Page 31 of Phoenix Academy: Madness

I learn all of this from the phoenix student who sits next to me in class, and apparently likes to gossip under his breath, regardless of how much interest (or lack thereof) I show in what he's saying. His name is Jack, and he has brown hair and a scar down his face that he resentfully attributes to "soul-stealing Grims" and their "demon lackeys" attacking him during some outing that got a teacher killed over a year ago.

So, yeah. This place issonot as safe as Headmaster Towers pretends. Increased security my ass—nothing, it turns out, will completely keep Grims from wanting phoenix hearts so badly that they'll storm the campus just to try to snatch them up.

Needless to say, I plan on sleeping with my door locked, one eye open, and a protection sigil burned into the wood floor beneath my bed. There's no way I'm escaping the Heretic just to die because some power-hungry necromantic asshole wants my heart. Learning that there are demons capable of hypnotizing phoenix like me only ratchets up my overwhelming fear of getting my ribs cracked open by a serial killer.

Although the music doesn't seem to be affecting me the same as the other phoenix in the class. There are a handful of students, and all of them have fallen into a deep trance. Dani, who summoned the demon, has earmuffs over her ears, but even so the song must be filtering through, and she doesn't seem affected at all.

I feel a little spaced out. Kind of like I ate a few bad mushrooms or drank a large glass of witch wine. But I can still look around the room, glance from student to student, and I don't feel like I've lost my will completely.

It reminds me a little of how I felt when one of the Heretic's followers played that song over the speakers of his phone, right before David full-on wolf dragged him to the ground. That was far, far worse than this song, though, which feels softer somehow.

"Alright, that's enough."

Shimmer claps her hands together, and Dani tells the siren demon—a skeletal thin woman-like thing with long ragged red hair—to stop singing. The demon obeys, her black eyes narrowing at Dani resentfully. A moment later Dani doessomethingwith black energy that disappears the demon from the room entirely, leaving a blank space where she was, her dark power gone. It gives me a little sense of vertigo as the spirit realm shifts to smooth over the demon's sudden absence. No one else seems to feel anything, though, so it must just be me.

Leaning over towards me, Jack the gossiper murmurs, "It's scary how she can just...controlus like that. Don't you think?"

"The teacher is saying something," I point out, not wanting to get involved one way or another during my first class.

"It's only three days into our new semester, but no doubt all of you have noticed the same thing: it is far, far harder to resist a real life siren's song than to resist it on a recording, or even resist my own pixie song and glamour. Which means we have a long road ahead of us."

She skims her eyes across the class, and mentally I count them: ten students, including me. A small class, and apparently all the current phoenix students are here. I don't know. If that makes us rare because the genes that birth a phoenix, and the circumstances, rarely align, or if Grims have killed every other young phoenix the moment they're reborn.

"Some of you did better than others," Shimmer notes. "Lily stayed awake longest of the class—congratulations. And of course, Ari was able to resist the pull of the siren's song at least partially, but that's because it wasn't calibrated to Blue Phoenix physiology. We'll soon have that fixed, and she'll have to resist her own song type. Now, any questions?"

Jack's hand shoots up. "What about Dani?"

Shimmer frowns. "What about her?"

"She hasn't had to be hypnotized," he points out. "Shouldn't the siren also sing something to take out a Black Phoenix?"

Dani's eyes narrow in his direction, and I swear she's considering cracking open his ribs and taking out his heart. I find myself scooting away from him just a bit, to avoid being in the line of fire.

"If I have the demon hypnotize me, no one will be able to control her," she grinds out angrily. "So unless you want to hire another Grim teacher to summon a siren just for me, it's not possible. And we all remember what the last Grim teacher turned out to be."

You could hear a pin drop in this room. Jack breaks the tension first by looking away, and Dani smirks in his direction. The class moves on a moment later as Shimmer retakes control of the reins. We learn how to divert our focus, are assigned meditation exercises, and given moldable wax earplugs along with a downloadable recording of the siren's creepy ass song.

Apparently, our homework is to torture ourselves repeatedly until the torture no longer works.

Sadistic.

* * *

My history class is a good, slow break from the drama, introducing me to a man named Ocean Johnson with long braided hair and a propensity to speak at length on the same subject.

I share the class with David.

The whole time he's sitting just a few rows ahead of me and one column to the right.

He staunchly looks forward the whole class, ignoring my gaze on his back, even though he must feel it. Thankfully he's wearing pants now—I guess he returned to his room to get a proper change of clothes. His hair looks neatened, too, like he took a shower between this morning and now.

A shower he'd have beencompletelynaked during, his body long, lean, and well-muscled, water sluicing down his pale chest, hair plastered to his forehead, eyes piercing through the steam fogging the shower door...

Yeah, something is wrong with me.

Very,verywrong.

I'm getting turned on in a goddamned history class thinking about a naked werewolf I kinda hate, who definitely hates me, and who I accidentally turned into my familiar.

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