The Lesson
TRUE TO FORM, HAGAR disappeared after she’d dropped her bomb on me. While I spent my days wondering when the clan would finally track down my mother, my former handler was nowhere to be found. I checked her room, kept hoping she’d turn up in class, and watched for her at every meal. I knew whatever Hagar was up to was important and she’d return as soon as she could, but that didn’t make it any easier to wait for her.
“People are starting to talk,” Eric announced at dinner one night in the middle of November. “About you and Hagar.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I insisted. “We’re friends.”
“Abi’s your friend,” Eric said. “And you don’t stare at the dining hall’s door like you’re trying to set it on fire with your mind whenever he’s late for lunch.”
“It’s not like that,” I grumbled into my coffee. That was the one good thing about Hagar being gone. I could drink as much of the good stuff as I wanted without any grief. “Hagar’s got information I need. That’s what I’m really waiting on.”
“Oh?” Clem said with a raised eyebrow. “Anything we should know?”
“It’s about my mom,” I said quietly. “The clan’s helping me find her.”
Despite my vow to stop lying to my friends, the truth about my mother was one thing I wanted to keep to myself. No one needed to know she worked with the heretics. Once I found my mom, I could convince her she was wrong. Whatever work she’d done with the Machina must’ve been some misguided attempt to heal my hollow core. That was the story I told myself.
It’s what I needed to believe.
In the meantime, I’d keep the truth to myself.
“That’s great news,” Abi said. “Are they close?”
“Maybe,” I said with a shrug. “I’m trying not to get my hopes up too high.”
“They’ll find her.” Clem clasped her hand on my shoulder and gave a firm nod of her head. “I know it.”
I did, too. The Shadow Phoenix clan had become spies who hunted down and dealt with threats to Empyreal society following the Utter War. I’d worked with them on several covert missions last year. Then I’d broken my veil during a battle with the Lost, revealed to everyone that I was an Eclipse Warrior, and made myself useless as a covert asset. Now, I watched my clan’s espionage from the outside looking in. Until Hagar showed up with news about my mom, I was as clueless as any of my friends about my mother’s whereabouts.
What worried me more, though, was that I didn’t know what the clan would do when they finally found my mom. The covert battle against the heretics had heated up significantly in the past year or so, and judging by my last meeting with Sanrin, the casualties were mounting. I wasn’t sure that my clanmates wouldn’t take their anger at our losses out on my mother.
I also wasn’t sure they wouldn’t be right to do so. She had, after all, created me and the Machina.
“Mr. Warin,” Headmistress Cruzal called from the dining room’s door. “Please come with me.”
“Bummer.” Eric pointed at the plate I’d been too preoccupied to touch. “Can I eat that?”
“Sure.” I groaned, slid my plate over to my friend, and pushed away from the table.
Cruzal watched me cross the dining hall with sharp eyes. A faint smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, though it did nothing to warm her eyes. She still hadn’t forgiven me for pushing my way onto the School’s team, so if there was anything that made her happy, it couldn’t be good for me.
“Good morning, honored Headmistress,” I said formally. Even if Cruzal and I didn’t get along, there was no reason for me to be rude to her. That would only make my already complicated life harder.
“Your initiates need your attention.” Cruzal put an arm around my shoulders, forcing a friendly smile. She steered me out of the dining hall and guided me through the school. “They’re not pleased about the holiday situation.”
I groaned. Those poor kids knew less about what was going on in this school than I had during my first year. I’d have to explain that no students were allowed to leave school grounds during their initiate year. That meant winter vacation in their dorm towers with only each other, the wardens, and a skeleton staff of spirits and low-ranking administration employees to keep them company. The students wouldn’t starve, but that first year was hard.
For the hollows, it would be even worse. They’d been recruited through Rachel’s outreach program and then found themselves in a world they didn’t understand. They’d all been homesick from the day they’d arrived, and being stranded at school during this time of year would only make them feel worse.
“I’ll talk to them,” I said. “And let them know I’ll be here with them during the break.”
“Nowhere to go?” Cruzal seemed more than a little pleased by this. “Oh, that’s right. Your father’s dead, and no one knows where your mother is hiding out. You’re practically an orphan.”
Cruzal’s petty jibes rolled off me. If it made her feel better to take shots at my misfortune, I’d let her have those minor victories. I had more important battles to fight. Plus, when I didn’t respond to her insults, the headmistress lost interest in taunting me. We finished the rest of our walk in silence, and she didn’t even say anything after she’d unlocked the classroom door, just left me alone with the hollows and their guard.
“They told us we can’t go home,” Christina called from her seat near the back of the room. Though she’d picked up cycling quickly and was now one of my most advanced students, she was always angry. “We’re prisoners.”
“You’re not prisoners,” I corrected her. “You’re guests of the School. It’s for your own safety.”
“I don’t feel like a guest!” Ricky, a sharp-eyed kid from the Los Angeles undercity with the long, lean muscles of someone who’d
