by Rose, Imogen
“Offense taken, though,” Neave said, practically shaking with anger and embarrassment. “Let me make something clear to you, sweet Taylor. The three of us wouldn’t even consider joining your little group if it wasn’t for Faustine. So shove that up your enormous....”
“Girls!” I pleaded. “Let’s just try to get along. Taylor, you were saying?”
“Well, since you insist, the committee has decided to accept your friends as pledges.”
“Oh, for crying out loud!” Neave exclaimed. “Pledges?”
“You will have to go through the standard twelve weeks of pledging followed by hell week, then–if you don’t get blackballed–you’re in as full members. It’s the best we can do without the whole school demanding to join. We’d have a minor riot if we bent the rules for you. As it is, we’ll have to say that we’re only accepting pledges from established member recommendations. Look, we are trying to be as accommodating as we can.”
“Neave,” I said, trying my best to sound positive, “it’s just terminology. I need you to give it a go. For me,” I said, ignoring Taylor’s cough.
Neave, Audrey and Viola nodded. “For you,” Neave confirmed.
“Super,” Taylor replied. “We don’t have time to go through the charter right now, but let’s meet up at lunch to talk some more. Ready to go?”
They each nodded and followed Taylor, single file, out the front door.
We walked through the streets of the Upper East Side without uttering a word until we arrived at the imposing brick building that was our school. “One more thing, before we go inside,” Taylor whispered to me right outside the school gates. “I have a message for you from my brother.”
“Your brother?”
“Yes. Fitch. He’s a junior. He’ll be escorting you to our social this weekend.”
Before I could protest, the bell rang, and we hurried inside.
I found my classes to be pretty easy, even though I was in all advanced classes, which had a nice mix of sophomores and juniors, with just a few freshman–like me–and seniors thrown in. Bonfire Academy emphasized academics even more than paranormal studies, with the International Baccalaureate as an end degree. Most did not attend the Academy long enough to achieve that, but we all got a good foundation during our time there. I spent most of my class time scanning the other students, trying to figure out if there were any paranormals among them. I had a feeling about one or two of them, but I couldn’t be sure.
At lunch, I found the girls waiting at the best table in the cafeteria. It was the whole group–Taylor, Nicole, Kelsey, Neave, the twins and three girls I hadn’t met before.
“Faustine, you missed the introductions,” Taylor said. “This is Elenora,” she said pointing to a pretty brunette. “Elenora is a senior like me and Kelsey. And this is Mel and Tara, juniors. And that’s our group.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said, and sat down.
“We were talking about the upcoming party,” Taylor continued. “The three of you haven’t been to one of these events yet, so I was explaining the protocol.”
Protocol? Did everything come with a protocol?
“The party is over in Long Island, at the Flower House Hotel, this Friday night. We’re leaving straight after school on Friday and staying over. I’ve booked us rooms. Faustine, you’ll be sharing with Neave.”
“Hey,” a voice said from behind me.
“Hey, bro,” Taylor said, as I turned around to look. “Faustine, Neave, Audrey and Viola, this is my brother, Fitch, a junior,” she introduced.
Physically, it was totally obvious that they were brother and sister. Fitch and Taylor shared the same fair coloring and red hair. They also had the same facial features and large freckles, but that’s where the similarities ended. Fitch contrasted drastically with Taylor’s polished persona. While Taylor wore her hair neat in long, straight strands, Fitch’s hair was cut short and gelled into tiny spikes. He was all punk rock. A studded dog collar peeked out from under the crisp, white collar of his shirt, and a bemused smirk played on his lips.
“So, this is my date?” he asked, and smelled me. Yes, he actually lowered his face and took a deep whiff of my neck! Weird.
“Yes. Lady Annabel’s daughter,” Taylor confirmed.
“Hold on,” I protested. “Date for what?”
“For the party this weekend,” he said, as his eyebrows drew together in a frown.
“Look. I never said I could make it this weekend. I have other plans,” I said. Like a coronation. “And even if I didn’t, I have a boyfriend.”
“That she does,” Ryker said, as he walked over to us and planted a kiss on my forehead.
I so wished I hadn’t said boyfriend in front of Ryker. He wasn’t really my boyfriend; I was just using him as an excuse. My face had turned bright red. Luke, who had walked in with Ryker and seen the flush on my cheeks, began to snicker.
Taylor looked at Nicole, “Did you know about this?”
Nicole pouted. “Well, sort of. We all met Ryker Saturday night. I didn’t know he was her boyfriend, though!”
“Well, this is a bit awkward, Sis,” Fitch said, clearly annoyed. “I could have hooked up with someone else had you not insisted....”
