Free Fallen Angel by Melody John

heart hurt like someone was punching me in the chest with a sledgehammer. ‘Just that. It’s hardly a power at all. Look.’ I waved my hand, and my Funko figures rattled, and a book on the floor flipped open, and its pages rustled as though in a breeze. ‘Big fat whoop. Telekinesis. Wow. Such power, very magic.’
     
    I tugged at my bootlaces hopelessly, feeling like I was drowning.
     
    Dmitri took a few steps into the room. I thought he was going to say something, but instead he just said, ‘I’ll take that back for you.’
     
    I didn’t know what he was talking about, but he picked up the glass. He paused with his hand on the door handle. ‘Goodnight, Lizzie,’ he said in a rather odd voice.
     
    ‘Goodnight,’ I sniffed. I hardly heard when he shut the door. I wrestled with my laces, and finally managed to undo them. I kicked my boots off and burrowed under the covers without bothering to undress any further. I closed my eyes and felt my tears leak out onto the pillow, knowing that there would probably be loads of mascara stains on the case tomorrow, but too sick and miserable to care.
     
    *
     
    I must have slept for a few hours. Then I was suddenly awakened by a blur of voices outside my room. The noise made my head hurt, and I stumbled out of bed to yell at whoever it was to kindly shut the hell up.
     
    I fumbled my door open and looked blearily up and down the corridor. It was a crowd of about five people lurching back to their rooms. They were laughing, and they stank of booze. ‘Oi!’ I said thickly. ‘Shuttup.’
     
    ‘Sorry,’ they giggled. They wobbled farther on up the corridor. I was about to shut my door, but then I looked the other way. Outside Dmitri’s room, two people were pressed up against the wall. They were kissing.
     
    It was Dmitri and David.
     
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER TEN
     
    The next morning, Laura rolled into the kitchen looking far more chipper than seemed normal for someone who hadn’t come home until three in the morning. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘You all right? How are you feeling now?’
     
    I nodded. ‘Yeah. Sorry about last night. I think essays and all kind of got me down a bit. And alcohol didn’t help.’
     
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Laura said. She patted my shoulder on the way to the fridge.
     
    ‘So,’ I said, trying to sound casual as I chewed on my toast, ‘how did it go last night? Did you guys do anything interesting?’
     
    ‘Just usual stuff, really.’ She turned around with a Pop-Tart in her hand. ‘I danced with a few people. Jamie was gross again. Dmitri was kinda quiet—I didn’t see him around much. David asked where you’d gone. I told him you were tired and had gone back to your room.’
     
    ‘Thanks.’
     
    ‘So yeah.’ She shrugged. ‘Just normal stuff, really.’
     
    So Dmitri and David didn’t hook up last night?
     
    I couldn’t say it. I turned back to my toast, and tried not to think about it. Kissing outside someone’s room didn’t automatically mean a hook-up (except that in most cases that was pretty much always what it meant). But even if it did, it wasn’t any of my business. If David wanted to hook up with Dmitri, it wasn’t something I could control or speak out against.
     
    So long as Dmitri wasn’t using his mesmer to do it. No, that was unfair—Dmitri had promised not to use it. He’d said that he didn’t need to. I shouldn’t doubt him. And anyway, wasn’t that just like massive sour grapes on my part? David wasn’t interested in me, so he had to be enchanted by someone else?
     
    God, what was wrong with me?
     
    I finished my toast, and went back to my room. But I bumped into Dmitri just outside the kitchen. ‘Oh hi,’ he said. ‘Are you feeling better?’
     
    ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, thanks.’ I couldn’t actually remember much of what he’d said to me last night. Oh god, had he seen me having a meltdown? Oh god.
     
    ‘Are you sure?’ he asked. ‘You seemed pretty