Chapter 8

The final steps of the departing students left the classroom quiet and peaceful after a long day of teaching. I rubbed at my temples as I glanced down at the screen built into my desk. Another set of assignments had been graded. Reaching down, I tapped the Submit button, sending off the newly posted grades to their respective students.

Running a hand through my hair, I let loose a heavy sigh.

Why couldn't I shake this feeling? Why couldn't I get her face out of my head?

"What has your feathers ruffled?"

I jumped at the voice that disrupted my peaceful silence.

"Kai!" I called in annoyance. "Why do you find it so hard to knock?"

"The door was open. Why would I knock?"

"A tapping on the door is a lot less jarring than your enthusiastic voice."

Kai Inari, the math teacher, made his way toward my desk. He was wearing a button-down tan shirt, the top button undone, and a cardinal tie pulled a little loose around his collar. He was Japanese-American and my oldest friend. We'd known each other so long that I could almost see Kai's fox features in the sharp angles of his face.

"I think the door was ajar-ring, but that's just me," Kai replied casually.

I rolled my eyes. I wasn't in the mood for his corny humor.

"Besides, I could have just phased through the closed door anyway," he added. "On a more serious note, I just wanted to swing by and talk to you about some new tech we're developing. It's just about ready for field testing with the shifter military."

"I've got a lot on my mind, my friend," I replied wearily, looking back down at my screen. "Now isn't a very good time."

Kai tilted his head, his ears flicking. "A vampire tracking system. The latest and greatest."

My eyes made their way back up to his face. "Better than the ones your team has come up with in the past, I hope."

He moved forward, taking my words as an invitation to explain things.

"We've been using ineffective methods up to this point. Our current gear picks up patterns by searching reported attacks on news and social media databases to locate large groups of them. But the problem is, we're tracking the attacks, not the vampires themselves."

My heart rate increased as I realized what this could mean. "And your new tech could locate any vampire, anywhere, anytime?"

Scrunching his brow, he sucked in a breath between his teeth. "Not exactly. But we're getting closer to that ultimate goal."

Waiting expectantly, I raised my eyebrows.

Kai cleared his throat. "The new tracking system has been fine-tuned to detect the chemical that vampires expel when they need to drink. You know, when their animal instincts are kicking into gear, so to speak."

I nodded slowly. "That's getting us a bit closer to what we really want to be able to do."

I noticed Celeste quietly standing at the door, unbeknownst to Kai. I had sent her a message between classes, asking if she could stop by at the end of the day to talk about Arya.

"It's progress," Kai said. "I sent the schematics for the system directly to your tablet, so when you get a chance, could you take a look at them? And if you like what you see, maybe use your impeccable gryphon charm to persuade Celeste to approve the finances?"

I stared at the kitsune, waiting for the punchline.

Kai's serious face grimaced, then cracked into a huge grin as he laughed. "Impeccable—get it, Caesar? Im-peck-able? Because of your beak?"

I just shook my head.

Celeste spoke from the doorway. "Just like you, Kai, your jokes don't improve with age."

Kai jumped in surprise, whirling around to face the doorway. There, Celeste was leaning against the frame with folded arms.

"We call that karma, Kai," I said. "You scared me, and then you got it worse."

"Celeste!" Kai greeted sweetly. He'd always been taken with her, ever since we'd first met her at Framboise Island. "Er, how much of the conversation did you hear?"

She didn't move from her position. "That really isn't the question, is it? The question is: how much money is this tinkering project of yours going to cost?"

Kai pointed a finger in the air. "You can't put a price tag on kitsune-made inventions, my dear. That's like trying to figure out how much the sun is worth."

"Actually, that analogy makes no sense," Celeste replied, her hands dropping to her sides and striding forward. "But, I'll work with Caesar to see if your foxy little project is worth it."

"Wonderful," Kai said, slightly bowing his head. "That's all I ask."

"I have some important matters to discuss with Caesar now, Kai," Celeste said. "I'm sure you have your hands full."

Kai nodded. "I'll be on my way. Thank you both for considering this new project. Once it's approved, we'll get right to work."

My slender friend skimmed past Celeste and out the door.

"He's a good man," I said, getting to my feet. "Please, Celeste, take a seat. And thank you for coming to speak with me."

