Olivia lay in her bed, savoring the sounds of her friends sleeping around her. How strange it was to be back among them, listening to their soft night sounds and finding comfort in them. At first, she’d thought she’d find the communal space annoying after so many nights with just her and Bronwyn sharing a space. Even in the dungeon, Morgan had kept to himself and rarely bothered them once they went into their tent. Now she was here, three feet away from the softly snoring Veena and just across the aisle from Shani and Adaida, and her eyes felt heavy with the desire to close and drift away.

She turned over and allowed her sleepy eyelids to fall, replaying the conversations they’d had before going to sleep. Rald had insisted on sharing some liquor he’d brought from home—some kind of Ridonnian whiskey. It had been harsh and smokey and made the cohort’s rebonding experience easier and more fun than Olivia would have thought possible. Rald had moaned endlessly about how he needed Olivia’s help with women, having struck out with not one, not two, but three relationships while she was gone. Of course, this opened him up to more teasing from Veena and Shani, and Hanwol had simply snorted and opened a book to peruse while he deemed the subject unworthy of his attention.

Olivia smiled into her pillow as she remembered how Veena hadn’t let Hanwol slide so easily, landing a perfectly placed barb about his recent “date” with Gwinna. Apparently, they’d been studying how to manipulate certain states of matter together—they shared an affinity for something called “bonding Energy,” which Olivia found intriguing on its own. Not only were there different types of affinities, but there appeared to be different states of Energy within those affinities. The revelation drove home how much she’d missed in their Spellcraft class.

Smiling at the memories, Olivia felt her eyes grow heavier, and sleep pulled her into oblivion. Though she dreamed quite a lot, when she woke to the hushed conversations of her cohort getting ready for their first class, they fled her mind, and she had no recollection of any of them. “Mmff,” she said, rolling over onto her back and pulling her pillow into a ball beneath her head. “Is it time to get up already?”

“Guess you’ve been getting lazy in your time away from the academy, huh?” Adaida said, coming over to sit on the side of her bed. “Must be nice not to have to go to most of your classes!”

“Well, I have to go sit with Oylla-dak while we interview people vying to be my new taskmaster!” Olivia scooted up, both enjoying and feeling the familiar pit in her stomach at Adaida’s proximity. Just as she opened her mouth to say something, though, a piercing scream sounded from the hallway. Suddenly Olivia’s pleasant, fuzzy demeanor shifted, and she veritably flew out of bed, her nightgown-clothed body blazing like a white-blue torch. “Get back!” she commanded to Adaida and Veena, the only other members of her cohort near the door; then, she summoned a ball of crackling blue plasma and pulled the door ajar, peering into the hallway.

A student, Ulya ap’Tine, from Wood cohort, was standing with her back to the wall, a hand over her mouth, her entire body shaking, while she gazed upon the scene of a slaughter. Olivia stepped into the hallway and took the girl’s wrist, guiding her to the dorm and Adaida and Veena; then she went back into the hall, pulling the door closed behind her.

Some of the other dormitory doors opened a few inches while other students peered into the hallway, trying to see what the scream was about. Still, they quickly closed them when they saw Olivia’s torch-like figure standing amidst the carnage, and what carnage it was! The remains of a female student were strewn up and down the hallway—viscera and blood liberally painted the walls and floor, and even the ceiling dripped with the fleshy matter.

Olivia wouldn’t have been able to identify the remains as a person if not for the perfectly intact head set purposefully in the center of the hall. Olivia studied the floor, noting the sprays of arterial blood and the footprints left by Ulya as she’d stumbled into the scene. “How did she get so far into it before she realized what she’d come upon?” Olivia carefully tiptoed through the mess, looking up and down the hallway but not seeing any sign of the aggressor. Realizing the authorities weren’t anywhere near yet, Olivia moved back to the center of the slaughter and the decapitated head that sat there, surveying the scene of its own massacre.

“Poor thing,” she said, squatting down to peer into the cloudy violet eyes. The victim had long, white hair, the ends of which were painted crimson by the blood on the floor. Smooth, pale blue skin and tiny antennae told the story of the girl’s heritage—part Ardeni and part Ghelli. Olivia glanced at her face more closely, a thought like a thunderbolt running through her, and then she saw it, “Oh God! Shathi . . .”

