The classroom was depressing.
It would have been almost impossible for it not to be. Four plain, stucco-over-concrete walls painted in Institutional Green held a dozen students who sat at scarred and battered wooden desks that had been old before their parents had met. The floor was covered with equally-ancient linoleum, in a gray speckled pattern that looked dirty even when it was clean. The lighting was overhead fluorescent tubes of a style that hadn't been manufactured in decades, harsh and unforgiving, the sort of thing that made everyone look like a pale, washed out Goth. The fact that half the students in this class were pale, washed-out Goths didn't help - the lights made them look as if they'd been dead for a week.
The view through the single window in the room was pleasant - woods and grass and sky - but the window, like most of the windows here, had bars on it, and that really spoiled the view. But then, when your school was in a decommissioned nuthouse, you tended to get things like bars on the windows.
Despite the surroundings, the class itself was anything but depressing. In fact, even the Goths were leaning forward in their seats with interest.
Mind, it didn't hurt that Eric Banyon, the teacher of this class, was by all feminine standards, "hott." The fact that he was also well and truly taken did not prevent virtually every red-blooded female student in the school from eyeing him with that peculiar moony daydreaming expression usually seen on the faces of preteens ogling a photo of Orlando Bloom as Legolas. Pretty much everyone agreed he looked enough like Johnny Depp to be the movie star's double, with that kind of competent-yet-vulnerable air that was just as irresistible as an Elven glamourie.
The class was music - with a difference. Eric was dissecting a series of folk-ballads. Now for most high school students, this would be yawn-making in the extreme. Not so for the M-track kids of St. Rhiannon's School for Gifted and Exceptional Students. The ballads Eric was teaching them about just might mean the difference between nailing a friend or possible ally by accident and being blindsided by someone you didn't recognize as a foe. That was because St. Rhia's was a school for people with "powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men." And the M-track students were budding magicians.
Or, in the case of Valeria Victrix Langenfeld, Mages in full bloom. She'd been a practicing magician since she was nine, and training in combat magic since she was twelve. By now she was a specialist, a techno-shaman, someone who used the common artifacts of everyday modern life - rather than arcane instruments and ingredients of the past - to make her spells work.
She didn't need this class, but she listened intently anyway. For starters, Eric was a Bard, and that was a discipline she knew very little about, so it was likely he'd have a slightly different approach to this than any of her other teachers, past and present. For another, this was filling part of her Art and Lit requirement. For a third - if she was ever made a Knight-Mage Underhill - one of her ambitions - she'd have to have mastered three of the Arts as well as combat-magic and swordsmanship. And for a fourth, well - Eric Banyon was hott.
So it was with annoyance that she sensed one of the headmaster's runners just outside the door, waiting for Banyon to pause before making an entrance. "Sensed," rather than saw, because of course the door was closed and quite solid, but VeeVee had been able to see magical auras since she was six, and the runners were all magical constructs. They looked like students, but that was part of the whole ruse of making St. Rhia's look like an ordinary boarding school - even to some of the other students.
Eric could, without a doubt, sense the runner too. He gave no sign that he had, but the fact that he wrapped up the discussion of "The Wife of Usher's Well" pretty quickly after the runner first appeared was pretty much a giveaway.
A couple of the other students sensed the runner as well; VeeVee could tell by the way they shifted in their chairs and looked quizzically at the door. None of them were nearly as far along in their studies of the Arts Arcane as VeeVee was, but then, most of them had been born into Mundane households and had found their way here by just about every means possible other than the straightforward one.
But when your mother was a Finnish Witch who could whistle up storms, and your father was a hereditary German vampire hunter descended from the Van Helsings, you tended to get your Gifts and Talents ID'd pretty early in life.
And when both of them were Guardians to boot, when someone started up a school specifically created to train the Gifted and Talented safely away from the prying eyes of the Mundanes, you could bet you'd probably find yourself enrolled faster than you could say "athame."
The runner tapped once on the door as soon as Eric stopped speaking and opened it. There were two "models" of runner; this one was the cute-and-sassy schoolgirl in double-ponytails, plaid skirt, knee socks and white shirt. The other was the bespectacled-and-studious, but darkly handsome, boy in dark pants and a blazer. Both of them looked pretty familiar if you were into anime - and VeeVee suspected that St. Rhia's headmaster, Inigo Moonlight, watched a lot more Cartoon Channel than he was willing to admit.
