Fire and the Flood - KitTy

Chapter Three - Livvy

I apologize profusely for how little happens in this chapter. Also, the mood of it is very back-and-forth; you may get confused. And I feel like I didn't really write Ty that well in the previous chapter, and for that I am sorry. I'm going to try to fix how I write his POV. Okay, here's the chapter:

Livvy peeked her head around a corner and into a room, giving it a quick scan before sighing and looking away. She was trying to find Ty, who was probably in some deserted room, reading or studying for something. She had already tried to use their special bond thingy-magiggin to let herself get pulled back to him, but it was no use. She didn't know why, but all she had felt was a little tug before the "line," as she called it, went slack. (It was easier to think of it as a physical bond than spiritual or something; she could just imagine pulling on a string and boom! there she was, right next to Ty. But not this time.)

There was a fork in the hallways ahead of the room Livvy had just checked, and when she got to it she turned left with no hesitation. She had the layout of the whole Scholomance mapped out in her head, thanks to two and a half years' worth of nights where the only thing to do was explore. She'd learned of a maze of passages that went all the way through walls and underneath the school. She'd discovered them after she had gone exploring one night only to find that she knew everything there was to know about the Scholomance's layout (there were a few things she would definitely change if she could design it and words to be had with the architect of the fortress, but she didn't know who the original architect was so she couldn't have any words with anyone about it. And even if she did know, how would she? She was a ghost for the Angel's sake). She'd thought about all the big, giant, scary castles and temples and hotels in all of those horror movies she'd watched with Dru, and most of them had some cool secret passageway or something, filled with cobwebs and skeletons and rats.

It was so boring just floating around a building she'd already memorized, so she had decided to search for a passageway. And yes, she knew that the Scholomance wasn't some haunted and abandoned castle in a horror movie, but what else could she have done? So, after "floating-in" on a bunch of Centurions-in-training doing a whole variety of weird things that keep them busy and entertained, she'd eventually pushed herself through a floor near the infirmary where Catarina Loss worked and found herself not intruding in on a teenager counting how many stickers they had in their book (not very many--the only stickers in the Scholomance were the different coloured stars that Professor Ravenhood handed out when you did something that pleased him. He was a bit wonky in the head, Livvy thought), but instead staring down a vast, wide and dark, very dark, chamber.

Although Livvy's undead state had given her a few advantages (she could go through solid things, for example), she could not, sadly, see any better in the dark than she could when she was a live, breathing human, and nor could she wield a flashlight or torch to illuminate the dark corridors. So she had taken to exploring as much as could without vision in the nighttime and examining the passageways thoroughly while Ty was in his classes and she had nothing of importance to do (which was all the time. Nobody except for Ty and Irene knew about Livvy, and they weren't even sure if Irene could actually see her). Using that technique of searching, Livvy had scoured the passageways until she was sure there was nothing more to see. There was an entrance right near the library, the kitchens, and all the other main rooms of the Scholomance, including a few seemingly random classrooms and rooms occupied by students. She hadn't yet told Ty about the maze of corridors and tombs and chambers, but she was going to at some time, she told herself. Just not right then.

Now, Livvy kept looking in all the rooms she knew ought to be empty, but never found Ty as she expected her would be, with his headphones covering his ears, a book in his lap and a distant expression on his face, intent on learning everything he could in his lifetime. Though she did walk in on a few students playing card games or picking at what the Professors and cooks called "lunch". Even in the three years that Livvy and Ty had stayed at the Scholomance, they still hadn't bothered to make the food any better. Apparently they didn't see any need to; only around two to five students in a month got food poisoning. Livvy didn't really know who "they" was, either. It had never occurred to her to wonder who arranged everything at the Scholomance--she'd always assumed it was the Consul, but now that Alec was the Consul, he could be bothered to come up with a better meal plan for the Scholomance, right? Maybe Livvy would ask Magnus to mention it to Alec the next time that Magnus visited (which was often, seeing as he was the only person who knew about their secret and checked up on them to see that they hadn't accidentally killed anyone or something).