“Yeah?” Apparently, I wasn’t the only one wide awake.
“Why did my blade kill him? I thought…that it would hurt him, but I honestly didn’t think it would kill him.”
Her bed squeaked as she shifted her weight. “Magical blades can do a lot of things, Wild. And that blade might seem like an ordinary hunting knife to you, but whoever made it had magical skill. And they gave you an extraordinary weapon. But I thought you knew that already?”
Magical skill? But my dad had said he was a null, and that he and mom had made the knife together. Or had he just said that so my mom would bring him with her when she ran away from…well, from the Shadowkiller.
The director had said I shared blood with him...how?
Sleep came eventually in fits and starts, and I tossed and turned. I realized only a couple hours in that I had a solution for my lack of sleep. We were just in the wrong room. “Wally, get up,” I grumbled, grabbing my pillow and leading the way.
She mumbled something under her breath but wasn’t far behind me.
The door on the second floor wasn’t even locked. What a bunch of ding dongs.
At least the four of them woke up when I opened the door. “What are you doing here, Wild?” Orin asked.
“Can’t sleep.” I went straight to the bed Pete was on. “Shift.”
“You could say please,” Pete muttered, but he shifted to his honey badger form. I crawled into the bed, and Wally tucked in behind me. Pete lay on our legs. Orin grumbled and moved to the side of the bed, laid down on the floor and flung an arm up. Wally took his hand. Gregory muttered something about crazy girls, but he slid his mattress onto the floor and scooted it close enough that he could reach us. I took his hand.
“And where do I fit in?” Ethan asked.
“Wherever you like,” I mumbled, already feeling sleep pull itself over me. Ethan grunted and then arranged some pillows at the foot of the bed. He leaned back and reached an arm up and over one of my legs. His hand rested on Pete’s back.
I didn’t see him do it, but I felt it. Now that we were together, I could feel all of them, weirdly enough, kind of in the back of my head. They had been my crew, the misfits no one thought would make it through the culling trials, but we were more than that now. No matter what I was, if Frost was even right about me being a Chameleon.
We were family.
Chapter 21
The next day announcements came on loud and clear, snapping us all out of a deep sleep.
“Director Frost has been removed from the grounds due to unprofessional conduct. Director Rufus will oversee the final advancement ceremony. Please be advised that the ceremony will take place in one hour for those who missed it last night.”
I would have rolled out of bed, but the others had me pinned down. I smiled to myself. “Up and at ’em, boys.” I wiggled my legs, disturbing both Pete and Ethan as I let go of Gregory’s hand and saw Wally let go of Orin. You’d think we would have been uncomfortable sleeping like that all night, but no one had complained.
Not even Ethan.
Wally and I headed back to our room and quickly dressed. So the Sandman was taking the director’s spot? Did that mean he would stay on with the academy?
Rory’s words came back to me.
The Sandman. He’s not what he seems. I can feel it. His position in the school is a cover.
Whatever the Sandman’s game was, it wasn’t over. Whatever plans he had, he was in a prime position to execute them now. Cold washed over me. Did he know I was a Chameleon? Was that why he was on my case? I kept my thoughts to myself, unable to spill the beans, even to my crew. Maybe later.
Maybe never.
Dressed in clean jeans, a dark green T-shirt and my ball cap, I headed out. Or tried to. Wally stopped me. “You don’t have to wear that hat anymore, you know. Everyone knows you’re a girl.”
I touched the brim of the hat. “Yeah, I know.” The thing was, they might know I was a girl, but they’d given me wide berth as a boy. And maybe I wanted that respect. I didn’t want to have to go through earning it all over again because suddenly people realized I had boobs instead of balls.
We hurried down to the front hall and into the ballroom I’d rushed out of the night before. In the center of the room a cauldron rose out of a trap door, flames curling up around the black bulbous pot. Steam swirled up from the surface, flickers of light dancing through it.
Wally nodded. “You weren’t the only student who didn’t get to toss their tokens into the cauldron.”
“Crap, I lost my tokens!” I put my hands to my pockets as if I’d find them there.
She smiled and held up a little bag. “My mom sent me with an extra set, in case I lost mine.”
