We made for the kitchen but stopped short in the doorway. Someone I was not expecting stood there.
In front of someone else.
Ostelle was tied to a chair in the middle of the room, her mouth taped shut, her eyes wild. Leaning against the sink for all the world as if she lived there was Beatrice. At the sound of the three of us entering, she turned to look at us and smiled.
Chapter Thirty-One
“I knew having you transfer to this school was bad news,” hissed Eighellie.
Beatrice’s smile widened. “You knew nothing. You suspected nothing. I slipped in here for all the world as if I belonged with you pathetic lot.”
“The fact that you even say that proves you never did belong. Nobody in Public thinks they belong. That’s what we all have in common. We’re all too different to expect anyone else to be the same,” said Keegan.
Eighellie looked at Keegan as if he were being surprisingly poetic.
“Whatever, half-breed,” Beatrice shot back with a sneer. “At least my hands aren’t green. How awkward. No wonder you’ve never had a date.”
Keegan’s face colored, but before he could stumble around in embarrassment Eighellie said, “Like anyone has ever dated you. Crazy vampire that you are! I’m sure anyone you were ever interested in knew better than to come near you.”
Beatrice’s eyes flashed. Eighellie had apparently scored a direct hit.
My eyes were locked on Ostelle while this banter went on. Her expression was burning, fury was pouring off her. Her hands were tied behind her back, and I could see her wand on the counter.
Somehow Beatrice had managed to get it away from her.
Possibly even more frightening, somehow Beatrice had managed to get inside my dorm.
“What do you think you’re doing here?” I demanded. “I know you’re a criminal, but this is foolish. You broke into the elemental dorm. You really think you can handle that?”
Beatrice threw back her head and laughed. Then she laughed some more.
“You really are silly, aren’t you? I’m sure your sister was smarter. She at least managed to graduate and not get killed. Of course that was before the Hunters existed,” she said.
“What you talking about?” I demanded.
“What I’m talking about is thinking this place is safe from us. Nothing is safe from us! Not with the resources we now have at our disposal. You lost the artifacts! Not just the artifacts on the Counter Wheel, but many other important artifacts, ancient and strong, that you can’t plan for. You can’t possibly know. We have them ALL. We have powers beyond your wildest dreams,” Beatrice hissed.
As she ranted, she started circling behind Ostelle’s chair. Far from looking afraid, the darkness mage was struggling mightily to get at her, to attack.
“Pretty certain you don’t understand what my wildest dreams are. Given how dull you’ve been all semester, I’m reasonably confident you neither know what they are nor have any of your own that are as much fun,” said Keegan.
For a split second Beatrice was lost for words. Then she spat, “Be that as it may. You don’t understand what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
“I simply tried to return to my home. I don’t think you understand what you’ve gotten yourself into,” I said.
Beatrice came to a standstill next to Ostelle, whose eyes were still moving frantically. At first I had thought she was just afraid, or trying to catch a glimpse of the vampire attacking her. Now I realized that she was trying to signal me.
Keegan had started to fan out, to move away from us. Eighellie moved to the other side of me and put some distance between us as well. The three of us were creating too many places to look for the one vampire to keep track of
Unfortunately she noticed immediately and didn’t like it.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing? Stop moving or I’ll kill her,” she hissed.
All three of us came to a halt. Ostelle’s life might hang in the balance, and we dared not tip the scales until we were sure we could neutralize Beatrice.
“What do you want?” I asked her.
“You know what I want. I want the object on the Counter Wheel that you have,” she said.
“I have no object. You really think I’d leave it here at the college? I’m friends with the Premier of All Darkness. I would just give it to her,” I said.
“That’s your argument, but none of the objects can leave here unless they’re with the others. That’s how we know they’re all here,” she said.
I rocked back on my heels, but the movement made my head spin again and I was forced to steady myself. Beatrice smiled in evil amusement. She had already decided she had won.
I was tired and injured. She had overmastered Ostelle, and she didn’t care about the other two. Whatever artifacts she had, she must be pretty confident in their effectiveness.
“You just gave us a vital piece of information,” said Keegan.
“Because I don’t expect any of you to live beyond tonight,” she said.
“You really think you can kill an elemental?” asked Eighellie, who until now had remained quieter than usual. She was now standing over by the island and glaring at Beatrice, but the other girl appeared not to notice.
The vampire took a long breath. “Of course we’re going to kill the elemental. The Power of Five can’t stand. Why do you think we’re going after the elementals in the first place? With Lisabelle weakened, there will be nobody to protect the paranormals. Can you believe they don’t even realize that Lisabelle is helping protect them? Idiots. Your own foolishness did this. All you have done is fight Lisabelle. You never looked around to see how much danger you were in from other sides.”
“President Quest knew how much danger we were in. She tried to counteract it. She dedicated her entire presidency to it,” said Keegan though gritted teeth.
“Right. She had some idea. And she is now dead. Killed by a Hunter. She never stood a chance against us. She might have known that Hunters were dangerous, but she didn’t know how far our reach went. If she had, she never would have gone to Paranormal Public on her own,” said Beatrice.
