Dante shook his head. “For the record, I don’t like keeping secrets from you.”
“I’m sure you don’t, but you keep them anyway. Why do you do that?”
He looked at his hands, then back at me. “George didn’t want to take any chances that someone may be listening to our plans.”
I narrowed my eyes and took a gamble. “Bullshit. That’s not it, and I know it.”
Dante swallowed, his Adam’s apple working in his throat. “You want the truth?”
“I do. I don’t want to be treated like I’m second class, or like I’m not important enough to be let in on the secret. Unless you haven’t noticed, I’ve had just as much input in these situations as anyone else has, so I think I deserve to be in on the big conspiracy.”
“It isn’t a conspiracy.”
“Then what is it, Dante?”
Dante took a deep breath. “Alright,” he said, “All of the evidence we’ve seen regarding every single attack that has ever happened since we found you points at one inescapable fact; you are a target, if not the target of these groups.”
“How can you possibly know that? And anyway, what makes you think the people who kidnapped Henry and Covell are after me?”
“Reasons.”
“Reasons you can’t go into, or won’t?”
“Won’t. Lilith, if the groups we have made contact with are after you, and they capture you, we can’t risk them knowing our plans because we’ve included you in them.”
I shifted in my seat to make it easier to look at him, because what he had just told me had struck a nerve. “So, what does that mean?” I asked, “Do you think I’m going to get captured or something?”
“I don’t. You’re safe here, safer than you were in the mansion in Germany, but the fact remains, if we keep you in all of our plans and you are taken in, the temptation to tell them what we’re up to would be present. We wanted to make sure you didn’t know anything so you wouldn’t be put in the position where you’d have to choose between your own health and safety, or ours.”
“Oh, so you lied to me, but it’s okay because you had selfless reasons for doing so.”
“Yes, and you’re going to have to just accept that. You don’t get to be outraged about this, understood?”
“I understand. I’m not an idiot, Dante. Everything you’ve just told me makes sense.”
“So, why are you still upset?”
“I’m upset because you should have just come and told me that in the first place instead of thinking I was going to flip out on you and do something stupid.”
His eyebrows pinched at the middle. “What do you mean?”
“What I mean is that none of you thought to tell me, hey Lilith, this is what’s up—we’re going to make some plans, but because you’re the target, we’re going to make them without you because of x, y, and z. Instead you thought I’d be an unreasonable bitch who would just go psycho on you out of a stupid, misplaced sense of entitlement.”
“It’s not that. The truth is, I know you think that you’ve grown up tough so you can handle anything that life throws at you, but you have no idea what we’re dealing with here.”
“I don’t need you protecting me.”
“Yes, you do!” The sudden rise in his voice caught me completely by surprise. Dante had never yelled at me before.
“Dante…”
“God dammit Lilith, Leo has the same damn attitude, and look what happened to him! The only difference is that he has almost 20 years of experience on you. Trust me when I say I hate pissing you off, but I am not going to willingly put you in harm’s way just to appease your ego, because if anything were to happen to you…”
My entire demeanor softened, melted like ice in the sun. I wasn’t being unreasonable, but neither was Dante. He made a lot of sense, and he did have my best interests at heart. I couldn’t fault him for that.
“It’s not just about the guys…” I said, “I just hate feeling so helpless.”
Dante reached for me, and I hugged him tightly, sinking into him, allowing his scent to envelop me. It was a perfect, quiet moment, accompanied by the light voices coming from the TV. I could have stayed there forever, but someone else had stepped into the room. When I turned my head, and saw it was Laura, the side of her body lit up by the glow from the giant TV, I could have rolled my eyes, but I didn’t. It was dark in the room save from the light the TV was radiating, but I didn’t want to risk Dante seeing my reaction to this girl’s presence.
“Sorry,” she said, “I didn’t think there was anyone in here.”
Dante stood, almost as if he were reacting to her arrival. “You don’t have to apologize,” he said.
“There isn’t usually anyone out at this time of night,” Laura said.
“I’ve noticed this is a quiet place,” Dante said, releasing me from his hold. “Reminds me of the center in Germany.”
“I wish I could have visited it. Hello, Lilith.”
I turned my head up at her. “Hi. How have you been?” I asked. I didn’t really care to know, but Dante had already experienced too much of my irrational side tonight, so I decided to reel it in a little.
“I’m doing well, thanks, but I don’t want to bother the two of you.”
“It’s no bother,” Dante said, “I’m about to leave, anyway.”
Laura stared at Dante for a long, hard moment. “You’re Dante Rhodes, aren’t you?” she asked, “The recruiter.”
“I am, but I’m at a loss. I don’t know who you are.”
“Laura, my name is Laura.”
They shook hands. “I have to say your reputation is pretty impressive. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“News travels fast, and good news travels far.”
“Bad news travels further,” I put in, my attention now back on the TV.
“If you don’t mind,” Laura said to Dante, “I was wondering if you had a few minutes to spare—I’d love to ask you some questions.”
“I have some time,” Dante said.
“Excellent. We’d best leave Lilith in peace, then.”
