Chapter 10
Iwake up all groggy, looking around and wondering where I am. It takes me a moment to realize I’m in the new room, but as soon as I do, a powerful mix of dread and incredulousness pins me in place.
I’m a shifter studying at Grimm Academy.
For one long moment, I just keep staring at the ceiling.
It’s for the first time since it happened — that thing with the Lexarcanum book, that I actually consider the possibility. That the book chose me, and that it did that for a reason.
Then this feeling that I’m forgetting something makes me frown and I push myself up, glancing around.
I stumble out of bed, my new room still so unfamiliar to me, it’s as if I’m seeing it for the first time. Despite being slightly cramped, especially thanks to the bed occupying most of the width, it’s actually better than my old room in the Grimm Tower. Right opposite the bed, there’s the large wooden closet, while to my left I have a cute little desk overlooking the castle grounds. Much to my relief, between the bed and the closet, there’s the door into my own private bathroom.
It’s only once I start getting dressed that my eyes land on the schedule lying on the desk.
It finally hits me, what I’m forgetting. I have my first special class with Bane today.
I have to fight the urge to get back in bed and pull the covers over my head until there’s only darkness and silence around me. Instead, I let out a dragged-out groan and force myself to keep getting ready.
***
By the time I start down the hallway leading from the Entrance Hall to B13, I have a plan and I’m feeling pretty good about it.
Sure, I can’t exactly call myself lucky for having been assigned to that man. But it’s still true — what I said to Carrel and Nolan. None of us really know him. Gods know how long this is going to last — there’s a part of me that’s still waiting for someone to come and tell me it was all a mistake.
It could happen any moment now.
Until then, all I need to do is not repeat the mistake from the Opening Ceremony — letting him get to me.
Should be a piece of cake, considering the reason he managed to do it in the first place is the fact I was so messed up that day.
It’s a new day and, well, I’m feeling only slightly messed up right now.
So it’s with determination in my step that I keep walking to my first special class.
I reach the intersection opening onto the Gerhardt Yard — the one the students call the Junkyard because of all the Academy misfits gathering there with all their contraband. It makes me slow down, when I feel eyes on me just as I’m about to pass the entrance.
I come a little closer and take a peek. The Junkyard is a large stretch of patchy grass surrounded by a crumbling stone arcade looking out onto the hallways. There’s a giant maple shooting out of the center and alcoves with lichen-covered tables lining the borders.
Still feeling watched, I let my eyes sweep over the space and the students hanging around. I drag them from the tree to one of the alcoves across from me, then up the table nestled inside, then all the way to the graffitied gargoyle perched at the top of the arch, finding a pair of eyes blinking at me.
Raven, sitting in a lotus position on top of the gargoyle, an open book in her lap.
My lips curling into a smile, I lift my hand to wave. As soon as I do, she abruptly shifts, takes flight as this delicate little black bird, grabs the falling book in her beak and disappears out of my line of sight.
I just keep standing there for a second. What an odd little cutie.
I shake my head and take the right at the intersection, for a couple of minutes walking down the mostly empty hallway until I finally find the classroom. I open the door and walk inside, frowning when I see what kind of space they’ve picked for this.
It’s just a regular classroom. I mean, it’s showing more than the usual wear-and-tear, but it’s not that which bothers me. It’s the fact that it’s both small and so crammed with desks and shelves that there’s barely any room for standing, let alone doing any training.
Doesn’t matter, I tell myself. I have my plan and I’m sticking to it. I choose the front-row desk facing the solitary professor’s, placed in front of the blackboard. I take a seat, glancing at my watch to see it’s 09:59.
Then my ears prick up and I hear these confident footsteps drawing near. The sound makes me sit straight and fix my eyes on the door.
At exactly 10:00, I see the knob turn, making all my determination crumble and nervousness flood my entire system.
***
The very next second, I’m watching him walk in and close the door behind him. I feel the presence inside me stir, but I shove it down, along with all my nervousness. Just remember the plan, Anna.
I get up. “Morning—”
“Cooperate,” he mercilessly cuts me off, making my eyebrows pull down as I watch him walk up to the professor’s desk, lean on its edge and brace his hands at his sides, only then locking eyes with me. “And you won’t be needing more than this one class. Understood?”
I just keep looking at him, my confusion growing the longer I do. It’s not the rudeness that’s throwing me off. It’s how formal he’s being, his tone cold and his face devoid of any expression.
“Understood?” he repeats himself, a touch of impatience in his voice.
It takes me a moment to shrug my confusion off. “I’m sorry, one class?” I ask with a mix of surprise and suspicion.
“It’s because you can’t shift that you’re in need of special classes, right?”
“Right,” I grumble.
“So I’ll get you to shift and be done with it,” he says flatly.
My eyes narrow. I’m still suspicious and the very thought of him succeeding seems absurd, but his whole attitude is actually working in my favor. “By all means,” I reply with a smile.
Feeling determined once again, I move to get in front of my desk and await further instruction, stopping the second I see him shake his head and motion at the chair behind me.
A little hesitantly, I walk back, take my seat and clasp my hands in front of me, going straight back to suspicious.
He shifts a little, but stays leaned against the desk with his hands braced along its edges. For one long moment, he just looks at me with a blank face. Then, finally, he breaks the torturous silence. “What’s your animal?”
