Elysium Academy: Book One Read online

  “Wait.”

  “No,” I said, before I could stop myself, and twisted my elbow, trying to spiral out of his grasp. It was no use.

  “I’m not going to hurt you.” His tone was serious—probably hard not to sound serious with an Adam Driver baritone—but somehow not threatening. Maybe I was well and truly wacked in the head, but if angels were real, then why would one of them beat me up for no reason?

  My captor narrowed his dark eyes at me, looking more curious than predatory. “Where did you come from?”

  “San Francisco,” I said. “Or you mean just now?” I looked down at my legs—still solidly visible. No fucking clue—I’d just appeared. Or re-appeared.

  When I looked back up, my face must have shown my confusion, because Mr. Intense dropped my wrist.

  “Did you see anything?” He put his hands on his hips, which, combined with his tall, lean frame and the whole rolled-up-shirtsleeves-and-tie thing, made me want to stand up and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I felt both irked that he had that effect on me and a little...

  ...something.

  I felt a little something.

  I folded my arms, leaned into one hip, and shook my head. “Just the flash grenade.” An idea popped into my head—maybe this was some kind of dumb hazing thing. Did Elysium Academy have frats? Because this guy looked like the type—although less Animal House and more the one brother who ends up elected to congress with a perfect blonde wife.

  “The...” His brow furrowed, then he relaxed in recognition. When he wasn’t hyper-intense, he actually looked kind of...handsome. There was really no other word for it. “Hot” might have been technically accurate, but there was something to the chiseledness of his features, the slight wave to his auburn hair, that transcended hot. Hot was a dude you swiped right on and eventually got tired of.

  This guy was...more than that.

  “Fine. Well, you should go now,” he said, as if that was that.

  “I should?” I repeated.

  The corner of his mouth twitched. “A moment ago you couldn’t wait to leave.”

  He had me there. I was still starving, I realized, and if the rapidly cooling breeze that swirled in from the columns was any indication, it was definitely getting late in the day.

  “Marius!” called a voice from deep in the corridor. I started, surprised—I’d forgotten anyone else was even around. This intense guy—Marius, I supposed—looked over his shoulder.

  “One second,” he called, then looked back at me. “You’re a new student?”

  It wasn’t a question. And given my dirty Oakland A’s raglan and—ugh—smoky eau de parfum, there was little evidence to the contrary. If the rest of Elysium’s students were as clean and crisp as Marius, then definitely did not look the part. But something in me still bristled at the implication.

  “We’ll see,” I said. Can’t be new somewhere if you don’t stay.

  Was it my imagination, or did one of his brows flicker interest? His expression stayed stoic. “The dean’s office is across the quad. On the left, second building.” He nodded in the general direction. "And you are?”

  “Meladryne,” I blurted out. Oh, what the fuck, Quinn? “Uh, Dawnbringer.”

  Marius jerked his head in what I assume was his version of a nod. “Welcome to Elysium, Meladryne.” His dusky eyes flared with danger. “If I were you, I’d forget about everything you saw here.”

  YOU KNOW WHAT’S THE best part of the first day of school? Making new friends.

  That’s all I could think as I hightailed it across campus. Of course, I was being entirely ironic. That guy didn't look like he wanted to kill me, to be sure, but he sure wasn't that friendly either.

  It was closer to dusk now, and the campus had filled up. No one seemed to notice the one random girl slipping out of the giant temple building, because they were too invested in giggling and waving and rushing across the quads to say hi—or some of them were. Not everyone was so sociable. There were definitely some people who looked too cool for school. And everyone was kind of ridiculously gorgeous, which was disconcerting. I kept my head hunched down and tucked my hair behind my ears, my shoulders curved in a bit over my stupid baseball T-shirt as I ducked my way through supermodel after supermodel. Clearly, I'd spent too much time around computer nerds, because I felt completely out of my element. And I wasn't bad looking—I mean, not a supermodel, but I wouldn't break any mirrors.

  Among literal angels, though? Guess I was a bit more average.

