4. Ella

Chapter 4

Ella

To do list:

· Check in first thing tomorrow with Connor Paight about how his test went, then discuss a time that works for him to begin counseling

? Need to get access to his schedule to know where he’ll be first period

? REMINDER: ask Headmistress Dyer for the twentieth time for the password to the database so I can start accessing transcripts and schedules on my own

· Do a classroom observation of Oken Bennet—I want to see what his triggers are

? Get his schedule to find a time to meet for counseling

? Get him to come—even if he says no, GET HIM TO COME

? Would love to have a conversation with his parents to see if his anger is an issue at home, but I need the password to the database to access his emergency contact info

· Check in with Skylar Wolfe and see if she needs a session to process what happened with Oken

· Check in with Anastasia Branwen—she never came to find me after class

· See if I can take a self-defense class in Cavale? Maybe off campus, since no one here will want to teach me

? Find out if there are buses or trains that could take me off campus—let’s be real, no one is driving me anywhere

· Make myself lunch tonight and bring it with me to work. Not going to the teacher’s lounge ever again

At three o’clock on the dot, Ella closed her brown leather notebook, tucking it safely inside her desk drawer, and grabbed her coat and briefcase, locking her office behind her and heading for the faculty housing.

Ella’s apartment was located on the first floor, possibly the only kindness she’d been granted in Cavale—well, she would have considered it a benevolent gesture on Headmistress Dyer’s part, if her apartment wasn’t directly across the hall from Kellen Kilic. She tiptoed through the hallway to her apartment complex, careful not to release any loud noises that would alert Kellen, if he was in his apartment, that she was there, before she unlocked her door and rushed inside, bolting it shut behind her.

“Freya?” Ella called out. “I’m home!”

Entering the loft, she heard the tiny pitter-patters of her five-year-old Cavachon puppy. Ella stumbled upon Freya when she was twenty-one-years-old, living in Essex at the time during her semester of study abroad. Though Ella couldn’t compute the numbers for sure, she was fairly certain Freya had only been three months when she found her, separated from her mother and a sopping, trembling mess in the rain.

From the day they met until now, the two of them had never spent a single day apart. In Ella’s interview to work at Delmarth, her one condition for moving onto their campus was that she had to be allowed to bring her dog. If she didn’t have Freya with her, Ella wasn’t sure she’d have made it through that initial month in Cavale.

Freya came barreling around the corner and leapt into Ella’s arms.

“Hi, my love!” Ella cooed, kissing the crown of her head. Freya was apricot colored, her fur a light brown with some sprinkles of white scattered throughout, her ears a tanner color at the tips. Her breed was a mix of a Caviler King Charles Spaniel and a Bichon, with more attributes of a Caviler, but a smile that was copied and pasted off a Bichon. She had big, expressive black eyes that were always filled with so much adoration and joy. Ella’s favorite little quirk about Freya was the shape of her back—she sort of had a hump, and when she walked, it looked like she was wiggling, or what Ella called spider walking.

She licked all over Ella’s face, her typical greeting, but quickly froze, pulling her head back.

“You’re tasting the smoothie I had thrown in my face,” Ella told her. Freya wrinkled her nose in a manner that communicated she didn’t like the taste, then squirmed in Ella’s arms, her way of signaling it was time to be put down. “Alright, alright. There you go.” Ella set Freya on her feet.

In the five years they’d spent attached at the hip, Ella learned to converse and read Freya better than she’d ever known how to read a single human. Freya peeked up, asking with her eyes where’s my dinner?

“You think I didn’t bring you anything from the cafeteria? That I’d randomly decide to starve you now? ”

Freya narrowed her eyes, flicking them to her bowl. She wasn’t in the mood to banter, it seemed.

Ella frowned. “You’re no fun.”

Ella retrieved, from the plastic bag she’d lugged home in her briefcase, two meat patties she swiped from a burger when she snuck inside the kitchen around one o’clock, as she’d done every day since she finished the bag of dry food she’d packed in her suitcase. Ella had spent Freya’s first five years refusing to give her any human food, but with no way for her to order any dog food from the Earthly Plane, she had to get creative in order to feed her girl. Ella placed the patties in a bowl on the floor, then poured water into Freya’s metal dish. The moment Ella was no longer hovering over her dinner, Freya scampered across the carpet and shoved her face inside the meat.

