Chapter 15 #3
I would rather burn this whole building down.
My hands are shaking. I press them flat to the door, grit my teeth, and pour—heat flooding out of me faster than I've ever let it, past the cold, past the flatness, past the thing that's supposed to make me lie down. The ring climbs in my ears toward a scream. I don't stop.
Then something steadies.
No warning. My magic is fraying at the edges, spilling past the shape I'm trying to hold it in, and then something slides in underneath it and holds.
Not more force—control. Something outside me closing over the surge and folding it precise, like a second pair of hands guiding mine on the wheel. Aiming what I've already broken loose.
It should feel like relief. It feels like being touched somewhere I didn't know was open.
The heat stops scattering. It drives forward in a single clean line, straight through the guttering cold, and the ward—
Breaks.
Not gently. It dies all at once, the flatness snapping off like a current cut, and the sound the door makes is low and enormous, more felt than heard, a groan that comes up through my feet. Then it swings open slowly, grinding on the old concrete of the room beyond.
Behind me, Leopold lets out a breath.
"It worked," he says, low, like he doesn't quite believe it even as he watches it happen. "I thought—" He stops. Starts again, quieter. "I hoped. I never let myself be sure."
I pull my hands back. Still shaking.
Beyond the door is a room full of shelves. Iron, floor to ceiling, packed with boxes and ledgers. The air that rolls out is dry and old and smells like paper and cedar.
"Wait here," Leopold says, and goes in alone.
He doesn't browse. He crosses the room like he's walked it a hundred times, straight to the back corner, and crouches in front of a low iron safe I can barely see from the passage. He doesn't open it. He puts one hand flat against it, the way you'd check a stovetop for heat, and goes very still.
Then he exhales, and it's the most human sound I've heard him make.
"It's here," he says. Not to me. To himself, or to no one. "It's still here."
He straightens. Takes out his phone. Whatever number he calls picks up on the first ring.
"It's where he said it would be." A pause. His voice has gone quiet and quick, stripped of all the dinner-table warmth. "No. Tonight. I don't care what it costs—move it tonight, before anyone thinks to look." Another pause. "The Voclain route. You know the one." He listens for a breath. "Good."
He ends the call and slides the phone back into his coat, then turns to face me.
He's smiling.
Not the warm one he wears for strangers. This one is slow, private, satisfied—and it sends a cold crawl straight down my spine. I don't know what puts that smile on a man like Leopold. I only know I helped him get it.
"We're leaving," he says.
My brows knit. "You didn't take anything."
"I don't need to carry it out myself. I have people for that, and this—" a small gesture back at the safe, at the whole ruined house pressing down around us "—this isn't a thing you slip in a coat pocket and move on.
It'll be moved properly. Quietly." His hand closes around my upper arm, firm, already steering me back toward the stairs.
"By people I trust more than I trust this neighborhood after nine o'clock. "
"Leopold—what is it? What did I just open a door for."
"Something my family should never have let out of their sight.
" He's walking me fast now, up the stairs, through the dead hall, and the easy unhurried grace he wore all through dinner is gone—he moves like a man who's gotten what he came for and no longer wants to be anywhere near it.
"Something they buried behind a door they prayed no one could open. "
"You're not going to tell me."
"No." He pushes the side door open into the night and the cool air hits me like a slap. "I'm not."
The car's at the curb where we left it. Leopold opens the back door and all but pours me into it, one hand on my shoulder, and before I've found the seat he's gone from the pavement and reappeared on the other side, sliding in beside me so fast the air moves.
"Campus," he tells the driver. "Quickly."
We pull away from the dead house. I catch my breath and I don't like the quiet, so I break it.
"So that's the arrangement, then." I keep my voice light. Conversational. "I do your bidding, I open doors I'm not allowed to ask about, I aid and abet whatever it is you're doing tonight—and I keep my mouth shut."
Nothing. He watches the window.
"Is that what the sponsorship was for? All of it? The debt, the mansion, the pretty dress?" I let a little edge in. "You needed a witch who could get past that ward, and I'm the one they built. That's it. That's the whole thing."
"You're upset," he says, mild. "It's been a long night. Rest."
"Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Talk to me like I'm a child. Like I didn't just open up that vault and give you access to something important." I turn in the seat to face him. "What did I help you do?"
He sighs. It's the sound of a man deciding I'm not worth the energy, and it makes me want to burn a hole in the upholstery.
"You're not going to bait me, Calypso. You can push all you like."
"I'm not baiting. I'm asking. There's a difference, though I get why you'd—"
His hand is around my throat before I finish the sentence.
Not crushing. Not cutting off air. Just there, all at once, his long fingers spanning the side of my neck and his thumb under my jaw, tipping my face up toward his as he draws me across the seat and close.
His pulse-warm grip, my pulse slamming against it—and down the bond, sudden and vicious, a spike of cold rage that isn't mine, that whites out for half a second and then chokes off, like a door slammed on it from the other side.
Kage. He felt that. He felt me afraid. And then nothing, the wire gone slack and silent, and I don't know if he cut it off or something cut it off for him.
"Let me be clear," Leopold says, and his voice is soft, almost gentle, which is worse than a shout.
"You will do what I ask of you. Every time I ask it.
You'll open the doors and you won't ask what's behind them, and you'll keep doing it until I grow tired of giving the orders—" his thumb moves once against my jaw, almost tender "—or until there's nothing left of that lovely magic to spend.
Whichever comes first. I'm patient. I can wait for either. "
I make myself hold his stare. "You're an asshole," I breathe.
Something flickers at the corner of his mouth. Not the public smile. The private one.
"Sweetheart," he murmurs, "you have no idea."
He lets go.
I fall back against my seat and my hand flies to my throat, to the warmth his fingers left, the ghost of his grip printed into my skin. He faces front like nothing happened, fangs gone, hands folded, the picture of a young aristocrat being driven home from dinner.
The barrier flares blue across the windshield as we cross back onto campus. Devenir's ward. Tonight I could almost weep at the sight of it. The car slows. The mansion rises white and lit ahead of us and rolls to a stop at the foot of the steps.
I open my mouth. One more thing—I don't even know what, only that I need the last word, need to prove some small piece of me is still my own—
His door opens and he's gone. Just gone, between one blink and the next, no sound, no motion, only the cold air rushing in where he was.
Stupid vamp speed.
I sit alone in the dark of the car, my hand at my throat, wracking my brain to figure out what could be so important to someone like Leopold.
Something worth all this…
But deep down, I have a feeling I’ll be finding out very soon.