The Dark World

by Cara Lynn Shultz

  “Why do you look upset? Did something happen?” Dottie asked, and I merely nodded. I didn’t need everyone in the school to bear witness to my one-sided conversations, after all. Not that I thought I could form a coherent sentence—I was trembling, my mind racing as I tried to make sense of what had just happened.

  What had just happened?

  “Did someone come in?” she asked, and again, I gave her a quick nod, wiping the sweat from my forehead with the cuff of my uniform shirt. The first bell rang, and I felt my stomach twist into knots. My first thought was to ditch class—but what if Blaise followed me home? What would she do to my parents? She swore she’d find me. I ran my fingers through my slightly sweaty hair, trying to figure out what I should do.

  “What happened to your wrist? Did someone attack you?” Dottie gaped, and I nodded as I studied the tender, pink impressions that curled around my wrist. That had to prove that I’d just been threatened by the new girl—who may or may not be a girl. That nightmarish, gaping maw, full of sharp teeth, couldn’t have been a hallucination, right?

  I decided to go to the nurse’s office. Maybe I could feign sickness and get sent home—I sure felt like I had a temperature. And I’d go somewhere public—a store, a library, somewhere until I was sure Blaise hadn’t followed me.

  I picked my bag off the floor with shaking fingers. And that’s when I saw it—the charred, black tiles which marked the spot where Blaise had stood.

  Dottie saw it, too, staring at the spot in the middle of the white tile floor in confusion. The second bell rang, so I ran straight to the nurse’s office, Dottie in tow. She pelted me with questions I couldn’t answer as ancient Nurse Esposito inspected my wrist with eyeglasses so thick, they were probably bulletproof. The nurse was sympathetic until she checked the computer at her desk—and then she berated me for trying to get out of detention.

  “If you went home sick, you’d just have to make up detention on Monday,” she scolded, peering at me over her wide tortoiseshell frames before begrudgingly handing me my excuse slip for my next class. Even though the halls were empty, I kept my voice low, telling Dottie what had happened with Blaise as my best friend walked me to English. Dottie—usually a slowpoke—kept up with my brisk pace. I needed to be around people. I needed witnesses.

  “All I know is that when she was in the room with you, I couldn’t stay here,” Dottie whispered when we arrived at my class, even though she didn’t have to keep her voice muted. “There’s an energy around you that guides me to cross over. You’re this beacon—kind of like a lighthouse in the darkness. But I can’t keep a hold on it when she’s there.”

  My English teacher saw me hovering by the open doorway and gestured for me to come in, which earned a few snickers from some classmates.

  “What was she doing just staring off like that in the hall?” Scott Young whispered, shaking his head and giving me a bemused stare as I handed Mrs. Doyle my excuse slip from the nurse.

  “She’s one of those idiotic savant people,” Andie Ward hissed back. “Good grades, but a psycho.”

  Normally, I would have corrected Andie, but I had bigger, scarier and deadlier things on my mind. I stayed slouched low in my seat, not even hearing my English teacher drone on and on as I searched my memory for anything I might have read that explained what Blaise was.

  When I’d first discovered that my hallucinations were ghosts, I researched the paranormal. I’d gone to any website that looked halfway legitimate. I’d even trekked to the library and checked out every old, dusty book on the supernatural that I could find, secretly hoping to stumble upon some hidden chamber, filled with books unlocking the mysteries of the supernatural world and managed by some kindly old witch who’d take me under her magical wing.

  But instead, I’d read textbooks about witches and warlocks and ghosts at communal tables under buzzing fluorescent lights. I’d even taken photos of Dottie, but apart from a few orbs and streaks of light, the pictures just showed the brown bathroom stalls and green-to-blue paint job I’d ruined. Nothing gave me any answers. As a last resort, I’d tried speaking to a few tarot card readers and psychics whose storefronts lined the streets in the East Village. I figured if I was able to talk to Dottie, then I couldn’t be the only one, right? But everyone I’d spoken to was a low-rent charlatan angling for my allowance, so I’d eventually assumed I was alone. Until now.

