by D. R. Perry
After changing, I went about the business of packing all the essentials in my suitcase: Regular clothes, some extra pillowcases and sheets, and of course, the contraband communication orb. I wouldn’t go back without that, because it had been a lifesaver last semester. Hal's dad had changed an awful lot at Hawthorn Academy already. Maybe I should ask him to reconsider the no-communication policy. I still took pains to hide it in the small suitcase underneath stuff like underwear that no one would look through.
I decided to bring the turquoise maxi dress, along with Bubbe's. It didn't hold a candle aesthetically, of course, but it was comfortable, I liked it, and the color was soothing, like my tankini. I decided to toss that in too because maybe this semester, I’d join Faith in her weekly swims. Increasing my physical activity would only help prepare for the tournament.
Since we were allowed to arrive on campus anytime on Sunday or even early Monday, I didn’t rush through my day. I spent some time downstairs in Bubbe's office, playing with the critters who felt up to it. None of them were strays or otherwise unattached, although a few were in for medical care. Over the holidays, some extrahumans boarded their pets and familiars while traveling overseas.
I thanked Bubbe for lending me her dress, and she seemed glad that I had taken her up on the offer. She asked for pictures if I decided to wear it.
Upstairs, I had breakfast and lunch with my parents. Noah was there too but didn’t participate in the conversation. Either he was nervous about going back to school or tired. He had been out an awful lot over the break, making me wonder if he’d started seeing a boy in town. It didn't seem like there were many romantic prospects for him at Hawthorn. I think Darren was the only other gay man on campus.
I'd have to remember to ask him how the old dating life was. Maybe my brother even had some advice. Noah knew more about romance than anyone in my year. Then again, he was guilty of attempted matchmaking in the case of Logan and me, so maybe not.
Talking to Cadence might have been a better idea, although her advice on most things was usually just do it. I wasn’t talking about sex; I mean like speed-dating. That was just not my style. I felt like I had to know someone before I could decide if I wanted romance. It had been difficult enough going with Logan to Parents’ Night because I'd only known him for a month at that point.
My thoughts were cut off when my parents said it was time for us to go. They asked one more time if either of us wanted to stay the extra night and go to school at breakfast time, but my brother and I both said no. So, we all headed out, walking down the snow-lined streets. There wasn’t much coating the ground, just enough to be a slippery nuisance for the suitcases.
The cobblestones on Essex Street were even harder to navigate now than in the fall. I was glad we all went this time. Mom and Dad stayed outside.
The lobby was mostly deserted when we arrived. I looked across it at the stairway, knowing I should go up to my room first and drop off my luggage, but I missed my friends. I had seen most of them over break, but it felt like longer.
They weren’t in the lounge or the cafeteria, so I figured they must be upstairs. I should have just gone. Noah already had since the stairs were still moving. I got on, stating my floor. Once they stopped, I walked down the hall toward my room, whistling. When I put my hand on the flat space next to the door, the latch clicked. Inside, I heard frantic rustling and low voices. I stepped back from the door and waited before opening it.
I stood in the hall, counting seconds. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi. Once I got to ten, I opened the door and rolled my suitcases ahead of me. Ember swooped in over my head, flying directly to her preferred perch on my footboard.
Dylan and Grace sat on her bed. They were both rigid, perfectly still, barely even breathing—and their cheeks were flushed. I didn't bother looking at their clothes, because I’d heard plenty from out in the hall. Some adjustments must have happened, since my whistling had signaled someone approaching.
"I'm going down to the lounge for coffee. Once I put these suitcases down, anyway." My back was turned as I tried to compose my face. I don’t know what I looked like, but if the heat I felt from the neck up was any indication, I didn't want them to see.
Everything swam: light, sound, the cool air around my flushed face. There was a rush too, the kind I got the year I had walking pneumonia and collapsed on the stoop outside my house. It was nearly impossible to swallow past the lump in my throat, so I cleared it instead, trying to breathe. I managed enough respiration to blurt a question.
