Conspiracy Boy (Angel Academy)

by Cecily White

  He snatched the cardboard takeout box from me and continued chewing. To be fair, his skin was decidedly less pale, though he still looked like he’d digested a demonic tapeworm. And he was still eating like a maniac, despite the late hour.

  “Why don’t you ask Jack to do it?” Lyle folded an entire slice of pizza in his mouth. “I’m sure he’d be glad to jump you to wherever this exit key drops and whip out the old incident report form for Lisa. It’s his job, right?”

  “He’s mad at me. We’ve got some issues with our bond being tracked.”

  “Dare I ask?”

  I fiddled with my own pizza slice as a visual of Luc’s demolished dining room flashed through my head. “Best not to. Anyway, Jack’s been a little gung ho with the rule following lately. He’d probably behead first and ask questions later. I can’t risk it.”

  Lyle pondered a piece of pizza crust before shoving it in. “What about Matt?”

  “He’s with Katie now. Besides, do you really think he wants to go hang out with his murderous ex-girlfriend and her psychopathic booty call?”

  “Solid point,” he said. “That Fassnight guy, maybe? If he’s really demon infected, you might not need to shield him—”

  “Because bringing another quasi-evil and completely unknown bloodsucker into this situation is such an awesome idea.”

  “Touché.”

  “Besides,” I added, “with my luck, there’s probably a prophecy about him going nuts and eating all the poodles in the world.”

  “Would that be so bad?”

  We both chewed in silence for a moment, pondering a world without poodles. It’s odd how normalizing that can be, just chewing alongside a guy. Like going to the movies or buying Girl Scout cookies. It was something Luc and I generally didn’t share—unless he decided to start chewing Girl Scouts, that is.

  “You know you’re going to have to ask Luc,” Lyle said after a while. “He did Watcher duty for you before, and that was a remote jump. He could totally manage it.”

  “I know.”

  “So why don’t you ask him?”

  It was a fine question—one I didn’t have a good answer for. So I did what every smart girl does when asked an impossible question.

  “I should go. Call me if you feel better. Or if you die,” I added. “Maybe then they’ll let me heal you.”

  “Will do,” Lyle said, as I plopped a kiss on his forehead. “Hey, Ami?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If you find her,” he said, then paused. “Just don’t do anything stupid.”

  Translation: Don’t go all evil and start killing people.

  “I’ll try,” I promised.

  “And Ami?”

  I turned, halfway out the door.

  Lyle grinned. “Tell Smith-Hailey he’s a lucky bastard.”

  “Oh, he knows,” I said. On impulse, I ran back to Lyle and gave him another kiss on the forehead, then let the door swing shut behind me.

  It took a while to get back to Luc’s house. Not like I hurried. Midnight stars glowed like hot embers in the sky, and the walk gave me time to sort through what to do next. Ideally, Jack could help me with the locating Lisa part. The only problem was I didn’t fully know what he would do if we did find her. And more importantly, I didn’t know what she would do. If the prophecy still hadn’t been fulfilled, then her goal hadn’t been reached. What if she tried to kill him again? Could I stop her? What if I had to choose between them?

  There weren’t a lot of people around, given the late hour. Still, the closer I got to Luc’s house, the more vacant the streets became. Almost like people could sense crazy wafting off the mansion. Even stray cats opted for different hunting grounds.

  By the time I turned the corner to the Montaignes’ back entrance, I was so lost in thought I could have bumped into a Meliox demon and not even noticed. What I did run into was just as dangerous and almost as slimy.

  “Guardian Bennett.” Lori Hansen stepped into the lamplight. “What are you doing here?”

  I tried to smile, though I’m pretty sure it came out like a grimace. “Just out slaughtering innocents. How about yourself?”

  “I’m doing my job.”

  My eyes widened. “You’re slaughtering innocents, too?”

  “I’m warding the house.” She frowned. “Amelie, I know you don’t like me—”

  “Understatement.”

  “—but there’s no need to be so hostile. You’re a talented girl with a bright future. I would like it if we could be friends someday. We are both on the same team, you know.”

