by Rain Oxford
“You do have a creepy side,” he said. “They’re moving away.”
I nodded and we retreated further behind the corner. “Becky is the most intuitive of the new council members. I’m not surprised she would figure out that Veronica is messing with them.”
We reached Veronica’s room and my intuition stopped me. I kept my magic to myself because I couldn’t even risk connecting to Henry’s mind with Veronica so close. “She’s in there,” I mouthed.
Henry nodded and pressed his ears to the door. Then I gestured to the room across from her and we went into it to discuss the plan. “I’ll cause a distraction,” Henry volunteered.
“I should cause the distraction. You can break into things I can’t.”
“But without your intuition, we wouldn’t know what to look for. Besides, an invisible horse-sized jaguar is going to make a better distraction in the wizard council than a wizard.”
“You have a good point. If you end up in danger, use the shadow pass to escape.”
“I am not leaving you behind. Besides, in my jaguar form, they can’t capture me.”
“Did you forget that they have shifter-specialized weapons?”
“I haven’t, and my cat hasn’t forgotten what they did, either.”
“Veronica can control minds even better than me. Slate your cat’s bloodlust if you must, but be careful against her and don’t kill anyone.”
“Tell that to my jaguar.” He stripped, shifted, and vanished.
I opened the door and felt him brush past me. He was huge when he wanted to be. Nevertheless, I hated that Henry had to put himself in danger of my sister so that I could break into her room. My family is all kinds of fucked up.
A couple of minutes later, there were startled shouts and small explosions in a room far down the hallway. I heard Veronica open the door and slip out. When her hurried steps sounded far enough away, I inched open the door. She was falling for it. Once she disappeared down another hallway, my intuition told me the coast was clear. I crept across the hallway into her room, which she had left unlocked, and closed the door behind me.
Eric giggled loudly from his playpen. The toddler was pretty typical, with a little brown hair, blue eyes, and a happy smile. Nothing about him suggested that he was the son of a psychopath. “Hey, buddy. Don’t mind me.”
“Juice!” he said.
“I don’t have any, kiddo.” I hated the idea of leaving him behind. I didn’t know what Veronica’s plans for him were, but I couldn’t imagine she would hurt her own child, so I wouldn’t take him.
The room was average with a bed, nightstand, dresser, bookshelf, closet, and door to Eric’s nursery. I searched the nightstand and dresser first, but by the time I was done, Eric was fussing loudly enough to endanger me. I went to his playpen to hand him my keys, hoping they would occupy his attention, when I almost tripped over plastic. I looked down and saw his sippy cup.
“Did you lose your juice?” I picked it up and handed it to him. He giggled loudly and took it. I searched the bookshelf and found many untitled and foreign books. Some of them looked handwritten, but they didn’t match Veronica’s or Arthur’s handwriting.
“Up!” Eric said. I shushed him automatically, but he ignored me. “Pick up!”
With a frustrated sigh, I returned to the playpen and picked him up. He laid his head on my shoulder and wrapped his right arm around my neck as he drank his juice with his left hand. “You’re a cute little terror, at least. I wonder how much of your mother’s story was true, if anything.” My calming tone helped him relax.
“Mama,” he mumbled.
I brought him back to the bookshelf to finish my search and had to set my staff down. After a few minutes, he dropped his cup and reached towards his nursery door. “You want a nap?” I asked. I tried to put him back into his playpen, but he struggled to hold onto me. I sighed again. “Fine.” I took him into the adjoined nursery.
There was a crib, rocking chair, changing table, and cabinet. It had sky-blue walls, toys everywhere, and soothing pictures on the walls.
He reached towards his bed. “Kitty!” He was trying to get to the picture over the bed of him and his mother at a zoo with a tiger in its exhibit right behind them.
“Your baby cage is missing the top,” I said. I tried to set him down, but he latched onto me again and turned into an octopus. “It’s nap time, Eric.”
He reached out for the picture over his bed. “Kitty!”
“That’s just a picture of a cat,” I said, trying to quiet him.
“Kitty!” He almost made a dive out of my arm for the picture. I used his momentum to deposit him safely in his crib. With every step towards the door to get my staff, the volume of his whining increased.
I groaned and turned back to him. He wasn’t trying to get me to pick him up, though; he was reaching for the tiger in the picture. “You would love the school if you’re that into big cats,” I said.
I grabbed the picture off the wall and handed it to him, but what I saw under it stopped me. It was a numerical pad for a safe or secured room.
“You’re a good kid. Want to help me out a little more?”
He giggled and petted the tiger. I reached out and touched his forehead. I had to be very careful to keep my magic close. Fortunately, his underdeveloped mind offered no resistance at all. He was completely open and trusting. His thoughts weren’t in words, of course. However, it was easy to search his limited memories for the keypad.
The memory popped up easily and surprisingly clearly. His vision was well-developed even though his focus was scattered at best. I saw Veronica taking off the picture and setting it aside. Eric tried to reach it, but Veronica wouldn’t let him have it. “I’ll get your kitty in a minute,” she said.
