Chapter 44
“I know this is a lot to take in,” Fiona says.
“What the fuck?” I repeat. My heart is so high up my throat I could puke it out. “What is going on?”
Reid is equally shocked beside me. “Gemeline, you’re…a shifter?”
“A dichotomous shifter, to be precise.”
Two forms only, if I recall from Peter’s Lymantrian Beings flash cards. “So when you’re Fiona—”
“I’m mortal,” she says. “But when I’m Gemeline, I’m a hunter, yes.”
“Does Nora know?”
Fiona shakes her head. “I never intended to fall in love with a mortal. It just happened. I still haven’t figured out how to tell her what I am.”
All those jokes I made about Fiona being old…
Shifters live a lot longer than regular hunters.
She’s probably been around for fifty or sixty years.
And the strange feelings I had whenever we spoke, like she was keeping something from me…
The laugh that breaks from me is verging on delirious.
“The sugary coffee, the bare feet, the bad glasses…”
“Excuse me?”
But I can’t stop the thoughts now. She allowed me to take that break from the Windsor.
She never asked follow-up questions about my senseless, made-up campaign job with my mom.
She tried to keep me out of trouble at Harker more times than I can count—I thought she had it out for me, when all along it’s been the very opposite.
Though I didn’t realize it then, she was even encouraging me to attend Harker that first day before orientation when we spoke in her office.
“That’s why you work such insane hours. You aren’t traveling for work—you’re teaching at Harker. You’re living a double life too.” I’ve spent my entire life thinking I was alone, when another hunter has been right under my nose. “You knew this whole time I was a student at Harker…”
“Long before that.” She tuts. “I got you your job here at the Windsor as soon as I figured out you were a hunter. I knew firsthand how much easier it would make enrolling at Harker.”
A year ago, when she saw me with the chalice and the amulet. When I lied about praying for Penny…She offered me the job here only a few days afterward. Not knowing I was an aeon, she probably thought I’d just begun to come into my abilities. “I thought you believed my Penny breakup story.”
A small smile perks up on her face. “I teach Underworld Studies. I know what a ritual for succubus entrapment looks like.”
I turn to Reid. “So I wasn’t recruited by coincidence…Lisette told you there was a rogue hunter in Astera?”
Reid nods, still in his own shock. “I get tips from professors like that all the time. Didn’t think anything of it.” He looks to Fiona. “How does nobody at Harker know?”
“Some of the Elders are aware that I work at the Windsor in my mortal form. They entrusted me to keep an eye on this place. There are lymantrians on the board, important artifacts stored here for safekeeping…I’ve successfully protected this place for years. Until tonight…”
My eyes crawl over the demon ash and spilled blood. “The High Thane was here.”
“Yes,” Fiona says faintly.
“Surveillance cameras?” Reid asks.
“We can doctor them. One of the perks of the Elders owning the institution.”
“The High Thane and a turned warlock of his got away,” I say.
Fiona nods. “And with the censer.”
“Fucking hell,” Reid groans, bringing his hand to the bridge of his nose.
“What’s the censer?”
“I had it in my office the day you first went to Harker. That antique brass vessel? It was only just discovered a few days before then. It burns ritual herbs and incense. If the right blend is used on the new moon, it can ward off spells cast on demons.”
The new moon…“When is that?”
Fiona’s expression hardens. “Tomorrow.”
And suddenly everything slams into shocking, gut-wrenching place. I turn to Reid. “That’s why whoever took the asphodels and Lyra was in such a rush. Whatever the High Thane is planning…he’s going to try to do it by tomorrow.”
But it’s more than that. All of this—the wraith attack, the zombie spell, the missing dagger—began after the censer was found at the end of the summer.
Right around my first day at Harker, like Fiona said.
A censer that protects demons from spells…
I try to remember the steps of casting a syrabraxa: finding the ingredients to brew the spell, imbuing that concoction into the host, and then killing them.
But after that, once the endless power has been granted to the killer…
madness descends. Drowned armadas, raw livers.
“Could the censer be the High Thane’s contingency plan to stay sane after casting the syrabraxa? A way to ward off the madness caused by using the spell’s power?”
Reid’s face is a shadowed wreck. “Possibly.”