Ella plopped down on their grey couch, unfurling her legs out on the wooden coffee table, and observed as Freya devoured her dinner, her thin tail slapping against the floorboard. Ella loved Freya’s coiling tail—when it whipped from side to side, it looked like a windshield wiper.

When she finished eating, her chin damp from the water she’d lapped up, she flashed Ella a wet grin and vaulted onto the couch, resting her chin on Ella’s chest. When she found Freya alone in that deserted alley in Essex, only five pounds at the time, she’d crawled into Ella’s arms and rested her chin on Ella’s sternum, peeking up at her with guileless eyes that could thaw even the emptiest, coldest of souls. Five years later, she’d grown to be fourteen pounds of pure sweetness and underrated feistiness—and she still loved lying on top of Ella this way over any other.

On the arm of the couch, Ella’s phone began vibrating with an incoming call from her big sister.

“Fuck,” she hissed under her breath, then reluctantly answered the call, bringing her phone to her ear. “Rylee?”

“Thank fuck. When you didn’t answer right away, I thought you might be in the bottom of a ditch.”

Ella choked out a bitter laugh. “That’s not entirely implausible anymore.”

“Don’t joke like that. The thought of someone hurting you makes me absolutely murderous. The fact that I have to exist in New York knowing these things are happening to you in a different fucking dimension where I can’t come give those jackasses a piece of my mind makes my skin feel so itchy around my bones that I wish I could crawl out of it.” Ella’s face split apart from a smile at her sister’s hyperbole. “Are you okay, though? How did today go? Any better than yesterday?”

Headmistress Dyer never told Ella she couldn’t share Cavale’s existence with anyone from the Earthly Plane, so she’d never even attempted to hide anything from Rylee, not that she ever would have been able to successfully. Rylee, in her special, inimitable way, knew the second she heard Ella’s voice that first day that something horrible had transpired. She believed her immediately, even without any proof.

Ella rested the back of her head against the wall.

“I had my arm broken once by a student, my cheekbone broken by a teacher, and got thrown into a wall twice. They really love to throw me into walls. Oh, and I also had a smoothie thrown in my face. But in some good news, I finally got a student to agree to begin counseling with me! Not the strength-wielder, yet. He’s the one who broke my arm, but I do think I’m beginning to get through to him, which is progress. The kid who agreed to counseling is a middle school aged Varmin. It was the first time since I’ve been here that I finally got to do my actual job. I can’t tell you how good that felt, Ry.”

“Oh, Ella,” Rylee sighed, her voice ensnared by a distressed sob.

“Stop it,” Ella begged, squeezing her eyes shut so they weren’t tempted to succumb to any tears. “It doesn’t help me to sit here and listen to you cry about what’s happening to me. I need these phone calls to be light.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t help it.” Rylee sniffled on the other end, then pulled herself together. “Was it that same teacher who’s been giving you a hard time?”

“They all give me a hard time. Kilic, you mean? I saw him twice today, with the Varmin kid. He didn’t do anything too bad.”

“Who broke your cheekbone?”

“A Herculea instructor.”

“Remind me again what Herculea means?” Ella smiled.

“The Herculeans are the Primordials that possess strength-based powers, or abilities like super speed or flying or healing injury. They’re known as wielders.”

“But they don’t turn into creatures?”

“No. Those are the Varmin. They’re shifters. We’re not supposed to say creatures. It’s apparently offensive.”

“Oh. Sorry,” Rylee whispered, which made Ella chuckle. “Which are the ones that can do things with their minds?”

“The Cerebri. They manipulate matter, which is why they’re called manipulators.”

“And what’s the last one?”

“Meteoro. Benders of the elements, fire, water, earth and wind.” Rylee whistled through her teeth.

“I’d find it all fascinating if they weren’t such assholes to my little sister.”