  I repeated my slouched-low-in-my-seat routine in Spanish and silently prayed that there would be multiple students with me in detention. Maybe I could walk out of the school with Miller. Maybe I could ditch detention. Maybe I could come up with some sort of plan, if Logan would stop distracting me by trying to get my attention.

  “Where’s your bracelet?” he mouthed, and I pulled it out of my pocket to show it to him. His eyes widened, and I could have sworn he looked horrified before Travis Moore leaned forward to whisper to someone, blocking my view.

  I stared at my bracelet, as it sat coiled in my palm. A hundred thoughts rattled around in my head, until one thought—one loud thought that silenced all the others—echoed in my brain.

  What if I really am crazy? What if I blacked out and only thought I’d lost my bracelet? What if I hallucinated a student transforming into some kind of monster in front of me, attacking me and bleeding plumes of smoke when my nails punctured her skin? What if I burned my own wrist to make the hallucination seem real? I didn’t feel crazy—but I’m pretty sure crazy people don’t realize they’re nuts.

  I put my bracelet back in my shirt pocket and rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands, exhaling deeply.

  Calm down, Paige. Get yourself together. Get through today. Take a cab home so Blaise can’t follow you and hurt Mom or Dad or Mercer. Maybe it’s time for another therapist. Or time to sleep with a baseball bat at the ready.

  I looked down at my notebook and shivered: I’d filled the last two pages with horrifying, cartoonish images of Blaise, with her mouth gaping and her eyes glittering with hunger and hate—the kind of sketches that would have had Therapist Number Three calling for a straitjacket. The bell rang, and I yelped, slamming my notebook shut in an effort to force the sight out of my mind. I bolted from class to grab my stuff from my locker—I could have sworn I heard someone call my name as I sped through the halls, but I just chalked it up to more of my neurons misfiring. Now you’re hearing voices.

  I could make it. Just one more hour and a half, and I could make sense of all this. I could go home, curl up with Mercer, and somehow things would make sense again.

  They had to make sense again.

  When I slid into the fourth-floor classroom used for detention, I was comforted to see that there was at least one other student trapped in after-hours hell with me. Travis Moore sat by the window, not-so-surreptitiously checking sports scores on the phone in his lap. He was perpetually late to school, coming in from Pelham Bay in the North Bronx every morning—so he was a regular in detention. He was practically the detention mascot, much to Dottie’s delight. She mooned over Travis every day after school, gushing to me that he was “the most.” The most late student, but whatever. She thought he was, and I quote, “choice.”

  “Take a seat behind Mr. Morris, Miss Keller.” True to form, Vice Principal Miller managed to get both of our names wrong as he snatched my detention slip from my fingers. As I headed to the last row, I heard Miller complain under his breath. “Damn kids, can’t keep out of trouble one day so I can go home early....”

  Miller returned his attention to whatever book he was reading. Judging by how sweaty his face was, I’d guess it was quite porny.

  I slid into my chair, staring at the back of Travis’s head—he had soft, flaxen hair, the corn silk kind that girls daydreamed about having. Maybe that’s why he kept it buzzed so short—any longer and he’d risk looking like a Barbie doll.

  “Take out a textbook and start copying the pages,”
Miller said, and I groaned internally, reaching into my bag for my history textbook. My fingers brushed against the transparent brown bottle of pills I pretended to take every day—the antipsychotic drugs that I told my parents made the hallucinations go away. I curled my fingers around the bottle, considering taking a dose, when I heard Miller exhale angrily.

  “You’re late,” Miller barked, slamming his palm on the table. I turned my head to the doorway, relieved that yet another student had detention—until I saw who it was.

  “It’s not like you could start without me,” Blaise crowed before strolling into the classroom. In one lithe movement, she hopped over the first desk in the first row by the door, her red hair rippling behind her. She gracefully sat down, stretching her long legs in front of her. Her toes nearly touched the beige wall—meaning I’d have to step over her legs to leave.

  If she let me leave.

  “I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” Blaise said, twisting in her desk to give me a slow smile.

  And then, her eyes began to glitter.

