by Eva Chase
His lips twitched, and he chuckled. “Okay, point taken. I suppose I could make a sort of jam out of this.” His gaze slid back to me. “I’ll see the Naries get their workers back.”
“Thank you,” I said with a rush of relief tempered by confusion.
As Imogen and I headed out, I glanced at her. “Berries?”
“It’s sort of an inside joke. Long story. He got the picture, and you’re back in the game.” She offered me a high-five.
I returned it, but the gears in my head had started spinning in a totally different direction.
People used sort-of codes like that all the time—referencing shared experiences or understanding to get their point across quickly… or if they didn’t want other people to know what they were talking about. My searching through Banefield’s records hadn’t turned anything up so far, but I’d been looking for the sorts of clues anyone would have recognized as meaningful, like bank names or something obviously labeled as a storage facility.
He must have known there was a good chance he wouldn’t be able to tell me everything he had to in the moment. He’d have hoped I’d come searching if I needed to know more. Maybe the answer was in there somewhere—but left for me in a way only he and I would understand.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Malcolm
All told, this was a pretty wretched party.
The summer parties often were. With only about a quarter of the usual student population, the crowd couldn’t summon the same energy. The summer nights didn’t get quite cool enough for the heat of the bonfire to be enjoyable, and the humidity kept the smoke lower to the ground, seeping into our lungs. Not to mention everyone was a little at odds because of the term’s project, eyeing each other across the flames or over the beverage table as if trying to determine who their biggest competition was.
Tonight, though, I had to admit that some of the wretchedness was happening inside me.
I circulated through the revelers nursing my beer and making sure everyone knew I was there and keeping an eye on things. I had Victory and a few of the other girls hanging off me at one point, and a bunch of the guys tagging along with their flattering remarks hoping to get in good with the king of the scions. That should have been all I needed.
But about a half hour in, I glanced up to see a couple ducking into the boathouse in mid-kiss, and my next gulp of beer seemed to burn right through the bottom of my stomach. I’d turned away, only to notice Rory standing farther down the shore with that dormmate of hers, the one whose father was in Maintenance.
The Bloodstone scion didn’t so much as glance my way. She meandered along the edge of the crowd, slipped over to the tables briefly to grab a wine cooler, and retreated into the shadows beyond the firelight again.
She’d never acted all that enthusiastic about these parties, although maybe that was because of the treatment she’d received at her first ones. Was she being even more hesitant than usual to avoid me? Because she was afraid of what I might try to do in the dark once I had a beer or two in my system?
That question made my stomach churn harder. I ended up setting my beer down by the firepit and abandoning it.
Rory wasn’t the only one giving me a wide berth. Declan had dropped in briefly, as was his usual party MO, and offered me a nod. Jude and Connar hadn’t acknowledged me at all.
Neither of them were exactly sticking with Rory, but Connar always moved when she did, staying where he could keep an eye out for anyone else coming at her, I guessed. Jude wove through the crowd with his usual jokes and pranking illusions, always managing to be on the opposite side of the fire from me.
I could take a little comfort from the fact that he was behaving normally, other than the avoidance thing. Whatever dark mood had gripped him recently, it appeared to have lifted.
My gaze kept returning to Rory, seeking her out as if by a supernatural pull. I must have noted her travels through the party a couple dozen times before I caught a glimpse of her back as she headed up the path toward the campus buildings, leaving early.
Just not her thing, or too many uncomfortable memories?
Victory laughed at something Chandler had said and squeezed my arm as if it’d been my wry remark. Bradley made some comment about how the awesomeness of this party was obviously thanks to me. For just an instant, I wanted nothing more than for a black hole to open up in the ground beneath me and warp me away from here.
A Nightwood didn’t run away from his problems, though. A Nightwood looked them in the face and tackled them head-on. Even if those problems were of his own making.
The thought of running into Rory alone in the night made me queasy all over again. I waited several minutes until I was sure she’d have reached her destination, and then I gave my fans some quick excuses and ducked away to tap a message into my phone.
Meet me in the lounge. We need to talk. Scions are meant to be family.
I set off without waiting for a response. That last line would bring them if the order didn’t.
The fresh air farther up the field was a welcome change after the fire’s smoky heat. I sucked it into my lungs and let it wash over my skin. I still couldn’t say I felt particularly cleansed by the time I reached Ashgrave Hall and descended to our basement lounge.
I went over to the bar cabinet but decided halfway through reaching for a glass that having this conversation as sober as possible was probably the wisest move, if not the easiest. I wandered back to the seating around the TV and dropped into one of the armchairs.
Declan showed up a moment later, the most prompt of the others, of course. He gave me that nod again and sat down on the sofa. I guessed he realized there wasn’t much point in asking what I wanted until they were all here to hear it.
Connar arrived next, with a wary glance toward me and then around the room. He stopped by the side of the sofa, not sitting down. Jude sauntered in a minute later with a cooler from the party still in one hand, but the steadiness of his steps told me he hadn’t drunk much other than that.
