Or maybe it’s just that these people are exhausting. I’m about ready to off Other Elodie’s BFFs. Maybe not directly, but if I could lead them to a convenient kelpie-infested bog or drop them in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, I’d seriously consider it.
I inhale the coffee-scented air—which I happen to enjoy, thank you very much—and let the rich aroma and the tinkling of classical music wash away some of my discomfort. I still have a mission to see through if I want to get out of this nightmare.
And if I’m also keeping one eye on my best escape route out the back hall to my right, can anyone blame me?
“We should hang out here more often,” I say, taking a stab in the dark. “How many better things are there to do after we’re out of class?”
Please, fill me in on all the incredibly exciting activities Other Elodie was getting up to.
Madison gives a terrier-style huff and a shake of her platinum bob. “You should tell us. You’re the one who kept ditching us last month.”
“That’s right,” Mia puts in with a burst of hyper Yorkie energy. “I know you have that recital coming up, but how manyviolin lessons can a person need? You lost the top spot in the ranks!”
Stella waves off their criticism. “Oh, Elle will leap back over Byron in no time. She always does.”
I ignore the nickname that grates even more than Aunt Daphne’s “Ellie.” So Other Elodie was ranked number one in our year last month? And it sounds like she was going back and forth over that spot with Byron somewhat regularly.
I hope I don’t need to perform this violin recital before Daphne sends me home.Ihaven’t been taking any lessons.
Cadance kicks me under the table, supposedly playful but hard enough to leave a brief sting in my shin. “You’ve been distracted even when you’re with us, Elle. Please tell me there’s something more going on than music tutoring. Maybe your violin teacher is super hot?” She arches her eyebrows.
I scoff at the idea. “There’s no point in doing something if you can’t do it well. But hey, we had a good time on Friday, didn’t we?”
I have no idea what if anything Other Elodie did with her friends on the day she died. She hadn’t texted with them since that morning, asking the twins to grab coffees for everyone to take to class. Apparently Madison and Mia are the gofers of the group, which only adds to their terrier vibe.
These girls have to knowsomethingabout where she might have been going that night and why, don’t they?
Cadance winds one of her honey-blond ringlets around her finger. “I guess. You didn’t stick around for long before you and Stella had to run to the special practicum session.”
A special session—the professors run those for the top-ranked students once a month, offering hands-on experience out in the community in our assumed core magical type. Stella’s currently ranked five in our year, so it makes sense she’d have been there.
Byron would have been too. Maybe Salvatore as well, for the sake of not offending him or his brutal relatives, even though it’s generally assumed his glim will take a different form from ours.
Not that it seems likely Other Elodie would have spilled any of her extracurricular plans to the two of them. But they might have seen something.
Stella rolls her shoulders. “It wasn’t a bad session, but they get kind of repetitive after a while, you know?” She cocks her head to one side, studying me. “Where did you head off to afterward? I thought you were getting picked up, but I saw you walking in the opposite direction.”
Don’t I wish I had the answer to that question.
I make a breezy gesture with my hand. It’s hard to make up a story when I don’t even know where the practicum was, but I think they’re usually within the lucent neighborhoods. “Oh, my dad wanted me to grab something from a friend of his who lives nearby. I got picked up there.”
Stella considers me for a moment longer, those Irish Setter eyes gone pensive. Did my explanation sound off?
Before she can question me further, a couple of younger Luminary students push into the café, still in their uniforms.
Cadance’s eyes narrow at the totems hanging from their school bags: clear crystal spheres with a flare of yellow dye inside them. “Wonderful. The radiators are descending on this place.”
Stella shrugs. “Aw, it won’t matter unless they try to turn it into one of their temples.”
We all eye the two teens heading to the order counter. Other than the totems, they look totally normal to me, but it’s not their looks that would set them apart.
The general theory in lucent society is that once upon a time, powerful supernatural beings existed on Earth. The kinds of figures various cultures have called nature spirits or fae or even gods.
We call them radiants. Supposedly they intermingled with humans in a bumping uglies sort of way here and there, gifting humanity with a little of their magic, and we lucents are the result of those encounters somewhere back in our family trees.
The thing is, no one’s encountered a radiant in an awfully long time. The most recent records of them are old and sketchy enough that it’s hard to know how much is true. The consensus has been that they disappeared completely at least a couple hundred years ago for reasons unknown.
For some people, that’s not good enough. There’s a small but very loud group of lucents who call themselves “the Faithful,” who insist the radiants really were gods and that they simply ascended to a higher plane of existence from which they’re guiding or judging us or possibly both, depending on who you talk to. The Faithful perform ceremonies and carry totems and so on in the hopes of gaining better guidance and/or avoiding worse judgment.
