Chapter 17

17

EVANGELINE

T he girl slowly became visible. Even though she was mostly translucent, I could tell she had freckles and a short tangle of hair that was probably meant to be a tidy bob but stuck up in every direction. She sat on the handrail of the landing above us, kicking her shiny school shoes in the air. Her outfit looked like a school uniform, although she'd swapped out the skirt for a pair of knickerbockers that were somehow muddy even in the spectral realm. She leered down at us, the expression made ghastlier by the way my light hit her from below.

She didn't move toward us, though. I took a second to study her. Her horrible expression didn't seem like it was anything malicious, more like the sort of hammy creepiness a certain sort of little girl loved. This little girl just happened to be a ghost.

Gabriel stepped forward and dipped a shallow bow toward the kid. "Please forgive us, spirit," he said. "We had no intention of trespassing on your territory. Any misdeed we have committed against you was the result of ignorance, not malice, and I sincerely hope?—"

The loud fart sounds the girl made with her mouth drowned out his words and echoed around the stairwell.

"Thhbptthbt THBBBPFTTTT!" she finished with a flourish.

Gabriel and I exchanged a glance.

"Nice," I told her. "Really… Really wet sounding."

"Thank you," she said primly. "I've been practicing."

"And it shows," Gabriel replied politely. He clearly hadn't been around many kids because he was treating the ghost like a small, confusing adult.

"I'm Evangeline, and this is Gabriel," I told the kid. "What's your name?"

"Merri. What are you doing here? This place is gross and soooo boring. There's nothing to do except look at bugs, and none of them are even poisonous or giant." She floated down toward us and settled cross-legged in the middle of the open air between the staircases.

"We're here to see if anything weird is going on," I said. "Have you seen anything weird? You seem like you'd keep an eye out."

Merri narrowed her eyes. "What's it worth to you?"

It was always tough to meet a kid who reminded you so strongly of how you used to be that they made you realize just how much you must have annoyed everyone around you. It felt like looking into a mirror without realizing it was a magnifying one, and being jump-scared by your own pores.

"I might have some things to offer," I said nonchalantly. "But I'd need more than intel. You'd have to let us out of this stairwell, too."

Merri looked us both up and down with a calculating gaze. "Five magazines and two novels," she said. "Spy or mystery ones. Lots of blood. Nothing mushy."

"I think we can do better than that," Gabriel said. "Excuse us for just a moment, please."

He pulled me aside, although given how small the stairwell was, we couldn't go far. Merri flipped onto her stomach and started humming, kicking her feet in the air.

"There was a specter at the citadel who could impact electronics," he said. "He used to use the computers. Can all spirits do that, or is it a more niche skill?"

"Most of them can't move much stuff around, but they can use touchscreens, and a few of them can charge up devices. It's pretty cool."

"Wonderful," he said with a pleased smile that made me want to do extremely not-school-appropriate things to him. "Merri? If you let us out of this stairwell, help us avoid further traps, and tell us about anything odd you've seen, I will give you… this." With a flourish, he pulled out his phone.

"I don't need a little box," Merri said dismissively.

"This isn't just a box," I said. "Gabriel?"

Gabriel typed quickly, then turned the screen toward her. I had a bad angle on it, but I could see a YouTube video of someone playing a video game.

"All right, guys, this is my nether portal speed run, third attempt," said a voice over the tinny speakers.

Merri was absolutely riveted, floating right in front of the screen with her mouth hanging open. Without looking away, she waved a hand at one of the walls, and suddenly, it was like a door had always been there. It creaked open, revealing a dark hallway beyond it.

"Don't touch any of the doors with copper knobs, and look out for the tripwire by the bathrooms," she said absently. "There are a bunch of people penned up downstairs, over in the music rooms."

"There are prisoners here?" I blurted, but she ignored me.

"Down the hallway, take a left, take the first right, go past the art rooms, then take another right. Music rooms are all right there. Don't go into the teacher's lounge. That's my room, and absolutely no boys are allowed under any circumstances. It is booby-trapped, so no funny business." Then she snickered, probably because of the word ‘booby'. I thought a silent apology to all the teachers I'd had when I was her age.

Gabriel carefully set down the phone in one corner, making sure it was propped up against the wall. "Pleasure doing business with you," he said.

"Mmhmm," Merri mumbled, still staring at the screen.

"I think we just turned a ghost into an iPad baby," I whispered to Gabriel as we went for the now-visible door.

"Bye!" Merri yelled after us. "You two are way nicer than that other guy."

What other guy? I spun back around, but Merri was gone, and she'd taken the phone with her.