The runner whispered in Eric's ear and departed. Eric looked at her, and crooked a finger. Obediently she rose and came up to the front of the class.
"School Counselor wants to see you," he said, and one elegant auburn eyebrow rose. "No, I wasn't told why. Except to say don't worry, there's nothing wrong at home."
Well that did quell the moment of panic. VeeVee hadn't seen Sarah Clifford except at her intake interview - the school counselor saved her time for people with real problems, and VeeVee was one of the few, the lucky, who came from a stable home with understanding parents, even if they were freaking old-fashioned about some things. In fact, the more she saw of other peoples' parents, the more VeeVee appreciated her own.
"Get your things, and report in, VeeVee," Eric continued. "The rest of the class is going to be on 'Tam Lin' anyway, and I doubt there's anything about that ballad that you don't already know."
She nodded, and went back to her seat to get her backpack and stow her books. Eric was right. "Tam Lin" was a staple teaching element with all the teachers she'd had. She must have mined it for information a dozen times all told.
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The Counselor's office was in the Main Building. The Main Building was the only one that didn't have bars on the windows – well, except for the little cottages where the resident doctors had once lived with their families. The teachers lived in those now. But the school offices - and one or two of the classrooms - were all in what had been the old Administration Building, built in 1913, and designed to look pretty much like a scaled-down, red brick version of Mad Ludwig's Castle.
Outwardly, the school looked like a train-wreck because that was what people expected an "alternative" school to look like, and if it was sleek and posh, or all comfy-English-manor, outsiders would begin to wonder. But the fact was that VeeVee, and most of the other Advanced kids here, could have practically any teacher, on practically any subject, just for the asking. That was the sort of thing that happened when your school's founder and benefactor was a multi-billionaire - and a half-Elven Mage to boot.
And that made St. Rhia's the best school she'd ever been at in her entire life. She had friends here. She never had to lie about anything - and lies could be fatal to a magician, because words were Power, and when spoken by a Mage could twist and turn and bite you in the butt if you were lying.
With both of her parents being Guardians, there'd been a pretty good chance she'd turn out to have some sort of magical ability. She wasn't a Guardian herself, of course. Even though they'd been in existence for thousands of years, even the Guardians didn't know where their special abilities came from, or just what would confer them - or when.
The Guardians were a loose - very loose - anarchisticly loose - organization of the extraordinarily Talented and Gifted who stood between the Mundanes and the kind of things that you usually found only in horror movies and books with black covers. Their purpose for existing was to protect the Mundane World from the Supernatural World in such a fashion that the Mundanes were able to go on believing that 'things that went bump in the night' only existed in fiction, and the greatest restriction on their power was that they could never give help unless they were asked to do so by the person who was actually in peril.
Guardians were in many ways, the elite of Mages. By virtue of what they did, and some undefined connection to Powers outside themselves, they were granted more strength than they would have had alone, more magical abilities, and had the benefit of being able to call on one another for help. But like the Knight-Mages of the Elfhames (a position VeeVee also intended to achieve), they walked a path strictly hemmed in by what they could and could not do with their power. It was never to be used selfishly, for instance. Never punitively. Guardians were not judge and jury; they were protectors and defenders. And no matter what your heritage, you could not win your way to the position, nor volunteer for it. It was offered to you — or not.
VeeVee hoped that one day it would be offered to her.
The trouble was, the Other Side didn't have to play by the same rules the Guardians did, and a lot of that nasty stuff in the Guardians' world tended to take the offensive and come after them and those around them. Which was why a lot of Guardians tended to lead solitary lives - and the few who did marry didn't tend to start families. The idea of producing "Daddy's little hostage," just did not appeal.
VeeVee's parents, however, took the position that the last thing a Hideous Death Monster was going to expect was that the tiny blond-haired, blue-eyed child it had just snatched was going to turn around, pull out a Soul-Blade with the Six Runes of Righteous Destruction written on it and stab it in the gut with it. So the second her Gifts had manifested, her parents began training her in them. It had been a real pain in the rear to have to attend both regular schools and arcane lessons, pull off good grades in both, and keep the latter secret from the former.