Dante nodded, then gestured toward the door leading out of the lounge, and it hit me only as they started to walk out of the room. I hadn’t noticed it a moment ago, had been too stuck in my own head to see what had just happened right in front of me. This girl had poached Dante. He had been sitting right next to me, and with a flutter of her eyelashes and a word of praise, had stolen him right from under my nose, and since I had ignored it, there was nothing I could do to stop it.
I scowled at the TV and shut it off, tossing the remote into the dark. It was time for bed, anyway.
CHAPTER NINE
Something is scratching in the walls. Behind the walls. Maybe the walls themselves are the ones making all that racket. Whatever it is, the noise is keeping the children awake. Children? No, not children—snakes. The snakes aren’t going to be able to sleep with all that noise going on, and if they don’t get their beauty sleep, they’re going to start biting people. I can’t let that happen.
They’re my serpents, I’m their queen, the last queen they’ll ever have, and I need to help them, protect them, care for them, or they’ll hurt people; maybe they’ll even hurt me. Maybe they’ll kill me.
Yes.
These serpents could be the death of me, and then what? No more I, no more they, and then one by one, everyone else will die, because they have to kill me first. If they don’t put me in the ground first, then they’ll never prove they can put the others in the ground for good. But they’ll come for me first, yes, they’ll find me, and they’ll kill me. Kill me. Kill me. That scratching noise will kill me.
I exploded into consciousness, heart pounding, breathing short and ragged, skin cold and covered in a thin film of sweat. I scrambled for my phone to check the time, three in the morning. The night was dark, and still. My window was frosted. Outside, I could see slight flecks of snow falling, touching the window and then dissolving into nothing.
&
nbsp; I had been dreaming. I wasn’t sure exactly what the dream had been about, but it had been powerful enough to send me reeling into my own consciousness—something that didn’t happen often. I wasn’t the kind of person to put a lot of stock into dreams.
But there was something about the dream that stuck with me; scratching. In the dream I had heard a scratching sound, like nails on wood, almost the same sound I would often hear on the nights when I didn’t want to keep Morticia in my bedroom with me. She would paw and scratch at the door until the point of boredom, then go off and do something else. But Morticia wasn’t here, and as I turned to look at the door, I listened to that very same scratching sound I couldn’t explain, and dread crept into my already frightened heart.
I swallowed hard, swung my legs across the bed, and stood. Heart pounding now, I approached the door, wondering randomly if maybe the Alexandria had a cat somewhere that had gotten loose and, having taken a liking to me, had come to my door in the dead of night. Maybe that was exactly the sound that had not only infected my dreams and turned them into something unpleasant, but that had also woken me up from the very same dream in a cold sweat, my nerves shot to shit.
The scratching stopped when I got to within four or five steps of the door. I stopped too, and waited, listening, but the sound didn’t return. Swallowing the apprehension, I turned toward my bed and padded back, but then the scratching returned, this time louder, and forceful enough to make the door wobble slightly. Moriticia had the strength to do that back home, but these doors weren’t the thin pieces of crap I was used to—these doors were old, and tough as nails.
What the hell kind of cat was out there that it had the strength to make an otherwise sturdy door wobble?
Sucking it up, I marched toward the bedroom door, unlocked it, and threw it open just as whatever little beastie was out there scratched at it, but the hall was dead, empty, no sign of anything at my door, or scurrying away. I was alone, but at the same time I felt like there was someone, or something, with me; I just couldn’t see it.
“Hello?” I asked, holding my voice only slightly above a whisper. But there was no response, only a slight shift in air pressure, a sudden trick of the wind, and a whoosh, as if something almost entirely invisible to my eyes had zipped through the air, down the corridor, and away from me.
The thought of calling for help, for backup, crossed my mind, but I only had a second to make the choice, and it was an easy one to make. Whatever that had been, it had come to my room, had woken me up from a terrible dream, and now—I thought—it wanted me to follow it, to trust it. I couldn’t see this thing, but I could feel it with my mind, and knew where it was going. And while I had no idea what it was, or what it wanted, I really did feel like I could trust it.
Pelting down the hall I went, barefoot, my feet barely making a sound on the carpet as I moved, urged on by an instinct that seemed to be guiding me toward this shadow in the dark, helping me keep pace with it.
I followed the feeling through the Alexandria’s quiet halls, down a flight of stairs, through the foyer, into and out of one of the lounges, and then through more corridors, always one step behind this thing, whatever it was, until finally I arrived at the foot of an open door. A light dusting of snow had started to creep into the house, carried on the back of the night’s cold chill, and I wasn’t wearing more than a pair of pajama pants and a thin t-shirt.
I wrapped my hands around my shoulders and watched my breath turn to mist in front of my eyes. This was a back door, one I had never gone through before. It led to the Alexandria’s back garden, which was as dark and still as the school itself. In the distance, London loomed, the city lights yellowing the low hanging clouds hovering above it.
Whatever thing I had been sensing had gone through that door and into the night, and as much as I got the feeling it wanted me to follow it, I wouldn’t last ten minutes in that cold without warmer clothes. At the same time…
I inched toward the door, feeling the floor grow colder beneath each of my foot falls as I closed in on the door, but then someone grabbed my shoulder from behind and I jumped and yelped, and almost tripped over myself in my need to get away from the cold, phantom hand that had just touched me.
