72. Chapter Seventy-Two
Chapter Seventy-Two
Argus “Headmaster” Xavier
Living Dead Girl
It worked. It actually worked.
I can feel her now, a steady presence in the air, unmistakable even at this distance. Elowen’s un-dead existence hums from across the street like a low note held for too long, vibrating against my bones and vast memory.
Kalevala pays me a visit. I must be so overwhelmed with my schedule that it’s not until she appears before me and speaks that I realize I’ve just been standing in the corner all day. She stands across from me as though the room has been saving her a place.
“As evil as I appear,” she says mildly, examining her nails, “I am doing you a kindness.” I don’t contradict her.
She informs me I’m behind schedule. That the currents are misaligned.
That the council won’t tolerate sentiment, only symmetry.
She lists what must still occur before Beau Drewitt can be presented. I listen.
I always listen when Kalevala speaks. She knows what’s best for the future of the council.
I trust her. That knowledge sits in me fully formed, unquestioned.
What unsettles me is the absence beside it.
I can’t remember how we got here. No first exchange or origin.
Only the certainty that she has always been there, guiding the sharp turns of fate with hands that never tremble.
She smiles like someone indulging a child.
When she leaves, the sense of Elowen remains, flickering now, unstable, but alive. The path is narrowing, causing all of the pieces to move into place. Beau Drewitt is not ready. But he will be.