Authors: Annette Marie
Piper clenched her hands as her mood worsened. “I don’t know.”
“Let me know then when you get your schedule,” Kindra said cheerfully.
Piper stood abruptly, not wanting to admit there were neither schedules nor shifts in her future. “Well, seeing as I won’t be getting a surprise birthday party, I’m going to throw my own.”
Kindra’s mouth popped open. “It’s your birthday?”
“Yup.”
“How old?”
“Eighteen.”
“Oooh, eighteen!” Kindra’s grin faded as she looked around the silent Consulate. “Your family isn’t here ...”
“I noticed that.”
“But they should be here for your eighteenth birthday.”
Piper shrugged. “That meeting is more important.”
Kindra shot to her feet, gesturing grandly. “We should have a party for you right now!”
“Isn’t that what I just said?”
Kindra ignored the question, her eyes alight. “What kind of party do you want?”
“The kind where we bake cookies, sit around in sweatpants, and trade stories about all the ass we’ve kicked lately.”
The daemon, who under the right circumstances was a lethally efficient killer, clapped her hands in delight. “Perfect! Can we make cookies with chocolate chips?”
Piper laughed. All things aside, it was good to be home.
CHAPTER 2
V
ERY
few things could trump a chocolate chip cookie still warm from the oven. Piper’s eyes rolled back as the chocolate melted on her tongue. So good.
Kindra took a big bite and sighed contentedly. They were sprawled on the sofa in the sitting area just off the kitchen, the daemon in her sweater and leggings, Piper in fitted yoga pants, a red tank top, and a black hoodie. She’d tied her hair in a high, messy ponytail, vaguely wishing her current auburn locks were her preferred dye job of black with red streaks.
She also wore a leather band wrapped twice around her wrist, a memento from Ash. She traced a finger over the buckle with a sigh.
“You have no idea how nice it is to relax,” she said. “The security at Westwood was over the top. Bodyguards everywhere. I swear the only privacy I ever got was in the shower, and even then I’m not so sure.”
“Fun,” Kindra commented. She eyed her sixth cookie, perhaps measuring how it might affect her willow-thin figure—or not. “Was anything about the boarding school pleasant?”
“Not really.” She didn’t want to admit that between her total disinterest in non-daemon-related academia and the classes she’d missed while in detention, she’d barely scraped by with passing grades.
“Any cute boys?”
Piper snorted. “I suppose, but they were all afraid of me.”
“Afraid? Why?”
“Probably because I got in a fight on my third day and beat up a couple of them.”
“Oh, well, those kinds of things happen at school.”
“It’s not usually girls beating up boys though,” Piper remarked dryly. “And then there were the security guards ...”
Kindra looked worried. “What about them?”
“Well, one of them grabbed me from behind while I was fighting the boys, and I kind of ... threw him onto the floor.” It hadn’t been a difficult shoulder throw, but it must have looked pretty impressive to the rest of the cafeteria.
“You threw a security guard?”
“He surprised me. It was a reflex.” The fight had happened a little more than a week after escaping Samael, so she’d still been pretty jumpy.
“What happened then?”
“Then another security guard came running in, and it really looked like he was going to tackle me, so ...”
Eyes wide, Kindra shook her head slightly. “You beat up the security guards too, didn’t you?”
“Well, ‘
beat up
’ would be a bit of a stretch. But the principal told me I would be expelled if I used physical force on anyone again, so that was it for fights. But the other kids just wouldn’t let it go.”
“So human boys don’t like tough girls at all?”
“I guess not. They seemed to like the giggly girls a lot more.” She shrugged. “I really don’t fit in with humans.”
“You belong here anyway.”
Piper smiled, emotions swelling. She was far more used to hearing how she
didn’t
belong at the Consulate. As a haemon without magic, she was—according to her critics—ill-equipped to be a Consul.
Of course, Kindra had no idea why Piper had been sent to the high-security boarding school. Samael had already had her kidnapped once, and she was pretty sure his new plan involved eliminating her before someone else decided to make her their personal Sahar-wielder.
“So clearly you aren’t suited to human boys,” Kindra said, holding up another cookie. Her examination complete, she nibbled on an edge. “Tell me about Ash. How did you become ... friends?”
