Phoenix Academy: Forged (Phoenix Academy First Years Book 3)

by Lucy Auburn

  At the same time, I won’t be able to live with myself if I discover that the Grim side of me that connected me to the guys is undeniably evil and completely irredeemable.

  “Grenade pin for your thoughts.” I turn towards Mateo, who’s leaning against the wall next to my bedroom door, a bright shiny piece of metal swinging off his fingertip.

  I blink at him. “Did you just set off a fucking explosive inside?”

  “I can put it back.” He holds up the grenade in the palm of his other hand, his body language completely casual despite the imminent threat. “You have to throw them to make them go boom.”

  “Great. That fills me with incredible relief.”

  The white flash of his teeth grows as he grins harder; behind him, Sebastian rolls his stark blue eyes hard enough that it looks like it hurts. “Your dumbass is going to die in tiny pieces one day. In fact, I’m willing to bet that if you had the memories of your human life, they’d involve biting the dust via the world’s stupidest gunpowder-fueled accident.”

  Lynx mutters, “He’s probably one of those guys in the viral headlines. ‘Florida Man Shoots Off His Dick’ or ‘Florida Man Dies Deep-Frying Frozen Turkey.’ Give me a computer for long enough and I’m sure I could find him.”

  Ezra snorts. “I bet he’s a meme.”

  I wave at them to shush, then arch a brow in Mateo’s direction. “I know you’re trying to cheer me up, but I’d prefer you put the pin back in the grenade. I like all ten of my fingers and toes right where they are, regenerative phoenix powers be damned.”

  “Tell me your thoughts first.” He juts out his chin stubbornly. “C’mon, Daaaannn-i. We’re reunited and it feels so good. Why the glum face?”

  “Well, other than learning that the only good Grim I’ve ever met wasn’t good at all, and also he contributed half of my DNA, I’m pretty bummed about the whole kill-all-Grims thing.” I sigh, and Lynx shoots my a sympathetic look. “Also, there’s the fact that the headmaster wouldn’t commit to completely cancelling finals. So apparently I’m supposed to study on top of everything.”

  “I’m sure no one will give you a failing grade,” Ezra says gently. “She just has to figure out how to get the school back to normal after the spell lifts. Letting finals go on as usual will help with that.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Staring into his fierce green eyes, I can’t help noting, “I should never have let Meyer convince me to sever our bond. If I hadn’t done that... if I’d believed in what we had... none of this would’ve ever happened.”

  “You can’t blame yourself.” He steps forward and reaches out to rest a hand on my shoulder, squeezing comfortingly. “We all believed what he said. None of us knew the truth. Now that we do, we can reforge what we had with our eyes wide open.”

  “Yeah,” I say softly, reaching up to place my hand over his, “I guess we can.”

  “Assuming,” Sebastian adds, “Mateo doesn’t blow us all up.”

  “Oh, right.” Spinning the pin in his fingers, Mateo slips it back into place on the grenade. “I almost forgot. That would’ve been exciting.” He grins. “We could’ve had our very own fireworks show.”

  Lynx groans. “Dani, I hope you can still make us incorporeal and send us away, because there’s no way I’ll survive a single night sleeping in the same room as this dunce. Either he’ll kill us all with his bullshit or I’ll strangle him to death.”

  “I’d shoot you in the dick if you did.”

  “It’d be worth it for the silence,” Lynx mutters.

  I can see some things didn’t change in our time apart, which is a relief despite the ever-present bickering. I don’t know what I would’ve done if the guys lost their senses of humor. It scares me to think about what has changed that I haven’t yet discovered.

  “I don’t know how this new bond works,” I confess, licking my lips and staring at Lynx. “I guess I could try to ghostify you now.”

  “Is that what we’re calling it?” He raises an eyebrow, all smooth criminal. “Before you experiment with my current state, there’s something I’ve been wanting to do all evening.”

  He steps forward, into my space, until I can feel the undeniable heat of his body caressing my skin. Eyes locked with mine, he raises a hand and cups the side of my face, so gently, palm curving against my jaw. Then he leans down towards me intently, and I tilt my chin up to meet his kiss.

