Chapter 25

“Try Juri directly,” Beck suggested.

Nix hung up and tried again, dialing Juri’s number instead.

“Act calm,” Lake instructed. “You don’t want to tip him off.”

“I’ve contacted the people we left at the hospital,” West said. “They’re going to the room to check things out now.

Those people were really two of West’s boxing buddies that he trusted enough to assign to this. They were only meant to hang out in the lobby and keep their eyes peeled for anything strange. It’d given Nix a sense of relief knowing there was that extra layer of defense just in case their plan backfired and they drew unwanted attention toward Briant instead of himself.

“Hey, what’s up?” Juri’s voice came through the line. “How’s the showing?”

“Where’s Briant?” Nix blurted, then inhaled when Lake gave him a disapproving look and said in a more relaxed tone, “I tried calling, but he didn’t answer.”

“Oh, he was in the bathroom. He just stepped out now, hold on.” There was movement on the other end of the line, and then, “It’s your cousin.”

“Hello?” Briant sounded fine.

“Is everything okay?” Nix asked.

“No,” he replied, but before Nix could worry further, added, “I’m in a hospital. It sucks.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I meant with Juri. He hasn’t been weird or anything?”

“…Why would he be?” A door opened and someone greeted them. “Two guys just stepped in. They’re claiming you sent them. Is that true?”

“Yes.” Nix turned to West. “Did you instruct them to keep them apart so I can ask questions?”

“Yeah,” West confirmed.

“Okay, Briant, can you hand the phone back to Juri, please.”

“Why are you acting so weird?” Briant seemed nervous now. “Is everything all right? Look, I know this is the life you’ve chosen, but Nix, I can’t lose you, too, okay? I’m barely holding on as it is.”

“I’m being careful, promise.”

He blew out a breath. “Here’s Juri.”

“Nix? Why are two of West’s teammates blocking the exit?” Juri’s footsteps resounded through the line, suggesting he was moving further away from them. “What’s going on?” his voice was just above a whisper when he spoke again.

“They’re there to protect Briant,” Nix explained.

“From who?”

“Potentially? You.”

There was silence and then, “I haven’t done anything.”

“I seriously hope that’s true,” Nix said, and briefly summarized the situation. The stairwell filmed was the only way to exit that level, and only seniors were allowed to that floor. Juri stood out not only because he’d left holding a similar sized painting, but also because as a Junior, he shouldn’t have had reason to be there at all.

“I was doing a favor for Dew,” Juri replied as soon as Nix had finished. “He texted me this morning saying he’d forgotten his piece and asked me to bring it. If you check the security cameras down the main hall, you should see me entering his studio, not Yejun’s.”

Nix had left out the part about how they only had access to a single camera in that area, since the others had been tampered with. But Juri sounded so confident…He motioned to Yejun. “Do you know where Dew’s studio room is located?”

“Who?” the Demon appeared to be clueless.

“Dew Seaborn?” Beck asked. “He’s one of my students.” He turned to West. “Do you recall when I mentioned there was someone getting too familiar with me? That’s who I was referring to.”

“He’s been coming on to you?” Nix had known how obsessed with the Demons Dew always came off, but he’d never mentioned the professor to him before. Then again, they only ever hung out in a group with the others, so it wasn’t like they shared many personal tidbits. “Juri is saying Dew was the one who sent him to Hunters Cross.”

“There’s a brunette girl to my left, and a redhead guy to my right,” Yejun thought it over and said. “Those are the studios next to mine.”

Dew was a redhead.

“I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding,” Juri’s voice came through the line again, a bit desperately this time. “Dew’s always been flaky. Forgetting to bring his piece to the gallery until the last minute isn’t abnormal. Isn’t he there? Ask him yourself.”

“He didn’t come.” Nix hadn’t thought anything of that earlier when Grady and Khloe had pointed it out, but that’s because Juri was right. Dew lived in his own little bubble half the time, and it wouldn’t be odd for him to skip out on the gallery to meet up with someone on the app. “I’ve got to go. If you hear from him, call me.”

