A Study In Shifters

by Majanka Verstraete

  Reyna was Elise’s sister, so obviously she’d come to Elise’s room often. On one such occasion, she may have stumbled upon Aria hiding her vials of snake venom. Or maybe Elise had confided in her sister about her roommate’s strange disease.

  Reyna had been dating Roan, but then he dumped her. Maybe that was what inspired her to get revenge on jaguars. Maybe her hatred for our clan was born in that moment. She hated him enough to steal his claws, basically maiming him, something you would only do to a person you despised.

  It reminded me of the saying they had about a woman scorned…

  My jaguar was still clawing at the door of her cell with a determination I’d never seen in her before. It seemed as if, the more I discovered, the angrier she became, the more dead set on getting out of her cage.

  I can’t let you out.

  I wasn’t even sure if she heard me anymore. She kept on clawing, ripping against the wood, occasionally throwing herself against the door, making it creak and bend. How long would it be before she could tear down the door and make it out?

  From the other side of the door, I attached another wooden beam to it, which would hopefully keep her locked up a little longer.

  Don’t, please, don’t, I need to focus right now, I need to think… If I can’t think, if I’m too emotional, then I’ll never be able to save Roan!

  I got up from my seat and walked back toward the hallway. It was completely deserted. Rays of moonlight slithered in from the windows, but everyone had holed themselves up in their bedrooms, probably too afraid to be out even though it was barely past nine. Across Elise and Aria’s bedroom door hung a yellow police tape that separated it from the rest of the world. The rest of the world was innocent and covered in light, and that room seemed like a cursed, rotten place, with its previous two inhabitants both dead.

  Someone had left flowers at the door.

  I crept past that door and to my own room, growing more and more convinced that Reyna Felton had indeed killed her sister. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. It was the only solution that connected all the strange dots of this case neatly, tying them all together to form a completed puzzle.

  As I pushed the door open to my room, I opened my mouth to tell Indra about my discovery…

  Only to find the room ransacked, and Indra gone.

  Everything in the room was a mess, as if a tornado had blown right through the room and left devastation in its wake. My clothes were thrown out all over the bed. Drawers had been ripped from closets, chairs were turned upside down, even the bedsheets had been torn off.

  “Indra!” I called out for her, twisting around so I could take in the entire room, check to make sure she wasn’t lying on the ground somewhere.

  No Indra, but her cell phone was on the floor, and someone asked, “Hello? Hello?” from the other end of the line.

  Someone had sprung on her while she was calling the Conclave, and I hadn’t been there to protect her. I’d been just down the hallway, and yet I hadn’t heard anything, no commotion at all.

  I picked up the phone. “I’m Marisol Holmes,” I said. “Indra is missing and…”

  As I spoke those words, two sharp fangs pierced my neck, and an arm closed around my chest, holding me close.

  Before I had time to register what was going on, I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  I woke up tied to a chair. The chains were so tight they cut off my blood flow and would probably leave bruises. The chair was hard, wood pressing against my back.

  Groggy, I tried to lift my head and failed. It dropped forward again, my muscles refusing to cooperate.

  “I’m sorry. You’ll be out of it for a while,” a voice I vaguely recognized said. “The venom of a cobra is quite potent.”

  Cobra? Cobalt snake. She meant cobalt snake, right?

  I struggled to open my eyes even though every instinct told me to keep them shut, that I should sleep, that I needed more sleep.

  You need to open your eyes, Marisol, I told myself.

  “So, you had it all figured out, right?” Someone put their hands on my chair and leaned over me—I was still too out of it to see who, but they cast a shadow over me.

  “Where…am I?” My tongue was thick and swollen, as uncooperative as the rest of my body.

  “That’s your first question?” The voice cackled. “You can ask anything in the world, and your first question is where you are. And they call you a genius.” A moment of silence. “Well, you’re in the dungeons below Waynard Academy. Don’t be surprised about it—if you’d been going to this school for years, you might have found the secret entrance one day, but your friend Wyatt probably left it out during his grand tour.”

