An iron-banded door looms at the top of a narrow side stair—marked Overflow Housing in barely legible script.
Charming.
I shove the door open and immediately duck as a paper bird dives past my head.
“What the hell?—”
“You must be new.”
A voice lilts from above. I look up.
A girl perches halfway over the railing of the landing just inside the doorway, red curls spilling down, a wicked grin on her face.
“Tamsin,” she says cheerfully, swinging over the rail to land beside me with a dancer’s grace. She sticks out a hand. “Welcome to the land of misfits and overflow.”
I shake her hand automatically. “Lindsay.”
Her grin widens. “Oh, I heard about you already.”
My stomach sinks. “You did? What did you hear?”
Can this place get any stranger?
“There are no real secrets at Blackthorn.” She loops an arm through mine like we’ve been best friends since we were babies, and tugs me inside, leading me up a small staircase to the landing she just hopped down from. “Come on. I’ll show you which beds don’t creak like dying things. You’re human, right? That part was true?” she adds, like it’s the most normal thing in the world.
I freeze. “What do you mean,human?”
Tamsin doesn’t even blink. “Relax,” she says, eyes dancing. “Some of us don’t care. But word’s out. You might wanna brace for a rough start tomorrow.”
“For what?” I ask.
She nods, steering me toward a hallway. “First classes, first impressions, first round of assholes trying to test and knock you down. It’s tradition.”
Fantastic. Magical school hazing, can’t wait.
She tugs me down a dim hallway, the iron-banded door I came through swinging shut down below with a metallic thud. The air up here is cooler. Stale, with a faint trace of herbs and something else that is acrid, similar to the aftermath of a storm, sorta like the smell of the letter when I first opened it.
Overflow housing. I’m officially here.
Tamsin weaves us through a maze of narrow corridors, uneven floors, faded tapestries that cover windows, more shadows than light. The walls hum faintly, but not in the alive way the rest of the Academy does. More like…it's been forgotten.
We step into the main dorm space—a long, high-ceilinged room lined with eight mismatched beds on each side of the room and sagging curtains. A cracked fireplace sits cold at one end.
A few students glance up. Most don’t bother. One girl near the far wall lets out an audible scoff and turns away.
“Home sweet home,” Tamsin says brightly, tugging me toward an open bed near the window. “Best spot left. Trust me.”
I stare at all of the other students. “Are they all…?”
“Overflow?” She grins. “Yep. Late admits, troublemakers, half-bloods…like me, scholarship kids. And now—” she winks “—humans.”
That earns me another sideways glance. Whatever. Let them look.
Tamsin pats the mattress. “This one’s not cursed. Probably. Sheets are…fine. Just ward your stuff.”
Ward my stuff? What stuff? How would I even do that? I must have a deer-in-headlights look in my eyes, because she lifts her eyebrows and drops onto the bed next to the one she suggested I take.
“Right, I’ll help you once they bring up your things,” she says with a grin.