"Did you guys have dinner yet?"
Talking about food seemed like the safest topic. My stomach felt like someone clenched it in their fists and squeezed, and Ember's silence spoke volumes. Usually she'd peep at Grace and Lune and Gale and Dylan, but mum was the word for my dragonet.
"Um, no." Grace managed an answer. "I'll meet you down there in a few minutes."
"Sure, no problem." But it was. It shouldn't have been.
I called for Ember and waited until she perched on my shoulder before leaving the room. Then I closed the door behind me, letting it latch. I probably wouldn't see either of them in a few minutes. Maybe not even for a few hours. I wasn’t sure what I interrupted, but I had the general idea.
It felt totally wrong to want something Grace had, especially when she had no home and family. I had to stop it now, even if it meant distancing myself from Dylan.
You're powerful. You deserve whatever you can take, even from other people.
"Might does not make right," I muttered to the empty hallway. "Sit down, shut up, and let your friends have what little happiness they can get."
Downstairs, I settled down in the lounge with coffee and biscotti. Lee joined me, and his mild yet comforting presence helped me calm down. Eventually, Logan arrived, hurrying out of the hallway with a backpack and rolling suitcase. Doris paced behind him, and it was clear neither of them was in a good mood.
I stood and sprinted to catch up with him, Ember swooping along behind me. He headed straight for the stairs, and I recognized this tunnel vision from Lab. He was hyper-focused on getting himself and his luggage upstairs and out of sight, but after Grace's near-collapse at the end of last semester, I wasn’t about to let Logan deal with whatever this was alone.
"Hey, do you want some help with that suitcase?" I didn't want to make this about his mood unless he wanted it to be.
"No, but company's cool." I got on the stairs with him, and we rode up in silence. At the top, he spoke again. "Aliyah it's terrible. Mom and Dad almost turned me around at the airport and put me on a plane back the second they saw Doris. They were horrible every day. They keep saying I broke our family, ruined their plans for our future. Even Elanor acts like she hates me now, and I don't know what to do."
Logan's voice was strained, cracked, under pressure. His eyes were rimmed with red too, in lines so perfect they could have been drawn by a makeup artist. His hands shook so much he ended up grasping the straps on his backpack until his knuckles went white. My friend needed a lifeline.
"Listen, if anything like that happens again, let them turn you around. Call me. I'll tell Bubbe. She said you're always welcome, right?"
"Thank you." His back was toward me, his head down as he opened his door. I already knew Dylan wasn’t in the room, so I followed Logan inside.
We spent some time putting his clothes in the dresser and the wardrobe. This wasn't due to any immediate need to unpack, but it gave him some time to realize he wasn’t at home. Instead, he was at school, surrounded by friends.
We all were. Now all we needed to do was navigate the rest of the semester without making any more mistakes.
Chapter Forty-One
"Mind if I sit here?"
I looked up, blinking at Alex. It was Lab, and usually Hal was my partner. It'd been that way for all of last semester and all of January. But Hal was late. He had been through the entire first week of February.
"Sure, I guess." I wasn’t sure wh
y, except I was tired of rushing through all of our experiments. It wasn’t like Alex had gone out of his way to hang out with me since last semester. Maybe Faith had been wrong about him liking me, or maybe he’d found somebody else over the break.
Alex set down his bag and started rummaging through it. Bailey took one look at where he sat, then pouted and stomped off to team up for the lesson with Logan.
I doodled in my notebook, letting my mind wander. Hal Hawkins hadn't been well. He had low energy, shortness of breath, his skin was ashy and dull, and he'd barely done any magic except at Gym during drills. Professor Luciano even infused his materials in Lab.
If he were a critter, I'd have brought him to Bubbe right away. Nurse Smith knew what he was doing, but Hal didn't seem to get any better no matter how much time he spent in the infirmary, and that was a considerable amount this semester.
