Chapter 14
I’m not shocked when Deacon whips out a key to the Windsor, which is closed by the time we arrive a little after six in the evening. I’m not shocked when Deacon knows where the utility closet is, or even when his lymantrian coin slips easily into the broken kiosk.
I am shocked, though, when it pops us out not in the rotunda with the muraled ceiling and the glass case of trinkets and trophies, but rather somewhere deep in the heart of the Fickle Thicket. His copper coin must have a unique gateway of its own.
Sophia, Elliot, and I exchange wary glances.
We’re alone, in a highly dangerous forest, with a bloodthirsty demon.
It’s not that I think the three of us couldn’t take Deacon—with him being unable to kill me without inflicting the syrabraxa’s madness on himself, I’d actually say that’s a fair fight.
What worries me is that the school has strict rules against entering these woods without faculty supervision.
And perhaps even more concerning, somewhere beyond the twisted roots at our feet and spindly hoarfrost on the branches knotted above us is the Citadel.
The Elders’ keep. The one place I should be avoiding at all costs.
When we slip out of the woods, the Citadel hunters at the tree line—essentially our campus police—don’t even point their spears at Deacon’s neck. He looks like a fourth-year. Maybe a young visiting professor. Either way, Sophia, Elliot, and I can only shuffle after him, heads down.
On the subway ride over, I’d decided that bringing Deacon to Harker was kind of a win-win: If he were to be stopped instantly upon arrival—either by the wards around the school or by a keen-eyed student catching the demonic flash of red in his eyes—he’d be killed or jailed in the Harker dungeon and we could find a way to draw his blood then.
Bonus points: We’d have captured one of the most treacherous demons in deviant history.
If that wouldn’t get me an A in Underworld Studies, nothing would.
And if he somehow waltzed through untouched as he believed he would…Well, I might sleep worse at night thinking Harker isn’t as safe as I once believed, but at least we’d get answers on Reid. So long as the groundskeeper really is a warlock. And the spell works with Reid’s brother’s blood.
Alas, as I watch Deacon trudge unnoticed through the snow, past bundled students with weapons and grimoires piled high, I suppose I’m grateful for Deacon’s villainy. One step closer to Reid. And grateful there are no other aeons on campus who could out him as a demon on sight alone.
“How on earth…?” Peter asks, catching up with us at the edge of frozen Lake Hellebore.
“No clue,” I mutter back as we watch Deacon stalk past rolling hills and low lantern light, toward the groundkeeper’s cottage.
I hurry my steps, letting Sophia, Peter, and Elliot fall back until I’m walking in pace with Deacon.
Or trying to, given his gargantuan strides.
That leg span is no joke. “Are you going to tell me how you did it?”
Deacon’s eyes roam calmly over the white expanse before us. All of Harker’s meadows outside Old Campus are blanketed in banks and bushels of snow. Every tree’s leaves are replaced with frost. “What do you think?”
“It’s a spell, right? Like the one some deviants use to hide from aeons.” I think of the one Peter told me about. The spell that kept me from knowing Driscoll had turned. “You’re undetectable by our wards?”
“Perhaps.”
“Or,” I correct myself, “you’ve got someone on the inside at the Citadel. They know who you are and allow you to come and go as you please.”
“Now that’s a good idea.”
I chew my lip in thought. “No, you have a relic on you.” We’re learning all about this very practice in Runes, Relics, and Charms. Studying everything from the Holy Grail to the long-since-lost Caspian Ring, to the Florentine Diamond housed in the Windsor’s Rare Gems section.
Like the lure I gave Penny, all kinds of enchanted jewelry, tokens, and goblets have found their way onto the mortal plane. In fact, Fiona told me the most powerful ones are kept in the Windsor of all places. Behind panes of glass for unknowing fifth-graders to breathe on during field trips.
“Your necklace.” I point to the silver-colored chain he’s always wearing. “Makes you untraceable or something?”
When he doesn’t respond I think of my locket and let my fingers graze my neck to touch the chain.
There’s no magic to the piece, but knowing it was my dad’s and my grandmother’s before him makes me feel invincible at times.
Loss yanks at my heart, and I try not to think too much about him.
Of how much I could use his advice these days.
Deacon’s eyes are studying me strangely when I glance up.
I almost ask him why he hasn’t told the Brood where Harker is.
Traded the information for something at some point in all the years he’s lived in this city.
But I’m beginning to get a clearer picture of the guy the more time I spend with him: He seems to hate his uncle and the Brood almost as much as the Elders and this school.
