Chapter 12
Cass’s first class was called Introduction to Clairvoyance.
She knew this not just from the small piece of paper in her hand, but also because it was written on the chalkboard in neat handwriting. It was the first thing Cass saw when she walked through the door.
Sunlight poured into the busy room. Wearing an off-the-shoulder sweatshirt over tight jeans, Cass did a swift scan of every face she passed as she automatically headed toward a table at the back. There were at least twenty people in this class, and the only one she recognized was Tammy, who didn’t look up from whatever she was writing in a notebook. The girl’s expression was just as sullen as the last time Cass had seen it, which was why she didn’t even try to extend a greeting. Cass slid into the chair and mussed her bangs.
Moments later, the professor hurried inside, holding a stack of textbooks in her arms. She was a small-framed woman with black-rimmed glasses and a wide, white smile. She wore a perfectly-tailored pantsuit of green plaid and a white scarf, which stood out starkly against her dark skin.
Once she’d set the stack of books down on the desk, the professor folded her hands and waited for the steady murmur of voices to die down.
“Professor Clemens is on vacation, so I’ll be filling in for him until he’s back. My name is Annabelle Green, and I graduated from Else Bellows with the class of 1976. House Pennyseeker.” Her smile widened, and Cass caught a glimpse of that pride Headmistress Crane had mentioned.
For the first time, Cass wondered what house she’d be in, if she was here long enough to find out. The thought unsettled her, but Cass wasn’t sure why. Or maybe she did, and she just didn’t want to think about it. Cass quickly reached for the textbook in front of her and cracked it open as Professor Green’s lecture went on.
Cass didn’t recognize most of the terminology, and the pictures were strange. There was one black and white image of what looked like an exorcism, a skeletal woman lying on a thin, lumpy mattress while a circle of grim-faced people stood around her. Another eerie image depicted a solemn-faced girl, her hair in pigtails, while a bright light floated in the air beside her. Cass quickly realized that she’d never seen a textbook like this. At her old school, before she dropped out, her classes had mostly been science and math. The basics. She’d been halfway through her sophomore year when the accident happened.
But even if she had made it all the way to senior year, Cass doubted any of those books would’ve compared to the one in front of her.
“Does anyone know what secondary abilities a voyant can possess?” she heard Professor Green ask from a distance. With effort, Cass lifted her head and refocused.
Tammy’s familiar voice spoke up from the front row. “Telepathy, which is communicating with others psychically. Telekinesis, moving objects with the mind. Precognition, seeing the future. Then there’s transtemporal travel.”
The tip of the chalk was the only sound in the room as Professor Green wrote down the four abilities. Once she was finished, she set the chalk back on the ledge, clapped the white residue off her hands, and rested her fingertips on the desk. “Someone has certainly done the reading. You got every single one, Miss Price. Now, it’s rare for a voyant to possess any one of these abilities, much less more than one, but there are exceptions.”
“Exceptions such as Nathanial Hissing and Sinister Gray,” Tammy put in.
What was it with the names in this place? Cass wondered. Couldn’t there be a famous voyant named Bob Miller?
She turned to make a face at Cal, knowing he’d probably had a similar thought.
But the desk next to her was empty.
“…good, Miss Price,” Professor Green praised. Her brown eyes shifted as she addressed the rest of the class, and Cass looked back with an overly calm expression, silently commanding herself to focus. “It’s publicly known that Nathanial Hissing possessed the gifts of telepathy and telekinesis.”
Don’t think about Cal. Concentrate. Cass waited for the professor to tell them what Sinister Gray could do. Instead, Professor Green wrote on the board again, saying over her slim shoulder, “We call these abilities PSI or EP. Does anyone—anyone besides Miss Price—know what these stand for?”
When no one else answered, the professor’s smile became strained. With a look of resignation in her eyes, she nodded at Tammy, who immediately declared, “PSI stands for ‘psychic phenomena’ and EP is ‘extrasensory perception.’ It’s when an individual learns something that can’t be gained through the senses or deducted from previous experience.”
