by Lucy Auburn
Lip snarling, Petra gives out one more growl of complaint, then slinks onto her bed. I back away—slowly, ever so slowly—and kick the door shut between us. The scratches on my arms sting, but they’re healing already, and I don’t really blame Petra for instinctively slashing out towards me.
Half the strands of wolf hair I’m holding are dotted with bits of blood. It turns out that even a shifter like Petra doesn’t respond well to having her skin ripped out in tiny chunks.
Shuddering, I hurry back to my room, deposit the hair on my desk, and double back to lock my door behind me. Although I’m almost completely certain Petra still has enough self-control not to murder me in my dorm room, I’ve participated in enough group combat training drills to know shifters in their animal form have a taste for aggression. And the last thing I want to waste one of my remaining eleven lives on is pissing her off.
Next time I’ll just ask Liam for a bit of his mane—if I can peel him and Olivia off each other long enough to get it.
Now it’s just a matter of some unholy water and a pinch of malice. I’ve got the malice to spare, and thankfully Meyer has taught me how to cast my own emotions into spells. As for the unholy water, it’s a few simple steps—if I can find the right container for it.
Searching my room, I finally luck on an empty cereal bowl stuffed in the bottom of my wardrobe. It’s no doubt courtesy of one of my miserable, depressed episodes after I lost them, where I basically only left my room long enough to get food, and attended only enough classes to avoid being suspended. It took an insistent—and really fucking annoying—Sam to get me out of bed, push me into the shower, and drag me to classes until I started to live again.
The bowl is gross, but unholiness doesn’t care. I rinse it out enough to avoid tainting my spell with chunks of frosted wheat and shove it under the bathroom faucet. Once it’s full almost to the brim, I set it down on the counter and carefully lean over its still surface.
This part is the fun part. When Meyer taught me how it works, I practically cackled—and found myself wishing Mateo was with me to see me do it. Little did I know he could’ve been there the whole time.
“Fuck all gods and blaspheme their name.” The bowl shimmers briefly; it’s not enough, so I up the ante a little. “Persephone has lopsided breasts, and Apollo is a dumbass. Horus has a thumb permanently stuck up his ass and Thor kicks corgi puppies to death. Angels are stupid and they should suck my non-existent dick. Shiva—”
The water turns an abrupt, deep black color that reflects my own face back up at me. Satisfied, I grab the bowl and carefully carry it into my bedroom, then set it down on my desk. It’s easy enough to scoop the wolf hair up and drop it into the shimmering surface, where it smokes and disappears, leaving the faint scent of burnt hair lingering in the air.
Finally, the pinch of malice. Summoning the memory of Meyer using Mateo to coerce the headmaster, I find myself full of an altogether too familiar rage, and it’s an effort not to let it out of me in the form of phoenix fire. As it fills my chest and sends my pulse skyrocketing with a desire to commit violence in the name of vengeance, I hold my fingers out, pinching my index and middle fingers against my thumbs, and let the malice surge into my fingertips.
As I release the motion it drips down, dark red like blood, and turned the whole surface of the bowl into the same red color. That’s all it takes; satisfied, I wave a flat palm over the bowl, and feel the spell’s effects blanket the room. There’s a faint muffled sound to everything around me, and the walls and floor glimmer with energy, suggesting that nothing will be able to get in here through effort alone.
All that’s left is to summon them.
I’ll have one chance, and only one chance, to speak to them with this spell. After that I have no idea how I’ll free them from his grasp—the only person who could teach me is the very Grim who lied to me and betrayed me.
So I’ll have to make this one chance count.
They come to me one at a time, summoned by the blood circle I drew on the floor, even as the red stuff still spills from my healing palm.
There is no physical pain when I look into their eyes. Just anguish, knowing that we wouldn’t be here at all, meeting like this after months apart, if I hadn’t trusted the wrong person.