A few loose strands jumped out from the smooth bun of Celeste's otherwise perfectly kept red hair. In the eight years I'd known her, she'd hardly aged a day. She eased into one of the chairs that sat before my desk, and I sat back down as well.

Though I knew Celeste's gifts were specific to glimpsing the future, I did my best to keep my mind blank. I couldn't have her knowing about the thoughts that had been plaguing me all day and night. I didn't even want to have them. And who really knew if this talented seer couldn't read minds as well?

"Your message sounded urgent," Celeste said, starting the conversation. "Is everything okay?"

I shrugged. "I wouldn't say it's urgent, exactly. I just need someone to talk to about some things that have been weighing on my mind." Or at least, the things that should be.

Celeste half-smiled. "I'm assuming Kai wasn't cutting it?"

"Like I said, Kai is a good man, but he's hardly one I can talk to about serious matters."

"Understood," she replied. I knew that, while Celeste and Kai got along, she didn't care much for the kitsune's company. "What's been on your mind, Caesar?"

Looking past Celeste, I saw that the door to my classroom was still open. I navigated to the room controls on my desk tablet and sent the command for the door to shut and lock.

"Today in one of my morning classes, a student had the nerve to ask me why we've been searching for a stray mermaid. Arya happened to be in that class, and all eyes went straight to her."

Celeste nodded expectantly. "Our students are sharp. Where did the conversation go after that?"

"I was able to shift it back to our class topic pretty quickly," I replied. "But Arya now knows, at the very least, that we were looking for somebody out of the ordinary. She can't know about the prophecy, not yet."

The prophecy. I had been present when Celeste received it seven years ago, and I now heard her voice replay that moment in my head.

A siren will emerge as a stray mermaid and bring destruction to Hadrian, leader of the vampires, summoning ultimate peace between shifters and vampires once and for all.

Ever since then, we'd been searching for the one—this stray mermaid. And I was convinced it was Arya.

"We've been over this before, Caesar," Celeste said cautiously. "While Arya does fit within the parameters of the prophecy, I can't be completely sure she is the mermaid we've been looking for."

"Why else did it take you so long to find her?" I reasoned. "She's seventeen years old—"

"And before today, she'd never shifted," Celeste interrupted. She was one of only a handful of people that could do this without setting me off. "Even for a shifter that we find after their puberty trigger, seventeen is a late age to be found. But Arya is a mermaid—the puberty trigger doesn't apply to her."

"Yes," I agreed, a little annoyed with the proud reminder. "All mermaids are lucky enough to be born with the ability to shift."

Celeste bit her upper lip. "Although I hate to admit it, my clairvoyance isn't all-inclusive. There are billions of people in the world, and while a small percentage of them have shifting abilities, there are many we don't know about who would benefit from what we have here at The Dome. And the mermaid from the prophecy? She could still be out there."

Deep inside, I felt that Arya was the one. I couldn't prove it, but in the moments I'd been around the girl, my instincts screamed that she was the prophesied mermaid.

"And we'll keep looking," I reassured her.

"That being said," Celeste continued, "I have hope that Arya is the siren. But only time will tell if she truly is."

"Time and training," I added.

"Speaking of which, thank you for assigning her to music class. Having her in close proximity will help me keep a better eye on her outside of my other interaction with her and the other mer students."

"Music is a powerful form of art that has a magical quality to it," I said. "And as we both know, music can bring forth incredible things."

"With Arya, that is the hope," Celeste said with a smile.

I nodded. "Yes, it is."

A quietness fell around us as we let that last statement settle in. It felt right. We'd work with Arya and help her as best we could. Hadrian had to be stopped. No. Not just stopped. The vampire leader had to die.

My thoughts pulled me into painful memories of the school on Framboise Island in South Dakota when I was eighteen. My mother's helpless scream pulling me from the sky. The bruised, broken bodies of my parents in gryphon form lying nearby, stripped of their wings, their barren eyes staring at me. And Hadrian's pale, taunting face catching in the moonlight as he crouched in the window.

Say one last goodbye to your family.

Explosions erupting from the school, burying my family…

"Do you wish to discuss anything else, Caesar?"