“That’s correct. Thank you, Miss Price.” The rest of the class continued on in that way. Professor Green would say something in her cheerful, matter-of-fact voice, as if she weren’t completely shaking Cass’s world on its axis, and then she would ask them a question. Tammy’s hand shot in the air, time and time again. Professor Green tried to get answers from other students, but usually, Tammy ended up answering.
Cass went to her next class in a daze. OCCULT SCIENCE I, her schedule read. When she drifted over the threshold, she spotted Finch instantly. The other girl was hard to miss—she was sitting in the front row, alone, waving as if there was any possibility of Cass not seeing her. Cass sat in the chair beside her silently, still numb with shock. She let her heavy, book-laden bag slide to the floor with a graceless thud.
Finch leaned over. She was wearing another sweater today, this one even frumpier than the last. Her thick hair was gathered up in a scrunchie. “How was your first class?” she asked.
At that moment, the professor strode in. He was a bald man with a stained tie and a booming voice. Cass hid her relief and faced forward. This time, Cass didn’t touch her textbook. She just kept her gaze on the professor, even when he directed them to flip to certain pages. Cass struggled to listen as Professor Barbarack began a lecture about astrology. For the rest of the class period, she felt Finch’s concerned, darting glances.
When the midday bell rang across campus, Cass practically shot to her feet. Finch gathered her things more slowly. She held them against her chest and faced Cass. “The dining hall is on the other side of—” she started.
Then the world started shaking. Cass’s heart lurched, and she felt her eyes widen. She snatched the edge of a table and half-squatted, searching wildly around the room to see if everyone else was doing the same.
But the earthquake had already ended.
To Cass’s surprise, Finch didn’t look concerned. Two or three of the other students still wore expressions of alarm, but for the most part, everyone continued on as if nothing had happened. Cass turned back to Finch, her eyebrows raised in a silent question.
“That happens sometimes, especially in the past few months,” the other girl said with a shrug. “Life in California, I guess. We should go to lunch. The lines can get really long.”
“Actually, I’ll meet you there. I need to look for my keys.” Cass pointed her thumb over her shoulder, walking backward. She really was anxious to find them—she couldn’t crawl through Finch’s window every time she snuck out.
“Your next class is Basics of Untethering, right?” Finch asked.
Still walking, Cass glanced at her schedule again. “Yeah.”
Color spread through Finch’s freckled cheeks. “My friend Teddy is a TA for that one.”
“Oh.” Cass waited, thinking there was more. Finch just stood there, looking mortified, as if she’d revealed too much. Quickly Cass added, “Hopefully I can catch up with you in the dining hall. If not, I’ll see you at home. Later.”
“Later,” Finch said to Cass’s retreating back.
She hurried out of the room and into the hall, moving into the river of students streaming past. Once Cass was outside, harsh sunlight pounding down on her, she shouldered her bag and started in the direction of the Hissing Gardens. She arrived at the brick paths and retraced her steps back to the chapel, taking the same route she’d gone the night before.
Cass hadn’t forgotten the revenant with the bleeding chest, though. At the point in the hedges where she’d encountered the dead girl, she hesitated. Her fear kicked up a notch. Cass contemplated turning around and going back the way she’d come. Fuck the keys, she’d just get new copies made.
She chose that moment to remember what Cal had said to her, his voice tinted with disappointment. Never thought I’d see the day Cassandra Ryan acted like a fucking coward.
Cal still didn’t know the other ghosts could touch her—she hadn’t told him. That would probably change his perspective on Cass facing them.
And yet, she couldn’t bring herself to leave.
Fucking Cal. Cass made a huffing noise, partly out of genuine annoyance, and the other part desperately trying to pretend she wasn’t terrified. Deciding just to get it over with, Cass launched herself forward, bolting past the opening in the hedges where she’d seen the dead girl.
There was no sign of her. When Cass saw that the path was empty, she sagged in relief and kept going, even more motivated to find the key and get the hell out of here.
