Royals of Villain Academy 4: Horrid Charms

by Eva Chase

  Malcolm opened his mouth with an exasperated look and then closed it again. His brow knit. He contemplated me for a moment, possibly realizing what a tall order proving himself would be considering our history.

  “Ask me whether I cast any magic at you. Or when the last time was. Or however you want to phrase it,” he said abruptly. “Make it an insight spell. I’ve got nothing to hide. I am telling you the truth.”

  I stared at him. Malcolm of all people was voluntarily letting me inside his head. Of course, I had to assume that if I tried to take a more general dip into his thoughts and memories, he’d punt me out faster than I could blink. But even for a specific question, it was a greater show of trust than I’d have thought he was capable of.

  The fact that I’d misjudged him sent a twinge of guilt through me, but I had to take the opening he’d given me, just to be sure. “All right,” I said. “Ready?”

  His jaw tightened, but he nodded. If he was going to offer me this much trust, I could show him I wasn’t the kind of person who’d abuse it. I fixed my gaze on his forehead and said, “When was the last time you cast any kind of magic to affect me?”

  My awareness flipped and mingled with his. The impressions washed over me in a shifting wave of images and sensations. I caught a glimpse of me bobbing in lake water up to my neck with my hair slicked wet and sleek, a flash of desire, a murmured spell shaping the currents in the hopes of stirring the same desire in its target, the flush of my cheeks and an answering flare of heat in Malcolm’s body—

  I jerked myself out of his head, my face flushing too. A tingling that was awkward but not entirely uncomfortable spread through my chest and farther down, to all the places that wouldn’t have minded indulging in that sensation again if I’d been willing to let myself.

  He hadn’t been lying, anyway. It took me a second to find my tongue. “Okay. Thank you. I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions.”

  Malcolm shrugged, his gaze a little more intent on me, maybe a little more heated with the thought of the memory I’d just dipped into. “I suppose I can’t really blame you. I did do quite a number on you with those spells before.” He paused. “I’m sorry about that. I think it’s safe to say that was one tactic I took too far. I thought… I don’t know.” He rubbed his forehead with a grimace.

  A second apology from the heir of Nightwood in as many weeks, on top of the vulnerability he’d just offered in opening up his mind to me? I found myself speechless again.

  The other scions had assured me that Malcolm had plenty of positive qualities, but it’d been pretty hard to see them in the midst of his campaign against me. Now that he was lowering his guard, trying to make peace and even understand where I was coming from… It was hard not to wonder how much differently our association might have played out if I’d gotten this version of him to begin with.

  I still disagreed with plenty of his ideas, but less of them than I’d have expected. I couldn’t claim anymore that he was a full-out villain. Who was to say how I’d have acted if our positions and histories had been reversed?

  As I groped for an appropriate answer to his apology, one of the dorm doors behind me opened and a couple of the other senior students ducked out, talking quietly as they walked to the stairs. People were starting to head off to classes or whatever other responsibilities they had this morning. A different sort of panic jolted through me.

  I turned on my heel. “Well, I— I’ve got to get going.”

  “What’s the big hurry all of a sudden?” Malcolm took a step after me. “Is something else going on?”

  It might have been the way he’d just opened up to me or the fact that he sounded honestly concerned—probably some of both. Before I could second-guess the impulse, I told him the truth.

  “I wanted to talk to the guys in the dorm under mine. It occurred to me that one of them might have been in the room when Imogen was attacked and could have heard something that would help my case.”

  Malcolm gave a brisk nod, looking completely alert now. “I’ll come with you. I can encourage them to… speak up if any of them aren’t so keen.”

  That wasn’t the outcome I’d been going for. “I’m sure if I need any help, Declan—”

  “Declan will already be off in the library or consulting with Professor Sinleigh or God knows what,” Malcolm said dismissively. “The guy has never heard of the concept of sleeping in. Come on. Let’s see who’s around. I don’t know all his dormmates off the top of my head, but when I see them, I should be able to at least tell you who was around for the summer session.”

