Girls Can't Be Knights: (Spirit Knights Book 1) (20 page)

Scratching her head over such strangeness, she stepped into the long, stone hallway and had no idea which way to go. Picking left for no reason other than a desire to find Justin’s room, she walked down the corridor. The other doors she passed each had a different design, for both the doors themselves and the numbers on them. She passed several kinds of stone, wood, metal, and even a blue plastic patio table. The creepiest door by far reminded her of an ornate headstone.

At the end of the hall, she found a stairwell and climbed up one floor. Three men, all big and beefy like Justin, stood on the landing of the fifth floor, blocking the entrance. They turned to acknowledge her, then stared and blinked and stared some more.

She gave them a weak smile. “Hi, um, can I go through that door, please?”

“What are you doing here?” The dark-skinned man had a thick accent.

“I’m a Knight?”

“That’s ridiculous.” The second man had an Australian accent. “How did you get here?”

She bit her lip and wished Justin would hurry up and get here to fix this. “I, um, don’t know?”

The door opened behind them, and they moved for another man to walk through. She took the opportunity and slipped past them. The doors started at 501 here. Behind her, the men—now four of them—gave chase. She fled from them, checking numbers until she found the wood door inlaid with two silver fives and a seven. Rattling the knob, she discovered it was locked. The four men caught up to her as she pounded on the wood and tackled her to the floor.

“Let go! I’m a Knight, you have to let go.” One of them grabbed her foot and she kicked out with it, hitting him in the face. They all paused for a heartbeat, maybe surprised by her well-executed kick. Then someone sat on her legs, and someone else clocked her across the jaw.

Chapter 38

Justin

Opening his door, Justin found four Knights clustered in the hallway. Three of them he only knew in passing. The fourth, Djembe, tossed Claire over his shoulder. When she offered no resistance, he realized she must be unconscious. He frowned and reached for Djembe to stop him.

“What’s going on?”

“This girl somehow got in here.”

“She’s a Knight.”

The four other Knights gave him similar expressions of disbelief and alarm. Justin wanted to laugh at how comical it seemed. Seeing they were quite serious, he stifled it.

“Girls can’t be Knights.” Djembe stalked away.

Justin followed him, and the other three trailed along behind them. “How else could she possibly have gotten here?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care. I’ll take care of it.” His ground-eating stride brought them to the stairs.

Justin hurried to catch up and grabbed his arm. “Whoa! Djembe, wait. You can’t just kill her.” He thought he knew how things worked here. Apparently not. There had to be a way to protect Claire, and he racked his brain to figure it out. Kurt would know, but the bastard had to go and die this morning. “At least convene a convocation about it. Have elder Knights weigh in. Let me stand on her behalf.”

Djembe raised an eyebrow at him. “You know this girl.” When Justin nodded, Djembe’s lip curled. “Fine. Let’s go. But girls don’t belong here, brother. You’re on the wrong side of this.”

Pressing his mouth shut, Justin followed him. He needed the time to tamp down his outrage and figure out how to explain the situation. Besides, an argument in the stairwell would be overheard. Opinions would be formed. Claire would die.

They reached the bottom of the stairs and strode out into the Great Hall. The magnificent chamber boasted pure white marble, crystal-and-diamond chandeliers, and frescoes from every time period since the inception of the Knights, all preserved in their original bright colors and precise designs. Djembe strode to the far end, where a large metal disc hung from the wall.

Djembe tossed Claire without regard for how she’d land. Justin caught her and checked her pulse as he eased her to the floor. Her heartbeat felt strong, at least. What his fellow Knights had done to her sickened him. Worse, if he’d delayed another few minutes, they would’ve already killed Claire. After the last few days, she deserved so much more than that.

When Djembe thumped a fist into the center of the gong, Justin heard a quiet metallic thunk. Along with every other Knight in the Palace, he felt the sound reverberate inside his chest. Claire shifted and groaned, and he brushed her cheek.

“Aren’t you married?” Djembe towered over him, scowling with his thick arms crossed over his chest.

“Yes.”

“Where I come from, we honor our women, not betray them.”

“Don’t,” Justin growled.

Djembe snorted and curled his lip again.

