“You need blood,” Minnie said.
We got to the moonkissed woman who was serving. She raked us over. “Type?”
“Two O neg, please,” Minnie said. “Heated.”
“Not for me.” I held up a hand. “I’m fine.”
“Are you sick?” Minnie asked. “You didn’t take any blood yesterday either. You’re going to get weak if you don’t drink, and you need to be on the ball for the exam.”
She was right, of course, but bagged blood tasted shit. “Fine.” I gave the server a tight smile. “Two bags it is.”
The woman ambled off to get the blood. She returned a minute later and plonked the bags on our trays.
The smell made my stomach clench with need, but the taste would be slightly too metallic and off. Still, it was all we’d be getting here, and it was all I deserved.
We broke away from the queue and headed toward our usual table.
“Min!” A blonde, curly-haired bombshell intercepted us. “You didn’t show to the pamper evening last night.” She pouted. “We missed you.”
Harper Bourne, feyblood legacy family, spoilt princess, and in any other environment would have been the mean girl. But in adherence to the rules of the Academy, she’d toned it down. The girls she hung with would have been called her clique, but here, they were merely her friends. They wore matching bubblegum lipstick and flicky eyeliner.
Fucking clones.
Made me wonder how they’d deal with the outside world when they were forced to roll around in the mud wrestling a demon dog.
Harper kept her attention on Minnie, not even bothering to acknowledge me. Nothing new there. If not for Minnie, I’d probably be invisible in this place. Trust me. I’d tried.
“We did face masks and nails.” Harper wiggled her crimson-tipped fingers at Minnie. “It wasn’t the same without you.”
Minnie arched a brow. “Yeah, well, I decided to watch Lunar Creek with Indie instead.”
The Supernatural Television Network broadcasted the show on a closed network only accessible by supernaturals, and the show was a fan favorite. Set in a coastal town with mermaids and sirens, moonkissed and nightbloods, it was a soap opera not many would miss.
“Oh, God. Klayton is sooo dreamy,” one of the bubblegum posse swooned.
Harper ignored her, keeping her attention on Minnie. “Oh, you could have done that with us.”
“I know.” Minnie smiled stiffly. “So could Indie. If you’d bothered inviting her.”
Oh, man. The urge to face-palm was almost too much.
Harper’s eyes widened, and no, she still didn’t look at me. “Oh, we just thought it could be us girls, you know.”
“And what’s Indie? Chopped liver?” Minnie shook her head. “Forget it, Harper. You haven’t even said hello to her, and she’s standing right here. I don’t have time for bitchiness.”
My friend strode off, and I made to follow.
“You’re bringing her down, you know,” Harper said.
It took a moment to register that she was talking to me, and another split second to register what she was implying.
I should have walked away. It would have been the smart thing to do. But my temper overrode my common sense.
I turned slowly to face her. “You have a problem with me, then say it. Let’s get it out in the open.”
Her chest rose and fell, and her minions clustered around her like pink fluffy bats.
“You’re a criminal,” she snapped.
“So is the amount of makeup you’re wearing.”
She opened and closed her mouth, and then her eyes narrowed. “Problem with Minnie is her heart’s too big. She’s always taking in strays and nursing sick animals back to health. You’re just another project to her, Justice. She doesn’t realize how toxic you are. But I know about your stint in the slums, the pit fights, and the drinking.”
My pulse beat faster. Did she know what my crime was? That was closed case information.
“I’ll find out what you did, and once I do—”
“You’ll what?” Minnie reappeared sans tray. “I don’t care about the past. I care about the here and now. Everyone has a right to a second chance.”
My chest tightened with dread. If she knew the truth …
“Come on, Indie, blood’s getting cold.”
She wove her arm through mine and tugged me away from Harper and her posse.
We took our seats at our regular corner table, and I pushed away the feeling of dread.
“I’m way too old for this shit, you know.” I picked up my blood bag. “You’d think at our age, we’d be past all this petty crap.”