Mind, she had never regretted it. Especially not after the day when Shadow-Warriors in the pay of the Rudeski family of vampyri invaded the house one afternoon while Mom and Dad were still at work (because being a Guardian didn't pay the bills, and so both of them had day jobs) with the intent to take her prisoner - or worse. She'd pinned the hand of the first Shadow-Warrior to the table with a handy fork (silver-plated steel, of course), pulled out the afore-mentioned Soul-Blade and stabbed the second in the gut with it, and then made a run for the bathroom. Once there, using only what was in the bathroom, she'd built a Nine-fold Sphere of Protection that had held until her parents got home and finished the invaders off.
Try explaining something like that to your school counselor when she wanted to know why you showed up at school the next day looking like you'd fallen down a flight of stairs. Backwards. It was only because the folks had had the smarts to file a breaking-entering-and-assault report with the cops that she’d kept them from getting hauled in as child-abusers. She was just glad she wasn’t the one who’d had to come up with the story for the cops.
But at St. Rhia's, not only did VeeVee not have to come up with a convincing explanation for mysterious bumps and bruises that wouldn't involve anyone thinking her parents were abusing her, she was safe. Because the entire school was Warded in every possible way - psionically, magically - with shields that, well, if something could actually get through them, they all had problems that were a lot bigger than just whether something had decided to show up to eat her.
She went up the steps of the main building and into the foyer. An enormous staircase led up to the second floor, and on the right, massive oak doors led into a large parlor where a lot of the interviews with new students and their parents were held. A long hallway led to the back of the building, where more staff offices were. The regular-sized door at the left was Ms. Clifford's office. VeeVee went over to it and knocked, although the door was already ajar.
"Come," Ms. Clifford said.
Now, given how the rest of the school was tricked out, it would be reasonable to expect that the Counselor's office would be done up like something out of a 50s health-and-hygiene movie, with white walls with charts and rah-rah posters on them, a big wooden desk, and uncompromising chairs. Reasonable, but wrong.
VeeVee had seen less-welcoming living rooms. It was exactly the kind of room to encourage a kid to just flop down, relax and talk. It had walls of a color between brown and gold, with funky art on them, mostly folk-art alternating with framed rock posters from the 60s. There were three sofas and three chairs, all of the kind of cushy-casual style that encouraged hanging your legs over the arm and staring up at the ceiling - which was painted with the night sky around Beltane. VeeVee knew it was that time of year - though Ms Clifford referred to it as "May Day" - because she thought she had recognized the star patterns and asked the last time she'd been here. Ms Clifford was a big fan of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, and May First at Oxford was apparently something of an occasion.
For the rest, there were lots of bookcases, lots of books, a good stereo that was always playing something interesting - VeeVee had only been in here once before, but Ms. Clifford's door was usually open, and VeeVee often stopped outside to listen. There was a fish-tank made out with a kind of waterscape in miniature, a waterfall with plants growing around it and little fish in the shallow water at the bottom of the tank, and a tiny green lizard that lived on the "cliff" part, which fascinated VeeVee.
Ms. Clifford was on the phone. She waved vaguely in the direction of the chairs, and VeeVee flopped down into the one nearest the fish-tank to watch the lizard. So, this wasn't anything about her. Nor was it about any emergency at home. But now VeeVee was curious: just what was this all about? Ms. Clifford really was a psychiatric pro, specializing in the traumas of the Gifted and Talented. A conservative estimate was that about half of the kids showed up here with Issues and the other half showed up with Traumas, and all of them needed help. Real help - not the fake kind most of them had been getting for years in the outside world.
"Yes, I think we can handle this," Ms. Clifford was saying. "Yes, the fax came through just fine. What time can we expect him? Good. We'll look forward to it."
