Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
A murder of crows descended on Dani’s head in a knife-winged cloud the moment she stepped into the apartment.
She flailed her arms frantically, dissipating most of the illusory birds and leaving the only real one treading air right in front of her, his otherworldly screeches more than enough for a whole power line packed with his brethren.
“Shoo, Gingerbread, leave off.” She ducked underneath him, his talons snagging in her hair.
“Where have you been?” McKenna squawked, matching the timbre of her familiar. “We were trying to reach you on the shell forever and neither you nor Wyatt would answer. I thought you’d been caught or ripped into pieces by one of pretty boy’s portals. So? What do you have to say for yourself?”
“I’m sorry,” Dani began, knowing full well what was coming.
“You’re sorry? That’s all you have to say? I thought you fucking died, Dani, I thought you—”
“Kenz, I…” Dani didn’t make it further than that before she burst into tears.
McKenna stopped pacing and rushed to her, wrapping her up in a hug.
She guided Dani to the bed and held her while she cried.
Everything Dani couldn’t let Wyatt see, she showed McKenna.
The sky-high stress of the escapade, the energy and courage it had taken to express her rage at him like that, the grief of what she’d learned about Kass.
Because that’s what it was: grief. The relationship she’d thought she was going to have with Kass was dead.
“Shhh, babe, shhh. It’s all right. You’re all right.”
“Am I?” Dani asked as her tears subsided. “He’s the CEO’s son, McKenna. How the fuck am I supposed to handle this?”
McKenna bit her lip. “I don’t know,” she said with unusual uncertainty. “But what I do know is we’re going to figure it out.”
Right now, Dani couldn’t possibly see how, but she was too tired and sad to try. “I’m sorry if I scared you.”
An exhale shuddered out of McKenna. “Yes. Well. Next time, send a smoke signal or something so I don’t summon Gingerbread’s family to comb the city streets for your dead body.”
“Wait, what?”
“Oh, they’re fine,” McKenna said. “Ruby needs to get out more, anyway. Where did you and Wyatt go?”
“This random hookah bar.” Dani untangled herself from McKenna’s arms and started to unlace her boots. “Wyatt wanted a drink.”
“That’s why you smell like a chimney sweep at a tropical resort.”
“Do tropical resorts have chimneys?”
“Don’t heckle me,” McKenna said. “It’s unbecoming.”
They went to bed after Dani shot a quick message to Silva and Oliver each, letting them know she’d made it home safely. Dani was beyond relieved to melt into her nest of blankets, much like Gingerbread curled up in his own. As soon as her head hit the pillow, she was out.
But she didn’t get much quality rest. Her dreams were haunted by vignettes of Kass discovering her breaking into OneiroLabs. You betrayed me, he said, over and over. This is my family. How could you do this to me? I thought I could trust you.
Dani woke with a start after only a few hours, sitting up straight. Sweat was sticky in her hairline. From his roost, Gingerbread asked a sleepy question.
“I’m all right,” she told him. The window was still dark, and McKenna was snoring softly.
Dani was certain that even if she could go back to sleep, she didn’t want to.
It was four A.M., and she didn’t want to wake McKenna, to burden her with all this again, so she took a quick shower, packed up her things, and headed out to the café attached to the library, the only place on campus open this early.
She splurged on an almond croissant and a triple espresso with a packet of raw sugar in the hopes that she could make some headway on next week’s tarot assignment.
But it was hard to focus on homework when she was terrified she wouldn’t be at the Leap long enough to turn it in.
She couldn’t tell if it was a void sickness hangover making her queasy or if it was her fear that Dr. Rodriguez had somehow recognized her through McKenna’s glamour last night.
And even if campus security wasn’t on their way to detain Dani at this very moment, there was still the soul-crushing, heart-wrenching matter of Kass.
What was she going to do? Put it all out there and tell him she was attempting to sabotage his father’s company?
If she did that, she’d lose him and her place at the Leap in one fell swoop.
She knew he liked her, but this was his family.
What were the odds he wouldn’t go straight to his father with this information?
Then they’d all end up expelled, maybe even in prison.
But on the other hand, could she really keep dating him without saying anything? A relationship without trust was no relationship at all. She couldn’t lie to his face and then kiss him in the same breath. Could she?
