by Elena Lawson
“Yes, it’s me.”
The hell you doing in my head?
The better question is how are you getting in our heads? The distaste in his voice was clear.
“It’s a familiar bond thing,” I explained quickly, unsure how long I would be able to hold to the slippery connection before the call dropped. “I’ll explain later, but I need you both to listen.”
The urgency in my tone must’ve done the trick because I felt Adrian’s wolf stiffen and watched the green-eyed beast that was Cal let go of his snarl in favor of sitting calmly to listen.
“A girl was found dead today—on academy grounds.”
I told you I smelled something off this morning, Adrian thought through the three-way bond toward Cal.
“They don’t know what happened yet, but she was bitten by something and left to bleed out.”
Silence.
“I’ve fixed it so you aren’t suspects,” I told them. “If you’re approached by the Arcane Authorities or asked when I left you last night—” I paused, realizing a little belatedly that Elias was about to learn the truth, and that I’d lied to both him and Granger. I sighed. “Tell them I left at three. And that you went straight to sleep after that, ok?”
Elias’s hands dropped from mine as though burned, and I winced, the connection faltering.
You left at two, Cal stated.
“And the girl was killed at two-thirty.”
Shit.
“Yeah. Shit just about sums it up.”
Thank you, Cal said. Come to us when—
But the connection broke off, like the snapping of a twig, and I jolted back fully into the present. Left staring at a face filled with disappointment.
“You lied,” he accused.
I swallowed hard and sat down. Weakened from holding the connection for so long.
“I did.”
“Why? One of them could be responsible for—”
“No,” I growled. I knew what everyone else would think. I expected it the moment Granger told me Lacey was bitten. But I knew with every fiber of my being that it wasn’t them. And I didn’t care if I had to lie to prove it to the people who wouldn’t otherwise believe.
I expected more from Elias, though. “They wouldn’t have done this. They aren’t murderers, Elias.”
He looked like he wanted to say something more, but kept his mouth shut.
“Are you telling me you wouldn’t do the same for me?”
“I didn’t—”
“Then don’t look so surprised I would want to protect them.”
I didn’t know if it was the weakness gnawing at my bones, or the still airy feeling in my mind, but I hadn’t meant to snap at him.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, rising shakily. “I’m going to get back.”
I needed fresh air. Or maybe a warm shower. Something to bring me back to the here and now. My head felt funny after being inside two others.
“Fine,” Elias replied. “I’ll walk you back. The first time you connect like that can be jarring. It takes a lot out of you.”
You think?
“It’s broad daylight. I’ll be fine. Stay.”
I didn’t wait for him to respond. Needing more than wanting to get outside. The airspace of his cabin was suddenly stifling. He didn’t follow me out, and I was grateful, because no more than twenty yards from his cabin, my body started to rebel against me.
It felt like someone was pressing on my head with a dark hand, and my chest was swiftly covered in a layer of clammy sweat. I fell forward into the grass and heaved up the little bit of breakfast I’d snatched from the dining hall on the way to first period this morning.
Once it was all out and I could breathe, the feeling subsided, and I allowed the earth’s magic to flow into me again, just a little, enough to help strengthen me so I could walk the rest of the way back.
I wiped at my mouth with the back of my hand and pulled in long, deep breaths. Feeling better in seconds.
Well, that sucked.
I had to pass a trio of Arcane Officers on my way into the academy and bowed my head as I rushed through the doors. Hopeful that they wouldn’t try to call me back. Question me.
I needed a damned minute to myself.
Rounding the corner to the Sigils and History hallway that lead to the dormitories, I found Bianca walking slowly towards the stairs.
I thought she was leaving?
“B!” I called to her, lengthening my strides to catch up to her.
Hadn’t she heard me? She didn’t even turn.
“Hey, B,” I said again, clearing the last few steps between us, my voice echoing through the empty hallway. It seemed all the other students had already gone. Home for the weekend.
Taking her by the shoulder, I turned her to face me. “Are you alright?”
All the heat drained from my face when I saw hers. She looked so pale. Her eyes stared at me, unfocused, the normally bright shade of golden brown was muted, her pupils dilated.
“Bianca?”
She’d stopped walking, but she still looked through me as though she was a zombie or some other equally terrifying thing. My hair stood on end.
“Hey,” I said, this time more forcefully. “What’s going on? I thought you were going to visit your brothers?”
She tilted her head, and a little bit of focus came back into her gaze. “No. I need to go to my room. I’m so tired,” her voice was a lifeless monotone that only added to the zombie-like effect.
“Is it Lacey? Are you—I mean, are you upset?”
She didn’t answer me, instead looking to where the stairs waited for us only a few more paces down the hall.
Bianca was obviously a lot more shook up than I realized. And there I was worried about my familiars and going to get jiggy with Elias more than I was worried about my best friend. What a shitty person I was. How did I not see that this had bothered her so much? If Sterling was friends with Lacey’s dad, they probably saw each other all the time, right?
