by W. J. May
“We’re really sorry—”
“Rae,” Devon interrupted quietly, tilting his head towards the lot. “It’s late.”
She turned on her heel without a glance at her children—heading across the shadowy lawn with her husband. They would keep up the cool façade until they reached the car. At that point he’d start yelling, she’d start hyperventilating, and both would demand that Julian keep an eye on their kids.
But the kids would never know that. They were left standing on the lawn.
“What the heck was that?” James muttered as they vanished into the night. He stared after them another moment before turning to his sister. “Why would Jason—”
“I don’t know,” she interrupted softly. When a strained silence fell between them, she looked him in the eye. “Really, James. I have no idea. But I’ll find out. I promise.”
He considered it a moment before nodding curtly and heading to the dorms. He’d only gone a step or two before she caught the back of his sleeve.
“And James...thanks.”
He pulled himself free, looking back at her in surprise. “For what?”
She paused, glancing around to make sure they weren’t being overheard. “For sticking with the rest of us. For keeping your mouth shut in there.”
He stared at her a second longer before heading off into the dark. “They’re my friends, too.”
Yeah, she hung her head, feeling suddenly exhausted, I guess they are.
ARIA DIDN’T SEE ANYONE else on her way back to the dorms. The dance had been effectively cancelled, and the presence of agents had cleared the campus of any remaining students. She waited a while for Lily, milling around outside the steps of Aumbry Hall before deciding she must have missed her and heading inside.
The tower was dark and each step echoed off the high stone walls as she climbed slowly to the top floor. Most days, it seemed like a privilege—having earned a place right at the very top. But tonight she resented every jagged stair, dragging her feet up flight after flight.
By the time she got to her room, she was ready to pass out. A cursory glance showed that Catalina was clearly gone for the night—probably swooped back to the city by her parents. Now that she thought about it, there were probably going to be many students whose parents decided to pull them from class until further notice. It wasn’t that much of a surprise.
First a dead teacher, now an attack at the winter dance? She plucked a few jeweled pins from her dark hair, letting them clatter to the floor. It’ll be a wonder if we have any students left at all—
“Aria?”
She let out a little shriek, leaping back with a hand clamped to her chest. In her heavy-eyed delirium, she’d completely missed the fact that there was someone else in the room. A lovely girl in a sparkling dress, hovering nervously in the shadows.
...Sofia?
In a flash Aria streaked to the closet, banging a secret metal tile burrowed deep inside the wall. A second later a panel slid open, revealing an impressive cache of weapons underneath. She reached inside blindly, pulling out what unfortunately turned out to be a mace.
“Whoa!” The girl leapt back at once, lifting both hands in surrender. “Take it easy with that! I only came here to—”
“Get back!” Aria warned, waving it threateningly between them. “Get back or else I’ll do what I should have done in those trees!”
Sofia paled, and nodded very slowly. “All right, I just—”
“What are you even doing here?” Aria demanded, unable to let the girl finish a single sentence. The adrenaline had spiked, and no matter how hard she tried to keep it together her ears were ringing with echoes of her friends’ screams. “How did you get in!”
“The door was open,” Sofia answered slowly, trying to temper the frantic speed of the conversation. “I knocked, then walked inside.”
“And where’s Caty?”
The girl paused a moment, then shook her head. “...who?”
Aria’s fingers tightened on the grip, swinging the ancient weapon between them.
“My roommate,” she snarled through clenched teeth. “Where is my roommate? Or do you expect me to believe she just magically vanished when you came inside?”
Sofia blanked, mind racing. “...she probably went home?”
The mace was lowered ever so slightly.
Yeah, I was thinking that myself...
With a vicious scowl, Aria dropped the weapon carelessly on her dresser—not noticing when it speared a hole right through the center of her biology homework. Now that the shock had worn off, any trace of fear had vanished with it. She was better than this shy, trembling girl. If it came to a fight, she didn’t have a doubt as to who would win.
“What are you doing here?” she asked again, trying to project the same dangerous calm she’d seen her Uncle Gabriel speak with all night.
With him, it was highly effective. With her, slightly less.
“I just came to...” Sofia trailed off, looking suddenly off-balanced, as if she was asking the same question herself. “I wanted to apologize for what my brother did.”
There was a beat of silence.
“You wanted to apologize...for your brother?” Aria repeated incredulously.
Sofia flushed, staring down at her shoes. “I know it isn’t enough—”
“What about you?” Aria exclaimed, remembering the moment all too well when a second tiger leapt into the clearing. “You attacked Benji!”
“I didn’t attack Benji—”
“You bit his arm!” she cried. “You dragged him through the trees!”
Just saying it made her blood boil in anger. She didn’t know why she didn’t fire up some lightning of her own and shock the girl right out the open window.
But Sofia took a step forward, eyes shining in the night.
“I didn’t hurt Benji!” she insisted. “I was getting him away from Alexander! You saw what was happening, the guy was going to—”
She stopped herself quickly, looking terrified of what she’d almost said.
