We dropped altitude slowly before touching down into a large ring of robust men and women, hard-faced and tight-bodied. There was no doubt in my mind they were shifters.
“What’s the deal here?” I said quietly to my alicorn, reluctant to slide to the ground. “Are they going to rush us? And if so, can we go at them as a unit?”
Her puff of air seemed like laughter, and that was good enough for me. I threw my leg over and hopped to the ground, walking to her head. After petting her nose and then up and around the base of her horn, I pressed my forehead to her nose.
“Good-bye. That was the best ride of my life, Beauty. Thank you.” I kissed her nose, because it felt like the right thing to do, and took my place among the others—a little behind a green-faced Ethan and beside a pale-faced Wally.
“I will never forgive you for that ride. I’m beyond nauseous,” Orin whispered from behind me.
It shouldn’t have been as funny as it was. It really shouldn’t have been. But I grinned, fighting the laughter. I mean, what wasn’t funny about an airsick vampire?
A stocky man with compact muscle and a chiseled jaw approached us, and for the first time, I noticed the chest behind him, piled high with gold. As he neared us, he angled his walk so that he was looking directly at me, his stare hard but his eyes glittering with respect.
“To win the gold, contestants had to ride an alicorn into this area,” he said, his voice raspy. “All of you accomplished that goal, despite the obstacles put in front of you.” His gaze flicked to Pete and a half grin lifted one side of his mouth. “Gives a new definition to saddle sore, doesn’t it?”
Pete reddened, and I didn’t know if it was because he was star-struck, staring at the shifter in awe like he’d been, or embarrassed. More likely, it was a combination of the two.
The man chuckled, a hearty sound that loosened the muscles across my shoulders. “Been there, done that.” His eyes came back to rest on me. “Amalthea, the matriarch of the herd, selects only exceptional individuals, ones with character above the rest. She doesn’t often allow riders, but she chose you. For that, your team will get a boon.”
My face turning red, I pointed at Pete. “His team. He’s the shifter.”
The man’s eyes rooted to me unflinchingly. “It will be delivered to your rooms. Well done.” He took a step back and lifted his arms. “My people will escort you out and see you back to campus. Good work, all of you. Your combined efforts are a model for every team in this school.”
As the others dispersed, each led away by someone different, the man who’d addressed us—the obvious alpha of the group—fell in beside me again, just for a moment.
“Amalthea has never, in all the time that I have known her, allowed someone to touch around her horn.” He looked at me with serious, deep blue eyes. “She is a judge unlike any other. You have a friend for life in that alicorn, something no one I know can boast, not even me. You are special…” He paused expectantly.
“Wild,” I supplied. “People call me Wild.”
He nodded once, a curt movement. “You are special, Wild. I’ll look out for you.” He nodded again, moving away, his eyes lingering on me for a moment more. “I’ll look out for you.”
In theory, it couldn’t be a bad thing to have a powerful alpha looking out for me. But it struck me that I wasn’t doing a very good job of avoiding notoriety.
Chapter 16
Getting back to the mansion should have been as simple as boarding a bus, sitting down, and letting the driver take us there with no stops along the way. Of course, we weren’t great at the simple way of doing things. Or maybe that was just me, maybe it was just my luck.
Ethan led us to the back of the bus, our usual station now that we were an unwilling part of the Helix cool crew. Ethan was on my left, head lolled back against the back of the seat, eyes at half-mast. Of course, he could totally relax. He didn’t have some trained assassin on his tail.
I, on the other hand, was a mess of nerves. The glow of the alicorn ride had faded, and the longer we sat there on the bus, the tighter my anxiety wove around me. This wasn’t a warning so much as a general realization that I was surrounded by people I wasn’t sure I could trust. I needed some alone time, some space to think, but alone time was exactly what Rory had told me I couldn’t have.
An all-male crew tromped in after us, covered in blood, busted lips, and some seriously wounded egos if their glowers were any indication. That drop-dead gorgeous guy—Colt, if I remembered his name right—was in the crew. He had a wand holster at his hip like Ethan and the other magic users carried. His dirty blond hair was just long enough to get messy, and he had a lean build like a swimmer or a runner, with a jaw line that begged to be touched. Not that I was that into pretty boys, but damn, he was the prettiest boy I’d seen in a long time. And I was far from blind.
Even if I was pretending to be a boy.
Wouldn’t mind getting my hands on that—pouch. His dark eyes turned my way almost like he could hear my thoughts, and the slightest smile curved those lips I’d pay good money to kiss. The smile widened, almost like…no, there was no way he knew…and then he winked at me. A simple wink, so subtle I almost thought I’d imagined it. Only I hadn’t.
Was he into dudes? I mean, it was possible, which was seriously a downer, much as it was another great win for the other team.
I leaned over to Ethan. “You know that guy there, right?”
He opened one eye. “Who? Colt? Yeah, we go way back.” He settled himself deeper into the lackluster seat. “Went to grade school together.”
“Is he into dudes?” I asked softly, not wanting to offend the hottest of hots.
Ethan burst into sudden loud laughter, but of course, he didn’t let it end there. “Colt! You into dudes and didn’t tell me?”