  Not wanting to ask for directions lest I run into someone like my pal Marius back in the temple, I just sort of wound my way across the grass quad in the direction of a line that was forming out of one of the other alabaster buildings. I realized that some of the people striding busily across the swept flagstones and verdant lawns were wearing uniforms. Everyone looked like an extremely preppy investment banker. Well, not the girls—they had on blue plaid skirts, white collared button downs, and even little ties. Extremely Harry Potter, if you asked me.

  A willowy girl with pale lavender hair gave me a serious side-eye as I brushed past in my grungy shorts.

  Fair point. It wasn’t like I could brag about my fashion choices.

  Finally, I got to the tail end of the line and, not knowing what else to do, just kind of stood there behind some strapping Adonis with wavy blonde hair, who barely blinked at me as I shuffled into place. Suited me fine.

  “Excuse me?”

  I turned around to see someone behind me. Well, behind and below me. This chick was extremely petite. She had giant brown doe-like eyes and strawberry-blonde hair in a ponytail. If it weren't for her impressively curvy figure, I would have taken her for like twelve years old.

  “Is this the registration line?” she asked, her voice perky and clear.

  I honestly didn't know. “I honestly don't know,” I told her. “I'm just waiting here because I thought it would be a thing to do.”

  The girl giggled. It occurred to me that I myself had probably never giggled in my entire life. Which wasn't to say that I judged girly girls at all. I was definitely Team Bechdel Test. But I always felt a little strange, being basically raised by my geek brother, not knowing how to be graceful the same way some girls could do it instinctively. Especially those that were like a foot shorter than me.

  “I'm Lucy,” she said, and stuck out her hand. I shook it, despite feeling like my own palm must be grimy and disgusting.

  “Quinn,” I said.

  Lucy smiled. “So let me guess: you're primarily restorative, right? Or, no—you definitely could have some protective in you. Unless—”

  “Lucy,” someone said in front of us. A guy. “Like Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds?”

  “I'll say,” said another of his friends.

  Lucy faltered and blushed, clearly embarrassed.

  “Oh, I mean—”

  In front of us, the guys started singing a really off-key version of the Beatles song. Lucy gave me a private little just between us girls grimace. I gave her back an expression that said does this happen all the time? And her response: kind of, but it's fine. My response? No, it's not.

  I turned on my heel. “Hey, dudes? Save it for the a capella groups.”

  The Adonis guy and his friend—an equally strapping specimen—looked at me, looked at each other, and burst out laughing.

  “Yeah, right,” they said.

  “Shouldn't you be strumming a little harp when you sing?” I went on. “You know, fluttering up above the ground in a white robe? Where's your halo?”

  That caught them off guard. They looked at each other again with a definite is this chick crazy? look on their faces.

  I didn't care. “Just don't bother her, okay? It's not like she named herself or wrote the song.”

  “Yo, we were just having fun,” Bro One said.

  “Yeah, fun,” Bro Two said. Real intelligent, that one.

  “You know what? Whatever. Why don't we let the ladies go first?” Bro One said, snarling.


  I glanced back at Lucy, who looked utterly terrified. She was definitely not the confrontational type, which struck me as strange, given that the job of guardians was supposed to be, oh, saving people from danger or whatever.

  I answered for both of us. “I think we will, thank you very much. Lucy?” I said. Without waiting for her to respond, I grabbed her wrist, just like Marius had grabbed mine, and led her into the building.

  “Oh. My. Gosh,” Lucy breathed as soon as we were inside the darkened foyer. Above us, a gleaming chandelier glowed with blue fire that somehow managed to warm up the space despite its icy color. “That was crazy. I can't believe you stood up to them. They were like six times our size!”

  I shrugged. “I mean, it's not like I invited them to throw down. I just more or less politely asked them to stop. I'm sure you get sick of that.”

  Lucy shrugged. “I mean, it's not my favorite song. But yeah...”

  “So they need to leave you alone,” I said. This day was giving me whiplash. From Temple Guy to Lucy, I'd really rocketed from one side of the friendliness spectrum to the other. But even if she was a little more chipper than I was used to, even chipper people didn't deserve to be harassed by Dude Bros.

