Charlaine Harris - An Apple for the Creature

“I wasn’t talking to you.” The kid looked at me. “Whatcha doing?”

“I’m dancing.” I told him. Ask a dumb question . . .

“You’re breaking into Ashlyn’s desk.”

“See, I knew you were smart and you’d figure it out.” I winked at him.

Barka made big eyes at Brook. “And what if I tell Walton you’re doing that? That would be a spot on your perfect record.”

“Mind your own business,” Brook snapped.

“He won’t,” I told her. “He wants to see what’s inside the desk.”

Barka grinned.

The lock clicked and the drawer slid open. Rows of apples filled it. Large Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, green Granny Smith and every color and shape in between, each with a tiny sticker announcing its name. Even a handful of red crab apples the size of large cherries, stuck between Cortland and Crimson Gold. I had no idea so many varieties of apple even existed. None of them showed any signs of rotting either. They looked crisp and fresh.

I concentrated. My sensate vision kicked in. The apples glowed with bright green. Now that was a first. A healthy hunter green usually meant a shapeshifter. Human magic came in various shades of blue. Animal magic was typically too weak to be picked up by any of the machines, but I saw it just fine—it was yellow. Together blue and yellow made green. This particular green had too much yellow to belong to a regular shapeshifter.

Most shapeshifters were infected with Lyc-V virus, which let them turn into animals. Sometimes it happened the other way and animals turned into humans. The human-weres were really rare, but I’ve met one, and the color wasn’t right for them either. Human-weres were a drab olive, but this, this was a vivid spring green.

“What kind of magic did Ashlyn have?”

Brook and Barka looked at each other. “I don’t know,” Barka said. “I never asked.”

Whatever she was, she didn’t advertise it. Totally understandable. Seeing the color of magic was an invaluable tool for law enforcement, for mages, basically for anyone who dealt with it, so much so that people actually made a magic machine, called an m-scanner, to imitate it. My magic wasn’t just rare, it was exceptional. I was a hundred times more precise than any existing m-scanner. But in a fight, being a sensate didn’t do me any good at all. If I walked around telling everyone about it, sooner or later someone would try to use me and I had to use other means than my sensate ability to protect myself. It was easier to just keep my mouth shut.

Ashlyn could be that kind of magic user, something rare but not useful in combat.

Still didn’t explain her obsession with apples, though. Maybe she was using them to bribe her teachers. But then her grades would be better.

The shorter of the three girls to our left glared at me. Her magic, a solid indigo when I came in, now developed streaks of pale celery green. Normally the magic signature didn’t change. Ever. Except for Kate.

Hello, clue.

I pretended to look at the apples. “Did Ashlyn have any enemies?”

Barka picked up a pen and rolled it between his fingers. “Not that I noticed. She was quiet. A looker, but no personality.”

Brook pushed her glasses up at him. “Pervert.”

The girl took a step toward us. “What are you doing?”

“Dancing!” Barka said.

Brook didn’t even look in her direction. “Mind your own business, Lisa.”

Lisa skewed her mouth into a disapproving thin line, which was quite a fit because she had one of those pouty-lip mouths. Eyebrows plucked into two narrow lines, unnaturally straight hair, carefully parted, pink shiny on those big lips . . . Lisa was clearly the Take-Care-of-Myself type. Good clothes, too. Girls like that made my life miserable at the old school. I was never put together enough, my clothes were never expensive enough, and I didn’t stroll the halls broadcasting to everyone who cared that I was much better than they were.

But we weren’t at my old school, and a lot has changed since. Besides, she could be a perfectly nice person. Although somehow I doubted it.

“You shouldn’t be doing that,” Lisa said, entirely too loudly.

If I poked her, would her magic get even veinier? Was veinier even a word? “I’m looking for Ashlyn,” I told her.

“She’s dead,” Lisa announced and checked the room out of the corner of her eye.

Don’t worry, you have everyone’s attention.

“Here we go,” Brook muttered.

“How do you know that? Did you kill her?” Poke-poke-poke.

Lisa raised her chin. “I know because I spoke to her spirit.”

“Her spirit?” I asked.

“Yes, her spirit. Her ghost.”

That was nice, but there was no such thing as ghosts. Even Kate had never run across one. I never saw any ghost magic and I had seen a lot of messed-up things.

“Did her ghost tell you who killed her?” I asked.

“She took her own life,” Lisa declared.

Brook pushed her glasses up. “Don’t be ridiculous. This whole ‘I see spirits’ thing is getting old.”

Lisa rocked back on her heels. Her face turned serious. “Ashlyn! Show yourself, spirit.”

“This is stupid,” Barka said.

“Show your presence!” Lisa called.

Yellow-green veins shot through her magic, sparking with flashes of dandelion yellow. Whoa.

The desk shuddered under my fingertips. The chairs around me rattled.

Brook took a step back.

The desk danced, jumping up and down. The two chairs on both sides of me shot to the ceiling, hovered there for a tense second, and crashed down.

Nice.

Lisa leveled her stare at me. “Ashlyn is dead. I don’t know who you are, but you should leave. You disturb her.”

I laughed.

Lisa turned on her heel and walked out.

“So Lisa is a telekinetic?” I asked.

Brook shrugged. “A little. Nothing like this. The chair-flying thing is new. Usually she has to sweat to push a pen across the desk.”

And this new power wouldn’t have anything to do with those lovely yellow-green streaks in her magic, would it? Like Ashlyn’s apples, yellow green, but not the same shade. Two weird magic colors in one day. That was a hell of a thing, as Kate would say.

“You’re not leaving?” Barka asked me.

“Of course she isn’t leaving,” Brook told him. “I haven’t finished the tour.”

“When people tell me to leave, it’s the right time to stick around,” I told him. “Did Lisa have any problems with Ashlyn?”

“Lisa has problems with everyone,” Brook said. “People like her like to pick on you if you have any weakness to make themselves feel better.”

“She’s a dud,” Barka added. “Well, she was a dud, apparently. Her parents are both professors at the Mage Academy. When she was first admitted, she made a big deal out of all this major magic that she supposedly had.”

“I remember that.” Brook grimaced. “Every time she opened her mouth, it was all ‘at the Mage Academy where my father works’ or ‘when I visited my mother’s laboratory at the Mage Academy.’ Ugh.”

“She claimed to have tons of power,” Barka added, “but she couldn’t do anything with it, except some minor telekinesis.”

“Let me guess, people made fun of her?” I asked.

“She brought a lot of it on herself,” Brook told me. “Not everybody here has super-awesome magic.”

“Like Sam.” Barka shrugged. “If you give him a clear piece of glass, he can etch it with his magic so it looks frosted. It’s cool the first time you see it, but it’s pretty useless and he can’t control it very well either. He doesn’t make a big deal out of it.”

“It’s in Lisa’s head that she is super-special,” Brook said. “She feels entitled, like we’re all peons here and she is a higher being. Nobody likes being treated that way.”