by Jami Klein
I didn’t know why I even tried to have a conversation with him. The gossip surrounding Stefan ranged from he had a mental disability to he was a near feral killer. He was neither and both, which was probably why he didn’t bother to correct anyone.
He walked me to my classroom, glared into the room, and then watched until I took my seat. How he managed to be late for class and not get in trouble for it, I’ll never know. Maybe he used his reputation. I couldn’t keep my mouth shut long enough to have that mystique. Still, it worked in my favor. Ever since he started being my bodyguard, I wasn’t seen like easy prey.
I felt a little guilty that he appointed himself my constant shadow. I knew he was grateful for me unlocking what had been blocking him from speaking, but I was grateful for him freeing me from my bracelets. He had agreed to be my bodyguard while we found out what happened to Delia.
Now that he had been exonerated for Delia’s death, it didn’t feel right to continue to use him to scare off predators, especially now that I could cast without being impeded. Still, I was going to miss him, but he was pulling away from me anyway. I didn’t want to lose him as a friend because he thought I was taking advantage of him.
This period was my mundane lesson and the teacher was blathering on about a book I already read last year before my life fell apart. I was trying not to nod off when the girl behind me poked me with her pen. Rubbing my ribs, I glared back at her and she passed me a note. She was a witch, pale skin with bright red lipstick. There were fresh bite marks on her wrist and I only noticed them because I had similar ones on mine. Only I made Andrei heal them so no one knew I was feeding him.
Swiveling back in my seat, I waited until the teacher turned her back to write on the board. In my old high school, I would have had a text on my phone instead of a passed note and we’d be in Google classroom for the lecture and note taking. Technology didn’t work so well here, though, so we were being taught old school: textbooks, notebooks and blackboards. How quaint. I unfolded the note as quietly as I could. I recognized Andrei’s spidery handwriting.
“Come to the Archives after dinner tomorrow. I’ve got something to show you.”
A thrill of excitement passed through me. Finally.
***
Stefan hated the library and getting in the possessed elevator that shot you several floors under the earth. And I always felt bad that he forced himself to follow me. It was a library. What was the worst that could happen? Luckily, he had a football game anyway tonight, so he didn’t have to join me and Andrei. As a rule shifters and vampires didn’t really get along and Stefan, in particular, really didn’t like Andrei. I could relate. Andrei could be a pill. So with a wave to Ms. Barnes, who happened to also be Andrei’s mother, I headed to the elevator from Hades.
I hoped it didn’t take me to Hades on a whim.
After rocketing down like the elevator cables had been cut, the doors opened smoothly. I staggered out on shaky legs and glared at it when the doors gently closed and glided back up to the main floor.
The Archives resembled a never-ending warehouse with shelves upon shelves of paper, books, manuscripts and artwork. It was dark and shadowy. Lights popped on as you entered a section and shut off as soon as you left. The vampire students loved shelving books down here as a work study job. They had different hours of classes than us, with the exception of the occasional night seminar. But not all of them slept until sunset. Andrei was one of the ones who didn’t need to be down for all the daylight hours, but he wasn’t a day walker yet.
I liked it down here, even though it was creepy AF, because it helped me connect to my father again. He had a secret life that I had never known about. He had been sent to Jewel Academy and experienced such unhappiness that he never spoke of it again. After he died and I was sentenced here, I found his old term papers and his yearbooks. And for a while, he was back with me. I had thought he had forsaken most of his powers, but the details of his death had been sketchy. The reports said it had been a plane crash. No planes had crashed that day.
I felt with all of my heart that someone killed him. It hadn’t been the demon. So who was it? And what could he have possibly stolen? Andrei and I had been searching for that information in all of our free time, which was one of the reasons I wasn’t any closer to being in a coven.
Sitting down in my usual chair in the middle of the archives, I waited impatiently for the telltale wisp that Andrei was trying to sneak up on me. I felt the change in temperature as he coalesced behind me in a freezing blast.
“I got your note,” I said, smirking when he huffed in disappointment that I didn’t jump.
“I didn’t want to say too much, but you’re not going to believe this.” Andrei tugged me to my feet.
His hand was icy cold and I tried not to shiver. He noticed anyway. “I haven’t fed today,” he said defensively.
I held out my wrist with a sigh. We had made a deal. I would be his blood donor until Yule and he would get me information on my father, who had been his mother’s high school sweetie.
“Not here,” he hissed, pushing my arm down and looking over his shoulder.
I guess Ms. Barnes didn’t know of his little bargains of blood her son made.
“So what’s so unbelievable?” I asked.
“This way.”
We went deeper into the Archive, walking for more than fifteen minutes. “How big is this place?” I asked, looking over my shoulder as the lights blacked out behind us. Could I even find my way out of here?
“As big as it needs to be.”
I wanted to smack him when he said things like that.
“How much longer is it?” I asked.
“Just around the corner.”
I could see a dim pulsating light up front. As we rounded the corner, Andrei held his arm out to stop me from going further. Up ahead was a pedestal. On the pedestal was a gigantic glowing pearl. It lit the area up in an otherworldly glow.
“What’s that?” I whispered.
