by April White
Which sort of made me determined to be unpredictable.
But it’s also why I’d been more or less confined to St. Brigid’s. The list of people who knew my heritage was small, but it included at least one Monger. And if Raven’s threats about my mother were any indication, it was suspected by more.
I gasped with the effort of hanging onto the contents of my stomach when I landed on my knees in the Bedlam basement. The air still carried the lingering scent of mortar dust from the cave-in, but the debris had been swept away, and the only remnants of the night my father had died were the vivid images imprinted in my brain.
My Maglite’s beam lit up the chessboard. The black bishop had slid backwards three spaces, which put the white queen directly in the line of fire. I debated moving her, but that left her open to attack within two moves from at least three other pieces. So my hand went to a pawn.
Then I heard the faintest scuff of a footstep, and my hand went for my knife instead.
“You leave her vulnerable.” The voice was quiet and came from the blackest corner of the room. My knife hand jerked, and a sudden flush of heat crept up my neck.
I managed to find my voice where it had fallen somewhere behind my spine. “She’s been vulnerable since her knight fell.” I wasn’t talking about chess.
Archer stepped into the light of my upright Maglite. The skin of his face was drawn tightly over his bones, and his eye sockets looked like something just this side of sinkholes. I stood to face him and covered my sudden bout of nerves with a mental shake, then I searched his face. I hadn’t put away the knife yet, but my grip on it slackened.
“You haven’t fed enough.” It was very strange to sound like my mother, but even weirder that I was concerned about a Vampire’s eating habits.
“Why are you wearing a sling on your arm?”
I blew out a frustrated sigh. If I told him the real story his protectiveness would come out in full-force. “I landed wrong on a flip.” His eyes narrowed. Damn! I’d forgotten, yet again, that he could see the colors of a lie around me, so I changed the subject. “Have you seen Ringo?” I wanted to make sure he was still firmly lodged in this time so I could discount the vision and call it a dream.
Archer studied me a long moment. “Only in visions.”
That surprised me. “Why? What do you see?”
“I see him with Charlie. They’re in his flat together.”
“Is that weird that you have visions of Ringo?”
“He cared for me in Epping Wood. It is perhaps not so strange.” Guilt slammed into me. It should have been me taking care of Archer after he was bitten by Wilder and began the painful transformation into a Vampire. No matter how logical it had been at the time, the fact was, I left him behind to be cared for by the Missus and Ringo. Archer gave my expression an odd look, then shook his head. “I won’t see him in person until I can get the bloodlust under control.”
“How’s it going? The control?” I still hadn’t put the knife away. Archer noticed.
Archer’s eyes traveled to my face. He stayed away from me, just at the edge of the pool of light. “Too slowly.”
It seemed like there was a whole novel unwritten in those two words, but I folded up the little knife and put it away. I faced a brand new Vampire unarmed. On purpose. The only difference between brave and stupid is reflex speed. And trust.
Suddenly, Archer was in front of me, and his eyes swept over my face like he was memorizing the details. He leaned closer until I could smell the faintest scent of spice and something musky and warm. His gaze drank me in, and the air disappeared from my lungs, but breathing was overrated when he was so close to me. My heart re-started with a resounding THUMP, and a sudden flush of heat rose off my skin like my body was calling to him.
“It kills me. The wanting…” The growl in his throat was raw with emotion, and when he stepped back from me I shivered from everything undone and unsaid.
But then Archer resumed his place at the edge of the circle of light.
“Why are you here, Saira?”
“I missed you.”
He looked at me a long time. “Why?”
“You’re in London.”
“I wouldn’t leave you.”
I sucked in a breath against the pain, and my expression hardened. “You did though. You think you’re a danger to me. And … other reasons.”
Archer looked completely shocked for about a second, and then he took another step away from me. Into the shadows.
“Good bye, Saira.”
The room went very cold.
I leaned down to move my queen. Though she was now out of reach of the bishop, it was the black knight who could take her down. I spun away from the chessboard and stumbled to the spiral before the tears could blur my vision.
Found
The next few days I pushed my shoulder harder than I probably should have, mostly to keep my brain on mute, but except for some residual muscle ache, I had decent use of it again. If Ava said anything to Adam about Archer’s departure, I didn’t hear it, and I definitely didn’t pick that scab open with anyone. Self-pity was bad enough; anyone else’s would have been intolerable.
Connor was laying low in his room recovering. I stopped by his room every day to bring his science homework, and he seemed to be healing really well. He said he was just more tired than normal, and we were all waiting for him to be pronounced fit enough to do Mr. Shaw’s outdoor survival class.
Just when the boredom of inactivity threatened to send me into a coma, Adam and Tom tracked me down in the library. “Hey, Elian. When are you going to be good to run again?”
“I know you’re not talking about skill since I can kick your ass even with one shoulder trussed up like a turkey.”
