by Lucy Auburn
I’m just sure that if I can get close enough to one of them, I can swipe a student ID and use it to get that book from the library. The Arcane Arts of the Living and the Dead. Whatever Richard did with it that night, I’m sure I’ll be able to undo it—after all, Dick didn’t have two brain cells to rub together, so I’ve got one up on him. Once I’ve gotten rid of the demons, I’ll have the freedom to figure out my next steps on my own.
You’ll be all alone again once they’re gone, an insidious voice inside me whispers. No one to encourage you like today. No one to save you the way they did in Sticky’s attic. If you get rid of them, they’ll never come back.
I swallow, forcing the thoughts away. The demons are annoying and distracting; there’s no reason why I should want them to stick around. Sure, they saved me that one time, but that was a one-off, an exception. I can’t exactly let them haunt me for the rest of my life just because I’m a lonely little orphan girl.
Also, they’re murderers. No matter what Sebastian says about the true evil being the people who summon them, I can’t forget what they did that night.
They did what they had to, that little voice murmurs at me. They stopped a worse evil. They weren’t even going to kill you, because they didn’t see evil in your soul. If you weren’t such a bitter runaway you might —
I need some music to drown out the self-doubt. Grabbing my outdated smart phone with the prepaid minutes and playlist of pirated songs, I search my purse for my earbuds and come up empty. Frowning, I sweep the room with my eyes, looking for them on every surface; I know I have them somewhere. I stole them from a drug store a few months back and there’s no way I would lose them so fast. I’ve used them a few nights to drown out my thoughts before bed.
My eyes catch on the nightstand; the single drawer in it is open a crack, and it’s the most logical place for them to me. Reaching in, I pull the drawer open and find the bright pink earbuds sitting in the back—just beneath the edge of a folded up piece of paper with my name on it.
A chill goes down my spine. I didn’t put that there. Pulling out the note, I sit on the edge of my bed and cautiously unfold it, hoping against hope that it’s a spare class schedule I forgot about or some kind of message from the headmaster.
But it’s written in a very messy scrawl, and decidedly not official at all.
You need to get out of here. It’s not safe here for people like you. Don’t believe me? Ask one of the teachers about Eleanor Collins or Matthew Stephenson. They’re not telling you the whole truth, and you deserve to know it if you’re going to stick around.
My heart races at the words on the paper. And, like clockwork, four demons fade into existence all around me, responding to the threat my body senses.
Mateo groans. “What is it this time?”
“Shut up,” Lynx mutters. “Whatever it is, better to be here than nowhere.” He approaches the bed, and looks down at the note in my hands, skimming it. “Wow. That’s a doozy. Who are those kids?”
“I don’t know,” I respond. Since the others are staring at us, I read the note aloud; by the time I’m done, they all look like their interest is peaked. “I wonder when this was left in my room. I’ve been so busy, it could’ve been days ago and I wouldn’t have even noticed.”
Ezra dismisses the whole thing. “Don’t worry about it. It’s probably just some prank. You’re surrounded by teachers with decades of combat experience, in a building warded with spells and hidden from sight. Who could get in?”
I swallow. “Yohan said that a bunch of Grims attacked over the summer and killed his sister,” I remind them. “They didn’t get in here, but they got into another school. This could be about that. A Grim could come inside and kill me.”
For some reason, Lynx and Ezra exchange a glance, and I get the feeling there’s something they’re not telling me. It’s Mateo who pipes up and reassures me, “If someone really tries to attack you, we’ll be here. And we can protect you.”
Sebastian shakes his head, a shadowed look crossing his blue eyes. “Only if they have evil in their hearts. We can’t become corporeal otherwise.”
“Actually.” I look over at Ezra, and find his green eyes staring at me, though I can’t tell what’s going on in his mind. “Earlier today, I could feel Ezra’s fingers on my shoulder. I think... I think somehow I made it happen.”
“Oh?” He raises a brow, head tilted a little in thought. “I felt something, but I didn’t realize you did too.”