“So it’s true.” Fiona’s expression could strip paint from the Windsor’s walls. “Someone is trying to brew a syrabraxa? That’s why you went looking for the asphodels?” When I nod, she swallows thickly. “Dark magic like that in the hands of the High Thane would be…”
“Dangerous.” Reid supplies.
But Fiona’s eyes have gone haunted. “Cataclysmic.”
“And,” I add, “he has help from someone at Harker.”
I was right that night at Fever Dream. Whoever at Harker is plotting to brew the spell has been working with the High Thane all along. I just wasn’t right about who the High Thane was. Not Deacon. Not anyone we have any leads on.
“You really never met him when you were in the Brood?” I ask Reid. “You don’t have any way to find him?”
Reid shakes his head, eyes on all the broken wood and glass.
“The current High Thane isn’t the deadliest one deviants have ever knelt before, but he is the most cunning.
He knew he couldn’t best his predecessor physically, so he waited until the High Thane would least suspect it and killed him one afternoon during a casual game of chess.
Had an entire mutiny ready and seized the Throne of Bael in half an hour.
That was about two centuries ago.” A shocking flash of demon blood splattering a castle wall sparks in my mind, and I shudder away from the sick thrill that curls low inside me.
“Point is, he’s not the type to let just anyone in his Brood know his identity. ”
That must be what the hooded cloak is for. But something doesn’t add up. I know how monarchies work. “The High Thane before him had no children to take the throne?”
Reid’s eyes are dark when they find mine. “He did.”
Even though they were demons, the thought is chilling.
“I need to contact the Citadel and the dean with all this,” Fiona interrupts. “And make sure Nora is all right.” She’s already sliding her spear down to its compact size and slotting it into the holster at her hip. “Can you two clean this up?”
“What about Astera PD?” I ask. “Nora said she called them, but they never came. Even if she hadn’t, the whole neighborhood must have heard that alarm.”
“Half of Astera’s police are deviants on the payroll of the Brood. I doubt they’re coming. But I’ll make sure the neighbors know it was a false alarm, and I’ll tell your mother and Nor the same. And that I asked you to stay behind and help me with some things before we close for the holiday.”
Something small flutters in my chest. Silly, despite everything. Still, I can’t help but ask, “Does that mean I get my job back?”
Fiona sighs. “I didn’t fire you just to keep up appearances, Viv.
It’s a lesson I owe to you as both your teacher and your family to help you learn: To live a successful life as a hunter, you can’t neglect who you are as a human.
I don’t want to see you forfeit your relationship with your mother and sister for the hunt. It’s a balance.”
My eyes find my feet. She’s right. She’s managed both for years.
“But…let’s call it probation?”
When I look up, she isn’t smiling, but her eyes are warm. She gives Reid and me one last nod before disappearing around the corner. A minute later, the alarm finally shuts off, as well as the red emergency glow, drowning the trashed exhibit hall in low, after-hours lighting.
“Well,” Reid says with a sigh. “Your sister-in-law is a tenured professor at Harker.”
“Yeah,” I mutter. “And that’s not even the biggest bombshell of the night.”
Reid’s voice is tight as he takes in the carnage. “We’ll stop him.”
I don’t say what I’m thinking: How can we?
Reid bends down and begins to scoop up broken shards of glass.
I go to the storage closet where I spent so many months grabbing coffee beans and rulers and paper towels for Fiona and the other executives—all the while there was an entire world of information I was missing about almost everything in my life.
Harker, Fiona, the High Thane’s plans, how my mom felt about losing my dad…
It’s been a night of revelations, to say the least.
I return with plastic trash bags, a mop, and a bucket.
Reid does the dirty work, cleaning up ash and blood, while I use a pair of gloves to carefully collect as many relics, photos, and artifacts as I can.
Just as I’ve watched Fiona do, I handle each one with care, placing them back into what remains of their cases.
Fiona’s going to have to put together quite the cover-up to explain the damage that Reid and I can’t fix tonight.
When the exhibit looks less like there was a demonic battle and more like a rabid bird got trapped inside, Reid and I take exhausted seats side by side on the marble floor.
Bathed in near pitch-darkness, illuminated only by the low safety lights along the walkways and the moonlight gilding the stained glass above, his strong jaw and masculine nose take on an otherworldly beauty I can barely look right at.