Chapter 18

18

Ijust couldn’t figure out how, but it was all connected. Wasn’t it? Otherwise it would be one hell of a huge coincidence, and I didn’t believe in coincidences.

The Augundae Imperium and the shifters were both intimately intertwined.

Whether I had brought the wolves to the school or not didn’t matter at this point. They were here, and after the Augundae Imperium, or me. Or both.

Saturday afternoon I was well enough to move back to the dorm, but I didn’t get to work right away. Instead, after a long shower I took a trip to Melia’s room and the two of us chatted for the longest time before I turned to my homework.

I didn’t ask for her help, not wanting to burden her, though it took me hours to get through the literal stack of papers from my professors. My only saving grace was that Professor Marsh hadn’t assigned anything for me in Divination. I didn’t want to think she’d played the favorite card…yeah, I did.

She had, however, included a note to see her in her office, and when I went, we ended up talking for a long time. Our chat left me much more confident about going forward after my absence.

But I didn’t tell anyone about the other note I’d found in my underwear drawer once I’d finished my shower. From Barbara.

Hurry the hell up, Tavi. Or else.

The “or else” worried me more than anything. It left a lot of room open for interpretation, and part of me wondered if she had some worse ideas in mind than just exposing me.

I shoved my dinner down quickly and crawled into bed before Persephone got back to the room. I didn’t want to look at her face.

But by midnight, after listening to the muffled sounds of half a dozen sleeping girls, I climbed down my ladder and slipped on my old sneakers.

Homework done, check. Shower and food, check. Catching a killer? Still a big blank. Finding the Augundae Imperium? Also blank.

I turned on the landing outside of my door and took the flight of stairs up, ending on a stone floor landing, with another empty, open hallway like all the others in this place. Punctuated by periodic glowing lanterns kept alive by magic, the upper floors of the castle were a maze of these kinds of claustrophobic corridors. Downstairs most of the halls angled toward the huge open entrance chamber filled with windows, like spokes moving out from the center of a wheel. Not the case up here.

The rest of the school was sleeping. Perfect. I’d taken a potion when I got back to the dorm, and though my senses were a bit dulled, I felt much better than I had all week. On the tail end of my bout with the flu, thankfully.

I’d gotten enough rest. It was time for action. Barbara’s note had warning spikes stabbing at my insides.

I’d be safe as long as I kept my eyes open and stayed hidden. Sticking to the shadows was not a new concept for me. I’d been hiding my entire life, keeping the fae part of myself a secret from my pack.

With a soft exhale, I crept along the hallway toward the door I’d seen the boys trying to break into. There was no one around at the moment and I grabbed the handle. Tugged. They had it locked tight with no visible deadbolt or lock I could try and pick.

A few more tugs, even with my better than normal strength, did nothing to loosen it.

Hmm. Curious. Most of the doors in the castle were left open, and those with locks granted students access with a simple word of magic. I only knew one though, and I doubted if the magic word that opened the secret fairy corridors would work here. No, this protection seemed to be coming from the occupants inside, not installed by the school.

Why would the exchange students feel the need to lock themselves in at night? My nostrils flared as I picked up on the powerful magic. Did they expect someone to attack them?

Warning bells dinged in my head.

A creak several feet away caught my attention. Someone’s coming.

My hands shook at my sides. What should I do?

Although I’d never tried to use my second power of transformation, I didn’t have an option. Out of time, I had no chance to run without being discovered, with the barren hall devoid of places to hide.

Crap, crap. My mind raced. A bug? Could I change into a bug? Or maybe a moth. Now there was a thought. I’d seen plenty of moths in my life.

It was a risk to change without having done so before—in this capacity—but without any plaster fairy statues signaling a hidden passage, did I have a choice?

Using transformation couldn’t be much different from shifting into my wolf self during our pack runs. Then I let the magic take me, twisting and molding my body into its second form, a natural state.

The footsteps drew closer and I locked my teeth, pushing closer to the wall and focusing my attention on the image of a moth in my head. Something small and innocent, something to blend in with the surroundings without giving me away.

Come on, come on.

Panic would do me no good.

I was used to changing form, I reminded myself. I’d done it all my life, from the time I learned I was half wolf and could shift outside of the pull of the full moon. I could do this. I drew the magic up from the deepest parts of myself and held tight to the memory of the first time I’d changed. How I’d let myself go, trusting the process.

Slowly I felt my bones begin to shiver, my skin melt away and wings sprout where my arms used to hang at my sides. My stomach flipped once, twice, the curl of nausea nothing compared to the pain of having my eyes move to either side of my head, now coated with tiny, uniform bumps to gradually bend the light.

Yes!

No…it hurt. It hurt so badly, this body compacted in a way it shouldn’t be. This was unnatural, my subconscious screamed. An unnatural form and someplace I should have left alone. Instead I found myself held captive inside the body of another creature.