She hadn’t known the girl well, but there were only so many cohorts, and they had several classes together—of course, she should recognize her! Olivia had thought the girl from Silver cohort was beautiful and sweet and hadn’t ever had cause to complain about her. She wasn’t overly competitive. She never gossiped out of turn, and, in fact, she’d once helped Olivia with one of her alchemical recipes after she’d been in “detention.”

“Stand slowly and turn to regard me!” the voice was firm and loud but very calm, so Olivia didn’t overreact. She just rose to a standing position and slowly turned toward the voice, still holding her ball of crackling plasma. When she saw Carlu, the investigator, still wearing blue and white striped pajamas, she relaxed.

“Hello, Investigator. What a horrible thing to wake up to, wouldn’t you say?” She ended her spell, and the sizzling ball of Energy winked out, reduced to a wispy line of blue smoke that shortly faded into nothing.

“Oh, Miss Bennet.” Relief was evident in his voice. “I was alerted to the scream of a student and feared I might have stumbled upon the killer.”

“No sign of the killer to my untrained eye. The girl who screamed is in Copper cohort’s dorm here,” Olivia gestured to the closed door between them.

“Well, let me see what I can find. Please don’t move for a few moments—the less you stir up the Energies before I can do some scrying, the better.

“Oh, I should have thought of that. Did I ruin the scene? I, um, wouldn’t mind getting into some different clothes,” Olivia said, suddenly self-conscious about standing in the hallway in her white, silky nightgown.

“I beg your patience,” Carlu said, fiddling with a pair of brass goggles. They sprouted a half dozen different springy antennae and emitted a buzzing, crackling sound as he powered them up. Olivia watched as he slowly moved his gaze over the hallway, lingering on this spot or that and seemingly staring at her feet for a long couple of minutes. After darting his glance here and there, he reached up and turned a dial on the side of the goggles until visible electrical currents began to arc between the antennae. Then he knelt and stared down the length of the hallway, seemingly forming some sort of impression.

Olivia folded her arms over her chest and frowned, tapping a foot, glancing at the various dormitory doors that opened and closed as curious students poked their noses out. Finally, Inspector Carlu seemed to finish, and he reached up to click off the weird goggles and pull them from his face. “Thanks for putting up with that; it was good that you weren’t mixing more of your Energy signature with the killer’s. While I had you standing there, I was able to isolate the signature of the victim and, I believe, a trace of the murderer. We’re looking for someone with a spirit Core and an affinity for death Energy.”

“A spirit Core? Death Energy?” Olivia repeated, sounding almost like an echo.

“Not a common combination in civilized circles, I’m afraid, though that might work in our favor. I’ll deal with the administration if you’d like to return to your dormitory now, Ms. Bennet. Thank you for so bravely coming forth in the defense of your fellow students.”

“Oh, well, you’re welcome. Thanks, Mr. Carlu,” Olivia said, pleased that the investigator was giving her the benefit of the doubt. She quickly tiptoed between smears of blood to her dormitory and then went inside.

“Liv! What in the roots? Why’d you run out there?” Adaida asked the instant she came inside.

“Why? I was hoping to catch the killer, of course . . .”

“Hah, of course, she was. Conqueror of the Proving Grounds that she is!” Rald slapped his hands together, then asked, “Is it true?” He gestured to where Ulya was sitting on Veena’s bed, sobbing into her hands while she spoke softly to Shani and Veena. “Was it Shathi?”

“Yes,” Olivia said with a sigh. “Poor thing—if I could pick anyone from the first years that didn’t deserve to be killed like that, she’d be on the list.”

“This is hitting rather close to home, isn’t it?” Hanwol said, his voice even more morose and sonorous than usual.

“This is terrible! Poor Shathi! She reminded me of my sister, and not just because their names are similar,” Adaida sat at the foot of Olivia’s bed and stared into space, almost like she was in shock. Olivia glanced at Shani and Veena, still comforting Ulya. She supposed the blond Ghelli was similar in features to the victim, but Shani was far more acerbic and outgoing than Shathi. Still, there was no accounting for how other people felt, and if Adaida felt they were similar, who was Olivia to judge?

