Royals of Villain Academy 7: Grim Witchery

by Eva Chase

  The spells keeping the door locked I could break with a few words. I turned the knob and eased inside.

  Moonlight streamed through the sitting room window. Holden had left it a smidge open—he’d always preferred a cooler temperature than my parents kept the house at—and the drawn curtain whispered in a faint breeze. I crossed the room to the inner doorway and hesitated there.

  I’d never actually gone into his bedroom or the other more private areas of his quarters before. He might not have shown me any obvious resentment, but it felt wrong to march in without invitation or acknowledgement.

  I didn’t have a whole lot of choice, though. I squared my shoulders and walked onward.

  The little hall just off the sitting room led to a bedroom on one side and a bathroom on the other. I paused on the threshold of the bedroom. Holden’s wheelchair stood beside his bed where he must have leveraged himself onto the mattress. His prone form lay sprawled under the covers, his chest rising and falling with a soft rasp that was barely a snore. He looked so fragile like that.

  How did I wake him up without risking him startling and rousing the staff? He might not have a great grasp on his words anymore, but he could certainly yell loudly if he thought he was in danger. And honestly, I didn’t want to put him through any more anguish than he’d already faced because of me, even a tiny bit.

  Maybe if I did it gradually, as if it was simply the morning sun coming up. I waved my glowing orb past me into the bedroom until it hovered over the bed. With a murmured command, it started to brighten, slowly and surely.

  The whole room was filled with a pale but sharpening light when Holden stirred. He turned his head with his arm shielding his eyes to peer at the light.

  “Holden,” I said quickly. “It’s me. Connar.” As if he wouldn’t recognize my voice. I took a step toward his bed. “I’m getting you out of here.”

  “Con?” He peered at me, blinking. His mouth worked with the words he couldn’t quite transmit from his mind to his vocal chords. “W— D— Why?”

  “There’s a lot to explain. The most important part is, Mom and Dad left you like this on purpose. They never had a doctor even try to heal you.” My throat constricted. “It was my fault, so I’m making it right. And I’m not letting them get at either of us again.”

  “Con.” The same syllable, made totally different by his hushed tone. The knitting of his brow told me he was trying to tell me he didn’t blame me. That was all the more reason he didn’t deserve the hobbled state he’d been forced into.

  “I’m taking you with me and then I’m getting you help,” I went on. “They might come after us, but the other scions are on our side. If you’re okay with taking that risk?”

  His jaw flexed, and he stopped bothering with trying to speak. Instead he just nodded in his slightly lopsided way and pushed himself into a sitting position on the bed. With practiced motions, he pulled his limp lower half across the mattress and sank into the wheelchair. His body and face might have thinned during his long isolation, but his arms and shoulders were ropey with lean muscle.

  He was only wearing an undershirt and boxers. “It’s cold out,” I said. “We should get you into some warm clothes, and grab some more for later. I guess you can handle that?”

  He nodded again and flicked his wheels to cruise to the dresser. In a few brisk movements, he’d pulled out a sweater and loose slacks. He tossed a few more outfits onto the bed and motioned to the closet while he pulled on his clothes.

  I found an old suitcase in the closet that would work fine and stuffed the extra clothes in it. By the time I’d finished, Holden was finished dressing and had tossed a couple of records into the suitcase for good measure.

  He careened into the sitting room. When I followed him, he gestured for me to set the suitcase on the floor. He snatched his tablet and some books off the shelves and tossed them in on top of the clothes. After one last quick look around, he sighed. “‘Kay.”

  “Does this fold?” I asked, tapping the wheelchair. I could carry his slender body no problem if I needed to, but I’d rather let him keep his mobility from the start.

  He gave me a thumbs up and glanced apprehensively toward the door. “Par— Mom?”

  “She’s out. They’re both out. But we’ll want to be quiet so we don’t run into any issues with the staff.”

  I cast a spell to muffle the sound of the wheelchair rolling over the hardwood floor. We slipped down the hall, Holden’s expression tensing as he took in the wider world that he hadn’t been allowed to venture into in years. A shiver ran down his back. I wasn’t sure how much of it was emotion and how much his permanently frayed nerves. What could I say to make this moment any easier?

  I was here—I was doing everything I could for him now. Eventually that might feel like enough.

  At the stairs, I hefted him as considerately as I could and carried him down and right out to the car. The fall chill closed tight around us, turning my breath into a puff of condensation, and it occurred to me to think about coats—but why would my parents have gotten Holden a coat that fit him when they hadn’t let him leave the house since he was fourteen? We’d buy him a new one tomorrow.

  I set him in the passenger seat and started the engine for warmth. Holden fumbled with the seatbelt but managed to click it in on his own. He hadn’t needed to do that since his injuries either.

  “Good?” I checked.

  He gave me another thumbs up. I hurried back to get his wheelchair and hefted it to the trunk. With a little fiddling and some magical assistance, I figured out how to collapse the frame so I could tuck it inside.

  I’d just shut the trunk with a whisper of magic to mute that thump too when my phone vibrated in my pocket. I tugged it out.

