by LJ Rivers
“Yes, Charlie.”
“Am I ... are we … what happened?”
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and sat on the arrangement of pillows on the floor by her bed. Jen was snoring, hugging the duvet, her body plastered to the wall on the other side of Charlie.
The memories of the night before flooded my mind and I choked back a sob. “You almost had a heart attack, that’s what happened.”
“I—” Charlie started.
“You.” I shook my head at her. “You could have died. You were dying. Don’t you get it?”
“I’m sorry. Dunc vouched for the dealer. It should have been perfectly safe.”
“It’s MagX. That shit is never safe. You don’t know the first thing about how it was treated before it ended up on your tongue.”
I was wide awake now and the worry I had felt the night before was quickly turning to anger. Charlie should have known better. The warm sensation of fire ignited in my veins and I pressed my hands into fists. What was that? Every time I got upset, the fire started up again. I had to learn to control it, but how? As far as I knew, fire wasn’t a normal Fae power, and I didn’t want to tell Mum either. She had stepped far out of her comfort zone just by letting me come to London in the first place. Nothing good would come from telling her about this.
A tear swam down Charlie’s cheek. “I’m so sorry, Ru. I never realised.”
“I did try to tell you, didn’t I?”
“You did, and you have my word that I will listen to you in the future.”
I shook, the warmth spread out, and it was as if I were sat in a sauna when the sweat began trickling from my pores. Stop it, Ruby! I yelled in my mind.
The touch from Charlie’s hand on my shoulder made me wince. I locked eyes with her—seeing what? Concern? Regret? Whatever it was, it made me relax. I took a few deep breaths. The warmth eventually subsided and I returned to my usual body temperature.
So, I could control it—at least to an extent. Maybe all I needed was practice.
The door sprang open and Duncan’s knees buckled before he hurled himself at the pillows beside me.
“Liv here?”
“Why would she be here?” Charlie asked, pulling her fingers through her dark hair, failing miserably to clear out the knots that had gathered since we left for the party the night before.
“She’s vanished.” Dunc licked his chapped lips.
“You did check her room before you came storming in here, right?” Charlie asked.
He stuck his tongue out. “I’m not an idiot, Char.”
Vanished? Liv still hadn’t shown up? A knot formed in my stomach. But why? Surely there had to be some natural explanation for Liv’s disappearance, so why did my intuition scream at me that something was wrong?
“She probably hooked up with her dealer or some other loser,” Charlie quipped, much more chipper than mere seconds ago.
“Nah, she don’t do blood. Booze is more her thing.” Dunc scratched his thighs, his pupils nearly extinguishing the brown in his eyes.
“You sure? Perhaps she traded for some MagX. She looked more than a little desperate last I saw her.” Jen had rolled over to face us and was now leaning her body past Charlie’s feet.
Duncan glared at her. “I’m telling you, that’s not Liv. She’s never touched MagX.”
I somehow believed Duncan. The concern in his voice was genuine enough, but moreover, I couldn’t shake the feeling rooted in my chest.
“Whatever,” Jen said. She slid out of bed and stood. “Glad to see you’re feeling better, Charlie. But girl, you had us scared shitless. Don’t you ever do that again or I will smack you senseless myself!”
Charlie shook her head vehemently, immediately holding her hands to her temples. “Too soon,” she moaned.
Jen raised her chin. “Good. That you won’t do it again, I mean, not the headache. Now, I smell like a drenched cub, so I’ll be in the shower for the next hour or so.” She spun on her heels and left.
While I was happy that Charlie was feeling better, I couldn’t make my gut unwind. My intuition had sent me down the wrong path more than once, but it had been right last night. Charlie was in trouble and I had sensed it. That same feeling was twisting around in my body about Liv, and I had to trust that it meant something.
“I believe you, Dunc,” I blurted.
He gave me a lopsided smile. “Are you pulling my leg?”
