Strange Academy (Hot Paranormal Romance) (25 page)

Also, it was Gray’s knock.

When she opened the door, she found he wasn’t alone. His nephews were with him. But her happiness at seeing them was tinged with a bitter edge. Argent was wearing his jacket. Next to him, under Thalia’s raised shepherd’s crook, sat a navy blue suitcase on wheels. Sterling didn’t look too thrilled, taking great interest in his own shuffling feet. She had to press her lips together to keep smiling.

Gray stood behind them, leaning against the statue, his arms crossed over his chest casually. Though his eyes were half-lidded, he kept them on Argent as if drinking in the sight of the kid.

“Miss Strange,” Argent announced in his cute little accent. “Uncle Gray is taking me back. I won’t see you anymore.”

“I’m so happy I got to meet you,” she told him. “I hope you had a great time. And you did get that essay written, right?”

Argent had been fighting with a book report on Conan Doyle’s
The Lost World
. She’d helped a bit, corrected a few of his more glaring grammar errors. He nodded.

Sterling cocked his head, all his interest on the parcel she rested on her hip. “Did you get a present?”

“I’m not sure,” she told him. “It might be from myself. I’ve ordered some stuff lately.” Or it could be from her sister. Maybe Chloë had sent her a Christmas gift after all, she thought, with a blossom of hope. Not that she needed a present—what she wanted was a signal that her sister had softened a little. Maybe even forgiven her blunder.

“It’s better when it’s a present,” Sterling said, with a ten-year-old’s irrefutable logic. “Open it.”

She shrugged, though she felt like refusing just to avoid following an order from a male. The tab made a ragged zipping noise as she pulled it back, leaving her holding a strip of corrugated cardboard as wide as her pinky finger. Really, was there anything closer to pure bliss than a delivery of new books?

Actually...a whiff of Gray’s warm cinnamon scent drifted her way at just that moment. She caught sight of his shoulders, made even wider by his storm cloud-colored coat, and remembered what they looked like without the coat. Maybe there was something better than a new book after all.

But she couldn’t indulge in that here, in front of a pair of adolescents. So she settled for pulling back the cardboard and stared at the contents of the package. It definitely wasn’t something she’d ordered. She’d just gotten paperbacks, and what she was looking at was one big book, an inch wide, at least a foot tall, and bound in leather.

She dumped it out into her hand, letting the white paper receipt flutter to the rough wooden floor.

As she felt the pebbled leather hit her palm, it came back to her with growing horror. She had ordered this. A long, long time ago. Before she’d even come here. Back when she’d thought Pippa had been murdered.

Slowly, but unable to stop herself, she turned the book over. Light glinted on the golden letters sunk into the leather.
The Atlas of Ancient and Medieval Architecture.
She breathed the same as normal, but all the oxygen seemed to have been sucked out of the air. Her lungs worked, but she had a horrible feeling of suffocation, just the same. The letters appeared and disappeared before her eyes—until she realized it was just her, blinking at them.

The book was ripped from her hands. A square-jawed face appeared in her vision, eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring in pure anger. Gray had a hand wrapped around her upper arm like a manacle. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

She looked down to see Sterling’s eyes had filled with tears. Silently, water dripped down his face in a steady stream. His skin was the color of whitewash.

“Boys.” Gray shoved the book’s cover into her chest, forcing her to stumble backward. “We’re leaving.”

All Sadie could do was hold the atlas to her chest, clinging to it and watching them leave. Only Argent looked back at her, wagging his fingers in a cautious farewell wave over his shoulder.

It must have been a full ten minutes later when she seemed to come back to herself, a few neurons starting to fire again. What the hell had just happened?

This felt exactly like the night Count Burana had visited. Everyone had known what was going on but her. She’d been missing vital information that made everything else make sense. Then, as now, if she’d only known that one thing...

The look on Sterling’s face. Hollow and haunted. It made no sense. They’d talked about Pippa’s death before, so why take it so hard now? Whatever it was, she had a feeling she wouldn’t have a chance to talk to Gray about it. He’d been so angry...

With effort, she forced herself to move. She picked up the discarded Amazon box from the doorway, along with the receipt, and threw them on the dining table.