  Rory had texted me, an urgent rush of words.

  Are you still at the house? Please tell me everything’s okay.

  We’re good, I wrote back. Just about to leave.

  Thank God. We need you.

  There were few words more guaranteed to grip my attention. My stomach flipped over. What’s going on?

  My mother is convinced that Declan called in the joymancers. The only way I can see to stop her from prying until maybe she uncovers the whole thing is to point her toward someone else. We wanted to destabilize the barons’ alliance. Your mother is the one she knows the least. Can you set something up at the house or bring something back that would give the impression she was conspiring?

  Like what? My mind went blank. I was the brute force; I wasn’t the schemer. My attempts at deceiving my mother in the past had proven that pretty well.

  But the other scions were hours away. If we were going to frame Mom for something, I was the only one in a reasonable position to do it.

  Another text popped up as I grappled with the idea. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you something like that. It’s your *mom*. We’ll see what else we can figure out.

  So compassionate even when one of our lives could be on the line. I tapped out my response as quickly as I could. No. If it gets them fighting each other instead of us, I’m all for it. I’m just not sure what to do.

  You’ve got time. She’s in a meeting with the other full barons here at the university now. You know her better than any of us. I know you can do this.

  Her faith rang through every word. I swallowed thickly. I could do something, at the very least.

  I’m on it.

  I spoke a word to hide the car’s lights and another to block the rumble of the engine so no one from the house should notice them. Then I came around to Holden’s seat.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “There’s something else I need to do before we can go—but it should help make sure Mom and Dad stay off our backs for a while. I can leave the car running so you have heat—and music if you want to put on the radio. Are you okay to wait?”

  “Do—” Holden started, and lost his grip on his words as he so often did. His mouth twisted before he finally spat out. “Fine.” He gave me the warmest s
mile he could manage to show he hadn’t meant it as aggressively as it had sounded.

  I headed back into the house, doing my best to focus my whirling thoughts. What could I take from here or arrange that would make it look as if my mother had been consorting with the joymancers—and that she wouldn’t notice in time to cover it up?

  I did know her. I’d been forced to cater to her my entire life. Think, Connar.

  We couldn’t claim she’d gone to visit the joymancers recently, not even in New York. She’d have witnesses who’d be able to account for her real whereabouts. How would she have set up an agreement with them if they couldn’t magically seal it in person? There was no way she’d ever have risked that kind of treason without something to cover her ass…

  Wait. My head jerked toward her home office. Sometimes even with in-person deals, she wanted the terms committed to paper. She had a whole file full of contracts, the paper magically imbued by her to only accept a signature if the signer was acting in good faith. A spell could confirm her magic had acted on it, but if it was a piece without any clear writing on it, it wouldn’t be obvious what the contract had been about.

  It took me several excruciating minutes to break the spells protecting her office door, my heart racing faster as each second passed. I hustled inside and went straight to the filing cabinet.

  There. Dozens of them. I rifled through the recent ones and tugged out an agreement with our current chef. She wasn’t likely to go looking for that any time soon to notice it was missing.

  I folded it and tucked it into my jacket pocket. But that one piece didn’t feel like enough. A single shred of evidence against a baron was pretty much nothing.

  If the other barons investigated my mother, they’d probably come here. Where would they think to look? What did my mother actually have to hide?

  I frowned, thinking back to the accounts the other scions had given me of the gala here, the last time the barons had been in this building. Declan had found it odd that my parents had insisted on getting the new bottle of wine together. That action might have caught the other barons’ attention too. If they went looking for secrets, there was a decent chance they’d search down in the basement.

  As far as I knew, my parents didn’t keep anything traitorous anywhere in the house. But they did have a survival stash concealed in one of the basement walls—my mother had shown us once when Holden and I were little. Supplies in case we needed to carry out a task under the radar or even completely disappear for a little while. There was cash, a few magical artifacts I wasn’t entirely clear on the function of, pills to increase alertness… and a burner phone that wasn’t connected to any of us by name.

  If she’d been conspiring with joymancers, she’d have needed to get in touch with them somehow.

  I dashed down to the basement and swiveled around, dragging up the memory from years ago. Where was the spot? If I reached out with my magic to seek the hum of energy disguising it…

  An illusion of the blank wall hung in place over the door to the safe, so subtle I barely picked up on it. I drew it aside and compelled the dial into the right notches. The door swung open—and there were all the supplies I remembered, thank the Lord.

  I grabbed the phone. I didn’t often use my physicality skills on electronic devices, but now that I had a plan, putting it into action was the easy part. I concentrated on the tickle of the battery, using my magic to charge it until the screen lit up and the bar gleamed full.

  No messages showed up from previous conversations. If anyone had used it before, they’d deleted their history. That was fine. Let whoever found this think Mom had obtained it specifically for this plot.

  I concentrated on the thin strands of energy flowing through the device and murmured to myself as I drew messages into being from a source that showed as a concealed number. With another whisper, I twitched the date of the exchange to yesterday. Just a handful of comments back and forth, nothing over the top, but clearly passing on information about the town and what was happening there, as well as confirmation about the supposed contract.

