Chapter 6
A few blinks desaturate a white sky back to blue.
I flex my jaw and fists—everything is wound tight, an instinctual reaction to gateways.
I’ve only passed through one before, when my father took me to hunt down a powerful warlock who had turned to the side of the deviants.
The warlock had enchanted a gateway that led from an Astera noodle restaurant to a gurgling bog somewhere halfway across the world.
I was only ten then, and this gateway is more jarring than I remember. Probably because along with the discomfort of having all my molecules scattered and reassembled in a heartbeat, almost everything I thought I knew for the last decade of my life has been proven false.
Students mill past me on both sides of a wide cobblestone path dotted with lampposts.
A manicured lawn sprawls in all directions, spring green under the vast sunshine.
No skyscrapers in sight. No scaffolding or whizzing taxis.
Only vast oaks that flutter in the morning’s breeze and the red brick of an old collegiate campus, complete with gray-tiled roofs and classical columns.
Iron-crossed windows and stonework crawling with ivy. Sweeping towers, arches, and spires.
It’s like I’ve been sent back in time. And space too—beyond the campus, all I can see are rolling green hills, rich with wildflowers and thick elms. I’m in a scholarly oasis of some kind.
And yet it’s modern: Students are in shorts and sneakers, blasting end-of-summer hits from handheld speakers as they gather grimoires and textbooks to race through the quad.
“Hurry,” a mousy brunette in a navy HADD hoodie and yoga pants calls to her friend. “Orientation’s already started.”
Once again, I’m late.
I haven’t even reached the entrance to the amphitheater and already my thighs are aching.
Three times a week I go to a cute Pilates studio down on Ambrosia Ave, and I routinely sprint through the city streets tracking demonic creatures from the underworld.
I thought that was a pretty solid fitness routine.
Based on the throngs of students trudging past me up this gargantuan grassy hill without even a wheeze, I was mistaken.
What I’ve gathered so far about Harker is this: It’s nestled in a valley of hills somewhere, and while the majority of buildings are down in the flatland, surrounded on all sides by a moss-covered brick wall, the amphitheater, where orientation is being held, is up at the top of a grassy slope.
If I weren’t so winded, it would be kind of remarkable.
The higher I climb, the more of the expansive campus I can make out—the imposing bell tower, the placid lake, the wide stone courtyards.
Even this hill—I can imagine students lazing about here between classes, tall grass swaying, a view of the valley and Harker’s gothic campus.
Not a bad place to get a demon-hunting education.
But all I can feel is my stomach clenching so tightly I’m nearly folding in half. All these years I’d felt so violently alone, and this place has been here, waiting for me to turn twenty-one. How could my dad have kept it from me?
Sweat prickling under my arms in my Windsor-approved linen button-down, I finally crest the top of the hill and begin the steep decline into the outdoor theater. There are hundreds of students. Hundreds. I can’t tell if I’m relieved or humiliated.
Someone is already speaking, her severe voice carrying through loudspeakers. Students angle their bodies for me as I push past to find an open seat. I nab one next to an intense-looking girl with hair as dark as mine and a lanky boy with sweet doe eyes.
Onstage, the female professor is addressing the masses.
She’s got mismatched earrings and a brightly patterned violet skirt.
Horn-rimmed glasses and long black nails.
“For the first years who don’t yet know me, I’m Professor Gemeline Lisette, chair of Harker’s Underworld Studies Department.
First, allow me to welcome you to Harker Academy for Deviant Defense. ”
There’s something haunting about the tenor of her voice. Something ancient. Foreboding. Even as the students clap for her, she doesn’t smile.
“Over the next four years you will be taught everything from grueling physical combat to extensive knowledge of deviants and their vulnerabilities. Everything that a hunter might need to protect themselves, their fellow hunters, and, of course, the human race.”
Students across the theater clap again with enthusiasm. They’re…joyous. I can’t remember being joyous about hunting even once since my dad died.
“And…” the woman says, adjusting her glasses, “let me warn you as well.”
A tense quiet descends on the crowd. But not one of fear.
This is a crowd of protectors. Of trackers and warriors.
At the mention of danger, a tidal wave of ears collectively perk up.
There’s something destabilizing about it.
For the first time in my life, I’m surrounded by people who can do the job I’d thought for years only I could do.
All those nights out with Penny and family dinners I gave up…
There were others who could have been saving the day.
Nobody told me that community could make you feel so small.
“Thanks to the Elders, talented warlocks have warded Harker’s Old Campus against deviants of all kinds for the last seventy-five years.
Alongside the wards, both professors and Citadel hunters alike do everything in our power to keep our hunter students safe.
But deviants so often have other plans. They crave bloodshed, cruelty, chaos, power… ”
Students around me shift in their seats.
“It is for that reason we adhere to strict rules here at Harker. First and foremost, first years are not to leave the walls of Old Campus after nightfall. While the heart of campus is protected, the same cannot be said for Lake Hellebore nor the rest of the grounds. Second, no student, regardless of year, is to enter the Fickle Thicket. The creatures in those woods are as volatile as the forest’s name suggests.
Third, there is no hunting in Astera while you are enrolled at Harker unless supervised by a faculty member. ”
My eyes threaten to bulge from my head. No hunting unsupervised? Why even bring us here in the first place if we can’t hunt? I look around at the sea of other students and don’t find one ounce of outrage to match my own.
