CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
I come to with the warmth of my arm against my cheek. There’s a bit of discomfort in my lower back, but other than that I feel almost pleasant. At least until I see the small TV across from me and realize where I am.
I’m back in New York. Back in the apartment.
There’s no Academy, no castle.
I question whether that was all a fever dream, albeit a very long, very, very detailed dream, but I reach to my neck and find the tender spot where I was drugged—again—not to mention that low thrum of power that continues to pulse through me.
No, the Academy was no dream. Damien was no dream.
I heave myself into a sitting position on the couch and stretch.
There’s an envelope on the table in front of me, ‘Annabelle Fairchild’ in scrawling, very un-notice-like script.
Yawning, I reach forward and pick up the envelope, opening it to find a series of papers. The first is the deed to the apartment—in my name no less.
I blink, but nope, it’s still there.
Well, shit.
There’s a letter attached from the bank that shows the finalized debt, the balance reading a very neat and handsome zero.
I speculate who could have paid this off. Damien?
It’s possible. We never spoke of his finances, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s hoarding a stash of money or gold or some-such.
There is yet a second letter I pull out, reading fast.
Dear Ms. Fairchild,
Please forgive our unorthodox methods, but it is paramount students leave the Academy until we can better understand the Event in question. Any updates on Professor Darkwood will, of course, be passed onto you accordingly.
As you can see, the debt of your grandmother’s apartment was paid off some weeks ago. The bank will not release any information as to who provided the payout, invoking client privilege.
The AOB thanks you for your service to the magical community and wishes to inform you that you are still under its protection while in inais. Should you require assistance, our operatives will be more than glad to help.
Sincerely,
Hazlet Miller
Arcane Oversight Bureau – Public Relations
So yes, they’re happy to help but provided no way to get in touch.
Figures.
Hazlet Miller—Christ, I’ve got to get me one of these AOB names.
It’s clear then. Damien paid off the apartment.
“Damn you, Damien,” I whisper, tears clouding my vision. He’s in a coma and still taking care of me. The man who I thought was out to destroy me made sure I had a home to return to in case things went south. And south they went.
I place the papers down and pace over to the window. It’s a gloomy, soup of a day in New York. Much like Lumina, really. I’ve brought the weather with me.
But not him.
I’ve got to get back, which means finding how to get to the Academy, which means… Sweet fuck all, because how the hell am I going to find that out?
I stroll around in the apartment, certain things bringing a small smile to my face. My clothes are pretty much everywhere, reminding me of the hurry I left in. That’s how desperate I was to get the hell out of here—to leave my whole life behind.
But soon the space becomes suffocating. I decide I need some air, making my way to the front door. I ease it open and step into the stairwell only to find a grainy picture of myself looking back at me.
The eviction notice is gone and, in its place, a missing poster with the worst possible picture of me and a caption that reads: ‘Have you seen me?’
Oh. My. God.
I look to the bottom of the page, and yep, there’s Sabrina’s number.
I can’t even begin to fathom the anguish I must have put her through all this time when I just up and disappeared. I never even got a message out to her.
I head back inside and find my cell sitting neatly on my bed beside my duffle. It’s even charged.
I briefly spot what must be hundreds of missed texts and calls, but I can’t bring myself to go through them right now.
I go to call Sab, but stop, deciding to text instead.
It’s me. I know you must have a million questions. Meet me at the diner at 12?
I turn the phone off before the inevitable missed calls and flood of texts follow. It’s a strange thing, uncharacteristic perhaps to shut out your best friend, but I’ve got ease back into life.
The closer it gets to twelve, though, the more nervous I become. Sab’s a sweetheart, the best friend you could hope for. It’s just that I’ve got no idea where to begin with any of this. And Lily and Ava…it feels like I’ve been cheating on her in a way, stupid as that seems.
Since I left New York, my life has been turned upside down. I catch my reflection in the mirror on the wall and remind myself to breathe.
It’s Sab, I reason. She’ll understand.
*
I step into the diner, the little bell chiming over the door just like I remember. The strong scent of coffee—wonderful, heavenly coffee—laces the air, a waitress brushing past me with an empty tray over her head. And actual decent food. How I’ve missed this.
Something crashes into me from the side, arms right around my torso.
It’s Sabrina. She steps back, still holding me, eyes wide. “Holy shit. It really is you.”
Her eyes are wet, which only makes me feel infinitely more terrible.
She drags me towards our usual table. “Come on. I’ve already ordered.”
I take a seat and can barely look her in the eye, not after abandoning my whole life without as much as a warning.
