Well, nearly alone.
“What was that?” Emrys croaked, willing his racing heart to still.
“Hard to say without a bit more information,” Van Stavern said. “In my present state, I can’t sense what you do. But as I warned you in the Blue Reliquary, you and your friends are part of the hidden world now. Like it or not, that world will only become more insistent with time.”
The Atlas cleared its nonexistent throat. “So—what did you see?”
“Brian Skupp,” Emrys rasped. Though he barely knew the boy, he felt sure. And he was also sure that Brian wasn’t just missing, but dead. Had that been Brian’s … ghost? Some kind of vision? What had happened to him? The poor eighth grader had looked half decomposed already, but he hadn’t even been missing for a week.
Whatever Emrys had just witnessed, it was enough to convince him that Brian hadn’t just run away.
“There was sand,” Emrys said, collecting his thoughts. “Red sand.” He glanced to the open janitorial closet where he’d seen a similar pile of the stuff. But as with the mirror, the strange sediment had disappeared there, too. “Is there a … a relic or a monster that uses red sand? Something the Order knew about?”
“Not that I recall,” Van Stavern said. “You’re sure it was sand? Not ectoplasm or miasma? Or blood?”
Emrys shook his head. “I’m sure. It was red as blood, but it was definitely sand.”
A phantom thought scratched at the back of Emrys’s mind. Something about that felt familiar. If only he had his phone.
Outside, the warning bell shrilled. Class would be starting soon, and Emrys still had to travel two floors down. The Atlas shriveled, its eye flattening and the leather cover speckling into the familiar black-and-white pattern of a composition notebook. Emrys grabbed it and shoved it into his tote—only belatedly remembering to be gentle with Van Stavern when the book grunted in discomfort. He gave the tote an apologetic pat. But as he turned to leave the bathroom, Emrys paused, gazing into the cracked glass of the far mirror.
His right eye looked strange in the reflection—not his own. His hazel-colored iris had clouded to milky blue, like morning fog just before sunrise. The center glimmered with an eerie azure light. Emrys took a step to the side, to the nearest unbroken mirror. There, his reflection looked normal.
With a shiver, Emrys hurried to class.
Emrys and Hazel had made plans to meet in the parking lot at the end of the day—once Emrys retrieved his phone. He needed to tell her about his vision as soon as possible. If Brian really was dead, that meant they were already dealing with a highly dangerous threat.
Was the Yellow Court involved? Van Stavern’s warnings followed Emrys as he hurried past the outdoor portable classrooms. He didn’t feel ready to take on the very people who’d eradicated the previous Order. If Van Stavern himself couldn’t face the Whistler, what hope did three kids have?
Two, Emrys reminded himself. Serena wasn’t one of them, as she’d made abundantly clear last night. Emrys just hoped the Yellow Court wouldn’t do anything to make her regret her decision.
The afternoon shadows had just begun to stretch into long, umbral pillars, giving the portables an almost reverent aura. Emrys reached the door for the American History classroom and knocked, then shoved his hands into his pockets. After a long beat—vindictively long, Emrys thought—Ms. Joanna’s voice finally called, “Come in!”
Emrys opened the door and was greeted by the teacher’s ever-present smile.
“Can I help you, Emrys?” Ms. Joanna asked.
Emrys grimaced. They both knew why he was there, but of course she’d force him to say it.
He’d grown used to teachers not liking him, but Ms. Joanna was on another level. From his first day at Gideon, she seemed to take special pleasure in making him squirm. With her big, sweet smile and her bright, eager eyes, she reminded Emrys of a cat who’d just spotted something small and fearful to torture.
She loved Hazel, though. Maybe he just brought that out in some people, Emrys thought sadly.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m here to get my phone. I mean … Can I have my phone back? Please?”
“Ah, yes,” Ms. Joanna sighed. She opened her desk drawer and fished around inside. “I hope you aren’t having any problems adjusting to our school, Emrys. A new town, a new grade level; it’s a lot to take in. And it seems we’re less relaxed about certain luxuries. Here I’m afraid, phones are a privilege, not a right.”
“Thank goodness there wasn’t an emergency, then,” Emrys snapped, his temper rising.
All the stress of the last twenty-four hours came boiling up at once. A boy had disappeared—had died, Emrys knew it—and here Ms. Joanna was lecturing him about phone etiquette?
“Like, say, a missing student?” he continued sharply. “Imagine how upset my parents would have been if I disappeared, and they found out my luxurious cell phone with its tracking app had been taken from me.”
Now Ms. Joanna’s smile finally fell. Emrys discovered he didn’t like the alternative better.
“I don’t appreciate your tone, Emrys,” the teacher practically growled.
A tense beat of silence followed, in which Emrys was sure he felt the temperature drop by a few degrees. Grown-ups didn’t call kids bad names—not usually, anyway—but the way Ms. Joanna had said his name brought to mind all the insults he’d been called back in Cape Cod. It was as if the name were a disgusting taste that she couldn’t scrape from her tongue quickly enough.
“Sorry …” he finally said in a small voice.
Ms. Joanna pulled Emrys’s phone from the drawer, then set it onto the desk. She pressed a finger against the glass screen protector and slid it slowly toward him.
“Don’t let me see this in my class again,” she said. “It truly would break my heart if you didn’t have it in a moment of need.”
Emrys kept his eyes on the carpeted floor as he stepped forward to retrieve the phone, only glancing up when he had it in hand.
Ms. Joanna was smiling again—but something was wrong. For a brief moment, the skin of her face looked … off. As if it were a mask that was stretched too tight, pulling in all the wrong places. Emrys barely restrained a gasp, but he couldn’t help taking an involuntary step backward.
But then the moment passed. Ms. Joanna’s face was normal, her pretty smile beaming with cold delight.
“Is everything all right?” she asked.
Emrys nodded, rubbing at his right eye. Was it his imagination or had he felt it buzzing? He thought again of the Yellow Court, putting dangerous relics right where they’d be most likely to hurt people. People like Brian Skupp?
Perhaps, in his keyed-up state, Emrys was looking for threats.