“I mean it. I believe you. Liv was in no condition to go anywhere with anyone. If someone helped her, she should be in her room.”
“Guess that’s settled.” Charlie smelled her armpits and wrinkled her nose. “I’ll jump in the shower as well, though I’ll only be like five minutes. Then we’ll help you look for Liv. All right?”
Duncan gave us a series of quick nods like a toddler expecting treats.
I stood and rolled my duvet into a ball in my arms. “Let’s all meet up in the living room in fifteen?” No way was I able to use five minutes to get ready but fifteen would be enough to look slightly decent.
After a quick shower and a freshly painted face, the painting consisting of a few strokes of mascara and lip gloss, I stood in the living room with Duncan and Charlie.
“Do we wait for Jen?” I asked.
“She’ll catch up,” Charlie replied. “Where to first?”
I wasn’t sure. If Duncan had already been out looking, then where would be the sensible place to start? I didn’t even know where the girl lived, much less where her favourite hang-out spots were.
Charlie pushed her glasses up the ridge of her nose. “We should probably alert campus security.”
“No!” Duncan shook his head wildly. “I may have, sort of, left my stash with her. More like she confiscated it, but if they find it on her, needles and all, she’ll get in trouble.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “What do you mean, needles—are you injecting? You mean with a syringe?”
“Well, yeah.” He looked like I had asked him if he liked to breathe.
My mind was spinning. He wasn’t just licking the stuff? When did people start injecting it? That sounded all kinds of wrong, and probably a mile more dangerous than licking a strip of blood. I could maybe understand the attraction to the drugs in and of itself but this was another level of idiocy. What happened when people started sharing syringes? The blood would be tainted by the first user. I ground my teeth, unable to contain myself.
“Why would you inject it?” It came off more harshly than I intended.
Duncan shrugged. “It makes MagX last longer. The entire experience is, well, it’s magical, for lack of a better word.”
“You mean it’s more magical than just licking it?” Charlie asked with much more excitement in her voice than I was comfortable with.
I glared at her and her eyes shot to the floor.
“Sorry,” she muttered.
“It’s freaking amazing, Char. You have no idea what you’re missing out on.” Duncan hopped from one foot to the other.
“Heck, you guys. You need to get your heads on straight. It could very well kill you. I hope you looking for her isn’t simply because you want your stash back, because I’ll confiscate that crap myself.”
Duncan’s shoulders slumped. “Of course not. She’s my friend, Ru.”
The silence was deafening, and luckily broken as Jen strutted into the room.
“We got a girl to find, right?” Her voice was bubbly, contrasting with the energy in the room and somehow lightening my mood.
“We do,” I said.
I decided to leave the discussion of injecting MagX for another time. While I didn’t like it one bit, Charlie should be scared enough to at least stay clear of the drugs for a while. All I could do was focus my energy on finding Liv so that the knot still growing in my stomach could unwind a little.
We passed a few students on the steps, and Jen waved at the janitor, who was standing on a stepladder trying to fix a broken lamp on the corner of Craydon House.
&
nbsp; “Perhaps we can ask him?” Charlie whispered. “He’s not security, so he wouldn’t have the authority to turn anyone in for possession or anything. But he has to know the campus pretty well, right?”
Duncan’s eyebrows knitted together. “All right, we can ask him, but keep the details out of it.”
“Hey,” Jen called, already halfway to where the janitor was balancing on the stepladder.
“Good afternoon,” the janitor replied. He didn’t look that much older than us, perhaps in his early twenties. His chestnut-coloured hair was tied with a leather band into a low ponytail and some stubble covered his jawline.
“I guess you see a lot working here,” Jen said, now standing right beside the stepladder, batting her eyes.
“Guess I do.” The janitor quirked his lips up to one side. It was one of those smiles you see on toothpaste advertising; Jen was already in flirt mode, and who could blame her? Still, he was no Brendan.