“That’s the pearl of wisdom. It’s like a Magic Eight ball, but real.”
I went to rush over to it, but I didn’t get close. An apparition dressed in an Enforcer’s uniform appeared in front of me. He was translucent, but the sword he carried which was now pointed at me was very solid.
“Whoa,” Andrei said and yanked me back.
The apparition faded.
“What was that?”
“This is the restricted section. You can’t get in there without a pass badge. You’ll be attacked. The guardians are authorized to use lethal force.”
“Lethal? As in dead?”
“Is there another definition that I’m not aware of?” Andrei said, dragging me back a few more steps.
“That’s crazy. I just want to ask it a couple of questions.”
“You and everybody else. It’s rumored to only have a finite amount of answers.”
“What kind of cheap magic item is that?”
“A rare one, that we don’t have access to.”
“Can’t your mother get us in?”
“My mother would skin me alive if she knew I was even here. She’d boil me first, if she knew I brought you with me.”
“Then why did you?”
“Well…” Andrei rocked back on his heels. “You can be persuasive when you want to be, and I’ve got a few questions for the pearl myself.”
I gasped. “You want me to mind control your mom to giving us passes in here.”
“And make her forget that she did it,” he said.
“No.” I shook my head. “No. I can’t do that.”
“But you hexed the coven last month. What’s the difference?”
“Who cares what they think? They already hate me.”
They also acted really weird towards me too. Like they forgot I was even there sometimes, which was residual from the spell I cast. I was becoming a dangerous mind mage. I had the power, some control, and almost no idea what I was doing. I was going to get neutered, if I wasn’t ca
reful.
“It’s not like that. You’d just need to ask a quick question. ‘What’s the password to get by the guardian and use the pearl of wisdom?’ Then, ‘Forget I asked.’ No permanent brain damage. Just a simple answer to a question and then another pass to cover our tracks.”
“You don’t understand.” I pulled away from him and ran back from where we came, not caring that I was running into blackness or not.
“What’s the matter?” Andrei said, easily keeping up with me.
“That’s how I lost my mother. I’m not going to turn your mother against me too.”
“What do you mean you lost your mother?”
I had to stop running. I was completely out of breath and Andrei wasn’t even breathing hard. Bending over, I put my hands on my knees and took in deep gulps of air. I needed to get some more exercise. Jewel Academy didn’t have much of a gym class and I had spent a lot of time in the library lately.
“My mom hates me now.” There I said it. It’s what I’ve been thinking ever since Agent Fines drove away like her tailpipe was on fire.
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure. She hasn’t called me once since I’ve been here. I want to go home for a weekend, but Magee won’t even discuss it with me. I don’t know why my mom’s not calling me back. As far as she knows, I can’t mind control her. Why can’t I go back home? I’m dying for Pepe’s pizza and some Libby’s Italian ice. I want to see my friends from school. I want to go back to my old life.”
I hadn’t realized I was shouting until I heard my own words echo back to me.
“That usually isn’t how Jewel Academy works,” Andrei said, awkwardly patting my shoulder. I guess vampires didn’t do comforting well. “You’re in here for a long time before you get a pass. Yule is probably the earliest. Maybe that’s why she’s not returning your calls. She doesn’t want to disappoint you. Or maybe her battery’s dead. That happens to my dad all the time. Of course, he still isn’t used to all this new technology.” Andrei rolled his eyes. “Ancient vampires are the worst.”
I sniffed and wiped my sleeve over my eyes. It was dry in here and my eyes were leaking. “Yeah? Maybe.” I clung to that idea because the thought I made a mistake that my mother thought was unforgivable was too hurtful to consider more deeply.
“I’m sorry I upset you,” he said, and gave an old-world bow to me that his ancient vampire father probably talked to him.
“It’s all right. I didn’t mean to freak out on you. We’ll find another way to get to the pearl of wisdom.” I’d come up with something.
Chapter Three
The next day, I stared gloomily into my locker, hoping that a magic portal would appear and whisk me away. No such luck, but when I shut the door, Janine was leaning up against the lockers looking at me.
“Hi,” I said.
Janine was the shifter that the four horsemen had been picking on last month. I made them leave her alone, but afterwards she said that the unkindness wouldn’t forget. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but knowing me I messed something up.
“Go to the football game tomorrow.”
Stefan said they were travelling to Old Saybrook, which was close to my old stomping grounds, but he also said that only the cheerleaders and the team were allowed on the bus. They only bussed in fans for the important games.
“I can’t.”
“Do you want to see your Mom or not?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The unkindness pays their debts. Go to the football game and you will see your mother.”
Janine joined the flow of students heading towards class. Unkindness, huh? I bet that didn’t mean what I thought it meant. My homeroom was in the library and I made a beeline to Andrei’s mother.
“Ms. Barnes what’s an unkindness?”
She regarded me from her pedestal desk on the floor above me. As the head librarian, she took her job of overlooking the library seriously. She could see the whole first floor from where she sat. “I’m going to assume that you’re not looking for the obvious definition. What exactly are you asking?”
“A girl told me that the unkindness pays their debts.”
