My Merlin Awakening (3 page)

“I’ll try,” I mumbled.

“Coach is right,” Ramanajan said quickly. “We can’t lose if we can just figure out how to work together again. As your captain, I promise you I won’t rest until that is so.”

Vane gave her a brisk nod. “Good.”

I shivered as another blast of arctic air raced across the open field and leveled us.

“Everyone inside,” Vane said.

The team didn’t need more prompting. Arms linked, they huddled together against the cold and ran inside. I followed. Vane didn’t stop me again as I half expected him to. I turned around to glance at him.

He stood looking out across the empty field with a pensive expression, his dark-blonde eyebrows furrowed. I had the feeling he wasn’t thinking about lacrosse. I had to resist the urge to walk over and put a hand against the hard cheekbones of his face. I shook my head. When it came to Vane, I was more pathetic that anyone else on the team.

***

It took me a few minutes to shower after practice. The other girls were still congratulating Ramanajan when I hurried out of the locker room. I was the first to get to History. The basement room reminded me of a dungeon. Cheap plywood desk-and-chair combos took up most of the space. A thin teacher’s desk looked barren at the front. Most of the room was bereft of any decoration. High windows surrounded the top of the classroom, letting in a bit of sun, but not enough to lighten the dreary interior.

The classroom filled quickly as students rushed to beat the bell. There were usually one or two who hung around just outside in the hallway until the bell forced them in, but not this class. Everyone sat and waited for the teacher.

A couple of people peeked in from the hallway. They were teachers on their off period. The sharp ring of the bell sounded. We waited. No one was particularly surprised that our teacher was late. I heard footsteps pound down the corridor, then a titter of voices from the lingering teachers in the hall before Vane entered the classroom.

“Ah, you’re all here,” Vane said, as if it were a surprise.

I glanced around the packed room. When Ms. Bedevere was teaching Advanced Placement European History, despite it being the only Euro-History class, barely half the room had been full. Now, every desk had a student and I knew there was a waiting list of several students if a space opened up. The majority of the class was, of course, girls. And by the way they stared at Vane with such intense concentration, I doubted if a space was going to open up anytime soon.

Vane slammed his bag down on the floor beside the teacher’s desk. With white chalk, he wrote “Ancient Greece” on the blank chalkboard. He asked without turning, “Who’s done their reading?”

Almost every single hand in the classroom went up.

I forced myself to lower mine. I glanced behind me at Grey and raised a brow at my brother’s taciturn expression. Grey and three of his buddies sat in the back. Grey’s hand was not up, but his buddies had raised theirs. They were the only boys left. Many of the other boys who had originally been in the class had, over the month, disappeared bit by bit, transferring to other classes as their girlfriends persuaded them to give up their space. Since my brother didn’t have a girlfriend, and didn’t seem inclined to get one anytime soon, he held on. He also wanted to keep a close eye on Vane.

Vane turned around. His eyes fixed on Grey. “Don’t like the Greeks, Ragnar?”

“Aren’t we supposed to be on World War I or something? The AP tests aren’t that far away. Ms. Bedevere already covered this.”

“Indeed, she did. However, when I gave you the pop quiz last week, it seems that none of you were able to answer any questions in this area. Hence, we shall be going back to address these holes. And I expect you to complete your assignments, not just question them.” He leveled Grey with a sardonic look. “You may do that once you’ve actually built up a basic foundation.” Vane glanced at the class.

They all watched him with alert eyes.

“Who can tell me the date of the great volcanic eruption on the Greek island of Thera?”

A wheezy girl in the front coughed and stuck her hand up in the air. She beat the twenty other girls whose hands were also held high.

Vane looked at me. “Well, DuLac?”

If I could have sunk any lower into my seat I would have, but showing weakness in front of Vane wasn’t an option. “The
estimated
date was said to be somewhere between 1630 BC and 1600 BC, about thirty-five hundred years ago.”