  His mouth is soft and warm. After so long away I expected to find the touch of his lips to be unfamiliar, but as I sink into him there’s no fumbling, no hesitancy or uncertainty. We fit together with the familiarity of two people who haven’t spent a single second apart at all.

  As he pulls back from the kiss and smiles softly down at me, I feel his hand trail down my neck and press against my collarbone. “I suppose I could say goodbye now.” His voice is warm liquid caramel melting on my tongue. “It’s a hardship, but I’ll see you tomorrow. And the day after that. And, well...”

  Mateo scoffs. “Is this a teen movie?”

  “I think it’s sweet,” I murmur, reaching up to stroke the soft brown skin of Lynx’s masculine jawline, watching his throat bob as he swallows. “It’s nice to know you’ll still be around tomorrow when the sun rises. I’d forgotten what that feels like. I never want to go another day without all of you again.”

  “But we have to say goodbye,” Lynx reminds me. “You need sleep. Your hand...” Reaching out, he tugs on my wrist and pushes my fingers open to reveal my still-injured palm, Lana’s blood and mine both crusting on my skin. “You must be exhausted from using your powers, because it should’ve healed by now, but it hasn’t. So as much as I’d like to stick around...”

  A yawning pit of hunger forms inside me at his words, and I promise myself that I’ll make use of our time together as soon as we have any. Reluctantly, though, I have to admit that he’s right; I desperately need to sleep and regenerate, not hang around with the demons until sunrise, as much as I’d like to have the energy for it. “Goodbye for now.”

  “Until tomorrow.”

  Closing my eyes, I reach out towards the warm, comforting energy that is my bond with Lynx. And slowly, carefully, I imagine him fading out of the mortal plane and back to being incorporeal.

  When I open my eyes I’m pleased to see that the moonlight streaming in through the bay windows of the Great House is passing through his form. His touch on my hand fades, then slips away entirely. Cocking his brows at me, he jokes, “Boo! I’m a ghost.”

  I laugh, softly, and then he disappears from view.

  “Well, that took long enough.” Pushing off from the wall, Mateo swings out in front of me and presses me back against the doorway, hands caging my shoulders on either side. “You really know how to make an explosives expert wait.”

  Sebastian quips, “I wouldn’t use the word ‘expert’ as long as you’re still forgetting that you’ve pulled grenade pins.”

  “That wasn’t the kind of explosion I was talking about.”

  Ignoring Sebastian’s snort and Ezra’s exaggerated groan, Mateo tilts my chin up and closes the space between us to give me a ravishing kiss. His expert lips press against my mouth, his tongue stroking inside to send shivers pulsing up and down my spine. Even after all this time away, he remembers how to make my toes curl with just his mouth on mine, and he tastes like warm cinnamon and dark spice settling in the back of my throat.

  When our kiss is done, a long moment later—and after several pointed clearings of Ezra’s throat—my lips are tingling and my chest feels tight from lack of breath. Mateo smirks down at me, pushing his black hair out of his face, tattoos rippling with every tiny movement of his arm muscles.

  “I don’t have to go anywhere,” he says, his breath skimming against my jawline and neck with his words. “There’s room in that bed for one more.”

  I groan, opening the bedroom door and taking a step back, closely followed by him. Despite the temptation, though, I manage to hold up a hand and push him away, ignoring his luscious pout. �
��Goodnight, Mateo. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  It takes all my effort to dismiss him to his incorporeal form and let him go. That leaves the other half of the Scooby gang here, giving me two pointed green-and-blue glares.

  “I won’t overstay my welcome.” Pacing over, Sebastian gives me a quick, closed-mouth kiss—then, reluctantly, another longer kiss when I pout up at him, his mouth sliding open to taste mine. Little shocks of pleasure trail up my skin as he skims his fingers across my arm, then just as suddenly are gone when he steps back, his expression closing off. “We’ll have to catch up tomorrow. After you’ve rested.”

  “Okay.” My heart twists at the bitterness on his face; he looks more like he did when we were first bonded so many months ago. For a while there some of that pain and anger had faded, but now it’s back in full force, and I don’t know how to respond to it or make it go away. “Goodbye, Sebastian. I’ll miss you.”

  His face softens slightly at my words. “Sleep well, Dani.”