“Tom,” I said, after taking a sharp breath, “It’s just you.”
“Lilith,” he said, “Are you okay? You look frightened half to death.”
I shook my head. “I’m fine, I just noticed the door was open and—”
“What door?”
“That one.” I pointed down the hall, then turned my head, but the door was shut. An icy fist reached into my throat and tightened around it, impeding my ability to both breathe and speak at the same time. My heart was pounding against my chest, my head. I was sure that door had been open, as sure as the floor beneath my feet was as cold as the world outside.
“That door is closed,” Tom said.
“It was… open… it was just open, just now.” I looked around my feet, trying to find the snow I had seen, but it was gone, and the floor wasn’t even wet.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m… I don’t know.”
Tom headed for the back door, unlocked it with the key that sat inside the lock, and pulled it open. The night air spilled in followed by a light dusting of snow, a familiar sensation, but somehow the feel of this wind on my body made what I had felt a moment ago seem distant, and dreamlike, leaving me to wonder if I had just sleepwalked all the way down here, and casting into doubt everything that had happened from the moment I woke up.
If I had even woken up at all before now.
Tom turned around to look at me. “You’re sure this door was open?” he asked.
“I… don’t know anymore.”
“I find it weird that it would have been, this door is locked shut every night, and it can only be opened from the inside.”
“Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I just imagined it.”
Tom came back inside and shut the door. He was barefoot too, wearing a pair of grey sweat pants and a black t-shirt, and he had started to feel the night’s icy caress. “C’mon, let’s get you back upstairs.”
I nodded and allowed Tom to walk me through the Alexandria, all the way to my bedroom door, though we walked in silence. I kept trying to figure out if what had happened to me had been some kind of strange dream, or if that door had in fact been open, and had somehow shut without either of us noticing. Neither idea gave me any real kind of comfort. If I hadn’t been dreaming, then it meant something weird was going on within the Alexandria’s walls, and that idea carried with it all manner of worries.
“Do you want to tell me what just happened, really?” Tom asked once we arrived at my bedroom door.
“I wish I could tell you,” I said. “Maybe I was just sleepwalking.”
“And if you weren’t sleepwalking, then I don’t know what to suggest, since you haven’t told me the whole story.”
I let out a long sigh. “I woke up and thought I heard scratching noises at my door, but there was no one there.”
“So, how’d you end up downstairs?”
“I got this feeling… I followed it, and it led me to that door, which was open when I got there.”
“But it wasn’t, because I came up behind you, I saw you staring at the doorway, and it was closed.”
“Then either I’m going insane, or I was sleepwalking, or something was fucking with me.”
“Well… the Alexandria is haunted…”
“You’re kidding me.”
Tom smiled. “I’m joking. I don’t know if it is or it isn’t. Probably is. But nothing like what you’ve just described has ever happened to anyone else, as far as I know. You should push this whole thing out of your mind and try and get some sleep.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What were you doing down there at three in the morning?”
“That’s a good question.”
Silence followed. “Well?” I asked, “You gonna answer it or not?”
&
nbsp; “I could, but right now isn’t the time or the place.”
“And when would that be?”
“Over dinner tomorrow, about eight?”
I rolled my eyes. “This again, huh?”
“I’m nothing if not persistent.”
“So, you’re telling me you’ll answer my questions if I go out on a date with you?”
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
I opened my bedroom door and stepped through. “Goodnight, Tom.”
“I promise they’re good answers.”
“Goodnight.”
I shut the door and walked over to my bed. Tom had succeeded in making me feel a little more relaxed, and for that he had earned a few points, but he didn’t have enough points to score a date with me. It would take more than a mystery and some quick wit to get me to agree to something like that, and in any case, it would take him asking permission of all four of my guys, because there was no way in hell I was doing anything like that behind their backs.
CHAPTER TEN
I wasn’t sure when exactly morning had decided to make an appearance, I only knew I hadn’t slept for most of the night, and that meant there couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes between total darkness, and the pale precursor to dawn. Miraculously, I wasn’t feeling as tired as I thought I would have been, all things considered. Maybe I would feel it later. Right now, the world was starting to wake up, and my stomach was grumbling.
I decided to head downstairs, after getting showered and changed, and join the rest of the school’s inhabitants for breakfast. The dining hall was a massive room filled with long tables and benches for people to sit on. On one side of it, a huge, high window let in the sun. On the other side, a busy kitchen prepared trays of food for people to compose their breakfasts from. All I wanted was some bacon, eggs, and orange juice, so I thought I would load my plate, then go and eat it somewhere quiet; or, at least, as quiet a place as there could have been in a busy dining hall.
I found a spot near back where I would be easily overlooked, and set myself down there to get to work on my bacon and eggs. From there, I was able to observe the Alexandria’s supernatural students go about the business of having breakfast, socializing as they went. Conversations stuck to the mundane—mostly talking about students and or events I had never heard of.
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