by Cate Corvin
“Vega, Jewel, Clay, and Darke will take up cleromancy, or the casting of bones. Next week we’ll have the new group of students with us, and we’ll trade off then.”
I exchanged a glum look with Holly before moving to Daphne’s side of the room. She tossed her vivid hair over her shoulder, but steadfastly refused to look at me as she snatched a purple velvet sack from the middle of the pile.
Clay elbowed me in the side, hitting a spot where Dominic had accidentally left a bruise with the hilt of a dagger. I hissed, resisting the urge to press my hand to the spot, and put another foot of space between myself and Clay as we chose our tables.
Soon, our side of the room was filled with the rattle and clatter of runestones, bones, and seashells thrown across wooden tabletops.
I’d chosen a cracked leather sack, filled with runes carved from green jasper, a few cowrie shells, and an old ivory finger bone a little larger than the stolen one that was hiding in my pocket. For some reason I’d felt drawn to it.
My skin tingled where the new bone touched me as I scooped up my tools and cast them over the table.
I examined the spread of stone and bone and made absolutely nothing of it. As far as I could tell, no one else could make sense of theirs either. Lissa sighed dramatically, and Daphne idly stacked bits of amethyst in a seashell, crowning the pile with a bat vertebra.
“Girls. I don’t expect any non-clairvoyants to make headway on runecasting, but these are not toys. They are tools of Sight.” Bloom sat next to Daphne, demonstrating the proper way to cup the stones before casting them.
“Professor, you’re a greenwitch, aren’t you?” Clarimond asked, cupping her runes and dropping several of them. “Why did you take the Divination appointment?”
Bloom cast a handful of stones across Daphne’s table. “Yes, I am a greenwitch, Miss Jewel. My specialty lies in briars, but there is a touch of Sight in my family. As for why I took the post, well-” she let out a silvery laugh that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up- “Family is everything to a witch. My mother was a Gilt. It was time to come back to the family covenstead.”
I expected Clarimond’s face to fall, but she instead took this as a shining example of sainthood from her new hero, gazing up at Bloom with awe. Daphne only rolled her eyes at how easy it was to impress simple Clarimond.
If family was everything, none of our families would’ve left us here.
“I’m sure nepotism had nothing to do with it,” Daphne muttered. For the first time since I’d met her, we were in agreement.
“Now, Miss Vega. When one is part of a coven, it’s their duty to do everything in their power to ensure that coven’s success. Nepotism has nothing to do with it- it’s expectation. That is why some covens are greater than others; they’re willing to sacrifice their own personal happiness to ensure the success of their bloodlines.” Bloom gave Daphne her perfect smile, and to her credit, Daphne managed to look unimpressed.
For a moment, I almost felt bad about the shiny pink skin on her hands.
“If that success comes at the cost of tossing their new generations aside, does that really qualify as greatness?” Daphne asked, her voice sour.
Not for the first time, I wondered why Daphne was here. Like wildfire, creating blades from witchwind wasn’t a common skill. She would’ve been a valuable asset.
What had she done that was so terrible a Great Coven would’ve dropped her in a reform academy and never thought of her again?
“Of course it does, Miss Vega,” Bloom said, her smile becoming a little more plastic. “Does it hurt the rose to prune the plant, or does it make it stronger and healthier than it was before?”
Daphne glared at her, and Bloom dropped the runes on the table and strolled to the ceromancers. Holly’s chin was propped on her hand as she watched wax roll down a green candle, and Beckwith was in danger of flopping into a pool of molten wax.
I glanced at Daphne before turning back to my own runes, and her lips pulled back over her teeth. “What the fuck do you want, Darke?”
Most of my sympathy evaporated.
I turned back to my own runes and almost jumped out of my skin.
The ghost in lace sat on the other side of the table, her dark hair pooling on the wood. This close, her features were a little blurred, like I was looking at her through a film, but the desperation in her eyes was clear.
