I nodded mutely. Aidan held the door open, and I hurried out, wrapping his scarf around my neck as I did so.
“Do you want to go back to your room, or do you feel well enough to go over some of the class material now?”
I looked up at him in surprise. “Sure. I mean, we can go over it now.”
“Okay, then, let’s go. To the café, where we can get you something to eat.”
I fell into step beside him. “The café?”
“Yeah, if you’d like, we can even order a tea service there.”
“A tea service? What do you mean, like little cakes and stuff?”
“Yeah, little sandwiches and scones with clotted cream. Just one of Dr. Blackwell’s eccentricities,” he answered.
Convinced he was teasing me, I followed him through a set of double doors and down a long, carpeted hall that looked vaguely familiar.
“Sixth period hasn’t let out yet, so it should be pretty empty. Here we go.” We reached the end of the hall and entered a big atrium with glassfronted stores on both sides. On the left was what looked like a school store — gray fleece sweatshirts with WINTERHAVEN emblazoned across the front were displayed in the window, along with backpacks and notebooks, all with the Winterhaven crest. On the right was the café, with several tables out front and several more inside. Just beyond the café, I spotted a bookstore.
Bells jingled in the door as I followed Aidan inside the café and past a counter filled with sandwiches and pastries. He headed toward a booth in the far corner.
“I’ll go and order. You like tea, right?” he asked, and I nodded as I sat down.
A minute or two later, he was back. “Okay, one tea service, coming up,” he said. Only then, as Aidan sat back down across from me and pulled out a notebook from the black canvas backpack I hadn’t even realized he’d been carrying, did I remember the vision. I hadn’t seen anything bad happen — not really. Still, it unsettled me. Why was I following Aidan around New York City in the dead of night? And what was he doing, moving silently through the fog like a shadow?
For a moment I allowed myself to wonder if the vision would eventually come to pass, but in my heart I knew that it would. Of course it would, no matter what I did to try and prevent it. That was my curse, the one I tried to hide from the rest of the world.
And then I could have sworn I heard a voice in my head— Aidan’s voice. We’ve all got something to hide, it said, as clearly as if it had been spoken aloud, as if it was replying to my thoughts.
At once my gaze snapped up and met his, and my heart began to pound. He looked startled, surprised. His eyes widened, the irises now as gray as storm clouds, then narrowed as he watched me bite my lower lip.
My head was buzzing, my palms suddenly damp. What the holy hell just happened? I was losing my mind, hearing voices. And it wasn’t just any voice — it had been Aidan’s.
Somehow he knew my secret.
There she is,” Cece said as I stepped into the room and closed the door. They were all there — Sophie, Kate, and Marissa, sitting on Cece’s bed.
Waiting for me, obviously.
“So, how was it?” Sophie asked. “Your afternoon, I mean.”
“It was okay,” I answered, dropping my bag onto my bed and collapsing there myself. “I’m totally beat.”
“Kate heard that someone saw you in the café with Aidan,” Cece said. “During sixth period.”
Word sure traveled fast. “Yeah, he was trying to catch me up on my classes. Dr. Penworth asked him to, remember?”
“And?” Marissa prodded.
I sat up, shrugging. They were all watching me expectantly. “And that’s about it.”
Cece jumped up and hurried over to my bed, sitting down beside me on the quilt that Lupe had made me, and tucking her bare feet beneath herself. “C’mon, inquiring minds want to know. What did you and Aidan talk about?”
“Just schoolwork,” I answered. It was the honest-to-God truth. After that weird moment where I’d imagined his voice in my head, we’d opened our books and gotten busy — all work and no play. A few minutes later, someone had come out from behind the counter and brought us a pot of tea and two dainty teacups on saucers, and then returned with a tiered silver tray holding miniature sandwiches and scones. An old-fashioned tea service, just as Aidan had promised. Weird, but nice.
I’d sat there picking at my food, listening to his hypnotic voice as he’d summarized a full month’s worth of lectures. I’d forced myself to concentrate, and I thought I’d done a pretty good job, too, all things considered. Maybe it was really fascinating material, or maybe it was all in the retelling. Either way, I just needed to read through a few more chapters and take some notes, and I’d be set for tomorrow’s quiz.
“Just schoolwork?” Marissa looked disappointed. “That’s all? You must have talked about something else.”
I shook my head, sorry to disappoint them. “Nope, ’fraid not.”
“Why did you skip sixth period?” Kate asked.
“Oh. That. I guess I didn’t eat enough and I got a little light-headed after anthropology class. I almost passed out, and Aidan had to take me to the nurse’s office.” I felt the heat rise in my cheeks. As embarrassing as it was, I figured I better tell them the truth. For all I knew, half the school had witnessed the incident, and word would surely get back to them.
Marissa eyed me sharply. “Well, I sure hope you weren’t faking it,” she said. “Because he’d know if you were. You don’t know how to block your thoughts, do you?”
“What do you mean, block my thoughts?” It suddenly felt as if something were strangling me, and I reached a hand up to my throat. Aidan’s scarf.
I was still wearing his scarf. I loosened it, hoping no one recognized it or I’d never hear the end of the questions.
“He can read minds,” Sophie explained. “That’s his thing. You know, his gift? So you have to know how to block your thoughts around him, if you don’t want him to know what you’re thinking. It’s easy, really.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, laughing.
“No, really,” Cece said.
“Hey, you never told us what your thing is,” Sophie said, turning toward me. “You’re not going to make us guess, are you? I hate it when people do that.”
Kate picked up a pillow from Cece’s bed and threw it at Sophie. “She has to tell us; it’s against the code not to. Have you gotten a copy of the COPA yet?”
“The copa?” I shook my head in frustration. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Marissa rolled her eyes. “The code. You read it, sign it, and then you destroy it. Usually on your first day.”
“Maybe she hasn’t gotten it yet,” Sophie said. “It’s possible that she. you know, hasn’t figured it out yet.”
Marissa shook her head. “Everyone figures it out by the end of the first day, if they didn’t already know.”
“Guys, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m tired, I feel like crap, and I almost passed out today. Any chance you could cut me some slack?”
Cece’s hand flew to her forehead, her dark eyes as wide as saucers. “Oh my God, she really doesn’t know.”
“Then she’s clueless—”
“Shut up, Marissa,” Sophie said, giving her a dirty look. “Just because you were a legacy and knew all along—” Suddenly they were all arguing at once, about who knew and who didn’t know. something.