by Lan Chan
I blew out air through my nose, well aware that Sean and Rachel were hanging on to every word. “Please.”
His sombre mask lifted for a moment. Those forest-green eyes became backlit by the evening sun. He weaved his hand through the hairs at the nape of my neck. The pressure was excessively gentle but I felt completely captured. Boy was I in trouble.
“I’m not saying no because I want to, Blue.” I balanced on the balls on my feet and waited. Finally, he let out an irritated grunt. “Fine. But if he starts acting up, I want no part of it.”
Despite my blasé demeanour, when we got back to Bloodline, I ran up the dorm staircase as quickly as I could with Phoenix at my heels. I slammed the bedroom door shut as soon as we were inside. Okay, no alarm bells had gone off. Maybe nobody would notice I had an illegal pet. I stayed up late reading through Hilary Hastings’s diary. If there was a definition for unintelligible rambling, surely this was it. She had hectic handwriting and she didn’t stay within the lines. There were notes in the margins, and she crossed out stuff other people had written. None of it made sense. There were words in dead languages and lists of strange ingredients. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought she was a mad woman. Maybe I wasn’t far off.
Finally, my eyes wouldn’t stay open. Phoenix slept by my bed.
I got up early to resume my duties in the Grove. Sophie had snuck in during the night and was snoring away. She’d left me a note to say she was glad I was back. She also wrote: DINGO??????
I scrawled one back to tell her we’d catch up at lunch time. I left Hilary’s diary beside the note asking Sophie to look into the ingredients listed in there. That was the best thing I could think of right now.
We swung past the dining hall. I left Phoenix outside by the liquidambar tree while I loaded a plate with a double helping of food. He gulped it down even faster than I did.
At the entrance of the Grove, I worried the wards would deny him entry, but he sailed over the fence without so much as a zap of static electricity. When the nymphs appeared to check out what all the commotion was, they chattered around him in pleasure. Why was it that they seemed to like everyone around here but me?
I took my time getting everything done. I had plans to visit Jacqueline before my first class. Maybe I was also hoping the meeting would cut into Elemental Magic a little. Her door was open when I arrived. Professor McKenna was in there with her. They waved me in.
“Umm...maybe I should come back another time?”
Phoenix bounded right in. Both women startled. “Lex?”
“Ahhh...yeah, that’s what I needed to talk to you about. He wouldn’t stay behind. Can I please keep him?”
Professor McKenna scratched at her cheek. “He’s a mortal animal,” she said. Phoenix licked her hand. I wasn’t sure but her lip lifted. I hardly saw her smile but it was close. “How long has he been here?”
“Since last night.”
They exchanged a look. “And he hasn’t been whining or crying?” Jacqueline said.
“Not that I’ve heard.” I had slept pretty soundly last night. The first time in days.
“I’m not sure,” Jacqueline said. “There are rules against this type of thing. What would we tell the other human students if they want to bring their pets to school?”
“Tell them if their pet survives a bloodletting conjuring they’re welcome to it?”
She pursed her lips at me. The warning bell rang. “You’re not to take him to classes with you. That’s not negotiable. He is to be controlled at all times. I’m not saying this to be restrictive. There are beings here that might not take well to him. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to him.”
I was in the middle of backing out when she called me back. “I’m glad you’re home,” Jacqueline said. “I know it must be hard to go back and forth. We will sort this out eventually.”
I nodded. They would sort it out. I just wasn’t sure how many people would be left standing afterwards. I bolted to the billabong with Phoenix running beside me. When I arrived, the yowies scattered. I raced around trying to find the bunyip. The second warning bell sounded.
“Damn.” I rounded on the dingo. “Stay here. Don’t mess with anything. I’ll come back to get you after classes.”
He was already too busy sniffing at the sulphurous water to even notice I was leaving. I just hoped the bunyip wouldn’t take exception to his presence.
Professor Aisling took exception to me being late. “You’re already behind as it is, Alessia. At this rate, you will be repeating the class.”
