Royals of Villain Academy 4: Horrid Charms

by Eva Chase

  “That’s what they think I am.”

  “Well, we’ll just prove them wrong.”

  He opened the passenger-side door of his car for me before going around to the driver’s side. As I sank into the leather seat, the familiar cedar-sweet smell of him that lingered inside filled my lungs. I had to work twice as hard not to reach for him as he settled into the seat beside me.

  As he started the engine, Deborah scurried down my arm to nestle in my hand. She hadn’t spoken to me since I’d picked her up. The truth was, while I trusted Declan more than any other fearmancer I’d met, I still wasn’t completely sure how he’d react to the idea that I’d brought a miniature joymancer into their midst. It seemed better not to find out when there was no reason to give away that secret. I knew Deborah wouldn’t—and honestly, couldn’t, seeing as she’d lost her magical abilities with the transition—hurt any of them.

  Declan turned the car toward the winding road that led to the highway. “Are you all right?” he asked. “I mean, other than the obvious problems. They didn’t push you too hard with the interrogations or anything like that?”

  I shook my head. “They mostly left me alone. I think—my mother, the Bloodstone one, had a close friend in the blacksuits. She’s been ‘looking out for me.’ I think she’s involved with the barons’ plans, though. Part of that looking out for me must have included claiming I’d made her my representative, even though she never told me I had a right to leave.”

  “They’d need conspirators among the blacksuits to pull something like this off.” Declan shot me another concerned look. “I also mean—you found your friend’s body—after what happened with your mentor, too, I can’t imagine how horrifying that must have been.”

  “It… wasn’t fun.” My throat closed up at the memory of Imogen’s savaged form. “I haven’t had much else to do except come to terms with it, though. And be really pissed off at the people who actually murdered her.”

  “They won’t get away with it,” Declan promised, although I didn’t think he had any more idea than I did how to make the other barons pay. He exhaled slowly. “You’ve got a few more days before school’s back in session. Did you want me to make arrangements to get you home?”

  Home—that big old house in Maine? I hesitated. “If I need to be building a case to prove I didn’t hurt Imogen, nothing out there is going to be much use to me, is it? I’ll be able to accomplish more on campus. Malcolm came by—he brought my familiar… He said Jude and Connar have stuck around trying to help with the investigation?”

  Declan nodded. “They went home yesterday, I think more to see if they’d hear about anything from their parents’ circles than because they really wanted to be there, but as soon as they know you’re out, they’ll come back.” One side of his mouth curved up in a crooked smile. “You’ve inspired a lot of loyalty all around.”

  I didn’t know how to talk about the other guys with Declan. He knew I was… dating them, or whatever exactly you could call what we had. I knew he had similar feelings for me—feelings I returned. But he was the one who’d vetoed any possibility of him and me having a relationship even after he was finished with the teacher’s aide job. It wasn’t as if I’d picked them over him.

  To be honest, I’d have taken all three of them given the opportunity.

  That thought sent a not entirely welcome flush of warmth under my skin. I swallowed and groped for a change of subject. “So, we have to assume the other barons are behind this whole setup—them and the ‘reapers’ or whatever their allies call themselves. Do you have any idea why they’d do something like this? I can’t be there to support whatever it is they want to do in the pentacle if I’m in fearmancer prison, can I?”

  Declan’s smile disappeared. “It actually makes a lot more sense than you’d think. More than I like to think about. We don’t really lock people up for extended periods of time—no one’s committed a crime the authorities felt warranted that punishment in as long as I’ve been alive. If you’re convicted, the most likely consequence will be that you’ll have a spell placed on you that’ll restrict your ability to cast.”

  Uneasiness prickled over me. “Restrict it in what way?”

  “You wouldn’t be able to cast certain types of spells. There’d be a limit to how much power you could draw on for any individual casting. But that’s not the real issue.”

  It sounded like an awfully big issue to me. “What is, then?”

  He was silent, watching the road, for a few moments before he spoke. “Placing a long-term enchantment on a person puts them in a very vulnerable position. Once the spell is attached to you, it’d be easy for the original caster to adjust the workings in various ways without you even knowing. If the person doing the casting is in the barons’ pocket… they could use it to control what you do, what you say, what you think… and there’d be nothing you could do about it.”

  Chapter Five

  Rory

  The dorm was completely silent. Even after Declan and I walked in and I flicked on the light in the common room, an ominous ambiance filled the empty space. Everyone else in the whole building had gone home for summer break. I hadn’t really thought about what that would mean.

  As I set Deborah down on the floor, my gaze slid automatically to the spot where Imogen’s body had been sprawled when I’d found her. Just as with Professor Banefield, the maintenance staff had removed all traces of her death. I’d never have known any blood had been spilled there if I hadn’t seen it a few days ago.

  During the chaos of the discovery and my arrest, it seemed the full impact of her death hadn’t really sunk in after all. Now it hit me like a punch to the gut.

  I was never going to walk into this dorm and see her careful smile and the flash of her silver hair clip again. Never hear her urge me on in my attempts to push back against the more vicious students. Never head into town together for a little company while we grabbed some groceries or a quick meal.

