Hades Academy: Second Semester

by Abbie Lyons

  “What’s bothering you?”

  It took me a minute to find the words. “I had this weird moment when I was in Westrock this weekend. We went to the Bronze Blade—”

  Raines rolled his eyes. “Gods, how many times can Collum go for target practice in a single week?”

  “Hey, it was fun,” I defended. “Anyway, not the point. I went up to the shop upstairs to find a bathroom, and I ran into Wilder. Well, not ran into, exactly, but I saw him at the counter, looking really shady.”

  “Shady?” Raines folded his arms and leaned back against the wall. I followed suit, almost like a reflex. Our shoulders brushed.

  “He just flipped out when I saw him,” I said. “Like I’d caught him in flagrante or something. He was just buying a bunch of stuff...I don’t know exactly what, but it seemed like some of the stuff he had at the last exetasis.”

  Raines squinted. “What things from the last exetasis?”

  “The objects. You know, the crystal, the sickle, the wand thingy.”

  Confusion welled in me. Not my confusion—Raines’s.

  “I’m missing something,” Raines said. “The last exetasis was the gold-tipped arrows. The chart printed on silk? Target practice. That’s why I thought it was funny that Col took you to the Bronze Blade—like, hadn’t he had enough targets, et cetera.”

  My memory fired back to the axe-throwing. What had Collum said that so confused me?

  It’s an awful lot of chucking things at targets lately, isn’t it? Only this time it’s a lot lower stakes.

  “Arrows?” I said slowly. “Wilder didn’t have any arrows. Are you sure that was the test for everyone?” Maybe they changed it up. Like changing the order of multiple-choice answers so that people don’t cheat off each other.

  “For the three of us, yeah,” Raines said. “I’m sure your friends would say the same. String up the bow and aim blindfolded—it’s pretty standard stuff.”

  There was a long pause.

  “You said he gave you what? A sickle?”

  “A sickle, a crystal, and a wand,” I said. “I don’t know if I used them right, though.”

  Raine’s eyes began to glow red. Hadn’t seen that in a while. “I don’t know what he was trying to do,” he said, “but those things aren’t part of the third exetasis. They had no place there.” He paused. “Those aren’t...there’s a reason that’s the kind of crap you have to get on the black market from guys who operate axe-throwing joints. It’s unstable. You’d only use it to...find something way off the books about someone. It’s like...if the exetasis is supposed to be taking your pulse, he’s running a full panel blood test to see if you’ve got arsenic in your veins or something. It’s way disproportionate. Shit, Nova...this is bad.”

  “You don’t need to tell me,” I said darkly. I looked at him, heart hammering, and held his blazing gaze in mine. “But I want you to.”

  Raines pursed his lips. The fire-bright light in his eyes flickered, but didn’t dim. He closed them.

  Unbidden, my memory flew back to the whole reason we were here. The binding ceremony. Seeing Raines’s eyes like this, up close, lids shut.

  I shivered.

  Okay, not helpful. Not the kind of sensations you need to send to Raines, Nova.

  “Look, I don’t know what his end goal is here, but it can’t be good,” Raines said.

  My emotional compass whirled. I could feel his concern growing. It was growing in me, too, mixing with my own and amplifying, resonating. An image, long buried, emerged in my mind.

  “Have you ever been to Central Park?” I blurted out.

  Raines’s eyes flew open, back to their regular gold. “What?”

  “In New York City,” I explained.

  “I know where Central Park is,” Raines said. “But no, I haven’t. Why?”

  “There’s this bench there,” I said. “It’s a big stone one, almost a circle, kind of like a big capital letter C. You can sit on one side and have someone else sit on the other, and if you put your mouth right against the stone and whisper, and the other person puts their ear against the stone, they can hear you as if you’re talking right to them.”

  Raines shifted his shoulder blades against the wall, arms still folded. “So?”

  “So I used to go there and watch the tourists do it and freak out about how cool it was—like they’d say it was magical, even.” I snorted. “But you know what I felt when I went? By myself?”