That did not sit well with me. I didn’t want to take this class the first time around. The last thing I wanted to do was repeat it. Isla had no sympathy for me when we made our way to the mermaid lagoon. We passed through a small portal rather than make the twenty-or-so-minute walk.
“Don’t look at me,” Isla said. “I don’t think you should be in this class either.”
I was going for a snippy comeback when the first hint of saline around the lagoon hit me. I stopped dead. One of the Fae barrelled into me. They might appear graceful but they were no less fragile than the shifters.
“Ow!”
“Mind where you’re walking,” the Fae girl spat. I hurried to the side of the pathway and just kind of stood there. Isla noticed me lingering behind. She stalked back and grabbed my arm.
“What are you doing?” she hissed.
I shook my head at her. “Are you crazy?” she continued. “Do you want everyone to know you’re scared of saltwater? They’ll eat you alive.”
She was miles stronger than I was. Which was why she ended up dragging me towards where the horizon opened up to an enormous body of water that I had no idea was even part of the Academy. My mouth gaped.
“H-How?” I asked.
Isla beamed. “My parents helped shield this place,” she said. “Their magic makes sure the lagoon is protected for the mermaids.” She eyed me sidelong. “And it shields the Academy from the mermaid’s song.”
So basically, this lagoon had been here all along and I didn’t know about it. By now I was sweating through my shirt. The paved walkways of the Academy eased to sand and rocks. The lush growth of European trees and eucalyptus died away and was replaced by low-growing reeds and thick-leaved succulents. The sound of the waves lapping sent a cold shiver down my spine. By all accounts the pristine blue waters were breathtakingly beautiful. My heart kicked in my chest at the mere sight of the foam crawling up the sand. I swallowed as Professor Aisling came to a stop in front of a rocky enclosure.
“I’m sure you’ve all read the requisite pages of your textbooks,” she said. I did not imagine the way she looked at me sceptically. “The key to drawing the mermaids out is patience. We will start by wading into the water and using our energy to send them a message.”
The Fae wasted no time kicking off their shoes. Some had already done so on the way here. In the halls of Bloodline, they were often haughty and aloof. Out here, some of them were grinning like little kids. I stood a little off to the side. They waded into the water. I pretended to have trouble taking my socks off.
“Problem, Miss Hastings?” Professor Aisling asked.
“No, ma’am. Just don’t want to get cold feet.”
“I can assure you the water is the perfect temperature.”
I had hoped she might forget about me and move away, but she just stood there eyeing me until I couldn’t make any more of a spectacle of myself. Isla was rolling the hem of her jeans up nearby. For all her sniping, she wasn’t such a pain in the butt anymore.
“Come on,” she said. As soon as my socks were off, she yanked me towards the water. My limbs locked. She was basically carrying me at this point.
“What’s the deal?” she asked. “You walked across a bloody roaring river during our first semester.”
In the reflection of her eyes, my face had gone white as a sheet. “It’s just water. The mermaids are fickle but they’re not going to hurt you.”
I
clawed at her arm to try and get her off me. The sound of the waves was probably no more than a low rumble, but in my mind, I heard it as a roar. When I yanked her hair, Isla yelped and dropped me. I landed with my knee in damp sand. Some of the Fae around me laughed. But they were too enchanted by the lagoon to rub it in. Isla glanced between me and the water. I could feel the itch of her anticipation.
“Just go,” I whisper-shouted.
She didn’t think twice and ran into the water. I crawled back up the dunes until I was far enough away that my pulse didn’t want to leap out of my throat. I placed my shaking hands in my lap.
A shadow drew up beside me. Professor Aisling tsked. “Jacqueline did warn me that you might be reluctant. But it’ll be impossible for me to give you a passing grade if you can’t get into the water.”
I wanted to scream at her that I didn’t care about her stupid passing grade. The scathing glare she gave me as she walked towards the water made my head droop. I didn’t understand. For the billionth time, I tried to scrape up some memory of why I was so terrified of the ocean. This wasn’t even a real ocean. It was a magically produced version, and yet I still had the same visceral response to it.