I finally get the strength to bring my head up. “Are you mad at me?”
There’s a second where I’m unsure what her reaction is going to be. She nods. “Worried, at first, and then mad, but now? Honestly, I’m just happy to see you.”
“You have every right to be angry,” I tell her. “I can’t apologize enough, but I had to go.”
“To Lumina, right? Or have you been busy sailing the Greek Isles with a sun-kissed boytoy?”
I give a short laugh. “I wish.”
Her gaze turns inquisitive. “But you’re back, which means…”
I exhale, long and hard. “I don’t even know where to begin.”
“I thought you were dead, you know. A few more weeks and I would have thrown you a funeral.”
“Oh, Sab…Jesus.”
She wipes at her eyes, fingers fluttering in front of her face like she always does when she’s trying not to cry. “But you’re okay, aren’t you?”
“I’m okay,” I nod back, doing my best not to join her in Cryfest 2024. “But if I had to start somewhere, I guess it’s the ball, the invitation.”
“The guy in the wolf mask.”
“Right. He’s a professor, actually.”
“Oh? A professor of love?” she teases.
I do my best to smile back. “In a way.”
Sabrina slaps the table. “Fuck me. I knew you looked different.”
I raise a hand. “I’m not going to get into all that, suffice to say I accepted the invitation and the next thing I know I’m…there,” I tell her, leaving out the whole needle-in-the-neck thing. “I know I should have left you a text or something, but it was all very rushed. I thought I could contact you from the Academy, but they have it locked down pretty good. I know I’ve been a terrible friend leaving you in the dark like this.”
Her expression turns serious. “I know something happened there, Ana. People have been talking, but the AOB’s keeping a tight lid on it. Were you involved? Were you there?”
A lump the size of a grapefruit rises in my throat. If I close my eyes, I know I’ll see that ballroom, the countless bodies, Leo, Damien…the horror of it. I still haven’t processed it all. Maybe I’m still in shock.
“Yes,” I reply, leaving it at that.
Sabrina reaches out and covers my hand with her own. “It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me everything right away, even though you are going to tell me everything. But you’re safe, and you’re here, and clearly no longer a virgin, so overall, good, right?”
I smile for real now. “Yeah, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“I might have become an all-powerful shadow queen and stopped an all-powerful evil sorceress from destroying the non-magical world,” I smile. “Plus a lot of really kinky sex stuff.”
I see her watching me, wondering how to react. But she isn’t buying it. She raises her eyebrows, playing along. “I see. Well, humble Shadow Queen, I eagerly await your tales, but for now, why don’t you tell me why you’re sitting there secretly looking like your cat died?”
“I don’t have a cat.”
She wags her fingers. “And therein lies the problem. Something to do with the weirdly possessive Professor then?”
“Damien.”
“He has a name.”
I’ve always told Sab everything. This should be no different. “He’s in a coma.”
She sits back. “He’s what? Was it an accident? Misfire?”
Damien would never be so clumsy. “It’s because of me.”
Sabrina looks confused. “You put him in a coma?”
I have to smile at the absurdity of that before my stoicism returns. “No, he was trying to save me, actually, got caught in the crossfire, you could say.”
“Crossfire? The fuck was happening out there?”
I shake my head. “You have no idea, but I need to get back, to make sure he’s okay.”
“Don’t suppose they left you a map.”
“They did not,” I say. “I was hoping maybe you could ask around, use your Society contacts?”
“I can do that,” Sab says simply, “but I don’t imagine anyone’s going to give it up. I mean, hell, I didn’t even think Lumina was a real place before all this.”
I fold my arms over myself. “Oh, it’s real, alright.”
He was real. What we had was real, and now he’s lying there caught in limbo and I’m sitting at a diner in New York. It doesn’t seem fair.
I give Sab a brief rundown of the Academy and how things played out, skipping the intimate details and the massacre as a whole. Maybe I’ll tell her, but for now I don’t really want to sit here picking at my burger rehashing how half the student population was murdered.
I eventually let her take over the conversation. She talks about her job at the label, her bitchy new manager. It’s simple gossip, but it’s nice having this bit of normality back. There’s no evil sorceress lurking around the corner or secret room about to unleash all hell.
“I have been having some fucked-up dreams, though,” she goes on.
I almost choke on my burger. “Really?”
She nods. “Sex stuff, which I won’t bore you with, but damn. This one… It was so realistic, so weird. I woke up and I swear it was like I’d been fucked five ways to Sunday.”
“I don’t need the details,” I tell her, because I was there.
“In any case,” she says. “Order has been restored in the universe.”
