Piper’s shoulders slumped. “How many people live in the cottages?”
“Two to a room,” he said. “And the lavatories separate them, so four to a bathroom.”
Piper gaped at the back of his head. She’d never shared a bathroom before, let alone with three other people. Though, it wasn’t a sacrifice she had to make just yet.
Ash took them up to the fourth floor, and down a corridor that loomed above the foyer. The mahogany banisters were opposite a row of ordinary brown doors that had numbers plated on them. At the end of the corridor, Ash stopped and opened a door. The room was a replica of the one she’d been staying in, furnished with a double bed, one desk and a white door that led to an ensuite.
Kieran stepped inside and gazed around. His lips parted and his eyes widened, as if he’d never seen private accommodations before, even if it was modest. He turned around. “This is just for me?”
“For the time being,” said Ash. “I’ll come back for you in a few hours, show you around—the mess hall opens for lunch at one o’clock.”
Kieran’s slack face disappeared from Piper’s view; Ash had shut the door.
They went back down the corridor, and reached the end when Ash admitted, “I don’t trust him.”
Piper raised her eyebrows as they climbed down a spiral staircase. “What’s not to trust? He just seems sad to me.”
“He’s had too much time alone,” said Ash.
They reached the ground floor and strode down the main stone corridor that led to outside. The path wound through thick-leafed trees whose branches covered them in shade. Stone pews were dotted along the tree trunks, and some students were sprawled out in the warmth, reading or taking notes.
Ash headed straight for the dark grey cottage whose plaque cleared the closer they got and said, ‘ENFORCERS’.
“One day and one night is more than enough time for your father to get into his ear. Maybe even recruit him.” Ash stopped at the cottage door and jimmied it open. Most of the enforcers must have been training or out on missions, because it was as quiet as an awkward moment inside. “He could’ve eaten the banyon for all we know. Symptoms can be delayed, depending on the immune system of the target.”
Piper scowled. “Don’t call him that—he’s not my father.”
Ash took her up the curved staircase to the corridors whose doors wore numbered plates. He stopped at the fifth door.
“Besides,” she said, “he wasn’t gone for that long. We should give him a chance. The same chance you gave me.”
Ash inhaled through his nostrils before he pushed the door open. Piper poked her head inside.
Two curtained double beds sat opposite, and, as if there was an invisible line dividing the room in half, two chipped study desks stood ahead, facing the doorway. If the room could be folded in two, Piper suspected that the furniture would meet in perfect symmetry.
Ash placed his hand on the small of her back and nudged her inside. Piper’s spine tickled. She noticed, when the door shut behind them, that a pale muscular body lay across the bed to the right. As she peered through the dim light, offered by a lamp shining from a bedside table, she realised that it was Desmond. He appeared to be sleeping from the steady rise and fall of his bare back.
Ash walked by her to the other bed. The drapes were tangled around bedposts, and the nightstand had a spiralling décor of rings, left from water bottles and half-empty coffee mugs. She wandered over to the nightstand as Ash dropped onto his bed.
“Don’t you ever clean?” she said as she ran his finger over the edge of the nightstand. Her fingertip came away with a smear of dust.
“Not really.” Ash shrugged and tucked his hands under his head. His gaze burned into her, following her as she strolled over to a wardrobe, the doors wide open. “Looking for anything in particular, or are you just nosy?”
Piper ran her fingers over the crisp shirts and sweaters in the wardrobe. “Nosy,” she said, and pushed the hangers to the side. Swords and rusted chipped blades were propped up against the oak backdrop of the wardrobe, and carved chests were piled at the floor. Some were woven with golden threads and coated in fabric, others were plain wooden boxes with brass locks. Ash pushed himself from the bed and joined her at the wardrobe. He ducked down and reached inside.
Piper moved out of the way as he pulled out a blackwood box, about as big as a textbook, and engraved with symbols of a language she didn’t recognise. The symbols weren’t unlike those Elsa crafted. Ash carried to the bed and flopped down on the mattress. The box rested beside him, and his fingers danced over the carvings, as though caressing them.