Neutered Mateo, the joy gone from his playful mouth, the mischief missing from every inch of him. Pained Sebastian, eyes sunk into darkness, nothing but bitterness on his face; all hope gone. Playful, reasonable Lynx, who stumbles into the room wildly, face like a wild animal’s, muscles taut with aggression. And finally Ezra, the circles beneath his eyes not nearly as dark as the cruelty that twists his mouth, hands expertly unsheathing his sword the moment he’s summoned.
And then.
They look at me.
I see it as they see me, as they surface through whatever horrors they’ve witnessed the past few months and stare at my face first in disbelief, then hopeful sorrow. No matter how long he’s enslaved them, he hasn’t burned their spirits away, though Ezra does foolishly drop his sword as his eyes study my face like a man dying in the desert stares at a distant mirage.
“Dani.” His voice cracks, trembles; he swallows, visibly shaken. “It’s really you.”
“No, fucker,” I respond, voice wobbling with emotion, “it’s some other dumb chick you know. Of course it’s me you assho—”
My angry, grateful curses are cut off by the arms that grab me and hold me tight. Lynx is just as strong as ever, and just as impossibly muscular; what should be a hug by anyone else’s standards is practically a death hold in his arms.
But I don’t mind at all.
I’m just glad I get to feel his warmth, smell the familiar scent of his skin, touch him and sink my fingers into his strength.
In a strangled voice Mateo mutters, “Shut the fuck up. I can’t believe it.”
I manage to extract myself from Lynx’s embrace long enough to say, “Well, you better. Because we have maybe half an hour to talk about what the fuck is going on before Meyer will wake up for his morning exercise routines. The instant he does, this spell will be undone, and I’ll never be able to cast it again.
“So someone better tell me how it is that I set you all free just to discover the complete, ass-sucking opposite happened.”
Lynx supplies the answer. “We were tricked. We were all tricked. From the very beginning.”
A grumbling Mateo adds, “I told you I didn’t trust that guy.”
“It’s my fault.” Ezra sets his chin, taking the weight of the world on his shoulders as always. “I thought severing our bond would be the best.”
“Turns out it’s not like severing dicks,” Sebastian says, a glimmer of mischief and life coming to his eyes. “Severing souls is way, way worse. And not nearly as amusing.”
You can say that again.
Chapter 30
Though I want to sink into their arms, to make this moment last, there are more important things. So I permit myself the barest of touches—Lynx’s strong hug, Sebastian’s fierce kiss, Mateo’s sultry lips, Ezra’s sighing embrace—before I break away to get down to business.
“So.” I sit down on my bed, prepared for bad news. “What is Meyer planning? Do you know? And how do I get out of this?”
They exchange unhappy glances. The mood in the room, so briefly jubilant, instantly sours. Whatever it is, it’s not good.
I can’t resist the urge to crack a joke. “I’m guessing the expressions on your faces mean he’s not going to give us mini ponies and cotton candy.”
“Dani.” Ezra kneels in front of me and takes my hand between his. “What’s about to happen is too big for you to face alone. He’s planning something, and whatever it is, there’ll be a body count. A mass grave quite possibly, but who knows beyond that. He’s hypnotizing the whole school bit by bit just to prepare for whatever it is. You should take this opportunity to get out of here, go somewhere safe and—”
“No.” I surprise myself with the fierceness of my
emotion, my firm tone. I guess I learned that from stubborn green eyes here himself, who is nothing if not a fucking pain in the ass. “I’m not running away. Not again. It hasn’t ever gotten me anywhere good and I doubt that’s changing now. We do this together or not at all.”
Lynx voice cracks as he points out, “There is no together. There’s us and him, and there’s you.”
“You can’t stop us.” Sebastian’s mouth is a thin, bitter line. “Once this spell is over, once he wakes up, he’ll have us under his control again. Completely.”
“I know.”
Those blue eyes narrow. “Do you? Do you know what it’s like to have the pain of a single paper cut multiplied a thousand times until you beg and scream for it to stop? Can you imagine what it’ll feel like if your insides become your outsides?”
My stomach churns, but I refuse to back down. “I can handle it.”
