Caelum watched the three idiots exchange nervous looks.
Maybe he’d been wrong about Voltaire.
He looked as dumb as the other two now.
“I’m thinking I’m officially the leader of this little band of friends my father has so thoughtfully arranged for me,” Caelum pronounced next. “What are your thoughts on the matter, Voltaire?”
The bigger boy scowled at him like a kicked dog.
After another exchanged look with Pants and Scar, he nodded slowly.
“Fine by me,” he muttered. “So long’s I’m getting paid.”
Caelum planted his feet wider.
“Did my fatheralsoinform you that this arrangement is meant to be secret?” he asked, tossing his head to get a hank of platinum blond hair out of his eyes. At Pants’s stupid frown, Caelum scoffed. “That means, you do anything to blow my cover… like beat up your supposedfriend… or do anything but show me theutmost fucking respectas befits the noble heir to the Bones fortune… I can assure you, my father won’t give two shits if I discipline you accordingly. Or if you fall out of a fucking window of the castle, for that matter.”
Scar looked distinctly pale now.
Voltaire looked mostly angry, but Caelum could see him thinking.
Keep rubbing those two brain cells together, you unmagicked worm,he thought coldly.
Now that he’d cowed them, Caelum decided he’d offer a carrot.
“Right,” he said. He placed his hands on his thighs and pushed himself to his feet. “I fancy a wander. I think it’s time to start letting everyone know I’ve arrived.”
There was a silence while his words sank in.
Then Voltaire actually smirked.
Caelum assessed him again.
Okay, he could work with that.
If he gave Voltaire and Pants a free hand, both on the train and once they’d reached the school, most of his classmates would hate his guts before he’d even stepped foot at Briarwood. That should be enough to keep his father happy, and maybe enough to get him to back off a little. It might also keep Voltaire, Maskey, and Pants from turning those fists on him.
Caelum walked to the compartment door and shoved it open.
He didn’t bother to look back to see if the oafs were following him. He knew they would. For the same reason, he simply entered the corridor and––
––got shoved, hard, from behind.
He hadn’t felt the thick hand of Voltaire until he was already flying forward.
His head slammed into the window of the train. Pain, and panic, took over before Caelum could control how his magic reacted to that information.
He phased, without consciously triggering it at all––
He blinked his eyes,breathing hard, hands pressed against a walled surface that felt like smooth glass tiles. He fought to think, then to look around, to make sense of where he was, of the bodies moving through the shadowy spaces around him.
Like a cornered animal, he didn’t move.
He stood there, panting, his mind and eyes blurred.
Until, all at once, his eyes snapped back into focus.
Eye of Ra. Where was he? He certainly wasn’t on the train.
