My class schedule demanded far more of me than I was willing to give, especially considering my being at this pompous school was only a ruse. No one had worked appropriate "spy time" into it either—go figure. From sunrise to late evening, my bottom was in a chair. I was a prisoner in almost every sense of the word. And by the time I was released, I was too exhausted to do much of anything else besides eat dinner in silence and collapse onto my bed.

It turned out that I had not been admitted into the school year at quite such a random time. The other students had only been there for about three weeks after a lengthy break for the late summer festivals, so by all accounts their semester had barely begun. Despite what Elias and Yvonne feared—that I would never be able to catch up or blend in, and that I'd fail before I'd learned anything useful, and then... well, I supposed failing out of school would mean failing out of the rest of my life too.

One of the professors of the charm track—a smartly dressed woman with a mean hooked nose and a no-nonsense disposition—had informed me that I wouldn't have too much difficulty catching up because of this. In fact, I agreed with her heartily. On day one, I learned everyone else in the charm class was a moron, so I certainly wouldn't have any trouble at all.

Most of the students clothed in matching lilac uniforms were exactly the sort one might expect would choose to learn charms and illusions: girls of stunning beauty but little substance, boys who only dreamed of wooing girls into their beds, and the sleazy types between the two of them who were really there to become better liars. It might have seemed like a hotbed for potential targets except that there was an air of disinterest about the class. At Aetheria Academy, graduation was typically two years after enrollment, and of course, the top ten students earned their fancy-schmancy court jobs afterward. The charm track was famous for its students who took three or four years to graduate or never made it at all. Its top two were often quite lackluster in comparison to the others. Sometimes, it didn't even produce candidates who were worthy enough.

All in all, I fit in well enough. I didn't want to be there anymore than anyone else in the classroom did. As long as everyone kept their hands to themselves and left me alone, things would be just fine.

Of course, it was never to be that way. On day one, I was introduced to the other charm students and told I would spend two weeks acclimating to my chosen track before taking sample classes from others. That was the day everyone ignored me. Day four, however, I must not have kept my head low enough.

At the end of our morning lecture, I stood and began to pack up my bag when two girls stopped me. One had the sleepy look of someone who had never had to do hard things while the other had a sort of crisp unkindness to her. "Celestine, is it?" the crisp girl said, white teeth flashing against red lips. Too red, actually. They clashed with her aggressive platinum highlights.

"That's right." I stuffed my notes deeper into my bag with some barely contained frustration. There was nothing traitorish about her, nothing that required the attention of spy-Celestine. Student-Celestine was bored. Normal-Celestine hated the hardness in her steely eyes. It reminded me too much of the shovels used by gravediggers.

She sniffed, lifting her chin slightly. She was the same height as me so it did little. "I'm Sil. Ash and I sit behind you. You ought to remove those bells—it's distracting and, quite frankly, unseemly."

Ah. Ash and Sil. They did, in fact, sit behind me, usually way behind me against the wall where they tittered away for most of class. I quirked a brow. "I'll take that into consideration." I would not at all.

"A girl still afraid of death has no place at this academy."

"Is that so?" I snapped the flap of my bag shut and slung it over my shoulder, bumping Sil in the process—she shuffled back and eyed me rudely. "A healthy dose of fear is a good thing. Keeps one from acting the fool."

Sil huffed a laugh, a haughty meanness lighting up her shovel-gray eyes. It was the sort of laugh I ought to learn, for it would drive everyone away. On her, the frilly white sleeves of the girls' uniform looked sharp and coarse, the tight-fitted lilac vest all harsh angles. "Are you suggesting we ought to fear you?"

"No," I said. "I'm just a thorn. Good day." Then I weaseled my way between her and Ash and skittered out of the overly-polished classroom with its large wooden desks, stiff chairs, and too-bright lights. Not to mention the people there, that sea of lilac that I was growing quite sick of.

Six more class days confined to the charm track alone. Then I'd get to meet other students, learn other things, and not suffocate so much.

I was most interested in sampling the history track for whatever crumbs I could gather about my little friend Death and his stone flower grave. In hindsight, I ought to have picked the gold track, but it didn't have the same draw to it. Maybe I was rotten deep down so the charm truly did suit me.

I had a short break from the end of my morning lecture until after lunch, so I let my feet carry me to the library. I was still forming my mental map and the walk was longer than it should have been. All the indoor halls had this granite sameness to them, shiny and offensive. All the doors were tall, mahogany monstrosities with unnecessary filigree surrounding the entryway. It often looked too much like a palace and very little like a school.

