by Ben Reeder
I smiled. “You are my friend,” I said. “And I’m yours. Don’t worry, I get it.” His wings turned bright gold as he rose a couple of feet, and without another word, he turned and flew off.
After dinner, I went to my room and set down the extra plate I got for Hoshi on his desk, then turned my laptop on and hit the call button on Lucas’ program. It did its digital dance number, and Lucas’ face appeared after a few moments. The background was unfamiliar, but I recognized the classical music his grandfather usually played in the background.
“Hey, Lucas,” I said after he greeted me. “Where the Hells are you?”
“We’re at the bookstore. We’re remodeling the upstairs store room. Dr. C’s here, too.” Dr. Corwin leaned into the picture and waved.
“My place is being watched,” Dr. C said. “But that has nothing to do with your case. We went over the case files for the last attack, and we noticed the same thing. Every victim was particularly strong, magickally. Your friend Desiree? Her empath ratings were just about off the chart, and she was actually getting stronger. Kiya…no one understands the sources of her power, but she’s pulled off some amazing things, especially with water based conjurings and spells. The windstorm the night of prom? They traced that back to her. The other five fall into the same category. Lots of potential power in all of them, usually focused in one element or one particular type of magick.”
“So our only standouts are Stewart Hampton and Josie Hart,” I said.
“Given the nature of Hampton’s attack, he was just a convenient target to experiment on. And we still don’t know if Hart’s disappearance is related, but the Sentinels also came up dry in finding the rest of her academic files. Did you find anything about her on your end?”
“Not directly. Ren found out that her room hadn’t been assigned this semester, so he’s going to go check it out tonight.”
“But you’re not going to the girl’s wing after hours, right?” Dr. C asked. Beside him, Lucas gave him a sidelong look, then turned to me with an expectant smile.
“No one is going to see me in that dorm at all tonight,” I said. “Unless things go sideways and I have to go in to save Ren’s ass or something like that.”
“If I thought it would make a difference, I’d tell you to be careful,” Dr. C said. “Just don’t get yourself expelled, at least.”
“Last thing I want,” I said.
“Good. I need to go take care of an unwelcome guest right now, so give me at least until tomorrow evening before you call and let us know what you found.” He got up and left.
I’ll explain in a little bit, Lucas typed in the message field. Don’t go anywhere for a few, okay? I nodded and he cut the connection. A few minutes later, the screen lit up with an incoming call, and Lucas’ face appeared when I hit the green answer button.
“Okay, so what’s up with Dr. C?” I asked.
“We’re dealing with a little something of our own here,” he said. “There’s a priest missing and a bunch of rogue vampires in town. Dr. C thinks the two are connected, and so do a few other players, but the Council can’t stick its nose in.”
“So who’s watching Dr. C’s place?” I asked.
“He thinks it’s a faction of vamps who like what the rogues are up to.”
“So, is he going to jump in the middle of all that anyway?”
“Not exactly,” Lucas said slowly.
“Lucas,” I said, trying to make my tone as stern as Dr. Corwin’s could be. “What’s going on?”
“Well, remember how last time shit went down with the vampires, and you got sort of invited to interfere?”
“Thraxus owed me that,” I said. “But what about it?”
“Well, you’d be his natural choice for this, but you’re out of town, soooo…”
“So?”
“He kinda told me to deal with it.”
“WHAT?” I yelled. “How did he kind of tell you to deal with it?” I demanded when I got control of myself.
“Well, there’s a detective in the Missing Persons section who got assigned to a related case. And I guess an anonymous tip pointed him to me as an informant.”
“That’s Thraxus style, all right, but I still don’t get how you know he told you to get involved.”
“I was getting to that. He walked into the store a few days ago and started talking about a breach of etiquette. He said that, if he wanted to, he could kill me right then and there for interfering at Inferno, and the Council couldn’t touch him for it because I wasn’t part of the invitation. Chance….” He stopped and looked down. When he raised his head, his eyes were blazing. “He threatened to kill my grandfather first.”