The bus erupted into immediate and intense howls from the guys who were with Colt, filling the small space even as the bus driver revved up the engine, normally loud enough to drown most noise. Apparently, we were abandoning the rest of the crews. Or maybe they hadn’t made it through the trial.
Colt grinned as he leaned over a seat and stared back at us, flashing perfect teeth to go with his perfect everything else. “Last I checked, nope.” And those eyes cut my way again. “I like my ladies with a bit of fire and a bit of badass, and a whole lotta legs.”
The heat in my face was about as intense as the mirth unleashed in the bus. I turned to look out the window, staring hard at the scenery even though I didn’t really see it.
Jesus Christ, he knew I was a girl! How did he know? And was he flirting with me?
Once the laughter settled, Ethan yawned and leaned back. “Why do you ask about his preference?” The way he posed the question, paired with the smug grin on his stupid donkey face, said it all.
The dirty tricksy bastard had spilled my secret to his friend. Any other time I’d welcome the attention from a guy like Colt, but not here, not now. Not when my siblings’ lives were on the line.
I couldn’t let Ethan stay so freaking smug. Sure, I didn’t have the picture of him smooching his nana or his precious magical CliffsNotes, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t leverage to be had. Like all other magic users, he had something precious on his person. Something I could use against him.
Namely that boom stick of his.
As soon as Ethan closed his eyes, I drove my elbow into his solar plexus, pinning him back to the seat. With the other hand, I went for his wand holster. His fingers wrapped around mine, trying to stop their waist-ward trajectory, and I jerked away, twisting my wrist with a sharp movement while still pinning him down. The point of the elbow is a right brute when used properly, and I was using it for all I was worth.
He tried to get out from under me, gasping for air, but I leaned in hard, putting all my weight into the point of my elbow. His face twisted in pain as I drove it into him, scrabbling to get at his pouch. He was about to get a lesson in keeping his mouth shut.
“What’s going on? Why a
re you two at it again?” Pete reached into the fray, then yelped as he caught the point of my other elbow as I jerked my action arm back before driving my fist into Ethan’s gut. Under me, Ethan thrashed and fought to get his legs between us even as the last of the air whooshed out of him.
“He. Won’t. Tell.” He breathed out as my hands wrapped around the pouch and yanked it free from his belt. I stumbled back, knowing I held his most prized possession.
My breath came in gulps. My sister and brother would only be safe if I managed to pull off this cover for at least the rest of the week, if not longer. I stared down at him, keeping him pinned with my eyes as I opened the pouch. I lowered my voice, dropping the register as deep as I could.
“Listen here, numb nuts, you’d better hear me loud and clear.”
From the front of the bus came a chorus of “oohs.”
I ignored them as I pulled the wand from its pouch and held it between my two hands as if I would snap it in half. The wand was warm, tingling under my skin, but not in an unpleasant way. Ethan’s eyes widened until I thought they’d fall out of his head. Part of me wished they would so I could kick them around the floor of the filthy bus.
I tightened my fingers around the wand. “I will snap this twig if you so much as breathe another word about me to anyone. Talk in your sleep? Snap. Spill under duress? Snap. Whisper it to your girlfriend? Snap. Do you finally understand the importance of this to me?”
Ethan sat there, shaking. He held out his hand. “Give it back to me.”
This was not like him, but then I had just yanked his most precious item away from him and threatened to destroy it.
I narrowed my eyes. “Do you understand? Even with your skull as thick as a brick crap house? Do you get it?”
“I understand,” he said, his jaw ticking with barely suppressed anger. “Now give it back to me.”
I dropped the wand and he caught it midair and scooted over to the far side of the seat. I sat and faced the front only to see Colt watching us with eyes nearly as wide as Ethan’s.
I tugged my hat down and slumped in my seat as if I were sleeping too. I wasn’t.
Which meant I heard everything whispered between Pete and Wally.
“The odds of him being able to touch his wand without having a bad reaction are one in a thousand. More, actually, if you take into consideration the fact that he took it from him by force,” Wally said.
“You mean if he’d handed it to him—”
“Yes, wands are tied to their owners, and while you can get a new one, if you touch someone else’s, you’re likely to get a burn, shock, or worse.”
I swallowed hard and tried not to think about what that meant. That I was some sort of freakshow? Wally had said that you could have two abilities. Maybe I had more magic in me than even Dad and Mom thought. It was possible, I supposed.
I slowed my breathing. I’d absorbed the troll’s magic and sent it back to him. I’d felt the stones like Gregory had. I’d connected with alicorns with a rare ease. I could understand Pete in his honey badger form, even if no one else realized it.
The whole concept of magic was still foreign to me, but I was no fool. I couldn’t ignore what was happening in front of my face. Magic was what I’d been feeling all along. My ability to fight and track and all that came from growing up on the farm. From fighting with Rory and Tommy, living in a school of hard knocks and quick reflexes. Maybe I wasn’t a Shade at all… Because there was no explaining away the weird things I’d been able to do. The magical things. I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter. Even if I was some kind of magical freak, the stakes remained the same for me. I was here fighting for Billy and Sam and my dad. Keeping them safe was the only thing that mattered.
