Something for me to strive for next year, since Sebastian only worked with the juniors and seniors at the top of the sentinel class.
Anji, Pilar, and Radha showed up together five minutes later. Pilar stared at all the food, hands on her hips, and laughed. “I can’t believe you kept this a secret.”
“It was tricky,” I admitted. “Thanks, Anji.”
“Hey, we picked out some awesome outfits at the outlet store, so no complaints from me about being your distraction. Pilar is like a master couponer. You should see all the shit we got.”
Pilar’s cheeks turned rosy with pleasure, and I was glad to see the two of them had found some common ground.
Lia dished up heaping plates of food for everyone. We didn’t have enough seating, so a few of our friends ended up on the floor, but no one had any complaints. I stood at the breakfast counter with one eye on my phone while I shoveled in a mouthful of steaming mashed potatoes and ground lamb.
“Hey, Lia, did something spill in the oven?”
“No, why?”
“Huh. Caught a whiff of something burning, but I don’t smell it now. I’ll clean out the bottom later I guess.”
I texted Gabriel again. Hey. Is everything okay? Are you all right?
“I’m sure they’re wrapped up in a video game or something and will show up here starving,” Lia assured me. She set aside two generous, serving-platter-sized portions of dinner and placed a lid over them, going so far as to label both containers with Rodrigo and Gabriel’s names.
“Yeah, maybe.” Anxiety closed a tight fist around my heart. “You guys go ahead and finish up. I’m gonna run over and check on Gabriel. Drag him over.”
While they started up movies and broke out the booze we weren’t supposed to have, I slipped on sneakers and dashed down to the Wyvern Quarters, where a cluster of apartment buildings housed all the students with cash for single and one-bedroom apartments.
I rode the elevator up to Gabriel’s floor and knocked on the door.
Rodrigo answered a few seconds later and let me in. “Hey, Sky. What’s up?”
Stark waved to me from the couch. The noise of a Call of Duty game blasted from the home entertainment system. “Sup, Sky?”
“Uh... hey, guys. Is Gabe in?”
Rodrigo shook his head. “Nah. He went out to play in a pool tourney with Julien and Isaac. What’s up?”
I wrung my hands together and composed my thoughts, hoping not to sound like a clingy girlfriend. “He isn’t answering my texts or calls.”
“Eh, he probably doesn’t hear it. The Roadhouse is usually pretty loud. Why? What’s going on?”
“Look, I know this happened a few months ago with Trisha and it wasn’t really a vision, but something’s wrong. I can’t stop thinking about Gabriel and feeling like he isn’t okay.”
His thick brows slid together. “One of your premonitions?”
“I don’t know. Sorta. I—are you burning something?”
“Ha! Cook? Me? No way. I’m a train wreck in the kitchen, so we ordered takeout. Gabe gets pissed if I go in there and fuck shit up.”
“I swear I smell something burning. I smelled it when I woke up too.”
Instead of brushing aside my worries, Rodrigo drew in a deep breath through his nose. Then he opened the door and did the same thing out in the hall. “Nothing, Sky. Can you describe it?”
“It’s like… Now it smells like burnt hair. I keep getting a whiff of sulfur now too.”
“You think it’s related to your vision?”
“I do, yeah.”
Stark tossed the controller aside and stood. “That sounds like an aura.”
I blinked. “A what?”
“An aura. They sometimes happen with minor premonitions. You taste or smell something that’s occurring in another place in time. You don’t start learning about those until later this year.”
Rodrigo slipped on a gun holster and plucked a big hand cannon from their collection of firearms. “Remember when Trisha was sending you those visions last year?”
“Yeah?”
“A mage can’t fake an aura. They can send you visual cues and auditory hallucinations, but they can’t make you smell. A raven with a powerful mastery over illusions probably could, but they wouldn’t be able to wake you from a dead sleep.” He tossed Stark a short-barreled shotgun. The raven slid it under his jacket and made it disappear like a magician’s trick. I stared.
“You both believe me?”
