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VIX, OPERA as Marva, and the peach herself, the real Marva—who refused to stay home, and how could Vix exactly stop her—entered Pentagram and Crystal College's small shared gymnasium fifteen minutes after the Freshman Autumn Social was supposed to have begun. Impressively, the place was full. Everyone from class, from Blanchard to Gails, and even Professor LaRiche, was already there plus six or seven other students all sporting their black Crystal College t-shirts.
Why the hell didn't Pent have merch? A hat, or a tote. Something.
The Pent students looked like a mishmash of random people, while the CC crowd came across as a unified fucking team. They were, after all, the ones who did just fine in life without Little Shits Academy and got the bonus of attending magic school anyway.
Unlike a lot of gyms, this one, which apparently connected the two schools, didn't sport any basketball hoops or volleyball nets. There were, however, dozens of blue, cushioned landing mats lining the walls and interest-piquing burn scars in the floor though. What the hell kind of sports were they playing in here?
To one side of the room, a table displayed a wide variety of pizza options, some bottles of water, and cans of beer, as well as soda.
Ah, comfort food. Vix made a beeline for the booze. Adults, open bars, and trust were such a weird thing when combined.
Some guy gave her the beer and marked an X on the back of her hand with a Sharpie.
Cracking open a can, she barely got the suds to her mouth before Dean Adare Wallstone approached with a woman by her side.
“Victoria,” she said, beaming, even though their one and only face-to-face encounter wasn't so awesome. “This is Dean Natasha Checks from Crystal College.”
The dean, easily six-foot, brunette, glasses, extended a hand. “I've heard a lot about you.”
Welp, that was never a good sign.
“Nice to meet you,” Vix offered, but it wasn't nice to meet her, and she bit her tongue to keep from mentioning that she'd only just heard of Crystal College like a day ago.
She leaned in closer. “A specter, huh? And you can see and hear it?”
Nodding, she motioned to where Opera and Marva hung around by Gails and Huy. “The same as if she were a person. I couldn't keep her away tonight. Bitch said she'd torch my apartment if I didn't bring her along.”
“Marvelous,” Dean Checks chuckled.
“I guess.” Vix chugged her beer. “Hey, so while I've got you here, can we talk about something?”
Dean Checks touched her hand, dragging slow, cold fingertips over Vix's skin. “I'm sorry. I can't discuss anything school related with someone who isn't my student.”
“Ah, but this is about a student.” Don't lose her, V.
“Unfortunately, no.” And just like that, Dean Checks simply walked away as if she owed Vix nothing, which was entirely true in every way, but it still sucked more than a wet vac on a porn film set.
Shot down, Vix looked to Dean Wallstone for direction, but the woman only smiled and sipped her wine, head bobbing to the beat of Kravitz's rendition of American Woman.
Damn it. What were they supposed to do if Checks wouldn't talk?
Her eyes roved the crowd until they landed on Opera on the other side of the room where she danced with her eyes closed, head tipped toward the sky. High as a flipping kite.
Crossing the room, Vix tried to size up the Crystal College students, but honestly, they didn't seem like the brats she expected. These people mingled with her classmates, dancing, chatting, and laughing as if they were all one happy family. When she reached Ijemma, she hooked the woman's elbow and tugged her off to the side.
“Dean Checks won't talk to me. Not even a little,” she whispered, pointing out the woman to her classmate. “Any chance you can read her mind?”
Insulted, she crossed her arms. “I don't read people's minds, Vix. I can hear thoughts. Not the same thing.”
“Whatever it is. Can you do it to Dean Checks while she's still here?”
Ijemma's eyes narrowed on the dean who seemed to be enjoying a conversation with LaRiche and a few other people Vix assumed were teachers.
A minute passed.
Then two.
Ijemma shook her head. “I can't get in. Well, I can, but I can't hear anything. It's like she's turned the volume down.”
Shit. Vix should have guessed a master of magic would have protections, like Wallstone did. Just then, someone bumped into Vix from behind. She spun to curse out the person, but found no one there.
Weird.