“Eighteen is hardly old in nightblood years,” Minnie said.
“Nineteen. I’ll be nineteen next month.”
She licked her lips and leaned in. “Want to know a secret?”
“Like I’m going to say no to that.”
Her eyes twinkled. “Harper is twenty-five. She went through a rebel phase when she was younger, and then her parents grounded her for a year before pulling strings to get her in last year. They’ve threatened to cut her off if she doesn’t shape up.”
“And hanging out with a Faraday helps.”
She shrugged and winked. “Eat up, we have an exam to ace.”
* * *
The next class was on the upper floor situated next to a room that hummed with the whirr of machinery and blinking lights. The tiny room powered the Sim lab where pods were grouped into scrums of six. Most of the cadets hovered by the windows on the far end of the room, looking nervous.
Not surprising. The pods took some getting used to. My first time had resulted in ten minutes of vomiting. But after several trials over the past eight weeks, because like hell did anyone get to lie low in this class, my brain had acclimatized to being hooked up to a machine so my consciousness could be beamed to a simulated location. Even so, my stomach did a little flip of nerves.
“Why can’t we just do the test in the real world?” a young feyblood male asked.
Pale, tall, broad-shouldered, and typically beautiful – which meant he was a Tuatha mixed with some other supernatural breed—the guy drew every eye with his question.
The Tuatha were always too good-looking to be real. This one was twirling a strand of his gleaming shoulder-length, silver-blond hair around his finger while fluttering his impossibly long eyelashes at Madam Garnet, the sim tutor.
Out in the real world, maybe Garnet and I would have been friends. Short and stocky, she had the don’t-mess-with-me attitude I admired and was my favorite tutor here – if I gave a shit about favorites.
“Why can’t we do this outside?” She glared at him. “Do we have fomorian hounds and rogue fey running around the bloody academy that I don’t bloody know about?”
He opened his mouth to reply, but she cut him off. “No. No, we do not, and you know why? Because this is a bloody secure location.” She crossed her arms. “These pods are as close as you get to a supernatural threat until your third term, and let’s hope by that time you’re ready to face the challenge.” She tapped the holotab in her hand. “The pods, for those of you that need a reminder, are Feytech, which means they are infallible, unbreakable, and un … damn, I can’t think of another word.”
“Perfect?” Harmon offered, his attention on a curvy female moonkissed.
Thomas’s face pinched.
“No, Harmon,” Madam Garnet said. “That wasn’t the word I was looking for. How about you bloody stick to finishing Carmichael’s sentences.”
A low chuckle rippled across the class.
Garnet ignored them. “The pods will keep you safe while you’re linked to the sim arena. Like anything that comes from Winterlock Tech, these pods have been tested and retested. Only the best for our cadets.” She tapped several buttons. “Teams are …”
She began to rattle off names, reiterating what we already knew.
“Minnie Faraday, Harmon Black, Thomas Carmichael, Indigo Justice, and Oberon Hyde.�
�
My pulse skipped. Hyde? Like Archer Hyde. They were spawned directly from Orion Winterlock’s bloodline – the only pure-blood fey on the mortal realm, council member, and owner of Winterlock Tech. Orion had certainly sown his oats, but the Hydes were the only feyblood line that were both descended from Orion and made up of a mix of human and fey genes. It made them more fey than any other feybloods because human genes were recessive to fey genes.
The golden-haired feyblood inclined his head, his gaze sliding our way. Whereas a moment ago, his expression had been airhead, now it was sly and cunning. What the actual fuck?
“Shit,” Minnie said. “Oberon sucks and not in a nice way.”
Thomas groaned as if he was hearing the news about our team-up for the first time, but I was pretty sure his objection wasn’t to Oberon. His next words confirmed it.
“Come on, Madam. Why do we have to be stuck with the criminal?”
My neck heated, but I kept a straight face and my eyes on the whiteboard behind Garnet.
