Page 30 of Architecti
It’s hard work, but I slalom my way through the carriages and pedestrians, weaving along the endless driveway.I didn’t realise there would be so many of us with invitations.Though I suppose half of these are the potential students, and the other half are excited family members wishing their young ones luck.
It must be two miles before I find myself braking and pulling to a stop before the same wrought iron gates where I left Lucy last night.
In the morning light, they seem less imposing and more sinister.Long iron poles stretch up into the low-hanging mist cloaking the Academy.Ivy chokes the sandstone brick.And while the trees outside the campus have shed their leaves for autumn, the evergreen vines inside are bushy and plump, as though the ivy fed on the carcasses.
I take my helmet off.The crowd’s screams are shrill, their leers more vicious still.I wince against the roar as pressure builds in my ears.My arms prickle from the restless energy.
“Get the fuck off me,” a girl bellows.
There’s a scuffle, a swarm of bodies pressing in towards the carriages.
“Fucking ashkisser,” someone screams.
“It’s a university, for demon’s sake,” the same girl bellows.“Get off me.”
I find her voice.She’s been grabbed by several protesters.I flick my bike’s kickstand down and dive in, barking at the nearest security guard, who leaps into action after me.A man and a woman hold her as she struggles.
I ram my elbow into the man’s gut and stomp on his foot.He shrieks, and the woman lets go, flapping her arms at what I assume is her husband.
The girl gains her feet and aims a kick right into his crotch, hard enough even I wince.He drops to the floor.
“Ashkissers,” his wife spits at our feet.
“Go fuck yourself,” I say and tug the girl away to head towards the gates.
“Hi,” she says.She’s a Black girl with a set of turquoise braids.
“Midnight.”I hold out my hand, and she shakes it.She’s shorter than me and wears such an array of styles and brightly coloured clothes that I’m pretty sure she’s covered the entire rainbow.
“Lex,” she says.“Well, that’s not my real name of course, but the kids in my school used to call me Lexicon because I’ve always been obsessed with language, and the name just stuck.”
She’s sweet.I like her.
“Pleasure to meet you, Lex.With a name like that, I’m assuming you’re here to study Eytomancy?”
She nods, the beads on the ends of her braids jangling like birdsong.“Absolutely.I’m determined to be fluent in every necromantic language.”
“Fluent… is there someone you want to speak to?”
She shucks her rucksack into place, ignoring my question.“So why are you here?”
“To win the favour,” I say.The fact Lex changed the subject isn’t lost on me.
She cocks an eyebrow at me.“Nothing else?You don’t want to be a Doorstop or Detour?Maybe an Echo or Loose End?”
I frown at her.“A what, what and a what now?”
She hustles me towards the gate, so I grab my bike and trot after her while she babbles away.
“You know, you really need to get with the lingo if you want to be the top student.”
“Apparently so!”
“I’ll help.So, the Echoes are the students who study the memories of the dead.The Doorstops are the Fabric Weavers working with the integrity of the Veil.The Loose Ends deal with the dead who have unfinished business, helping the shades to move on etcetera, etcetera.And then there’s the Subtexts, that’s me.Though I’ll be minoring in Footnotes—also known as Theoretical Death studies.”
Gods, my head is already swimming.A wave of warmth rushes up my neck, the confidence I came with draining out of me the more she talks.
We approach the gates.Unlike last night, they willingly open for me.The goyle narrows his grey gaze at me, making me shift position.I hold my bike with one hand and let my fingers skim the cool metal with the other.