  It takes but a moment to dismiss him; now that I’m practicing using the bond again, it feels like second nature.

  Which is just as well, because now that it’s only me and Ezra, I can feel the full force of the bond—and his emotions. They seem to simmer just at the surface: regret, frustration, anger, sorrow, and a lonely kind of tenderness when he looks at me, the kind that makes my heart do a somersault inside my chest.

  Maybe that’s another one of my phoenix powers: a jumping jack heart that does skateboard tricks. It would explain why Grims are so eager to yank the things out of our chests—other than the whole gold-making and necromancy-casting abilities.

  My thoughts are racing. Licking my lips, I start to ask Ezra a question that’s been shaking around inside my head.

  Before I can the door to the roof opens, and Sam comes pounding down the stairs and sliding down the hallway towards my room. He glances at me, at Ezra, and back at me again. It’s clear he has something to say but has no idea if he should say it in front of an actual, real-life, upper-level demon.

  “What is it?”

  Looking relieved, he decides to direct his news in my direction. “Petra and I got the news from the infirmary. Olivia and Liam are both going to be fine.”

  A twinge of guilt spasms through me when I realize I hadn’t even stopped to check on them; I was too busy wallowing in my own feelings, absorbed with the news about my paternal parentage and the reforged bond with the guys.

  “That’s good. I should visit them.” Glancing towards the stairwell, I try to calculate how far it is to the infirmary, which is south and east of the Great House and down an incline that’ll be a pain to walk back up.

  “It’s after hours. You can visit them in the morning.” Based on the sympathetic look Sam is shooting my way, I didn’t make it subtle how tired I am. “By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask... why did you send the three of us up to the roof earlier? You could’ve sent us anywhere in the world. It doesn’t seem that far away. I mean, the headmaster healed in time, and it was nice to be so close so we could come back easily... but still.”

  Ezra is watching me, which makes me feel that much more self-conscious about the answer, but somehow I find I can’t lie to Sam’s face. “I used to think the only safe place in the world was my foster mother Sara’s house. Well, until it got a few grenades to the backyard, though I’m sure they rebuilt that by now.”

  Chewing on my lower lip, I search for an explanation that doesn’t sound sappy, and find that there is none. “When I came here at the start of the semester, I thought for sure the whole place was bullshit. And... it’s not perfect.” That’s an understatement, considering the fact that a student is about to be airlifted out in a body bag. “But it’s become my new home. It feels safe now. Nowhere is that more true than when I’ve hung out with you guys on the roof these past weeks, just being myself.” My eyes flick quickly to Ezra and back. “Although there were a few things missing, you guys did everything you could to make me feel at home. So it was the first place that came to mind when I thought of somewhere safe to put the headmaster to heal. Even though it wasn’t as far away as it could’ve been.”

  “Well.” He shoves his hands into his pockets. “It was clever, and it worked. We could’ve lost everyone tonight, but we didn’t. All because of you.”

  “We didn’t even catch him,” I point out.

  “There’ll be another chance.” He shrugs, surprisingly casual. “Live to fight another day...” Sam’s eyes trail about to Ezra, “isn’t that right?”

  “Ezra.”

  I watch, slightly mute with horror, as the demon puts his hand out and the shifter accepts it.

  “Sam,” he says, “Sam Leong. I’m the tiger from earlier.”

  “I noticed,” Ezra says dryly. “I can see those sort of things. Visualizing powers is my demonic ability.”

  “Ah.” Intimidation flashes across Sam’s face as he no doubt remembers he’s talking to a demon, one of his mortal enemies. It’s all I can do not to step between them—though I don’t know who I’d protect from whom. But just as quickly, the trepidation is replaced by a curious expression on Sam’s face. “Could you see who’s going to become a phoenix before they die? Because I have to say, that kind of power would be immensely useful to us. We wouldn’t have to fight so hard to protect baby phoenix from Grims if we could just gather them all up in one place.”

  Ezra shrugs, looking slightly uncomfortable to be having this conversation. “I’ve never tried.”

  “Well. Some other time.” Apparently sensing that the evening is ending, Sam heads back towards the stairwell. “Goodnight, Dani.”

