36. Midnight
Midnight
Thirty Days Left
I hand Lucy a hastily drawn scribble of the rune. She takes it and slips it into the boob cup of her dress.
“Thank you. But…”
“But?” I say, the air souring.
“We have to stop this,” Lucy says, adjusting her dress.
“You don’t want to,” I answer, inspecting the turret window for cracks. There are none, surprisingly. I think we got away with it.
“What I want is irrelevant. I… I told you at the start this could never be anything more… and what we’re doing…”
“It is more?” I say.
She turns away from me.
“So what? You’re breaking up with me after letting me fuck you?”
She kneads her temple. “Do you have to be so crass?”
“Do you have to be so cowardly?”
“Cowardly? Fuck you, Midnight. You have no concept at all of what will happen to me if I so much as utter words of confirmation.”
She’s right. To love her, all I have to do is fall; to love me, she has to sacrifice everything.
I’m just the idiot that fell first.
I need to get out of here. I need to leave and get my head in check and stop myself from falling any harder or faster. She was clear it could never be more. I chose not to listen.
I turn and walk out, leaving her in the turret alone and find my way back to Lex and Bastien.
Finis must recognise my growing reluctance. It is always with me. It follows me now, stalking me through the reflections in the windows, as I make my way downstairs.
Those flickering images, sometimes me, sometimes my parents, sometimes horrible lies and warped nightmares.
An image of Lucy, dead and rotting floats like a gnarled watercolour in the window.
I shudder as my name is chanted like a whisper on the breeze.
Finis is impatient, and for the first time, I am afraid of what will happen.
I find Lex and Bastien, both already animated.
“It’s a bit cruel for them to post the results during the ball,” Lex whines. She’s recovered now, but she has a nasty scar over her shoulder blade. I left Lucy in the turret to clean herself up and adjust her dress so she didn’t look like she’d been fucked within an inch of her life.
“Says the girl at the top of their class,” Bastien scoffs.
I note that Aurelia is third in Lex’s primary subject.
Second in Bastien’s.
My teeth grind against each other. I’m not top three in anything I’ve checked so far.
But what did I expect? Despite all my extra study, I spent the first half of the year at the bottom of the group.
It’s thanks to Lucy I’ve crawled my way to the mid-ranks and higher.
I frantically scan the papers hanging on the outside of Finis Tower searching for my name.
It seems I have made progress, for I’m in the top ten percent of every class I check.
But that’s not enough progress to chase off the gnawing knowledge that I made a deal that will see me choose: Lucy’s soul or mine?
And the longer I spend with Lucy, the more I struggle with the concept of reaping her.
I find the most important results, the Veilwalker scores, and torture myself by scanning from the bottom up.
My name isn’t there. What the hell?
I reach the middle of the class, and my name still hasn’t appeared. I scan back down to make sure I didn’t miss it.
Hope.
A dangerous creature, I swear it was designed by demons as a form of torture. One sent to lure you in, taunt you with possibility, with futures never meant for you.
I keep searching. Lex’s hand slides into one of mine. Bastien’s on the other side.
“Oh, my gods,” Lex whispers.
I reach the top ten students, and I still haven’t seen my name.
A swell of something warm and bubbly nestles in my chest like birthday cake and hugs from friends. My eyes sting, everything blurs.
Top five. Still my name hasn’t appeared.
4th: Silvana Danswick
Surely… not. Can I really have a chance of winning the favour next month? We’re thirty days out. But what if I’ve scored close enough…
3rd: Mercedes Midnight.
The bubbles pop. The cake turns sour, and the hugs vanish, leaving me cold.
“I knew it was too much to ask,” I say, dropping Lex and Bastien’s hands and turn my back on the scroll just as Hadrian shoves past me and sees his name next to first place.
The worst bit wasn’t Hadrian. It was…
“Listen, she’s not even going to be in your final exam. Not when it counts,” Bastien says.
“Oh, please. It all counts. And top student isn’t just top of their own subject. It’s top of everything. And Aurelia is in the top three of every fucking subject she’s taken,” I bark.
I’m going to have to study harder, longer.
More hours in the library. I’ll drink more coffee, cut sleep.
I don’t care what I have to do to get to the top of the student rankings.
An absurd thought occurs to me that at this point, if I hadn’t already sold my soul and was trying to get it back, I’d consider selling my soul to win.
Gods. What the hell is wrong with me that I value my soul so little? Or perhaps it’s that I valued someone else so much that I’d have done anything for them and that cost me everything.
