by Lucy Auburn
“Good,” she says, in complete opposite of how I feel. “Ocean, I want you to tell me everything you know about Gunter. His goals, his aims, why he joined up in the wars in the first place.”
“I’ll tell you all you need to know and then some.”
“Dani.” Her gaze takes on quite a bit of weight as she looks to me. “Keep this last bit about Meyer to yourself. It’s a bit... out there, as theories go, even with all the evidence.”
As if I want everyone to know I’ve got a bio dad who’s not just a murderous psycho Grim but also hundreds of years old. “My lips are zipped. No one would believe me anyway.”
Wryly, Ocean says, “Oh, stranger things have happened in these halls. You’d be surprised how many people would believe you about this particular theory.”
He does have a point. “Well, it’s info I’d rather keep to myself anyway.”
“That’s just as well.” The headmaster nods in my direction. “Go for now. When you’re through visiting your friends in the infirmary and you’ve had lunch—I’m sure you’re hungry by now—return to my office. Five this afternoon should be good. I have a plan in mind that just might end this all for good.”
I’m almost out the door when Ocean adds, “And don’t forget to come by my office so we can start our research. Right after lunch would be perfect, before you speak to the headmaster.”
I hold back a sigh. “I guess I won’t need to study for my Weapons Combat exam, so sure.”
“Great.” Ocean pushes his glasses up on the bridge of his nose and smiles. “I’m looking forward to it.”
I’m not. But at least I’ll have my guys with me—even if, this time, it’s to have us all scrutinized.
I try to look on the bright side. If anyone will be able to figure out what all this means, from my parentage to my connection with the guys, it’ll be history research nerd Ocean Johnson. I just hope he’s able to tell me once and for all just what exactly a Black Phoenix is besides a nightmare reborn into a flame-winged regenerating miracle.
And I better get an A for all this.
Chapter 7
As soon as I step out of the headmaster’s office Lynx moves towards the library door, longing on his face.
“You know,” he says, “now that Meyer is gone, I bet we could get those books out of his office and find answers in them.”
“Do you think about anything but books?” Mateo grouses. “I’m shocked your dick doesn’t shoot out ink.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Gross. I could’ve done without that image in my head.”
“I want to know what they’re talking about,” Sebastian says, eyeing the headmaster’s closed door mistrustfully.
Ezra predicts, “They’re going to try to get Dani to trick her bio dad into something, no matter how much it risks her life, because they value the war more than its soldiers.” He eyes me. “What’re we calling him, by the way? Meyer, I mean.”
“I vote for evil fuckface,” Mateo offers. “Or sperm donor.”
Sebastian scoffs. “Psychopath is a good word for him.”
Evil. Father. Psycho. “Just call him Meyer,” I decide aloud. “That’s what we called him before. Nothing has changed. No matter what he says.” Ezra is looking at me, but I ignore his green eyes. “Even if him being my dad is true, that doesn’t mean I’m going to act any differently. He means nothing to me.”
I start to head down the hallway, ignoring the watchful eyes at my back, hurrying past the open dining hall doors serving a late breakfast. There’s a meeting going on past those doors; the headmaster sent a few of the teachers to explain that Meyer had been fired for impropriety and wouldn’t be allowed back on school grounds.
The hope was that time away from the spell would help break its hold over all of campus; already people were acting different, and the teachers were all cleared the moment the headmaster roused them from their beds and explained in clear-cut words what was going on.
But it could happen again.
One slip up. One way back on campus. A few well-placed words. And it’s all over for everyone here. He’ll make them forget again. Maybe even make me forget.
The phone, and its unanswered text message, are a heavy weight in my blazer pocket. I know the headmaster has her plans; I know I put my faith in her strength and supposed wisdom when I saved her last night. Out of everyone here, she’s clearly the only one Meyer ever truly feared, since he devoted so much of his time and power to destroying her strength.
But she’s been wrong before.
