All Chapters of They Thought I Was Human. Now I Rule Their Hearts: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The envelope was waiting on the porch when Amelia came home.That was the first strange thing.Not because the mail never arrived. The mail arrived all the time. Mostly bills, advertisements, and glossy flyers promising discounts on things Amelia had never wanted. But those came folded into the dented mailbox at the edge of the driveway, crammed between paper coupons and thin envelopes with little plastic windows.This envelope sat by itself on the welcome mat.Centered.Untouched by the damp.As if whoever had left it there had measured the porch, the mat, and the precise angle of the door before deciding where it belonged.Amelia stopped with one foot on the bottom step and stared at it.The afternoon had been gray in the way early autumn afternoons often were, with low clouds pressing close enough to make the whole neighborhood feel smaller. Rain had fallen sometime before she arrived home, leaving the concrete dark and slick and the air smelling of wet leaves, old wood, and the fa

The creature behind the admissions desk stared at Amelia as though she had arrived misspelled.That was the only way she could think to describe it.Its polished black eyes moved from her face to the open file, then back again. The fingers resting on the edge of the paper were too long by at least one joint, tipped in nails that looked less like nails and more like pieces of dark glass. Its skin had the faint pearly sheen of something that lived underground and rarely saw the sun, though the room around them was warm with golden light.For one suspended second, neither of them spoke.Rain tapped against the tall windows behind her. Somewhere deeper in the building, laughter echoed, then bent strangely, as if it had turned a corner without its owner.Amelia shifted the strap of her bag higher on her shoulder.“You said I’m listed as human.”The creature’s mouth closed.It had been slightly open. Not in surprise exactly. More in the manner of someone who had discovered a crack in a wall

The meal bell rang once.Amelia had been sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the symbol on the back of her placement slate, when the sound moved through the room.Not from outside.Not from the hall.From inside the walls.A single low note rolled through the floorboards, up through the legs of the bed, and into her bones. The brass lamp flickered. The window glass trembled. Somewhere beyond her door, voices rose at once, followed by footsteps and the soft rush of bodies moving in the same direction.She waited.The bell did not ring again.Follow everyone else if you hear it once.If you hear it twice, don’t.Liora’s advice had sounded ridiculous when she said it. Standing alone in a room that had already learned too much about her, Amelia was less willing to call anything ridiculous.She tucked the placement slate into the desk drawer, changed into the Waycross uniform because arriving in her own clothes had begun to feel like wearing a target, and braided her hair again with

Amelia dreamed of doors.Not normal doors.Not the chipped white one from her bedroom at home, or the dark wooden one of Room 317, or even the iron-banded entrance to Waycross Academy.These doors stood in a hallway that had no ceiling and no end.Some were tall enough for giants to walk through. Some were so small that she would have had to crawl through them on her hands and knees. Some were carved with symbols that hurt to look at. Others had no handles at all. One door breathed slowly in its frame, expanding and contracting like something asleep.Amelia walked past all of them.She did not know what she was searching for.Only that something behind one of those doors knew her name.When she woke, her hand was stretched toward the wardrobe.Her journal sat on the top shelf where the room had moved it the night before.Amelia lay still for a moment, staring at it.Then she pulled her hand back under the blanket and closed her eyes.“Nope,” she whispered. “Absolutely not.”The room,

By the end of the day, Amelia had learned three important things.First, Waycross Academy considered explanations optional.Second, mirrors could knock.Third, there were apparently several different ways for a stranger’s touch to stay beneath her skin.Kai’s had lingered like a secret at her pulse.Draven was like banked fire.Rowan’s like a bright thread looped around her wrist, quick and impossible to ignore.Amelia hated that she could tell the difference.She hated that more than part of her kept noticing.After her final session, she made it halfway back to the residence wing before the hallway changed its mind.Again.One moment, she was following a group of students through a vaulted corridor that smelled of rain and candle smoke. The next, the students were gone, the walls had narrowed, and the air tasted faintly of honeyed steam.Amelia stopped.“No,” she said aloud.The corridor did not apologize.It continued ahead in a long, dim line, lit by lanterns made of colored glass