17. Chapter 16
By Monday, the posters for the students who had gone missing during their assessments had been hung.
Callum’s face was among them, which confirmed his suspicions of his brother’s hold on the dean.
He could tell Declan’s magic by the faint gray sheen over her eyes the other night.
So long as she was under his control, Ezra wouldn’t have to be concerned about her interfering.
He couldn’t fully rely on how much she’d be involved either.
But he could at least believe she’d look the other way for as long as she could.
Ivy stood at one of the bulletin boards before their history class, scanning the posters as if the faces on them were whispering secrets to her.
While part of his mind was occupied with his task and with Silas, the rest was wrapped up over her.
He couldn’t stop thinking back to the night he’d run into her outside of Belarune.
Or how soft her lips looked. That was beside the point.
There was clearly something more to her than what met the eye.
Maybe it should’ve been obvious by the way their magic reacted to one another.
He wasn’t sure if he’d ever felt anything like it except with Silas.
But his was different. Her magic was like that of a rose—soft petals gliding against his whenever she was nearby, but also sharp like thorns when he pissed her off.
Even stranger was how their spells had combined to fend off those fire-breathing flowers.
Then how she brought up Briar Mayclair the other night.
It was a name that, unfortunately, was scarred in his mind by his father.
She was the disappearance his family believed he had “sabotaged”.
It was why he had been locked in the basement for months.
He thought it was his conscience preventing him from wiping the news stories about Briar’s disappearance the first time.
But what if it were something else? Or someone else?
Maybe that was reason enough to stay far away from her, no matter how much his magic begged him to get closer.
He ended up skipping their history class.
He actually skipped all of his classes. Not the wisest for his grades, but it was at least early enough in the semester for it not to matter as much.
Instead, he searched every building across campus for bulletin boards for the posters.
So far, every main student building had one, such as Arcania Hall, Galraine, Belarune, and Sequoia.
On every bulletin board were fifteen posters, each with a photo taken on orientation day with the accompanying name and date last seen.
After studying Callum’s poster closely, the most minute difference—a letter “T” that was a hair smaller than the rest of the text—became noticeable. He found the same variance on two other posters. Those must be his targets. Nausea built in his throat.
“Why them?” he muttered to himself. Maybe his father had a specific reason for picking people. Or maybe they were a means to an end and simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Neither possibility made what he had to do next any easier.
He waited in his apartment until a couple of hours past nightfall before venturing back out.
Most classes would have been finished, and students would have already wound down for the night.
As long as he paid attention to his surroundings, he should be able to slip in and out of places easily enough.
He’d start with the posters—erasing one student tonight, the second for tomorrow or the next day, and for Callum…
he wasn’t sure how to approach. Ivy knowing about Callum’s disappearance complicated things, and she hardly seemed the sort to let something go, especially since she was still pissed off at him over a plant.
Starting in Crusade Hall, in none other than the School of Warfare, which still gave him a laugh at the obvious name, he bypassed the even simpler lock on one of the side doors.
He moved through the halls carefully, side-stepping giant armored statues standing along the walls, until he reached the large entryway.
There were no lights other than the moon shining through the windows at the front of the building.
He paused a moment longer, listening for any movement.
But there was only the ringing of silence in his ears.
He snuck across the room toward the bulletin board, scanning the posters again until he found one of the three targets.
A second-year woman, Caladria Parish. He sighed as he pressed his palm flat against the page and reached for his magic.
Within seconds, the ink lifted from the page like smoke and curled onto his skin in sharp lines and swooping curves.
A moment later, the page was completely blank, and her memory became another tattoo on his arm.
Instead of leaving it there, with all the other secrets he held onto, he looked at the bulletin hanging next to this one, where flyers for school events, study groups, and other things hung.
He pulled the blank page off and, calling on his magic again, replicated a flyer seeking volunteers for the Halloween Fair next month.
Once the blank page was transformed, he pinned it to the corkboard and tore down the other flyer, crumpling it into a tight ball and tossing it into the trash.
He spent the next hour repeating the same process in every other school building, ending with Arcania Hall.
Thankfully, by the time he got there, the area was quiet.
Given that it was where the dining hall and most of the administrative offices were, a part of him worried it would be more difficult to erase the poster.
Once it had been transformed, he leaned his back against the wall, closing his eyes for a moment.
His limbs tingled at the amount of magic he’d used.
He was nowhere near exhausted, but it still took a toll on his energy.
Ezra blinked the heaviness from his eyes before going to his left to climb the stairs to the administrative offices for his last stop of the night: the registrar’s office.