It feels so stupid, to tell the truth, but what else am I supposed to do? “I don’t know,” I reply, a strain in my voice.
He squints. There’s the impatience again when he starts, “Wolf, bear, snake—”
“Listing them won’t help,” I cut in with a shake of my head. “I honestly don’t know which one is mine.”
“Get in touch with it and tell me what happens,” he orders.
As if I didn’t attempt that already. “Um, I can try, but—”
“Try then,” he coldly cuts me off.
There it is, the anger. My lips twitch in an effort not to tell him he’s being unnecessarily rude. I press them tight and close my eyes, trying to feel around my mind.
Nothing happens. “Hello?” I call out to the darkness behind closed eyelids. Still, nothing.
“I can’t,” I say. I open my eyes to find him staring at me. “It’s not working.”
It takes him a second to reply, “Fine. When it is working, how does it make you feel?”
Feel? It actually hasn’t occurred to me — to ask myself that particular question. Fighting the embarrassment, I say, “It seems to make my senses sharper.”
“You’ll need to be a lot more specific than that.”
“I don’t know,” I say defensively. “I’ve only felt it a few times and it wasn’t that strong.”
His face remains blank, but I do catch his eyebrows shoot up. “Well that’s easily the poorest connection I’ve ever heard of.”
It feels like a slap across the face. “Well that’s easily the least constructive feedback I’ve ever received,” I snap back.
For a moment, we just look at each other.
“What else?” he finally asks.
I raise my eyebrows in a silent question.
“Apart from making your senses sharper,” he demands with growing impatience in his voice, “how does it make you feel?”
This is where it becomes tricky. “Like…” I shrug, softly shaking my head. “It has needs.”
It surprises me, when he tears himself away from the desk to come to stand in front of me, arms folded and eyes narrowed. “What needs?” he asks in a lower, tenser voice.
Naked, the way he’s looking at me is making me feel completely naked. I let the silence stretch. “Why did you accept this position?” I find myself asking, in an effort to shift the focus away from myself I guess. “At Grimm Academy, I mean.”
He squints at me. “What do you care?”
“I don’t, I just want to make this feel less like an interrogation.”
“It is an interrogation,” he snaps. Then he walks back to the desk and takes a seat on its edge. “So I suggest you stop deflecting. Unless you want it to be pointless?”
“Alright,” I reply with a sigh, choosing to completely ignore his entire demeanor. “But the answer is still the same.”
When he lets out an exasperated sigh, I rush to add, “How am I supposed to know what it needs if I only sensed the animal a few times when I was already completely distraught?”
He waves a hand in dismissal. “When did you first sense it?”
The image of his eyes when I first looked into them flashes through my mind. “The day before yesterday.”
“Yeah, I gathered as much,” he says flatly. “When exactly? What triggered it?”
“I don’t remember.”
He throws daggers at me. “Why don’t you quit being a smartass and answer my question?”
Maybe it’s not such a good idea — to keep this information to myself, but there’s such a strong resistance in me to tell this asshole it was him that set it off.
So I shrug my shoulders, throwing him a defiant look. “I said I don’t remember.”
For a second, I think he’s going to come stand in front of me again, but he stops mid movement, gritting his teeth. “So you want me to believe that for twenty nine years you walked around thinking yourself to be a human, then one day, all of a sudden, your animal makes its appearance, and ‘you don’t remember’ when it happened?”
He’s talking to me like I’m some half-wit. “Yes,” I grit out, struggling to keep my growing anger contained.
If he keeps going like this, I’m forgetting all about my plan and smacking him across the face.
But he just leans back a little, stares at me for another second and then stands straight, saying, “Well then, why don’t you get started?”
I raise my eyebrows at him.
He gestures at the shelves around us. “Try making a connection with anything in this room.”
The very thought that the interrogation is over makes me breathe a sigh of relief. But when I get up and start walking around the room, the relief quickly turns into the promise of even greater embarrassment.
Because I can sense him following me as I keep failing to see anything in any of the displayed items — a bottle of snake venom, a feather plucked off a raven, a giant white tiger tooth…
Until I come to a stop in front of a piece of stretched hide the color of deep burning red. I frown, something stirring inside me.
“That,” I hear him say from behind my back. “What was that?”
I feel his heat and the combination creates this overwhelm of urges that I can’t untangle, and I quickly shove them all down.
“Nothing,” I rush to say, because I know for sure it’s got nothing to do with what my animal is.
Just as I turn around to tell him that, the bell rings.
It surprises him just as much as it surprises me, I can tell from the look on his face.
He’s not pleased.
I, on the other hand… “I guess I’ll be needing more than one class after all,” I say, feeling smug for two different reasons.
One, it seems I’ve managed to do exactly what I came here to do — not let him get to me. Two, things aren’t working out for him as he thought they would, which is giving me a kind of satisfaction that’s impossible not to gloat over.
His lips pressed tight, he stares at me for a second, but he doesn’t bite. “You know,” he says coldly, “if you don’t want to waste my time…” He leans in a little, his eyes narrowing. “You’ll first need to stop lying your ass off.”
With that, he turns on his heel and walks out the classroom, leaving me standing there with his words echoing in my mind.