“It didn’t burn.”
“Maybe because the dragon isn’t real.”
“Nothing in this place is fake.”
“Or maybe all of it is,” I said, hurrying forward. We passed the steel men, and something itched between my shoulder blades, like eyes were following our every movement. The suits of armor were not staring at us. But I picked up my pace.
We ducked into a few of the rooms we passed, but did not find the wolfling.
We passed the cafeteria. Wolfy hadn’t been in the yard or in the guys’ section of the reformatory. Short of the teachers’ private offices or rooms we’d yet to explore in the basement, I had no idea where my friend could be. He had to be somewhere.
“When the flames hit me,” Rhys said softly as we passed a bunch of vamps whose gazes fell on the gowns draped over my arm, “I remembered a certain passage in the book. I need to read it again, because I think there’s a connection.”
“Between the flames and that part of the book?” We reached my room and stopped to lean against the wall.
“I’m not sure,” he said, “but I want to check it out. It’s like something is trapped in the back of my mind, eager to break out of its cage. I just need to find the key.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Rhys. Something feels off about all this.”
His lips twisted up on one side. “Everything feels off here, but all we can do is keep pushing forward.”
I tipped my head to my door. “Well, okay, then. You go read your book.” I’d skim through mine, then maybe copy my sister and take a nap. “I’m beat. Between Cece…” I peered around to make sure we were alone and lowered my voice, “Cece getting ‘beat up’ by Aidan and that flame-throwing dragon in the attic, the headmaster, the Council, and everything else in between, I’m going to need to sleep for five weeks.”
He bumped off the wall and gave me a kiss. His finger tapped my nose. He strolled toward the door but turned. “See you soon, then.”
“Yup.”
As he entered the hall, I turned and unlocked my door. I entered, and as I engaged the lock, I slumped against the solid wooden panel.
I didn’t remember pulling the curtains closed, but I must’ve. Only dim shadows tangled across the room.
I started toward the window to tug the curtains aside, and something moved to my right. My heart jumped up into my throat, clogging my airway.
Tiptoeing toward the spare bed, I leaned forward, hoping something wouldn’t slash out and gut me.
Janie lay under the covers.
Her lips parted, and a soft snore puffed out.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Cece
I changed in silence, my mind reeling from all that had just happened. Aidan hadn’t removed the collars; our attempt to destroy the source had somehow unleashed the magic of the worst Wadsworth had to offer. We were still no closer to escaping.
And the Council’s presence loomed over our heads like a hangman's noose.
I pulled the clean t-shirt down over my head and took a breath to clear my mind. Maybe Aidan was right that we had to get out of Wadsworth before the dance—if that was even possible. I had zero interest in hanging around to see why the Council was paying us a visit. They were an ominous sign at best.
“But where do we start?” I asked my empty room, tapping my finger on my chin as though that would be at all helpful.
The soft thud of something landing on the bed behind me had me spinning around in a flash. In the center of my heavy gray bedspread was the book Aidan had taken to read; the one he’d said he might have found something in. With cautious steps, I walked over to it and picked it up. The intricate pattern on the cover gleamed in the light spilling in through the window, and I realized then why the door in the basement had looked familiar. This was the pattern I’d seen on it as well.
Coincidence? I didn’t think so.
“Too bad I can't read anything in here,” I muttered under my breath as I flipped the cover open. I wondered what Aidan had found in those pages about the crystal ball—about how it might help. I also wondered when he might show up at my door to tell me.
A mix of panic and anticipation swirled in my belly at the thought.
I delicately turned to the middle of the book. What I saw there had my eyebrows shooting up to my hairline.
“What the hell…?”
Select words scrawled on the parchment were in very plain English, as though they’d been translated just for me. They hadn’t been there before.
Or had they?
The jumble of ancient language mixed with modern English was hard to muddle through; a series of incomplete sentences graced the page. I struggled to make sense of half-phrases like ‘encompassing power’ and ‘vacuum of magic and evil’ and something about ‘in its grasp’ that had no context. With every page I turned, I was met with more of this ominous, partially-translated mumbo-jumbo, and all it served to do was hurt my head.
Finally, I closed the book and clutched it to my chest. The pattern on the front dug into my skin. The second it made contact, that same anger washed over me—that malicious pull that had drawn me to the basement and the door that bore the same marking.
Before I knew what I was doing, I was out the door and halfway down the hall.
“Going somewhere?” Aidan’s voice was so close behind me that I jumped at the sound. I looked over my shoulder to see his amused expression.
“I’m going back to the door we found,” I said, irritation in my tone.
His hand fell on my arm and pulled me to a stop. “Why?”
“Because whatever is going on there, I think it has to do with us escaping.”
“You think?”
“I feel,” I said.
His eyes fell to the book held tight against my chest, and a hint of black swirled behind the crystal blue. Anger swarmed around him like buzzing bees.
“How did you get that?” he asked, the calm in his voice camouflaging his growing distrust.
“It just showed up in my room.”
“Out of thin air?”
“Pretty much.”
I held my ground as his eyes searched mine. Then a spike of regret cut through the anger and shot into me like ice through my veins.
