Last Chance Reform

by Alex Lidell

  Reese grunted, his fingers busy asking Jack for coordinates. A moment later, the long lat coordinates lit up the screen, along with a hope you still like sand. Sand. Hmm. Sounded like the Middle East somewhere. Good enough. “Is your Cessna flight-ready?” he asked Cassis without looking up. “I need to borrow it.”

  21

  Sam

  Dread follows me into the training room for the next scheduled training session with Reese. The conversations I’ve been practicing with myself all feel awkward no matter how many times I go over them in my head.

  Except Reese is not there.

  Asher is. With thick golden hair and tawny eyes, the male looks like he just stepped off the cover of GQ—except for the closed expression clamping down his features. His dislike of me is palpable enough to fill the room.

  “Lieutenant Reesand has been called away,” Asher informs me by way of greeting, his hard voice matching his face. “I’ve no one else I can spare for your individual instruction right now, so it will be put on hold.”

  His words hang in the air, laden with thick condemnation. As if Reese’s sudden departure is my fault. I guess arithmetic is on Asher’s side right now—I’ve gone through two instructors in as many months.

  My stomach tightens, concern and relief washing through me at once. I was not in the least prepared to face Reese on the mats again. But apparently I’m just as unprepared for his absence. Studying Asher’s face, I can’t help wondering if he knows what Reese and I did the last time we were in this room. What would Asher think of me if he knew how much I enjoyed it? I study the male more closely, noting the crossed arms and tight jaw, and realize that I really don’t want to know what he’s thinking right now.

  “With midterm exams starting next week, I expect you will have plenty of demands on your time,” Asher says, turning on his heel and heading out the door.

  “Wait! Where did he go?”

  Asher pauses but doesn’t turn. “That is his business.”

  “When will he be back?” I ask. “I mean, will he be back, sir?”

  Asher walks out without answering.

  Within the next two days, the reality of the coming midterms hits Talonswood Academy like a snowstorm. A certain quiet settles over the students, with books opened at mealtimes and conversations turning toward details of the fae-vampire wars and mathematical theorems. Blissfully, all this focus means that Christian, Wayne, and their cronies are finally too distracted to torture me.

  I’m fine with Reese being gone. I’m happy he left before I had to face him again. Because whoever I was in that training room, I can’t afford to be. I’m…I’m back to how things were when Victor had just taken over the place, before Reese and I had even exchanged words, much less bodily fluids.

  That is to say, sleepless, on edge, and enjoying a front-row seat to whatever nightmares my mind comes up with each night. I’ve started waking up each morning with a small, nagging headache—lack of sleep will do that—but can usually suppress it with an ibuprofen or two.

  “The vamps have an unfair advantage.” Wayne is busy holding court with a group of the stronger demifae in the middle of the green. In their crisp white and blue uniforms under a clear blue sky, fall leaves skipping around them, they look like a poster for an American Ivy League college. I speed up as I pass them on my way to the chem lab—walking with a purpose creates the illusion that someone is waiting for you. That someone will come asking questions if you don’t show up on time. Wayne growls, a deep, predatory sound that makes my skin crawl. “They need less sleep. Have more time to prep.”

  “True, but they have further to go,” I mutter to myself. “Some need to learn to read first.”

  “What was that, Samantha?” Victor’s cool voice makes me jerk to a stop, cursing myself for letting down my guard. A demi’s hearing is better than a human’s, but a full vamp’s ears are downright dangerous. I should have seen him crossing the green toward me, two of his hulking vamp bodyguards trailing an almost-subtle distance behind him.

  “Count Victor.” I drop my eyes politely, my throat tightening for a moment at the fact that Reese, who taught me the difference between empty manners and true submission, has been gone for a week. “Good evening, sir.”

  Victor makes a noncommittal sound that I take to mean I’m allowed to raise my eyes. Around us, the green is quickly shifting into motion, cadets starting to notice Victor and immediately breaking up their clusters, looking as busy and studious as possible. Wayne and his group throw me dark glares, as if I’m somehow at fault for dispersing their gathering.

