Chapter 7 Old Charms, New Harms
I come out of the portal at a run to find Grace standing several feet away with her back to me.
She whirls around as I hit the ground. “Don’t let it go!” she yells.
“Let what go?” I brace myself for an attack, head turning back and forth as I search for a threat.
“The portal!” she says, racing toward me with her arms outstretched. “It keeps moving!”
As soon as her words register, I turn around and dive for the portal as requested.
I have no idea if it’s even possible to hold on to the bloody thing, but I’m more than willing to give it a try.
Especially since the one glance I had of this place has me wondering if we’re even on the Katmere campus anymore—or if one of the seniors took their instructors up on that three-hundred-mile-radius limit.
Not having any idea of where we are makes me bloody nervous, especially considering just how many things that go bump in the night are pissed off by Grace’s very existence—starting with my not-so-dear-old dad.
Moving fast, I manage to get my hand into the portal before it disappears completely, but that must not be enough to activate it because instead of reopening, the thing disappears, leaving Grace and me stranded.
“Damn it!” Grace shoves a hand through her wild curls and pushes them back from her face in that way I’ve grown to love. “I’ve been looking for that thing for fifteen minutes now. I’ve covered every inch of this place—twice—and I haven’t hit on it. Until you got here.”
“Sorry.” I feel guilty for letting the portal go, but I had no idea portals could even disappear and reappear like that, let alone that a student could be skilled enough to make one.
I look around, trying to come up with an idea that doesn’t have to do with a portal at all, and realize we have a bigger problem. My first impression was correct—wherever we are, it’s not Katmere Academy grounds, or at least not any part that I’ve ever been to before.
The problem with not being at Katmere, however, is that I can’t fade us back to the castle and Grace can’t fly us there, not when we have no idea which direction to even head.
“What is this place?” I ask, moving toward the closest of the four stone walls that surround us.
“I have no idea. There aren’t any windows and the door’s locked, so I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do.” She looks super frustrated and super cute, and it’s taking everything inside me not to pull her toward me, to hold her and kiss her and tell her everything is going to be okay.
But I don’t think she’s ready for any of that with me yet, so I settle for running a hand over her hair the way I used to as I walk by her to examine the door.
“I already tried it,” she says. “It’s locked.”
“I know. I was just trying to figure out if it was easier to get this door off its hinges or disintegrate the thing.”
I squat down to look at said hinges. The rest of this place looks pretty run-down and decrepit, so I expect one good hit and I can knock the door right off. But these hinges are industrial-strength and they look brand-new—as do the three locks on the door.
“What the hell is this place?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she answers. “But it gives me the creeps.”
“I can see why.” My brain is whirling, trying to figure out why a portal at Katmere would lead to someplace with no windows and three locks on the door. None of the scenarios I come up with are exactly reassuring, though.
“We need to get out of here,” I say, and Grace gives me a no shit look.
“Should we try to find the portal again?” she asks. “Or should…”
Her voice trails off, but I know what she was going to say. “Or should I blow this place up.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m leaning toward the second, but since we have no idea where we are, that could cause a big problem—depending on who happens to be outside the door, possibly guarding it.” Then again, every instinct I have tells me that just waiting here like sitting ducks is an even bigger problem.
So fuck it. Whatever’s out there—even if it’s a bunch of humans who are going to freak out at the sight of a vampire and gargoyle walking down the street—is better than sitting around here waiting to see what happens.
“Let’s go,” I tell Grace, holding out a hand and feeling the door disintegrate. Seconds later, I close my fist and it does just that.
“I thought you were going to destroy the whole place?” Grace comments as we walk toward the opening.
“I was going for subtle.”
“Good plan,” she says as she walks through the opening.
As I follow her, I can see why she said it like that.
Because while we’re not in the middle of downtown Anchorage, we’re on the outskirts of some kind of town.
One that has cars on the road and people walking out of a nearby restaurant—all of which is to say, they definitely would have noticed if I’d disintegrated the entire shack.
“So what do we do now?” I ask, looking around for some distinguishing characteristic.
Grace pulls out her phone. “My first instinct is to fly up and get an aerial view of the place. But I’m pretty sure me growing wings wouldn’t go well. But getting directions to Katmere doesn’t work, either, considering Google Maps doesn’t know it exists.”
“No, but I’m pretty sure it knows that café exists,” I say, pointing to the restaurant across the street.
“Exactly what I was thinking.” A few seconds later she adds, “Looks like we’re in Healy, though at the opposite end from the airport where I landed when I first got here.”
“Healy?” I ask, because I’ve been here before. Everyone from Katmere has at one time or another. “And no offense, but don’t you think calling it an airport is a bit much?”
She rolls her eyes. “Says a vampire who’s probably never been on a plane in his life.”
“Why would I need an airplane when I can run faster than most of them?”
“Because as far as I know, vampires can’t walk on water,” she answers, brows arched.
“Not yet,” I reply.
Grace just shakes her head and rolls her eyes at me again. It makes me want to kiss her—makes me want to hold her so badly that my fingers ache—so I take a cautious step back. And say, “I know what that shack was. And why the portal moves the way it does.”
“Oh yeah?” She looks around like she’s afraid we’re in danger. “Why?”
“It’s nothing to worry about. A couple of decades ago, a few witches charmed a portal in the forest outside Katmere.
They did it so that they could sneak off the school grounds whenever they wanted, since curfews were so much stricter back then.
When they graduated, they left the portal for the next generation of Katmere students to find, but rumor has it that no one ever has. ”
“Until us,” Grace says with a grin.
“Until you,” I answer. “I’m just along for the ride here.”
“As if.” She glances at the mountains that loom huge in the distance. “If I remember correctly, Katmere is straight up the side of that mountain.”
“Yeah, but we need to get to the mountain first. And the only way to do that without attracting attention—”
“Is to walk,” she finishes with a sigh as we both look down the long stretch of road in front of us.
“Exactly.” I bow a little, waving my arm with a flourish. “After you?”