“Yeah. Me too.” Ella lay her cheek inside her palm, leaning her elbow on the arm of the couch. “I’ll get through the next nine months. We’ll get through it. We’ve survived worse, Ry.”

“Stop saying that, Noella. Just because we’ve been through shit in the past doesn’t excuse what’s happening to you in the present. I know you use that phrasing to help yourself cope, but don’t do that shit with me. What’s happening to you is awful, and it’s okay to sit here with me right now and admit that.”

I can’t, Ella wanted to weep, wanted to dissolve into tears, dissolve inside the comfort of her phone so she could find a way to travel back to her sister. She knew if she let herself surrender to the sob that now permanently dwelt within her throat, waiting for her to breathe life into it, she’d never be able to stop crying, never be able to walk out that door and face this world she’d been trapped in.

“Yes. It’s awful. I’m miserable. Does it make you feel better to hear me say that?”

“Of course not. I just don’t want you to bottle up what you’re feeling. You’re the queen of telling others to feel their emotions, to not let their feelings become something they fear. Don’t let the way of the Primordials trick you into thinking the way you exist is wrong. Just because you’ve been through shit before doesn’t mean you deserve to be going through shit now. Just because a feeling is familiar doesn’t make it comfortable.” Ella stuffed her fist inside her mouth to imprison a scream, biting down on her fingers.

When she felt certain it wouldn’t leak out, she coughed up an artificial laugh for her sister’s benefit.

“Maybe you should be the school counselor.”

“They couldn’t pay me all the money in the world to do that job.” This time, Ella’s laugh was genuine.

“You’re right. Stick to being an attorney. You’re good at that.”

“I appreciate the bode of confidence, dear sister.” Ella’s chest warmed.

“How’s Mason?” she asked, crushed by an unbearable longing to be with her sister and brother-in-law, to have people again, to have anything other than crushing silence be her only suitable companion.

“Mason is good. He misses you. We both do.”

“I miss you too, Ry.” Every second of every single day, I miss you. “I have to go. I need to walk Freya.”

“Okay, my honey. Please, call me if you need anything. Anything at all. I love you so much.”

“I love you more.” She hung up the phone, dashing away a tear.

As far as Ella was concerned, Rylee raised her. Ella’s father left them when she was five. What few memories she possessed of her mother now—who she referred to as Annalise when asked about her because the title of mom, in her heart, belonged to Rylee—were splintered and unclear. The older she got, the more those memories floated together and blurred, like the plumes of smoke frothing from the end of her mother’s cigarette buds. All she was left with was the residue of feeling attached to the memories, the pain, the loneliness, the anguish. Sometimes Ella fantasized about what it would be like to still have her around, but it would only last for a moment before her brain intervened to permeate her eyes with images from when she was still alive.

That’s all it took for the fantasy to dissolve as quickly as it formed.

Ella turned to look at Freya, who hadn’t moved off her chest. “Want to go for a walk?” she asked in a falsetto, high-pitched voice, feigning excitement for the sake of her dog. Freya catapulted herself off Ella’s lap and ran right to the door.

Ella and Freya’s walks remained localized to the academic sector after hours, since any other quarter on campus wasn’t safe. They walked in a comfortable silence, Freya plastered to her side, her leash twisted around Ella’s hand. The pavement, in all its stunning decrepitude, looked as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to it, diligently hitting every cement rectangle with enough force to make a network of cracks, many of them now colonized by weeds. Ella dropped the leash, letting Freya go off on her own. She leapt through the trees that lined the path, emerging with a stick in her mouth.

“Really?” Ella shut her eyes and huffed out a sigh.

She saw the rest of her evening play out. She’d throw the branch, and it would leave brown flecks on her hands in its wake. She’d end up wiping them off on her slacks, which would result in needing to do laundry earlier than planned because she wouldn’t be able to stand knowing her favorite pair of work pants were out of commission for the rest of the week. Depending on where it landed, Freya would return with dirt all over her fur and twigs tangled in her hair, and they’d end the night with Ella having to bathe her and both of them being miserable.

While Ella consciously knew all of this, she could never refuse Freya when she flashed her that beseeching, ingenuous big-eyed look.

