Royals of Villain Academy 3: Sinister Wizardry

by Eva Chase

  His eyebrows stayed up. “And how did you become so invested in a Nary that you’re going out of your way to handle their medical treatment?” he asked with a hint of bemusement.

  “It’s a fellow student from the university.”

  The doctor waited, obviously not considering that enough of an answer. I restrained a grimace. “Seeing this matter taken care of is important to me. I hardly have the skill to do it myself. That’s why I hoped you could help.”

  Dr. Wolfton ran his fingers through his fine gray hair. “I’m assuming if the university medical staff felt they could reasonably intervene, they would have.”

  “They don’t have half the skill you do,” I said. “And you know how over-cautious they can be. I wouldn’t be here asking if I wasn’t sure you could pull it off.”

  He looked as if he was about to shake his head. Before he could express any more doubts, I leaned on my last gambit. “Actually, I am kind of thirsty. If I could just get a glass of water…”

  “Of course.” He got up, maybe relieved to have a respite from the awkward conversation, and walked past me through the kitchen’s wide arched doorway.

  I turned on the sofa to watch him. As he reached for a glass in the cupboard over the sink, I fixed my gaze on the back of his head and murmured an insight spell by way of a question. “What do you want?”

  It was a nicely broad avenue of inquiry. I slipped into the flow of his thoughts and emotions with only the faintest hitch of a breach. Images washed over me.

  Well, I couldn’t offer that. That was too simple for a situation like this. Ah, there we were.

  A smile curved my lips. I’d have him. It was only a matter of putting the offer to him in the right terms.

  “Look,” I said when he came back with the glass, “I realize this is a big ask. I wouldn’t expect you to do it just out of the goodness of your heart. I’ll repay you.”

  The doctor adjusted his glasses as he sat back down. “I couldn’t take a fee for something like this.”

  “Oh, no, that’s not what I meant at all.” I gave him my most winning grin. “I gather there are some people you’re looking to impress. I can cast some very impressive illusions.”

  Dr. Wolfton paused, but he couldn’t hide the flash of hope that lit his eyes. My grin widened. Jackpot.

  “What exactly did you have in mind?” he said slowly, leaning forward in his chair, and I knew it was only a matter of negotiation now.

  Honestly, it was hard to look at the little town we’d driven into and not think it was awfully drab. Dr. Wolfton didn’t look concerned as he parked down the street from the address I’d looked up, but this place was a far cry from both New York City and the elegance of the Killbrook properties.

  “She has to think you’re a regular doctor,” I said, as if we hadn’t already been over this, as if he didn’t know the consequences of a mistake as well as I did. My nerves were twitching away. “It’s better if she thinks the other doctors made a mistake, not that you fixed something they couldn’t.”

  “I know,” the doctor said in his usual mild tone, and patted my shoulder. “From what you described, I don’t imagine it’ll be much trouble. Take a walk around if you’d like to. I expect I’ll be a half hour or so.”

  I didn’t think I’d want to wander around this place, but after a few impatient minutes twiddling my thumbs in the car, I couldn’t bear to just sit anymore.

  My feet carried me off without much sense of direction. I ended up at a park a few blocks away. The sun beamed brightly over the whole place, warming my skin. A woman was walking her dog in the broad grassy area. Children clambered over the playground equipment while their parents or other caretakers watched. I meandered around the fringes, feeling utterly out of place.

  This was the right move, wasn’t it? Suddenly my entire plan seemed ridiculous.

  And yet Rory’s voice rose up in the back of my head, repeating the words that had echoed through my mind over and over since the moment she’d said them. All that matters to me is what you do and what you believe.

  I sucked in a breath, and with it my resolve steadied.

  I knew her. I thought maybe I was starting to really understand her. And this—this was doing something. Trying to woo her all over again had never been the right tactic. She already knew how I could be with her. My charms had never been the problem.

  It might be too late to fix the actual problem, but at least I could give it my best shot. And… even if this didn’t change her mind about me, it wouldn’t be for nothing. I’d done damage that I hadn’t meant to, that the recipient hadn’t deserved. Some part of me felt a little relief just knowing I might be able to reverse that. Which wasn’t an emotion I’d ever have anticipated experiencing in these circumstances, but…

  In the playground, one mother and father clasped their toddler’s hands as they eased him down the slide. The child burst into excited laughter when he reached the bottom. I propped myself against a tree to watch, and a hollow sensation opened in my stomach.

  Look at these people—these people without magic. Was there really anything all that different about them other than that fact? Could I really say that mother and father were worse than my own? That their child deserved less than I did? God, could anyone deserve less than the lot my father had inflicted on me?

  The thought still jarred uneasily inside me, but it was starting to sink in. The look on Rory’s face when she’d said it wouldn’t matter if I were a Nary, that my magic didn’t even factor into what she thought of me… In that moment, it’d hit me just how much she meant that.

  I had less magical skill than everyone around me believed. Did I really believe that made me less of a person than Malcolm or Connar or Declan? And if it didn’t… then why would these people in front of me be anything less than some half-assed mage who could barely cast a coherent spell?

