by Eva Chase
“I know. But I can’t just sit around here hoping answers will drop into my lap.” I gave her fur another stroke of my thumb. “Don’t be a Debbie Downer. I’ve made it this far. I think I’ll survive a little longer. It’d be good to have more room to maneuver.” At the very least, I didn’t think anyone wanted to outright kill the Bloodstone scion. What would happen to their rulership then?
I had to wait for Ms. Grimsworth to finish a meeting before I could see her. She pursed her thin lips in a way that managed to look slightly sympathetic as she let me in.
“If you were hoping for news about Professor Banefield, I can tell you that he’s doing well enough to have returned to his apartment. The health center staff have advised him not to engage in any work for the next day or two while he completely recovers, but after that, we have every expectation that he’ll be available to you as usual.”
“That’s good to hear,” I said with a rush of relief. “I don’t suppose… He mentioned he was taking a trip a few days ago. Do you know where he went?”
The headmistress’s beady gaze sharpened. In her fitted dress suit—a deep forest green today—and with her graying blond hair pinned in its usual thick coil by her neck, she always gave off a strictly formal vibe.
“The recreational activities of my staff are beyond my purview,” she said. “If the trip related to your studies in some way, I’m sure you can discuss it with your mentor when he’s back in full health.”
I hadn’t really expected her to tell me even if she knew. Hell, maybe Banefield’s illness had been non-supernatural, the timing simply a coincidence, Shelby had spent a week fighting off a flu not that long ago.
“If that’s the only matter you wanted to see me about…” Ms. Grimsworth added, reaching for a notebook on her desk.
“No, actually, it’s not,” I said quickly. “I was thinking—I’d like to take a trip of my own to see my family’s properties. Any of them that are close enough that I could go out there without missing any of my classes, at least. I could use some directions, and I’m not sure of my best way of getting out to them… and I’d need the tracing spell you have on me relaxed so the blacksuits don’t go on the alert when I get that far off campus.”
Or removed completely, if she was in a trusting mood. If I could have run off from the university without the fearmancers being able to trace my movements, I could make it back to California and the Enclave of joymancers before they managed to catch me, I was pretty sure. Of course, I’d have to be absolutely sure before I made an attempt like that. As soon as I revealed just how deep my loyalties to the joymancers ran, these people would never let me walk around freely again.
I wasn’t sure I knew enough yet to prove those loyalties to my parents’ people either. I should be able to direct them to the location of the university, but I hadn’t figured out anything about taking down the wards or otherwise tackling the place. Still, not setting off alarms the second I walked farther than the neighboring town would be helpful no matter how much longer it took for me to work out the rest of my plans.
The headmistress was nodding, so the request must have sounded reasonable. “I can relax the spell’s range. We still want to be sure you’re protected after everything you’ve been through.”
“Thank you,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound overly grateful.
“The main Bloodstone home is in Maine, too far to make a day trip of it unless you hire a private plane, but they do have a couple of properties closer by. I’d imagine your grandfather packed up most of your parents’ personal items for storage before he passed on, but everything else has been maintained as it was. As for getting to them, we had someone bring by one of your family’s cars a few weeks ago in case you wanted to make use of it. Let me get you the key.”
I hadn’t expected to discover I owned a car, although maybe I should have given the size of the bank account I’d inherited and the fact that there were multiple properties across the Northeast in my name.
Ms. Grimsworth tugged open a drawer on her desk and riffled through it before handing over a car key on a worn leather fob. My fingers closed around it with a flash of uncertainty, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to share my doubts with her.
“Thanks,” I said.
“The vehicle has been kept in good working order, as with all your family’s property, in anticipation of your return.” She paused. “I hadn’t mentioned it because it was so important that you focus on your studies leading up to your second assessment, but your other grandparents have been asking about seeing you.”
I froze. “I thought all my grandparents were dead.”
“On your mother’s side—on the Bloodstone side. Your paternal grandparents are still much with the living.” The hint of derision in her tone made me suspect she’d put these people off for more than just the sake of my studies. She didn’t like them. “They have no particular authority among the barons, but they are relatives. It’s up to you whether I accept their request and allow them to visit you here.”
I had living family among the fearmancers. Maybe I was supposed to be leaping with joy at the idea, but instead I felt sick. Dealing with the expectations of my classmates and teachers had been bad enough. I wasn’t sure I was ready to pretend I wanted to take on another family.
Since Ms. Grimsworth didn’t appear to like the idea either, at least I wouldn’t face any pressure from her. “I think I’d like a little more time to get my bearings first,” I said. “It’s going to be a little…awkward, meeting people who are supposedly family but are basically strangers.”
“Yes. I agree. Better to wait until you’re feeling secure in your role.” Ms. Grimsworth nodded to the key I was clutching. “Your Lexus is in spot 39 in the garage. Let me see what I can do with your tracing spell while you’re here.”
I paid close attention as she came around the desk and walked around me, but the sounds she murmured were her own spell-casting words, indecipherable to anyone else. Most of the time she was behind me where I couldn’t even see how she moved her hands, if that made any difference. Other than a faint quiver that ran over my skin at one moment, I wouldn’t have known she was adjusting the magic attached to me at all.