  “Actually, I’m on the team that wants to preserve life,” I said. “Not on the psycho murderer team.”

  I started to walk back toward the house, but she stopped me. “I had reasons for what I did last fall. Just because you don’t understand them doesn’t mean they’re not valid.”

  “Valid? You tried to kill me,” I reminded her.

  “You were an escaped convict.”

  “And Jack?”

  That made her hesitate. “I was under orders.”

  “Well, good for you,” I said. “Congratulations on following orders.”

  It probably would have been polite to say something empathic about how hard it must have been for her, but I just couldn’t. There was no excuse for doing something so obviously wrong, even if you’re under orders. I didn’t even glance back this time as I stalked into the house.

  I took the stairs two at a time, plowing into Arianna on her way down. She looked flawless and beautiful, as usual, which only made me feel dowdy in my jeans and lame peacoat.

  “Good heavens, dear, you’re shaking. Are you ill?” She frowned. “Shall I have Marguerite make you some tea?”

  I stared at her, trying to think of something to say. My head was still filled with the last few hours—trying to piece it all together. I didn’t need tea. I needed a therapist.

  “I’m fine. Have you seen Luc?”

  “In his quarters, I assume.”

  “Thanks.” I nudged past her as the door swung open at the top of the stairs, Jack emerging from his bedroom.

  My heart jumped at the sight of him, and not just because he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Don’t get me wrong, that definitely helped. I couldn’t help staring at the shadows curved under his well-defined chest, the ripples of muscle lining his abdomen. Even the silky golden hair and pale battle scars slashed over his arms begged to be touched. It all just made me want to push him back into his room and shut the door.

  “Hey,” he said, stepping closer to me. It was like taking a hit off an oxygen tank—my whole body ignited.

  “Hey, yourself,” I whispered. “What are you doing up?”

  “Couldn’t sleep. I made this for you.”

  My gaze fell to his hands, to the soft, knitted scarf he held there. It had muted grays and blues, with that super-silky, nubby yarn that makes the world seem snuggly, even in a snowstorm. I couldn’t help smiling as he looped the scarf around my neck and twined it into a snug knot.

  “There. That’s better.”

  “You were worried,” I observed. “You always get domestic when you’re worried.”

  He shrugged. “If you hadn’t come home when you did, I was going to start baking cookies. I couldn’t feel you for a while. It makes me nervous when I can’t feel you.”

  I nodded. That was definitely mutual. He’d become such a fixture inside me, if I went too long without seeing him, the world started to feel off balance. Sometimes I didn’t even notice it until I saw him again. Then everything clicked into place, my body hummed, and my soul sat up and stretched. And the world made sense again. Like now.

  I leaned close to him, my forehead pressed against his collarbone. “You wouldn’t believe the night I’ve had.”

  “I might,” he said. “Annabelle’s looking for you.”

  “I’m sure she is.”

  Careful not to ignite our bond, I let my hands slide up his sides. The indentations of his ribs stuck out in familiar ri
dges—like a musical instrument I hadn’t been allowed to play in far too long. It left a palpable ache of need in my chest. “Do you have a minute? I need you.”

  “Mmm, my three favorite words,” he said. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Something epic.” I let him dangle on the optimism as I took his hand and led him down the hall to Luc’s room. When I knocked on the door, Jack’s shoulders slumped.

  “Not exactly the epic I was hoping for,” he commented lightly.

  “Vampires rarely are.”

  Luc opened the door wearing silk pajama bottoms and no shirt, with a toothbrush hanging out of his mouth. “Oh, joy,” he mumbled through a froth of toothpaste. “Company.”

  “We need you,” I told him as he wandered back to the bathroom.

  “It’s going to be epic,” Jack intoned.

  “Cheers,” Luc said and spat into the sink.

  It took me a few minutes to explain my plan, then a few more to calm Jack down. I guess letting me jump an unmonitored portal to an undefined location, probably into the arms of a waiting psychopath and a known assassin, wasn’t on his list of approved leisure activities.

