Royals of Villain Academy 5: Corrupt Alchemy

by Eva Chase

  “If you’re not up to the challenge, you can just say so,” I replied. “Lots of other games you can try your hand at here.”

  He stroked his thumbs over my arms. “Rory…”

  The longing in his voice sobered me up. I looked him straight in the eyes. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Not yet. I’m still… working through everything.”

  I thought he might leave after that admission. His hands dropped back to his sides. But he offered me a small smile and shrugged. “If you change your mind later, it’s room 1506. You’re welcome to drop by any time. Now, which of these relics are you going to try to kick my ass at next?”

  Gratitude that he hadn’t pushed the invitation, that he was willing to keep goofing around by my rules, brought a lump into my throat. I cocked my head as I considered our remaining options, but before I could pick, my phone chimed.

  Lillian. As I read her message, even though I’d been expecting it, my spirits sank. I glanced up at Malcolm.

  “Game time’s over. I’ve got to go help them figure out exactly where my mother is.”

  Exactly where they were going to direct their brutal assault.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jude

  It really was irritating how once you noticed something, you could never completely ignore it again, even if you’d managed to be oblivious to it for ages beforehand.

  I had no idea how long my father had been ordering a few of his employees to keep an eye on me. Maybe it had been going on for years. Maybe it’d started the moment I’d moved out. Maybe the man I’d spotted by Killbrook Hall a few days ago had been the first intruder on his initial shift.

  There was no way for me to tell. All I knew was that now that I’d picked up on my stalkers and their illusionary tricks, I couldn’t make myself unaware, as much as I might have wanted to pretend they didn’t exist.

  I searched my bedroom and then the common room when I had it to myself to make sure no spells or more mundane technology had been planted there, but my sphere of privacy ended beyond those walls. One or another figure was lurking around the green every time I left my dorm. Now and then I passed one in the halls. Someone slunk after me and my Physicality seminar classmates when we went out to the Casting Grounds to work on conjuring and transforming larger objects than the classroom would allow.

  Their presence might not have annoyed me quite so much if I didn’t have to wonder whether more people like that were spying on Rory now that she’d taken off for California. As if she didn’t have enough to worry about while she tried to save her mother from the fucking joymancers without our own people recording her every move.

  After the Physicality session, my stalker wavered between the trees some ten feet behind me, visible in a shaky blur at the edge of my vision when I turned to make a remark to one of my classmates. Frustration coiled in my gut.

  This was ridiculous. I’d moved out so I could get away from my family. My supposed father hadn’t wanted me anyway. Now I was faced with reminders of him and how little faith he had in me everywhere I looked. How was a guy supposed to concentrate on his studies? I’d like to make use of what actual talents I had.

  Rather than heading back to the dorm or the scion lounge before my next class, I meandered past the Stormhurst Building toward the lake. My stalker let the distance between us extend on the open ground, but as soon as I veered off onto the path that led through the forest near the shore, he drew closer again. I waited until I’d walked about a quarter of a mile deep into the woods, and then I spun around and marched up to him in a few swift strides.

  “Snap out of the illusion,” I said, jabbing my finger in the general direction of where I thought the man’s chest was. I aimed well enough to graze the fabric of his shirt.

  The disguised form shifted as if to flee, but I had a good enough sense of his presence now to grab his arm before he could run. “Forget about that. I know you’re here. I have to assume you know who I am. Do you really want to mess with a scion’s magic?”

  I hated leaning on that false label—and the false skills presumed to go with it—but the lie did serve me well. This guy had no idea I wasn’t really who I was supposed to be. Dad would never have let that secret out.

  After a moment’s hesitation, my stalker waved the illusion away. I found myself staring at a skinny middle-aged man with a jutting chin and a suit that looked a little too tight. Then I registered the position of his free hand. He’d jerked it to the hilt of some sort of dagger shoved into his pocket.

  I gave him an incredulous look. “What, were you planning on stabbing me? Do you have any idea the shitload of trouble you’d be in then?”

  The man just stared back at me without flinching. “I don’t answer to you.”

  The person he answered to was okay with him cutting me open if he felt he needed to, then? My skin went suddenly cold. Had he been planning on doing that no matter what I did, just waiting for an ideal moment? Was Baron Killbrook so paranoid he’d risk offing me before his new heir had even arrived?

  “Who do you answer to?” I asked, narrowing my eyes in what I intended to be a threatening expression. I drew a casting word into the back of my throat in case I had to fight for my life right now.

  The guy didn’t even bother to answer the question. He just glared at me obstinately. I released his arm to grasp the front of his shirt, letting an edge creep into my voice. “That’s okay. I can figure it out. Why don’t you go tell my father that your skills weren’t up to the task. And that he’d have a whole lot less to worry about if he’d leave me alone.”

  I pushed the man away with a little shove. He scowled at me before swiveling on his heel and hurrying away. I scanned the forest quickly in case I had two stalkers on my trail today instead of just one. Nothing caught my eye.

