Page 5 of Malcroix Bones Academy (Bones and Shadow #1)

Faces, murmured voices, bodies moving with purpose, holding briefcases and stacks of files, drinking from mugs and chatting loudly, sometimes to seemingly no one at all.

The energy of this new place was instantly that of a crowded, office-like setting, one filled with people with strange-colored eyes, strange hairstyles, and even stranger clothes.

I watched them walk back and forth, barely noticing me, then my eyes tracked upwards in shock.

I followed curved, black-tile walls to a cavernously high ceiling, lined with windows all around me in an unbroken circle.

The whole thing stretched up what had to be ten stories, yet the entire structure still appeared to be underground.

The sheer architectural improbability of that stuttered something in my mind.

The floor area where I stood looked longer than two football pitches laid end upon end.

Only one, thick, support pillar stood in the very center, stretching all the way up to that impossibly high ceiling.

My lungs struggled to work in what felt like a different kind of air.

The harder I breathed, the more light-headed I got.

Was there not enough oxygen? Too much oxygen?

My eyes started getting caught on individual faces.

Cat-like eyes with vertical pupils appeared next to regular, human-looking eyes with pink irises, or a pair tinted an odd shade of indigo blue, or deep purple, or blood orange, or bright yellow.

They all walked to and fro between long rows of what looked like windowed offices.

I had to be either in the lobby of a very large building, or some vast, subterranean structure, or possibly some combination of both.

Either way, the mere fact that the ceiling hadn’t caved in?

“Where in the?”

“Silence,” Ankha hissed. “And close your mouth. You look like an idiot.”

I obeyed without thought.

Ignoring my aunt, who obviously wasn’t going to be a source of information, or civility, or much of anything useful, I made a conscious effort to view this improbable place logically.

I also remembered my promise to her.

I couldn’t speak. Not to anyone.

My aunt elbowed me then, hard, and I looked over to see a group of people approaching where we stood.

Two of the men walked slightly in front, while six or seven others trailed behind.

Those following all appeared to be wearing suits, both the male and female variety, cut in styles that evoked both the late 1800s and, in a few cases, the 1930s and 1940s.

The two people walking ahead wore outfits that evoked even older periods.

Seventeenth Century?

Sixteenth?

I wasn’t enough up on my historical costumery to be able to say for sure, and neither could be entirely accurate.

Neither man wore a wig or powdered their face, and the hair was all wrong.

Their vests were too long in front and too short in back.

One wore a coat that was asymmetrical, as if made with several pieces of cloth stitched together to give it more of a flowing, draping quality.

The symbols covering the embroidered silk of their vests reminded me of Egyptian hieroglyphs, but didn’t match any specific characters I’d seen in books.

Both wore cream tights under silk pants that cut off just below the knee, but below that, one wore calfskin-like boots, while the other wore jewel-encrusted, pointed shoes with heels and no buckles.

What in the ever-loving?

“You cut it close to the line, Ms. La Fey,” the taller of the two men sniffed. “Is this your idea of a dramatic entrance, Ankha?”

“You didn’t give me much notice, Horace,” my aunt quipped.

He waved off her words with a silk handkerchief edged in detailed lace.

“You need notice for the annual test day?” he scoffed.

“The first test day following your niece’s nineteenth birthday?

You know when Magicals come of age. Nineteen.

It is always nineteen. It’s not like you haven’t known this was coming.

If I’m not mistaken, it was you who wanted to do this when she turned sixteen. Then seventeen. Then eighteen…”

He let out another low scoff.

“…And now you inexplicably ‘forget’ the date actually set by the Tribunal?”

I bit my tongue harder.

Barring any ability to ask questions, I made a point of memorizing every word, and noticing as much as I could about the small crowd of strangers.

The shorter of the two men still hadn’t spoken.

He stared openly and unapologetically at me, his violet-tinted eyes raking over my black curls with an expression that flickered between fascination, distaste, eagerness, and outright revulsion.

After taking in my face and hair with that rude level of scrutiny, he looked over my body the same way.

He focused a lot too long on my trainers and socks, then my uniform skirt, the cream uniform blouse, the grey and black striped tie, and, frankly, my chest.

Apart from him being an old perv, I had no idea why any of it made his eyes bulge like they did, but the look there raised my hackles.

I glanced at the woman standing directly to his right, who’d edged forward once the group came to a stop. She stared openly at me, too, but instead of disbelief and revulsion, her expression held a greedy excitement.

