by Elena Lawson
“We had to make sure you were right about him,” Cal explained. “That he could be trusted.”
“And?” Draven asked, clearly annoyed by the whole situation. “Are you satisfied now that I’m stuck here until sundown?”
Adrian shrugged at the vampire. “Not our problem.”
“It will be if I don’t feed,” he said, and I saw his jaw twitch. “I haven’t in two days. It’s too long, the risk of losing control will be too high if I need to wait another fourteen hours for the sun to fully set.”
Cal cringed at the suggestion. “And where the hell do you expect us to get that—”
“Hold up,” I said, suddenly remembering why I came here in the first place. It wasn’t to argue with a vampire about his next meal, and it certainly wasn’t to check and see that Cal and Adrian had done their due diligence in making sure I was keeping safe company—though I had to admit I appreciated knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that Draven wasn’t to blame. But, no, that wasn’t why I was here.
“I don’t give a shit what you two have been doing this morning. What I want to know is what made you think you had the right to do this—” I slapped the invitation down on the table.
Adrian crossed his arms, and Cal suddenly felt the need to count the beams in the ceiling.
Really?
Draven, as the only man in the room who wasn’t a direct target of my scorn, walked over to the table with a swagger only he could accomplish and lifted the little rectangle of paper from the wood. “Why wasn’t I invited?” he asked, his voice dripping sarcasm as he lifted a brow at my familiars. “I feel horribly left out. Everyone knows it isn’t a party unless there’s at least one vampire.”
His joking only managed to make me more obscenely pissed off.
“It doesn’t matter that you weren’t invited,” I told him, turning my attention back to Cal and Adrian with a pointed scowl. “Because it won’t be happening. Undo this,” I ordered them. “Undo it right now. Cancel the whole thing. I don’t want a party.”
“We can’t.”
“You can and you will,” I snapped back at Adrian.
“Why do you always have to be so stubborn?”
“Why do you always have to piss me off?”
His ochre gaze heated, and I saw in the tension around his mouth that he was holding back another scathing retort.
“It’s not just for you,” Cal said, butting in. “We had an idea.”
A horrible one, obviously.
I stood with my hands firmly planted on my hips, waiting.
“Look, there’s a reason why it’s Bianca’s mind that’s being tampered with,” Cal said, an apology in his eyes. “At first, we thought maybe it had something to do with Sterling. That whoever was messing with her memory was trying to get information she might’ve had.”
“But Sterling wouldn’t have told her about any of that.”
“We figured that,” Adrian said. “So, then we tried to think of other reasons someone might try to get information from Bianca and could come up with only one…”
The two of them paused, staring at me as though I should’ve been able to finish the thought for them, but I wasn’t catching on.
“Harper,” Draven said, stepping in closer, and I realized they’d already explained this idea to him, too. “Who at the academy is trying to figure out who had the Vocari and Enduran’s captive? Who was discovered to be Alistair Hawkins’ daughter and had access to his estate? Including it’s contents… like a journal full of code and spells?”
I stopped breathing.
“You think…” I started, unable to finish the thought. It was too painful. I didn’t want it to be true, but even I had to admit it made so much sense. “You think whoever is doing this to Bianca is doing it to keep tabs on me? To find out what I know?”
They nodded all together.
Adrian shrugged, gloomy. “Otherwise, why her? She’s your roommate, and she’s often alone studying from what you’ve said…”
My skin crawled, and I shuddered at the icky feeling raising the hairs on my arms and legs. This wasn’t fair. If someone was really messing with Bianca’s head—using dangerous memory magic on her because of me… I’d never forgive myself for that. And the person responsible for something so heinous would pay dearly for trespassing where they didn’t belong.
No one touched my friends.
But there was something I still didn’t understand. “Why this stupid ball?”
“There’s only one way to test the theory,” Cal said, lifting my hand from my side to hold between his two larger ones. The heat made me shiver, but my stomach dropped at the look in his eyes. I wasn’t going to like what he was about to say, was I?
“We bait the hook,” Adrian said, stoic. “We feed Bianca information that may interest this person and set her loose. You tell her you think you’ve figured out what was happening in Elk Falls—maybe that you’ve discovered something in your father’s study? But most importantly, that you’re going to be meeting someone who’ll tell you if you’re right.”
“And you’re going to say they’re meeting you at the party.”
“Why?” I asked, so completely uncomfortable with this plan. I couldn’t use Bianca as bait, could I? I hadn’t left her alone unless it was with Marcus for the last couple days, and the thought of leaving her side—of sending her into the clutches of whoever was tampering with her head made me physically ill.
“You aren’t exactly popular,” Cal said with a pained expression. “But that works to our advantage here. I doubt all that many people will show up, but if whoever is doing this to Bianca—”
“And to those other girls,” I added, still convinced whoever it was hard to be the same person. There couldn’t be two monsters right under our noses, right?
“Maybe,” Adrian allowed. “But the point is, anyone who shows up will be a suspect. We can narrow it down a lot by baiting whoever is responsible to come.”
They had a good point. We were getting no where otherwise. And narrowing it down was a good place to start. As much as I hated to admit it. “Fine,” I said, my jaw tight, sighing. “I’ll do it. But there’s something else we need to figure out, too.”