“All right,” I said, leaning forward. “We’re all here. I—”
“We’re not all here,” Jude said tartly, dropping into the chair across from me. “Unless you’ve forgotten how to count. Last time I checked, there were five scions.”
I glowered at him. “I wanted us to talk, just the four of us.”
Connar pulled back from the sofa. “If you’re still shutting Rory out, I don’t really want to be part of this conversation. If this is about some new scheme to tear her down, you know I’m out, and if it’s about something else to do with the pentacle, she has a right—”
“I know,” I snapped. “Will you shut up for a second and let me explain?”
Connar went still, but the tendons in his square jaw flexed. I rubbed my hand over my face. “I’m sorry. We were here first, all right? We’ve known each other way longer than Rory’s been in the picture. Whatever… Whatever I have to say to her, it’s not the same thing I have to say to you. So I’m keeping them separate for now. That’s all.”
I didn’t even want to think about Rory right now. There was nothing in this room that should remind me of that encounter last week when we—when I—
I closed my eyes for a second, but the images flashed through my mind anyway. Her hair, so fucking soft, and her lips somehow even softer but still fierce as they pressed back against mine, and nothing had existed in my body except fire and wanting until that cold shock of terror had torn through everything.
That wasn’t really what had happened, though. The fear had been there before, flowing from her into me. I didn’t know when exactly it had started, but it wouldn’t have come out of nowhere. I’d been so caught up, so drunk on her, I’d tuned out all the rest of my senses until she’d said those words and shoved me back. The look in her eyes, afterward—the strain in her voice…
Shame and horror curdled inside me like they had then, like they had every time I’d remembered it since. Rory thought fearmancers were monsters. That
’s why she preferred the prissy joymancers on their high horses. But I’d acted just like a monster, hadn’t I? I’d been enough of one in that moment for her to think that I’d—that I’d really—
I didn’t want her broken, not like that. And sure as hell not by me. I laid down the law. I made sure people got in line. I taught lessons where they needed teaching, so the juniors smartened up, so the seniors remembered where they owed their respect. That was what a Nightwood did—that was what the leader of the scions was meant to do. He didn’t savage people for his own personal gratification.
But maybe I’d broken a lot of things without really seeing what I was doing.
The other guys had stayed silent as I gathered myself. I raised my head and looked from one of them to the next.
“I am sorry,” I said. “That’s the main thing I wanted to say, to all of you. I let the whole feud escalate way too far, and I lashed out at you when I should have thanked you for trying to snap me out of it, and that’s not… that’s not how we’re supposed to be. We’re a family. And however much that’s screwed up right now, I recognize it’s at least mostly my fault. So let’s make it right and move on. I don’t want the pentacle to stay fractured like this.”
Jude’s eyes had widened, as if he hadn’t thought I was even capable of making an apology. Connar blinked, and a small smile crossed his face. Even though I’d been the hardest on him, he was willing to let bygones be bygones so quickly.
I’d better be worthy of that loyalty.
Naturally it was Declan who got down to the practicalities. “Does that mean that your whole campaign to knock Rory down a peg is over?” he asked, his tone as even as ever. He hadn’t fought with me over the feud, but he’d tried to steer me onto a different course. And I’d ignored him. He deserved the apology as much as the other two did.
“No more fighting,” I said. “It wasn’t helping anything. I should have seen that sooner.”
Connar allowed himself to sink onto the sofa. “I don’t think Rory ever wanted to fight,” he said quietly.
I could believe that. Her stance on the boathouse floor hadn’t been that of a predator readying for the next lunge but a protective hunching in defense. Seeing her in that moment, the battleground I’d thought we’d been waging war over had crumbled away.
If I could have been that wrong, misread her that badly when I had a direct line into the fear I was provoking in her… how many more subtle cues had I missed from her along the way? Dad had been urging me on, and my pride had been stinging from the way she’d tried to cut me down that first day, and she kept singing the praises of those fucking joymancers—
I cut off that train of thought with a tensing of my jaw.
“I’ll figure out how to address that with her, between the two of us,” I said. “Right now—what do you need from me? I’m not going to assume saying I’m sorry is enough.”
“I’m just glad you’ve thought this through,” Declan said.
Connar looked down at his hands and then back at me. “You aren’t going to be pissed off about me—or anyone else—spending time with her? I don’t want to just not hassle her. She deserves to be a part of the pentacle.”
“Cozy up to her all you want,” I said, even though my stomach lurched all over again at the thought. That he would touch her—that she would welcome his touch in a way she couldn’t mine—
Get back on track, Malcolm.
“And we’ll get the pentacle business sorted out,” I added. “It’s going to be complicated. I made the problem, so can you let me worry about sorting it out?”
Connar nodded.