“Oh, don’t be a baby! You still have plenty of time. I’ve got to go,” she said, and stomped off, clearly annoyed.
“You sure you don’t want to go with me?” Fitch asked looking at me.
I nodded.
“Okay, well, this was a waste of time! Later,” he muttered, and walked off.
It was time to go to my next class. Thank goodness! I was momentarily spared from having to explain the boyfriend comment to Ryker. I sure hoped the rest of the day would go a bit smoother.
Not so.
Just before I stepped into math class, my phone vibrated. I took a peek just in case it was important–like my dad. Not Dad; in fact, I didn't even recognize the number.
The text was short:
I need you. Meet me in the upper girl’s restroom.
-your sister
My sister? Half sister, obviously. What was she doing at my school? Did she go here? I guessed I’d better go and find out what was up. The text sounded urgent.
“Faustine?” Luke asked from behind me.
“Are you in this class?” I asked, moving to let him pass.
“I’m in all your classes, remember?”
“Oh, yeah. Go ahead. I’ve got to do something.”
“Like what?”
“It’s not important; go on in.”
“Look, I’m gonna follow you anyway, so you might as well tell me what’s up. Something is definitely going on, I can tell from your look. You’ll never be a poker player.”
I handed my cell over to him.
“We’d better hurry,” he said, taking me by my hand and pulling me through the corridor and up the steps.
“Wait! Luke! Do you know her?”
“Of course I do!”
“You might have mentioned that my sister goes to our school. Don’t you think? What’s her name?”
“Kismet.”
“Kismet? What kind of a demon name is that?” I asked.
“She’s not a demon. Not even a half demon. Her mother is an angel. She’s a very rare hybrid. We don’t have a classification for her. She seems to be some kind of heightened angel. She’s a loner and certainly wouldn’t contact you if she wasn’t in danger. Come on! Hurry!”
We ran along in the quiet of the never-ending corridors until we reached the restroom. Luke didn’t knock; he just barged into the girls’ room and stopped dead in his tracks. On the mirror above the sink: Eat that, demon Princess was written in red marker. Luke stared at it, then went over to the sink and threw up.
“Luke?”
He fell to the ground, his face planted in the palms of his hands. I had a good look around. I opened every stall. There was no one, nothing. No flayed body, no signs of struggle, no shreds of clothing, no drips of blood. Nothing.
&nb
sp; “Luke, there’s no one here. Could this be a hoax?” I suggested.
“A hoax?” he whispered. “How?”
“Oh, I don’t know!”
“It’s not a hoax, Faustine,” he said, picking up a small white scale from the floor. “This is from her necklace. She always wears it.”
I thought about this for a moment. “Couldn’t she have dropped it the last time she was in this restroom?”
Luke reached for his cell phone and punched in some numbers. As he put it to his ear, a look of concern crept over his face. “She’s not picking up.”
“Where are the rest of my siblings?”
“The twins, Jaques and Mariel, are in Paris. Portia is in London, Maximillian is in Tokyo, and Katerina is here in New York.”
“Contact Katerina first and find out if she’s okay. Then, let’s contact the rest,” I said, pacing around the restroom, trying to figure out what to do next. Why was this happening? Could one of my siblings be behind this? We needed to figure out if they had alibis for the last two incidents. Dorian had already left for London, so this was up to me. But what could I do? I didn’t have a clue. I was just grateful that we didn’t have a gory body to deal with this time.
“Look, I have to be honest. I’m at a total loss. What the heck am I supposed to do about this? Apart from cleaning that mess up,” I said, pointing to the mirror.
“We need to find your father. We need to find out what’s happened to Kismet,” Luke said.
Talk about stating the obvious! Sheesh.
“Going back to what I suggested before, let’s ask Neave and Tessa to help us locate them. They might be able to use that white scale you found to help locate Kismet. But in all honesty, I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I thought Dad said that we should use Cassandra to help us; otherwise, it could be a diplomatic nightmare.”
“Yeah. But, to tell you the truth, I didn’t really take to Cassandra. I’m not sure I can trust her. Besides, I have my own witches right here. I just don’t want to waste any more time. I’m going to get Neave and update her. I want you to call my siblings and confirm their safety and locations for me. Weren’t they all supposed to come over and meet me? When is that going to happen?”
“I haven’t gotten around to it yet, Princess....”
“Luke!” I pleaded, “do it now!”
I left him in the restroom rubbing off the red marker mess with paper towels while I went to find Neave. I waited outside her classroom until the bell rang, then pulled her aside. “Let’s go.”