I left the headmistress’s office with several locations marked on my phone’s map and a twist in my stomach. I didn’t have any classes until late in the afternoon, so I went to take a look at my new acquisition.
This was the first time I’d had any reason to venture into the garage just east of the parking lot at the front of the school. The trim wooden building didn’t look all that big from the outside, but then, that was in comparison to Killbrook Hall, which loomed over the south end of the grounds like a craggy Victorian mansion-slash-castle.
Clearly a lot of the students did have their own cars on hand, because it turned out the garage housed three long rows of parked cars with a lane looping around the middle, leading to a ramp up to a second floor that presumably held even more vehicles.
I found my Lexus just around the curve in the lane: a sleek sedan that shone pale gold in the sunlight streaming through the building’s high windows. As I eased toward the driver’s seat in the space between it and the neighboring Porsche, a flame-red Ferrari pulled out of a spot farther down and zoomed past me with a girlish whoop. I peered through the driver-side window of my car.
Well, I knew enough about cars to tell that it was an automatic, thank God. I tried to picture Mom in there—she’d done most of the driving back home. What she’d have grasped or pushed first. How she’d have set her hands on the wheel.
A lump rose in my throat. What I wouldn’t give to have her or Dad here right now.
I squeezed my eyes shut against the flood of grief. Hold it together, Rory. Anyway, this was ridiculous. Of course I wasn’t going to get anywhere like this. Maybe I could—
Footsteps tapped down the concrete ramp from the second floor. I glanced up, and my gaze locked with Jude’s. His eyebrows rose slightly. I braced myself as he sauntered over.<
br />
He came to a stop by the rear of the car and let out a low whistle. “Is this yours, then? Bloodstones know how to make a statement, don’t they?”
I didn’t hear any mockery in his tone, only apparently genuine admiration, but it didn’t set me any more at ease than his comments the other day in the forest had. “I can’t take any credit for it. It’d have belonged to my—to my birth parents.” I wasn’t going to start calling the Bloodstones my parents, full stop.
“What are you waiting for? You should take her for a spin, make her yours.”
“I can’t,” I said, figuring he’d connect the dots soon enough even if I tried to avoid the subject. “I don’t have my license.”
He laughed. “Half of us here never bothered. You can always magic up an illusion of one if you need to.”
I shoved the key into my purse. “No, I mean I never learned how to drive.” One more way Mom and Dad had ensured I’d stay close. There’d never been many places to drive to, with me being homeschooled and pretty deficient in social life. I’d asked about it a couple of times, and they’d made one excuse or another… I hadn’t cared enough to push it.
Jude’s eyebrows jumped a little higher. He propped himself against the Porsche’s trunk. “Good thing I happened to be passing by. That’s simple enough to fix. I’ll teach you.”
I gave him a skeptical look. “Yeah, that sounds like a brilliant idea.”
“I’m not joking. Jump in, and we can get started right now. I enjoy living dangerously.” He grinned at me when I continued to hesitate. “If that’s not a good enough reason for you, consider it my way of starting to pay you back for the shit I put you through.”
That framing did make the idea more palatable, but that didn’t mean I trusted him to mean it. “I feel like I can find a driving instructor who didn’t put me through shit in the first place.”
I hoped I could, anyway. The list of people who fit that criteria was depressingly short. It wasn’t as if Deborah could teach me.
Jude’s smirk suggested he realized how limited my options in that department were. He cocked his head. “What exactly do you think my evil plan is here?”
“I don’t know,” I retorted. “I just know there’s a fairly good chance you have one.”
“And there’s no way I can convince you otherwise?”
“I can’t think of any, and I doubt that’s going to change. So why don’t you just call it a loss and save us both a bunch more arguing?”
My frustration seeped into my voice despite my best efforts. Jude considered me for a moment, his smirk fading into a more thoughtful expression. Then he wet his lips.
“What if I gave you a free pass? One question, asked with insight, and I’ll let you in. ‘Do you have any evil plans?’ or ‘Are you trying to screw me over?’ or however you’d want to put it.”
For a second I could only stare at him. Jude who kept a wall up that felt solid as a mountainside, Jude who I’d never actually managed to get a read on through magic—the only “insight” I’d been able to glean had been through observations I’d made with my eyes… He was offering to let me inside his head? Did giving me driving lessons really matter that much to him?
How could I pass up the opportunity to take a peek at whatever was really going on behind those dark green eyes?
I turned to face him. “All right. Let me know when you’re ready.”
I’d need to pick my question carefully. Leave the wording open enough that he shouldn’t be able to hide any ill intentions.
Jude’s expression tightened for a second as if he was regretting the offer, but he exhaled slowly and tipped back his head. “Go for it.”
I focused on his temple, the pale skin beside the fall of his dark copper hair, and coaxed some of the energy swirling behind my clavicle up my throat and into the words I spoke. “Why are you offering to help me?”
I caught a glimpse of Jude’s mouth twitching, and then I was tumbling straight into a mass of sensations that overwhelmed the rest of my awareness, not even a sliver of a wall to slow my fall.