  That could actually be useful. I wasn’t sure I trusted my memory with the students I didn’t know all that well and hadn’t known for very long.

  “Okay,” I said. “But let me ask the questions. It’s my case.”

  A teasing note came into Malcolm’s voice. “If you insist, Glinda.”

  We tramped down one flight of stairs to the hall beneath ours. True to his word, Malcolm hung back a couple steps behind me as I knocked on the dorm door.

  I did recognize the guy who came to answer it: Alex Rutland, who’d tried very ineffectively to ask me out a few months back, after everyone had found out I was the most powerful mage currently attending the school and before anyone had thought I was a murderer. I suspected the new development might have put a damper on my marriage prospects. An unexpected bonus.

  He paled a little when he saw me, as if he thought I might be going to murder him for daring to flirt with me two terms ago. I fixed him with a firm look. “Rutland, get all your dormmates who are around into the common room. I need to talk to everyone. Scion business.” If that excuse had worked for Malcolm with the blacksuits, it’d damn well better work for me here.

  “Yes—yes, of course,” Alex mumbled, and hustled across the common room, leaving the door open for us.

  A couple of the guys were already sitting on the sofas, and a few more were at the dining table. Alex rapped on two of the other doors to bring the inhabitants out and stopped a guy who’d just emerged from the bathroom in a bathrobe.

  Malcolm had been right—Declan, who had the bedroom right under mine, was gone. I knew he’d still been at the end of summer party when I’d left it anyway, and it wasn’t as if he’d have failed to mention he’d come back to the dorm during the time of the murder.

  I scanned the faces in front of me. Alex had been around during the summer, and I was sure two of the other guys had been in some of my classes. The other five I couldn’t have said.

  Malcolm leaned closer and spoke under his breath. “Mr. Bathrobe, the two on the sofas, and that guy just coming out of his room weren’t here for the summer.”

  I tipped my head in acknowledgment with a rush of gratitude. “You four don’t need to be here for this,” I said, pointing to them. Even the ones who’d already been out in the common room when I’d arrived scattered to their bedrooms at my dismissal. My chest jittered with fresh jolts of fear. I was building quite a store of magic today.

  In the momentary silence as the remaining guys gathered warily, I couldn’t help noticing that no sound at all traveled to me from the room above. My own dormmates must be walking around up there with their morning preparations now, but I wouldn’t have known it from down here. Was there any chance someone had heard Imogen’s fall—and that they could say exactly when it’d happened?

  I had to try.

  “You were all here for the summer session,” I said, looking at the four guys still in front of me. “What time did you each of you leave the end-of-term party?”

  “I was there until the end,” Alex said. From Malcolm’s nod at the corner of my vision, he remembered well enough to confirm that.

  “Same here,” the second guy. Another nod.

  “I left right after the prize announcement,” said a guy holding a mug of coffee. His gaze darted nervously not to me but to Malcolm before he added, “My parents wanted me home right away for a family business meeting.”

  “I left somewhere
in the middle,” the last guy said. “I wasn’t really paying attention to the time.”

  I focused on the final two. “Did either of you come back to the dorm after you left the party?”

  They both hesitated. Malcolm cleared his throat, and the coffee guy shook his head with a jerk. “I’d already packed the things I needed in my car. I went straight to the garage and drove home.”

  The last guy sighed and offered a crooked smile. “Eventually, sure, but by the time I got here there were blacksuits all over the place. I took a detour with my girlfriend into the woods.”

  The room had been empty until after the murder, then. Except—it couldn’t have been. I didn’t know whether anyone down here could have heard what was happening over their heads, but Deborah had definitely heard a noise from down here.

  “Thanks for your time,” I said quickly. “That’s all I needed to know.”

  “You’re giving up just like that?” Malcolm asked when I’d retreated into the hall.

