Demon Accords 8: College Arcane (12 page)

My thoughts slightly more organized and
thoroughly alarmed, I finally looked back up to see her frowning at
me. It was unbelievably cute and it raised the hairs on the back of
my neck. No one was this charismatic. I’ve met Tanya Demidova and
Stacia Reynolds, two of the most beautiful women on the planet—an
opinion held by most of the world’s media—and they were nowhere
near as brain melting as this girl was.

It couldn’t be natural and therefore it had
to be supernatural.

She smiled and the pressure ramped up a bit,
but I could now manage my thoughts.

“So these new methods… anything odd about
them or exotic, maybe?”

“Oh, they’re odd, all right. All kinds of
writing seminars and public speaking bullshit,” I said with a
shrug, popping the top on my diet soda a little too vigorously.
Brown cola sprayed across the tabletop and spattered a few drops on
her perfect face.

The blond guy stiffened like he’d been
slapped, and the girl’s smile froze in place while her eyes shut
for a second, but not before I’d seen a flare of rage.

“Oh my bad. Here, let me get that,” I said,
wiping the blob of cola from her cheek with a clean napkin. Her
hand shot up and snatched the napkin from mine, using it to finish
cleaning up.

“Sorry about that. What’s your name?” I
asked, going on the offensive.

Oddly, it caught her off guard: the simple
request for a name. She hesitated, then I felt the pressure again,
but now it just flowed off my shields.

“You can call me Erin,” she said, smiling
again.

“Okay, Erin, but is that your name?” I
pressed. Her smile faltered and a cute furrow appeared between her
eyes.
Focus, O’Carroll. Guard up.

“It’s a form of my name,” she finally
answered, clearly off stride.

“But not your name?” I pressed.

She leaned back, frowning, eyes locked to
mine, lips compressed in a flat line.

“Hey Declan,” a voice called from across the
room. We turned and I spotted Ashley coming toward us, a strained
smile on her face and her eyes locked on the blonde whose name
wasn’t really Erin. Behind her came a tough-looking, middle-aged
guy who might have been her dad.

Ashley arrived at the table and studied me
for a second before glancing at Not Erin, then back to me. She
frowned minutely, then turned back to the spooky blonde across the
table and her minion.

“Sightseeing, Eirwen?” she asked, an edge to
her voice.

“Just interested in your education choices,
young Speaker,” the blonde answered, her bearing suddenly
formal.

“Declan, this is my dad, Ian Moore. I see
you’ve met Eirwen.”

“Well, she said I could call her Erin, but we
had just established that wasn’t her true name. Eirwen, is it? Nice
to meet you,” I said.

“Likewise, Declan, likewise,” she replied,
standing up, the guy next to her popping up like a puppet. “But now
I must take my leave,” she said, gliding away without even glancing
back to see if her companion was following, which he was.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Moore. Ashley, please
don’t take this the wrong way, but your friend was… well, a bit
weird.”

“She’s not my friend, Declan, and she’s
certainly not yours,” Ashley said, looking at me a bit
worriedly.

“Oh, I’m pretty sure of that. She tried to
hex me with a charm or something,” I said, holding my hand out to
shake her father’s.

He had a powerful grip and callused hands,
but then, I would expect nothing less from a blacksmith. Up close,
he seemed younger than I would have thought. Ashley was about my
age and her dad looked to be in his mid-thirties, which meant he
had her young.

He held my hand a moment longer than a normal
handshake, pulling me forward just a bit and studying me carefully.
“You’re alright then? Not feeling the need to chase after her and
offer up your firstborn or anything?”

“Yes, sir, ah, no sir. So it was compulsion
of some type, right?” I asked.

“It’s a kind of overwhelming glamour that
effects both appearance and personal charisma. She’s very, very
good at it. Most men become her babbling slaves,” Mr. Moore said,
grimacing. “It helps to hold on to a piece of iron or steel.” He
opened his left hand to show me ring of car keys with a tiny steel
prybar on it.