Jude slung his legs over the arm of the chair and ran a finger along his lips. “Since you’re in such a contrite and generous mood,” he said lightly, “I have always thought that Aston Martin of yours would fit perfectly in my collection.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’m not giving you my car.”
He spread his hands with a wide grin. “Hey, it was worth a try.”
There was something so perfectly Jude about the way he’d said it, the expression on his face, and the fact that he’d tried it at all, that an unexpected laugh careened up my throat. I tipped back in my chair as it spilled out of me, and Connar started laughing too, and after a moment all four of us had cracked up, the sound bouncing through the room.
A good sound. A sound like a family back together again.
Something shifted in the air, and when we settled down, we fell into a natural conversation of trying to suss out what each other’s summer project plans were and who’d gotten a scoop on future tests from which teachers, like old times. By the time we got up to head off to our dorms, I was breathing a little easier.
But not exactly easy. I caught Declan before he headed out after the others and waited until the door swung closed.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, taking in my expression.
I grimaced and forced myself to spit out the question. “What exactly do you think my father did?”
I didn’t need to tell him I was talking about our conversation at his house. Understanding lit in his eyes. I braced myself with the same sickening uncertainty that had been tugging at me since I’d left Rory in the boathouse.
If I could act like a monster… who was to say my parents had never crossed that line? And with far more resources than I had at my command.
Declan’s shoulders had stiffened. “I haven’t accused any of the barons of anything,” he said in a voice that sounded a touch stilted too.
“I know,” I said quickly. “That’s not what I meant. Just… if someone had taken down Professor Banefield on purpose… what would that have looked like? What would you have to look for to know?”
He seemed to work the question over. Then he sighed. “The best thing I can say to you is, if you want to know more about what your father is doing, you should ask him about it. Ask him, and really listen.”
That was less of an answer than I’d hoped for, but it might have been the most reasonable one he could give me.
He paused with his hand on the doorknob. “How are you going to approach Rory?”
Now that was the question. “I’m working that out,” I hedged.
I was still a scion. I was still a Nightwood. Maybe I wasn’t going to undermine her anymore, but I couldn’t cut my own feet out from under me making amends either. It was… a delicate balance.
What would a Nightwood do with her? What would the mage I wanted to be do with her, after everything that’d happened between us?
I honestly didn’t have a clue.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Rory
Deborah scampered off my hand onto the roof of the Lexus. Ready to stand guard! Do you think you have a better idea what you’re looking for now?
I peered around the shadowy expanse of the school garage, even though I’d just double-checked that I was alone here a second ago. While that hadn’t changed, I kept my voice low anyway. “I’m not sure. But I’ve at least got a new angle to try.”
She stayed perched on the roof as I pulled the box of Professor Banefield’s records out of the trunk and brought it into the back seat, where I’d been conducting all of my searches through it. Her sharp mouse ears would pick up on anyone coming into the garage before I might notice, especially once I got absorbed in the task ahead of me. No one had come poking around my car yet, but they might if they noticed I was using it for more than just driving places.
I needed to look for a sign Banefield might have left just for me—something the average person wouldn’t recognize the meaning of. But something that wouldn’t stand out too much as unusual either, since that would draw attention too. I sucked my lower lip under my teeth as I considered.
He and I hadn’t really had anything I could call an inside joke. There were things it was possible only the two of us knew about, like how he’d helped me get the hang of generating fear by having me protect a rabbit from a cat, but I wasn’t sure how he could convey that in a
simple notation somewhere in these documents.
If he’d even left a hint in these at all. Maybe I’d missed something in his office or his apartment that he’d meant to guide me instead. Although I thought I would have noticed a clue left on some random object… Records like these would be the easiest place to hide them.
There was of course the key itself. I dug it out of my purse and studied it. It was printed with a brand name that an internet search had revealed tons of keys had, as well as a few digits on either side that didn’t appear to have any meaning. 1307 on the left. C95 on the right.
Generic might be good in this case. No one would know either of those sets of digits referred to a key. They could be just about anything.
I pulled out the first stack of records and started scanning them. Before, I’d focused on the official lists of charges and investments. Banefield had made notations on the edges of several of the papers that might have been references for tax purposes—just a few letters jotted here or there. I’d stopped paying attention to them after I’d realized they were so common.
Now, I focused specifically on the handwritten bits. What might BFR stand for? Or ZP? I still couldn’t see how any of them connected to me or this situation at all.
I flipped through the first stack, set it aside, and pulled out a bunch more papers. More of the same, more of the same…
My hand paused over a bank statement from a few months ago. At the bottom, Banefield had written C95 in faint pencil, followed by a street address.
My pulse stuttered. That had to be it. I moved to tear off the bottom of the paper, thought better of it, and took a photo of it with my phone. Then I tucked all the papers back in the box. All I needed to do was look up that address, and—
Deborah’s voice carried faintly through the telepathic connection. Lorelei, I’m not sure this is anything you need to worry about, but someone’s yelling outside nearby. They sound rather distressed.