Piper climbed onto the bed and studied the box. “What is it?”
Ash flipped open the lock before he propped himself up on his elbows. “It was my mum’s.”
He flipped the lid open. Velvet coated the inside of the box, and a stack of crinkled photographs and papers were tucked inside. Ash plucked out the first picture and handed it to her.
“You say Colt isn’t your father,” he said. “I get that. Blood doesn’t always mean family. I know it doesn’t for me, at least.”
Piper gazed down at the photograph. It appeared to have been taken with a Polaroid camera. The backdrop was an office, one very much like Provost Vale’s. Though, the colour scheme was lighter with creams and greys, instead of beige curtains and mahogany desks. In front of the ivory desk, a family congregated; a tall man with black curls atop his head, and beneath them silver eyes glowed, fixed on the woman beside him. The woman’s hair roped down the side of her oval—shaped face in a waterfall of icy blonde, and her pink lips were curved into a smile as she gazed down at the babies sitting at her feet. Piper estimated them to be around one year old. One boy—with brown curly hair and piercing silver eyes—held the arm of a baby—girl who wore blonde hair above the glare of her metallic irises.
Ash tapped his finger against the photo. “My parents,” he said, a warmth softening his voice. But the warmth hardened into ice as he dragged his finger to the young girl; “And my sister.”
Piper glanced up at him, and saw the shadows of sorrow dance behind the veil in his eyes. “You don’t talk to your family?”
“My mum,” he said, his voice a rasped breath, “died days after this picture was taken.”
Piper’s face slackened. “Ash,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know—”
He waved her apology away. “I didn’t tell you. Besides, it’s a risk we take as enforcers. It was a long time ago.” He cleared his throat and took the photo. His eyes drifted from person to person before he said, “She was on patrol with my dad. They were partners, that’s how they met. A Nightwalker had been harassing a human girl. My parents intercepted him, and they chased him through the streets. He ran across the road, my mum followed...” He dropped the photo and met Piper’s gaze. “A drunk driver hit her. She died straight away.”
Ash smiled, but it wasn’t genuine or like any smile she’d seen on his face before. This smile, it was grim, wry—as if he knew some cosmic joke that she didn’t, and his lips held the punchline.
“An enforcer,” he said, as if to himself. “A warrior who fought Nightwalkers, Aswangs, Odiyans...killed by a mere dullborn who was too pissed to notice a stop sign.”
The smile drifted from his mouth, taken away by the breeze of grief that crept into his gaze.
Piper reached out her hand, her fingertips grazing over his knuckles. He curved his hand, their palms touching, before his fingers wrapped around hers. Piper stayed quiet; she knew from experience that he wanted to tell her this, he needed to talk about it without interruptions. One wrong word and he could shut down.
“My dad wasn’t the same after that,” he said. “He came back to the Academy for a couple of weeks. He bided his time until the dullborn was released from human custody. Then, he tracked him down.”
“Did he kill him?”
Ash’s tongue dragged along his lips. “Yes. But he never came back after that.”
; Piper shifted on the mattress, their fingers tangled together. “He abandoned you?”
“He did.” Ash nodded. “He got his revenge, then he left. We were only a year old, you know. And we’d lost both of our parents in the space of a month.”
“Where did he go?”
“Wherever his misery took him.” Ash fidgeted with a platinum ring on his pinkie. “My sister thinks he turned himself into a Nightwalker. Some daywalker do that when they suffer a great loss. Grief changes us that way. But I don’t believe it. He wouldn’t have left us to turn into one of those things.”
“You’ve mentioned Nightwalkers a few times,” she said. “What are they? What’s so bad about them?”
A loud groan came from the other bed. Piper and Ash yanked their hands away and looked over at Desmond. He pushed himself from the mattress, rubbing his fists against his eyes. Piper’s gaze followed the shirtless grump as he dragged himself over to a table tucked in the corner—stacked with sachets of coffee, teas and sugar—and flicked the kettle on.
