Paranormal Public (Paranormal Public Series) (19 page)

“Why were the elementals important?” Keller asked me in his best tutor’s voice.

“For fighting demons, to start,” I said. “We aren’t as strong without all five arms of the wheel. We still have fallen angels, pixies, vampires, and Airlee, but Airlee is getting weaker. Look at Lough. There used to be ten or twenty dream givers at school, and now there’s just Lough and Bailey.

“Without the elementals, our defenses are even weaker,” I continued. “What happens when we lose more?”

Realizing I had just made a speech, I took a deep breath. Without a word Keller nodded. When I heard Lisabelle call my name from downstairs, I must have jumped three feet in the air.

Keller raised his eyebrows at me. “No one’s caught you doing anything bad,” he pointed out. “Yet.”

I rolled my eyes at him.

“What, Lisabelle?” I yelled down.

Suddenly, Keller grabbed my arm. It didn’t hurt, but it came close. “You will show them,” he said. The intensity in his eyes made me keep looking at him. “I know you will.”

I stared at him.

Lisabelle’s voice broke my concentration.

“There’s a runner here that says the President wants to see you,” she yelled.

Keller’s words had given me a high, but suddenly I felt like I was tumbling off a cliff. My heart plummeted. What I had been dreading had come true. The President had called me to her office. She could only want one thing.

I raced away, leaving Keller alone in the Astra attic.

I thought I was finished for sure, but to my surprise, I left the President’s office with only a small tongue-lashing.

When I just stared back at her in shock after she told me I needed to try harder to perform magic, she ordered me to close my mouth. “I said I’d give you until the end of the semester, and I’m sticking to that,” she said. “Close your mouth. Use Keller. He will help you.”

After that I couldn’t leave her office fast enough; I didn’t want to give her an opportunity to change her mind. Besides, I had a lot to do. I had lost the whole day to cleaning and coming to the President’s office. I had even missed dinner, so now I was tired and hungry.

At least the walk back through campus was quiet. There were few students out, and I had only the rustle of the wind for company. I glanced down at my Airlee ring; I so badly wanted to see it light up with magic, but as usual there was nothing.

I never saw the punch coming.

Camilla appeared out of nowhere. Her face was a mask of fury. “HOW DARE YOU?” she screamed at me. “You stupid bitch!”

I was literally knocked backward. There was a blossoming pain radiating out from my cheek.

I was too disoriented to understand why Camilla was yelling at me. I tried to get away from her and her shrieking, but her four cronies were surrounding me. I had nowhere to go, and I was alone and at the mercy of the pixies.

I put my hand to my face, hoping that the throbbing would stop. I could feel my cheek starting to smart.

I knew Camilla wanted me to be afraid of her. Maybe I should have been, but I decided not to show it. “What’s up, Camilla? Mad you don’t know how to smack someone properly?” I asked. Someday I really should learn to keep my mouth shut. But not now, and not with Camilla.

“Arrgghh,” she screamed as she launched herself at me. I put my hand up to protect myself, but one of her friends grabbed her.

“You can’t hurt her,” Kia cried. “You’ll get in trouble.”

I wondered what Kia called punching me in the face if not hurting me.

“She STOLE him!” Camilla sobbed. “That’s what she’d been trying to do all along, and she did it.”

I hoped that Kia kept holding on, because Camilla looked like she was ready to kill me.

“What are you talking about?” I asked. The pain in my face had subsided into a dull throb, and I lowered my hand more as a way to defend myself against another attack than because my face had stopped hurting.

“You know what I’m talking about! I’m talking about Cale!” Camilla yelled.

“What about Cale?” I asked. “I don’t know anything. Shockingly enough, I have better things to do than constantly worry about your love life, but it doesn’t sound like it’s going well.” I couldn’t help it. She’d just smacked me.

“How dare you?” she snarled, coming eye to eye with me.

“How dare
you
?” I retorted. “You’re lucky I’m on probation, because otherwise you’d be sorry.”

“Ha ha, Probationer, what’s a mage with no magic going to do?” Camilla asked, laughing in my face. “The President is only keeping you around because she feels sorry for you. Because of your mother.”

“I’m always going to defend myself from a bully like you,” I told her. “And if you ever mention my mother again I’ll kill you where you stand.” That was probably an idle threat, since Camilla could do real magic while all I could do was make sparks that smoked a little, but it sounded good and Camilla seemed cowed.

She had stopped screaming, but her eyes still looked crazy. She came nose to nose with me and said, “You need to learn your place and stay there, Probationer. You are a defect. You are a mage that can’t even do simple spells. You are nothing. In short, you are below wherever I am and you always will be.”

I lost it. It was too much. I had almost just had a good day – yes, I guess I call not getting expelled a good day. Then Camilla had come along and ruined it.

