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“Sorry about that,” Elliot said. “Should have warned you. If we’d stayed much longer in front of the open doors like that, they would have thrown us out.”
“Literally thrown us out?”
“Literally.”
“This school is ridiculous sometimes.”
He grinned. “True, but doesn’t it also make you feel unbelievably alive?”
I had to think about that for a moment.
Did it?
I was a little chagrined to realize it kind of did.
How demoralizing to realize all that education and evolution and we were still just base animals, rooted in instincts, at our core.
Elliot grinned. “You ready to enter the obstacle course?”
“What? No! But I am ready to get off this ledge. How about you just fly us down?”
He snickered. “That’d be too easy, don’t you think? First, I’m not allowed to use my wings to get me down to the obstacle course. That would give those of us with wings an unfair advantage, so we’re required to pretend they’ve been injured and we can’t fly while going throughthe course.”
“That’s total bullshit!”
“Of course it is, but it’s also the reason your powers were stripped from you the minute you went through those doors.”
“What? That can’t be right.” I reached for my magic, but literally nothing came at my call.
Miki-Leopard?
I still here.
“My leopard’s still there.”
“So’s my dragon. We just won’t be able to shift while in the obstacle course, but we can still draw on their strengths. So that’s your first lesson of the day, Mikaela. Just because you’re in human form doesn’t mean you don’t carry with you right now all your leopard’s strengths. You talked about not being athletic. Well, you have apowerfulleopard, who I guarantee, isveryathletic. You just have to learn how to tap into her natural athleticism—her sense of balance, her strength, her agility and her speed—to power you past your own human limitations.”
“I can do that?”
“With practice, yes. So that’s the plan for today. We’re going to run that obstacle course and your leopard’s going to help you do it.”
I sighed. “Fine. So how do we get down there?”
“Depends. The way down isn’t always easy to figure out.” He leaned forward, looked over the ledge and nodded. “Today’s method is pretty straightforward, though.” He pulled a couple pairs of gloves from his hoodie pocket and handed oneset to me. “Make sure you bring those to class every time because Puddlemoan won’t give you a pass just because you might burn your hands.”
“You do know that fire can’t burn me, right?” I pulled on the gloves anyway, just in case.
“Not that kind of burn.” Elliot said, flexing his now gloved hands. “Today we get down by climbing a rope.” With that, he spun so he faced the building, then stepped back off the ledge.
“Elliot!”
“There’s a rope right beneath your feet,” he called up. “You just have to reach it and use it to climb down.”
“Are you kidding me right now?” I carefully lowered myself to my knees and peeked over the ledge. Oh, goddess. What the fuck?
What the fuckety, fuckety-fuck?
He was hanging from a rope, arms wrapped around it, foot somehow looped in it and he just looked so calm hanging there, about a hundred feet from the ground.