  Because it let us feel powerful. Because we enjoyed having someone to lord it over. Because we were all full of fucking bullshit.

  That was the way my father thought—about appearances, about clinging to status. I’d thought I was nothing like him, but I’d bought into an awful lot of the same ideals, hadn’t I?

  I watched the Naries go about their lives for several minutes longer, and then I headed back to the car. None of the thoughts that had been whirling around inside my head felt easy. But I’d opened my eyes to something I’d missed before, and that could only mean I was heading someplace better.

  I just hoped I hadn’t taken too long getting there.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Rory

  It appeared I’d made it to Professor Banefield’s home off-campus just in time. Or maybe not quite on time, considering that the truck for some storage company was parked out front and the workers were already prepping it to be loaded. Whoever Banefield’s inheritors were, they’d obviously heard about his death by now, and they’d decided to pack up the contents of his house.

  I watched from my car down the street, suddenly wishing I’d rented something inconspicuous rather than driving the Bloodstone Lexus from the university garage. None of the workers had glanced my way yet, but the Lexus didn’t exactly fit in on this suburban street. My mentor might have been an expert at his craft, but he mustn’t have been much for extravagance—or maybe he’d just downsized a lot after his wife’s death. The pastel-trimmed bungalow didn’t look like anything a fearmancer would want to be caught in, dead or alive.

  I needed to look through the contents of that house before these people shipped them off. Something in there might fit the key he’d given me or at least lead me to the place I needed to go. Which meant I had to find some way of diverting the company for at least an hour or two to give me time for a thorough search.

  My back tensed as two of the men walked up to the front door. What would make them leave—and stay away for a while? They were here to move furniture and box up the other possessions… They wouldn’t be prepared to deal with anything more fraught than that.


  An idea unfurled in my head as one of the workers fit a house key into the lock. As many issues as I’d had with Victory, she’d demonstrated plenty of repulsive spells I could use for inspiration. I didn’t have the chance to give the brainstorm a lot of thought. As the guy pushed open the door, I muttered the word “rancid” under my breath with a flick of my hand.

  My magic coursed through the air and condensed into a sensory illusion that flooded the front hall. The worker coughed and backed up a step, waving his hand in front of his face.

  “What the hell?” he said. “Something’s gone very bad in there. We can’t work in a place like that.”

  The guy next to him caught a whiff and turned a bit green. “Call it in to the office. They’ve got to let the owners know to put a cleaning crew through there before we can get on with the job.”

  They tramped back to the truck and closed the ramp. I exhaled in relief. I couldn’t imagine the inheritors would be able to find a cleaning crew in an instant, even if the storage company reached them right away. The gambit should buy me enough of a window.

  I waited until the truck had pulled out of sight around a corner farther down the road and then gave it another ten minutes just to be sure. In an ideal scenario, I’d have made myself invisible so no one even saw me walking over to Professor Banefield’s house, but from what I’d gathered, hiding one’s self from all angles across a significant distance wasn’t the sort of thing you should first attempt in potential view of dozens of Naries. Rendering myself invisible on an open street was several orders of magnitude above cloaking my descent ten feet down a solid wall.

  Instead, I relied on the illusion of looking like I belonged here. I ambled down the street as if I wasn’t in any particular hurry and headed down the driveway to the back of the house like I lived there.

  The high picket fence around the backyard meant I didn’t have to worry as much about witnesses there. I popped the lock with a quick casting and slipped inside.

  My stink illusion had remained at the front of the house. I dispelled it with a word and a wave so I wouldn’t have to inhale it and started my search.

  The house’s interior definitely gave the impression that Professor Banefield hadn’t invested much energy in the space since he’d moved here. The pots hanging in the kitchen were coated with a layer of dust; a few pieces of framed art leaned against the walls in the living and dining room, but nothing had been hung. Here and there, moving boxes sat open, some with just a few objects lying in the bottom, some still mostly full.

  In the second bedroom, where the mattress was bare, I came across a stack of closed boxes labeled “Delia.” His wife’s name, I guessed. Looking at them, a lump rose in my throat. She’d died in a car accident several years ago—while pregnant with their first kid. I couldn’t imagine how awful that’d been for Banefield. Her absence must have still haunted him.

  I didn’t come across any safes or lockboxes. The house didn’t even have furniture with locked drawers here like he’d had in his office.

  After I’d riffled through every room, I came to a stop in the hallway with a sigh. If I didn’t find anything here, I had no idea where to look next. This was my last lead.

  If the key didn’t fit anything here or in his office, then he must have another property, or a storage unit, or a safety deposit box. That would cost money. Money left a paper trail.

  There’d been a file box full of receipts and banking statements in Banefield’s bedroom closet. I crouched down next to it and pulled out the first few papers. Those were from three years ago. Would he have had whatever the key opened that long? I dug farther, but he seemed to have tossed records in haphazardly. Here was one from this past winter, here one from five years ago.

  The growl of an engine right outside made my skin turn cold. I got up and eased over to the window. My pulse hiccupped.

  Another van had pulled up outside. The inheritors had gotten their act together faster than I’d anticipated. Shit.