What was she supposed to do with the book? When she’d ordered it, it had been a clue in a mystery. Not anymore. And she didn’t particularly want it sitting around Pippa’s apartment.

Maybe she’d donate it to the library. The irony of that made her want to laugh. Sort of. Not really.

She could talk to Mr. English about that, if he ever called. He might not. It had been close to two weeks since she’d talked to the secretary about him. For now, she’d just have to store the book. With a sigh, she went over to her bookshelves to find a place to fit it in.

Still weirded out by Gray’s bizarre reaction, she tried to figure out where to put the book. There was space on the top and bottom shelves, both of which had the advantage of keeping the book far from eye level. She didn’t care that Gray was bothered by it—though she definitely wanted to know what was going on there—but, mainly, she didn’t want a constant reminder of Pippa’s accident hanging around.

When she kneeled down to put the atlas out of sight on the bottom shelf, that’s when she realized it. Something had been bothering her about the atlas. Now she knew.

There was no way that Pippa’s death could have been an accident.

*

***

******

****

*

The New Year. Dread soured the pit of Sadie’s stomach, and not just because of what she now understood about the atlas. She laid a hand on the diamond panes of lead glass in Pippa’s window. The heat of her hand soon melted a palm shape in the frost, letting her look out onto the campus.

Through her handprint, she saw Strange Academy coming to life after two weeks of emptiness. All afternoon, cars had pulled up in front of Strange Hall and families had piled out. Younger kids clung to their parents, milking the last moments of togetherness. Older ones looked embarrassed when their mothers kissed them. Sadie watched this from her perch high above, seeing everything, but separated from all of it.

Over the course of the holidays, she and Gray had worked together during the day to look after the boys. And at night, they’d made love. But it was over now.

She’d spent the rest of the afternoon going through Pippa’s books one by one. Now that she knew for certain her death couldn’t be an accident, Sadie might be able to work out what had happened. She needed to figure out what Pippa had been doing that pissed someone off enough to drop a book on her head. Christian had mentioned notes between the pages of the books. But since he’d confiscated them, there wasn’t much chance that she could find evidence that way.

Still, it was her only option right now.

It wasn’t just her lack of success dragging her down. Classes would start soon, the beginning of months of faces staring at her like she was useless.

She ached to talk to her sister, but she didn’t know whether Chloë had forgiven her. She had the odd feeling that another rejection would crush her.

She tapped the carved wooden box sitting at her feet with a sock-covered toe. Her farewell present from Gray, left on her bed. She’d been asleep when he’d gone. She liked it that way. It meant she didn’t have to watch him go.

And she hadn’t shared her revelation with him. Or asked him about his reaction to the atlas. He wasn’t involved, she told herself.

She ran a finger over the box’s carved rose design, worn smooth by decades—or maybe centuries—of use. Little pieces of gold leaf clung in the deeper crevices. Gray’s gilt on the outside. Inside, Gray’s guilt.

A German sedan worth her year’s salary pulled up to Strange Hall’s entrance. The 6:15 bell hadn’t rung yet, but darkness had already fallen, and the white car had a ghostly glow. She didn’t have to see the driver to know who it was. She might as well say hello.

When she stepped out of the Strange Hall lobby, the cold winter night hit her skin. She tucked her long wool sweater tighter around her waist. The car’s owner was leaning into the car’s trunk.

“Your Excellency,” she said.

“Sadie Strange.” Count Burana didn’t look up. “I have told you to call me Orff.”

She saw him with new eyes and felt dim for not seeing the clues before. His oxblood leather coat could have been part of Gary Oldman’s wardrobe for
Dracula
, not to mention the little round sunglasses. Count Burana lifted a candy-pink Barbie suitcase from the trunk while managing to look lithe and dangerous.

“Papa,” a little voice said.

She turned to see Carmina, in a crisp pair of designer jeans and a puffy peach coat with fuzzy trim framing her pale face. Seeing Sadie, Carmina froze in. Sadie’s dormant guilt woke from hibernation, reminding her she hadn’t been able to stop Gray from getting Carmina suspended.