“Will do.”

Nix hung up. “West, can you access the King chat logs from here?”

He shook his head. “To help ensure it stayed protected, that sort of thing can only be done from my main computer. Why? What are you thinking?”

“A King got to my cousin through the app,” Nix said. “Dew is always playing around on that thing, and according to Juri, he sent him to pick up a painting that just happened to be the same size as this one.” He pointed to the canvas at his feet. He didn’t want to suspect one of his friends, but…It was honestly a lot easier to swallow believing it was Dew, over someone like Juri or Grady, who he was actually close with.

“You think it was a frame job?” Yejun asked.

“Isn’t that this person’s specialty?” Nix held his gaze but didn’t elaborate, knowing he’d understand.

“Still, this is a long shot. Who’s to say Juri is even telling the truth?”

“Let’s find out.” Beck tapped on his multi-slate, leaving the speaker function on so they could all listen as it began to ring. They didn’t have to wait long.

“Prof—”

“Dew,” Beck cut him off. “Where are you?”

“Huh?”

“Your current whereabouts,” he reiterated. “Where is that? There’s something I need to ask you. I was hoping we could meet.”

“You…want to meet with me?” Dew’s tone was strange, but Nix couldn’t place it.

“I was hoping to catch you at the gallery,” the lie rolled off Beck’s tongue as he shared a look with Lake, probably taking a cue from his book, “but you’re not here. If you tell me where you are, I’ll come to you. I have something important I need to discuss.”

“Oh no,” Dew’s voice turned a bit whiny, sounding more like himself in an instant. “It’s not the socioeconomics quiz, is it? Please don’t tell me I flunked. My parents will kill me.”

“There’s certainly room for improvement,” Beck said. “Perhaps I’ll be able to walk you through the questions you got wrong.”

“Really? Thank you, Professor! I’m at the dorms right now. Do you want to meet at the coffee shop on campus or—”

“No, let’s meet at your place,” Beck told him. “I’ll be there in five minutes. Wait for me.”

“Okay!”

Beck disconnected the call. “He stays at Jimson Hall.”

That was just across the quad and to the left. They could make it there in less than five minutes even if they hurried. If it wasn’t Dew, they’d ideally know once speaking with him. At this stage, crossing names off the suspect list was still progress in Nix’s book.

“What about them?” he motioned toward the crowd who were still scattered throughout the room.

“I’ll stay behind and make sure no one leaves until I’ve heard from you,” Yejun suggested. “It’s better that way. Even if the person responsible for this isn’t Dew, we can’t contain the rumors if we let them all go now.”

That was true. Keeping everyone on lockdown for the time being to prevent them from tipping off the culprit was the most logical decision.

They were all clearly certain that whoever switched the paintings was also one of the people they were after, whether it be the hacker himself or his accomplice, though Nix’s money was on it being the latter. This was an obvious attempt to turn them against each other, to make them all suspect Yejun and ostracize him, but the execution had been sloppy.

If there was only one camera that had been left unaffected, what were the odds it was the exact camera they needed in order to identify who’d come and gone from that level of the art building? Hunters Cross was massive. It was too coincidental. Messy.

Now that they knew what to look for, it screamed the accomplice.

“What if it’s just a terrible prank?” Nix had to admit there were plenty of people envious of his position with the Demons. He’d noticed it more and more as of late—maybe because he’d finally accepted this was his life now and had paid closer attention to the exposure that brought him.

Knowing there was someone out to get you sort of put things into perspective, and Nix had been overly cautious toward anyone who’d approached him since dropping the bait in the cafeteria.

The bait he’d given loudly in the presence of his friends. Including Dew.

“Then at least we’ll have caught the person who thought it was okay to humiliate you,” Lake said. He took Nix’s hand and motioned toward Beck. “Lead the way.”

