Strength of Desire (Vesperwood Academy: Incubus #2)

14. Noah

14

NOAH

A fter the night on the roof, I redoubled my efforts doing Isaac’s spy work. Anything to keep my mind off Cory.

Cory, who I couldn’t get out of my head. Cory, who kept turning up like a bad penny. Cory, who’d appeared that night just as I was imagining coming down his throat.

I definitely needed something to distract me. And with the whole campus gearing up for Imbolc celebrations, I hoped the wardkeepers might be a bit distracted too, making it easier to avoid their notice.

Unfortunately, getting into Sheridan’s quarters was going to be more difficult than Teresa’s. His rooms were on the second floor, off a busy hallway close to the grand staircase that connected the four main floors of the manor. I loitered as much as I could, but I never once saw any cleaning staff go into his rooms.

Either he didn’t want cleaners coming in, or they only did it when I was teaching. Either way, it was going to be hard to sneak into his quarters with all the foot traffic around. Which just meant I’d have to do it boldly instead.

Sheridan went to dinner at Angler’s Rest with Orlando Moyano once a week on Thursdays. ‘ Mingling with the hoi pollo i,’ I’d heard Sheridan call it once. I couldn’t imagine there were that many people to mingle with at a fishing resort in January, but it didn’t matter.

The important thing was that they left at the end of Fourth Hour, and that Angler’s Rest was a good twenty minute drive from Vesperwood along twisty, forested roads. That meant that if I waited to break into his rooms until 5:45 p.m., Sheridan would be safely ensconced at the bar by then, mingling with his unwashed masses.

If Sheridan didn’t ward his rooms, then none of this mattered, but I had to assume he did. If I tripped his wards at 5:45, then I had fifteen minutes, assuming Sheridan sped home, to thoroughly search his rooms before he arrived back at the manor to find out what had happened.

At least my little adventure with Cory on the roof had yielded one positive outcome—it had given me the idea for what my excuse would be, when Sheridan ran back into his rooms to find me standing inside them.

I wasn’t positive Sheridan and Orlando would be going out for dinner this Thursday, since it was the same night as Imbolc, but when I heard them talking about it in the faculty lounge on Wednesday, I knew tomorrow would be my day.

On Thursday morning, I got to the gym earlier than usual to select my weapon. I scanned the wall, my eyes sliding across katanas, battle-axes, longswords, and spears, to the more creative maces, flails, and stilettos, before landing on the cross-bow I needed.

My plan called for a projectile, not a blade. I didn’t have to be particularly accurate, which was good, because it would be dark by the time I was shooting, but I needed a weapon with enough heft and range to be worrisome, to Sheridan in particular.

After setting the crossbow and arrows in the crook of a white pine where I could pick them up later, I strode back to the gym. Out on the back lawn, a group of young women completed a complicated, circular dance in the snow, under the watchful eyes of two professors. Their voices rose high into the winter morning, singing a lilting tune that mingled with the frost. The beginning of the day’s Imbolc celebrations were underway.

I was grateful for the darkness, by the time five thirty rolled around that evening. Part of my plan required blaming a mysterious group of students who would dematerialize into the shadows, and that wouldn’t work if anyone noticed me skulking around the grounds tonight instead.

I wound my way around the manor, staying just inside the treeline, in case anyone was looking out the windows. I doubted anyone would be, what with the feast being thrown in the ballroom, but it was good to be careful. We’d had snow again the day before, and I hoped no one questioned my story enough to look for footprints. They wouldn’t find any but my own.

Sheridan’s windows were in the back center section of the manor, just behind a low crenelation that ran around the building. This morning, I’d made my way up to the thin stretch of roof behind the crenelation and placed three cans of Milwaukee’s Best on the fanciful merlons that had been carved from it. The snow blanketing the grounds helped create a glow that made the night a little brighter, but I was still shooting in the dark. It would be a wonder if I actually hit any of the cans, though that didn’t really matter.

