Elysium Academy: Book One Read online

  I pushed myself to standing and gripped the edge of the window sash, which was metal, but still not hot. If anything, it felt like an ice cube. My senses must have been totally whacked.

  “Kid!” I heard him crying behind me. “Don't do that!”

  Why did people keep insisting on telling me to do—what they wanted? The firefighter, this guy, the whole fucking world, it felt like. Besides, where could he possibly take me that was safer than out of the fire?

  The window was sticking. I tugged harder, Meladryne’s tiny sword digging into my flesh. Behind me, I heard the snap and fizzle and crashing sound of something catching fire and collapsing.

  “Listen, I know this is crazy, but—”

  “Stop!” I cried. Finally, the window gave way and the pane soared open, cracking under the stress of the heat and shattering. I took a deep breath, a bitter taste of the air around me, clutched the figurine even tighter, and swung my legs out the window.

  I could barely see below me. The smoke was billowing out in dark plumes, clouding out any view I might have had of the firemen and what was surely a gathering crowd. I imagined somewhere below me was one of those giant trampoline things you see in cartoons that people jump onto and bounce off unharmed.

  With my luck, I'd smack right into the pavement and a cartoon angel version of myself would drift out of my body, strumming a harp.

  My hands were tight on the edge of the sill. I knew I had to jump. There was no way out. The hot air blasting out from behind me sent my hair flinging out into the breeze, streaming and streaking, and I knew that it would be easy enough for me to just follow that breeze, to push and jump and hopefully land with this stupid warrior princess toy and nothing else to my name.

  Then I slipped.

  “No!” I screamed. But I wasn't falling. I was...dangling. A sharp pain shot from my wrist to my elbow as my body abruptly stopped its descent. Someone was holding me. My life coach—the junkie.

  “I'm telling you, kid,” he said. “Just—“

  “I don't know who the fuck you are,” I said, coughing. “But you're crazy and I hate you. This is all your fault!”

  I knew it wasn't his fault, but I needed someone to blame who wasn't me. I was rambling.

  “I'll get you back in here,” he said. His hand was incredibly firm around my wrist, his eyes gleaming in a way that they hadn't when he was lying strung out on the sidewalk in front of the bodega. Maybe the sandwich had reinvigorated him.

  Of course my mind was making jokes at a time like this.

  “But I need you to trust me. I need you to be willing to hear what I have to tell you.”

  Dangling beneath me, my left palm was sweating around the figurine. I was afraid to even look down at it. Another blast of hot air from inside the apartment ruffled my hair and chilled the sweat on my skin.

  “Do you trust me?” he said.

  “I don't even know you,” I said.

  All I cared about was this stupid figurine. And in that moment, I turned to look at it, look down at my dangling hand, and I almost screamed.

  It was ashes. Meladryne was scorched to nothing. Nothing but a blackened piece of plastic that snapped and crumbled into dust. When I shifted my hand to look at it, another gust of wind came and carried the dust off to God knows where.

  I wanted to scream. I wanted to die.

  If there was any fight in me, it had totally left.

  At that, I lost consciousness. I felt the distinct sensation of being pulled upward. Carried, almost. Like I was drifting.

  I'm so sorry, Scott, I thought. But if I die, maybe I'll at least get to see you.

  “MISS. MISS! ARE YOU all right?”

  My eyes flew open and I instantly regretted it. The air was acrid and stinging. I squeezed them shut again, tears forming in the corners.

  I wasn't dead. There was no way being dead could be this fucking painful.

  I opened my eyes again.

  The firefighter with the dad bod was staring into my face, his expression streaked with sweat and worry.

  I sat up slightly and realized that one of those silvery fire blankets was covering me, like I’d just run a marathon. They'd set me on the sidewalk, a good half block away from the building, which I could barely make out at this point as anything other than a column of black smoke.

  A pinprick light flashed in front of me and I squinted.

  “Ahh!” I cried.