Stark shrugged. “Why not? If you’re right, we head off a fight. If you’re wrong… we get wasted and have a good time.”
Rodrigo nodded. “Lemme grab my keys. If anything’s going down, we’ll call Sebastian and Simon as per protocol. Cool?”
“Cool.”
We circled the block twice before we passed an empty spot. When Rodrigo started fumbling for money to pay the parking meter, I jinxed it to malfunction and dragged him away. That’d buy us at least an hour before the magic faded.
Stark laughed. “I like how you operate.”
The Roadhouse occupied a gravel lot, a three-story building with blinding neon light signs hanging in almost every window. The clashing, flickering colors gave me a headache.
Rodrigo stopped me. “Hold up a sec. You’re not twenty-one yet, are you?”
“Nope.”
“Glamour your ID then or you aren’t getting past the door.”
“Oh, right.”
A little dose of faerie magic scrambled the numbers on my ID and made me legal. The bouncer shooed us past after scrutinizing it, even giving me a dubious look like he knew I didn’t belong but couldn’t prove it. Inside, the place was less of an eyesore, lights kept dim. Peanut shells littered the scuffed wooden floors, and the smell of old beer hung heavy in the air.
Rodrigo led me across the floor with a hand between my shoulder blades. “Pool tourney is up on the third floor. The whole space is dedicated to it with their own bar.”
We took the stairs to the third floor. There were three pool tables in the center of the spacious room, but only one in use at the moment. A scoreboard said the game was down to the semifinals, and I picked out Isaac’s huge body among the players at the tables.
A crowd of people on barstools and at small tables sipped drinks while observing the competition. I picked out Julien’s white and gold head among spectators closest to the table. Gabriel was next to him.
“Either of you smell anything funny?” Rodrigo asked.
I shook my head. The panic was already fading.
Stark sniffed the air. “Just smells like booze and way too much cologne to me.”
“Yeah.” Rodrigo’s comforting smile eased the hard knot in my chest. “See? He’s right there watching Isaac shoot. Nothing to worry about. I bet he’s got his phone off so he can concentrate when he’s up.”
It made sense. Feeling silly, I forced a smile and nodded toward the bar. “Buy you guys drinks then to make up for this.”
Stark raised a brow. “Not going to say hi to your boyfriend?”
“I don’t want to bother—wait, how—? He isn’t my boyfriend.”
“Yeah, whatever. Can’t nobody tell me you two aren’t boning.”
Heat surged over my face. “Why does everyone assume that? We’re not—”
Rodrigo dropped his heavy arm around my shoulders. “Don’t worry. Stark isn’t a snitch.”
“We aren’t boning.”
The raven smirked. “Are you more worried about that, or that I know you’re together?”
“What? No, it’s not like that. Ugh. How did you even know? Did Gabriel tell you?”
“Technically, he did. Did you not see the dirty look he gave me for touching you at the club meeting? I thought he was going to take my hand off.”
The two guys exchanged looks and silence fell over them before Rodrigo grinned. “Everybody kinda figured it out then, but you’re one of us now, so it’d be like… against the bro code to narc on y’all.”
�
��What about Jada?”
“Nah. If she says anything, people will think she’s just sore for being dumped.”
Stark snickered. “Yeah. On the highway.”
We grabbed seats at the end of the bar, not far from a trio of sailors in their Dress Blues.
“Three Flaming Assholes.” One of the sailors peered across his pals toward me. “Unless the sexy lady wants one too.”
“Oh no,” I said, both hands out to ward off the bartender. “No, but thanks. I’ll watch this round.”
“You sure? Ah… well, still, her drink’s on us.”
Brows notched together, I watched the bartender prepare their drinks in layers then move down the line lighting them aflame. One of the guys drank his through a straw, but the second tossed it back all in one go.
“Damn, that was good.”
“More?” the bartender asked.
“Yeah, fill us up again.” He glanced to the third guy who was staring down at his drink, everything about his expression mirroring how I was feeling when I thought about voluntarily putting flammable liquid near my face.