The bleeding revenant wasn’t the only detail that had changed since her last visit, Cass noted as she slipped into the chapel. Up ahead, at the other end of the room, the earthquake had obviously shaken some stones in the back wall loose. There was a narrow gap now, leading into darkness, and a pile of debris had scattered down the aisle. Not her problem, Cass thought. She went back to the spot where she’d been sitting. She searched the pew first, then got down on her hands and knees, scanning the floor for any glint of a key.
She’d only been down there a few seconds when Cass heard the sound of footsteps. A moment later, soft weeping filled the stillness. Cass decided to stand up and make herself known—no way she wanted to listen to someone have a breakdown while they thought they were alone.
But just as she flattened her palms beneath her for leverage, a pair of legs appeared in her line of vision. Cass’s gaze lowered, and when she saw the newcomer’s feet, a high-pitched ringing filled her head.
She was missing one of her shoes. It looked like the girl had been running through fresh soil or damp earth, because it clung to her bare skin like black paint. On the foot that had lost a shoe, one of the girl’s toes was broken, the bone bent at an unnatural angle. Red drops fell around those thin, dirty feet.
And there, right beside the blood, Cass spotted her keys.
She didn’t move. As the seconds ticked by, the weeping got louder. Slowly, the feet moved away, padding back down the aisle.
But Cass stayed frozen. She stayed crouched on the cold floor, her sweaty fingers digging into the stone. All she kept thinking was, No ghosts. Sally Crane said there were no ghosts on campus.
Finch tried to warn her, though. Maybe this was just one of those revenants that had ventured onto campus by accident. Cass could still feel her panic taking the wheel, especially when the revenant’s footsteps went silent. She wrested it back by silently ordering herself to get it together. Right now, she needed to be smart. There would be plenty of time to freak out later, if she managed to survive this encounter. But Cass didn’t know how to get rid of a revenant yet. Or untether them, whatever.
So Cass decided to get the fuck out of dodge.
The revenant wasn’t crying anymore, and Cass didn’t see those creepy feet anywhere. Maybe it had wandered through the walls and gotten outside. Cass liked this theory. It lent her enough courage to reach for her keys, scuttle out from beneath the pew, and ease into the open. She did a swift scan around her, breathing raggedly, and the room seemed to be empty. This was her chance. Cass’s heart ramped up. She whirled, tensing to run…
…and came face-to-face with the revenant.
It was a girl, but not the one from the garden. This one was taller, thinner, her hair long and fine. She wore torn jeans and a shirt that was buttoned incorrectly, the edges so misaligned that part of the girl’s stomach was visible. She stared right at Cass, her pale eyes so huge that Cass could see the whites all around them.
Before she could act, the floor began to shake. More stones came loose in the back wall, drawing Cass’s gaze for a split second. But then she did a double take, looking from the dead girl back to that dark opening. In a burst of horror, Cass realized where this revenant must have come from, and why no one had untethered it.
She’d been trapped behind the wall.
Cass felt like time slowed down as she watched the dead girl’s hands rise. Then, when she started clawing at her own throat, time sped back up again. The floor was trembling so hard that the loose stones rattled. Cass recoiled, her eyes wide with terror. When the revenant saw that, it only seemed to make things worse. Now the walls were shaking, too, the legs of the pews rattling on the flagstones. The girl’s mouth gaped open in a desperate bid for air. She clawed at herself so hard that Cass saw one of her nails snap back.
Cass halted in her tracks—even though she knew it was pointless, she couldn’t shake the urge to help. But this chick was dead, she reminded herself. There was nothing anyone could do. If Cass had any sense of self-preservation, she should run.
Then, before she could decide what to do, everything went still.
The revenant had disappeared, and Cass stood there alone, her chest heaving. It was so quiet that she could hear voices floating through the closest window, which must’ve cracked or loosened during the earthquake.
“Second one today,” someone on the other side of the wall said. A second person responded, the words too far away for Cass to make out.
The two voices faded. Slowly, Cass lowered her gaze back to the empty space in front of her, then to the broken wall. Her mind worked, processing what had just happened. She felt a gradual tightening in her gut, a hard knot of certainty forming.
It wasn’t earthquakes that had been rocking the entire school the past few months, Cass thought.
It was a revenant.