Celeste's question stole the terrible memory away as if it were caught in a breeze.

I blinked a few times, processing her words. "I don't believe so. We'll just want to keep our ears out for any more of these rumors about our stray mermaid. The less people know, the better we can protect Arya. She's dealing with enough already, what with the death of her mother and being whisked away to a new world with foreign abilities."

"Agreed," Celeste said with a nod as she got to her feet. "I will keep you posted on the training Arya goes through, as well as her progress."

"Any and all information is helpful," I said. "Thank you, Celeste, for all that you have done and are doing for our cause. We couldn't do this without you."

She chuckled. "I agree with that statement, too."

Her pride used to bother me, but I'd grown to see past it. The head mermaid really did care for all shifters, despite the front she put on.

A few taps on my desk tablet opened the classroom door, and Celeste made for it.

"One more thing," I said quickly, stopping her before she made it to the door. "Could you please send Arya here? I'd like to see how her first day of classes went."

"I'll gladly have her sent your way," she said, then stepped out of the classroom.

I watched her leave.

A notification from my tablet chimed, and I looked down. It was Kai's schematics for the new vampire tracking system. This only brought back the image of Hadrian's sneering face.

I gritted my teeth, finding my eyes stinging with the threat of tears. I pounded my fist on the desk in an attempt to let my emotions flood in a different way. It wouldn't do for Arya to see me sobbing like an infant. But at least the scandalous thoughts that had been plaguing me were being overridden by the pain.

I tapped on my tablet, opening Kai's schematics, trying to distract his mind from everything. I needed something productive to focus on. After scanning the description of the project, I found I couldn't concentrate on the technical terminology.

I could use a flight right about now.

And then Arya entered the room, hands in her uniform pockets, looking tired and a little out of place.

I smiled, shoving all my feelings aside for the moment.

"Come in," I said, getting to my feet and gesturing for her to come forward.

"You wanted to see me?" she asked, moving closer to the desk.

"Just for a moment," I replied. "I know after a full day of being stuck inside classrooms, the last place you'd want to be right now is back here."

She shrugged. "This place is incredible—even the classrooms. I've been to a lot of schools, but this one? It's amazing."

I chuckled. "Yes, it's quite a unique school, and it will only get more amazing for you. But tell me, how has your day been?"

She breathed in heavily, then let it out in one big gust. She paused for a moment, looking above me for a few moments, then made eye contact again. "Overwhelming?"

"I can imagine. This school, although amazing, is very different from any other school you've ever been to. And while there are good differences, there are likely some that aren't so good."

"It's actually the similarities that make it hard," she said quickly, her lips instantly becoming a line, as if she felt she'd overstepped some boundary with her words.

I cocked my head. "What do you mean?"

Arya shrugged. "You know…cliques. I've already run into some."

"I suppose you'll find cliques just about anywhere you go," I replied.

"That's just how it goes." Her tired eyes suddenly widened as a wave of excitement lit up her face. "I shifted into mermaid form for the first time today!"

Smiling, I said, "That's great. You'll find that shifting will be an excellent outlet for you, something you'll be able to turn to whenever you want. At least, with enough practice."

"Hopefully, it won't take me too long," she replied.

"The best advice I can give you is to have patience," I advised. "Have patience and keep trying. A mix of those two things will get you there."

She looked down at her hands in her lap and nodded.

"One more thing and then you can head back to your afternoon," I continued, taking on a more serious tone. "It's not something that is easy for me to discuss. But I know what you are going through and that a lot is hitting you at once. Most of all, I know what it's like to lose family members."

She continued to look down, and I saw her neck bob with a forced swallow.

"If you ever need someone to talk to, and you don't feel like there's anybody else, you can come to me, okay?"

Arya nodded quickly, sniffling. "Thank you. Can I go now?"

I studied her for a few seconds, fighting the temptation to ask about the one thing that had truly been on my mind all day. But I knew I couldn't, shouldn't. It was completely inappropriate. "Of course."

She stood up and hurried out the door.

I leaned back in my chair, exhaling deeply. I should be focusing on the prophecy, on Kai's stupid inventions, on preparing Arya the best I could for what was to come.

But how was I going to do Arya justice when I couldn't get her sassy witch friend out of my head?