MY STUDENT GUIDE was a tall dark-haired girl named Brook. She had skinny legs, bony arms, and wore round glasses that constantly slid down her nose. She kept pushing them up with her middle finger, so it looked as if she was shooting the bird at the entire world every five minutes. Her magic was a strong simple blue, the color of human abilities. We met in the front office, where they outfitted me with a white armband. Apparently they marked their visitors. If there was any trouble, we’d be easy to shoot.
“Okay, you follow me and don’t touch things,” Brook informed me. “Stuff here is randomly warded. Also Barka has been leaving little tiny charges of magic all around the school. You touch it, it zaps you. Then your fingers hurt for an hour.”
“Is Barka a student?”
“Barka is a pisshead,” Brook told me and pushed her glasses up. “Come on.”
We walked up the stairs. The bell rang and the staircase filled with kids.
“Four floors,” Brook told me. “The school is a big square, with the garden slash courtyard in the center. All the fields, like for soccer and football, are outside of the square. First floor is the gymnasium, pool, dance studio, auditorium, and cafeteria. Second floor, humanities: literature, history, sociology, anthropology, Latin—”
“Did you know Ashlyn?” I asked.
Brook paused, momentarily knocked off her course by the interruption. “She did not take Latin.”
“But did you know her?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of a student was she?”
Brook shrugged. “Quiet. We have an algebra class together, fourth period. I thought she might be competition at first. You have to watch out for the quiet ones.”
“Was she?”
“Naaah.” Brook grimaced. “Progress reports came out last week. Her math grade was seventeen. One seven. She only does well in one class, botany. You could give her a broom and she’ll stick it in the ground and grow you an apple tree. I took botany last semester and she beat my grade by two points. She has a perfect hundred. There’s got to be a trick to it.” Brook squared her shoulders. “That’s okay. I am taking AP botany next year. I’ll take her down.”
“You’re a little bit crazy, you know that?”
Brook shrugged and pushed her glasses up at me. “Third floor, magic: alchemy, magic theory—”
“Did Ashlyn seem upset over the seventeen in math?” Maybe she was hiding because of her grades.
Brook paused. “No.”
“She wasn’t worried about her parents?” When I got a bad grade in my old boarding school, Kate would make a trip to the school to chew me out. When I got homesick, I’d flunk a grade on purpose. Sometimes she came by herself. Sometimes with other people. Boy kind of people. Of whom I promised myself I wouldn’t be thinking about, because they were idiots.
“I met her parents on family day. I was in charge of Hospitality Committee. They are really into nurture and all that,” Brook said. “They wouldn’t be upset with her. Fourth floor: science and technology—”
“Do you have lockers?”
“No. We have storage in our desks in the homerooms.”
“Can we go to see Ashlyn’s homeroom?”
Brook stared at me. “Look you, I’m assigned to do this stupid tour with you. I can’t do the tour if you keep interrupting.”
“How many tours have you done so far?”
Brook peered at me. “Eleven.”
“Aren’t you tired of doing them?”
“That’s irrelevant. It’s good for my record.”
Right. “If you don’t do the tour this time, I won’t tell anyone.”
Brook frowned. That line of thought obviously stumped her. I worked my iron while it was hot. “I’m here undercover investigating Ashlyn’s disappearance. If you help me, I’ll mention it to Gendun.”
Brook puzzled it over.
Come on, Brook. You know you want to.
“Fine,” she said. “But you’ll tell Master Gendun that I helped.”
“Invaluable assistance,” I said.
Brook nodded. “Come on. Ashlyn’s homeroom is on the second floor.”
? ? ?
ASHLYN’S HOMEROOM WAS in the geography class. Maps hung on the walls: world, Americas, U.S., and the biggest map of all, the new magic-screwed-up map of Atlanta, complete with all the new additions and warped, dangerous neighborhoods.
A few people occupied the classroom, milling in little clumps. I took a second to look around and closed my eyes. Nine people in all, two girls to my right, three boys farther on, a girl sitting by herself by the window, two guys discussing something, and a blond kid sitting by himself at the back of the class. I opened my eyes. Missed the dark-haired boy in the corner. Oh well, at least I was getting better at it.
Brook stopped by a wooden desk. It was nice, large and polished, the sealed wood stained the color of amber. Pretty. None of the places I ever studied at were this nice.
“This is her desk,” Brook said.
I sat down into Ashlyn’s chair. The desk had one wide drawer running the entire length of it. I tried it gently. Locked. No big. I pulled a lockpick out of the leather bracelet on my left wrist and slid it into the lock.
The blond kid from the back sauntered over and leaned on the desk. His magic was dark, intense indigo. Probably an elemental mage. He had sharp features and blue eyes that said he was up to no good. My kind of people.
“Hi. What are you doing?”
“Go away, Barka,” Brook said.
