Page 7 of Coerced

I felt his body tense, but he took a deep breath and held out his other hand. Very slowly, she touched her hand to his palm and he folded his fingers around hers. Then his nose nuzzled into my hair and he relaxed again.

He did that a lot. Smelled my hair, then calmed down. August, my warden, said it was because a warrior’s senses were more finely tuned than any other classes. At first, I was horrified because I didn’t always take the time to wash my hair, but August had explained it went beyond that.

“He can smellyou, not your shampoo.” He’d smiled. “You. Your essential nature. To someone with Kerry’s background, you probably smell like everything good and pure in this world.”

I had laughed, knowing I was far from the angel Kerry often called me, full of as many faults as anyone. But if it helped him and he liked it, how could I deny him?

“Mr. Harker.” Ms. Chapman’s sharp voice drew my attention. “If your harem is ready, let us proceed.”

He probably didn’t know what a harem was, but he ignored the snorts of laughter from our classmates and nodded at her.

As we moved on, I tried to see everything. Angelic sigilla were everywhere and I recognized several from Miss Weatherbee’s class. The walls were studded with round steel doors every twenty feet or so. Above was the usual drop ceiling with fluorescent lighting panels and the occasional black bump of a camera.

Everything looked modern and efficient except for one door on the left. Thick wooden beams, rich with age, were pegged together in a large square that made me think of a gothic cathedral down a forgotten side street somewhere in Europe. The elegant designs spoke of a master carver. Examining them, I realized five familiar sigilla repeated in a rectangular spiral that ended in the center with a sigillum I did not know. That one was carved deeper and slightly larger than the others.

Kerry noticed the door, too, and came to a dead stop in front of it. As he stared, Chessie suggested it was probably left from bygone days and too much a work of art to replace with a modern door. He shook his head and his nostrils flared as if he were tasting the air. For whatever reason, the door disturbed him.

“Defend. Protect. Bind. Guard. Lock,” I read the repeating sigilla. “But that one in the center, it doesn’t even look like a sigillum.”

“Because it ain’t.” He shook his head. “It’s a seal.”

“How do you know that?” Gigi still held his other hand and her eyes were wide. She obviously didn’t like this place anymore than I did.

“Miss Weatherbee taught seals last week,” he said. “In her lecture about active and passive warding.”

I blinked. I remembered the lecture, but not anything about seals. I knew he did, though, and in perfect detail, too. His memory was phenomenal.

“Um, shementionedseals, Kerry.” Gigi rolled her eyes at me. “In a passing comment. She didn’tteachthem.”

“Why is it there?” Chessie demanded. “Why would you need a seal on a vault?”

“I don’t think it’s a vault. I think it’s— Nah. Never mind.”

“What, Harker?”

I jumped a little, surprised Ms. Chapman had returned to stand behind me.

“A gateway.” He swiveled his head to meet her gaze.

“And how did you formulate that hypothesis?”

He cut his eyes down at me, and I mouthed,Why do you think that?

“There’s something underneath the seal. Gears, maybe. I can see them if I look outta the corner of my eye. Even if the sealdoesdo something, I think it’s mainly there as a distraction.” His eyes flashed to the door, then back to her. “This is a portal.”

Ms. Chapman never smiled. Very rarely, if someone performed exceptionally well in class, her eyebrows arched up and she inclined her head in a regal nod and you knew she was pleased.

She gave him that look now and, when he grinned back, I wanted to hug her.

Too often, I feared Kerry thought he was dumb, which was far from the truth, but his misconception was compounded by too few people noticing, let alone recognizing, his intelligence. The teachers rarely acknowledged him, except for Miss Weatherbee and Mr. Snyder, who seemed fascinated by him more than anything. The rest were terrified of him, and I could only imagine what Ms. Fey would have done if he’d ever gone to poli-dip with me.

But not Ms. Chapman. She praised him in front of everyone when he had a right answer, gave him papers to pass out, and encouraged him to contribute in class discussions - all in the same matter-of-fact way she redirected him when he mentally checked out during a lecture or told him to watch his language.

In other words, she treated him like she treated the rest of us. That was why her approvalmeantsomething to him, and why he respected her so much.

“Who uses it?” Gigi interrupted my thoughts. “Where does it go?”

“If you select it as the artifact for your project, you can answer those questions for yourself.” Ms. Chapman nodded, then went back to the main group.

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