  “I came to inquire about your progress with the closing spell I gave you. Have you found your way into practicing it?”

  I give Victor an account of my progress, that I’ve been able to close some of the simpler locks without melting them about one out of four times. Nothing spectacular, but it feels shamefully good to have someone to talk about my magic with, even if that someone is Victor. When I ask about expanding my practice to include opening the locks back up, however, the count shakes his head emphatically.

  “One step at a time, young witch,” he says. “Closing and opening may sound like they are two sides of the same coin, but I assure you that one is infinitely more volatile and dangerous than the other. It’s like the difference between a spoon and a knife, to use a human analogy.” Victor checks his watch—a gold Cartier that had to have set him back at least twenty grand, I notice distantly. “Continue the assignments I give you and inform me when you are ready for me to review the progress in person.”

  Victor waves his long fingers, dismissing both the subject and further inquiries with brutal efficiency. “As it happens, I had a second reason for seeking you out. I will be leading a select group of first years on a tour of some of Talonswood’s notable sites, including the famous gateway to Talon. You are welcome to join, if you would find that a convenient way to spend a few hours of liberty.”

  22

  Sam

  It’s tiki night at Dusk, which means the dancers are wearing flower garlands and bikinis instead of diamonds and thongs, and the bar is decorated with carvings of wooden statues. Not to mention that I’m more naked than usual—Cassis’s request for the occasion—in cheeky shorts and a hot-pink strapless corset that makes my breasts spill over the top like a Victorian romance heroine. Huge pineapple earrings weigh down my earlobes, encrusted with what I’m pretty sure are genuine yellow diamonds and emeralds.

  By the time weekend liberty rolled around yesterday, my small headache each morning had turned into a mild fever and a nagging migraine, both of which I managed to drown out with ibuprofen before my shift tonight. For all the ways Newark’s foster system fucked up my life, it also put my immune system through boot camp. I don’t remember the last time I had so much as a cold, much less the flu, so to get sick at Talonswood Reform is adding insult to injury.

  “Are you sniffing me?” I look behind me to find Cassis’s nostril flaring delicately over my shoulder as I practice mixing Dusk’s new take on a Bloody Mary which one of the other bartenders warned me was getting popular. Unlike its namesake, this one involves actual blood. O negative. From a silver decanter. It’s a precision kind of thing. I wave my hand at the vampire. “I’m warning you right now, if you’re consider taking a sip from either the glass or me, I’ll smack you.”

  “Promise?” Cassis purrs, making heat rush to my face.

  Fuck.

  “You shouldn’t tease.” Cassis straightens his cuff links, something flickering across his face before his voice drops. “And don’t jest with vampires about taking sips of your blood, Samantha. You look good enough to eat—you don’t need to remind them.” The admonishment echoes back to the warning Cassis once gave me about the dangers of his kind. For all his cockiness, when the male gets serious, it’s enough to send a shiver down my spine.

  Suddenly, I want out. Out of Talonswood, out of this life. I want to go back to Newark and worry about corrupt cops and normal sleazy men. I had no
thing there, but at least I knew who I was. Or thought I knew. Whatever. I want to be the old Samantha who never expected anyone to stay, who learned long ago never to get attached. But instead, I have only me. And a headache.

  So I do what I always have—conjure a facade of confidence and hope that no one smells blood in the water.

  “Here, peace offering.” I add a final splash of O negative to my concoction and hold it out to Cassis. “Tell me what you think.”

  Cassis takes a sip and purses his lips. “I think it is an affront to O negative and Grey Goose both.” Setting down the whiskey he’s holding, he reaches over my shoulder and fills a fresh glass with cassis liquor—the drink he has designated as mine. Picking up both glasses, he gestures to one of the booths in the back of Dusk. “Stop torturing my clients and come entertain me instead.”

  “I’m working,” I tell him. “And if you aren’t going to drink this, I’ll find a new victim.”