Vane blinked. He clearly was not expecting me to actually know the dates. I don’t know why, but it surprised him that I had, in fact, read the assignment. Total flakes didn’t get elected student president. Plus, I happened to be a history nerd. Why else would I be interested in a guy born in the year 519?

I met Vane’s steady gaze. He didn’t seem at all out of place in our time despite being cryogenically frozen in a cave for more than fifteen hundred years. The staff of Acton-Concord was startled when the new lacrosse coach took over a history class. The combination of razor-sharp wit (completely real) and his credentials (completely fake) had won them over in the end.

“What is the date estimate based on?” Vane asked.

“Carbon dating of an olive tree found under the lava flow.”

“What city was on Thera?”

“Akrotiri, a Minoan settlement,” I said.

“What did the eruption also cause?”

I opened my mouth to answer.

Vane raised a brow. “Clearly you’ve read your assignment, DuLac. Shall we allow someone else to answer?”

My cheeks heating, I glared at Vane. Of course, I couldn’t come up with anything cuttingly clever on the spot. Some people had that ability, not I.

Ramanajan, who sat behind me, cleared her throat. “The eruption was so large, a tsunami hundreds of feet high devastated the northern coast of the island of Crete, the center of the Minoan civilization about sixty-eight miles away. The Minoans never recovered from the eruption. In less than fifty or so years, their strongholds fell and the Greek city-states such as Athens, Sparta, and Argos came into power.”

Vane nodded. Coming around his desk, he sat on the edge and stared at the class for a minute. He didn’t say anything, but I found myself holding my breath in anticipation. “One event that changed the world as we know it. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? How everything we know, even the way we live, can change in the blink of an eye?”

He didn’t look at me, but I knew his words were directed straight at me.

The class stared back at him. The whole world had literally trembled when a giant stone holding King Arthur’s sword suddenly poofed into existence, crashing into the middle of London. The news had labeled it the “Total Tremor.” Several months later, no one could explain the appearance of the sword. Nor could anyone scientifically figure out how a rock, only the size of pickup truck, created an impact wave that caused the whole world to experience the tremor.

It did change the world. Just the appearance of King Arthur’s sword had caused a storm of excitement, speculation, and fear. No one wanted to say the “M” word.

“M” was for magic.

Two girls in front of me turned their heads and gave me a pitying look. I looked down at my desk.

“M” was for Merlin. “M” was for Matt.

Matt Emrys, my sort-of-ex-boyfriend who was formerly considered the hottest guy at Acton-Concord High, had gone off the deep end and declared on international news that he was Merlin. After his announcement, Matt had apparently been carted away in a straightjacket. People also thought it hilarious that Grey and I had supposedly both stood in line to try to pull the sword from the stone, along with all the other crazies. What we’d actually done had been a lot crazier than they could have imagined.

Vane grabbed some papers on his desk and shuffled through them. “However while we wait for the world to change, I have your quizzes from last time. From the marks, I can tell that many of you have already left for mid-winter break.” Uncrossing long, lean legs, he started passing out the quizzes. A few of the girls actually giggled in excitement when he handed them their papers.

Vane came up to my desk. Without looking up, I lifted my hand, palm up, for him to drop the quiz onto. His fingers grazed my palm. He laid the paper down on the desk instead. I stared at the paper. I refused to give in to the urge to look at him.

Vane chuckled softly. “Decent showing, DuLac. You’re the only one who managed to answer the date of King Arthur’s death correctly.”

I couldn’t help it. I raised my eyes to meet his dark brown ones. “It hasn’t been proven that he actually existed.”

Hazel-brown irises deepened. “Hasn’t it?”

“The sword and the stone falling out of nowhere proved that part of the legend existed. So why not King Arthur?” the wheezy girl from the front said. “And someone even pulled the sword.”

“Pulling the sword didn’t make him king…” I started.

“No,” she said. “But if one piece of the legend is true, it makes you question the rest.”