Sabrina insists on paying, which is just as well, because I don’t have a dime to my name. That’s going to be a whole different problem, but for now I’m happy to simply hold her for a bit.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper into her shoulder, the waterworks finally starting to flow.
She nods against me. “You’re back. That’s all that matters.”
Outside, it’s starting to rain, which again reminds me of Lumina. I’m starting to think everything will.
Everything reminds me of him.
“Oh, it’s raining,” Sab notes, staring through the diner door. She looks to me in alarm. “Do you need somewhere to stay? Your apartment—”
“Is mine. Long story.”
“Oh, because you know I’m going to see you tomorrow and the day after that, and the day after that. You better call me Casper, because girl, I’m going to haunt your ass, make sure you never skip out on me again.”
I laugh. “I’ll hold you to it.”
“Love you,” she says, opening the door.
“Love you more.”
She darts out into the downpour and heads left, keeping to the wall.
I wave her off and step out myself, about to start down the street when a voice from the curbside calls out. “Ms. Fairchild? Ms. Annabelle Fairchild?”
I swivel to find a suited, serious sort of man standing beside a black limo. He’s holding up an umbrella, moving to shield me from the rain.
“Yes,” I answer cautiously and subtly guarding my neck before someone jabs me again.
“Someone’s expecting you.” He nods, stretching over to the limo’s rear door and pulling it open while continuing to hold the umbrella over me with his other hand. It’s quite the contortion act.
“Who?” I ask the obvious question.
“Please,” he nods, about to perform the splits.
But I’m used to all this mysterious back and forth by now, so why not jump in a strange car with a strange man? What’s the worst that could happen? I wonder with a sense of déjà vu.
Thing is, I’ve changed since I was last in New York. I’m confident, powerful… If someone wants to try something, let them. They’ll go the same, toasty way Isadora Lumina did.
But as to who’s arranging all this? I have no idea. I think about it as I settle myself into the back of the limo, but the search is short and bears little fruit. With Damien in a coma, I can’t imagine who would be expecting me here bar maybe Lily or Ava, though this doesn’t really seem like their MO.
AOB? I consider.
That’s possible. Maybe I’ll get my own Nick Fury, a team.
Fat fucking chance.
The door closes and the driver moves around to the cabin, the car pulling away slowly into the stream of traffic.
My thoughts return to Damien. It’s been barely a day and already I can’t stand not being by his side. If this is the AOB, the first thing I’m going to petition is to get right back to the Academy so I can be with him—on a plane this time. If they don’t agree to that, I’ll…
Burn the place down? my head offers.
I would. I’d burn the whole world twice over if it meant another second with him. Being here without him is a new kind of agony, a void I know I will never be able to fill.
And if he dies?
I cast the thought away. No. I will not allow it.
Fifteen minutes later, the rain abating, we pull up to a high-rise somewhere near Central Park North.
The driver moves around to my side of the car, opening the door and helping me out onto the sidewalk.
I look up, the building like a shiny toothpick pricking at the sullen sky above. It seems residential, but I can’t be sure.
I follow the driver inside towards the elevators at the back of the lobby. He swipes a card, the elevator chiming and doors opening.
I step inside, but the driver remains.
“You’re not coming?” I ask.
“No, ma’am,” he smiles, just as the doors close and the elevator begins to ascend with a vaulted whoosh.
I watch the floors climb on the display above the elevator doors—fifty, seventy-three, ninety-ninety—until we come to a stop at one-twenty-nine.
The elevator chimes, the doors opening to reveal a long, mirrored hallway.
I step forward doing my best not to speculate what or who is waiting for me beyond.
Whatever this place is, it’s fucking stunning—a penthouse or some such, and in a location like this? Can’t be cheap.
I come to the end of the hallway, the light low. Floor-to-ceiling windows look over a rather soggy Central Park.
There’s more light coming from a room to the left.
I follow it, heart racing, but that steady confidence remaining. I can handle anything.
He taught me as much.
I breathe in and step around the doorframe into a bedroom. It’s empty save for a single figure standing by the windows.
He turns in my direction and my heart stops completely.
His scarred lips leave no room for doubt, lips that have broken and rebuilt me, made me anew.
He’s in a light-gray suit, a departure, but no less commanding.
His head turns and his eyes meet mine across the room, a thousand things unsaid.
I open my mouth but cannot speak.
He speaks for me, that voice, so deep and poisonously masculine, already undoing me again.
“Hello,” he says.
“Hello, little lamb.”
###
Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed Ana and Damien’s story. If you enjoyed this book, please help out by leaving a short review.
- Ravenna