I was used to being the wolf. To giving in to the part of me I’d always possessed. But shifting into something new and utterly different? My antennae twitched. The new form felt utterly strange to me. Awkward and uncomfortable with my consciousness squeezed into a too-small box.

I completed the transformation and clung to the wall, six legs versus two, wings flapping and vision adapting. Slowly the pain faded until the oddity of the shift became a distant remembrance.

Just in time, I realized, going still and huddling against the wall with my wings pressed tightly together. The chaperone from Canada passed me with a click of shoes on stone, slender and wearing a scowl. Her short hair hung about an inch and a half above her chin and she’d brushed the black strands back from the top of her head with gel, keeping it contained. The way she stalked forward, she reminded me of a pissed-off dog on a leash, hackles raised and prepared to attack.

She glanced around the hallway. Wary. Searching. Her eyes fell on me for a moment before she moved on, pursing her lips. Shadows darkened her eyes as she turned on her heel and stalked away. If I’d been human, I might have breathed a sigh of relief.

Not yet.

Her presence wasn’t what worried me. What worried me was the holster at her hip.

Why would a full-blooded fairy need a gun? My moth body trembled. Things were getting stranger and stranger, and if I didn’t figure things out quickly then I had a sinking feeling we wouldn’t like the surprises coming our way.

The second I was relatively sure the chaperone wasn’t coming back this way, I shifted back into my normal form. Something inside of me clenched, as though expecting a punch, and I wondered at how strange my limbs felt. Did I still have flapping wings?

I shook myself, rubbing my hands through my hair and shaking out my hands and legs. Sooner or later I would need to find the time to practice, otherwise I’d put myself at risk—

A gasp interrupted the silence and I jerked around to see someone staring at me. A familiar someone.

Nora.

Oh. Well, crap.

Her eyes had gone wide, her mouth gaping open and she took a step in the opposite direction. Away from me. “You…you just changed,” she said. Gawking, surprised and scared. “You changed from a moth to a human. I saw it!”

It wasn’t a look I wanted to see on her face. On anyone’s face, let alone a friend. Especially not when it was directed at me.

A sense of finality crashed over me. My secret had come out, and although I still hadn’t found the Augundae Imperium, it was over. Damn it!

“It’s not what you think,” I told her immediately. Sounding almost identical to Mike when he’d been caught with Persephone.

Nora’s brain struggled to digest what she’d seen. I saw it clearly as she shook her head, hands twitching in time with the motion. “I think I saw you change from a moth into a human!”

If she screamed…yeah, I had to keep her quiet at all costs.

“What are you doing here this late at night?” I demanded. What are you doing here, period? I thought.

“The insomnia was really bad tonight.” Nora pushed her glasses up to her forehead and rubbed her eyes. “I couldn’t sleep so I decided to take a walk.”

“Walk off some energy so you can get to sleep? Probably a good idea.”

We stared at each other and the seconds ticked by. Then she said, “Tavi, transfiguration isn’t a natural fae power. It only happens when you have shifter…” She trailed off. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” What else could I say?

“Oh, Tavi. No.”

Nora shrank back from me, with shadows flickering in her soulful brown eyes. I reined in my grimace at her response. Not the best way for us to have this conversation. I wouldn’t have dared tell her my secret under regular circumstances.

Shaking my head, I didn’t think twice about what came next. I knew what I had to do. I dug inside myself the way I had when I took my cognitive manipulation test in front of the professors. And reached out to grab her mind with my magic. Her aura shone clearly around her body in shades of navy and gray.

This would be too easy.

I’m sorry about this,I apologized to Nora in my head, taking hold of her mind and her energy to make her believe she hadn’t seen me here tonight. If I could force people to believe what I wanted, then I could erase memories. Implant new ones. Make Nora believe she saw nothing.

I’d remember this for the rest of my life. And had no assurance I’d ever forgive myself.

Nora’s energy was warm, bright, but exhausted. Oh my goodness. I wasn’t sure how she stayed standing up, let alone awake. How many nights had she gone without sleep at this point?

I forced my mind to clear. None of that mattered now. What mattered was making sure I protected my secret.

I’m so sorry.

“You went out for a walk,” I told her. “And saw nothing out of the ordinary. Do you understand?”

“I saw nothing unusual,” Nora repeated mechanically.

“You’re going to go back to your room, crawl into bed, and sleep.” It was worth a shot, right? Maybe I could kill two birds with one stone. “Sleep, Nora. Your body needs it. The walk helped you. You will fall asleep immediately and stay asleep until the first light of dawn, when you will wake well rested. Tell me, Nora. What are you going to do?

“I’m going back to my room.”

“Exactly right. And then?” I pressed. Three more seconds of staring at her made my stomach sick with anxiety. I shouldn’t be doing this.

“Then…I’m going to sleep,” she replied.

