Page 19 of Malcroix Bones Academy

“Close your eyes, please, Miss Shadow,” he instructed.

I closed my eyes.

“You saw the object above me,” the inspector said. “Envision it now, and aim that same feeling you used before. Right at the object, if you are able, as strong as you can. Don’t hold back.”

More murmurs erupted around me, sounding increasingly excited.

I shifted my weight, distracted by the commotion. I gradually pulled my full attention back to that tense, hot, buzzing area in my chest.

I focused on my memory of the thick orb.

A perfect replica of the object came clearly into my mind, roughly ten feet above where the man sat with his light bear.

It was strange how exact, howphotographicthe memory looked.

I focused on it.

As he’d instructed me, I breathed, opening myself more, holding myself back less. I focused that hot, glowing, buzzing feeling directly at the glass ball.

The view inside the ball began to change behind my eyes.

The clear, empty air inside it turned to a pink mist, then rapidly to red, then a darker, more complex blue-green. The mist writhed. More colors wove into the dense mass, then shapes began to form inside the glass ball. Gradually, I opened that spigot in my chest wider, and the shapes grew more detailed, more precise, and significantly more real.

I saw people’s faces.

Men and women roughly my age and into their mid and late twenties wore suits and dark skirts and knee-high boots. They carried books and bags and strange backpacks made of feathers. One threw a ball of green fire at another and laughed when the other turned it into a bird and it flew away. Translucent, light animals hung around each of them, and I saw one of the students scolding hers, a finger held up as she spoke.

Scenes melted one into the next, a view of a bridge with strange, temple-like buildings beyond, a white stone mansion, a hall filled with enormous statues, wings with gold hinges that looked larger than me, more students, this time wearing what looked like costumes, drinking from flasks and dancing wildly.

I heard laughter, saw half-naked people chanting around a bonfire in the dark, a stone tower filled with men and women wearing more of those feathery wings. The view from the top was dizzying, terrifying, but beautiful. I saw a sharp, angular face I vaguely recognized, a man with white, spiky hair staring directly over my head, gold eyes flashing, and?

More, louder murmuring rose on both sides.

That time, it was too loud to ignore.

I flinched, and lost my focus.

“Okay, I believe that is enough of that,” the man in front of me said. The smile grew more audible in his voice. “Thank you very much for that, Miss Shadow. Most illuminating. Most, most instructive, that was… and quite beautiful, if you don’t mind my saying. You may have more than a bit of seer-talent in you.”

I opened my eyes, and immediately glanced to my left, where I’d heard the largest number of voices.

I hadn’t been imagining things.

I could see them now.

A line of people stood there, looking a lot like an audience. They seemed to be there just for me, although I noticed my test inspector studiously ignored them. My eyes scanned over their colorful, dated-but-not-dated clothes, their odd hairstyles and eye colors, their quill pens and strange cameras, until the man in front of me politely cleared his throat.

My eyes jerked back to his.

“Are you ready to move on, my dear?” he asked kindly. “You’ll need to keep your eyes open for this one.”

I hesitated, tempted to ask what just happened, whether he’d seen the same things I had, and if so, what they meant.

Something in the man’s serious expression warned me away from doing that.

I glanced above his head anyway, but the glass ball had vanished.

When I aimed my eyes back down, the inspector appeared to be waiting for me, patiently, and I nodded once, quickly. His smiled widened, and an instant later, a long, broken line of odd symbols appeared in the air over him.