  Chapter 3

  “WHAT’S UP WITH her eyes?”

  Travis turned in his seat, his face ashen with fright as he whispered to me. I dropped the pills back into my bag, feeling a momentary rush of relief—he sees it, too—before panic began to set in.

  Travis confirmed it. She’s real—this was all real. And right now, she’s blocking the only exit to the classroom.

  “You see it, right?” he asked, panicked. I nodded, and gulped against the lump in my throat.

  “Are those contacts? I don’t think those are contacts,” he hissed, darting another nervous glance at Blaise, whose large black eyes were dotted with several twinkling facets.

  “We need to leave,” I said, my voice low, and Travis nodded in agreement, shrugging into the hoodie he’d slung over the back of his desk.

  “Stop talking,” Miller ordered, glaring at us before returning his attention to his book. “And you—Blythe? Bunny?” he asked, snapping his fingers in the air as he tried to recall her name. Finally, he gave up, shaking his head. “New girl, turn around and hand me your detention slip.”

  The sparkling facets glittered like crystals as Blaise rolled her black eyes, a surprisingly human gesture for someone so inhuman.

  “First things first, let’s get rid of this one,” she sniffed, turning around to cast a condescending look at Miller as she languidly stretched one slender arm out in front of her. She extended two fingers, as if she were making a sideways peace sign—and then pointed her fingers down, shifting them back and forth to mimic walking.

  That’s when I noticed Miller stumbling toward her with halted, faltering steps. His face was blank, his eyes hollow and sightless as his limbs jerked forward in time with Blaise’s movements, merely a marionette she controlled.

  Blaise held her palm up and Miller stopped short in front of her desk just as she slunk out of her seat, resting one knee on top of the desk to crouch, catlike, before him.

  “You left this room at four-thirty. These two students left with you.” Blaise’s seductive voice was almost a purr. Miller nodded woodenly, his eyes unfocused as he staggered to the door, opening it with the same broken movements. I gripped the edges of my history textbook—it was thick and probably would leave Blaise with one hell of a headache when I whacked her with it.

  I slowly slid out of my desk, holding my history textbook in front of me as the door slammed shut.

  “Now, where were we?” Blaise asked almost cheerfully, striding to the front of the classroom as if she were a teacher.

  “What the hell was that? What are you? A witch or something?” Travis demanded, his voice trembling underneath his bravado as he stood up, as well. Blaise raised her eyebrows at his question and laughed.

  “You poor little human,” she clucked, shaking her head. “You had the misfortune of coming between me and her.”

  “What do you want with me?” I hoped my voice sounded stronger than I felt.

  Blaise smirked. “Stupid little Traveler. You’re the one they want me to take. This one will just be a pleasant diversion for me.”

  “Screw this,” Travis huffed, grabbing his bag off the floor and hoisting it onto his shoulder. “This is ridiculous. She’s a hypnotist or some shit. You coming, Paige? Just stay behind me.”

  I wielded my history book like a weapon and followed Travis as he strode confidently past Blaise, who pursed her lips into a kiss as he walked past. We were close to the door when I felt myself being thrown through the air, my back smacking against the file cabinet in the corner of the classroom. I fell to the floor, looking up in time to see Blaise grip Travis by the throat one-handed as she pinned him against the wall.

  “What are you?” he screamed, his eyes wide with terror as Blaise’s face morphed, the menacing wide grin stretching across her face. He clawed at her arm, trying to break free from Blaise’s iron grip.

  I grabbed my history book from where it had fallen next to me, and hoisted it over my shoulder, whipping it right at Blaise’s head.

  Without taking her gaze off Travis, Blaise extended her arm and nimbly caught the textbook mere inches before it hit her face, her fingers curling around the binding. Black smoke wafted out from between her fingertips, and the book burst into a fireball, flaming scraps of paper fluttering to the ground as she incinerated it with her mere touch.

  “Time to say goodbye,” she growled, wrapping her other hand around Travis’s throat. Glowing red veins, like trails of lava, spread out from where her fingers gripped him. Travis made a strangulated choking sound as the crimson lines crisscrossed across his skin. Blaise threw her head back in ecstasy, the red trails forming a web between her and Travis, sucking the life out of him.

