Chapter 2: Social Cartography
Eugene bounced into consciousness like someone had injected him with espresso, chattering about breakfast and class schedules before I'd fully opened my eyes. The kid's energy levels bordered on supernatural—definitely not natural teenage metabolism.
"You're not a morning person," he observed, watching me drag myself upright. "That's fine. I talk enough for both of us."
Truth. He'd been providing running commentary since dawn, something about optimal honey production ratios and the architectural superiority of hexagonal structures. I caught maybe half of it, but his enthusiasm was oddly calming.
The dining hall occupied what had probably been a cathedral in the building's previous life. Vaulted ceilings disappeared into shadows overhead, and stained glass windows cast colored light across long tables that seated maybe three hundred students. The breakfast spread looked normal enough—eggs, bacon, fruit—until you noticed details like the raw steaks for the vampire section and what appeared to be a whole salmon for the shapeshifters.
"Power dynamics," Eugene said, loading his plate with enough carbohydrates to fuel a marathon. "Everything here comes down to power dynamics."
He pointed across the hall with his fork, mapping the social landscape like a war correspondent. "Fangs sit near the windows because they can handle more sunlight than stereotypes suggest, but they still prefer shade. Scales cluster around the center tables—pack mentality, but with more politics than the Furs."
The vampire section was easy to spot. Pale kids who moved with predatory grace, their conversations punctuated by occasional flashes of fang. The siren tables buzzed with the kind of low-level charm magic that made everyone nearby slightly more attractive and significantly more agreeable.
"And the Furs?"
"Werewolves." Eugene nodded toward a cluster of tables where the occupants looked like they'd rather be outside running through forests. "Lot of contained energy there. They're actually pretty chill most of the time, but don't get between them and the full moon."
I filed the information away, noting which groups sat where, who talked to whom, where the unofficial boundaries fell. Three minutes of observation revealed more about Nevermore's politics than an hour of orientation would have.
"There," Eugene said, voice dropping to what he probably thought was a whisper. "Bianca Barclay. Queen bee of the Scales. Literally controls water and metaphorically controls half the social scene here."
Bianca sat at the center of her group like a dark-haired spider in a web of beautiful people. She was the kind of gorgeous that made you forget what you were thinking about, but there was calculation behind her smile. When her gaze swept across the room, students straightened automatically.
Dangerous. My shadow recoiled without conscious direction, pooling closer to my feet like it could sense the predator across the room.
"Does she always command attention like that?"
"Siren thing," Eugene explained. "They can't really turn it off completely. But Bianca's special—she can make you want to drown yourself just by humming the right tune."
Noted. I'd be staying away from the pool area.
"What about him?" I nodded toward a corner table where a dark-haired kid sat alone, sketching with intense focus. Something about his posture triggered warning bells—the way he held his shoulders, the slight tremor in his hand as he drew.
"Xavier Thorpe. Probably the most talented artist here, which is saying something since half the student body considers murder a creative endeavor." Eugene paused, studying Xavier with more attention than he'd given anyone else. "He's been... weird lately. Ever since that incident with Rowan Laslow last month."
Incident. Another one. This place seemed to collect them like stamps.
"What kind of incident?"
"Nobody talks about it much, but Rowan claimed Xavier was drawing things that hadn't happened yet. Like, prophetic art or something. Then Rowan just... left. Middle of the semester, no explanation."
Interesting. Prophetic art sounded like exactly the kind of supernatural complication that could get people killed in a place like this.
"Where did he go?"
"Nobody knows. His parents came to collect his stuff, but they wouldn't say why he'd withdrawn." Eugene lowered his voice even further. "Some people think Xavier's visions showed him something he didn't want to see."
I watched Xavier's pencil move across the page, noting the way his whole body tensed as he drew. Whatever he was seeing in his head, it wasn't pleasant.
Movement caught my eye—a blur of pink and blonde energy weaving between tables with the kind of manic enthusiasm that usually required pharmaceutical intervention. She was decorating something, hanging streamers and arranging flowers with the single-minded dedication of someone planning a state dinner.
"Who's that?"
"Enid Sinclair," Eugene said, and something in his tone suggested complicated feelings. "She's... a lot. Werewolf who hasn't transformed yet, which is apparently a big deal in her family. Overcompensates by being aggressively cheerful and organizing every social event within a fifty-mile radius."
Werewolf who couldn't wolf. That had to be tough in a culture that probably valued predatory instincts above all else.
"Is that why she's not sitting with the Furs?"
"Partly. Also because she's roommates with the school's resident psychopath, so most people aren't sure how to categorize her."
Psychopath? That was specific enough to be interesting.
"Meaning?"
"Wednesday Addams. Transferred here a few weeks ago from some fancy private school after she got expelled for dumping piranhas in the swimming pool during a water polo match."
The name triggered something in the back of my mind—fragmented memories of a TV show, images of a pale girl in braids who looked at the world like it had personally offended her. The protagonist. The center of everything that was about to go sideways.
She's not here yet. That much I remembered from the show's timeline. Which meant I had maybe a week before things got complicated.
"Sounds like someone to avoid."
"Probably smart. Though Enid seems to think she's just misunderstood." Eugene gathered up his empty plate. "Come on, first period starts in ten minutes. I'll show you where everything is."