Eventually, I came across an even grander set of double doors several halls down, marked with a clever bronze plaque that read library. How serendipitous. I walked inside without ceremony, my bells jingling as I moved. The sound raised some heads, but I kept walking and disappeared into the stacks.

As I scoured for some mention of the grave of Death, my hand strayed to the flower attached to the belt at my waist. I waited foolishly for some sign from it that there was a hint here. Even better, I wanted it to magically teleport me to the grave and provide me with exact instructions, but it was as it had always been: cold yet vaguely alive.

"Rare to find a student in purple over here," a familiar voice cut through my concentration.

I swung to find Bren standing straight-backed at the other end of the shelves, his hands folded neatly behind him. He smiled, so terribly warm in the low orange light. Like before, he was clothed in the maroon uniform of the combat track. Every morning, the students of his specialty went for a run around the school, but he showed no signs of it. No sweat, no exhaustion, not even a hair out of place. Maybe he'd lucked out.

"Personal research," I said and shrugged him off. I didn't have a suitcase for him to move today, and I'd rather he not hover over my shoulder. Explaining this pet interest of mine would be rather unpleasant, not to mention difficult.

"I didn't expect to see you in the charm specialty." He apparently could not take a hint. His smile suggested he was deaf to my hints. "I thought I might find you in a nice sage green. Blue maybe, gold unlikely. If I was lucky, I'd have seen you in red on the first day, I suppose."

"You can't make assumptions about my interests when you hardly know me."

"Then I apologize for being presumptuous."

"Apology not accepted." I glared at him before sweeping out into the next row of shelves, scanning over the titles of the neatly bound volumes once more. Their spines were marked with gold, categorizing them for the history track, and some did mention death. Most focused on the phenomena of the resurrection of certain children, though.

And still, Bren was trailing me like a lost puppy. "Perhaps I can help you find what you're looking for. I do frequent this library."

"I'm not interested."

"Pardon?"

I sighed, squaring my shoulders before I swung to face him. "Need I repeat myself? I'm grateful for your help the other day, but I don't need you to keep offering it. I'm not interested." After all, there was nothing coincidental about this run-in. A boy who was conveniently always there when a girl needed help usually did so only because he found her attractive. I was already a player in one stupid game and didn't have time for another.

He blinked. Twice. Then he laughed, so free I was almost envious. He stifled it behind his hand like he remembered all too late that the library was a place of quiet, but it took him some time to regain his composure. "Sorry," he said. "That was never my intention. I remember what it was like, trying to settle in to this place after everything. It can be overwhelming."

I hesitated, picking his words apart and reconstructing them along with everything else. My mind went blank. I stammered a bit. "I don't need to be coddled," I said, because I remembered at the last second that I had told myself I would be mean. A sensible part of me wanted to cringe.

"Of course not." His face softened. "I'll leave you to it."

After he was gone, I scoured the library until my time was up to no avail. All I could uncover were books on burial practices, limited research on the Aetheria death phenomena, and vague philosophy that made no sense at a cursory glance. As I marched in frustration to my next lecture, I couldn't help but imagine a scenario in which I had accepted Bren's help.

Deep down, I was weak and silly, no matter how much I tried not to be. I shook off that girl. She couldn't resurface until I was free.

<><><>

At the end of every day, Elias asked for a report. Have you located the suspect yet? Do you have anyone in mind? Does anyone else suspect you? Do you require any aid from myself or Yvonne? Questions of that sort, always throwing the whole list at me the moment I walked in the door. My answer was a plain and simple no, but that made him pause. I was certain that meant he was supposed to form a report for my uncle and my lack of progress would be disappointing.

I didn't know how to make it more clear that I didn't care if my uncle was disappointed in me. Let him be.

That day, however, after all of his questions had been answered, Elias sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. It was so different from the routine that I paused at the foot of the stairs, my schoolbag dangling from one hand.

"How are you doing, Celestine?" he asked.

"Just fine." There were the girls, Ash and Sil, who had pestered me throughout the rest of the day. Little things, like bumping shoulders on purpose when they passed me in the hall and gossiping about me with other girls in the class. I really didn't care as long as none of them tried to bury me. I didn't come to make friends, and I wasn't afraid to make enemies. All the more reason to never come back once I settled my task.

And there was Bren, the enigma that he was. I had seen him once more, several hours later. He'd been with a group of friends in the courtyard, talking, laughing, and generally looking so painfully normal. They'd had a ball with them and were tossing it about. When it landed up on the roof of the overhang, he had volunteered to get it. Being helpful was just in his nature, I supposed. The girls in the group had all applauded him too, and it had made him flush.

No, I didn't need to mention him at all.

