I was scanning the crowd when my eyes were drawn downward, where I immediately saw a man sitting surrounded by guards. They looked likeMen in Blackfrom the 1990s film. The guards weren’t what caught my attention, though. The guy was glowing, well, not necessarily glowing like with light. It was more like if all the colors of the spectrum were combined, they’d give off their own glow.
The moment I made eye contact, my body felt like it was lifting off the ground, and I was being pulled into those eyes. I shook my head and looked around to make sure I wasn’t really floating. When I saw my two feet were still planted on the ground, I looked back up.
But the moment had passed, and the guy was getting up and moving toward his table. The sensation from a moment before had left me shaky. My insides felt strange, like someone had reached into me and jiggled them all.
I took a deep breath to steady myself before resuming my search. I ended up following the glowing man toward the back of the room. He stopped at the same table as mine for the last names P, Q, and R. The guards still surrounded him.
I walked behind him. Now I was closer, I could feel the energy vibrating off his body. The strange thing was, I came out as gay when I was fourteen, but in the years I’d been out, I’d never got a woody just by walking past a guy.
The energy coming off the man was warmth, life, sex, heat. It was what you’d expect pure blood-pumping attraction to feel like. It was an uncomfortable feeling like that in a crowd of people. I looked at his back, but he didn’t notice me. I quickly scanned the room to see if anyone else was affected by him the same way I was.
It didn’t seem like anyone else was about to cream their pants just by being in the man’s presence. So, I sighed, did what I could to pull myself together, and moved toward the other side of the PQR table from him, to register for orientation.
Chapter five
Kaden
ItfeltlikeIwas a heat-seeking missile, and he was my target. I couldn’t keep from staring at the back of his head. He had long dark hair that has been combed so it stood high on his head. Besides that, I couldn’t tell much more about him, just that something about him set every nerve in my body on edge, no, not edge. It set them on fire.
I had barely paid attention to the speakers until some teacher cast a spell on the students. It didn’t affect me, but I could sense it. I could tell what it was meant to do. It was pretty cool, and I wondered why I didn’t have that kind of power.
I’d first noticed the guy when I came in, but when he turned around to check out some blond dude who’d magically sent a Coke can flying into a nearby wall, the electricity soared through me.
I couldn’t tell whether it was attraction or a desire to destroy him. Maybe it was both. When he turned around, and I could see his profile, I knew he was attractive. Not a jock or anything like that. No, he was smooth and sexy, not rough. Not someone I’d have said was my type or anything, but something about him was different.
I didn’t know. It was a confusing feeling that I was still wrestling with when the talk ended. When he stood up and turned around, he immediately locked eyes with me.
It was weird. The same feeling I felt when Briggs threatened to hurt the girl began to build inside me. But it was different, not as angry, not as inevitable as that’d been, but just as unnerving.
He must be a bad guy. That was all I could fathom since I only reacted that way to bad guys, right? Why didn’t he feel like a bad guy, then? He quickly looked away, and when he did, it was like the spell had broken. I was able to get up and turn away from him.
I followed the guards still surrounding me and went to my table to find out where I was supposed to go next. I felt rather than saw the guy walking behind me. It was almost as if I could see him in my mind. I could probably even identify the people standing around him.
What was it the woman had asked the dean, something about a nemesis? Clearly, that was what was going on. This man must be my nemesis. I quickly made a mental note to keep an eye on him, and since I could see him wherever he went, even when I wasn’t looking at him, that would make the chore easier.
Chapter six
Lysander
Anearlysnowstormsweptthrough the area. No surprise, considering Erudo College sat astride the Continental Divide in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. The staff usually kept the snow at bay, or so we’d been told, but they traditionally allowed the first snow to cover the school grounds for luck.
Orientation sucked in the way orientations always sucked. They covered boring, mindless things the faculty deemed imperative for us to know. Things like using our powers against one another and causing harm would equal expulsion, and knowing when and where to locate your student advocate. I assumed it was the same stuff every school freshman had to learn.
The darkling, as I’d begun calling him, had disappeared after our first day. We each had our orientation group assigned to us, and he and I weren’t in the same group. I rarely ever saw him after that.
Remembering the guards who flanked him, I wondered if he was some sort of villain. The dark glow around him would certainly point to that. I guessed maybe I was lucky he didn’t try to hurt me.
I resolved to avoid him at all costs. I knew my power was weak, since that was why I’d come here--to learn how or what it was capable of doing. But looking at that man that day, I knew if he wanted to, he could probably rip me to shreds with no effort.
I shuddered at the thought and quickly scanned the grounds for him again. I wasn’t sure why he bothered me so much. It wasn’t like almost everyone on campus couldn’t destroy me in as many different ways as there were people. I was in school with some of the most dangerous people on Earth, yet, it just felt like a regular school.
Whomp! Damn, the snowball hit me square in the chest. I turned around to see Kaylee and her twin brother, Kyle. Kaylee, who’d thrown the snowball, was laughing her ass off.
“No fair, Kaylee,” I yelled as I bent down to make my own. Both Kaylee and Kyle shared the same sort of power. They could move objects with their minds. Clearly, that included snowballs.
I was majorly outgunned, and after throwing my first and only snowball, I quickly scampered into the nearby student lounge and watched through the window as the twins took on all the other students.
I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. The twins had befriended me on the first day of school, and we’d gotten close fast. Kaylee was the one always setting up practical jokes, but Kyle was often the one who followed through with them. Luckily, it was always in fun.