  “Goodnight. Wake me up if there are any developments.”

  “Will do.” He barely manages to cover up a yawn. “I’ll tell Petra the same thing, too. She’s taking first shift.”

  As soon as he’s gone, I turn back towards Ezra and ask him the thing that’s been itching at me. “How do you know that the five of us are meant to be together? Was that in one of Meyer’s books or something? Did he tell you?”

  “No,” Ezra says. “It was in his diary, which I managed to nab the other night while he wasn’t looking and got Lynx to translate from Dutch.”

  Reaching into his jacket, he pulls out an altogether too familiar item, and a shudder of revulsion goes up my spine—along with confusion. “That book belongs to some dead Grim or something. It's not his diary. It’s hundreds of years old."

  “So is Leo Meyer.”

  Chapter 4

  No. Fuck no. I shake my head in denial.

  “You’ve got to be mistaken. Maybe it was like his great-great-great-whatever grandfather’s or something, but it’s not his. That would be nuts. Unless there’s something about Grims that’s been left out of my fucking history classes, which wouldn’t shock me at this point.”

  With a name like Ocean, my history teacher has to smoke weed from time to time, so it would be very in character for him to leave vital information off the lesson plan. Oh hey, by the way guys, Grims are not only scary evil dead-raising demon-controlling phoenix-heart-stealing assholes but also super old and don’t look a day over forty. It’s all that phoenix blood they inject into their veins. Enjoy the nightmares that’ll give you!

  “Seriously though,” I insist, “that’s just not possible.”

  “It is. I have my theories.” Glancing up towards the staircase to the roof, Ezra takes me by the elbow and steers me back into my room, then gently pushes the door shut behind him. “Out of the four of us, I’ve been spending the most time observing Meyer these past few months. I was frequently able to slip the leash he put on us since he needed my powers the least. Because of that, I’ve been able to observe some things he’s been hiding. Like the fact that he grinds up dried phoenix heart and drinks it with his coffee.”

  A full-body, revulsion-filled shudder goes through me. “That’s the grossest thing anyone’s ever said to me. And here I thought we were going to makeout once the others were gone.�
�

  Smirking crookedly, Ezra points out, “We still could.”

  I make a face at him, even though inwardly the thirsty bitch part of me agrees with him. But my mind keeps going back to the whole cannibalistic, three-hundred-year-old dad thing.

  “So you’re telling me everything he said was a lie? Because he acted like he wanted some alternative to taking Lana’s heart out of her chest. Kept saying shit about how he was going to make her fall in love with him or some nonsense like that... seemed far-fetched if you ask me.”

  “Oh, the headmaster is a lesbian,” Ezra casually says, since apparently he knows every bit of gossip this side of the supernatural. “That was something else I figured out by observing Meyer. It grated him that he couldn’t get her romantic love. He was trying to achieve a platonic love instead, but I don’t think it was working very well. Every time he earned her trust she would wake up just enough to be alarmed by his presence on campus, and he’d have to use Mateo’s powers against her.”

  “Poor Lana,” I murmur. “For the hypnotizing thing, I mean. The whole being-a-lesbian thing seems like a great alternative to having my psychopathic sperm donor of a father mind fuck her into loving him.”

  “Agreed on that one.” Ezra’s eyes spark. “Now that I’ve got you all caught up...”

  “Wait.” I hold a hand up. “So you’re telling me Meyer is super old?”

  “Yes. It’s unmistakable—the handwriting in this journal is his, and the details in it continue into the twentieth century, matching up with what little he’s revealed about himself. It has to be his life detailed there. It’s just too much of a coincidence that he has the journal.”

  “And he keeps from aging with some kind of necromancy, basically, by ingesting phoenix hearts every day?”

  “From what I observed. Although there could be something else to it,” he admits. “Lynx apparently only knows remedial Dutch. He kept complaining that he needed access to a library to get the rest of it translated, but there is something about a spell in there. I couldn’t convince him the journal is Meyer’s—he kept saying some nonsense about how it was a hypothesis only until more evidence was gathered, until I wanted to call him a nerd like Mateo does. But even he had to admit there’s something fishy going on. Meyer isn’t all that he claims.”