by Elena Lawson
“Hey,” Draven said, his own smile fading now, too. He reached out and gave my arm a gentle squeeze. “It’ll be alright.”
I wondered which broken facet of my life he was referring to.
“Just tell me you’ll come with us,” I said weakly. I needed all of them there with me. Elias and his big brain. Cal’s brutal truths. Adrian’s theories. And Draven’s knowledge of the ancient languages and deciphering code. He’d managed to decipher three more passages from the journal the last time he was at the Abbey with us. And who knew what we would find at La Casa Rosa.
But it was more than their skills I needed to support me. I needed them. Like a house needs a foundation and a roof. The four of them had become my roots—keeping me stable. Without them, I was afraid it would all fall apart.
Or worse—we’d never figure it out.
Never put a stop to whatever malicious thing was going on in our messed-up world.
I was afraid that it would never end.
And I needed it to end, or I was going to go insane. Like, really insane. Worse than Rose, insane. And there would be no coming back from it.
Draven dipped his head down and touched his forehead to mine. “Alright,” he said. “I’ll come.”
I released a pent-up breath and wrapped my arms around him, catching him off guard for the second time tonight. I felt his body stiffen for an instant beneath my touch. “Thank you,” I whispered into his leather jacket.
“You’re welcome.”
5
Draven had to leave almost straight away. To run back to his queen to get permission to accompany me on my trip. I was suddenly glad I’d paid the more expensive fare to select the night-time flights for us—and glad that since I booked first class when I phoned the airline from Granger’s office the next morning to add another seat to my booking, they were happy to oblige—for an exorbitant additional fee, of course.
I was careful to give the airline the exact spelling of the fake name he’d written down for me. David Ravenswood. It was laughable, really. He didn’t look like a David at all—not to me, at least. David’s were nice guys. David’s were guys who bought you a corsage for prom and asked you if you wanted to go steady.
Draven was not a David.
I’d rolled my eyes before agreeing to the mind-bending sum of money I’d just paid and hung up the phone.
Granger re-entered her office from going to fetch some tea and perked up upon seeing me finished with the call. “All finished, then?”
I nodded. “Yep. Thanks for letting me use it.”
Witches didn’t have all that much use for telephones. I’d had a cellular one a couple of years ago—but it was only because I sucked at magic and the majority of my spells tended to go haywire.
Not much changed since then, but I thought my time at the academy was at least helping to shape my magic into a proper form. I’d only had a handful of fuckups. Turning all of Bianca’s clothing black being the most notable one. And I’d only had one of those awful migraines I’d been plagued with as a younger witch.
Things were looking up in that department, at least. I wasn’t a total failure as a witch, anymore.
I huffed. Gotta take the good with the bad.
“Spain?” Granger said, a halfway question. A prod to bring me out of my reverie.
I cocked my head at her, clearing it of the morning cobwebs still clinging around the edges. I needed a coffee before first period or I was going to fall asleep on my desk in the back of Elias’ classroom. “Yeah. Alistair had a summer home there. I’m going for the break.”
I tried to sound excited about it, but my tone fell flat.
“La Casa Rosa,” she said, and a strange flicker of emotion crossed her face that I couldn’t place. Had she been there before?
With my father, maybe?
Ew. The thought of Ms. Granger and him together made me want to barf. Sort of like how the thought of any adult who I regarded as being a parental sort of figure in any sort of intimate…ugh. I put a stop to the thought.
I wasn’t a child anymore, but for whatever reason, the idea of old wrinkly bodies—
Ugh. Stop it, Harper.
What my father did before he met my mother was so long ago it was practically ancient history. There’s no reason it should irk me now.
“Have you been there?” I asked, barely concealing my distaste while trying to change my perspective.
“No,” Granger answered quickly, the word almost a snap. “I mean, no, I haven’t. It was a place Alistair and his family went when he was younger, before they passed, and then after…well, Alistair and I lost touch for a very long time,” she trailed off, and it was near impossible to miss the sadness drawing down the corners of her eyes.
Perking back up in a way that seemed all too forced, she pasted on a smile and regarded me with kind light brown eyes, reaching back to check and see if any of her hair had escaped her bun in the last three seconds.
“It was always a place only for family,” she said in a way that told me she wasn’t happy about that. “But I suppose it’s yours now.”
I nodded. She wasn’t wrong. There were a lot of things that were mine now. I wondered when that would stop being weird.
Decided it probably never would.
“Where is it anyway?” she asked. “I always wondered.”
“Well, it’s in Spain.”
“I gathered that,” she said with a chiding look and set her tea down on her desk, moving lithely behind it to slink down into her plush chair. “But where in Spain, exactly?”
“Somewhere nearer to the coast. I can’t remember,” I said honestly, shrugging. “Martin only gave me coordinates. The guys plugged them into Google. They know where it is probably better than I do.”
She seemed disappointed and something plucked at my heart at the look that crossed her face as she narrowed her eyes into her teacup, sipping quietly at the edge of it. She really did miss him, didn’t she? “Maybe you could come there?” I offered.
