“Professor Binion confirmed it,” I said.
“Holy shit,” Celeste said. She leaned against the base of her bed and crunched her knees to her chest. She contemplated all of this for a long time and then said, “I don’t know what it is about those boys. But it seems like whatever connection you guys have is a good thing, right?”
“It’s a little overwhelming,” I admitted. “But only if I think about it too hard. When I’m with them, it feels like the most natural thing in the entire world.”
Celeste nodded. She looked a little bit older, a little bit sadder than I’d ever seen her.
“I’m just thinking...” Celeste finally said, her voice low. “Thinking that if somebody is willing to penetrate the academy spells...then it’s a damn good thing you didn’t leave for Christmas. Can you imagine what might have happened? And—no offense, Ivy—but you’re not a dragon. Spells don’t penetrate dragon skin as easily as our human skin. And those made Quintin unconscious. I just...” She palmed the back of her neck, seemingly unsure of what to say.
“So what? Do you think I’ll never be able to leave the academy again?” I asked, panic rising up in me and taking the form of sarcasm. “Think I’ll just live in this dormitory for the rest of my life? Maybe they’ll give me a menial job like I don’t know, trash pick-up or cafeteria lady or something. I imagine those are the people who failed out of the supernatural world in some way.”
“An oracle picking up garbage,” Celeste said, clucking her tongue. As usual, she wanted to take my words and spin them on their head. “You’re the only one between us who can really see the future. When you close your eyes, can you feel yourself slipping on a garbage uniform, ready to seize the day’s trash?”
I rolled my eyes. Admittedly, I couldn’t see much about my own future—I guessed because I hadn’t really trained that side of my oracle brain. But in truth, I couldn’t imagine myself in any sort of garbage jumpsuit. I shook my head and gave a wry laugh.
“Then focus on what you can,” Celeste said with a shrug. “Your own powers. Your own responsibility for yourself. It’s all you can do.”
I knew she was right.
Chapter Sixteen
The other students arrived back from break on January 6. This extra time on campus had gifted me loads of time with the boys (discovering new and creative ways to mess around with each other—something that, I realized, was the only thing that really kept my head above water), plenty of time to practice my powers on the soccer field, and time to sit around with Celeste and laugh and gossip like old times. There weren’t any other incidents like the one with Quintin—and my locket only glowed slightly while having sex, like it confused danger with passion. Somehow, maybe, they were very similar.
Classes started up again. Celeste took Peter back with excited zeal and I began to doubt her assertion that she wasn’t that sure about him. I attended classes with the others, along with my sessions with Professor Binion. For a few days, everything seemed almost ordinary. Professor Binion informed me that he’d taken great efforts to strengthen the charms around the academy. There was a strangeness behind his eyes when he said it, as though there was more to the story. I decided not to push it. He only wanted to tell me what I needed to know, anyway.
It took me a few days to recognize the void in my life, which was the disappearance of Margot’s bullying. In fact, it seemed like she avoided me at all costs. When I tried to make eye contact with her during lunch or before or after class, she shot her eyes to the ground and mumbled something in French.
“What do you think is going on with her?” I asked the boys during dinner one evening. “I can’t get my mind around it. She’s normally so persistent.”
The boys exchanged glances.
“Normally, by this point, she’s chased whoever she was bullying off campus,” Raphael said. “You know. Daniela from Deutschland? She was gone in only a few months.”
“But you’ve got staying power, baby,” Ezra said, with a coy smile. “Maybe she’s just gotten bored of you.”
“Or maybe she’s decided not to be such a manipulative bitch?” Quintin tried. “I mean, people can change.”
Celeste and I exchanged glances, knowing full-well that Margot wasn’t really the type to just change. Not like that.
“Or maybe she’s found somebody else to bully,” Raphael added. “Suffice it to say; you have enough to worry about. It’s good she’s giving you a break.”