“Let’s get you to bed,” I said in the most supportive tone I could muster.
I was always shit at dealing with things like grief and other horrid emotions. It made me super uncomfortable when people cried. Damn, I hoped she didn’t cry.
“I’ll get some of that black forest cake you like from the dining hall and you can just relax. Your brothers can totally wait until tomorrow to get their game. Don’t stress, okay?”
In a daze, she let me lead her up the stairs and through the maze of doors until we made it to our room. She didn’t say a single word as I helped her into her pink silk jammies. She fell asleep before the sun could fully set or her head fully hit the pillow.
6
It grew dark by the time I’d finished showering, and I didn’t want to push my luck with Granger, or the officers still searching the grounds outside for clues—waiting to see if the animal, or vampire would return. I wanted to go see them. Make sure they hadn’t been questioned, and that they’d held up the lie and were treated with the respect they deserved if they were.
But Granger made the announcement just after Bianca fell asleep. No one was permitted to go outside after sunset.
So, here I was, up well past midnight with a light orb illuminating my father’s journal in my lap—lying in a bed I had no intention of sleeping in. How could I sleep? There were too many unknown factors to sleep. So, even though my body ached to be horizontal, I fought it. My mind too active to shut down just yet.
I wanted to go out to my familiars the moment the sun rose.
Taking another swallow of the potion tea I’d come to affectionately call midnight oil for its strange slippery texture, and the fact that it could keep you up all night studying, I grimaced and set the clay mug back down quietly, not wanting to wake Bianca.
Though at this point, I started to think an air-raid siren could blare to life and she wouldn’t wake. The steady rising and falling of her chest never faltered. And even when I’d stubbed my toe on her bedpost earlie
r after coming back from the showers and cursed louder than most girls could scream, she didn’t stir.
The stress must’ve really gotten to her.
I flipped the worn page back to where I’d been reading earlier, drawing the orb of blueish light closer to see better.
July 3rd, 1872
They lied to us. I have strong reason to believe the council, likely by order of the Magistrate himself, orchestrated the concealment of it. How could we have been so trusting? There was no documentation of it being lost to the sea. The Alchemical Codex lives.
It’s the only explanation. And I can think of only one place they would hide it. In plain sight.
It has to be in the Archives at the Department. And if it is, I’m going to take it, and I’m going to use it to decipher what I found. I’m certain there is a way to put an end to the curses that have plagued the other races for so many years. I only have to find it.
And then she’ll be free.
I turned to the next page, hopeful that there would be another entry confirming whether my father’s suspicions were true, but the following page was blank. The page after that contained more of the same gibberish on several other pages. A code or a language I didn’t recognize or understand.
Ugh.
I shut the old journal with a thud, exasperated. I had this feeling that if I could just figure out what this book held, and what was on the piece of parchment Blanche seemed to have eaten, I would have all the answers I needed. Not just about why my father had to die, and whether he ever found a way to break the curses—but also what was happening in that warehouse in Elk Falls.
I felt like it was all connected, somehow, but I couldn’t seem to find the common string tying it together.
“Make more sense!” I demanded of the journal. “You aren’t making enough sense.”
And now I was talking to a book.
Maybe I should go to bed.
A loud bang on my window sent me sprawling out of bed, the journal thrown into the air. My legs tangled in a mass of blankets on the unforgiving floor.
My head snapped up to the window and I shrieked when I saw a pair of eyes there—staring back at me.
“Mind unlocking it?” Draven said, unperturbed that he’d just about scared the literal shit out of me. “The authorities will be swinging back around this way any second.”
I snapped my mouth shut. Considering.
I could let them find him.
What if he did kill Lacey? I couldn’t just let him inside.
“Where were you last night?” I asked, rising to look at him through the pane of glass.
He cocked his head at me, and I saw a dangerous glint in his eyes. I’d known from the first moment I met him that he was a vampire, but in that one look, I understood just how dangerous it was to befriend him. What I could be risking.
“Harper—”
“Where were you?”
He looked behind himself, and I realized he was clinging to the outside of the building. Damn he was strong. There wasn’t even a ledge there. What was he holding himself up by? The tiny gap between bricks? His fingers must’ve been very strong.
Strong enough to leave bruises all over poor Lacey Dellamora.
I saw a light shining outside to the right. Draven was right—the officers would be back around the building any second now.
I didn’t budge, deciding until he answered, no matter what he did or said, I wouldn’t open it.
“Alright,” he said after a moment. “I met with Atlas like I said.”
“And then?”
He groaned.
“And then?” I said, louder this time.
His gaze fixed on me, and I saw in it a flicker of worry. “And then I came here. To see you returned safely.”
My heart skipped a beat. He was here.
“But as soon as I saw that you were, I left. I promise you.”
I heard their voices turn the corner and lunged for the latch, unlocking the window.
In one swift movement, Draven was inside, the window closed quietly behind him.
“So, you know what happened last night, then? About the girl who was killed?”