For the last two weeks, he’d brought his to-go bag down to the infirmary instead of the lounge. Faith had joined him every single night, diminishing our group by two. We missed having them around. Of course, the best solution was for all of us to go down there. Don't think we hadn't tried it.
Nurse Smith had turned all of us away, even Lee, who claimed he needed to talk to him about roommate stuff. Only Faith was allowed to remain, something about how school was stressful, and our friend needed his rest. But nobody said why.
The medicine I studied with Bubbe wasn't specifically for extrahumans, but bodies with magic had plenty in common. The rest of us were stressed and weren't stuck in bed for extra hours each day. Hal Hawkins should have been on the mend by then. He shouldn't have been adding trips to the infirmary to the break between class periods.
Unless there was something seriously wrong with him.
One of the drawbacks of being in our group was that we didn't hear much gossip. Sometimes I wished Cadence went here because she'd tell us everything, even stuff we'd want to unhear later. But hadn’t I called the guy sitting right next to me Switzerland? He visited just about every circle of friends in this place. Maybe he knew more about this than we did.
"Alex, what you think is up with Hal?"
"What you mean?" He locked eyes with me, which was a little unnerving, maybe because he had a basilisk for a familiar. I had no reason to think he was hostile or otherwise someone to fear.
"He's been sick all semester." I tapped my pen on the paper. "And I'm worried about him because he's my friend."
"Oh." He shook his head. "I don't know for sure. All I’ve got are rumors, stuff overheard from upperclassmen. Repeating that isn't always the best idea."
"I think I'm smart enough to take gossip with a grain of salt." I wasn’t totally honest, but nobody ever solved a mystery by refusing to ask questions.
"Fair enough." Alex glanced at the door, probably to make sure Hal hadn't just walked in. He was pretty sharp when it came to people, apparently. "Last year, Hal collapsed on his campus tour. Before that, everyone thought he was just a regular space magus like his dad, who taught second year here before the old headmaster left. But the third years had a theory about the other side of his family."
"Go on."
"Students here now never met Mrs. Hawkins. Hal's parents got divorced, and she hasn't set foot on this campus since, but Darren told me his sister, who graduated two years ago, heard she was a Dampyr." He shrugged. "I know next to nothing about them, so that's about all I can tell you."
Maybe Alex didn't know much about Dampyr, but I did. They were the offspring of two vampires, and extremely rare. Back before the Reveal and its early days, they'd often get abducted by extrahuman traffickers. From infants to elders, it didn't matter.
They had high value as blood dolls because their entire biology was different from the humans they resembled so closely. Their blood was the most potent nourishment for vamps, so of course, a woman married into such a high-profile family like the Hawkins wouldn't go around advertising her heritage.
She might even have kept her status a secret from her husband, but that had risks. Dampyr genetics were wonky, making it risky for them to have kids with anyone besides another Dampyr. Their offspring were born with magical maladies that had no cure and only experimental treatments.
Since Hal had a mysterious health condition that wasn’t getting better, maybe there was some truth to the rumor.
And if it was correct, he might have qualified for experimental treatment in one of the many medical trials down in Boston. None of them were cures, but according to the medical journals in Bubbe's office, they improved quality of life.
Hal might want to try something like that, but he'd need proof he had Dampyr blood.
There was a fairly simple blood testing substance, one also used in extraveterinary medicine for identifying blood-borne illnesses in magical critters. I'd been helping Bubbe with those for the last few years, and she knew how to run the test and read the results. It wouldn't be official coming from her or even Nurse Smith—you needed a medical doctor for that—but with an unofficial test, he'd know where to go from there.
Bubbe had loads of them in her office. If Hal's problem came from his mom's biology, I might be able to help him find out, but I'd need to smuggle a testing kit on campus and also Hal's permission.
Permission? He's sick. Help him out and just do it anyway. You've got the power. Use it.
It felt like my heart stopped. The voice, the one trying to convince me to do the wrong thing, actually made sense. But it couldn't be the right thing, not coming from this part of my brain. Was this how Uncle Richard had felt? Did he have a devil on his shoulder, too?
