Chapter 4
The pain and horror that shadow her face hurt more than the scar tissue on my back. “You? You’re carrying the syrabraxa?”
I nod bitterly. “My dad was an aeon. He and Driscoll were friends at Harker, and Driscoll knew what he was. Driscoll and the High Thane had been looking for him all along, and when they killed him before they could use him for the spell, they started to look for his kid.”
I still don’t know how Driscoll learned I was David Cadell’s daughter.
How he figured out I was the aeon. How he knew of my friendship with Penny.
One night I’m protecting the Windsor from the Brood; the next morning Penny’s being kidnapped to lure me to the docks.
The only people who knew I was an aeon were Sophia, Peter, and Elliot, but I don’t doubt their loyalty to me—to the Lymantrian Order, to Harker, to fighting evil.
“Christ above,” she breathes. “Will they come for Nora to get you back? Beatrice? Do they—”
“No, no. The Brood don’t even know my name, now that Driscoll is dead. My family is safe.”
She shakes her head. “All this time. An aeon bloodline…”
“I’m sorry. I should have told you.”
But Fiona takes my shoulders in her hands and holds me still until my eyes meet hers. “You have nothing to apologize for. I’m sorry, Viv. I’m so sorry…I couldn’t protect you.”
“You didn’t know,” I manage around the lump in my throat.
“You’re really carrying the syrabraxa in you…” She peers down at my body. “Right now?”
“Yeah. Escaped before the High Thane arrived to kill me. There has to be a way—” I can’t help how my voice cracks. “A way to get this thing out, right?”
Fiona nods, but her glasses slip a bit down her nose. She pushes them back up with a bracing breath. “I’ll spend every minute I have researching it.”
My blood turns to ice. “Oh. You don’t already know how?”
Fiona shakes her head. “Not without the warlock who cast the spell.”
I don’t ask what we’ll do if we can’t find a way to remove this spell from my body.
What will happen to me. I don’t want to know.
I’ll just add no known cure for the spell that is going to drain me to the list of problems for tomorrow.
It’ll fit nicely right alongside rabid High Thane’s son hunting me down and potential White Stag demon crime lord too.
I’m nothing if not good at compartmentalizing. “What else?”
“The Elders are determined to find the aeon carrying the spell,” she says, hushed.
“They cannot know, Viv, under any circumstances, what you are or what has been done. Even with the madness your death would inflict on one of their own, they would eliminate you to quell the risk you pose to the mortal plane.”
The Chasm opened. All deviants freed. The end of times.
It’s what Finn told me. That the Elders culled the aeons.
Had them all killed off so nobody could create a syrabraxa ever again.
But allowing one of their own to suffer the fate that would come with killing me, to kill one of their own so nobody has that power…
I can’t help but shudder at the ruthlessness.
And at the list of people who want to see me dead growing longer. My eyes begin to burn.
Not yet.
Fiona rubs her temples. “The Elders don’t believe Driscoll was working alone.
They’ve tasked me with looking into it while I oversee the school.
They trust me, from all my years as sworn protector of the Windsor.
Once I’m sure Harker is safe, they’ll appoint a new dean.
But until then, you and Penny should stay here.
At least over the winter break…It’s the only place you’ll be safe. ”
I repeat this in my mind until it calms me. As long as Penny and I hide out here, Finn has no way of getting to us. As soon as we go back into the city, we run the risk of anyone in the Brood recognizing us. But here, we are safe. “Of course we will.”
“Your text said the High Thane was there, at the docks. You didn’t happen to see…”
“No.” His chilling voice sounds in my mind.
Those cruel snake’s eyes…“Just a man in a cloak. He does have a son named Finn. I think he’s the only one left alive who knows what I look like.
I could probably draw you a picture, but I’m no Penny.
” We both turn our eyes toward the closed dormitory door.
Fiona takes a step closer, her voice a notch above a whisper.
“No one can know she is mortal, Viv. I’ll enroll her in basic, nonviolent classes.
Get a single on your floor for her and Hound.
But she should wander around campus as little as possible, lest someone figure out she isn’t a hunter.
The Elders won’t allow a mortal to know all that she does.