I’d never liked crossbows, to tell the truth. They weren’t made for the type of fighting I was used to. They did the most damage when used defensively, from the kind of rampart I was now shooting up at. But the bolts were heavy, designed to penetrate armor, and they’d work for my purposes now.

I loaded the bow and raised it, then paused for a moment to exhale, emptying my mind of all thought except the invisible line connecting me to my target. I shot, and I was pretty sure I heard one of the cans topple over.

That was better luck than I’d expected. Shooting up at a building was far harder than shooting down from one, and even though the woods came close to the manor where I was standing, I was pushing the edge of the crossbow’s range. I shot a second bolt, deliberately aiming a little wide, and heard a clatter as it landed somewhere on the roof.

The final shot was what counted, though. I loaded the bolt and shifted my stance, aiming now for Sheridan’s diamond-paned windows. Exhale, pause, release. The bolt flew true. In the stillness of the dusky woods, I heard a shatter of glass, but I didn’t stick around to admire my handiwork.

I dropped the crossbow and three other bolts, then sprinted back into the woods a bit before yelling, “Hey, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Then I pivoted and ran back to the manor. I didn’t think anyone was watching, but I put on the show just in case.

I ran to the back doors as though hot on the tails of invisible miscreants, threw the doors wide, and dashed down the hall to the grand foyer. From there, I sprinted up the stairs, taking them two at a time. I arrived at Sheridan’s rooms not out of breath, but realistically winded.

Most of the students and faculty were at the feast by now, but I continued my charade, looking left and right for the ‘ students ’ I was chasing. Then I advanced on Sheridan’s door.

“Sheridan! Are you in there? Are you okay?” I shouted.

No answer, of course.

“Sheridan?” I called again. When all I got was silence in return, I threw my body against the door. The lock shuddered, but didn’t give. I backed up a step and kicked it once, then twice. On the third kick, the lock failed and the door slammed inwards.

If the broken window hadn’t already tripped Sheridan’s wards, the door definitely would. The clock was ticking now. I had ten minutes, maybe fifteen, to find whatever I was going to find in here before Sheridan came back.

I shoved the door closed behind me. It didn’t latch right, now that I’d broken the lock, but at least it wasn’t hanging wide open, to catch the interest of anyone in the hall. Then I looked around Sheridan’s living room, shaking my head.

I no longer thought his rooms got cleaned when I was teaching—I didn’t think they got cleaned at all. The place was a mess. Papers were strewn everywhere, along with plates with crumbs, crumpled towels, shoes in little piles, and shirts hanging off of chair backs, doorknobs, even a lampshade. A tie and a single sock stuck out from underneath an untidy heap of books that appeared to have fallen off his coffee table. If I hadn’t known better, I’d say someone had already ransacked the place. The shards of glass from the window I’d broken didn’t make it look any neater.

Still, I did the best I could, going through each room as methodically as was possible in that chaos. Half his wardrobe seemed to be on the floor of his bedroom, and his study looked like the aftermath of a book avalanche. There were two empty bottles of sherry on his unmade bed, and another one next to the clawfoot bathtub. I peered at the labels. Lustau Pedro Ximénez. I didn’t know much about sherry, but I would have bet a month’s salary that these were expensive.

The good thing was that I didn’t think Sheridan would notice my rifling, amidst the mess. The bad thing was that I had to sort through extra layers of detritus to find anything useful. And search as I might, I didn’t find anything—until I reached a drawer in the built-in wooden desk in a corner of Sheridan’s living room.

It was sticking out at an angle, like he’d pulled it off its tracks and hadn’t realigned it before shoving it back in. I made a note of the approximate angle, then pulled on the handle.

It wouldn’t budge. I tugged again, then bent down. Something was stuck, blocking the drawer from opening further. I tried pushing instead of pulling, shaking it back and forth to make the contents rattle around. Finally, it pulled free.

Most of the contents were what you’d expect. Loose papers, a scattering of coins, an actual quill pen with a stoppered bottle of ink, but the strangest was a soup ladle. That must have been what was jamming the drawer, but I had no idea what it was doing there.

