Page 43 of Phoenix Academy: Madness

With a glower on his face that would rival David's intense anger, Jared Fisk approaches me and stares down from his impressive height.

"That," he says, and I take a deep breath to prepare for the punishment I'm about to get, "was impressive. Think you could do it again?"

I blink up at him. Beside me, David sputters. "What?"

"Do that again," Fisk says, sounding almostcheerful."You took out dozens of enemy combatants on your own without even lifting a finger or getting hurt. On the battlefield, a skill like that would be incredibly useful—especially if it can be used against Grims. Can it?"

I admit, "I don't know. It's worked on humans before, though."

"Well, close enough. We'll just have to do a little experimentation." I can practically hear the gears turn in his head. "If you can do that to Grims, it changes the whole field. Making them turn on each other like that... it's amazing."

This is the last reaction I expected him to have. "Thanks, I guess. I'm just glad it didn't turn out worse than it could have."

As I'm finishing my sentence, though, I see something that turned my stomach into knots: Headmaster Towers.

Needless to say, she doesn't look happy with me, or eager to turn my powers into a weapon.

Even worse, standing next to her is Mage Auerbach himself, the last person I want to see right now.

Chapter 21

"I can seethat we're going to have to accelerate your learning track," Auerbach says when I finish telling him how I turned half the students on campus into feral, angry beasts. "Using magic in your sleep is something that we can at least solve right away with a containment rune underneath your bed. You'll just have to make sure to always sleep there and nowhere else on campus."

I frown at him, perplexed. "Where else would I sleep?"

His eyes flick briefly and subtly over to the trio of shifters, who are sitting to my left. The gesture makes me blush and turns me irritated at the same time, even though I've had some of the same thoughts myself, especially about the twins. Thankfully he doesn't say anything to embarrass me.

We're having this conversation in the headmaster's office, the rising sun sending tendrils of light through the overhead dome. After the night I've had, with very little sleep, I'm exhausted, but I haven't yet had the courage to pipe up and ask the headmaster for a mug of coffee. She's had an intense expression on her face all through this conversation, sitting on the other side of her desk and chewing her lower lip, pensive.

I almost wonder if she's going to kick me out of school.

Or maybe she'll come up with some other solution, like putting me in that prison David mentioned and only taking me out when she wants to use me on the battlefield, like Fisk suggested. She's certainly looking at me right now as if I'm a problem to solve, not a student to teach.

But no—those thoughts are paranoid, fueled by my sleep-deprived paranoia. Headmaster Towers has let me into her school without question. She's not even charging me room and board or tuition. She wouldn't kick me out.

Would she?

And why does it worry me so much? After all, I've lived all my life without a guaranteed four walls around me, or protection from being hunted. Leaving this place wouldn't change anything, not really.

There's nothing I would miss about it.

Although I do find myself glancing over to the guys, and wondering...

"We'll have to figure out a way to prevent this from happening again," the headmaster says, folding her hands on her desk. I shake off my thoughts and force my attention back to her. "The rune under your bed will help at night, but there are still classes to consider. Other than your phoenix fire class, you share every classroom with shifters, and your magic seems to affect them more than most. One slip-up and we could be sending more students to the medic, just like tonight. Or worse, having them airlifted out to the hospital—or the morgue."

I swallow at the sobering thought. "My magic only really goes wild when I'm feeling threatened or... other strong feelings. I just have to control my emotions. That shouldn't be that hard—Yohan has already been teaching me more concentration and meditation exercises."

The headmaster studies me. "And what about when meditation doesn't do the trick?" She shakes her head. "No, it's a risk too great to take. I'm realizing that now. What we need to do is make sure that no matter what, the shifters you share your classrooms with will be safe."

I chew my lower lip, feeling trepidation. "How would we even begin to do that? I mean, I can maybe do a bootcamp with Mage Auerbach, or just... study in the gym for a while until I've got my powers under control."

"That would take a while," the headmaster says gently. "I was thinking something more immediate, for at least this semester if not the whole year."

"Okay."

"Since Xavier, Reggie, and David were able to help you with your magic so easily, and seem to be affected by it differently or not at all, I want at least one, if not all three of them, to be in all of your classes with shifters." To the trio she adds, "If you're amenable to it."

The way she saysamenablemakes it sound like her idea is less of a suggestion and more of a gentle yet implacable requirement, one with consequences she's willing to enforce.

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