Elias was still watching in silence, waiting, when I returned to the present. I didn't quite know how to dismiss him, so I managed a thin and terrible smile. "What do you expect me to say?"

"Nothing," he murmured, his shoulders dropping. "Go on then."

I started to climb the stairs rather slowly. When he dismissed me in such a way, I only had a moment before he would call me back down again. As if on cue, he let out a sharp breath. "And your magic. Has it manifested at all yet?"

That was the trickiest thing. I had gotten into the school easily and settled well into my chosen track, but I was still a student without a touch of magic. I shook my head. My fingers curled tight against my palms. What was the point of my resurrection if I hadn't gained magic with it?

Elias eyed me from the bottom of the stairs. He looked small and far scruffier that way, hardly much of a handler. Certainly not the guard who had chained me up in the first place. "Very well. I'm sure it will surface soon."

"Why not kill me a second time? That ought to do it," I muttered, but I didn't stay long enough to hear his retort. By then, I'd already made it up and into my room. Perhaps because I'd hurried, fearing he might nip my heels a little too fiercely.

I upended the contents of my school bag onto my desk the moment I tumbled into my room. My papers, books, and fancy self-inking pens all thunked down together in a mess of audacity. I only had a few weeks' worth of catching up to do, but it was more than enough to keep me busy. I wanted it done before the gears shifted and I'd have more work piled on my head, so I sat reluctantly, read my boring charm textbooks, and went about scribbling notes.

Much of the basis of the charm speciality was shaping things—images, feelings, emotions, and the like—that weren't real in such a way that someone could be convinced they were. We were warned many times over not to use this in unsavory ways (I was certain I had signed a form promising I wouldn't during my time as a student), but it seemed rather odd to teach anyone such things.

Maybe your reluctance is the reason you feel nothing. My pen scratched against my paper as I tightened my jaw. What would it take for my magic to properly appear?

I forced myself back to the textbook and, after several long seconds of scanning words without comprehending them, finally managed to settle my focus again. I needed a simple spell, something small and relatively easy to repeat. Just enough to confirm whether I could or not. I wasn't technically allowed to use magic off campus, but no one would know.

The book recommended minor illusions for beginner charmers. I settled on one that would temporarily change the color of a small object of my choosing and set to work. First: concentrate, empty the mind, and pick a target. Second: consider its current state and how best to alter it. Third: draw the magic up and cast. Fourth: obvious success.

I sat back, holding my pen tight in my hands. It was slate black, but I thought I could turn it the same purple as my uniform. I closed my eyes. I listened to the sound of my breathing until all was quiet, save for the low hum somewhere within me. It was like the drone of machinery in the workshop back home or the buzz of countless insects. Whatever it was, it lived—or it once had. There was a hollowness about it that was so like the place I had met Death.

What are you? I asked, and I pulled it up, wound it around my fingers. It was shapeless until I molded it, then it took on a certain veil-like quality. Thin. Fragile. Shimmering. Cold at the tips of my fingers. Still, it hummed on.

I guided it down toward the pen in my hands, draped it over and wrapped it around, and willed it to settle. It was clear to my eye, iridescent at its edges. When the light filtered through it, it might change the color. That was the idea, at least.

My brow scrunched. There were still holes, so I tucked the thin membrane tighter around the pen, smoothed it until slate turned lilac, then—

"Celestine!"

Startled, I tumbled backward, my chair tipping over. My head snapped against the floor. I lay there, groaning, as I struggled to pull myself together again.

Yvonne stood in the doorway, one hand on her hip and her face pinched. "What are you doing? I've called your name four times now."

"I was engrossed in my oh-so-interesting homework," I muttered as I extracted myself from the toppled chair and stood. I jolted a little too upright, my hands stiff behind my back, but I smiled so awkwardly that my face captured all of her suspicion instead. The back of my head ached where I'd hit the floor, but I'd be fine.

There was some concern in Yvonne's face but not enough for her to ask. Instead, she eyed me strangely then turned. "Come downstairs when you have a moment. Dinner is ready." She shut the door behind her as she left.

Letting out a breath, I bent down to the pen I'd dropped and scooped it up. The purple was already fading from its smooth slate black sides, but it had been there. Some semblance of triumph swept over me. It was gone quick enough because no matter how much I wanted to relish what small power I had, I couldn't forget what it had cost me. I wondered at the hollowness inside me, the thing that I shaped into magic.

Death said it had a purpose, and I was not eager to find out what that was. If I found his grave, however, I would surely uncover the truth whether I wanted to or not.

Poor Celestine just can't escape people :( Sigh. Surely next week she will have some peace and quiet! :D