Orin’s voice tugged at my ears. “Sometimes when a wand doesn’t like its user, it will be more lenient about outsiders touching it in the hopes that someone else will take it away. Perhaps that is the case here.”
Pete sucked in a breath. “Really? You mean Wild could actually be a mage? Wow, that would be awesome.”
I should have been excited about the possibility of having magic—real, honest-to-God magic. Even a week ago, if you’d told me I could wave a wand and make things explode, or use it to save people, I would have been over-the-moon excited. But…I’d gotten used to the idea of being a Shade.
It fit me in a way I hadn’t expected.
So what would happen if I got stuck into another house, one with all the snobby highbrow bastards?
The bus jerked to a halt and everyone peeled out. Everyone but me, which meant that Ethan wasn’t moving either.
“Get out of my way, Johnson.” He growled, but there was very little heat in it. I lifted my head and tipped the brow of my hat up. The bus was empty—even the driver had left, and the two of us were completely alone.
I turned to Ethan, hating that I needed him to answer a question when I trusted him about as far as I could send him with a single kick to the butt.
“What are the chances that I’m being groomed for the wrong house?” I asked.
His eyes narrowed to the look of irritation he always bestowed on me. “What do you mean?”
“I held your wand,” I shook my head. “And keep your mind out of the gutter, you know what I mean. I didn’t explode. I didn’t get more than a tingle. Could it be…that I’m being groomed for the wrong house?”
For the first time in our short, fraught acquaintance, I saw Ethan really listen to me, really consider what I was asking. A minute ticked by. His hand drifted to his pouch, and then he shrugged. “It is possible. As much as a filthy farm hand like you wouldn’t deserve to be part of the House of Wonder…it is possible. A lot of what you’ve done so far—”
“Could be learned behavior,” I said softly. I swallowed hard, suddenly needing to figure this out. “Who would be able to tell me?”
Ethan laughed and shook his head. “That’s what you’re here for. To be tested. You won’t know for sure until you hit the final test, I guess. Until you face the House of Wonder.”
I stood and started down the center aisle, my head spinning. My nametag on that first day had identified me as a Shade. A master of shadows and death. A killer in the making.
Now here I was doubting, wondering if there was more to me than even my father knew.
More than he or my mom, or even I could ever dream.
And it terrified the crap right out of me.
Chapter 17
“If you are still here, congratulations. You have survived the first three Culling Trials. You will now have a single day of rest. Be aware, curfew is now at ten p.m. If you see any of the following students, immediately contact one of the academy supervisors, or Director Frost.”
The booming voice cut through the really lovely, really hot and steamy shower I was having, and I stood there, water streaming off me, as the names were read through the PA system.
Heath Percival.
Gregory Goblin.
Lisa Danvers.
I towelled off quickly and pulled on my sports bra, wrestling the too tight material over my still damp body. I yanked my sweats on and all but tumbled out of the bathroom and into our dorm.
The three guys looked up, eyebrows raised. Pete shook his head. “Holy cats. I can’t believe you got by even one day without anyone guessing.”
“She didn’t,” Orin corrected him.
I shook my head, a plan already forming. “The names they called out. Do you guys know the others? I thought there were more missing the first day?”
Pete yawned and flopped into his bed. “Lisa was a shifter. A snake shifter to be exact. I think. I heard that the first kids ‘missing,’” he made air quotes with his hands, “had just taken off from the trials and the supervisors found them on the nearest road hitchhiking out of here.”
One shifter. One from the House of Unmentionables. “What do you want to bet that Heath was a future Shade?” All from the same house trials that we were doing at the time they went missing.
My head was spinning with the possibilities. Someone was taking the kids, and Rory had said that as far as he knew, they weren’t being killed. So why were they being taken?
“What does that matter?” Orin climbed into bed.
The pieces clicked inside my head, realigning themselves, trying to make sense of what was still missing. “Because it means that whoever is taking the kids is using the trials specifically to weed out the ones they want. And specifically, out of the trials that we are in at the same time.”
I paced the room, thoughts whirling as fast as a hurricane, whipping up everything I’d learned so far. I could almost taste the answer. I clenched and unclenched my fingers as I walked.
“You’re going to wear a hole in the floor,” Pete said. “And even if you’re right, what then?”
Before he could answer, the door swung open and Wally strolled in, pillow and bag in hand.
Pete jumped up. “Whoa, whoa, you can’t be in here!”
Her eyes were puffy and red and her chest rose and fell at a speed that I knew all too well. She swept toward me first, then stumbled to a stop. “Wild. Are you a girl?”
“No one knows.” I hurried past her to the door to make sure it was shut tight. “Please, my brother’s life is on the line.”
“You never asked me nicely,” Ethan muttered to himself.
“Because you’re a twat, and we only put up with you because we have to!” Wally snapped, shocking us all into silence, right before she burst into tears.
The guys all seemed to freeze, as if a girl’s tears were more terrifying than any of the challenges they’d yet faced. I moved first, having spent more than my fair share of nights comforting Sam.
Wally leaned into me. “Those girls are awful, just awful.”
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