  I didn’t need to tell him. But I needed him to hear it, out loud, from me.

  “Sad,” I said. “And pathetic. Because I had no one to sit on the other side and hear the things I whispered.” I looked straight ahead, at the wall opposite us—it was too hard to look him right in the eye. “I was used to everything I thought, or said, or felt, being nothing. To me being nothing. I could scream or whisper and there was no one on the receiving end. Like the phone was always disconnected.” Which sometimes it was, literally, when the bills weren’t paid. “For the first nineteen years of my life, no one cared what I felt. No one felt what I felt, that’s for damn sure.”

  I blew out a breath, my throat surprisingly thick. Where the hell was I going with this? I expected annoyance from Raines, which usually manifested itself in my body as a tightness in my jaw, a low heat in my stomach. But I didn’t get that. I got...not pity. Empathy, maybe. Like my chest was opening, the bands around it loosening.

  “Anyway,” I said, desperate to move on from my emo outburst. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you,” I said. “About staying away from him. You were right.”

  My stupid little crush on Wilder seemed like another lifetime ago. But then again, would any of this turned out differently had I been more wary of him? It’s not like I could just avoid going to class or my exetases.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Raines said. “I’ll be on high alert tomorrow. I’ll be able to feel it if something goes wrong during your exetasis. You have good intuition, right? You’ll feel it in your gut, or whatever, if he’s up to something.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. That’s the one thing I can do pretty consistently.”

  “All right. So if that happens, I’ll come running to kick that fucker’s ass.” Raines leaned forward, away from the wall, back to standing, and adjusted his sleeves.

  “I can handle myself,” I said automatically.

  We both knew that wasn’t true.

  “Fine,” I said. “Look, I want to get going. Are you headed to the common room?”

  Raines shook his head. “Not yet.”

  “Fine,” I said again, and, not sure what to do, just spun on the heel of my Docs and started a confident but not-too-stompy march away from him, willing my emotions to just keep their cool.

  “Hey, Nova!”

  I turned just enough to see Raines, hands in his pockets.

  “I do want to see Central Park one day.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  I wish I could’ve just skipped my final exetasis. I even thought about meeting with Dean Harlowe during her office hours to request a new proctor. But as badly as I didn’t want to be alone with Wilder in his office, I wanted to remain here at Hades Academy even more. Complaining about a professor being creepy or trying to switch things up with my exetasis could probably be seen as rocking the boat. I didn’t want to push too far and find myself expelled, back out on my ass in Brooklyn. Even Raines agreed it would be in my best interests not to do anything drastic, so I figured that if even the most anti-Wilder person in the world was telling me to go, he was probably right.

  Morgan gave me a gigantic hug before I left. “If he lays so much as a finger on you, I’ll break his neck,” she said. “I swear to Gods.”

  I wasn’t sure Morgan could do anything, except maybe turn into an exceptionally accessorized ghost, but it felt really reassuring to have her have my back. Between her and Raines, I felt just the smallest glimmer of calm.

  The trek from my room to Wilder’s office felt like a death march. I hadn’t seen him around at al
l since that night in Westrock, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the vile look on his face when he’d caught me spying on him.

  His face looked just as ugly to me when he opened the door to his office.

  It amazed me that it was only weeks ago that I thought Wilder was just about the most handsome man/demon in the world. Now I couldn't think of a single person who disgusted me more. It was as if his gross personality was seeping out of his skin and all over him. He looked the same as ever, but there was just something about him that made him...well, ugly.

  A true lesson in never judging a book by its cover.

  I wondered how many of his "insights" that he'd shared in class that I'd once found so fascinating and thought-provoking were really just bullshit that I couldn't see past because of a stupid crush. At least I could see clearly now.

  "Nova, welcome," he said. "Please, take a seat."

  He didn't sound mad or anything. Just tired, as if he didn't want to keep going through these motions. He wasn't even bothering to try and put up his usual veneer of friendliness.

  I took a seat and looked down at the ground. I just couldn't look him in the eye.

