14. Cory
14
CORY
W hat the fuck had I done?
I sat in my bedroom, a narrow little cell on the fourth floor that I was pretty sure was actually a storage closet, except that it had a small closet inside it as well. It also had a single bed, a tiny desk, and an even tinier chair.
The nicest part of the room was by far the window, diamond-paned and recessed, with a ledge that was perfect for sitting on and staring out at the night sky, wondering just when you’d turned into a complete idiot.
It was one day after my…liaison…with Sean, and I still felt panicky every time my mind drifted back there. The fact that I’d done that with him—that I’d let him do that to me . At the time, I’d wanted it. Or at least, some sick part of me had. But looking back at it, all I saw was a pathetic excuse for a man, asking to be treated like shit.
A man who got off on being with other men.
That couldn’t be me, could it?
My classes today had been more of the same—another incomprehensible lecture in Spellwork, an unsettling lecture in Human and Paranormal Relations, and an overwhelming lecture in Alchemy and Artifice. We’d had Combat a second time, but I’d been paired with Felix, thank God. Still, I could feel Sean’s eyes on me from across the gym, and it made my skin crawl.
Was he hoping to get me alone again? To make me do those disgusting things with him?
Except he didn’t make you , did he ? You’re the one who asked him to stay .
The only good thing I could say about Combat was that Professor Braverman—Noah—had ignored me completely. I didn’t know if it was by chance or design that he’d never come within ten feet of me all class. I was grateful for it, either way.
I closed my eyes, leaning the side of my head against the cool glass. I was exhausted, mentally and physically. Emotionally too, if that were possible. And at the same time, I felt this weird tugging in my core, like a string pulling me somewhere I desperately needed to go—only, I had no idea where that was.
It made me feel antsy in a way I didn’t like. Or maybe that was just what came from ruminating over my mistakes. I just hoped the tugging wasn’t my body trying to pull me back to Sean. Sweat broke out on my brow as I contemplated that. I really might vomit, if that were what the pull meant.
“I mean, you might as well tell us now,” Ash said behind me, and I spun around so fast I almost fell off the ledge.
He was standing in my bedroom doorway, Felix peering out behind him. I hadn’t even heard them open the door.
“What?” I blinked. Ash had a habit of doing this, I was learning. Starting a conversation as though we were already in the middle of it. “Tell you what?”
“Whatever’s wrong. You don’t seem to be the gruff and stoic type, and something’s clearly bothering you. You look terrible, too—like a consumptive Victorian ghost. And you’re going to tell us eventually. So I figured we could just skip all the private, angsty bits and go right to the part where you break down and spill your deep, dark secret, or whatever it is.”
“I want it on the record that I told Ash this was too pushy,” Felix said, his shoulders hunched. He towered above Ash, but looked like he was trying to shrink. “I told him you would tell us if you wanted to, and that it was rude to barge in like this.”
“And yet, you’re still here.” Ash threw him an exasperated look. “So clearly your objections aren’t that strong.”
“I’m here to rein in the worst of your excesses.”
“You’re here because you’re as nosy as I am, you just don’t want to admit it.” Ash turned back to me and smiled brightly. “I, on the other hand, am perfectly comfortable owning my nosiness. So, as I was saying: spill.”
With that, he walked into the room and plopped himself down on my bed. He folded his legs into a pretzel and brought his palms together, looking at me expectantly.
Dammit. I couldn’t deny something was wrong. If Ash and Felix had only known me for two days and could tell, then it must be obvious. But I couldn’t imagine telling them the truth.
So, it turns out I’m an incubus, but I have no experience to speak of, so I decided to have my first sexual encounter with a guy who treated me like absolute garbage. Oh, and I liked it. The sex, and the garbage. Something is deeply wrong with me .
No. God, no. I could barely even admit that to myself. There was no way I was going to say it out loud.
“I don’t have anything to spill,” I said, doing my best to look like I wasn’t hiding a hundred giant secrets. “I guess I’ve just been thinking about—well, everything. A few days ago, I was pretty sure I was going crazy, running away from monsters that looked like something out of a nightmare. And now, I’ve been told that not only are those monsters real, magic is too, and all sorts of paranormal beings, and I’m just supposed to roll with it? There’s a magical university, and I’m supposed to be a student here, and apparently it’s possible to make a globe of light with your mind, and I just…it’s a lot, is all.”
By the time I finished talking, I realized that maybe I was struggling with all of this, in addition to the Sean stuff. I’d written letters—actual paper-and-ink letters—to the diner and the motel back home, that the dean had promised to mail for me. I’d told them I had no idea when I’d come back, or if I ever would. Writing that had felt like cutting the last cord tethering me to my old life.
Ash laughed. “Yeah, I guess when you put it that way, it really is a lot. I grew up with magic, so I tend to forget it’s not normal for everyone else.”
“It’s completely reasonable to feel overwhelmed,” Felix said from the doorway. “I’m sort of like Ash. I never knew a world without the supernatural. But even I had a hard time adjusting to life at Vesperwood. And I think just about anyone would be freaked out if they’d been attacked by tenelkiri.”
