INTEGRATION (Bonfire Academy Book Two) (Bonfire Chronicles) (19 page)

“Which he obviously hasn’t if she’s back possessing the Academy headmistress,” she mused.

“Yes.”

“So let’s call Dad and ask him.” She pulled out her phone.

“Wait. I’m not sure he’s going to love me sharing all this with you. I’m supposed to keep you away from all this stuff. Let me call him. I’ll tell you everything he says.”

“Okay, call him then.”

“Right now? We really need to head over to the lab. We’re going to be horribly late.”

“Okay, but I’m not even dressed yet, so call him while I do that. Here, use this number; he always answers that.” She handed me her phone, then went off to get dressed.

I dialed before I lost my nerve.

“Faustine?”

“No, it’s Cordelia. Faustine gave me this number to use. I hope that’s okay.”

He was silent for a moment and then said, “Yes, it’s fine. Is Faustine okay?”

“Yes, she’s fine. That’s not what I was calling you about.”

“Go on.”

He seemed curt, probably really busy, so I got straight to the point. “When you were here last, you seemed to recognize something in Mason’s room that changed your mood. I was wondering if you picked up on something.”

“Like what?” His tone was guarded. I hoped I wasn’t overstepping.

“An old lady.”

“How does this concern you?”

“Well, my brother thinks an old lady may have possessed Frau Schmelder, and now Quinn has disappeared.” I hoped I was making some sense.

“Your brother? What does he have to do with this?” King Sebastian demanded to know.

I gave him the rundown on Pascal’s body-hopping story. Once again, there was a silence on the other end of the phone. “King Sebastian?”

“Can you get someone to watch Faustine for a while?”

“Yes, no problem. What do you want me to do?”

“Come over to my office in London.”

I was taken aback. There was no way The Smelt or Professor Bern would grant me a leave of absence, especially while we were in the middle of the tests. But I really wanted to find out what had happened to Quinn, and if going to London would help, that was what I had to do. “I’m going to have to find a way to sneak out of the Academy to do that.”

“Ask Ryker to bring you over. Tell him I’ll run it past his uncle, and it’ll be fine.”

“Okay, I’ll arrange it. Will Ryker need…directions?”

“No, he’ll know what to do. Ask him to bring you for dinner tonight. That way you won’t need to worry about what time you can get away; he’ll time-adjust his wandering.”

Cool! “Great. I’ll see you later.”

“And, Cordelia, don’t tell anyone other than Ryker that you are coming over here, not even Faustine.” He cut the call.

“Did you get ahold of him?” Faustine was all dressed now and looked smart in her school uniform, her tie neatly secured into a tidy knot. She was combing her hair while applying lip gloss.

“Yes, he didn’t say much, but we’re going to talk later,” I said, not lying completely.

She shrugged. “He’s probably busy. Oh well, make sure you tell me what he says. Did he say anything about me?”

“He just asked if you were okay. I think he might have been a bit worried when he got me on the phone. Is that your private line with him?”

“Yes.” She pursed her lips.

“What’s up?”

“He didn’t say anything at all?”

“No…was he supposed to?”

“It’s just that it’s my birthday soon. I thought he might have said something, you know, asked you for pressie ideas.”

“Like I’d tell you if he did.” I laughed.

“Did he?”

I zipped my lips shut with my fingers and got up. “Come on; let’s go.” I made a mental note to ask her father if he needed any help with her birthday planning. She was obviously expecting a little—or big—something. I wished I had a way of wrapping up Ryker for her.

Henri looked a bit annoyed when we walked into the dOME lab. He tapped his watch. “I was just about to send out a search party. Why didn’t you answer your phone, Cordelia? You are almost forty minutes late.”

“That’s my fault,” Faustine interjected. “I slept in and then made Cordelia wait while I showered and got dressed. I hope I didn’t get her into trouble.” She batted her lashes.

Henri’s anger melted instantly, and he beamed at Faustine. “No, no. It’s fine. Cordelia just needs to keep her cell on in case of emergencies.” He gave me a pointed look.

