Chapter 6

Lin was, frankly, frozen. Thankfully not literally, though she wasn't sure how long that would last. She stood halted in the doorway with Genevieve at her back as the screams of rage filled her ears, the sharp crack of something breaking resounding in the otherwise silent hall.

Lin started to turn on her heel and declare she'd sleep outside if need be, but Genevieve grinned at her, quick, disarming, before shoving open the door. Silence fell behind them, and Lin held still, as if she could avoid detection like she used to be able to when she played her beloved RPG obsessively. She'd been the best rogue there was.

A protest of wood behind her and a feminine voice. "You."

Lin gulped down apparent terror as she slowly swiveled, a victim in a horror movie. Though something told Lin if this was a horror movie, it wouldn't be very scary at first. The girl seemed barely taller than her, hair a nearly glaring cascade of white around her slight shoulders that just brushed the tops. Eyes the color of icicles, go figure, stared Lin in the face, slowly narrowing as the girl again repeated in the same haughty, disgusted tone, "You." Every time the white haired Ice Queen moved, she released a wave of sharp smell, as if winter had decided to cling to this girl's form. Was it really surprising?

Trying for humor Lin didn't quite believe in, she gave a strangled laugh. "If you could tell me exactly why you keep saying that, it'd be nice." Lin lowered her eyes to the paper thin sheet of ice spreading from Kayla's barefooted feet. It inched ever closer, setting Lin just as on edge as the fire had. She moved back, just a centimeter, knowing Genevieve still stood behind her.

As if the thought had summoned words from her escort, Genevieve's honey sweet tone tossed out a single word. "Kayla."

Standing so close, Lin could inhale the lingering vestiges of smoke and embers. Was it normal then, to be able to smell them like this? Spencer had smelled of spruce and clove. Orias' makeshift office like shoe polish, oddly. Shoe polish and...something Lin couldn't name. Was this normal, to be noticing these now? Lin felt a laugh claw at her throat at the absurdity. Was any of this normal, regulation?

No. Not by a long shot.

It was a relief to at least assume the animosity was directed at Genevieve, as bad as Lin knew it was to be grateful for something like that. At least, it seemed as if the majority of the bristling tension had been focused on the Spanish girl towering over her until Genevieve continued, "I trust you've heard about Lin."

Kayla gave a sugar sweet, forced smile as she responded through clenched teeth, "She can't stay here. The bed's broken on her side."

Lin blinked, surely it wasn't? Her gaze switched from the icy girl to the unadorned other bed...only to find it coated in a heavy layer of ice, wooden beams warped and cracked with the strain. That must have been the sound she'd heard earlier, she mused darkly as she looked back towards Kayla, making up her mind. She really did seem as bad as Genevieve made her out to be, if she was willing to go and break furniture to keep her out. Though maybe it was a little unfair of Lin to assume so quickly...? No. This title of Ice Queen seemed well deserved.

Lin crossed her arms over her chest the at same time as Kayla did, the two girls staring at each other as if the first one to break would have to scrub toilets. And Lin had no intention of scrubbing toilets, literally or figuratively.

Kayla opened her mouth to snark something as Lin, but not before the slightly shorter girl strode past the white-haired one. Lin settled on the frost covered bed, and fixed Kayla with a silent challenge of a glare just as cold as the ice on which she sat. "I think it'll do." The pinpricks of cold leeched through the seat of her pants, but Lin kept her face free of the discomfort plaguing her.

Lin swept an eye over the rest of the room, Kayla's bed draped with a gauzy princess canopy. Some kind of memento, or just a like for the girly? Her gaze alighted on each telling clue to who this girl was, the pristinely carved dresser and little wardrobe sheltered over in the corner that judging by the pale spot on the wall had been meant for both inhabitants to share.

Lin's attentions were drawn back to Kayla when she blinked. A scowl creased what might have once been a pretty face had it not been marred by sourness. "Have it your way," she hissed vehemently, straightening a proud, unrelenting back.

Genevieve arched an eyebrow from the doorway before inviting herself in, flopping backwards onto Lin's bed. At the contact, the frost melted away from her skin, the look on the girl's face as innocent and innocuous as ever. Lin restrained a smile, meeting Genevieve's smug, laughing face with a half-hearted glare of disapproval.