  Secret entrance? Dungeons?

  “You see, the beauty of these dungeons,” the voice continued, “is that they’re hidden. No ordinary staircase to reach them, oh no. We’re in the basement behind the basement, in the old dungeons where they locked people up back in the Dark Ages. The only entrance is through the secret door in the library, which you, conveniently, didn’t find. Want a hint?”

  I narrowed my eyes to make out who the shadow belonged to and strained my ears to recognize the voice. As her shape came into view, I recognized her.

  Reyna Felton. Leopard. Sister murderer.

  She’d kidnapped me and probably Indra, too. Indra. Where was she?

  The thought of Indra pushed a new panic forward in my chest. Was she hurt? Was she even still alive?

  I tried to focus on the room, but everything was still spinning. Was Indra here, too? I had to focus, had to find out if she was here with me, or if I was alone.

  An alternative even-worse scenario popped into my mind. What if Reyna had used the third bottle of the cobalt snake venom on Indra? What if Indra was dead?

  My palms grew sweaty, and my heart just about jumped out of my chest. My jaguar pounded her paws against the door, desperately wanting to be let out.

  “You had to take out a book in the second-to-last row, pull it back, and the entrance would open. A really obscure book, Treatise of the Dominion of Sin and Grace by John Owen, printed in 1739, to be exact. You probably would never have found it,” Reyna said. “Pretty sure the principal doesn’t even know about it. After all, the library dates back from before the school became a school, when it was still in private hands. Did you know that? I’m betting you didn’t.”

  My focus became sharper. I could make out Reyna now as she stood casually in front of me, occasionally pacing left to right. Indra was nowhere to be seen, though, at least not as far as I could tell. I couldn’t look behind me, but I felt a draft, so I knew I wasn’t placed against a wall.

  I had chains around my ankles, arms, and neck, restricting my movement severely.

  “People think you’re such a genius, but to me, you seem rather mediocre.” Reyna crinkled her nose. “Maybe even bordering on stupid.”

  “What…” I struggled to get the words out, my tongue still partly paralyzed. “What do you want?”

  “Want?” Reyna chortled again. She put her hands on both sides of my chair and leaned forward, her face inches away from mine.

  “What I want, stupid half-blood, is to rip your throat out.”

  She snapped at me with her teeth, then laughed out loud when I flinched back.

  “But I can’t. Not yet, at least. So, while you’re still alive and here to entertain me, answer this. Did you figure it out before I took you? That I was the one? That I killed them?”

  “Yes.” Each word was torture, but I forced myself to choke them out anyway. “Clever with the venom.”

  Reyna smirked, filled with pride for her own sadistic accomplishments. “I am clever, thank you. Smarter than you are, in any case. Or did you also figure out why? Why my sister had to die? Why that stupid snake bitch had to die? Why Roan Black had to suffer?” With each sentence, she started gloating more and more, and her eyes sparkled in insane delight.

  Suffer. She s
aid he suffered, not died.

  My heart leapt in my chest, relief washing over me. Roan was alive. He had to be still alive.

  “No,” I admitted. “But I have a few ideas. Were you jealous?”

  “Jealous?” Reyna huffed. “Maybe a little.” As my focus became sharper, I noticed she was holding a needle filled with an almost transparent liquid.

  The cobalt snake venom.

  “Let’s start with Roan. Before I met him, I couldn’t care less about politics or about one clan against the other,” Reyna said. “That was Elise’s territory. She was obsessed with how shifters were losing strength over the years, with how we were drifting apart, yada, yada, yada. She wanted all shifters to be united under one common, strong ruler, and obviously, jaguars just weren’t cut out for that type of work.” She sneered at me, obviously enjoying her moment in the spotlight, how she could lay out her master plan like a supervillain in a Disney movie.

  I doubted that, like in cartoon movies, a hero would barge in to save the day and rescue me… Unless Indra had managed to escape somehow. Not seeing her here, and with Reyna still holding the cobalt snake venom, that gave me some hope.

