The Hidden Court

by Vivienne Savage

  An unfamiliar voice rang out from the room’s main entrance. I didn’t understand the words, only recognizing they were an Asian language. Maybe Chinese.

  My vision became overwhelmed by a magical light and power filled the air, a buzz raising the hairs on my arms. The two statues stopped their advance and snapped to attention where they stood. It was over, and there wasn’t one human bystander left.

  A woman in an ebony dress strode toward us on tall heels with dagger points that would have made better weapons than footwear. Her fine bone structure, glossy brunette hair, and alabaster skin reminded me of a black swan given a human form, graceful and elegant, her steps impossibly smooth. Her eyes were gorgeous, the prettiest shade of lightning blue I’d ever seen, just like Tricia’s.

  “What did you two do?” She came to a stop in front of us, crossed her arms over her chest, and stared down her long nose.

  “Do?” My voice squeaked.

  Gabriel stepped in front of me. “We didn’t do anything, Ms. French. This freshman noticed one of them had shifted position, and before we were able to notify the 7-line, their bonds snapped and they went after her.”

  Ms. French. The name rang a bell, but it took me a moment to connect the dots. Stories still circulated campus about the former mage teacher who had voluntarily been turned into a vampire by one of her students two years ago. People were more scandalized by that than the torrid love affair between a thirty-seven-year-old woman and her twenty-year-old lover.

  “There’s one more thing,” Gabriel told her. “I’m certain I saw someone else in here and they smelled like a nos.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I would know if there was a nosferatu on the premises.”

  “I’m telling you what I saw and smelled. I didn’t get a good look since we were dealing with these two.” Gabriel gestured to the statues. They might have been inert, but I felt their stares on me.

  “You should have gone after him.” My voice came out shaky and weak.

  Ms. French’s gaze locked on my injury. She stared, watching the blood run down my arm to my wrist, dripping to the floor. “The authorities will be here at any moment. If you’re present when they arrive, they’ll hold you and ask a dozen questions with answers their mortal brains are unable to comprehend, even if you did have the time to waste. As this girl needs medical attention, I dismiss you to report in to Provost Riordan. See that it’s done, Fujimoto. I will look into your claims and speak with the authorities.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Do you have transportation back to the campus?”

  “I drove with friends.”

  “Your cousin, right?”

  Gabriel nodded.

  “Gutierrez is by the Tyrannosaurus exhibit with Miss Sonnier. I’ll give you a short-range teleport and relay the message to them if you need it.”

  “I’ll text them.”

  With the spike of one high heel, she touched the tiny puddle of blood I’d created and drew a teleportation circle on the floor. Gabriel pulled me into the glowing corona of mystical color, and we reappeared in a snap in the parking garage.

  “I think I might need a doctor,” I whispered. As fading adrenaline and blood loss took their toll, the lot around us kind of spun, and I staggered against him. My blood stained the white T-shirt beneath his leather jacket.

  Gabriel led me to a monster of a pickup truck and fetched a first aid kit from the tool box.

  “That’s a mighty big medical kit.”

  “Comes in handy for sentinels,” he told me. “It’s our job to get busted up, remember? Go ahead and get inside.”

  “I’ll bleed all over your nice seats.”

  He laughed. “I have a werebear for a roomie. Your blood isn’t the first to get all over my seats.”

  “Do I even wanna know why Rodrigo got blood all over?” I tried to picture it, but all I could come up with was hunting. Or… “Do you guys have a were fight club or something?”

  “Woman, get in the damn truck.”

  I got in the truck, and he patched me up inside without disturbing the glass—he wanted to leave it for the doctor to remove. Although he’d joked about bloodstains being no big deal, an immaculate interior scented like fresh leather and spice knocked the chill from my body. Once settled behind the wheel, he fished his phone from the beverage holder and started texting.

  “Are we going to wait for Rodrigo and Amalia?”

  Gabriel tossed his phone into the drink holder again. “Nope. It’s protocol to send wounded ahead first. He said they’ll look for your friends and catch a ride.”