  “Over my dead body,” Jack said, tugging a shirt on. Regrettably. “Let me revise that. Over my cold, dismembered, decapitated, un-revivifiable body.”

  “Don’t hold back, Jackson. Tell her how you really feel,” Luc said.

  Jack ignored him. “You’re not doing it. No.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “You can’t. I won’t help you.”

  “You don’t have to.” I pointed at Luc. “He will.”

  “I’ll what now?”

  “You’ll jump me through this portal to the exit locus key Lisa snuck into my locker last week,” I told him.

  He thought about that for a second. “Yeah, okay.”

  I smiled at Jack. “It’s all settled.”

  “Nothing’s settled,” Jack said. “It’s not happening.”

  “It is.”

  “Is not.”

  “Is.”

  We might have gone on like that for another hour if someone hadn’t knocked on the door. Rather forcefully.

  “Jackson.” Lori Hansen’s voice seeped through the door from the hallway. “The outside wards are done. Akira needs us on campus.”

  Luc sighed. “Remind me to get a Do Not Disturb sign for my bedroom door.”

  “Too late,” I said. “You’re already deeply disturbed.”

  Lori banged again. “Jackson, are you hearing me?”

  Grumbling lightly, my bondmate shut his eyes. After a few beats, he opened them, clapped his hands, and said, “Okay, everybody in the closet.”

  Not precisely what I was expecting, but appropriate, nonetheless. With varying levels of complaint, Luc and I shuffled into the closet. He looked vaguely zombielike with the dark circles under his eyes. I’d gotten used to sleep deprivation over the years, but I had to admit, even for me, this was pushing it.

  “All right, I’ll help you. With a few rules.” Jack shut the closet door behind us, effectively forming two layers of insulation between us and Lori Hansen. We could still hear her banging, but it was easier to ignore. “First, I jump her, not you. This is Guardian business. Guardians should handle it.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but he cut me off.

  “Not negotiable. Second, if we do find Lisa, you maintain strict defensive protocols. No running into her arms shrieking like a hormonal teenage girl, got it?”

  I fidgeted with the scarf still loosely knotted at my neck. “I am a hormonal teenage girl.”

  “You know what I mean. Third, if anything dangerous or unexpected happens—”

  “To her?” Luc broke in. “Inconceivable.”

  “Shut it, Luc,” I said.

  “—then we portal back here immediately,” Jack finished, wrapping his giant hand around mine. “You’re too important to me. I’d never forgive myself if something happened to you.”

  “Things happen to me every day.” I stepped closer until I could feel his breath on my hair, smell his sunshine-and-marshmallows scent. “If you’re with me, I’ll be safe.”

  “Promise?”

  As he talked, my skin started to do its glowy thing again. It wasn’t my fault. It’s just when you’re standing in a dark room next to your super-hot boyfriend, listening to him tell you how cool and important you are, it’s kind of hard not to get the warm fuzzies. The glow alone should have been enough to make me pay attention, but, unfortunately, I’m not too smart sometimes.

  “Um, cousin?” Luc interrupted. “Not to be a killjoy, but can you cut that out? Immediately, please?”

  I broke my gaze with Jack just in time to see a stutter of gold light, followed by a quick flash of purple. It’s not entirely clear to me when the air began to tighten, or when the walls began to fizzle like baking soda in vinegar. By the time I turned around, the entire west wall of the closet had dissolved into a fractal map of Crossworlds power and purple darkness.

  Unsettlingly familiar purple darkness.

  “Protorum.” Intuitively, I threw up a shield. Not that it did any good.

  “Amelie, get back,” Jack said, shoving me behind him.

  “We’re a little late for that, don’t you think?” Luc sounded vaguely bored, which I supposed is typical for him when he knows there’s no point in fighting. When the purple settled into a predictable rift pattern, I understood why.

  “You”—Petra stepped through the hole between the worlds and leveled a finger at me—“are a tremendous pain in the ass.”

  “I get that a lot.”

