by Ivy Hearne
In the physical world, the pendant heated up, growing warmer than it would simply from my touch.
To my inner eye, in the metaphysical world, it began to glow. Experience told me it was probably glowing in the real world, too.
I concentrated on everyone in the room with me, the shifters who had shown up when Reo had called them. One by one, they began to pop up in my inner vision—vaguely human shapes glowing pale green, with a bright emerald green inner shape. Reo was first, his jaguar burning hot inside him. Bash and his wolf, Izzy and her coywolf like a slightly smaller version of her mate. For a second, I was certain I saw Layla, the animal inside her a bird of prey with an enormously wide wingspan. And then my vision was crowded with shifters and their animals.
One by one, I drew them into me, threading my gorgon energy from my center through the pendant to amplify it, then wrapping each shifter with it—not their human cells, but their animals, tying them all to me one at a time.
Like a leash, a quiet part of me whispered. I shoved the thought down and away. I wouldn’t use the connection that way.
But part of me knew I could.
When I had tendrils embedded in every shifter in the room, I looped all the lines back to me, braiding them in an intricate, detailed rope.
Then I turned to Izzy, who had begun chanting quietly.
With my pendant-enhanced vision, I marveled at the multicolored beauty of her magic, full of rainbow sparkles.
Everything of mine, all my magic since I had begun using the pendant, flashed in shades of green and brown. Earth shades.
It was no wonder the ancients had thought my kind of magician used snakes.
And turned people to stone. I realized my magic had such a tight hold on everyone in the room that no one was moving except to breathe. Autonomic functions only—nothing voluntary.
I loosened my hold on enough to allow them movement again, then took the parade of magic I had created and began weaving it through Izzy’s spell.
It waved back and forth, like a snake dancing to the flute tune of a charmer. When it was completely entwined with Izzy’s spell, I stepped back, handing it over to her.
It was still part of me—handing it over wasn’t letting it go—but Izzy took control of it.
I felt it when the shifters’ understanding of Souji began to flow through Izzy. It made its way through our combined magic spell as sight and sound and scent. It came to me in senses I didn’t have. A brother’s sense of his love, a panther’s sense of some combination of taste and smell, molecules teased out after being dragged over the Jacobson’s organ in the roof of the mouth.
In return, they all gained an understanding of the sense of utter trust I had in my hunting partner.
They also got the feel of his lips on mine, the taste of him when he kissed me.
I hadn’t realized the spell would be quite so intimate—but it was too late now. And while I didn’t think that information would help them find Souji, there was nothing I could do about it now that it was out in their world.
And they all felt my terror at the thought that something might happen to him, my horror at the thought of losing him.
And as all the senses flowed through me, I suddenly got an image of Souji from high above as he ran through the forest or walked across campus. Image after image of it, all from the previous summer.
Layla.
She had a huge crush on Souji.
Was that why she was terrified of me?
I glanced up and made eye contact with her.
Well, if she’d wondered before, she knew for sure now that Souji and I had kissed.
But that also probably meant that she knew I wasn’t sure if any of the kiss mattered.
I glanced away from her to find Caleb staring at me intently. Speculatively.
Maybe this hadn’t been the best idea I had ever had.
Too late.
When we had shared everything we all knew of Souji, I glanced up at Reo. “I’ll stay here while the pack finds him.”
With a nod, Reo turned to the rest of the room. “We all know who we’re searching for. There should be two of them. Those of you who have psychic messaging abilities, pair up with those who don’t. Let’s go find them.”
As everyone prepared to leave, Izzy leaned over and gave me a quick hug. “We’ll find him,” she promised.
“And we’ll find the bastard impersonating him, too,” Bash added.
They all flowed out into the late afternoon, their animal sides making them quiet in a way that human teenagers rarely were.
Reo was the last to leave. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything from the others.” He grabbed my hands and stared deep into my eyes. “Nothing’s going to happen to him. I swear.”
I nodded, unable to say anything.
I knew Reo meant it. All I could do was hope he was right.
And then I was all alone, hanging out in Reo’s faculty apartment with half a cup of cold tea in front of me, and a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, terror gnawing away at me as I worried about whether or not the shifters would find him.
I sat like that for less than five minutes before I did exactly what I had promised myself I wouldn’t do—followed the connections I now had with the pack members, slipping down the magical lines and eavesdropping briefly in the hopes that I would hear or see something through them when they found Reo delete that Souji.
I couldn’t do that for long, either, though, because it just felt too invasive. Finally, in the end, I was reduced to pacing back and forth in Reo’s living room, hoping someone let me know when they found him.
Chapter 14
That didn’t last long, either. I was no good at hanging back while everyone else went out hunting. I reached out to said it delete that
I reached out to Reo. Psychically.
“Where are you?”
“Headed to the underclassman’s dorm. Starting with his room.”
“I’m coming to you.”
I could feel his amused exasperation. “What if he shows up at my place?”
“I can’t just stay here, Reo. It’s making me crazy.”
