Emotionally and mentally exhausted, I grabbed an oatmeal banana smoothie from the food court and returned to a quiet townhouse a little after two. Since Holly had already shut her door, I tried to relax under a long shower with my favorite lavender aromatherapy bodywash, luxuriating away the trauma of the previous night.
My busy mind kept me awake long after I crawled under the sheets, restlessly tossing and turning.
Tap. Tap.
I tossed off the covers and moved to the window, throwing open the curtains to find a raven perched on the window planter amidst the roses. Some of the feathers around its face and neck were unruly, reminding me of Gabriel’s hair.
A quick search of the grounds below located the werewolf currently guarding the house. He waved from beneath our apple tree.
My visitor had to be safe then. The moment I raised the pane, the bird cocked its blue-black head. Pale brown eyes filled with a keen intelligence watched me.
“Gabe?”
“Up for some company?” the bird asked in a creakier version of my boyfriend’s voice.
“Yours? Always.”
I brought him inside on my wrist then shut the window and curtains. He was heavier than I’d anticipated, a large creature by species and even bigger since shifters were always the ideal specimen of their particular breeds. He weighed as much as a sack of sugar. Somewhere between five and ten pounds.
Sitting on the edge of the bed and placing Gabriel on my lap, I took my first opportunity to truly admire his avian form, to appreciate the beauty of him. There were other similarities between his human body and the bird perched on my thigh, his brighter eyes and crown feathers that, no matter how many times I smoothed them down, fluffed up again. I laughed.
“What?”
“You look like you still.”
“Are you just noticing that?”
“Well, yeah. All the other times I saw you like this, we were either fighting for our lives or I was being bossed around by Monica.”
“Point.” He fluffed up then preened a wing feather. “Well?”
“You’re beautiful.”
“I was hoping for handsome.”
“Nope. Beautiful. This is the prettiest shade of blue I’ve ever seen.” I stroked the feathers on his shoulders then dragged that finger toward his neck. He leaned into it and closed his eyes, making this low, quiet noise of pleasure and absolute contentment—bliss given sound.
“How come you aren’t asleep?” I finally asked.
“I wanted to see how you were doing. We have a training session tonight, but we can skip that if you’re not feeling up to it yet.”
“I…” Wanted to stay in bed wrapped in his arms instead of sweating on the training yard. After considering the benefits of each option, I kissed his beak. “I can train later if you’ll stay here with me now.” His feathered chest looked snuggly and warm.
He hopped off my lap and onto the spot beside my pillow, so I rolled onto my belly and curled in close, with my arm wrapped around his smaller body. His warmth and gentle preening through my hair lulled me to a peaceful transition between consciousness and sleep.
“Gabriel?” His name left my lips in a drowsy slur. I struggled to hold on.
He cocked his head. “Yeah?”
“Would you think less of me if I said I was scared?”
“Not at all. I’m a little scared too, but like you said, we’re going to get through this. Anyone who wants to hurt you, will have to come through me first.”
Gabriel gave me a pass on the hardcore training that night. Since skipping across the Veil was obviously one of my strengths, we spent most of the ninety-minute session practicing evasion tactics involving the Twilight and what he wanted me to do if we encountered danger away from the school.
He met my initial protests with common sense. If he was shooting a gun loaded with silver bullets, did I really want my ass in the way?
Whispers followed me throughout the halls during my journey to the social sciences building for Magical Ethics. By now, everyone on campus had heard about what happened on the highway.
Our teacher, an ancient raven by the name of Professor English, perched on one foot in his animal form on a chair back at the front of the lecture hall. He looked like he was asleep, but we knew better.
Anji waved me over. “Skylar, come sit with me over here.”
“Thanks.” My bag hit the floor with a soft thud, and I sank down in the padded chair. A few people twisted in their seats to look at me, which only added to the uneasiness churning in my gut. Being the center of attention was disconcerting when it didn’t involve dancing games.
When the bell rang, indicating the start of class, Professor English flew to his podium and landed in human form, gray feathers transitioning to sparse silver hair. He picked up the clicker for the projector and started the slideshow without fanfare.
“In light of recent circumstances, I have decided to rearrange the semester’s curriculum and begin the chapter covering fae this evening.”
Crap. I hadn’t read that far ahead in the book, but by the mutters rumbling through the room, neither had anyone else.
“Now, the fae have a natural ability to change the world around them by altering reality—glamour clothes, influence people, and even change luck. Can anyone tell me how these abilities could be abused?”
“Yeah, they get whatever they want,” someone behind me said.
“I’ve seen underage fae sneak into bars because they can glamour their license,” another girl added.
Professor English nodded. “Some good examples. Now, tell me, Miss Corazzi, why do more fae not abuse their power in this manner?”
“Because when we use our magic for selfish reasons, we can go dark. Glamouring clothes is fine, and little things like the fake ID are okay on occasion. It’s the other stuff like tampering with emotions or influencing someone for the wrong reasons that can add up over time. It’s… addictive, I guess you could say.”
Professor English crossed his wiry arms against his frail-looking chest. “Tell us about some of the basic transgressions a fae can make.”