Granger had done nothing but help me since I arrived at the academy. Helping with my studies. Telling me about my father. Shielding me from the Chronicle and the council—which I cringed to think about what would happen now that I was an ‘adult’. I doubted she would be able to shield me from their inquiries anymore. But good luck getting to me in Spain, dickheads!
The point was, I owed her. And if being in a place so filled with the essence of my father would make her happy—or bring her any measure of peace—then that’s what I would give her.
“I mean, if you get some free time during the break.”
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly,” she began, sipping her tea again, but I could already see her considering it. “But…if it wouldn’t be an imposition…” she hedged, glancing up at me from beneath her lashes, as though hiding. Afraid to hear my response.
She looked so much younger in that moment. Even though I knew if she grew up alongside my father, she would have to be over one-hundred years old.
Right then, she could have been sixteen. A friend more so than an elder or a teacher—never mind a headmistress.
“It wouldn’t be,” I said without hesitation, though the thought of having a teacher over during my summer holiday with all the guys didn’t sound super appealing. No matter who she was. “You can come and tell me more about him.”
She grinned. “Alright. It’s settled then. I’ll open a communication portal to you when I have time.”
“Okay.”
“You should get to class, though, dear. The bell will ring any—”
The sounding of the bell interrupted her, and she laughed. “There it is.”
I turned to leave, realizing I probably wouldn’t see her again before I left the academy since she tended to spend almost her entire days during school hours sequestered in this room. “Thanks for everything,” I told her, cursing myself as the swell of emotion thickened in my throat. “I hope you have a good break.”
She regarded me with a pai
ned expression, and I thought maybe she was seeing my father in my eyes. “You too, Harper.”
6
The rest of the day dragged on like no other I’d spent at the academy. First period being the exception. Elias hushed the whispers of the other students. He reprimanded them when they stared—casting me inquisitive and dirty looks. I silently thanked him from my seat in the back, my jaw tense.
But after I left Arcane History, he wasn’t there to scold them into leaving me alone and their whispers followed me everywhere I went.
Why is she always there when bad shit happens?
Maybe it’s her fault they’re dead.
I bet she’s the one who killed Headmaster Sterling and it wasn’t her familiars at all.
And who the hell has wolf shifters as familiars, anyway?
It isn’t natural.
She’s not like us.
By the time I sat beside Bianca in Donovan’s old classroom—now being overseen by the same professor who teaches Immortal Languages—I was utterly spent and dying to leave. Why the professors insisted on having an actual lesson today was beyond me. Our grades were already set in stone.
I’d missed all the Alchemical Comprehension Exams because of what happened with Martin. Granger had given me a pass—like she always did—but that didn’t mean all the other teachers would.
The exams made up thirty percent of our grades.
I knew I’d be lucky if I didn’t fail every single class. I just wanted to get it all over with. Give me my shitty grades and I’ll be on my way, thanks.
“You look awful,” Bianca said as I slid into my seat.
“Thanks,” I said sarcastically, narrowing my eyes at her as I stuck out my tongue.
She opened her mouth to retort, but Professor whatshisface had already begun the lesson.
After a few minutes, Bianca passed me a note and I looked down to see the neatly folded little triangle and rolled my eyes at her. But in the end, I unfolded it and read the parchment behind the thick textbook laying open in front of me.
We get our grades at lunch hour, it said. Want to skip the rest of the day? We can go shopping for your trip.
I wouldn’t pretend the idea wasn’t immediately enticing. Not the shopping part—though I supposed that might be alright, too. Besides, I still owed her a whole new wardrobe for ruining hers a few weeks before. Getting the hell out of the academy was the bit that got me.
With a stroke of my quill, I replied to her note with two words.
Fuck. Yes.
She laughed once she had it unfolded in her lap and was swiftly reprimanded by the professor.
“Something funny?” he asked her.
And Bianca, being the perfect little student, crushed the note between her thighs and folded her hands atop her desk with a winning smile. “No,” she said. “Not at all, sir. Please, go on, this lecture is absolutely riveting.”
Though I would’ve thought it impossible to miss the sarcasm in her voice, the professor blushed at her words and continued on with a renewed fervor.
I didn’t particularly want to stay at the academy for lunch, either, but if I wanted to know whether I was doomed to repeat this term or not, I didn’t really have a choice. If I failed, maybe I could run away to La Casa Rosa—stay there where no one would be able to find me. Erect massive wards around the Spanish villa and never leave.
Hell, I was just as likely to do it if I passed as if I failed.
The sidelong glances I was getting from the student body as I pushed little elbows of macaroni around on my plate were enough to ruin my appetite. I couldn’t have that. I liked food too much to allow them to stress me into not wanting to eat one of my favorite cafeteria lunches. Just look at all that wasted cheese…
It’s a goddamned crime.
I took a long swallow of my glass of orange juice instead, grimacing at the slightly too-tart flavor that meant the oranges weren’t quite ripe for the picking when they were used to making it.
“When will they be handing out our grades?” I asked Bianca, who was talking in a hushed tone with Marcus across the table. She giggled at something he said, the pair of them totally oblivious to all the people staring.
