“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“You had enough to deal with, and I didn’t want to ruin your summer with bad news. Besides, I guess I was still processing it. I didn’t think he believed in all that crap.”
“What about, um, the other raven?”
“Stark?”
“Yeah.”
His fragile smile wavered, thin and delicate as glass. “He’s handling it. It’s weird not having Edmund around, but we’re better off without him. I don’t need people like that in my life, you know?”
Two steps brought me in against him. I wrapped my arms around his waist and pressed my cheek over his heart, hugging him close. Gabriel returned the embrace and set his cheek atop my head.
“Take it easy today, okay? You’re doing great.”
Wishing I could crawl into bed beside him for a few hours, I turned my head and kissed his cheek instead. “Thanks for breakfast. See you tonight?”
“Yeah. I promise not to torture you too much. Think of our training time together as a refresher session. If some shit during the week gives you trouble, I’ll work on it with you.”
Gabriel walked me as far as the door and saw me out to the hall.
I made it to my first class with five minutes to spare. Pilar and Liadan had saved a chair for me, but our other friends had seats on the opposite side of the lecture hall with some of their mage pals. The hour may as well have been an entire day. Magical History wasn’t any better, but at least this time Holly and Ben joined us.
By some miracle, I stayed awake enough to take legible notes, but a sleep deprivation headache pounded behind my eyes when I stumbled into the sunlight at the end of the hour-long class.
“You two must be exhausted.” Ben glanced between me and Holly. She had an oversized umbrella open to keep her shaded from the sun. “I’m so glad I didn’t pass the battlemage trials.”
“You mean, you’re so glad you threw the exam,” Holly said bitterly.
Ben nodded. “I’m so glad I was smart enough to throw the exam.”
Holly stared at him so hard I expected him to combust.
Mage students took a battery of aptitude tests at the end of their freshman year. Those scores, along with their preferences, guided them into one of three study paths. Brainiacs like Ben tended to go for the scholarly pursuits. They were usually the alchemists, librarians, instructors, and healers.
Battlemages made up a little less than half of sentinel forces. As their name implied, they mastered magic in combative situations and became half of a sentinel pair devoted to law enforcement, like Simon and Sebastian.
Those with higher ambitions, especially the mages interested in politics, went into advisory and leadership classes. A lot of wizards aspired to be the next Merlin.
And then there was a fourth class no one counted. They were the unfortunate mages who couldn’t light a fire with a match, because magic was hereditary, not something someone learned purely by study. If they flunked out bad enough, they were rendered Talentless—a shame on their family that usually resulted in magicians getting disowned.
If they were merely mediocre but able to control their gifts, they found jobs within the mortal community.
“I’ll help you practice though,” Ben offered, appearing contrite. “Anytime. Really.”
“Thanks. Anyway, I’m off to bed.” Holly moved ahead of us. I didn’t know whether it was because she was really that tired or because she wanted to get away from Ben.
“Are you going to stay up and eat with us, Skylar?” Ben asked.
“Nah, I’m gonna go after Holly and follow her example. I’ll see you guys this evening for dinner.”
We walked together for a while longer before splitting ways at the next path. A long, hot bath and fresh sheets were calling my name. I hadn’t made it more than a dozen steps down the residential street before my phone rang, Holly’s name on the screen.
“Let me guess. You forgot your key, so now you’re locked out. I’m almost there—”
“No. You need to come quick. Like right now. Someone was in our place and your room.”
* * *
Holly met me at the door and wouldn’t let me inside when I arrived. Looking past her, I didn’t notice anything unusual or out of place in our living room.
“What happened? What’s up with my room?”
“We can’t go up there. I already called campus security, and they said to stay outside.”
“But it’s my room.” My stomach twisted into a lump of hard knots. “Holly, what’s wrong with my room?”
“Just stay here with me until someone comes, please. Actually”—she grabbed her parasol in one hand and dragged me outside with the other—“I’ll feel better waiting out here.”
I stood beneath the parasol with her, shivering without understanding why. The weight of her arm around my shoulders didn’t alleviate the gnawing pressure in my chest.
A scrawny mage arrived five minutes later, clothed in a black campus security uniform and holding a staff in one hand. “One of you report a break-in?”
Holly nodded. “I did.”
He asked a battery of questions while we stood on the green lawn, wanting to know if the building had been locked and if anyone else had a key. We shook our heads. Holly told him it had been locked still when she arrived.
“All right, I’ll take a look. Wait here, please.”
Each minute that crawled by worsened my anxiety. Holly continued to remain silent about my room.
Our neighbors stepped onto their porch and glanced over at us. We shared a wall with a trio of grad student alchemists.
“Hey, Sky! Everything okay?”
“Break-in. You guys didn’t hear anything, did you?”
“No, nothing. Sorry.”
The campus police officer returned. His face had gone chalk-white. “I’m going to call Sentinel Bostwick.”
“What? Why? Dammit, what is so bad?”
