by Callie Rose
“Good. Piper, take us through every step from the time you decided to follow Owen to the time you came back upstairs.”
I did, telling them every detail from the way things smelled to the way his footsteps sounded, all the way down the stairs.
“Then I went around the corner, and I couldn’t see him. I was angry that he disappeared. Then he hit me over the head.”
“What happened next?”
“I woke up—”
“No,” Cassandra sang. “Before you woke up. What happened?”
I frowned. I truly wanted nothing more in the world than to please her and give her everything she wanted—that was the siren song’s magic—but the unrealistic demand forced me to surface slightly from the depths of my hypnotic state.
“How would I know? I wasn’t awake.”
“But your ears heard,” she whispered. “What did they hear?”
Her song intensified once more, pushing me under. And she was right. Even in my unconscious state, some part of my mind had picked up little things.
Noises.
Sensations.
I could feel the jostle of moving, living stone under my rib cage. I could hear a sound like boulders grinding together. I knew it was Owen’s voice, but I couldn’t make out the words.
“His feet are heavy,” I said, speaking slowly. “They echo off the walls. His voice—his voice is—I can’t hear what he’s saying. It’s just noise.”
“Focus,” Cassandra instructed.
“She’s getting frustrated,” Devra interjected. “She won’t be able to remember if she’s frustrated.”
“Relax. Breathe, Piper, and relax.” Cassandra’s voice was like the softest rain and the gentlest sun, the coolest lemonade and the warmest brandy. I let her take me under, back to the memory. I felt entirely calm, but it wasn’t any more clear the second time.
“It’s just dark.” I shook my head. Or at least, I thought I did, but it was hard to tell if my body actually moved. “His voice is just a grumble. I can’t hear what he’s saying. It’s gibberish.”
“Move on,” Toland said. “We can come back to this later.”
“What happened next?”
I told her everything. Every little detail. How when I woke up, he’d been going off on a tangent about how girls like me were stupid for falling for jocks and bad boys, how I should have accepted his offer to help feed my succubus powers, and if I had he would have taken me with him when he got what was coming to him. How Gavriel had promised him that demon chicks were different, but I clearly wasn’t.
“He was sympathetic to Gavriel when he was still human?” Toland’s voice resonated with shock.
“That’s what it sounded like. He wanted power. Gavriel gave it to him.”
“What was his mission?”
The question whirled through my brain, slipping through memories, trying to attach to something.
“To screw you over,” I said helplessly. “Screw the school over. Give Gavriel an edge.”
“That was the intention.” Toland sounded frustrated. “But what was he sent here to do exactly?”
I groped around for answers, but I came up empty. Despite the soothing siren song, I was starting to panic. If Toland didn’t know how we got here, how the hell was he going to find a way to get us back?
“Stop.” Devra’s voice was sharp. “She’s had enough. She can’t remember.”
“She has to,” the headmaster said, a reflection of my own panic edging his tone. “She’s the only one who heard his monologue, we need to know every word he said!”
My heart was racing, thrumming so hard and fast in my chest it felt like an engine revving. But my body, held in Cassandra’s siren song, refused to react. I floundered in the dark, grasping for stray words as my memories played out in my mind’s eye, moving faster and faster the more I tried to catch up with them.
“Pull back,” Devra insisted. “She’s losing focus. She can’t regain it under this pressure.”
“She’s going to have to.” The hard edge to Toland’s voice made my panic spike even higher.
“I. Can’t!” I gasped. Memories spun around my head, flashes of yellow and red and blue, the bloody battle mixing with sex and fear and academia and Seattle, a cluster fuck of nonsense.
“Cassandra, stop this!” Devra bypassed Toland entirely.
“No, Cassandra. Keep her sedated until we get answers!”
“She’s shaking,” Charles, the tweedy mage, said in his nervous tenor.
My teeth clattered together until I thought they would crack. Cassandra’s spell began to weaken. She was pulling back without Toland’s approval. It felt like a breakup, like a parent dying, like being picked last for dodgeball while simultaneously getting fired. I was desperate for her to keep singing, even if it killed me. I needed her song.
“No,” I whispered through trembling lips.
Cassandra still withdrew, pulling away from my consciousness so slowly I almost couldn’t tell until the heartache grew stronger. My cheeks were wet with tears, and I was sobbing so hard I couldn’t speak.
“All right,” Toland said with a sigh. “Release her.”
“I am.” The siren’s voice had lost just a little of its tune, but I still clung to the sound of her song like a lifeline. “It’s going to take a long time.”
“Why?”
“I made her go too deep. If I break the connection too fast, her mind may not recover.”
I wondered if she’d given the same consideration to Xero, who had very nearly been broken by our first round of interrogations. He looked big and scary and tough, but he was so soft underneath. Loving and warm and vulnerable. The way they’d gone after him though, you’d think he was a wanted criminal on three planes of existence.
My stomach tightened at the memory of his face when he’d emerged from the questioning, but the fact that I could wonder about that at all meant Cassandra’s spell was fading. It was a heart-wrenching relief when she released me completely; as the echoes of her song faded in the chamber, so did my heartache.