The next few hours blurred together—classrooms that looked like they'd been designed by someone with a gothic architecture fetish, teachers who discussed supernatural history like it was perfectly normal, and classmates who occasionally sprouted fangs or scales mid-conversation.
I kept my head down and my mouth shut, taking notes and cataloguing information. Who sat where. Which students had obvious power hierarchies. Where the emergency exits were located.
Survive. Adapt. Don't stand out.
Between classes, Eugene provided running commentary on Nevermore's social ecosystem with the enthusiasm of a nature documentary narrator. Apparently there were unspoken rules about everything—which staircases belonged to which cliques, when it was safe to walk alone after dark, who you could make eye contact with without starting a supernatural pissing contest.
"The key," he said as we walked toward our afternoon classes, "is remembering that everyone here is basically a teenager with superpowers and emotional problems. The powers make everything more dramatic, but the basic social dynamics are the same as any other school."
Right. Except at any other school, teenage drama didn't involve students who could literally tear your throat out or convince you to walk off a cliff.
We were crossing the main courtyard when I saw him. Rowan Laslow stood near the fountain, very much not withdrawn from school, watching the student population with the focused intensity of a sniper selecting targets.
But Eugene said he left.
I stopped walking, studying Rowan more carefully. Something about him was wrong—not supernatural wrong, but fundamentally off in ways I couldn't identify. The way he held himself. The expression on his face. Like he was seeing patterns no one else could perceive.
When his gaze met mine across the courtyard, his expression shifted from calculation to confusion. For a moment, he looked like he was trying to solve an equation that didn't add up.
He knows something.
The moment stretched between us, and my fragmented memories screamed warnings I couldn't quite understand. Something about Rowan. Something about death and darkness and the first domino falling.
Then Ajax Petropolus came barreling between us, chasing a knitted beanie that the wind had stolen from his head. The spell broke, and by the time Ajax had retrieved his hat, Rowan had disappeared into the crowd.
"You okay?" Eugene asked. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
Close enough.
"Just tired. New school and all."
But I filed the encounter away under immediate threats and made a mental note to figure out what Rowan Laslow knew that Eugene didn't.
The library turned out to be exactly what I needed—a gothic cathedral of books with enough shadows to hide an army. Towering shelves stretched toward a vaulted ceiling lost in darkness, and reading nooks were scattered throughout like perfect training grounds.
"This place is amazing," I said, and meant it.
"Most students avoid it," Eugene admitted. "Too quiet for the Fangs, not enough drama for the Scales. But if you need somewhere to think..." He gestured at the rows of empty tables. "It's perfect."
Perfect for more than thinking.
I waited until Eugene left for his afternoon beekeeping seminar, then found a corner table hidden behind the folklore section. Time to test my abilities somewhere with actual shadows to work with.
The library's darkness responded like it had been waiting for permission. My shadow stretched between the stacks, flowing around corners and up walls with increasing confidence. Four meters became five became six before the familiar headache started building behind my eyes.
Push through it.
Seven meters. My shadow reached the main circulation desk and I tried something new—lifting a pen from the counter using shadow manipulation alone. The mental strain intensified, but the pen rose a full inch off the wooden surface before I had to let go.
Solid contact. Not just moving shadows, but actually affecting physical objects.
I experimented for another twenty minutes, testing range and endurance. The librarian—an ancient woman who looked like she'd been cataloguing books since the Renaissance—glanced in my direction twice but never quite seemed to focus on me.
Presence alteration. The unconscious kind that made people overlook me without realizing they were doing it.
Interesting. If I could control that effect deliberately, it would be better than any camouflage.
By the time Eugene found me, I'd mapped seventeen locations where the shadows were deep enough for serious training, identified nine potential escape routes, and confirmed that at least three students had walked past my table without registering my presence.
"There you are," Eugene said, dropping into the chair across from me. "How was your first day?"
"Educational."
"Good educational or traumatizing educational? Because there's definitely a difference here."
I considered the question seriously. Meeting Eugene had been unexpectedly positive—the kid was useful, trustworthy, and apparently willing to adopt antisocial roommates as personal projects. Learning about Nevermore's social structure felt like intelligence gathering for an inevitable war. And discovering that I could train my powers in the library without observation was critical for long-term survival.
But Rowan Laslow's presence complicated everything. If he was supposed to be gone but wasn't, that meant my fragmented memories were either incomplete or the timeline had already shifted.
Either way, I need more information.
"Good educational," I said finally. "I think I'm going to like it here."
Eugene beamed like I'd just validated his entire worldview. "Excellent! Tomorrow I'll show you the greenhouse and the outdoor training areas. Oh, and the Poe Cup is coming up next month if you're interested in competitive rowing with supernatural enhancement."
We walked back to the dorm through twilight that turned Nevermore's architecture into something from a fever dream. I catalogued shadow pools and sight lines automatically, already planning tomorrow's training session.
Seventeen locations. Nine escape routes. Three students who can't see me properly.
The strategic part of my mind was satisfied. I had resources, intelligence, and a base of operations. Now I just needed to figure out what Rowan Laslow was planning and how it connected to the goth girl who would arrive next week and turn this entire place upside down.
Wednesday Addams. The name felt like a countdown timer ticking in the back of my skull.
Seven days.
Seven days to master my powers, understand the landscape, and prepare for whatever chaos was coming.
Should be interesting.
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