Boundless (Unearthly, #3)(32)

“Oh yeah?” says T. S. Eliot. “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

Angela doesn’t show up for the Poet Re-making the World. Doesn’t turn in the paper. Which means, according to the rules in the syllabus, that she can’t pass the class.

The idea sends a chill through me. Angela Zerbino: straight-A student, high school valedictorian, school-geek extraordinaire, lover of all things poetical, is going to fail her first college poetry course.

I’ve got to find her. Talk to her. Right freaking now. I’ll do whatever it takes.

The minute class is over, I call Amy. “Do you know where Angela is?” I ask.

“She was in the room, last time I saw her,” she tells me. “Why? Is something going on?”

Oh, something’s going on.

I sprint all the way back to Roble, but stop short when I reach the building. Because a crow is perched on the bike rack again.

“Don’t you have somewhere better to be?” I ask it.

No reply, except it hops from the rack to one of the bikes. My bike, as a matter of fact.

I don’t want bird poo on my bike, broken or not. I take a few steps forward, waving my arms at it. “Go away. Get out of here.”

It cocks its head at me, but doesn’t otherwise move.

“Go on.”

I’m directly in front of it now. I could touch it if I wanted to, and it doesn’t budge. It stares at me calmly and holds its ground. Which is when I know—or maybe I’ve always known, and haven’t wanted to admit to myself—that this is not a regular old crow.

It’s not a bird at all.

I open my mind then, like cracking open a door, ready to push it closed again at any moment. I can feel him, that particular flavor of sorrow I know so well. I can hear that sad music, the way I used to hear it calling me last year from the field behind the school grounds, a melody of this is all that I am, when I was so much more; I’m alone, alone now for good, and I can never go back, never go back, never go back.

I wasn’t being paranoid. It’s Samjeeza.

I take a step back, slam the door in my mind so hard it gives me an instant headache, but a headache’s better than the sorrow by a long shot.

“What are you doing here?” I whisper. “What do you want?”

I know I felt sorry for him last year, I did; I knew how much he’d cared about my mom, even in his twisted-up way, and I’d taken pity on him that day in the cemetery. Even now I don’t fully understand what came over me. I just walked over there and gave him my mother’s bracelet, and he took it, and he didn’t try to hurt us and we all got home safe and sound. But that doesn’t make him any less dangerous. He’s a fallen angel, aligned with the powers of dark. He’s almost done me in on two separate occasions.

I force myself to stand up straight, look him in his wide yellow eyes.

“If you’re here to kill me, then do it already,” I say. “Otherwise I’ve got stuff I’ve got to do.”

The bird shifts and then, without warning, takes off, straight at me. I yelp and duck and prepare to, I don’t know, have my head separated from my shoulders or something, but he breezes past me over my shoulder, so close he brushes my cheek with his feathers, up and away, into the cloud-darkened sky.

Standing outside her dorm room in A wing, I try to call Angela again, and I can hear her phone ringing from inside. She’s home. It’s a miracle.

I pound on the door.

“Come on, Ange. I know you’re there.”

She opens the door. I push my way inside before she can protest. A quick glance around reveals that the roommates aren’t here. Which is good, because it’s about to get ugly.

“Okay, what is going on with you?” I demand to know.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean, what do I mean?” I cry. “You’ve been dodgy. The whole dorm is talking about how you’re involved, in a horizontal-type way, with Pierce. He’s the PHE, you know, the dorm doctor. He lives on the first floor. Blondish, shortish, scruffyish—”

She gives me an amused look and closes the door behind me, locks it. “I know who he is,” she says with her back to me. “And yes, we’re together. Involved, if that works better for you, in a horizontal-type way.”

My mouth drops open.

I owe Christian ten bucks.

Angela puts a hand on her hip. I notice that she’s got a wet washcloth slung over one shoulder. She’s wearing sweats, an oversize Yellowstone National Park T-shirt with a trout on the front, her hair braided in a long, single plait down her back, no shoes or socks, and no polish on her fingers or toes. Under the fluorescent lights of our room, her skin has a blue cast to it, lavender shadows under her eyes.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“I’m fine. Tired, is all. I was up all night working on my Eliot paper.”

“But you weren’t in class—”

“I got an extension,” she explains. “Things have been crazy lately, and I’ve been so swamped that I’ve fallen way behind. I spent all weekend trying to catch up with everything.”

I squint at her. She’s lying, I sense vaguely. But why?

“Are you okay?” she asks. “You look a little wild-eyed.”

“Oh, well, let’s see: My dad showed up saying that he wants to train me to use a glory sword. Because I’m apparently going to have to fight for my life at some point. And oh yes, I’m having a vision where someone is trying to kill me, which works well with Dad’s theory that I should sharpen up my glory sword. And if that’s not enough, Christian’s having the same vision, except in his vision he doesn’t see me holding a glory sword. He sees me all weak and covered with blood. So maybe I’m going to die.”