Toland had his head cradled in his laced fingers and was looking down at the table. Devra was glaring daggers at him, clearly disapproving of how far he had taken things. Cassandra herself looked exhausted.
“Next.” Toland raised his voice slightly without looking at me. “Bring Xero.”
“No,” Cassandra said.
“Excuse me?” He glanced up, his mustache bunching up as he frowned.
She turned to him. “I need Jayce. He was an actor before he was turned into a hellhound, which means he was trained to open up his heart and mind. I won’t be able to fight another guarded mind until I recharge a little bit. Bring me Jayce, then Kingston, then Kai. Xero will be last.”
My heart sank, and anger tightened my jaw. She was giving herself plenty of time to gear back up before going after Xero. I wanted to shake her and tell her to stop judging him for what she thought she knew about him. To make her see that he was sensitive and earnest and would be so willing to help her if she’d just give him the chance.
But I didn’t. I could barely speak, let alone move.
“Very well.” Toland waved a hand impatiently. “You can choose the lineup, as long as we get through them all today.” He shifted his gaze to Vesper. “Take Piper to isolation.”
“Yes, sir.” His assistant rose and guided me out of the chair by my elbow. She was a short woman with a round face and deep-set eyes.
“I’ve never seen him like this,” I whispered to her as we left the room.
“He’s taking it hard,” she said, almost apologetically. “This happened on his watch. He can’t forgive himself for that.”
I could understand that. But still. I wouldn’t be able to forgive him if he broke my guys the way he had tried to break me. I trusted Cassandra—within reason—but I knew that the more Toland panicked, the worse it would be for all of us.
The isolated waiting room looked like it had been furnished in the ‘60s and h
ad never been redecorated. The furniture appeared blocky and uncomfortable, and a few novels lined a small bookshelf.
Jesus. How long am I expected to be here? Do they think I’ll have time to read a whole book?
Picking one up, I opened it to the first page then closed it again. I was too restless to even think about reading.
“Is it really true that actors are more easily swayed by sirens than other people?”
I asked the question out loud just to fill the space with something. Vesper was still hovering nearby, and the silence was making my skin crawl. She didn’t answer, and I was about to open the book again when the door opened.
Vesper cocked her head, then nodded once, the gray streaks in her hair gleaming in the bland yellow light of the wall sconces. I’d always assumed she was about the same age as Toland, but she looked better preserved. The effect of less stress and responsibility, maybe.
“Ah. They’ve all finished.” She crooked a finger at me. “Come with me. Toland wishes to speak with you all.”
I blinked at her. “Umm… I’ve been in here for two minutes. He got through all four of them already?”
She offered a tired smile. “The waiting room is enchanted. You’ve been here for five hours. Come on, he’s waiting.”
I shook my head, wondering if I was ever going to get used to this place. I followed her out and around a corner to a boardroom I had never been in before. All the men were all there. Kai looked ashamed, which was weird for him. Kingston looked extra haughty, which made sense. He and Xero had shared the killing blow that took down Owen, and Kingston was allergic to guilt. Xero was the opposite though. He looked drained and miserable. Jayce was the only one who didn’t look like he’d just been through the wringer. He actually looked better than he had when they’d come to fetch me in the morning, and he even cracked a smile at me.
“Have a seat, Piper.” Toland gestured to a chair with one hand while pensively scratching his eyebrow with the other. Once I was settled, he sat at the head of the table and looked around, meeting our eyes one by one.
“First, I owe you all an apology. I should not have pushed you so hard. Especially you, Piper. And, Kai, you as well.”
I tried to share a look with Kai, but the coldly beautiful man wouldn’t meet my gaze. His cheeks were slightly flushed, tingeing his bronze skin a deeper shade.
Neither of us spoke up to accept Toland’s apology, and after a brief pause, the headmaster continued.
“I can tell you that I believe your story. I have no doubt that it happened just as you all say it did. Unfortunately, we still have a problem. Kai and Piper have missing memories due to falling unconscious, and we need to know what happened in those moments.”
Kai’s gaze snapped up, his dark eyes as bright and hard as obsidian. “You want us to go back in there?”
“Not right away. Cassandra and Devra need time to recover, and I’m sure you could both use a reprieve as well. I’ll expect you back here in three days, right after breakfast.” Then he leaned back in his chair and sighed. “There is another problem, however. Extenuating circumstances aside, you did miss your finals. I absolutely cannot allow you to move forward with your schooling until you pass those.”
“And if we don’t pass—what will happen?” Jayce asked.
Toland frowned. “Generally speaking, you would be banished to the underworld. Unfortunately, our current circumstances make that impossible; while we could remove you from the school, it’s possible we would be making ourselves vulnerable to detection if we were to do so. Since that is the case, anyone who doesn’t pass will have to be isolated within the school itself until such a time as we find a way back to earth. Then they would be banished.”
“Hold on.” My eyebrows shot up, and I raised my hand like an over-eager five-year-old in school. “We almost died trying to save you and everybody else, and you’re telling me that I still have to pass a fucking scantron to prove myself to your organization?”
Toland stared at me for a moment, his face still. “You will pass,” he said finally. “You all will.”
