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#Summary: Fifteen-year-old Orla thinks her life is nothing short of ordinary. Then, a knock upon her door changes her entire world forever.

Orla is told she is one of the Seraphium, a society of people gifted with special Talents that can bend time, space, and reality to their whims. In order to learn and master her abilities, Orla is enrolled in Bilarthus Academy, part of a secretive community where she makes her first friends with a girl whose touch can raise the dead, and another whose nightmares come to life.

Despite its charming exterior, danger lurks in the Academy. One of their teachers is found dead, and suspicion turns to Orla and her odd friends. To make matters worse, Orla can't be entirely sure one of them didn't commit the crime, not when her own Talent starts to behave violently in the presence of the enigmatic Obscrumancy instructor, Master Atlas Lazarian.

One thing is for certain: life will never be ordinary for Orla and her friends again.

#Book Contents: some violence and strong language. No graphic intimacy. Themes of fantasy bigotry and frightening imagery.

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ONE: A GIRL WITH HER SHADOW

Orla

Beneath the cafeteria's bothersome noise, Orla listened to the idle scuff of her sneakers swaying above the linoleum floor. The afternoon sun from the window behind her poured heat against her back. The northern seaboard of Maine usually cooled off by the time September rolled around, but summer was tenacious this year. The warmth clung to the pines and draped over the steep roofs and salt-stained shingles of Dirgemore, and it filled Oceancrest High School like a muggy, sticky cloud. Everyone was hot and irritated.

Orla exhaled as she picked over her lunch, plastic fork scraping against the tray underneath, sweat on her sunburnt neck prickling her skin. Her foot kept bumping against her backpack filled with the things she needed for the ninth grade. The stretched-out collar of her shirt gaped over thin, bony collarbone, the sleeves almost reaching her dry elbows.

Where the light flowed over her shoulders, it cast a shadow too long and large to belong to a fourteen-year-old girl. It swelled over the table and almost seemed to sit on the bench across from her.

Thoughts not belonging to Orla flitted against her mind. They popped up like white clovers in the grass after a spring rainstorm, brief pinpricks of light in the weeds.

"No," she answered, swallowing a bite of food. She tucked her untidy bangs behind her ears, the rest of the blonde strands gathered in a lopsided ponytail. "I can't do that, Morty."

No one else sat at the table, only Orla and her shadow. Around her, voices and laughter echoed and rang, and no one took notice of the dark, bizarre shape she was addressing. No one ever did.

Orla had been talking to her shadow for as long as she could remember, and it had always answered. She knew it wasn't normal, but then very little in Orla's life ever seemed normal—not as the other kids in their mountainous fishing town understood normal to be. They didn't have shadows that moved on their own, and they didn't hear voices that weren't there or sometimes make the lights go out in the house. She once told Mr. Byrne about her shadowy friend, and he had her stand in a corner with her nose to the wall until she admitted to being a liar. It took hours for her to relent. He didn't believe her. No one ever did.

So, Orla learned not to tell anyone about her shadow, and if odd things happened here or there, she simply accepted them as inevitabilities. She accepted that she would always be looked at oddly, and sometimes passersby shivered if they came too close. All people had their curiosities, and Morty was Orla's.

Of course, keeping her shadow to herself didn't mean her shadow kept to himself, and he was prone to the worst kind of mischief. That mischief at the moment included coaxing Orla into leaving school early.

"Mr. Byrne would be so mad," she told Morty, nudging aside her custard cup. The sun had turned it into a gelatinous soup, and Orla had no interest in it. She tore the soggy chicken nuggets into pieces and ate them one by one. "The principal would find out and call home. Mr. Byrne would murder me. He's still angry you trashed the pantry, and I had to hand over my whole allowance to replace the junk!"

Morty pulled himself up from the table in feathery, transparent ribbons, wavering until he formed the somewhat solid shape of a crow. The strange creature flapped its wings to hop onto her shoulder, leaving behind a shadow perfectly suitable for a teen girl. Orla felt nothing but the slightest pressure of talons against her t-shirt like a comforting hand being laid there.

"Definitely not," she said, chewing, sneaker bouncing against her bag. "Because leaving early is much different than making a mess in a pantry. Mr. Byrne never lets me wander around Dirgemore; he'd have a fit."

Mr. Byrne was Orla's foster father. Being fostered was another oddity that earned her scorn among her peers, though, unlike the few other foster children who'd drifted through Dirgemore's school district in Orla's lifetime, she had only ever had the one foster father for as far back as she could remember. Mr. Byrne was sour and sad and sometimes mean, but he'd always done right by Orla. He'd had a wife some time ago, though they didn't talk about that. They didn't talk about much, which suited her fine.

"Ugh, she's so weird."

"She's talking to herself again."

"She does that all the time."

A voice tittered, another shushing it, though Orla could still hear them. She stared at the table, at the sticky beads of perspiration running down the side of her juice box. Morty's claws pinched her skin.

Stupid, she thought. They're stupid.

"Hey, Tiernan!"

Orla turned her head to see a trio approach her. She grimaced when she recognized Marissa Mallard and her idiot friends Andre and Joan, the latter pair two years older than them but still freshmen. Marissa's cheeks had a deep red glow from the sweltering heat, and Andre's shirt had wet spots under his armpits.

None of the three noticed the dark, haunting bird relaxing on Orla's shoulder.

"Don't cha ever get tired of talking to yourself?" Marissa asked, sounding almost friendly. "No one wants to sit with you in case you have some kind of fit."

Orla rolled her eyes, aimlessly moving food around on her tray.