  Even without spotting another watcher, my pulse kept up a skittering beat as I headed back toward the main campus. Whatever he was thinking, Baron Killbrook wasn’t playing around. I’d thought putting myself out of his way and out of his sight might be enough to keep things peaceful between us at least until my half-sister arrived. That clearly wasn’t the case.

  So, was I going to keep living like this, with him peering over my shoulder in every way he could and possibly setting me up to be murdered at any moment… or was I going to buck up and look the problem in the face?

  I stewed on that question as I walked. By the time I reached my dorm, I couldn’t stand the thought of sitting back and waiting to see how he’d come at me next. I might not be a Killbrook, but I had at least as much spine as a scion should.

  There was no point in calling Dad since he wouldn’t answer when he saw my number. I was pretty sure he’d read a text, though.

  We have things to discuss. Let’s do it without intermediaries and without knives? You pick a place and I’ll meet you there.

  My heart thudded even harder as I hit send. I watched my phone’s screen for a few minutes before I accepted that if he was going to answer, it wasn’t going to be right away. His lackey might not even have reported back to him yet.

  Thankfully, my other class of the day was in economics, which I’d always found relatively easy to pick up simply because the Nary approach to finances could be ridiculously complicated to the point of hilarity. I cruised through the discussion on autopilot, tossing in a few wry remarks as needed, and accepted the return of an essay on which I’d gotten top marks. Well, perhaps if I couldn’t make a go of some kind of independent career in illusions, I could set myself up at a non-magical university as a professor of financial systems.

  My phone’s alert went off as I was heading out of class. All my innards balled into a knot when I saw it was a message from my father.

  He’d sent an address. No remark on my suggestion, no indication of how he felt about the meeting, just a street name and number and the town. Not exactly the warmest start to the conversation, but then, what had I expected? It was close to a miracle he’d agreed at all.

  I didn’t
know what time he meant for me to be there, so I went straight to the garage. He could estimate how long it’d take me to make the trip from campus. He probably wanted me to jump at his command. Just this once, I’d indulge him.

  As I drove across the countryside and on into the town he’d indicated, a deeper apprehension prickled through me.

  My father might not want to talk at all. He might be using this as an excuse for an ambush. Bring me out to some isolated spot…

  But the address he’d given me proved to be a trim four-story office building in the center of town. I parked on the street outside and walked up to the front door warily. A woman with thick framed glasses and dark lipstick met me at the entrance.

  “Mr. Killbrook?” she said, all professional cool. “Please come with me.”

  This must be one of the fearmancer business holdings in the area. The baron families and other members of the community bought up commercial real estate here and there across the northeast so we’d have a base of operations nearby no matter what we were planning next. Quite likely Dad owned this one himself, if he was confident enough in whatever magical protections it held to want to have a potentially explosive conversation here.

  The woman led me to an elevator, and we took it to the fourth floor. As she guided me to a door toward the end of the hall, my nose wrinkled. A faintly sickly smell hung in the air, as if the carpet had been recently deep-cleaned with some kind of god-awful cleaning fluid. A nice way to set the mood for this talk.

  The woman opened the door and motioned me in. She closed it behind me, leaving me in a large, spartan office space that held only a couple of bookcases and a glass desk at the far end near the window. My supposed father sat behind the desk, his expression tight. His narrow face looked even more sallow than usual, not much different in shade from his pale hair.

  “Here you are,” he said flatly.

  Here I was. I didn’t see anywhere obvious to sit, so I settled for sauntering up to the desk and stopping a couple of feet away. “We can talk about anything here?” I asked.

  “Whatever you have to say, go ahead and get on with it.”

  I wouldn’t let his disdain rankle me the way it had so many times in the past. Rory was right. I hadn’t done anything wrong. Everything this man hated about me was his own damned fault.

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d call off your surveillance crew,” I said. “I’m sure they’ll have told you I’m not doing anything all that controversial. If you want to know what I’m doing, you could just ask me, as difficult as that apparently is for you.”

  Baron Killbrook’s gaze didn’t waver. “I’ll run my affairs as seems best to me. I didn’t ask for your input.”

  I barely restrained a snort. “I didn’t ask to be followed all over the place. I don’t belong to you. And keep in mind that it’s hardly going to look good to the other families if I make some kind of scene and it becomes obvious to all of them that you don’t trust yourself to keep your heir in check without constant monitoring. I did you a favor making the confrontation private this morning. Next time I might be feeling less generous.”

  His lips tensed even more than they’d been before. “Is that a threat, Jude?”

  He remembered my name. That was almost shocking in itself, considering how seldom he used it. I suppressed all the acidic comments I’d have liked to make in response.

  “I don’t see it that way,” I said. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s simply self-defense. You wouldn’t have wanted to raise a scion who can’t look after himself, would you?”

  “I want a scion who won’t ruin the family in the many other possible ways available to you.”