Mateo whoops in excitement, the swirls of black tattoos on his arms stretching as he pumps his fist in the air. “Alright! Do it to me, Dani—make me a real boy again! I want to eat that sweet potato pie in the dining hall.”
The others collectively roll their eyes at his excitement. Pursing my lips, I try to decide if I should tell them the truth, which is that Ezra touched me because I wanted him to. But that would be a mistake; they’d just look into it and see things that aren’t there.
I’m pretty sure by now that they weren’t actually in my dreams last night and have no idea I was thinking about them that way. If they knew about it, I would’ve heard from them—especially Mateo, who can’t keep his mouth shut.
So I decide to tell them a little white lie. “I was just thinking that it’d be nice if Ezra could show me the moves to the combat exercise myself, and he became a little bit solid again. I could probably do it if I concentrated.”
Lynx looks thoughtful. “A kind of manifestation of thought. It makes sense, given...” He trails off, like he’s rethinking his sentence, then finishes it oddly. “It makes sense, given that you were somehow anchored to us by that book. If you can summon our souls like this, maybe you can summon our bodies too. All you have to do is try.”
Mateo is frowning, like he wants to say something, but seconds pass and somehow he keeps it to himself. Strange; normally he’s not one to let any thought go by unspoken.
Some part of me is excited at the thought that I could make the demons corporeal. Maybe if I can do that, it can help us get the book we need out of the library and take care of things sooner—before I wind up so used to them being around that I actually do miss them once they’re gone.
“Alright. So how do we practice this thing?”
Ezra gives me a look with those green eyes of his, and I have the sudden sinking feeling that whatever is on his mind won’t be good for me. “I have just the idea to help you practice this new skills of yours, and impress your teachers enough that you can get into the library by the end of next week.”
“I don’t know about this,” I repeat for what feels like the thousandth time as we walk into the empty combat practice room. “I was kind of looking forward to sleeping.”
“Which is exactly your problem.” Pacing in front of me, those green eyes giving me a once-over, Ezra feels more like a drill instructor than a demon who’s haunting me. “Sleep is all well and good, after the job is done. But because you were the bait today you haven’t gotten enough proper training in—and we both know you’ve barely been trying in most of your classes. It’s time to rise to the occasion.”
Sebastian quips, “If she’s even capable of that.”
“Hey!”
“If the shoe fits.” His blue eyes seem to scorch right through me. “It’s not like she has overachiever written all over her.”
Mateo mumbles, “That’d be a dumb tattoo,” just as Lynx points out, “She’s only had a few days to get adjusted.”
“Thank you!” Throwing my hands up, I pace to the middle of the room and glance at each of them. “So how is this going down? Who’s sparring with me first?”
The expression that slides over Mateo’s face is anything but pure. “I know what kind of sparring I want to get up to.”
Sighing, Ezra snaps, “Shut up, all three of you. I’m going to show Dani how to manifest our corporeal forms during combat. Clearly the rest of you won’t be any help.”
There’s something about his easy, commanding tone that makes me envious.
I wish I could casually announce what’s going to happen next and just make people listen. My first impression of Ezra, as the leader among the group, has proven to be correct—though I wonder how exactly that came to be.
“Hey...” I watch him square off in front of me, and adjust my stance to match his. “Why is it the four of you? Why not four other demons?”
“We’re like a triumvirate.”
“Technically that’s three men,” Lynx calls out. At Ezra’s cutting glare, he draws back and mutters, “Though I guess it doesn’t matter.”
Ezra sighs. “We’re a group. When we’re summoned, the four of us are always pulled together, because our powers complement each other.”
“Powers?” I frown at him. “I know Lynx can see into souls, but what are your other powers?”
“Not to let this distract from your training, but Sebastian can manipulate others’ pain levels, Mateo can remove people’s memories, and I... I can sense people’s powers.”
“Oh. So that’s how you knew about my weird sixth sense ability.”
“Exactly. Now stop stalling, and let’s get to work.”