Ella surrendered and curled her fingers around the other side of the stick that wasn’t between Freya’s teeth. When her arm wheeled back, Freya prematurely sprinted forward, having thought Ella already threw it. Ella decided to amuse herself and paused, holding still until Freya stopped several feet away from her, looking back with confusion. Only then did Ella hurl the stick.

While small for a cavachon, Freya had power in those tiny legs. Her eyes sparkled as she soared down the path to retrieve what was pitched, though she wasn’t quite fast enough to catch it midair. After she collected the stick, Freya galloped back to where Ella stood, dropping the branch at her feet.

“Oh no,” Ella refused with a shake of her head. “Once was enough. Do you want to end up in another bath tonight?”

Freya’s big black eyes lifted to the heavens, as if she was considering whether one more game of fetch was worth a third bath this week. She decided it was and pushed the stick closer to Ella with her paw.

“Alright. As long as you know what this means.” She wound her arm back, tossing the branch again.

Thank all the Gods in existence for dogs.

Once they returned home from their walk, Ella bathed Freya in the bathtub, then stripped off her soiled turtleneck and tossed it in the laundry bin, along with her slacks, bra, and socks. As she dressed in her bathing suit and hunted through the drawers for a dress to throw on, Freya found her way into her crate, situating herself in a half-moon shape in the bed, resting her cheek along the metal bars.

“Mommy’s going to go, but she’ll be home later,” she told Freya, as she always did when she left her alone. “I love you.” She blew Freya three kisses, adding one for good luck, and grabbed her keys.

Ella yanked open the door to Delmarth’s Sports Center and scuttled down the stairs to the pool, a towel and goggles in toe. The bathing suit sheput on had been provided by the school, a navy blue one-piece with a tiny silver crown emblazoned on the left breast. The black dress she picked was made from supple cotton that trickled down to her ankles, appropriate for an educator to be wearing around students, should she run into any in the pool. Ella took a moment to absorb her surroundings as the most gargantuan pool she’d ever laid eyes upon unfurled before her, surrounded by polished panes of glass. The smudges of purple and pink and blue composing the sunset reflected across the surface of the water in a bleary mirror image. Dappled light spilled down onto the rivulets in clean lines through the open sunroof, kaleidoscopic wonder drenching the room in variegated color. Ella was the only person in there, so no one bore witness to the way her jaw tumbled open and nearly dislocated in awe at the grandeur of the landscape.

There was no lifeguard currently in the room, nor was there a patrolling station where one might sit. This wasn’t really a surprise after observing the way of the Primordials over the last several weeks and how little they valued safety above skill. It was just further reinforcement of their urgent need for someone to be the spokesperson for mental well-being over physical capability.

Which would have to be her, because no one else here seemed up for the task.

Ella kicked off her shoes, laying her sandals and towel down on one of the cushioned lounge chairs positioned beside the pool before removing her dress. She secured her goggles over her eyes, then made her way down the steps into the pool. The water was slightly chilled, but she’d swam in pools with much colder temperatures and didn’t mind it. She dunked her head underwater, admiring the interior design through her goggles. The walls were smothered in blue mosaics, each square glossed over in a varnish that made them glimmer when the light refracted off the tiles. The pool itself was deeper than its external appearance suggested, starting at four feet at the shallow end and finishing off at twenty feet at the deep end. She gripped the edge of the pool, positioning her feet in place against the wall, then pushed off and swept her arms out to propel herself forward, engaging her core in the process.

She kept her head above water through her breaststroke, which she knew wasn’t the correct way to do it, but it made her feel safer despite the fact there was no one else in the room besides her. Ella made it to the deep end, flattening herself against the wall so she could pull her upper body out of the water, her legs remaining submerged below. She stacked her arms on top of one another on the floor, resting her cheek over the pile of limbs. In Cavale, the air tasted immaculate and uncontaminated, the wind bestowing fresh kisses onto her damp cheeks, cool beads of water saturating her flesh. The tendrils of her hair that were still underwater were doused in the late evening sun filtering down through the sunroof, emphasizing the amber undertones in the honey-golden strands. She lingered only a moment more by the edge of the pool before repositioning her feet so they were splayed on the wall and leaping out to swim back toward the shallow end.