“Steel… iron.
Sidhe,
” I realized.

“Wow, you put that together very fast,”
Ashley commented.

“Last name O’Carroll, as in Irish. I was
raised on the legends. But
they’re
real and they’re here?” I
asked.

“Yes to both. Not all of the portal gates
open to Hell. Some open to our sister world, Fairie,” Mr. Moore
said. “It used to occur naturally from time to time, and they would
visit. Or sometimes one of us would fall through to their world.
Back when the Collider first came online, the very first gates to
open were to Fairie. They came through in droves, but only in
certain places. They were hunting,” he said.

“Hunting?” I asked.

“Children, Declan. Children like us and our
classmates at Arcane,” Ashley said. “But ideally younger.”

“They grabbed Ashley, but it turns out her
particular skill is a very, very rare form of telepathy, one they
hadn’t seen in a thousand years,” Mr. Moore said, pulling up a
chair.

“Fairie has a second dominant species… a very
large, very dominant species,” Ashley said, pausing to gauge my
reaction. She leaned close and whispered, “Dragons.”

I looked her in the eye and she was dead
serious. Glancing at her father showed he was as well. Then I
glanced around to see if any of the eating students near us were
listening.

“Like flying, fire-breathing dragons?” I
asked.

“Exactly. Big as in 747 Boeing big. At least,
Gargax is,” she said.

“And you’re their translator, so if the
sidhe
and the
unseelie sidhe
don’t want to get their
asses kicked by the dragons, then you are suddenly a very important
person,” I surmised.

Father and daughter shared a glance, the
daughter surprised, the father suspicious.

“Chris said you were a negotiator for another
world, between species. He didn’t say anything about elves or
dragons, though,” I explained.

“Why would he tell you that?” Mr. Moore
asked.

“He thought we could keep an eye on Ashley
and Ariel. He owes Ariel big time and he thinks you could both be
targets of some kind.”

“I understand Caeco as a bodyguard, Declan,
but why you?” Ashley asked, a gleam in her eyes.

“Because I’m not your average warlock,
Ashley,” I said.

“You know, that’s been my suspicion all
along,” she said. “I mean, come on. God’s Hammer seeks you out for
your opinion on stuff? An eighteen-year-old warlock that shouldn’t
be able to do much but turns out to be the only dual-affinity witch
in our school? Like, please.”

“Are you aware of the necklace that Gina’s
daughter wears?” I asked.

“The black stone in the silver tear? Of
course,” Ashley said, puzzled.

“It’s a really, really powerful artifact that
protects Toni. My aunt and I pretty much made it.”

“No way?” she asked. I just nodded.

“This thing a big deal, then?” Mr. Moore
asked.

“Chris bombed that silo in New Hampshire
because he was so upset that he couldn’t protect Toni. That’s where
we met him… protecting his goddaughter,” I explained to Mr. Moore.
Ashley was nodding impatiently.

“So we helped make the necklace. It’s instant
death to anyone who attempts to harm her. Lets him protect her no
matter where he is.”

“Will the necklaces you made for Ariel and I
do that?” she asked, fingering her Rowan amulet.

“No, but it will block witch attacks, up to a
point.”

“What point?” she asked.

“I think if the twins and all the others
worked together, they would pretty much blow past the wards. One on
one, though, you’re pretty safe.”

“Is that why Erika’s spell failed on
Caeco?”

“No, I blocked that one by reflex. Better if
they don’t know about the necklaces,” I said.

“Hmm, I feel a bit better about you attending
this school, Ash,” Mr. Moore said.

“Oh, Mr. Moore, Ashley mentioned you might be
revisiting your knife forging business. Are you taking
commissions?” I asked.

“What do you have in mind, Declan?”

“A folded steel set like the ones on your
poster. Bowie and tomahawk, only with silver wire folded in as
well,” I said.