“Go where?” she asked, as I pulled her along.
“Home.”
“Did you get passes?”
“Passes?”
She sighed. “Faustine, they won’t let us just walk out of school halfway through the day. We’ll need permission.”
“Okay. Let’s get it and go.”
“It’s not as easy as all that. You’ll need to call your mom first, then she’ll have to call the school office with a good excuse for us to leave early,” she explained.
“That’s silly. Besides, we don’t have time for that.”
“But....”
“Don’t worry, I’ll sort it out.”
“How?”
“Ryker.”
“Right.”
While I had assumed that Ryker would just wander us out, it turned out that he couldn’t, not the both of us. So, he helped us bust out of the downstairs restroom. It was a clumsy maneuver on my part as I fell, head first, into the bushes below the window. For sure, it was not a pretty sight, not a moment I’d want captured on YouTube. After the three of us had removed the leaves and twigs from all sorts of awkward places, we made a run for it and didn’t stop until we got to my building. We were all completely out of breath. The plan was to go up to my apartment and get something that belonged to Dad. Then, we’d go down to the security of the basement hideaway.
As we entered the building, we were too pooped to take the stairs, so we made for the elevator. But, before we could even push the up button, a nerdy-looking man wearing a pinstripe suit came out of the elevator.
“Neave? What are you doing out of school? Are you all right?”
“Um. Yeah. Faustine, Ryker, this is Tessa’s husband, Robert,” Neave explained. Then, Neave turned to Robert and continued. “Faustine isn’t feeling well, so Ryker and I are bringing her home.”
“Yes, your eyes do look bloodshot,” Robert remarked, looking at me suspiciously. “I trust you’ve called Lady Annabel, and that you’re going back to school, Neave?”
“Yeah,” she said, as she scrambled into the elevator with us. As soon as the elevator jerked to life, Neave shuddered. It was a long shudder that shook the elevator.
“What was that?” I asked, dumbfounded.
“I just had the darkest, most hollow feeling. It left me cold, shivering.”
“Wow, that was some shiver,” I pointed out. “What caused that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it has something to do with what’s going on with you and your siblings. We are dealing with some dark forces. I can feel it.”
Surprise, surprise. We weren’t dealing with fairies and Christmas elves, that’s for sure.
“Ryker, are you sure you want to be around for this?” I asked.
“I’m not leaving you to deal with this on your own,” he said firmly. “I’m staying. Let’s get what you need.”
The elevator finally stopped, and we made our way to my apartment. I went into the spare bathroom, which my dad used during his visits, and got his hairbrush. There were still some strands of his hair tangled up in the bristles.
“What else do you need, Neave?”
“For what? What exactly is it that you want me to do?”
“Find my dad!”
“And you think I can do that how?”
“You’re the witch! Don’t you have a spell or something? I thought all you would need is something of his, and you’d mix it up with whatever, say a spell and....”
Ryker started chuckling. “Faustine, you’ve been watching way too much television.”
“Look, I’ve just done a few minor spells. It takes years for witches to grow powerful enough to cast complicated spells. I wouldn’t know where to start to help you find your dad,” she said with a shrug.
“What about your mom? Do you think she could help?”
“I don’t think so. You could ask, though.”
I felt defeated. How else would I track my father? I needed some kind of indication, vision of where he was or what had happened to him. “Neave, let’s talk to your mom.”
When I updated Tessa, telling her everything, and asked her for help, she was beside herself with worry, but she just wasn’t powerful enough to help. Unfortunately, she confirmed what everyone else had already told us: we needed to contact Cassandra or an equally powerful witch. Tessa was adamant that we needed to hurry and find someone who had access to the Book of the Dead. It was Neave who tentatively suggested that her grandmother might be able to help. At first, Tessa seemed a bit reluctant, but she eventually agreed that this was the least complicated option.
So here we were, on our way to Neave’s grandma’s house in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania. It was just the four of us: Tessa, Neave, Luke and I. Ryker had stayed behind at Tessa’s request. We had rented an SUV for the occasion, which Tessa was driving while the rest of us took in the amazing country sights.
“Gorgeous, isn’t it?” Tessa remarked. “Do you remember our last visit?”
“Only vaguely. What was I? Five?”
“Just four, actually. I’m not surprised that you don’t remember. I brought you and Neave for a weekend of tubing at Camelback Mountain. We had such fun, and when you saw the skiers, you wanted to give skiing a try. I enrolled both of you in beginner ski school; you turned out to be a natural. Neave, not so much,” she smiled.
“Mom, you know I hate heights!” Neave protested.