“Have you seen a girl on her own today or last night maybe? Light brown hair, about this tall.” Jen held her hand in the air, measuring Liv’s approximate height. “Her name is Olivia, goes by Liv. Big boobs.”
I almost laughed at the expression on the janitor’s face. His eyes widened and he looked utterly confused. How did anyone respond to that?
“Uhm. I don’t know. Have you tried her flat, assuming she lives on campus?”
“That’s cool. We just thought we should ask someone who looks like he might know his way around here. We’re all pretty new on campus. Know any good hideouts?”
The janitor stepped down, leaning on the ladder.
“I might know a couple.” He winked at Jen. “Perhaps I’ll show you another time, but I don’t think your girl is hiding in any of those places. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help, maybe I could get your phone number?” He cupped his hand around his chin. “In case I see her or think of something useful.”
Jen tilted her head at him. “Got your phone?”
With the speed of a gunslinger from an old western film, he retrieved his phone from one of the many pockets in his trousers, a wide grin on his face.
Jen gave him her phone number while Duncan tapped his foot, clearly annoyed to have to wait for Jen to stop flirting while I, on the other hand, chastised myself for not having thought to ask Brendan for his phone number. I didn’t have any way to reach him. Not that I would have called him but maybe he would have reached out to me if he had my number. It was amusing enough to watch Jen in action that I didn’t mind much, but I felt for Dunc as well. His friend, or whatever she was, was still missing.
“Took you long enough,” Dunc said sourly as we started towards the lake.
“A girl has needs,” Jen retorted.
We continued across the grass and into the lilac archway before ending up back at Raven Court. It looked different during the day, though it still seemed like the campus equivalent to Beverly Hills. I had no idea where to start looking for Liv and my body was aching with concern. Maybe we should have alerted campus security after all? Besides, I wasn’t thrilled about the fact that the only reason not to alert anyone was to cover Duncan’s ass. I could understand why he didn’t want us to tell, even if I didn’t condone it, but if Liv was in trouble, we would have to involve authorities at some point. Not that I had any idea what kind of trouble she might have got herself into. All I had to go on was an upset stomach, which very well might be the jello shot from last night.
Jen took my arm. “We’ll sniff around outside. You guys can find Diane or whoever else is home and see if anyone knows anything.”
We split up. Jen wasn’t kidding about the sniffing around part. She was literally sniffing her nose at anything that could be considered a clue.
“What do you expect to find from the rubbish people have left behind?” I asked.
“You never know, Red. People leave prints in different ways.”
I shrugged and we continued around the large building, looking behind every piece of shrubbery we could find.
Jen was on her knees by a thick bed of thorny roses. “Ru,” she called. “Look here.” She parted the bush with her hands and nodded at something stuck in the slits of a drain by the wall, well hidden behind the roses.
My eyes settled on a needle, glinting as the afternoon light pierced through the gap Jen had created. A syringe.
Jen leaned in closer, wrinkling her nose. “Appears someone wanted to get rid of this.”
I crouched, staring at the syringe. Was this part of Duncan’s stash?
“How did you find this?” I lifted away a hanging collection of roses, and the thorns pinched my skin, a couple drawing blood. “Ouch. Why didn’t you warn me about the thorns?”
Jen shrugged, still holding parts of the rose bush to the side with one hand. “I didn’t even notice.”
“You think this is for MagX?”
I sucked on the tiny punctures on my hand. Not that I had much experience with syringes or injections of any kind, but it didn’t take a lot of MagX to reach the desired effect and the needle was small. Jen rummaged through her bag and retrieved a handful of wet wipes. An odd thing to carry around, I thought, but who was I to judge? She wrapped the wipes around the syringe and carefully placed it into her bag.
What on earth was she doing? “Shouldn’t we call the police?”
“For a syringe? They would laugh at us. Still, you never know, it might be a clue.” Her eyes twinkled. “So, I’m keeping it.”
“Just, please don’t touch it. We don’t know what was in it.”
