by Alex Lidell
The panic has moved to my heart now, making it patter like a trapped rabbit’s. But I keep my voice calm, level. “Let me guess, a posh attorney named Bryant sold you a bunch of shit on the virtues of Talonswood Reform?”
Ellis smiles coolly, his eyes as still and unreadable as stones. “Something like that. Though I usually call him something else.”
I raise a brow.
Ellis’s teeth flash in a cruel grin. “Father.”
Fuck me. I pull my leather jacket tighter around myself and move as far away from him as the seat allows. Ellis is a bastard, but at least he’s real—with the police and attorneys all assuring me that no one else was in the mansion, I was starting to believe them. “You’ll understand if I don’t shed tears that the man who tried to murder me two weeks ago managed to get snatched up by the cops too.”
Ellis’s eyes flash as if I just suggested he fuck his mother. “I’m not a man.”
I blink. Not the words I was expecting. Before I can help myself, my gaze drops down to his pants—the sizable bulge beneath the black denim speaking for itself. “Could have fooled me.”
“I’m a male.” Ellis says this as if the word means more than it does.
“You are a backstabbing asshole who nearly cost me my life and did cost me my freedom. And the moment I get a chance, I am going to chop off your maleness with the dullest knife I can find and stuff it down your throat. Are we on the same page now?” My chest heaves as I spit the words, my body bracing for a blow. But I don’t care. The words are worth a bloody lip or black eye. I don’t think Ellis would go further in the Suburban.
He cocks his head, regarding me with a strange type of curious amusement and a tinge of infuriating pity—like I imagine the Big Bad Wolf did just before blowing the little pigs’ houses to hell. “You truly have no inkling of anything. Who I am. What you are. Where we’re going.”
I raise my hand, unbending my fingers as I answer the three trivia challenges one at a time. “Asshole. Idiot. Prison.”
Ellis snorts a laugh, the sound as dark as the tension swirling in his eyes. “That is remarkably accurate,” he informs me. “Incomplete, but accurate.”
“You have a better description?”
Ellis considers the car door for a moment, his chiseled face deep in shadow now.
“Don’t sprain your brain.”
“I was making sure the locks are engaged. It’s too much trouble to explain when you can still run. But you can’t now.” He holds up his hand, the fingers long and probably powerful enough to crush my neck. Unbending his fingers one at a time just as I did, he enunciates the words with a self-satisfied vindictiveness that makes his words come out low and thick. “Fae. Witch. A place that will break you into a million pieces.”
Witch?
“I didn’t realize the Marine Corps ran an insane asylum.” My words are light, but my whole body is prickling, my nerves jumping as if they too are desperately trying to get away from Ellis. He was scary enough when he was just a stone-cold killer, but as a crazy stone-cold killer, he’s terrifying.
He’s hazing you, Sam. That’s all this is, one student trying to psych out another student before they even reach the gates. And yet… Unbidden, I remember that whisper in the darkness, echoing through the dusty halls of the mansion. Sam. Sam. Sam.
“I’d smart-mouth less and listen more if I were in your shoes, witch.”
“Feel free to step into my shoes any time you like. Meanwhile, if you let me near a broomstick, I’ll shove it up your ass.”
“Next time you’re holding a broomstick, I’ll remind you of that,” Ellis purrs, the words sending a shiver down my spine as if he’s somehow in on a much deeper joke than I’m giving him credit for. With his sharp cheekbones sculpted in the playing shadows, he has a wolf-like look to him, especially when he smiles without humor and flashes a set of very healthy teeth. “Though by the time Talonswood has a crack at you, I don’t imagine you’ll have the strength to try.”
“Aren’t you worried that Bryant—or, wait, you call him Daddy—will spank you for telling me the secret truths? I presume he had his reasons for not doing so himself.” Such as not being crazy and off meds.
“You signed away your freedom, you climbed into the SUV, you’ve nowhere to run. Safe to say your training wheels are officially off, Devinee.” The sound of my name on Ellis’s lips sends a ripple of heat through me, my blood speeding with a renewed cocktail of fear and anger.