  “Oh.”

  We were on the road within a couple minutes, granting me time to finally check my phone.

  “Crap.” Over two dozen texts filled up my notifications bar. Liadan, Ben, and Pilar had all tried to get a hold of me during the incident, leaving messages in varying degrees of concern. They’d even grouped together and searched for me. I replied to Liadan first, telling her I was getting a ride from Gabriel and that I would explain everything when we all met up in the room.

  No need to worry her right then with the details of the attack.

  “You eaten anything today?” Gabriel asked.

  “Huh?”

  “I’m going to take that as a no. There’s a White Castle along the way out of the city. A McDonald’s and a Devil Dawgs too. You want something to eat before you’re stuck at the infirmary all afternoon?”

  “Oh, yeah, sure.”

  He shot me a grin. “Okay, good. Wasn’t sure if you were one of those fae who won’t touch meat.”

  “Oh no, trust me. I’m fine with meat. Hey, uh, is your arm okay?”

  “It was dislocated, I think.”

  “What?”

  “Partially at least. Probably pressing on a nerve.”

  He zipped us through a drive-thru and ordered a huge sack of food, stuffing two of the tiny burgers into his mouth before he put us onto the road again. Driving one-armed, he was at a disadvantage. How the hell had he even patched me up if his shoulder hurt that much?

  Adrenaline probably. Shifters had more of it, their bodies designed for endurance fighting. Adaptability made even the smaller raven shifters like Gabriel a lethal force to be reckoned with.

  Not that I’d call the hunk of man next to me small. Before I could offer to help with his meal or eat more than two bites of mine, his phone rang. He glanced down at it.

  “Want me to get it?” I asked.

  “Please. Hit the speaker.”

  His girlfriend’s irritating voice came across the speaker when I hit the button. “Dammit, Gabriel, why haven’t you been picking up, baby?”

  “I’m kinda busy.”

  Caught in the middle of their argument, I froze with the phone still in hand while the oblivious girlfriend continued on.

  “Too busy for me? Look, I know we fought, and I’m sorry you felt like you had to go. I really am. Why don’t you come over here and we can snuggle on the couch for a study session, huh? You can make it up to me.”

  “No thanks.” He shot me an apologetic look and reached for the phone, only for his expression to contort. He sucked in a breath and grunted.

  “Gabriel, don’t be like this.”

  His brows knit in consternation, clearly divided between being the private individual I knew and carrying on with conversation. “Maybe I didn’t get my point across clearly enough to you, but I meant everything I said. You don’t have respect for anyone, Jada. No one. Look, I’ve got someone in my car with me and this isn’t the best time to talk.”

  Miss Pink Booty Shorts was a real piece of work. I winced for him and tried to pretend I didn’t exist.

  “Rodrigo doesn’t mind. Do you, Rodrigo?”

  “It’s not Rodrigo,” he clarified and glanced again at me. “Isn’t that right?”

  “What the hell do you mean it’s not Rodrigo? Who’s in the car with you?”

  “Er, no, I’m not Rodrigo. Gabriel’s just giving me a lift after an acciden
t at the museum. That’s all.”

  Gabriel’s laughter held no actual amusement, only bitterness and the kind of resentment that poisoned relationships. “So anyway, as you can see, I’m busy. We’re both hurt, and I don’t have time for your nonsense.”

  “What?” Jada’s voice rose with irritation. “Who the hell are you—”

  When he signaled for me to end the call, I jammed my finger down on the red disconnect icon. Afterward, I sank against the leather seats, feeling miserable again as I studied Gabriel’s stormy features and white-knuckled grip on the wheel. He didn’t talk again.

  At the end of an hour-long drive, PNRU’s massive gates came into view. Gabriel rolled his injured shoulder, a mild flinch his only reaction. “I’m sorry about that. Her, I mean.”

  “You don’t have to apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong. Though I’m sorry if my being here gets you in trouble. Sorry for getting you beat up too.”

  “It’s my job to get beat up for you, remember?”