  My jaguar roared again, throwing her full weight against the door now. If only I could shift…

  I had no choice. I was so afraid of my instincts, so worried that my jaguar’s instincts hadn’t picked up on Mannix’ betrayal, that I had locked her up. I was so disconnected from her that every time she tried to get out, I had closed the door again. Because I felt guilty. Because I felt weak. Because I felt as if I didn’t deserve her.

  But she was there for me, she’d been there all along. The way she was tearing up that door, not giving up, continuing to fight.

  “But Roan betrayed me, big-time. He broke up with me, and not even a day later, I saw him hanging out with Aria Forbes. When I confronted him, he kept telling me they were just friends, that I was too jealous and controlling, and she was just a nice person, that was all.” Reyna shook her head as if she couldn’t believe the indignation. “Not only did that hideous bitch steal my sister right from under my nose, she also stole him. When I found out, I wanted nothing more than to hurt him, and her. That’s when the plan formed in my mind. The plan that I should do something about it…” She smirked evilly.

  “With my sister being so vocal about jaguar politics, I figured what better way than to have her get killed by a jaguar? That’s why I declawed Roan after I kidnapped him.” She relished in the memory. “You should’ve heard him scream when I did that. I thought he was going to die right there and then.” The thought made her smile, and her smile made me want to slap her.

  I struggled against the chains that held me in place, panic rising in my chest, but they didn’t even budge an inch.

  My jaguar roared and attacked the door again. If only she could bring the door down in time, if only I found a way to let her back in…

  “Anyway, I fastened the claws onto a leather glove, and made sure they were firmly locked. However, I had a backup plan, because I knew those gloves alone wouldn’t be enough to kill Elise. Or if they did, she would still have time to shift and try to attack me, and I couldn’t have that. Couldn’t risk that she might survive. So, I stole venom from Aria. Seemed right, considering she’d stolen everything from me.”

  “So, you were jealous,” I concluded. “And because you were jealous, Elise and Aria had to die.”

  “Well…” Reyna shrugged. “If Elise hadn’t been so adamant that Aria hadn’t done anything wrong by stealing my boyfriend right from under my nose, and my sister, too, then she might have still been alive. Elise signed her own death warrant, really.”

  “One thing I don’t understand, though,” I said, trying to buy some time by getting her to talk and spill the beans on what she had planned. “Why a jaguar? I understand you wanted to get revenge on Roan, but by picking jaguar claws, you hit awfully close to home, don’t you think? Someone might’ve thought those were leopard claws.” I made sure my voice was laced with sarcasm as I spoke. “You could’ve just killed Roan with the venom, too.”

  “True.” A sly smile crept across Reyna’s lips. “But I picked jaguars because my friend, the one who helped me come up with this plan and who showed me the secret entrance to this dungeon, wanted me to. You see…” She leaned closer, whispering in my ear. “He has a score to settle, too. And he asked me to make it look like a jaguar killing for one specific reason…”

  She stepped back and licked her lips, beaming as she looked at me.

  “To bring you here.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  A door opened from behind Reyna and in stepped the one person I had dreaded seeing again since the day I last saw him.

  Mannix.

  Bile rose in my mouth, and I wanted to throw up, while my heart seemed to shrink in my chest. My jaguar grew even more furious. She clawed against the door again, more agitated than ever, roaring and growling.

  Despite my initial thoughts, and even when I figured out Reyna Felton was behind the murders, I still hadn’t expected him to be here. From all the things I’d expected, even the worst scenario—him being behind the killings—I hadn’t suspected he would be working with Reyna Felton.

  That he would be responsible for two, potentially three, people getting killed.

  No wonder he could give me those hints—he’d orchestrated this whole thing himself.

  “Hello, Marisol,” Mannix said as he strolled into the room. Wearing his trademark black clothes, he looked almost exactly the same as the day I’d last spoken to him. Yet, everything about how I felt toward him had changed. He no longer held that allure, that dangerous edge that kept pulling me in. I was no longer the weak, foolish girl who would just let him go, even after he’d committed murder.