She brought him here, and she could be led astray again.
If I’m going to go against her wishes, I’ll have a short window to do it. I could take the phone out, tell him to meet me right now, and walk right out of the front gates with nothing but my demons at my side.
Except I have no fucking clue what I’m doing.
Walking into the infirmary and seeing Olivia makes that immediately clear. Yesterday I led her into battle with nothing but my confidence and the flimsy plan to cast a spell I’d never performed before. Now she’s been gravely injured by the very same man who claims to be my father, is apparently hundreds of years old, and who I have no chance of taking on by myself.
The headmaster has made her mistakes.
But it’s not her fault Olivia is currently beneath the white sheets of an infirmary bed, her middle heavily bandaged, face so pale she’s the color of the white sheets she’s laid out on. I’ve never seen her with so little life on her face or so much pain turning down the corners of her mouth.
Pausing at the doorway to the infirmary, I look inside and admit to myself that I avoided coming here because I didn’t want to see what I’ve done.
Lynx’s voice is soft near my ear, his presence close enough that little tingles go up and down my spine. “It’s not your fault, what happened to her. You shouldn’t blame yourself.”
I don’t respond; I put her in harm’s way, after all. She wouldn’t have even been involved if not for me and my foolishness.
I did this to her. I put her in the firing line. That isn’t even the end of it; I got someone killed last night without even bothering to get to know them first.
Clearly I should never be in charge of anything.
“Dani.” Her eyes flutter as she looks up at me. “Apparently I missed quite a bit.”
“You did.”
Sitting on a chair at her side holding her hand, Liam says, “I was just explaining our morning meeting. Or trying to. What did the headmaster have to say to you and Mr. Johnson? It sounded serious.”
Keeping in mind what I’m not supposed to say, I settle on telling them, “She’s coming up with some sort of plan to lure Meyer somewhere and capture him, I think.”
Licking her lips, Olivia says, “Liam told me that he’s apparently... your bio father?”
“Well, Liam isn’t my dad, as far as I know,” I dryly quip, “but apparently yeah, the lying bastard who nearly killed you may very well have donated the sperm that made me happen. But I don’t want to talk about him.” Grabbing a chair, I pull up next to the bed on her other side, emotions fluttering through my stomach at the sight of her like this. “I want to talk about you. How’re you doing? Hanging in there?”
“Oh, I’m peachy.” Her smile is a valiant effort, but it’s wan and weak compared to what it used to be. Playfully, she adds, “Apparently I got on A on all my final exams.”
“What luck,” I respond just as playfully, “I’m going to have to take at least three of mine. Though it’s nothing compared to what you’re going through.”
“It’s not that bad.” She reaches out and squeezes my hand, comforting me when it should be the other way around. “I’m just glad I’m still here.”
“Me too.”
“Promise me one thing though, Dani.”
“Anything.”
“Get the bastard and make him pay.”
“I just want to speak to them,” Ocean says soothingly, though the eagerness in his eyes does noth
ing to ease my worries. “This is unprecedented, Dani. I’m surprised I’ve never gotten to meet them before.”
“Well, you probably have,” I admit. “I think Meyer may have used Mateo’s powers on all the faculty.”
“Nah,” Mateo mutters, “I think I would remember this guy, but he’s not ringing a bell. Maybe he’s not strong enough to need a double-whammy of forget-me-not-not.”
“Really?” Lynx shakes his head. “A double negative? And a shitty one at that.”
Ocean nods and carries on, unaware of the secondary conversation going on around him. “It’s strange to realize that this whole time, our minds were being messed with. I didn’t even know Grims were capable of such a thing.”
“Neither did I,” I admit. “But we’ve already established that Meyer is a strange Grim. Apparently he had his own journal full of spells that he hoarded to himself. And he checked out all the top level books in the library about Grims. In fact I was hoping those books might help us out since he left them behind.”