  “Seems like your reflexes are okay.” The firefighter chuckled, clicked the light off, and tucked it in his pocket. “You're incredibly lucky, miss,” he said. “To put it bluntly, you shouldn't have survived that fall.”

  “Fall?” I didn't realize I'd said it out loud until I noticed the puzzled look on his face. I swallowed, my throat like sandpaper. “I didn't fall,” I said raspily. “I was pulled back up. I was in the apartment”

  “I'm not sure what you remember,” the firefighter interrupted. “But you fell from that window three stories onto the sidewalk. You landed pretty badly. We were sure that there was going to be some kind of break, but”

  As if on cue, two EMTs rushed beside him: a girl who looked about my age with a no nonsense look on her face and a woman in her 50s with close cropped gray hair.

  “But I...” This didn't make any sense. I knew I hadn't fallen. I'd wanted to fall and I didn't.

  “We'll take it from here. Thanks, Chip.”

  The firefighter nodded and I heard his footsteps jogging away as I was dimly aware of the EMTs palpating my muscles, looking for anything broken. I opened my eyes and opened my palm, the one that had been holding the figurine. It was black, streaked with ash. All that remained of my memories.

  I wailed. Like a fucking baby.

  “Oh! Does that hurt?” asked the chipper younger EMT, who was flexing one of my legs back and forth.

  I shook her off. “No it doesn't,” I said tersely. “I'm fine”

  “You don't know that you're fine,” said the older one sternly. “You could have internal bleeding, a fracture.”

  “I don't,” I said. “I swear to God, if there were something wrong, I would know.”

  Physically, anyway. Mentally, the jury was still out.

  The two of them exchanged a look and backed off.

  “You just tell us when you're ready for the exam,” said the younger one, handing me a bottle of water. “We’ll let you rest for a second.”

  A radio crackled on one of their shoulders and they whispered back into it, then darted off to some other cluster of emergency workers. I stayed in my huddle in my space blanket, holding the water and my ears ringing.

  I couldn't quite put together what had happened.

  But it turned out I wouldn't have to.

  “Kid, you made it.”

  The back of my neck stiffened at the sound of the voice, but when I turned around it was my junkie life coach.

  Coming from around the corner.

  I blinked. Maybe I had suffered a head trauma. Unconsciously, I twisted and untwisted the top of the bottle of water.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. “Who—what—are you some kind of fucking shapeshifter.”

  “Huh?” He looked confused.

  “I would have gotten out of there fine. I would have still had that stupid figurine if you hadn't, I don't know, appeared or whatever you did.”

  “Kid, you are in a bad way,” he said. “Because I do not know what you are talking about. I just have something to—”

  “You were up there,” I said. “In the apartment!”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “The one that’s on fire?”

  “Yes!” My hands balled up into fists, the plastic of the water bottle crinkling. The junkie gestured for it, and I handed it over.

  “All right, now this is for your own good,” he said. Then he screwed the water bottle top off and threw the entire thing in my face.

  I stared at him, face dripping. And, I admit, I had to actually laugh.

  “Whoa!” yelled a firefighter,
who darted in between us. “What’s going on here? Miss, is this man harassing you?”

  “Hey, man, she looked hot, and—”

  “I think you’d better be going,” said the firefighter. He gave the junkie a not-too-subtle shove.

  “Hey!” The junkie sidestepped out of the way, spinning back to me. “Hang on. I got just one thing I’m supposed to give you, kid.”

  With a sigh, he shook off the drops from his hand and drew a folded piece of creamy colored paper out of...not his pocket. I wasn’t sure where he got it from. But maybe I was delusional. He couldn't have just conjured a piece of paper.

  “Here,” he said. “Read this and you'll understand. And when you want to learn more, you'll know what to do.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” My head started to swim, the ringing in my ears growing stronger. Was this guy trying to recruit me for some kind of cult after I'd suffered some trauma? Did he somehow think that I'd be easier to get into his stupid movement just because my brother had died, and then I'd almost fallen my fiery death out of an apartment?

