Chapter Two

Principal Edgerton's door was open to begin with. I just stormed in with tears running freely out of my eyes, and she looked like she was going to have a stroke because she saw me crying. I never cried. It was how I maintained the title Queen Bitch. She was rightfully alarmed.

"What happened?" she asked, standing from her chair immediately.

Blubbering, I tried to explain to her about what I saw. My relationship with Principal Edgerton might be stiff, but she was the only one who knew what happened to me when they discovered me when I was seven. While every foster parent I ever had was convinced that I was just making up imaginary friends and talking to animals, she was the only one who believed me and brought to the academy.

A few years into the academy, I grew out of seeing things that weren't there and I stopped hearing the animals talked. I discovered that this thing sometimes happened to witches or warlocks whose magic surfaced too early in life, but no one ever experienced it after puberty—if they did, then it was an omen that their death was close.

I remembered every insults and physical blows I had received for being an aberration. A freak. I would talk to a girl in the playground, for example, only to realize later that no one else could see her. Or I would tell my older foster siblings that the kitten said his name was Owen, and they would laugh at me, the notoriously delusional kid. Honestly, maybe that was why I preferred being Queen Bitch rather than Freak Girl.

Principal Edgerton knew all about this. However, when I finished my encounter with the ghost mage with a sob, she ran her hand through my hair like I was still a child. "Dear, I'm sorry you found the experience traumatizing, but the man you saw wasn't a ghost."

That made me look up mid-sniffle. "What?"

"That was real mage. We've heightened our security by the Council's orders. I was going to announce it tonight at dinner. Most mages use self-projection to spy and guard a few places at once. Mr. Island was incapable of decoding astral spells, however, and that's why he didn't see anyone. The spell itself is a little bit tricky, but you will learn it next semester if you take Astral and Illusion."

As I processed this, oddly, the bit that made my head reel was the one about Luke. "Why can't Luke decode the spell?"

She pressed her lips and sat back, crossing her fingers. "That is not my information to tell, Miss Williams. Now, why don't you go back to class?"

"But Mr. Ortiz isn't there."

Saying that was a mistake. "Then I will personally substitute for your class. Come and let me show you the way back to class, Miss Williams."

I inwardly groaned.

Later that evening, I thought talks about me crying would have spread throughout the academy. However, no one had given me odd looks for the rest of the day except for Luke, who stared at me across the field in Archery without saying anything, but like he now knew my deepest secret. Maybe he didn't tell anyone, or maybe the rumors about him being a demigod was still too thick in the air for a room of talks about me being a crybaby. No matter what, now I also had one ace on him—Lucas Island couldn't do or see astral spells.

He wasn't perfect. He had a weakness.

He knew about my fear of insanity and I knew about the one thing he couldn't do. We were even.

Our staring match didn't stop even until dinner. He sat on his usual spot at the front of the hall, and I sat with Amy near the doors. Luke caught my eyes while his friends talk lively, and he didn't break the gaze. I felt like I was being challenged into something I didn't know. Something about the way he looked at me was different from the mocking gaze he usually reserved for me every other day before this morning.

Even Amy noticed it. "Why is Luke looking our way?" she asked me. "Do you think he finally realizes that I exist and won't mind having quarter-god babies with him?"

With that, I broke my gaze away from Luke to look at my friend. "Quarter-god? Really?"

Amy shrugged. "What else do you call a baby who's fathered by a demigod?"

"Luke. Is. Not. A. Demigod."

"How do you suppose he kept underwater for thirty-four minutes then? He's like real-life Percy Jackson."

I gritted my teeth. "I told you, he used a spell. I'm going to figure out what that spell is. Everyone can win with a spell like that. I'm the one who actually practices not breathing underwater."

"Hey, actually, I keep having trouble getting that phrase around my head. If you want to live underwater, aren't you supposed to wish that you can breathe underwater?"

"In literal terms, if you actually breathe while you're underwater, then you'll inhale water into your lungs, Amy. Unless you have gills."

She brightened. "Wouldn't that be cool? It'll be just like Kevin Costner in Waterworld."

I gave her a deadpanned look and downed my orange juice.

"Attention, students." Principal Edgerton adjusted her tie and cleared her throat soundly on the microphone. When no one still paid attention to her, she flicked her wrist and murmured something. Suddenly, when she spoke, the volume of her voice had been amplified magically. "ATTENTION."