In fact, it seems like besides seedy criminals and poppy dealers, he’d rather not work with anyone but Baz and Ward.
But before I can form my thoughts into a question, Deacon nods his head toward Sophia and Peter as they pass us, snickering quietly about something. Probably Deacon. “Your flirty friend with the bangs over there would have made a good torturer in the underworld.”
My mind tries to unscramble whatever that might mean. I come up empty. “I don’t follow.”
Deacon tips his chin once more toward Sophia, who is laughing as Peter quietly tells her something against the shell of her ear. “She knows he loves her, but she won’t cut him loose.” He makes a tsking sound. “Naughty, naughty.”
I swallow the sting of his words. “They’re just friends.”
Deacon makes an exaggerated sighing sound. “Sure they are. And I’m the pope. Actually,” his eyes crinkle, “funny story about that—”
I’m saved from another Deacon-ism when his cell rings in his pocket. He fishes it out, checks who’s calling, and answers. “What’s up, baby?”
Something oily squirms in my stomach at the pet name. I raise my brows at Deacon. Baby? Really?
His face twists in confusion until he realizes what I’m implying and then his features transform into amusement. “Ward,” he mouths. “Obviously.”
“Nothing really,” he tells Ward on the other end of the line. “Babysitting all the fucklings.”
I stomp away through the snow until I reach my friends, who have come to a stop before the groundskeeper’s cottage.
Unlike the professors’ cottages—each a two bedroom, one bath; some covered in ivy and others with antique lanterns hanging low over cozy stone entryways—this is more like a log cabin.
Four walls, two windows, one chimney piping thick, hot smoke into the early-evening air.
Peter, of all people, steps forward first and nearly raps his knuckles on the door when Deacon grasps his wrist before it can land.
My limbs tense—primed for a fight—and Sophia takes a deadly step forward, but Deacon makes no move to harm Peter. He only looks at all of us and says, “No matter what your warlock asks, nobody says anything about who I am. Yes?”
“Sure,” I bite out. “Let him go.”
He releases Peter’s hand and I watch as Peter rubs the flesh of his wrist to jump-start his circulation.
“I’m serious,” Deacon says to me. And the intensity in his eyes confirms it. “Or I’ll be the only one who walks out of this cottage tonight.”
But I have no desire for the Citadel, nor Fiona for that matter, to know I snuck a demon crime boss onto campus. “Yep, I hear ya.”
The door opens before any of us can knock. “Evening,” a voice rasps. “All is well?”
Silence follows. Something has rendered Sophia speechless. I can’t quite see into the cabin behind Elliot’s wide frame, but I do make out Peter’s hand on Sophia’s low back in comfort. “Good evening, sir. We were hoping to ask you a few questions about a paper we’re writing. May we come in?”
The groundskeeper mumbles something about how the “whole lot might not fit” but ushers us in regardless. Deacon has to crouch nearly to his knees to slip inside.
The cabin’s warmth is a welcome respite from the chill that had been sinking into my bones outside.
A fire crackles pleasantly in the hearth before a single worn-in couch.
But all I can see is how the room is littered with greenery.
Hibiscus, fig trees, herbs of all kinds…
Potted plants hang from the ceiling, some with leafy tendrils that brush the floor, not a boot print on a leaf to be found—each one carefully stepped around every day.
The entire cabin smells like chlorophyll and the spice of ritualistic herbs recently burned.
It reminds me of Driscoll’s cottage when he was dean.
Warlocks and witches do love their plants.
When Peter moves to the side to make room for Deacon and me, I finally get a good look at the groundskeeper. It seems the story Peter told us was true. His face has been viciously disfigured by fire, the kind of mottled flesh—singed-off nose and ear—that can only be doled out by a dragon.
The groundskeeper’s eyes are the only part of his face untouched—kind brown eyes. Knowing eyes. Watchful.
“Sir,” Peter begins, “this is going to sound—”
“We’re here to learn about plants,” I cut in. “For a presentation in our Herbology for Lycanthropy class.”
Sophia and Elliot shoot me confused glances, but Peter rolls with it. “We heard you were the man to ask. Is it true a blend of certain roots can help even turned weres shift at will?”
“Yes, some can. Not roots, though. Flowering plants, such as henbane and betony.” The groundskeeper studies each of us. Eventually he points a knotted finger at Deacon and rasps, “A bit old to be a student, no?”
“He was held back,” Sophia says. “A lot.”
Elliot nods. “So he really needs to pass.”