  I took a look around, trying to take stock of our surroundings. I realized that I'd never actually determined whether or not we were waiting in the right line or not, so I started hoping that Lucy would know more than I would. But she just looked at me expectantly.

  “I'm not the leader here,” I explained. “I'm not the kind of person you want to follow.”

  “Oh.” Lucy sounded genuinely surprised. Her big brown eyes followed my gaze around the arching marble hall. There was a set of stairs that went up to some second floor, and a bunch of alcoves that seemed to lead to various offices. This was much more in line with what I had expected—not that I really had any expectations whatsoever about what a college for supernatural guardians would look like, but...

  “I think it's this way,” Lucy said, interrupting my thoughts. She pointed at an archway in the back right corner of the atrium, where a glittering gold sign in the air said WELCOME. No, it wasn't actually a sign, I realized; it was just letters hanging in the air.

  “All right,” I said. I marched resolutely across the floor, realizing too late that I had already told Lucy that I wasn't the kind of person who should be followed. But she still did.

  “When you get in?” she asked. I've been here for a few days. “My sisters all came to drop me off. I have six, which is kind of crazy, I know. And I'm the last one to go here. The baby of the family. So I guess everyone was feeling all sentimental about it. No idea.” She shrugged. “I'm just hoping that I don't get some jerk for a roommate. All these girls seem pretty stuck up.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I hadn't even thought about roommates. I hadn't shared a bedroom with anyone since Scott and I were kids. And I wasn't looking forward to starting again.

  “Next?” called an airy feminine voice from inside the alcove.

  “I guess that's us,” I said. “Er, you first.” The last thing I needed was anyone thinking I was any kind of example.

  “Cool!” she chirped, and strode right into the office. I hung back for a few minutes until she emerged, holding a parchment envelope with presumably all of her registration paperwork. Her face looked strangely ashen.

  “What happened?” I said, more than a little alarmed. Lucy just shook her head, forcing a smile.

  “Nothing. It’s all fine! Just me.” She smiled bigger. “The welcome assembly’s starting in a few minutes.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Cool. Thanks for the heads up. Guess I’ll...”

  I drifted into the office. Inside it was a pearly shade of white-blue—the only color Elysium seemed to use in its decorating—and a pleasant-faced woman was sitting at a golden desk, a pair of silver glasses perched on her nose and a nameplate reading MS. CHARLOTTE TREMAINE, ADMINISTRATION. Her hair was a pale pink, which reminded me immediately of Tavi, the woman who’d gotten me here. Not an angel investor after all. I wondered if I’d see her again.

  “Excuse me?” the woman said, her irritated tone implying I’d ignored her once before.

  “Sorry,” I said, and took another step inside. The office was full of all kinds of curling plants and greenery, too, which was a bit overwhelming up close. Especially because I was pretty sure some of the plants were moving?

  “Don’t mind my babies,” Ms. Tremaine said briskly. “They’re just cranky because I haven’t watered them yet today. You know how medicinal herbs can get.” She gave me an inside-joke kind of smile I didn’t know how to return.

  “Uh, sure,” I said. I blinked a few times. “Uh—”

  “Name?”

  “Quinn Everson,” I said. She nodded crisply, snapped her fingers, and summoned an expanding file of parchment from...somewhere. With a flick of the wrist, she shuffled through them, forward and backward through presumably a host of alphabetized information, until she found what she was looking for. The paper extracted, she pulled it close to her eyes, read, and frowned. She looked at me, then at the paper, then back at me. Then she put the paper down.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Quinn, you said? There seems to be a mistake—”

  My heart caught in my throat. I didn’t know what kind of mistake there could be here, but at this point, no mistakes were good. I’d put basically everything I owned, everything in my life on hold and on the line to get here, and I didn’t want to leave until I had at least a few more answers.

  “—these papers have you listed as Mr. Quinn Everson.”

  Oh. I sighed with actual relief. “That’s it? Happens all the time.” I shrugged. “I get junk mail addressed to ‘Dear Sir’ all the time. Quinn can be a guy’s name too.”