“Um, we’ve already discussed some of them. It starts with frequently using glamour to break the laws of man. It’s a breach of their personal morals and behaving in a way they know is wrong. Bending the rules to help someone is okay, and so is the occasional prank if no one comes to harm.”
“Correct. It is the frequent and repeated disregard for the laws of man that places a fae’s light in peril.”
Professor English pressed the clicker. A radiant fae in an emerald dress posed in front of the fountain of Queen Titania and King Oberon, her golden-brown hair shimmering in the sun. “This was one of my students. Twenty-three years ago, she turned to the dark and began to prey on young men at beaches, draining them of vitality and life during sexual intercourse.”
One of the werewolves beside me grimaced. “That’s a selkie, right?”
“Yes. After she had drained them and they were no longer useful to her, she lured them away and consumed them.” He clicked to the next slide, revealing a deformed hellbeast covered in ragged strands of seaweed, its monstrous jaws open wide. A shotgun blast had opened its side, and an iron rod protruded from its chest. It had been slain. “She became a kelpie, a monster known to inhabit ocean depths and lakes.”
Several students jolted in their seats, and my blood ran cold.
“Holy shit,” the guy next to me breathed.
“Oh fuck, man. Couldn’t you warn us?” someone asked in the front row. “That is ugly.”
Professor English raised a brow. “Shall I swap to the slides of wendigos instead?”
The whole room fell silent. Professor English waited a moment for his point to sink in, and then he switched to the next slide.
“There are no warnings in real life, young man. Now, as I was saying, this young lady was once one of my students. A selkie is a sexual creature, as are many varieties of fae, but it wasn’t her promiscuity that t
hreatened her safety. It was the deviant decision to feed endlessly on her lovers’ life energy—on their joy and happiness until so very little was left that their emotions became… unpalatable to her.”
I knew where he was going. Uncomfortable, I shifted in my chair, knowing he planned to call on me again before he said my name.
“What happens to the prey of a faerie darkling, Miss Crowder?”
I exhaled in relief.
Anji jumped and desperately thumbed through her textbook. “Uh, they get depressed, right? Suicidally depressed.”
“Yes. When so many young mortal men turn to suicide in a given timeframe, in one particular area, sentinels are dispatched to investigate. Consuming them became her way of hiding the evidence.”
Someone gagged.
The next slide displayed an unusual chimera with the long trunk of an elephant and the powerful, furry legs of a tiger. It was covered in gorgeous scales that shimmered from gold to green. “This is a baku, and their particular breed Ascends exclusively in Eastern Asia. There are dozens in Shangri-La, though we rarely receive such a fascinating addition at PNRU.”
I wondered if Jiro felt as lonely about being the only baku as I did about being the only sylph.
A werewolf in the front row glanced down at her textbook. “They eat nightmares, don’t they? Their darkling form is called a nue. They cause nightmares and feed on the fear.”
He nodded. “Yes, Miss Watkins. Though I’m certain most of you are familiar with a popular movie franchise featuring a dream demon with a glove of knives, I must say the nue is far more dangerous.”
A few chuckles spread over the class. Gabriel had the boxed set, and we’d vowed to make time to watch them all one night.
“The nue is considered a dream leech and attacks in a similar fashion, acquiring sustenance by draining the life essence and vitality of its host. They grow in power each time the victim is terrorized and slain in nightmares.”
A vampire raised her hand. “But why? Why not eat genuine nightmares instead of causing them?”
The answer slipped out of me, louder than the whisper I’d meant for Anji’s ears alone. “Why does a leanansidhe manufacture happiness?”
The taste. The flavor of ruined dreams had to be every bit as delicious as false happiness.
“Excellent, Miss Corazzi. It is a matter of taste, and I imagine, also for the pleasure. At any point in your future careers as sentinels, you may cross paths with a faerie who is well on his or her way toward the dark. You may even work alongside them. It is your responsibility, especially as their partner, to discourage such activities or… to report them to the proper authorities for destruction.”
The lecture went on with our professor covering other varieties of darkling fae, from gremlins to hags and barghests, always revealing the photograph of a beautiful faerie or half-fae before showing us what became of them. We spent the latter half of class discussing the dark decisions that led them away from the path of light, and ways budding sentinels could sniff out corruption in their wards.
“This goes for you as well, Miss Corazzi. Though you may be a fae, it is most important that you maintain constant vigilance when it comes to your peers. You must not allow friendships or even a misguided sense of loyalty to cloud your judgment.”
I nodded. “Of course.”
“Good. To conclude our hour together, I remind all of you that our ethics are what separate us from animals and true monsters. Let no one tell you otherwise.”
The slide transitioned from a defeated dullahan to a sad little cat with enormous, fishy black eyes and slimy brown fur. Its teeth were like needles, and despite it being a darkling, my heart ached for the creature. Of all the ones photographed, the cath palug was the only one still alive.
“Did they kill it after the photo or what?” the same werewolf in the front row asked.
The dismissal bell tolled.