Ash turned back around to face Piper. The wall was back up. “We must choose only one power to channel our magic into,” he said. “Nightwalkers are what happens when we don’t abide by that law of nature.”
As Desmond made himself a cup of coffee—loudly, of course—Piper placed the picture back into the box.
Ash said, “If we haven’t chosen an area of magic by the time we come of age, our power grows. It takes over us completely. Then, there are two choices. We can either halt the process of our changes by quitting all use of magic forever, or we can eat what we call the ‘black rice’.”
Piper tucked a limp strand of hair behind her ear. “Is that like banyon?”
“It’s the same in the way that they’re both cursed foods, made from dark magic,” he said. “But, no. The black rice finalises the change. What was once daywalker becomes Nightwalker—the change can’t be undone.”
“But if Nightwalker’s have greater power, and in all areas, why wouldn’t you want to be one?”
“They are a cursed version of us.” It was Desmond, his back to them as he stirred sugar cubes into his coffee. “During their transformation, they lose what makes them daywalker. They lose their souls.”
Piper’s eyes widened and darted from Desmond to Ash. Ash leaned back on his elbows and added, “They become immortal. Only soulless beings can live forever. The grey of their eyes blackens to match their hearts—they are a selfish and cruel race.”
A clang came from the table Desmond stood at. He’d tossed the spoon into an empty mug. “It’s the temptation of power that draws them in,” he said. “Every Nightwalker made that choice, knowing what they’d become.”
Piper’s brows furrowed as she looked down at the chest. The baby—girl in the picture smiled up at her. Piper had a thought; “Your sister,” she said. “Did she eat black rice?”
Ash’s lips parted as he went to speak. A knock rattled the door. All three of them snapped their gazes to the wood just as it shook again. Desmond sighed, an inconvenienced sound, as he marched to the door and swung it open. Elsa stood in the threshold, her chin raised and her eyes peering down her nose. She slid her gaze to Piper and Ash on the bed, and her brow arched.
“I don’t know how I became your messenger,” said Elsa, “but rumour has it there’s a dullborn wandering around the academy. A pretty thing with blonde hair, I’m told.”
Piper’s shoulders slumped. “April.” Ash shut the lid of the blackwood box, and made to climb off the bed. Her gaze found his. “I don’t want to see her.”
Her eyes drifted back to the door where Desmond put his mug on a tall table and left. Elsa studied her with unveiled disdain, and leaned against the doorframe.
“Are you sure?” It was Ash, and he tucked the box back into the wardrobe. “It might be good for you to talk things out with her.”
Piper rubbed her hands over her face. “She’s too much right now,” she said into her palms. “April only gives a damn about herself.” Her hands dropped to her lap with a slap. “I’m not in the mood to deal with her self-absorbed nonsense. Not when there are real things going on, and especially not after she abandoned me when my mother...” Her voice trailed away in the silence of the room. “Besides,” she said, “I’ve been ignoring her calls and texts—she should take the hint.”
Elsa was the one who replied: “I suggest you get rid of her before provost Vale finds out that she’s here.”
Piper shot her a baffled look. “She was here just yesterday, and the provost knew about it then.”
“She was here to be healed.” Elsa smirked. “Now that she is, she has no business returning here. If she comes here again, they’ll do muddlement on her.”
Piper shimmied off the bed. “What’s that?”
“It’s something a human doesn’t want done to them,” said Ash. “An awful fate.”
“Do hurry, halfbreed.” Elsa pushed herself from the doorway, a snarky smirk plastered onto her aristocratic face. “I have better things to do than help clean up your mess.”
Elsa spun on her heels and vanished down the corridor. Piper shot Ash a look, one that radiated her weariness of Elsa, before she went into the corridor. Ash ducked out after her and shut the door.
“You wanted to know what happened to my sister,” said Ash. Piper glanced up at him, but he wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were fixed ahead, down the corridor where Elsa could be seen striding away. “That is what happened to her. She became a cold stranger, and the best forger in the school.”