  Maybe my feelings about him weren’t the only thing that had changed. Maybe I had changed too. Maybe I’d become stronger.

  I held my head high and met his gaze. When I stared at him, none of the emotions I’d once felt returned. No butterflies, no tumbling heart, nothing. I felt strangely hollow, disappointed rather than angry, and I knew that, no matter what, I would never fall for his tricks again.

  I balled my hands into fists and forced myself not to show fear. I wouldn’t back down, no matter what.

  The last time, I’d let him go because I was broken. Because I thought I was weak and because I felt guilty over what happened.

  And while I had some fault in what happened to Amaranth… The main person responsible was standing right in front of me. Mannix.

  I’d taken all the blame and shoved it right onto my own shoulders, but he deserved some of it too, maybe even most of it.

  I’d been stupid and naïve, but he had used me for his own gain. He’d killed my cousin.

  The door locked up my jaguar shook in its hinges, trembling as she threw her weight against it.

  “It’s nice to see you again.”

  “Wish I could say the same, but it’s not,” I spat at him.

  “Now, now.” He smiled patiently, the way one would at a disobedient child. “Aren’t you the least bit happy to see me? After all, I set this up all for you.”

  He walked closer toward me, and I wished I could back away, chair and all, but it was rooted firmly to the floor. When he leaned closer, his breath touched my face, and goose bumps ran down my spine. I was afraid of him. Afraid of what he could do now he’d turned out to be so much worse than I’d ever thought possible.

  “I felt so bad when I heard the Conclave kicked you out. In fact, I started to hate them for it. Someone with your talents…” He grabbed a strand of my hair and twisted it around his finger softly, almost absentmindedly.

  “They should’ve been honored to have someone with your skills in their midst. They didn’t appreciate what they had. None of them did. So, I wanted to force them to bring you back on, give you a case worthy of your talents. That’s when I reached out to Reyna.” He looked at her, smiling. “Seems like we have some of the same int
erests.”

  “Murdering people, you mean?” I snapped, struggling to control myself while my jaguar’s attacks on my mind door grew even worse. She lashed out in fury now, her anger coiling into a tornado of resentment, a whirlwind out for revenge.

  “No, I don’t care much for murder,” he replied. “Only when it’s necessary. But Reyna’s endeavors helped to bring you here, and that was what I was interested in. When you crack this case, your reputation will be salvaged. More so, it will be solidified. The Conclave will never question your skills as a detective again. That is, if you make it out of here alive. I’m thinking Reyna might have other plans in that regard.”

  Reyna glared at me evilly and playfully shook the injection needle from left to right. “Quite.”

  I couldn’t look at her anymore. My gaze kept being pulled back to Mannix. What had I ever seen in him? The dark allure… He was still alluring, I couldn’t deny it, but part of me hated him, too. A lot. Even more now I discovered he’d orchestrated this whole thing…

  What had I ever seen in him? Trusting him, falling for him, had been the gravest mistake of my life, and I would pay for it every day. But what was even more stupid than trusting him once was that he’d managed to fool me twice. Because despite the cryptic notes, despite his messages, I hadn’t wanted to believe the truth that was in retrospect, plain as day. I hadn’t wanted to believe that he, Mannix, the person I’d once loved, was behind all of this.

  “You manipulated her into murdering her friends,” I said, looking straight at Mannix. “Just so you could get me here.”

  “Hey. Half-blood.” Reyna slapped me across the face so hard my head spun. I tasted blood in my mouth, and my lip had cracked open. “I’m here, too, you know. Don’t talk about me like I’m not here. And no, that wasn’t the whole reason, of course.” She smirked, enjoying her moment of power. “We want to bring down the entire jaguar clan. Too long you weaklings have been in power. Too long have we leopards had to wait in the shadows. And now, to put a half-blood on the shifter throne?”