  “Stop it! Let him go!” I shouted, charging at Blaise. She lazily removed one hand and shoved me in the chest, blasting me several feet backward where I fell to the floor again. I looked up to see Blaise release her grip, and Travis slithered to the ground, limbs askew as he collapsed into a heap. His skin was gray, chalky—a loose pile of Travis-molded ash on the floor. Blaise poked him with her toe, and he slowly crumbled to dust, wisps of powder wafting across on the linoleum. I scrambled to my feet as Blaise turned to me with that wide, inhuman grin, her black tongue darting out to lick her thin red lips.

  “That was glorious fun,” Blaise purred, her eyes twinkling as she glared at me. “Now you’re coming with me, little Traveler.”

  “Why are you calling me that?” I screamed. I gripped the desk nearest me and flung it in front of her. It skipped across the floor before Blaise reached out her hand, stopping it by merely placing her palm against the back of the desk.

  “Cute. Nice try.” She smirked, raising an eyebrow at me. “You’re fun. Much more lively than I originally gave you credit for.”

  Blaise rested both hands on the back of the red plastic seat. It exploded into flames, burning pieces of wood and molten lumps of metal and plastic scattering across the floor. Blaise stepped through the fire, unfazed, and I ran to the windows on the far wall, flinging one open. I grabbed the weak iron bars and shook them, the screws rattling in the weather-rotted wood frame. If I got the bars off, maybe I could survive the jump—aim to land in a snow bank or a Dumpster. I’d rather be alive with two broken legs than suffer an excruciating, fiery death in this classroom.

  The door to the classroom swung open, the knob slamming into the plaster wall with a loud bang. I whirled around to see Blaise staring at the door with an entertained smile on her face—probably expecting another student to murder—but her smile faded when she saw Logan standing there, fists clenched at his side.

  “Get out of here! Call the cops!” I shouted, slamming my palms onto the desk nearest me in frustration. First, Travis, now, Logan. How many more, because of me? But Logan merely held his hand up, giving me a slight nod—he
never took his steely focus off Blaise.

  “Stay away from her, incindia,” Logan ordered, a hateful look on his face as he spat out the unfamiliar word. Blaise took a hesitant step toward him.

  “I wondered if you were to blame for Viola’s sudden disappearance today.” Her voice was full of bravado, but her once-arrogant movements were cautious, almost tentative, as she crossed the length of the room to confront Logan. “The proditori, isn’t it?”

  Logan’s eyes narrowed as she spoke.

  “You’re about to find out how I earned that nickname,” he said, striding toward her. She scrambled back into the corner of the room, her back pressed against the file cabinet as Logan reached over his shoulder, pulling a sword from behind his back. But there was nothing strapped to his back—the sword Logan brandished materialized out of nothing.

  Logan expertly twirled the sword—Blaise’s sparkling eyes tracking its movements as it gracefully sliced through the air. The weapon looked like it was made of ice—long, translucent and pale blue, rising from an intricate silver handle that curled over his knuckles.

  This wasn’t the quiet, somewhat shy boy from the back of the class. Instead, Logan was a commanding presence, his back straight and his voice confident and controlled as he ordered me to hit the floor. I crouched on the other side of the classroom, against the windows. Ducking behind a desk, I peeked out to watch as Blaise held her hand out, a massive swirl of smoke, red mist and flames churning above her palm until it condensed into a fireball—which she hurled at Logan.

  He deftly blocked the fireball with the broad side of the sword, sending licks of fire raining onto the linoleum. She conjured another fireball, and I could hear a slight hiss as the frosty blade again sliced through the whirling flames, scattering burning embers on the floor. Blaise began to panic, her sparkling black eyes searching the classroom for an escape as she quickly created another fireball. Logan closed the gap between them, arms held high as he adjusted his grip on the sword, pointing the tip of the blade down until it was just a few feet from the base of Blaise’s throat. She reared her arm back, but switched the fireball’s target at the last moment—to me.