“Yeah, about that.” Ash looked at me with renewed interest. “I don’t mean to pry—”
“Too late for that,” said Felix.
“But what the hell did you do to get them interested in you?”
Leak my uncontrolled sex magic all over the place, apparently .
“I’m not sure,” I said aloud. “The dean didn’t seem sure either. He basically just said he hoped he could figure it out with time.”
That was more or less true, which made me feel better. I didn’t like lying to my new friends.
“Weird,” Ash said. “Maybe you’re some sort of chosen one or something. Here to save the world and teach us all the true meaning of life. Do you feel chosen-one-y?”
“I don’t think so.” I laughed nervously. “Unless feeling confused and lost counts as chosen-one-y.”
“Maybe it does,” he said brightly. “I’ve never been a chosen one, so I can’t judge.”
Felix snorted. “Or maybe Cory just got in the way of someone else that the tenelkiri were after. Maybe they wanted to attack the school, and just happened to run into him on the way.”
“Maybe.” Ash didn’t sound convinced. “When did you first see them, exactly? Were you already on your way here? Oh, which reminds me of something else I wanted to ask—why exactly are you here? You never told us. You seemed so confused about what Vesperwood was, when I first met you, but how did you end up here, if you didn’t already know?”
Any pretext of not wanting to pry had clearly been dropped.
Those questions skirted too close to things I didn’t want to talk about. But at the same time, Felix and Ash knew way more about magic and Vesperwood and how this all worked than I did. Maybe I could get some useful information from telling them, if I did it carefully?
“I wasn’t on my way here yet when I first saw the tenelkiri,” I said slowly. I paused, wondering just how nuts I was going to sound if I told them the rest of it. Sure, magic was real and all, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t also be completely crazy. “Not at first, at least.”
“You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to,” Felix said, seeing my hesitation.
“Well, duh.” Ash grinned. “He knows that. But he wants to. Right?”
“He’s not going to be more likely to tell you if you keep pestering him.”
“Or maybe he is , if you would quit jumping in and stopping him from talking. And come into the room, dammit. You’re giving me a crick in my neck, hanging in the doorway like that.”
“Too bad it’s not a crick in your tongue,” Felix said, but he did finally step fully into my room, closing the door behind him.
He walked over to my desk, setting down two books he was carrying. He pulled out the chair and sat, trying to fold his legs neatly underneath it. They were too long, though, and eventually he gave up and stretched them out. They reached all the way to the edge of my bed.
“You do look kind of pale,” he added, his brow furrowing. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
I sighed. I knew I didn’t need to say anything, but then I felt like I’d have to explain why I didn’t want to talk, and that seemed harder than just telling them. Plus, maybe they could help me figure some of this stuff out. I shifted so I my back was to the window, took a deep breath, and began.
“So this is probably going to sound weird, but a while ago I started having these dreams. Just like, very dark, and confusing, with this monster that was—it was just—well, scary. And these dreams felt so real, even after I’d wake up. They’d stick with me all day, and I was tired all the time, and they started happening more and more, and I thought I was going crazy.”
That was all true, as far as it went. If I’d left out the part about the monster trying to fuck me, well, I’d never promised to tell the whole truth.
“And then earlier this week, there was this raven, and this is going to sound totally nuts, but I swear it followed me around all day. I thought it was an axe murderer at first. I was walking to work before dawn and I could tell something was following me, but I couldn’t see it and—I mean, it doesn’t matter, but it was kind of strange. Even other people commented on how weird it was for it to loiter outside the diner like it did. And then it followed me to my second job, and yeah, maybe it was just there by happenstance—Churchill’s not that big, it could have visited every business in town if it wanted to—but I just felt like it was fixated on me.”
I paused to take a breath. It was surprising, how good it felt to finally tell people, even if it did make me sound insane.
“And then I fell asleep at work—I’m a clerk at a motel, and it was a slow shift—and I had one of those dreams again, and it was just, um, intense. More so than usual.” I swallowed, wondering if my omission was glaringly obvious. “And at the end of it—the dream, I mean—the monster said the word, ‘ Vesperwood ,’ and then I woke up.”
“Whoa.” Ash looked stunned. “Weird. Did it say anything else?”
I didn’t think sexual growls counted as words, so I shook my head. “No.”
“What did you do?”
“Uh, ran out into the parking lot and had a panic attack?”
“That seems a little extreme.”
“Well, it was an intense dream.”
I sounded like a little kid, afraid of the boogie-man. But I wasn’t sure it would improve matters to tell them the part of the dream I was holding back. What kind of person had a panic attack after a sex dream?
“The thing is, as soon as I got outside, that raven was there again. Like it had been waiting for me. It flew over while I was still trying to catch my breath, and it, uh, kind of… talked…to me?”
I looked at Felix and Ash, preemptively wincing at how dumb that sounded, and how dumb they must think I was. But Felix just looked thoughtful and quiet, which was how he always looked, and Ash said, “Oooh, interesting. What did it say?”
