Chapter 7
To all who enter into their education at Heathermoor Academy, the following runes shall bind you henceforth and forever more.
“You gotta be shitting me.” I let out a low whistle between my teeth as I looked over the contract that we’d be required to sign before entering the school.
Of course I’d signed my entrance contract to Neverthorn. Opie’s safety and belief in me had been on the line, so I hadn’t even bothered to look at it before scrawling my name.
This time? Well, this time, I was reading the fine print.
I looked up at Liam. “A gag rune? It’s put on us when we sign this.”
“Correct. Thalienne has found that keeping the details about how she runs Heathermoor . . . quiet . . . has been beneficial to both her students and to her as a Sage.”
He was up to his elbows in sudsy water, with both Gary and Ross helping him clean the kitchen. The rest of us were reading over the contract that would officially enroll us into school here.
Fable stared at the contract next to me, fidgeting as she read. “I think I see a loophole here.”
Liam shook his head. “There aren’t any.”
“Says the undersigned is held to all the rules. We’ll be using fake names, so technically we aren’t the undersigned.” Fable tapped her finger against the signature line and little sparks flowed up.
I grimaced. “That won’t matter, Fabes.” I picked up the blank contract and gently tapped my fingers to the edge of the paper, being sure not to put my name or anything close to the signature line.
Another burst of sparkles danced upward and then settled back into the paper.
“Those little sparks mean that no matter what you sign, the signature is literally tied to you as the signer. You could sign as the Queen of England, and you’d still be bound by these rules.
Very clever way to keep anyone from exploiting that ‘loophole.’ Guessing someone else thought of it before? ”
Liam dried his hands and arms with a quick rune, floating the bubbles and water back to the sink. “Correct. How did you know about signatures like that?”
I stared at the contract. “I had to sign one once. For a job.” There was no way I’d be going into how that particular job went, how I’d nearly died, how very, very ugly the whole thing had been. Nope, I did not need to stir up those memories, not one bit.
“Fair enough,” Liam turned and leaned against the counter so he could look at us all. “The thing is, the name you put there is the name you’ll be assigned but the contract will be keyed to you, no matter what name you put down. Just like Harlow said.”
I didn’t care much about that, because who was I going to talk to outside of my friends here? What I did like was that there were no uniforms. There were supplies we were required to grab, but Liam had already gotten us all the basics on his way.
Which meant that heading into Lairg and trying to contact Zeed was going to be put off for at least another day . . . probably longer.
I glanced over at Fable. “I don’t think this will be all that bad. I mean, I don’t have any friends outside of you guys to tell anything to anyway.”
Fable’s eyebrows shot up. “You are good at keeping secrets . . .”
Fuck me. That was straight to the core of things – she was the only one who knew that Nocta was my father.
Fable’s cheeks pinkened and she winced as if I’d kicked her in the shin. “I just meant that you can be trusted not to blab. Not . . . nothing. Never mind.”
She looked away and a wave of relief rolled over me. It had been a slip of the tongue, nothing more.
“I’m okay with whatever, so long as it gets us in,” I said, keeping my tone light and easy. “You?”
She shrugged. “If you’re okay with it, I’m okay.”
I had to stop being so paranoid. That’s what happened to liars. We had to bear the weight of our lies on our conscience, and it made us twitchy at times, even with our closest, most trusted friends.
I’d convinced myself that I needed to keep my secret to make sure everyone was on board to escape Neverthorn. There was no time to tell them and give them a chance to forgive . . . or even digest whose daughter I was. I’d done it for the good of the team.
The thought of seeing the disgust in their eyes . . . a good chance even hatred, when I already knew Opie was going to hate me, at least for a while . . .
It was more than I could take when I’d only just found my place with them.
But once we’d gotten settled in here and had some reasonable expectation of staying awhile, I was going to come clean with the others. Zero doubt about it. If not, the guilt would eat me alive.
“At least the contract doesn’t force us to stay here, the way that Neverthorn’s does,” I pointed out, “Which . . . how did you work through that, anyway? I mean . . . I know as a doyen there you have some say, but . . .”
It was common knowledge that there were only two ways one left Neverthorn – graduation or death. Specifically, a death in the family, or the student themselves.
Tarquinius was generous that way. He’d let you go if you died.