She reached out and touched the bone with a ghastly white finger. It rocked, and she pushed harder, her face screwed up in concentration.
For all her force, she was a weak ghost, and the bone only rolled a short distance before stopping again. Then she pointed at my jacket pocket in frustration.
The message was quite clear.
Whoever this girl in lace was, these were both her bones. Somehow fate had aligned just right to ensure I took the bag with a piece of her bodily remains in it.
My stomach dropped as I realized that it must have been her bones in the box of remains I’d incinerated on Gilt’s behalf. Guilt suffused me as I reached across the table and palmed the bone, tucking it into my jacket pocket alongside its mate.
The ghost let out a silent sigh and faded.
“What are you staring at? God, you’re just as bad as Beckwith. Someone should’ve dropped you in a real institution, Lulu.” Clarimond sneered when I turned to look at her.
Daphne watched the two of us, her blue eyes shadowed, but she said nothing.
Clarimond realized she was tittering to herself and stopped. “You’re the freak playing with bones,” she sniffed, and the bell finally rang.
I walked out with Holly, who looked bored out of her mind, and we escaped from the frilly pink Divination hallway together.
“Can I show you something?” she muttered as we turned into the hall of entomology.
“Of course you can.” The finger bones felt like they were burning a hole in my pocket. I needed to see Dominic and make good on his promise to mirrorwalk as soon as possible.
With her physical remains, it would be much easier to find her spirit on the deadside and speak with her.
Holly pulled me into an empty alcove, and Daphne walked by us, her head held stiffly, but she didn’t say anything.
When the click of her Louboutins (which were scuffed, I’d noticed) had faded, Holly dug her sketchbook out of her colorfully-patched satchel and flipped to her most recent drawings. “I did these over the weekend you were gone,” she said. “I don’t recognize them. They must be the new students.”
I took in each charcoal drawing, unable to resist finding the ghost-girl who was stalking me in the backgrounds of each one. Two young men who were clearly brothers faced down a slavering female vampire, and a witch with curly hair shrieked as Helping Hands grasped at her.
To be honest, I was relieved none of the pictures featured myself or Holly, or the guys.
“They must be. They should be here soon.” I handed her the sketchbook, wanting to tell her something comforting, but now I knew how well those gifted with the Sight tended to react if you suggested trying to change the future they Saw: both Shane and Holly would give that person the world’s most jaded, weary look, and wander off shaking their heads.
I still thought they were being a little defeatist about it.
We ate seafood paella while I listened to Holly mutter dark things about Bloom between bites, beginning with how imprecise ceromancy was and ending with the total lack of practical instruction.
By the end of dinner, her fingers were trembling as another fit of the Sight came over her. She excused herself to go lock herself in her bedroom and draw more impending tragedy.
I found myself alone in the library as usual as the evening wound down. With the fire crackling and a stack of promising history books, I settled in for a few rousing hours of research, hoping to uncover any other clues about Lockheart.
The last thing I expected was for a wolf to creep around the corner half an hour later, flames reflected in his ice blue eyes.
I al
most gasped out loud, my heart hammering with the shock of a large, silent predator creeping up on me, but Roman had something gently caged in his mouth, something squirmy that was making horrendous noises.
He strode to the couch I was sitting on and dropped the screeching present in my lap.
A little ball of smoke-gray fur stared up at me with vivid orange eyes.
By the time I collected my thoughts, Roman was already back in his human skin, lounging on the couch beside me in all his naked glory.
I kept my eyes steadily fixed on the kitten.
“You didn’t eat it,” I said, scratching the kitten behind one tiny ear. It screamed at my finger and attacked.
Roman scoffed and folded his arms behind his head. “Thanks, Lu. I am capable of empathy.”
I quickly shut down the part of me that always wanted to say something snide to Roman. He was trying to be nice. He’d brought me a kitten, for Aradia’s sake.