“Lucas, I’m sorry,” I said. All of the anger drained out of me, and I felt my hands and face get cold. “This was my fault. I never should have let you get involved in any of this.”
“No, Chance,” he said, his voice sharp. “You tried to warn me the first time, but I made the decision to get involved. This is on me, no one else. If you want, I’ll let you shoulder half the guilt, but that’s where I draw the line.”
“You drive a hard bargain, dude,” I said through a tight throat. “So, is there anything I can do to help out on this?”
“Funny you should ask,” he answered then leaned closer to the camera.
Half an hour later, I was pretty sure I’d told Lucas what he wanted to know, but I wasn’t so sure he had everything he needed to know. I was really only certain about one thing: Thraxus and I were going to be having a talk the next time I was back home.
With all of that done, there was really only one thing left for me to do, and that was catch some sleep before I broke a dozen different rules in the middle of the night. I changed into my gray sweatpants and hoodie, then laid my blanket down on the floor and grabbed the quilt Mom had made for me and snuggled under it. It was the only thing I could sleep under that was heavier than sheets, and autumn in Boston was pretty, but damn was it cold compared to what I was used to. My biggest worry was actually getting to sleep.
Help me.
I came awake with a gasp, and found myself reaching for something, with the memory of a girl’s voice in my head. The room was dark, with only a few slivers of moonlight slanting in gray across my empty bed. A warm, wet tongue licked my right cheek, then Junkyard’s furry mass leaned against me from behind.
“I’m okay, buddy,” I said as I got my bearings. “Just a weird dream. Guess it’s a step up from a bad dream, right?” My phone showed I only had a few more minutes before the alarm I’d set was going to go off, so I cancelled it and slipped my shoes on.
Hoshi was asleep on his bed, the plate on his desk only half eaten. I shook my head as I slipped my backpack on. His eyes were puffy, and I could see his cheekbones even in the soft glow of the moonlight. Even the guilt I felt over not being able to protect Desiree had settled to a muted ache over the past three weeks, but it was evidently still hard for Hoshi and Kiya.
As Junkyard and I slipped out into the hallway, the familiar flip-flop in my stomach reminded me of why I seemed to be doing okay: I was doing something. I wasn’t sure if sneaking out in the middle of the night to investigate a missing student was what the counselor had intended when she told me to find a healthy outlet for my feelings, though. Oh, well, it was just one session.
The basement was quiet and dark, like always. A whispered “Lumio” brought a soft glow to the tip of my wand, and let me thread my way silently to the door into the tunnels. Ren was waiting on the other side with a bundle of blue cloth. His wings shown gold as he fluttered in the air near the door.
“Quick, put it on and hide,” Ren hissed, thrusting the bundle at me. “The command is ‘occulto.’ Someone’s coming!”
I shook the bundle out to reveal a Sentinel cloak, and with a flourish, swung it across my shoulders. “Junkyard, center; Ren, on Junkyard.” Sprite and dog moved quickly, with Junkyard sliding between my knees and Ren descending to sit on his shoulders. “Occulto,” I whispered,
and the world went hazy like before as the cloak’s chameleon spell activated. Footsteps sounded from behind us, and I crouched in the corner of a small alcove.
Moments later, a Sentinel and someone in a staff uniform stopped a few yards away and consulted a piece of paper.
“Yes, that’s Jefferson Hall up ahead. We’re fine,” Professor Talbot’s voice reached my ears.
“So, where does this one go?” an unfamiliar voice asked.
“Out by the old chapel.”
“Well, that explains something,” the Sentinel said. “We chased some kid in a mask out that way a few days ago, lost him near the chapel. He must have known about that tunnel.”
“Oh, those idiots,” Talbot said with a short chuckle.
“You know who they are?”
“Not exactly,” Talbot said. “At least, not individually. You probably ran across a Highwayman. They’re nothing to worry about, just a bunch of rich boys playing at being in a secret society.”