She gripped a feather quill in one hand, with something like a clipboard clutched tightly in her other arm. Her lipstick and high-heeled shoes matched her bright orange eyes, hair, and quill feather, as did the stone on a large ring she wore on one hand.

She kept smiling and staring at me between bouts of writing furiously with the quill, her eyebrows raised so high they nearly kissed her hairline.

A tall, lean, scarecrow of a man stood just behind the woman with the quill.

He kept snapping pictures of me over the woman’s shoulder then receding back, as if somehow I wouldn’t notice him doing it.

He used the oddest-looking camera I’d ever seen.

Roughly the size of a sandwich, it was made of dark-green metal, with a giant, round flash that blinded me every time it went off.

After the flash had gone off a few more times, I was blinking uncontrollably. After five or six flashes, I could see nothing but floating spots.

“…She is to be tested along with the others, utilizing the same process,” the man Ankha called Horace was now saying. “For obvious reasons,” he emphasized. “Although it’s clear from our monitoring that the suppression is starting to fail.”

Everyone except me nodded, even Ankha.

“For that reason,” the man continued. “We couldn’t keep the press out entirely, so we have granted a permit to The London Twilight News…

as well as the Wings Herald…” Again, the balding man in front addressed Ankha alone, without so much as a glance my way.

“They can be trusted to be discreet. And balanced. At least until results are tabulated and posted.”

My aunt let out a low scoff, making it clear she didn’t share his opinion on any perceived trustworthiness of the people around us.

I got briefly stuck on the names of the two newspapers.

I’d never heard of either, and I’d thought I knew all the major U.K. papers. I stood by a newsstand every day by the bus stop I used for school.

I had so many questions now, it was getting hard to track them all.

I glanced around the cavernous space, and flinched when I saw faces close to the glass, staring down at me through the tinted windows.

Half the people above us had got up from their desks to peer down at our little group.

I could clearly see them talking to one another on the other side of the glass. A few even pointed directly at me.

Then I noticed something else, and let out a little gasp.

Small creatures stood on the outside ledges of a number of the tile window sills.

They looked like little people, but their bodies seemed to be made of flames, with round, ruddy faces on top of smokeless fires.

Their hair, miraculously, didn’t catch on fire, nor did their shoes, or even their beards.

A few were golden-blond, others had hair that was black, red, brown, white, and even green.

A number had narrow but furry tails, like a monkey’s.

They stared down at me with visible interest, just like the pale, human-looking faces that stood behind the green-tinted windows. A few curled and uncurled and swished their tails, reminding me of cats.

I was still watching them when one leapt off the windowsill.

Startled, I let out another soft gasp.

A cry rose in my throat, but right as it began to fall…

…small, leathery wings unfolded from its back.

I let out a louder gasp, a real one that time.

I stared up, mouth open, as it swooped and dove, emitting sparks, then finally spiraled back up and flew to a higher window sill. It reached another group of fire-people up there, perched among them, and refolded its wings.

It went back to staring at me, its dark eyes intent.

I noticed the silence around me then, and looked down.

Every person in the group was staring at me now, including my aunt. All of them looked baffled, apart from Ankha, who looked positively venomous.

I coughed into a hand. Although I still managed to restrain myself from speaking, Ankha glared daggers at me as if I hadn’t, even after the others all looked away.

The man called Horace cleared his throat.

“Shall we?” he asked brightly.

For the first time, I looked at him directly. Long, grey and black sideburns reached onto his cheeks, covering part of his doughy face and offsetting his large, veiny, and dark red nose. His eyes, despite the unearthly violet color, reminded me of those of a predatory bird.

When he turned and began to walk briskly across the round, tiled floor of the high-ceilinged room, his entourage followed, and so did Ankha.

After a quickly inhaled breath, I followed, too.

Then something else occurred to me, and I glanced over my shoulder.

The arched opening we’d walked through had vanished. Only a wall lived there now, made of smooth, black stone like the rest of the walls and floor. A gold symbol shone in the center of it, another that reminded me of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

It looked like a hawk, or a falcon.

A few feet above, another tinted window had a pale face behind it, staring at me through the rounded glass. The woman’s mouth hung slightly open as she gawked, her eyes holding a fear-tinged excitement, like she couldn’t believe what she was looking at, and was a little scared, but in a fun way.

I kept my own expression still with an effort as I turned around and rushed my steps to catch up with my aunt.

There had to be a logical explanation for this.

There just had to be.