"Tell us, how was detention, Tiernan?" Marissa jabbed. She propped her foot on the bench. "You had another one yesterday, right? Didya have to climb the gate again to get out? Or did the janitor take pity on you and wait?"

"S'not like she has anything to go home to," Joan scoffed. "Her dad's always drunk." Andre tittered.

"He's not even her dad." Marissa sneered. "I doubt he even realizes she's not home."

Normally such taunting didn't bother Orla much. She'd gotten it often enough from students and sometimes oblivious teachers who didn't realize she could hear them. However, her week had been long and tiresome, and yesterday, watching through the windows as her peers got picked up by their parents had needled at something small and vulnerable inside of Orla. Her patience had been worn thin. "Don't you have a pond to go back to, Mallard?"

The other girl's mouth flattened and her eyes narrowed, but when she started forward, Joan gripped her arm.

"We're gonna get in trouble," she said.

"Yeah. Get her after school," Andre added.

Marissa leaned back and dropped her foot, shaking off Joan's hand. "Like I'd even bother with the little freak."

Orla stared at the table, the back of her eyes feeling suspiciously warm, pressure building between her brows. The feeling radiated outward like the band of another migraine. "Quack," she said under her breath, and she saw Marissa stiffen out of the corner of her eye, but she kept walking. Smirking, Orla returned to her food despite her lack of appetite.

Her custard cup wiggled and tipped. Frowning, Orla blinked at it—and the custard cup started to rise from the tray, carefully clasped between two long, shadowy fingers. Orla held her breath.

"Don't you dare," she hissed, heart leaping into her throat. The cup rose more, her shadowy hanger-on seemingly not hearing a word she said. It was yet another oddity Orla had come to accept over the years. Morty—whether or not he was a figment of her active imagination or something real—did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, with little input from her. "Morty!"

He whipped the custard through the air, and it splattered against Marissa Mallard's back. She shrieked and spun around—finding Orla wide-eyed and shocked with a lunch tray suspiciously absent of a custard cup.

"You little rat—!"

Orla lurched out of the way as Marissa lunged, plastic clattering as her tray hit the floor. Someone screamed, and someone cheered—benches screeching as they jerked backward and sneakers scuffed the linoleum. Something sharp on the table's leg dragged across Orla's knee and she winced, but being smaller and skinnier than her peers had its advantages. She ducked out of reach of Mallard's grasping hands and Joan's kicks. Orla scrambled out the other side and dove for the aisle.

Her shoulder bashed into another table and a girl shrieked when cold milk splashed in her lap. She threw a bowl of half-eaten applesauce at a freshman who started cackling at her—and before Orla made it to the next row, food was flying. Something wet splashed against the back of her head, and Orla felt it drip from her loose ponytail.

She ran for the doorway.

"Stupid, bitch—!"

Marissa's sudden, nasty swearing warned Orla a moment too late, and suddenly a foot collided with her ankle, sending her crashing into the floor. Something knocked her in the back of the head, and Orla stumbled as she regained her feet, seeing stars. Her knee stung.

Marissa grabbed her loose sleeve in a fist and twisted, yanking Orla closer. "You're not so smart," she snarled. "Are ya, trash? That's all you are. Mouthy trash with no family who wants you, trash that won't amount to anything in your whole damn life."

An ominous clicking sounded in Orla's ear as she swiped her messy bangs from her face. Morty decided he'd had enough of Marissa Mallard and her stupid friends. His black, shadowy claws flashed out, raking across the hand holding Orla in place. Orla had only enough time to see a burst of red before Marissa threw her down again. Her elbows collided with an empty bench.

"She cut me! She cut me!" Marissa shrieked above the din. "She's got a knife! That freak has a knife!"

Orla ran. The heavy door clattered against the wall as she threw it open, sprinting into the empty corridor. She'd forgotten her bag and knew she'd return to find it covered in juice and creamed corn, if she found it at all, if someone didn't throw it in a garbage can or draw obscene pictures on it in Sharpie again. She kept running despite the pain in her leg.

She dashed into a quiet, barren bathroom, panting, and barricaded herself in a stall. The echoing drip of a leaky faucet accompanied her shakey breaths and short, irritated gasps.

Marissa would tell everyone what happened, and Orla knew she'd be in trouble again once a teacher found her. A knife. Orla didn't have a knife, but she'd be lucky if Principal Gorn didn't suspend her over this. Mr. Byrne was going to be furious. More furious than she'd ever seen before.

"You shouldn't have done that," she said as she sank onto the toilet and buried her sweaty face in her hands. Her leg throbbed, and a glance down showed a nasty scrape on her knee, covered in dust from her tumble across the floor. Orla swiped at it and grimaced. "Morty, I'm going to be in so much trouble."

The crow still on her shoulder leaned in close, cool feathers brushing her warm cheek. The impression of words filled her mind like a voice speaking at a distance, rising and falling, the intonation clearer than the words themselves. Reassurance. Safety. Her brown eyes flickered, gazing at the graffitied door as she muddled through the final word. Promise. No apology. Never an apology, never remorse, because Morty did what Morty wished to do and would never change.

Orla sat there alone, a girl with her shadow, and told herself it would be all right. She told herself the bullies and their words didn't matter, and one day, she'd leave Dirgemore to find something more for herself out there. She kept repeating soft, shaky platitudes until she could breathe, and her eyes stopped burning. She kept going, and hoped she could believe herself one day.

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A DREADFUL THING is my own creation and property. Its covers and chapter art are original to me and also my property. Please do not reuse my work, in whole or in part. If you see my work being misused, please inform me.

This ORIGINAL DRAFT is only available on Wattpad. If you are reading it anywhere else, it has been uploaded illegally.

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