“Ah, I’ve read every rare book in the library, including all the ones on Grims.” Ocean waves his hand dismissively. “Half of them are in dead old dialects of Dutch or German, and the other half contain too many theories to be useful. Though I suppose if anyone could make sense of them, Wilhelm Gunter could, and probably no one else alive.”
Great. “Well, the spell seems to be lifting now that he’s gone, even though we don’t know what it is.”
Sebastian chimes in, “I think I know what it was.” I glance over at him, frowning. “Well, what? We all watched him as much as we could. And he used my powers a lot at night, I think to help him with that spell.”
“Well, what was it?” I ask, ignoring Ocean’s glance of confusion.
Ocean saying, “Are you talking to them now? I’d really like to see them, as I said,” overlaps with Sebastian saying, “I think he was giving people good dreams and memories of him. Once he had the four of us, he used my power to make them even better, and used Mateo’s power to take away any bad memories or thoughts. As for the headmaster... well, the right siren song, add some powers of persuasion, and that’s all it would take. Even a Red Phoenix can be tamed.”
Ocean is downright frowning at me now. With a sigh, I tell him, “I’ll make them all corporeal so he can explain it again.”
“Good. Please do. After all, this counts towards your final grade for the semester.”
“Dani,” Mateo says, in a faux-serious voice, “if you want me to blow him up, I will.”
Tempting. But just think of the mess.
Chapter 8
Petra is lounging outside the headmaster’s office when I make it up the stairs, the demons no longer at my side. After being questioned by Ocean for nearly an hour and having to deal with his constant curiosity—how do your powers work, where did you come from, what does the bond feel like, did Meyer say this, did Meyer do that—Ezra snarkily told me that he’d prefer the void of nothingness to dealing with him.
Mateo was the one who said, “Bring us back when something fun is happening. Involving blood or sex. Maybe both?”
“Not both,” I told him.
I don’t blame them for hating this new out-to-the-world style of living. So far it’s been proving to be incredibly annoying—and it kind of ruins the fun of having a secret when it’s no longer a secret at all.
I’d like to go into a void myself rather than deal with the headmaster, her plans, or anything to do with Meyer right about now.
“So.” I glance at Petra. “Are you part of the Grand Plan too?”
She shrugs. “Fuck if I know. Apparently I’m going to be your Shield instead of graduating and going into the great wide world, though, so I guess she wants to brief me too. That or I’m here to fetch her coffee.” Petra raises one of her delicate blonde brows. “Apparently a certain someone pressed the button on Towers' machine so many times in a row and so hard that it’s no longer working properly. It has to be mailed back to the manufacturer for repair.”
“Wow,” I drawl, “I wouldn’t want to be that someone.”
“I wouldn’t want to have to protect them from dying of their own stupidity,” Petra responds, “but here we both are.”
Eyeing the door, I wonder aloud, “Do you think she’s figured something out that could work?”
Petra is about to answer when the door opens. Standing on the other side, tall and impeccably dressed, her bright red hair pulled back in a smooth bun, the headmaster looks incredibly imposing.
And she clearly overheard us.
Dryly, she says, “I think she has figured out something that could work. It’s just a matter of getting the details ironed out. If you’re up to it, Dani, I’d like to put the whole thing into motion tonight. Which means we have just a few hours to prepare.”
There’s nothing in the world I’d rather do less.
But I can’t get the image of Olivia in that infirmary bed out of my mind. She told me to kick his ass; she wants justice for what he did to us. I don’t blame her, and I don’t blame the headmaster either—as she arches a brow at me, I can’t help noticing the way she absent-mindedly rubs at the right side of her chest, where her heart was recently stolen.
I know what that feels like.
And I know what it feels like to watch as someone you care about is enslaved and used for evil against their will. Four someones, in fact, all of whom will want revenge just as much as I want to take it for them.
I’m just scared that I don’t actually have what it takes to do this.