* * *

There was no response when they made it to Dew’s dorm and knocked. Nix and the others stood safely out of eyesight off to the side, with only Beck in front of the door, so he’d be the only one spotted through the peephole, but maybe they’d been caught already.

“He’s not answering.” Beck tried calling Dew again, this time with it off of speaker mode. He leaned in and placed his ear directly to the door, pursing his lips. “I don’t hear anything from inside.”

Had Dew already fled?

Nix felt kind of bad that he was so quick to believe the worst in Dew, but things weren’t looking great if the guy had up and vanished.

West stepped up to the keypad, placing his multi-slate screen to screen. “Forget this. Let me just hack the locking mechanism.” Almost before he’d finished with his sentence, there was a click. “There. Just go in.”

Beck hesitated, probably because he worked for the university and encroaching on student’s privacy was a big no-no, so Lake brushed him to the side and did it himself.

They stepped into the empty room, Beck taking up the rear and shutting the door behind them. The space was typical, though it was set up for a single student and not two, so it was slightly smaller than the one Nix had shared with Grady. It was also sort of a mess, with clutter strewn about.

The bed was set lengthwise against the far wall, with a desk angled so one half could act as a nightstand of sorts. There were two windows, one between the bed and the wardrobe, and the other just above the desk, overlooking the front of the building.

Which meant they very well could have been spotted arriving.

West and Nix went straight to the desk, while Lake began snooping through the contents of some of the cluttered piles on the bed and floor.

“Forgive me,” Beck cleared his throat, “I understand this is important, but I—”

“He’s our fourth,” Lake stopped him. “If someone insults him, they insult us, not you.”

“Thanks for getting us this far,” West added. “If the university tries to give you any lip for it, be sure to play the my-cousin-is-about-to-be-emperor card.”

The fact that Beck had willingly done all of this was already a great help. He might suspect that they believed Dew and the hacker to be working together, but there was also the chance he didn’t. They’d kept the truth of the matter between the four of them, swearing not to share their plan with anyone outside of their circle.

To Beck, this could just be them going to the extreme to punish someone who’d attacked Nix’s self-worth and have nothing to do with the hacker at all.

“Shit,” West cursed and drew their attention. He’d entered Dew’s computer and done a deep search for keywords, and there’d been more than a couple of hits. “He’s looked up poison a lot.”

“Poison?” Beck frowned and then glanced at Lake. “Why does it suddenly feel like you’re not telling me something?”

“Probably because I’m not,” Lake replied, leaving it at that.

Nix sent Beck an apologetic look but didn’t offer up details himself either.

“I’ve entered his email,” West said, and they all came over to stare at the screen as he scrolled through, stopping when a recognizable name appeared. “Is that…?”

“My father.” Beck scowled.

“Why would Dew have contact with an Order member?” Nix hadn’t even met Lake’s uncle, or any of the Club Essential members for that matter, and they were dating.

“It’s written in code,” West told them.

“How can you be certain?” Beck asked, frowning at the screen. “I can read it just fine.”

“Unless your darling dad opened a bakery recently,” West drawled, “they’re using code phrases to communicate. ‘Has the delivery driver dropped off the ciabatta?’ is definitely not something I expect Hendrix to be asking a random university student. Dew isn’t Essential.”

There was another ping and a new window popped up. West clicked it and then froze.

“Is that…” Nix covered his mouth, eyes scanning the familiar text. He’d read through that same chat log so many times he could probably act it out verbatim. “Why does he have the chat logs for Iris and Serendipity?”

“Did he hack into Enigma?” Lake demanded to know, but West vehemently shook his head.

“I caught Nix,” he reminded, “and Nix is good. There’s no way this guy is better than him and managed to slip under my radar.”

“There’s always someone better out there,” Beck stated, then winced and bowed his head toward Nix. “Apologies, that wasn’t meant the way it sounded. “

“No, you’re right,” Nix said. “We can’t be sure of anything at the moment.”

