by D. D. Chance
“Jesus, are you okay?” Liam asked, or I think he asked. I didn’t much care. I plunged down over him, reveling in the burst of sparks exploding deep inside me. Something about this guy literally set me on fire, and I could not get enough. A storm of emotions and sensations cascaded through me, and I lifted my head to meet his gaze—joy, excitement, and pure unfettered delight flowing through me.
“This is freaking amazing,” I said, and he blinked at me in unfeigned surprise.
“Are you serious?” he asked with such shock that I couldn’t help but laugh. But I wasn’t going to let this moment pass.
“You’re okay? You’re good? I’m not hurting you?” I asked.
“Uh—no. Definitely not hurting me.” He waved his right hand, distracting me. I stared as tiny pinpoints of light danced along those fingers, running down the grooves of his skin, his hands visibly healing in front of my eyes.
He sighed in absolute wonder. “This is awesome on so many levels, I can’t even—”
I didn’t let him finish. I dropped down again, taking him fully into my mouth and delighting in his groan of pure pleasure. Or maybe that groan was all me. I could feel the tension building inside him as I moved, thoroughly enjoying what had to be the world’s best scientific experiment, my own excitement spiraling up and up until my heart was pounding, the blood rushing through my ears an almost deafening roar.
The only warning I had of Liam’s impending release was the hiss of my name through his lips. Then he convulsed in climax, and I barely held on without blacking out. I came fully back online several heartbeats later, pulling back as Liam sagged against the table, his hands still spread wide, fire racing over his palms, and then everything slowed, slowed—the sparks around his hands finally dimming, then winking out completely as we both stared at each other, then down at his hands.
“My God, Nina,” he murmured in total awe. “I totally need to put a patent on that.”
20
“So….now that my hands are better,” Liam began after another few seconds, but his words were cut off almost immediately with a sharp crash that sounded from somewhere down the hall. We both jumped, this time for far less pleasurable reasons. Liam hopped off the stool, straightening his clothes, talking quickly the whole time.
“Nobody knows we’re here. There’s probably nothing else in here with us, but given the insect swarm we incited downstairs, I don’t think we can take anything for granted. So I’m going to ask for a rain check on our experimentation here—as much as that seriously pains me—and we’re going to go get what we need, then get the hell out.”
“What is it you think we’re going to find in here?”
Liam was at the door now, and peeked out into the hallway before glancing back. “I told you, this place was run by the Hallowells. There are records they would have left behind, more or less.”
“Oh, come on. There’s no way that’s true. They would have taken any books and materials with them. There wouldn’t be anything worth reading still here, not after all these years.”
“Like I said, it’ll be there…more or less,” Liam countered. “You’ll see.”
He poked his head out of the room again, but there was nothing there to greet us, fortunately, and silence reigned again. He glanced back toward the stairway, then ahead again, as if trying to get his bearings. He nodded quickly.
“Mom told me about the school once, how secretive it was. There was only one room that visitors got to see when they came to check on the students here. It was a formal sitting room, gorgeously outfitted, and the Hallowells took great pride in it. All their history and knowledge was on display for the paying customers.”
“But…” I still couldn’t understand how there would be any record of these people after so long, but Liam was already moving fast. He trotted down the long hallway, toward what I assumed was the front of the building, and sure enough, there was a set of double doors standing off to one side of the corridor, literally flaked in gold.
“Proud group,” Liam observed drily. He tried the double door, and it slid apart at his touch, the wood stiff but still remembering its tracks as it receded into pockets in the wall. We stepped into a parlor that was completely devoid of even one stick of furniture. There was nothing on the walls, no shelves, no furniture. It was empty.
I looked at him. “And this proves what?” I asked, but Liam had already dropped his pack to the floor and was rummaging through it, bringing out another square box, this one with a tiny fluttering blue light.
“Energy is the game here, yeah? I want to see what these people looked like. I want to see who they were and what they did—and most especially, what they read.”
He depressed a button on the machine, and a tiny light projector extended up and whirled, rotating its beam around the room, filling in the empty spaces.
As I watched, shelves appeared in stripes of flickering light, chairs, a gorgeous buffet bar with a full set of crystal, and shelves upon shelves of books. Books that looked remarkably real, though of course they were only illusions. Or at least that’s what I thought until Liam darted forward, opening up the glass doors to one of the bookcases and pulling several books free.
“What the hell are you doing?” I blurted.
“Think of it as a 3D rendering of memories,” Liam said quickly. “These books are magic. Magic leaves an imprint, and a 3D printer can reproduce what they were, kind of pulling it out of the very atmosphere. The effect doesn’t last long, but while it lasts, it’s friggin’ awesome. Come on, we need to look at these.”
I hustled over to him, and he handed me a thick tome. “What are we looking for?”
“Pride, for starters,” Liam muttered. “There has to be a connection between the Hallowells and the Perkins family. Some slight, some issue. If we can tie them to that, then we may have a reason to point the finger at them.”
