Ever since Alastair pummeled his father's face, he was angry more often than not, and seeing Sarah and Mason making out all over school certainly didn't help matters. Black mist was now a regular visitor in his life. Maybe the others were right about him. He felt the darkness, had given into it that day he sent his father packing. It was festering inside of him. To say the least, Alastair had struggled with Control the last couple of weeks.

As he walked toward his last class that week, he thought that maybe tiptoeing on the edge of darkness was what made his gift, drawing, more Empathic. The trick was to stay on the right side of the line. He would have to concentrate, focus. He didn't want to become overrun with the pestilent blackness. But maybe releasing the dark heart passed down from his dad onto the pages of his sketchbook would help him with Control.

Alastair wandered pensively into the arts studio and sat at a drawing table with his sketch. Alastair raised his eyes to see Rose looking down at his page, an expression of horror mixed with understanding. He knew that she was experiencing what he had when she played that first day: empathy so strong it overwhelmed. Mrs. Cowdrey had described the effect of Empathic Magic to the arts classes in the past, but he had never felt it as strongly as when Rose played piano. He placed one smudged hand on hers, and she visibly relaxed, hands unfolding, jaws unclenching, eyes softening. He left it there only moments before he took back the hand he needed for his work, and continued the piece based on the mournful music she had played, his lost love, their sorrow. She sat and watched him smooth and break and roughen the lines on the page until class ended.

As he walked out of the studio, he bumped into Maggie.

"Hey," he said. "Where're you coming from?"

"Dropping off some coffee to Whitley." She looked at the page he carried at his side with wide eyes. "Whoa, that is the gloomiest thing I've ever seen."

Alastair shrugged, "It's based on some pretty gloomy stuff."

Maggie shook her head, and Alastair knew she wouldn't understand. She hadn't heard the music, seen the scars, felt the pain. Her parents were a lovely pair of hippies who had turned into successful business executives. They loved their daughters, each other, and everyone else, for that matter. She didn't know what it was to fear her home.

"Are your parents coming on Monday, Al?" Even her question showed she didn't understand. He only had the one parent left, having chased the other off.

"My mom is, I think. You?"

"Of course! All right, see you later," she said as they reached the eleventh floor and went in opposite directions.

Saturday twisted into Sunday, which slid into Monday. It was a rainy Labor Day in New York, hot summer rain that spurted off and on like a broken faucet. The school had been transformed from its usual quiet academic atmosphere to one of celebration, upbeat music coursing through the halls. Huge banners of welcome were strung around the common areas. Some parents of out-of-towners had arrived yesterday, staying in the guest rooms in the faculty apartments.

Alastair was glad to see his mother for parents day, even though he left her just a few weeks ago. She seemed to be doing really well since his dad had gone for good. She looked healthier in every way: her skin was glowing, her hair shiny, her eyes content. She had attended Whitman Academy in her time, so this was really just a chance to spend some time together and for her to hear how he was doing in his classes.

They stood together in the main hall lobby on the first floor amid the crowd of parents finding their kids, teachers greeting parents, and administrators worrying about all of them. Alastair saw Maggie and her "big" sister hugging their parents, whose hippie days were not entirely behind them, if their wardrobe had anything to say about it. Mr. Weintraub was around fifty, balding with a ponytail, and dressed in jeans, a purple paisley button-down shirt and brown leather vest. Mrs. Weintraub had tight curls to her shoulders and wore a yellow and orange sun dress that complimented her cocoa skin.

"You seem taller. Did you get taller?" His mother fussed with his hair, trying to push it out of his eyes. He took her hand in his to stop her messing it up any further.

"I don't think so. It's been two weeks, Mom. How much taller can I get?" He smiled down at her.

"Hello, Leah, so good to see you again," said Dean Whitley, extending her hand to Alastair's mother.

"Dean Whitley, how's my boy doing?"

The dean glanced at Alastair, "He is a fine young man. He's helpful, courteous, intelligent. You should be very proud."

Leah Silver beamed up at her blushing son, "I am."

