The Awakening of Ren Crown (50 page)

Forgetting about my brother. For even a
moment
. I was a horrible person.

Nausea overcame me and I bent over.

“Demon! Everyone run!”

But I couldn't run. Couldn't move.

“It's powering up a killing blast!”

Emotion built within me, confusing and horrible. I just wanted things to be right. For everything to be ok. Magic blasted out from around my cuff. I heard an outraged roar, a terrifying boom, then all was silent.

~*~

I spent the next two days away from everyone and their crazy talk about demons, working with Draeger and Stevens and drowning in blob tests and rituals. Christian's voice would alternately urge me to move on with my life, then demand that I help him live.

I showed up in the cafeteria on the third day with bloodshot eyes. Everyone gave a soft greeting as I set my tray down.

I...I couldn't be afraid to live.

Chapter Twenty-Four: Living and Helping

Early on, I had realized that if Olivia ate in the cafeteria, it was in a nook somewhere unknown to me. Because frankly, I had looked for her as a familiar face in a crowd of strangers and would have very likely attempted to sit with her in those early days, despite her obvious frostiness toward me.

But...what if Olivia ate in our room all the time? She had a fridge and a microwave. No one visited our room for her except to discuss class work. And through a semi-deduction of her shorthand, I had occasionally seen her check names off of her “minions” list.

None of those visitors were friends.

After the brush with the tricorn, she had thawed a little toward me. She didn't snap at me directly or give me frigid glares. The looks were more southern Arctic in intensity now.

In the grand scheme of her hatred of the world, I thought maybe I rated on her scale as “I hate you slightly less than most of the other people in this Layer.”

In my new, tentative optimism, I thought, maybe if I made a few overtures, we could achieve a more harmonious relationship. If not as direct allies, then occasional conversational partners.

I made my move on a Wednesday morning. I had noticed that she was a habitual breakfast eater and had just run out of Bran Flakes, or whatever her dry looking stuff was.

“Um, so, do you want to go to the cafeteria to get something to eat?”

She didn't answer.

“It's time for breakfast,” I tried again. “ And, well, we have to eat, right?”

Her lips pinched together. I was about to let it go, when she closed her book with a thump. “Fine.”

“Great!” I was entirely too excited sounding. “Wednesday is pancake-extravaganza. And they have tubs of melted butter and powdered...” Right. Bran Flakes. “And the cereal is always well-stocked.”

She pulled on her sweater and gave me a flat look.

I kept up a steady stream of chatter on the way over, trying to repress any stray guilt-ridden thoughts about how I should be thinking of my research instead of chatting. Her eyes stayed narrowed on the building that housed the cafeteria. As if at some point it had done her a grave injustice.

We had come at the right time. We had the place pretty much to ourselves. People came in and out much faster at breakfast than with the other meals, and were generally either groggy or ultra-focused.

I didn't see any of the people I normally sat with in our usual second tier section of the cafeteria. Nephthys wasn't a huge pancake eater. Will and Mike were on opposite ends of my wake up scale—with Will rising earlier and Mike far later.

“So...I'm going to get pancakes,” I said.

Olivia gave me an arctic look in response.

“I'll meet you once I get my tray. But if you find a table, I'll find you.”

She nodded stiffly, and we went our separate ways.

I loaded up my pancakes with chocolate chips and powdered sugar, then drenched them in hot melted butter.

I was surprised to find Olivia at the end of my line holding her tray stiffly.

“Great! Let's find a seat,” I said.

She followed me to a small empty table, and we sat on opposite sides. She gave my plate a disgusted look, but I just smiled.

“Pancake extravaganza day is not a day on which one should ever feel bad,” I said, then swallowed and nodded to myself. Christian had loved pancakes. Celebrating pancakes was not an activity that necessitated guilt.

Finding joy in life was good. I repeated that sentiment to myself twice, forcing myself to believe it. If I couldn't find joy in life, then why was I trying to bring Christian back to a joyless world?

We dug in—me to my decadent, luscious pancakes, and she to her cardboard flakes.

Ok, so Olivia didn't dig in so much as take a ladylike taste after her spoon skimmed the opposite side of her bowl. And I wasn't totally without manners—or nerves—so I cut my pieces into small bites.

“So, do you have a focus, Olivia?” I could have tweaked my translation charm with Will's help to make “focus” into “major,” but I liked the way focus sounded. The translation charms worked both ways, with the person speaking in a way best designed to be understood by the listener.

“I'm studying law.”

“That is great.” It confirmed what I had seen around her desk. Law was a very...mature focus. I had no plan yet as to what I was going to study as a focus. That I was studying necromancy at the moment was not for public exposure. I was pretty sure I was on the hook for some sort of art focus. “Law is great.”

Olivia's eyes narrowed. What had I said? Did she take my nervous ramblings for insincerity?

Joyful world or not, I still sucked at communicating with my roommate. But law—I wished I'd had her to advise me before I'd been sentenced to a billion days policing the student populace.

“I think that is a great career,” I stressed. “Are you going to declare?”

Disdain. “I declared the second day I was here.”

I gripped my fork and took another bite. I knew I was an oddity who asked weird questions. Being reminded of it sucked, though.

Feral
. God, I hated that term. It made me feel like some rabies-infested raccoon. Will had said three years studying in the magical world would wipe the title of feral from my record.

“The second day? The first day was full?”

Olivia's face grew cooler. “I have had no
issues
knowing what I wanted to do.”

The implication was clear.

“Well, I have no end of issues. What's one more?” I tried to keep my tone light, but I just felt exhausted all of a sudden. I sighed. “Listen, I honestly admire that you have your career chosen and know your path.”