I didn’t tell him that I was already out the door, but he didn’t suggest I stay behind.
The faculty housing was set back, slightly away from the rest of the campus buildings. The path toward the quad was completely empty.
And I was utterly unprepared when the doppelgänger grabbed me from behind and dragged me back into the tree line. I kicked and fought back, but he was strong—stronger than I expected.
“Why are all the shifters out looking for me?” he demanded, but he had his hand over my mouth, so I couldn’t answer. “If you had just left me alone for a couple of days, I could have learned enough to go back, to earn my way back into the academy.
The academy?
Oh—he almost certainly meant the Lusus Naturae Academy. The same one Jolie, the girl who had given me the gorgon pendant, was attending.
I grew still, listening, waiting for an opportunity to get away.
“I found him.” I sent the message out to Reo. I didn’t get any message in particular in reply, but I felt his shock when he realized what I meant.
That shock echoed up and down the braided line of power I’d sent out with Izzy.
And through it, I felt it when all the shifters began circling back in, preparing to take down the doppelgänger who had me in his grasp.
In the meantime, this great enemy of mine continued to blubber. “I just want to go back home. I want them to take me back. I can’t survive like this much longer.”
I felt sorry for him. I really did. I knew what it was like to want to belong so desperately and be afraid that you didn’t.
But handing over information about the Hunters' Academy to the Lusus Naturae wasn’t anything I could allow, of course.
I could, however, keep him busy while the pack closed in on him. I began struggling again as if I were desperate to get away.
Then, the one
shifter I didn’t expect dropped down out of the tree above us.
Souji in his panther form.
With the kind of cat’s snarl and scream you usually only hear and see in movies, he landed on the doppelgänger, all his claws out, knocking us both to the ground.
The doppelgänger was too stunned to maintain his hold on me, and I scrambled away. When I got to a safe distance, I turned to see Souji and the doppelgänger rolling over and over. Souji had his claws embedded in the Lusus Naturae member, holding on with all his might. He pulled the doppelgänger out of the trees and onto the path.
And then the clearing was full delete that filled with animals of all kinds—but, as I’d expected, mostly predator species. They formed a circle around Souji and the doppelgänger.
When the doppelgänger realized he was surrounded, he stopped fighting, instead glaring solemnly at us all.
Souji had the doppelgänger pinned to the ground and raised one paw, claws out, ready to strike. I froze, unwilling to intervene.
Then one of the birds, a beautiful hawk, swirled up into her human form.
Layla. Of course.
She stepped forward and knelt a few feet away from Souji. “You have to let him face some kind of justice.” Her voice was warm and smooth and persuasive.
I hated it.
I wanted to be the one to convince Souji not to kill the monster in front of him.
But I wasn’t. My brand-new roommate, the one with the giant crush on my hunting partner, was the one who managed it instead.
I was pretty sure I hated her.
Chapter 15
No matter how much I disliked Layla right now, though, I wasn’t petty enough to do anything that would jeopardize Souji.
Instead, I glanced around the circle of animals, some of whom are beginning to shift back into their human forms. “Bring the doppelgänger back to Reo’s apartment,” I said. “I’ll call Dr. Novak.”
As it turned out, Dr. Novak was still out of town. As the Hunter in Residence, though, Reo had all the authority he needed to deal with the campus intruder.
We took him back to Reo’s to question him.
Over and over again, all he did was say that he had to do it, had to try to get back into the academy.
A few minutes into the questioning, Reo and I glanced at each other, then stepped into the kitchen to confer while Souji and the other shifters—most of whom had stuck around to see what happened—stayed behind in the living room to keep an eye on the doppelgänger.
“That’s it?” I asked. “It just seems like there would be more.”
Reo shrugged. “There doesn’t always have to be some big conspiracy behind things, Kacie. Sometimes small people do things for their own small reasons—even the Lusus Naturae.”
I leaned back to glance to the doorway, staring at the doppelgänger. I could feel the darkness coming off him. It was like I could feel it leaking out of him, shading his words with a black fog. But what if I was wrong? What if I was imagining it all?
“I feel better about it if Dr. Novak were here to take over,” I said.
Reo laughed aloud. “Don’t trust me?”
“It’s not that. It’s just that—I swear there’s more to this than were figuring out right now.”
“If that’s true, will figure it out. I promise. Whatever’s going on, whatever the Lusus Naturae have in store for us, we will need it and we will defeat them.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t convinced.
Suddenly, I realized that officially, this was just day one of my second year here.
If my life at the Hunters’ Academy was this insane today, I couldn’t help but wonder...what would the rest of the semester have in store for me?
I wanted to believe it couldn’t get any worse than today.
But this was my second year at the Academy. I knew better now.
Chapter 16
The next morning, I got an email from Dr. Novak’s secretary. It contained my new course schedule, corrected and complete. I wouldn’t be able to skip out on class without anybody noticing today.
Which was just fine with me. I could use some normalcy.