When Ezra says work, he really means it. He leads me through the major blocking and counterattacking moves Laura has taught in my class so far, stopping whenever I need correction. As he does so, he insistently tries to get me to make him more solid again.
“Think about my corporeal form.”
His hand forms a fist that I don’t manage to dodge, and it goes right through me, much to my relief.
“Do what you did earlier today.”
I nearly fall trying to punch him, because he’s not a solid form at all.
“Just—damnit Dani, think about me touching you.”
The air leaves my lungs, eyes widening as he moves in close to counter my pulled punch. Suddenly the thought is in my head again: what it would be like if the hands skimming my body touched me, if the man standing six inches away from me had heat that I could feel or breath that curled around my ears as he leans in to murmur words to me.
His green eyes startle, and suddenly he’s grabbing my arm, twisting it around, and carefully guiding me down to the mats. Leaning down, he does exactly what I imagined him doing: he murmurs in my ear.
“You’re done for, Dani.”
I squirm beneath him, suddenly very aware of his weight, the strange scent of mint on his clothes, the brush of his brown hair against my cheek. Warmth infuses me, and tingles go up and down my spine, just like when his non-corporeal body goes through me.
Apparently, no matter what form they’re wearing, something about the demons has an affect on me.
I’m totally fucked.
“I surrender!” I exclaim, as Ezra lightly digs his elbow in my back. “You win already.”
Chuckling, he releases me and gets up—then steps right through me as he goes incorporeal again. The shudder that travels through my body is hard to hide, and as I push myself up to my feet I can feel his eyes on me.
All their eyes on me.
Lynx’s curious expression, Mateo’s salacious eyes dragging up and down my body, Sebastian’s little smirk, the way Ezra keeps moving in close to speak to me in a low voice that only I can hear. It’s all too much—much more intimate than anything I signed up for or expected.
And I hate that I want more of it, from all four of them, just like in my dream.
Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath, let the tension out of me, and imagine that they’re gone.
The last thing I hear before I open my eyes is Ezra exclaiming, “Dani, damnit, don’t do that—”
Then they’re gone, and I’m alone in the room again.
It’s what I wanted; it was getting to be overwhelming. Now I can do whatever I feel like doing without their bossy, flirty, and annoying voices in my ear. All I have to do is pick my moment and I can swipe an ID card then get a copy of The Arcane Arts of the Living and the Dead so I can get rid of them forever.
But despite the fact that I wanted it this way, I still miss them terribly now that they’re gone. Walking down the hallway alone, some sick part of me secretly hopes that any second a Grim will pop out of an empty classroom and try to shoot me, just so I have a good reason to summon them again.
Dani Carpenter, lonely orphan girl who bonds better with murderous demons than her actual classmates.
What a joke.
Dinner provides the perfect chance to get what I need. With an oblivious Olivia on one side of me, making moon eyes at Liam, it’s going to be a piece of cake to reach into her blazer pocket and pull out the ID I can see pushing against the wool blend fabric.
Until, that is, Petra sits on the other side of me. “Hey Dani. How’d your first Friday with Fisk go?”
I groan, and feel the other’s eyes on me. “I was the bait, which I thought would be easy until I got a few kicks to the stomach. Turns out that Group Combat is the craziest class so far.”
“Yeah,” Sam agrees, “Fisk lets pretty much anything go in his class. At first I thought he was just nuts, but I guess they give him that kind of leeway because of his record.”
Curiosity piques at me. “Record? What record?”
“Oh, you don’t know?” Liam gives me a wide grin. “Jared Fisk has killed over two dozen Grims, and he protected Headmaster Towers when she was a teenager and got attacked by a group of witch doctors—all on his own. His combat skills are basically the best of any of the teachers here.”
Petra dryly points out, “Coming from Liam, that’s high praise, given that Laura McKinley once put him in six headlocks in a row.”
“Hey now—I was a first year then! I’ve gotten much better in my second year of schooling.”
“Yeah,” Sam quips, “now he only gets put in one headlock a class, two at the most.”