Piper blinked up at him. Her dumfounded eyes darted from Elsa’s retreating figure to Ash.
He smirked down at her gaping expression. “You’re more shocked by that revelation than you are about Nightwalkers and Aswangs.”
Piper hummed and headed back out to the heat of the metropolitan sauna; Ash strolled beside her. It was an alien thought, she mused, that they were siblings—twins, if their ages were any indication. Yet, Kieran and she acted more like brother and sister than Ash and Elsa did. And she’d barely known Kieran for three days.
CHAPTER 15
The watchful eyes of the peculiar students burned into her like x-ray machines, piercing through her clothes as if they could see every scar that marked her flesh. April tugged on the sleeve of her cardigan. A clique of girls scurried by and snickered at her. April stuck up two fingers. They erupted in giggles and ran up the stairs to the upper level.
April’s glower followed them up the steps until they disappeared through a door. When they were out of sight, she heaved a heavy breath and swung the strings of a shopping bag that tapped against her upper thigh. It was a Tiffany’s bag; she’d made a quick stop in her favourite jewellery shop before heading to the Academy of Weirdos. Given what she’d learned that morning about Piper’s mother, she figured she had some sucking up to do.
The soft tap of footsteps neared. April looked up at the first level just as Desmond reached the top of the staircase. His pale chest glinted under the warm lights from the gas lanterns on the walls. Desmond paused at the top step and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants. He jogged down the stairs, his bare feet thudding against the wood.
“How’d you get in here?” said Desmond. His tone was terse, loud enough that it carried down to the foyer.
April arched her brow and straightened her spine. Her lips puckered as her steady gaze followed him down the stairs. “The same way I left,” she said. “Through the front door.”
Desmond slowed to a stop as he reached the foyer. His eyes swept the area, as if afraid that someone had seen her. But April had been in the foyer for at least fifteen minutes—many people had seen her. Some had even had the audacity to throw dirty looks her way, though April had replied with crude remarks, threatening glares, and the occasional two-fingered salute.
April flicked her hair and sniffed. “Where is Piper?”
Desmond strolled to the wooden column beside the bannister. He perched himself on the waist-high
pillar, and crossed his arms over his chest. “She’s coming,” he said. “Word of warning—she’s not happy you’re here.”
April’s eyelashes fluttered as she fought to preserve her composure.
“Do you need more lotion?” Desmond’s voice lacked sincerity, but was slick with curiosity. “Are your scars healed?”
April’s upper lip curled. “They’re fine.”
Desmond hmphed, a knowing and arrogant sound that bristled her nerves. There was just something infuriating about him, she thought. But it was more than that he rubbed her the wrong way—she remembered what Piper had told her at Club Soho, how he’d shot people, broken into her home, and now Piper had been thrown into a world none of them belonged in. Not to mention that she recalled his quarrel with Ash the day before; April didn’t fancy having a hateful being drooling after her.
“I did tell you,” he said, his biceps clenching as an all-knowing superiority slipped over him. “You shouldn’t have left until the healer cleared you. The wounds needed further treatment.”
April cocked her hip to the side. “What is your spoil?”
Desmond’s brows furrowed. “Pardon me?”
“Your spoil,” she said, stepping closer. “You seem to have developed an insatiable obsession with my scars.”
“That’s a spoil?” An amused look loosened his features. “Inquiring into the health of a former patient at this Academy, and the victim of an attack that I stopped.”
“Yes, you saved my life, I know.” April swung the Tiffany’s bag at her side. “But I don’t know you. I said thank you, and that’s that. I’m not going to fawn over you for it.”
Desmond’s jawline tightened as he leaned forward. “Something tells me you don’t do too well in someone’s debt,” he said. “Either that, or you’re frightened.”
“Frightened,” she echoed in a shrill tone. “Of you?”
Desmond shrugged. “Of what you know now; of seeing the monsters in the shadows. And you think by being a Class-A tosser about it that it will somehow go away.” He smirked before he added, “News flash, princess—It won’t.”
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