  She might not have been a perfect friend, but she had been my friend. Maybe if I’d forgiven her faster for her one betrayal, the barons wouldn’t have targeted her. If they hadn’t thought they could make a real case for me being angry with her…

  I closed my eyes as if that would shut out those guilty thoughts. I couldn’t have known my enemies would go this far. If I’d gotten closer with Imogen again, they could have used her in some other way.

  Still, the thought of going to sleep amid this silence with the images of her murder floating in my head made my skin crawl.

  “Hard being here again?” Declan asked from behind me.

  “It just… feels kind of haunted, with no one else here.” A lump rose in my throat. “I tried to save her, you know—I wanted to call for help, I fought the spell as well as I could—”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Declan said firmly. When I drew in a shaky breath, he slipped his arms around me in a gentle embrace. I couldn’t help leaning back into the warmth of his body just a little, soaking in the comfort he was offering.

  He swallowed audibly. “If it’s too much, staying here alone, you could spend the night in my dorm. I mean, there are the couches, and one of the bedrooms has been vacant since that guy graduated in June. But I’d be in shouting distance if you need anything.”

  The desire to take him up on that offer rang through me from head to toe, but at the same time my throat tightened even more. Already, with his arms around me and his head ducked close to mine, a whole lot more desire was welling up inside me—to be even closer than this, to feel his kiss, to rediscover every inch of the lean frame aligned with mine. How much self-control could either of us really count on alone in the night with only a single thin door between us?

  I didn’t want to ruin another life.

  “I’m not sure that’s the best idea,” I said. “Even if we stick to different rooms… if someone on staff came by and saw I’d stayed in your dorm… it could still cause a problem, right?”

  “It could.” He sighed. His
head dipped over my shoulder, his breath tickling over my cheek and his arms hugging me a little harder, and for a second I thought he might turn that short distance to brush his lips against my skin. The warmth where our bodies touched flared into a sharper heat.

  If he started kissing me here, right now, I wasn’t sure my good intentions would hold. I wanted him too much.

  His stance tensed, and then with obvious effort he drew away from me. “If you do need anything, I’ll be right downstairs.”

  “Thank you. For everything.”

  When he left, the space felt even emptier. I hurried over to my bedroom, where at least I had all my familiar things. And Deborah, who’d squeezed her way in through the various mouse-sized passages. While I pulled the curtain shut against the darkness outside and changed into a pair of pajamas, she curled up in a nook on the bedcovers.

  “Do you want anything to eat?” I asked her, able to talk to her freely for the first time since Malcolm had delivered her to me. With Declan’s interruption coming right after my dinner, I hadn’t gotten the chance to slip her the morsels I’d saved from my prison meal.

  I had enough at lunch that I think it’ll hold me over, Deborah said. I can’t say this situation has left me with much of an appetite.

  “No kidding.” I flopped down on the bed and she cuddled next to my arm. Seeing the blank floor with all trace of the crime wiped away had stirred up other uneasy emotions as well. “I don’t know how I’m going to get out of this, Deborah. What evidence am I going to find? Whoever did this will have taken all kinds of precautions to make sure there were no witnesses. And they messed with my mind, so even I can’t be a witness to my innocence.”

  The real attacker didn’t count on me as a witness, she reminded me.

  “Yeah, but it’s not as if I can present your observations at the hearing.”

  She paused for a moment. Her cool nose nudged my skin. I could present my own observations. You tell them you believe your familiar may have seen at least part of the altercation, and they could take a peek into my memories.

  I tipped my head to look at her. “Do insight spells work on animals?”

  Joymancers use similar sorts of magic, and they can allow you to delve into any conscious mind. As I recall, the impressions you get from an animal tend to be vaguer and more jumbled, but that’ll be less of an issue in my case.

  Or more of an issue. “They’d notice it’s strange that your memories are so clear, though, won’t they? They might even see something that shows you’re more than just a mouse, like a memory of us talking together.”

  A small risk. If it prevents these barons from putting you under their control… I was made your familiar so I could protect you, Lorelei, and I intend to do that however I can.

  She’d always said that, but she knew as well as I did that the joymancer Conclave had assigned her to me more to protect everyone else from me rather than the other way around. As much as that fact made my skin crawl, so far it certainly seemed as if I was more of a danger to the people around me than they were to me, if indirectly.

  “No,” I said. “It’s not just a small risk; it’s a huge one. The barons are going to be pulling out all the stops to make this charge stick. Who knows how deep they’ll poke into your brain if we give them the chance? Then I’d lose you… and I’d still be charged with a major crime. It wouldn’t help anyone.”

  Perhaps you’re right. I wasn’t thinking about how you would be threatened by the discovery as well. She paused. I’d do it if you decided it was worth the risk after all, though. I want you to remember that. If those miscreants take you over for their awful purposes, then I’ll have failed both you and the Conclave.

  A thought that might have been unfair passed through my mind—was she more worried about failing me or failing the Conclave? I shoved it away. Deborah had supported me as well as she could, stuck in that mouse body and unable to cast.