My back straightens and I lift my chin, making myself as tall as possible, even if the top of my head only reaches Ellis’s shoulder. This isn’t my first rodeo. I know the rules, know that giving off at least the illusion of strength is vital. There is no surer way to be shoved to the bottom than to let anyone get a whiff of fear from you—well, other than crying, but that’s obvious.
“You’ve been to Talonswood before, then.” I snatch the piece of information from the air, tucking it away into a little pouch in the back of my mind. “The first time around didn’t reform you enough to deter you from attempted murder?”
I don’t see Ellis move until he’s kneeling on the seat, his large body looming over me. How did he—? But all reasonable thought vanishes under the cold glare of his golden eyes. With one hand on the back of my seat and the other braced against the Suburban’s tinted window, he has me trapped even without touching my skin. His musk brushes over my skin, making my thighs tighten even as my fists do. Damn. The man’s body is so honed and lethal that I can’t look away, can’t help marking every coiled tendon. Or the dark, invisible weight that seems to press down on him from all sides. I swallow, my heart pounding so loudly that it echoes in my ears.
Ellis tilts his face down, his heat and scent slamming into me with the force of a storm. His full mouth is two inches away from me when he speaks, his voice is laden with menace. With a hate that can’t possibly come from our short acquaintance, he says, “I’m not being punished for attempting to kill you, witch.” Ellis’s words pierce through me to grip my stomach. “I’m being punished for letting you live. And I regret it already.”
7
Sam
I blink at the sunlight streaming into the windows as a sleek sedan I have no memory of getting into pulls into the circular drive in front of a huge stone wall, a set of thick double gates with iron bindings as welcoming as the grim reaper. The gray columns rising toward the sky on either side of the entrance provide a perch for crazed-looking gargoyles, glaring down on the miscreants daring to enter. On all sides of the driveway, and lining the two-lane road behind us, dense forest shoots spiny arms into the darkening sky.
I try to take in clues to figure out where we are in the world, but I’ve never been far enough beyond Newark to make much sense of it. Trees, rolling hills rising into higher rocky-topped mountains, a chill in the air as the sun falls. In other words: the middle of butt-fuck nowhere.
Rubbing my face, I realize that my head feels heavy and that Ellis is gone.
What in the ever-loving hell?
I jerk upright, the full force of what just happened hitting me like a cold wind. The last thing I remember, we were heading toward Newark Liberty International Airport, the driver ordering Ellis and me to keep a civil tone in the back. And then… And now here I am, the sky overhead an unfamiliar pink hue that I think means dusk on the horizon.
“Did you drug me?” I demand.
The driver merely gets out and shuts his door in answer, walking around the back of the car toward my side.
“Yes, of course,” he says, opening my door. For one very embarrassing moment, seeing him head-on for the first time, all I can do is gape. This is who’s been driving me around for hours? He towers over the open door, broad shoulders backlit by the setting sun, a sleek black shirt hugging his muscled body like a glove. His dark hair is tied back in a ponytail, showing off a pale, sharply carved face, a face that belongs in a painting, not here in front of me with an impatient tilt to one brow. “I’m Reese,” he says after a long
beat, his crisp British accent belying the cold steel in his pale blue eyes. This guy has killed people, I know with sudden certainty. A lot of them.
I hold out my hand dumbly, which, instead of shaking, he uses to haul me up and out of the car with all the ceremony of a farmer throwing a bale of hay.
“I did not agree to being drugged,” I say stupidly, swaying slightly on my feet. His scent makes me even dizzier, a delicious tang, like salty sea with a bite of mint. I inhale deeply before I can catch myself, making G.I. Joe actually lean away from me slightly, like whatever kind of crazy I have might be contagious.
“Did you think I’d be handing you a map and welcome packet to a place we very much prefer no one ever finds?”
Or runs away from.
“Where’s Ellis?” The words spill out before I can stop myself. The man—male—whatever—might be an asshole who deserves to have his balls cut off, but at least he’s a familiar face in all this.