  I looked back at him, and suddenly all I felt was exhausted. What was the point of all this beating around the bush? I knew why he was afraid. He suspected I might know, and he was going to act as if I did to protect himself. I’d meant to save full honesty for when matters of his real heir were more settled, but fuck, why not get it over with and put an end to any need to worry about the man in front of me again?

  “I hope you get one, then,” I said. “We both know it’s not me. I’m no more keen to see myself step up to the barony and be exposed as a fraud than you are.”

  Any remaining color drained from the man’s face. “Jude—”

  I barreled on. “I’m not asking you for anything. I’m not threatening you with anything. I just want to be done. I’ll remove myself from your life the way I was already attempting to, and when my sister arrives I’ll sign whatever documents you want transferring my supposed inheritance over to her—all of it, including the barony. We can leave it behind and never have to see or speak to or even think about each other again.”

  My father’s expression twitched. He might have suspected I knew, but he probably hadn’t expected I’d lay it out so baldly. He drew himself up straighter with a bristly air. “Whatever you think you’re insinuating—”

  I had to roll my eyes as I cut him off a second time. As if we really needed to keep up the pretense. “I’m not insinuating anything. I’m just saying you don’t have anything to worry about from me when it comes to… anything about how I came into the family. I’m removing myself from it. That’s what you want, isn’t it? So let me do it.”

  His mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. Then he stood up. “You don’t get to give the orders around here.”

  Oh, for fuck’s sake. “Fine,” I said. “Whatever. Handle it how you want. I was just trying to take something off your plate. Send me your forms for me to sign whenever you’re ready. From here on, it’s your problem, not mine.”

  I stalked out of the room without waiting for another blustering response, my pulse thumping raggedly but my spirits strangely light.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Rory

  The environment for the final locating spell couldn’t have felt much more different from the overgrown field where we’d conducted the first two. Lillian, Maggie, and a few of their colleagues were staying in what must have been the hotel’s largest executive suite, which was at least three times the size of my own large room. When one of the blacksuits let me in, I found they’d cleared the furniture from the main space, leaving a big oak dining table pressed to one wall, a sofa to another, with only glossy hardwood in the middle.

  Conducting pieces scattered the floor, I assume to represent major landmarks in the city. The last few stones the blacksuits were setting down rapped against the polished boards. Lillian swept from one end of the room to the other in between her underlings, comparing them to a map she’d brought up on her phone. She adjusted the position of a piece here and another there before giving the space a satisfied nod.

  I stopped at the edge of the room and considered the layout cautiously. “How closely are we going to be able to narrow down her location now that we’re in the same city?”

  “If all goes well, I expect we’re likely to determine the exact building,” Lillian said with a confident air. “Even if we’re limited to a slightly larger area like a block, we should be able to determine the specific structure she’s in with some in-person investigation. There’ll be magic on the building—that much we can be sure of.”

  A lot of magic, wherever the joymancers were holding the most powerful of the fearmancer barons. If my mother had much power left in her now. I exhaled with a jitter of my nerves. “Okay. Should I stand in the middle like before?”

  “Right here.” She indicated a spot over a large casting stone. I walked over and planted my feet on either side of it. Lillian stepped back, and the other blacksuits joined her in forming a ring around the room. No one bothered with any special cleansing of me this time. I guessed that wasn’t necessary with so much less distance to cover.

  There were fifteen blacksuits altogether—a much larger force than had come to extract me from the joymancers’ clutches. Lillian wasn’t leaving anything to chance. I could only imagine how much destruction a group this large was capable of.

  “Begin,�
� Lillian said.

  I closed my eyes as the murmurs rose, bracing myself.

  This time, the magic crept up over me rather than hitting me in a deluge. The threads of it condensed and grew, sweeping through my body and out the top of my head in a now-familiar stream. The energy spread out more slowly this time too, only needing to stretch over this one city rather than the entire country. I could still breathe, still hear the voices intoning a casting word here and there, even as much of my awareness drifted off with the searching energy.

  My birth mother was here. Somewhere in this city; maybe somewhere very close. I thought of the pictures and videos I’d seen of her from decades ago, of her smile as she’d cradled my infant self, of the bits and pieces Declan had been able to tell me about her associations with the other barons.

  I didn’t know what she’d be like now or even what she’d been like before, but I wanted to find out. The joymancers had stolen her from me and me from the life I’d been supposed to have, and while I didn’t regret the time I’d had with Mom and Dad… It was time to set things right.

  I had the vague impression of skimming over buildings and across busy streets. The magic tugged my senses one way and then another. Always the thrum of a sort of call rang through the energy, seeking out my mother’s presence.

  It should be even stronger here. That jolt of familiarity and anger…

  I caught just a flicker of it, off to the right. My mind itched to shoot straight toward it, but I caught myself and held it back.

  If I could approach her location tentatively, before the blacksuits noticed—figure out some details they wouldn’t grasp in time—maybe I could still keep some control over this situation. If I held the key to finding her, if they needed me for the final directions, they’d have to listen to me before they charged in.