“That’s what I was working on before you all left. I needed a loophole.” He winked at Fable. “I fabricated deaths in each of your families. No one actually died, but I had to create letters that I then fed into the spell that ties you all to Neverthorn.”
A spell that held us all . . . I had a sudden image of a huge writhing tornado of magic just spinning in place, with Tarquinius next to it, hands raised and laughing maniacally. Of course, that was just my imagination running off with me.
“And it worked?” Ellie asked, her voice gentle as if she didn’t want to offend her one-time teacher by asking if he actually did something right. “How can you know for sure?”
“You’re here, and no one has come for you yet,” Liam said.
“I managed to break bindings on each of you by the second day of your travel. Tarquinius sent a handful of his own private minions to search, but they lost track of you once you left North America. As far as he knows, you could be anywhere in either world, Dwimmer or Unlit.”
The mention of breaking bonds had me lifting my hand to rub at my still slightly achy breastbone and faint scar there.
Shit, Tarquinius might not know where we were, but something told me Typhon would have a much better guess. But would he think we’d be so fucking ballsy as to come to Heathermoor? Would he truly run us down and turn us in?
Again, my mind reeled back to that night in his room. The anguish in his eyes . . .
Don’t be a sucker, Harlow.
Thieving 106: Assume the worst of people and you’ll never be disappointed.
“Pass it over, I’m ready,” Ross said. “I don’t have a problem signing this.”
“Bring it with you, you’ll sign it once you’re through the gate.” Liam grabbed a long trench coat lined in a thick wool and motioned for Ross to join him. “Who else is ready?”
“Harlow will do it,” Calypso barked from my pocket. “She needs to get to hunting that coin for me. Clock’s ticking, girlie, let’s move.”
I was going to offer to go first anyway, but having Calypso volunteer me made me want to fold my arms and get stubborn.
Except that Calypso was right. I needed to get after it – we didn’t have a lot of time for anything. Not for the training and certainly not for the kraken coin that I had three weeks left to find.
“Yeah, fine, but you keep your mouth shut and let me do the talking.”
Fable glanced at Ellie who nodded and then shrugged. “If Harlow’s in . . .”
“Atta girl, Fabes.”
“I’ll take Harlow, Ross, and Marina first. Then I’ll come back for the rest of you, so we don’t show up in a group of seven just in case Tarquinius does put out a bulletin on you.”
Fable took the pendant from Liam as I grabbed my leather coat and tugged it on, thinking I needed to trade it in for something better.
But first thing first. We needed to get into the school, and from there .
. . well, from there I’d try my ‘finders keepers’ rune and see where it led us.
Hopefully straight to the coin so we could strike that off the list.
Liam led the way, taking us back out the hidden tunnel that we’d arrived through.
“‘Who made this tunnel?” I held my hand up, a simple rune hovering over my palm lit up like a tiny glowing orb to get a better look at the walls. We’d been in such a rush the night before, I’d barely noticed that the walls were damp, as if maybe the tunnel had only recently been made.
“Not sure, but a friend of mine knew about it and was able to tell me about it once I started working here and signed my contract.”
“Same friend who helped you with the pendants?”
“Yes.”
I found myself smiling. “Good friend to have, by the sounds of it.”
Liam glanced back at me, his eyes softening in the light of the glowing orb. “Yes, he is a good friend. I . . . don’t have many with how busy my work keeps me.”
His openness still caught me off guard. Typhon was always holding back, keeping secrets and Liam just let me see him for who he was. Really, I shouldn’t have been comparing them, but how could I not? They were about as opposite as two men could be.
“Are we swimming to the main gate?” Marina flexed her fingers. “I mean, we don’t have to, I could probably push the water back from the edge of the shore and we could walk there.”
Liam grabbed her hands as she began a rune with her index finger. “Don’t. Keep your Quirks hidden. Remember that you aren’t you anymore. Your new personas don’t have Quirks. Your Quirk, Ellie’s and Harlow’s are known, and unusual.”
She blew out a breath. “Right. Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I grinned at her. “It’s a fucking cool Quirk.”
I offered her my knuckles and she smacked them back.
After a quick boat ride in a slightly leaking wooden rowboat that looked as though the Nessies had used it for a round of water polo, we stood in front of the main gate into Heathermoor. In the daylight I got my first real look at it.