Garnet lowered her holotab and fixed her eyes on Thomas. “Are you questioning my judgment?” Her tone was a knife’s edge.
Thomas pressed his lips together. “Of course not.”
Her smile was brittle as she turned her attention to me. “I’m sure Miss Justice knows better than to let the team down.”
I didn’t bother gracing her with a response, verbal or otherwise, and after a long, uncomfortable stare-off, she returned her attention back to the class.
“The past eight weeks, you’ve been learning about the kind of threats you’ll be facing back in the human world. Threats from your own kind, from rogue nightbloods and moonkissed, from feybloods and creatures that enter our world via thinnings in our reality. The fomorians aren’t the only threat to our world, and although some of you will find yourselves chosen to fight the bigger threat, the rest of you will be rooted in the mortal world, fighting every day to keep the universal glamour from failing by making sure our existence remains secret. To do that, you’ll need to bring down the trouble-makers, the rogues, and the factions that care little for the balance of things. You’ll need to police demons that enter our world in an unauthorized fashion. You are the only line of defense beyond these wards.” She took a deep breath. “So, show me what you’ve learned. Work together in your teams to survive. Use the tools in your pack to get from point A to B, and remember, you need to cross that finish line together. If you lose a member or leave one behind, you all fail.”
Shit, this was not going to be fun.
“Well, what are you waiting for? Fire up, and let’s get this exam underway.”
Harmon and Thomas ambled over to us. As a team, we needed to be in connected pods. There were five of us, so one pod would be vacant. Oberon appeared at my side.
“Mind if I take the spot next to you?”
It was the first time he’d spoken to me, and his voice was like honey. I hated honey.
“Do what you want.” I climbed into my pod and hit the calibration controls.
The material of the seat was soft and alive as it molded to my body. Around me, the others hurried to get settled. I pressed my head back against the rest and closed my eyes. Don’t hold your breath. Don’t …
Shit, the material whooshed over my head, covering it entirely in a semi-permeable material that I didn’t know the name of. The first time this had happened, I’d almost passed out from hyperventilating, and then there’d been the puke. Yeah, all over my face.
I’d have been mortified if I’d been the only one chucking up my guts. Pod riding took time to adjust to.
Shit, hurry up already.
My head felt light, and then the world was whooshing away.
Four
I opened my eyes in a leafy clearing at night. The air smelled crisp and clean, like just after a heavy rainfall, except the ground was bone dry.
Little incongruences like this ruined the authenticity of the simulation.
I looked up at the night sky and studied the map of stars—one map I could always navigate by—except it was all off. Urgh. Could they not get anything right? It shouldn’t bother me, but it did. Maybe I should say something; surely these tests should be more realistic with a little more attention to detail?
Why did I even care?
“Hey?” Minnie appeared beside me, a huge grin on her pixie face. “I have a good feeling about this test.”
I couldn’t help but smile back. It felt strange on my face. Smiling. “Are you sure you’re a Faraday?”
She snorted. “Not all Faradays are sticks-in-the-butt.”
“Except your uncle and your brother.”
She winced. “Lloyd has his moments. He’s under a lot of pressure to be … perfect.”
Yeah, if anyone understood pressure, it was me. I’d grown up under the pressure of being the wrong sex.
I took in Minnie’s outfit: combat trousers with a dagger strapped to the thigh, long-sleeved, dark-green top, and heavy-duty boots. Mine was the same. Clothes designed to blend in, and shoes made to carry us over difficult terrain. One thing she had that I didn’t was a backpack. It sat snug against her back and bulged with items.
I guess Minnie was the resource manager then.
Harmon and Thomas strode toward us from the tree line. They were dressed the same as us. Thomas wore the outfit easily, his slender form looking comfortable in the getup, but Harmon? Not so much. The pants looked too tight, and his polo top stretched, ready to burst at the seams.
He tugged at the collar. “It’s a simulation, you’d think they’d get the proportions right.”