Genevieve simply shrugged, as if having no indication what Lin was almost playfully glaring at her about. Still, Lin could see on the fire girl's face the howling humor below the mask. She knew it, because Lin was holding back the exact same thing.

Kayla made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat, waving a not-so-discreet hand. Ice closed over sheets Genevieve had robbed from her, leaving the one lying on the linens to jolt up with a hiss that might have given a lioness pause.

Instead, Kayla just smirked, slow and satisfied. "Have it your way." She repeated again, tilting her head to look down her nose at the only millimeters shorter Lin, and the towering tower of model grace now fuming on the sheets, Genevieve.

Genevieve wrapped a hand around Lin's wrist, pulling her up so quickly it jarred the bones in Lin's wrist, grinding them together like wheat under the millstone. "I think it's high time we find better company."

Lin wasn't given time to formulate a protest of needing to stay for bragging rights. Because leaving was just as good as declaring she'd scrub those toilets she so wanted to avoid. Genevieve didn't seem to care, flouncing from the room as if she had nothing to prove. Lin supposed she didn't. Even if she didn't know how long, Lin at least knew Genevieve had been in residence longer than she, likely had support and friends. And Lin wasn't positive if she classified as a friend to Genevieve, or some pet project. Much less if the support Genevieve had garnered on her own time extended to Lin.

"I truly pity you, you know." Genevieve's voice struck Lin as oddly muted before things returned to normal. She shook herself slightly as she refocused on her newest, and one of her only, ally. The taller girl's lips held the curve of a bitter smile once restrained, now free."Getting stuck with her. Spencer's well-intentioned bad idea I trust?"

Lin shifted on her feet even as she was dragged down countless corridors that looked the same to her. "Olly's actually." Her voice came with some hesitation at the statement, she knew. But she couldn't bear to stifle it. What if Genevieve had vital information to her survival here? Lin stumbled over her own two run-shuffling feet as a thought hit her almost as solidly as a baseball to the eye. Was this...some sort of warped high school situation? The framework of socialization, the carefully tossed words and already visible hierarchy. The battles waged behind closed doors, out of view of adults?

If it was, she was sorely screwed, Lin pondered. Because she had never been one to ace the high school game.

Genevieve's laughter was abrupt, and sturdy. "The poor guy. Must have gotten on the track that Kayla just needed friends." Genevieve slowed just for a moment, both with her stride and her words as she offhandedly remarked, "Again."

Lin stared wide-eyed with barely disguised terror, ignorant of what lay around the bend in the hall, at her guide as she forced out the question, "What happened to the last one?"

_______________________________________

Spencer's harsh bark must have surprised the onyx haired girl with the way she jumped, nearly falling over herself in her haste to right the rack of mats the shared the hall with the four. He spoke, a tilt to his lips that anyone could almost call a smile. That Olly certainly would from behind, where he couldn't see. "It took her hours to thaw. She was never quite the same after."

Spencer felt more than saw Olly grimace, nudging the floor with a sneakered foot. "I thought it would help Kayla to have a few friends. That maybe she was lonely."

Spencer almost wanted to scoff at how easily the two women seemed to take this, Genevieve, who he knew well, actually going so far as to attempt a joke to cheer him. "It's just a little frostbite. She was fine."

Olly shrugged it off before looking to Lin with a bright smile. A smile that said Spencer was failing at being negative enough to push her away. Spencer's own scowl was brought to the surface once more. Olly chirped in that voice of his, the voice Spencer had to keep going, "So where were you two headed? I mean, I assume you found your room, Lin. Right?"

A laugh crinkled the edges of Lin's eyes as she smiled, wide. Uninhibited. "I found it, I can assure you. And as for where we were going..." She looked up at Genevieve as if she didn't quite know and was waiting for an answer.

Spencer raised an eyebrow as Genevieve straightened and replied for both of them, "The mess hall. I'm hungry. It's lunch. I bet Lin is hungry. Case closed." The girl, nearly as tall as Spencer, one of the reasons he'd dated her in the past, tossed her hair over a shoulder, arching an eyebrow as if daring them to question.

Almost as if she couldn't restrain herself, knowing Genevieve she probably couldn't, she added with a bare smirk, "And to see Xavier."

