Chapter 13
“I still don’t know how you can be so sure it’s from him,” Sophia says, sliding behind her desk the next day.
“Quiet please,” Professor Dawnmere chimes, waltzing into her Runes, Relics, and Charms classroom.
The scent of lilacs and lemons follows her in, and the sun peeks out from clouds that haven’t moved all morning, pouring rays of yellow light through the glittering chandelier and rich, jewel-toned curtains.
Sophia and I press our lips shut in unison.
Professor Dawnmere has been made Harker’s new chair of Magical Studies in Driscoll’s absence, and despite being his veritable opposite—a lovely fairy woman rarely spotted without a serene look on her face or musical lilt to her voice—she’s just as intimidating.
You try raising your hand to ask a question of a six-four goddess with the grace and precision of an Astera Conservatory ballerina and the temper of seventeen banshees combined.
“In this class, you’ll learn everything from trapping a succubus inside a pendant to using a charmed goblet for invisibility…”
“Plus,” I whisper even quieter this time, “I tried to take a few photos, and the roll was full. Who gifts someone a camera with a full roll of film?”
Sophia makes a weighing face and opens her textbook.
Last night I’d searched every inch of smooth silver.
Every cog and compartment. No letters, no codes.
I’d been stumped until this morning, when I’d spotted a pair of Harker students sparring and tried to capture the intensity of the moment, only to find the roll full.
“I asked Elliot to drop it off to be developed in the city. Maybe Reid left a message for me in the photos.”
I try to put myself in Reid’s shoes: He’s taken captive by his sadist cousin to presumably be tortured until he gives up my identity so Finn can deliver me to his father, who will use me as a human conduit to split the Chasm back open.
But Reid tricks his captors and finds a way out of Finn’s clutches instead.
Now he’s free but on the run from the Brood.
He knows that if he returns to Harker he runs the risk of putting me in even more danger.
What if Finn’s warlock placed a tracking spell on him?
What if someone followed him out of the Manor that night and is just waiting for him to lead them right back to me?
So he purchases something innocuous—the camera, takes photos with it that surely have some kind of proof of his safety, and gets it to a lymantrian postal worker in the city.
“Miss Abbot,” Professor Dawnmere hums. “Did you hear me?”
I snap out of my logic daze to find diamond-like eyes drilling into mine. As Dawnmere glares before the blackboard at the center of the room, I fight to recall a single word she spoke in the last ten minutes. “Would you mind repeating the question?”
Professor Dawnmere’s lips purse and I can scent the tension from the other fifty hunters in the room. I brace for a punishing spew of fairy magic. “What relic can aid you when an injured deviant evades your hunt?” she repeats, straining to remain calm.
Thank every possible god—I actually know the answer. Really, I should just thank my father, who taught me this before I was old enough to hold his daggers. “A witch can use a deviant’s blood to trace the creature with an enchanted map.”
Professor Dawnmere nods. “Precision depending on…?”
My father’s warm voice sounds in my head. “How fresh the blood is.”
“Well done,” Professor Dawnmere tells me, relaxing. “And Mr. Miller…”
But I’m already elsewhere. I turn to Sophia and mouth “Reid!”
“Read what?” She flips through her grimoire before squinting up at the blackboard.
I shake my head and try again, this time with hand motions: We can track Reid with his blood.
Intrigue blooms in Sophia’s deep brown eyes. You have his blood?
I wince. Not exactly.
“Are you insane?” Penny whines over the chatter of the dining hall.
The stained-glass windows are no longer opaque with snow, and colorful light floods the long wooden tables and medieval-style beams throughout the room.
Penny’s face is lit in a lime hue as she chews her fries and worries her brow with equal fervor.
“You can’t work with him again. He got you shot with an arrow! ”
“Technically, that was Soph,” Elliot corrects, popping one of her fries in his mouth.
“I’ll never live that down,” Sophia groans.
“I don’t like it any more than you do,” I tell Penny.
After our expedition at the Manor, I’d hoped my short-lived partnership with Deacon Graveheart would be put to bed.
That I’d never see him again until, perhaps, I finally did Astera a favor and stabbed him in the nonexistent heart. “But he is literally Reid’s blood.”
“Are you even sure that’ll work?” Penny asks. “Won’t the spell just track Deacon?”
“Maybe,” I admit. “But it’s the only lead we have.”
“He could hurt you,” Penny presses. “He’s dangerous.”
“It’s not like he can kill her, though,” Elliot notes. “Because of her…” He eyes my back. “The…the thing.”
“Thank you, Elliot,” I snip. “I had almost forgotten about the thing.”