  “Maybe, but… hey, can I ask you a personal question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Why do you put up with that from her?”

  Gabriel quieted for a moment, putting on one of those neutral masks as he pulled up to the security booth and checked us in. Just when I thought he wasn’t going to answer, he rolled the window up again and glanced at me. “It’s a shifter thing. Our parents promised us to each other when we were seven.”

  “What? An arranged marriage?”

  “Kinda like that, yeah. Our parents have been planning it for years. Mom isn’t even a shifter. She’s human as fuck, but her and Jada’s mother go way back to their middle school days. Miss Sofia invited her to some big raven party, introduced her to Dad, and they kinda just fell in love, you know? So mom’s always kind of been aware of this stuff since my uncle married Rodrigo’s mom a few years before that. That’s why my fam is all bears and ravens.”

  “Oh.”

  He drove to the infirmary and pulled into a parking space. I loathed the thought of getting out of his toasty-warm truck into the biting wind, but I didn’t want to look like a baby either by complaining.

  “You should have Mr. Vandercamp look at your shoulder.” Hospitalization was a valid excuse to keep him away from his bitchy girlfriend—fiancée, technically, though thinking about it that way made my chest ache for reasons I couldn’t explain. His next encounter with her would probably be worse.

  I shuddered, for once glad to be single. It beat answering to another person.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I was just thinking that you should have checked out if that was a nos,” I fibbed.

  The grim expression returned, hardening his face and tensing his jaw. He spoke with an edge to his voice. “What sort of future sentinel would I be if I abandoned you? Besides, they can always track down whoever that was. There’s only one Skylar.”

  A few moments of semi-awkward silence fell over us. “You’d just miss me at our sparring lessons,” I said to cover how deeply his words touched me. The tension gripping my throat inhibited my ability to swallow. Avoiding eye contact, I glanced out the window into the windy evening.

  He shrugged out of his jacket and then passed it over the center console. “It’s cold out. You can bring it back to me tomorrow.”

  Accepting his jacket gave me a perfect opportunity to hide my face and swipe my eyes.

  “Thanks. You sure you don’t want to get checked out too?”

  “Nah. My friend Stark is a pro at reducing joints. He always knows what to do. I’ll have him do it before I seek Jada out.” He flashed me a smile rife with uncertainty. “I don’t like hiding from arguments. If she wants a fight with me, she can have it.”

  “I know. It’s what I like best about you,” I said as my brain-to-mouth filter failed me.

  He grinned as I climbed from the car, and with his jacket draped around my shoulders, I hurried into the infirmary. He lingered until I was past the doors.

  Our campus infirmary provided all the student day-to-day medical necessities, but since vampires and shifters didn’t suffer from most physical illnesses, many didn’t use the clinic for anything but basic stuff like first aid and contraception. Mages, the most human of us, passed through as their frequent customers for everything from asthma to eczema unless they could brew their own curative in their dormitory room. Poor Ben had both.

  Only a few yards from the sliding glass doors, a statuesque bear shifter woman in dark pink scrubs typed away at a computer. Nurse Kristi didn’t need to team lift anyone onto a gurney because her biceps were bigger than my waist.

  “Hello, Skylar, back so soon for your next Anti-Conception—” Before she could finish her sentence, her gaze fell to my injured arm. “What happened here?”

  “An accident at the museum,” I muttered.

  Nurse Kristi abandoned her station and fussed over my arm. While she walked me to a treatment room, I relayed the whole string of events from the spontaneous attack to Gabriel wrapping up my arm.

  “He didn’t do too bad a job,” she mused after I lay in the bed with my injured arm propped on a table.

  I was cool with everything she needed to do until she stepped away to the counter and returned with this needle of clear fluid. “What’s that?”

  “A little lidocaine. Unless injuries are severe, we do things the natural way here without magical aids and fixatives.” She smiled to reassure me while I wondered how much of a choice I had about the way we proceeded.

