Elodie gives a slight nod and takes her turn without prompting. “Our professor drove you most of the way to school today.”
He usually insists on it, since we need to arrive around the same time but he often has to stay much later than I do.Iinsist on him letting me out of the car before we’re in sight of my peers. So much for that.
As I acknowledge her statement, Cole folds his arms over his chest. I scan the energies seeping through Elodie’s shield as quickly as I can, hunting for anything that might explain her shift in attitude.
Fragments float up, scattered and indistinct. A single word in a voice I don’t recognize here; a flash of color there. I’m struggling to find even a mundane observation to put forward, let alone anything more insightful.
At this rate, all my classmates are thinking I’m even more of an idiot than they already believed.
I grasp on to one vivid if small impression. “There was coffee brewing in your kitchen.”
I can’t even say for sure when that was. If I was anyone other than Cole’s brother, he’d be lambasting me for this weak performance.
Another nod from Elodie, then barely a pause. “You have something in a black bag in your bedroom closet.”
My training sword.
I restrain a wince, but Elodie mustn’t have been able to get a clear idea of the bag’s contents. And its presence shouldn’t bethatstartling anyway. Lots of people keep training equipment at home.
I’m already studying her as I indicate yes, but I can’t sense anything clearer than before. The grass on the green—pretty much everyone crosses it in the morning. The graze of the breeze against her cheek, sometime recently. A glimmer of purple—seeing her hair in the mirror?
None of that feels like enough.
A possible tactic creeps into my mind. If I can’t push through her shield… maybe I can shake her enough to disrupt her magic.
Something about my presence is stirring up emotions she doesn’t want to feel. I don’t like the idea of upsetting anyone, but a little jab might be worth it if it helps me see what’s wrong.
I propel the words from my mouth. “You feel ill when you look in my eyes.”
A grimace tugs at Elodie’s lips—and her gaze flicks up to catch mine in instinctive reaction to my declaration. I can’t say I made it up, because in the instant before she jerks her eyes away again, a hint of a sickly cast does touch her light brown skin.
And a few sharper fragments slip through her protective shell. A burning sensation in her back. Puddles rippling on pavement. Red splattered across the dark gray. A gust of a sharply metallic scent?—
Is thatblood?
I miss whether Elodie answers my assessment—or maybe she doesn’t at all. The barrier thickens, jarring me out of the burst of impressions I sensed, and she’s already launching into her next reading.
“You fed a dog yesterday.”
At the corner of my vision, my brother’s head jerks toward me. My pulse hiccups.
There’ll be a lecture coming tonight.
How is she finding every detail he could possibly have a problem with?
The only bit of sense I could make of the jumbled impressions I caught a moment ago pops from my mouth. “You hurt your back.”
Sometime, I have no idea when or how. Cole would never let a reading that vague slide for anyone else.
It doesn’t matter, because an emotion that seems to match my own panic flickers through Elodie’s expression.
Her voice hardens. “You spend every day wishing your brother would back off and let you live your own life without having to worry about what he’d do if he found out.”
The jitter of panic rises to a blare. I barely hear Cole’s voice, taut and icy: “Enough!”
Our professor spins on Elodie. “You seem to have missed the point of this exercise. It’s not to invent commentary to fit your personal vendettas. I’ll have to?—”
“I’m not inventing—” Elodie starts to break in, and then her gaze snags with mine for only the second time in this conversation.
