Chapter Seven
Ilay on the mattress, watching a big, strong, handsome wolf... flit around like a chicken with its head cut off.
“I’m sorry—so sorry that I—that I—” He glanced at my chest and then tore away, blushing even deeper. “If I’d known, I never would’ve—” The man stopped trying to finish a sentence, and then stopped trying to look at me altogether.
After witnessing that horrible scene in the courtyard, and then taking an impromptu ground nap, I woke up sometime later in what I assumed was Tristan’s dorm room.
Likely for the reasons Sabrina suggested, his room wasn’t as grand or fancy as mine.
He had a simple full-sized bed with comfortable, but thin sheets.
There was a desk and bookshelf in one corner, and an armchair in the other.
There was also a door that I assumed led to a bathroom or closet, but nothing else.
No fireplace, no expensive décor, no chandeliers, or raised platform for the bed.
All in all, it was just a normal single room.
“Tristan, it’s okay,” I croaked. “You don’t have to keep apologizing.”
“Hmm, oh, right...” he said to the wall. “Okay.”
I glanced at Sabrina. She was curled at the foot of the mattress, watching Tristan pace like I was. She hadn’t uttered a word since I woke up, so I didn’t know what to make of her silence, or Tristan’s reaction.
“So, uh...” He scratched the back of his neck. “Can I get you anything? The books say you mortals break really easily. Is your head okay?”
“I’m f—”
“Tell him it’s not,” Sabrina sliced in. “Tell him you need to ice your wound.”
I frowned at her, but did what she said. It was only a few hours before that I promised to do less arguing with Sabrina, and more listening to her.
“Ice. Got it.” Tristan took off out the door like the ice would save my life.
“Sab—”
“Silence, girl, and listen.” Sabrina rose up, staring her slitted eyes down on me.
“When he comes back, he’ll have questionsss.
Nothing but questionsss. He has only held himself back till now out of shame for manhandling and hurting a woman,” she said.
“This shame will fade, and then he will want answers. Heed me, and heed me well, you must not tell him why you’re here. ”
I shoved up on his pillows and winced at the stab of pain that went through my skull. “Why not? I’ve already given up that I’m a human woman. Is telling him that I’m here to find my sister really a bigger secret than that?”
I reflected in her expressionless eyes. “What is it you think will happen if you do tell him your sister was taken by the very men who lay dead on a bed of stone? You,” she hissed, “a human mortal woman—everything a witch must be.”
“He— He—” I shook, swallowing hard. “He’ll think I did it.”
“And why will he think this?” she snapped, voice hard.
I sunk down just as slowly as I rose up. “Because I gave him a big, fat motive.”
She dipped her head—correct answer. “But truthfully, even though my purpose is to guide you, I don’t know how much help I can be to you now. Everything has changed.”
“What? What are you talking about? What’s changed?” I asked. “Is it because that vampire professor is on my tail, because as long as I never say the B-word again, I’ll be able to—”
“No, it is not him.” There was an odd quality to her strange, whispering voice. One I’d never heard before. “I put this down to your head injury and the following shock. That’s why you haven’t taken in exactly what the death of your nestmate’s captors mean.”
I tensed, jaw clenching. “I know what it means! I was supposed to find them, follow them, and interrogate them! They were supposed to lead me to Dora, and now they’re gone.
” Tears prickled behind my eyes. “For a whole month, all I had to go on was one grimy school patch. Then, I made it all the way here. I was finally in the same fucking realm as those bastards—let alone the same building, and now...” I looked away. “I have nothing to go on.”
A deep, heavy silence filled the room.
“See?” Sabrina said. “Clueless to the last. You still cannot see what is right in front of you.”
Anger ripped through my chest. “Excuse me?! What the hell is your problem!” I burst out. “If you’ve got something you’re trying to say, just spit it out already! Stop kicking me when I’m down, you legless bitch!”
A strange, hissing noise dripped from her mouth. “Legless bitch?” She laughed some more. “That’s quite humorous, human. Well done. It is good to see you haven’t lost your fighting ssspirit. You’ll need it for the challenges to come, because this is what your shock is preventing you from seeing.
“It has been an entire month since your nestmate was taken,” she said.