“Not a fan, huh?” the Sentinel asked.
“I was never a member,” Talbot said. “So I have no idea what they do. I just get the same briefings the rest of the faculty get when they show up. We should be almost to Jefferson Hall.”
“Jefferson…let’s see,” the Sentinel said. “Hampton, Nakamura, Fortunato and Marlin. Three of them have been targets. And the fourth…well, you know what they say about him.”
“Yes, I do,” Talbot said. “But only an idiot shits where he sleeps The evidence to support the theory isn’t very strong, either. Mostly circumstantial. Let’s press on.” They turned toward me and started walking, leaving me to sweat as they passed within a couple of feet of me. I stayed still until the sound of their footsteps faded, then took off the way they came from. Ren led me past turn after turn, only stopping when he reached our goal, a thick door that looked almost exactly like the one we’d left at Jefferson Hall. We slipped into the basement, and with a gesture, I sent Junkyard to the door while we headed for the stairs. If things went sideways, at least he could slip out and pee on something.
Minutes later, we were on the third floor, pacing quietly down the hall. Ren hovered just above my right shoulder, his wings crystal clear now. I counted the door numbers, then stopped near the end.
“Where is it?” I whispered, looking to my left.
“It’s right here,” Ren said, pointing to a blank section of wall. I frowned as I realized that the part of the wall he was pointing at should have been only a foot to my right, but Ren was floating about ten feet away. I shook my head,
“Wait, you can’t see it, can you?” he asked.
“Not yet,” I said as I shrugged my pack off. I unzipped it and pulled out the enchanted mirror. With a slow turn, I scanned the wall in front of Ren. For a moment, nothing happened. That wasn’t unusual. Like most concealing spells, this one was hard to get past. But my little focus worked on a principle that most illusions ignored: reflections. Dealing with two different perspectives for the same viewer, the reflection wasn’t altered by the chameleon spell. However, this one didn’t shimmer and change. It took me a moment to realize that it was already showing me the correct image.
“This isn’t an illusion,” I said. “It’s a neglenom spell.” Of all the mental manipulation spells, the neglinom charms were the ones I had the hardest time with. I willed my mental defenses into place before I turned my gaze back to the wall, and the hallway stretched a little to reveal the door to room 312.
“They aren’t strong enough to work on fae,” Ren said smugly.
I shook my head. “It wasn’t cast with fae in mind,” I said.
“Of course not,” Ren said. “It would have been an exercise in futility.”
“Whatever,” I said. “Did you remember to grab the key?”
“Oh, sorry I forgot to tell you. I mean, I remembered to grab the key, and I would have, but it wasn’t there! Even the master key for the room was gone.”
“Someone really didn’t want this room to be used, did they?” I asked. Once again, I unslung my pack, this time reaching under one of the titanium plates that ran down the middle of the back panel to detach the set of lockpicks I stored there.
“Wait,” Ren said. “This door has active wards.”
“Crap!” I hissed. “I don’t have time to take them down.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got this.” With that, Ren sped down to the far end of the hall. Moments later, the door clicked open, and I was treated to the site of my sprite friend hovering on the other side of the threshold. “Wards only work on the outside, right?”
I nodded. “So how did you get inside without setting off the wards?” I asked.
“Oh, that was simple. Through the mail box. The school wards those, and I work for the school.”
My senses were still buzzing a little, so I put my hand up to the invisible line that ran across the opening. Slight pressure met my fingertips, and I stopped. “The wards seem to be negated, but…there’s a threshold here.”
“Well, that’s strange,” Ren said. “And kind of inconvenient. Hey, wait… please, come in.” The pressure against my fingertips disappeared.
“How did you…?”
“I work here,” he said with a broad smile. “No matter who sets the threshold, the building belongs to my masters.”
“And a servant can act in the name of his master,” I said as I stepped into the room. It also explained how he could negate the wards on the door. In theory, he could have opened it from the outside as well. I closed the door behind me and brought my wand out. “Lumio pallide caeruleo,” I said softly, and a pale blue light filled the room.