“I will see you all next Tuesday. Be prepared for a quiz on today’s topic. Afterward, we will discuss the corruption of the aos sidhe and their descent into leanansidhe and gan ceanach behavior in depth,” he said, referring to the rarer, more violent male variant of darkling muses.
Outside the classroom, Anji and I walked alongside each other in silence. Eager to move on from what we’d learned in class, I broke it first.
“How are you liking being paired with Ben?”
She snapped out of her daze and blinked at me. “He’s great. Really easy to work with. Probably because he doesn’t leave campus much. And he’s cute too, so that helps.”
I raised both brows. “You think Ben is cute?”
“Um, well, you know, for a mage, I guess.” She shifted her backpack around and slid her notebook inside. “Did you notice he’s growing his hair out?”
My brows raised even higher. “Uh, no.”
“Oh. Um, so anyway, how are you doing? You were so late for class I didn’t get to ask about how you are after what happened on the road.”
“You could have called.”
“Scout said he saw Gabriel drop by your place, so I, uh, didn’t wanna interrupt if y’all were in the bone zone.”
“Anji. Seriously?”
She blinked at me. “What?”
“We’re not boning. We haven’t even talked about it yet. Much. I mean, we just started dating.”
“Oh. That’s a surprise, especially considering he—er, anyway, I meant to ask you something else.”
“No, considering he what?”
“Did you really jump a car through the Twilight?”
I scowled at her, wondering if Gabriel had said something to the shifters about me being off limits when our relationship was supposed to be a big secret. “Yeah, I did. It drained me though, and I’m still tired. Now, seriously, what did Gabriel say?”
“It’s not what he said. It’s what he did. Anyway, I need to run to Geology. I’ll talk later.”
“Anji, what did he—”
“Bye, Sky!”
She jogged away, leaving me to wonder what the hell my raven had done, and why Anji wouldn’t fess up about it when all of us girls told each other everything.
Biology would have been the ideal place to snooze if not for Liadan kicking my ankle every time my eyes closed for more than five seconds. She kept me up, signaling times when I should take notes, and even fetched me a mocha caramel espresso during the five-minute mini-break our professor gave us.
When Liadan headed to one of her art classes, I went home and found Pilar on the couch in front of her favorite telenovela. I’d been watching it with her most nights before my evening classes, since the lack of subtitles was great practice for me and the storylines were actually awesome.
“Pilar? Hey, we missed you in class.”
She lifted her shoulders and took another bite from the ice cream container on her lap.
And maybe because I’d never seen her looking so glum before, I crossed the room and settled beside her on the couch, trying to pretend I was Liadan and knew exactly what to do.
I hugged her.
Pilar leaned into me, shoulders shaking, face wet within moments of sinking into my embrace. I held her until the last of the sobs subsided and wondered how many times she’d cried on and off throughout the day while we attended classes.
At the end of the episode—Lia must have recorded it the previous night while Pilar slept—I rubbed her back again and stole a peek at her tearstained face.
“We’re worried about you, but we’re here. And we’ll be here for you as long as you need us to be.”
“I know.”
“You know, if you want, I could ask Gabriel to take us to the mall. I know he would.”
“I don’t want to go shopping.”
“Oh, okay. Well, do you—”
“I’m going to bed.”
She left the couch and tossed the ice cream in the freezer.
I bit back the swear on the tip of my tongue as we went forward one step and danced backward two more.
/> 12
Holy Hotness
Frustrated with my inability to harness the wind, Professor Tristal kicked off our Thursday practice session by hammering me with Faerie Fire drills, since, as of now, it was my greatest offensive strength.
Tristal casually snuffed out the last fireball I threw at her. “Again. Perhaps you’ll singe me a little one of these times, Miss Corazzi.”
I closed my fist and smothered the blue and gold flames rising from my palm. “What am I doing wrong?”
“It’s not that you’re doing it wrong, but that it isn’t coming as a natural reflex. Not only is it slow to build, but it lacks power, and by the time it arrives, it is little more than a lick of harmless flame. Your faerie magic must arise without effort. Each precious second you take trying to draw on your power is a second for your enemy to strike or prepare a counter.”
“So muscle memory.”
She gave me a small, tight smile. “Yes, in a fashion. You are able to summon Faerie Fire quickly enough, but not at full strength. I want you to summon your full potential at a moment’s notice.”
“Okay, I’ll keep practicing on my own then too.”
“Excellent. In that case, let’s move on to flight. I’d like you to cross the gymnasium as fast as you’re able.”
Ugh. Figures.
Thankfully, a mere split second of concentration summoned my wings, because I’d practiced it off and on so much Sunday Holly had asked me to knock off the psychedelic rave. And to warn her next time, because their glow affected her like sunlight. I’d felt awful.
The professor watched me expectantly, so I bit back my grumbles and hovered a foot above the floor. Her lips pursed.
“Miss Corazzi, you do realize you’ll have to leave the ground for the sky eventually, yes?”
“I do, but I don’t really feel—”
A presence filled the chamber, an all-encompassing sort of aura that raised the hairs on my arms and buzzed over my bare skin. I heard music in my head, but not with my ears, like a song that only played for the soul.
My heart sped.
The Scary Godmother Page 11