Fallen University Complete Series

by Callie Rose

  “Pretty sure cheating counts as failure,” I told him as I sat down.

  “What? Oh. I’m not.”

  “Then what’s in your pocket?”

  A flash of anger crossed his face, but he pushed it away with an over-the-top leer. “Come here and I’ll show you.” He wiggled his eyebrows and licked his lips.

  I rolled my eyes. “You don’t have to be a dick about it.”

  “A dick! You guessed it! Well, that’s no fun. Now all of these fine people will have to find a way to enjoy their breakfasts without a show. What a shame.”

  “Oh, shut up, Kingston. God, you’re—” I groped around for the right word.

  “Attractive? Enticing? Superb?” He grinned as he filled in the blanks.

  “Obnoxious,” Jayce said.

  “Insufferable,” Xero added absently.

  “Yeah, what they said.”

  Kingston smirked and went back to his meal. He didn’t look in his pocket again after that, and I wondered if he’d just been messing with me to begin with.

  I chalked it up to nerves. We were all dealing with them, but Kingston didn’t exactly deal with emotions well. He preferred to pretend he didn’t have any, but he couldn’t hide the truth from me. I could feel an echo of what my bonded foursome were feeling all the time, and right now we were one giant mass of walking nerves.

  It was all wasted energy, as it turned out. When we were settled into our seats in the magic lab and had the tests in front of us, everything suddenly made sense. They weren’t testing us on our ability to memorize facts—which was good, because I would very likely have flunked—but on our ability to use that knowledge in ways that were not psychotic.

  For example, one of the early questions was about the Salem witch trials. It asked what I would have done if I’d been accused of being a witch and had a mob chasing me, threatening to burn me at the stake. The answers ranged from Eat them to Beg for mercy. I chose Diplomatically diffuse the situation, which I assumed was code for Cast persuasion.

  As the test went on, the questions got more complex, but as far as I was concerned the answers were always clear. Find the balance between doing the best thing for myself and causing the least amount of harm to others. There were a few trick questions, and a few morally ambiguous situations, but for the most part it was all very straightforward. A person would have to be completely evil or completely stupid to screw it up. Probably both, honestly.

  It made me wonder about the students who didn’t pass.

  We finished by dinner time, and as we all headed to the cafeteria, it felt like the giant bubble of stress had popped, leaving my whole group feeling looser and happier. I smiled at my guys as I linked arms with Xero and Jayce.

  “Think you all passed?”

  “Of course,” Xero said with his slow grin.

  “That test was so simple I was almost offended.” Kingston rolled his eyes.

  “I know. It was basically just ‘don’t be a dick’, right? Or… did I miss something?” Jayce suddenly looked worried.

  “No, that’s what I got out of it.” I leaned forward to peer around him as we walked, my gaze landing on the fifth member of our group. “Kai?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Simple.”

  His cold and hopeless tone sent shivers down my spine. I gave him a hard look and saw guilt behind the hopelessness, and anxiety behind the guilt. I wanted to take him away somewhere private and force him to tell me what the fuck was wrong. My heartbeat sped up and my mouth went dry as several awful scenarios ran through my mind.

  What if he hadn’t passed? What if I had to leave him behind? I couldn’t do it. For as many issues as Kai and I had, he was bonded to me. It would kill part of my soul to be without him. I would literally waste away, and eventually, I’d die.

  “Kai—you do think you passed, right?”

  He turned his shuttered gaze my way. “I don’t know.”

  “Bro! How could you not know? Those questions were easy!” Jayce looked as pained as I felt.

  Kai shrugged and walked away. I wanted to chase after him, but I let him go. We’d always been at odds, and there had always been barriers between us. But now, there was something going on in his head that I couldn’t figure out or even feel. That was new and different in a way I didn’t much like.

  After a nervous evening and a restless night, the three men who had been cleared went off to find something to do while Kai and I headed back downstairs for our second round of interrogations.