I frowned. “How do you know, you gonna give us cheat sheets?”
“Of course not.” He scoffed. “But you have two days to prepare. And as you stated, you’ve already proved yourselves to me, which means the tests will be easy for you.”
“You aren’t making any sense.”
“You’ll understand when you sit for your exams,” he said tiredly. “You are to meet Ms. Jewel in the magic lab at nine o’clock sharp the day after tomorrow. The following day, you’ll be back down here. After that, maybe we can all focus on getting home.” He gestured with one hand. “Dismissed. Vesper will show you out.”
The guys rose, but I stayed in my seat and gave our headmaster a hard look.
“Okay.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “So I understand the need for an interrogation. Someone died, and obviously there’s a mystery to solve. What I don’t understand is why you are so hell-bent—so to speak—on us taking these goddamn finals. Surely there are more important things for us all to be worrying about right now.”
All right, so maybe I had test anxiety, but it honestly made no fucking sense.
“I took an oath,” Toland said shortly. “A blood oath. Pass your damn finals.”
Xero inhaled sharply. I shot him a questioning look, and he shook his head at me.
Ugh. Fine.
I wasn’t about to get answers right now, so I stood up and joined the guys. As we all filed out, I glanced back and saw Toland fold his hands and lay his head down on the table.
He looked like he was regretting his career choices.
Chapter Four
“Blood oath?”
I turned to Xero as soon as Vesper led us out of the labyrinth and disappeared, probably to go help Toland sort through the multitude of headaches being suddenly plopped into the underworld had caused.
The fire demon shuddered. “A blood oath is bad. Even fallen in the underworld take a step back before taking a blood oath. Blood magic is forbidden for almost everybody. If he lets us move on to next year’s schoolwork without our finals on file, he’s in for a world of hurt.”
“I thought he was in charge around here though. Who would punish him?”
Xero gave me a somber look. “The oath itself. These things have built-in fail-safes. I don’t know exactly what would happen to him—it varies from oath to oath—but it would be bad. Bad enough that he would banish us in a heartbeat, even if we managed to save the day.”
“Fuck.” I grimaced. “Everything’s so life and death around here. You’d think the stress alone would make people snap and go full monster.”
Kai snorted. “Who says it doesn’t?”
I thought about the way Toland had behaved during my interrogation, and my stomach churned. Was what Xero had said true? Was there something in the air, in the very atmosphere here that destroyed humanity and fostered evil?
We started up the stairs toward the ground level, and I looked at my guys a little more closely. They all—except Jayce, naturally—bore the marks of intense psychic exhaustion.
“How did it go for you guys?” I asked as we reached the main hall upstairs.
“Not as bad as last time,” Xero reassured me with a small smile. “Still sucked though.”
“It was fine.” Kingston preened haughtily. “I could do that every day.”
“Shut up,” Kai growled. “Those interrogations are hell, and you all know it.”
“Only because you fight it.” Jayce slipped an arm around my waist, sending an instant wave of calm through me. “Which I get. I mean, it’s completely normal. But honestly, if you just sit back and invite them in, it works so much better.”
Kingston snorted. “They can have what they’re good enough to get.”
“You hid something from them?” Kai asked sharply.
“Who said that? I didn’t say that. All I’m saying is that I’m not going to let some creepy elders poke around in my head unsu
pervised.”
My instinct was to agree with Kingston. I valued my privacy more than almost anything else. But I didn’t want to have to go down there and break my heart in front of Cassandra a million freaking times, so I looked up at Jayce instead.
“Can you teach me?” I asked.
“Teach you?”
“How to invite them in. Those missing memories—they’re talking about the moments when I was blacked out and coming out of it, when I was all disoriented. Or, you know, literally not conscious. I’d give them the memories freely if I could, but I can’t get to them.”
Jayce rubbed his fingers thoughtfully over the necklace at his throat. “I think I can. I don’t know for sure. My mom started teaching me this stuff before I could talk, so it would kind of be like trying to teach you to breathe, it’s so second-nature to me now. But I can try. You’re welcome to learn too, Kai.”
“Yeah, I’ll pass.” Kai’s lip curled bitterly. “I’m with Kingston on this.”
Xero sighed. “You should listen to Jayce. If they think you’re hiding anything, they won’t hold back. It would be a lot easier if you just cooperated.”
“I’m not a fan of easy,” Kai snapped. “I’m going to go back to my room. Have fun.”
Damn it. I shot a subtle glance at him out of the corner of my eye, already dreading the moment when he would break away from our group to return to his dorm room. A little piece of my soul would go with him, and I hated that fact.
My relationship with the moody vampire was complicated as fuck. He didn’t want the bond between us, and because I hated being bonded to someone who barely even liked me, I tried not to want it either.
But it was hard to separate what my mind wanted from what my soul needed.
We were ten feet from the fork in the hall where we would part ways when Sonja and her cronies stepped out in front of us.
“Oh, look, the criminal crusade has been released. I thought for sure they would have hanged you all by now.”
The big girl on her right and the little blonde on her left smirked at us. The morose girl with the mirror-gray eyes simply looked on, blank-faced.