“Opera.” She tugged the girl's hair to get her to turn around. “Going into Dean Checks may be the only solution we have here. Can you even do it?”
The girl’s eyes were glassy, wouldn't focus in on Vix's face and stay there for more than two seconds. “I can do anything.”
Well, there went that option. Chick was as spaced out as the fucking Milky Way. When did she even have the time to take pills? Before they got in the car?
“Where's Morgan?” she asked. Maybe the dean was uncertain about reporting them and their very own hot dog nudger could do her trick, tip the scales to their favor.
“Bathroom?” Opera managed, as she swirled in a circle, arms out wide.
Shoot. Apparently, instead of playing dress up prepping for the party, she and Opera should have formed their own plan for addressing Dean Checks. Kind of like how they should have made a plan for talking to Dorfman that didn't involve a parking lot chase and pulses of energy.
She tapped Gails on the shoulder. “Hey man, what are we doing here? How are we swaying this dean?”
“Have you thought about talking to her?” He smiled.
“Oh, that's cute. Totally new idea coming at me. I appreciate that.” Vix finished the last of her beer.
Glancing around the room, she spotted Dorfman and Finn enter and join their classmates. All smiles, a few hugs even. Damn it. These Crystal College students weren't the enemy at all. They were regular people. Nice people. Good people. Individuals deserving of not dealing with her and the tornado of garbage which always followed. Why did LaRiche say they were rivals with Pent?
Gails stepped into her view and waved a hand in front of her face. “Hello, Vicky. Come back to me.”
She shoved his hand away. There was that Vicky shit. “Stop it.”
“What if we talk to Dorfman and Finn again? Maybe we could get them to talk to their dean.”
“Maybe—”
There it was again. Something sure as hell knocked into her. Was someone fucking invisible here?
A prickle of energy raced up her back. The creeping sensation of bugs trailed her arms. Suddenly, the room felt full to the brim with hostility. Spinning, she searched the gym.
Her vision tunneled.
The CC students erupted in a swell of laughter.
Both deans stepped out into the hallway.
The scent of coming rain invaded her senses.
LaRiche spoke to another teacher, pointing at the individual clusters of people.
Her hearing dulled.
Cold sweats covered her forehead. “Something's wrong,” she said.
“You’re getting it too, then?”
“In a big way.”
Gails inched closer to her. “Should we be worried?”
“How the hell am I supposed to know?”
The energy swelled and thickened. Pulsed like the bass beat pounding in the room. None of this felt right.
Taking Gails' hand, Vix started for the door, but before she could manage her first step, her feet froze in place and one of those CC assholes yelled, “Take them down!”
––––––––
AT THE CRYSTAL COLLEGE battle cry, Gails raced ahead, but was jerked back when Vix didn't go with him.
“Come on,” he urged.
Frozen against her will, Vix struggled to move. “I can't.”
A yellow orb of energy left Dorfman's hands and slammed into Takon, knocking him back three feet.
“Come on, you idiots,” one of the CCs yelled.
Finn added to the chaos. “Give it your best shot, losers!”
The hell?
Once the nano-second of confusion passed, every student of Pent College and Crystal College began hurling balls of energy at one another. Everyone except Opera, who spread out on her back on the floor and giggled with one arm flopped over her face.
Gails built up an orange glow the size of a tennis ball and pitched it, hard, at Dorfman's head, but it missed.
A blue burst of energy sailed over their heads, hitting Morgan and throwing her off balance. Without missing a beat, she formed a white glow of her own and beamed a guy in the chest. He sucked for air.
Good.
While Gails shielded Vix from the onslaught of energy balls, the rest of the Pent crew flipped a table and dodged behind it. How come everyone could move except her?
Crystal College on the other hand yanked a padded mat from the wall and propped it in front of themselves.
“Rejects, rejects, rejects,” the CC students chanted, and no way would Vix stand for it.
“Disperse the energy, guys,” Vix called to her classmates, feet still locked in place. “Don’t try to block it. Disperse it. Remember?”
A speeding red glow smacked into Mateo, then burned across him, singing his stark white hair.