Bianca had been memory wiped on more than one occasion and Marcus nearly died. They stared at them for much different reasons than they stared at me. They watched them and whispered about they were so lucky to be alive. Poor Bianca. Poor Marcus.
And there’s that fucking crazy, murderous bitch, Harper. Death clings to her like her own dark shadow…
“B?”
“What did you say?” she asked, surfacing from her and Marcus’ little bubble.
I was happy for them—truly, I was—but it was hard not to be a little jealous when the man I wished I could sit and eat lunch with was resigned to watching me from afar. Elias stood across the cafeteria, sipping a mug of Earl Grey, casting me half-hearted smiles over the brim of his mug when he thought no one was looking.
I hated it.
The fact that Cal and Adrian were still not permitted to enter the academy except to accompany through the portaling room didn’t help, either. I wanted to be outside eating with them in the old shed. It would be eons better than enduring this bullshit just to get my likely failing grades.
“When will they be giving us our reports?”
“Any time now.” It was Marcus who answered me. “They usually just send them straight to the tables just before the lunch hour is up.”
I glanced up at the old-fashioned clock across the room to find there was still another fifteen minutes until the lunch bell would ring.
Only fifteen minutes.
I can do this.
As my gaze trailed back down to my still-full plate of mac and cheese I caught sight of someone entering the cafeteria. She wasn’t in uniform, but instead wore designer jeans and a deep purple long sleeve top that looked like cashmere. Paired with the distressed knee-high brown leather boots. Even I had to admit she looked good.
Even if it was Kendra we were talking about.
She strolled into the cafeteria with much less of her regular swagger. It was hard not to notice she’d slimmed down since the last time I’d seen her. Her heart-shaped face looked gaunt and pale. And her jeans seemed loose around her hips. Her usually shining yellow-blonde hair was dull and pulled back in a messy ponytail that was very unlike her.
Even the heavy layer of makeup coating her face couldn’t hide how tired she looked.
Why had she come?
Surely not just to collect her grades? They would have had them forwarded to her home after everything that happened.
“Is that…?” Bianca began, turning to follow my line of sight.
“Yep.”
“She looks—”
“Half dead?” I offered.
“Harper!”
“What?” I said with a half shrug. It was true.
A squeal preceded the attack of her minion and with a pang of guilt, I remembered her other follower—er—friend was no longer with us. It was hard to miss how Kendra’s jaw tightened as her friend approached to hug her. Kendra returned the short embrace before she caught sight of me watching her and I quickly looked away.
“She’s coming over here,” Bianca whispered.
I snapped my head back up to find she was right, and I pleated my fingers in my lap. Kendra made a beeline for our table near the side-wall of the room, leaving her friend to follow awkwardly behind her.
“Hi,” I said, my voice oddly strangled. “How are you? Um…I mean, how are you feel—”
“I’m fine,” she snipped, and I saw a tinge of pink color her cheeks beneath her makeup.
“Oh. Well that’s good,” I replied, not really knowing what else to say or do. This was Kendra… I felt bad about what happened to her, but she was still the bitch who blackmailed me into doing her homework and I suspected also spread all sorts of nasty rumors about me. There had to be a reason I was avoided like the plague in this place almost from the fi
rst moment I walked in.
“I—” she swallowed, and I watched her hands ball at her sides. “I wanted to thank you.”
“The fuck…” I distantly heard Bianca say under her breath, drawing out the ‘uh’ in the curse word so it would have been impossible for Kendra not to hear her. She ignored it.
“For saving my life,” she continued when all I did was stare, gaping at her, my eyebrows dangerously near to getting lost in my hairline. “I—I’d be dead if you hadn’t come and found me. You could have left me there. But you didn’t. So…thank you.”
“You’re…welcome? I guess.”
“Good,” she said—her nasally voice oddly strained as she began to turn away from our table. “See you next term?”
I gave her a slow nod and she spun on her heel and went to sit with her friend and the dickhead in Elias’ class and all his friends, tossing her ponytail before she sent her shorter clone to fetch her something to eat.
“That was fucking weird,” Bianca said, not bothering to try to conceal her distaste.
“Here they come,” Marcus said and rubbed his hands together, drawing my attention back to the table. First an envelope with Bianca’s name scrawled across the front appeared in front of her as though out of thin air. Then Marcus’, just the left of his tray.
I held my breath as mine materialized in front of me, landing in the congealed mass of pasta and cheese sauce on my plate. Of course.
Bianca giggled. “That’s some crap luck.”
Bianca was already tearing into her envelope along with Marcus. The rest of the dining hall had erupted in loud chatter and the occasional whoop! when someone found they’d done better than expected.
Marcus was showing Bianca his grades and they began comparing them to each other’s scores, trying to one-up each other.
I hesitated for a beat before I snatched up the envelope from the tray and did my best to tear open the goopy parchment without getting too much food on my hands. The envelope fell away and I unfolded the single piece of paper, my stomach in knots.
What I found on the other side gave me pause.
