by Eric Nylund
Dallas’s eyes widened at this, and her hands curled into fists. “That Xanax-popping harlot? You can’t be serious.”
“We do need someone,” Lucia told her. “And she is capable of having fun. . ”
Dallas stifled a squeak of rage.
Outside the sun grew brighter, and the intense light made the metal walls ping as they heated and expanded.
Henry took a step away from both women.
It had been a mistake to collect all three Fates in one location-explosive, primer, and detonator all in one neat package.
Dallas sighed, however, and hung her head. “Very well. I’ll do it.”
“Excellent,” Lucia purred. “Do I have a second to the motion for Henry to mentor Eliot, and Dallas to bring along Fiona?”
“I will second,” Gilbert said.
Lucia looked surprised that her recently estranged lover would so readily agree to her suggestion.
Henry worried that he had overplayed their hand. .
Lucia nonetheless continued: “Shall we put it to a vote?”
“Wait,” Kino said, his dark, ever-skeptical eyes taking them all in. “Only with honey will you bribe the children? There is a more potent method to convince them our ways are best. With fear.”
Aaron stood, color flushing his already ruddy cheeks.
Cornelius made little calming-down motions with his hands. “Let us hear what he has to say.”
Aaron nodded and sank back down.
Kino smiled. “Show them the benefit of the League, yes, I agree. But also show them the opposite side of the coin: the disadvantages of the other family.”
Audrey nodded, understanding. “You want to scare the hell out of them,” she said. “Literally. Perhaps. .” Her features hardened. “But only scare them, Kino.”
The two stared at each other a moment, and then Kino blinked and gave a tiny bow. “Of course.”
“And who better to do this,” Lucia asked, “but the Lord of the Dead and Guardian of the Gateway to Hell?”
A chill spread down Henry’s spine. Indeed, Lucia and Kino had schemes of their own hatching.
But there were worse alternatives to so influencing young Eliot and Fiona-ones no one here spoke of-yet. If the Infernals brought them over to their side. . the League had signed Warrants of Death for both children.
The bright sunlight faded. Iron gray clouds covered the sky.
This was a possibility Henry would do anything to avoid, or at least delay its inevitability for as long as he could.
8. TOUR
Fiona waited outside in the courtyard. She welcomed the sunlight on her skin after being cooped up for so long. The classroom in Bristlecone Hall had felt like a tomb.
Without crossing into its shade, she examined the tree in the yard. It was a bristlecone pine with a silver trunk and skeletal arms that only occasionally sprouted a pine needle. This species could live for thousands of years, like her family.
Was she Immortal as well? Fiona couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to be 16 years old, let alone 116. . or 1,600.
The other freshman teams stood together in loose cliques across the courtyard: Green Dragon, Black Wolf, White Knight, Soaring Eagle, and others. They talked and stole glances at each other.
Sixteen teams. Eight students in each yielded a total of 128 in their freshman class… of which a quarter, thirty-two of them, would fail.
Fiona had a bad feeling about this. Why couldn’t school just be about reading and learning? Why was it so cutthroat?
She eyed that Jezebel girl, an Infernal-and so did almost every boy. They clustered around her, all smiling and flirting and wanting to know her better.
She did look a little like Julie Marks, but this girl was taller and older. Maybe Julie had had an older sister who’d crawled out of Hell.
And why was she getting all the attention? Because she was pretty. Beyond pretty, really: Jezebel had a mystical look, like she had just stepped out of a masterwork oil painting, luminous and perfect.
Fiona smoothed her skirt and jacket, thankful for the school uniforms. If she’d had to wear Cee’s homemade clothes, the social chasm between her and the rest of these girls would have been light-years wide.
That may have been the most unfair thing of all. Fiona was a goddess, for crying out loud, and yet somehow she still managed to look less than ordinary.
Eliot shuffled closer to her. “What kind of mascot is a scarab?” he asked.