Piper raised her eyebrows, too content to get offended over the doubtful pause before “friends.”
“It’s a long story,” she said. And not one she wanted to share with casual acquaintances.
“What’s he like beneath all those black clothes and cold stares? I’ve never spoken to him.”
“Umm.” She picked a cookie off the plate between them and frowned at it. “Fearless,” she finally said. “Reckless. Loyal.”
“
Paaaaa
ssionate?” Kindra drawled.
Piper blushed, refusing to answer.
Kindra sighed. “Fine. Be mean. Tell me what happened two months ago when you went missing. Did you two run off together?”
Piper shook her head. She didn’t want to get into that story either. The last eight weeks had done little to heal Piper’s emotional wounds from the preceding week in Samael’s tender care.
Seeing that an answer wasn’t forthcoming, Kindra shifted on the sofa, leaning a little closer. “Tell me then. How do you feel about him?”
“Huh?”
“How do you feel about Ash?”
“We’re friends, like I said,” she replied quickly.
Kindra gave her a look. “But do you want more than that, hmm?”
Piper glanced down, pressing her lips together. Why was she even having this conversation, especially with a daemon? She wasn’t great with feelings at the best of times. Other girls always seemed to know exactly how they felt when it came to everything and everyone, but she’d never had much time to worry about feelings. She’d been too busy training or kicking ass.
And Ash, well. Things were complicated. She couldn’t deny she was attracted to him. She couldn’t deny she was drawn to him in other ways besides physical desire. But he was still a mystery, still a stranger in so many ways. But whenever she tried to convince herself that, really, she didn’t know him at all, her mind would conjure up a perfect memory of his dark eyes, gleaming with fire and determination, staring through her skin and scorching her soul with their intensity.
“It doesn’t matter,” she finally answered, her voice flat. “He’s never coming back here. He’s gone for good.”
He, Seiya—his sister—and Lyre had gone deep underground, hiding from Samael’s relentless spies, and she’d done a pretty good job over the last two months of convincing herself she would never see any of them again. But the thought still made her ache inside.
Kindra opened her mouth to respond but thumping footsteps made them both turn toward the back of the kitchen. Marcelo appeared at the top of the stairs and stopped at the sight of them. His eyebrows shot up and his dark gaze snapped over Piper. His buzz cut, sturdy build, and heavy boots made him look more like a soldier than a Consul. The ugly bump on his nose from a badly healed break ruined his look a bit.
“Piper? What are you doing here?” His tone was much closer to disgruntled surprise than welcoming.
“I live here.”
He snorted. “Not anymore.”
“Uh, actually, I do. I was at school, not banished.”
He folded his arms, biceps bulging. “The only people allowed in Consulates are Consuls, Apprentice Consuls, and daemons. Ergo, you shouldn’t be here.”
“Are you drunk, Marcelo?” Kindra snapped. “You said it yourself. Apprentice Consuls belong here just as much as you do.”
“They do. But since there are no Apprentice Consuls in this Consulate right now, the point is moot.”
Kindra looked sharply at Piper, who flexed her jaw, wishing she could break Marcelo’s ugly nose a second time.
“Piper’s apprenticeship was cancelled two months ago,” he informed Kindra, barely suppressing his smug delight. “I don’t know what the official reason is, but ‘gross incompetence’ is probably pretty close.”
“Piper is a good Apprentice!” Kindra said angrily.
He snorted again. “I spent more time cleaning up her messes than doing my job. But the last two months have been great. It’s been so quiet it’s almost been boring, but that’s how it’s supposed to be.”
Waving a dismissive hand at Piper, he smiled coolly. “We all knew you wouldn’t make it. We were surprised you lasted this long. Even
I
think your father has been pretty damn cruel, stringing you along for so many years. You’ll have a better time of things once you settle into a human community.”
“I’m not going to a human community,” she ground out.
“You sure as hell aren’t staying here.”
She bared her teeth at him. “You’ve been enjoying the peace and quiet, haven’t you? You like it better that way because then maybe no one will notice that you couldn’t beat a daemon in a fight if your life depended on it.”
He sneered. “Talk all you want, but you won’t be here long. Your father is already planning how to get rid of you again.”