Even if that kitten was currently hanging off my finger. Its fangs were tiny but razor-sharp. I hissed as I detached it and held it so it couldn’t attack again. “Thanks, Roman.” To my surprise, I was feeling a little misty-eyed over what a kind gesture it was. He was a wolf. He didn’t save kittens, he ate them.
“It was starving,” he muttered, turning his head away from my thanks. “And the color of your eyes. And you didn’t like my flower.”
“Three excellent criteria to bring it home,” I said, and felt his gaze land on me again. When had Roman ever bothered to notice the color of my eyes? “And I did like the flower.”
“Home?”
I shrugged noncommittally and fended off another small, sharp attack. “For me it is, anyways.”
He didn’t look away, and my skin prickled from his scrutiny. “Because Gilt’s your guardian? Or because of what you said outside the wall?”
I petted the kitten. Even now I felt the wards of Cimmerian around us, the magic of Lockheart’s original cornerstone woven into every inch of the structure around us, from the wooden skeleton, to the walls, to the glass panes of the windows. Even the grounds were part of its magic.
My mouth blurted like it always did around Roman, but this time it was honesty instead of sarcasm. “I think Cimmerian’s cornerstone is reaching out to me. I feel it, calling me here.”
I touched my chest, but even that couldn’t encompass the full-body sensation of a cornerstone’s wards trying to make contact.
It was like trying to reach mind to mind with another sentient being.
Roman stopped slouching and pulled himself upright on the couch. I had to look away again as the taut muscles of his stomach and chest flexed.
Why did the twins and Locke have to be so damn comfortable with being naked all the time?
“It’s trying to reach you? I didn’t think that was possible.” His dark brows furrowed. “Unless Gilt never completed-” He cut himself off abruptly. “Never mind. That’s not a thought I should say out loud.”
That was true enough. There could be thousands of whisper-charms scattered around the place, meant to pick up secrets.
“Write it down for me? I need to find food for this,” I said, detaching the kitten from the front of my shirt. Orange eyes gleamed like lanterns at Roman, promising retribution for being carried in his mouth.
I also needed to get away from him while he was lounging around in nothing but the skin he was born in. The heat pooling in my stomach had nothing to do with irritation, and everything to do with the memory of his heavy-lidded eyes, lips swollen from kissing as he pushed into me.
One kiss wasn’t going to make up for the humiliation of feeling like someone’s mistake.
“I’ll come with you,” he said, but I was already backing away as he stood up.
“Oh, no, I’m good, thanks. I know this place like the back of my hand now.” Old gods take me, it just wasn’t fair that he was pure brawn, with twilight eyes that undressed me as he approached.
I tried to keep my own gaze focused on his, and not on the thick length of his cock. It was impossible not to think about what he felt like inside me, or what those eyes looked like when he was between my legs-
My back rammed into a bookshelf and I froze, clutching the now-purring kitten and cut off from all exits by Roman.
“I can keep watch while you ransack for the little demon’s dinner,” he said, his voice dangerously soft and low. He was only inches away, towering over me, the firelight gilding his dusky skin in shades of gold and umber.
It was very tempting to release my death grip on the kitten to stroke my fingers down the ridged planes of his abdomen, but the last thing I needed right now was to be tempted into touching Roman again.
He leaned on the bookshelf, braced his hand above me, and something clicked overhead.
A second later I stumbled backwards, holding the kitten in the air as the bookshelf swung away from me.
Roman caught me before I hit the floor, his arms looped around my waist and back, and the kitten shrieked in his face. He stared over my head with wide eyes.
“What is it?” I craned my own head to look. A long, pitch-black hallway stretched in front of us. I sucked in a sharp breath.
“Ooh, a secret hallway,” he whispered sarcastically. “We should definitely walk into that without a light.”
“Roman-” I craned my head up again, and found myself dangerously close to his throat, close enough I could raise my head an inch and kiss him. I already knew his skin would be like scorching-hot silk under my lips. “Let me up.”