  “I appreciate that,” I told her. “We’ll just have to find another way.” With three—or maybe even all four?—of the other scions working alongside me, I had to have some kind of chance, didn’t I?

  I nestled my head in the pillow with my hands tucked by my face. The cuffs pressed against my wrists, not letting me forget them even when I closed my eyes to try to sleep. It was a long, uneasy time before I finally drifted off.

  The fridge had been cleared out after all the summer students had departed—some of us less willingly than others—and the cafeteria wasn’t running during the break, so the next morning I made the twenty-minute walk into the town down the hill to make sure Deborah and I wouldn’t starve. I returned to the dorm loaded down with bread, cheese, fruits, and various other essentials, and nearly gave a woman standing in the common room a heart attack.

  She flinched at the swing of the door and jerked her hands down from where they’d been raised to cast a spell over the sofa’s upholstery. A jolt of fear shot into me from her. When she saw me, her eyes widened. Her stance shifted but didn’t exactly relax, smaller whiffs of anxiety tickling past my collarbone from her to join my stores of magic.

  “I’m so sorry, Miss Bloodstone,” she said. From her simple blue dress shirt and gray slacks, I figured she was part of the maintenance staff. “I didn’t know you were back. I was assigned to deep clean the common seating areas today. If you’d rather I came back later…”

  “No, no,” I said with a wave of my free hand. “It doesn’t bother me, as long as it doesn’t bother you if I make myself some breakfast.”

  “Of course not,” she said, but I felt her gaze follow me as I headed into the kitchen area.

  The woman went back to her cleaning spells, but I caught more than one wary glance aimed my way—and more tingles of nervous energy passing into me—as I toasted a couple slices of bread, fried an egg, and chopped up an apple to share with Deborah. Suspicion wormed its way under my skin.

  Was she really here just to freshen up the rooms, or was she yet another person the barons or their allies had brought under their sway? They might be setting new plots in motion now that I was temporarily free, even with the hearing looming. She might have intended to cast some kind of harmful spell in here. She might still mean to do it and was worried I’d realize.

  I trained my eyes on the back of her head and murmured a general insight spell as I spread butter on the toast, my low voice covered by the scrape of the knife. The woman didn’t have much in the way of defenses up. I tumbled into her thoughts in an instant.

  As always, the impressions flowed around me without much rhyme or reason. I tasted her determination to see her job done well to make her boss happy… while he was so torn up in grief over his daughter’s death. Her boss was Imogen’s dad, of course. A simmering discomfort at my presence ran through her consciousness too, but it had nothing to do with any nefarious plans she was part of. Her heightened awareness of the knife in my hand only solidified that fact.

  She was afraid she was in the presence of a murderer. And not just any murderer—one who might fly off the handle without much warning.

  Nausea gripped my stomach as I pulled back into my own head. I had to force myself to add jam to my toast before I carried it into my bedroom.

  Ever since my assessment had shown I was strong in all four domains of fearmancer magic, my fellow students had regarded me with a certain amount of caution. I hadn’t liked it, but it’d conveniently replenished the fear I relied on to power my magic without me having to actually hurt anyone. Now, though… How many of the students and staff outside the few who knew me well believed I’d killed Imogen in a vicious fury? Was this the kind of reaction I’d have to expect across the board once school was back in session?

  I relaxed a little when I heard the click of the main door as the woman left—and tensed up all over again when a knock sounded on it a few minutes later. Then a familiar playful voice carried in from the hall.

  “Oh, Ice Queen, don’t leave me hanging here.”

  My spirits lifted in an instan
t. I leapt up from my desk and all but ran for the door.

  Jude’s tone might have been light, but when I threw open the door, his green eyes met mine, even darker than usual with worry. I grabbed him in a hug, and he squeezed me back with a pleased chuckle.

  “Now that’s the kind of welcome I’m talking about. Are you okay?” He eased back just far enough to examine my face. “The blacksuits didn’t manhandle you too much, did they?”

  Seeing that much concern from a guy who rarely showed he was anything other than absolutely carefree made my heart squeeze. Jude had plenty of his own problems weighing on him, but he’d dashed back to campus to be here for me without me even asking.

  “No one hurt me,” I reassured him. “It just wasn’t exactly a vacation.”

  “They never should have taken you in the first place,” he muttered, and traced his fingers along my jaw. “We’ll just have to make whoever set you up like this regret it, won’t we?” He gave me a wicked smirk and tipped up my chin for a kiss.

  He made it sound so much easier than I could imagine fixing this mess would be, but it was impossible to focus on that with his mouth claiming mine. I kissed him back hard, letting myself get lost just for a moment in all the desire and adoration that radiated from his touch.

  Someone cleared his throat from the top of the stairs. I broke from Jude to see Connar watching us with one eyebrow cocked.

  “You just had to get in there first,” he said to Jude, but his low baritone had a teasing note to it.

  He strode over as I turned to meet him, and in an instant I was engulfed in his brawny arms. I lifted my head to kiss him too. Even with the horrible situation I’d found myself in, a wave of gratitude washed through me—that I had these guys who were not only willing to fight for me against my enemies but to share my affections with each other as well.