He reached the top of the steps and waited to turn the corner.
But there was only silence. He moved slowly, half from tiredness and half from caution, down the hall until he reached the office.
When he waved his hand over the lock, and nothing happened.
He tried again, and it still didn’t budge.
A door creaked open at the end of the hall, and he snapped his attention to the sound.
A faint light spilled out into the darkness for a moment before it was flicked off.
Shit. He had seconds to get this door open.
Otherwise, he’d have to come up with a good excuse why he was here so late.
But before he could try again, a curtain of cold shadow encapsulated him, and a familiar hand covered his mouth.
“Stay quiet,” Silas whispered.
He did as he was told, and a moment later, someone he couldn’t make out walked out of the office ahead, closed and locked the door behind them, and headed toward the stairs beyond it. Once the person was out of sight, the shadows retreated, as did Silas’s hand.
“What are you doi—” Ezra began before Silas held up a finger to silence him.
Silas then waved his hand over the lock, and the door opened with ease. They slipped inside, and the door shut behind them as Ezra moved farther into the room. He wanted to get what he needed done and leave before Silas could memory-walk through his mind again.
“You’re welcome, by the way,” Silas said quietly.
“I didn’t need you to rescue me.” Ezra rounded the desk to the computer and glared over at Silas, who slowly spun the globe in the corner. “What are you doing here anyw—” But before he could finish the sentence, it dawned on him. He fell back into the computer chair. God, he was stupid.
“Took you long enough,” Silas said, strolling over and taking a seat in one of the chairs.
“You’re the one my father has watching me.” Ezra laughed, actually laughed. Not that it was funny. More that it was so unsurprising that it was absurd. He searched through the drawers while the computer booted up. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.”
“I have always been a distraction for you,” Silas said with the slightest of smiles.
“And here I was thinking I was the egotistical one.” Ezra finally found a pad of paper with the computer’s password scrawled on it. The assistant probably shouldn’t have left it lying around, but he was thankful they did.
“I meant it as I’m your weakness,” Silas said more plainly. The words were like a hot iron pressing against Ezra’s skin. “You let your emotions control you. You let people get too close.”
Ezra bit the inside of his cheek, staying silent for a moment as he tried to navigate the school’s records. Once he found the student roll, he found all three of his targets were marked as withdrawn, and the dean had approved the requests.
“Is that what you really think?” Ezra asked as he closed the various windows he had opened.
“Was that all we meant—” He cut himself off, powering down the computer instead.
He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know the answer to those questions.
The monitor light filling the room cut to black, leaving them both in the dark.
A sliver of moonlight slipped between the cracks of the closed curtains and cut across Silas’s face like a shining blade. “Yes.”
It shouldn’t sting as much as it did. They’d spent years with the same push and pull: rejection, then reunion. Just to follow the same cycle. It was the nature of the roles they played, though that didn’t mean he enjoyed it.
“How’d you convince my father to let you work for him?”
“He didn’t need convincing,” Silas said. “He asked me to work for him after he had my father committed.”
“And you accepted just like that?” Ezra asked. He pressed his palms against his eyes, hoping to relieve some of the ache behind them. But it was no use.
“I had no choice.” Silas rose from his chair, as if to signal he was finished answering questions for tonight. “How many of the targets did you take care of?”
“One.” Ezra frowned, pushing himself from the chair before rolling it back close to the desk. “I’ll take care of the second tomorrow.”
“And Callum?” Silas stepped away, slowly making his way back toward the door.
Ezra’s heart thudded at the name. His mouth dried, and he cleared his throat. “He’ll be more complicated to erase.”
“Why?”
“You tell me.” Ezra scoffed and rounded the desk to stand in front of Silas. “He disappeared outside of your party.”
Silas’s brow cocked before his dark eyes flicked down to Ezra’s lips and back. “I was a little preoccupied, if you remember.”
“Yeah, I remember,” Ezra said, his voice hoarse.
“The woman I’ve seen you with, is she the complication?”
Ezra’s jaw tightened. Ivy was a complication. A frustrating, beautiful complication.
“That is a yes, then, I take it,” Silas said. “She is quite intriguing. I’ve seen her around campus…”
“I’ll take care of her,” Ezra said, interrupting him before Silas could finish his thought.
Silas tilted his head slightly.
“Of it,” he corrected himself through gritted teeth. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Are you sure you won’t get distracted?” Silas asked with a bite to his words.
Ezra sighed. There were several things he wished he could say. Like how he didn’t believe emotions were a weakness or a distraction, or how caring for someone would only result in failure. But they all died in his throat.
“I’m sure.”