Liam looks embarrassed, so it’s clearly not something he can refute. I laugh, shaking my head. “She is pretty scary, and I’ve never even seen her hold a weapon. I thought Kade was going to be the toughest teacher, but I was wrong. Although Yohan can be pretty frightening when he wants to be.”
The others lean forward. “Yohan? What’s he like?”
With their eyes on me, I wonder if this might be the perfect diversion. No one notices what’s going on with your fingers when they’re looking at your face. Plenty of pick-pocketing I’ve pulled off has proven this to me; bat a few eyelashes and you can get a guy’s whole wallet off him without even sticking around for his scintillating conversation.
“Well, he’s got these big wings.” I drop my right hand down beneath the table as I start telling the story. “Like, huge—I don’t know if you’ve seen them, but they could burn a house down. And I’m the only student in his class. Sometimes I’ll be meditating, trying to do my thing, and I zone out for a while.”
Slowly, I walk my hand to the lip of Olivia’s pocket, grateful that she’s sitting close to me with her hips turned, her blazer wide open away from her body. “When I open my eyes and realize I fell asleep for a minute or two, he’s always staring straight at me.” I do an impression of Yohan’s intense eyes, getting a too-loud chuckle from Liam. My fingers dive into Olivia’s pocket.
“And his wings won’t be out when I close my eyes, but they’re always open when I wake up. The way he looks at me, I swear it’s like he’s thinking ‘there won’t be any witnesses if I burn her alive.’ I’m pretty sure that if I don’t manifest wings by next week he’s going to burn me a little just to see if it motivates me.”
Almost there. I feel the edge of her lanyard, and the plastic case she keeps her ID inside.
Suddenly a voice behind me calls out, “Dani, what the hell are you doing?”
Chapter 17
Kayla glares at me. “You shouldn’t be talking about a teacher like that. It’s rude.”
“And none of your business,” I point out, heart thumping fast against my rib cage, Olivia’s ID just barely tucked inside my own pocket, the lanyard spilling over the edge. I barely got it there before it was too
late, and now I’m having trouble hiding my triumphant grin. “We were just having a little fun, Kayla. You might want to try it sometime. It’d be a good cure for that wart on your cheek.”
Face burning, she squeals out, “It’s a mole!”
As she turns on her heels and marches down the line of the table, I do my best to subtly adjust the ID inside my pocket and push the end of the lanyard further in. I try not to feel guilty throughout the rest of dinner; Olivia is so friendly, and if it weren’t for these four not only might I be dead, but I definitely wouldn’t be eating a full meal with a bunch of friends. I can already feel my thin rib cage filling out, the muscles strengthening in my arms and legs after days of consistent food.
It’s not like I stole money from her, I remind myself. After I get what I need, I’ll push the ID back underneath her door and she’ll just think she dropped it while she was getting undressed. It’s just a book, and I need it way more than the library—plus there’s no way I’m going to get one of these teachers to choose me as a possible apprentice so quickly.
I’ll be lucky if Yohan doesn’t declare me defective and advise the headmaster to put me back where I came from.
These are all the things I tell myself to assuage my own guilt as dinner winds down, we put our trays away—mine covered in empty dishes of food I stuffed in my mouth to feed a stomach grumbling after hours of combat—and we head out.
“Sam and I are going up to the roof to watch the stars and play some board games, if you’re interested,” Liam offers.
Leaning in close, Sam adds, “There’ll be beer and wine, too. He always forgets to mention that part since he’s a goody goody.”
Olivia chimes in, “I’ll go!” I can’t help noticing, yet again, the way she looks at Liam. “It sounds fun.”
“Cool, so three of us. Dani? Petra probably won’t show—she hates fun.”
Petra rolls her eyes at this. “It’s not fun I hate, it’s listening to you two squabble about video games after drinking too many cheap beers. Plus, I’ve got night watch. Have to make sure another baby phoenix doesn’t stumble into this world and get slaughtered.”