Page 23 of Faerie Gift

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That evening on my way to the library to study, I stopped by Melia’s room. My insides continued to quake as I closed the door behind me, leaning against it and trying to hold myself together.

Not happening, but I deserved points for trying. The moment she turned to me, however, my lower lip trembled and everything wanted to spill out. I needed to focus on the important things first. And a teacher’s venomous threats were not important.

Then again I’d been known to lie to myself before.

“You look like someone pumped you full of firecrackers and they’re starting to go off,” she said by way of greeting.

She was holed up at her desk beneath the window, the glass panes showing a sky full of stars and slight curls of frost along the edges. Her fingers clicked away at a keyboard and I wondered if she was getting a head start on homework or just writing for fun. With Melia, I never knew.

“I have to talk to someone,” I said on a long exhale. “I’m going out of my mind. There is a lot going on right now.” I let my bag drop.

She stopped typing. “What’s the matter?”

I placed a hand over the test slip in my pocket and pushed all thoughts of Hoarfrost aside. I’d reexamine my feelings on him later. Alone. “Okay. Well. You know the first-years had our innate power test today.”

Melia turned around to face me, a wide and excited grin stretching her face. “Girl! Yes! I wanted to ask you about the results. How did it go?”

I had made the decision to trust her implicitly last semester, when she watched my potion fail, the spell broken, and my shifter side exposed. Melia knew the true story of my past and its crazy twists and turns.

I could trust her with this newest twist, surely.

I brought the test strip out and showed it to her, crossing the room to hand it over. “I tested for cognitive manipulation. But…there’s another symbol. On the back of the paper. It didn’t show up right away but now it’s clear.”

I had to give Melia credit. She didn’t blink. She didn’t look skeptical or try to immediately tell me it was a mistake. No finding an excuse for the second symbol.

She simply held out a hand. “Let me see. I might be able to help you figure it out.”

Giving her the strip, I watched her face shift from one expression to another. Surprise and confusion, then a gleam of interest. Melia loved nothing more than an adventure, a problem needing to be solved. She excelled at logic puzzles.

“Leaves told the assembly it was impossible for us to manifest more than one innate power,” I said. My fingers twitched and I looped them together to keep them still.

“Impossible, no,” Melia said with her lips pursed. She turned the paper over and ran her thumb over both symbols. “Extremely rare and unprecedented, maybe, but not impossible. You know what? I think I’ve seen this one before. The blue one. I’m not sure I can place it, though.”

I straightened, eyes wide and blinking. “What?Really?You have?”

Both symbols were still visible on the paper, red on front and blue on the back. Melia worried the inside of her cheek and stared, unblinking.

“I’m trying to remember where… Come on.” She handed the strip back to me and jumped up from the desk. “We’re going to the library. We’ve got some research to do.”

I groaned. “Can’t we research from the inner sanctum? I’m a mess.”

“Nope, and nope. There’s a book I need to look at and I can’t very well read it from this room, can I, now?” Melia stretched her arms over her head, lamplight bringing out the gold in her burnished hair. I’d kill for hair like hers, I thought, tugging at my limp and lackluster auburn strands. She looked like she’d been dipped in gold from head to toe, from her dusky skin to her honeyed eyes.

I followed behind her, struggling to keep up with her long legs, her long strides. Melia on a mission. There was no stopping her.

“I know I read something about this symbol during my powers test,” she murmured over her shoulder to me. “Because I wanted to know more than what was in the stupid literature they gave me on tactile manipulation. I pretty much checked out every book I could find on innate powers from the library and requested more, things they didn’t have. Librarian Mustardseed really hated me. She seemed to take my quest for knowledge as a personal insult. Something about our library being so expansive I didn’t need to look outside for info, blah blah.”

It had taken me a while to come to terms with most teachers and employees in the school being named after plants, especially with a name like Mustardseed. It helped how Melia told me the librarian had been named after a fairy in Shakespeare’s playA Midsummer Night’s Dream.

“I love your memory,” I whispered in return as we entered the muted hush of the library. This time of the evening, no one bothered coming here.

“It certainly comes in handy. Now to find the thing on the shelves. I think finding it is going to be the tricky part. Hopefully no one has the book checked out.”

The library reminded me of a cathedral, with high ceilings and massive cases rising to meet them. In the right light, and with no one else using the tables, it resembled a tomb. But here I’d found my peace and, on the nights I studied with Mike, my sanctuary. Because it was better to enjoy the silence of a tomb than it was to listen to Persephone.

Melia led the way to a shelf in the rear of the massive space. Leather spines lined up like soldiers and she clucked her tongue, checking each one, before she eventually found the book she wanted.

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