by D. D. Chance
Still, the Brahmin was apparently hunting me and had gone after a harmless barista, simply just because I was in the area. If nothing else, I needed to put the thing out of commission before it hurt someone else.
I remade that decision fully a dozen times on the way over to the campus, stopping off for a bolstering cup of coffee at the Crazy Cup. Walking way too slowly, I’d finished my coffee and screwed my courage to the sticking point by the time I passed under the archway to Wellington Academy. Per Frost’s instructions, I made my way to the administration building, surprised to see Merry waiting for me. She jumped up as I approached, beaming.
“Hey! I’m so glad you finally made it. They told me to expect you at eight, then pinged me that you were running late.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “They, who?”
“The scholarship board! And one Tyler Perkins, hottably hot despite all the monster hunting stuff. Your meeting with the powers that be had to be rescheduled, they said, but it’s totally a formality. You’re in.”
“Wait.” I held up my hands, confused on two separate points—the first being more important. “Why are you so happy about this? I heard you were at the monster quad last night leading the charge to shut the minor down. You do know that’s what I’m going to be studying, right?”
“Girl, give me a little credit,” Merry said, rolling her eyes. “I don’t blame you for the entrenched entitlement of the academy and its absolutely abysmal track record of nonhuman rights violations dating back freaking centuries. Wellington Academy is a great school for everyone—except for the monsters it keeps trapped beneath our feet. I want you to enroll here. That way you can be part of the solution.”
“The…solution.”
“Exactly!” she enthused. “Look, I know I give Tyler and the others a hard time, but they’re not total assholes, even if they are freaks. And they are unreasonably hot, which maybe gets them a few more points, but still. You’re new. You’re not from here. You have an open mind.”
I could see where this was going. “You think I’ll—”
“I don’t think anything,” Merry said quickly, holding up her hands. “I’m not saying you have to agree with me. But look around. See what you see with your own eyes. Listen and learn, and I bet you’ll understand where I’m coming from, faster than you think.”
“Merry—”
“That’s all I’m going to say!” she insisted. “But regardless, you’re totally in. As in Wellington Academy’s newest full-time enrolled student. I don’t have the deets, but I suspect there was some major string pulling, and Tyler is a Perkins after all. That counts for a lot in this neck of the woods. Here. I’ve got all your stuff.”
“Oh—” Any response I might have leveled was cut off as Merry shoved a backpack at me, emblazoned with the Wellington Academy symbol, an intertwined W and A on a shield, with crossed knives beneath it. It looked sufficiently badass, even if it was embroidered on a hot-pink backpack. “What is this?”
“Syllabi, course schedule, some rando logo gear, and your dorm and food service keys. I suggested to them that you be my roommate and not live in the freak ghetto, at least until you had a chance to see how cool the rest of the campus could be, and they totally agreed.”
By this time, I could only stare at her. “The freak ghetto.”
“The monster hunter quadrant. I mean, that’s cute and all that the guys want to stay there, but believe me when I tell you that sharing a house with four guys does not make for an awesomely hygienic situation.”
I started, a new jolt of panic slipping through me. Unbidden, images of the wishing gate danced in my memory, making me cringe. “The guys all live together? And there’s no women in the program right now, right?”
“There are, but they’re freshmen, and all underclassmen have to live on main campus. You’re coming in as a junior, which gives you options—whoops.” She paled as she glanced beyond me. “Hello, hottable hotness.”
I turned and realized who she was talking about—Tyler ambled up, his usual cocky grin firmly in place. “Merry,” he acknowledged, and she sighed.
“You’re going to make her stay in Fowlers Hall, aren’t you? You didn’t even give me a chance!”
Tyler laughed. “You don’t need a chance. Fowlers Hall is co-ed, safe, and large enough for a hundred students. I think we’ll be able to find her a clean room.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Merry groused. But she gave me a bolstering smile.
“I’m here if you need me—whenever you need me, okay?”
Surprisingly, I felt a rush of affection for her. I’d never had a friend, really—not with monsters inviting themselves over on play dates and sleepovers. “Thanks,” I said, sharing a real smile with her as she winked, then swung away.
“I mean it on the clean room!” she shouted over her shoulder. “Don’t scare her on her first day.”
I couldn’t help myself, I chuckled a little wistfully as Tyler turned me back toward the monster quad.
“Are you okay?” he asked, with enough doubt in the question that I didn’t think he was reading my mind. Didn’t think, but at this point, I didn’t know for sure.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You can’t read my mind, right? That’s not one of your fancy powers?”
“What? Oh, Jesus. No.” He looked at me with genuine concern. “My fancy powers are all spell craft, not counting everything I’ve learned about being a monster hunter. Same with Liam, though he’s got more skill with magical items than any four people combined. Zach can read minds, yes. But we’ve taken care of that. If you want to get a permanent tattoo, it’s maybe not a bad idea, but until then, your bracelet has you covered. And Grim can track like nobody’s business, sure. We suspect there’s some magic going on there, but he doesn’t talk about it. Wellington Academy isn’t about inherent magic, though. It’s about applied magic. The magic of totems and spells that takes the natural energy of the world around us and bends it. Make sense?”