««•»»

Rose didn't like thinking about her parents. They had been gone since she was five. They wouldn't be coming to parents day today. They wouldn't be coming ever. And she assumed, or hoped actually, that her guardian wouldn't be coming either. She wanted to avoid the crowds of annoyingly happy children and their parents as much as possible, so she went down to the dining hall and grabbed a few packaged donuts, which she stuffed in the pockets of her sweater, leaving almost as soon as she got there.

She spent the morning in the arts room, which was unusually quiet. The emptiness of the room was tempting, and she found herself staring at the instruments displayed around the front of the room. Rose hadn't played since the first day of school. She considered sitting again at the grand piano, wanting to see if that first day had been an anomaly, some freak accident caused by her trauma. But given her mindset and memories, she decided, not yet. Instead, she found a section of the room labeled "Poet's Corner," filled with books of poetry. Books accepted her silence, and Rose thought this could be her solution to the problem of arts class, a way to avoid actually creating anything real.

After reading "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock," twice, Rose wandered up the stairs without any real idea where she was going. She ended up in a lounge on the top floor, across from the basketball court, where Dean Whitley had tried to recruit Rose to the team. Rose had scowled at the suggestion. She could barely walk through a room without banging her leg on a desk. Rose was not an athlete.

The modern straight-line sofas and glass and metal tables made the lounge feel cold. She walked over to the window and looked down upon the horde of parents arriving for the day's events far below. She chose a white cushioned bench and leaned against the window. She stared across the interior windows that surrounded the courtyard, birds dipping in and out of view. And against her will and better judgment, she thought about her parents.

Rose was so little when they died. She couldn't remember much about them, but she remembered her father's waxy dead form in his coffin, and her mother's blank green eyes, rimmed with gold, as she slipped into insanity in the days after his funeral. These images would never fade, she feared.

She pictured her dad's hulking frame and his scruffy beard, which she still knew from the photos in her drawer. Rose could hear her mother singing. She was always singing, with bright white chipmunk teeth and the cutest little dimple on one side. Her heart ached at the memory.

Rose hated to remember. It would be so much easier to forget. Damn stupid Parents' Day. She wanted to be numb, not to feel anything at all. That was how she had coped for all those years in placement, by pushing the past deep, away, beyond reach. Now, every painful memory seemed to be floating up. Feeling nothing would certainly be better than feeling this. And in a moment of utter insanity, she missed the pills they gave her in the asylum because at least they dulled her emotions. She hugged her knees, her chin on her arms, staring without seeing. There had always been one word Rose used to describe herself. Survivor.

She swallowed down her emotion, without pills, and rested her forehead on her wrists. She breathed slowly, until the pain faded and the numbness returned. When she looked up, Rose noticed people moving around furtively on the opposite side of the floor, where the basketball court was. From this distance, it was difficult to see who they were. At first, she assumed it must be a kid and his parents, but their body language suggested they were up to something and didn't want to be seen. She hunched toward the courtyard window to try to observe them. A perfect distraction.

The shadowy figures ducked suddenly into the boys' locker room.

"Excuse me," said a deep voice behind her.

Rose stood up straight, embarrassed to have been caught spying.

"Can you tell me more about this school? I'm thinking of sending my son here."

She shrugged as her eyes took in his appearance. He was about six feet tall, muscular, with sharp grey eyes, and dressed all in black. He had a smile that looked as if he had cut it out from a magazine and glued it to his face. Something didn't feel right to Rose. Why would someone who is thinking of sending their kid to Whitman be there on Parents' Day, and why all the way on the 12th floor, when the people who could really answer his question were all downstairs? As if these questions were apparent in her eyes, the man's friendly smile dissolved into a dark expression. He stepped toward her, and she turned and bolted for the stairs, driven only by instinct.

Rose jumped three steps at a time all the way down to the first floor, shouts of men above her echoing down. She figured she should go where all the people are. Safety in numbers, right? She was winded and paranoid when she burst out of the stairwell into the main hall.

