Misty
Burning sunlight stuns me into alertness. I open my eyes to slits and promptly close them again. A dull pain spreads through my head, reminiscent of the type of hangover I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, but that doesn’t make any sense.
I’m standing in the damp, dusty corridor in the web-like underground beneath campus… right?
I open my eyes against the light and stare blankly at the ceiling of my dorm room. Soft snoring echoes all around me. Ignoring the sickening pain in my head, I turn ever so slightly to look at the person whose arm and leg are draped over my body, finding Georgia sleeping peacefully, still wearing her black dress. We’re in her bed on top of the bedspread, and one quick glance across the room shows me a tangle of cloaks and shoes separating Georgia’s section of the tight room from mine where Fia and Darby are fast asleep in my bed.
I sit up. Georgia’s arm slips from my waist as I slide out of bed and walk on unsteady feet to the door, grabbing my shower kit, a robe, and a towel. Trembling with confusion, I fumble with the door with numb fingers that just won’t do what I need them to do.
The hallway outside our door sways as I stagger down to the communal bathroom. Normally, the bathroom is a wash of hairspray, steam, and girlish banter, but right now, it’s silent. Empty. I didn’t bother to check the time, but it must be the early hours of the morning.
I set the water as hot as I can possibly handle and let it wash away the numbness coasting through my veins, trying to put together the pieces of my night. I don’t remember anything past meeting that order member in the corridor. Touching my fingers to my still swollen lips, his kiss comes hurtling back to me with startling clarity. I remember the other men walking away and the knowledge that this could stop but it… didn’t. We kept kissing. We kissed like we knew each other, like our souls were intertwined.
But I remember him pulling away the second I touched his back, and he hissed in pain, then he told me to go back to the party and to go home.
Well, I made it home. But I have no idea if I made it back to the party and what happened afterward.
I shake out my tight muscles and sink to the floor of the shower, leaning my head against the tile as steam rises all around me. I close my eyes as the pain in my head starts to recede. I’m not hungover. I’m a terrible lightweight. A single glass of wine has my cheeks burning red and a migraine creeping into existence. I know better than to even touch hard liquor. Even the smell of it makes my stomach turn.
I wouldn’t have been drinking at all. Not with plans to unravel the mysteries of the order.
Was I drugged?
If so, how?
Voices drift into the bathroom. Women who live on our floor are shuffling in, talking in soft tones about their nights. Another shower starts, then another, but I continue to sit, battered by hot water, for several more minutes. Eventually, I step out of the shower dressed in a robe with my hair twisted in a towel and smile in greeting to the four women crowding a long, narrow counter, all of them chatting over the sound of hairdryers and the clink of makeup compacts opening, but I hurry back to my room without so much as drying my hair.
My friends are still fast asleep.
I pour three glasses of water, force myself to cry, which isn’t that hard when I let my memories flood back to catching Nathan cheating on me, and let the tears drop into the water. I still feel like shit, but my friends don’t have to.
I let my hair air dry, curling softly at the edges while gathering up the scattered shoes and cloaks covering the floor. I tuck everyone in, change into my usual shorts and tank top, and make a snap decision to grab my bathing suit and gym bag along with my backpack. I plan my day out in my head to stop from thinking back on what I remember from last night, which is becoming hazier by the second. I’ll go to the athletic center first. I’ll use the pool, swim laps until I feel satiated, and then I’ll go to the library and spend the rest of the day studying.
My heart rate is already spiking as I cut through the campus square, lugging two bags with me, my freshly washed hair curling into soft waves around my face. It’s going to hate being stuffed into a swim cap, but my options right now are severely limited. I can spend the day wondering what the hell happened to me or go about my day like I normally would.
I simply chose the latter.
“Misty, hey!”
I slow my pace with a sigh. Jogging footsteps rush in my direction, and then I’m being cast in shadow by a young man I know through Nathan.
Declan steps in front of me, looking me up and down before saying, “Going to the gym?”
“Yes,” I reply sweetly, biting down on my tongue before I can say something like, “What does it look like? Get out of my way.”
“Did you, uh, do anything fun last night?” He runs his fingers through his shaggy brown hair, looking down at me with an odd expression. Admittedly, I don’t know Declan very well. He’s a jock, like Nathan, and they run in the same crowd. He has bright, sandy-brown eyes and a pleasant, quiet personality that makes him an outlier in their group of friends. I’ve never seen him as a threat.
Until I remember that my now ex-boyfriend is part of the Order of Arcane Umbra.
How many of the track team guys are part of it, too?
I narrow my eyes at him. “Not really. Why?”
“I was–was just wondering,” he stammers, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I didn’t see you at Leroy’s last night.”
Leroy’s, the campus tavern. I roll my eyes, deciding to drop the act. “I wasn’t invited to Rodney’s early birthday party.”
“Oh,” he says as I turn toward the door of the athletic center. “I mean, it wasn’t really a birthday party, just a few drinks–”
“Declan, I need you to listen to every word I’m about to say to you, okay?” I turn to him with my hand on the doorknob of the very old building housing a state-of-the-art pool, gym, and indoor track. “Tell Nathan he’s pathetic, and I never want to see him again. If he asks why, tell him it doesn’t matter, and if he gets all sad, confused, and pouty, tell him to go seek comfort in the girl he was fucking last night.” I pull open the door, walk in, and let it slam shut behind me.
Declan gapes through the glass in the door but doesn’t follow, thank the Goddess, because now I’m about to start crying again.
I hurry to the locker room, change into my one-piece suit, stuff my hair into a swim cap, and beeline for the pool, ignoring the other students milling about. I didn’t even check the pool schedule, but it doesn’t matter. The tangled voices and images in my head are growing so overwhelming that I find it hard to catch my breath as I burst into the pool area and rush to the edge, diving in gracefully.
