book 1) Page 11