“One whole month her captors have walked these halls free and unaccosted, but yet it is today—today of all days—that they are brutally murdered and dumped in a public place to be seen by all. Why?” Her reptilian eyes held me fast. “What’s changed, human? ”
My jaw worked, dread leeching into my bones. “I... They—”
“What’s changed?” she demanded. “Why is it they suddenly needed to die?”
“They... The only thing that changed is...” My voice was nothing more than a thin rasp. “I’m here.”
“That’s right. You’re here. Now that I’ve seen the faces of the men who took her, I can tell you they were no one special or important,” she said.
“In all likelihood, they were nothing more than a bunch of lowly thugs tasked with delivering your nestmate to their true master. They were not worth killing... until you found yourself in the one place you shouldn’t be. ”
“But how?” I croaked. “How can whoever they are know that I’m here? Did the glamour fail? Can some demons see through them?”
She was shaking her head before I finished. “Your glamour was cast by Lord Lucifer himself. His power is absolute. His contracts are absolute... and that may be why you were discovered.”
My head snapped up. “Why I was discovered? Because of the contract?”
Sabrina dipped her head. “It has been told to you over and over again that hellhounds cannot be tamed, and yet, for the first time in thousands of years, one came to the rescue of a lowly demon. Anyone who cares to follow their suspicions to the inevitable conclusion will realize that it wasn’t a hellhound who saved you.
It was something or someone else in disguise.
And why would anyone disguise and risk themselves to get you into this school? ”
“No, wait— No,” I cried, head spinning. “How does it follow that just because someone helped me get into Abaddon, it means I’m a threat to whoever took Dora? Why in the world would someone think those events are connected a month after the fact?”
She stared at me for a long time, then nodded.
“No, it’s you who is correct. A mysterious demon helped by a hellhound in disguise is too little information for her captor to jump to that conclusion.
There’s no reason for them to think those events are connected,” she said, “which means you were overheard.”
I stilled. “Pardon? What do you mean? Overheard when?”
“Today. When you asked the wolf if he’d seen the demons who took your nestmate,” she said. “Someone heard—the one who took your nestmate heard—and realized there was only one reason the strange new student would be looking for those five particular demons.”
My skin prickled. I backed away as far as the pillows would allow me, as if hoping to escape the chill that ran up my spine. “Someone heard me...” I rasped. “And they acted that quickly? Murdering them all before class even let out? H-how? Who!”
“I do not know who. There are many beings in this manor with superior hearing, so there’s no guarantee they were even in the room when you spoke, but know thissss,” she hissed, “to paint the sign of the witches at the scene of the massacre is an act of terrible calculation.
There has never been a witch in hell because there has never been a living mortal woman in hell.
“That is the case no more.”
I couldn’t help it. I shook under her gaze.
“If you are found, and it is almost a certainty now that you will be, the example that will be made of the invading witch will make all the tortures and punishments of hell look like a slap on the wrist.”
“But I’m not a witch!” I shrieked. “And I was in class when they were killed. Dozens of people saw me! No one could really think I had anything to do with this!”
Sabrina was unmoved. “You have everything to do with this, human, because now we know one thing to be true—whoever has your sister has no intention of giving her up. Even if it means turning on their minions. Even if it means inciting old grudges, hatreds, and panics. They will not surrender their prize, which means that you... will never leave hell alive.”
Her words were daggers piercing deeper and deeper into my heart.
Taking a deep breath, I grabbed hold of those daggers, and ripped them out. “No.” Finality rang in my voice clear as a bell. “No, I’m not going to do this. I’m not despairing or giving up. So what, her kidnapper knows I’m here? As long as Dora is here too, it means I’ll find her.
“And if that bastard did overhear my whispered conversation in the middle of a busy classroom, it means something else,” I gritted, balling my fist. “The man who had her taken has superior hearing. The kind that can hear a heart beating from ten miles away.”
“A vampire,” she stated. “That is not an illogical conclusion. There is nothing the vampires want more in this afterlife than the living blood of a human. They will do just about anything—kill just about anyone—to get their handsss on it.” She turned her head toward the door.
“But there is another, simpler, conclusion.”
Tristan came in carrying a goblet of ice, and some water for me too.
“Into whose ear did you pour your questions directly into?” she asked as he shot me a tight, blushing smile. “Who knew from the outset that you weren’t what you appeared to be? Who offered to remain by your side even though he’d gain absolutely nothing by doing so?”