Adam barked in laughter. “You are maybe the only person I know more naturally arrogant than me. It’s why I love you, Elian.” He pushed on my good arm in a friendly way, but it didn’t negate the odd twinge his words caused. Not the arrogance part, I didn’t care what anyone thought of my attitude. It’s part of what kept me safe in crappy neighborhoods near Venice Beach. But the casual way he dropped ‘love’ into it. I shoved that thought somewhere down around my ankles and considered his words about running. I knew Connor was still out; Mr. Shaw had him on bed rest all week. And the other guys didn’t really have as much natural skill as Adam and Tom did, so they weren’t quite as fun to train.
“Okay, meet me on the third floor in the west wing in fifteen.”
“But that wing’s locked.”
I grinned at Tom. “Use your imagination.”
Adam slapped Tom on the back with a grin that matched mine. “Let’s go.”
The guys took off running, and I figured even if I babied my shoulder I could still give them a five minute head start.
On my way up I ran into Olivia on the main staircase. She was carrying a pile of books and had a graphic novel perched on top. I eyed the stack with a smile.
“How’s he doing?”
Olivia grimaced. “Bored. Getting peevish.”
“He’ll feel better when he can get up and go running with us.”
She rolled her eyes. “Are you kidding, free-running with you and the boys is all Connor can talk about. You’d think he was in a cage having to stay in bed.”
I shrugged. “I’d feel that way too if I were him.” I eyed her tiny frame. Olivia was probably really strong for her size because she barely had any body weight to lift. She wasn’t an Immortal Descendant like about half of us at St. Brigid’s were, but she was descended from something almost as old. With Pict blood in her, she came from the same family as the Missus and Sanda – tiny, capable, and very long-lived. “Have you ever wanted to come with us?”
“I’m not a runner.”
“Bet you’re a climber though.”
She gave me one of those lingering looks that I’d learned meant she was deciding how much to tell me. “Maybe.”
I laughed. “Come on. Drop those with Connor, and let’
s go show some guys how we do it.”
She didn’t even hesitate. “Two minutes.” She sped off down the hall toward the boys’ rooms in the west wing, and in the time it took me to re-tie my boots, she was back with a mischievous smile. “I told Connor what I was doing. I’ve never seen him look so mad. It was brilliant!”
I told her about my challenge to Adam and Tom. She suggested exactly what I’d been thinking to keep some of the pressure off my shoulder, and we made our way up to the south tower. We didn’t need to break into the actual tower since the window at the end of the hall was unlocked. Once that was open and we were through, it was just a matter of picking our way across roof tiles to the fire escape at the end of the west wing. Olivia dropped down first to make sure the window was unlatched, and by the time I landed on the balcony she had shimmied it open and was climbing through.
We closed the window behind us for good measure and scanned the deserted hallway. There was no sign that the guys had been there yet.
Olivia tried one of the doors to the empty rooms. “Locked.”
“Know how to get in?” She shook her head, and I grinned mischievously. “Wanna learn?”
“Definitely!”
I found a print on the wall with cardboard backing and did my key trick. The cardboard was a little thicker than others I’d used before, and the key got hung up while I was sliding it under the door, but Olivia’s nimble little fingers pulled it out the rest of the way. We turned the key in the lock, and it opened perfectly.
“Fantastic! Is this how you got your own room last term?”
I nodded. “And how I got out of Millicent’s prison. It’s why she sent me here.”
“Isn’t awful though, is it?”
“Nope. First time in my life I’ve had friends.”
I guess I assumed people kind of knew that about me, but the look of sadness that crossed Olivia’s face made me think I’d done too good a job of being tough and mysterious. I gave her a genuine smile. “Kind of puts my pathetic people skills into perspective, huh?”
“Actually, it goes a long way to explaining your game-free nature.”
“You lost me.”
“You don’t play the game. You either like people or you don’t. Who they are and how connected they might be doesn’t seem to matter to you.”
I scoffed. “Sounds like something Archer said to me once, a long time ago. Except he basically called me an innocent little girl.” My heart twisted a little at the thought of him, but if Olivia noticed, she said nothing.
“If ‘innocent’ means ‘real,’ I’d take it.”
There was a muffled “Ooof!” from outside on the fire escape. Adam was out there trying to haul himself up over the ledge. Olivia and I watched in fascination as Adam collapsed to catch his breath for a moment, then leaned over the railing to help haul Tom up. Both of them were sweaty and exhausted, despite the chill in the March air.
Olivia and I busted up laughing at the same moment. Adam couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
I opened the window for them, and he and Tom dragged themselves through.
“You guys have the key,” he accused me.
I held up the room key we’d just liberated. “We do now. But we came in through the window, same as you.”
“Not possible.” Tom was in rough shape, still trying to gasp enough air into his lungs to use all his voice.
“Yes, possible. We took the roof.”
Tom paled. I’d never actually seen someone lose all the color in their face at once. And with Tom’s gypsy coloring, that was saying something. “Are you about to puke? Because dude, if you’re going to puke, find a toilet.” My tolerance for puke is higher than most because it’s such a nasty side effect of Clocking, but I’m all about not getting it on my shoes if it can be helped.
Adam glanced at his cousin. “He’s not going to puke. He just hates heights.”
Olivia looked at him with wide eyes. “Really, I love them! I feel like I can see the whole world from the top of a tree, or a house, or a, I don’t know, bridge?”
