24. Lucy
Lucy
W e’re in the library tonight. Midnight is practicing Veil stitching and cutting.
The library isn’t the best location, but I have a ton of contracts to mark, and I needed some resources from the vaults. So here we are.
“No,” I say and slide in behind her.
She huffs in my ear as I move my arms over hers, repositioning her hands into the correct position for a more effective long stitch.
“There,” I say, lacing my fingers through hers. My lips are close to her neck, my breath trickling down into her collar.
“It’s intensely difficult to focus when you are this close to me.”
“I’m pretty sure I could be further away and directing you, but where’s the fun in that?”
“What a deviant professor you are.”
She spins suddenly and plunges her lips on mine. We shouldn’t, it’s dangerous and risky, even at this time of night, but she smells like hot skin and citrus, and I drink in every ounce of her lips.
Her tongue slides into mine, her hands between my legs as she caresses my crotch.
I moan into her kiss.
Thud .
I freeze. Midnight leaps off me, shoving me behind her as she puts her arm out to guard me.
“Oh gods, Professor Malifax, I didn’t see you there,” I say, pushing past Midnight to greet the Severance Rite professor in the vain hope he didn’t see me with my tongue down Midnight’s throat.
“Mmm, that much is evident. Pretty hard to see anything when you’re tonguing a student.”
Oh. Shit. He very much saw then. Midnight swallows audibly. This time, I push her behind me.
“It’s not what you think,” I say.
He laughs, it’s sinister and cold and I know he’s not buying our bullshit.
“I think you have some explaining to do, don’t you?”
He lunges for me. What the fuck?
His fingers grip my arm so hard it hurts. “You’re coming with me.”
“Get off her. What the fuck is wrong with you? Stop manhandling her,” Midnight says.
He draws a blade on Midnight, halting her as he points it right over her heart.
“One more move.”
“What the fuck is going on?” I say, trying to pry his fingers off me.
When it doesn’t work, I twist and drive my knee into his balls. “I said, get off me.”
He drops the blade and groans as he buckles forward gripping his crotch.
“Who the hell are you?” I snap.
But he’s already recovered. He lurches for his blade and swings up. I duck out of the way and scream.
“You’re coming with me.”
“The fuck I am,” I bark and back up.
He charges at me with the blade, and I scream and run. Midnight sprints after us, smashing an emergency alarm on the library wall as she darts out the door on our heels. I run hard and fast. But the glint of the blade is always in my periphery, and he gains on me.
“KEEP GOING,” Midnight bellows after me as the library sirens scream through the night.
I break out into the courtyard moat area and run hard for the drawbridge. But it’s shut.
Who the fuck shut it? In forty years, I’ve never known the drawbridge to be closed.
How the hell am I getting out of here?
He careens into me, and I go flying, almost falling into the moat. I roll and save myself as Midnight lands a blow to the back of his head, making the blade sail out of his hands.
I throw myself at it, grasp the hilt and yank it out of his reach milliseconds before he gets to it.
“You’re fucked now,” Midnight says, pulling her bone-like scythe out of her hip holster. The pair of us circle him.
“You better start talking,” I snap.
“The Societas will not stop hunting you. You will be taken, and she will be resurrected.”
Thalia comes surging out of the Great Library. “What the hell is going on?”
Malifax freezes, his skin grows clammy.
“I may not have secured you, but the Societas will resurrect her. Omnia mors aequat.”
The threat is punctuated with a crack, and then yellow foam fills his mouth, his eyes roll back and he drops to the ground like a stone.
“What the fuck?” I say.
Thalia jogs over, takes one look at Malifax and shouts, “Medic!”
Verrill’s head pokes out of the library door and ducks straight back in.
But I can’t get over Malifax. He was all out for attack and then he just stopped. It was like something terrified him.
“Are you okay?” Thalia says and wraps her arms around me.
“I think so,” I say.
“Go, get back to House Inferos. Midnight, will you escort her?”
“Of course, Professor,” she says and gestures for me to follow her.
Father runs into the courtyard as Midnight guides me out. He slows to a walk and then halts to stare at us with narrowed eyes as we pass by.
My throat thickens. What is he thinking? What does he know? Midnight keeps her distance and her hands to herself. Neither of us says anything. But Father follows us at a distance.
As Midnight reaches for Inferos’s door handle, her fingers trembling, my father’s cold eyes are still on us.
It doesn’t open. She growls at it, shaking the handle and slams her fist against the wood.
“Gently,” I say. And twist the handle.
She pouts at me, as if opening a door isn’t the easiest thing in the world.
“I swear the campus hates me,” she says.
“Of course it doesn’t.”
I glance at Father as we enter House Inferos.
Midnight’s mouth thins as I close the door behind us.
“This isn’t great,” I say.
“No. The Societas had a mole, and they’re after you…”