“So there are a lot of you here,” I said. If she was inclined to speak, I was inclined to listen. I had no intention of dying tonight.
Then I caught Ostelle’s eyes a second time. At last I realized what she was trying to tell me.
Beatrice was wearing an amulet strung tightly around her neck. In the right light, it glinted beguilingly. Ancient runes flashed on it, then disappeared. I had never seen anything like it before.
Now I realized that the amulet must be the artifact that she had used to break into Astra. I didn’t recognize it as a part of the Counter Wheel, but then again Beatrice wouldn’t have one of those objects with her here. Beatrice was young and untested. She wouldn’t have been trusted with something as important as a Counter Wheel object.
She had used this amulet to appear as if she had elemental magic.
A desperate need to conclude this battle as quickly as possible filled me. I wanted to search the dorm from top to bottom, a difficult feat given that I could barely walk. Maybe the ghosts could help.
As subtly as I possibly could, I called to my power. My ring started to throb. Instead of ordering the magic around Astra to fight back, I asked my ring to do it. As magic divorced from myself, I hoped it was subtle enough that Beatrice wouldn’t notice what I was doing. She was too young and inexperienced to fight back against such magic anyway. The elemental power rose up strong in every fiber, every step, every space throughout the dorm.
Real elemental magic would shatter pretend elemental magic.
When I felt essence all around me, I gave Ostelle the slightest nod.
Beatrice was still standing close enough to Ostelle’s chair that when Ostelle threw herself sideways, she knocked into the vampire and they both went down and landed with a thud. I winced at the expression of pain that flashed across Ostelle’s face. But that was all the time I needed.
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Beatrice reached for the amulet around her neck just as Keegan darted forward. She sent a shot of searing fire outward, revealing that the amulet did fire magic. That’s how she had managed to get in. The amulet recognized something of its own in Astra’s magic.
The burly half pixie threw himself sideways at the last moment and a hole seared into my kitchen floor. The smell of burning tile and wood met my nostrils.
An anger that I couldn’t begin to describe filled me. The magic of Astra rose up. The very floor appeared to move and dance. Beatrice was trying to push herself far away from Ostelle to attack again, but the floor near the door rolled and tossed.
Beatrice leaped sideways again. By this time Eighellie had reached Ostelle and grabbed up the other darkness mage. All that mattered was getting her away from the vampire.
Meanwhile, Beatrice had finally decided that she was outnumbered. She was trying to stumble away just as every fiber of Astra attacked her and the amulet’s power. I raised my hand and fired a shot at her. A storm of wind and rain hit her and she stumbled again. Then she grabbed onto her amulet, and her power changed and amplified.
A dangerous battle of magic had blossomed in a place where I normally just ate muffins.
Oh, yeah, and one of the objects from the Counter Wheel was hidden in the fridge.
Eighellie busied herself untying Ostelle. While she did that, Keegan took off after the runaway vampire. Fire had appeared in the kitchen at her command, but I ordered my own fire to encircle it. Elemental fire would not wound or cause further damage to my property.
That effort distracted me so much that I was unable to attack Beatrice directly. Swearing, I raced after Keegan.
The two of us headed out of the front door of Astra chasing after the fleeing vampire. She was already a black streak running across the lawn, her hair rushing in streams behind her as she made for the forest.
Wherever the pixies had gone, they were no longer anywhere in sight outside of Astra. They were not seeing this confrontation of power. Still, just before Beatrice reached the forest there was movement in front of her.
I heard Keegan swear, and I knew he was thinking the same thing that I was. The Hunters had come to help her. She would get away.
Then the person emerging from the forest came into the clear. Her black eyes were as cold as a February night in Vermont. A shiver ran down my spine at the expression on Averett’s face.
Pure murder.
Beatrice clearly saw the same thing, because she tried to stumble to a halt before she reached Averett. Then she tried to run in a different direction. Vampire chasing vampire was something to see, but the outcome was never in doubt.
Like a bolt of pure elemental lightning, Averett was upon Beatrice. The Hunter screamed, but Averett showed no mercy.
As the two wrestled on the ground, more shapes appeared. I was about to start forward when I realized that they too were vampires I knew. In fact, half the vampire dorm was coming to Averett’s aid.
Beatrice fought wildly. Right now it was just one on one, but it was about to be one on twenty.
It didn’t make any difference in the end. As Keegan and I watched, it became painfully clear that Beatrice had no chance of slipping away, no chance to run, no chance to hide. The vampires had caught one of their own. What that meant for her I had no idea. If the expression on Averett’s face was anything to go by, pain and death were on order.
The vampires circled their captive, then led her way. For a moment she was screaming and fighting, then all was silent. We couldn’t see into the throng of paranormals, but I saw Averett turn and look over her shoulder.
A cool calculation had replaced the rage of moments before. Murder might no longer be written in her eyes, but what was left there was more deadly. Something like victory, something an awful lot like vengeance.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The first thing I did when we returned to the dorm was to check on Ostelle. She had wrapped her wrists after they’d been chafed raw by the ropes and was now lying back on a sofa with some ice against her cheek, which had just started to swell.