“Can you handle the pain of coming back and having it all happen again?” Ezra squeezes my hand between his. “What you’re talking about, Dani, isn’t a game or a mock battle. It’s a war. And he’ll use us against you. You’d be risking so much more than you can imagine.”
For them, I’d do anything.
But I’m starting to realize that goes both ways. For me, they’d risk anything, including losing their free will, just to protect me from Meyer’s wrath.
“We don’t have time for this,” I point out, switching tracks. “Tell me what he plans to do, so I can at least keep the other students safe, maybe even do something to help the headmaster resist what’s going on.” My eyes flick guiltily to Mateo and back. “She’s powerful enough to fight him if she has to. It doesn’t have to be me.”
Ezra frowns. “As long as you promise you won’t do anything to endanger yourself.”
Bullshit. I’ll promise no such thing.
But I never claimed to be unwilling to lie to get what I want, even if what I want is to reassure them I won’t go headfirst into danger—despite the fact that I’m planning just the opposite.
Still, Ezra will see right through me if I don’t at least stray close to the truth. “I promise I’m going to go to everyone I can who can help, instead of doing something stupid like confronting Meyer on my own. After all,” I point out, hoping logic will prevail, “I could’ve done that just now when I saw what he was doing to the headmaster. But I didn’t, because I’m not a complete dumbass. Can you trust me a little too?”
He looks at me with those green eyes, weighing everything: the weight of responsibility on his shoulders, how he feels about me, his fears of repeating the past, all his various sins. I can see them flit across his face, which is more expressive than I think he realizes—or maybe it’s just an echo of the place where his soul once connected with mine, squeezing the truth from my heart.
“Fuck a duck,” Mateo mutters, “yeah, we trust you. Say you trust her, asshole. Before it’s too thrice-damned late.”
Lynx asks, “How do you know the word ‘thrice?’”
“Thrice-tell her, Ezra, or I’ll give you a wedgie.”
“That’s more like your level of intellect.”
“Fuck you both.”
“I hope your next grenade explodes on you,” Ezra retorts, though the words are without heat. He smiles a little, just in one corner, lifting the tiredness from his eyes. “Dani, I trust you. Maddening as you are, as much as it scares me, I know I have to put some faith in you.”
“So tell me.”
“He’s planning a revolt against another Grim clan.” His expression is, well, grim. “Some kind of holy war, and he needs an army on his side. An army that I have the feeling will be comprised of phoenix and shifters—at least, the ones he manages to tame rather than slaughter. So yes, you can warn people about it and try to rouse the headmaster to defend the school. Just do me a favor.”
“Yeah?”
He presses a soft kiss to my forehead. “Don’t get the woman I love killed doing something stupid.”
I open my mouth to say something, but before I can he vanishes.
Tearing my eyes from the spot where he was, I look at Sebastian, Lynx, Mateo—they all disappear one by one, in the span of a few seconds.
Before they do, for a moment I swear their mouths open to say words none of us have dared uttered, words I don’t even know how to speak aloud.
How can you love if no one ever taught you what it feels like long enough for the lesson to sink in?
Then again, if it would be anyone for me, it would be these four.
I swear to myself I’ll get them back long enough to settle into my skin and work my way up to saying it. Not just to say it, but to really mean it.
Until then, I’ve got a steaming pile of revenge to plan.
Three Days Later
“Let’s try this again.” Staring at my reflection, I pinch my cheeks to put a little color in them. “You can do this, Dani. You got through to Petra twice. Olivia once. Sam and Liam... well, maybe today they’ll pay attention to you.”
Leaning forward, I scoop up my cleavage and rearrange it so a bit more of it is showing. Not too much, but—if this is the only way I can get the boys’ attention, well, it’ll be worth it.