Penny’s face turns forlorn and she lowers her fry.
“Even if we decided to work with the bleached-blond jerk-off,” Sophia says, “we still don’t have a witch to do the spell.”
That one renders us all quiet. She has a point: With Driscoll gone, we have no witches nor warlocks currently employed at Harker.
Many are employed at the Citadel, where the Elders govern, but it’s not like I can go there and ask for help.
Hey, it’s me, the aeon with the syrabraxa you’ve been searching for.
How about rather than kill me to ensure the safety of the human race, you help me and the White Stag find my ex-Brood demon boyfriend?
We chew in silence, even as Peter walks up to our table with two oranges and plops down next to Sophia. He hands one to her and she begins to peel it, still deep in thought. Penny has her eyes fixed on the ceiling, Elliot on the tapestry behind my head.
“Are we playing some kind of game?” Peter studies each of us. “First one to speak to me loses?” He seems to have recovered a bit from the dark place he was in after seeing Finn outside Shiloh.
“We’re trying to figure out where to find a witch to perform one of those spells where if you have deviant’s blood—”
“—you can track them down on an enchanted map?” Peter supplies. “You have Reid’s blood?”
“Sort of,” I say.
“She has an insane plan,” Elliot tells him.
“Well, the groundskeeper’s a warlock,” Peter says, taking a bite of his orange. “If that helps.”
My eyes grow wide. It was one of the first things Peter told me about this place when I came to orientation at the end of last summer. “That’s just a rumor, right?”
Peter shakes his head. “No, I’m pretty sure it’s true. If the students weren’t so afraid to talk to the guy, it would be more widely known.”
“What’s so scary about him?” Penny asks, voice a bit quiet.
“Fickle Thicket had a dragon problem a few decades back,” Peter tells her. “They say he barely survived a fire-breather.”
“Oh, jeez,” Penny breathes. “Poor guy.”
“Do the Elders know he’s a warlock?” Sophia asks.
“I doubt it,” Peter says, digging in to his orange. “After Driscoll, I don’t think they want any witches or warlocks on campus at all.”
“So we’ll have to be sneaky about it. But first,” Sophia says, standing from the table, “we have douchebag demon blood to procure. Come on, Elliot, let’s escort Viv to her favorite spot in the city, Fever Dream.”
Fever Dream on a Wednesday afternoon is more like a ghost town than a nightclub.
Baz is nowhere to be found outside, and when we yank on those imposing front doors I’m baffled to find them unlocked.
Inside, the lights are all on. No music, no dancers, no bartenders.
No shady North of the Chasm businessmen doing under-the-table deals in oversized lounges.
The sky-high ceilings and those Grecian columns soar, the empty space cavernous and silent and still.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find a tumbleweed rolling across my black leather loafers.
“He’s not here,” a dreary voice says. Baz slinks out from a door I mistook for a wall, crate of booze in hand. He drops it on top of the bar, narrow face and carved cheekbones briefly obscured by a thin curtain of ghoulish black hair, which he moves aside with long, elegant fingers.
His violet eyes stroll over Soph and me like we’re little more than floating dust particles, but they snag on Elliot. Deepen and intensify. “That’s new.”
“That’s Elliot,” Sophia growls. “He’s with us.”
“I can see that.” Baz cocks his head, studying our Adonis friend. Elliot’s bronze skin glows, even beneath the tepid daytime club lighting. His shoulder-length waves are pulled into a low bun. I can feel Elliot’s heart beat faster, and I know Baz can too.
“Where’s your boss?” I snarl.
Baz’s eyes linger on Elliot before he reluctantly drags them to me. His entire expression hardens when he drinks me in. “I told you. Not here.”
“When will he be?” Sophia asks. When I look down, she’s already got a wooden stake palmed under her coat. “Details, bloodsucker.”
“How original,” Baz says flatly as he begins to unload the bottles from the crate.
“We have a lead on Reid, but we need Deacon’s help,” I say, before adding a reluctant, “again.”
“Oh joy, they’re back.” Deacon’s deep voice carries from high above, and we all crane our necks up.
He’s strolling across a balcony built into the side of the club near the ceiling that I’d never noticed before.
In the dim lights, and with him that high up, I can only make out loose gray sweats hung around his hips and a swath of pale, broad muscle scattered with a handful of tattoos.
He pulls a white T-shirt over his head as he makes his way down the spiral staircase I spied when I first came here.
After the docks, I had been taken to a bedroom somewhere fairly high up…
I wonder absently if all these deviants live here, above the club.