It’s a liability, as I’m sure you can imagine. ”
It’s worse than horror, the realization that dawns on me. “ ‘Won’t allow’ as in…”
Fiona’s nod is grave.
So much for safe. “They’re supposed to save mortal lives, not take them,” I seethe. “I get why they’d need to kill me, but they’d kill an innocent to protect their secrets?”
“The Elders serve the good of the many, Viv. Our secrets getting out to the masses could cause more mortal hysteria and death than the one life they’d take. You just have to trust me on this.”
“I do.”
Fiona shakes her head. “None of the students know about Driscoll. About Kitty or Lyra.” Fiona’s face betrays a hint of genuine pain when she says their names.
Though not her fault, Kitty and Lyra were her students too.
I know she blames herself. “The Elders are adamant. Nobody is ever to know about any of it. Even Reid’s heroism—the story is his contract was up at the end of the semester. ”
“But they’re going to keep looking for him, right?”
Fiona’s lips form a grim line. “Even though he was a valued member of the Harker faculty, he was still a demon. I fought hard to get their best men on the hunt but he’s not high on their list of priorities right now. They’ve replaced him already with one of their own.”
I’ve agreed to everything else. To stay away from my family for their safety, to keep Penny here, to lie about her mortality.
But I can’t help myself when it comes to Reid.
I never could. “We have to search for him, Fiona. I can’t leave him to those…
” The thought is so physically revolting I nearly pitch forward.
“You didn’t see them. They’ll kill him.” Or, if Deacon is right, he’ll suffer.
Maybe for centuries. “I can’t abandon him. ”
Nobody will fight for him like I will. Nobody ever has. The thought is like a saw through my stomach.
“We won’t. But right now my priority is protecting this school that serves to protect the entire mortal plane, getting that spell out of you safely, and stopping the High Thane from splitting the earth.
Reid would understand that his search and rescue has to come second.
And that you are not able to leave the school to look for him.
” Fiona says this not as my sister-in-law, not as my professor, not as my boss at the Windsor, but as my dean. And it’s clear, to her, that is final.
With one last squeeze of my hand, Fiona leaves.
I take a breath, slumping against the aged wallpaper in the hallway. I have one more thing to do before I can go back inside my dorm. With shaking hands, I dial my mom.
“Viv?” Her voice is high and tight when she answers. “Did you hear about Penny?”
“Yes, I’m with her right now.”
“Oh, thank god. Why didn’t you call me back? You can’t sleep in so late, honey. I was worried sick—”
It’s no use arguing. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“Laura was with her at the apartment last night and said you weren’t there. I understand you aren’t with James anymore, and I’m not judging you for that, but if you’re seeing someone—”
“I’m not, Mom. Was just at a friend’s place.”
My mom makes a sound of disapproval, and my stomach twists.
She’s trying, I know she is. After our fight at the Windsor—me accusing her of turning on me the day my father was killed and her admitting that parenting me hasn’t been a picnic—she wants to make peace.
But she really thinks I was out screwing a stranger while my best friend was being abducted?
“I’m just glad you’re with her now,” she says. “I’m sure Penny is still so shaken up. Laura and I can come over with some lunch in a little?”
My blood freezes. “No—”
“No?”
My mom has never offered to bring a meal to our dingy place in Babylon. Not once. This is her olive branch, and I’m about to snap it in half. After everything, I didn’t expect this part to hurt so much.
“I’m just not over our argument.” I think of the truths we’d both admitted—how much harder it was for her to lose my father than I’d known. How much I’d thought she blamed me. “I think we should take some time.”
“Oh.” Silence on the other end of the line. My mother is rarely stunned. “I understand.”
I wince at the pain in her voice. “Thanks.”
“Give Penny my love.”
By the time I go back inside our dorm, Peter and Elliot are there too.
Everyone is sitting on the floor, Hound sleeping softly in Penny’s lap.
When I sit down between Sophia and Elliot, a violent shiver overtakes me.
I’m just now realizing how exhausted I am.
How every corner of my body aches. How broken my heart is.
The tears brim as I look across the faces of four of the people I love most in this world.
“Here,” Elliot offers, pulling Sophia’s duvet off her bed and wrapping it around me.
And then I can’t hold it in a minute longer. After the worst twenty-four hours of my life since my dad died, the dam finally breaks.