“What—”
A knock came at the door, and we all froze. Draven vanished into bathroom in a blur of dark hair and pale skin. Cal mouthed, who would that be?
I shrugged, going to the door. I wasn’t exactly supposed to be here, but I’d take the tongue lashing if it happened to be a teacher come to escort me back to class.
But when I opened the door, my heart in my throat, thinking it was probably Granger, or maybe the Arcane Authorities come to interrogate my familiars some more, I was surprised to find neither. Elias stood in the doorway, an ivory envelope in his hand with a broken red was seal. “Thought I’d find you here,” he said, and walked past me, inviting himself inside.
“Want to explain why you didn’t tell me your birthday is in five days?”
“You invited Elias?” I asked Cal and Adrian, ignoring Elias altogether.
“Were they not supposed to?” Elias asked, hurt crossing his eyes.
Adrian poured himself a cup of coffee, and filled another three for Cal, Elias, and I. Draven was back from hiding out in the bathroom, and Elias jolted at the sight of him in the shed.
“What’s going on here?” Elias asked no one in particular, turning down the mug of piping hot coffee Adrian was trying to hand him.
Cal took the coffee instead and downed a large gulp. He turned to me. “We don’t know if it’s a teacher or a student—”
“Could still be a vampire, too, just because it’s not Draven—”
“Shut up,” Cal interrupted Adrian. “Would you quit interrupting me,” he sighed. “Like I was saying. We don’t know who it is, which means for this plan to work we had to invite everyone. Besides, we figured you’d want your boyfriend there for your birthday since we’re forcing you to throw yourself a party.”
Elias stiff
ened at Cal’s words, and his gaze shot to me, his eyes wide. “You told them?”
Ugh.
“It wasn’t hard to guess,” Adrian said.
“And you should really refrain from making out in her room,” Draven added. “Never know who might be watching through the window…” he lifted the one extra mug of coffee even though he was never offered one and took a sip, grimacing. “This coffee is shit.”
“No one asked you,” Adrian said and sat down. I slumped into the chair next to him, and Elias fell into the chair next to me, lost in his own mind.
I hoped he wasn’t too upset that they’d figured it out.
It wouldn’t be all that difficult for anyone to figure out if they were looking hard enough. Hell, even Professor Donovan probably had his suspicions. Which was why it was so reckless for us to carry on like this…
After a few minutes spent in an awkward silence, the four men all staring at each other, sizing one another up, considering where their places were, I felt ready to crawl out of my skin and flee.
It was painful.
Halfway into my coffee, it was Elias who finally broke awkward tension. “Well, would somebody mind sharing this supposed plan with me?” he said, and then jerked his head in the direction of Draven. “And what the hell he’s doing here in daylight? Or, you know, at all?”
Draven grinned mischievously at Elias, his fangs slipping from his gums. “Hasn’t Harper told you. I’m her own personal vampire liaison,” he said with a wink in my direction that made me blush.
I was in so so much trouble.
20
We didn’t have much time after we finished filling Elias in on everything he’d missed. There were only about forty minutes until classes started for the day, and they wanted me to plant the information, i.e. lie to Bianca before we left for class, and then tell Marcus to back off.
For the plan to work, I’d have to lie to him, too. Tell him I was watching Bianca when really, I wasn’t. We had to give whoever was doing this the opportunity to hear the false information or the entire plan would crumble.
Adrian was in the shower, and Cal was having his third coffee of the morning outside to keep watch in case anyone else happened to join the accidental pow wow we seemed to be having around my familiars’ table. I wasn’t sure how it would look if anyone found two Enduran shifters, a vampire, and a student and teacher all in the same room…
There was a joke there, but I couldn’t figure out the punchline.
Elias had my father’s journal with him and was showing me something within its pages that he’d decoded, Draven and I looking over his shoulders to see what he’d found.
“You see,” Elias said, pointing out the section in the journal and the piece of parchment he’d used to note the decoded version. “This section here refers to a jeweled box and dagger. It says they are essential for the spell, but it doesn’t say which spell precisely.”
I think I know. A flash of the dark memory I’d glimpsed in the nightmares after the origin spell came back to my mind. Cyprian had shown me what he’d done the day he died. How he spilled his blood all over the jeweled box with the dagger he himself plunged deep into his chest. The box had to have been spelled, or perhaps it held some sort of amplifier. But I’d known since seeing it then that it was important.
“He had a box and dagger,” I found myself saying blankly. “Cyprian used a jeweled dagger and a jeweled box in the casting of the curses of the sun and moon.”
“How do you know that?” Draven asked, aghast, leveling an intense stare on me without any hint of his usual jest in his eyes.
My eyes watered. Why had I said that?
Elias knew. But Cal and Adrian and Draven—they didn’t. I hated keeping it secret and had already tried to tell them several times. Maybe this was my subconscious giving me a little boost. “Because he’s my ancestor,” I said after a moment.
Draven seemed confused. “That’s not possible. Cyprian’s line died with him in Emeris. Everyone knows that,” but even as he said it, I saw some of the disbelief leave his eyes.
