Page 16 of Misfit Monsters
My muscles tense so swiftly I nearly trip over my feet.
Jonah glances over from where he’s standing by a whiteboard at the front of the room. He’s smiling, white teeth bright against his cedar-brown skin.
When his deep brown eyes meet mine, his friendly expression falters.
I get a whiff of sour-stale discomfort that makes me wish I could chug more of the maple syrup we left back in the cafeteria.
Fen tugs my wrist. “We should sit in the front. Then we get the best view of the pictures.”
It shouldn’t be a surprise that the sorcerer has other roles at the academy. I wouldn’t want there to be so many shadowkind upending mortal lives that he’d need to make a full-time career out of dragging them here.
When I risk another glance at Jonah, his smile has come back, though it’s a little cautious. “It looks like you’re already making friends, Peri. That’s good to see. I know Fen will help you find your footing.”
His tone stays steady and professional, but my new friend beams at the compliment anyway.
“I definitely will,” she promises, and drags me over to the table that’s front and center.
It’s only after I’ve followed her lead that I realize sitting up here means I’m as close as possible to the sorcerer in our midst. Minor miscalculation.
I breathe slow and deep. The last thing I need is my hair shining with anxiety for all to see.
There’s nothing to be afraid of anyway, is there? I’mgladI’ve ended up at the school.
I should be grateful Jonah stepped in, really.
It’s just hard not to remember the strands of sorcery digging into my essence every time I look at him. And that memory stirs up echoes of so many other times…
So I do my best not to look at him at all. As our classmates file in, I check out them instead.
The icy man with the unnervingly dark blue eyes enters and drapes his lanky frame into a chair halfway back at the edge of the room. When he catches me looking at him, he gives me a smile so cold it feels more like a knife-stab.
Thankfully Gloss won’t be joining us, since she isn’t even in the reform division. I do spot a few of her other friends—they all sit by the chilly guy, like they’re forming a barricade around him.
To my delight, Mirage bounds through the doorway, grinning with a flash of his fangs. He vaults over one of the tables to land on the chair feet-first. Spinning around, he drops into the seat. Conjured applause kicks in like the laugh track in a TV sitcom.
Jonah gives him a stern look. “Let’s keep the illusions to a minimum today, Mirage.”
“Just giving myself the recognition I’m sure I deserve,” the fox shifter replies cheerfully.
A few dozen more beings drift in and take their seats until almost all the chairs are taken. None of them is the big sinewy shadowkind who yelled at me to get out of our dorm room yesterday.
That’s strange. Shouldn’t he have this class too? He was level one like me.
As I consider asking Fen, Jonah clears his throat. A shadowkind woman wearing a staff badge has arrived, now standing next to him.
Well, that solves one problem. I’ll just look at her instead of him and still be perfectly attentive.
Jonah taps the whiteboard, which must have a computer display built in. Its surface flickers and forms what looks like a digital photo album.
“Today, we’re going to be talking about Berlin. That’s the capital city of the country of Germany, in the continent of Europe. The location is convenient for shadowkind, with a few rifts around the city if you need to quickly return to the shadow realm.”
He brings up a map of the entire mortal realm to showthe city’s exact location. It takes my breath away seeing how big the human world is.
I guess the shadow realm might be equally large, but it’s so vague and dark that it’s not as though any one part is particularly different from another. No cities or countries, just endless gloom.
I restrain a shudder.
Jonah goes on. “If you like an urban atmosphere, Berlin is one of the best cities to blend in among humans. Many alternative subcultures have a strong presence there, with a wide variety of unique fashion and personal styling. In some cases, your shadowkind features won’t raise any eyebrows—people will assume they’re body modifications.”