Caring. Love.
Maybe Lucy is right, we should quit while we’re ahead.
Aurelia strides past me, her hand locked in her new girlfriend’s. She doesn’t even look at me. The pair of them are dressed beautifully, but that’s about as much of a compliment as I can muster for the bitch who stole everything from me.
She can’t win that favour. She just can’t.
The music behind us at the ball kicks up a beat as Aurelia gasps and claps her hands together behind me. It sets my teeth on edge. Lex and Bastien must notice because they sling their arms over my shoulders and drag me away.
“She’s not worth it,” Bastien says, handing me a glass of some sort of booze, which I down in one. He blinks, takes the glass and exchanges it for another, which I also down.
“Okaaay, maybe we won’t have any more of those just yet,” he says.
We stroll around the tower, doing a full loop, examining the bars and food stalls. Bastien eats enough for all of Ora City, and Lex picks at the odd thing, preferring to steal bites of Bastien’s food than actually order her own.
I’m too pissed off to eat.
A couple of students stroll past me, and I double take. Must be the booze. But I don’t recognise them, and they’re wearing uniform, tonight of all nights.
“What’s wrong?” Lex asks.
“You ever seen those two before?”
“No?” she says. “Maybe they started term late.”
“Is that a thing here?” Bastien asks.
Lex shrugs. “My sister had a late starter.”
But something feels off, like an ant trapped under your shirt. I can’t get rid of the sensation. We make our way to the front of the tower, and Lucy is standing there with several professors, Alistair and Thalia—the two professors I see her with most often, among them.
Ignatius is behind her. He catches my eye and narrows his gaze at me. He indicates for me to come to him, so I break off from Lex and Bastien and head over.
The two students I don’t recognise linger near the drinks table Lucy is at. Professor Stroud joins Alistair and Thalia in conversation.
Lucy appears elegant and put back together save for a couple of rubies missing from her chest; they must have flicked off while we were fucking. My eyes glance up to the window, a smirk tickling the corner of my mouth. Aside from the missing rubies, you’d never know I fucked her.
“What do you want, Ignatius?” I ask, moving us away from the group of professors into a nook near a bar.
“Is that really a way to talk to the demon holding your soul in his hands? Hmm?”
“I have a party to attend unless you have something you need me to do?”
“There are three souls I need you to reap tomorrow.”
“Fine, send the details in the moths as usual.”
“Eager to get rid of me tonight, aren’t you? You wouldn’t be hiding anything from me, would you?”
“Like I could,” I say.
Lies. I’m hiding too much from him.
He leans close. “I see the way you look at my daughter. She is not for you.”
“Why? Because I’m a lowly reaper? Or because I’m a mortal?”
His lip curls. “Both…”
But that’s not it, is it? There’s something he’s hiding from me or maybe from her. “There’s more, isn’t there?”
“If she falls in love with a mortal, her powers will be lost. I can’t… I won’t allow that to happen.”
There’s something in his expression. Something I’m missing. I may not be close to Ignatius, but I’ve known him for a decade, I’m used to his ego, his charm, I can tell when he’s lying. And while it might not be an outright lie, there is something.
“No…That’s not it. Why don’t you want me near her?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Midnight. You’re naive to think you can barrel up to me with this ego and accusations. You’re mortal, that alone means you’re not good enough for her.”
“And yet, you haven’t denied it. Maybe it’s not me you want her to avoid. But it is something about me, or is it a relationship you don’t want her having? Is the threat a human? Perhaps it’s all tied to her contract…”
His expression darkens. I’ve hit a nerve. Good.
“I’m going to figure it out, Ignatius. And when I do, I’m going to make sure she knows how to break free from you.”
He snarls. Lurches towards me, grabbing my shirt.
Thalia bursts out laughing, distracting both of us. I slip his outstretched hand, spinning out of his grasp as Thalia flings her arms out, laughing so hard she knocks several glasses over.
“The best bit…” I say, and only demons know what possesses me to keep pushing him. “I’ve got nothing to lose by pissing you off. You might reap my soul, but you can’t for another thirty days.”
He flashes so dark I swear he swallows Finis Tower whole. Thalia is still laughing when Mortem appears out of nowhere.
“Hey, Mortem,” I say and kneel to pet him, but he darts away and heads straight for Lucy, who’s reaching for a drink.
Mortem hisses and leaps at her, disappearing through her dress and I assume sinking his claws into her ankle because she lets the glass go and hops around, screaming.