“Maybe we should just wait for Bard to get back and ask him?”
I shook my head. “We don’t know how long he’ll be away. The way he said it, Ishmae could leave at any time.”
“Well, wandering the campus isn’t getting us anywhere.”
“You didn’t have to come along. You can always go check on Wormhole like you’d planned.”
“Cram it up your ass, Boneboy. Unicorn was my friend too. Evie will understand.” Sofia dropped down onto one of the many benches that dotted the campus’ walking paths. “I’m just saying we should walk smarter, not harder.”
I gingerly lowered myself onto the same bench, mindful again of the torn skin on my back. Despite the healing I’d received, there was a dull ache in the right side of my face, and one glance in a mirror had shown the mottled yellow of a slowly healing bruise.
“So where do you think we should look then?”
Silt shrugged. “That’s the question, isn’t it? Unicorn healed her before she killed him, which is why she wasn’t in the med ward. And they’re probably worried she could be a danger to others, given her state of mind, which is why she never returned to her dorm room. But then where—”
It was the state of mind phrase that did it. I saw Silt’s brown eyes widen as we both came to the same realization.
“Dr. Gibbings!”
“Alexa,” I said, at the same time.
“Who’s Alexa?”
Apparently, not all of us were on a first-name basis with the school counselor. But when I explained, Silt shook her head.
“Dr. Gibbings’ first name is Stephanie.”
“I go see her every week, Sofia. I think I know her name.” I rolled my eyes. “Tall, slim, and monochromatic? Doesn’t blink and curses almost as much as me?”
“Damian…” Silt’s rough voice was confused. “Dr. Gibbings is pushing sixty, even wider than I am, and would probably faint if she heard the word fuck.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe they’re sisters or something?”
I shook my head. “There are only diplomas for one doctor on the wall.”
“Wow; you really do go there a lot.”
“It’s that or get my ass thrown out on the street.”
“Well, either way, I think Dr. Gibbings is our best chance of finding Ishmae.” Silt was built like a tree stump, but the majority of that was muscle; she bounced up from the bench with a grace that made me feel even clumsier than usual. “Shall we?”
•—•—•
Dr. Gibbings was exactly as Silt had described her, white-haired and maternal, seated behind the desk in the same office I’d been coming to for months. Even the diplomas, on careful re-examination, all said Stephanie Gibbings. With my mind going a thousand miles a second, I barely heard Silt trying to talk the older woman into giving up Ishmae’s location. If this was Dr. Gibbings, then who the fuck had I been seeing all this time? Who was Alexa?
For the first time since my arrival at the Academy, I had to seriously question my own sanity. What if Alexa was someone I’d dreamed up, a mental projection of what I thought a shrink should be? What if I’d spent the last few months only thinking I was going to the counselor? If I was already that far gone, what chance did I have?
The only thing that kept me from truly freaking out was that I knew the office we were standing in. That meant I had to have seen it before… didn’t it?
I’d missed a session with Alexa while I was being healed from Ishmae’s fire, but I decided then and there that I was bringing someone else with me when I came for my next session. And if Alexa was here, and she was real, I was going to have some serious fucking questions for her.
In the periphery of my awareness, I saw the moment the real Dr. Gibbings finally gave in to Silt’s arguments, learning—as those of us in the Fearsome Five already had—that the Earthshaker was an avalanche in motion; inescapable and unrelenting. The old counselor sighed and said something, waving a pudgy hand at the door.
“What did she say?” I asked, once Silt and I were both back in the hallway.
“Weren’t you listening?”
“I was a little busy wondering who the fuck Alexa is, and whether or not she’s a product of my Crow-given insanity.”
That drew Sofia up short. “Do you think that’s possible?”
“No clue, but if you or Vibe are willing to come along to my next session, I’m going to damn well find out.”
“Deal.” Silt was one of the few first-years who never seemed particularly concerned about either my power or my looming insanity. Even Shane, who saw my insanity as a new challenge for healing, had sometimes gotten freaked out. But Sofia just rolled on, and God help anyone who got in her way. “But first, let’s go talk to the little Pyro.” She frowned again. “Are you sure Shane would’ve wanted us to convince Ishmae to stay? She did kill him.”
“This is Unicorn we’re talking about,” I reminded her. “Since when would he have held that against her?”
•—•—•
Ishmae wasn’t all that far away. The same building that had the counselor’s office also had a handful of visitors’ suites, and the young Pyro was staying in the third one down the hall. The door was closed, but it opened within seconds of Silt’s knock.
“Oh.” Phoenix looked from Sofia to I and something in her wilted. She turned and stepped back into the room without another word, seemingly indifferent to whether the two of us followed her in or not.
Needless to say, we marched inside.
“How are you doing, Ishmae?” Sofia’s voice was uncharacteristically kind.
“Fine.” The Pyro slouched on the foot of her suite’s bed, eyes downcast.
“You don’t look fine.” I shrugged when Silt shot me a look. “What? She doesn’t.”
It was true; Ishmae had always been young and small, but she’d had a sense of presence to her—part ego, part pride,