“Sorry, Henri. Did you try and call me?” I checked my phone. “Oops. I forgot to turn it back on after Mason’s test. It won’t happen again.”

He nodded curtly and turned back to Faustine. “Are you ready? Did you get time to eat?”

“Yes, that’s the other reason we’re a bit late. Cordelia made me lunch.”

“Good. Let me introduce you to Colton. He is Professor Kunz’s apprentice and will run the test with Cordelia and me observing. Is that okay with you?”

“Yes! I remember you from the Professor Kunz’s last lecture. You’re the shifter that Cordelia had to hug onstage, right?”

“Yep, that’s right, and before you ask, I’m a werewolf shifter.” He smiled.

“Are you a hybrid?”

“No, I’m a pure shifter. And from my notes, I see that you’re a demon-human hybrid. Interesting.”

“Not really, but the vamps love me.” She giggled.

“I’ll bet! Are you ready?”

“Yes! Let’s get this show on the road.”

“Cordelia, can you set Faustine up?”

“Yes, I think so. I’ll ask for help if I need to.”

I walked Faustine down to the chair and, once she was sitting, applied the various probes to her body, glancing over at the guide on the table to make sure I put them in the correct spots. Then, I pushed the button that activated the chair. I walked back up to Henri and Colton and sat down in my seat.

“Faustine. Start counting back from twenty,” Colton instructed.

As we watched her fall into a semi-sleep state, Henri’s cell buzzed. After mumbling into it for a few seconds, he said, “Can you two handle this? Professor Bern needs me at another laboratory.”

“Everything okay?” I asked, concerned by Henri’s change in demeanor. He looked tense.

“I don’t know. Looks like we might have just had another student disappear during a test—Ryker Darley. Know him?”

“Yes,” I said, not the least bit surprised. “We’re good. Aren’t we, Colton?”

“Yep, no problem. I’ll update you later, Henri.”

When Henri left, Colton asked, “You were around for all of Faustine’s Initiation tests?”

“Yes, she’s not done with them yet, though. We’re still testing her.”

“What are the chances of her disappearing during our test?”

“She hasn’t done that for a while, so I’d say pretty slim.” I said that with hesitation, wondering why Ryker had felt the need to wander from his test. If he’d done so out of fear for Faustine, she’d be gone for sure.

“Good. We’re just going to do a repeat of what we did with Mason—with different stimuli, of course. Okay, let’s get started with the sounds.”

Colton played through several neutral tracks, including a bit of opera, some rock music, and the sound of giggling, which actually made Faustine chuckle. He then moved on to animal sounds, including barking dogs, mewing cats, growling bears, cawing crows, and flapping wings.

She reacted to all of them, mostly with a smile, even saying, “Aww,” when she heard the dogs. She had no reaction to the sound of a screaming eagle, an obvious nod to Mason. Her biological parameters remained constant throughout, showing no sign of fear or stress.

After a short break, Colton moved on to the visual stimuli, shuffling them along quickly, not giving Faustine any opportunity to latch onto one. He started off with neutral stimuli—cars, bikes, the moon, and a pink summer dress, which elicited a little bout of excitement from her. Then he moved on to animal images, receiving pretty much the same responses as the animal sounds. Then a picture of Colton flashed across the screen, followed by one of Mason, which lingered slightly longer than the others. Although Faustine sat up at attention, her heartbeat remained steady.

Before we started the last phase of the test, Colton turned to me. “Wouldn’t you have expected Faustine to transform at Mason’s image?” He looked confused. “I was told that he’d tried to attack her on several occasions.”

“Yes, I’m as bewildered as you are. I totally expected her to go nuts. I don’t know what she was thinking. The fact that she didn’t show any self-protective response really sucks. I know you guys over at Integration are all aiming for peace and harmony, but Mason is a threat to her! She can’t be all hippy peace when he’s around. I can only hope that if he ever takes a step toward her, she’ll react. But I’m not so sure. So, we in the Initiation department obviously still have a whole lot of work to do with her.”