The cop unclipped his radio and pressed the button. “Sentinel Bostwick, this is Jensen. We have an incident at building eleven of the Phoenix Townhomes, home of—”
“I know who lives there. We’ll be right to you,” Simon replied.
“Holly, please tell me what you saw.”
“I smelled blood, okay? That’s why I looked in your room.”
Her words and Officer Jenson’s pasty face painted all sorts of gruesome pictures in my mind. I imagined a murder and wondered who the victim might be. A chilling thought crossed my mind, so I whipped out my phone and texted Gabriel.
Are you okay? Where are you?
Simon and Sebastian arrived by magic, stepping from a portal that shimmered into existence on the lawn. They strode past us, spoke with Officer Jensen a moment in hushed voices, and then they headed inside.
On top of administering summer entrance exams for soon-to-be freshmen students, Simon and Sebastian also each took on a class as faculty at the college. Simon was the wizard of their sentinel pair, Sebastian a werewolf he treated as his equal.
Gabriel still hadn’t replied. My hands started to shake, and my throat tightened. Prickling heat crawled up my neck, followed by a cold wave of panic and terror. That had to be why no one would say anything to me.
“Skylar? You’re trembling.”
“I…” Couldn’t breathe. Thinking that Gabriel might be dead up there in my room made me want to puke and scream.
“C’mon, let’s go sit down over—”
The phone chirped an alert as Gabriel’s response flashed across the screen. Relief turned my knees to jelly, and Holly caught me as I sagged.
In bed. Where else would I be? Is everything okay?
Someone broke into my place. Sebastian and Simon are investigating.
Shit. You want me there?
No. Just stay. Get some sleep. I’ll tell you later.
Are you sure?
I’m sure. I’ll catch you up later.
“Was that Gabriel you were texting?”
“Y
eah. I had to make sure he was all right. That he wasn’t… That he hadn’t been hurt.”
My friend’s face blanched with understanding, and she hugged me tight. “Oh sweetie, God, no. I would have said something if he’d been involved. I swear. It’s just… it’s really gross, Sky. I don’t even know how to tell you.”
We remained outside, huddled together while Officer Jensen stood on the threshold of the building. Minutes later, Simon stepped onto the porch with Sebastian.
“Please. I need to know what’s wrong.”
Simon frowned at me. “I’m not sure that’s a wise idea.”
His partner raised a brow and crossed both beefy arms across his broad chest. “She’s not a child, man. You diffused it, so that means it’s safe for her to go up and look. Let her see it so she can know how serious this shit is.”
Simon released a held breath. “All right. Follow us.”
The two sentinels led us inside. The sense of wrong hit me all at once—an alien feeling that didn’t belong in our home. At the top of the stairs, we reached my bedroom door, which stood open to reveal the chaos inside.
I stepped beyond the threshold to find ripped sheets, shattered knickknacks, and blood, so much blood on the walls drawn in a great pattern of runes and destabilized magic. The spell was no longer active, but the malignance of it lingered like a stale odor.
In the very center of the rune, a sprite had been pinned to the wall with a dagger through its tiny chest. The creature had died screaming. Blood dribbled from the corner of its mouth.
“No,” I breathed, surging forward, only for Sebastian to grab me around the waist and draw me back.
“It’s too late to help it, Skylar.”
“But why?” The words left me in a ragged sob. “They’re innocent.”
Simon rubbed his face with one hand. “The sprite was… the central component of a trap for you. An effigy.”
Holly’s eyes flew open wide. “I thought so. But that’s black magic.”
The grim expression on Simon’s face didn’t fade. “It is.”
I blinked at them through a haze of stinging tears. “I don’t get it. What’s an effigy?”
“A puppet crafted by a dark wizard meant to represent their victim. Mercifully, Miss Burke is a vampire and a mage, and this was keyed to your kind specifically. Had a fae entered this room before I disarmed the curse, the death of this little one would have been displaced to them.”
“Wait, you mean if I had gone in my room, I would have died?”
Sebastian’s low growl raised the hairs on my nape. “Your heart might have exploded. Or maybe it would have just stopped beating altogether.”
4
Sleep is For the Weak
A team of mages cleansed the town house alongside Simon while Sebastian and more shifters ran a perimeter, following invisible scent trails and searching for clues.
I crashed on our neighbors’ couch, haunted at first by the memory of the little fae, but too fatigued to remain awake after one of them offered me a little sleeping draught. The potion put me out like a light.
By dinner time, our home was finally ours again.
Since the sentinel crew had taken all the evidence they needed, Simon stayed behind with Pilar to help restore my possessions to normal with Rewind glamours and Reconstruction spells.
Then Simon installed a twenty-four-hour guard to keep watch on our place. Our neighbors went on the alert, and campus security took all kinds of extra safety measures.
I didn’t make arrangements with Gabriel to see my charge until Friday afternoon, my body too fatigued by the upside-down sleep schedule and hours of exercise. In the months since I’d become her faerie godmother-in-training, Sharon’s life had improved by leaps and bounds.