But this made me curious. I couldn’t shake it. I hadn’t seen Margot bullying anyone since she’d returned, but that didn’t mean that I hadn’t missed something. I felt weirdly apprehensive about this—knowing that somebody was out there, being bullied by Margot and Zelda and Riley. I felt this urgent desire to protect them; however, I could.
Which led to me following Margot around for a few days. I did this as sneakily as I could. I changed up my routes back to the girls’ dormitory, made sure to trail behind her on her way to classes, and even came to my lessons with Professor Binion late a few times, to support my mission. Luckily, Margot never seemed to notice.
But after about a week of this, around mid-January, I grew frustrated. I hadn’t seen Margot do anything yet. In fact, she’d seemed borderline boring, hardly even bossing around Zelda and Riley. Both of the other girls seemed a bit withdrawn, as well. When I told this to Celeste, she suggested winter doldrums, but this didn’t seem to be it. Everything seemed way more complicated than it used to.
I knew that I had something else up my sleeves—something that the other students didn’t. Although I didn’t feel brave enough to touch Margot herself, I did make my way over to Zelda one afternoon, mid-way through lunch. Zelda seemed uninterested in her lunch and returned her tray half-eaten, before stepping out into the arboretum. She walked alone, through streams of other students. I followed a bit behind her, keeping a close watch. She padded toward the little garden area between a few of the other classroom buildings. At the center of this garden was a beautiful, white stone statue of one of the original founders of Origins Supernatural Academy—a regal-looking old man who held his hand out far into the air in front of him, in the middle of saying some kind of spell. According to lore, this was an old spell of “protection” over the Origins Supernatural Academy. I had to scoff at that after what had happened to Quintin—but whatever.
Zelda paused at a flower bed and blinked down at the dead flowers. She seemed lost in thought. I took this as my chance. I marched directly past her, slipping off one of my gloves, and then pressed my hand—just for a moment—against her upper arm. Immediately, I was flooded with images. I swear, I could have drowned in the number of images I saw.
Zelda’s home in England—a little cottage.
Her mother’s fangs, hovering over her as she’d completed a glass of ruby red blood.
A black dog, maybe one she’d grown up with, laid out on a pillow and gasping for air. The knowledge that dogs couldn’t be turned into vampires. The knowledge that as a vampire, you always had to say goodbye...
Before I knew it, I walked toward the statue, still swimming in images. But suddenly, I felt a strange color of foreboding. It was ominous, strange. I felt it—something bad was about to happen. I whipped around to see Zelda staring at me, her eyes monstrously huge. She was enraged.
“What the fuck was that?” she demanded.
I paused, genuinely stricken. I had no idea what to do, where to go. I knew something was about to happen—and I had to figure out what it was so I could stop it.
Zelda stepped toward me, her nostrils flared. “You fucking creep. The rumors are all around about what happens when you touch someone. Tell me what you saw. Tell me what you just did to me.” Her fangs jutted out from her upper mouth as she cut closer. There was no way she would actually attack me; she would go to prison, probably, for a long, long time.
Zelda appeared in front of me. She spat with anger as she spoke. “You’re a fucking weird girl, Ivy Whitestone. I feel like I shouldn’t have to
tell you to stay away from me. Half the school wants you to stay away from them. And they—“
But I suddenly knew it. I could see what would happen next. It hit me like a hand to a drum. I jumped forward, grabbing her shoulders, and tore toward the far end of the garden, landing in the softness of the grass. Just as I did this, the enormous extended arm of the old founder of Origins Supernatural Academy broke off from the shoulder and crashed down, directly in the space where Zelda had stood.
Zelda screamed with panic. She was stretched out beneath me for only a moment until I leaped up and blinked around to look at the massive stone arm, which had cracked and busted into several pieces on the ground.
“What the fuck!” Zelda cried. Her voice grew into a shriek, and she brought her hands over her cheeks in genuine alarm as she clambered back to her feet. Her backside was soaked with dirt and mud.