  Wilder sat down behind his desk. "About that elephant in the room," he began. "I owe you yet another huge apology. And I don't blame you if you don't accept this one. My behavior has been terribly inappropriate as of late. The way I acted in Westrock...it's kept me awake at night all week. I'm not sure what got into me."

  "Okay," was all I could manage to say.

  "I think it's just that I see so much of myself in you."

  Oh, no, is that really the line he’s going with?

  "You're just like me when I was a student here," he continued. "And so I think I feel this...attraction to you. I know, I know. I'm your professor, and I'd never cross that boundary. That's my promise. But it brings me joy to be around you, Nova. And when I see you stumbling around drunk in town, it pulls at me, because I know that you're so much more than that."

  He couldn't even choose an excuse. He didn't know whether to play the "we're so similar, and I don't want you to waste your potential" card, or the "I'm attracted to you, and it's making me act like a fool" card.

  For that matter, I wasn't even sure Wilder was actually attracted to me. Perhaps to my power, yes, but to me as a person? I doubted it. But he knew he was handsome enough that he could use lines like that on girls and nine times out of ten, they'd work. I was just thankful to finally being able to see clearly.

  "Can I be blunt for a minute?" I asked.

  "Please."

  "I'd really just rather get on with my exetasis than dwell on this."

  That was the truth—if I couldn't think of anything else to say, then I might as well at least say what I was actually thinking.

  He looked taken aback at the fact that his apology had fallen totally flat. "Fair enough," he said. "Though I hope we can continue this conversation some other time."

  He opened a drawer in his desk and produced a small vial of a bright green liquid.

  "So, this is simple," he said, "although I have to admit, maybe a little awkward.”

  Huh?

  "What's the deal with that stuff?" I asked.

  "It's a decoction," he explained, pouring it into a golden chalice. "Artemisia vulgaris. Mugwort. Called ‘dream plant’ by the Paiute. And a few other things. You're going to have especially vivid dreams, which I'll be able to observe. It's not perfect, mind you. Your dreams will appear to me a bit blurry and imperceptible, but I should be able to make out the broad details."

  Great, so the dude who had just admitted how creepy he'd been was about to drug me. Not exactly something to feel awesome about.

  "How do you watch my dreams?" I asked.

  "As you sleep, I'll do a form of channeling that taps into your mind. Think of me as a radio antenna picking up the waves that your dreams are sending out." He gestured at the other side of the room, and a black shroud obediently flew to the floor from where it had been draped. What I thought was another bookshelf or pile of random academic crap was in fact a giant brass...birdcage? Inside was a tufted purple couch like you’d see in a shrink’s office—oh, the irony—behind a small door that was just big enough to crawl through.

  “Of course, to avoid any kind of interference, you will be completely separate from your proctor while asleep.”

  I stared at him. “You’re going to lock me in a cage?”

  Wilder smiled, more of a grimace than a smile. “No. You’re going to lock you in a cage.”

  He dangled a palm-sized brass key from a chain. The teeth looked sharp as kitchen knives. “You’ll take the key in with you, and as you fall asleep, the cage will elevate. Then, as you wake, it will drift back down, and you can unlock the door.”

  I took the key slowly, careful not to cut myself.

  "Now if you will, you can lie down right there just to make sure you're good and comfortable. You might wake up feeling groggy, but otherwise this should go rather smoothly."

  He slid the chalice across the desk and gestured for me to drink it.

  I clutched the key, pressing the non-sharp part into the flesh of my hand. I had a million reasons to be apprehensive, not least of which was that this shit looked absolutely disgusting. But the idea of Wilder peering into my dreams? Holy shit, that was bad.

  And yet, did I really have a choice? Not drinking the decoction would be tantamount to refusing to participate in an exetasis, which in turn would put me right on the fast track out of Hades Academy.

  I grabbed the chalice and swallowed the decoction down without sparing another thought. It actually didn’t taste so bad—weirdly enough, it reminded me of cherry Coke.

  “Please,” Wilder said. “Go right on over to the couch and make yourself comfortable.”