“Okay.” I accepted that and began paging through the books. They were journals, written in a beautiful hand, and I caught myself skimming passages detailing students and teachers at the academy, progress and exams and courses in etiquette. I didn’t see anything about the Perkinses, though, so I turned another page, and heart quickened. The page grew more insubstantial as I flipped it.
“How long does the illusion last?”
“First time I’ve ever tested it.” Liam shrugged, confirming my worst fears. “Why, you got anything?”
“No, I…” My words broke off as my gaze landed on a name.
“Oh my God,” I breathed. “Janet Cross.”
“You’re kidding,” Liam said. “What’s it say? Read quick.”
“She was a teacher. She definitely was a teacher here. But…that doesn’t make any sense. Why would she be a teacher here over a hundred years ago? The dates are in 1889, for God’s sake. How could that be possible?”
“It’s not possible. It just means your mom was smart. She took the name of a teacher who taught here for a reason. Who did she teach? Does it say anything about her students?”
“Just that it seemed like she had the more, I guess, wilder students. There’s all sorts of entries about her needing to improve their discipline, their control. I don’t really understand it, but…I just don’t understand.”
“Well, I’m coming up with nothing here. From what I can tell, we’ve got no connection—no mention at all of the Perkins family. I totally thought we would. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
By this point, Liam was muttering under his breath, and he turned to pull another book off the shelves. Scanning it quickly, he shook his head in exasperation. “Girls, girls, girls, nothing but girls.” He looked back at me, his brows knitting together. “That’s kind of interesting don’t you think? Wellington Academy has some women, but not a lot when you think about it. Not even when monster hunting was more of a focus of the academy. How come?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you need to be big and strong to fight monsters?”
“That hasn’t stopped you,” he p
ointed out, and I nodded.
“Fair enough, but this was the 1800s. Women weren’t allowed to do a lot of things.”
“Fair, but in the magical families, that kind of sexist bullshit didn’t really play. It really was more of a meritocracy, and if these young women were gifted and the Hallowells had a school…there’s something there, something I’m missing. I don’t know what it is yet, but there’s—”
He broke off as the illusion around us flickered.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “I need more time.”
More time was not in the cards, however, as the machine in the center of the room gave a final sigh, and the illusion petered out completely.
Liam moved back toward his pack, pulling out what looked like a compass. “Well, that was fun while it lasted. But I really need to do a better job with my power supplies. First time I’ve ever had the chance to test these things in the wild, but they’re not much good if they flake before anything interesting happens. Come on.”
He held the compass aloft and reached for my hand. Once again when my fingers clasped his, I felt the zing of electricity between us. He did too, and he gave me a smile. “Don’t think we’re not going to pick up where we left off back there. But we need to get back to Fowlers Hall. I need to recharge a little myself.”
I lifted my brows as he glanced down at the compass again.
“Recharge in what way?” I asked, and he just shrugged.
“In the way you’re probably thinking. When my parents decided to trick out my insides, they didn’t give much thought to the effort it would take to keep everything working without causing problems to my system. It…it takes a lot out of me, you could say. Anyway, way too much information. Let’s go.”
Following the compass, we moved back down the hallway, then turned down a side hallway that we’d passed earlier, and eventually angled into a room that looked like a kitchen.
“It’s always the kitchens with these people,” he murmured, though the room looked as barren as the rest of the building. He went over to a large pantry and pulled it open. A platform lay on the other side, heavy and wooden, and Liam leaned over it, testing it with his hands.
“I’ve fallen through my share of these, but this one looks sturdy enough,” he decided.
I frowned. “Sturdy enough for what?”
“Come on. It’s going to be tight with both of us in here, but I don’t want to leave you up here.” He crawled into the closet and beckoned me to join him. The two of us barely fit in the small space, and Liam reached up and opened a panel in the ceiling, revealing a wheel with a deep track, an old, oiled rope threaded through it.
“I don’t have time to mess around with this,” he muttered. He flipped out his wrist, and fire smoked out of some hidden port while he hissed out a sharp curse.
It leapt onto the twine, which immediately began to fray.
“Wait a minute,” I blurted. “If you’re cutting that, aren’t we going to—”
“Brace yourself,” Liam shouted back, shoving his hands against the sides of the cabinet. “Hang on!”
I’d barely gotten my hands up in time when, with a sickening lurch, the cabinet dropped easily a couple of floors, landing with a thud and dumping us onto a straw-covered floor.
We lay there for a moment, stunned. Liam spoke first. “These things always had braces in the bottom. Falls happened more often than you might think, and they didn’t want to smash dishes or, you know, kill people.”
Sure enough, there were thick bales of moldering straw stacked beneath the platform. I stood and staggered a little anyway, trying to get my bearings. “So where is this?”
He waved his compass. “This is the way out. I’ve tailored this compass to latch into the subterranean network of passageways that extend throughout Boston. It doesn’t do much for getting me to new places, but it can always point me home, which is a lot more useful than you might think.”
“Home as in your parents’ house?”