I flipped through the papers. They seemed to be notes on chaos magic, but the details were beyond me. Definitely not my area. I slid my fingers over the coins. Most of them were foreign. Euros, Pesos, and a handful of West German Deutsche Marks from the 1960s. There was one other coin in the back that I couldn’t quite see. I pushed the inkwell out of the way, pulled the coin forward, and froze.

The coin was silver. Pure silver, I knew, as soon as I saw it. Twice the circumference of a quarter, and four times as thick. The front showed a raised relief of an open human eye surrounded by seven stars. No date. It wasn’t that kind of coin.

It would have felt heavy in the palm of my hand, but I didn’t want to pick it up. I stared at it warily, like the eyeball might bite me. I needed to see the other side, to confirm it really was what I thought it was.

I grabbed the quill and used the tip to flip the coin over. It landed with a thud in the back of the drawer, the new side displaying a closed human eye, just like I’d known in my gut it would. Instead of stars, a few words in script ran around the edge of the coin. Mine in darkness, mine in light .

Fuck.

I prided myself on not scaring easily. My whole life was dedicated to keeping a cool head in a fight, to keeping control of myself. Standing in Sheridan’s living room, staring at a silver coin, might not have looked like a fight, but that coin was more dangerous than any weapon I had in the gym. More dangerous than the moraghin, even. And it was here, at Vesperwood.

I forced down my rising sense of unease, refusing to let it turn into fear. There would be time for that later, but for now, I needed to keep calm. I flipped the coin back to the open-eye side, replaced the quill, and slid the drawer back into place. I even set the ladle so that it jammed again.

Dammit, I’d only been in Sheridan’s rooms for ten minutes. I needed to talk to Isaac now , but I also needed Sheridan to show up again. If anyone saw me leaving his rooms in a hurry, they’d assume I was there illicitly. I needed to complete my cover story.

Fucking Sheridan, of all people. Arrogant stuffed-shirt that he was, I wouldn’t have thought he was dangerous enough to carry that coin. But maybe, just maybe, he was foolish enough. Yeah, that made more sense.

Thankfully, he didn’t take too much longer to show up, rushing into his rooms with fear on his face. Fear that turned to fury when he saw me standing there, holding the crossbow bolt that had landed on his floor.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“Looking for this.” I held up the bolt that I’d grabbed a few minutes before.

“But why are you—”

“Do you know any reason why students would want to shoot arrows at your rooms?” I asked, not giving him a chance to gain control of the conversation. I needed to keep him on the defensive.

“What?” Sheridan’s face blanched.

Good. He was scared. That would make him less likely to question me closely.

“I saw a group of students in the woods,” I said. “They’d stolen a crossbow from the armory, and were shooting up at the manor from the grounds.”

He looked outraged. “Students? Which ones?”

“Didn’t see. I called out to them to stop, and they scattered. They’re probably back inside by now, mingling with everyone else at the celebrations.” I let myself growl wordlessly, evincing frustration.

“Well, why didn’t you chase them?” Sheridan asked, looking at me as if I were delinquent.

“I was more concerned about what they were aiming at, and if they’d hit any of their targets,” I snapped back, which shut his mouth satisfyingly. “I heard glass shatter on the last shot they got off. Given everything that’s happened lately, I was more worried about whether someone had been shot than about who had done the shooting.”

I gestured to the shattered window behind me, the glass sparkling in the dim light of Sheridan’s rooms. His mouth dropped open, noticing it for the first time. He stepped further into the room, placing his feet carefully as he inspected the damage.

“Quite right, quite right,” he murmured, and I wasn’t sure if he was talking to himself or to me.

“When I realized it was your window they’d hit, I ran up here,” I told him. “There was no answer when I knocked or called your name. I know you usually spend Thursday nights off campus, but I was worried you might have changed your schedule. You could have been lying in here bleeding, for all I knew. So I forced your door. I’m sorry.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Sheridan said, barely looking up from his survey of the glass blanketing the floor. “I ward my rooms and felt the door give. Drove back here to…” he trailed off, looking around the room as though one of the ‘ students ’ might jump out at him.