When I walked in she was alone. Her eyes skated over me, and she asked, “I take it you didn’t catch her?”
“Averett did,” I said. “I think Beatrice would rather have been caught by an entire town of monsters.”
Ostelle started to chuckle, then winced. “I can’t believe she caught me. I was careless and stupid.”
“I’m sorry it happened here, where you’re supposed to be safe,” I said quietly.
“Come here,” she said.
Confused, I pulled a chair up next to the couch and sat down. Ostelle used the hand that wasn’t holding the ice to take hold of mine.
Shock skated through me. My cheeks started to turn crimson, and I cursed my inability to be cool. She could probably feel my pulse thrumming.
“Thank you, Ricky,” she said, smiling.
“Um. Of course,” was all I managed.
“Hey! We need to talk,” said Keegan, bursting in and followed closely by Eighellie. A beat too late, they noticed the position of the chair I was sitting in. Ostelle dropped my hand, I pushed my chair away, and Keegan and Eighellie awkwardly found seats of their own.
Eighellie looked down at her lap while I coughed and offered to go to the kitchen to get us something to eat.
My heart was busy hammering the entire time I waited for people to tell me what they wanted to eat. Then I rushed to the kitchen.
The hammering wasn’t just from the rush of Ostelle’s hand in mine. When I was certain I was alone, I looked in the fridge.
There was the mug. A sense of relief like I had only felt a few times in my life washed over me. When Beatrice had run, it hadn’t appeared as if she had any place to hide a bulky object, but I hadn’t been certain. Maybe she had performed a spell and disappeared it. I really couldn’t know.
Now I knew.
Carrying a tray of snacks, I rejoined my friends in the study. They were all chatting as if it was a normal night. Ostelle looked up and grinned. Whatever momentary upset Eighellie had felt had disappeared. She was back to arguing with Keegan as usual.
I settled into a seat at a normal distance from Ostelle and started to eat. I kept waiting for a knock at the door, thinking maybe the president of Public would come, maybe President Yeast would want an explanation. Every paranormal at Public must have felt Lisabelle’s darkness magic roll through the forest. The battle must have shaken the foundations of the school.
Then there were the police, not to mention Averett.
The silence was deafening.
That night Keegan and Eighellie were determined to stay in the dorm with me. Ostelle was staying as well. After what had happened, none of us wanted to let her return to Airlee.
I didn’t want to point it out in case I jinxed it, but Ostelle was spending more and more time in my home. She and Eighellie had even started to become close. I liked having all of them there. If I knew where they were, I knew they were all right. Danger was flowing as fast as a river at Public. The more defenses we had for each other the better.
There were some simple truths I was forced to address. Paranormal Public was teeming with Hunters and had been for months. The vampires had taken Beatrice away, and tomorrow I needed to go over to Cruor and find out exactly what was happening with her. There was a good chance she wasn’t even still alive. At the very least there was a good chance she was no longer at Public.
We spent the evening resting and the next morning swapping stories in Astra’s kitchen. At one point Ostelle said, “I can’t believe we let her just waltz around campus all semester.”
“New students come and go. Averett hated her all along. It makes sense that the only one who truly suspected her was another vampire,” I said.
Eighellie didn’t like that explanation any more than Ostelle did. They were careful to avoid looking each other, since we could all tell they agreed. “Still,” Eighellie said, “we should have been more
suspicious. Do you think she was the only Hunter here? Do you think the vampires would tell us if they found others?”
“No, and probably not,” I said.
I thought of Averett and wondered if she had been in touch with her cousin or his wife. I knew Averett thought she was on the side of the paranormals, but sometimes I wondered which paranormal side exactly she was on, since in reality the conflict was between one set of paranormals and another. Sometimes I thought she was on my side, but then I’d remember Queen Lanca’s fury at Lisabelle about Lough, and I became less certain.
“We need to pay a visit to the vampires, which is about the least exciting sentence I’ve ever said,” said Keegan.
“Right. That,” I said, glancing around the room. My body wanted rest, but I couldn’t rest until I had some answers. “Maybe they know where the Hunters are hiding in the woods.”
“They must be close,” said Keegan.
“If they’re getting onto Public grounds anyhow, what if they’re just hiding right on campus?” Ostelle asked. A bruise was blooming on her cheek, but I had given her some of the healing balm that Keller had made for me, and it seemed to be helping a little.
“I don’t think everyone involved in this is pretending to be a Public student,” said Eighellie.
“True. We’ve fought against real Hunters,” I agreed. “No, I think they have a place in the woods.”
“Now all we have to do is find it,” said Ostelle.
“Then everything will be fine,” said Keegan dryly.
I thought of the Cup. Under no circumstances could we allow the Hunters to possess all the artifacts.
“Let’s go to Cruor,” I said.
There was more to be done.
Approaching the formidable castle across a stinking swampy moat, we made for the front door of the vampire dorm
Unusually, a couple of vampires were standing outside. Neither of them looked surprised to see me.
“Averett?” I asked.
“She said to let you in. Not four of you,” said Michael, glaring.
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