by Eva Chase
“You could get Mischief in on the fun,” I pointed out. Whenever Jude’s ferret familiar startled anyone, that energy would pass on to him.
“Oh, she had a nice little romp last night,” Jude said with a wink. “I think she was almost as happy about it as I was.”
Thunder rumbled faintly in the distance, but the clouds overhead held onto any rain they meant to spill. Jude spotted a couple of juniors coming out of Killbrook Hall and intoned a word under his breath that made the grass in front of them ripple with the impression of dozens of tiny snakes. From the one girl’s squeal and Jude’s chuckle, he’d gotten a good rush from that.
He waved the illusion away a moment later and called out, “Sorry! Just testing some things out.” The juniors gave him a skeptical look, but then they laughed and continued on along the path.
I shook my head in amusement. “Does it feel very different from the way you’d have drawn on your magic before?”
“It’s a little more distant,” Jude said. “Like I’m pulling it up from farther away. I can’t work the spells quite as fast as I used to. But once I’ve got the magic, I haven’t noticed any change in what I can do with it. As long as I stay topped up, I think I’ll be able to pull off just about anything I could have before—I’ll just need to make sure I’m refilling the well a lot more regularly than I used to need to. No marathons unless they’re fright-fests too.”
He didn’t look all that bothered by the limitations—unsurprising given how much more limited he’d been before he’d gotten this accommodation.
As he scanned the area for a fresh target, footsteps whispered over the grass behind us. The one dormmate I didn’t know all that well who’d stayed on campus instead of taking off with Ms. Grimsworth’s announcement—a quiet, sallow girl named Torrin—came over to me with an intense expression.
“Rory?” she said hesitantly, as if she wasn’t sure whether she’d offend me by presuming to use my first name.
My instincts immediately went on the alert. “Is something wrong?”
“I’m… not sure.” She looked at the grass and then at me again. “I thought I should tell you just in case. Last night, Pauline—you know, who was in our dorm before—she texted me asking about the Nary girl who left. Shelby? The one you hung out with sometimes. Pauline couldn’t remember her name.”
I frowned. I wasn’t completely sure which of our four absent roommates Pauline was, but the girls who’d left hadn’t been at all friendly to the Nary students. Three of them had started tormenting Morgan the second she’d moved in. “Did she say why she was asking?”
“She said Baron Bloodstone had been asking about it. I don’t think she realized I’d mention it to you—I didn’t tell her I’m still here and not at home.”
Why would my mother care about a Nary student who hadn’t been at the school for weeks now? Uneasiness coiled around my gut. I managed to offer Torrin a smile. “Thank you for telling me. I really appreciate it. If Pauline contacts you again, let me know.”
She nodded and scurried back into the building. I guessed she’d been the sort of fly-under-the-radar, not-making-waves type, acting as if she agreed with whoever was nearby, so Pauline had assumed she was an ally. Maybe she hadn’t even totally sided with us yet, but at least she’d cared enough to reach out with this information.
I dug my phone out of my purse. Jude watched me, his joy fading. “Do you think Shelby is in trouble?”
He had a personal stake in my friend’s well-being too. After one of his more elaborate pranks had accidentally resulted in Shelby breaking her wrist, he’d taken a huge chance to arrange for her to get magical medical treatment so she could return to school.
“Hopefully not. But I can’t imagine my mother wanted to know about her so she could send her a gift basket.” I worried at my lip with my teeth as I brought up Shelby’s number. I’d arranged for her to get the job with the orchestra because I’d thought she’d be safer that way, back when the fearmancer students had first been given the go-ahead to torment the Naries. Now, knowing she was two hours distant and well beyond any protections our wards could offer made my skin itch with nerves.
Shelby picked up after the second ring. “Hey,” she said, sounding a little breathless but not disturbed. “What’s up? I don’t have much time to talk—we’ve got an afternoon performance in half an hour.”
“I just—” How could I even explain the reason for this call? Her memory had been wiped of anything to do with magic—as far as she knew, Blood U was a perfectly normal if elitist school. Well, maybe it didn’t matter if I sounded weird. “I had a bad feeling. It might be nothing. You haven’t noticed anything strange today?”
“No, it’s been a pretty good day so far, really. Are you all right, Rory?”
Her concern for me when she was the one so much more vulnerable brought a lump into my throat. I didn’t hear any other sign of distress in her tone. “I’m good, other than a little paranoid, apparently,” I said. “I hope your performance goes well! And just… be careful and keep an eye out just in case, okay?”
“I can do that.”
Her reassurance barely dulled my apprehension. I shifted on my feet as I tucked my phone away, a helpless sensation prickling over me.
I wasn’t helpless, though. I had to at least take a look around and make sure she was safe.
“She hasn’t seen any reason to be worried yet,” I said to Jude. “But she wouldn’t know what to look for. I’m going to drive out there and check for any signs of magic use nearby, and then put down some protections around the concert hall and her apartment. I can’t just leave her hanging.”
I turned to head toward the garage the moment I’d finished speaking. The sooner I went out there, the sooner I could make sure Shelby really was safe—and stayed that way.
