“Oh, good. You’re still up. Are you on school grounds?” Her soft lisp took flight with the question.
I rolled my eyes and stopped short of growling. Here I thought it was something important, not my faculty advisor checking up on me. “Yes, Professor Layden. You made it clear I wasn’t allowed to leave without your permission.” I caught my mom grinning and returned the gesture.
“That’s not why I’m calling, although I don’t appreciate the tone, Katy.” Her response, so sharp and clipped, cut right through me. It hurt, and I didn’t know why. She was my professor, not my mom.
My mom stood in front of me, making faces and trying to get me to laugh. That was a mom, someone who supported me and made me laugh when I wanted to growl, not someone who only called to check up on me and took every opportunity to lecture me and turn the conversation into some sort of life lesson. Having my mom back made me realize I’d been aligning myself with surrogates since she left. Mindy Wilkerson. Stacey Layden. Now that Samantha Reed had returned, I no longer needed replacement moms. I had the real one six feet from me.
“You know what I don’t appreciate, Stace?” I glanced at my mom, who encouraged me with a nod. It filled my lungs with a bravado I only felt surface deep, if that. Although my stomach twisted at the thought of telling off the professor, that didn’t stop me from putting on a show as my mom watched. “My faculty advisor thinking she has any right to demand to know where I am. You’re my professor, not my mother.”
My mom clapped silently. I smiled as she continued to cheer me on to tell my 3C professor how I really felt. Only… It wasn’t how I really felt, I realized as soon as the words fell from my lips. Stace had been there for me when no one else had. She’d taken me in when I had nowhere to live over the summer. She’d healed me on a hunch when the gash in my hand had nearly turned me dark, and I went on a killing rampage.
“Stace—”
“I had no idea you felt that way,” she said quietly, her tone thick, heavy with disappointment. Jebus on a rainy day. Her response crushed me. I was a terrible human.
I glanced at my mom, who’d lost her smile and now studied my expression, hers settling into a hard, cool, and disapproving look. Now I know where I got the power of my resting bitch face.
“Is it how you feel?” Stace’s question pulled my attention back to her.
Turning from my mom, I replied, “What do you mean?”
“I’m sure you’re there with your mother.”
How’d she know that? “I am.”
“So, I’ll ask again. Is it how you feel? Or is this coming from someone else?”
No hidden meaning there. I fought the urge to glance back at my mom for fear her expression would drive me to say something else I didn’t mean.
“I’m not going to keep you,” she finally said. “I just wanted to check on you and make sure you were okay after today’s tribunals. I heard they were difficult.”
That was just for those of us who were forced to watch. For the kids being tested, it was nothing short of torture. And I got the pleasure of doing that all over again, day after day, until the Council cleared out all the magically enhanced riffraff. Like me. “They were.”
“I’ve asked to be on the field for the remaining tribunals.”
“What about 3C? And why’d you call all the students to class on a Saturday?”
“I wanted to keep them distracted. No one could concentrate, not with what’s happening. Not even the instructor.” She laughed softly, and I imagined her smoothing back her dark hair in the tight bun she always wore. “I don’t approve of the Council wanting the students watching their friends go through tribunal. And, I’ll be honest, I was worried about you.”
Now I felt even worse for attempting to tell her off. “Why? You know it takes a lot more than calling a few elements to drain me.”
“Being around that much concentrated dark magic,” she pointed out. “We know what happens when it calls to the darkness inside you.”
I closed my hand into a fist to hide the damning proof. “You think I’ll go all dark again.”
“The thought had crossed my mind.”
“I’m never going to let the darkness take over,” I whispered fiercely, keeping my voice down so my mom wouldn’t hear. “I’m stronger now. I know how to control it.”
“Make sure you do. If the Council discovers you have a sixth element inside you, a magically enhanced element, they’ll send you to Carcerem permanently.”
“Permanently?” I repeated in shock. Why would me having the ability to call six elements send me to prison? Granted, one of the elements was darkness, so there was that. But that did not make me dark. “But that’s so unfair. I didn’t ask for this.”
“Neither did the MEs. Remember that.”
How could I forget? “They’re just innocent kids.”
“So are you. Let’s not give them any reason to think otherwise.”
I ended the call and turned to tell my mom that Stace would be joining her on the field tomorrow. Disappointment rattled me.
She was gone.
6
Not wanting to spend the rest of the evening in my room and wanting even less to dream about the void, I whipped out my phone and texted the only one of the group with his own place. My fire elemental was now a hunter with the Council patrols. Although I hated the idea of him running around looking for clans of dark elementals, he loved it.
I texted Rob. You home?
Pop over. The guys are here.
My excitement sparked to life. I loved hanging with my guys and closed my eyes to concentrate on Rob’s cabin, teleporting out and landing on the ground just in front of the stairs leading up to the