The room, large enough to hold all seven hundred Knights at once, filled with men from all corners of the world. Several arrived with food in hand, others dripping wet and wearing only towels or robes. Nearly a hundred men formed a crowd around Justin, Claire, and Djembe.

“Brothers,” Djembe’s deep voice boomed, “a witch has infiltrated our beloved Palace. We must expel her before she teaches her dark sorcery to others.”

Dark rumblings ran through the crowd.

“She’s not a witch!” Justin rose to his feet, glaring at Djembe. “This girl is Mark Terdan’s daughter. He was a Knight. One of us. It may be strange and unprecedented to have a female Knight, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.” Judging the audience to be listening, he launched into the story he’d pieced together from both the ne-phasm and Mark’s Phasm.

“Several years ago, a Phasm left behind by a Knight named Stewart became corrupted. It sent an ur after Mark, and the thing managed to get at Claire, who was then just a small child. It took most of her essence before Mark interrupted it and failed to kill it. He found a way to replace her lost essence with power from the Palace and forged it into a locket for her.

“Mark and Kurt hunted the Phasm down but never found the thing that nearly killed Claire. It became something strange, different from a usual ne-phasm. Left unchecked, it grew powerful enough to possess a human body while also becoming obsessed with what remained of Claire’s essence. It convinced Mark’s wife to hire it as their nanny.

“Whatever Mark did to create the locket and bind it to Claire prevented the thing from devouring the rest of her as long as she wore it. When Mark got suspicious about its behavior, it killed him and his family by burning his house down. By a quirk of luck, Claire happened not to be there and it lost track of her.

“John Avery investigated the arson and found the ne-phasm. When he confronted it, the ne shot and nearly killed him. That shooting took place near enough to attract Mark’s Phasm, which caused its corruption and Avery’s tainting. Both the ne-phasm and Mark’s Phasm have been dealt with. Claire was instrumental in that effort and showed at least as much courage and resolve as any other Knight.”

Given how much blood and pain the whole incident had caused, it took less time to relate the story than he thought it should. “She’s here because of Mark’s actions. Our brother couldn’t stand the thought of losing his daughter, and we owe it to him to at least let her try to shoulder the mantle.”

Djembe, still scowling, stepped past him and held his arms out to speak to the crowd. “Mark did something wrong. He should never have saved her in the first place. Even if he had, he should have killed the ne-phasm before it grew strong enough to kill him and the rest of his family. I say we take the locket from her and return the power where it belongs, in the Palace.”

“Because you want to watch her die? She’s just a kid, like you were, like we all were when we started here.”

“She’s a girl, and this was done without permission or consideration for the consequences. It was a great mistake.”

On the floor, Claire stirred and her eyes fluttered open. Justin crouched beside her and helped her sit up. “Look at her, all of you. What he’s talking about is killing her, finishing the work of a ne-phasm instead of giving her a chance to prove herself. There’s no law that says a girl can’t be a Knight. What’s more, no one noticed the power Mark siphoned off. We still wouldn’t know he’d done it if she happened to be his son instead of his daughter.”

Djembe crossed his arms again and turned his back on the crowd, still scowling. “This is madness,” he snapped.

“I agree.” Until now, Justin had considered Djembe a friend. He curled his hand into a fist and readied himself to throw it if he needed to defend Claire physically. Around them, angry voices simmered. Justin couldn’t tell if anyone stood with him or not.

Rondy slammed his sword into the floor. The clang echoed in the hall and everyone quieted. “Boys, we can resolve this without fighting.” He turned a kind smile on Claire. “Young lady, do you want to be a Knight?”

Rubbing her jaw, Claire took Justin’s help to wobble to her feet. “I didn’t get the feeling this job was voluntary. Either you do it or you get killed.”

Pride swelling in his chest, Justin beamed and refused to try to hide it. “She knows more than I did when I got here, but not by much. We’ve been busy.”

“The biggest problem I can see,” the elder Knight said as he paced forward, “is that the locket can be taken away. May I see it?”

Claire gulped. Justin put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed. She pulled the locket out of her shirt and held it up.