  It burned going in before deadening the whole area. As I blinked back tears and kept up a tough facade, the nurse flushed the wound with saline and picked out tiny glass shards with a pair of tweezers. I refused to watch her apply the five stitches to close the wound.

  “There now, that’s better,” she said, stripping off her gloves. “Rolling around in glass isn’t the best of past times, dear.”

  “Trust me, I have no plans of doing it again,” I mumbled.

  She clucked her tongue and urged me to lay back. “Rest for a while. You’ve had a traumatizing experience.”

  “Huh? But I’m not tired.”

  The nurse chuckled again and settled a thick blanket over me from the warmer against the wall. Something about her amusement should have been a warning. My body didn’t even put up a fight.

  Voices roused me from sleep, and Simon’s unmistakable voice carried through the cracked door even though he spoke in a whisper.

  “The damages are extensive, but Ms. French was able to contain the spirits before they escaped.”

  Provost Riordan’s gentle reply was almost lost beneath the low hum of equipment. “Good, that’s one less worry off our plate.”

  “Yes and no,” Simon said. “Unfortunately, it appears the perpetrator stole an ancient ding vessel from the collection. It was one of the few authentic magical items in the display.”

  I couldn’t see the provost’s face, but by her long pause, I imagined she was frowning. “You’re certain this was orchestrated by the Hidden Court?”

  The Hidden Court? It sounded like something from a teen drama on television.

  “They’ve claimed credit for the attack, yeah, but at this point I think they’d claim credit for a pigeon shitting on a car. They want attention of any kind.” After a moment of silence, Sebastian murmured, “Perhaps we should finish this discussion when we have less of an audience. She’s awake.”

  So much for my future as a spy. How the hell did he even realize I wasn’t asleep anymore? Since I was busted, I shifted in bed and opened my eyes. Simon, Sebastian, and Provost Riordan all watched me through the doorway.

  “Good evening, Miss Corazzi,” the provost said. “How do you feel?”

  “A little groggy, but better, thanks.”

  Simon stepped up to my bedside. “Feeling up to a little chat?”

  “I’m guessing if I say no, you’re going to insist anyway, so…” I struggled to sit up.

  To my surprise, Sebastian ste
pped over and adjusted the bed. Then he puffed up my pillows. “Heard you wrangled a couple evil spirits. That took guts.”

  For a moment I stared at him. Had that been an actual compliment? “Oh, um, thanks.”

  Simon cleared his throat, bringing my attention back to him. Provost Riordan stood at his side with her hands folded in front of her. “We’ve already had a talk with Gabriel about what happened, but we’d like to hear your side.”

  “Are we in trouble?” I asked.

  The provost placed a warm, grandmotherly touch over the back of my hand. “Not at all, dear. We’d just like to corroborate Mr. Fujimoto’s story, and perhaps glean something from the incident that has escaped his notice. Can you tell us what happened right before the attack began?”

  “Right before that, I noticed one of them had moved from his original pose in the physical realm. Not just the Twilight.”

  “Interesting,” Riordan murmured. “And what did you do at that time?”

  “Well, I pointed it out to Gabriel first, to see if he saw the same thing. That’s when the power dropped. He wanted my phone so he could call and report it in, but the warriors attacked us first.”

  The three authority figures nodded and exchanged glances.

  “Mr. Fujimoto mentioned seeing someone else in the room,” the provost said. “Did you?”

  “No, but like I said, the power was out. If Gabriel said he saw a vampire, I believe him.”

  Simon nodded. “All right. We’ve disturbed your rest long enough. Take it easy over the remainder of the weekend, Skylar.”

  Riordan patted my hand again and adjusted the blankets while the two men drifted to the door. She followed behind them.

  “Hey. What’s the Hidden Court?” Vampires belonged to the Sanguine Court and fae to the Summer Court, but my parents had never mentioned another governing magical body.

  Simon looked back over his shoulder. “Nothing you need to be concerned with. In fact, I suggest you forget the name.”

  The door closed behind them, clicking shut on my inquiry louder than thunder.

  8

  I Have Nothing to Hide