  “Last I checked, I was your boss,” Cassis smiles at my glower. “Which means you are free to take my suggestion of a break as an order.”

  Following Cassis, I slip into the booth on the other side of him and take a sip of the sweet liquor before glaring. There are already too many thoughts brewing in my head without Cassis messing with me. At least he isn’t playing the piano—we both know his music would mesmerize me the way his compulsion cannot. Interesting how neither Reese’s nor Cassis’s trick works on me. Interesting too that I can scratch Ellis with my nails where it usually takes a solid knife to slice into an immortal’s skin.

  The back of my head gives a twitch, the pressure behind my eyes building. I’m tired and I want to sleep. Well, not sleep, but rest. Rubbing my eyes, I give Cassis a weary sigh. “What do you want?”

  “To know what happened with you and Reesand.” Cassis relaxes back against the cushioned seat, his masculine scent of spice and sin filling the air between us. Instead of looking at me, his rich brown eyes study the swirls of whiskey in his glass, his mussed hair framing his face in a way that underscores every masculine angle. It’s enough to make my sex clench—and I have no doubt the male knows it.

  I brace my forearms on the table’s edge and lean forward. “We fucked. He left.”

  No surprise touches his perfect features.

  I take a sip of my drink. “Why exactly do you care?”

  “That is actually a very good question,” Cassis says thoughtfully. “And to be honest, I haven’t the bloodiest idea.”

  The frank admission takes me aback for a moment. My gaze falls on my palm and the mark I have there. The same one that Sienna left on the horsemen. We’re connected somehow, the males and I. But after what I felt with Reese, I don’t think I like the connection. Not if it turns me into something I don’t recognize.

  “Reese and I had a spat about my using magic.” Utter truth. The specific order of events leading to his departure is a whole other story—but if Cassis insists on talking to me today, then I’m steering. “Never mind that without it, everyone in the Academy is stronger than me. Even the fae who can’t shift into full animal form can still toss me into a ditch without breaking a sweat.”

  “So you’re interested in pursuing a mixed martial arts career?”

  “What?”

  “Or gang leader?” Cassis asks.

  I rub my face, trying and failing to follow his train of thought. “Why would—”

  “I have no notion as to why.” Cassis takes a deep swig of his drink. “But plainly not being able to best demis in a fistfight has set a burr under your saddle, so I’m just going along with the premise.”

  I roll my eyes, shaking my head as I meet Cassis’s gaze. “I don’t want to get into a fight, but I sure as hell want to be able to get out of one without the help of the cavalry. And for that, I need magic. Which no one is willing to teach me except…” I hesitate, a voice urging me to keep my mouth shut.

  “Yes?”

  I shove the hesitation aside—and find that I finally can. The warm gauze doesn’t drift over my mind, making me want to talk about anything else.

  Suddenly, I remember something Reese said about vampire compulsion—that it fades with time and distance.

  Goddammit. Of course the count compelled me not to talk about the magic—which only makes me more desperate to talk about it now.

  “Victor gave me a rune to practice and the use of a lab to work in,” I say, holding my breath as the dean’s name hangs between us.

  “Victor.” Cassis’s eyes narrow dangerously.

  I swallow but raise my chin. Cassis has every right to despise me for crossing paths with the bastard, but of everyone I know, he is also the most likely to understand why I took the risk. “Victor,” I confirm.

  Thoughts too fast for me to read flash over the vamp’s beautiful face, before it reclaims its signature nonchalance. “Continue.”

  Right. I release a breath I didn’t realize I’ve been holding. “It isn’t much as far as instruction goes, but it’s more than I can get from anyone else. I’m not so stupid as to trust the count, but beggars can’t be choosers either, and facts are facts: Asher threw out all the witch texts from the library, Ellis won’t go near me, and Reese had a fit when I even brought up magic. So here we are.”

  “Bollocks.” The vamp flicks an invisible bit of dust off his suit jacket. “Asher is a prick with a stick so far up his arse that it comes out his throat, but he certainly didn’t order book genocide.”