“Except we can,” West disagreed, “because these aren’t copies.”

“What do you mean?”

“This is the real thing. The Enigma app is linked to this computer instead of a multi-slate.”

That didn’t make any sense. “But I’ve seen Dew’s account. He’s shown it to me. His username is RedHotLover and he’s only in the Knight tier.”

“Remember the change you implemented two years ago?” Lake asked West. “Do you think this account was created before then?”

“Hold on.” West clicked a few more keys and then grunted. “Yeah. This account was activated a month before I revamped the app's system.”

“You used to be able to create more than one account,” Beck noticed Nix’s confusion and explained. “But then it became apparent people were creating multiple accounts so they could fake Favors between them and rise up in rank. West reprogrammed it so that now, only one account will be recognized by the same biometric scanner.”

“Dew has mentioned struggling to rise in tier rank before,” Nix said. Could Dew be the real Serendipity? Since it was possible to make multiple accounts at one point, he now understood why West had also checked time stamps to help clear Rase’s name. “Dew made it sound like he was desperate to get into the King tier. But if he’s Serendipity, he already was.”

Branwen had gotten involved with a King, someone who she could meet with at the library without anyone batting an eye. Both she and Dew were members of the art department, which meant it would be easy for them to move about campus in each other's company so long as they avoided any of their close friends.

“Is Dew a member of the intramural sports club?” He waited while West searched through the computer to check.

“Yeah. How’d you know?” West quirked a brow.

“The guy who shoved me into the waif stall was wearing a pair of shoes that all of those members received last year.”

If Dew really was Serendipity, then it would add up that he was the one who attacked Nix…

“We need to get into his multi-slate,” Nix decided.

“You think he’s unknown.”

“Don’t you?”

Serendipity had tried to get Iris to help him poison West and Yejun, but she’d been caught in the act, meaning there was no way a plan like that had any chance of working a second time. The “hacker” in charge had to have known that, so he’d switched gears and sent his accomplice to rattle Nix and distract them all instead.

“They want us too focused on in-fighting to see what they’re really up to,” Nix surmised.

“Which is?” Lake crossed his arms.

“I don’t know. That’s what we’ll have to figure out.” They were finally on the right track though. Everything could cleanly be linked back to Dew. There was enough evidence to prove it, now they just needed to actually find the guy and speak with him.

Even if they couldn’t get him to break and expose the hacker, at least Nix would have accomplished what he’d set out to do. He would have found the person responsible for pushing Branwen over the edge. All of the questions he’d been wanting to ask circled in his mind.

Why had Dew done it?

Why Branwen?

Nix was finally going to get answers. Maybe then he could make peace with his cousin and the choices she’d made.

Something dark passed over the window in front of them, and Nix lifted his head just in time to see feet vanish from view.

“Shit!” West leaped out of the chair and leaned over the desk to peer out the window. They were on the third level of a building that had five in total. Whatever he saw at the bottom made him swear all over again. “It’s him. Crazy bastard must have gone to the roof and jumped!”

Beck and Lake both moved to see for themselves, but Nix didn’t bother, the image of those feet now seared into his brain.

The shoes the person had been wearing were colorful.

Orange, with neon yellow soles.

Chani Lynn Feener has wanted to be a writer since the age of ten during fifth grade story time. She majored in Creative Writing at Johnson State College in Vermont. To pay her bills, she has worked many odd jobs, including, but not limited to, telemarketing, order picking in a warehouse, and filling ink cartridges. When she isn’t writing, she’s binging TV shows, drawing, or frequenting zoos/aquariums. Chani is also the author of teen paranormal series, The Underworld Saga , originally written under the penname Tempest C. Avery. She currently resides in Connecticut, but lives on Goodreads.com.

Chani Lynn Feener can be found on Goodreads.com, as well as on Twitter and Instagram @TempestChani.

For more information on upcoming and past works, please visit her website: HOME | ChaniLynnFeener (wixsite.com) .