“I wasn’t talking to you.” The kid looked at me. “Whatcha doing?”
“I’m dancing.” I told him. Ask a dumb question . . .
“You’re breaking into Ashlyn’s desk.”
“See, I knew you were smart and you’d figure it out.” I winked at him.
Barka made big eyes at Brook. “And what if I tell Walton you’re doing that? That would be a spot on your perfect record.”
“Mind your own business,” Brook snapped.
“He won’t,” I told her. “He wants to see what’s inside the desk.”
Barka grinned.
The lock clicked and the drawer slid open. Rows of apples filled it. Large Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, green Granny Smith and every color and shape in between, each with a tiny sticker announcing its name. Even a handful of red crab apples the size of large cherries, stuck between Cortland and Crimson Gold. I had no idea so many varieties of apple even existed. None of them showed any signs of rotting either. They looked crisp and fresh.
I concentrated. My sensate vision kicked in. The apples glowed with bright green. Now that was a first. A healthy hunter green usually meant a shapeshifter. Human magic came in various shades of blue. Animal magic was typically too weak to be picked up by any of the machines, but I saw it just fine—it was yellow. Together blue and yellow made green. This particular green had too much yellow to belong to a regular shapeshifter.
Most shapeshifters were infected with Lyc-V virus, which let them turn into animals. Sometimes it happened the other way and animals turned into humans. The human-weres were really rare, but I’ve met one, and the color wasn’t right for them either. Human-weres were a drab olive, but this, this was a vivid spring green.
“What kind of magic did Ashlyn have?”
Brook and Barka looked at each other. “I don’t know,” Barka said. “I never asked.”
Whatever she was, she didn’t advertise it. Totally understandable. Seeing the color of magic was an invaluable tool for law enforcement, for mages, basically for anyone who dealt with it, so much so that people actually made a magic machine, called an m-scanner, to imitate it. My magic wasn’t just rare, it was exceptional. I was a hundred times more precise than any existing m-scanner. But in a fight, being a sensate didn’t do me any good at all. If I walked around telling everyone about it, sooner or later someone would try to use me and I had to use other means than my sensate ability to protect myself. It was easier to just keep my mouth shut.
Ashlyn could be that kind of magic user, something rare but not useful in combat.
Still didn’t explain her obsession with apples, though. Maybe she was using them to bribe her teachers. But then her grades would be better.
The shorter of the three girls to our left glared at me. Her magic, a solid indigo when I came in, now developed streaks of pale celery green. Normally the magic signature didn’t change. Ever. Except for Kate.
Hello, clue.
I pretended to look at the apples. “Did Ashlyn have any enemies?”
Barka picked up a pen and rolled it between his fingers. “Not that I noticed. She was quiet. A looker, but no personality.”
Brook pushed her glasses up at him. “Pervert.”
The girl took a step toward us. “What are you doing?”
“Dancing!” Barka said.
Brook didn’t even look in her direction. “Mind your own business, Lisa.”
Lisa skewed her mouth into a disapproving thin line, which was quite a fit because she had one of those pouty-lip mouths. Eyebrows plucked into two narrow lines, unnaturally straight hair, carefully parted, pink shiny on those big lips . . . Lisa was clearly the Take-Care-of-Myself type. Good clothes, too. Girls like that made my life miserable at the old school. I was never put together enough, my clothes were never expensive enough, and I didn’t stroll the halls broadcasting to everyone who cared that I was much better than they were.
But we weren’t at my old school, and a lot has changed since. Besides, she could be a perfectly nice person. Although somehow I doubted it.
“You shouldn’t be doing that,” Lisa said, entirely too loudly.
If I poked her, would her magic get even veinier? Was veinier even a word? “I’m looking for Ashlyn,” I told her.
“She’s dead,” Lisa announced and checked the room out of the corner of her eye.
Don’t worry, you have everyone’s attention.
“Here we go,” Brook muttered.
“How do you know that? Did you kill her?” Poke-poke-poke.
Lisa raised her chin. “I know because I spoke to her spirit.”
“Her spirit?” I asked.
“Yes, her spirit. Her ghost.”
That was nice, but there was no such thing as ghosts. Even Kate had never run across one. I never saw any ghost magic and I had seen a lot of messed-up things.
“Did her ghost tell you who killed her?” I asked.
“She took her own life,” Lisa declared.
Brook pushed her glasses up. “Don’t be ridiculous. This whole ‘I see spirits’ thing is getting old.”
Lisa rocked back on her heels. Her face turned serious. “Ashlyn! Show yourself, spirit.”
“This is stupid,” Barka said.
“Show your presence!” Lisa called.
Yellow-green veins shot through her magic, sparking with flashes of dandelion yellow. Whoa.
The desk shuddered under my fingertips. The chairs around me rattled.
Brook took a step back.