She thumbed off the phone and turned to VeeVee. VeeVee regarded her with interest. Ms. Clifford interested her because in a school full of people who tended to be outstanding and different in some way or other, Ms. Clifford was utterly nondescript. If you were to try to describe her, you'd find yourself talking about brown hair and eyes, someone who was neither tall nor short, neither fat nor slim, with what Kenny Chandler, the telekinetic, called "a face-shaped face." And since all of the teachers and staff here had some sort of Gift or Talent, VeeVee really wondered if Ms. Clifford's was to blend in and be utterly forgettable. If so, the ability had to be psionic, not magical, because VeeVee didn't pick up any magical vibes from her.
"Well, VeeVee," Ms. Clifford said, setting the phone back in the charger. "I believe I have a challenge here for you. We're getting a new student here tomorrow-"
"Ah, and you want me to mentor him!" That much was easy to deduce; all new students got a student mentor assigned to them from among the pool of the more experienced members of St. Rhia's student body. VeeVee hadn't done a mentoring stint yet, so she had more-or-less been waiting for her number to come up.
Ms. Clifford nodded, smiling. "This is no ordinary student, though, and he'll take some careful handling. I just got off the phone with our special contact in the DA's office; our new student will be coming to us instead of going to prison. He's on probation for felony arson - that's the only thing they could actually charge him with, but the things they know and can't prove are apparently pretty disturbing; he managed to get himself in with a very rough crowd in an extremely short time, and Linda's just glad they managed to get their hands on him before he actually hurt anyone. He's a pyrokinetic - so he'll be Mr. Bishop's problem as a last resort - and from what I've been told, he has attitude enough for any four people." Ms Clifford smiled. "His name is Tomas Torres. Since he'll be our first student with an actual police record, I thought I'd give you the chance to decide whether or not you felt this was something you felt you wanted to be involved with."
She reached across the top of her desk to hand a small stack of paper to VeeVee. There was a picture on top - it was an actual a mug-shot - of a defiant-looking kid in a do-rag. "Where is he from?" VeeVee asked, studying the picture further. Even in the washed-out mug shot she could see that he was cute. Antonio Banderas-league cute.
"The family is from El Paso. His mother was born in Mexico, but Tomas was born here. They moved to New York City about three months ago. Broken home. The father did a runner a few years ago and the mother got work up here through a cousin." Ms Clifford shook her head. "Mother works two jobs. There's a little sister."
"Hmm. Lots of opportunity to get into trouble." VeeVee turned her attention to the rap-sheet. "Fifteen?" She looked at Ms. Clifford speculatively. "So what do they know at the DA's office that they can't prove?"
"That he was acting as an enforcer for the local padrone," Ms. Clifford said with a sigh. "That was why he was setting those fires. He's a powerful pyrokinetic now, and he's only going to get stronger as he practices. He needs to be trained - or shut down."
VeeVee nodded. Harsh as that sounded, if you couldn't instill or awaken a good set of morals and ethics in someone with powerful abilities, then you had to take those abilities away. Otherwise, well, you ended up with another case for the Guardians to deal with.
"But Linda thinks he's salvageable," Ms Clifford went on. "She's one of ours, or rather, one of your parents' peers, another Guardian. I hope you feel up to the challenge, because I'd like to have someone mentoring Tomas who knows how to look for trouble, for something wrong that can't be corrected."
VeeVee wound a strand of her long blonde hair around a finger uneasily. She wasn't altogether sure that she'd know the signs of someone going bad. All her training so far had been in dealing with things that were already bad. And trying to kill her. Not much room for confusion there. Then again, he was cute, and he didn't look like the type to be overawed by her magical ability. That cocky attitude ... hmm. A challenge. She studied the picture. She hadn't always been living in the 'burbs. Her folks had been very mobile, what with both of them working as a team for the CDC. They tended to go where disease problems were, which meant a lot of places not on the recommended tourist lists. Only in the last couple years had they actually lived in a house rather than an apartment.
"So, what do you think, VeeVee?" Ms Clifford's voice brought her back to reality, and she set the photo back on the desk. Why try and scry something when you're were going to meet the original in the flesh, anyway? One of the unwritten Laws of Magic was: "Never do anything magically that you could do as easily Mundanely. Save the energy for when you need it."
"I think I'll look forward to being Mr. Torres' mentor, Ms. Clifford," she replied cheerfully. She handed back the file on Tomas Torres.
