They look … intimidating. Powerful. And perhaps most surprisingly … not the least bit ridiculous. They look like they belong here. Like whatever it is they’re doing, they were born to do this.
The one in the middle holds something up between his outstretched hands. At first, I’m not sure what it is. He lifts it higher until it’s clutched high above his head.
When he opens his mouth, his voice carries loud and clear.
“We, The Brotherhood.”
In unison, the two boys standing at either of his sides shout the same.
As soon as their jaws clamp shut again, the boy in the middle sweeps his arms down in a sudden, smooth movement, sending the thing in his hand crashing to the ground. It smashes in an explosion of ceramic shards and ash.
The whole hall fills with thick, choking smoke.
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I throw up my hand to shield my face, but it isn’t until the dust has started to settle that I realize I’m suddenly standing alone. Everyone else had the good sense to step back out of the way. With the rest of them hidden in the settling ash, it feels like I’m standing in the midst of an empty chasm.
Movement above draws my gaze back to the top of the stairs.
The air has started to clear on the landing.
As I watch, the three boys each reach down and take a handful of ash. They smear the dark powder across their cheeks and chests like great swaths of warpaint. Once they’re finished, each one of them straightens back up and stares ahead again.
“The Brotherhood Lives.”
This time, the chant comes from all around me, instead of from the boys up above. It scares me shitless, making me jump and whirl around as the ash finally starts to settle enough for me to make the rest of them out. Behind me—much further behind me—the students repeat the chant several more times. The only one who doesn’t is the dean, who though he doesn’t look entirely pleased with the ritual, isn’t doing anything to stop it either.
Well, this is fucking fantastic. I think I’ve joined a cult.
When I glance back up to the top of the stairs, the boys are gone.
But this isn’t the last I’m going to hear of this. I know it when the last of the ash settles enough for me to finally catch sight of Rafael among the rest of my crazy new classmates.
As soon as he spots me, he covers his face with his hands and I know that once again, I’ve done something wrong.
But something else tells me this time, the fix isn’t going to be so simple as biting down my nails or taking a draw on a cigarette. And it might have something to do with the fact that, like the boys at the top of the stairs, I somehow ended up being the only other student smeared with that same ash.
Chapter Four
After a display like that, I half expect shadowy figures to appear all around us in dark cloaks chanting something ominous, probably in Latin.
But instead, everything returns to such stark normalcy that it leaves my head spinning.
“Everyone should take this opportunity to finish unpacking their things and tying up any final affairs before dinner,” Dean Withers says calmly, the only hint that anything totally weird and cultish just happened being the slight cough that punctuates the end of his sentence. “We will meet in the dining hall promptly at seven. Anyone late will be turned away. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” the voices chorus around me. I try to join in, but between the ash I’ve sucked into my lungs and that cigarette earlier, all I manage is a pathetic wheeze.
While the rest of the boys start to disperse, none of them giving off the slightest hint that anything out of the normal just happened, the Dean turns directly to me.
“And you are … Alex, I presume?”
The only good thing about the ash covering me head-to-toe is that it hides the full extent of how red my face actually gets.
“Yes, sir.”
“You were late,” he says, matter-of-factly. “Did your driver get lost?”
If I thought my face was red before …