Chapter 18
Professor Crowley’s silver teeth are glaring at me.
“Don’t stare,” Peter whispers.
My eyes slam down to the open book on my desk. The cursive ink is fading into the yellowed pages, the spine peeling from overuse, and the cluttered sentences becoming hard to follow. I think this book was written before punctuation was invented.
Professor Crowley hunches over a projector while a student dims the candelabras on either wall. The screen focuses on the words The Undead, and I spy a few candles lit on the shelves behind him. When he turns to face us again, his silver teeth gleam in the flickering light.
“Ah fuck, are we having a séance?” Elliot groans.
“I hope not.” Sophia snorts. “I’ve communed with enough undead to last a lifetime.”
“All right.” Crowley grins. “Who knows the difference between these three?”
The projector clicks through three images. The first is an old photo of a filmy gossamer outline. A ghost in someone’s basement, barely caught on film. I nod my head at the impressive photography skills. I’ve never caught one with my half-frame.
The second is of the gaping maw and eyeless, noseless face of the wraiths we fought just a few nights ago.
One of the girls in our class turns her face away and gags.
The third image is of a rotting skeletal body gurgling out of a murky river, severed hand in its mouth.
Dad and I fought one of those on a family road trip to the Great Lakes.
The ghoul almost ate my dad’s arm. Good times.
Peter raises his hand high in the air. “Ghosts have no corporeal form but can manipulate physical objects. Wraiths have form but are not conscious beings, and ghouls are sentient creatures that feed on both the living and the dead.”
Crowley’s teeth glitter as he grins. “Right you are, Roydon. Ghouls and wraiths move through the world like you or me,” Crowley continues in front of the projector. “But ghosts can only be summoned by spellcraft. That’s why you always want to find the origin object with any summoning spell.”
“Anything from Kitty?” I whisper to Peter when Crowley’s moved on. It’s been two days since we found her letter.
“Nothing yet,” he whispers. “And the school told me they haven’t received her textbooks. Students who leave have forty-eight hours to return them to the registrar.”
Unease drips through me. Kitty was nothing if not responsible. I’m opening my mouth to tell him I don’t like the sound of that when the darkened classroom fills with light and nearly fifty hunter heads swivel in the direction of the doorway.
“We’ve had a sighting.” Reid’s hair is slightly damp, like he’s just gotten out of the shower. “A deviant in Astera. I need my Field Training first years.”
Sophia and Elliot exchange thrilled glances before standing and gathering their books and pens.
“Very well.” Crowley nods, but I can see the irritation flicker in his steely gaze. I guess this is part of the curriculum as much as his class is, even when he’s not a fan of the instructor.
But my heart is spiking in my chest too hard to think about Crowley’s disdain for Reid. Not only is there a deviant in my city that I’m not allowed to fight, but now two people I care about are going to battle it without me?
I don’t think so.
Reid lets the door slam shut behind him, and when Sophia and Elliot hurry out of the class, I get up to follow them. I just make out Peter’s hushed Viv, don’t—but it’s too late. I’ve already set my mind on the hunt.
Plus, this might be the best way for me to swipe Reid’s key card off of him. I would’ve made a decent pickpocket if we’d stayed down in Lethe throughout my teens.
Reid’s entire body stiffens when he notices me in the hall. “Huntress—”
“Let me come,” I tell him. “I know this city better than anyone.”
“No.” He turns and heads for the doors to the rotunda. “Where’s Briggs?”
Sophia, Elliot, and I exchange a look. “Not sure,” I say quickly. If Reid doesn’t already know she’s dropped out, I’m not going to be the one to tell him. Not if something nefarious might be going on. “Let me fight in her place.”
“I said no.”
“I’ve been training for weeks.”
“And like all students, you’ll keep doing just that. You’ll have plenty of Field Training opportunities once you learn the—”
“Cut the crap. I’m going with you.”
Reid stops in his tracks. His voice is as razor-sharp as his glare when he turns to face me. “No, you aren’t. I am your instructor.”
“Doesn’t mean you can stop me.”
Quiet wrath simmers in his eyes. “I stopped you pretty well last time.”
“I’ve got two silver daggers on me today and one less blindfold.”
“Enough,” Reid growls. “You’re out of line.”
I suck an inhale through my nose. “Please,” I say, though the word burns. “Please. I want to help.”
Reid’s mouth tightens into a flat line. Torturous minutes pass, my heart laid bare before him. I fight the urge to squirm.