She tore her gaze away from Jezebel. “The Egyptian pharaohs used scarabs as symbols of eternal life.”[9]
Fiona was about to engage Eliot in debate over hieroglyphics (her knowledge was rudimentary, but Eliot’s was nonexistent) when Robert Farmington emerged from the restrooms, cleaned up from the scuffle to get that last token.
She brightened as he walked toward her.
He looked like he owned the entire school. That was so Robert’s style.
But he also looked out of place in a Paxington school uniform-like someone dressed for Halloween. She half expected to see his motorcycle parked in the corridors.
Fiona didn’t have a clue what Robert was doing here, but she didn’t care.
She moved to meet him, and started to reach out and hug him, but that felt wrong in front of all these people. . and besides, Robert made no such move toward her, stopping a short distance away.
“You didn’t call after our vacation,” she whispered. “Was there trouble?”
Robert looked away. “Some,” he said. “After I got kicked out of the League, I had to lie low for a while. Mr. Mimes says I can’t go back to work for him. . so he got me in here. Kind of a going-away present.”
“You’re on your own?”
“Yeah,” Robert said. “I’ve always been on my own. It’s no big deal.”
Robert spotted Eliot and waved. His gaze then fell upon Jezebel and darkened.
Fiona felt something wrong-very wrong-between her and Robert. The week they’d spent on a tropical island this summer was a distant dream. She wanted to take his hand, give it a reassuring squeeze, but the air between them chilled. . and something inside her protectively curled away from him.
An older boy strode her way. It was the student she and Eliot had met before-the one who hadn’t helped them find Paxington. His chiseled Italian features broke into a smile as he saw her. “I’m glad you passed the entrance and placement exams,” the boy said. “I had a feeling you and your brother would.”
Then to the rest of the group, the older boy said in a commanding voice, “I will be your guide today, Team Scarab. I am Dante of the family Scalagari. Please follow me.”
Dante turned and they fell in behind him: Jeremy and Sarah Covington introducing themselves to the Scalagari boy, Jezebel parting with her entourage, Mitch Stephenson, and Robert, herself, and Eliot. . followed at last by Amanda Lane.
“Scalagari is an old family,” Robert whispered to Fiona and Eliot. “They weave magic. Usually the best-dressed guys in the place.”
“What about the Covington clan?” Eliot asked.
“They’re conjurers,” Robert said. “Nine times out of ten, troublemakers to boot. I wouldn’t waste time worrying about them, though. You’ve got bigger problems on your team.”
He had to mean Jezebel.
Fiona wanted to ask Robert what exactly a conjurer was, but Dante turned, walking backwards, and said, “Paxington was founded in 329 C.E. in Rome by Emperor Constantine. He wanted to study Jewish and Pagan influences on Christianity. Called Curia Deus Pax, or ‘the Court of God’s Peace,’ many believed its true purpose was to secretly eradiate those influences.”[10]
Sarah Covington lagged behind and turned to Robert (completely ignoring Fiona and Eliot). “I’m Sarah,” she said, and smiled so her freckled cheeks dimpled. She held out her hand.
Robert took her hand, clasping in a way that was more than a handshake. . and only a little less than an embrace.
“The pleasure is mine,” he said.
Fiona felt her blood heat.
“A most impressive scuffle to get our token.”
“I do my best,” Robert replied.
“Then you’ll be an admirable addition to Team Scarab,” Sarah said. “I look forward to working together.”
Sarah maneuvered past them toward the end of their group, all the pleasantness draining from her features as she approached Amanda Lane.
Amanda tried to move away, but Sarah sidled up next to her.
Their group crossed a quadrangle the size of football field. Its flagstones were quartz with sparkling veins of amethyst and topaz. It was like walking on rainbows.
“I don’t recall inviting you onto the team,” Sarah told Amanda.
Amanda didn’t make eye contact. Her shoulders hunched, and her head lowered as if she were shrinking. “I. .,” she started. “I was just there, and your cousin gave me a token. . ”
Fiona wanted to tell Sarah to back off. Amanda hadn’t done anything wrong. They were supposed to be on the same side. But she didn’t know how to confront Sarah without incurring her anger as well.