“I’m up for it,” I tell her, trying to sound as convincing as possible, so much so that I almost believe myself. “Tell us what we need to do.”
“Marvelous.” She claps her hands together and motions for us to take the chairs in front of the desk. “What I propose is simple, Dani: you’ll act as bait. Petra will be your backup. And you’ll lead Meyer through a door that he’ll think goes one place, but actually leads straight to our prison complex.”
I wait for her to tell us more of the plan, and blink when there’s no more. “That’s... it? That simple?”
“The simplest plans are the most deceptive. This one relies on our belief that he’ll want to be reunited with you—and that his hubris will prevent him from seeing the trap coming. And it’s not foolproof. Once he takes a single step onto Darkness Island he’ll enter into our power-dampening field. But we have no idea how it’ll affect a Grim of his considerable powers. Because of that, I’d like to have as much backup as possible waiting for him on the other side.”
“Makes sense.” I’m relieved there’s more to her plan. “So you’ll put all the faculty members on the other side, waiting for him.”
“Actually.” The headmaster folds her hands in front of her on her desk and leans forward. “There’s one wrinkle in that part of the plan. The power dampeners also prevent shifters from shifting, and phoenix from using their fire—it all comes from the same magic source.”
Petra frowns. “It’ll be a slaughter if we try to face him without our powers.”
I have the feeling there’s something more to the plan. “You want me to summon the demons and put them on the other side of the door,” I guess aloud. “Because they won’t be affected by the power dampeners the same way.”
Headmaster Towers beams wide. “Exactly! You got it. Do you think they’ll agree to it?”
“She can just order them to do whatever she wants. So technically,” Petra points out, “it doesn’t matter if they’ll agree or not.”
“It does to me.” But I have the feeling they’ll jump at the chance to eviscerate Meyer. “I’m sure they’ll be into it. There’s nothing a demon loves more than a little revenge.”
I can just imagine the four of them now, eyes hard and angry, weapons at the ready, converging on Meyer with dark violence in their hearts. If anything, it makes me nostalgic for the night we met.
Mateo has a genuine spring in his step as we walk across the east side of campus, to
wards the top-secret entrance to Darkness Island. “I hope I have enough grenades for this.” He fiddles with his utility belt and double-checks his sidearm. “I want to blow a hole wide open in that bastard’s chest. Or shoot his dick off. Both? Both is good.”
Headmaster Towers looks at him sideways, clearly at least a little disturbed by spending time with a demon in person. “We don’t want to kill him. He has useful information.”
“At least let us maim him a little,” Mateo grumbles. “Otherwise what’s the point?”
Lynx, who was trailing behind us with the others, takes a few jogging steps to catch up and cuts his eyes in Mateo’s direction. “You’re so uncivilized. At least try to pretend like you’re not a violent killer.”
“You’re the one who strangles people with your bare hands,” Mateo points out. “At least I kill from a distance. Usually."
"There's a difference between a neat kill and a messy one. Ripping entrails is more Sebastian’s deal.”
From behind us, Sebastian calls out, “They scream so much harder when you turn them inside out before they die.”
The headmaster looks positively nauseous, while on my other side, Petra is biting her lower lip to keep from laughing—or vomiting, it’s hard to tell.
I would reassure them that the demons are just trying to rile them up by being as edgy as possible, but even I’m not sure. It does sound very Sebastian-like to do something like pull someone’s intestines out of their still-living body and smile as they scream.
“They probably deserved it.” I glance over at Lynx. “Right?”
“Most humans who try to summon us deserve at least a little bit of torture,” he says casually. “Dark marks on their souls and all that. Not to worry—neither of you have black bits swimming around in your ether. You haven’t done anything in your lives evil enough to deserve punishment from a demonic entity. I’m sure Sebastian won’t try to disembowel you.”
Petra bursts out in a huff of laughter at this. “Gee, I’m so reassured. Aren’t you reassured, Headmaster Towers?”