I rolled my eyes. “We’re in a simulation, so you’re not actually wearing the clothes. There’s no reason for them to get it right.”
Something made an eerie chirping sound.
“You think they’d be a little more original when it comes to location,” Thomas said drolly.
“Would you rather we were in a desert?” Minnie asked.
“At least then we’d see any danger coming,” Thomas replied.
“We’d probably die of thirst and exposure first,” Harmon said. “Come on, Tom, think.” His tone was good-natured, but there was no mistaking the glint of annoyance in Thomas’s eyes.
It looked like there was trouble in paradise.
“Where’s golden boy?” I glanced about, searching for Oberon.
The clearing was obviously the rendezvous spot, so he should have been dropped close by.
“Fuck him,” Harmon said.
“I bet you would,” Thomas muttered under his breath.
But he might as well have shouted it—we all had super hearing, after all.
Harmon’s chest rumbled. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Thomas exhaled through his nose and closed his eyes. “Nothing. It means nothing. We should get moving.”
Honestly, these guys. “You want to fail? I mean not that I give a shit, but I assume you guys do.”
They looked at me with matching frowns.
“We have to wait for him,” Minnie said. “Teamwork, remember? If we leave anyone behind, we lose.”
“Fuck.” Harmon rubbed the back of his neck. “Fine, let’s go find him. Maybe this is part of the test. Maybe he’s in trouble?”
It was a possibility.
Just then Oberon strolled into the clearing, cargo pants hugging his slender hips, hair pulled back off his chiseled face in a half pony, sapphire eyes cool as they took us in.
“So, are we going to go somewhere?” He shrugged. “Or do you plan on hanging out in the clearing until they drag us out of the sim?”
Irritation flared in my chest. “What took you so long, Goldie? Did you stop for some porridge?”
He pouted at me and I gave him the finger.
“We have to get to this spot.” Minnie waved a map around. “Look.”
Animosity aside, we gathered around to stare at the map.
Map reading wasn’t my forte. Everything looked the same to me,
and the Geographical History of Supernaturals on Human Realms class was my go-to place for a nap. The tutor, Master Braun, had a voice that could tame the wildest hellhound and put it into a coma. He also happened to have a face like a hellhound, but that was beside the point.
Yeah, so maps were not my strong suit.
Minnie, however, was in her element.
She tucked her hair behind her ears, which, with her pixie features, should have been pointed. But nightbloods didn’t have pointy ears. Wait, what did she just say?
“It looks like a twenty-mile hike,” Thomas said.
“Yes,” Minnie agreed. “The forest stretches for ten miles, and then we have flatlands that bleed to mountainous terrain, and finally, the body of water we’re headed toward.” She tapped a red X marked on the map. “Here. We have to get here.”
“In the middle of the water?” Oberon said, brow crinkled.
I sighed. “It’s probably a small island. There’ll be a boat.”
“Unless they expect us to swim,” Thomas added.
Minnie opened the pack so we could examine the items. “Water purification tablets, energy bars, a tarp, an empty flask – looks like we have to get our own water – oh, and a pouch filled with green goop.”
“Healing everness. Nice,” Harmon said. “Should knit wounds if we get hurt. Which I do not plan to do.”
“Okay, so we have basic shit,” Thomas said. “I’ll carry it.”
Minnie finished putting everything back into the bag and then hauled it onto her shoulders. “I’ve got it,” she said tersely.
God, we were a fucked-up bunch.
I broke away from the group. Now that Minnie had read the map and pointed out the path, it was burned in my mind.
“Let’s get this over with.” I set off. “I’m already bored.”
Minnie jogged to catch up to me as I crossed the clearing and dove into the gloom of the forest proper. Sounds erupted around me—chirps and shuffles and the smell of life. Okay, this was good stuff. I almost believed this was real.
“We’ll need to make camp before the sun comes up,” Minnie said.
Shadow Caster: The Nightwatch Academy book 1 Page 3