"Don't you want to keep this?" Ms Clifford asked in surprise.
She shook her head. "No. I don't want to give the impression I've been studying him. I want this to be like any other mentor gig. I'll learn about him as we go." Then she grinned. "From all that free-range attitude, I don't imagine he's the kind to keep anything secret for very long anyway!"
Ms. Clifford smiled. "You know, I was pretty sure that was what you were going to say." She glanced at her watch. "In that case, why don't you run along down to the Headmaster's office? I think it's probably too late to catch up with your Music class anyway, and Mr. Moonlight has a few things he'd like to say to you."
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VeeVee walked down the long hallway that led to the Headmaster's Study, thinking ruefully that if she'd known that agreeing to mentor Tomas Torres would involve an interview with Mr. Moonlight, she might not have been quite so eager to take on the job.
It wasn't that Inigo Moonlight was cruel or nasty or engaged in any of the kinds of power games that adults - or those in positions of authority - often tried on children and underlings. From Mr. Moonlight's perspective, after all, VeeVee and Ms. Clifford were probably pretty much the same age, and he had no interest in human power games. Inigo Moonlight was a Seleighe Sidhe - an Elf of the Bright Court - and he was at least a thousand years old.
He was also a Magus Major - which meant he was one of the most powerful magicians the Elves could produce - and the combination of magical power, plus literally centuries of practice and discipline, meant that St. Rhia's could have no better Headmaster. No one - not even Ria Llewellyn, not even Eric Banyon - knew what he'd done Underhill, or what his name had been there, but for the last several centuries Inigo Moonlight had lived on Earth pretty much in retirement, as a kind of occult private detective, until Ms. Llewellyn had talked him into taking over as Headmaster here. Of course he didn't exactly run the place - his human assistants, Grace Fairchild and Tucker Bell, did all the actual administrative work. Mr. Moonlight just sort of ... oversaw things. And grew roses. And sometimes hosted tea parties.
And was just a little ... spooky. Not because he was Sidhe; VeeVee had actually encountered Elves before. She just didn't think that - even in Underhill - there were very many Elves like Inigo Moonlight.
She reached the end of the hall and tapped quietly on the door.
"Enter."
She pushed open the door and walked in.
If Ms. Clifford's office was designed to be welcoming, Mr. Moonlight's, well, wasn't. It wasn't designed to be intimidating, either. It just was.
Although she knew it had to have been new when the school was started three years ago, it actually looked older than the building itself, like something out of the Victorian period (or maybe the Middle Ages.) There wasn't a single modern piece of office equipment in sight, not even a phone - the Headmaster left things like making telephone calls to his assistants. The walls were paneled in dark oak and lined with glass-fronted 'barrister' bookcases; the large window had a stained glass panel at the top - and if that weren't enough, gold-fringed green velvet curtains - and there was an enormous Oriental rug on the floor. The walls held, not only a number of lovely oil paintings in elaborate old-fashioned gilt frames, but other objects in deep shadow-boxes as well. A collection of sea-shells. Some carefully-framed - and very old - postcards. A number of coins or medallions. Nearly every horizontal surface contained some object as well: vases, bowls filled with Mr. Moonlight's beloved roses, pieces of sculpture even older than he was.
The center of the room was dominated by an enormous mahogany desk. The top was a single solid slab of malachite. VeeVee had seen one like it in photographs of the Russian Imperial Palace. Its top contained a bronze inkstand - Mr. Moonlight handwrote everything - some art-glass paperweights, a large wooden stationery box, several seals, and a very large leather blotter. Piled neatly in the center of the blotter were two stacks of paper. One was school paperwork and the other was gardening catalogues.
In front of the desk were two comfortable leather chairs. Behind the desk was a third high-backed leather chair, and in the chair sat Mr. Moonlight.
Even though he wore the glamourie that made him look human, VeeVee suspected he'd look pretty much the same way with or without it - very tall, very pale, and very old. His hair was absolutely white, swept straight back and worn collar-length, and the way he dressed reminded her just a little of Doc Holiday in the old Western movies her Mom liked to watch - a little old-fashioned, and very formal.
"Sit down, Miss Langenfeld. How does the world find you today?"