“I see. You helped a raven shifter. Witches have covens. Wolves have packs. Lions have a pride. Vampires have a kiss. Crow shifters have a murder, and raven shifters have an unkindness.”
“Why do they call them that?” I asked.
“The mundanes named them many centuries ago and it stuck. The poets are to blame, I suppose. They saw a regal lion and called it a pride. They saw a bunch of geese honking and called them a gaggle.”
“But why unkindness?”
“Ravens work together to protect their group and others by any means necessary.”
“They’re birds, though, not lions. What can they do?”
“You should look up an old movie by Alfred Hitchcock and watch it. We have it in the Archives. It’s called The Birds.”
“Is it in the restricted section?” I asked innocently.
She blinked down at me over her glasses. “No. Students aren’t allowed in the restricted section.”
“If there was something I needed from there, would a teacher or staff member get it for me?”
“No. What is it you are looking for?”
“I was very curious as to the type of things in the restricted section,” I hedged, not wanting her to know that I was fishing for information on the pearl of wisdom.
“You know what they say about curiosity, my dear.” Ms. Barnes went back to her scrolls, dismissing me without a word.
“Yeah, but satisfaction brought it back,” I muttered under my breath and turned to get to class when I bumped into someone.
“I’m so sorry. I do that all the time.” I looked up and saw Grantaire.
He was not only an Enforcer, he was the subject of the love spell gone wrong last month.
“I didn’t do it,” I said, automatically. Enforcers gave me the creeps. Two of them had busted into my high school, tased me, and then dragged me to the FBMI.
“Do what?”
“Whatever would cause an Enforcer to stop me.” Even a cute one. Grantaire had curly blond hair and warm brown eyes.
“You bumped into me,” he said with a grin.
I tried not to smile back at him, but it was tough. Even though, he wore a black uniform and had several weapons on him to stop various supernaturals, Grantaire wasn’t looking to perp walk me anywhere. He had wolfsbane, holy water, a silver knife and a sidearm that was probably loaded with silver bullets, and he wore bracelets similar to what mine had looked like. Only his anti-magic bracelets kept him being affected by spells. It wasn’t 100%, but it was a good bit of protection. When I had the anti-magic bracelets on, I could still cast spells, but it hurt like the devil and the force of them were very low. I imagine it was similar repelling rituals, which could be why the love spell didn’t work on him. Or Priscilla’s coven could have messed up the spell.
“I should go,” I said.
“I’m Grantaire,” he said. “Can I walk you to class?”
“Sure.” Like I had a lot of choice in the matter about that. “I’m Lola.”
“I know. We get a list of the new students,” he said, when I shot him a panicked look. “I was sorry to hear about your cousin.”
“I never met Delia. I wish I had. Did you know her?”
“Yeah, we were friends,” he said as we exited the library. That might be the reason she appeared when Priscilla’s coven had tried to put a love spell on him. His image had been in a magical flame in the center of their circle. The image of him looked right at me. I wanted to ask him if he saw me through the flames, but I didn’t want to get nailed for being involved in a black ritual—even though my lips had been literally sealed at the time.
As we left the library, I felt the same shiver of a spell cast over me every time I walked in or out of the library. I saw him shake it off too.
“What’s that?” I asked. “It’s some
sort of spell, but I don’t recognize it.”
“Oh, it’s to make sure you aren’t bringing in or taking out anything you shouldn’t.”
“Taking out, I can understand,” I said. “But what would I bring in that wouldn’t be permitted?”
Grantaire rubbed the back of his neck. “You’d be surprised what tries to get through those doors. Everything from imps to cursed magic items. Ms. Barnes runs a tight ship and that’s why we haven’t had an incident at the library in over two years.”
I just had to make sure I didn’t take the pearl outside that was all. Stefan peeled himself away from the wall where he had been waiting for me and his menacing presence was enough to have Grantaire drop his hand to his weapon belt. Stefan rumbled a warning growl low in his throat.
“It’s okay.” I stepped between them.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said to Stefan in my mind. “He’s not a threat. Not out in the open.”
“Enforcers are always a threat.” Stefan thought back at me. He walked forward, which pushed me closer to Grantaire.
“Is there a problem here, Harte?” Grantaire said between his teeth.
“No problem.” I shoved Stefan back for all I was worth, but it was like shoving a brick wall.
“Get out of here,” I thought furiously at Stefan.
“I’m your bodyguard. He’s trouble.”
“You’re not my bodyguard anymore. Our deal was over after we found out what happened to Delia.”
He stopped and looked at me.
“I didn’t want to do this now.” I glanced helplessly back.
“My mistake.” Stefan turned on his heel and walked away.
“Stefan,” I said aloud, but he didn’t turn back around. Hecate’s twisted knickers I handled that poorly.
“Everything all right?” Grantaire frowned.
“It will be. Shifters, you know?” I shrugged, hoping he’d let it drop.
That seemed to be the right thing to say. Grantaire nodded. “I don’t want to cause trouble between you and your friends.”
“And as long as you don’t Taser me, we’re all good.”
He took his hand away from his weapon and waggled his fingers at me. “You remind me a lot of Delia. She never mentioned having a cousin.”