  I wavered and then grabbed the box of financial records. These distant family members had been out of the picture so long they were only just taking care of Banefield’s belongings. It wasn’t likely they’d realize this box was missing… and if they did, they’d have no idea who’d taken it. Hefting it in my arms, I dashed for the back door.

  The picket fence created a problem now. There was no easy escape route other than back up the driveway where the van was parked. I braced myself by the back of the building and peeked around the corner.

  Four figures were getting out of the van. Two of them retrieved baskets of cleaning supplies from the back. Then they all trooped over to the house.

  The door squeaked open and thumped shut behind them. I hustled along the driveway, past the van, and down the street, slowing when I’d gotten a few house-lengths away. As soon as I reached my car, I tossed the box in the trunk.

  I wasn’t sure I could bring that into my dorm room without raising all kinds of questions… but at least I had it now.

  In the end, I opted to leave Professor Banefield’s records stashed in the trunk of the Lexus. No one had messed with my car yet. It had an actual lock, unlike my bedroom door, and I enhanced that with an extra casting that should punish anyone who tried to open it by magical means with a sharp electric zap.

  I headed up to the dorm intent on grabbing something to eat and then checking on the clubhouse site. When I opened the door, I stopped in my tracks, my jaw going slack.

  “Shelby?”

  The Nary girl turned with a swish of her mousy brown ponytail. It was her, with her usual shy smile as if she couldn’t quite believe I’d be happy to see her.

  A much wider smile sprang across my face. I grabbed her in a hug and then eased away, joy and disbelief mingling inside me. “Are you really back? Like, back in the program and everything? What happened?”

  My reaction had left Shelby beaming. She raised her hand where her wrist had been broken and waggled her fingers. No cast, no sign she’d ever been injured other than a slight pallor to her skin around the joint.

  “It was amazing,” she said. “Two days ago, this doctor just showed up at my house. He said he looked over the records of my treatment and thought the other doctors made a big mistake in interpreting the X-rays—something about shadow fragments or I don’t know what. Anyway, it was about time for the cast to come off anyway, so he took it off and led me through these exercises, gave me a cream to rub into it, and by the next day, my wrist already felt as strong as before. I can play no problem!”

  I blinked. A doctor showing up out of nowhere? And her wrist had been broken.

  The guy must have used magic to make her recover that quickly. But who would have—Ms. Grimsworth had said there was no way the school could interfere—

  “The headmistress called me yesterday afternoon,” Shelby went on. “She said a ‘concerned party’ had been following my case—I guess one of the people on the scholarship panel?—and they’d heard I might be able to continue with the courses here after all. I told her I was sure I could, and…” She gestured to herself and her room. “I just got here half an hour ago. I guess it’s pretty quiet during the summer, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I said, still reeling. “Only some people come for the summer session.” A suspicion started to form in my head. There were very few mages who knew about Shelby’s situation and would have gone out on a limb like this. Declan might have wished he could, but he wouldn’t have compromised his position over a girl he hadn’t even known. I didn’t think I’d ever talked about Shelby with Connar. So…

  “It’s so great to be back,” Shelby said. She snatched up her cello case and hugged the neck of it. “I’ve got to get going—there’s a class about to start and I don’t want to fall any more behind—but maybe we can go get dinner tonight? Imogen too, if she’s around and wants to?”

  “Yeah, that’d be great. You go show them you haven’t missed a beat.”

  I gave her a minute’s head start, and then I went
out too—down to the fourth floor to the dorm room across from Declan’s. When I knocked, a burly guy with a scraggly moustache opened, with a little jolt of nerves that echoed into me when he saw who’d come calling.

  “Hi,” I said. “Ah, is Jude around?”

  The guy looked as if he was afraid of what I’d do to him if he didn’t produce Jude instantaneously. “Killbrook,” he called over his shoulder. “It’s one of your colleagues.”

  He stepped back to let me in, and I stopped just past the threshold. Jude emerged from his bedroom in the corner looking vaguely irritated until his gaze found me. He brightened so quickly a pang shot through my chest.

  I hadn’t thought he was capable of caring enough about the damage he’d done to make real amends. I hadn’t been sure he could even understand that harm done to a Nary was actual damage.

  He strode over, his gaze never leaving my face. “She’s back at school?” he said, erasing any lingering doubts I might have had about who Shelby’s mysterious benefactor had been. “It all worked out?”

  The lengths he must have gone to—my God. And he looked not just pleased with himself but relieved, like he’d really been worried about whether his efforts would succeed.

  “It worked,” I confirmed. “You…”

  No words felt adequate. A couple of his dormmates were watching us, and the urge rose up inside me to show both him and them how much I adored him in this moment. I clasped the front of his shirt and tugged him into a kiss.

  I’d meant it to be a quick one, not much more than a peck. But Jude made a tight sound and kissed me back hard, and it took me a few seconds to think of anything other than the intensity of his mouth against mine. I managed to swallow a gasp as I drew back.

  “How did you—” I started, lowering my voice, and hesitated with the awareness of our small but avid audience. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”