“No,” I said sourly, and he laughed.
“You think too much.”
I snorted. “Well, you’re wrong there,” I said. “I’ve thought exactly enough to keep my ass alive, no more—no less. Not all of us were born into Boston’s magical aristocracy.”
I’d meant the jab as a joke, but Tyler grimaced. “It sounds stupid to say you should count yourself lucky, but—count yourself lucky. The Perkins clan sports one twisted family tree, and that’s the truth. I wouldn’t be here without that tree, so I’m grateful for it…but I also know that there are branches of the family that are rotten to the core. I’ve got a lot of ground to make up for us.”
He spoke with such grim resignation, that I felt compelled to say something. “I’m sure any seriously old family has a few skeletons in the closet.”
If anything, that seemed the exact wrong thing to say. “Yeah, well. In our family, those skeletons were more likely to be real live people who got walled up and buried under a metric ton of concrete bullshit for not walking the Perkins walk or talking the Perkins talk. If I had a dollar for every lecture I’ve endured about protecting the family legacy…”
He broke off, sounding thoroughly disgusted. By now, we’d entered the monster quad, but it appeared deserted. Tyler drew me toward a building with the name “Fowlers Hall” emblazoned across its roofline. I squinted up at it as we approached.
“Please tell me you do, actually, have a cleaning service.”
He scoffed an amused laugh. “Boy, Merry really did a number on you, didn’t she? But I guess it’s only to be expected. We try pretty hard to keep people away. You’ll understand why in a second.”
He scanned open the door, and we stepped inside a very ordinary-looking foyer, but at least it was clean. I can do this, I thought. I’d faced a barn full of monkey rats before—this was nothing more than a dorm left to the questionable housekeeping skills of four college guys. I probably would encounter nothing more harrowing than some dirty socks on the floor. Probably. “It
looks a lot like any college dorm,” I allowed.
“By careful design,” Tyler agreed. Before I could ask him about that response, he stepped ahead to another door and scanned his card across its reader as well.
“Most of the rest of the campus only sees this hallway, if they see anything at all about Fowlers Hall. Again, we’ve done a pretty good job of keeping people out of our business.”
The locks clicked open after a long pause. “And this is why,” he said, opening the door wide.
My jaw dropped as I stepped through the door…and into a palace.
21
Dark marble floors ran the length of the chamber, which was lined with pillars. Stained glass panels hung from chains between the pillars, depicting scenes that looked like they’d been drawn from fairy tales. Brave warriors rescuing villagers from dragons, princesses from towers, the full monster hunting treatment.
“What is all this stuff?” I asked, awed despite myself.
“Some of it has been here since the early days of the school, some of it came from other areas of the school as they evolved away from monster hunting. We’ve always managed to find some way to keep it from being destroyed or sold.”
“Aren’t you afraid of it being stolen?”
Tyler grinned, waving his key card. “State-of-the-art technology combined with magical discernment makes theft a difficult proposition unless it’s officially sanctioned. So that’s the biggest fear, that the university itself will remember what’s lying in plain sight and look to make a buck off it.”
“So, what, they’re going to phase out the monster hunting program? They won’t let anyone else in after you guys?”
Tyler nodded. “That’s the story, anyway. Granted, they’ve been saying some version of that for the last thirty years, but they’re getting a lot more obnoxious about it. Come on.”
He reached for my hand and led me up the staircase. The second floor of Fowlers Hall was as impressive as the first. Marble passages were inlaid with wrought iron, and a long plush runner of carpet chased its way down the center to muffle our footsteps. We passed several shut doors, heavy wood ornamented with more iron.
“Has there ever been an attack on these grounds?” I asked.
“Nope,” Tyler said. “Part of that is because of the iron, part of it is the spells of warding that hang over the place. No monster with dark intent can step foot in here.”
I shot him a look. “Oh, but regular ol’ monsters who are your buddies, they’re okay.”
He laughed. “Believe it or not, there was a time when the academy worked more directly with monsters. Considered them nearly allies, even. Not all of them, of course, but the ones that were a little more acceptable in human society. The djinn, for one. The fae.”
“Yeah? How did that work?”
“Not well,” he admitted. “They left the program about fifty years after we were founded, no reason given. But at that point, the rift between humans and monsters became markedly wider. What do you think?” He glanced to me. “Are you in the camp that we should talk first, attack later? Or the other way around?”
I considered the question. “The monsters I’ve encountered have all been trying to kill me. I don’t doubt that anymore, but back when all this started, I wanted to believe they simply wanted to reach out. Not all the monsters were scary looking, so that didn’t help. I knew they were different and strange, that they were the Other, but they kept coming so often for a while that I wondered if, I don’t know, maybe they wanted to talk to me, tell me something. I also wanted to know why they were targeting me. When I was twelve or thirteen, I imagined I was some sort of ambassador the monster pantheon wanted to recruit to their side, something like that.”
I’d never admitted as much to anyone, knowing how stupid it sounded, but Tyler merely nodded. “Makes sense,” he said. “They were literally coming out of the woodwork around you. Totally reasonable for you to think there was a higher purpose to it all.”