  I shook my head. “There was someone in that room when Imogen was attacked. I—I was able to figure that out.” Regardless of the new side of him I was seeing, I sure as hell wasn’t telling him Deborah’s secret. “Would the cleaning staff have started work before the session was even over?”

  “Not likely,” Malcolm said. “They have a whole week afterward to get everything in order. Maintenance prefers to keep out of students’ way as much as possible. But you’re thinking too much like a good witch.” He raised his hand as if to tap my head but stopped just shy of brushing my hair. “You’re assuming whoever was in there was supposed to be. Breaking and entering is fair play around here.”

  My heart sank. “Then it could be literally anyone. If I just had some idea—”

  I cut myself off in mid-sentence as the pieces clicked in my head.

  I did have an idea. I’d dismissed the possibility that Cressida knew anything because I’d seen her leaving the stairwell before I’d even started up from the first floor, and the real murderer wouldn’t have shown herself to anyone in my dorm.

  But… if Imogen’s attacker had been holding her in place for a little while before I even showed up, like Deborah had said, then Cressida couldn’t have gotten into our dorm room in the first place. So where had she gone up there? What had sent her hurrying out of the building so quickly she’d practically run into me?

  “What?” Malcolm said, studying my expression.

  “I know who else to ask,” I said, without much boost to my spirits. “But even if she does know I’m innocent, I think she might be happy to see me go down for the crime anyway.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jude

  It was a long drive to the main Killbrook home from Blood U, but I jumped at the first chance I got to make the trip. The funny thing about coming to a major decision was that once you’d arrived there, no matter how gradual the process would be, the impatience to get on with it would keep itching at you. I was going to make a clean break, and I wanted it to start now.

  I had no classes after my morning seminar until my business course the next afternoon, so I didn’t really need to hurry. The Mercedes’s engine purred as I zipped along the highway past trees and farmland. My familiar, who I hadn’t wanted to leave cooped up in my dorm bedroom for ages, bounced between the floor and the passenger seat with ferret chortles that were a lot more pleased than I felt.

  After a while, to distract myself from thoughts of the task ahead, I put on my playlist of my favorite modern piano tracks. Too bad the music industry was even more of a clusterfuck than the fearmancer community, or maybe I’d have considered trying to build a career for myself there.

  The complex melody that filled the interior of the car didn’t quite overwhelm my nerves. I drummed my fingers against the steering wheel. Mischief cocked her head at me with a questioning sound, and I reached over to give her a quick scratch under her chin.

  “It’ll be fine,” I told her and myself. “In and out. No big deal.”

  This early in the afternoon, I could hope no one would be home except the staff, who wouldn’t hassle me. Dad should be off tending to his various business concerns, and Mom often visited with her friends or looked in on the local shops she’d invested in during the day.

  Still, my chest tightened when I finally turned down the winding drive that led to the mansion. The tall gate with its dark bars loomed ahead of me. I punched in the code on my dashboard control that would unlock the gate and drove on in toward the sprawling stone building beyond.

  One of the grounds staff was trimming the hedges along the driveway. Otherwise there was no sign of activity. I parked the Mercedes in the loop outside the front door, not bothering with the garage. “Wait here,” I told Mischief, who for once in her life decided to be obedient and curled up on the leather seat. Lord only knew how much of my uneasiness she was picking up on.

  Ideally this really would be a quick in-and-out. I didn’t have much here I was interested in hanging on to.

  “Hello, Mr. Killbrook,” our butler said as I crossed the foyer to the stairs. A look of consternation crossed his face. “We weren’t expecting you home.”

  “Don’t worry, Cravers,” I said. “I’m not staying for dinner. I’ll be out of your hair in less than an hour.”

  I jogged up the stairs and veered across the expansive hallway to the east wing. My shoes thumped against the worn but polished hardwood. It was a familiar sound, but the matching thud of my pulse turned it somehow ominous.