He shrugged. “Originally, but I reset it to Fowlers Hall. That’s home to me now, more of a home than my own place ever was. Let’s go.”
We headed out, making our way through passageways that varied between little more than narrow alleys to tunnels that seemed like they’d once been part of the underground rail system, Liam keeping up a chattering commentary the whole way. It took us about twenty minutes until he turned down a particularly well-kept passage, which led to a steep flight of stairs.
“Here we are,” he said, the grin obvious in his voice, though I couldn’t see his face. “Fowlers Hall has a basement, but as you might imagine, I’m not a big fan of basements. So up we go.”
He headed up the stairs, and when it ended at a short landing with a door cut into the wall, he keyed in a code on a surprisingly modern-looking keypad. The door opened to a bright cheerful room.
“Welcome to my humble domain,” he said.
21
I’d seen both Tyler’s and Zach’s dorm rooms at Fowlers Hall—both of them way more luxurious than any ordinary college dorm room. Tyler’s had been twice the size of Zach’s and reasonably tidy, and I honestly couldn’t remember Zach’s that much, given the fire and brimstone I’d had to fight through in order to get to his bed.
Liam’s room was a revelation.
The room was enormous, partitioned into sections separated by a wide, gleaming wood floor. The right side of the room was dominated by a dozen floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that jutted into the room perpendicular to the wall, with tall rolling ladders positioned at the near edges of the shelving units that were stacked with books on every shelf. A large, comfortable-looking recliner peeked out from behind the last shelf, also surrounded with books. The left wall was given over to a desk with three laptop computers faintly gleaming in sleep mode, and the far end of the room boasted a large door—what I assumed was the main entry.
“Where’s your bed? Or do you just sleep in that recliner?”
Liam turned and pointed to a series of doors on the same wall from which we’d just emerged. “This door goes to the stairway we just came up—there are lots of other corners and nooks down there, but the footprint is only about the size of a closet. Bedroom’s there, bathroom’s over there.”
Sure enough, I could see the corner of a bed through the open door, the room looking like a bomb went off in it. I suspected Liam didn’t spend too much time worrying about housekeeping—not when there were all these books to read.
“How did you get a room this amazing? It looks like it was designed specifically for you.”
“Well…it kind of was. When I knew I was going to come to Wellington Academy, I broke into Fowlers Hall from beneath, and searched the entire place.”
I stared at him. “Nobody noticed?”
“Not even a little bit.” He grinned. “Remember, the monster hunting major has been on the decline for a while. This part of the building is farthest away from the front doors. I think only Grim’s quarters are tougher to get to. Not generally a great option if you have to go back and forth to class a lot. I scouted out the rooms and found the one I wanted to fix up mainly by virtue of the fact that it led to the most interesting places.”
“Your subterranean network.”
“Yup. Once I figured that out, it wasn’t that hard to arrange for the shelving to be put in and then the desk set up. It was all there by the time I officially joined the school, and frankly, nobody cared that I wanted this room. I kind of thought they would, thought someone would make a comment about it, but they didn’t.”
Once again, there was a sense of isolation in Liam’s tone that I didn’t miss, but he rushed on before I could call him on it. “I’ve got books in here on just about everything you could imagine,” he confided. “Anything you could possibly want.”
I gazed around. “Yeah? How about a phone book of my family tree?”
“You laugh, but I’ve got something close to it—a history of the magical families of Boston, all the way back to the founding fat
hers of Wellington. I started looking through it after you arrived, but we haven’t had that much downtime. Still…”
He muttered something under his breath, and a whirring sound emanated from the depths of the stacks. A few moments later, a series of drones flew out into the center of the room, their hanging clawlike appendages carrying books. They whooshed over to the broad desk and laid the books gently down.
“Okay, well, that’s kind of cool,” I allowed.
He nodded. “Pretty much anything you can imagine, I’ve figured out how to do. And I’m not going to lie, the last several days, I’ve sort of wondered what you could imagine, you specifically.”
I blinked at him. “Me? What do you mean?”
“Oh, you know, like what would impress Nina Cross, specifically? What is something you’d want that I could maybe give you? An experience, a piece of information other than your elusive family ties, a spell? What’s the thing you feel like you missed out on, living your life as a monster hunter?”
The last question caught me off guard, and I looked around the room, not seeing shelves and books and laptops anymore, but actually the floor.
“Honestly?” I blushed, surprising myself by sharing the first answer that came to mind. “This floor reminds me of the gym in our school. The hardwood was darker than most gyms. They hadn’t gotten around to replacing it with the new bouncy floors they use now, and they’d overvarnished it, making it dark like this. That’s where we were going to have our prom senior year, or I guess where we did have our prom. I just didn’t go.”
He frowned at me. “You didn’t go to your own prom?”
“Nah. I’d almost gone to the one the year before, but on our way there, we kind of ran into a bit of a monster problem. My date didn’t take it really well after I hacked a bugbear to death in front of him. It sort of ruined the night, and he moved schools before the next semester started. I felt pretty bad about that. I didn’t even make the attempt my senior year.”