"Other guy?" I said to Gabriel.

He shrugged, looking worried. "We'll keep an eye out, but our first priority should be the prisoners."

We crept down the hallways, following Merri's directions. It was bright enough that I could drop my light spell, although the gray light that filtered in from the windows mostly just showed off the dirt and moss on the floors.

A left, a right, past the art rooms. Near what looked like a pottery classroom was a heavy door with a sign that read: TEACHERS' LOUNGE. Someone had added in an apostrophe with marker. The door was covered with mismatched posters and flyers that must have been stolen from around the school and pinned up as decorations. The words MeRRi's Room!! had been written across them in red paint, which was also splattered across the floor. It would've been a more convincing fake blood illusion if Merri hadn't left the tub of paint on the floor.

The music wing was hard to miss. For one thing, it was brightly lit. Someone had brought in big industrial lights—the kind you'd see at a construction site—and set them up all over the place. Magic hummed in the air, an annoying mosquito whine.

"Hold on." I put up a hand. "Wards."

Whoever had put the wards up had gone for quantity over quality, and the magic in them was nothing impressive. They crumpled easily when I focused on them. Not Morgana's work, I was certain.

"There's no way she did those herself," I told Gabriel. I didn't have to clarify who ‘she' was. "Which means she's got other witches working for her, not just the vampires who followed your dad."

"I wonder who else she's brought in on her scheme," he said darkly. "Would the werewolves fall for it? The fae? The ghosts?"

With the wards down, we continued cautiously. In one classroom, the chairs had been pushed aside, papers and ledgers stacked on the teacher's desk. I flipped one of the ledgers open. The handwriting was neat and in some sort of code, but I could make some guesses. Each entry had a line with two words, which must have been first and last names. Then one word, and the same few ones popped up over and over again through the entries, so I guessed that that was species. Most of them had a paragraph or two that came next, which I didn't even try to decipher. Some of the entries were crossed out with one quick line of red ink.

"They're keeping track of the dead," I said hollowly.

Gabriel squeezed my shoulder. "Which means if we decode these, we can inform the families," he said. "But first we need to help the living."

There were so many names. The reality hit me at the worst possible time. I'd dealt with death before—it was part of the job. Sometimes the cases I solved were horribly brutal, the sort that made you grateful to whoever had invented alcohol. I'd dealt with murderers, even a serial killer once. A few times, I'd found the bodies.

Before this, the most lethal case I'd ever worked on involved six victims, and I'd been just in time to save a seventh.

How many people were in those books? Dozens? More than that, clearly. A hundred? Two hundred? And those were just the books being kept here. How many people had Morgana killed to steal their power?

"Evangeline," Gabriel said, gentle but firm. "Right now, I need you here with me."

I sucked in a rough breath and nodded. "I know. Yeah, I'm good, it's…" I didn't know what to say. Had they kept a red pen next to the books to mark off the dead? Had someone gone to Staples to get some red ballpoints so they could keep track of who they'd killed?

"Use the anger," Gabriel said. "Leave the grief for later."

He was right. It wouldn't do anyone any good if I lost it now.

Beyond this classroom that acted as the command center, the music wing had a long hallway that zigzagged back and forth like one of those brownie pans that was all edges. There were dozens of tiny rooms, heavily soundproofed so the sounds of kids practicing all at once wouldn't be overwhelming. The lights were turned on in all of them, too, and as we reached the first one, I saw a slumped figure through the small, thick window set into the door at face height.

The grief had taken a back seat, and the anger was in charge now. I threw out blasts of magic, tearing the wards on the doors down like they were wet tissue paper. I used enough force that some of the doors buckled in on themselves, and a few frail people cautiously stuck their heads out of their confinement. Gabriel made quick work of the doors I hadn't broken, tearing them off their hinges and helping the people inside to their feet.

Some of the prisoners were too weak to stand. They were pretty much silent, staring at us with wide, fearful eyes. Did they think this was some sort of trick? That we were trying to break their spirits even more?

"We're here to help," Gabriel said, repeating it every time he opened a new door. "We're going to get you out of this place."

Some of the people in the cells didn't move. Judging from the smells, some probably hadn't moved in a long time. I worked my way down the zigzag of the corridor, throwing doors open. The prisoners were all shapes and sizes, all different magical species. I thought I might've recognized a few faces, but I if I stopped to focus, the grief would find its way back in.

I threw another door open, and the prisoner inside charged out, a little unsteady but clearly ready for a fight. He turned to me, eyes wild, and then dropped his hands from their defensive position.