Before she could puzzle out the social complexities, Mitch broke ranks and dropped back, walking along the other side of Amanda.
“Did I hear you correctly, Miss Lane?” he asked. “You actually have a scholarship from the League? The League of Immortals?”
Sarah looked over at Amanda disbelievingly.
“It’s nothing,” Amanda said, trying but failing to keep the hair out of her face.
Fiona was astonished that Mitch had overheard that. More astonished that Amanda was talking about the League in public. Didn’t their rules apply to her, too?
“I don’t believe Clan Covington has ever received such a scholarship,” Mitch said. “Having the blessing of the League, well, that practically makes her a goddess, don’t you think?”
Amanda looked up and tried to force a smile on her face.
“Hardly,” Sarah said with a snort. She left them, catching up to Jeremy at the head of their group.
Fiona went back to Mitch. “Thanks,” she whispered.
“Not a problem.” Mitch flashed his easy, reassuring smile. “We’re a team, right?”
Before Fiona could tell him that’s exactly what she had been thinking, Dante pointed to the building on the right: a domed structure that looked like pictures she had seen of the Temple on the Mount in Jerusalem. This building, however, had a pair of red stone pyramids flanking either side.
“Our main library, the House of Wisdom,” Dante told them. “It contains the collection preserved from the Library at Alexandria as well as digitized versions of nearly every book in existence.”
Fiona was drawn to the building. So many things she didn’t know. . she could probably spend the rest of her life happily reading in there.
Dante, however, veered away and led them through rose gardens in full bloom.
Fiona inhaled and felt drunk with the overwhelming perfume of flowers.
“Constantine’s Court of God’s Peace,” Dante continued, “was infiltrated by Immortals and secretly used to preserve the ancient Pagan ways. The League of Immortals, Infernals, and mortal magical families declared the Court a neutral asset, and since then, the Court continued on in various incarnations. In 1642, it officially became Paxington University in Oxford, England. And at the beginning of the twentieth century, for tax considerations, the campus was finally moved to San Francisco.”
Jeremy brazenly plucked an heirloom rose and presented it to Jezebel.
She turned her back on him, ignoring the gesture.
Dante led their group out of the garden.
Jeremy sighed and tossed the flower away.
That was destruction of school property. How could a person like Jeremy effortlessly break all the rules-while Fiona would have been caught just thinking about it?
They marched into a grove of towering black oaks, redwood, silver birches, shimmering aspens, and willows. A cobblestone path meandered and branched through this peculiar forest.
“Here,” Dante said, and waved at the trees, “is the Grove Primeval. The Paxington Arboreal Society imported famous trees from all over the world, many on the verge of being cut down, and replanted them here for safekeeping.” He nodded at a few-“the Hangman of London, the Lady in Mourning, Walking Still Spirit”-and then he moved on.
Ahead Fiona saw a building that looked like the Colosseum in Rome, but a tad smaller, and square instead of oval.
Dante continued his lecture “The Paxington campus appears to the outside world as a prestigious but ordinary private high school. In reality, however, it is where many of the next generation of the world’s magical families are trained.” He gave an appreciative nod toward Jezebel. “As well as the occasional honor of having a diabolical protégée or Immortal offspring.”
Chill bumps pebbled Fiona’s arms. Dante hadn’t looked anywhere near her when he said this, but it seemed he actually made a point of not looking her way. Did he know who she was?
She wanted him to know. She wanted all of them to know.
Just to get a fraction of the attention that Jezebel was getting. . but there were those League rules, and Fiona knew they wouldn’t take her breaking their rules lightly. But hadn’t her father said that “everything was made to be broken. . especially rules”?
She knew she was in trouble if she was even thinking about taking Louis’s advice.