“Yeah, I guess,” I said. “Then I encountered one I could talk to.”
“Really?” Tyler asked. “Liam is going to be all over this. Most of the time, they don’t.”
“Yeah, well, maybe that’s not such a bad thing,” I said. “Even discounting the fact it could’ve all been bullshit, the things that one said about me were pretty vile. It knew what I was thinking, knew what I was hoping, I guess. And took some delight in explaining why it wasn’t possible. That I was food, basically. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“Nice.” Tyler chuckled. “But that is what they teach us. You learn that pretty fast in Intro to Ethics, probably not the same Intro to Ethics that you guys took back in North Carolina. It’s the main tenet for the ‘attack first’ credo. Monsters may be thinking, rational creatures in their own environment, but when they get around humans, that goes away. They want to attack, eat, and leave, generally. We typically don’t even hear about them unless they fixate on an area and don’t move along. Like this Boston Brahmin guy. Something in his wiring must’ve gotten jumbled for him to keep circling back the way he does. Monsters typically don’t stick around.”
“Comforting,” I said dryly.
“Isn’t it?” Tyler stopped in front of a door and incongruously swiped his key card over an ancient-looking metal casing. The door clicked open, and he pushed inside. I shouldn’t have been surprised at that point, but I couldn’t help it.
“This is your room?” If I hadn’t already been seriously rethinking my decision in accommodations, this would’ve put me over the edge. The room was nothing short of gorgeous. Instead of marble floors, rich dark wood flowed through the room, covered with thick carpets that looked genuinely Persian. A large fireplace stood in one corner, not currently lit, but with charred wood in the grate that didn’t look like it was for show.
“You like it?” Tyler asked smugly, and I turned to him and rolled my eyes.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this before Merry got her hooks into me? I was expecting a total dive.”
“I didn’t think she was going to move so fast,” he laughed. “But you’ve got to admit, this is a pretty sweet gig.”
“Ya think?” I snorted.
“I do think,” he said. “And in the interest of being thorough, I feel like no campus tour would be complete without you seeing an actual bedroom.”
“How thorough of you.” Still, I followed as he moved across the room and gestured through an open doorway. Another fireplace, also with charred wood in the grate, a desk overlooking a bay window, a large four-poster bed piled with sheets, and a tumbled comforter.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Am I the first girl you brought here today?” I asked wryly, and he grimaced.
“Nightmares,” he said without a hint of embarrassment. “I didn’t want to admit it before but—yeah. I still have them.”
I turned to him with surprise. “Seriously? More ghosts?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t remember that anyway. I just woke up to what you see here. Kind of crazy, I know. And to answer your other question, yes, we do have a cleaning service, but only for the main floor. What happens up here, we keep to ourselves.”
I felt a rush of warmth at his nearness, and I blurted my next words before I could stop myself. “Well, then, I should probably help you make your bed.”
Tyler didn’t hesitate. “That would be awfully kind of you,” he agreed.
“I’m a super kind person,” I allowed. “I think first we should find where your pillows are underneath all these sheets.”
“I think you’re right.” We both reached for the nearest pillow at the same time, our hands tangling together and—
His phone rang.
Along with about fifty other sirens within a fifteen-foot radius.
“What the hell is that?” I screeched as sound erupted from every surface in the room, the walls, ceiling, and floor practically vibrating with the cacophony. “Make it stop.”
Tyler bounded across the room to where he slammed
his fist against the wall. That didn’t appear to do the trick, but it seemed to make him feel better. Then he yanked his phone out of his pocket and danced his fingers across the screen. The chimes mercifully fell silent. His phone still buzzed in his hand, though, and he scowled down at it, tapping viciously as his dark hair dropped over his brow.
“What the hell is this all about?” he muttered, and I could see the tension in his body jack up until he was practically vibrating as much as his phone. Then he looked up at me with a frown. “Looks like we’ve been summoned.”
“Already?” I asked, my brows climbing my forehead. “Who’s doing the summoning—Dean Robbins? Frost?”
But Tyler shook his head, his expression stormy.
“My father.”
22
The Perkins mansion was tucked into a corner of Beacon Hill so overgrown with trees and flowering bushes, I would have missed the house completely if I didn’t know where to look. That effect was clearly intentional, because Tyler knew exactly where to find the doorway cut into the stone wall next to a large, foliage-covered gate. He stepped through, and I followed. Almost immediately, the thick underbrush gave way to a paved lane bordered by impeccably manicured walkways. The driveway led up to an imposing three-story mansion outfitted with every Victorian detail imaginable.
“This is where you grew up?” I asked, my voice a little strangled.
“Oh, yeah.” Tyler glanced up at the big stone house, with its dizzying array of cupolas, peaked towers, and custom-shaped windows, every angle and inset bordered with elaborate trim. A deep covered porch ran all the way around the first floor, accessed by a sweeping staircase flanked by huge pots of lush ferns. “When I was a kid, I didn’t notice it, really, and even as a teenager, it didn’t faze me. You don’t see what you’re used to. But now, looking at it…yeah. It’s a little much.”
