In any other situation I would have laughed. Instead I just nodded, acting like I thought his threat, or interest in women for that matter, was genuine.
“Cheers, then,” Danio said, throwing us a cocky grin. It slipped, just for a fraction of a second as his eyes met mine.
I tightened my lips and nodded ever so slightly. He turned and left, returning to the madness outside. Now, to make sure Connor wasn’t going to be a problem… I decided the best thing to do was act like Danio and I hadn’t sought out each other for a private conversation.
“Thank you. That was getting awkward,” I lied.
“What were you talking about?”
“Mainly the fight,” I said cautiously, hoping I was right that he wasn’t on board with what was happening here. “That guy seems a little more… into it than…” I improvised, hoping it seemed like I hadn’t been enjoying the conversation and that Danio and I weren’t close.
Connor looked relieved. “It’s not what I came here for.”
“No, me neither,” I told him.
“Are you—” he started.
We both turned at the sound of a voice calling for everyone to regroup. I nodded to him grimly, hoping he’d keep this encounter to himself. He nodded too and we went back to rejoin the others.
~~~***~~~
Once in my room, I quickly inspected it for anything out of the ordinary that might be used to spy on me or something but I found nothing unusual.
To my dismay the door was locked; I was trapped until they came to get us in the morning then. I paced for a while, still feeling groggy from the sleeping potion they used on the bus, but too keyed up – not to mention paranoid – to sleep.
At last, I decided I had to risk it; I would need to be well rested to face whatever was going to happen the following morning.
After getting into bed I fell asleep quickly and awoke to the sun coming in the window. I got up and looked out, not that I expected to see anything I hadn’t the night before. Nothing. Just a stone wall, so high I couldn’t see over it. I opened the window and leaned out with some difficulty, the window was far too small to climb through; not that it mattered, I could see now that it led to a very long drop down to a rocky ground, with no way to climb to safety.
I heard a knocking and turned. Was that my door? I crossed the room and waited for it again.
“Good morning, sir,” said a muffled, somewhat distant voice. “I trust you slept well?”
I tried the knob and to my surprise, it turned easily this time. I cracked the door just a bit and the voice floated in clearly. “Breakfast will be served in half an hour. Have you made up your mind as to whether you’ll be extending your stay or returning home?”
I opened the door wider to look out and spotted a trio of wizards directly across the hall. Their backs were to me, but Connor was standing in the doorway of his room; he looked right at me and I quickly ducked away. The door may have been unlocked now, but I had a feeling they didn’t want us out of the rooms yet.
Nevertheless, I kept my door cracked enough to listen in and hear Connor’s answer.
“Yes, thank you,” he said. “I’m afraid this really isn’t for me; I’d like to leave.”
“Of course,” one of the wizards replied. “I have a non-disclosure agreement for you to sign, if you don’t mind. We prefer to keep the details of our ah, activities, secret.”
“Oh, yeah sure.”
I risked another glance into the hall, watching as one of the wizards followed Connor into his room. A non-disclosure agreement? Seriously? That was as outrageous as the “exit survey” they told people they were conducting at Cavaliers. I had an uneasy feeling that their reasons for keeping the werewolf woman and that dhampir behind with them weren’t as innocent as a friendly chat.
A sudden knot formed in my stomach; if I was right and those poor people hadn’t left Cavaliers alive, what the hell would they do to someone who wanted to leave here?!
The two wizards in the hall started to turn. I pulled back as far as I could without losing sight of them. They straightened up, standing as if they were guarding the room and the knot in my stomach tightened.
I eased my door almost completely closed, listening intently. I heard something. A thud?
A moment later the door opened. “He’s taken care of,” said the wizard coldly. The almost overpowering scent of fresh blood hit me. Lots of blood. Vampire blood. I heard the door close. “Let’s make sure nobody else wants to leave and then we can take care of the bodies,” the wizard suggested.
I silently closed my door the rest of the way and backed up. Oh my god. They really were killing anyone who tried to leave!
A sudden panic gripped me as I realized that, thanks to Connor’s interruption, Danio and I hadn’t gotten a chance to agree on what we’d do this morning. There was no question I had to agree to stay now. While I was confident I could handle the three wizards, especially without wands, there were too many other people here; I’d never make it out if I resisted now.
But what had Danio told them?
What if he said he’d leave?
Knock knock
I swallowed hard; I couldn’t be worried about that now. I had to trust his instinct would be to stay until we got a chance to coordinate; it would be easier to escape together than for one of us to get back in if we got separated. I was also confident that he would have suspected the people asking to leave before boarding the bus hadn’t gotten away so easily.
I took a deep breath, pushing away my fears that Danio had told them he wanted to leave, and opened the door.
“Morning,” I said, forcing a sleepy, but happy smile.
“Good morning, sir,” said one. There were only two now; the one who smelled like blood was gone. “Breakfast is in about twenty minutes. Have you decided if you’ll remain with us or if you wish to leave?”
“I’m going to stay,” I said. “I think I’m going to like it here.”