  “Do you think you’re going to be able to give them what they’re looking for?” I asked him as we rounded a corner on the first floor, striding toward the basement stairs.

  He glanced out a window that overlooked the dark, foreboding cave beyond. Sighing heavily, he shrugged.

  “Guess I don’t have a choice.”

  I gave him an odd look, but as usual, he avoided my gaze. Goddamn it. I wanted to ask what he meant, but Vesper met us at the bottom of the stairs. She gave us each a long, somber look, then turned.

  “Follow me.”

  “I don’t know why you’re being so theatrical,” I commented, mildly annoyed. “It’s not like this is the first time we’ve done this.”

  Irritation prickled under my skin like an itch I couldn’t scratch. I hadn’t gotten nearly enough coffee at breakfast. They seemed to be rationing it, which made me very concerned about what would happen if we were stuck down here for any significant length of time.

  You can drag me to the underworld, but if you take away my coffee, then I’ll really be in hell.

  “No, it’s not the first time you’ve done this.” Vesper glanced back over her shoulder at me. “But it is the most important. If either of you can remember anything else at all, it might just hold the key to our salvation.”

  I rolled my eyes at Kai. Such drama. He merely pressed his lips together and kept his eyes straight ahead. Okay, so maybe I was the dumb fuck who didn’t realize how important this was. Or maybe I just didn’t think it would matter. I didn’t exactly think Owen would have been muttering about the butler in the pantry with a wrench while he had me slung over his shoulder.

  “You first.” Vesper pointed to me when we reached the heavy door. “Kai, you’ll be next. Make yourself comfortable.”

  Toland glanced up as I entered the room behind his assistant. He looked exhausted. He seemed to be aging years by the day, and I suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to help him. I didn’t know if it was because he looked so strained and ragged, or if it was the training that Jayce had given me over the last two days, but the siren’s song didn’t hit quite as much resistance when she began.

  “Tell me what you heard when you were captured. While Owen was carrying you over his shoulder,” Cassandra said.

  It came to me in bits and pieces and didn’t seem to make any sense. I shook my head. “I can’t. I don’t know what he’s saying.”

  “Don’t worry about that.” Her song was enticing and soothing. “Repeat it just as you hear it.”

  My brows furrowed slightly, but I let the melody of her voice drag words up from the depths of my brain. This time, I didn’t try to make sense of them. I just spoke them as they came to me.

  “Why tread grown bellow. Uptown laugh trite. White up red down green left yellow right. White red green yellow. Up, down, left, right.”

  “Vesper?”

  “Recording, sir.”

  “Continue, Piper.”

  “Uh—stupid simpletons. Something—the code, wasn’t even here—untether the school—should be more difficult. Uptown laugh trite.”

  “Good. That’s good. What else did he say?”

  “Uh—better be better in the underworld. Sick of earth chicks. Then I started to wake up.”

  It got much easier as I reported the events that’d happened while I was conscious. The memories were clear and sharp, as if they’d been dusted off and polished up by Cassandra’s alluring song. I filled in the rest of his hateful misogyny for them, then told them of th
e magical binding cord and my various escape attempts. When I got to the part where I was mentally calling for my guys, they asked me to slow down and go step-by-step.

  “Your wrists were bleeding,” the siren prompted me. “How severely?”

  “There was a puddle.” I frowned. “My clothes were wet. Cuts all over my body. But then the guys came.”

  “And they healed you?”

  “No,” I said. “They attacked Owen. Kai released me from my bonds, but then Owen smashed him against the wall. He was going to die.”

  “Go on,” the siren said.

  Even from the depths of my trance, I could feel the whole room holding its breath.

  “I told the guys to get Owen out of the room before he crushed us all.” Despite the calm of my trance, I could feel my heart beating harder, sending blood racing through my veins. “I went to Kai. He looked dead. I cried over him.” I was crying now, as I told the story. “I touched his face. My blood got on him. I tried to wipe it off, but then—it dripped into his mouth. He drank from me. Then he woke up.”