“Do you know why anyone would be shooting at you?” I repeated.

“No,” he said, finally looking at me. “No, I don’t.”

“Well, I’m going to talk to Isaac,” I said, hefting the crossbow bolt. “Something like this is too out of the ordinary. He needs to know about it. Then I’m going to figure out which students did this, if it’s the last thing I do.”

I was going to talk to Isaac, but not about my fake students. There would be plenty of time to ‘ find ’ the beer cans and other bolts on the ramparts tomorrow, to reassure Sheridan that no one had been trying to shoot at him. Not that he deserved the reassurance, if he was holding onto that coin. But Isaac needed to know about the coin right now—that took precedence.

“Glad you’re okay,” I said as I headed for the door, though I was nothing of the sort. I had no pity for anyone who put themself in Sheridan’s position. Hell, I’d have been happy to shoot him with the crossbow myself right now, if I’d had it in hand. But I couldn’t say that.

I’d just reached the doorway when he called out, “Do you think they really were students?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, tensing. I didn’t turn around until I was sure my face was still.

“Well, the school’s already been attacked once,” he said. “What if they came back?”

“Moraghin aren’t known for their crossbow skills,” I said drily.

“Maybe it’s not moraghin this time,” he said. “Maybe it’s something else. Something worse.”

I blinked. “Like what?”

Obviously, I knew it wasn’t, but I wondered where his mind was going.

“Assassins,” he whispered.

My eyebrows shot up, and for once, I didn’t mind my surprise showing on my face. “Assassins?”

“Coming back to take me out,” Sheridan said. He twisted his hands together, the picture of worry. Finally, he exhaled and said, “I was in the woods when the moraghin attacked. I wasn’t that far from the gym. So the moraghin could have been looking for me.”

I frowned. “I thought you said you were in your rooms.”

He looked like his stomach hurt. “I was on my way to Harmony Haven. I had been in my rooms, before that. Absolutely ridiculous that I don’t have quarters in Harmony already. I may be a newer faculty member, but I’m over twenty years older than Connor, and five years older than Ayah. I ought to have seniority.”

I looked at him blankly.

“In any case, in all the confusion, I think I said I was in my rooms during the attack, when I was, in fact, a bit farther away. It hardly matters. But I was passing near the gym when the attack occurred, and I was using a heat spell as I walked. It was rather cold that day, you know.”

“You didn’t think the walk would warm you up on its own?” I asked. Was he such a delicate flower that he couldn’t handle a healthy trek across the grounds without babying himself with an additional warming spell?

“It shouldn’t have mattered,” he sputtered. “How was I to know that a group of moraghin were to breach our wards? But if someone had sent the moraghin after me, and the alignment of their breaching spell went awry, they could have ended up in the gym by accident and gotten sidetracked by your students.”

“Why would someone be after you?”

I could think of plenty of reasons, with that coin in his drawer, but I didn’t think Sheridan would cop to any of that.

“I—I—I don’t know!” he spluttered, dry-washing his hands even more intensely. “Perhaps the moraghin weren’t sent after anyone in particular, but once they were on the grounds, they were attracted by the spell I was doing as I walked past the gym. You have to admit, that makes more sense than those monsters intentionally targeting you or your students. You’re not even a witch, and freshmen are hardly powerful enough to tempt moraghin.”

Was that actually plausible? I wondered. Maybe Sheridan just had a guilty conscience.

“Could be,” I said slowly. “Have you told Isaac about this?”

Sheridan definitely looked guilty now. “I was hoping I was wrong. That it wouldn’t be necessary.”

I felt sick. I had no sympathy for him at all, but this still seemed like information Isaac should have. I said as much, and Sheridan looked like he might vomit.

“Are you going to tell him?” he asked, nodding at the bolt in my hand. “When you talk to him about what happened tonight?”

“Not if you promise to tell him as soon as possible.” A complete lie, but not one I had trouble telling. I needed to talk to Isac now . “Good night, Sheridan.”