“Excellent,” he replied. “In that case, unless you have any questions, please feel free to get ready and join us for breakfast.” He gave me brief directions for finding the dining hall, then left.
I closed my door and sagged against it with a sigh. I had to find Danio.
I heard them knock on another door, followed by the same speech and the sound of Flint, the stone elemental. He wanted to stay as well, hardly surprising, and was directed to breakfast. A moment later there was another knock, this one sounded like it was Connor’s door again.
“We’re done out here,” said one of the wizards.
“Let’s get these bodies taken care of then,” replied the voice of the one who had killed Connor.
I heard a door close and risked peeking out of mine again. They were gone! I flung myself out and sprinted through the hall, sniffing frantically for Danio. A couple of doors down, I located his room and knocked on the door impatiently. Nothing.
“Damn it,” I spat, knocking again.
I took another sniff, praying I wouldn’t smell his blood. To my relief, I couldn’t detect any.
A sound.
I turned toward it and my breath caught; a wizard was backing out of Connor’s room! He had part of a suspiciously large bundle in his arms, wrapped up in a sheet. I swallowed back bile at the knowledge of what, who, was inside. I hoped his death was fast.
But now I was out of time.
I quickly tried the knob, breathing a sigh of relief that it was unlocked. With a glance at the wizard who still hadn’t noticed me, I hurled myself into Danio’s room through the thick air in the threshold. I slammed it shut behind me and stepped back.
An intense throbbing instantly started in my head. I staggered away from the door, as my chest tightened and my knees gave out.
“Tom?!”
Through blurred vision, I could see Danio dropping to his knees beside me.
“Tom! What happened?” he demanded, grabbing my shoulder. “Hey! Are you okay, what happened?!”
My nose filled with
the scent of my own blood. I tried to speak but couldn’t.
“Wait, how did you get in here without – oh fuck! Come in! Does that work retroactively?! Come in?!”
The pounding in my head vanished as quickly as it had started. I stayed still for a moment, struggling to catch my breath. I lifted a trembling hand to wipe the blood away from my nose.
“You realize if you had just waited ten seconds I would have opened the door and invited you in, right?” Danio said in annoyance.
“There were wizards in the hallway,” I managed to say.
“How terrifying for you,” he said flatly.
I took a deep breath and was able to sit back. “They just killed Connor.”
Danio’s eyes widened in alarm. “What?!”
“They asked if he wanted to stay or leave… he picked leave.”
“Skata,” he spat. “Not that I’m surprised, they already killed the two at Cavaliers.”
“I thought so. Are you sure?”
He shrugged. “You spend enough time with fire elementals, you learn what they look like after they burn a bunch of shit. And… what’s her name…”
“Singe?”
“Yeah. She sure as hell looked pleased with herself when she got on the bus.”
I sighed. He extended a hand and helped me to my feet. We crossed the room and I sat heavily on the bed, still feeling unsteady. Danio joined me with a curse.
“What now?” he asked softly.
“I don’t know.”
“We’re so fucking stupid. We knew that if you go to Cavaliers on a specific night, you don’t come back. What the hell made us think we could go to Cavaliers on said specific night and be the exception?”
I shook my head. “It just… it all happened so fast,” I said with a helpless shrug.
He nodded, knowing I wasn’t just referring to the debacle last night had turned into. Or was it two nights ago? I had no idea how long we had been unconscious on that bus.
The entire Cavaliers thing had moved quickly, once it started to move at all. In the weeks that followed our escape from Mystic Cay, we chased several frustrating leads and had nothing to show for it – every small step forward in our attempt to track down Alaria hit a dead end. Mystic Cay and the ferry seemed to be completely controlled by non-magics; the whole operation was in utter chaos now that the island had been destroyed but there wasn’t a single clue as to Alaria or the other blood casters’ whereabouts.
Alaria herself was nowhere to be found in the MES database either. We were able to find Taylor and Burton, the blood casters Jen and Mariana encountered, but nothing in their files led us anywhere. Our only other connection was Greyson Turner, who we suspected was working with them, but he was conveniently – suspiciously, we thought – on a sabbatical and impossible to locate.
While we exhausted every angle in our hunt for Alaria, we held out hope that our discovery of what CVLR was would yield results. Once we knew that the mysterious charge from CVLR on the credit cards of missing magics was from a place called Cavaliers, we started staking it out; it seemed like an innocent restaurant. Nothing in the MES database turned up anything of note or suspicious about the employees or owners. It was totally normal, except every six months a handful of people – all of them non-humans – went there on the same day and then never had any other activity in their MES accounts or credit cards. If they were reported as missing, their files were altered to remove the alert and anything that would have made a MES officer look twice was deleted. Some were dead; now I knew why.
It was sheer luck I was at Cavaliers when Kiana showed up for an “interview” with Anthony. I was easily able to hear the cryptic conversation and, honestly, wouldn’t have paid any attention had I not heard the name Reave. It took another week of careful questions and observation and I was able to arrange a meeting with Anthony for myself. Danio was the most logical one to join me, seeing as we needed my connection with Tethys in case anything went wrong; not that it ended up helping at all.