The words didn’t mean anything to him, but he understood that she was talking about his “kitty.” “Kitty!” he yelled, watching her closely.
She typed in five numbers and stepped back. I pulled out of Eric’s mind gently. I could have made him sleep, but I didn’t know if my powers would affect the mind of a baby.
I typed in the numbers and rolled the crib a couple of feet away just in case. The light flashed green and I heard a click as the secret panel popped out. I opened it to find what looked like a wooden medicine cabinet. The small shelves were covered in bottles and books. These were the supplies she kept away from the other council members. I shoved everything into my bag, closed the case, and returned the picture.
Fortunately, Eric had lost interest in it and was chewing on a teddy bear instead. I picked him up to return him to his playpen. However, the instant I turned, I froze. Veronica was standing in the doorway. “What are you doing?” she asked. She looked like the same innocent Serena who brought us food in the cells, which gave me an idea.
I relaxed my body and controlled my expression. I highly doubted she was in everyone’s mind at all times; it would be too exhausting even for her. Thus, there was a chance she didn’t know that I knew about her yet. “I was looking for evidence against Veronica and heard Eric fussing.”
“Oh.” She came forth easily, and I let her take him from me. “Thank you for checking on him. I had to run out and didn’t get a chance to put him down for his nap.”
As she was focused on him, I returned to her bedroom to grab my staff. Except it was gone.
Behind me, Veronica laughed coldly. “You were very wrong about me; I am always in your head when you’re close.”
I turned so that I was facing her and backed up to the door. She closed the nursery door behind her. I sensed my path being blocked and knew without having to look that it was Henry.
“I’ve been waiting for months for you to figure it out,” Veronica said.
“To figure out that you’re my sister or that you were pretending to be Serena?”
“Both.”
“Why haven’t you killed me yet if you’re so powerful?”
“For the third time, I have no intention of killing you. Death is so b
oring. Why would I want to break all of my toys? Then I wouldn’t have any left.” That was simultaneously creepy and reminded me of Remy’s joke. “Sure, I’ve killed a few people, but they had no use left.”
“Where is the real Serena?”
“Oh, she’s long dead.”
“What about Eric? Is he yours or Serena’s?”
She scowled. “Do you really think I would raise someone else’s baby? If he weren’t mine, I would have left him on the street corner.”
“What about that vampire, Peter?”
“Oh, I let him take Eric and filled his mind with that crap story. I knew the helpless widowed mother act was the fastest way to make you trust me. I also considered letting you know right off the bat that I was your sister, but your hatred for John would have caused you to watch me too closely.”
“I’m not interested in ruling anything with you, let alone destroying the paranormal world with an army of children. You’ve got your son, so give me back my staff.” Even as I said it, I mentally banished my staff, because if she didn’t have it under pretty powerful magic, it would go back to its unknown place.
With a dangerously realistic mask of innocent horror, she put her hand on her chest and gasped. “You would hurt my baby if I don’t give you your staff?” She dropped her hand and the expression simultaneously. Then she smirked. “You’re not capable of defeating me. You don’t even pose a challenge to me… but I see potential in you, and I want to see this through. I want you to get there, but you’re going to have to work for it.”
“Because you want to get caught?”
“I want to crush you like a little bug, but right now, you’re not even worth stepping on and messing up my shoe.”
Either she believed that and was overconfident, or she was trying to psych me out. Without my intuition or the ability to read her mind, I didn’t know which.
“Coming here was a big mistake on your part, but I’ll give you an out so that you can run home and lick your wounds. Give me back what you stole from me, and I’ll give you this.” She pulled a brown glass potion bottle out of her robe pocket and held it up.
“What is that?”
She smiled warmly. “Oh, just the antidote to the poison that Remington Hunt is drinking right about…” She looked at her watch. “… now.”
My heart sank. “You’re lying.”
Her smile brightened. “What would be the fun in that? Did I lie about Darwin’s family? And what’s special about this poison is that it’s not going to kill Remington.”
That would have been reassuring coming from anyone else. “What does it do?”
“You see, about a month ago, Remington took a potion. You know? The potion she takes every single month on the same date? Only, this time I played a little trick and switched her potion with a placebo. The funny thing about placebo potions is that they don’t do anything at all.”
“Are you saying that she could be pregnant?”
“For another ten minutes, but if you don’t get this antidote to her in the next hour, she’ll lose the baby, and she’ll never be able to get pregnant again.”
“Why would you trick her into getting pregnant and then poison her to get rid of the pregnancy?”
“There’s a big difference between preventing a pregnancy forever and killing an unborn infant. To rip the potential of that child’s future away from Remington is going to destroy her much worse than simply making her unable to have children. I also didn’t poison her until you came here because I was planning on using the child against you. I still can, and the child could still be born, but you have to give back what you stole.”
“I don’t believe you. I can’t give Remy a potion from you.”
Her grin was evil. “Well, that’s a pleasant surprise. It’ll be even more fun for me when the unborn child dies because you don’t want to give her the antidote.”
I had some time. I can have Langril test… No, Langril was gone. That still left Dr. Martin, though. He could test the so-called antidote to make sure it was safe.