  “Yeah, I don't think so,” I said. I unceremoniously ripped the paper into shreds.

  “Fine, kid,” he said. “Have it your way. But they’re gonna get you that letter.” He grinned. The firefighter lurched closer, and the junkie backed off. “I’m goin’, I’m goin’,” he said.

  “Letter? What are you talking about?” I was feeling dizzy.

  Even worse, the EMTs were back.

  “Sounds like you've found your voice,” joked the older one.

  “Let's get you examined, huh?”

  “Sure,” I said, unable to fight back anymore. “Whatever.”

  I shrugged off the space blanket, ready to follow them, but the younger one piped up. “Miss? Are these yours?”

  I turned. She was holding up...Meladryne. The little plastic warrior girl. Unharmed. A little scuffed, but not burned up, not ash.

  And a letter. Identical to the one I’d just ripped to shred.

  My mouth actually fell open. I looked around wildly for the life coach guy, expecting that I’d just been punked or he’d be doing a kind of David Blaine flourish, but when I finally caught sight of him down the block, he wasn't.

  “Like I told you!” he called out. “Whoever’s trying to get you that letter reeeeally wants you to read it! All the answers are there!”

  I grabbed Meladryne and took the letter from the EMT, and I didn't rip it up this time.

  “Who—what the fuck are you? Hey!” I yelled after the guy, because he was walking away.

  I tried to get to my feet, but my limbs were too weak, and I fell back on my ass. By the time I regained my standing posture, he had disappeared.

  “Okay, okay,” said the older EMT. “Enough excitement for today. Tina, help me carry her? Three, two...”

  They lifted me onto a gurney, and I clutched the letter and my little D&D toy for dear life.

  If there were answers on this thing, then after all this, I was going to fucking read it.

  Chapter Four

  It wouldn’t have been my first time getting approached by a cult. California’s full of weirdos. Most of them are pretty harmless— “learning to be your best self” type stuff. The super messed-up death cults are few and far between. As far as I know, I’d never been approached by any of those.

  Until, possibly, now. Because the piece of paper that old hobo/mysterious funeral dude—which I was still extremely confused by, to be clear—had all the makings of something incredibly screwed up. “This is to notify you of your admittance to Elysium Academy, given you standing as a guardian of the suitable age,” the letter began.

  There were at least two big time red flags right there in that first sentence, the obvious one being: what the hell was Elysium Academy? My first thought was that it was one of those schools that teaches underserved women programming skills for future careers in the tech industry—there were a million of those in the Bay Area. Scott had even pushed me to attend one of them! “It’s just a few months of intense study, and you could end up with a nice six-figure job!” he’d always encourage. The issue was that I had less than zero interest in programming.

  Then I remembered my encounter with the girl at the deli, trying to get me into her rehab program. So many this was some kind of recovery thing? Only problem was I had never touched any drugs, and never would.

  But what was really throwing me off in that first sentence of the letter was the phrase “guardian of the suitable age.” I couldn’t fathom what that could possibly mean. I wasn’t anybody’s legal guardian—I didn’t even have a dog or cat, let alone a child that I was responsible for. And why would that plus my age make me admissible to some sort of school?

  It all made so little sense, which was why my brain was drifting toward “cult.” Elysium Academy? Easily could’ve been some weird new age-y bullshit school. Guardian? Sounds like the vague kind of title for members that a cult would use. But how had they tracked me down? Was somebody sifting through obituaries and looking for vulnerable young women without any living relatives left? Because if so—honestly it wouldn’t be the worst cult recruitment strategy.

  The letter went on to say a few other things that made no sense to me. I even read through it three times to make sure. Just a lot of buzzwords and phrases like “creating Balance” and “fostering a sense of protection and love.”

  Just a lot of bullshit, bullshit, and oh...more bullshit!