A little crowd had gathered around the busted stone. Zelda turned her eyes from the stone, back to me. In my head, I’d just saved Zelda from tremendous pain. (Honestly, I wasn’t sure a vampire could die from a stone falling on their head? But it probably wouldn’t have been the most pleasant thing.)
“You fucking bitch,” Zelda said, her voice low.
I bucked around and gazed at her, shocked. Everyone turned their eyes to me. I could feel them muttering and questioning whether I had done that or not? Had I planned this? Had I tried to maim Zelda?
Zelda’s cheeks were light pink—all she could really muster in anger, being a vampire. She stepped closer and said, “You caused that. I know you did.”
I scoffed. “Then why the hell would I have rescued you?”
Zelda was too enraged to listen to reason. “As if that was an accident, Ivy Whitestone. Where you go, drama and chaos follow. Nobody at this school is safe around you. Nobody.” She turned her eyes toward the growing crowd, as though she held court over them.
It was too horrible. Every single eye now drew itself toward me, labeling me as this cursed creature. I’d spent the past few weeks thinking the same about myself—that I was monstrous, that I shouldn’t exist. That I’d brought tremendous pain to so many people in my life. Now, the rest of the school could live in this reality.
And I had a feeling they would make my life a living hell because of it.
Fuck.
It was time for the next round of classes. The bell that clanked over the campus was my only saving grace. Everyone turned on their heels, their heads still spinning with what they felt sure they’d seen me do. Zelda gave me a final, cutting glare and then sauntered away. I felt used up, exhausted—still swimming in the panic of what I’d seen.
I’d known that statue was going to fall and bust her across the skull.
I’d known that the only way she could be saved was to hurl myself at her.
But she’d only been near the statue because of me. She’d only come all the way there because she’d wanted to yell at me to stay away from her after I’d touched her. It felt like the chicken and the egg scenario. Had I caused it? Or had it always been meant to be?
Maybe I really was cursed. The words rang out through my skull, labeling me. I resolved to keep my head down the next few weeks, to avoid Margot and Zelda and Riley at all costs. I didn’t need to solve anything or get myself into any more trouble. It was obvious it brought nothing but pain.
Chapter Seventeen
With the arrival of the rest of the students came a new force of curfew. This meant that none of us could leave our rooms after nine again—a fact that the boys really wanted me to resist. After all, I’d snuck out of curfew once already to meet Quintin at the library. “Come on, Ivy. We’ll protect you. Come with us.”
They wanted me and weren’t afraid to tell me. I could feel their eyes on me wherever I went—urgent and sexual and protective. But I felt weirdly sinister these days. My entire focus, everything within me, had to go toward the development of my powers. I felt unreasonably fearful that I would never grow strong enough for whatever it was I was meant to do—that I would have to remain at Origins Supernatural Academy for the rest of my days, always hiding from both the supernatural world and the human one. I’d imagined Celeste going off with Peter or whoever else and becoming an adult and having children and traveling far and wide and experiencing the world in ways I never could. I would be just the friend she sometimes visited if she even managed that.
I didn’t want to stay in hiding. I wanted to live, dammit, the way I’d always meant to.
Professor Binion sensed my new resolve during classes. He presented me with an old painting of Bulgaria, and I recited to him who the painter had been, where the painting had been painted—in the old studio of the painter in Sophia, Bulgaria—and how many times the painting had exchanged hands. It was crazy to me that these facts just rolled off my tongue, only seconds after I’d pressed my hand against the side of the painting’s canvas. I could feel its history. I could feel it as though I’d read the story in an old book.
As I snuck down the staircase, heading back to the dorm, I felt a hand wrap around my elbow and whipped to the side to see Quintin, Raphael, and Ezra. They stood in the darkness of the hallway, near an antique painting. Their eyes were sinister.