Immediately, everyone stopped talking and turned to the principal.

She smiled. "My fellow students and teachers of Asphodel Academy, I have a very important announcement for you today. You may have noticed the mages standing on guard in front of your classes earlier today and the new dogs on our gates, if you ever take the time to stroll around Asphodel at all." She laughed at her own joke, but stopped when no one was laughing with her. Clearing her throat, she continued, "Our academy is under orders by the Council to be protected tightly this month. Aside from the mages the Council had placed in our academy, we would also move our dormitory curfew to eight p.m. until the end of the month. Students will be escorted by mages from dinner hall to dormitory in a line..."

"A line?" Amy whispered beside me. She wasn't the only one protesting—the whole hall was filled with echoing murmurs of complaint. "What are we, kindergarten school?"

"...furthermore, visiting days are limited to only one day at the middle of this month, and only parents and immediate siblings or guardians are allowed to do so with proper identification and without leaving the school grounds at any costs."

A senior student raised his hand.

"Yes, Mr. Kowalski?"

"Why are we on tight security suddenly, ma'am?"

That's what we were all dying to know. All the voices in the hall died down to listen closely to the principal's answer. "For your own safety, the only thing you need to know is that someone in our school is under a great danger, and automatically puts us all at the same risk. As long as everyone stay secure this month, no one will be hurt. Enjoy your dinner."

The moment she got off the stage, arguments exploded among the students, including on my table. Everyone speculated who the 'someone' could be. Whoever he or she is, putting a whole school at risk was a selfish move, Amy said. "I mean," she continued, "why couldn't he or she just go to a safe house, or something? Why all the guards—they're waste of resources if the target is actually just one person."

"Maybe it's because they don't know who is actually in danger yet," I reasoned. "It could be a student or a teacher." We didn't have janitors—who needed them when everything could be cleaned with a simple spell you learned when you were in secondary school?

"I think something bigger is going on," Dee threw in, looking thoughtful. She was one of the only girls who actually tolerated hanging out with us. "For the Council to interfere alone—it must be something that affects a lot of factions, not just witches and warlocks. And why just exactly one month? This isn't just about protecting one person in the school and putting everyone else in danger. There's a big picture Edgerton isn't telling us."

Amy and I stared at her. Her brains constantly continued to amaze us every day. Dee shrugged and murmured something incoherent, then went back to eating her eggs. Dee was one of the students who had always been here all their lives. She was here even before I was. Her uncle worked for the Council, not as a member, but with enough influence that he always knew what was going on. Politics was three-course meal for someone like Dee. It was kind of obvious which way Dee would take after graduation.

After dinner, true to Principal Edgerton's words, we were lined up into six lines and were escorted by the mages back to our dorm buildings. Amy were talking to me about how much she hated to walk in a line like a bunch of living-dead force in a post-apocalyptic world, when I suddenly saw him—Baby Face mage whom I had thought was a ghost. He acknowledged me with a nod, but didn't say anything as he walked by our line. This time he was definitely solid, slipping between bodies and brushing against people's sleeves as he passed by them.

Amy turned to me as soon as he disappeared from sight. "You know him?"

I looked around me, where everyone was pressing in, very much within earshot. "Later," I said.

Later, in the bedroom, I told Amy about how I had thought Baby Face was a ghost while he was actually an astral projection, and how Luke couldn't see it because he couldn't decode astral spells. Amy knew a little about how much I hated my childhood, but she didn't know the details. I wasn't ready to spill them either—besides, they weren't very relevant.

"So," Amy said slowly, "let me get this right: you flirted with Mr. Hot Baby Face, and Lucas Island thought you were kissing the wall, because he couldn't see Mr. Hot Baby Face, because he was there in spirit but not body, but you could see him."

"Why do you have to twist things like that? I didn't kiss a wall. I wasn't even flirting."

"You, randomly approaching a hot guy and striking up a civil conversation? That's equal second base for someone like you."

"What do you mean, someone like me?" I asked, offended.

"You know. Celibate."

"I'm not—" Well, I was. But not by intention. "Gah. I'm going to brush my teeth."

"Celibate," Amy sang. "Celibate, Riley!"

I turned and snapped my fingers, muttering the handiest spell I knew to let off my steam.

"NOT PINK! YOU TURN MY HAIR BACK AT THIS ONCE, RILEY WILLIAMS!"