The first thing that came to my attention was that someone was spending a lot of time here. The bed on the left side of the room was unmade, and several plates were stacked neatly on one corner of the desk next to it. The other bed was piled with clothes, and the desk on that side of the room had a thick book on it, and something that made my blood run a little cold. Set in the middle of the blotter on the desk top was a metal plate inscribed with familiar looking runes and sigils that seemed to crawl across its surface.
“What in the Nine Hells is that?” Ren asked as he went to hover near the desk.
“Muvian,” I whispered as I pulled my phone out. “At least, I think it is.”
“Don’t you mean Lemurian?”
“No, I mean Muvian,” I repeated as I brought the camera up and tried to focus it on the metal tablet. “The language Lemurian is descended from.” The camera wouldn’t focus, and when I turned the lens away from the tablet, afterimages kept writhing across the screen. It wasn’t until I switched the camera off that they disappeared.
“That was creepy,” Ren said from over my shoulder. I set my pack down and pulled out my sketch pad and charcoal. No sooner than I’d laid the paper against the tablet, the writing seared itself against the paper, and I had to pull it away to keep the page from bursting into flame.
“So was that,” I whispered. The larger book was written in what looked like Greek, and it cooperated much better when I focused the camera on the bookmarked pages.
“Hey, Chance?” I heard Ren say from behind me.
“What?” I hissed.
“I found the rest of Josie Hart’s file.” I turned to see him holding a thick manila folder with the school logo on it. One of the closets was open behind him, and I could see something on the door that made my stomach drop. I stepped past Ren and snapped a picture, then took the file from him and stuffed it into my backpack.
“What are you…oh, crap,” he said. His wings glowed a pale green as he saw what was on the door behind him.
I’d seen the same thing once when Dr. Corwin worked as a consultant for the New Essex County Sherriff’s Department over the summer. Detective Collins had a name for it, and I found myself parroting his words.
“God, I hate the murder wall.” Printed photos were tacked to the inside of the closet door, and eight of them had a red X across them, all of them familiar f
aces. Desiree, Sterling Lodge, and five other people who were lying in the school’s infirmary, and one who was in a morgue somewhere. Hoshi’s picture was up there, and so was Kiya’s. Off to the side was another picture, and Ren floated over to it, then turned to face me, his wings almost white.
“Chance,” his voice wavered. “That…that’s your…”
“Family,” another voice finished.
I turned and leveled my hand, hissing “Eximo!” almost by reflex, releasing the power stored up in my ring. A dark figure dodged out of the way of the weakened kinetic bolt, and I ended up blowing the window out into the darkness.
“Fulmen!” the dark figure spat, and I threw myself down on the floor as a thick blue spark arced across the distance between us and struck the closet beside me. I reached back and grabbed a handful of clothing in the closet and flung it in front of me. Hangers and fabric filled the air, and the next bolt jumped from wire hanger to wire hanger, bending away from me and finding its mark in the wall socket.
“Go!” I yelled as I scrambled toward the door. Ren darted for the gaping hole where one window used to be, and the dark figure sidestepped to block the doorway. My right hand found the handle of my backpack, and I came up in a crouch. For a moment, I faced off with the mysterious figure. Small and definitely feminine, she held her wand in her fist like a knife. Behind her, the hinges of the open closet door glowed a bright red that was fading to a cherry color.
“I should have killed you first,” she said. “But you’re such an idiot, and you did everything we needed you to, up to now.”
“I’ve been saying the same thing myself,” I said. “The idiot part, I mean.”
She snorted and raised her wand. “Well, you’re going to die stu-”
“Ictus!” I yelled, catching her midsentence. She ducked, and I turned and threw my backpack out the window. “Obex!” I followed up as she pointed her wand at me from the floor. Her next bolt stopped short of my flesh by a couple of feet, though I could still feel the hair on my arms stand up.