Finally he relents. “Observe only. Or you aren’t going out in the field again the rest of the year, understood?”
I exhale all the air in my lungs. “Absolutely.”
Zero chance.
If I’d known the deviant in question was sniffing around Shiloh Asylum, I might have put up less of a fight.
A tunnel ride away, on a little borough off the coast of Astera called the Idles, sits the only mental health institution South of the Chasm.
North of the Chasm you’ve got your pick of clean hospitals, wellness facilities, and luxury retreats. This place is something different.
Half the windows are boarded up, so the setting sun only reflects in two panes of glass.
If the raw wood was ever painted, it’s long since chipped off now.
Shutters hang askew, and all the potted plants along the driveway up to the front doors are fossilized.
If I were to touch the leaves, they’d crumble to dust in my hand.
“It looks like the setting for a horror movie,” Elliot notes, staring up at the towering building.
“Like the sixth one in the franchise,” Sophia adds, chewing her lip. “Impalement at the Insane Asylum.”
“It’s just a run-down psychiatric facility,” I tell Sophia, chilly wind biting at my skin.
“Sure.” She nods. “With a deviant running loose inside.”
“We got a call from a fairy mortician in the city,” Reid says behind us, voice grim. “A body from the asylum showed up drained of blood.” Reid hands us each a pristinely carved wooden stake.
“So it’s a vamp,” I say.
Elliot places his stake in his front pocket. “God, I hope so.”
When we ease open the front doors, I peek my head in, expecting slaughter. A hellish creature that’s devoured half the patients and staff. But inside, a crusty speaker system plays soft jazz, and a woman with graying hair mans the front desk.
“Hi.” She smiles, eyes crinkling. “How can I help you?”
Reid wanders over to the desk, careful to avoid a skittering rat that moves across his path. I eye Elliot, but he doesn’t flinch, debunking the storybook theory that big, strong men are afraid of mice.
“Hi there,” Reid purrs. His cheek has an actual dimple. It’s strange seeing him turn on the charm with someone. Despite his movie star good looks, I didn’t think he was capable of being pleasant. “We’re the pharmaceutical reps. We called earlier?”
“Oh yes,” the woman mutters. “Right this way…”
But I can’t hear the rest. My entire body has electrified.
The vampire’s nearby. I can feel it.
All thoughts of being a team player or stealing a key card tumble out of my brain. There’s a predator here, and I need to put it down.
While Reid charms the front desk lady, I walk backward, heel-toeing down the hallway and around the first corner I find. Sophia sees and follows suit, leaving the boys behind.
“Why’d you ditch?” she whispers as we pass a nurse rolling a young woman into a room with ample padding.
“Gut feeling.”
We tiptoe quietly down the hallway, fluorescent lights sputtering above. The buzzing in my skin intensifies when we round a darkened corner. But Sophia’s stopped to peer into one of the open doors. “There’s a patient in there who’s very pale,” she whispers. “Vamp pale.”
“No, this way.” I have to keep following the fireworks in my veins.
Eventually Sophia catches up. “Care to clue me in?”
But I don’t have time to explain. Nor would I really know how to. I’ve never hunted with anyone but my dad before. My heart rate is ratcheting up. My fingers and toes beginning to pulse. I’m close, I can feel it.
When I hear the sound of a bucket clattering to the floor, I take off running down the hall, leaving Sophia in my wake.
“What the— Viv?”
But I ignore her, the need to hunt snapping inside me. An insistent, violent pleading that must be answered. I tell myself I work better alone anyway—I can’t be worrying about Sophia getting hurt.
She launches after me, but I’m quicker, leaping over empty rollaway beds and barreling down stairs, following nothing but the demanding sensation inside me. Around two corners, down another flight of stairs, and onto an abandoned floor, where I realize I no longer hear anything.
I curl my fists and wait.
And listen.
And study the unmoving dimness, one fluorescent light flickering.
At the end of the hall, a scruffy orderly barks at me. “Miss.” His voice is like an out of tune harp. “This floor is restricted.”
My body rings like the damn Liberty Bell.
“Gotcha,” I hiss.
The orderly feigns confusion for a split second before realizing the jig is up. He drops the papers in his hands and takes off down the hallway. And I take off right after him.
We leap over a bin filled with socks, slide around equipment in our way.
He shoves an IV stand at me with vampire force, and it clips my shoulder, knocking me down to the linoleum floor.
I scramble back up and hurtle after him, past a cart of meds, where the orderly grabs something, though I can’t see what—