Dani couldn’t bear the answer. Instead, she brute-forced her attention onto her tarot deck and tormented herself with astrological associations for two hours, until her quartzpad pinged a message in Katya’s app.
My office. Noon.
The command from Silva didn’t come as a surprise, yet it filled Dani with trepidation.
She went to her morning classes in a stupor, her lack of sleep dogging her and the nightmare still lurking in her neurons.
Her wifting was heavier than usual as she made her way to the OS building just before twelve.
She ran into McKenna in the lobby, answering the same summons.
The other girl took her by the hand, and they arrived side by side at the door to Silva’s office, which opened at the sound of their voices.
Wyatt was on the other side, looking apprehensive and a bit haggard, and behind him, Katya was seated in the chair meant for students at office hours.
Oliver was slouched against the wall, their expression somber, but they gave Dani a small smile when she entered, clearly glad to see her in one piece after last night.
Silva was seated at her desk, stone-faced, and Dani bit the inside of her lip, sensing the aura of crankiness that hung over the whole group.
“Come in, ladies,” Silva said stiffly. “Close the door, please, Mr. Shalhope.”
All of them obeyed. It was a tight fit, the six of them in the office, and Dani felt properly sandwiched between McKenna and Oliver.
“Thank you for coming on such short notice,” the professor continued. “I know you all have to get to afternoon classes soon, but I wanted us to make certain we’re all on the same page after the disaster that was last evening’s mission.”
“Disaster?” Wyatt repeated. “How is doing what we set out to do a disaster?”
Dani wanted very badly to lean over and smack Wyatt on the side of the head, but resisted the urge.
“Mr. Shalhope,” Silva said, and Dani could practically feel the ice crystals forming on her words. “I would suggest you choose your stance very carefully, considering your actions last night. An apology would not be amiss.”
Dani swallowed, willing Wyatt to conjure some of the humility he’d shown in the hookah bar, but he clearly wasn’t on her wavelength, because he puffed up his chest.
“I don’t think I have anything to apologize for. I saw a chance and I took it. It’s not my fault you squandered the opportunity I dumped in your lap.”
“The opportunity?” Silva’s venom was such that Dani leaned away from her.
“You went rogue when I explicitly instructed you not to act upon any of your foolish ideas. Then you assaulted one of the highest-level employees at OneiroLabs. My priority is your safety and the success of the operation. Pardon me if I’m not fawning over you with grati—”
“Bullshit!” Wyatt said. “You don’t give a rat’s ass about our safety, or you wouldn’t have recruited students to do your dirty work.
I didn’t see you in there sticking your neck out for your so-called moral cause.
Nope, you were speeding off in your van while Dani and I were left to fend for ourselves.
Because why do it yourself when you can send a couple of students in and hang us out to dry when things turn ugly, right? ”
There was a long, frosty silence. The enchanted skylight overhead darkened. At Dani’s side, Oliver shifted.
“If that’s how you feel, Mr. Shalhope,” Professor Silva said, her voice taking on an android edge, “you know where the exit is.”
“I don’t want to leave,” Wyatt said, some of his fire finally dying down. “I just don’t think it’s fair that you want us to do the hard parts but won’t listen to us.”
“I—” Silva started.
“Stop.”
Everyone turned toward Oliver, who pushed themself off the wall. They looked weary, but this time it was because of the firefight going on in front of them.
“Just stop,” they repeated. “None of this is helping. It’s a tough situation all around. Can we just agree to be a team from now on? Or at least pretend to be?”
“We are a team,” Silva said, “and every team needs a leader. I’m doing what I can to be the best leader possible, which includes listening.
If someone has something to discuss, my door is always open.
But it’s imperative that we’re in alignment when we’re in the middle of an operation. Is that understood?”
Everyone nodded or murmured affirmation, including Wyatt, though he did so reluctantly.
“I’m sorry if you felt left behind,” the professor continued, looking at Dani.
“It was a difficult decision, but one I felt I had to make to protect the most people that I could at the time. Perhaps there were more ideal ways to have handled the situation, but it might not have come to that if we had all played our parts correctly, which I trust each of you will in the future. If anyone, anyone goes against my direct orders in the field again, they will be excused without a second thought,” she finished.