“You think Emrys is really Merlin?” Grey asked from the back of the room.

“Grey,” one of the girls sitting beside him hissed as she slapped a bicep. “Don’t talk about him. It’ll upset Mr. Northe—”

Vane interjected smoothly. “My brother has allowed this mystery to overwhelm him, but I assure you he’s receiving all the help he needs. He’s always been a little… delicate.”

Delicate.
I debated kicking Vane in the shin.

Taking a cue from Vane’s playbook, for once, careful and plotting Matt had done the unthinkable. He exposed magic to a crowd of reporters in the middle of a press announcement. The whole thing had been covered up—sort of. All digital and analog recordings of the news feed had been altered to show Matt supposedly doing magic. The reporters in the media room who had actually seen Matt do magic also had their memories “fixed.” That left one last group of people who saw the news broadcast. The number was surprisingly small, but considering that I didn’t know anyone who actually watched a TV show when it came on, I suppose it wasn’t too much of a stretch.

For once, Matt had done something reckless. Something only Vane would have dared. So, naturally, Vane wanted to dismiss it like it meant nothing. I crumpled the quiz I held in my hand.

Vane raised a sardonic brow. “Careful, DuLac, you’ll need to know those questions for the test.” He looked at the rest of the students. “I know it’s second semester, but you have decided to take an Advanced Placement class and the test will cover all this and more.” He patted my head. “I want to make sure you realize your full potential.”

Clenching my teeth, I resisted growling at him.

With a Cheshire cat smile, Vane walked off toward another student. The rest of the class was filled with more discussion on Greek facts and mythology. For a direct descendant of the ancient Romans, it seemed odd that Vane was spending so much time on Greece. For the first time since I’d gotten there, a shiver went up my spine. Vane was up to something.

And that usually meant someone was about to die.

***

Fifteen minutes after the first lunch, the hallways stood abandoned. Anyone who didn’t have first lunch sat in homeroom, still in class. I was in Independent Projects. Only open to a select set of students, the class let you explore a profession under the mentorship of an expert in the field from the community. A few students sat in an empty classroom. Large windows took up one wall. The Independent Projects classroom was one of the nicest rooms in the whole school, meaning, it actually opened up to the rare bit of sunlight when it graced the city. Eight circular tables took up the classroom. Each table had five or six plastic, bucket-style seats. After the first five minutes, the other students started filing out until Grey and I were the only ones left. Independent Projects allowed you to leave campus for a whole two hours to do research. It had to be the number one reason why everyone took the class. Also, the teacher only showed up on Mondays to check up on us.

I had my laptop open and typed away on a brochure I was creating. My project was to open a small exhibit at a local museum. We all had to come up with a project that related to what we were studying. Okay, my project was a little over-the-top, since I’d actually convinced a museum to showcase my exhibit, but you didn’t get to be student president by being an under-achiever. Anyway, one of the guys was shooting an actual commercial for a small clothing store. I had to top that.

Grey was coming up with a portfolio analysis of an investment company. Grey’s mentor was a VP at Ragnar Bank, a bank owned by Grey’s mom—my adopted mom—who could write a portfolio analysis in her sleep. My mentor happened to be Dr. Vivane Northe. Vane. A.k.a., everything in vain. Nothing without pain… I could go on.

Grey shut his laptop and put it into his backpack.

“You’re done?” I asked in surprise. We sat on the same table across from each other. “Didn’t you just start?”

“I’m meeting Joey and a couple of other guys at the sandwich shop.”

I gave him a skeptical look. “We have to make a presentation on everything we’ve done next class.”

Grey snorted. “Mrs. Morris slotted ten minutes for each of us. I can spew bull for at least fifteen.” He slung his backpack on his shoulder and got up. “Don’t worry, sis, I’ll come out just fine. I always do.” He smiled a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Since we’d gotten back from London—where he’d almost died—Grey hadn’t been the same.