“This is where you’ll have gym class,” Dante said as they approached the archway leading into the coliseum. “The Ludus Magnus.”[11]
9. LUDUS MAGNUS
Fiona peered down a long shadowy corridor that led into the Ludus Magnus. She heard distant cheers, angry shouts, and cries of pain. Part of her was afraid and wanted to run away, but part of her was curious and wanted to see.
Dante led the group into the vaulted entrance, through a passage lined with old bricks and ancient stones-even a few skulls and bones had been cemented into the mix.
They came out on a grassy field half a city block wide. In the center sat the most unusual structure Fiona had ever laid eyes on. It was a lattice of posts and crossbeams, a honeycomb of ladders, ropes, and metal poles. It looked like a crisscrossing three-dimensional web spun by an army of mechanical spiders.
In the lower part of the structure, a person could barely squeeze through, with sinuous crawlways, tunnels that angled underground, even a canal filled with roaring white water.
Higher, however, the structure was wide open and towered six stories tall with ropes dangling, rickety bridges, and wooden spans barely a handsbreadth wide-which all swayed in the breeze.
“This is the gym,” Dante said. “It is part obstacle course and part battlefield. You will learn to hate it by the end of the year. Today four sophomore volunteers will give you a demonstration.”
Eliot looked sick.
Fiona moved closer for moral support. This “gym” looked like everything her brother wasn’t good at-running, climbing, and dealing with heights.
Four students ran onto the field. They wore sweatpants and sneakers. Two wore red T-shirts; the others wore green. They ran past, giving Team Scarab a polite wave, then halted in front of the gym, eyeing one another with mischievous grins.
Dante clapped his hands. A red and a green banner unfurled at the very top of the structure.
“Winning is simple,” Dante explained. “Your team must get half their people to their own flag before the other team gets to theirs. Each team has ten minutes to accomplish this, or neither wins.”
Dante raised his arms. The sophomores tensed.
Dante dropped his hands. Both two-man teams scrambled onto the lattice and climbed.
“You can take a safer but slower route,” Dante said. “Or you can go faster, which is more dangerous.”
Fiona saw a green-team student stop climbing about a third of the way up and get onto a narrow beam. There was only a slender iron pipe alongside to help him balance.
“Aye, there be a
bit more to it than that,” Jeremy said, and pointed higher.
Two boys were thirty feet off the ground. Both clambered toward a rope swing.
The red-team boy got there first, leaped for the rope, swung around, and knocked the other boy-
— off the platform. The green-team boy twisted and turned through the air. . bounced off a ladder. . landed with a thud in the dirt.
Fiona moved toward him, but Dante stepped in front of her. “No interference,” he said. “It has to play out.”
“Is he-?” Eliot asked, unable to finish his thought.
They watched as the boy who’d fallen slowly got up, his arm hanging at an odd, clearly broken, angle.
“Apparently not,” Dante replied.
“You may use any means to get to your goal,” Dante continued. “And you can use any means to prevent your opponents from getting to their goal-short of bringing weapons onto the field.”
Fiona thought it a razor-fine distinction between getting kicked off a thirty-foot-high platform and not using weapons. Both were potentially lethal.
Meanwhile, the boy who’d knocked his opponent off swung across a wide chasm, landed, traversed across monkey bars, and then grabbed the red flag.
“Red wins,” Dante announced.
“This will be more complicated,” Jezebel remarked, “with two eight-person teams. Sixteen participants. The probability for combat will be much greater.”
There was a glint in the Infernal’s eyes, and Fiona didn’t like that one bit.
Amanda Lane, on the other hand, looked so pale now, Fiona thought she might faint.
“Some students,” Dante said without looking at any of them in particular, “leave after they see this. . or after their first match. It is not for the weak of heart.”
Fiona wondered how she would do. Lose or win? Grab a flag in glory-or fall into the dirt. . maybe breaking her neck? She imagined herself climbing and jumping and swinging through the air high off the ground. It made her blood race.
But there was more to this. Maybe Fiona wasn’t the smartest here, or the prettiest, nor did she have a clue about the social mechanics. . but this she understood. She could win here and prove to everyone that she belonged at Paxington.