"Thanks, Alex." I nodded. "I'm not sure it helps. I feel pretty powerless about now." Take that, evil inside voice.
"It'd be pretty easy to check on without anyone knowing." Alex's tone was casual, light, nonchalant.
See? This boy speaks sense. Why not hear him out?
"What do you mean?" I blinked. He had no idea I waged war with a voice in my head, and that he was unintentionally on its side.
If we're only trying to help, are we wrong?
I tried thinking one of Bubbe's sayings at it, about how intention’s only ever part of the bigger picture. Fortunately, my inside voice stayed where it belonged.
"My mom's a genealogist." Alex leaned his head on his hand. "Most of her work is trying to get people back with their families. You know, folks who got separated during the messes during the Reveal. The Boston Internment, that kind of thing. All I have to do is ask her to check the Hawkins family. It's all public information, just compiled."
I waited for the evil inside voice to chime in, but it was silent. I should have been glad about that. It'd been a thorn in my side since I started hearing it. But I had trouble getting my brain around the ethics of the whole situation. It might have been a moot point, though.
If Alex's relationship with his family was like any of my other friends’, I couldn't imagine her helping, but we could team up to do our own research.
"What research, now?" Alex's mouth wore a faint grin.
"Sorry, rampaging inside voice coming outside once again." I sighed. "Story of my awkward life."
"It's cute." The grin asserted itself. "Let me know if I can help, aside from talking to mom. Hal's a good guy, and I don't like seeing him sick either."
"Thanks."
After that, we spent the next twenty minutes of lab time working on our experiment. It wasn’t too bad, just obnoxiously slow. We had to do something called titration. It was supposed to identify how much acid was in the magically infused solution we were preparing for use next week. Only one drip at a time could go into the flask, and it was super tedious.
Hal didn't make it to class until half an hour in. Faith was with him, so they started the experiment together. Professor Luciano went over to help them, setting up the burette and the stopcock in its stand. Because Hal's hands were too shaky to do fine motor tasks, which made me feel like a goose walked over my grave—or maybe his—Faith helped him with everythin
g else, including taking notes.
Even though they were behind on the experiment, they managed to finish right before the bell rang. Alex and I were with them right down to that wire. We went over to help because we finished early. As we went about our business, watching one solution drip into the other, Faith gave me major side-eye.
I could tell she wanted to talk, so I jerked my chin toward the hall, letting her know we could chat out there. But Alex headed me off as she walked through the door. I was stuck between the last bench and the exit, caught by the strangely paralyzing weight of his hand on my shoulder.
"It might be a little early for me to ask this, but I figure there's no time like the present." He took a deep breath. "Do you want to go to the Valentine’s dance with me?"
"I kind of plan to just go by myself." I shrugged. Not with the shoulder he touched, though. I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about it. "Didn't consider a date."
Why are you lying? Tell him how you feel.
I shook my head. Alex took this as emphasis of my spoken point because nobody would have suspected I was hearing a voice. At least, not anybody as sane as he seemed to be.
"Sorry. I sort of assumed since you went to the Parents’ Night dance with Logan, that you might want company. And you guys are obviously not dating, so I figured maybe you were ready to move on?"
He seemed surprised. My reaction hadn’t been what he expected, and probably wasn’t normal. I couldn't for the life of me imagine what that normal was, anyway. All I could do was stand there, blinking. He let go of my shoulder, too, and I wasn’t sure how to tell him he didn't need to, that I didn’t mind.
Don't mind. That's interesting.
For the second time that day, the evil voice had a point. Wasn't it supposed to be earth-shattering? When someone who was interested touched you, I mean? The world was supposed to go away. At least, that was what it looked like on TV, and how Noah had described getting together with Darren. They’d held hands, and he just knew everything. That he was definitely gay, and that his as-yet future boyfriend was a total hottie. But apparently, I was different.