What reason would I have to lie about something like this?
“Not before he got some poor soul pregnant apparently,” I said with a shrug, unable to look him in the eyes. Elias reached out to take my hand atop the table and I glanced up at him, finding pride and unyielding support in his eyes.
When I finally chanced a look at Draven, I found him looking at me as though I were someone else. Some other Harper he didn’t know. But then the look was gone and he came back to himself, blinking back into the present and out of whatever thought plagued his mind. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything. It is what it is. I can’t change my parentage. But I’m also trusting you to keep this information to yourself. There are already enough people in the witching community who know, but if the other races were to find out…” Draven’s eyes widened infinitesimally. “They’d kill you,” he said without any trace of doubt or remorse, causing a tremor to pass over the surface of my skin. Elias held tighter to my hand and glared at Draven. “Why the hell did you say that to her?”
Draven didn’t waver at the malice in Elias’ eyes. “Because it’s the truth. Would you rather I lie to her? Drape her in false securities that would only get her killed?”
Yes, I thought to myself guiltily. He probably would’ve rathered that.
“What about you,” I asked Draven.
The vampire cracked his neck and grimaced. “You aren’t your ancestor,” he said simply. “I bear you no ill will. And besides, from what I’ve gathered from your father’s journal and our own conversations, both he and you would like nothing more than to end the curses Cyprian laid on my kind and the Endurans.”
He wasn’t wrong. Though I still had a hard time believing there was any possible way to undo what was done all those hundreds of years ago. But if it was possible to do it, it had to be possible to undo it. I was starting to see that now.
“So, you’ve found something else then? In your translating of the pages in Melîn?”
Elias, immediately taking an interest, swiveled in his chair to face Draven. “I hadn’t noticed there was a section in Melîn.”
Draven nodded. “There is. And several in Emelîn as well.”
“I know some Emelîn,” he said. “I studied it for two years.”
“Good,” Draven said. “Maybe we can piece together those sections, too.”
“But, wait,” I said, tugging the journal out of Elias’ grip to slide it over to Draven. “Show me what else you found about the passage in Melîn.”
Draven leaned in and his rose and smoke scent wrapped around me. The nearness of him set off warning bells in my head, but it ignited a fire somewhere lower. I swallowed, hoping Elias didn’t notice. I didn’t want to explain that right now.
With one pale finger, he pointed out the page he’d been translating, and Elias leaned in to read over the bits and pieces he’d already translated. “This part that I could figure out near the end,” he pointed to the bit that was all jumbled words and notes that’d confused us before. “Well, once I matched it with the continuing section on the next page and spent most of the morning in here trying to remember the words, I think I figured it out.”
“And?”
“It says, ‘I can’t tell anyone. If they learn the things that I have, they’ll all be in danger. The leader will not allow me to succeed. I have to undo what was done before they find out they are missing the key… ingredient? I have it, and they will not stop until they take it from me. If they succeed before I do, it will end with more than my own blood.’ The translation isn’t perfect, but that is the gist of what it says.”
Elias ran a shaky hand through his hair and down the back of his neck. “Could he have the dagger and box that were mentioned in the other section?”
I shook my head, my brow furrowing as I tried to work out the puzzle my father had presented. We only had so few pieces, but I was star
ting to see some possible links. “No, I don’t think so. The box and dagger—they’re tools that were used in the creation of the curses. It’s possible they are needed to undo it, I’ll agree with that, but this section talks about an ingredient, not tools. I think there’s a difference.”
“Then all we’ve done is create more questions,” Elias said with a shake of his head.
Outside, the morning bell rang, and Elias jumped up from his seat. “Shit. Harper, we have to go,” he reached out a hand for me.
I didn’t take it. There were still a couple things I had to do here. I glanced up at Draven from the corner of my eyes, bit the inside of my cheek. I couldn’t let him starve all day. If someone got hurt because he didn’t feed while he was still in control and I could’ve done something to stop that—it would be as much my fault as it would be his. And although I wouldn’t admit it, I was… curious.
And now that Draven knew about my heritage, maybe it was finally time to grow some lady balls and tell my familiars, too. If Draven took it so well, maybe they would, too.
I gave Elias a hopeful look. I’d never used our… well, this thing between us to earn myself any favors, but I needed him to cover for me just this once.
“Alright,” he said. “I’ll excuse you from my class, but make sure you’re back in time for Sigils.”
“I will be.”
He nodded and bent down to kiss the top of my head tightly. “I’ll send Cal back inside,” he said, and I knew he only said it because he didn’t want to leave me alone with Draven. But I’d heard the faucet in the bathroom shut off nearly ten minutes ago, so, I knew Adrian would be out any minute now, too.
A moment later, he was gone, and Adrian still hadn’t come out of the shower, and maybe Elias hadn’t been able to find Cal because he hadn’t come back in yet.
“What is it you have to do here?” Draven asked, and now, with no one else around to watch him, I saw more of the strain that I’d seen when I first walked in. He was having a difficult time, alright.
I swallowed hard and with my body stiff with nerves, moved so I was facing him. “Well, you said you needed to… feed.”