"Very well, thank you, sir." Formality was a plus in dealing with any of the Sidhe, and that went double for dealing with St. Rhia's Headmaster. She sat down and folded her hands demurely in her lap.
"I presume that our Miss Clifford has spoken to you about our newest student already - and that you feel yourself capable of accepting the challenge he presents?"
"I think so," VeeVee said. "And I know that if I'm not, I won't be foolish enough not to say so as quickly as possible."
Mr. Moonlight smiled. "An excellent answer. We can never, after all, be entirely certain of what the future will bring until it arrives. Even the Gift of Foreseeing is not entirely reliable in that regard. You've shown excellent judgment in the past, however, and I believe that, with your assistance, we may be able to preserve his Talent and harness it to the service of good works. I am also certain that this will be no simple task. The Children of Earth - especially the very young - are often remarkably set in their ways. You must impress him in whatever fashion you feel is best, Miss Langenfeld. I believe we will need to throw him off-balance at once so that he gives the other students - and especially the teachers - the respect they deserve."
VeeVee blinked in surprise. Students were generally strongly discouraged from flaunting their Gifts and Talents outside the labs and classrooms. Had Mr. Moonlight just given her carte blanche to do anything she liked anywhere on campus?
He inclined his head, and she knew she'd guessed right.
"At the moment he believes he is an enormously special individual. I am relying upon you to impress upon our young man that he is perhaps not as unique as he believes."
VeeVee couldn't quite hold back a smile of her own. So Mr. Moonlight wanted her to take Tomas Torres down a peg or two, did he? Well, she could do that.
"Yes, sir," she said. "I'll do my best."
"I know you will, Miss Langenfeld. And if you should sense any ... extraordinary ... difficulties in the weeks to come, please feel free to share them with me. My door is always open."
"Yes, sir. Of course sir."
She got to her feet. The interview was at an end.
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The next day, at noon, the van from the city arrived. She and Mr. Moonlight were on the steps to meet it.
Tomas was much handsomer in person than in his mug-shot. Still wearing that do-rag, and now with a pair of cheap sunglasses, too. He was having a hard time deciding which of them to stare at harder - she was used to getting appreciative looks from boys, but he was obviously smart enough to know - or to sense - that Mr. Moonlight was somebody he'd better not blow off. He kept his attention on Mr. Moonlight as the van drove off behind him.
"Welcome to St. Rhiannon's School for Gifted and Exceptional Students, Mr. Torres. I am Inigo Moonlight, the Headmaster of this facility. Did you have a pleasant journey?"
"Uh... yeah," Tomas said. He looked wary and baffled, but he still hadn't quite lost his swagger.
"Very good. I trust you will enjoy your time with us, and learn everything the staff has to teach you. You will be seeing Ms. Clifford later to discuss your academic placement, and anything else, Miss Langenfeld can tell you. Again, welcome to St Rhiannon's," Mr. Moonlight finished gravely. He gave a curt nod and turned, leaving the two of them standing alone on the sidewalk.
"I'm Valeria Victrix Langenfeld, but most people call me VeeVee," she said, without offering her hand. "I've been assigned as your mentor."
Tomas looked faintly affronted. "Mentor? Mentor for what, rubia?. I don't need no mentor for nothin', chinga. Not from you... Why, what you got?"
One corner of her mouth lifted in a sardonic smirk. Tomas Torres definitely had attitude to spare. But he'd paid careful attention to the rather brief welcome Inigo Moonlight gave him, so maybe his instincts were as powerful as his attitude. She hoped so, for both their sakes.
"What I got," she said carefully, "Is this—"
With a gesture and a twist of her mind that summoned raw power from one of the ley-lines beneath the school, she set herself on fire. Not illusory fire. Real fire. Fire more than hot enough for him to be scorched by the flames that were her favored element. He was a pyrokinetic.
That ought to impress him.
It did. He leapt back, yelping, "Que onda oye!"
She had no trouble translating that. "Whoa!"
She doused the flames with another gesture.
"That, Hot Stuff," she said, "Is why you are here. That is what St Rhia's is all about." Now she grinned. "It's not a reform school, chico. It's a school where a guy that can toss fireballs at cars is less scary than midterms."