My attempts thus far to talk to them about what Meyer’s doing and make some plan of action haven’t exactly worked. Mere moments after I got through to the girls and told them we had to get the others, they just... forgot completely about our conversation. It’s like it never happened, and trying to explain it again makes their eyes glaze over in confusion and distress. Plus, each time I told the boys it was like trying to explain a conspiracy theory to them. They just didn’t get it at all, and then they wandered off to their next class or midterm study session like I wasn’t even there. Rude.
I don’t know what Meyer has done with Mateo’s powers, but he’s somehow boosted them into something far more than taking single memories from people one at a time. It’s like no one here even remembers that Meyer is new or they ever mistrusted him. He did it so slowly that I didn’t even notice how artificial it was—or maybe he did it quickly while I was in a funk after losing the guys—but somehow in just a few months the campus has gone from loathing and mistrusting Grims to completely believing this one is to be completely trusted.
Whatever he’s planning for them, it can’t be good.
That’s not even getting into that masked Grim who tried to nab me. Meyer said he protected me from Grims like that, but for all I know it was just a decoy, a way to get me to trust him right off the bat by saving my life. Or worse, there’s more out there just like them, and this is just the tip of the maniac iceberg.
I’m starting to understand why, when so many of the shifters here found out I was born a Grim, they looked at me like I slaughter lambs, drain their blood, and drink it in my breakfast cereal.
Now I wouldn’t be shocked to discover that doing just such an occult thing is my only way of defeating Meyer. That and maybe dancing naked under the full moon. These spells are so bizarre.
Satisfied with my reflection—and wanton level of cleavage—I check the clock. Five minutes until we’re supposed to meet, but to be blunt, I don’t have the goddamn patience to wait. So I rush out the door, grab my book bag—ignoring the increasingly hostile letters from the librarian shoved under my door—and head down the hallway, up the stairs, and to the roof.
It’s empty, just like it was the night that I saw what Meyer was up to. The sun is dipping low in the sky, and the grounds surrounding us are empty of frolicking shifters and rowdy sports games that mostly resemble feral animals fighting. It’s the weekend before the big midterms, after which the whole school will go on break, and the students with places to go to will head there.
I have nowhere to go to myself. But I do have a bank account now, and a debit card, courtesy of Petra’s bullying-like help on opening one with a new ID and a legal address. If things get dicey, I can leave the academy and try to find somewhere safe to stay, though I’m surprised to realize I don’t r
eally want to go.
In the distance, I can spot the picnic table near where I first kissed Mateo. There’s a scorch mark across its scratched and pitted surface; another, similar scorch mark stretches up the trunk of a nearby tree. The memory of the smell of burning in the air brings an aching kind of joy to my heart.
“So, what’s going on?” Petra’s voice startles me. “Somehow I doubt you brought me up here to makeout. That’s Sam’s thing.”
I raise my eyebrow at this news. “Really, Petra? A freshie?”
She shrugs. “We all have our toys.”
“Hey.” Sam’s head pokes out of the roof access door, his shiny black hair ruffled, the side of his face red. “I resent that.”
I blink at him. “Did you fall asleep on a book again?”
Liam, striding in behind him, answers with a smirk and a tousle of Sam’s hair. “Not only did he fall asleep on a fucking book, but he drooled all over it and got a lecture from Ms. Trout. Who, by the way—”
“Is threatening to pull my limbs from my torso if I don’t return an overdue book at once?” I wave my hand in the air dismissively. “Trust me, we have bigger problems. And I do mean we.”
Olivia steps up behind Liam and puts her hand in his back pocket, practically beaming just from being close to him. “What, are you failing out? Because I don’t think they’d kick a Black Phoenix out of the school. No offense, Dani, but you’ve got it easy compared to the rest of us.”
If only she knew. Hopefully this time, she will know—because hopefully, if I talk to all of them at once, somehow I’ll get through to them.
It’s that, or start beating them over the head with heavy objects.
“So.” I take a deep breath, and notice the way Sam’s gaze briefly lands on my cleavage—while Liam looks very carefully away. “There’s something I have to tell all of you. And I need you to really, really, really pay attention.”
Sam frowns. “What is it, Dani?”