I slip into the deep end, and the second my body fully submerges, my head goes blissfully quiet once again.
I swim over a dozen laps and finally come to rest on the edge of the pool, panting, resting my head on my arm as I catch my breath. The pool is empty. A few people are walking laps on the track overlooking the pool, but that’s it. I’m alone here.
I suck in a breath and slip underwater in preparation to pull myself out of the pool and go about my day when the voice echoes through my head so loud my ears ring.
In the still emptiness of the water all around me, the voice is loud and crystal clear.
‘Get off campus. Now.’
I’ve rarely ever talked back to it, not until yesterday when I heard the distorted whispers and finally decided to ask what the hell it was going on about.
‘Why?’ I ask into the nothingness, opening my eyes underwater.
A hushed sigh echoes through my head–very male, honestly. ‘Just listen–for once. Don’t bother packing. Just leave.’
‘Who are you?’
‘The fucking devil on your shoulder, Mystica. You have to LEAVE.’
I close my eyes again, trying to pull the voice closer, to see the person, or being, behind it. It’s not nearly as distorted as it usually is. I can hear the infliction in each word, the sheer frustration and concern, and it’s definitely a man talking to me.
‘What god are you?’
He laughs. ‘I’m not a god.’
This doesn’t feel like the mind-link. I don’t have the ability to shut it off, tune it out, or seek it like I can do with my family. It doesn’t tickle the same parts of my brain, either. This is… deep. Overwhelmingly so. It blurs my other senses. I open my eyes, focusing on the glimmering far wall of the pool.
‘Tell me why I need to leave and maybe I’ll listen to your warning, demon,’ I reply hotly.
‘Just listen to me–’
My lungs burn and warning bells skitter through my brain. I’m still underwater. I’m sitting at the bottom of the pool with my eyes open. Suddenly frantic, I tuck my legs beneath me and leap up on my toes, grasping for the surface as the voice’s words coast through my mind, but the end of his sentence is cut off when I breach the surface and suck in much needed oxygen.
‘What did you say?’ I fire down the… line? Whatever this is, it's nothing but static now, then echoing, deafening silence as the sounds of the athletic center fade back into view.
Uneasy, I pull myself out of the pool, standing at the edge to glance around. I’m still alone. There isn’t a single, other soul in the pool area. There’s no music blasting over the speakers or anyone sitting in the stands, watching me. No one that could have been talking to me somehow, mind-linking with me.
I can’t even mind-link with my friends here. I’m too far away from my family to use it with them.
I hurry back to the locker room, wash the sharp, chemical laden pool water from my skin, and redress. I pull the swim cap off in a huff and grip the porcelain rim of the bathroom sink as I stare at my reflection, my eyes rimmed red from holding them open underwater for what could have been seconds–or several minutes.
Does water somehow… hold whatever link I have to this voice… open?
I’ve never heard of this before. This… power? Maybe. It could be a power. A new power emerging in time for my upcoming birthday.
Within minutes, I’m in the library, shuffling down the wide, amazing, seven story spiral staircase that leads three stories down to the recesses of the library and four stories up to the domed ceiling leagues above my head.
My usual study spot is shockingly busy today, but Saturdays are always busy in the library. I chew the end of my pen as I scan racks of ancient tomes and books in the “magic” section, aptly named. I have special access to this section because the librarians were sick of me asking them for new books every five seconds. I’m the only student in the entire university who’s allowed to just take these books off the shelf, and the strange library knows that.
The library has the same kind of magic as my cousin Kenna’s castle in Veiled Valley. It’s alive.
I turn with a tome about magic communication in my hand and watch hundreds of books zooming in a spiral against the turns of the staircase at the center of the library, sorted by magic.
But as I pick through the racks back to my usual table, I spot someone else there.
“Oh, thank the Goddess,” I rush out, slamming my book down in front of Georgia, who jostles at the noise, choking on her iced coffee.
“Did you just see a ghost… again?” She laughs, shaking her coffee to better mix her hazelnut and vanilla flavor. She gets the same coffee every morning. She’s a creature of habit and has a wicked memory. She knows the name of every member of my family and remembers their birthdays, anniversaries, and any upcoming due dates when I honestly grapple to hang on to that information, and I’m related to them.
“How did we get home last night?” I hiss as I sit down, glancing up and down the table. There’s a group studying nearby but hopefully out of earshot.
“What do you mean? We walked.” She narrows her eyes at me. “Don’t you remember? After we left Leroy’s–”
“Leroys?” Something like unease curls in my belly. “But we didn’t go to Leroys.”
She searches my face for understanding. “Have you had any coffee yet today?”
“No, but–” I suck in a breath as tingles whisper over my skin. “We didn’t go to Leroy’s last night. We went to the bell tower.”
She arches a brow. “The bell tower?”
Does she seriously not remember? “We went to an Arcane Umbra party! How did we get home from it?” My tone takes on a desperate edge as Georgia shakes her head, her eyes filling with concern.
“Misty, what the hell are you talking about? We got dressed up and went to Leroy’s, remember? Darby was there celebrating Rodney’s birthday and asked us to come.”
My heart races as I lean back and look at her. I rack my brain. I’d cleaned up this morning in our room and didn’t see the masks anywhere.
Something’s wrong.
“You look exhausted, Misty,” she whispers, but she still looks concerned as she rises and gathers her purse. “I’m going to go get you a coffee, okay? They messed up my order, anyway. I’ll be right back. Maybe instead of hitting the books, you chill today. You danced until like, three in the morning.”
No, I didn’t. I wasn’t dancing at all. I was kissing an order member in a shadowed corridor deep underground.
I watch her walk away and turn to my book… just as the magically sorted books still in midair, then plummet to the ground.