Out of Bounds Qualities That Could Go Unsaid

Glory and Gore Go Hand in Hand

I had three conditions when I told Cam I needed help finding a roommate. Just three. I told him, "He can't smoke, he has to keep his pants on while around the apartment, and he is not to touch what isn't his." This is what I got for putting my faith in Cameron Laurent, St. Nicholas's College of Magic's Most Likely to End Up Working at Chuck E. Cheese's.

"Jesse's cool, man. Never touched a cig, real neat, funny, chill. Y'all'll be great together."

"Alright," I said. "Now what's wrong with him?"

"Well." He coughed when he said it, like he was hiding a laugh, and I knew that was the moment the trapdoor opened. "Jesse may or may not be a siren. Be there at two. Tell your mom I said hello, bye!"

Unfortunately, he'd hung up on me before I could hang up on him.

A siren. Stripper of the magical world. Cam's latest idea in his campaign to help me "expand my worldview." I didn't have any problem with my worldview; he was the one who found my existence tragic.

My knowledge of sirens was confined to drunk, late-night texts from friends and articles from The Eye read underneath my desk during Advanced Incanting. And then there was the time my sister brought her siren boyfriend home to meet me and my mom. Mom had thrown all semblance of tact out the window and into a volcano and gave them a box of condoms before they'd made it fully into the foyer.

Mostly normal, apparently--Xander had been a bit dull, but otherwise an okay guy--but could really whump your hormones given the opportunity. I tried not to think about what he had been doing to my sister's hormones. I like being able to sleep at night without nightmares.

One thing I did know was that as long as Cam's siren intervention didn't subscribe to a clothing-optional lifestyle while in the apartment, didn't bring a coterie of friends over for orgies, and didn't blast Halsey at four in the morning, I figured I could deal with the rest.

I wasn't surprised that a siren ended up going to St. Nick's, or that I might end up rooming with them. It was a useless college, and I was useless at magic.

This was demonstrated perfectly during orientation, when they gathered the incoming class of freshmen into the Greater Auditorium. (I didn't want to know how small the Lesser Auditorium was, because the Greater Auditorium couldn't laugh at a matchbox.) I planted myself at the end of a row and only shifted my toes in when someone wanted to walk past me, so that more often than not, they bumped my knees and didn't apologize. All around me was the buzz of people chatting about absolutely nothing.

Then a girl dropped herself in the row in front of me. She fell like a raindrop: one big mass that split apart when it hit something—her bag went in the seat next to her, her jacket splayed over the back of the chair in front of her, and the plastic thunk indicated she'd let her umbrella drop to the floor. I stared at the back of her head: straight brown hair way past shoulder length—and then I was staring at the front her. Her eyes would have probably been big and dark on their own but the eyeshadow was an insurance policy making sure that all attention was drawn to them. They made her pale skin even paler, almost incandescent next to the pop of pink lipstick she'd dabbed on.

"Do you have gum?" she asked.

"No."

"A mint?"

"No."

"Hard candy?"

I squinted at her. "Is K-Mart tattooed on my forehead?"

She narrowed her eyes and pressed her lips together, but my snap didn't dig as deep as I'd thought it would.