He nodded gravely. “It’s all anyone is talking about. It’s all over the Arcane Chronicle, and my queen is worried the blame will fall on our kind.”
I wondered how he knew what was on the Chronicle, since only witch-kind had access to it, but that wasn’t important right now.
“Does she know you were here—your… uh… queen?”
I didn’t know what to do with my hands. Our shared dorm room was a decent size, but with Draven inside it, it suddenly seemed very small. And me—too close to him. Had I made a mistake letting him inside? I settled with awkwardly tucking my hands into the back pockets of my borrowed pajama shorts.
I looked to where Bianca was gratefully, still asleep in her bed. Could I have just put her in danger? I’d decided in the split second after he told me he left to believe him.
He could’ve lied.
“She does,” he replied. “And I’m not lying,” he added, maybe reading my discomfort. “I don’t kill for blood. Not humans, and certainly not witches. I pride myself on being pretty smart. Only an idiot would prey on a witch.”
I couldn’t disagree with that. Hadn’t I thought the same thing earlier this afternoon?
All at once, I became painfully aware of the fact that the shorts I was wearing were uber short, and the neckline of the tank top that matched the purple and pink heart patterned set a little too low in the front. Alternately, I tried to pull the top up and the bottoms down, but that only exposed my stomach.
“Uncomfortable?” Draven asked after a minute of examining the random items covering my night table.
“What are you doing here?”
He narrowed his piercing blue eyes at me and shoved a lock of his inky black hair back from his face. “I said I would help you figure out who—”
“No,” I said, interrupting him. “I mean what are you doing here in my room?”
He had the audacity to smirk, moving to sit on my bed. He leaned his back against the headrest and propped his feet up, taking up the entire thing. “Maybe you hadn’t noticed, but witches aren’t exactly fond of vampires. I thought it best to carry out these little meetings in secret.” Well, duh. Of course, it would have to be done in secret, I just didn’t want him in my room, and, “You’re either very brave or very stupid coming here after what happened to Lacey.”
“Or very confident,” he said and flashed me a smile.
A bit more at ease now, I went back to the bed and shoved his legs over—maybe a bit more roughly than I needed to and sat on the edge.
“Do you have any leads,” he asked me after a time.
“Maybe. Do you?”
He tilted his head back and forth, pursed his lips a bit. “I have my suspicions, but nothing more than that.”
The black journal caught my eye, resting face-down and open at the head of the bed right next to where Draven was sitting. I gulped.
Seeing what drew my attention, he looked down beside him and snatched it up. “And what’s this?”
Reflexively I lunged to snatch it back. The secrets its pages contained weren’t meant for the eyes of others. Certainly not a vampire.
He lifted it out of my reach, and I landed unceremoniously on top of him, my hand reaching up for the journal just an inch away from my fingertips.
Realizing what I’d done, I froze, feeling through his long black jacket and black t-shirt that he was wearing all his blades. And below that rested a wall of solid muscle.
When I chanced a look up, I found him staring down into my eyes mischievously. Grinning. His face was no more than a hands-width away from mine. He smelled of sweet smoke and… roses? It was an intoxicating combination and I found myself shaking my head and clearing my throat—trying to scramble off him.
“No, please, do stay where you are. I quite like the view from here.”
“Bastard.�
�
He didn’t disagree.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat and sat back up, my hand out, palm up. “Give it back,” I demanded.
“Manners.”
Of all the… I grimaced, fuming. “Give it back… please.”
“Oh alright, since you asked so nicely.”
He dropped the journal into my waiting hand, and I pulled it into my chest, holding it tightly there.
He cocked his head at my reaction. At the relief I was sure he could sense in the slowing of my racing heart and the tension leaking out of my shoulders. “What is it?” he asked, more kindly this time. His gaze flicking from me, back to the journal.
“It was my fathers.”
A muscle in his temple twitched and he looked away. “I apologize—”
“It’s fine.”
“May I ask what it contains?”
Your guess is as good as mine.
I let the book fall into my lap, biting the inside of my cheek.
Was I really going to show a man I barely knew its contents?
“How old are you?” I asked him.
Taken aback, his brows furrowed. I reveled in his sudden discomfort, glad to know I wasn’t the only one feeling embarrassed in here.
He considered me for a moment before answering. “One-hundred and ninety-eight.”
Wow.
My mouth went dry. “So, it would be safe to assume that you know a lot. Like, for example, how to decode messages, and maybe read in other languages?”
Intrigued, he nodded. “I do, for the most part. I speak twelve languages, and as for decoding—well that depends on the code.”
I huffed. “Alright.”
“Alright?”
I still clutched the journal. Even though I’d decided to share, I couldn’t quite seem to let it go.
“I think that there may be something in here that can help me figure out what happened to my father.”
“Okay…?” he replied, drawing out the word.
How could I explain this? “I might be wrong, but I think that if I can figure out what happened to him, it will help us figure out what happened in Elk Falls. I think—well, I was thinking that it could be connected somehow.”