Staying Under

Chapter Two

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.