She scanned the crowd for someone to tell. She spotted Mr. Grant a few paces away, standing with a group of older kids and their parents, and hurried over to him. He turned towards the sound of her panting as she rested her hands on her knees to find her breath.

As she straightened, she conjured paper and grabbed the pen sticking out of his shirt pocket, then wrote: strange men upstairs, 12th floor, asked questions about the school, chased me when I ran. Admin stairwell, her writing coming out in bursts as it would if she were actually speaking through her hyperventilation.

Without hesitation, Grant spun to find more teachers and staff to take with him. He, Mr. Bennett, Mr. Cain, and another teacher she didn't know headed for the stairwell door. She saw Cain cock his head to the side, listening, then nod and run up the stairs, followed by the others.

She sank into a chair against the front wall, struggling to breathe. Rose stared straight ahead, watching the door to the stairs, waiting for Grant and the others to drag her pursuers out by their necks.

Alastair and his mother watched as a commotion drew Dean Whitley away to confer with some of the teachers.

She walked back over. "Leah, head on into the auditorium, please. Alastair, I'm going to have to call on you to help with a leadership project."

He pulled free of his mother's hand and went with the dean to where the other leadership students and teachers were gathering, the adults wearing obvious worry on their faces. He knew it couldn't be good.

"There is an emergency situation developing. Some of the teachers are handling it, but we need as many people as we can to get the families into the auditorium and stand watch at the doors," the dean explained the situation calmly and matter-of-factly. She gave them each instructions for their post, and the group disbursed quickly.

Alastair was assigned to the ground-floor auditorium doors that all the families had used to enter. As he made his way into position, he saw Rose being led by the arm by Ms. Steele, the math teacher, and resisting.

"Rose!" he called, wondering if she had gotten in trouble.

She looked back over her shoulder, fear shadowing her dark eyes.

"Dr. Olivier instructed me to make sure she came to the auditorium," Ms. Steele said.

Alastair wondered why the director of the school would take such an interest in making sure she, in particular, was there. "Sure," he said. "I have to guard the doors. I'll walk with you."

"Thanks," Ms. Steele said, looking relieved. She was the only teacher at WAG who wasn't a practitioner.

As they reached the door, Alastair leaned forward to pull it open. The noisy crowd inside the sunken space was still settling into seats, and the director stood on the stage, the royal blue and gold curtains drawn behind him. The muttering of the crowd echoed off the two-story high ceilings, which were covered in pressed metal squares with a labyrinthine design. He could hear people chatting on the second floor balcony as well.

A loud pop from above was followed by the crash of shattering glass. Alastair and Rose were back in the hallway in a blink, in time to hear the tinkling of the broken window raining down on the pavement outside. The hundreds still milling around the large theater turned toward the street side of the school, murmuring in confusion. Four men dressed all in black were fleeing south down 7th avenue, one crutched along by two others, who had his arms draped over their shoulders.

Three teachers ran out of the girls' dorm stairs between where Rose and Alastair stood and the front of the school. They circled the front display case and stared out at the street.

"Dammit, they got away," Bennett kicked at a chair. "This is really serious."

Alastair frowned. In his ten years at the school, they had never had such a disturbance.

"Unbelievable. They just jumped out of that window?" Cain asked. The others shrugged, as if they were unsure exactly what had happened.

"Who the hell were they, is what I want to know," Grant looked around at his colleagues.

Jackson ran up, barely exiting the stairwell as Grant spoke, and fumed, "We'll never know now. We should get break-proof glass."

"It's better they're gone. We've got families here to think about," Cain said, turning toward them. "Come on, let's go into the theater."

Cain led the teachers and Alastair into the theater. "Don't tell anyone anything. Not even your mom," he muttered, gripping Alastair by the upper arm. Rose fell in step behind them. This was crazy.

Alastair noticed that Rose sat alone in the back of the theater. He knew from Cowdrey that her great-aunt died this summer, so he figured that she must not have family to spend the day with. He looked across the room at his mother and felt grateful for what he had; even though they didn't have much, they had each other.