“Have whoever you want test it, but it won’t do you any good if you don’t give me back my supplies.”
“Give me the potion and if it turns out to be safe to give to her, I’ll bring your supplies back.”
She sighed. “I’m a patient woman, Devon, but I’m not stupid.” She looked to my side and Henry, who hadn’t moved a muscle since he reached the door, grabbed the bag from me with his left hand. His right hand wrapped around my neck and squeezed. His eyes were not white.
Veronica shook her head and took the bag calmly. I expected her to continue talking about how it was a shame or how I was so far behind her. But no, that had just been a distraction.
Henry’s grip wasn’t enough to crush my windpipe, as I knew he easily could. He was waiting for her command. Unable to breathe, I tried to pry his fingers off. It was no use. Instead, I silently thought, “Let me save her.” I couldn’t get into her head, but I had no doubt she was in my mind.
She gave me one last half smile. “No. Goodbye, Brother. Henry…”
Before she could get the command out, I pushed my power out with every ounce of strength I had.
Into Henry.
It wasn’t enough to break her control over him, but it was enough to fill his head with one image.
I showed him the moment Scott had been shot. I didn’t have to break her control over him because Henry did that himself. In an instant, everything went dark.
Chapter 25
We appeared in my office. Fury overcame Henry and he slammed me against the wall. “Not that! You should have used anything in the world except for that!”
“I had to break her control over you.”
“Next time, use the time I thought I had killed my wife! Anything was better than that!”
“I know. I have to save Remy.”
He was shaking, but released me. I ran to Remington’s office and threw open the door. She was sitting in her chair, drinking tea while Dani watered a plant in the window.
“Stop!” I said, grabbing the tea out of her hand.
“What?”
“It’s poisoned.”
“But I already drank some.”
“Shit!” I slumped into the chair across from her with a groan. “Veronica said that she made you miss your potion.”
“What potion?”
“Your birth control potion. She also said she was going to poison your tea so that you can never get pregnant.”
“I got her tea out of the secure kitchen,” Dani said.
“Veronica can possess people.”
“I dropped that tea because Kimba crashed into me. This one I made and brought to her.”
“I’m pregnant?” Remy asked, deathly pale. She put her hand on her stomach as if she couldn’t imagine it.
“She said you were. I don’t know, though.”
“Well, find out!”
“First, we need to worry about the poison. We need to go to Dr. Martin immediately and have him test the tea for poison. I don’t even know what it would look like. Dani, I need to see everything about the tea. Every tiny little detail.”
She swallowed and nodded. “Anything you need.” We took the remaining tea and cup to Dr. Martin first and I rushed through the explanation. The instant I told him it was a poison, his demeanor changed from weird and quirky to serious. I kept forgetting that he was a demon with a shitload of power.
The first thing he did was give Remy a pre-made potion. “This will cause you to vomit. A lot. If you consumed the poison just a few minutes ago, you will have a better chance of recovery.”
She took the bottle and raised it to her mouth quickly, only to pause. “This won’t hurt a baby if I’m pregnant, right?” she asked.
“Not at all.”
She tossed it back like a shot. Dr. Martin handed her a quart-sized, white bucket before turning his attention to testing the tea. I figured he had a clue as to what it might be based on the effects of the potion,
so I focused on Dani.
“Is this going to hurt?” she asked.
“No.” I entered her mind easily. She was a mix of a fae, shifter, and wizard, but her mind wasn’t blocked and her red panda had no interest in fighting me. She seemed more curious than anything. “Close your eyes and run through the memory shortly before you got her tea. Don’t skip any details. I will slow you down or focus on something if I need to, so don’t be surprised. Let me know if something feels false or blocked off.”
She was shaking, but before I could tell her to calm down, I realized it was my fault. I was so anxious that I was making her nervous. As Remy vomited next to me, my head throbbed with pain from the tension in my back. I remembered when Regina told me she was pregnant, and when I learned it had been a lie. If Remy never wanted to have kids, that was fine, but that wasn’t Veronica’s choice to make.
When she slipped her hand in mine, I relaxed automatically. Remy and I would deal with anything that Veronica threw at us. I had to calm down so that I could see what really happened.
Dani stopped shaking, and I saw her memory start off with her standing in front of Remington.
* * *
Remington was searching her desk. “Can I help you find something?” Remy gave up her search. “I’m looking for something to soothe a headache. Can you get me something from Andrew?”
“I could, but tea would be healthier.” Dani was worried that Remington was taking too many potions for headaches. She had seen at least one in Remington’s trash can every day since the school was cursed until Remington was arrested.
Remington sighed and nodded. “I know it would. Since the curse, every time I get a damn cup, it goes cold because there’s a crisis that immediately requires my attention.”
“I’ll get you one and try to keep the screaming toddlers outside long enough for you to drink it.”
She left Remy alone and went to the service kitchen in the East. It was smaller than the others, built for teachers, but due to misuse over the years, it was shut down to other teachers. Now, only Remington, Dani, and the three deputy headmasters were allowed to use it and had a key to it.