“...was going to kill him?” Aria finished softly. “Is that what you were going to say? That your psychotic brother was about to kill my best friend?”
It was like popping a balloon. There was a quiet gasp as Sofia deflated before her eyes. All that fiery insistence vanished, leaving her defeated and cold.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t know what he would have done.”
Aria stared warily from across the room. It wasn’t the answer she was expecting. Then again, Sofia was nothing like the other two. Eric was nothing but a surly enforcer, while Alexander...
“That’s really what happened?” she asked quietly, wishing like mad she knew how to use her mother’s truth tatù. “You were dragging Benji away from the fight?”
A silent sob shook the girl’s shoulders. When she nodded, there were tears in her eyes.
“I’m so sorry about Jason,” she gasped. “Please tell me he’s all right.”
It was in that moment that something very strange happened.
As Aria stood there, watching her start to cry, another voice started echoing through the room. One that sounded exactly like Sofia’s, though the girl hadn’t opened her mouth.
Tell me he’s all right. Tell me Alex didn’t really do it. Tell me my brother’s not a murderer and we don’t have to leave again. Tell me we can stay here. Tell me we can finally have a home—
She held up her hand, blinking quickly, unable to hear any more. When she lifted her head Sofia was staring at her strangely, not understanding what had just transpired.
“Jason’s fine. They were able to heal him.” She paused a moment before adding, “And he didn’t give Alexander up. No one knows what really happened tonight.”
Sofia froze where she stood, utterly stunned. Several times, she tried to think of something to say. But in the end, it was Aria who moved things forward—sinking down onto her mattress.
“I’ve got some questions, an
d I think you owe me some answers.” She patted the space beside her, offering an olive branch at the same time. “We’ve got all night...”
Chapter 5
If you’d told Aria a few hours ago that she’d be sitting on her bed with Sofia Hastings, listening to her life story, she would never have believed you. To be honest, she’d probably have picked up the mace again and asked you to leave. But that’s exactly what ended up happening.
“Just start at the beginning,” Aria prompted gently, sensing the girl was at a bit of a loss.
“The beginning...” Sofia murmured, staring at the floor. “I guess our story actually begins the same way as yours does...with Jonathon Cromfield.”
Aria blinked in surprise, sure she’d heard wrong.
“Cromfield,” she repeated in confusion. “But how—”
“The battle helped bring your parents together, right?” Sofia interrupted softly. “Everyone knows the story. How they tracked down the hybrids, united the two agencies, turned both his top lieutenants against him. In a way, they’d have to thank him...for causing them to become so close.”
“I guess...”
Sofia lowered her eyes with a look of extreme reluctance, as if she was dragging the next words from some hidden place deep inside.
“The battle brought my parents together, too, except...they were fighting on the other side.”
This time, Aria was unable to hide her shock. She remembered questioning her parents about such a phenomenon just a few days before. The battle at the sugar factory had caused an enormous rift in the supernatural community—one so great that no single side could be eliminated completely. When the dust settled, they’d be assimilated back into the fold.
But she couldn’t imagine it wouldn’t come with certain restrictions.
Or conditions, she thought suddenly. That’s the word Alexander used...conditions.
“So what happened?” she asked quietly. “They were arrested, or—”
“They weren’t arrested,” Sofia said shortly. “They were killed.”
A hard silence fell between them. One neither girl was particularly equipped to break.
“There was an explosion,” Sofia continued in monotone. “Something about a gas main blowing up behind a wall. Or at least that’s what we were told later. The three of us were just babies at the time.”
“The three of you—”
“Me, Alex, and Eric. We always joke that he’s our cousin,” she said dully. “Not quite part of the family, but close enough.”
“That’s funny,” Aria said quietly. “That’s exactly what my friends and I say, too.”
Sofia smiled faintly, but it faded as her eyes drifted to the door. “If they knew I was telling you this...”
Aria tilted her head, catching the girl’s eye. “What?” she quipped. “They’d rage out and try to rip us apart with their claws?”
There was a beat of silence.
“...too soon?”
Sofia laughed softly, breathing a bit easier for the first time.
“Anyway, there was a bunch of us children left behind to wait out the fight. As far as I know the three of us were some of the youngest, but I’m sure there were others. The plan was to keep us in a stronghold until the battle was over. Everyone talked about Cromfield like he was some kind of god. There wasn’t any doubt that he would win.”
She paused ever so slightly.
“That’s probably why they didn’t leave behind many guards...”
A clock ticked loudly on the wall behind them. A pair of songbirds cooed in the frosty night.
“The rest is just hearsay, but this is what I was told. Intelligence was shaky in those days, for both sides. When the PC sent agents to the stronghold, they didn’t know it would be filled with children. They’d believed they were sent to eliminate the second wave of reinforcements instead. If they’d known, they probably wouldn’t have...” She cleared her throat, trying to keep speaking in an even tone. “They weren’t taking any chances with tatùs, so they ended the fight before it could even begin. Threw down a chemical agent to incapacitate anyone waiting on the other side.”