“You’re not lying.”
“No, I’m not, but thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt,” I said, unable to keep a note of hurt from my tone. “But speaking of lying, do you want to tell me why you didn’t mention that there’s English in here?”
His brow furrowed. “I can’t lie about something if it’s not there to lie about,” he said, taking the book from my hands. He flipped through the pages, his pace growing increasingly frantic. “Impossible,” he mumbled. “It’s changed…the text has all changed.”
If I hadn’t been able to feel his confusion, I never would have believed him. But I could, so I did, and I had no idea where that left us, other than standing in the hall with a magical book, selectively translated.
“I have to go down there, Aidan,” I said softly, taking the book back. “I can’t ignore this.”
His gaze met mine, and I saw the montage of emotions I already felt emanating from him.
“You can’t go alone.” His words were clear and concise, but they lacked the haughtiness they would have once possessed. They weren’t born out of arrogance. They were driven by concern.
I let a mischievous smile tug at my lips. “You offering your services, fairy boy?”
His expression soon matched mine. “You accepting them, little witch?”
I made a big show of looking around the hall. “I don’t seem to have anyone better to do the job, so yes. I accept.”
Without another word, he strode down the hall, leading the way back to the mysterious furnace-like door in the basement.
“So what now?” he asked, staring at the metal door with three tiny vents near the top.
“I’m not sure.” I crouched down closer to it, but this time, the anger didn’t overwh
elm me. There was a restraint that hadn’t been there before, for which I was thankful.
“For the record, I think this is a terrible idea.”
I cut him a sideward glance. “And yet here you are.” His response was an ambivalent shrug. “Well,” I said, reaching the book’s metal inlay outward to press it against the matching indentation on the door, “let’s hope this works.”
“Or that it doesn’t,” Aidan muttered under his breath.
“Chicken.”
Before he could respond, I pushed the book against the door and adjusted it until the pattern clicked into place. The sound of a heavy latch giving way echoed around us, and the door creaked open a crack. It took nearly all my strength to pull it open wider, and I soon found Aidan crouched next to me, helping me swing the door aside to see what lay beyond.
A narrow passage like a dusty culvert angled down and extended into the darkness.
“Light would be good here,” I said, looking back at the corridor we’d taken to see if there was anything we could use to illuminate the space. Disappointment was all I found. Then warmth grew against my thigh, and I reached in my pocket to find the marble I hadn't brought with me, glowing. “You’re a handy little bugger sometimes, you know that?”
Aidan leaned in closer to inspect what must have looked to him like my radiant palm, and his expression soured.
“What?” I asked.
“It likes you a bit too much for my comfort,” he said.
“It’s not exactly sentient, Aidan.”
His lips pressed to a line. “Tell that to the ball.”
I sighed heavily, then turned back to the tunnel and thrust the ball inside. All I found was more dust and darkness far beyond the light’s reach.
“I’m going in,” I said before crawling into the mouth of the passage.
“No,” Aidan said, hauling me back, “I’ll go first.” He reached for the light in my hand and scooped it into his, but the second the ball touched his skin, it went dark. His harsh gaze cut to me as he handed it back. The second it nestled in my palm, it glowed yet again. “It definitely likes you too much.”
“You’re just jealous,” I said before inching into the tight space. “I’ll go in and see where it leads. You can follow me in a sec.” My bravado drove me forward, but the further I crawled, the more hemmed-in I felt. My claustrophobia grew as I progressed into the chute that seemed to stretch on forever.
“Find anything yet, Lara Croft?” The hint of mocking in Aidan’s voice was duly noted.
“I’m not raiding a tomb,” I called back. I thought it was a solid comeback.
I felt the metal passage shudder as Aidan climbed in behind me. Then my nerve-slicked hands slipped on a smooth patch, and I slid face-first through the remainder of the tunnel. It spat me out a few yards later, and I belly-flopped into a cloud of dust and sharp edges.
“Shit!” I yelled, scrambling to find the crystal ball that had gone flying. “I can’t see!”
“What’s going on?” he called after me.
“I slid into a pit of waist-high dirt and dust and pokey things.”
“Pokey things?”
“I’ll let you know when I can see again,” I snarled, running my hands through the dirt toward the muted light buried beneath. “I think I found the ball! Yep…yep…almost got it...”
“I'm coming down—”
“No! Be careful. I might need your help getting out, and that won’t work if you slide into this mess, too.”
“I think I can manage,” he replied as the echo of his approach preceded him.
I cursed under my breath just as my fingers brushed the warm glass surface. “I found it.” My hand emerged from the mess of debris surrounding me and cast a warm glow around me. The space was small—too small—and the dark metal was scorched with charred ash. I once again felt my breathing tighten. “Oh God,” I whispered, taking stock of the tiny, kiln-like enclosure. “Oh God—I've got to get out of here.”
“What’s wrong?” he called over the scuff of him crawling toward me.
“So small…kinda freaking out…”
“So the fearless one is actually afraid of something—”
“Shut up,” I gasped between breaths. Where was my handy-dandy teleportation when I needed it most?
“You need to calm down—”
“Why didn’t I think of that?”
