Chapter 35 Not The Smartest #2
Which meant Leda’s two roommates, Harringbone and Rook, would be back soon.
So would that fucker, Hollywood Joran. Caelum scowled, propping himself up on his palms as he gazed blearily around his room.
He squinted at the window last, right after it struck him that the sun was significantly higher in the sky than it was most mornings when he woke.
His eyes found the clock face over his smoldering fireplace and he fought to focus on it, still adjusting to the brightness of the sun.
Fuck, the carriage could have come already.
Leda’s friends, not to mention every other prick who went to the school, including all the royals who hated her guts, could be here already.
He glanced around the floor and grew even more annoyed when he saw she’d taken that traitorous little cat with her.
She’d definitely bolted, probably for multiple reasons.
He flung off the bedspread and swung his legs over to the side, wincing from the bruises and cuts that littered his body from the night before.
None of it was particularly serious. The burn that damaged his ribs was probably worst of it, since Sirena always loved to put creatively malicious twists into her magic.
That had been true even when they’d purportedly been on the same side.
But no one had killed him, or even tried particularly hard to kill him.
He strongly suspected they had orders to bring him in alive. That, or maybe they were afraid to cross that line without specific clearance from his father.
They’d definitely wanted Mocking and the others alive.
Even when Caelum had been extracting Leda’s friends from whoever replaced Walker, Walker treated Caelum relatively carefully.
So had the other Dark Cathedral mage who’d run out of the temple to help Walker.
They’d used a lot of extremely painful and debilitating curses and spells, most of which were illegal.
They’d also made a few attempts to throw chimaeras over him to knock him unconscious or distort his reality.
But Caelum couldn’t remember many spells used on him that put him at high risk of dying, not until they got desperate, anyway. When Walker got in serious trouble, his spells suddenly got a lot more dangerous, and a lot more accurate.
Bones had decided relatively quickly he would honor no such restraints on his end.
He wasn’t ready to think about that yet, though.
He needed a damned shower, first.
Right as he slid off the mattress and set his feet on the door, he felt a ping from the chimaeras. Leda had left up the insane number of defensive shields he’d put up the night before. They were so intense, he grimaced when the ping came again.
Someone was standing outside his tower.
He muttered a spell and the corresponding hand gesture, and an image solidified in gold and blue light, hovering in front of him.
“Greythorne,” he muttered.
He went back and forth on whether he could handle dealing with the other mage right then, then noticed Luc was with Alaric and swore under his breath.
He unlocked the chimaera and opened the lower tower door.
If they’d come here to thank him again, he might have to flush their heads in the tower lavatory. Greythorne’s, he especially wanted to dunk. Useless prick had been so wasted on those human drugs, he’d barely been able to form sentences.
Given what he’d seen in Tunis, and what had likely happened to the original Dervish Walker, if Caelum hadn’t gone back for them, they’d probably be naked in a ritual hall right now, chained to a stone dais like Rebecca Whitehorse, stark naked while the re-hydrated blood of one of the Dark Cathedral ancestors got poured down their throats.
The thought made his jaw clench.
He didn’t stop his walk in the direction of the shower, but he didn’t close the door to the lavatory, either. By the time he’d cleaned his teeth, and splashed cold water on his face a few times, they’d ascended the last steps and he heard the door open.
He didn’t bother with a greeting.
“I’m taking a shower,” he announced loudly. “If you want to talk to me, you’re going to have to do it through the door.”
No one answered him at first, so he pushed off the sink and walked into the shower.
It didn’t escape him that Leda had stripped him naked at some point the night before. The realization only managed to sharpen his annoyance with her absence when he woke up.
“Elysia and the others are back,” Alaric said. His voice started off a little tentative by the door as he presumably poked his head inside. “We’re supposed to meet her on the lawn. They’re having a special brunch in the gardens for the New Year.”
Caelum muttered under his breath, even as he twisted the water on, setting it to as hot as he thought he could stand.
“In the snow?” he asked derisively.
“They’ve apparently dealt with that.”
Caelum didn’t ask what that meant.
Mocking spoke up next. “There are a few other things, Bones,” the red-haired mage said, his voice noticeably stiffer and more uncomfortable than Greythorne’s.
“Forsooth wants to talk to all of us tomorrow, apparently, but he told me to tell you he needs to speak with you alone, too. He said he’d be available any time after two o’clock.
He wanted you to go to his office in the Northeast Tower. ”
Caelum muttered a little more at that, but didn’t answer loud enough for either mage to hear him over the running water.
“I think we should all talk before you meet with Forsooth,” Luc added, his voice a touch louder. “Leda gave me all the research materials you brought back from the Tower. I also had a chance to run the blood sample you gave me… the one from your mother.”