“Anti-werewolf and vampire, huh? That’s an
expensive order. Have you seen the price of silver lately? I can
give you a discount, but it’s still going to cost,” he warned.

“I have money that I’m not having to spend on
college and Caeco, my girlfriend, really, really admires your work.
Plus, with the two species being out in the open, I would think
folding silver into the mix would be a big hit.”

“Why Declan, you romantic, you,” Ashley
laughed.

“Caeco’s much more of a knife and axe girl
than a diamond and gold girl.”

“I think we can work something out. Just make
sure you keep an eye on my kid,” he said.

“Dad… you know Neeve is always lurking about,
and I have Pancho. Plus, I’m learning to protect myself,” she said,
hands on hips.

“The more the merrier, kiddo,” he said. “Now
let’s get some chow.”

“I have to get to English anyway. Nice to
meet you, Mr. Moore,” I said, shaking his hand one last time before
heading out.

Chapter 12

My class was mostly sophomores, with maybe a
few younger kids like me who had gotten AP English credits in high
school. Held in one of the older buildings, the room had hardwood
floors and chairs with attached desks set in rather haphazard rows
that more or less faced the old-school blackboard.

I grabbed a desk, maybe two-thirds back, and
hung my jacket over the back of it before breaking out a
spiral-bound notebook and pencil. Kids were trickling in, finding
their own spaces and basically ignoring each other. So I doodled.
The room filled slowly and the empty desks dwindled. A wave of
warm, perfumed air announced that the desk next to mine had been
claimed. I glanced over and met a pair of amused green eyes.

“Hey Declan, what are the odds, da ya think?”
Ryanne asked, setting her own supplies up on the little
desktop.

“Well, you write music and basically grew up
next to the United Kingdom, home of English. So actually, the odds
must be pretty decent. I’m guessing you tested out of English 1?” I
asked.

“Naturally, but me meanin’ was more about the
odds that a slacker like you would have shuunted it as well,” she
clarified, flicking my forearm lightly with the eraser end of her
yellow No. 2 pencil.

“I took AP English in eleventh grade and the
college accepted the credits,” I said.

“Good on ya, D,” she said with a smile.
“You’re not the complete slacker then, are ya? Maybe yer a licky
bum bum?”

“Only with the hot girl teachers,” I said,
smiling back.

She laughed before glancing at the doorway
where the middle-aged female professor had just entered.

“Oh, this one looks about right for ya then,”
she said of the glasses-wearing, gray and black-haired woman
wearing a brown sweater and brown corduroy slacks.

The teacher introduced herself to the class
before I could answer and I had to concede the verbal sparring
match to the young lady from Ireland.

It turned out that our professor was animated
and lively, with a quick sense of humor that kept the entire class
entertained as she outlined what we could expect from the
curriculum. We would be reading as much as we would be writing, and
she immediately listed a whole slew of classic and modern books to
choose from, pretty much including every genre known to man.

“It’s surprising, but this jest might end up
to be a savage class,” Ryanne said at the end of the hour and a
half.

“What are you going to read first?” I asked
as we walked down the old staircase to the first floor.

“I’ve always had a hankerin’ ta read
The
Call of the Wild.
About as far from life in Ireland as ya could
get, and a fella with the name of London should know a bit about
writing. What’s yer pick, then?”

“
Dead Witch Walking,
by Kim
Harrison.”

“Yer going to read a tale about witches?
Really? Living it ain’t enough?” she asked.

“What the hell; it’ll be fun to read about
someone else’s idea of magic,” I said.

“Holy shite, its feckin’ cold out here. How
do ye stand it?” she asked, shivering as we hit the outside air.
The wind was blowing up the hill from Lake Champlain and the wind
chill was wicked.

“You get used to it.”

“It’s goin’ to suck fierce walking down to
Arcane. Right into the teeth of the wind, it is,” she muttered.