“Blanchard,” Vix called. “Get Opera.”
Immediately, the jock went into action, taking Opera's wrist and dragging her behind the table with them.
Damn, even though she was terrified on the inside, she had to admit Compelling and bossing everyone around could be useful, and came pretty naturally.
A green orb came at her, and she focused hard on absorption. Instead, it nailed her hip and stung, then broke apart. Maybe she got part of it?
“Gails, who isn't throwing anything on their side?”
“What?” He built up a fresh batch of frantic, pulsing energy and shot it at the other students.
“Look at them. Who isn't throwing anything?”
He grunted. “Um, some redhead. Chick on the far left.”
Her eyes punched holes in each of their faces until she found the redhead's. The bitch holding her frozen was going down.
Before, she would have been a panicked asshole, reacting and ready to throw punches. Not anymore. Now Vix found herself pressing her palms together slowly, calculating each move she would make, then spreading her fingers—I see you, I see you—until a fuchsia glow the size of a basketball swirled madly in her grasp.
A tangerine bomb nailed Gails in the head, gouging a path across his temple. “Shit,” he shouted.
“Duck,” she ordered.
Gails dropped to his knees.
Throwing the hardened sphere of magic, Vix gave all of the force she could to send it home to the redhead imprisoning her. Like a perfect hole in one, the sucker plowed right into the chick, laying her out.
Within an instant, Vix's feet released. She grabbed the back of Gails shirt and dragged him behind the table where the rest of the class panted practically in unison.
Opera whimpered from the floor.
“Opera,” Vix said, shoving as much Compelling as she could manage at the girl. “Get up.”
Her head lolled side to side, eyes fluttered, but she didn't move.
Crap. On the bright side, she wasn't jumping around. On the shit side, she was barely conscious.
A series of rapid fire hits peppered the tabletop at their backs.
“Why is this is happening?” Vix asked, fairly certain this time it wasn't her fault.
“No clue,” Blanchard offered.
Okay, tough guy suddenly was part of the team.
God, she couldn't believe she was going to say this, “What should we do?”
He shrugged, building a new ball of energy. “I don't think we can overpower them.”
“We have equal numbers.”
Gails butted in. “In total, but not awake.”
True. Nerves, like a boiling pot, jumbled up inside her.
Wait a second. Where was Huy?
“The real question,” Ijemma said, “Are we trying to win, or stop this?”
“Of course we want to win.” A no brainer in her book. They'd spent their whole life as the losers, and being told as such. Fuck those guys.
“Nah,” Gails. “You have to leave the race to win it. Let's end this.”
Heart pounding, Vix baked a fresh batch of grapefruit-sized attacks and hurled them one by one at the Crystal College pack. From the corner of her eye, she spotted Finn moving behind the bleachers. That bastard was trying to flank them. Hell no. Not happening.
“Jackson, throw perfect. On your six.”
Turning around, the jock zeroed in on the guy. “Oh no, you don't,” he said.
Like tugging a blanket over your shoulder, Jackson grabbed his shadow and covered himself until he disappeared into the darkness.
Wide-eyed, Vix knew her jaw dropped open, as did Gails'. This dude could manipulate shadows! Why didn't he want to say anything about it before?
“Wow!”
“Uh huh.”
Peering over the table's edge, she peeked at Crystal College's finest. They seemed . . . disorganized. Sure, they had firepower for days, and clearly they understood energy manipulation, but they were tripping over one another to get cover and slammed into each other when they tried to throw at the same time.
“Well Gails, tell us how to leave the race.”
“Need a diversion,” he said, ducking too slowly to miss a burst of green punching his shoulder. “Something that stops it all. That overrides this mess.”
“Pulling the fire alarm is out.” Takon pointed to it on the CC side of the room. And that’s when Vix realized there was a Takon on her right, and one on her left, both forming energy and firing it into enemy lines. Hot damn!
Vix crouched down beside Opera. “Give me a second. A diversion.” A diversion. A diver—.
She had it.