I didn’t think it was possible for Tom to lose any more color, but he did, and he gulped. “You’ve been on top of a bridge?”
“You know the walkways that connect the two towers of Tower Bridge?”
Tom seemed to visibly relax. “Yeah, they’re covered and enclosed. I’ve been up there.”
Olivia grinned evilly. “I’ve been on top.”
Tom was done. He got up and walked away on shaky legs. I had to restrain myself from either laughing or going after him – he wouldn’t have appreciated either one. Meanwhile, Adam was looking at Olivia with frank disbelief.
“You did not!”
“My uncle was one of the builders who worked on the restoration in the eighties. He knows all the secrets of that bridge, and he took me there last year after I built an obstacle course in the top of an old oak on his property.”
A quiet gagging sound came from the direction Tom had gone.
Adam seemed to look at Olivia with new eyes. “How old are you?”
She narrowed her gaze dangerously. I’d been on the receiving end of one of her tirades, and I kind of wanted to see Adam get hit in the eyes with one, just because he deserved it on principle. “Why?”
“Because you’re the size of a twelve-year-old with the balls of a twenty-year-old bloke.”
Uh oh. Wait for it …
Her eyes flashed and she … burst out laughing?
Oh, come on.
But her laughter seemed to help Tom get over himself, and he rejoined us with much more human-colored skin tone.
I pointed to him. “You and I are going to need to work on your acrophobia. You …” I pointed to Adam, “just need to learn to see the problem from all sides before you make your first move.”
“Hey, we made it, didn’t we?”
“How many sides does a box have?”
The look he shot me was somewhere between confusion and annoyance. I knew Adam hated it when I turned on my teacher voice, but without fail, he provoked it every time we ran. “I don’t know, four?”
“Six. There’s a top and a bottom too. Sometimes the best way to get somewhere is working from the top down.”
Adam’s eyes danced teasingly. “So, if I think about the problem as if I were seducing it, you know, working top to bottom, I’ll have better luck?”
“That requires you to know what you’re doing, and I’d never assume something like that.”
Olivia and Tom busted up, but Adam smirked. “You’re right. You should never assume. Always find these things out first hand, that’s what I say.”
“Well, your hand would know all about that, now wouldn’t it?”
Olivia interrupted what was about to become a little nasty, based on the size of the breath Adam took to launch his attack. “Guys, if we want to do some more vertical stuff, I know a place.”
Tom instantly backed away. “Okay, seriously? I’m out. Saira, I’ll take height lessons later, after major fortification of food, sleep and maybe a little testicular growth. Any chance you can unlock the hall door with the key you magically procured?”
I laughed and led him down the hall. “Come on. I’ll teach you the locked-door thing as a reward for a day of heights.” We walked down the hall toward the locked main door, and Tom sighed dramatically. “Oh joy, I can’t wait.”
I showed Tom how to get out of the hall and locked the door behind him, then came back to find Olivia and Adam laughing about something Connor had been moaning about as he convalesced.
“Okay, tell me about vertical places,” I prodded Olivia.
“You guys have been to the attics, right?”
Adam and I looked at each other blankly. The attics? Olivia stared at us both. “Are you kidding? The attics in this place are huge! All the big manor houses were built with a lot of little box rooms for luggage and holiday storage.”
We must have still looked blank because Olivia’s eyes were going back and forth be
tween us with growing astonishment. “You really haven’t explored the attics? Wow, you guys don’t know what you’re missing. There are things that have been up there so long people forgot they forgot about it.”
“I know they keep old furniture in the cellar.” Even as I said it, I bit my tongue. Hard. I don’t think either of them even thought twice about why I’d know something like that, but I couldn’t believe how close I’d come to giving a clue about Archer’s hideaway.
“Yeah, but these things are personal. Like clothes, hats, shoes, books, jewelry … it feels like you can figure out a person’s whole life by what they’ve left behind in the attics.”
“Even here? I mean, this is a school, not a manor house.”
“Yes, but it was built in the 1500s. That’s a whole lot of students who have come through and left things behind.”
A light bulb in my brain lit up my eyes. “That’s what else happened in 1554!” I pictured the date above the school entrance in my mind. “St. Brigid’s opened.”
“Yeah? So?” Adam and Olivia looked confused.
I shrugged. “Just something my mom was teaching in her history class. It’s no big deal.”
Olivia grinned at us. “So, do you want to go?”
“Yeah, of course. But what’s the vertical part of it?”
“Oh, the doors are always locked. So the only way into the west attic is from the top of the south tower.”
“I’m in!”
“Me too.” Adam swept his arm out like a gallant knight. “Lead the way, small person.”
I rolled my eyes and braced for fireworks again, but Olivia just giggled. Seriously? Was Adam really that charming? He obviously didn’t get slapped nearly enough for the trouble he stirred up.
“Let’s go climbing.”
The Attics
Olivia’s route took us up the outside of the tower, which was totally climbable with big, fitted stones and weather-worn mortar for handholds. Then down to an attic fire escape ledge just behind the tower. The window was unlatched, and Olivia’s practiced fingers slipped the catchment pane up.