Page 7 of Reckless Witch

He slams his fist on the desk. “Where the hell are Caleb and Matthias?”

I don’t say what I’m thinking.

“If they were dead, we’d know,” he says, although we have no idea whether that’s true.

We five have never died, so we have no idea what happens if one of us dies. Even if we attempt to call Caleb or Matthias from the dead and get no answer, we wouldn’t know whether their silence meant they were alive, they reside in Shadow Hell, or they’d died in the Shadow War and their—lost—spirits are unable to reincarnate.

In truth, with the Hell Gates closed, no one is certain if souls bound for Hell can enter. Aside from another Shadow war, the thing we most fear is that those we love, those mired in bitterness and fear and most vulnerable to The Shadows, might be trapped in Shadow Hell with the evil deceased who can’t enter Hell.

I hope Raith’s right and we would sense if something happened to Matthias and Caleb. I wish I could say I’m more worried about Matthias than Caleb but that’s not so. Despite Matthias’s grotesque gargoyle features, when he shifts, he’s the closest thing to an angel that walks the earthly plane. One of The Most High’s grand jokes.

As the quintessential guardian, there’s simply nothing that will induce Matthias to desert Ciarah once he learns she’s alive. He’s just made that way. Just as Caleb is made to pick at every wound until it festers. Since her last death, we haven’t heard from Caleb. During the intervening years, I’ve often wondered if, this time, he’d died of a broken heart. Not that I would blame him. I’m not sure I could survive if Ciarah had died in my arms.

Raith slowly shakes his head. “A street witch, specializing in black market potions. I should have known,” his tone is grimmer than usual. He taps the topmost folder of a stack on his desk. “Leilah Crowe. Twenty-two. Young to be breaking the law with such abandon.”

“You’re just getting old,” I say.

He flicks me a ‘fuck you’ look, but his pique doesn’t halt the memory that rises.

“Remember Venice?” I ask.

His expression remains stormy. “Even in the eighteenth century she made a habit of breaking the law.”

“There wasn’t a chance in hell she would agree to marry that fat old merchant—in any life,” I say with a laugh.

My amusement dies when I recall the man she did marry in the early eighteenth century. Gregory Warwick. Despite the three hundred years that have passed, my gut twists. It took all my willpower, and the strength of the others, to keep me from killing him. He’d been good to her, but how does a man watch the woman he’s loved for millennia marry another man?

Raith releases a heavy sigh that puts me on guard. Vampires are almost unshakable and Raith is a rock amongst his kind. But there’s a weariness in that sigh I’ve never heard before.

“She shouldn’t attend The Academy,” he says.

Shouldn’t attend The Academy? “We have no say in the matter,” I reply carefully.

He hesitates, and I realize that he wants to argue. “She’ll have one helluva welcome.”

I force my fire to cool. “What do you mean?”

Raith meets my gaze. “We never did learn who leaked the news that Miriam Crowe killed herself while practicing Shadow magic.”

“Now most, if not all, the students know about Miriam and they will not be kind to her granddaughter,” I finish his thought.

He leans his head against the back of his chair and closes his eyes. “Tomorrow, then.” There’s a strange note in his voice I don’t recognize. “Tomorrow…it all begins.”

Before I can ask for an explanation, he vaults to his feet and crosses to the sideboard positioned to the left of the bookshelves behind his desk.

“You want a drink?” he asks.

My earlier desire for whiskey has vanished. “No thanks.”

He half fills a crystal tumbler with bourbon then drinks it in two gulps, and I know he’s remembering what I’m remembering: the last time all five of us were together, the day Ciarah died in Caleb’s arms.

“Olympia’s on her way from Greenland,” Raith says suddenly. “Be here at noon.”

Too much is happening at once. Olympia, Grand Witch of the North and Superintendent of all Illumina Academies, is coming to set up the virtual Shadow world we will use for our War Games. I don’t trust those who manipulate, and Olympia’s done nothing but manipulate from the moment I met her at that tavern on the Rhine in 1862.

“Has she said anything about filling the Headmaster position here?” I ask.

Since we lost George Brown last year to retirement, Raith has taken on extra duties I know are wearing on him. We fought alongside the tall black man during the Shadow War, and Raith had a great deal for respect for him, which is largely why Raith didn’t mind that George was his superior. I’d bet Raith isn’t looking forward to answering to someone new.