Her mind had bent to my will. Molded and accepted my suggestion. I cemented the new memory with a little push. “You never saw me. You saw nothing odd on your walk. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” She accompanied the word with a yawn.

Another gentle push of magic sent her in the opposite direction. I watched her shuffling steps until she turned the corner back toward her dorm bed. Then let out a breath when my chest began to ache and the energy sapped out of me.

Two big spells in less than five minutes.

I should have been more careful. I should have been watching everything instead of the chaperone. Because then I would have noticed Nora and I wouldn’t have been forced to—

Shivering, I rubbed my hands along my arms. I hated what I’d done to her. Hated how I could do it in the first place. There was no good excuse for using powers on friends.

Unless you were hiding something that meant the difference between life and death.

Nora didn’t know about me. She didn’t know I was running for my life. It didn’t make me feel any better.

Turning back to the door, I pulled at the handle and wondered if my cognitive manipulation would work on inanimate objects. Worth a try? Why not!

“Open,” I whispered. “Open for me.”

Nothing happened; the lock remained sealed. In charms class, we’d learned a spell to unlock any door. Helpful for a Fae, sure, but it still didn’t work for me tonight.

I leaned back with hands on my hips, crinkling my nose. What was I doing wrong?

Footsteps echoed behind me and I rolled my eyes. Not from the same direction Nora had gone. What the hell? Had someone put out a memo to congregate in front of the exchange students’ dorm? Maybe a memo had gone around about the benefits of midnight walks around the castle? If so, I’d missed it.

I’d waited until after midnight to make sure there wouldn’t be anyone around.

I used transformation again, shifting my body into something different. Something I’d never tried before and hoped I could come back from.

A fountain pen.

Melia had told me I had the magic to change into anything at all, animate or inanimate. Hadn’t she? I had to give this a try, on the off chance whoever it was would pick me up and head into the locked room. It had to be something small, something anyone would want, and definitely not food because I didn’t feel like being eaten tonight.

I was winging it. Winging it in a dangerous way that if I’d been thinking straight, I might have regretted.

My body shrank, compacted, and I lost track of time holding the image of the pen in my head. Too small, my brain argued this time around. Too small and too strange, too different. Worse than the moth because a pen wasn’t alive. My subconscious folded into tinier and tinier portions, relegated into a little box inside the plastic and metal pen body. A shred of myself still maintaining the image with the necessary magic.

The chaperone with the gun made her way back around, obviously taking a circuitous route to check the halls. I didn’t have eyes to see and had to rely on my other senses. Strange. So strange and nothing I wanted to repeat if I didn’t have to. The pen had no movement. No feeling.

But my half-ass plan paid off.

The woman bent to pick me up, stuffing me into the pocket of her robes. Through the door we went, the woman using a pulse of her own magic and a key to unlock the door. She made sure to bar it behind her with a spell I hadn’t heard of. I felt the ward pulse. No eyes, of course.

It wasn’t the optimal situation. At least I had an in. And once inside, then I’d figure out my next step.

Time meant nothing to me then. Not as a pen, of all things. I recognized movement, felt when fingers came around me and lifted me out of the pocket. The chaperone headed into her own private quarters—I could tell because of her feeling of relief when she sat—and I settled in to wait, as much as I could settle in.

Tavi, you outdid yourself this time.

Any discomfort would ease once I got my hands on the Augundae Imperium.

Hours surely passed and I recognized the soft snores coming from the bunk. Once I was sure I wouldn’t be found out, I changed back into my normal form.

My skin stretched uncomfortably, spreading and loosening. My lungs inflated with a pinch of pain and I spared a few moments to work my jaw, to tilt my head left and right. I went still as the tang of magic seared my nose and speared outward from me. Hoping it wouldn’t wake the sleeping chaperone on the twin bed next to me.

I glanced down at the floor to make sure my feet were there.

Never again, I told myself. Never again would I choose to be a pen. It wasn’t worth it. My magic had dropped to dangerously low levels.

But I was inside. A spark of excitement followed the thought.

So my plan had worked. In part. I’d take any small victory where I could.

Now I had to find where they were keeping the Imperium. Because I had a gut feeling it was somewhere nearby if I could search hard enough. And if no one else got in my way.

Prowling the empty corridors, I kept my eyes open for any kind of hint as to where the Canadians may be keeping a powerful magical artifact. It didn’t take long for me to find a locked room at the end of the long hallway. Not just locked, but protected by a strong network of spells. Foreign magic burned my nostrils and had my own powers curling my toes in response. Good or bad, I didn’t know, but there was something inside there calling to me.

This was it. I knew it.

I reached out for the handle, closing my eyes, drawing in a breath.

“What the hell are you doing? How did you get in here?”

The voice snapped me out of my head, and when I glanced behind, the bright light of a flashlight beam blinded me.

Caught.