  Ms. Tremaine the secretary looked relieved, too. “Ah, well. I do apologize. I’ve been working this desk for...” she counted on her fingers, “well, at least two hundred years, and I pride myself on never letting these kinds of silly little goof-ups through. Ah ah ah!” She smacked at a vine that had started to tap at her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said to me. “Some pothos plants have no manners.” The vine shrank back at her rebuke.

  “Ha, yeah.” I kind of wanted out of the creepy plant room. “Look, I’ll just take it, don’t worry about it. Like I said, happens all the time.”

  Ms. Tremaine handed over the sheaf. “That’s your class schedule, a map, your dormitory building assignment.” She glanced at a complicated fountain-like structure in the corner. “Oh my, but you’d better hurry. Dean Serathiel is about to give the assembly.” The vine creeped back onto her shoulder. “Bad!” she smacked it.

  “Great, sounds good!” I said, hustling out of there. I had no intention of going to an actual assembly. As soon as I found this dormitory building, I was going to take a goddamn shower and then try to figure out my next move.

  But no sooner was I out of the office than I found myself face-to-face with Lucy.

  “Hey!” she said. “Everything good? You took a while to grab those.” She looked at my “Mr. Quinn Everson” paperwork.

  “Yeah, just a typo,” I said hurriedly. “Uh—”

  “Assembly time?” She beamed. “Don’t worry. I know where the auditorium is.”

  So much for my quick escape.

  Chapter Six

  Elysium Academy reminded me a lot of your classic California universities—your Pepperdines, your Berkeleys. Green, expansive, and looking like it was funded by someone by deep pockets. But, as we crossed campus with the rest of the students toward the assembly, I had to wonder what kind of alumni this place even had. Did they make money? Or did they not need money? Who built all this stuff—these gleaming actual ivory towers, these manicured topiaries, these little gardens?

  Next to me, Lucy was chattering a mile a minute, and I was only half listening, too focused on how crazy this place was and how far my plan had gone off the rails. I thought I was going to steal some high-thread-count sheets, m
aybe some Nespresso pods and protein bars, and hightail it out of the luxury coding camp slash investment firm that I’d thought Tavi was talking about. But now I was...very much somewhere else.

  “Whoa,” I said in spite of myself as I caught sight of the huge structure ahead of us. “Is that the auditorium?”

  I asked because it looked like a fucking Coliseum. Huge, stone, and with tiny pennant flags flying from the roof. Lucy laughed.

  “No, that’s the philodiscus stadium.”

  “Philo...discus?”

  “The...sport?” she said, a bit hesitantly, like I might be stupid, or as though I’d never heard of football. “Oh, look, speak of the devil!”

  In front of us strode a bunch of guys in matching dark blue polo shirts and pants with a racing stripe down the legs—sports uniforms, I had to think. By their swagger and musculature, I had to assume these guys were the big men on campus. And by the way all the girls’ eyes were glued to them, I had to assume they were at the top of the social ladder, too.

  “Oh my Gods!” Lucy put a hand to her mouth and giggled. The team—seven guys total—cut into the path ahead of us as she watched. I recognized one of them, I realized. The guy at the very front.

  And he spotted me, too.

  Lucy noticed him noticing me, because she turned to me, eyes wide and mouth a bit open.

  “Why is Marius looking at you?”

  “Who?” I said, tearing my eyes off the auburn-haired guy from the temple. Had I walked in on some weird hazing ritual for the team? That didn’t seem worth the intensity of his warning. But then again, college athletes could be intense. And dicks.

  “Marius,” she said. “He’s a third-year. Made the team as a striker freshman year, super impressive, and now he’s captain. I mean, I’m not a huge fan, but my sisters filled me in on everything. You kind of end up a fan by default.”

  I slid a glance her way.

  “Oh, no, I know what you’re thinking,” Lucy said, “and I do not have a crush on him! I swear I’m not a groupie. He has a girlfriend, anyway. The rest of the team, though—”