"Evie?" Damien blurted out. He was a mess, bruised and battered beyond the capabilities of vampire healing. He was in tattered, ill-fitting uniform scrubs, the same as the other prisoners, and I realized it was the first time I'd seen him without a suit. He looked bigger out of one.

"Evangeline," I corrected him automatically. "What the fuck are you doing here?"

"Cover got blown," he said. "I'll tell you the rest when we're safe. What's the plan? What can I do?"

"Help organize the prisoners," I said quickly. "Make sure the stronger ones help those who can't stand on their own. I can teleport them out, but I can't take them all at once, and it's gonna take me a couple minutes to get back down here. Get them as close to the front drive as you can. It's where I'll be landing when I come back."

He nodded firmly and started opening doors. Even though he looked like shit, he could carry a person on each shoulder without much effort. He went toward the front of the wing, passing Gabriel on his way. Gabriel shot me a questioning look, but I waved it off.

"No time," I told him.

"Fair enough. Once the wards are all down, can you start getting people out? I'll stay here and open up the rest of the doors." It was odd seeing Gabriel so grimly efficient. I'd gotten used to him being earnest and romantic in a sort of clumsy way. This was a side of Gabriel that reminded me of his mother: precise, focused, determined.

"I can start soon. There are still a couple doors left," I said. "I told Damien to get them as close to the ley line crossing as he could."

I opened another set of wards, and Gabriel froze for a moment, then ran through one of the doors. He came out half-carrying a kid. No, not a kid. The man was barely younger than me, just on the short side, and so emaciated, he looked even smaller. He had matted curly hair and an unfocused look in his eyes. The sort of look that told me he was very lucky we'd gotten there when we did.

"It's all right, Nathan," Gabriel said. "It's all right. I found you. We're going to get you out of here. Just hold on a little while longer. Can you do that for me?"

The man—Nathan—let out a hoarse gurgling sound of agreement.

"Jus' like that time at the siren bar," he rasped, his voice slurred and distant. "When you ‘n' Theo got… got me home safe…"

"Yes," Gabriel said with a sort of desperate attempt at reassurance. "Just like that, Nathan. This is Evangeline. She's going to help me get you somewhere safe right away." He looked at me with pleading eyes, and it was such a stark contrast from how businesslike he'd been a moment earlier that it hit me like a physical blow.

I tore through the last of the wards in one ferocious burst and reached for Nathan, taking the rest of his weight. "Get the others upstairs," I told Gabriel. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

I got Nathan to hobble alongside me fast enough to dip us down into the ley lines and pulled back up outside of Marcus's safe house. I didn't think Nathan had the time to waste on walking, so I threw out a wild blast of magic, enough to propel us forward, and another little blast to keep us from crashing into the building. The windows rattled, and Marcus threw the door open before I could knock. He swept a look over the two of us, quick and appraising.

"Help him," I said shortly. "I'll be back with more. I don't know how many." Marcus was already moving, taking the barely conscious vampire from me and waving over a sofa that turned into a makeshift cot as it came closer. I ran back into the flow of the ley lines, counting the blips of crossroads until I was back outside the school. The front doors had been thrown open, and a few of the former prisoners were in the front hall. I grabbed as many as I thought I could take in one go and set off again.

I lost count of how many trips I made. Enough that my sense of where I ended and the magic started got fuzzy. The process was getting more fluid, less like jumping into the ley lines and more like slipping in and out slowly, luxuriating in it. It didn't seem important. The magic was so beautiful and free, and there was just so much of it. It was a pleasure just to let it carry me, to feel?—

Hands grabbed me by the arms and shook me roughly, and I funneled back down into my body. I blinked and looked up into Damien's pale, worried face. I was back in the front hall, my chest aching.

"Keep it together," Damien snapped. "There are only two more left to evacuate, not counting me. You can do this. You can do this, right?" He didn't sound certain.

"I can," I managed, voice a little slurred. "Where's Gabriel?"

"He's grabbing the records," he said. "He said it was important. Wanted you to get the last ones out, and said he'd meet you up here."

I nodded, which made the lights leave faint trails in my vision. "Got it." I took one of the prisoners by the hand, and Damien picked up the other and grabbed onto me. We walked, and I slipped us down into the ley lines. It must have been instantaneous for them, but for me it was gentle and sweet. Time seemed to slow down in the school in the split second before we were gone.

That was why I was still aware when Merri burst into the main hall and bellowed, "The other guy is here, and he found your boyfriend!"

The world blinked away, pulling us into the rush of the ley lines.