Aria softly sucked in a breath, eyes filling with tears.
“Children aren’t meant to survive such things,” Sofia said softly. “Most of them didn’t. The ones who did were very, very sick. It missed Eric and Alex. I wasn’t so lucky.”
Aria looked down at the bed, her mind spinning. Ever since they were children, she and the others had grown up hearing stories about the ‘war’. When they were young enough, they used to act them out—playing the parts of their parents, waving their hands to shoot imaginary lightning bolts and waves of fire into the sky. But the stories they heard were always ones of valor. There was never any doubt as to which side was in the right and who the heroes of those stories were.
A rushed mission with faulty intelligence...and children died?
They’d never heard stories like that.
“But didn’t they heal you?” Aria asked incredulously, thinking of Alicia’s magic touch. “I mean...if you survived the initial blast weren’t they able to fix whatever was wrong—”
“They can’t,” Sofia said briskly. “It did too much damage early on. But now that I’m older, it’s at least tolerable. They give me injections to manage the symptoms and stuff.”
Another silence fell between them.
“That day by the benches, when Benji asked if you were okay...”
The afternoon was just a blur, but she remembered Sofia’s face quite clearly. It was as if the light inside her had gone out, leaving a lovely corpse standing in its wake.
The shifter nodded dismissively, well used to such things.
“It flares up when I’m tired, or stressed, or already sick.”
“Tired or stressed, huh?” Aria’s eyes flickered out the darkened window. “Two things you’re bound to avoid at Guilder...”
Sofia bowed her head with the ghost of a smile. “It’s a lot better than the alternative. I’m just thrilled that we’re finally allowed to leave the Abbey. That we’re finally allowed to attend an actual school.”
The Abbey?
Aria’s face clouded with a sudden frown.
“Wait...what are you talking about? The three of you couldn’t have been living at the Abbey all this time. Ben and I practically grew up there—we’ve been inside every room. And even if you somehow were, they have a proper school—”
“The Abbey isn’t just the monastery,” Sofia interrupted. “Just like the Privy Council doesn’t only exist on this campus. There are extensions all over Europe. Safe-houses. Sub-stations. Foreign offices. We were in a branch of the Abbey further north in England.”
Aria’s eyes widened in shock. She never knew. Then again, she’d never asked.
“A branch of the Abbey...” she repeated under her breath. “Like the one here?”
Sofia shook her head.
“It was an apartment complex. A series of apartment complexes, actually. Near Newcastle, but not too close to the ocean. It was still overseen by Commander Fodder...”
There was a note of deference in her voice. Whether you agreed with his politics or not, Anthony Fodder was a man who was impossible not to respect.
“He visited from time to time.”
Aria shook her head slowly, trying to put it all straight.
The more she listened to the girl’s story, the more a thousand little things were clicking into place. The way the three shifters recognized Luke, heeded his warnings not to make waves. The way Alexander had looked up sharply when Jason introduced himself—stressing the name Alden.
He must blame him. If Gabriel hadn’t defected, there’s a chance the battle could have gone the other way.
“So that’s where you guys grew up?” she asked curiously, trying to recall if she’d ever been to Newcastle. “In this apartment complex?”
For the second time Sofia shook her head.
“I wish it had been that simple, but we b
ounced around a lot. After the exposure I was always sick, and the regular places they used didn’t always have the things we’d need.” She paused, wondering whether to continue. “By the time we got older, I was no longer the problem.”
Aria stared at her for a long moment.
“Alexander?”
The girl sighed, trying to think of a way to explain her older brother.
“He hated that we moved so much, that we were shuffled from place to place. It didn’t take long to figure out we weren’t exactly welcome in the supernatural community, and he resented it. He started getting into fights, started trying to get thrown out. They were considering settling us somewhere in Scotland when the commander summoned us to the actual Abbey for a meeting.”
She paused again, eyes glassing over as she remembered.
“It was...a little intense. He sat the three of us down in his office, then started reading off our rap sheet. Alex’s rap sheet more like it. He spoke slowly, and it took forever. By the time he was finally finished, there wasn’t a point left to be made. We’d blown it. Burned one too many bridges.”
Aria shook her head, trying to imagine. She knew Benji’s grandfather almost as well as she knew her own. And, while she loved him dearly, there was no one better at giving a lecture.
“So what happened?”
Sofia lifted her head suddenly, like she’d been thinking of something else.
“We were wrong,” she said simply. “He wasn’t kicking us out for good; it was exactly the opposite. He told us the fall term was just starting at Guilder, offered us a place at the school. When Alexander asked why, he got really serious and said that every great accomplishment is built on a mountain of failures. He said what happened in that bunker was the worst of those failures, and that the system had been failing us ever since. He said it was up to us to turn things around. Said that this was our chance at a better future, and he’d help us in whatever way he could.”
By the end of the story, she was smiling. A lovely, hopeful smile that seemed to brighten everything around her. But as she glanced out the window, that smile went suddenly cold.
“...and then tonight happened.”