There, standing with them again, my heartbeat wildly in my throat. I swallowed. Raphael pressed me up against the brick wall and their eyes feasted on me, waiting. The locket glowed a bit against my chest.
“You’re avoiding us,” Raphael said. His words were sharp.
My heart dipped lower in my chest. How could I explain myself?
“I don’t want to avoid you,” I whispered.
Raphael pressed harder against my shoulder, pinning me deeper against the wall. My breasts tipped up toward him.
“Bullshit. Explain yourself.” Ezra said, showing his fangs.
I turned my eyes toward Quintin, who lurked on the other side of Ezra. “You saw what happened to Quintin. Unconscious. Burns all over him. Can you imagine what that felt like—knowing that it had happened because of me?”
The boys wouldn’t accept this. When Quintin huffed, little spits of fire came out between his lips.
“We told you. We’re here to protect you,” he growled.
“But you can’t do that if you’re already dead,” I spat back.
Anger boiled up within me. Raphael could sense it. He let me free, and I rushed away from them, hustling down the staircase and back into the January grey. My heart beat with anger and adrenaline and fear. I didn’t want to live this life without them; hell, I hated this campus without them. But I knew I had to draw a heavy line between us, somehow, someway, if I was going to figure out my powers.
I had premonitions, too. Bad ones—images of Quintin with blood pouring from his face, Raphael stretched out, face-down, on the ground, and Ezra screaming into the night, clearly in some kind of pain. I asked Professor Binion about them, without going into detail about what they were. He admitted that he wasn’t entirely sure of the nature of premonitions.
“But it’s possible that a premonition might not be true,” I said urgently. I thought back again to that afternoon with Zelda when it was possible that my premonition had only seen something that I was going to cause anyway. “There’s a chance that they might not happen.”
“I suppose when it comes to this unprecedented occurrence—that is, your mother giving birth to you, a forbidden oracle, then anything really is possible,” Professor Binion said.
This obviously didn’t clear anything up at all.
When I sat in my bedroom that night, I felt the boys speaking about me across the arboretum, together in what seemed to be Ezra’s dormitory. I couldn’t articulate exactly what they said, but I felt their anger and their confusion. I felt them trying to come up with ways to coax me out of my bedroom at night. I held onto the locket and squeezed my eyes shut and tried to deliver some kind of news to them.
That they were so important to me.
That I couldn’t be the one to blame for anything bad that h
appened to them.
That I really was just a bad omen, the way Zelda had said.
I couldn’t remain there.
In fact, seated there on my bed, I made a resolution to myself. I knew what I had to do, above everything else.
The moment I came into my powers completely—the moment I felt strong enough to go out on my own, I would leave Origins Supernatural Academy.
I wouldn’t tell anyone where I went, either. I would run away as fast as I could and take up residence somewhere far, far away. I would make up a different name, come up with powerful curses to protect my surroundings, and never, ever speak to anyone I’d ever known again.
This meant that Celeste would no longer be in my life.
This meant that I would never see Aunt Maria again.
And the boys? The boys I’d fallen for so hard that it made my heart feel like it broke on-command when I saw them? The boys with such power over me, such love and protection?
I would never see them again, either.
Someday, hopefully soon, I would be nothing but a memory for these people.
There was a knock at the door, at this exact moment of resolve. I swung around to see Celeste slipping through, a massive grin across her cheeks. She shut the door and bounded onto my bed, making the mattress bounce. She looked mischievous and alive, the way I always wanted to remember her.
Look at me. I’m already thinking of all of this in the past-tense—something I’ll look back on when I’m far away and lonely.
Celeste talked at me for a while about something that had just happened with Peter. I made all the right noises at all the right times, laughing and asking questions. She popped up and paced and tossed her head around so that her black curls shook. I wanted to take her picture right then. There was no way I could ever tell her my plan. She would insist that I take it back; she would demand to go with me, even.
But I had to do this life alone. It seemed obvious now.
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