She had an amazing record deal, a serious relationship with her boyfriend, and her grades were flawless. Sometimes I wondered if mortals like her realized their lives had been blessed by the fae.
They weren’t supposed to know, but some had to have connected the dots and made a guess.
“When I called you a trouble magnet last year, I didn’t mean for you to take it to the next level this semester, Sky,” Gabriel said the moment I slipped into his car, a dinged-up blue Chrysler 300 instead of the powerful truck from last year.
I grimaced. “I didn’t do anything.”
A quiet moment passed, the weight of his gaze heavy during the silence. “I know. It’s just… If I knew who the fuck did it, I’d tear them to pieces myself. Simon says it wasn’t executed well. Sloppy and rushed. Possibly a student trying to destabilize their soul for lichdom.”
I shivered. Becoming a lich was a big deal, basically turning an everyday magician into an undying warlock who fed on the souls of the living. “I know we defeated Carmilla last year, but do you think this could be the Hidden Court?”
“It’s definitely the Hidden Court, or at least someone trying to get in good with them. My guess is that you made yourself a target for your role in Carmilla’s death.”
“Great. Then why aren’t they targeting you and Rodrigo? Or Simon and Sebastian for that matter?”
“You found her and led us there. Besides, her beef was with you specifically, right?”
“Yeah, I guess. With my family and the Blackwoods.”
Gabriel’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. “And since the Blackwoods are gone, that just leaves y’all.”
My friend Dedrik had been the last of his family, but another student murdered him last year to become a darkling.
“Looks like.” I reached over and smoothed my hand over his white knuckles. “It’s going to be okay. They’ll find whoever did it. You said Simon and Sebastian are the best in the region, right?”
He nodded. “If I wasn’t set on being your sentinel after school, I’d try to intern under Sebastian next year. We had spoken about it before, when I was still with Monica. They’re good. I mean… they’ve taken down entire nosferatu hives, necromancers, all kinds of dark covens.”
His sacrifice didn’t lighten my spirits. He was turning down an amazing opportunity for me? “Then finding a couple assholes at PNRU should be easy.”
I leaned in close enough to kiss his cheek, but he turned his head at the last minute and caught my mouth, drawing it out until my mind wandered to his spacious back seat and the privacy of the tinted windows. Gabriel pulled back first.
“All right, enough bad stuff. Let’s go see Sharon.” He started the car and pulled out from the garage. “We heading to the college, her place, or somewhere else?”
“Her place right now. This is just a check-in.”
“Where to after that?”
“Um….” He had me with that one.
He grinned. “You’re not a freshie anymore with a curfew, remember? You can stay out all weekend if you want. Just gotta work it out with your sentinel. And since I happen to be your sentinel...”
“Lucky me.”
“Yup.”
“I really don’t know. I’ve been so focused on what I’m gonna do if Sharon is having any issues that I didn’t consider anything else.”
“You worried about something? I thought the report from the summer watch fae was good.”
“It was, but some of the others have been having trouble with their charges this week.”
“What kinda trouble?”
I shrugged. “General assholery, I guess. Radha said her charge smoked a joint to wind down after a deployment, and she had to pull all kinds of magical charms out of her hat for him to pass his military piss test.”
“Sounds like a good hobby to start when you’re stressed.” When I rolled my eyes at him, he added, “If you’re not up for regular drug testing, that is.”
“Exactly. Anyway, he thinks he got super lucky and the lab did something wrong or fumbled the tests. He’s supposed to grow up to be some amazing admiral one day.”
“But not if he’s smoking pot and risking his career.”
“Yeah.”
; “I’m sure Sharon is fine.”
About fifteen minutes later, we reached her house, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw Sharon sprawled across her bed with a textbook. Her aura glowed a vibrant shade of pink and gold. Months of nurturing her had truly blossomed over the summer.
The red thread of fate that had connected her and Oliver, her boyfriend, wasn’t so much a line as it was a scarlet ribbon now. Complete and absolute devotion. He’d definitely propose soon. They’d be one of those young couples who married at nineteen then saw their seventieth anniversary together surrounded by grandchildren.
How the hell had I done that?
Not much had changed in her room over the summer, but after Radha’s misfortune, I made sure to take a good look around. There weren’t any drugs stashed in the bedroom, and last time she’d gone out with friends, she’d even declined alcohol.
“This is going to be an amazing year.” I let that thought slip into her mind before I stepped from her room. Gabriel waited outside for me.
“Everything good?” he asked.
“Yup. She’s studying, and she’s in love.”
“Awesome. So, that means your obligations are met, right?”
“They are. Which means, if my sentinel is willing, that it’s time to go have fun.”
A wide grin spread across his face. “There’s a new superhero flick out, and I know the dude who works the ticket booth at the Mod. Balcony seats at a five-finger discount.”
I swatted him. “You’re awful. Still, sounds like fun. Let’s do it.”
The Scary Godmother: The Paranormal University Files: Skylar, Year 2 Page 3