Like Kiana did, both Danio and I talked around the actual subject with Anthony, giving him the clear impression we were fed up with humans and interested in a more non-human centric existence. In return, he gave us a date and time, then swore us to secrecy.
The date was a week away; just like the previous dates we had identified it was right around Jen’s birthday. Fortunately, hers came before it and we were able to have her first big party in New York. I hoped it wouldn’t be the last one I spent with her.
We tried, and failed, to uncover anything else about Anthony or the events at Cavaliers in the following week and then it was time. Danio and I showed up, with a carefully staggered arrival, for what we thought was a more formal meeting than the interview.
That was that.
Suddenly, we were faced with getting on the bus or staying where I was fairly sure we’d be killed. I weighed the odds, but decided that while Danio and I could probably handle Victor, Anthony, and Singe, if anyone else in the group chose to take their side, we’d lose.
The moment the sleeping potion hit Danio I knew it was over.
I groaned. “It just all went way too fast,” I reiterated.
He nodded in agreement. “How far from New York are we?”
I hesitated. “Well…”
Danio’s eyes grayed in concern. “Well what?”
“Something’s affecting my bond.”
He groaned. “Please tell me we’re not in a labyrinth again.”
“No, nothing like that. It’s just…” I frowned, trying to think of how to describe it. “So, you know I just… sense Tethys, right? Like in the back of my mind, I always have a vague idea of how he’s feeling and sort of where he is, like how far and what direction.”
Danio nodded. “Yeah, like water, I imagine.”
“Right… If I try to focus on him I get a much clearer, stronger idea of it… but now when I do…” I narrowed my eyes. “It’s like it gets weaker. He’s that way and really far away…” I gestured toward the window. “But if I try to focus on him it gets all fuzzy and harder to pinpoint instead of easier… It’s not right.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“It mm… it gets worse,” he offered.
“Worse?” I groaned.
“We’re on an island.”
I groaned. “Please say it’s not in the Caribbean.”
“Worse…” He gave me a moment to wonder how it could possibly be worse, then pointed to the bathroom. “All of the water here is bottled, even the stuff in the shower. The only way I can possibly figure out where we are is to get out to the beach and check it out. I never thought I’d say this, but I’m starting to really hate islands.”
“But if we’re on an island… we just have to get over the wall and we’re fine, right? It’s not as if this one is surrounded by blood magic too.”
“No, just a copious amount of ice.” Danio eyed me in concern. “Judging by how fast I felt it outside, it’s cold out there. If you get in that water you’ll be a vampopsicle long before we got anywhere warmer.”
There was something about his tone that made my hearts sink. “It’s too cold for you, too, isn’t it?”
He hesitated and I fixed him with a firm look. “Probably,” he admitted. “Besides, I kind of promised Char I wouldn’t take any stupid risks… other than the whole going to Cavaliers in the first place thing.”
We sat silently for a couple of minutes. At last, I stood and stretched, feeling much better than I had right after rushing into the room without an invitation.
“Breakfast is soon,” I said, reluctant to go join up with any of the people in the dining hall.
“I doubt they enjoy tardiness,” Danio agreed, standing.
“Watch the accent this time,” I warned.
“No worries, mate, he caught me off guard is all. I won’t mess that up again,” he said, easily picking the accent back up. He frowned. “Of course, if I had known I’d be stuck with an accent for long
er than a couple of hours, I would have picked a different one. And a better name for that matter; Delta is boring.”
“So, you’re zero for two in naming yourself?” I teased.
“Hey! I happen to like my actual name!”
I grinned at him and decided to play a card I had been holding for a long time. “I heard you and your brother flipped a coin for Pike and you didn’t speak to him for a week after he won.”
“I-I-that’s…” he spluttered. “Do you have any idea what an idiot I was when I was twenty? Besides, I like my name. Now. It suits me.” His haughty smile turned into a frown and he wrinkled his nose. “Better than Delta. Why didn’t you stop me? Wait, no. Joe is just as bad. I should have stopped you.”
“At least I took my name and applied some creative thinking. You didn’t even make it past the first letter of yours.”
He stuck his tongue out at me and I feigned a punch. We both laughed. I felt a little better goofing around with him and had a renewed energy as we headed down to see what breakfast would hold.
Chapter Three
Danio
Breakfast was a shockingly relaxed, quiet affair. Victor appeared before the meal was served, claiming he wanted to make sure we were all settling in and to let us know, regrettably, Connor had left early this morning.
Sure. Left with a stake through his fucking hearts.
Then awkwardly meek witches and wizards served us plate after plate of decadent food and, admittedly, some of the best coffee I ever had. It would actually have been quite nice if not for the unusual staff and the fact I had to sit next to Olivia, who spent the meal regaling us with how she would have fared in the fights – most ended with how easily she would have killed each opponent.
Kiana listened eagerly, sometimes interjecting her own thoughts on how she would have done, Flint stayed silent, but I could tell he was listening.
Rise of the Arcanist Series: Books 1 - 6 Page 43