Ten minutes passed of deliciously swimming laps back and forth without any interruption before the doors to the pool swung open. From her peripheral vision, Ella tracked where a small band of men headed over to the lounge chairs, plopping down on the one directly next to where her clothes and towel were. At first, she thought they were students and didn’t think much of them. It wasn’t until she finished her lap, when she could really concentrate on the group, that she realized one of the men was Kellen Kilic, along with two other department heads, Daniel Madix of the Cerebri department, and Lukas Foster of the Herculea department.

Daniel and Lukas were exchanging friendly barbs, sharing raucous laughter, but Kellen’s emerald eyes were settled firmly on Ella, his index finger sliding back and forth over his bottom lip as he stared at her.

She glanced over at the clock. She’d wanted to complete her full forty minutes, but perhaps it would be wiser of her to leave now, before engaging in whatever back and forth she could see brewing in Kellen’s intense gaze.

No, Ella.

If she left now, she would be handing him the power on a silver platter, tossing in her dignity as an appetizer to the main course of her conviction. Rylee would call her a coward for even considering leaving. She’d tell Ella to grow a pair and stop allowing the opinion of others to spoil her joy. Her swim time was integral to her sanity, and she wasn’t about to let three assholes disturb her peace after enduring an excruciating four weeks where so much of her autonomy had been robbed from her.

Ella dove beneath the water, moving her chest, core, hips, and legs in a wave like a caterpillar to glide smoother along the current. Somehow, Kellen’s vehement scrutiny burned even underwater.

“Looking good, Ms. Rose!” Lukas called out just as she broke through the surface after finishing her lap. She combed her hair back with her fingers, shoving the dripping tendrils behind her ears and out of her face, a deliberate move to show the jibing idiots she wasn’t hiding from them.

“Would be better if you were wearing nothing at all,” Daniel chimed in.

“Yeah, take it off, earthborn!” Lukas whooped, Daniel whistling through his teeth. “Show us your birthday suit!”

Kellen said absolutely nothing, not in support of his friends, or in defense of Ella. He just kept glaring at the back of her head like he was hoping the ferocity of his scowl would demolish her existence, wipe her off the face of Cavale, this human stain on his untarnished Primordial world.

“Let’s see how fast the guppy can swim,” she heard Kellen tell his friends before she dipped down beneath the water to push up off the wall, doing her best to ignore the frisson of fear that coursed down her spine at the threat. The sound of crackling behind her had Ella whirling around.

The mosaic tiles began crumbling, putrefying into dust, before a massive fish resembling a whale, but possessed talons instead of fins and razor-sharp yellow teeth leaking out from the sides of its mouth, crashed through the wall and lunged for her. Ella’s scream was comprised of soundless bubbles, rising to the shore in their clustered way. She didn’t have time to process what was happening as she kicked her feet faster and tore her way through the waves, terrified tears gathering in the lens of her goggles, blurring her vision, chlorine water toppling down her throat, clogging her esophagus.

She broke through the surface, spluttering a petrified wheeze and a mouthful of pool water before wheeling her arms forward to try, somehow, to outswim this monstrosity. The creature nipped at her ankles, and the tip of a fang, glazed in a disconcerting green slime that she would bet her life on being lethal, nearly grazed her calf. She yanked her knees towards her chest just in time before the behemoth could sink its teeth into her leg, her arms screaming in agony at being trundled at a speed they weren’t accustomed to moving at.

Daniel and Lukas were seemingly cheering for her from the sidelines, but her attention wasn’t on them—her peripheral focus landed on Kellen, whose irises were now eclipsed by a screen of silver as he watched the scene before him, brows furrowed and jaw clenched taut in concentration.