A cold chill crept down my back, and an electric buzz tingled over my bare arms.
His friend nudged him. “Don’t be a pussy, man. Drink up.”
The sailor raised his shot glass and tilted it toward his mouth. The fiery cocktail went everywhere but where it belonged, coursing down his chin and onto his shirt.
Blue flames glowed against his face and raged across his jumper, growing larger and more intense by the second. He stumbled away from the bar in a panic while beating his cheeks and chin.
“Oh fuck,” Stark breathed. He and Rodrigo froze beside me, staring in wide-eyed horror. I couldn’t look away either.
The sailor’s buddy swung around to help but knocked his own drink over, sending a splash of flaming liquid into the path of the rum streaming into a third glass. Flames raced up the arc of liquid, and then the bottle exploded in the bartender’s hand and showered them all with flaming rum. The guy directly in front of the bartender collapsed to the floor with a large chunk of glass in his throat.
As if that wasn’t enough, the contents of the rum bottle hit the bar and splashed everywhere, including the bartender’s sleeve. He jerked back and shrieked in terror, knocking over a row of shelved bottles behind him and spreading the fire.
A woman screamed somewhere, chairs skidded across the floor, and people rushed over to help as the bar dissolved into chaos.
It had all happened in a span of seconds.
Rodrigo snapped out of it first, lurching off his seat and tearing off his jacket. He tackled the burning man to the floor and smothered the flames. The sailor writhed in agony.
At that moment, more explosions came from behind the bar as their shattered stock booze set other bottles aflame. Stark pulled me off my stool a second before a wall of blue fire flashed down the counter in front of us. I knelt beside the bleeding sailor, but it was already too late for him. He was just making these awful gurgling sounds as he drowned on his own blood.
The second bartender grabbed a small fire extinguisher to try and put out his screaming coworker. After a single burst, something sparked and the canister ruptured.
I screamed, and instinct took the lead. Magic surged from within me, a Prismatic Barrier expanding outward in a shimmering, rainbow globe of defensive magic. It surrounded the three of us, but the two bartenders and the remaining sailor weren’t as fortunate.
Stark glanced at me in respect. “Holy shit, girl. Thanks.”
My heart slammed in my chest. “A save for a save, right?”
People stampeded through thick black smoke, trampling anyone in their paths during their rush for the stairs. The light directly above them flickered then went out, dropping the entire third floor into darkness aside from the raging inferno spreading over the wall beside the bodies behind the bar.
A loud thump and the creak of wood filled my ears. Someone had kicked in the door to the fire escape. Light and clean air flooded inside, fueling the flames and letting out the smoke.
The stairwell became a clusterfuck congested by people who were no longer moving forward. Some of them spilled back inside, shouting about a fire downstairs too.
I glanced up at the inactive sprinkler system and frowned. “Gabriel! Where’s Gabriel?”
Stark shook his head as Rodrigo moved away. “Don’t know. I lost track of him when all the fireworks began.”
Wary of anything else exploding, I dropped down to one knee and shouted at the top of my lungs. “Gabriel!”
“Skylar?” He appeared through the thick smoke and crouched down beside me. “Fuck. I thought I smelled you here. The hell are you doing at a bar?” His gaze darted to Stark.
“Her idea, dude. Rodrigo’s here too. Long story for later. Right now, we need to get everyone out to safety.”
“Already started. Isaac had to bust down the door to the fire escape. Some idiot locked it. We were helping people out, but I heard your voice. There’s something going on downstairs. Julien went to go see—”
Julien stepped out of the Twilight, red-faced and perspiring heavily. The heat must have been awful for him. He coughed into one hand. “There are fires downstairs as well, mon ami. Several of them. Flaming liquor somehow dripped through crevices in the floorboards and carried it down below. This entire building is a death trap. I got out everyone I could on the second floor.”
Gabriel swore. “Sky, how many people can you take through the Twilight?”
“I don’t know. Two? Maybe three.”
“Help Julien.”
“Right.”
