by D. D. Chance
“You don’t feel it, but there’s a hell of a lot of magic bombarding all five of us,” Zach said, once again in my mind. “If we weren’t bonded as a collective, we’d probably be in a fair amount of pain. But Frost said that our bond is what’s being tested. We could just as easily be playing hopscotch and the result would be the same. This part isn’t about us. It’s just to give them time to throw shit at us.”
“I don’t feel any of that,” I thought right back to him, and he nodded.
“Good, then. Here you go. Try not to let Grim eat you.”
He turned me to the side, handed me off to Grim, and I realized how accurate his warning was. Beneath his carefully braided, thick, white-blond hair, Grim looked ferocious, his jaw set, his pale-gold eyes burning bright, every muscle in his body straining. I wanted to ask him if he was okay, but he hissed out a warning breath, and instead, I lifted my hand to his face, and brushed it along his jaw.
I had no idea the significance of any of this—or what possessed me to touch the guy so intimately—but it seemed to be the right thing to do. Grim jolted, his gaze meeting mine, and the tension in his muscles relaxed.
Then he turned me, folding me into his large body, and walked sedately past the last group of spectators, the Hallowells. I could feel the intensity of their glare as we passed, but they said nothing and I didn’t look at them directly. If they were my family, that certainly would make this process easier. I could leave Boston tomorrow a happy girl and never see them again.
The parade route finished, Grim stopped in front of Mr. Symmes, who had been joined by Claudia Graham, the music finally ebbing away as Liam, Zach, and Tyler stepped into line beside us.
“Well. That was impressive, wasn’t it?”
It was the forty-something, dark-haired Hallowell woman who spoke, her voice ringing out before Symmes could utter whatever ponderous pronouncement he was about to offer up. She strode forward, giving us her first smile.
“I know for a fact the amount of magic we threw at these students surpassed anything Wellington has dished out to its monster hunters in probably two decades. So, bravo.” She turned to Symmes, and I found myself warming toward her, her sophisticated drawl making me wish she would talk to me.
“I understand you want their graduation to proceed without them finishing their final year? I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t. We can even skip the ending rituals, no? They’re always a mind-numbing bore.
“Ahh…” Symmes began, but Claudia stepped forward.
“No. The final ritual must be completed,” she said crisply. “We can’t allow hunters to go out without every advantage.”
“Oh, really?” the woman retorted. “That’s worked out really well for the previous hunters, wouldn’t you say?”
“Elaine.” It was the older man who spoke, his voice carrying out over the room, low and resonant. “We have no formal standing at the academy anymore. You know that.”
“Clearly not,” the woman, who I assumed was Elaine, shot back drily. “If we did, Wellington probably wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“You were the one who chose to leave,” Claudia reminded her, and Elaine bristled at the accusation in her voice, although surely the decisions they were referencing had taken place generations ago.
“Because we saw the future, and we chose to work with it, not against it.” Elaine countered. “But even we have a need for monster hunters, and this is a fine crop, I would say.”
She turned and scanned the five of us with an assessing eye, and I didn’t miss how she lingered on Grim. Grim, for his part, was back to looking like he wanted to pound big rocks into gravel, but he said nothing.
“Bottom line, we still have a bit of a mystery, I understand,” Elaine continued as her gaze drifted toward me. “An orphaned girl whose mother played a very dangerous game.”
There was no doubting the edge to her voice, and I stiffened despite myself. She didn’t miss it.
“Don’t worry, Nina, we will find your family. Someone with as much strength as you should never have been hidden away for as long as you have. Someone will pay for that, rest assured. You’re safe with us.”
The way she said it, I didn’t feel safe at all, but Mr. Symmes stepped forward. “The presentation is at an end. The five of you,” he continued, turning to face us with an air almost of surprise in his expression, “acquitted yourself with a strength I have never seen in a presentation. Typically, though this fact is never shared, at least one or two class members fail this particular test. The fact you haven’t is a testament to your schooling and strength.”
“It’s a testament to their collective, you mean,” the younger male Hallowell said. Inwardly, I groaned, but these people clearly were well-informed. They’d probably read all the same books that we had, and theirs probably hadn’t had the guts cut out of them. “A mixed-gender collective, the first in, what, a hundred years?” He tossed the question to his sister or wife or whoever she was, Elaine, who nodded.
“And oh, not a sanctioned collective either. How dangerous of you all,” she mocked.
“On the contrary,” Mr. Symmes countered with a remarkable amount of pride. “We specifically ensured it would happen.”
This, of course, was patent bullshit, but he served it up with such satisfaction that even Elaine Hallowell looked a little hesitant. Her expression cleared quickly, and she smiled, focusing on me.
“Well then, color me impressed,” she drawled, giving me a little nod that, once again, strangely warmed me. “I look forward to seeing what other surprises you have in store for us. But for now, let’s dance. I think Nina and her surliest protector, your name is Grim, yes? You should go first.”
Without a sound, Grim turned and reached out to me.
I swallowed my sudden anxiety and took his hand.
The music picked up its pace.