“Less talking, more moving, Samantha.” Reese’s tone is hard, something in his eyes when he looks at me that feels personal, almost like he hated me before even meeting me. “The lead instructor will answer your questions. Or not. It doesn’t matter to me.” Though everything said in that clean British accent of his has a way of sounding polite, there’s no mistaking the note of command. Reese is military. Or was. From the way his eyes are always moving, his body seeming ready to kill even when standing still, I wager he has a special forces tattoo somewhere on that pale body of his.
Gripping my backpack, I walk toward the forbidding stone entrance, feet crunching loudly against the pavement, forcing myself to keep my head high as if the world is mine for the taking. As if my heart isn’t racing despite the number of times I’ve been shipped off to live in one place or another, whenever a foster family decided they were tired of me or wanted to take a vacation without some street kid hanging on. Or, my favorite, when some male of the family decided I wasn’t paying my keep and decided to take their chances that the next foster girl would be more willing.
More desperate.
Except I’m not a child anymore, and, though being dumped in a new place with no explanation still makes my gut churn, I’m not about to let it show.
Sticking my hands into my deep pockets, I turn around in a circle inside the gates, taking in the high gothic buildings lining the four sides of a vast, empty green that must be at least an acre across. Lights are coming on in windows, perhaps students just coming back from their last class. Here and there, dense leafy trees cast slanting shadows in the golden light. It’s almost…idyllic. Maybe my next four years won’t be such a shitstorm after all. Not after Newark. “So this is Talonswood? Cute.”
I see the movement in my side vision a second before a boy’s hand clamps around my throat, lifting me onto my toes as a rush of sudden panic courses through my blood. I claw instinctively at the grip, my hands sliding off his cool skin as if it were polished leather. I gasp for breath, kicking my toes against the ground to get purchase.
“Cadets do not speak unless spoken to, witch.” The boy’s cruel dark eyes glare at me, the specks of orange in them flickering in the sunlight, his black widow’s peak sharp enough to cut glass. As he gives my neck a shake, I can smell the stench of raw meat on his breath. “Am I clear?”
“Let her go, Quinn.” Ellis’s command, coming from somewhere behind me, is a quiet menace that makes my attacker’s lips pull back in a snarl. “Or I will dismember you joint by joint.”
Quinn throws me down to the grass and steps back, turning on Ellis. “Who are you to give me orders, cadet.” Quinn’s face darkens. “Your royal sperm donor isn’t protecting you now.”
Ellis growls, looking like he’s about to leap—but stops when he sees something behind me. Or someone.
“Well, that took all of five minutes,” a low voice says.
I struggle to my knees and turn. The golden-haired man walking toward us across the grass draws all the fight out of Ellis and Quinn as if popping a balloon with a pin. Though he only looks to be in his midtwenties, somehow he carries the air of someone far older and far more in control. Before Ellis can open his mouth to say anything, the man raises his palm and settles his eyes on me. I know I’m holding my breath, know I should release it, but can’t find the muscles to do so.
“My name is Commander Asher,” Golden Hair says in a calm I-can-kill-you-with-my-bare-hands cadence, the shape of his eyes an echo of Ellis’s. Relatives? But if Ellis holds himself like a wolf about to pounce, Asher is like the predator who is busy surveying his territory. Cold. All-knowing. In control. With Asher’s posture military straight under his blue uniform, I wonder if he and Reese served together.
“I am the lead instructor here, as well as acting headmaster while Dean Javin is away. Cadet-Commander Quinn is the highest-ranking cadet at Talonswood Reform and the only full immortal in the student body. And you’ve met Reesand, my lieutenant. You’ll meet the rest of our faculty in the coming days. Together, Reese, Quinn, and I are your commanding cadre—the officers in charge of your class. Whatever any of us tells you, you will execute that command as if it came from a divine source. Understand?”
No. “Perfectly.”
“Sir,” Quinn snaps.
“Perfectly, sir,” I echo back like a parrot.
Asher looks at Ellis.
“Yes, sir,” Ellis says with a mildness no one here is buying.