  There was quite literally only one thing in the entire letter that I actually understood: “To discuss your pending matriculation further, please report to Fisherman’s Wharf tomorrow at 1:00 PM sharp. A representative will gladly meet you there.”

  And in a way, that might’ve actually been the most unbelievable thing in the entire letter. Because no cult worth their salt would actively recruit at a total tourist attraction like Fisherman's Wharf. What, were they going to wine and dine me at the Applebee’s? Were they going to show me the time of my life at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.? Hard pass. Not to mention the fact that Fisherman's Wharf was always teeming with people. If they wanted to try any funny business with me, there’d be hundreds of eyewitnesses.

  Maybe that’s why I ultimately made the decision to go. Because what was the worst that could happen?

  AT THE VERY LEAST, I’ll get a story out of it, I told myself. And the alternative is a motel room, crying, and drowning my sorrows in even more booze. I’d hopped on a street car, and, for the first time since a middle school class trip, was headed north toward the wharf, like some stereotypical scene from any number of movies and TV shows set in San Francisco.

  Cue the Full House theme song, which actually felt pretty relatable—what ever did happen to predictability?

  In normal times I wouldn’t want to be caught dead at a tourist attraction. But these were not normal times—not even close. And I kind of liked the idea of it being very public. Everything about me right now, from my eyeliner-crusted eyes to my smoke-tinged Oakland A’s shirt, screamed “low-hanging serial killer fruit,” and even though I didn’t have much to live for, I didn’t think I wanted to die that particular way.

  There was also the not so small matter of the junkie dude—or whatever he was—who’d given me the letter in the first place. Either I was going insane—which granted, given all I’d been through recently was a very real possibility—or he’d literally teleported from a burning apartment down to the street, totally unharmed. And then somehow had not one, but two, mysterious letters to give me. And then made my D&D figure reappear like a literal magic trick.

  Again, maybe it was all in my imagination, but I couldn’t help but be intrigued by whatever was going on.

  As I got off the street car, I took in the salty air. The letter hadn’t been clear about what to do once I actually arrived at my destination. I figured whoever it was had done a good enough job of tracking me down to this point that they wouldn’t have any problem finding me in a crowd full of people. So I dec
ided to wander over to the only spot in this godforsaken place that was worth a damn: the sea lion colony.

  I made my way to the pier that they’d basically made their home. You could always find them there, bathing in the sun without a single care in the world. Every once in a while one would dive into the water for a quick drip, or somebody would come over and toss them some fish. I couldn’t help but smile as I watched them there. It seemed like a good life—a peaceful one. I would’ve happily traded places with one of them. Teach me how to relax, sea lions.

  “Charming creatures, aren’t they?” called a voice from behind me.

  I turned to see a woman with bright pink hair, looking effortlessly cool in simple jeans and a black hoodie. She probably was only five or so years older than me.

  “They don’t suck,” I replied. I eyed her up and down without trying to seem too obvious. Was this the person I was supposed to be meeting? Because she certainly didn’t look like any sort of brainwashed cultie.

  She smirked, as if she knew exactly what I was thinking. “Octavia Kennedy,” she said, bringing her hand forward for a fist bump. “But please, just call me Tavi. Well, until you get to campus, and then you’ll have to call me Professor Kennedy. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Because you are, I suspect, just the girl I’m looking for.”

  “If you’re talking about that letter, then yeah. I guess I’m the one you’re looking for.”

  Maybe there was nothing outwardly nefarious about her, but appearances can be deceiving, and after the fire, I trusted absolutely nothing. I was going to be as vague as possible with anything I said to her until I knew exactly what her deal was.

  “You’re probably wondering why we’re having you meet us here,” she said. Once again, it felt like she was reading my mind. “I swear this isn’t any sort of bizarre murder cult.” At that, she started giggling to herself.

  Wait a second.

  I gave her another look over. Pink hair. Jeans. Hoodie. This was the style of a very specific type of person—the kind that’s only a few degrees better than a cult.