EVERMORE ACADEMY

CHAPTER SIX (Jenny's pov)

We got to class early enough to claim seats at the back, which Wren informed me was a strategic decision — "best view of everything, worst chance of getting called on" — and settled in to wait for the professor with the rest of the room slowly filling in around us.

"Professor Halloway," Wren said, nodding at the empty desk at the front. "Theory and Applied Foundations. She's actually really good, not scary-good like Voss, just — thorough. She'll probably keep it all theory today, since half the room's fresher and nobody's classified yet."

While we waited, she launched into the story she'd promised me — the first time her invisibility had shown itself, completely by accident, in the middle of a family dinner.

"Thirty minutes," she said, holding up both hands like the number needed emphasis. "Thirty whole minutes I couldn't feel anything, couldn't touch anything properly, nobody could see me or hear me, and I genuinely — genuinely, Jenny — thought I had died. Like, mid-lasagna. Just gone."

"That's terrifying."

"It gets worse. That was the short version. The actual first time it fully kicked in, it lasted a good hour. A full hour of just — nothing. I was convinced this was what being dead felt like and nobody had bothered to tell me in advance." She was laughing by the end of it, and I was laughing with her.

Once we'd both settled down, the question I'd been sitting on finally came out.

"What about Marlowe? What's her power like? I don't know — does she see ghosts or something?"

Wren laughed so loudly it turned heads, and then, abruptly, the room went quiet — quiet enough that for one embarrassing second I thought it was because of me.

It wasn't that.

Every girl in the room had turned toward the door, where three boys had just walked in, and the class had gone from ordinary chatter to a very particular kind of hush.

I wasn't going to pretend they weren't easy to notice. But it was the sheer scale of the reaction around me that caught my attention more than the boys themselves — Wren included, who had gone very still beside me, eyes wide.

Then I recognized the one in the middle. Dark hair, easy posture, the boy who'd carried my bag across the courtyard and pointed me toward Founders' Hall on my first afternoon.

"Wren," I whispered, "that's the guy who helped me find the hall yesterday."

Wren's mouth fell open. "Girl," she said, entirely too loud for a whisper, "you just talked to the second hottest guy in the whole college."

"Second hottest?"

"Of course. Those three are a set — third-years, best friends, and their powers are supposed to be insane. Everyone knows them." She narrowed her eyes at me, like she was reassessing something. "Wait. Didn't you notice any of the girls watching you yesterday? While he was walking you to the hall?"

I thought back — the courtyard, the strange colored light through the windows, him holding the door — and honestly, no. I hadn't noticed anything except the building itself, too busy trying not to look as lost as I felt.

"I wasn't really paying attention to anyone else," I admitted. "I was just trying to find Founders' Hall."

"Unbelievable." Wren shook her head. "Half this school's been talking about the new Undetermined girl since yesterday, and you didn't even clock it."

She rattled off the other two boys' names before I could ask anything else, already deep into some ranking system in her head that I hadn't agreed to be part of.

The three of them took seats a row behind us, and Wren looked, for a second, like she might actually float out of her chair. She didn't bother hiding it — she'd have happily struck up a conversation with any one of the three, she informed me under her breath, and wouldn't think twice about it.

Before he sat down, the boy from the courtyard — Steven, Wren had said, though I still hadn't heard him say it himself — glanced my way and gave the smallest nod of acknowledgement, like he remembered me.

I gave him a small wave back, the kind you give a stranger you technically know, and turned my attention forward just as Professor Halloway swept into the room and the whole class scrambled to look like it hadn't been distracted at all.