Olivia said nothing, so I ate my pancakes in silence. The world was a joyful place. I tried repeating it twice more.

~*~

It shocked the hell out of me, when Olivia joined me for a late dinner the following night. We arrived fifteen minutes before closing time and quickly picked out our food.

Our conversation was...about the same. And there was more than a little of the sense that I had dragged her with me. But I had had a good day with Professor Stevens, I had learned how to manipulate space vectors in my secret lair without blowing anything up, and my blob was aging into a very fair imitation of a four-year-old. I could tweak that up thirteen years within a few days. I was riding a nice burst of confidence—my magic happily humming under my skin and riding through my veins.

So I chattered and Olivia relaxed a tiny bit—I hoped—and I considered the whole day a step in the right direction.

The workers had started to magically close down some of the kiosks and lines—flipping chairs and freezing machines.

I considered my roommate as she forked the last bits of her salad. “Would you like some ice cream? I know it's not a smart food, but it's a nice treat. And they keep the machines running until the last student leaves.”

Her fork paused as she lifted it to her lips. “Perhaps,” she said, with a touch of uncertainty—the first I had ever observed in her. “If one of the flavors is good.”

Success! No one disliked ice cream. Though someone who was allergic to ice cream might not like it because it made them sick. And if someone—

“What are you frowning about?” she demanded.

“Just thinking about ice cream.” I pushed back from the table before I could do something else embarrassing. “I’ll return with information about the flavors.”

I was checking the labels on the machines where you didn't magically have to mix the ice cream yourself—Banana Swirl again—yes!—and Strawberry—also, yes!—when Delia Peoples bounced up next to me.

“So, it took me three weeks to narrow it down to twelve candidates. But there is something about you.” She looked at me, then nodded. “You're newly feral.”

I forced some laughter, my excitement dropping completely. I had no idea what to expect from this girl or her knowledge of what I was—other than something bad. Something told me that she only found the information interesting in what she could spin with it.

“So how did you Awaken?” she asked.

“Like a troll finding himself under the wrong bridge,” I muttered. I might have to stop getting ice cream. This was my second such encounter. Who knew the machines were fraught with such peril?

Thankfully she was only half paying attention. Her eyes were scanning the dwindling crowd, and she was throwing a little wave to someone else every few seconds. She was one of those people who was always on the lookout for someone more interesting.

I cleared my throat. “I'm new because I transferred from Four Corners Academy.”

“Hmmm.” She cocked her head at me, obviously doubting that claim. “Well, where are you living?”

“I'm in Dorm Twenty-Five.”

“Oh, you got stuck with Olivia Price?” The girl seemed to rally back on this piece of information and chortled. “I wondered, when I saw you sitting with her. You poor thing. We went to primary together. Her last roommate here magicided. Ran screaming from this school and that cold, bitter fish. Living ordinary now.”

Putting aside the notion of “magicide” for a moment, I was pretty sure I should be actively and personally offended by at least some of the insinuations there, especially with her derogatory tone about the ordinary world.

“She is a complete troll,” she continued, only half looking at me again. “I heard even the law professors can't stand her. You should request a transfer immediately. She's had five roommates in five seasons. Five! I hear some of the Dorm Twenty-Five crowd take bets when she gets a new one.”

It was a blink of color out of the corner of my eye. A sense that I had relied upon as the pass receiver from a prankster brother. That extra bit of intuition that told me that something in my peripheral vision deserved my attention.

I looked to the people standing near us at the other machines. They were talking and laughing amongst themselves. Or filling cones and cups. No, that wasn't it. I wondered if it was my intuition—my magic—telling me my ice cream machine was about to explode. Stranger things had happened around me. It was actually kind of relieving that I now had something to blame the strangeness of my life on.

But I was getting sidetracked. I let my eyes wander farther and saw the tip of a Mary Jane sticking out from the far edge of the row of ice cream machines. I kept my eyes focused above that shoe, while Delia Peoples continued her catty recitation, and was rewarded with the end of Olivia's nose, then the rest of her face as she peered around. As her eyes met mine.

She stared at me in cool, uncaring disdain. The way that she had since I'd met her—her sole expression. Totally without one care that she was being gossiped about or that I was hearing it.

I wondered if that was what she was actually thinking. Was that how she felt?

My magic, still happily thrumming after a good day's work, took that moment to kick in full-force and I struggled for a moment with visions of the entire cafeteria blowing up in a glittering display of glass, pork chops, and Banana Swirl. I wrangled with my magic for a moment, my gaze still on Olivia.

The magic pointed, swirling around and latching onto my focus. My intent. It was like casting out a net, letting it settle and then pulling it in, hand over hand. I had no clue what I was doing, but I did it anyway, half-hoping that I wouldn't blow the place to bits.

I wondered if this was a side-effect of my soul rituals, with me now tasting a bit of her soul. Unnerving. But my brain, my heart, and my magic told me that I was doing something right. And I knew better than to mess with that feeling.

So I drew the net toward me. Some sort of essence—eau-de-Olivia. And I inhaled. Sadness. Anger. Loneliness. Dark intentions. Hope. Black certainty. The hope was a tiny flame, a mere wisp of light, and all of the darker emotions suddenly grabbed it and pinched, leaving only snuffed smoke.

Olivia whirled around and disappeared from my sight.

That cool, haughty, unaffected girl was a fraud.

My God. The old echo of my own loneliness and sadness gripped me. I felt the edge of the loneliness and sorrow I had experienced after Christian's death, especially in my darker moments, coming from Olivia. But I had always had my Mom and Dad to lean upon, even when they hadn't believed me about Christian's death, and even when I felt they couldn't understand the relationship I had had with my brother, my twin.