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“Yes? What?” he asked briskly.
“Ah… whatcha hiding there?”
“A book.”
“And why would you want to hide a book? Afraid I’ll find out that you’re literate? Too late, dude, the jig is up.”
He sighed and rubbed his temples. “Did you need something? I’m busy.”
I frowned, taken aback. I’d thought things had changed between us after the locker room—not just physically, but emotionally. “Okay, did I hallucinate what happened this morning, or…?”
“Piper! Did you need something or not?”
I shrugged. “Guess not. See you around.”
He didn’t say anything else as I stormed down the stairs. What the hell was his problem, anyway? We were right back to square one, and now he was hiding shit from me. Poorly. I started plotting a way to get that book from him and find out its secrets when I realized I was already plotting a way to catch Sonja, not to mention, plotting out the structure of the essay that was due on Monday. Any more plotting and I’d turn into a bad super-villain.
A few days later, when the tension in the school had just started to dissipate, I was back in Combat sparring with a third-year. She’d managed to harness her power into an energy sword, which was fun to dodge but intimidating as hell.
We had found a good rhythm and were actively honing our skills when Dru rushed into the room. I hadn’t seen him since he’d brought me to the school.
Oh, God, what’s happened now?
I was distracted just long enough to take a low-energy blow directly to the rib cage. My sparring partner was pulling back to strike again when Dru called her name. She froze mid-strike.
“What is it, Dru?”
“Fallen activity is spiking all over the place,” Dru said softly as he reached us. “Hi, Piper. Anyway, we need volunteers for away missions.”
“Just third-year volunteers, I assume?” I was starting to get restless, but my hope was a futile one.
“Yeah, just third-years. Sorry. Anyway, Liesel, will you come?”
“Of course,” she said with a tiny bow. Then she turned to me. “We’ll pick this up again.”
“We sure will.”
I watched them go. Five other third-years followed Dru and Liesel out the door, and I wondered just how many third-years they were going to need for these away missions. How much fallen activity could there be before the human news stations got wind that something was terribly wrong?
For the first time since I’d arrived, I missed having internet access. I could have figured out what was going on in the human world with a couple of well-worded searches. Having to stay behind and wonder was going to drive me crazy, and now I didn’t even have a sparring partner to work that energy off with.
I gazed around the room to see who else had been left without a partner. As soon as I spotted the one I wanted, I grinned. I changed my appearance enough so he wouldn’t try to avoid me right away and sauntered over to him in my fresh disguise. I was taking a Morphology class this semester—which wasn’t anything like the morphology I’d taken in human college—and I’d gotten really good at shifting into whatever face I wanted at will.
“Need a new partner?” I asked in a voice that was deeper than my comfortable tone.
“Yeah, mine took off to save the world,” Kingston said wryly as he turned around. “I haven’t seen you before, have I? Are you usually in another section of this class?”
“No talking, just fight.”
“You got it.” He settled into a parry stance. His breeding was clear at once; nobody but a trained fencer defaulted to that. I took my own stance.
“Three, two, one,” he said, and immediately struck at my face.
As he moved, so did the floor. It knocked both of us off-balance and made me lose my concentration. I snapped back into my default version of myself just as he landed on top of me. I clung to him as the room shook around us. Students screamed. Bits of rock fell from the ceiling overhead.
“Why—is it always—my class?” Beedle bellowed from somewhere to my left.
The lights flickered off and I held my breath, but they flickered back on again almost immediately. Kingston pulled away from me and glared an accusation at me, but then an aftershock rocked the room and he threw his body back over mine protectively.