My voice came out strained and he looked down at me, his gaze falling to my mouth, and my heart started beating a hard tattoo on my ribs. “Blondie-”
That fucking nickname. “Seriously, let me up.”
He lifted me back to my feet, and the kitten chose that exact moment to escape my clutches, spilling over my shoulder and bounding into the hallway.
“Naturally, it runs into the sinister dark corridor.” Roman’s hand lingered on my waist. “I’m sorry I brought you a defective kitten.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what they’re supposed to do,” I muttered, stepping out of his grasp and pulling my rowan wand from my jacket lining.
The knobbly wood felt almost fragile in my palm after two weeks of using the sturdier practice sword, but when I sent an ember of my wildfire through the wood it flared to life.
I held it out, illuminating the first several feet of the still, silent hallway. Cobwebs hung in thick curtains, drifting gently as the air from the library passed through.
Roman looked up at the bookshelf that had swung inwards. One of the books was a cleverly-disguised handle tilted forward several degrees, the binding an unremarkable shade of blue that he squinted at. “Best-Kept Secrets. Whoever built this was probably fun at parties.”
Of course he’d appreciate it.
The windows had been neatly boarded over, and the first several doors we passed were locked. Roman rattled each one as we went, the antique handles shaking under his touch. I followed the trail of tiny paw prints that cut through the dust.
One of the doors swung open as soon as he touched it and we both stopped in our tracks. “I don’t think Demonseed went in there,” he said. “But if it’s open…”
“You absolutely do not get to name my kitten Demonseed.” I poked my wand into the open space, and almost jumped back. As soon as the bright tip of my wand entered the room, the light seemed to light up a thousand reflective surfaces.
“Wait!” Roman poked his head in. “It’s just… metal. Not mirrors.”
I frowned and sent another tiny spark of wildfire into the wand. The room was crammed with the same old-fashioned furniture as the rest of the mansion, but dull metal implements and cages spilled from every surface, caked with cobwebs and dust. A pile of rotting wheelchairs reached almost to the ceiling. “It must be left over from Cimmerian’s asylum days.”
A chill ran down my back like ice and I backed away.
Roman shut the do
or firmly behind us and we moved to the last room of the hallway. The door was already open, and the paw prints led boldly where no kitten had gone before.
I paused, my heart in my throat, and Roman pushed the door open, blocking me with his body.
Nothing happened.
“It’s a bedroom,” he said, peering as far as the wandlight would allow. We stepped in cautiously, but no ghosts came screaming out at us.
A four-poster canopy filled much of the room, and mice fled the gray demon rampaging among them.
A woman’s ebony dressing table still had a dark length of silk drawn over the mirror, and dusty perfume bottles still sparkled despite the decay. I touched the surface of the ebony wood, my feet planted firmly on the rotting carpet despite my fervent desire to leave.
I turned to find Roman wrestling Demonseed out of a mouse’s bolt hole. The girl in lace sat on the bed only a few feet away, silently watching him with weeping eyes.
I almost choked on dust when I gasped, and she deliberately pointed at the dresser and vanished.
When the surface yielded nothing but the perfume bottles and a silver hairbrush, I steeled myself and yanked the top drawer’s pulls. It opened with a squeal and a mouse jumped out and disappeared into a dark corner.
“Lu, what the hell?” Roman was at my side instantly, nursing long red scratch marks over his otherwise-flawless chest.
If he hadn’t seen the spirit, I wasn’t about to tell him that she’d been watching him from two feet away.
Instead, I used one of the dusty perfume bottles to sift through the tattered remnants of clothing and mouse nest remains until something gold sparkled up at me.
I fished it out and shivered as something cold touched the back of my neck. I was positive this was what I was here for.
I didn’t examine my prize until we’d escaped back to the library, Demonseed in hand, and pulled the false bookshelf shut behind us.
Dust clung to Roman’s hair and feet, and the kitten looked pissed about being yanked from his mouse-terrorizing spree.
I extinguished the wand and held my prize up to the fireplace light.