Rald opened the door and poked his head out, only to have a school official bark at him to wait within until they were cleared to leave. “Looks like we’re missing Enchantment today.”

“Is that all you can think about?” Adaida asked, her eyes beginning to well with tears.

“No! Come on, you know me better than that! I liked Shathi, too, all right?” Rald sat down on the wooden bench that flanked their doorway. Olivia often used the bench to put her shoes on, and she wondered if Shathi had used a similar one to put hers on that morning. She cleared her throat and walked over to Ulya.

“Did you see anything, Ulya? How’d you get into the middle of that mess?”

“What?” Ulya looked up at Olivia, her blue face swollen and her eyes bleary and red.

“I mean, the hallway was a disaster. How’d you get so far into that mess without realizing it was a murder scene?”

“I was running! I’d stayed with Garnet last night! I was hurrying back to the dorm to change.”

“Oh?” Olivia prodded.

“Yes, if you must know, Pirk and I were . . . studying last night.”

“What?” Veena asked. “You slept with him in their dorm? I hope you didn’t mind the audience!”

“It’s not like that! Haven’t you been to the gemstone dorms? They all have separate rooms that open into a hallway.”

“What?” Rald asked, stunned, “That’s hardly fair!”

“It’s called money,” Ulya said, sniffing loudly. Just then, a loud knock sounded on the door, and it opened. Inspector Carlu stood there with a black-robed administrator whom Olivia had never met. He cleared his throat, stepping forward with a short bow.

“Pardon me, but you did say the witness was within, is that right, Miss Bennet?”

“Yes, Ulya is from Wood cohort—she’s the one who screamed.”

“I didn’t witness anything! I just stumbled on that horrible mess!”

“Nothing to be upset about, Miss ap’Tine.”

“How do you know my name?” She sniffed loudly, wiping her nose on the back of her sleeve.

“Oh, I took it upon myself to memorize the current rolls. Would you mind coming with us, please? I have some scrying spells I’d like to use to try to jog a few details loose in your memory. Things you might have noticed without realizing it.”

“Yes, come along, Ulya,” the administrator said. “You all may head to your class now. We’ve finished with the hallway. I would encourage you all to stay together and avoid spreading rumors—very little is known at this point, and speculation will only cause harm to the Academy. Is that understood?”

“What?” Hanwol asked, stepping forward in a very uncharacteristic show of confrontation. “You have the nerve to ask us not to speculate when our classmates are being slaughtered wholesale in the hallways?”

“That’s exactly the kind of talk we’d like to avoid, Mr. Fenash! Would you like the alumni to pull their funding? Would you like the great families to call their children home? The Academy doesn’t exist in a vacuum!”

“In that case, you should work to solve these murders, sir. It’s hardly our fault that this is happening,” Hanwol replied, not backing down even an inch. Olivia smiled, watching the interaction. Hanwol’s blue-painted face hid all of his emotion, but his red-shot eyes were steady and unblinking. Hadn’t he said something about wanting to be a solicitor or something? Perhaps he felt a calling to stand up to authority.

“As I said, please refrain from spreading rumors,” the administrator said, turning and exiting. Inspector Carlu took Ulya’s elbow and guided her out of the room. And then Rald stood up and gave Hanwol a thump on the back.

“Nice one, Han! Don’t let them push us around!”

“It’s easy to be brave when you have Olivia watching your back, eh, Han?” Adaida added. Olivia hadn’t noticed, but she’d moved close to her again, and now she reached out to, quite literally, hang onto her shoulder.

“Listen, you guys, I promise, anyone who comes into this dorm looking to hurt any of you is going to get reduced to slag, but I can’t be with you all the time, so please, please stay together, as the Professor said. Do you all promise me?” Olivia looked around the dorm, meeting eyes with each of her cohort members. “Say it! Promise me!”

She stood in front of the door with her arms crossed until they each promised her to stay with the others. “What about you?” Adaida asked, still clinging to her arm.

“I’ll be fine. I’ll stay on high alert, alright? I’m on my way to see Oylla as soon as you all leave, anyway. I don’t think anyone will mess with me as long as I’m with her, right?”