“Carmina,” she started. “I wanted to tell you how sorry I am for—”

Suddenly, powerful hands gripped her shoulders from behind, locking her in place. Terror boiled through her blood, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t scream. The count’s nose brushed her ear, and there was an odd noise as he inhaled deeply.

He released her. Panicked, she tried to dash for the safety of Strange Hall. Before she could, Burana spoke a single word in his native tongue. Sadie’s ears pressurized. Magic. Her feet locked in place. She shook with fear.

“Carmina.” His voice was cutting. “Go inside.”

Carmina turned, but her eyes stayed fixed on Sadie.

“Little One. Wait.” Burana lowered himself to his daughter. “Forgive me for being harsh. I will miss you like my soul.”

They whispered to each other in their lyrical language, then Burana kissed his daughter on both cheeks. When Carmina was gone, Sadie stayed silent. Touching family scene aside, she hadn’t forgotten what Burana was.

“You did not heed my warning about Gray,” he said.

Suddenly, the words struck her as funny. Sadie bit her bottom lip to hold back her hysteria.

Burana whirled on her. “Why does this amuse you?”

“I’m sorry. You just sound so much like—”

“Bela Lugosi.” He sighed. “On whom do you think he based that accent, hmm?”

Wind blew through the entryway, mussing Burana’s hair into a widow’s-peaked mess. It would have seemed sexy if she hadn’t developed a fetish for too-long black locks. Burana shrugged out of his coat and threw it over her shoulders.

“Fine. If I talk like this, would you take me seriously?” His voice had lost its rounded vowels and stressed consonants.

Her jaw dropped. “You’re American?”

“I am what I need to be. In the old days, someone might kill you just because you’re strange. Since my wife died, I haven’t been doing very well with fitting in. But you know all about being strange, don’t you?”

Irritation overrode her common sense and she glared at him. “What’s your point?”

“I’ll change my voice to fit in, but I wouldn’t sleep with someone just so they’d accept me.”

“You smelled him on me.” Sadie closed her eyes until she stopped trembling with anger. “It’s none of your business.”

The freezing wind billowed Burana’s thin linen shirt. He didn’t seem to notice, but ran his hands through his messed hair. It popped back into perfect salon style. “You helped my daughter. I will call you friend if you live long enough for me to do so.” Tiny lines at the corners of his eyes showed genuine concern. “How can you not understand you are in danger from him? Gray House men marry Meta women with strong Talents to preserve the bloodline, but also so they can defend themselves if their husbands go to the darkness.”

“Gray would never—” Her brain spun. Heat crawled up the back of her neck. He’d never hurt her, but he’d definitely gotten physical a couple of times.

Burana’s stare narrowed. “Your body betrays you. Your pulse has increased. I can hear your heartbeat.”

She took a deep breath, willing herself to relax. “I told him no. He insisted. But he stopped. He didn’t hurt me.”

“I’m sure he promised it would never happen again,” Orff said. “Give him what he wants until he tires of you.”

She felt the same aching acceptance she’d felt when she gave up trying to teach her students. The contents of the box had convinced her. Gray’s gift to her was dozens of vials of the prophylactic potion. The message was clear: He had no use for them. They wouldn’t work on April, after all.

It was everything she had left from him. That, and the bottle of scotch he’d left in her cupboard.

She took off Burana’s coat and passed it to him. “He’s tired of me now,” she said.

*

***

******

****

*

Sadie threw open the door to Pippa’s apartment and dove for the phone, leaving her key in the lock. The phone was on its third ring at least. If she hadn’t popped into Carmina’s room after talking to her dad, she would have been here.

Desperate panic made Sadie’s hand shake as she grabbed at the receiver. Please, please don’t hang up, she willed. Please. “Chloë,” she said, a little too loudly. The words tumbled out of her despite her breathlessness. “You called me. I’m here. I’m here.”

“I beg your pardon.” There was only one word to describe the voice on the other end of the line. Proper. The British accent spoke of stiff upper lips and carrying on no matter what. It spoke of manners and breeding. “I was given this number, but there must be some kind of mistake. I do apologize for the interruption.”

She’d been expecting another call. Realization broke over her like the dawn. She gripped the receiver with both hands, clinging to the lifeline. “Mr. English?”