He makes a shooing motion with his hands, signal enough to get started. Immediately, the classroom erupts with activity as the students turn to their partners and begin the exercise. I find myself looking to my right to see if my other neighbor seems friendlier than this Hunter guy. No such luck; she’s already partnered up with someone else, barely sparing me a second glance.
Shoulders slumping, I turn back around to Hunter, who still looks like someone just told him his mother died. “Hi,” I say tentatively. “I’m Millie. Should we…?”
Hunter takes a long breath before turning to me. “Yeah,” he says. “Sure. Fine. You first.”
“I, uh…” I clear my throat. “I’m totally new to this. I mean, I… I don’t know how to…”
“Fine,” says Hunter, crossing his arms, his expression still stoic. “I’ll keep my expectations low.”
I can feel the blush returning to my cheeks as I glance around at the other students. Some of them are already baring their fangs, while others seem to have gotten too gung ho and are struggling to transform the right parts of their bodies. I know this is supposed to be a beginners’ class, but I don’t even know where to begin. The only time I’ve transformed, I had adrenaline on my side, and I hadn’t been thinking about it. I don’t know if I could transform now if my life depended on it. “That’s the thing,” I say, biting my lip. “I’ve never done this before.”
Hunter snorts. “You had to have. You’re here, aren’t you?”
Now I can feel myself getting frustrated. “Come on,” I say, “the professor said you’d be able to help me. Don’t tell me you knew how to transform after a single time!”
“No,” he replies. “And I still don’t, so I’m about as useful as you are right now.”
I blink. That wasn’t what I had been expecting. “You can’t make fangs?”
“Or anything,” Hunter answers dryly. “Hence, I suppose, why I’m in the back of the classroom.”
“Oh.” I frown. “How long have you been here? At Shifter Academy, I mean.”
“Going on a month now,” Hunter replies, his expression still stony. “And from the looks of it, I’ll probably be stuck here in this intro class for the rest of my life.”
“Well, I guess that makes two of us,” I remark, and there’s a flicker of something that might be a smile on his face, but it’s gone before I can identify it. “I guess I’ll ask the professor,” I say, and raise my hand, but the professor is busy giving pointers to a pair of students in the front who are having the same problem.
“...You have to feel the magic inside you first,” he’s saying. “It’s a little different for everyone, but it’s always a sort of energy in the pit of your stomach. Once you feel it, you have to visualize the transformation you want to make.”
Squaring my shoulders, Hunter forgotten for the moment, I close my eyes and fish for that cool pool of unfamiliar energy I felt on the day I first transformed. But it’s nowhere to be found, and even as I set my jaw and furrow my brow, I can’t for the life of me make myself feel it. It’s hard to even remember what “it” felt like.
I’m just starting to grow frustrated when the classroom door opens. I open my eyes and look up, Hunter following my gaze, to see a hauntingly beautiful red-haired girl standing in the doorway. Her eyes are the same ocean-blue color as Hunter’s, and she has the curves of a classic pin-up girl, the kind of body that probably earns her stares everywhere she goes. Her eyes settle first on me, and then on Hunter next to me, and her face immediately twists into a look of disdain. “So,” she says, crossing her arms, “the freak is in our class.”
Chapter 12
I have to give her credit for her audacity, even if I’m shrinking in my chair, staring across the room at the newcomer like she might attack me or something. Professor Huxley looked up from the pair of students he was helping and gave a sniff. “Amelia Ash, I presume?”
The girl gives Professor Huxley an appraising look, one eyebrow raised. “That’s right,” she replies, her Irish lilt unmistakable. “Sorry I’m late.”
The professor eyes her for a moment before replying slowly, “All right, then. I suppose you can just take a seat where you like. We’re doing a basic shifting exercise--fangs only. I assume you know how to--”
Amelia shoots him a look of barely disguised condescension. “I think I can handle it, yes.” With that, she strides across the room to where Hunter and I are seated. By now, most of the other students have returned to their activities, unbothered by the new student or simply past caring.
Professor Huxley returns to desperately trying to coax his charges back into human form, and aside from an occasional sideways glance from the others, we’re left alone. Amelia stops in front of my desk, looking down at me. She’s tall--tall enough to cast a shadow over me--and she looks at me like I’m something unpleasant she’s just found on the sidewalk. “You’re in my seat,” she tells me, crossing her arms.
Huh? I shift uncomfortably. “I didn’t realize we had assigned seats. The professor just told me--”
“I’m going to be honest with you,” she says, “I don’t really care what the professor told you.”
Shit, I think, a sinking feeling in my stomach, she’s going there. It should probably be obvious by now that