As a result, I sat at the farthest edge of the shore as I could get away with while the Fae and other water elementals played in the waves. I held my breath when the first tailfin glided through the water. Streamlined bodies erupted from its surface in a spray of foam. The Fae clapped and laughed as the mermaids swam along with them.
Unlike the water shifters, the mermaids were humanoid but para-human. Their skin and hair were reminiscent of angel fish. On either side of their necks were membranous gills. They noticed me sitting by myself. One of the mermaids coasted on the water towards me. She slid onto the soaking sand and braced herself on the balls of her palms. The underside of her chest was covered in stunning pearlescent scales. As was the crown of her head. The tip of her tailfin curled around the front of her body, making imprints in the sand. She blinked black eyes at me and held out her arm.
As mesmerised as I was by the sheer beauty of her, I shook my head. Another mermaid joined her. They angled their heads together. By now I was adept enough with telepathic behaviour to understand when the supernaturals were conversing silently.
Isla charged out of the water after one of the other Fae splashed her. In her delight, she seemed to have forgotten she had wings. Her feet made dimples in the sand. She turned her head and saw the mermaids. Leaning down, she spoke close to them. The pitying looks the mermaids gave me made my eyes sting.
Relief flooded through me when the bell rang. I arrived through the portal in record time. But no matter how fast I was, Isla appeared a millisecond later. I refused to look at her. Brushing sand off my jeans, I grabbed my backpack and ran towards Weaponry and Combat.
It was unfortunate Isla was in the same class. When she wanted to be, she was like a mollusc. For some reason, she decided she was going to be a pain in my neck today.
“Do not say a word,” I warned her as we lined up to enter the class.
Her cheek puckered like she was biting the inside of it. I’d never known her to be so tactful before. “You’re really scared of the water, aren’t you?”
I never figured her for being dense either. “Nah. I just like to be dramatic.”
Sophie arrived and waved at me. Diana wasn’t far behind her. Seeing that we were about to have company, Isla grabbed my arm. My first instinct was to yank it back, but the expression on her face gave me pause. It was the same one the mermaids had given me. Pity. Like I was missing out on the best thing in the world.
“If you want, I can help you,” she said. The offer was followed by the immediate release of my arm. She stalked away to join her own friends.
I would have been less surprised if her hair morphed into a bed of snakes. My mouth was still gaping when the girls caught up to me. “You’re going to catch pixies with your mouth open like that,” Diana informed me. I snapped it closed and prepared for another lesson of torture. We were using bows again this lesson. Everyone else, including Sophie, had graduated to the more advanced models that were magicked to burst into flame or explode on contact. I was still stuck with your basic version that did nothing. Someone, I suspected Trey, had blunted the tips so I wouldn’t damage the walls when I inevitably missed the target.
I stood in my shooting lane that had been set up right on the edge of the class. Beside me, Diana was drawing and releasing like she’d been born with a bow in her hand. Her brother and Trey were waiting for Professor Eldridge to call a halt so they could safely retrieve their arrows. My last attempt had gone astray somewhere in another lane. The retrieval process usually involved me tiptoeing onto others people’s space as I apologetically picked up arrows.
As I stood there watching them, I was hit with a wave of incredulity. Sasha and Trey were now play-wrestling with each other. And by play, I meant Trey had Sasha in an arm bar and was trying to get the vamp to tap out. I heard muscle tearing but neither of them gave the impression they were in pain. In my periphery, someone struck the bullseye. The arrow caught purple fire. It warped the target into a sludgy mess. The sorceress then raised her hand and flicked. Both arrow and target rematerialised.
I gulped. Only a few days ago, I’d sat there at Terran and was horrified at the sight of rudimentary weapons meant to incapacitate supernaturals. For over a year I’d trained in this room of burgeoning death and hadn’t batted an eyelid. Something was definitely messed up.