“Students must complete all four years of Harker academics and combat training and then pass final physical and written examinations in order to be stationed at any of the deviant hotspots across the world or, of course, to earn a coveted spot working at the Citadel.”
The Citadel…Reid mentioned it being located on campus.
“These rules are for your safety. After all, you are the first and last line of defense between mortals and deviants, and as you well know, it is our job to protect those who cannot protect themselves. It is on our collective shoulders to stamp out any and all deviants that have infested our mortal plane.”
This time, the students don’t clap, and I find I’m relieved. They may not have been hunting for the last decade as I have—all their abilities having just hit them in their twenty-first year—but they understand the risks. They nod solemnly, some braced already for a looming fight.
As Professor Lisette continues to speak, I scan the row of what I assume to be other professors and instructors seated behind her.
A refined white-haired man in a tweed coat, a brutish thug in his fifties with menacing tattoos, an elegant woman wrapped in colorful layers with pointed ears and wings.
It’s kind of a motley group. A staff of people who I can’t imagine have one thing in common besides this shared mission. And at the very end of the row…Reid.
Hunched over, elbows pressed to thighs, broad, muscled back rippling under a thin athletic shirt. Strands of his brown hair fall gently over his forehead, but his eyes…Those ruthless, night-sky eyes—
They’re staring right at me.
My heart stops. In this sea of students, Reid’s zeroed in on me like a hawk, even from all the way down there. The sensation of his gaze boring into me does something floppy to my chest. I clear my throat against the sensation and get a sharp shh from the dark-haired girl beside me.
But I can’t reconcile what a vicious killing machine—the exact creature Professor Lisette is cautioning us about—is doing sitting onstage with so many lymantrian teachers. How did he con his way into this job? Why do they trust him? What is his endgame here?
Onstage, Lisette wraps up with “A few final items: As you’ll see on your maps, we have completed construction on the water tank in the dungeons for detaining aquatic deviant species.”
Cheers sound. For a deviant dungeon swimming pool. I am surely in The Twilight Zone. I scan the crowd and find everyone studying a pamphlet I don’t have.
“Here.” The lanky guy next to me offers up his Harker brochure, folded to display the school’s map. “You can use mine.”
“Thanks,” I whisper back to him.
The girl beside me whips her head at us. “Shh!”
“And,” Professor Lisette continues as I study the extensive academy grounds, “we have adjusted the school’s stance on battle-axes. They can now be borrowed from the armory by second years without a faculty signatory.”
A section of students I can only assume are second years chatter excitedly about this while other students, older ones perhaps, murmur their complaints.
But all I can feel are my dad’s two daggers, one broken, both worn from overuse, prickling against my skin. I’ve never needed a battle-axe to do my job.
“Now please welcome to the stage our dean, Edgar Driscoll.”
The crowd of students applaud like their dean is the headliner of a music festival.
I’m hit once again with the all-too-familiar feeling of not belonging.
I don’t know who this guy is or why he’s worthy of applause.
I don’t know about gateways or why a college for hunters would need a coliseum, bathhouse, or planetarium.
I’ve been hunting deviants since I was ten and have gotten along just fine without any of this fanfare.
And suddenly the sun is beating down too hot on the crown of my head.
My dark pants feel sticky in the creases of my knees and I’m nauseous.
Every time I look to the stage, I can feel Reid staring at me, and it’s been a physical effort not to meet his eyes this entire time.
I know what he’s thinking—why did I even come? I don’t fit in here.
I want to go back to my apartment and snuggle Hound. Hell, I’d sort exhibition permits in Fiona’s office over being stuck in this over-the-top hunter cult. I’m in enough rooms where I feel less-than in my real life. I don’t need to feel that way when I’m hunting too.
I move to stand, to sneak out of here and gateway myself back to Astera, when the girl next to me grabs my wrist, yanking me back down.
“You can’t leave,” she hisses. “Not before the dean speaks.”
“I can, though,” I snip, attempting to pry her fingers from my wrist. But like my own, her hunter grip is no joke. “Are you serious?”
“Just stay until he’s done?” the guy who gave me the pamphlet offers. I can see the stress in his narrow jaw and the panic in those puppy eyes. He doesn’t like us arguing. I wonder how he stomachs killing deviants every day.
“Fine, whatever.” I sit back down and Super Grip Sally releases me to focus on the dean. She’s watching like she’s being graded on eye contact. Down on the stage, Reid’s jaw has tightened at my failed escape attempt, and I curse my stupid hunter eyesight for its precision.
I wait petulantly for Tweed Blazer to take the stage and am surprised when the brute with all the scars and tattoos rises from his chair instead.
He’s no stately wizard nor wizened businessman.
Belaire’s headmaster was a retired Southern senator who wore polo shirts and called all the girls doll.
Dean Driscoll is hulking. Mean-looking. He’s got thick rings on his fingers, a scar down his chin, and another across his brow.
He looks like he could fuck up almost anyone and probably does so on the daily.
When he gets to the front of the stage, the students throughout the amphitheater are still clapping.
Dean Driscoll frowns and waves his hands at them to quiet down.
“Unnecessary but appreciated,” he tells the crowd.
He has a gruff, honest voice. No bullshit from this guy.
“Whether you’re brand-new or this is your last year here at Harker, you should already know what I’m about to say. ”
I swallow the churning in my gut at once again feeling like I’m taking a test I didn’t get to study for.
“Save lives. Don’t turn. Don’t die. Have a great semester.”