Rondy brushed a finger across it. “Unless the more heartless of you youngsters want to overwhelm Justin and myself, there will be no murdering of this girl for the crime of having the ‘wrong’ genitals.”

Justin let out a sigh of relief, and the tension ran out of Claire’s shoulders.

Someone called out, “Does that mean I can finish my shower?”

“Yes, go ahead. All of you who aren’t interested in meeting our newest Knight right now can go.” Rondy stroked one of his gray dreadlocks.

The room emptied again. Justin watched Djembe and a few other Knights fix him and Claire with glares offering promises of trouble in the future. He sighed and put it out of his mind as something he couldn’t fix right now.

Looking to Rondy, he asked, “Is there some way we can, I don’t know, transfer the power from the locket to her person? Having it in a separate object nearly killed her once already. If we can prevent that for the future, I think we should.”

Rondy nodded. “I think so, yes. I have no idea how Mark created this in the first place, but that was the hard part. Between the three of us, we’ll be able to manage the transfer.”

With the last hurdle overcome, Justin hugged Claire. “That’s great.”

Claire returned it. “For a minute there, I thought I’d have to punch someone in the face.”

Justin chuckled, glad she could crack a joke. “Thanks, Rondy. I should have come to you sooner. Everything just happened so fast.”

“What’s done is done.” Rondy smiled down at Claire. “I think you’re going to shake things up around here. I think maybe that’s a good thing. If you ever need anything and he’s not around, you can come to me.”

“Thanks.” Claire hugged Rondy.

Justin watched her connect with another Knight and found it satisfying. She’d find her way, and she’d be fine, though she had her work cut out for her in proving her competence to Knights like Djembe. He and Rondy would watch over her until then.

Chapter 39

Claire

“This is the official paperwork.” Justin set the manila folder in front of Claire and sat down at the table with her. “Avery seems to have smoothed everything over, so I had no trouble getting them to accept me. I’m a happily married, upstanding citizen of Washington State, have a place of residence, and passed their minimally useful psych test. Since you’re over age fourteen, for this to be final, you have to sign it.”

Marie stood at the sink, washing dishes, and Lisa and Missy played with toys on the floor. Drew also sat at the table. Claire opened the folder and scanned the pages. She’d never seen official adoption papers before and wanted to savor the moment. Justin and Marie had already signed them. As expected, his signature was a messy scrawl and hers was perfectly legible with classy loops and swirls.

He set a ballpoint pen on the paper and clasped his hands, watching her. “Before you sign that, I think we should discuss some rules.”

She gulped. “I thought you didn’t like authority figures.”

“I don’t like them exercising authority over me.” He smirked. “I’m fine with being one.”

“Oh, I see how it is.” She already had a room of her own here, which somehow had come together over the course of two days. They’d found a spare bed for her, and Justin had thrown some shelves together. With his help, she’d build the rest of her own furniture. She hadn’t had her own room for six long years. “What kind of rules?”

“Thing is, it wasn’t so long ago that Marie and I were teenagers. We did some extremely stupid things.”

Marie grinned over her shoulder. “He means that he did some extremely stupid things. I only did a few mildly dumb things.”

“Thank you, dear.”

Claire giggled. “Um, okay. So what’re you looking to prevent?”

He shrugged. “Pregnancy, drug use, prostitution, death, the usual. Since we don’t have a phone here, it’ll be hard for you to call when you want to do things, and I’m not saying you can’t go out and do things. We just want you to be as safe as being a Knight allows. And no getting naked with Drew until you’re confident about being ready and all that.”

Drew blushed crimson. “I, um, I don’t think—”

“I’ve been a seventeen-year-old boy, Drew, and it wasn’t that long ago. Don’t even try.”

With a gulp, Drew nodded and looked down at the table. “Jack already said I’m to sleep in my own bed every night. By myself. Until we’re both eighteen.”

Justin smirked. “Then Jack and I agree.”

Claire bit her lip and wished she could frame this. Being accepted and even welcomed into this family meant a lot. This moment in particular showed her so much that she really fit in here. Justin would be firm but not strict, and Marie would temper him with humor. If she got into trouble, of any kind at all, she could come to them and talk about it. He’d never lock her in a basement or take away anything she held dear.