I grabbed two women by the hand who were huddled by a cracked window trying to breathe in the clean air. “Come with me.”
“There’s nowhere to—”
“Just trust me.”
Dragging them across the Veil into the Twilight took concentration, but we passed through the curtain and into a world of perpetual dusk. I skipped us through it like a stone skimming water, and we emerged seconds later in the parking lot in the mortal plane again.
Both ladies stared at me in awe, the twinkling glimmer of my wings reflected in their eyes.
“Oh my God, you’re a faerie!”
“You saved us!”
“I can’t believe it.”
I stepped right back into the Twilight and went to rescue another two people. During the third return trip, a small dark shadow darted across my path when I reached the bar. I spun around and tried to follow it with my gaze, but whatever it was moved fast and vanished into the ceiling. A fine shower of sparks rained down from above.
Rather than waste time chasing shadows, I hurried inside and took hold of two more people. By then, the room had filled with choking smoke and the heat seared my skin and lungs. A third person sagged against me. With no other choice, I made the leap and brought all three into the Twilight. We all stumbled out again coughing and gasping.
An ear-splitting noise rent the night air, sending a shiver down my spine. I turned toward the sound of shrieking metal to watch part of the fire escape collapse. The second story rail broke away from the wall, and the entire thing shuddered beneath the load of a half dozen people descending it. Just as an older man leapt from the second-story landing, it started to sway, and then it tore free altogether. The people on it screamed and grabbed on to the fragile pieces of metal still fastened to the bricks.
A loud roar came from inside the building, and the roof collapsed inside the third floor. A bright gout of flames rose skyward, and orange embers kissed the night sky.
“Gabriel!” I screamed up to him.
He and Rodrigo remained trapped in the fire escape door with Hell’s inferno raging behind them.
The remaining rail snapped, and a woman swung out into open air. When she managed to grab hold of the ledge, a few people down below ran over to stand beneath her, only to quickly scatter when a section of stairs tumbled down.
Gabriel crouched down by the door, stretch
ing to reach her. Her fingers touched his, but then her grip on the ledge slipped.
The woman plummeted, screaming the entire way.
Gathering the wind behind me, I swept my wings back and thrust them down with all my power. A surge of wind launched my body forward and up toward the escape, the world around me blurring. I reached the woman and grabbed her by the seat of her jeans, and suddenly, all those hours of pumping iron in the gym finally helped.
Or maybe it was the magical nature of my wings, because instead of crashing to the ground with her, we soared away from the wobbling escape.
Julien emerged from the Twilight at that moment and cast a glamour, transforming the rubble beneath into an inflatable cushion like what stuntmen used for falls.
I landed and set her down as fire engines arrived, sirens screaming into the night.
Glancing up, I saw Gabriel coaxing the remaining survivors clinging to the stairs to jump down to the crash pad. They did it one by one, and then Rodrigo jumped down.
Gabriel and Stark shifted and flew off seconds before the doorframe collapsed. One raven—I couldn’t tell which, thanks to the smoke streaming from the blaze—wobbled and floundered in the air. With what little strength I had left in me, I zipped over to the two birds and caught the injured one against my chest.
He’d been burnt badly, hints of pink, scorched flesh visible beneath what down remained on the left wing. The odor of my premonition filled my nose: smoke, sweat, and scorched feathers.
19
The Endless Walk
By the end of it, there were about three unaccounted for mortals who probably perished in the flames, because their friends kept shouting for them and crying out their names. And there was Isaac. I hadn’t seen it, but Gabriel had given a solemn accounting of what happened in my absence. The floor had caved in and plummeted the big bear down to the first floor, where he’d been caught in the inferno.
Not even a bear shifter could survive that.
A pair of motorcycle sentinels arrived on scene a few minutes after the police sorted us out, one a vampire named Christian I’d only seen around the school once, the other a red-haired werewolf chick who introduced herself as Dani. She took over the investigation, called in backup from the nearest sentinel field office over the radio, and dismissed us after we answered her questions.
The Scary Godmother Page 18