24
The floor cleared, but not entirely. Several couples joined Grim and me, and Elaine singled out Liam, who held her in a formal style while trying not to look like he was going to throw up. Claudia Graham paired off with Tyler, and Zach moved to the side, putting his head together with Frost in what was apparently a Very Important Conversation that superseded his need to dance. How he’d managed that, I didn’t know, but I couldn’t focus on much of anything but the feel of Grim’s bulging arms around me, his arm bent and his hand clasping mine as if somewhere along the line, we both had learned how to ballroom dance.
We hadn’t, and I squeaked in alarm as Grim lifted me off my feet, pushing me backward as if I was taking the steps naturally before swinging me gently around.
“Let me lead,” he said, but a note of exasperated humor had entered his tone, which helped me unwind a notch.
“Did you feel the magic being thrown?” I asked him quietly, our words muted beneath the flow of music. “Because I have to tell you, I totally didn’t. As far as I know, we just played a life-size game of Chutes and Ladders, and I still don’t know what the point of that was.”
“I felt it,” he confirmed. “The guys did too—except Liam. He didn’t seem as affected. Which, given the givens, he should have been.”
Something in his tone tipped me off to his inference, and I colored. “Do I want to know how you figured that out?”
He chuckled, the sound like gravel. “No. But it’ll come out soon enough, especially if your connection with him failed to level him up.”
“I’m sure it did level him up,” I insisted, though of course, I had no way of knowing. Still, of all the guys, I really didn’t want to fail Liam. He needed it more than the rest of them. “Or at least, I hope it did,” I added a little lamely.
Grim regarded me coolly with his pale-gold eyes, turning me around with a catlike grace, and I suddenly remembered that he, also, was a member of the monster hunting collective, and so, arguably…
His lips thinned, and though I knew he couldn’t read my mind the way Zach did, I still felt the flush crawl up my cheeks. “Um, so…have you eve
r seen these Hallowell people before? Because they kind of—”
“It’s time,” Grim grunted, cutting me off as he turned and, once again with a grace that surprised me, handed me off to Liam. In turn, he and Elaine were left staring at each other, but both seemed to reach the same conclusion. They turned and stalked off in opposite directions.
“Was it something I said?” Liam offered, sotto voce, and I grinned at him with genuine pleasure, relieved to sink into the familiar static of our connection. I hadn’t realized how stressed it had made me to touch Grim—and I got the feeling he’d been equally put off. Well, with any luck, we’d never be stuck in close quarters together again, so he’d be safe from my cooties.
Liam turned me around easily, and once again, I was struck by the ability of pretty much anyone in the room other than me to dance. “Is Dancing 101 something you guys learned during your sophomore year or something? Because it wasn’t on my schedule,” I groused a little bitterly.
“Well, for Tyler and me, it’s something we were forced to do when we were really young. Zach picked it up after he moved here. Not a lot of dancing in the churches in southern Georgia, to the surprise of no one. And Grim—I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the guy dance, at least not when he wasn’t in the middle of trying to kill something.”
“It kind of felt like that, not gonna lie,” I quipped, though that wasn’t necessarily true. Liam laughed as he turned me again, then his gaze dropped to the line of pearls around my neck. He frowned. “Did you get those from my mom?”
I bit my lip, startled at the dismay in his voice. “Is that okay? She thought I didn’t look quite finished and that the pearls would help.”
“Oh, she thought the pearls would help, all right, but probably not because she was worried about what you look like. I wonder…”
He angled me across the room, the arc of our turning dance steps taking us closer to the edge of the ballroom floor. Tyler was there, having shaken off his Claudia detail. He and Liam exchanged a glance, one that apparently meant head over this way, because Tyler rolled his shoulders and strolled in our direction.
Liam slipped his hand under my left arm as Tyler came up on my right and took that elbow. I blinked, the dual contact with both guys sending a stream of shivers skittering through me. We still hadn’t figured out if Liam had upgraded his skillset, but I was definitely picking up on something.
“So here’s the deal. I’m not the only Graham who likes his toys,” Liam said quietly. “But I don’t know if Mom attempted to augment your skills or dampen them. More to the point, I don’t know why.”
“Seriously?” Tyler asked, glancing at me sharply, his gaze immediately dropping to my neck. “The pearls. How are we going to be able to tell? And why would she do that?”
“Knowing my mom, because she wanted to control the outcome of this little event. My gut says she wanted to augment Nina’s abilities, to hold off whatever magic was going to be thrown at us during our little walk-through. But she doesn’t know how strong Nina is, which means she doesn’t know if her attempt to jack things up might have sent Nina spiraling out of control. That’s not something she would typically overlook.”
“But the other doesn’t make any sense either,” Tyler countered. “If she tried to blunt Nina’s powers, whatever they may be, that would have left Nina unprotected. I can’t see your mom doing anything that would keep you from graduating, my man.”
“Agreed,” Liam sighed.
“How do we know it’s not anything but a strand of pearls?” I asked. “Maybe she literally didn’t want me to look silly, nothing more.”
It was a testament to how much these two agreed about the nature of Liam’s mother that both of them snorted with equal parts derision and doubt.