A sigh of relief slid out of me. Ethan was ahead of us, along with Gregory, Colt, Mason, Ethel, and Lisa. Pete and Orin hurried to our side. Okay, Pete hurried, Orin glided.
“I’m kinda glad I missed it,” Pete said. “It’s better this way, just us.”
“Not quite.” I tipped my chin at the kids who’d been missing. They lined up first and I watched, excited to see how this played out. That is until the Sandman strode across the ballroom floor. His eyes were hidden behind his aviators, but I saw the bruise on the side of his face. He’d not escaped the fight unscathed.
“Line up, throw your tokens in, and when you’re called to your house, get your ass in gear. The buses are waiting.”
“Such pretty words,” I said, just loud enough for my crew to hear. Pete snickered and even Orin’s mouth tipped up.
Lisa was the first, and when she threw her tokens in they bubbled and hissed and one was thrown back out of the cauldron, spinning in the air, catching the light. She reached up and snagged it. “House of Claw.” She clutched it to her chest and hurried away.
Mason went next. Then Heath. Then the other kids who’d been taken and not noticed. Two of them threw their tokens in and got nothing back.
“Nulls.” Sideburns said. “Wait outside my office.”
Those two, a boy and a girl, left with their eyes low and their shoulders hunched. Just watching them, I wasn’t surprised they were nulls. This place had eaten them up and spit them out.
Colt was next. He threw his tokens in and the cauldron shook and hissed harder than before, the steam turning from a clear mist to a red burst of magic and sparkles.
I grabbed Wally’s arm. “He won’t be a null, will he?”
She shook her head I think, but I only caught it from my peripheral as I stared hard at Colt.
Sideburns gave a slow smile. That could not be good.
The cauldron spit out not one, but two tokens. Colt caught them both. “House of Wonder and House of Shade.”
Sideburns tipped his head at him. “Your choice where you train. But you can only train one.”
Colt stared at them and slowly left the ballroom, but not before he shot a look at me. I couldn’t decipher what was in his eyes. He couldn’t be confused about what to choose, he was obviously a mage.
Ethan was up next and got—surprise!—House of Wonder.
Gregory, House of Unmentionables.
Orin, House of Night.
Pete, House of Claw.
Wally, House of Night.
My friends waited to the side of the cauldron for me. I stepped up to the black pot and stared into it.
“Wait.” Sideburns put his hand out, stopping me. “Everyone else, leave.”
“What? Why? Are you going to try and kill me again?” I took a few steps back, my hands going for my weapons.
Even underneath those aviator glasses, I could feel him glaring at me. “Not yet, I’m not.”
“That’s a threat!” Pete yelled.
It was, but something passed between Sideburns and me that I couldn’t quite explain. He was trying to protect me.
Because what if I had more than one token come out? What if Director Frost had been right about me and I was a chameleon? What kind of danger would that put me and my friends in. I swallowed hard and gav
e him a small nod. “It’s fine, I’ll be out in a minute.”
The others were reluctant but did as I asked. Ethan was the one who stopped at the doorway. “Just shout, we’ll be right here.”
“Don’t start being a nice guy now,” I said. “I just got used to you being a douche.”
He grinned and closed the door, and I turned back to the cauldron. “You think I’m going to be like her. Like Frost.”
“I do. And the fewer people who know that the better.” Sideburns made a motion to the cauldron. I lifted my hand over it, tokens in my palm.
“Why even make me do it then?”
“Because we could all be wrong about you. You could just be a talented human, a null like your father. Which would be worse?” he asked.
“Null,” I answered without hesitation and dropped my tokens into the cauldron.
They hit the tumbling, boiling water with tiny little plops. The water hissed and bubbled, turning a distinct shade of gray that slid into silver, then to red, not unlike Colt’s.
I held my breath as the cauldron shook, rattling on its bed so hard I thought it would tip over.
I didn’t dare take a step back. The steam rose, smelling of apples and lilac bushes, and then five tokens shot back out and into the air. I caught them as they fell, snagging them like a juggler.
Or like a Shade.
“House of Shade,” Sideburns said. “That is where you will train.”
“Under you?”
“God no.” He grunted. “I am no trainer. But I will be watching you. If you look even for an instant that you are going down the path of the other Chameleons, you’ll be dead faster than you can blink.”