I frowned, confused at how nonchalantly they were taking this.
“I’m sorry, I just—you guys are taking the news that a bird talked to me pretty calmly. That doesn’t seem out of the ordinary to you?”
“Says the guy sitting with a fallen angel and a changeling, at a paranormal university,” Ash deadpanned.
“And talking birds aren’t that weird anyway,” Felix said. He held out the index finger on his left hand, tapping it with his right. “Parrots talk.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Cockatoos.” He tapped another finger. “Parakeets. Mynas. Probably more. But ravens—ravens can definitely talk. You just don’t hear about it as much, because they’re not common pets.”
“Well maybe they can,” I said, “but I don’t think most ravens see you on your knees in a dark parking lot, flap down in front of you, and say the word, ‘ Vesperwood .’”
“Damn.” Ash’s mouth dropped open. “Really?”
I nodded.
“That is so cool .”
“Is it? I found it pretty terrifying. A bird repeating a word that a monster in my dream had just said to me—a word I’d never heard before? That either meant that the bird could read my mind, or that I was losing mine.”
“I think there are a few other explanations,” Felix said. “For instance, it’s possible that the bird and the dream were both magical projections, the result of a spell someone was using to contact you. Or have you considered whether—”
“Da-da-da-da-da,” Ash said, holding his hand up in Felix’s direction. “Not now, professor . I want to hear the rest of Cory’s story.”
I did not find the idea that someone was casting spells at me to be as comforting as Felix seemed to think it was. I also didn’t think a projection could leave me a totally real, totally corporeal feather. But I didn’t have that feather anymore, or my jacket, so maybe Felix was right.
“So go on,” Ash prompted. “What did you do next?”
“Threw up in the motel bathroom?” I said, wondering if I should have omitted that part too. “I was pretty convinced I was going crazy, but then I heard this noise out in the lobby, and when I went out to check on it, they were there.”
“They who?”
“The tenekiri.”
“Whoa,” Ash said again. “That’s fucking terrifying.”
Nice to know he finally agreed with me.
“Did they say anything?” Felix asked. “How many were there? Was it just them, or did there seem to be anyone else with them, directing them, maybe?”
“There were three of them. And one did say something, but it was in a language I couldn’t understand. Then the main one pointed at me, and they started chasing me, so I ran. There were fireballs involved.”
“Like the alcohol?” Ash asked.
“Like flaming balls of fire being lobbed at my head.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah, that was pretty much my feeling. I didn’t know what to do. I’d just had one panic attack and felt like I was about to have another, so I just ran. The motel is close to the highway, and I wasn’t thinking straight, so I ran up to the road and almost got hit by a car. The driver gave me a ride when I asked, but then he acted like he hadn’t even seen the tenelkiri following me, which only made me more convinced I was crazy. Then I thought I should look up the word ‘ Vesperwood ’ and see what it meant, and I found these weird, old blog posts with pictures and Latin phrases, and I figured out it was in Wisconsin, but I still didn’t know anything else, and then—well, then I just kind of hitchhiked my way here.”
That was leaving out a fucking lot , but I’d already told Dean Mansur about what happened at the rest stop. I wasn’t telling anyone else. And I’d go to my grave without mentioning the Balsam Inn again. I was pretty sure if I tried to talk about it, Noah would put me in my grave. Best not to tempt fate.
“That’s so weird, and so cool,” Ash said. “I’m actually a little jealous. I had to do an interview and an application to get in here.” He looked at Felix. “Didn’t you have to do that too?”
“Something like that,” Felix said, though he looked down at the floor as he said it. Then again, Felix often looked at the floor when he talked, so that didn’t necessarily mean anything. “I definitely didn’t get a raven coming to fetch me. But then, it’s different for paranormal students.”
“How?” I asked. “And why?”
“Everyone has to apply to get in,” Ash said. “But paranormal students have to take an oath not to use our powers against the school or anyone who studies or works here. Which is ridiculous, because witch students don’t have to take that oath, but they’re just as capable of using their powers for evil or whatever.”
“But what are your powers?” I looked at Felix. “And what did you mean when you said you didn’t have wings anymore ?”
“Just that. I had to give them up to come here.”
“But that’s not fair. I can’t believe the academy asked you to do that as a condition of coming here.”
“Oh, they didn’t. That was my family.”
“Gotta love family,” Ash said. “Can’t live with ‘em, in my case, and can’t have wings without ‘em, in Felix’s.” He grinned sardonically.
“Jesus,” I said. “That’s awful.”
Felix shrugged. “I never got along with them anyway. It was worth it, in the end.”
“And now he can make love to all the sexy, sexy books in the libraries here,” Ash added. “As for what our powers are…” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Did you know you have ink on your nose?”
I blinked in confusion and tried to stare at my nose. In the background, out of focus, Ash covered his face with his hands. When he dropped them, he said, “Voila!”
I gaped. I was doing a lot of gaping these days, but this might take the cake. I was staring at Ash—which now meant I was staring at an exact replica of my own face.