Jude fell into stride beside me. “Should I call the cavalry?”
As much as I’d have liked to tackle this with all of the scions by my side, or even a few of the blacksuits, I couldn’t be that selfish. “I think the campus will survive without me here for a few hours, but we don’t know when the barons might launch another attack. I can’t risk taking people with me, especially when there’s a good chance it’s nothing.”
“You’re taking at least one person,” he said. “You can forget it if you think you’re ditching me.”
When I shot him a stern look, he held up his hands. “Hey, I didn’t contribute much of anything during the last attack, so it’s not like I’d be all that missed. And you shouldn’t go out there completely alone. It’s probably nothing—great. Doing some detection and warding spells will be a good warm-up for when I really need to put this to use.” He tapped his conducting piece.
I couldn’t argue with that—and I didn’t really want to. “All right,” I said, reaching for my keys. “Can you let the other guys know where we’re going and that we’ll reach out again if we need backup after all?”
Jude tapped away at his phone as we hustled into the garage. I jumped into my Lexus and started the engine the second I’d clicked my seatbelt into place. Jude lowered his phone with a dry chuckle. “They don’t sound all that happy about it, but Declan says he understands your reasoning even if he’d rather you had more protection. And he makes a good point—are you sure this isn’t some kind of trap to lure you off campus?”
I paused, turning the question over in my mind. “I guess I can’t be totally sure, but it doesn’t sound as if my mother meant for me to find out that she was poking around. If the point was to draw me out, she’d have made a lot more sure I’d get the message and made the message a lot more threatening. But why don’t you start that warming up right away by scanning for magical activity around the road while we’re leaving?”
“Aye aye, captain.”
He spoke his casting words quietly as I headed toward town. I focused my own attention intently on the forest around us and then the buildings up ahead. No enemies leapt to confront us. We turned onto the main street and the
n onto the highway without any interference.
“Looks like we’re home free,” Jude said, but his expression had turned grimmer. The fact that this wasn’t a trick made it more likely that Shelby really was in danger.
I drove well over the speed limit, faster than I’d ever have dared go when Jude had first been teaching me to drive, with an occasional murmured spell to distract the attention of anyone who might have taken an issue with that minor crime. Jude peered out the window, making cheeky remarks about the drivers we passed and occasionally casting an illusion toward people in their front yards to rebuild his supply of magic.
We’d been on the road about an hour, with still at least thirty minutes left before we’d reach Shelby’s new home, when my phone chimed in my purse with an incoming text.
“Can you check that?” I said to Jude.
He fished it out and clicked the screen awake. His face stiffened so abruptly that my pulse stuttered. “What?”
“It’s from your mother,” he said slowly. “She says… ‘When you tie yourself to the weak, you make yourself weak too. Destroy things other people care about, and you’ll be paid back in kind.’”
“Shit.” Panic flashed through me, sharp and dizzying. That didn’t sound like a trick or a warning. It sounded just vague enough that she’d hope it’d unnerve me and then I’d understand later what she’d meant. Because she didn’t expect me to have any idea just yet. She wouldn’t have wanted to risk me figuring out what she was up to in time to stop it. Whatever she was going to do, it was happening soon.
“Tell the blacksuits on campus that there’s likely to be an attack out here any minute now. If they can spare anyone—”
But what were the chances any of them could get here in time? I wasn’t sure even we could reach Shelby before my mother rained down the destruction she’d planned.
Jude had already made the call even though he must have realized it was pretty much hopeless too. He relayed what we knew as I pushed the gas pedal even harder. The roar of the engine and the whir of the tires speeding over the asphalt made my heart thump harder.
Please, let us not be too late. Hell, please let me be wrong about this whole thing.
“A few of them are coming out as quickly as they can,” Jude said when he’d hung up. He swiped his hand across his mouth, his face gone even paler than usual. “You said Shelby has a performance, didn’t you? They wouldn’t attack her in front of an entire audience.”
“They wouldn’t have before now,” I said. But after all the stunts the barons had already pulled and how free they wanted to be with their magic, I wasn’t willing to count on their caution.
My hands gripped the steering wheel tighter as we passed the city’s welcome sign. I forced myself to slow down, not trusting myself to keep up the same pace amid city traffic and pedestrians. As I wove through the streets toward the concert hall, I watched for any hint of disaster.
We were just a few blocks away when a billow of smoke rushed up into the air over the rooftops ahead of us.
My stomach knotted. I shot straight through a red light, ignoring the honks of the cars that had slammed on their brakes. People ran past us in the opposite direction.
The concert hall was on fire. Its roof had already partly collapsed to release that torrent of smoke. Flames flickered in the windows of the lobby where Malcolm and I had met with the director just weeks ago.
I threw the car into park in the first empty spot and threw myself toward the building with Jude at my heels. With a few quick words, I shielded myself from the worst of the heat and smoke—and cast a similar spell back toward him so he wouldn’t have to use up his own smaller store of magic just to follow me. We dashed into the burning building.