I clutched the tokens in my hands. “Eloquent as always.” I turned my back on him, something I wouldn’t have done even a week ago and headed out to where the others waited. I tucked the tokens into my pockets, all except one. I held it up. “House of Shade!”
They grinned along with me and I let them think I was happy, excited, and not a little bit freaked out.
A host of buses were lined up at five intervals, ready to take us to the academy. Each of the houses had a retinue, and most had two flag bearers holding up a banner. They were decked out in colors and designs matching the house they represented. The House of Wonder was a trio of triangles, the lines interlocked, made out of silver and gold of course.
House of Night’s banner was a deep blue, a pair of back to back ravens holding a bone between them.
The House of Claw was a giant multi-branched tree and each branch was covered with animals in a forest scene, from wolves to squirrels to the alicorns, and even… “Pete, there’s a honey badger on that banner!”
He grinned and high fived me. “Hot damn, cats on fire, there is!”
The House of Unmentionables had a simple sign, the unfinished figure eight, the ends of it curling in on itself. Two gargoyles waited at the front of that bus.
And then there was the House of Shade. Black on black, the banner seemed to be one color, but within it was the Web of Wyrd, just like the patch on the Sandman’s jacket. The more you looked at the banner, the more things you saw in the darkness. Figures. Weapons. A man on his knees. I gasped and started shaking. It was Jared in the banner. I was sure of it.
We started forward and then suddenly we were walking apart from one another. I wanted to tell them to stop, that we couldn’t separate. But that wasn’t how this worked.
Wally waved at me, but she was sad. Pete wasn’t much better. Orin stared straight ahead, and Gregory kept shooting glances my way.
Ethan didn’t look at any of us. Of course not, he was done with us now that we’d finished the trials.
That hurt more than I’d thought it would.
I stopped walking and spoke without looking at them. “We’re still a crew. No matter how far we go.”
I felt more than saw each of them straighten.
“Damn right,” Pete said. “To the end.”
“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Again,” Ethan said, and I laughed.
“Yeah, let’s not do that again.”
We all stepped out at the same time to our individual houses.
At the banner of the House of Shade, I waited. There was a good cluster around us, and damned if everyone wasn’t shooting me fervent glances. No one spoke, though. I noticed some of the girls from the Shade challenge, those who’d baited the group of dumb boys to follow them. I nodded at one of them. She nodded back, an eyebrow arched.
“I will be your chaperone to get you to your new home, the campus of the House of Shade.” Rory’s voice cut through all the other noise as he stepped out of the passenger side of the nearest bus. “If you have any questions, I will be the one to answer them.”
My mouth got ahead of my filter. “How do you punish someone when they’ve wronged you in the House of Shade?”
Rory didn’t miss a beat. “You challenge them to a sparring match.”
I nodded. “I challenge you to a sparring match, Rory. You need an ass kicking.”
The other kids pulled away from me. But I wasn’t afraid, not of Rory.
He grinned at me, and a piece of the hurt I’d been carrying slid away from my heart. History was a strange thing. It made you forgive when you otherwise might not.
I sure hoped it would help him forgive the ass whooping I would be giving him.
I sure hoped I could fit into this new world. Maybe I would find out what it meant to be a Chameleon.
I crossed my arms. “And you need to tell me how you survived zombies.”
“Only if you win.” His grin widened, and I found myself grinning back.
He stepped back from the bus and waved a hand toward the many behind it.
“Welcome to the House of Shade.”
Let the games begin.
The End.
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Shannon Mayer is a lot of things, and most of these are true. She’s an author, mom, rider of horses, farm girl, heathen, softie, badass, Canadian. Juxtaposition incarnate.
She is the USA Today Bestselling author of the The Rylee Adamson Novels, The Elemental Series, The Nevermore Trilogy, A Celtic Legacy series, and the Venom Trilogy. Please visit her website for more information on her novels.
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K.F. Breene is a Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, and Amazon Charts Bestselling author of paranormal romance, urban fantasy and fantasy novels. With over two million books sold, when she isn’t penning stories about magic and what goes bump in the night, she’s sipping wine and planning shenanigans. She lives in Northern California with her husband, two children and out of work treadmill.
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