  I threw open the door to my set of rooms and paused for a moment when the door closed behind me, letting out my breath. A faintly floral smell tickled my nose—the housekeeping staff had come through with their cleaners and air fresheners. Otherwise, the sitting room attached to my bedroom and private bathroom looked the same as it had when I’d left last week: cushy leather couch across from the huge TV, shelves packed with an equal number of books and video games, the old arcade consoles I’d been collecting standing along the opposite wall.

  The other scions and I used to have a blast here when I’d invite them over. I hadn’t done that in a while. Not since I’d realized how little this all belonged to me, actually.

  But I figured my father who wasn’t really my father owed me a few things for dragging me into this world and this wretched situation. I just had to figure out what in this place I cared about enough to bother taking with me.

  I didn’t have the means to transport large items, and anyway, the apartment I’d managed to rent on short notice came furnished. Better not to have any major reminders of my old life there anyway. The whole point was to leave this all behind.

  Wandering the room, I grabbed the newest game console and my favorite games. The rest I could live without. I tossed those into one of my suitcases and took another look around the room. The tightness in my chest dug in little claws.

  How much had any of this stuff really mattered to me? It’d all been its own kind of distraction from my dad’s chilly treatment and the reasons for it I’d discovered.

  I left the sitting room for my bedroom and checked my closet for any clothes I’d want to hold onto that I hadn’t already brought with me to school. This formal suit had always suited me particularly well, if I ever had a good occasion to wear it again. I tossed a few sweaters and thicker pants for the winter after it. A nice pair of Oxfords that felt too fancy for most school functions. My wool coat. Some diamond cufflinks I doubted I’d ever wear but that might be useful if I burned through my money too quickly.

  There really wasn’t much else. I stepped out of the bedroom with an empty feeling expanding inside me, just as the door from the hallway opened.

  “Jude.” My mother stopped on the threshold, staring as she took in me and then the suitcase, her eyes widening. “The staff said you’d come home. What’s going on?”

  At five months along, her pregnancy was starting to become obvious. The silk blouse she’d chosen flowed over her rounded belly. The life growing in there had
the potential to utterly destroy mine—through no fault of its own, of course. I focused on Mom’s face, on the red hair just a couple shades lighter than my own falling in loose curls around her features. My stomach clenched.

  I didn’t want to blame Mom for her part in the conspiracy to bring me into this world. She loved Dad; she’d only been trying to make him happy. She’d believed him that producing an heir by whatever means necessary would accomplish that. She’d showered me with affection when that promise had proven to be a lie.

  But she had to have realized that eventually the truth would come out, one way or another, and I’d pay the consequences. She’d never stood up to him about the way he’d treated me. And how could she not realize what her current state meant for my future? Was she just willing that knowledge away, letting herself pretend it wasn’t true because as far as she knew, I didn’t have any idea?

  “I’m just getting a few of my things,” I said in a voice that came out oddly detached to my own ears. “I decided to get a place of my own.”

  She blinked at me. “A place of your own? But—if there’s something you’re unhappy with at the house— You can always make use of one of the other properties—”

  “I wanted a place that’s just mine,” I said, calmly but firmly. “That’s all. You can tell Dad not to worry—I’m not going to come asking for anything. I can handle it all on my own.”

  I’d already spoken to the bank to make sure my account there was only in my name. My parents couldn’t touch my accumulated “allowance” and the chunk of my inheritance that had transferred over to me at eighteen. The funds in there should last me a good long while, definitely long enough to finish school and establish myself in some kind of paying work.

  My parents would never need to think about me again. I’d fade right out of their lives… and maybe Dad could let that be enough.

  Mom’s mouth twisted at a pained angle, and her hand came to rest on her belly, as if somehow my soon-to-be baby sister was affected by this situation. “I don’t understand. Did something happen, Jude? Please, if something’s wrong, you can tell me.”