  I crept through the small cage door, swung it shut behind me, locked it, and settled back on the couch, my waves of hair spread under my neck.

  The last thing I remembered was tucking the key in my pocket.

  I WAS SWIMMING. HAZY. Cool, then warm. Everything around me felt silky—air, water, maybe fine sand.

  Couldn't tell. Can't tell.

  "Is that you?"

  The voice sounded distant, genderless, clear and vibrant as a struck chime. I blinked. Eyes open. Bright everywhere, pinks and reds.

  I tried to speak, but my throat was stopped. I touched a hand to my neck—nothing.

  "Baby, it's me."

  That voice. Now I recognized.

  I spun around—what were my feet standing on? Was there ground? It felt watery, soft, then firm, then slippery. My heels dipped, then my toes. Gravity kept shifting—down, left, right, down again—

  "Honey? Baby, speak to me."

  Mom?

  I couldn't speak, but I could think. I would know that voice anywhere. No one called me baby. No one ever looked for me.

  Mom, I thought-yelled again. Mom. Mama. It's me. It's Nova. I'm here.

  "Baby, I can't hear you."

  Eyes shut. Squeeze. Open again—nothing but colors, barely shapes. Squeeze. Open. Squeeze. Open.

  "If you can hear me..."

  I can, I thought. I can I can I can. Talk to me. Where are you? Are you okay?

  Why did you leave?

  "Nova, don't be afraid."

  I am afraid, I admitted to myself. And maybe to her. To my mom. If she could hear me.

  "Look at you. Look at everything about you."

  I did—I looked down. There was nothing there. I had no body. I was nothing. Beneath me only flares of soft pinks and oranges, the color of sun shining through eyelids.

  Mom, I cried, help.

  "You don't need me," came her voice. Whether she had heard me or not...

  Yes I do!

  "You're going to be so great, baby. So wonderful. So strong."

  Unbearable. It hurt—it was burning, not in my chest or stomach, they weren't there, but everywhere, all around me, omnipresent as a fine mist coating everything.

  Then,
a jolt.

  Something else. From someone else.

  "You piece of shit."

  A voice. Male. Not one I recognized.

  Cold spikes, driving in from every angle. I didn't like it.

  Hello? I called. Who are you?

  "You're an embarrassment." The voice spoke again. "You're not part of this family, Raines."

  Raines.

  Raines.

  Can you hear me?

  Nova.

  I gasped, but there was no air to breathe. The atmosphere swirling around me turned brilliant violet, then black, gray, like billowing smoke from a fire.

  Are you all right? I called.

  I don't know.

  His voice wasn't sound. It wasn't even a voice. It was a humming sensation, a resonance, something as absolute in my mind as my own thoughts.

  Are you? it asked. Raines asked.

  I'm—

  Crash.

  My eyes flew open—real eyes. I was physical again, I was somewhere. Gravity pointed down, there was the tickle of my hair at my neck and the weight of the key in my pocket and the brush of my jeans on my legs and the plush of the couch and...

  Wilder.

  He stood just outside the cage, eyes—well, wild. I sat up, heart pounding, scrambling back against the back of the couch.

  "You," he choked.

  "What?" I said, my voice leaping an octave. I was having a heart attack and a panic attack and a psychotic episode all at once. I blinked furiously, trying to clear my vision of the multicolored floaters that still edged my line of sight. "What did you see? Did I do something wrong? Did you see my mother?"

  He ignored all my questions, hastily turning his sleeves up, shoving them to his elbows.

  Then he said it.

  "You're soul bound."

  Sheer terror flooded through me, uncut and deadly pure, like nothing I'd ever felt. Terror—the whole reason we were here. The whole reason demons walked the earth. The whole reason Hades Academy existed in the first place.

  "I'm—"

  "Don't bother lying to me, Nova," Wilder spat. "Did you really think you'd be able to conceal that from me? I can't believe—do you have any idea how foolish this is?" He was shouting, his deep baritone ringing sharply off the stones of his office walls. "Do you have any idea what you're fucking doing?"