7. Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

Bronwyn

Iwill be honest, despite my purpose and who my father is, I never actually expected to find myself breaking into a professor's locked office in the middle of the night.

Breaking and entering is Corallin's territory.

Willfully ignoring the laws in place for her own gain is my twin Natasya's territory.

I like to think that I got Father's rationality. His penchant for seeing the bigger picture and ability to carefully concoct plans based on that.

His shrewdness if you will.

It normally makes me the calculating one, the one who sits back and gets one of my sisters to do my dirty work. I'm the one who pulls the strings and keeps my conscience clean. But I'm here alone and my sisters are far away, and I have always had a weakness for curiosity.

Which is why I find myself fumbling with lockpicks and cursing my clumsy fingers. The pick tumbles to the floor, and I switch to cursing Corallin. If she wasn't so jetting good at lockpicking then maybe I would have taken it up, but as it is there were no locked doors that remained that way for long around my sister. There never arose an opportunity or a necessity for me to learn the skill.

I bend over, running my hand across the stone until my fingers knock into the pick. It goes sliding, but I manage to snatch it up before it gets away.

I sit back on my heels and glare at the door before I jam the lockpick into the hidden pocket of my dress that my mother sewed for me to hide the artful tools of my father's trade.

As I study the door, my hands lower to the spellbook attached to my belt, and I begin flipping through it for a spell that I can use to open the door. If I keep trying to pick that lock, I'll be here all night.

I thumb through the worn pages whispering a quick spell that I already have memorized for illumination. A small glowing orb appears, bobbing next to my shoulder as my eyes move over the pages of my scrawled penmanship.

So much for the stealth that I was trying to attain, but I can't very well read in the dark. I just have to hope that everyone else in this wing of the building are sensible individuals and are now in bed. Well, except for the vampire that I'm trying to learn more about, but I am already taking a gamble with him. I only pray to whichever deity might be paying attention that he isn't here. After all, there is a whole academy for this creature of the night to stalk through, why would he be cooped up in a musty old office?

Besides, no light shines from underneath so unless he is sitting in the dark, I should be in the clear.

And just maybe if I can get into this study, I can learn what he is doing here. And if he was the one who turned Wilder into a vampire. If so, why?

Why would anyone want to make someone as vain and conceited as Wilder immortal?

It seems almost like an eternal punishment for humanity to me.

"Aha," I whisper as I finally find a spell that I think will do the trick. It's an ice spell, but just summoning ice won't do what I need it to do unless I intend to freeze the lock and break it. However I'd prefer to keep it, so the good professor doesn't know that I was here.

No, this spell not only summons ice but manipulates it to take a specific mold. It's longer and more complicated than a regular ice spell. I don't remember where I found it but probably in some musty tome and I thought it would be handy, so I jotted it down. This is just another area where one of my sisters would succeed much more easily than me.

Natasya could use her sorcery to manipulate the lock and turn the mechanisms within. Sorcery is capable of changing and manipulating any existing object—even the dead as my father and sister are so fond of using—but magic can only ever create something new.

Still, perhaps this ice key will work. I whisper the spell, making certain to form each syllable carefully. If I say one thing wrong, then the spell could go awry. I could wind up creating a creature of pure magic to fight at my side instead of summoning the ice like I want.

The temperature drops, and my breath fogs in the air in front of me as there is a cracking sound. A light fog appears, condensing before it clears to leave a jagged piece of ice protruding from the keyhole. Hopefully, the rest of the ice filled in the space beyond and is now pressing on each mechanism that needs to be lifted and pressed to work the lock.

I turn the ice piece carefully, moving painstakingly slowly to make certain that I don't snap the piece I'm holding. Cold slices across my skin like tiny daggers, but I grit my teeth and keep at it.

A click sounds, and the doorknob dips slightly. I let out and exhale as I push it open, peering in. As far as I can tell from my vantage point, the room is indeed empty. No vampires lurk within.

I push to my feet, whispering a heat spell that immediately melts the ice key.

I brush off my skirts as I stride into the room, balling my numb fingers into a fist so that they will warm up.

Now, if I were a vampiric professor with a hidden agenda, where would I hide my personal correspondence and other incriminating letters that might just reveal what I'm up to?

There are stacks of papers lying on his desk, but I doubt any of those will reveal any sort of pertinent information. No, the stuff I'm looking for would probably be kept in a hidden compartment. I move across the room, checking behind picture frames and tugging on the spines of the books before I move to the desk. I run my fingers along the edges, looking for loose panels.

I'm so engrossed in my work I don't realize that the door has swung open and that I'm no longer alone until a voice says, "Well, well, well. What have we here? Hello then, Eel. Fancy running into you here."