"We're sorry for the disruption, folks," said Dr. Olivier, director of Whitman Academy, from the podium on the stage. "Quite an exciting start to our Parents' day, heh?" The crowd chuckled, nerves settling.

Dr. Olivier was well-respected among magic practitioners. Sixty years old, he was a slight man, with a kind face and clean-cut white hair. He always wore mock turtleneck shirts under elbow-patched professorial tweed or corduroy coats. His presence on the stage seemed to soothe everyone's worries.

"How about we carry on! Students, please show your parents around to the dorms and classrooms, and we will see you all in the dining hall for lunch at 12."

Alastair waited until the herd had thinned, then found his mother.

"Hey mom, you ready?"

"Can't wait!"

Alastair spent the next two hours showing his mother this year's dorm, the work he had done so far in his academic classes, and some of the art he had been working on. She cooed appreciatively as a mother should.

When the auditorium was dismissed for parents day, Rose headed out into the main hall, unsure now where to spend her time. She saw the director and dean talking with Mr. Grant and tried to retreat before they could see her, but she wasn't quick enough.

"Come on over, Rose," called Dean Whitley wearily.

Rose liked the dean enough to go, but she had never actually met the director, and her relationship with Grant was beyond rough, so she went skeptically, prepared for the worst.

"This way," said the director.

She followed after them into his very blue office. The carpet was swirly navy, the desk a shiny sky enamel, the chairs covered in smooth indigo leather. He had ancient books everywhere, and she really wanted to touch their spines. Yet, the room had a modern feel. The paradox put her on edge. She sat down anxiously, as the director walked to the window and gazed out. She could see Mr. Cain speaking to NYPD officers. She was surprised, figuring that the school wouldn't want the police involved since the nature of the school was secret. Then again, from the street and to regular people, this just looked like any posh private school in the city.

"Hello, Ms. Regitano, my name is Thomas Olivier. I am the director of Whitman Academy."

Yes, Rose nodded, she knew. She resented his singsongy tone, as if she were a little kid, or stupid.

"Why were you on the twelfth floor at the start of Parents' day?"

She stared at the carpet, no sound, no movement.

"Please look at me," his voice was firm, unyielding, yet gentle.

She looked at him through her lashes, still keeping her head tilted down. Rose didn't know what to do. She didn't want him to think she was defying him. She made eye contact, trying to communicate her distress through her face, her eyes. She pleaded with him to understand, then dropped her eyes back down.

"Do you ever speak?"

No. She shook her head no, eyes fixed to the tops of her shoes. She could feel her throat tightening at the thought.

"Have you ever?"

Rose closed her eyes, realized she was shaking, and braced herself to look at him again. She raised her head and nodded.

He nodded--her silence always seemed to inspire quiet in others as well. Paper landed in her hands from nowhere. "Explain yourself," the director pushed a pen towards her.

She wrote one sentence: I can't explain why I don't talk. Selective mutism, the psychiatrists had called it, but she wasn't about to tell him that.

"I meant, why were you on the twelfth floor at the start of Parents' day?" asked the director again.

I don't have parents. She didn't know what else to say...er, write.

Dean Whitley read her response aloud. Mr. Grant paced behind her, and she saw him reflected in the window, hands going up to the sides of his head, as if he didn't like what he was hearing.

"Please describe exactly what happened," the director directed.

She wrote out a brief narrative detailing what happened, leaving out why she was hiding upstairs. She would never detail that for anyone. She didn't want to detail it for herself either, but her brain was stubborn and wouldn't obey when she told it to stop.

Whitley read it out for the others to hear, then asked, "When you ran down the stairs, did you hear anything specific that they said to each other?"

Rose's eyes moved left, as if she was looking into her ear. She replayed the voices in her mind. Asylum, she was almost certain someone had said asylum. But that could have just been her own fear whispering in her mind. She shook her head, no.

"Did you see if they made it into the archive room?" Grant asked, and the director shot him a dark look.