A small silence followed, in which Silva studied each of them in turn.
Finally, she cleared her throat. “Now. We have approximately three weeks left until the gala. We will meet again on Monday and determine our next steps. Though Miss Novak assures me her device could pass even the strictest security sweep, she must make certain that it remains undetected after the alarms were raised. After, she’ll need a few days to fully explore OneiroLabs’s systems and discover the breadth of what she can access or manipulate.
In the meantime, keep your heads down and please, try not to attract any undue attention to yourselves. Questions?”
A pause. Dani felt her question, the question, bubble up underneath her diaphragm: What do I do if I just found out I’m dating the CEO’s son?
But she just bit down hard on the inside of her lip again, this time tasting blood.
“Very well,” Silva said into the silence. “Dismissed.”
Everyone trooped out of her office without speaking to one another. Out in the wet afternoon, the sidewalks were rivers running with students hurrying to their next class. Katya and Wyatt peeled out quickly, but Dani, McKenna, and Oliver lingered in front of the OS building for a moment.
“How are you holding up?” Dani asked Oliver.
“I should be asking you that,” they said. “I feel awful that we left without you last night.”
“Oh, please don’t,” Dani said. “It was Silva’s decision to leave, not yours. And anyway, we could have ported back to campus if it had come to it.”
“Still,” Oliver said. “I’m sure that can’t have felt good.”
McKenna nodded.
“Porting definitely didn’t,” Dani said with a laugh. “I’d really rather not do that again unless I absolutely have to. Where are you headed now?”
“I’ve got a free period, so I think I’ll stop by the greenhouse,” Oliver said. “I haven’t told Silva yet, but I’ve started experimenting with using my telepathy to figure out what other plants could be part of the antidote.”
“How does that work?” McKenna asked with interest.
“It’s hard to explain,” Oliver said. “I can kind of discern the essence of a plant, get a sense of its properties. Right now I’m working on grafting two plants together that might work well against the nightmares.
I’m using telepathy to try to get them to communicate better as they fuse, but it’s delicate business.
I need to tend it multiple times a day.”
“Fascinating,” McKenna said. “I don’t have class until three—would you mind if I tagged along to see?”
“Of course not,” Oliver said. “I’d love to show you.”
“I’ve got stats in ten minutes, but I’m going in the same direction,” Dani said. “I’ll walk with you.”
They turned right, joining the flow of students.
McKenna and Oliver struck up a conversation about plants that could be used as components in glamours; McKenna frequently went into the university forest to forage but was curious about the possibilities of growing such things in a greenhouse.
After a few minutes, they came to the arcanobotany quad, the most artistically landscaped section of the university, with the mammoth greenhouse nestled at the center.
“Go on ahead,” McKenna said to Oliver. “I’ll catch up with you in a minute.”
“Sounds good,” Oliver said, and gave Dani a quick hug. “See you later, Dani.”
McKenna turned to face Dani as Oliver started toward the greenhouse. “I just wanted to check in. Are you—”
Dani’s long-held question came spilling out of her before her friend could even finish. “What the hell am I supposed to do, Kenz?”
“I’m going to be honest—this is one conundrum I don’t know how to solve,” McKenna said. “It’s a pretty tough spot. Let me ask you this: What do you want to do?”
“I want to have none of this OneiroLabs stuff to have ever happened. I want Kass not to be the CEO’s son. I want to forget I know anything about all of this.” Dani sighed. “I feel like I have to tell him.”
“Tell him that you’re trying to steal from his family’s business? You can’t do that.”
“I also can’t just pretend I don’t have a secret like this. I’d at least have to quit Silva’s project.”
“Do you want to quit?” McKenna asked.
“I mean, kind of. Not really, obviously, because Oliver, and you know, the whole scholarship thing. But I can’t keep dating Kass and trying to bring down his family’s business at the same time! What happens when he finds out? That’s so fucked up. I think I have to choose, Kenz.”
“Break up or back out?”
“Yeah,” Dani said sadly. “Break up or back out.”
“I’m sorry, babe.” McKenna reached for her hand and gave it a soft squeeze. “Whatever you decide, I’ve got your back. If you go, I go. It’s you and me. Always.”
“Always,” Dani said. At least she had McKenna. Of their friendship, she would forever be certain.