“Where is your roommate anyway, Olympia?” asked Tessa.
“When I called this morning, she was still figuring out what to pack.” When Olympia giggled, the whole room seemed to brighten.
Actually, the room did brighten. A Lightbringer then.
“What else do we have, Caleb?” asked the guy standing next to Matthew and I. He was about the same height as my roommate but olive-skinned and wiry, his shoulder-length brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. Like Tessa, he had green eyes, but his were pale, the color of sun-bleached grass.
I swallowed a curse. I was going to have a hard time getting any action at all if every first-year man ended up being prettier than I was.
“Let’s see… most of us are Threes, of course.” Caleb cocked an eye at Tessa. “Except for little Ms. Telekinetic here. Low-Four? Pretty sweet!”
She blushed prettily. “If you got it, flaunt it, right?” The second roster sheet peeled itself off the cork board and floated to her hand. “Ooo! We have a Healer too! High three!”
“Whoa.” That was Ponytail again, but I think we all shared his sentiment. Given how rare Healers were, having one in our class—let alone a High-Three—was just as impressive as our High-Four Pyro. “I hope she’s hot.”
“Shane Stevenson? Sounds like a guy to me.”
“Then I retract my last statement,” grinned Ponytail. “Guy already has an unfair advantage. Everyone loves the unicorns.”
Tessa’s gaze was cool. “And who are you?”
“Santiago Tomayo.” He executed a credible bow. “Santi to my friends, El Bosque to my admirers.”
“And do you have a lot of admirers, El Bosque?”
“More and more all the time,” he assured her, his grin widening.
“I guess there’s no accounting for taste.”
Santi’s smile slipped slightly, but he shrugged. “Nothing for you to worry your little head about, regardless… I prefer flowers to weeds.”
Leave it to a Druid to insult a woman using plant metaphors.
Tessa stiffened, her green eyes flashing dangerously, but before we could get into our very first student-on-student melee, the front door opened. The guy who stepped in was six and a half feet of hulking muscle, so wide that he almost looked short at first glance. He was tanned and dark-haired, but his most prominent features were the scars down one side of his face, and a pair of unblinking, golden eyes.
“How’s it going?” My roommate was already walking over to the newcomer, hand outstretched. “Matthew Strich, but I go by—”
The other man brushed by him without a word, never slowing as he bypassed the rest of us and headed down the hall to the boys’ dorm rooms. Matthew watched him go, his tan almost hiding the flush of embarrassment.
Holy hell. Someone even less social than me. Talk about unicorns…
“That must be Alan Jackson,” whispered Caleb, still looking at his sheet. “Beast-shifter, Low-Four, and… get this… he’s from the Badlands.”
Santi whistled. “Fuck. That makes him my roommate. I sure hope he’s housebroken.”
Olympia shook her head. “Not everyone is a charmer like you, El Bosque. I’m sure if we give him time—” Her light flickered as a door slammed shut down the hall. “Lots of time,” she corrected, “he’ll come around.”
“Or murder our resident Druid in his sleep.” Tessa seemed in favor of that idea. “Alan’s one of two Shifters, apparently. We also have a Titan and… ooooo a Switch. Low-Three, but still… that’s pretty cool.”
Switches were a bit of an oddity in the powered community. Unlike most Powers, they couldn’t do anything by themselves. Instead, their abilities worked to amplify the talents of Powers around them or mute those same talents. They weren’t as rare as Healers—or Crows, for that matter—but with every Team wanting at least one on their roster, demand far outstripped supply.
“Three Fours, a Healer, and a Switch.” Matthew shook his head. “We’ve got one heck of a class, don’t we?”
“Hell yeah,” agreed Caleb with a grin, floating a few inches off the ground as he continued to read through the roster. “Class of 76 is going to be fucking legendary! We’ve got almost every element covered too, plus a secondary Stalwart, a Teleporter, and…” He frowned, his voice trailing off. “Hold up. This can’t be right.”
“You not the only Flyboy Jitterbug, dude?” drawled Santiago.
“Huh? No.” Caleb shook his head, voice absent. “I’m one of a kind, Treefucker.”
“Can you at least try not to swear every three words?” pleaded Olympia.
“What is it, Caleb?” asked Tessa.
“It’s got to be a typo, but… this says we have a Crow.”
Olympia’s light went out.
•—•—•
“That has to be a mistake.” Tessa snatched the second roster sheet page out of Caleb’s hands—using her own hands this time instead of her telekinesis. “Or some sort of twisted joke.” She scanned the sheet and frowned. “Low-Three, Damian Banach.”
Any chance I’d had of delaying my reveal went out the window at that point. Matthew was already turning to me, eyes wide.
“Yeah, that’s me.”
It’s said some Black Hats can clear a room just by walking into it. I didn’t have that sort of mojo going for me, but a space had opened around me almost before I’d finished speaking.
“You’re a Necromancer?!?” That was my roommate, who’d swapped out his easy smile for something stone-faced. “Seriously?”
I shrugged.
“Crows aren’t heroes,” protested Olympia. “They’re insane, murdering assholes.”
So much for her concerns about language. Or for me being welcomed with open arms. I looked at my fellow classmates, noted the horror, fear, and outright hate shining from their faces, and bared my teeth. “I haven’t murdered anyone, but the day’s not over yet.”
Matthew positioned himself between me and the two ladies, but Olympia had gone even paler than normal at my words. A moment later, she fled down the hall toward her room.
I felt bad about that, actually. Nobody wants to make a Lightbringer sad. But she had no business calling me names.
Our strange little standoff had lasted for maybe ten seconds when