Only a few bodies lay in the lobby, their heads blasted open or burnt to a crisp by more than just regular flames. Shouts carried from the auditorium beyond. I ran for the inner doors, wincing at the heat that penetrated my bubble of cooled air.
The performance must have recently finished. When I burst past the auditorium doors, the seats were mostly empty, only a few figures scattered among them—slumped and lifeless.
But the orchestra hadn’t left when the attack began. Bodies lay strewn across the stage amid their blood-splattered instruments. A few still had life in them, crawling farther back on the stage to seek shelter, and a handful of others were scrambling along the walls, dodging flames as they searched for an escape route.
Four figures in blacksuit uniforms stalked along the aisles. With barked casting words, they smashed the survivors off their feet one by one, leaving more blood and the smell of singed flesh in their wake. My heart wrenched as a man toppled with a crunch of his skull just ten feet away from me.
In the time it took me to catch all that in a glance, the blacksuits jerked toward us. I grasped Jude’s arm as we ducked down behind the nearest row of seats. The smoke seeped through my shield and seared my throat.
“There’s no way we can put out a fire this big,” I said hoarsely.
Jude nodded, his expression queasy. “Did you see Shelby?”
I hadn’t spotted her mouse-brown hair among the sprawled bodies, but between the blood and the cinders it was hard to be sure. “We have to try to get anyone we can out of here.”
He nodded and then stiffened. “We’ve got company.”
Footsteps were rasping across the singed carpet to our left. We scuttled to the right, swinging around to the far aisle just as another man crumpled with one of the blacksuits’ spells.
In just the short time we’d been here, the mages had taken down all of the people attempting to flee on this side of the room. But a few others were crouched low like us beside the rows. I caught sight of Shelby’s face behind another girl, and my hopes leapt.
Now we just had to get them out of here.
Jude peeked over the top of the nearest seat and spat out a quick casting word that shoved a blacksuit who’d been closing in on us across the room. I sent a punch of magical force to fling aside another. The flames licked closer, slashing across Jude’s shoulder. A pained hiss escaped him, but he motioned for me to move toward the huddled forms ahead. We murmured together, thickening our defenses, although scorching ribbons of heat still managed to dart across my skin.
At a shout from across the room, one of the boxed seating areas overhead cracked. The railing and a significant portion of flooring careened down, ready to crush us.
There wasn’t much room left for stealth. I sprang forward, hurling every casting word I could think of to deflect the falling debris from both us and the survivors. Jude’s voice rang out too.
Magic tore from my chest, but my effort wasn’t quite enough. The chunks of metal and plaster whipped to the side and crashed over the guy at the back of the huddle.
My gut lurched, but I kept barreling forward. I grabbed Shelby by the shoulder and Jude clutched the wrist of the other girl. We tugged them with us back toward the main doors.
Shelby stared at me, but as startled as she must have been by the horror around us and my arrival, she kept her mouth shut. She could obviously realize questions could wait until we got out of here alive.
If we got out of here alive. As we bolted from the last row of seats toward the flame-edged doorway, the blacksuits flung a barrage of spells at us.
The first few cracked through our shields. The last raked across my leg like a dozen white-hot knives. I stumbled and fell to my knees, barely managing to push Shelby on toward the doorway.
Another vicious spell slammed into the chest of the girl Jude had been helping, punching in her ribs with a burst of blood.
Jude reached for me, his hand trembling, casting words sputtering from his lips as quickly as he could speak them. He managed to get another shield up in time to fend off the next assault. I snapped a word to numb my leg enough to dull the agony and staggered with him through the doorway.
Shelby was waiting for us in a small patch of clear floor outside, sweat trickling down her face and fi
relight wavering over her stiffened form. We swept her up in our escape, half running, half limping toward the outer doors. I forced casting word after casting word from my smoke-stung throat to keep off the worst of the heat and the spells thrown after us.
A fire engine was just wailing into view several blocks down the road when we tumbled out onto the sidewalk. I propelled myself on toward my car, my teeth clenched against the pain breaking through my numbing spell.
Jude got there first. He unlocked the doors with a hasty spell and leapt in to start the engine the same way. As I urged Shelby into the back seat, two of the blacksuits charged out of the burning concert hall. I jerked my hand up with a gasped casting word just in time to smack back the worst of their renewed attack.
The second I dropped into the car, yanking the door shut with me, Jude hit the gas. We roared away from the scene of my mother’s crime with the sound of our ragged breaths filling the air—one life saved, so many I could hardly bear to think about it cut down and left behind.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Rory
Several minutes into the drive, Shelby finally broke out of her shell-shocked state enough to speak. Her voice came out scratchy. “I don’t understand—who were those people? Why would they have— What the heck were they even doing?”
They’d been acting out my mother’s revenge on me—for caring about the Naries more than I was willing to stand beside her, for arguing on their behalf. For a second, my nausea overwhelmed the pain creeping up my leg from my wound.
“They’re assholes,” Jude said before I had to figure out my answer. “That’s all you need to know. Fucking psychotic assholes.” A tremor ran through the words despite the acid he put into them.