On the far side of the room, beside the pizza table, Marva sat on a drink cooler with one leg crossed over the other, looking every bit bored out of her misty mind.
“We’ll have Marva pull the alarm?”
Morgan gave her the stink face. “Who the hell is Marva?”
Oh, right. They couldn't all see her.
“I'll explain later.”
––––––––
CUPPING HER EARS SO she could focus, Vix drew as much Compelling energy together as she could. Marva had said she could move things, or at least lift them, but couldn't control what happened to them after that. If she moved the fire alarm, however, it only had one track it could follow, only one direction to go. No way she could mess that up.
Marva, she thought, hard, not exactly sure how to get into a spirit's head. But when she thought her name a second time, the specter looked up and made eye contact with her. Bingo, ya bitch.
Go pull the fire alarm.
Me?
Please. Now.
Girlie, this is your song. You dance to it.
Damn it! Be the poltergeist!
I don't exactly have hands, Einstein.
Yeah, Dorfman tried the same crap. She cranked the Compelling up a notch. Please. Poltergeist. Poltergeist.
The woman's posture, if a ghost could have posture, was trash. Shoulders slouched, head titled, a fuck-you kind of smirk. Fine.
Yes!
As the apparition floated toward the red square box on the wall, Vix bundled energy once more and flung it at the redhead who had frozen her.
“She’s almost there.” Vix hoped like hell this worked.
Behind the bleachers, Finn and Jackson wrestled in a tangle of shadow and flashes of orange light.
“Keep it up!”
Uncertainty crept into her belly and began to rot. She hoped manipulating a ghost was the right thing to do. Lord help her if it wasn't. She couldn't handle another meeting with Dean Wallstone.
Marva hovered, facing the gymnasium wall, for a fucking eternity before finally placing a hazy white hand over the fire alarm.
Come on. You can do it.
Vix clenched her eyes shut. Come on.
Heat zipped up her neck. Come on.
Her chest squeezed. Come—
A blaring siren pierced her eardrums. Bright white light pulsed violently in time with the alarm.
The gym doors flew open, Wallstone and Checks ran inside.
“What the hell is going on?” Wallstone shouted.
All energy orbs suddenly dropped to the ground and dissolved.
Marva moved out of the way as Checks rushed to the fire alarm and shoved the lever up. The room silenced.
“I am horribly disappointed in all of you,” Wallstone said, pointing at each student in the room, even those not her own. “Clearly, we have more work to do.”
Checks strolled to the center of the gym, arms crossed, sucking her teeth. “Everyone stand up.”
No one budged.
“Stand up!” she screamed, her voice echoing off the walls. “Form a line. Right here.”
Slowly, like the pace of a dog with its tail tucked, everyone rose and gathered in a single file line, side by side, before Checks and Wallstone.
Vix glanced at her co-conspirators. The double Takon was gone, but somehow now Huy was with them after all. Gails and Blanchard helped keep a drowsy Opera upright.
Wallstone joined Checks, looking every bit the disapproving parent. “Why are we doing this? Huh? Why aren't we leaving you all to your own devices and letting you continue on in your lives? Cut you lose? Why did we bother giving you this second chance if this is how you'll behave?”
“We'll do better,” Vix spoke up.
Wallstone raised a brow. “Do better?” The woman strolled toward her, a gravely anger in her voice. “Do better? You're damn right you'll do better. You have no choice!”
While Checks paced the floor in front of the line, Wallstone circled behind them, the tension in her muscles palpable. “When you return from fall break, you will be perfect students. You will apply yourselves, study hard, practice your craft like your life depends on it. Yes, ma'am?”
“Yes ma'am,” they all replied in unison.
Hot regret sloshed molten in Vix’s belly.
Dean Checks nodded to her counterpart and the pair reunited in the center of the room. “Clean up this mess,” Checks said. “Then get out.”
The two deans gave them one last disappointed stare before heading for the door.
“And students,” Dean Wallstone turned to face them again. “Magic cannot fix what is broken inside you; only you can do that.” She nodded, wisdom imparted. “Get your shit together.”