Of course she would go to see her boyfriend. The one she'd left Spencer for, to be exact. Vi never missed an opportunity to see him, with how scarce encounters were between sects of power and ability. It was how they used to be, Spencer recalled with a frown. But that was in the past. No matter how much his chest boiled with jealousy every time he saw Vi and Xavier together, laughing at some joke, bright and happy. A little funny as his own mind found, registering the pun he'd accidentally made. Bright. Because Xavier was a Common light manipulator. And light was bright.

Spencer shook off the thought train with a dull, half-hearted chortle to himself. What an idiot Spence, he mused. I thought you got over that. Spencer shrugged to himself, an answer to something he hadn't even said aloud. Or maybe just a gesture of feigned indifference on the subject of Genevieve and her glowy boyfriend. He definitely wasn't jealous still.

Definitely not.

Maybe a little.

Lin looked between the pair of them, the same little crease between her brow she'd gotten before saying something back in Orias' office. She tugged at her lip with her teeth, as if worrying whether to say something as Vi tossed her hair over her shoulder with a proud smile that still sent a twinge through Spencer's chest. In the end, all that left Lin's lips, in measured, careful tones, were the words, "You're not wrong. I am a little hungry."

Spencer's curiosity piqued against his will. Why choose a such a tame response when she could have inquired about why Vi had informed him in the way she had. The answer plucked at his mind like a string in the tapestry he was building in the shape of Lin. To diffuse the situation. Strange choice, he had to admit. Closer to an Olly decision than he would like to see staring him in the face from a girl who would cause his brother's death. Maybe. Maybe death. Hopefully not. Spencer was praying for not.

Olly spoke before Spencer could, beaming from the corner of his vision like a little kid led to a candy store. "We were just heading there, right Spence?" Olly drove a not-so-covert elbow into Spencer's side, and Spencer's brow twitched as he resisted the urge to glare at him.

Eventually Spencer replied, noncommittal and flat, "Yeah. Sure." He shrugged partially to needle the red-haired boy, partially to hopefully sway him to speak the truth and allow them to get the hell out of there. Of course Olly would ignore this, he grumbled internally as Olly practically glowed at the answer.

Lin seemed to perk slightly then, smiling, much more reserved, but smiling still, at Olly over her shoulder as she suggests, "We could travel together possibly?" She shifted from foot to foot as Genevieve glanced over her much taller shoulder with a questioning look.

It was almost laughable. It must have seemed crystal clear that Vi would end up as the leader of the pair, and here Lin was, making decisions without her input. Then again, it seemed like natural reflex for Genevieve. It always had, ever since Spencer had first met her three years ago.

Nonetheless, Olly beamed wholeheartedly at the suggestion, looking like a kid who'd been handed the candy jar. It made Spencer nauseous, to see the enthusiasm with which he regarded all of this, her especially. More to the point, just her actually. The circumstances would be comical almost, if there result was Olly... he'd said it too much already. Spencer would jinx it, set it in stone. Then where would he be? Without his brother. Without his closest friend. Without the pillar he'd leaned against for years.

Spencer tried to clear the abhorent thoughts from his head, but only partially succeeded. He pushed the rest into a small mental compartment and threw away the key. Hoped like hell it held.

Olly stepped from behind Spencer with a roguish grin, extending a hand as he asked, "May I escort you?" Maybe it was only Spencer who could discern the threat that Olly's offer held to him. Even as Olly's voice thrummed with quiet excitement and slight nervousness.

Lin's answer was by all rights innocent, but Spencer couldn't help but see every word coated in maliciousness to come as she took his hand with a bright laugh. "It would be my pleasure, Olly." The two started away, leaving Spencer and Genevieve alone. A thing that Spencer refused to let stand. He followed after, the grimness he felt clear on his face, his suspected.

Vi laid a hand on his arm to halt him in his chase, brow furrowed in concern. "Spence?" Her fingers curled with tension on the muscle, and Spencer shook her off with a wordless shake of his head.

Vi stared after him. He could feel it, her eyes burning holes in the back of his head with unasked questions that Spencer hadn't the time, or the patience, to answer. He stormed after the pair that had disappeared, following the light-hearted laughter that seemed to echo in these halls like every other ordinary sound. It shouldn't. It should have been like something from an old timey villian scene. The quiet, gradually mounting crazed cackle absent from stone and dirt corridors. It unsettled him, to say the least.