  “I checked the library.”

  “The previous dean ordered Asher to get rid of the books, and like a good little soldier, he followed orders—but if I know the bastard, he probably found a way to get those texts to Talon instead of destroying them altogether. Mind you, there were no witches around at the time to make use of them.”

  I digest this piece of information for a second, but ultimately come to the same conclusion I started with. “Does it even matter why or how? Point being that Victor is the only one who has an instruction manual for my powers.”

  “Have you asked anyone else?” Cassis inquires. “Besides Reese.”

  “Someone like who?”

  “Me, for starters.” Cassis places his hands behind his head, a smug expression on his gorgeous face. “I’ve been known to acquire certain hard-to-find objects. For a price.”

  I laugh without humor. “I’m afraid the only thing I have to offer the devil is my soul, Cassis. And trust me, you don’t want that.”

  Cassis’s dark eyes suddenly shift with a smoothness that closes my throat. “Don’t hurt Reesand,” he says. It takes me a few heartbeats to figure out that he isn’t joking. “When Sienna couldn’t break him, she butchered his wife before his eyes. That did the trick. Reese has not let a female close to him since.” Cassis leans forward, his dark eyes penetrating into me. “If all you’d done was fuck, Samantha, he wouldn’t have left.”

  Cassis’s words grip the air between us, my chest tightening further with each heartbeat. Unable to help myself, I trace the scar on my palm, which suddenly seems to tingle with responsibility. “I…” I don’t know what to say to that. Fuck, I don’t even know what to feel. “He isn’t here,” I say dumbly. “I don’t even know whether he is coming back.”

  Cassis leans back lazily, releasing the tension as swiftly as it came. “Oh, he’s coming back,” he says, savoring a sip of whiskey before pulling a phone out of his pocket. Something that looks like a GPS tracking program flashes on screen for a moment. “The arse took my plane. And I always keep track of my things.”

  23

  Sam

  I’m shattering. Pain tears through my body, boiling my blood. Each breath is heavy, the herculean effort needed to move my limbs so not worth it. I—

  “Sam!” Mika’s voice splinters the darkness, and I sit up in my sweat-soaked bed to find my friend’s pale face hovering over me. “You’re burning up. I can feel it from across the room.”

  I rub my eyes, my forehead as hot as my headache. Lingering vestiges of a nightma
re caress my subconscious and I shiver despite my temperature. “I forgot to take my meds last night,” I say, feeling around for the bottle of water and extra-strength ibuprofen the infirmary dispensed for me. My shift at Dusk had ended at two in the morning, and I’d more or less collapsed into bed the moment I walked into the room.

  Mika activates a chemical ice pack and lays it on the back of my neck. Outside, the sun is just creeping over the pines, nearly obscured by growing steel-bellied rain clouds. “I wish I had something positive to tell you, but they won’t count the semester if you skip exams today, so…”

  “I know.” Checking the time, I decide I might as well get up for the day, and plod into a cool shower to help take the edge of the fever. To my surprise, the shower and ibuprofen actually work, and by ten in the morning, I feel only semi-zombielike as I join the herd of other first years filing into a large classroom, my skin warm and clammy, but manageable. Rain has just started pattering at the four tall windows, a perfect match to the general mood. The desks have been set up in well-spaced columns, SAT style, the whiteboard at the front of the room announcing that we’re here for basic trig.

  Just as the door to the exam room is about to close, Ellis walks inside and settles into the back row. He looks about how I feel, his pale blond hair pulled back in a lank bun, revealing a clammy face and deep shadows under his yellow eyes. Which must mean whatever is happening inside him is ten times worse. My stomach tightens, my hand longing to reach out to him even though I know the contact would be unwelcome. Not that I could even reach all the way to the back. Given that there’s an empty seat right beside me, I can’t help but think Ellis’s choice is deliberate. Still, because I’m a stubborn idiot, I try to make eye contact with the male.