The creature bit a chunk out of the air, missing its target of Ella’s arm when she swerved to the right. Her goggles were filled to the brim with tears, making the path ahead unfocused and watery, but through the fog, she could map out where the wall was just a few feet away, even if the image was muddled and the waves encasing them grew more rampant. She stretched out her hand, her fingers razing through the water with urgency to reach the end of the pool. She felt something slippery coil itself around her wrist, becoming as cinched as a manacle once it was fully surrounding her forearm. Then, she was tugged backward away from the safety of the wall, right into the clutches of the beast. Ella cried out, writhing in vain to try and rip her arm out of whatever strange, seaweed-esque fin had snaked out of the behemoth and was currently strangulating her wrist.

Ella swung her other hand forward, clawing at the webbed shackle digging into her wrist while continuing to kick her feet so she stayed afloat. She grated at her own flesh in the process, drawing red welts down her forearm. The creature staggered back, bellowing a strangled cry in surprise at her actions, thrashing its cumbersome body and angering the eddying water more. Ella continued to abrade it with her nails until the fin finally slipped off her. She sprung forward the moment she was free and charged for the shallow end, all the oxygen trapped in her chest torrenting out through her relieved gasp.

The second her hand touched the wall, everything calmed. The purling waves fell flat, and the roaring wind hushed. Ella spun around, searching the water for the creature, but it was gone. The wall on the opposing side of the pool, where the creature had emerged from, was now completely intact.

Daniel and Lukas headed for the exit now that the show was over, her dress and towel departing with them. They left discussing what they would eat for dinner, as if Ella hadn’t almost died and they hadn’t just sat there bearing witness to it . Kellen remained, standing over Ella at the end of the pool.

“I’m impressed,” he praised, folding his burly arms. “I thought you were a guppy, but you may turn out to be a shark.”

“WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!” she shrieked at the top of her lungs, ripping her goggles off.

Kellen sunk down, taking his sweet time lowering to the ground, so his face was leveled with hers.

Then, he spat, “You don’t belong here, Rose. I’m not going to let your kind invade our world and infect our children with your skewed way of living. I’d rather finish my days in Terminus than work side by side with a disgusting earthborn who didn’t earn her place in Cavale.”

“You’re forgetting the fact that I wasn’t given a choice here,” she snarled, somehow subduing the emergent tears long enough to speak her piece. “I thought I was coming to work at a normal school on the Earthly Plane. I didn’t ask to enter your world, Kilic. Before four weeks ago, I didn’t even know it existed. I don’t want to be here just as much as you don’t want me here. I was tricked into signing a contract that binds me to this place for the rest of the school year, so unfortunately for both of us, it looks like we’ll just have to suck it up.” Kellen shook his head in refusal.

“You’re not lasting the school year,” he avowed, then turned on his heel and stormed out of the room.

Ella sunk back in the water, her restraint crumbling as she loosed a scream that didn’t even sound human, wrenching at the tendrils of her hair so hard that she felt the pain echo through her scalp. She’d been banking on the hope that the Primordial instructors wouldn’t dare try to murder her if it meant they spent an eternity in Terminus, but if some of them would gladly take the punishment, what protection did she have then? What Rylee said earlier rang through her ears.

Just because you’ve been through shit before doesn’t mean you deserve to be going through shit now.

Fuck this, she finally decided, climbing out of the pool. Fuck this. I’m done.

Ella stomped all the way to Headmistress Dyer’s office, her wrath keeping her warm despite not having her dress or towel, and barged in without bothering to announce her presence. The Headmistress was sprawled out on her opulent, red couch, her wiry legs draped across her glass coffee table, smothered in a white blanket. When Ella rushed in, Headmistress Dyer jolted awake from her apparent nap, her glasses tumbling off her nose and crashing to the ground.

“I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home!” Ella screamed at the top of her lungs.

“Whoa, whoa!” Headmistress Dyer sprung to her feet, her frizzy mane of untamed brunette curls whipping her cheeks from the hasty movement. Her hands outstretched towards Ella. “What happened?”

“One of your teachers just tried to drown me in the fucking pool!”

A perplexed expression took occupancy of Headmistress Dyer’s facial features. “Blaze?”

“No!” Ella cried in horror. “It was Mr. Kilic! How many of your instructors do shit like this?!”