  “You’re about to get it a lot more. Come on,” she said. “We’re leaving.”

  Jack shuffled me sideways as she stepped through the shadowed portal, all the way until my shoulders smacked the shoe shelf in the corner. A few of those weird, chalky rocks clanged off the ceiling, but it was nothing compared to what had happened at the wharf.

  “Petra,” Jack said, “I’m not going to let you hurt her.”

  “How dense are you, Jackson?” Annoyance layered her voice. “I’m not trying to hurt her. I’m trying to save her. And we need to go now.”

  Jack started to protest, but he barely got the first words out.

  With one hand, Petra grabbed at my arm, careful not to scratch me with her talons. The other swatted Jack out of the way like a discarded scrap of Kleenex. Every instinct screamed at me to fight, but it was all happening too fast. My brain burned with the image of Jack hitting the wall and collapsing onto the floor. It spun ugly shadows to life inside my heart.

  “Petra.” Luc stepped forward. “You can’t take her in there alone. She’ll die.”

  “Where we’re going, she won’t be alone,” Petra snapped, glancing back at the portal. It had already started to shrink, the edges sewing themselves together like a healing wound jacked up to fast-forward.

  In the distance, Lori’s voice pulsed through the door, along with an ungodly pounding. “Jackson, what’s going on? Let me in.”

  I opened my mouth to give the command “Abertura,” but Petra’s hand clamped over my throat and squeezed until I thought my face might explode.

  Not much for subtlety, that girl.

  As it turned out, it wouldn’t have mattered even if I had given the command, since less than a second later, the door fell in with a hard crack. A gush of air whipped over me, rippling the rift to the Crossworlds.

  Things happened fast after that, faster than I could process.

  Through the haze of movement that followed, I was able to register three things. The first was Jack, still huddled on the floor, launching a metal blade at the spot where Luc’s sock shelf used to be—the spot Petra’s head now occupied. The second was Petra, plucking the knife out of the air and chucking it back toward Jack.

  And the third—the most frightening of all—was Lori Hansen.

  In Luc’s closet.

  Before the knife had even left Petra’s hand, Hansen had already leaped for
ward. For a second, I thought she intended to jump in front of Jack, to take the knife for him. But her angle was off. Sure enough, she crashed into Luc, sending him careening forward. Directly into the path of the knife, on a perfect collision course with me, Petra, and the gaping maw of the open rift behind me.

  That’s when things got really awful.

  Sometimes I think about the last lecture Professor Templeman gave before he died. It was the final class of our junior year, and he’d just concluded a section on human philosophers. He’d left us with a quote from William James: “Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake.”

  That moment, as I pried open my eyes to the ragged huff of someone’s breath on my face, I decided half awake didn’t sound too bad.

  “Luc? Is that you?”

  The only answer was a soft gurgle.

  I patted the pine-needled ground until I found the shattered remnants of my cell phone then waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. It didn’t take long.

  Overhead, a canopy of snow-dusted leaves stretched across the charcoal-silver sky, making everything shimmer. Even the trees’ breath had condensed into an inexplicable metallic fog. High in the distance, the bright moon hovered, casting odd-shaped shadows over the uneven ground.

  And over the decidedly Luc-shaped body convulsing next to me.

  Yeah, I didn’t need anyone to tell me how badly I’d screwed up. Even a mentally challenged fruit fly could have figured that one out.

  Civitas terrena.

  City of Earth.

  The words sounded pretty innocent. Not too demony. Definitely not apocalyptic. And yet, somehow, that phrase had managed to land us in the middle of an icy forest with no money, no food, and no means of communicating with any form of civilization. It almost made me regret ditching Petra inside the portal.

  Almost.

  “Illuminé,” I said, opening my palm faceup. We might be otherwise screwed, but at least we’d be able to see, right?

  Wrong.

  In theory, when I gave that command, a floating orb of warm light should have coalesced above my hand, changing the visual from a scary Grimm-scape to a friendly, navigable grove of trees. Unfortunately for me, what should happen and what does happen rarely have much to do with one another.