Rose shrugged, then shook her head. She had no idea what the archive room was, but she was pretty sure the only room they had gone into was the boys' locker room.

"Thank you, Rose. You absolutely did the right thing today. I know you must be scared, but rest assured, you are safe here," the director spoke with a more collegial tone, as if he had reevaluated her and decided she was no fool. "Just one thing. I have to ask you not to mention what you saw or heard to anyone."

Rose wanted to laugh, but she simply raised a single sarcastic eyebrow at him.

"Good. Well, I understand you spend a lot of time in the library."

Rose looked back up with interest, surprised that anyone was aware of her reading habits.

"Mr. Grant would like to show you our special collection." Rose was uncertain. She looked over her shoulder at the harsh English teacher, who nodded, the same stony expression he always wore. She glanced at the dean.

"Go on, Rose. You'll love it."

And so she did. The room was starkly white, making the colors of the texts stand out. Some of the books were out on pedestals, most of which were under glass. It looked more like a museum than a library. There were ancient rare books, both magical and secular, and Mr. Grant explained the history of some of the texts. There was a beautiful German geography book from 1493 whose maps were gilt but did not include the Americas, Columbus having not yet returned to Europe to share his "discovery." This room made Rose very happy, and she imagined spending a lot more time here. Unfortunately, it remained locked unless a faculty member opened it.

They spent nearly two hours there, until he finally said they had to go down for the Parents' day lunch. She looked at him imploringly. "Another time," he said softly. Maybe he wasn't so bad after all.

««•»»

After the families left, Alastair and the other student officers were summoned to a Leadership Team meeting with the director, dean, and full faculty. He and Maggie shuffled into the office behind the others. Alastair saw the tired looks and concern on the faces of the staff. What the hell was going on?

"I hope your parents had a good time today, and that the disturbance earlier didn't ruin your day," began the director. "It appears as if there was a lot of fuss over nothing. Just a couple of vandals."

Dr. Olivier looked down at his hands, seeming to search for his next words. He finally looked up, swiveling is head to make eye contact with everyone in turn as he continued.
"However, we're afraid that these vandals may have attempted to gain entry into one of the archive rooms, up on 12."

The students and staff looked around at one another, murmuring in confusion and distress. Alastair had been in the archives up there last year, packing away graduates' files and extra yearbooks. If someone were to get in there, they would find quite a lot of important information that should really remain secret. But he knew that the archive rooms were secured not only with magic, but also the best civilian technology available. Dean Whitley had to perform several actions, both magical and mechanical, to gain access for them. It was unlikely they had gotten in.

"It may be overkill, but we are going into an alert status. Everyone must be on their guard at all times. If you see someone unfamiliar on school grounds, report it immediately. If you see any students, or anyone else for that matter, attempt to access those areas, report it immediately. If you see anything suspicious--"

The director was interrupted by a chorus of student officers, "Report it immediately."

"Exactly. But absolutely, under no circumstances should you engage anyone on your own. If you see something, protect yourself and get out of there. Let us protect the secrets. We need your leadership now more than ever, ladies and gentlemen. All this excitement today has highlighted a need for tighter security." He sighed heavily, his age showing. "Dean?"

The meeting adjourned nearly an hour later, after the dean and staff went over some additional security measures that would be in place and the extra expectations that were being placed on the SOs, like evening patrols. The senior student officers were tasked with repairing the damage to the infirmary, which, they learned, was where the vandals had "broken a window." Alastair left with a sense of dread. He had seen the men fleeing the school, and they did not look like vandals. There was something wrong. He could feel it, like when you leave your house sure you forgot something, but you don't know what.

««•»»

Rose sank onto her bed that night, thinking again about the strange men, trying to soothe her own fears. Nothing happened, she told herself. Maybe I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. They probably just thought everyone would be downstairs at that time. If I hadn't been there, maybe they'd have gotten whatever it was they came for. Maybe Rose had been in the right place at the right time, discovering the treachery before it could be carried out. But, how did they know that no one would be up there? Someone from the school must have told them.