Caelum stiffened as the words penetrated, but he turned towards the door in spite of himself, cocking his head.
“And?” he prompted, picking up the bottle of shampoo.
“She was right,” Luc said.
Caelum heard one of them lean against the doorjamb, but he didn’t turn to look.
“She’s got several different human strains in her blood.
” Luc cleared his throat. “The Parshukovas definitely seeded in half-human offspring across more than one generation. If it really was a deliberate family practice, as a means of strengthening the magical bloodline, as she said, it seems to have been effective, too. The aural scans Leda gave me from your mother’s side of the family are unusually strong.
They’re stronger than the vast majority of scans from the random sampling I’ve collected from the Magical population.
There’s also a pronounced difference between your maternal side of the family and the Bones lineage. ”
Caelum grunted. “Malefic would love that,” he muttered.
“I’d still really like a sample of your blood,” Luc said, his voice a touch annoyed. “And an auric scan. You and Leda are now the only people on the project who haven’t provided one, and you’re the only verified mixed-bloods I’ve got direct access to.”
Caelum felt his jaw harden.
He didn’t answer. Pouring shampoo from the bottle onto his head, he began scrubbing his hair and scalp with his fingers.
He wasn’t about to get into the argument with Mocking now, but there was no way in hell he was giving the other mage his blood.
He didn’t want Leda giving him her blood either, not until he knew more about what her own primal meant.
Fuck. He really did need to go talk to Forsooth.
“You know I’m as good as dead if it comes out that the Bones heir is a hybrid,” he said dryly. “And Leda doesn’t need her blood prints getting out there, either. If it comes out she’s got blood with ‘superior’ magic, how well do you think that’s going to go for her?”
“I’d keep both samples anonymous.”
Bones let out a humorless laugh. “Right. I’m sure that’ll be foolproof, Mocking.”
There was a silence, and Caelum finished shampooing and rinsing his hair.
He cast a spell to handle shaving, mostly because he didn’t want to do it the way he normally did, meaning by hand.
Normally he would. He used a straight razor and everything, but today he couldn’t pretend to care enough to spend the extra time.
“Is Minh all right?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Luc’s voice sounded almost grudging.
“The hospital fixed her broken leg. She wanted me to thank you.” He hesitated, long enough to irritate Caelum, then added, “There’s another thing, Bones.
Leda asked us not to tell her friends about…
you know. Well, any of it, really. She didn’t specifically ask about the research project… ”
He hesitated again, long enough for Caelum to frown.
“…But she made us promise not to tell the rest of our friends, especially Jolie, Miranda, and Draken, about the two of you.”
There was a silence after he spoke.
Bones felt his molars grind together, making his headache worse, even before the exact reason for his reaction had fully sunk in.
He shouldn’t be surprised. He wasn’t surprised, really.
She hadn’t said anything to him specifically, not since everything happened at the Black Tower and she’d spent Yule with him, at least, but she would have been thinking, of course, about how her friends might react to any sudden revelations that she might be sleeping with the guy who used to get in scathing insult matches with her in the dining hall the previous year.
Had she been afraid to ask him to be quiet about it?
The truth hit him the instant the thought crossed his mind.
Idiot Bones.
She just had asked him. What she hadn’t done was stick around to hear his answer.
She’d sent Mocking up here to impart the message instead of coming herself, presumably because she assumed he wouldn’t argue with that ginger fuck.
Even if she didn’t care about his reaction she likely didn’t want to risk being seen in his part of the Mansion.
No wonder she’d scampered off before he woke up, taking her little demon with her.
“Right,” he muttered under his breath. He didn’t turn around from where he faced the shower wall, staring sightlessly at the tile as the water pounded on his head. When he still hadn’t said anything to the two of them, Alaric cleared his throat.
“Elysia’s wanting to catch up,” he said. “I’m on my way down. We’ll save a table, but do you want me to order you anything?”
“Espresso,” Caelum said. “Something with chocolate and milk and a fuck of a lot of espresso.” He said it a little louder that time, but still didn’t look over. “I’ll find you.”
He cleared his throat, stripping the emotion from his voice. “Mocking, what about one o’clock? I can go see Forsooth whenever we’re finished.”
“Fine,” Luc said, sounding a little wary. “What about Leda?”
Caelum closed his eyes, opened them.
“Sounds like you’d better ask her,” he said.
He glanced over his shoulder only then, but they’d never ventured past the open door, and the glass was blurry with steam, so he couldn’t see them.
Even so, he could have sworn he saw them look at one another, right before he heard the lavatory door shut with a soft bang.