The whole day passed perfectly normally as if the Hunter’s Academy were any other private school. One that just happened to have classes like Chemistry for Magical Defense II. Or Intermediate Spellcasting. Apparently, I had been put into that one because what I could do with my pendant bore some resemblance to casting spells. A slight resemblance. Like, barely at all.
At lunch, I sat with Souji, Izzy, and Bash. Caleb joined us halfway through. He and Souji eyed each other suspiciously, but they were polite enough.
All in all, it was a lovely day. The sun was shining outside, and after classes were over, students lounged on the grassy lawn in the quad.
Everything was calm, peaceful, and lovely.
It should have been perfect.
So why did I still have this horrible sense of creeping dread?
It was horrifying. Because I knew exactly what it was.
That overwhelming darkness of everyone else thought we had vanquished.
It was coming back. And no one would believe me.
I would have to face it again. And we would all have to battle it when it came back.
I considered all the possibilities as I walked from my last class across campus back toward the dorm.
Layla had been asleep—or at least pretending to be asleep—when I’d finally gotten back to our room the night before. Reo had sent everyone but me and Souji away, and we had delivered the doppelgänger to the campus holding cells—which, until that moment, I had never seen. They were in a basement underground, heavily warded and guarded by two of the upperclassmen. For course credit, no less.
I was determined today to start over with Layla. We had to at least try to get along. Dr. Novak did not approve of students who requested roommate changes mid-semester. He was a big believer in getting along with your assigned hunting partners. “It is good training for the real world,” I’d heard him say, “where you could be thrown into battle at any minute and have to work with whomever was around.”
I tended to think that fighting against the Lusus Naturae and sharing a living space were completely different—apples and oranges. They could not be compared.
But I wasn’t about to tell the headmaster that.
So I was going to go make nice with the new roommate who still hadn’t said more than five words to me.
At least, that was my plan. Right up until I got a psychic message from Souji.
“Hey, partner. Meet me in the shifter clearing?”
“Sure,” I sent back. “What’s up?”
“Nothing bad. Just have something to show you.”
That could be interesting.
I turned left and headed directly toward the clearing. Whatever it was, it had to be better than going to try to make friends with Layla.
When I got the clearing, though, Souji wasn’t the only one there. Pretty much all the shifters who had joined the search for Souji the night before were milling around.
Reo was there, too. And Caleb, and Izzy, and Bash.
And Layla.
Going to my dorm room to be nice to her wouldn’t have worked, after all.
“Hey, guys,” I said, stepping toward Souji and Reo. As the other shifters realized I was there, they grew almost preternaturally quiet.
Standing among them, though, I could feel a heightened energy humming along the lines of connection I had created between us among us.
I had dropped the spell the night before, dispersed it to the best of my ability, but the magical channel I had carved out between me and each of the shifters remained. It might not be in use, but it was there. And I could feel it. I didn’t know if they could. I wasn’t going to mention it, but I suspected it would be easier to connect to them—to any of them or all of them at once—from now on.
“Kacie,” Reo said, “Come over here.”
I took a step closer, glaring at him susp
iciously. “What’s going on?”
“The Council of the Academy’s shifter pack just met.” He gestured expansively around all the shifters in the clearing.
“Okay.” I drew the word out, almost making it a question.
“We have unanimously agreed to invite you to join the Hunters’ Academy shifter pack as an official member.” I’d never seen Reo grin so widely.
“But I’m not a shifter. Can I be a part of the pack if I can’t shift into an animal?”
“We discussed that. And we have decided that your ability to connect with and join the pack to one another as you did last night makes you an honorary pack member.”
Slowly, a smile started to spread across my face. “So basically, you’re asking me to join your special shifters club?”
Reo laughed, and there were a few other laughs sprinkled throughout the group. “I guess you could put it that way.” He raised his eyebrows. “Do you accept?”
I glanced around the group. They were all watching me, waiting for my answer, smiling at me.
I had never had many friends in school. Certainly not after the Lusus Naturae started their metaphysical attack on me, leaving me with migraines all the time.
For the first time, right now at the Hunters’ Academy, I felt like I belonged somewhere.
I glanced at Izzy and Bash. I guess I did understand how they could be so sure already, after all.
“I do,” I said. “Yes. I would love to be part of the shifter pack.”
And now, even Layla was almost, if not quite, smiling at me.
Reo enveloped me in a hug but was quickly shoved out of the way by Souji. Then the rest of the pack surged in, laughing and hugging me.
I made eye contact with Layla, who gave me a tiny nod.
Okay. Maybe this semester wasn’t going to be so bad, after all.
Shows how little I knew.
LOVE THE HUNTERS’ ACADEMY? Be sure to read Dangerous Words for Izzy and Bash’s story.
Izzy Kirk may have been born the child of both a coywolf-shifter and a magic-user, but she’s certain she didn’t inherit anything useful from either side.
She’s never been able to cast a single spell, and though she’s finally started shifting into her coywolf form as a teenager, she can’t remember anything from her full-moon runs—in fact, she’s worried she’ll hurt someone one night without even realizing it.