I was so caught up in contemplation that I missed the signal for retrieval. The rest of the class passed in a blur. My distraction continued as I stood in the buffet line in the dining hall. Two goblin girls chatted amiably in the line in front of me. A little farther ahead, I saw Gwen, a leopard shifter who had been on my first semester exam team, bending a solid metal bar into a bow.
“Are you really eating that?” Sophie asked. I glanced down at where I was putting marinara sauce on my slice of cheesecake.
“Dammit!”
“Are you alright?”
I took in a long breath and tried to salvage the cheesecake by spooning the sauce off. Sophie made a face. “You can’t eat that now.”
Sure I could. I’d eaten worse. She took the whole tray from me and handed it to one of her friends behind the counter. The Fae boy gave me another tray. Somebody in line behind us tapped their foot. We were holding people up.
“What’s going on?” Sophie asked on our way to the table.
“Has it ever occurred to you that if they wanted to, the supernaturals could kill us in the blink of an eye?”
She did a double-take. It was terrible timing that we passed Max’s table at that very second. His laser focus settled on to her, and I heard him growling softly over the noise of dining hall. Something in Sophie’s expression closed over, but I didn’t think it had anything to do with Max’s interest.
“They’d get into a lot of trouble if they did,” Sophie said.
“If they did what?” Diana asked. We’d reached the table and I slid into the bench next to Trey. Sophie’s eyes shot warning signals at me. I wasn’t that dense. This was not a safe topic of conversation.
“Nothing,” I said. Sasha and Roland arrived. They brought with them their usual boisterous banter.
“Did you hear about the new guard positions they’ve advertised on the MirrorNet?” Sasha asked. Diana shot him an evil glare. His eyes flicked to me for a moment. “What? She doesn’t care, do you, Lex?”
“Care about what?”
“We learned about it in Dimension Integration,” Trey said. He paused between sentences, making me think he was choosing his words carefully. “The Council have posted new guard positions.”
“Where?”
If looks could kill, Diana would have murdered Sasha. His perpetually chilly complexion remained unchanged. “Around the perimeter of Terran Academy.”
I dropped my fork. It clattered on the plate. The vibrations lingered and became my sol
e focus for a moment while I gathered my composure. “I see.” It was all I could think to say.
“They’re not going to be close,” Diana said. For some reason Sophie was being very quiet. “They still have their perimeter warded, but the Council has decided we just need to watch the area around that.”
I pushed up to standing. “Lex,” Diana said.
“It’s fine. I just need some air.” Footsteps followed me outside. We were almost at the billabong but Sophie hadn’t said a word. She just trailed behind me like a shadow. I didn’t care for it at the moment.
“Can I please have some space?” I asked.
A red-and-tan flash caught my attention. Phoenix’s head appeared through the underbrush. He yelped but didn’t come any closer. “I’m sorry,” Sophie said.
“Why? It’s not your fault the Council are idiots.”
Any other time she would have heartily agreed with me. Today her cheek twitched. “They’re being overly cautious,” she managed to concede. “But at the same time, the Sisterhood are still dangerous. You were helping to guard against them, remember?”
I hated it when people tried to be reasonable when I was feeling the opposite. It was impossible to stay irritated.
I heard the flap of wings above us. Something inside of me snapped at the intrusion. “What exactly do you think I’m going to do?” I yelled, at the passing guard. I was quite certain said guard was for me specifically.
“Lex.”
“It’s fine,” I said.
She cracked her knuckles. “You won’t say anything to them, will you?”
It was at that moment that it really dawned on me. Sooner or later, I really would have to choose a side. And right now, I wasn’t sure which one it would be.
22
“You don’t have to do that, you know,” Rachel said on my second night at Terran for the week. I was pacing around the room with some table salt in my hands.
“It’s a habit.”
“You’re messing up the floor.” She snapped the deadbolt that had been newly added to the lock on account of my unplanned ocean adventure.