With a nasty chuckle, he strode over to the fridge, grabbed a can of soda, and disappeared back down the stairs. Piper glared after him, hands clenched into fists.
“Piper ...” Kindra said softly. “I’m sorry.”
She stood, motions jerky with anger. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Striding out of the kitchen, she headed for the grand staircase at the front of the manor. Marcelo’s words rang in her head.
Already planning how to get rid of you again
. It wouldn’t surprise her. Quinn wanted her as far away from the Consulate—any Consulate—as he could possibly get her.
She half-jogged up the stairs and stopped at the top, breathing hard. To her left were four Consul suites; to her right, an open-concept living, dining, and kitchen space where live-in and on-shift Consuls could relax. Two months ago, she’d been standing in almost this exact spot, her suitcase beside her, about to head down to the foyer to watch for the car from the school, when Quinn had told her that her apprenticeship had been cancelled. He’d told her literally ten minutes before she was to leave.
Her current situation was too
unstable
, he’d said. She wasn’t in a position to dedicate the proper effort to her training. She needed time off to get her life back in order.
Though he’d referenced recent events, she suspected his real feelings on the matter were a little different. He’d treated her strangely ever since he’d learned she could wield the Sahar. She could draw only one conclusion: he thought
she
was unstable. He was afraid she’d become fragile or even unhinged after everything that had happened to her. And his idea of the best approach to his daughter’s potential psychosis and her ability to wield massively destructive levels of magic was to get her as far away from daemons as physically possible.
Fury surged through her. She’d charged through an army of daemons to reach him and Miysis, then she’d used the Sahar to open up an escape route for them. And her reward? The cancelation of her apprenticeship. If anything, she’d proved herself to be strong and capable, but instead, Quinn thought she was damaged and brittle.
Jaw clenched, she stalked into her bedroom and shut the door, barely managing not to slam it. Damn Marcelo for digging at old wounds. Dropping into her desk chair, she rubbed her face and massaged her aching temples.
Propping her elbows on the desk, she stared listlessly around her room. She’d been so delighted to return home that she hadn’t given a lot of thought to what came next. Unless she convinced her father to reinstate her apprenticeship, she couldn’t live at the Consulate anymore. Marcelo was right. A random haemon hanging around would create all kinds of complications; deprived of her authority as an apprentice, she would be a target for any daemon in a bad mood. Besides that, without training or shifts to complete, she’d have nothing to do.
Without an apprenticeship, she would have to leave. But where would she go? This was the only life she’d ever known.
She stared in the general direction of her desk for several minutes, thoughts spinning through her head, before she realized what she was seeing. The corner of a red piece of paper peeked out from beneath a battered textbook on advanced first aid—a textbook she would no longer need to study without her apprenticeship.
Brow furrowed, she pulled the paper out. She didn’t own any red stationery that she could recall and she was certain the sheet hadn’t been there when she’d left for Westwood. Unfolding it, she discovered it had been torn from a larger page. What appeared to be a cheap menu was printed on one side. She flipped it over to find unfamiliar handwriting scrawled on the opposite side.
MIDNIGHT ON SATURDAY
AT THE WELL.
— L.
She stared at the message, then looked at the desk. A note hidden in her room. Only two people with names that started with an L would want to meet her in secret. Since Lilith wasn’t the “secret handwritten messages” type—as far as she knew—that meant the note had to be from Lyre.
Excitement erupted inside her like fire in her veins. Lyre had been here. In her room. When? Her excitement turned into anxiety. How long ago? What if he’d hid the note weeks ago, thinking she would be home to find it? No, he’d known she was going to a boarding school. It was common knowledge that today was the last day of the winter semester for schools across the region.
So he must have hidden the note just this week. Maybe he’d even been in the Consulate that very day. He must mean tomorrow night. There was an old well on the Consulate property, dry for decades; she knew the spot.
Her hands twitched, wanting to clench the note tight. So close. She’d been so close to seeing him—and Ash—again. Just when she’d finally accepted that they were gone forever, this! But why? Her exhilaration waned a second time. Why did Lyre want a secret meeting? Why was he back from the Underworld? Were Ash and Seiya with him? She’d assumed they were together, but what if something had gone wrong? What if Lyre wanted to meet her because he had bad news?