“—I’ll be there in a second—”
“Why do people think telling others to calm down is helpful?”
“You need to focus on something other than the space,” he said, his words barely registering. “A distraction…”
“Like what?” I asked, pressing my back against the cool metal wall. “There’s me, this pile of dirt, and the walls closing in around me.”
“Then focus on the dirt,” he said as his voice grew nearer.
With no other option, I did as he said.
I immediately regretted it.
I plunged my hand into the mound and wrenched the thing poking at my butt away. Smooth and oblong with a jagged edge, I tried to imagine what it could be.
“Almost there,” Aidan said just as I pulled the object in question from the dust. The light of the marble illuminated the bone fragment in my hand, and I began to scream.
“Get me out of here!” I shouted as I scrambled toward the tunnel I’d just traversed. But with every step I took, I seemed to sink further and further into what I now realized was a mass grave of sorts.
I wasn’t in a furnace.
I was in a makeshift incinerator.
While I flailed and fought against the bones and ashes of the dead in a feeble attempt to escape, Aidan finally appeared, wedged in the chute that had spat me out into a pit of remains.
“What’s wrong?”
“Bones—” I managed to squeeze out before a whole new type of panic took over.
A creative slew of curses escaped him before his arm thrust forward to grab me.
“Take my hand,” he said, his voice far calmer than his energy. Seemed I wasn't the only one panicking.
“I’m sinking! I can’t reach it.”
Another string of curses.
Then Aidan closed his eyes, and the tomb went ice-cold around us. When his eyes flew open, they were as black as night. One of his inky tendrils reached toward me and plunged into the ashes of what I assumed were dead Wadsworth students. It wrapped around my waist and jolted me upward. Dust flew around me, creating a cloud of cremains all around us. I choked on the remains of those kids and coughed wildly in between my gags.
By the time Aidan navigated me into the narrow tunnel with him, tears were streaming down my face and my breathing was ineffective. Wedged into the even smaller space, covered in the ashes of the dead, I was totally losing it.
“We need to get out of here,” he said, squeezing me past him. With a not-so-gentle push, he urged me forward, army-crawling toward the metal door. I tried to hurry, but my arms and legs were locked with panic, and my movements were slow and jerky at best.
“They...they bu...burned them,” I stammered as my arm gave out. I fell forward and smashed my chin on the metal, but the pain didn’t even register. Nothing did—nothing but the cold emptiness I felt.
“I know,” was all he said in return.
Then another voice drifted toward us, and we both slammed to a stop.
Not one voice—several.
“If we cannot meet the quota, there will be hell to pay,” a gruff male voice said.
“We need to ascertain what happened first. Did you not feel the break in the binding?” a smoother, silkier male voice asked. “Something has happened. Headmaster Warren’s behavior alone confirms that.”
The click of dress shoes on stone grew nearer and nearer, and part of me hoped I'd hyperventilate soon just to get a break from the anxiety raging in my system.
Then I realized that I could see light at the end of the tunnel, and terror tugged at my spine.
“Aidan,” I whispered
, “the door…”
“I can glamour it,” he said, pushing the back of my leg, “and I can do the same for us so we can get closer.”
My chest seized. “Closer?”
“We need to see who’s coming.” Fuck. He was right. But I still couldn’t make myself move. “It’ll be all right,” he said as he placed his hand on the small of my back. “You can do this. You just have to breathe...and trust me.” I looked back at him over my shoulder. “Nothing here can hurt you,” he said, his voice soft and earnest and full of something else that helped cut through the panic wracking my body.
”You could.”
Ice-blue eyes peered back at me in the dim light of the tunnel. “I could,” he whispered, “but I won’t.”
“Do you think the girl had something to do with it?” a third male asked, jarring me back to the danger before us. “Darren’s girl?”
“It’s possible,” the gruff voice replied. “One way or another, we’ll find out soon.”
Maddy…
Anger began to cut through my paralysis, and I forged ahead on sturdier limbs with Aidan right behind me. When we reached the door, he crammed in next to me, our bodies pressed together awkwardly.
“It could have been the fey boy—Myra’s kid. He’s powerful enough and wired to shirk the rules.”
“But would he know how?” Silky asked. “He doesn’t know all the details of the operation.”
“He knows enough,” McGruff replied. “He’ll be dealt with soon, too.”
An ominous pause dragged out as I peeked out of the opening at the three sets of legs standing perilously close to the illusion Aidan had crafted. One half-step closer and their legs would hit the open door, sending our defense crashing to the ground.
Then one of the men crouched down in front of the illusion and stared right at us. I swallowed back a scream and leaned away from his acne-scarred face and slicked-back hair. Aidan’s arm wrapped around my shoulders and pulled me tighter against him, his lips at my ear.
“Shhhh, little witch,” he whispered. “He can’t see us.”
And I knew that in my mind, but staring down the man coming for my sister—seeing the remorseless killer in the depths of his eyes—was frying my circuits. I wanted to run. I wanted to fight. I wanted to escape at all costs.
Rogue Reformatory: Broken (Supernatural Misfits Academy Book 2) Page 15