“Not likely,” Liam said. “But there is a way we can test it…”
He lifted one shoulder, but for once, his pack wasn’t on his back, and he blinked down in apparent surprise as nothing slid into easy access of his hand. “I knew when Frost told me I wasn’t able to wear my pack that I was going to regret it,” he grumbled. “I friggin’ hate being poorly equipped.”
“Or maybe it’s not as difficult as all that,” Tyler said. “Maybe we just need to overload the necklace’s circuits a little bit, see what the reaction is?”
“Overload its circuits how?” I asked warily. “We could just take it off me.”
But Liam was now studying me with an interested gleam in his eye. “We could, but I’ve been kind of wondering about this, actually.”
He slid his gaze toward Tyler. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“I sure hope so.” Tyler grinned. At this point in the conversation, we’d moved all the way through the crowd and now stepped out into the hallway behind the ballroom chamber. It was dark here, and no staff hovered at the doorway, the music instantly damping as we moved farther into the shadows. Heavy, ornate paintings hung on either side of the corridor, so it clearly went somewhere, but just not anywhere anyone needed to be, apparently, except us.
“So,” Tyler said, turning toward me. “You want to kiss Liam or me?”
I squinted at him. “How is that a choice? What are you guys up to?”
“Liam and I have been talking about the nature of your connection with the other members of the collective. You can link to Zach at will now, turning him on and shutting him off whenever you want access to his mind or to allow him to access yours, am I right?”
I glanced around, half expecting Zach to pop out of the shadows as well. “Yeah….”
“But Liam and I, we’re best friends, and we have been for most of our lives. So maybe there’s a connection to be had between us as well, even if we’re not mind readers.”
“Maybe,” I allowed, turning back to Liam. “But how does that help us figure out whether your mom’s necklace is a power enhancer or a jammer? I don’t get it.”
“Honestly? It doesn’t,” Liam admitted. “That doesn’t mean I still don’t want to try this out.”
Without any further warning, he leaned forward and brushed his lips against mine. The usual zing of electricity was there, and I temporarily lost all sense of where I was, eagerly leaning forward to kiss him more deeply. Then Tyler moved, leaning down and kissing the delicate skin beneath my ear, right above the edge of Claudia’s strand of pearls.
Sandwiched as I was between the two guys, I had nowhere to go, but I barely suppressed a yelp against Liam’s mouth as my body jackknifed, Tyler’s arms going around me to keep me from banging into the wall. The dual shock of kisses from the two guys had created a level of spontaneous combustion both inside and outside my body, as the pictures rattled against the walls, and at the far end of the hallway, a stone globe rolled off a table and bounced along the marble floor with a resounding boom.
“What in the…” We sprang apart as a man poked his head out of the ballroom, looking hard our way. Liam and Tyler pressed me back against the wall, Tyler murmuring something long and complicated sounding in Latin. The man squinted, then shook his head. He ducked back into the ballroom.
“What the hell was that?” I asked tightly, and Liam chuckled.
“That was, believe it or not, a subdued reaction. Agreed?” he asked Tyler.
Tyler nodded, his assessing gaze now fixed on my necklace. “Totally subdued. Which is a testament to both of you, because you still managed to cause a jolt to the world around you, just nowhere near what it should have been. It was like there was a stranglehold on the energy pouring off you, which was probably a good thing, because otherwise, we would’ve been set on fire. We’re going to need to test all this out a little bit more, I suspect—with your permission, of course.”
“What?” I protested as Liam nodded.
“I’m so onboard with that,” he said, the two of them grinning with such schoolboy delight that I didn’t know whether to take them seriously or not.
“Still,” Tyler said, focusing on my necklace with a more somber expression. “Why
would your mom want to subdue Nina’s abilities? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Or maybe it does, if you’re playing both ends against the middle. If mom was so confident that Nina would overcome the magic being thrown her way even with the barrier, then it argues that she didn’t want to tip our hand to anyone else. In other words—”
“In other words, she’s trying to hide Nina in plain sight.”
As this conversation continued however, I felt an unexpected scratchiness at my throat, not inside like a cough threatening to burst free, but an actual burning sensation around my neck, following the line of the pearls.
“Um, guys?”
“Holy shit, she’s smoking,” Liam barked, reaching up to pull the strand of pearls free from my neck with a practiced tug. The pearls glistened in his hand, still steaming slightly, and he traced his finger along them. “We may have overloaded the suckers after all,” he said.
“Looks like it,” Tyler agreed. “Let’s head back to…” We turned to the ballroom, only now Grim stood at the door. He looked absolutely furious.
“What are you guys doing?” he demanded in a low, urgent voice.
“Hey, man,” Liam said. He held up the pearls. “Just divesting Nina of some of my mom’s trick pearls. Don’t let Claudia dance with you, or she may try to trick you out with a pair of earrings to dampen your power.”
Grim’s gaze shot from me to the necklace and back to Liam.
“Good. I’m glad you got it off her,” he said, then disappeared back into the room. We all exchanged an uneasy glance.
“Is it just me, or does he get weirder every day?” I asked, and Tyler chuckled.
“With Grim, it’s impossible to know.”
We entered the room and glanced around for the big guy, but he wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Then Tyler cursed beneath his breath. “That’s not right,” he muttered.