“I can see that. I still have to go through the motions and do the olfactory tests.”

I nodded. I sat back and observed, slightly bored. As expected, nothing happened.

“And that’s it,” Colton declared after Mason’s aroma had been pumped into the chamber, with Faustine not so much as twitching her nose at it.

I waited for her to descend from the chamber and come back out. Faustine had been through the routine enough times. She was a pro at taking off the probes herself.

“Thank you, Faustine,” Colton said. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you. I’m going to give all the data I collected to Professor Kunz, and he’ll email you to arrange a time to discuss the results, goals, and schedule. Do you have any questions?”

“No, but thanks. It was nice meeting you, too,” she said politely.

I stood to leave. “I’ll take Faustine to get something to eat. Will you be okay closing up?”

“Absolutely, and I hope to see you soon, Cordelia.”

I looked at him, wondering if he was leering at me, but he seemed sincere, so I smiled and waved.

Once outside the lab, Faustine asked, “Can we go over to the dining hall? I’m hungry; that was a long session.”

“I want to talk to you, so let’s go back to my room instead. I’ll cook you something.”

“Oh, okay. What’s up?”

As soon as we were behind closed doors again, I turned to her. “How did you not react?” I threw my hands up in the air, then turned to go into the kitchen for the steaks.

Faustine followed me. “There was no reason to.”

“No reason to? You see the shifter who wants to kill you, and you don’t feel that’s a strong enough reason to transform? How about to defend yourself?”

“But he wasn’t doing anything! It’s not like he was coming at me or anything. Really, Cordelia, don’t you think you’re overreacting?”

“Faustine,” I said as patiently as I could, “what if he
had
made a move to attack you?”

“I guess I would have transformed then. Or I’d probably just have disappeared like I normally do when I’m in danger,” she said, biting into the steak I handed to her.

And there it was. Complete faith in her guardian Wanderer to rescue her every time. Except she didn’t know that she was being rescued. The silly demon assumed she had a special power of some kind. Sigh. Much as I wanted,
needed
, to tell her what was really happening, I had to zip my mouth yet again.

“Cordelia, you really don’t need to worry so much about me. I can take care of myself.”

“Faustine, maybe you can. But maybe you can’t! Especially if you’re attacked by a group—”

“I’ll just do my disappearing act,” she said triumphantly.

“And what if it doesn’t work?”

“Then I’ll transform into the biggest baddest demon of them all and kick some shifter azz.” She guffawed.

“Well, that’s what we need you to work on—the ability to transform, just in case. Do you think you can do that? Just for me, Faustine?”

She looked at me, and I hoped I oozed enough concern to sway her. “Okay. I’ll try. You want me to transform every time I see a shifter or just Mason?”

I took a deep breath. That just wasn’t it. How could I get her to understand what I meant? What if she just didn’t possess a natural instinct of danger, kind of like those babies born without a sense of temperature who kept burning themselves? If that was the case, Ryker had a job for life.

“Cordelia?”

“I’m trying to figure out how to explain it in a way that will make sense to you. What I need you to do is to transform when you sense any kind of danger, not just from Mason or another shifter, but from anyone. Think back to the time when we got attacked by Mason and his friends in the hallway last year. Before we got attacked, did you feel anything?”

She stared up at the ceiling, certainly looking as if she was thinking back to that incident. “Hmm. To be honest, I can’t really remember. I’m guessing you’re wondering if I felt afraid?”

“Yes. And when did you first feel that fear?”

“Well, I know I was afraid when you told me to jump on your back, and then you started running down the hall. I was scared of falling off you. I guess I must have been afraid of the shifters, but I really was only thinking of not falling.”

“And you didn’t transform.” I was ready to tear out my hair. It was almost as if she actually needed to get beat up to be able to learn. “Okay, look. Until we work out how to fine-tune your sense of danger, be ready to transform at any time. Danger is all around you.”

I could almost feel her rolling her eyes.