“Just the one,” Headmistress Dyer assured. “Those kinds of ploys are usually Blaze’s specialty. Kellen’s never done something of this caliber before. You must’ve done something to piss him off.” Ella couldn’t believe how cavalier she was being about the fact that one of her staff members tried to drown her, or the way she was insinuating Ella was to blame for Kellen sending a sea monster after her.

“If your instructors don’t care about being given a life sentence in Terminus for killing me, then what protection do I have here? What guarantees can you give me that I won’t be killed?”

“You have that amulet around your neck. I will always heal you when you ask me to.”

“And if I’m not in a state where I can even ask you to heal me? What then?!” Ella threaded her fingers in her hair and tugged on the strands. The frustration of feeling like she was talking to a brick wall ached through her core. “I can’t work here. I can’t work in a place where I don’t feel safe.”

“I think you’re being a tad bit dramatic, Noella.”

“ Dramatic? ” Ella repeated, sounding out the word slowly in case she misheard, giving Headmistress Dyer a chance to correct her inanity.

“Our teachers pull these kinds of pranks on each other all the time, especially at the start of the fall term. It’s tradition. If anything, you should feel flattered that you were included in the custom.”

Ella blinked at her, disgusted by how she first called what happened to her a prank , and the suggestion she should be grateful for being roped into their twisted idea of diversion, as if that made her one of them.

“Except when your teachers pull these pranks on each other, they have powers that help them combat what’s being done to them. So when a Varmin, for example, infiltrates their mind and makes them think a freaking sea monster is chasing after them, which by the way, I thought only a Cerebri could do, they have abilities that can make it a fair fight. Right?” At that, Headmistress Dyer’s lips knit shut. No argument was raised in opposition. “It’s not just this. It’s every fucking day I’ve been here. I’ve been broken apart and put back together far too many times to count. It has to stop!”

“I’m sorry this has clearly caused you so much distress,” Headmistress Dyer offered, changing her tune—a wise decision, since Ella was on the cusp of lunging at her. “I really feel for you, Ella. What can we do to make this better?”

“Let me go home!” she shrieked.

“That’s not going to happen. Think of something else I can give you.” Ella wracked her brain for an answer.

All that came to mind was, “Diet Coke.”

“Diet Coke?” Headmistress Dyer repeated in surprise.

“Since I can’t go home, I would like a magic cup that refills itself with Diet Coke every time I finish it. And the Diet Coke never goes flat. And a fridge in my office that will make whatever food I want for me, so I don’t have to go into the teacher’s lounge again.”

“Done,” Headmistress Dyer promised. The two stared awkwardly at each other for a moment before Headmistress Dyer added, “Is that all?”

“For now. If I think of anything else, I’ll tell you.” Ella began her trek to the exit, but halted right in front of the door, spinning around to face Headmistress Dyer. “I’d like to say something else, if I actually have any rights to do so.” Headmistress Dyer cocked her head at Ella’s boldness but said nothing to prevent her from continuing. “You hired me to do a job, which I’ve been unable to accomplish since the moment I got here. I have absolutely no creative liberty to form my own curriculum, even though you promised me I would when I agreed to work here. You still haven’t given me the password to the main database, so I can’t access student transcripts and schedules. Teachers aren’t even letting me inside their classrooms, let alone talking to me about their students or allowing me to offer support. They only call for me in the hopes that whatever child who’s having a panic attack will kill me themselves. Not to mention, several of your teachers have tried to kill me, while the others have been telling the student body not to come see me because I’m human scum. I can’t even begin to form relationships with the students I want to counsel because no one trusts me. I’ve been trained to work with all types of people, no matter their race, ethnicity, cultural background, or, in this case, species. I could actually make a difference here, but no one will let me. And I can’t leave here and go work for a school where I’ll actually be able to help because you tricked me into signing a magical contract that’s bound me to this school for a year. I beg you, Headmistress Dyer. Please. Either help me so I can be able to actually do my job, or please, for the love of all the Gods in existence, let me go somewhere where I’ll actually be appreciated for what I can do.”

And with that, Ella marched out of the office and slammed the door behind her.