Spencer kept them in sight as Olly traced the path to the mess hall, Lin on his arm. She looked like a child in comparison, but it seemed like she did compared to most people. Himself included.

There, walking by himself, Genevieve trailing behind him, Spencer tried to see the signs. He tried to peer at her and see the evil to come, the monster lurking just out of sight. No matter how he scrutinized every angle, from the look of her eyes in his memory, to the not-so-gentle responses to his more than present sharpness. The part that bothered him the most was that it wasn't there.

Spencer registered dimly through the haze of his thoughts that they had arrived at their destination, the great door opening in tandem to another light burst of laughter from Lin, no doubt in answer to something Olly had said. All he knew was that Olly spread a hand wide to encompass the pulsing, thunderous, only half organized mob of people. "And, this is the mess hall. Believe me, it's a mess."

Lin shook her head, black strands swinging softly about her face as her lips curled in smile. "Oh, is it now? I hadn't noticed." She titled her head toward what looked like a small scale food fight that had broken out at a table not far down the way.

Olly released his own laugh at the sight, pulling her over to the table. He lightly cuffed a few of the culprits in the back of the head, teasingly reminded them with an air that Spencer could never pull off that they only had so much food at a time.

Lin stood beside him, a delicate hand over her mouth to stifle...another laugh, maybe? A smile? Either way, something she shouldn't have the privilege of, not with the possibility of Olly's death looming over them like a great, black shadow.

Olly returned to her like he couldn't sense it somehow. But how could he not? It was his death, shouldn't he feel it breathing down his neck? Spencer only halfway heard the names of the occupants rattled off by Olly as he pointed out each, made quick, jovial introductions from Lin to them, them to Lin. Olly quickly pulled her along, just barely grazing the reach of a table with only two habitants of it's benches.

     And

                             the
    world
                                         went
                       dark.

Screams followed as the room plunged into darkness, as if someone had cut the lights. A few crashes resonated with in the space as people lost their way. Spencer's clipped words barely made it over the din. "Fire. Light."

On order, he felt heat at his back as Genevieve cupped fire in her palms, dozens of her fire-weilding brethren copying the action one after another. Flecks of light bloomed in the air as light weilders, Genevieve's boyfriend Xavier Morell among them, released the particles into the room.

Shapes gradually formed as it all brightened, the lights settling on a collapsed girl, a red haired boy standing frozen at her side, on the floor. Her ink black hair spread around her head like a stain, the same hue as the veins creeping up her neck and down her arms.

Spencer's stomach sank as a light weilder stared wide-eyed at Lin's unconscious body before he muttered to a friend at his side, "I thought it was called blooming. You know, like a flower? Soft, gentle. That sort of thing. Mine wasn't nearly this bad."

"I know." A voice answered that hadn't been standing next to the boy, but must have heard him anyway. The two occupants of the table Lin had been passing stood. Eric Levi and Jeremy Briggs, darkness manipulators, Spencer recalled.

Eric, the younger of the two by years, just a male of thirteen cracked a wry smile as he muttered to his mentor, "That's why it should be called booming. As in," Eric trailed off to make explosion noises, miming mushroom clouds with his hands. His hair grew close to his scalp, eyes a warm hazel mix. His skin gleamed in the low light, the color of coffee grounds. That had had something to do with Orias' correct guess of his abilities, Spencer offhandedly recalled.

Jeremy snorted a laugh, stepping forward to silently claim the girl into his ranks as he shot a half-hearted glare at his charge. "Eric, this is serious. Help me get her up." Spencer caught it when the older male, brown hair buzzed like Orias, eyes so dark they looked close enough to the black in Spencer's dream it gave him shivers, winked at the boy, whispered, "It was a good joke, though."

Eric's proud smirk stayed on his face as he helped lift Lin from the ground. As no one else lifted a finger to assist in moving her to the rooms with direct access to the hospital above. It was the way of things, to leave a bloomer's care to their own.

As Jeremy and Eric walked her, an arm slung over either shoulder, half dragging her, through the door on the opposite end, it dawned on Spencer truly that this was the first part of his dream come true.

That a darkness manipulator stared him in the face.