Images and emotions whirled past me. A glimpse of me standing beside Ms. Grimsworth as she announced to the curious onlookers that I was the only current or recent student with strengths in all four magical domains. A mix of irritation and admiration as Jude shook ice off his shoes. A chuckle at the thought of a pale-haired man sputtering with indignation.
And deeper, underneath all that but so vast and sweeping it rushed over me alongside everything else, a panicked impression of scrambling, of something crumbling away in his hands as he tried to grasp it. Fear—but not of me, or I’d have caught it before. The gaping size of it, the frantic fumbling to recover, jolted me back to the Desensitization room, to the metaphorical spire I’d watched disintegrate under Jude’s feet.
All those sensations crashed through me in the space of a couple seconds, and then a familiar wall slammed in front of me, hurtling my consciousness back into my own head.
Jude was staring at me, his face taut and his shoulders rigid, looking shaken for the first time I could remember. He shoved himself off the Porsche. His voice came out taut too. “Never mind then. Sorry I bothered you.”
He was… walking away. What the hell? Apprehension gripped my chest. I’d obviously gone deeper into his mind than he’d expected, given the way he’d cut me off so abruptly, but maybe I hadn’t gotten quite as deep as he thought.
“Wait!” I said.
Jude had already made it past the neighboring car. He stopped and swiveled only halfway toward me. “What?” he said flatly.
I crossed my arms, studying him. “Why are you giving up? What do you think I saw?”
His lips curled into a smile so tight it looked more like a grimace. “I’m aware that desperation is hardly an appealing quality. You don’t have to rub it in. I’m going.”
There wasn’t anything else, then. Fearmancers did make a big deal out of anyone seeing them the slightest bit vulnerable. And maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that Jude would be worse than most, considering how hard he must work to maintain his usual blasé attitude when he had all that turmoil roiling around underneath.
I didn’t know how to interpret every part of the insight I’d gotten, but I’d seen enough to tell he wasn’t here to hurt me.
“I’m not trying to rub it in,” I said. “I just want to understand. What are you so worried about?”
As he eyed me, his shoulders came down. His expression didn’t exactly relax, but some of the defensiveness in it softened. “Is the price for giving you driving lessons the full baring of my soul?” he said lightly, his gaze still wary. “You’ve already gotten a better look than anyone else ever has. You dive in there fast, Ice Queen.”
“You offered,” I had to point out. “And I think I’d be good with just an explanation of why driving lessons are so incredibly important all of a sudden.”
The corner of his mouth curled up, more of the tension seeping out of his stance. He took a few steps toward me again and stopped, still a safe distance away. I couldn’t tell what was going on in that striking head of his now, but his attention brought a tingle of warmth to the surface of my skin.
“Would you believe it’s simply that I’m starting to see I might have ruined my chances with the only person who’s ever made me care if I did?”
No, not really. What I’d felt in him had felt way more fraught than I could imagine had to do with just me. “You hardly know me,” I said.
He shrugged. “I’m not sure about that. You don’t make much effort to hide who you are.”
I supposed that was a fair point. I sucked my lower lip under my teeth, trying to sort through the jumble of emotions now residing inside me. My decision no longer felt so clear cut.
Lay out the pros and cons, my dad would have told me.
Pros: It would be really, really useful to learn how to drive so I could make whatever investigations I needed to without anyone looking over my shoulder. I wasn’t sure wh
o else I could ask. Jude might have been an asshole to me in the past, but at least I knew what I was dealing with. Everything I’d seen in his mind a moment ago and his reaction afterward told me he did care about getting this chance to make amends, even if the fact that he cared exasperated him. I hadn’t caught any hint of a conspiracy with the other scions or anyone else.
And he could be a very useful person to have on my side here at Blood U if I happened to need a rule or two to be broken in pursuit of the justice I wanted to bring down.
Cons: I remembered the humiliation and horror he’d put me through with wrenching clarity. No matter what I’d seen, I wasn’t sure I’d ever trust him.
But that might be a pro in its own way. If I never trusted him, I’d never make a mistake out of misplaced trust.
“I don’t know about ‘chances’,” I said, “but I’ll give you one. Where do we begin, Mr. Instructor?”
Jude blinked at me as if he didn’t quite believe his ears. Then he smiled again, so brilliantly my heart fluttered even with all those memories front and center. He held up his hand. “Key? Garage navigation is an advanced skill. I think I’d better be the one to get us out to the parking lot if you want your car to stay in one piece.”
I tossed him the key and moved out of the way so he could take the driver’s seat. As I got in on the passenger side, he ran his hands over the wheel with a pleased sigh. “You did luck out with this inheritance.”
I couldn’t help snorting at his reverent tone. “Are you in this for me or my car?”
“Oh, don’t worry, a hunk of steel is no competition. Although you should see the beauty I’ve got upstairs sometime.” He revved the engine without waiting for my response and backed out of the parking spot fast but so smoothly my heart only leapt halfway to my throat.
We cruised out of the garage into the smaller lot just outside. Jude parked so we could swap seats, and I settled in on the driver’s side with a flicker of nerves. It took me a few seconds to find the lever to adjust the seat so I could reach the pedals Jude’s long legs had found so easily.