  When I was done, I slipped the phone back into the safe, locked it, and tugged the illusion back into place. A shaky breath tumbled out of me.

  I’d done it. Let’s hope I’d done enough to keep all the scions’ necks off the chopping block.

  Without a backward glance, I loped up the stairs and out to the car where my brother was waiting.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Rory

  My mother made getting into the evidence room look easy. She peeked around the corner of the low-ceilinged hall, spoke a couple commands under her breath, and the cop who’d been sitting at the desk by the door got up. He stepped out, considerately leaving the door ajar for us, and hurried off to carry out whatever task she’d sent him on. His gaze slid right past us as he went by, not even seeing us.

  “We should have plenty of time,” my mother said, but she didn’t sound relaxed about it. Her voice was fierce and her eyes were lit with a furor that made my skin creep. She stalked down the hall to the evidence room with a sharp clack of her heels on the cement floor.

  I followed her under the humming florescent lights, their yellowish glow matching the faint lemony scent that hung in the cool air. The county’s police department was hardly posh.

  “What exactly are we looking for?” I asked as we stepped inside between the stainless steel shelving units with their crates of envelopes.

  “Anything the dead had on them that could connect them to Mr. Ashgrave. He must have been in communication with them. He might have covered his tracks well, but they won’t have had the same concern.” She glanced at a note on her phone and rattled off a few numbers. “Those are the ones we need to find.”

  “The barons haven’t found anything connecting Declan to the joymancers yet, have they?” I said cautiously as I slipped down the aisle. I needed to find those envelopes first—but I couldn’t look as if I were overly desperate. Not when my mother was already so hyped up on her suspicions.

  “No,” she muttered, browsing the shelves opposite me. “But he clearly didn’t like the changes we were making. The Ashgraves have been far too soft on the feebs as long as I’ve known them. And it’s rather fitting that he’d follow his mother’s footsteps in every possible way.”

  “There’ve been lots of fights between us and the joymancers on our territory, though, right?” I said. “Malcolm told me they come poking around up here trying to interfere with our business all the time. It’s possible no one tipped them off and they just realized on their own that something odd was going on in the town.”

  “Perhaps. I find that doubtful. You’ll get a sense for these things the longer you spend in our community, Persephone. Someone was meddling. Someone benefitted from this. I know Mr. Ashgrave helped you with transitioning into student life some, but you don’t understand all the history there. We can’t take anyone at face value.”

  Well, she was right about that much. I just had to hope she didn’t realize her comment extended even to me.

  “I’d rather not think someone who’s part of the pentacle would sabotage us like that.”

  My mother’s jaw tightened. “He’ll regret it—you can be sure of that. Him and the joymancers he roped in.” A quiver ran through her fingers as she nudged a box that had been turned to the side.

  I picked up my pace, turning down the next aisle. My pulse kicked up a notch as my gaze skimmed over the combinations of letters and numbers printed on the boxes. Come on, come on. Before she found an excuse to let out all that fury on Declan…

  There it was. I had to clamp my mouth shut against a sigh of relief. Tugging out the box I’d spotted, I found the three plump envelopes stuffed next to each other at the front, which made sense considering the three dead joymancers would have been brought in as part of the investigation together and only last night.

  My mother had moved to the far side of the room to check the shelves there. I tucked my hand into my pocket
and grasped the portion of smooth linen paper that Connar and I had doctored early this morning after he’d gotten back to campus.

  Most of the aggressive spells flung back and forth in the fight had involved searing energy, so it seemed reasonable that a paper a joymancer had been carrying might have gotten burnt. We’d conjured a flame on one corner and directed it so it ate away all of the text except a few vague words around a mention of a contract and the beginning of Baron Stormhurst’s signature. Only about a fifth of the original page remained, but it should be enough to point the way.

  As long as I got it into place without setting off more suspicions. I checked to make sure my mother’s back was turned and then flicked open the middle envelope. My heart thudded even faster as I shoved the fragment of paper inside. I closed it with a murmured spell as I lifted all three envelopes out.

  “I found them! They’re all here together.”

  “Well, I suppose the feebs can be efficient on occasion.” My mother strode over. I took the first envelope and set the other two on an empty section of shelf. As I’d intended, she picked up the one on top—the one I’d planted my false evidence in.

  “I guess a phone would be useful,” I said with forced nonchalance, digging into the envelope I’d picked. “Of course, if someone was tipping the joymancers off, we don’t know whether any of the ones who died was a contact person.”

  “Let’s just see what we have here,” the baron said, her attention fixed on her own envelope.

  I glanced around and ended up crouching down on the floor so I could spread out my findings there. My mother stayed by the bare section of shelf, laying out her own envelope’s contents. Mine held a watch, a partly opened roll of breath mints, a wallet with IDs and a few twenties but nothing out of the ordinary, a restaurant receipt from what must have been yesterday’s dinner—