  Warmth burned low in my belly as I thought about what it had felt like to have Kai drink from me, the remembered feelings and images even more vivid under the siren’s spell.

  Jesus, what an awkward time and place to be so aroused.

  I knew the empath was feeling what I was feeling, but in my utterly vulnerable state, I could do nothing about it. The old woman cleared her throat, and I talked a little faster.

  “He woke up and kissed me. It helped—it healed me a bit and gave me some strength back. It was just enough to get us back in the fight, but I was still bleeding. The other three fought hard. Xero and Kingston killed Owen. They didn’t want to, but they had no choice. He would have killed all of us, and everybody in the school.”

  I finished talking, and for a moment, the only sound in the room was the siren’s beautiful song.

  “Once more,” Toland said tiredly. “From the top.”

  After going through the whole scene three more times, highlighting different details each time—half to do with Kai, the other half to do with the nonsense code Owen had been repeating—he finally allowed Cassandra to withdraw from my mind. The process was much less painful than it had been the other day, and it didn’t feel like my heart was cracking open in my chest as her song faded away.

  “We believe you.” Toland interlaced his fingers and rested his elbows on his desk, regarding me with a steady gaze once my mind was my own again. “And we are clearing you as well. Of all charges.”

  “Wait? There were charges?” I blinked.

  The headmaster shared a look with Vesper. “There were. But we feel you did everything you could to protect yourself, your friends, and this school. The consequences—should be manageable.”

  “Consequences? Which ones?”

  Toland rubbed a hand over his face. “We shall see. We need to speak with Kai now. Vesper will take you to the waiting room.”

  I followed her out. This time, she took me to the same room where she’d been keeping Kai, and I squeezed his hand in a show of affectionate support as he passed. He met my eyes with a haunted look that made my heart ache. I hoped whatever nightmare was chasing him would be gone after all of this was over.

  Like before, the enchanted waiting room convinced me that I was only in it for a couple of minutes before Vesper returned with Kai in tow. His whole vibe had changed—for the worse, in my opinion. He’d gone from being haunted and frightened to being icy and furious. He wouldn’t look at me. He pulled away when I tried to touch his hand. A wall had closed down over his emotions, and with a start of terror, I realized that I could barely feel him.

  When Vesper left us at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the main level, I grabbed his arm. He yanked it away in a sharp movement.

  “Kai—what happened?”

  I tried to keep the desperation and growing fear out of my voice, but I was sure he could hear them anyway. He would’ve been able to see them on my face too if he’d ever fucking look at me.

  He shook his head. “See you around, Piper.”

  “I—what?”

  He took the stairs two at a time and never even glanced back.

  Chapter Six

  “When are they going to tell us if we passed or not?” Jayce glared down at his dinner discontentedly.

  “You certainly did,” I said with a grin. He was the nicest one out of all of us, and probably the least likely to ever be seduced by the dark side of our supernatural powers. “What are you worried about?”

  Jayce shrugged. His blue eyes were serious as he nodded at Kai, who had taken a spot on the other side of the cafeteria. He’d been avoiding me like the plague all afternoon, ever since we’d finished our exams.

  “Kai just got me thinking, that’s all.”

  “We passed.” Resting a hand on his muscled thigh, I gave a laugh that sounded nervous even to me. I waved my other hand as if trying to banish the cloud of anxiety that hovered over us. “We did.”

  The cafeteria began to empty as people finished their food. Just as my group finished ours, Vesper appeared at the door.

  “I bet she’s here for you guys.” Hannah sat up straighter, biting her lip. “Good luck!”

  Vesper gestured to Kai then walked to our table. “Headmaster Toland would like to see all of you in his office,” she said. “Immediately.”