I threw myself at her. She was so surprised she gave a little squeal. I had forgotten how fast pixies were, though. I was cursed to go to a school where the meaning of “paranormal” doubled for “shocking speed and strength,” and they all seemed to have that but me. Well, me and maybe Lough.

I didn’t know what I was going to accomplish, because I wasn’t a big fighter, but I didn’t even get the chance to decide, because Camilla’s cronies grabbed me by the arms and held me back.

“Why did Cale break up with me?” Camilla asked me when I stopped struggling.

Shock must have shown on my face, because she said, “Oh please. I know you knew.”

“I didn’t,” I told her. I bit my tongue to keep from saying that I thought he had made the right decision.

“I don’t believe you,” she said. “He said he wanted to see other people, and I see how he looks at you. He looks at you like he’s a helpless puppy.”

I was pretty sure he hadn’t looked at me like that, but Camilla was clearly not in a mood to be contradicted.

“Let her go,” said Camilla. “Obviously she’s just going to be the kind of girl that steals other people’s boyfriends.”

Her friends let me go, but she had crossed a line with that comment. I couldn’t help myself. I said, “No guy gets stolen that doesn’t want to be.”

The next thing I felt was a thwack when the spell Camilla flung at me impacted my chest.

Then there was nothing but darkness.

For the second time in a month I woke up in the Infirmary. Only this time Sip wasn’t sitting on my bed to greet me. Instead it was Professor Zervos.

I wished I could just melt back into the pillows, but it was too late.

He had noticed that I was awake, his black eyes meeting my gray ones.

“Thank you for gracing me with your presence,” he said. His voice was silky and rich.

“Any time,” I said. I could barely see straight my head hurt so much.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Honestly, it’s all a bit hazy,” I told him, which was true.

“Who did this to you?”

“Who did what to me?” I asked.

“Don’t be impertinent, Probationer,” he said. “I know it’s your natural state, but please try to fight against it.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Now, a spell was performed on you, and since you have no magic of your own you were unable to defend yourself. So what happened?”

He didn’t know who had attacked me. Was I going to tell him?

“I don’t know,” I told him, trying to look innocent. That wasn’t my natural state either.

“Are you trying to tell me that a member of this campus attacked you unprovoked, and you not only didn’t see who it was, but you do not even have a guess?”

“Yes?” I said.

“Charlotte Rollins, you are a terrible liar,” he informed me.

I keep hearing that.

I bit my lower lip. “You know if I tell you it will just happen again,” I said quietly. “You aren’t going to expel them, and they will be mad because they got caught.”

“It’s not their fault you don’t have magic,” said Professor Zeros. “If you did you would have been able to defend yourself.”

“So that I would be the one who got in trouble even though they started it?” I asked, sitting up with a wince. My head felt like it weighed two tons on my shoulders.

Professor Zervos smiled without parting his lips. “I would try to point out the obvious facts to the President: you are trouble and you should leave. And she would likely ignore me.”

“Why are you here, anyway?” I asked. I knew I was speaking disrespectfully to a professor, but he had been nothing but disrespectful to me since the day I arrived.

“I am here because I am the one who found your crumpled and beat up form on the grass outside,” he said, his black eyes still focused on my face.

“Oh.”

“Don’t look so surprised,” he said drily. “I wasn’t going to leave you outside alone and injured. I want you expelled, not dead.”

I was embarrassed that he had known what I was thinking.

“Thanks for the clarification,” I murmured.

Professor Zervos stood up. “Sip is waiting outside. So is Lisabelle Verlans, although why that girl is here is beyond me. She is not your roommate. And she rivals you for trouble-causing.”

He moved to leave, but as he opened the door he paused.

“A word of advice, Charlotte Rollins,” he said quietly. “A bully only wins if you play her game. Play yours.” And with that he was gone.

For a long time I stared at the closed door, not understanding. That had sounded oddly like helpful information, but Professor Zervos hated me. He hated everyone who wasn’t a fallen angel, a vampire, or a pixie, which meant all the Airlee students. He seemed to hate me in particular because I was at a school for paranormals without showing any paranormal abilities. I was actually starting to understand his point on that one.

I lay down and closed my eyes. I don’t know how long I lay there resting before I heard the door open.

“Sip, don’t get pissed. I didn’t even do anything,” I said.

“I’m sure you didn’t,” said a familiar male voice with an ever-present undertone of sarcasm.

I gasped and sat up. “Keller,” I said. “Ouch.” My head protested my sudden movement and I was forced to lie back down.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, coming to sit on the edge of my bed.

“I’m super,” I told him.

“What happened?” he asked. He reached out and touched the bruise on my cheek with his fingertips. “That’s a big bruise.” There wasn’t a hint of sarcasm in his voice.