Asher sighs almost reluctantly. “Quinn, three lashes to Ellis for speaking out of turn to you earlier.”
My eyes widen, the small glint of satisfaction flickering over Quinn’s face somehow more frightening than Asher’s offhand order. It’s all I can do to keep from flinching when Asher turns toward me, his broad shoulders and handsome face making my breath hitch for many reasons at once.
“Ms. Devinee, as I truly hope you are aware, you are now a ward of Talonswood Reform Academy. You may call this a reform school, a military prison, or hell on earth—so long as you do it out of my earshot, I don’t care. What I do care about is that you understand that our rules are strict and absolute.”
“I un—” I start to say, shutting up as Asher shakes his head.
“No, you do not. But you will.” He nods to Quinn. “Take Ellis to the post and then meet us at the hose. Samantha, follow Reese and me.”
I spare a glance for Ellis, who seems both unsurprised and unfazed by what’s about to happen to him, and then hurry to follow Asher as instructed. Dammit. Despite myself, I already fear making the man angry at me even more than I fear crossing Quinn again.
Quinn is like mean miniature Dachshund. Asher is a wolf.
Holding on to the strap of my backpack, I walk between Asher and Reese, the two instructors bracketing me like prison guards. I wonder if this is how all new students are welcomed, or if I’m just extra special.
Witch, Ellis’s voice spits in my memory as if in response, making me shiver.
Quinn has said as much too.
I swallow.
As we angle right across the dusky green, tall wrought iron lamps come on along the walkways, and we finally pass other students for the first time, paused to watch the procession. I try not to stare, but it’s hard—so hard. The girls, dressed in blue plaid skirts and white button-downs, all look cut out of the pages of Seventeen magazine, tall, willowy, smooth skinned, with silky hair down to their butts, in every natural color of the rainbow. Not dyed hair like mine—I can tell immediately that none of them would ever be so crass.
The boys, in blue blazers, are all athletically built and as beautiful as the girls, some with porcelain-pale skin like Reese’s, some with a feral angle to their eyes like Ellis’s.
I thought these were supposed to be a bunch of juvenile delinquents. What do they put in the water here? Fuck. Maybe I’ll wake up with muscles and hair down to my butt too.
When I meet the cadets’ gazes, the dislike in their eyes is palpable enough to leave a bitter aftertaste in my mouth. In foster care, another brat meant ano
ther threat to what little anyone had, but no one here looks underfed in the least. Nor does Talonswood appear to be lacking in anything but common sense. The four fortress-castle-mansion things could probably fetch enough money to buy a small country, their stone façades in perfect repair, even the ivy growing in seemingly intentional patterns. The metal fences at the corners of the yard are no less gorgeously elaborate, the wolf-head designs on them works of art—and their currently open leaves ready to swing shut. To turn the large green into a grand prison yard in a matter of seconds.
“You are the only witch at Talonswood, Samantha,” Asher says abruptly as we bend around the rightmost building to stop at a piece of soggy ground behind it under a single harsh spotlight, the forest rising darkly in the background. “The demis do not know what to make of you. Frankly, neither do I.”
Demis? Yet another word that sounds like gibberish. “That makes all of us,” I mutter. “What does being a witch mean exactly? Should I be able to fly or do magic or turn men into toads?” My pitch rises with each word until a hard look from Asher silences me at once.
“No. Potentially. No.” Asher tells me curtly, raising his hand to stop further inquiries. “You will learn more in class. Let me be clear—you are welcome to protest, cry, question the truth all you want, just do it on your own time.” Asher is hiding his emotions better than Quinn had, but something unkind flashes in his eyes nonetheless. “I will not abide bad behavior under my watch. You are a witch, a nonhuman species. That carries risks to all two—apologies, three—creature races. I do not expect you to know what I am talking about yet—I do expect you to spend your every waking moment learning.”
For the first time, hearing it in Asher’s cool, logical voice, my brain has a hard time rejecting it. It’s impossible. But when you hear something enough times… I think of cauldrons, frogs, pointy hats, and somehow know that’s not what it means.