  My stomach sank like a stone. Jayce, Kingston, Xero, and I looked at each other, giving and taking strength from one another. I held Jayce and Xero’s hands as we walked out, squeezing them tight.

  We’re going to be fine, I told myself firmly. No matter what.

  Toland sat behind the desk in his large office. He looked a little better than he had before, but I couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

  “Take a seat, please.” He gestured to the five chairs that had been arranged in front of his desk. “First, I should tell you that you all passed your final exams.”

  “All of us?” Kai tilted his head, sounding almost disbelieving.

  “All of you,” Toland said firmly. “But I also brought you here to thank you. The information you gave us will be very useful in our attempts to get back home. We’re optimistic about returning to earth before the new school year begins.”

  “That’s great!” Jayce beamed happily. “How long will it take?”

  “As long as it takes.” Toland gave him an indulgent smile. “Dismissed. Oh, except Kai. Hang back a minute, would you?”

  I tried to catch the vampire’s eye, but he wouldn’t look at me. The fury I’d felt from him earlier had faded into a vague sort of concern—but that was a guess at best. I was having as much trouble feeling him as I’d had trying to feel Xero when we first got here.

  The only difference was, Xero had come back to me.

  I wasn’t sure Kai ever would.

  Nothing changed much over the next few weeks.

  Which, given our circumstances, was pretty fucking bad.

  It felt like Kai and I had gone back to square one, and this time there wasn’t even a bar in the snowy mountains to corner him in. He just stuck to his skulking, and I stuck to trying to ignore the gaping hole in my armor.

  It wasn’t easy. Every week, Toland held an assembly. Every week, his optimism waned a little bit more. First, he said we’d get back before the beginning of the school year, then it was before our first break, and then he stopped talking about getting out altogether. Meanwhile, I joined the rest of the student body in going positively stir-crazy.

  “I just wish there was something to do,” I said to Hannah one lazy morning as I stared out my window into the dark, red-tinged wilderness beyond the cave. Fallen University had a month-long break in between school years, so classes hadn’t started back up yet, although they would soon.

  “Like what?” She glanced at me from where she was lounging on her bed.

  “I don’t know. I kind of want to see what’s out there. I still can’t tell if those are t
rees or bones.”

  She shot me a warning look. “No! Don’t even think about it, Piper.”

  “But look!” I flung a hand out toward the window. “It’s right there. I could pop out and be back before anybody knew I was missing.”

  “Yeah, and get caught by a demon and blow the school’s cover,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It’s not that bad. At least we’re safe inside the school. Read a book or something.”

  I groaned. “I’m sure there will be plenty of books to read next week. I can’t believe these guys. Who is so dedicated to education that they’ll make you go back to class after being transported to a hell dimension?”

  She pressed her lips together and sighed through her nose at me. “The same people who are trying to make sure that you don’t end up fighting for the hell dimension, genius. Now get out of bed, we’ve got that assembly.”

  “I’m sick of assemblies.”

  “And I’m sure they’re sick of you too, but we’re getting our class schedules today, and I want to compare notes.”

  “Oh, all right. Seriously. Classes in the underworld.” I shook my head, but eventually climbed out of bed, threw on fresh clothes, and walked the same three-hundred and twenty-five paces to the auditorium that I’d walked every week since we’d arrived. Yeah, I’d counted them. I was that bored.

  “Good morning, students,” Toland said from the podium once we’d all settled into our seats. “As you know, the new school year will begin soon. Our classes will be a little bit different this year. Obviously, our situation has changed, and we must be able to adapt to suit it. Vesper will call each year in alphabetical order, beginning with the new fourth-years.” He shot a look at Marshall, who sat several rows ahead of me and the guys. “I know all of you who were third-years should have graduated by now, but since you’re still with us, we will use the opportunity to do some advanced training. Once you have your class assignments, you are free to go to breakfast.”

  Toland stepped back as Vesper took the podium, and I settled in for a long wait.