The desk danced, jumping up and down. The two chairs on both sides of me shot to the ceiling, hovered there for a tense second, and crashed down.
Nice.
Lisa leveled her stare at me. “Ashlyn is dead. I don’t know who you are, but you should leave. You disturb her.”
I laughed.
Lisa turned on her heel and walked out.
? ? ?
“SO LISA IS a telekinetic?” I asked.
Brook shrugged. “A little. Nothing like this. The chair-flying thing is new. Usually she has to sweat to push a pen across the desk.”
And this new power wouldn’t have anything to do with those lovely yellow-green streaks in her magic, would it? Like Ashlyn’s apples, yellow green, but not the same shade. Two weird magic colors in one day. That was a hell of a thing, as Kate would say.
“You’re not leaving?” Barka asked me.
“Of course she isn’t leaving,” Brook told him. “I haven’t finished the tour.”
“When people tell me to leave, it’s the right time to stick around,” I told him. “Did Lisa have any problems with Ashlyn?”
“Lisa has problems with everyone,” Brook said. “People like her like to pick on you if you have any weakness to make themselves feel better.”
“She’s a dud,” Barka added. “Well, she was a dud, apparently. Her parents are both professors at the Mage Academy. When she was first admitted, she made a big deal out of all this major magic that she supposedly had.”
“I remember that.” Brook grimaced. “Every time she opened her mouth, it was all ‘at the Mage Academy where my father works’ or ‘when I visited my mother’s laboratory at the Mage Academy.’ Ugh.”
“She claimed to have tons of power,” Barka added, “but she couldn’t do anything with it, except some minor telekinesis.”
“Let me guess, people made fun of her?” I asked.
“She brought a lot of it on herself,” Brook told me. “Not everybody here has super-awesome magic.”
“Like Sam.” Barka shrugged. “If you give him a clear piece of glass, he can etch it with his magic so it looks frosted. It’s cool the first time you see it, but it’s pretty useless and he can’t control it very well either. He doesn’t make a big deal out of it.”
“It’s in Lisa’s head that she is super-special,” Brook said. “She feels entitled, like we’re all peons here and she is a higher being. Nobody likes being treated that way.”
“Does she get picked on?” I asked.
Barka shrugged again. “Nothing too bad. She doesn’t get invited to hang out. Nobody wants to sit with her at lunch. But that’s just pure self-defense, because she doesn’t listen to whatever you have to say. She just waits to tell you about her special parents. I guess she finally got her powers.”
“Did she get them about the time Ashlyn disappeared?”
“Yeah.” Barka grimaced. “Then she started sensing Ashlyn’s presence everywhere. Who knows, maybe Ashlyn is really dead.”
“Location spell says she is alive. Besides, there is no such thing as ghosts,” I told them.
“And you’re an authority on ghosts?” Brook asked.
“Trust me on this.”
Ghosts might be better. I had this sick little feeling in my stomach that said this was something bad. Something really bad.
I could call Kate and ask her what would cause the magic of two different colors to show up. The colors weren’t blended or flowing into one another the way Kate’s colors did. They were distinct. Separate. Together but not mixing.
Ehhh. There was some sort of answer at the end of that thought, but I couldn’t figure it out.
Calling Kate wouldn’t be happening. This was my little mission and I would get it done on my own.
I tried to think like Kate. She always said that people were the key to any mystery. Someone somehow did something that caused Ashlyn to hide and Lisa really didn’t want me to keep looking for her. “Did Ashlyn have a best friend?”
Brook paused. “She and Sheila hung out sometimes, but mostly she kept to herself.”
“Can we go talk to Sheila?”
Brook heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Sure.”
“You’re leaving? In that case, Brook, hold this for me for a second.” Barka stuck the pen he’d been rolling between his fingers at Brook. She took it. Bright light sparked and Brook dropped the pen and shook her hand.
Barka guffawed.
“Moron!” Brook’s eyes shone with a dangerous glint behind her glasses. She marched out of the class. I followed her.
We went down the hallway toward the staircase.
“He likes you,” I said.
“Yeah, sure,” Brook growled.
Sheila turned out to be the exact opposite of Ashlyn. Where Ashlyn’s picture showed a petite cutesy girly-girl, Sheila was muscular. Not manly, but really cut. We caught her in the locker room, just as she was going out to play volleyball. It’s not often you see a girl with a six-pack.
She sat on a wooden bench by the small wooden room inside the locker room that said sauna on it. I wondered what the heck sauna meant. It was a first-class locker room; the floor was tile, three showers, two bathrooms, “sauna,” large lockers. The clean tile smelled faintly of pine. Special locker room for special snowflakes.
“I don’t know why Ashlyn pulled this stunt.” Sheila pulled on her left sock.
“Was she worried about anything?”
“She did seem kind of jumpy.”
“Did she have a problem with Lisa?”