“Of course not, Red.”
We kept searching the area a while longer before we met up with the others again. None of us had any luck.
Liv truly had vanished.
Chapter Eleven
Diane and Rahul, the boy with the jello shots from the other night, carried a large cardboard box full of badges towards the stand, dumping it behind the table. The gig I had got to help recruit new members wasn’t exactly difficult, though I had problems answering many of the questions from curious students. Heck, I was one of them. I knew as much as they did. I had, however, studied the brochures Diane had given me on the first day, and I remembered them almost verbatim. If anyone asked me something not in the brochures, however, I was clueless.
Diane patted her brow with a small towel. “Who knew badges could be this heavy, huh?” she asked, showing off a perfect row of pearly whites.
I gave her a forced smile in return. There really should be a law against people being so drop-dead gorgeous. Perfect straight and shiny hair, not a strand out of place, perfect teeth, and a swimsuit cover body. I wasn’t that bad to look at myself, but my fair skin was intolerant to sunlight and I had annoying freckles on my nose. With my five foot three frame I found myself looking up at girls more often than not. Diane, however, with legs that went on forever, was simply flawless.
Rahul angled his head at me, his black hair gelled up to the extent where it looked plastered to his head. “Get any new sign-ups while we were gone?”
“Two,” I replied.
“That’s more than the whole of yesterday. You’ve made us obsolete.” He grinned. “Maybe we should leave you to it.”
If Diane was offended, she certainly didn’t show it.
“Well done.” She slapped a sticker on my denim jacket. “We’re going to need people for the Whispering Willow. Strictly pro bono but we do get extra credits and direct access to archives and such. Very handy when you’re working on uni assignments. Can I count on you, Ruby?”
The way she said my name made me flinch. It was sweet, like cotton candy with sugar on top, but I could swear it held a certain amount of sarcasm.
I had a moment of feeling overwhelmed. Brendan had mentioned a possible job and I was still adjusting to this new life, not to mention the new power growing inside me. Did I have time to take an unpaid job? I probably should say yes. Extra credits would look great on my job applications, and there was the added benefit of being able to dig into the M
agX world more closely without arousing any suspicion.
“Sure,” I said. “I don’t know how much time I’ll have on my hands but I’m already working on a story.”
“You are?” Rahul raised his eyebrows at me, clearly intrigued.
“Yep.”
I wasn’t sure how much I should tell them. Charlie didn’t want to pursue the matter when I had asked her, and I didn’t have a lot to go on, so I decided I might as well ask the posh ones.
“I noticed someone dealing MagX at your party last night, and figured it would make a good story. Not sure about my angle yet, though. You guys know anything about that?”
Diane shifted her eyes around. The hall was brimming with students, but none were currently eyeing our stand.
“You should stay clear of that. The university won’t be happy if you expose such business on campus grounds. Maybe start small, huh? Like, I don’t know, do an interview with one of the lecturers or something? They always love showing off.”
I frowned. “Shouldn’t we always chase a lead, though? If we want to become journalists and all?”
Rahul leaned between us and dropped a handful of badges into a small box on the table. “Let people have their fun,” he said. “Don’t start your uni life by ruining a good thing. Lots of students use MagX to enhance their performance. There’s a lot of pressure to do well, you know.”
“I thought all students were tested before exams?” I said.
“In theory, yes.” Rahul let out a little laugh. “But it’s not like all universities have the resources of the Tour de France. In fact, a pint of clear urine is considered a valuable commodity come exam time.”
“That’s gross, Rahul,” Diane said and slapped him jokingly on his forearm.
These two could have been yanked straight out of a modern Downton Abbey production.
“But, I—” My voice trailed off. I wasn’t going to get anything else out of these two. “Okay. I’ll drop it.”
They both flashed a smile at me before Diane turned her attention to the students nearby.
“Anyone want to become a journalist?” she called out. “Come on over! Best society on all campus!”
