Initiation (28 page)

Faustine’s eyes opened wide. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope. The selection is beyond awesome. I’ll take you over tomorrow after your test.”

“Cool! Do you think they’ll have any of Princess Diana’s dresses? Or Grace Kelly’s?” She practically drooled.

I winked at her. “Hmm, I think you’re going to be in seventh heaven.”

W
e had a problem. Jagger couldn’t fly. His arm was still bandaged. I sat in his study with Quinn, trying to come up with a plan on how to break into Mrs. Stone’s office. Ideally, we’d have done it the same way we’d broken into Frau Schmelder’s office–using the window to avoid the surveillance cameras. Mrs. Stone’s office was right next door to The Smelt’s, and that was where the student files were stored.

Since flying was out of the question, we racked our brains, trying to think of another way.

“Do you think Sienna or Jewel could manage to transport us?” I asked, fairly certain the answer would be a resounding
no
. And it was. Both of them could maybe have transported me between them, but even that was debatable. They were so tiny.

“You and I could transform,” Quinn suggested, looking at me. “It’s way less likely that we’ll get recognized in our demon forms.”

Jagger shook his head. “No, that’s a common misconception. Frau Schmelder knows all of us in all our forms. She’d know you both right away.”

I threw up my hands. “How then?”

Jagger shrugged. “If we decide to just rush up the hallway and break in, we won’t have much time. I’m pretty sure that the cameras are monitored, even at night. So, even if we make it into Mrs. Stone’s office, we’ll have to work fast. As for getting there… let’s disguise ourselves and then speed past as fast as we can. The cameras will, hopefully, only catch the blur of our outlines. That’s unless they’re set up to adjust for speed.”

“Go for it and hope for the best? Sounds like a plan, sort of.” I nodded. “May as well go now, right?”

“Yes. What did you do with Faustine?” Quinn asked.

“She’s with Martha for the night. She’ll be fine.”

“Martha? The girl at lunch? Where was she from? Texas?” Jagger asked, with a chuckle.

“Yes. She’s from Dallas–daughter of the Queen of Dallas. Quite a character.” I smiled.

“No kidding. Poor Ryker had no chance.”

“Ryker… tell us about him.”

Jagger threw a quick glance at Quinn. “Later. Let’s get this show on the road first.”

We dressed in black from head to toe again, our faces covered in one-hole ski masks. Jagger had managed to snag us some night-vision goggles, which we secured over our masks.

“No talking,” Jagger reminded us. Although we were fairly well disguised, our voices were easily recognizable.

We slunk down the corridor, slithering on all fours, keeping our bodies to the floor as much as possible. It was after curfew, so the corridors were empty and eerily quiet, apart from the soft buzzing of the cameras. I could feel them following us, tracking us.

We made it into Mrs. Stone’s office without any interruptions. Jagger used his Victorinox knife to get us through the locked door. I was definitely putting one of those knives on my birthday list. I closed the door behind us and looked around, thankful for the night-vision goggles.

I was surprised at the size of the office, enormous, twice the size of Frau Schmelder’s. It was all business, without any frills. There were no comfy chairs or sofas. No homey photo frames with smiling children. A huge, industrial-looking metal desk took up one corner and next to that stood a metal computer cart with a seriously big computer on it. A printer and a scanner both buzzed quietly beneath on a shelf. The walls were covered in floor-to-ceiling metal filing cabinets. Boy, how were we going to find anything in those? It would take us forever, and if Jagger was right, we were on a timer.

I raised my brows at Quinn. He was the one who had visited The Smelt’s mind; maybe he’d know where to find it.

Quinn walked over to the chair behind the metal desk and sat down, surveying the room. What was he doing? It was no time to relax. Since I couldn’t speak, I glared at him through my goggles. He ignored me and scanned the wall.

Then he got up and walked purposefully to the corner. He grabbed the ladder, slid it over to one of the cabinets, and climbed. When he got to the top drawer, he pulled it out. Then, he spent ages rifling through it, finally looking down at us and shrugging. He sighed, scooped up an armful of files, and climbed back down with them.

“What the heck’s all this?” I couldn’t help but whisper into his ear.

“All the O’Neill’s I could find. I didn’t see a Tad O’Neill.” He put the folders on the floor, shushing me from asking more questions.

Sheesh! There were about thirty or forty folders there. Going through those would take forever. Jagger divided the folders into three piles and shoved a batch toward me.

I started looking through them. All the folders had the name of the student on the front–the last name, followed by the first. I sorted them into males and females first, tossing the girl ones to the side. Then, I stopped. What if Tad was a gynandromorph as well? He could be registered under a female name. I sighed and decided to go through the female folders once I finished with the male ones.

The name on the first one was O’Neill, William. I opened the file, studied the picture inside, and quickly closed it. Nope, plus William was a vamp. I tossed it to the side. And so it went, my toss pile growing taller and taller.

I was just about to move on to the girls when Quinn held up a folder. Jagger and I crawled over to him and peered at it. I giggled when I read the full name on the folder–O’Neill, Mortad.

Quinn opened the folder to reveal a set of photographs. There were five of them, two in his human form–it was definitely the Tad from the fight–and three in his werewolf form. Quinn opened an envelope marked
Closeups,
which contained pics of his various markings. We didn’t bother flipping through those, but went on to his personal details page.

He was eighteen and in his Integration year at the Academy. Originally from Ireland, he lived in Paris, and both parents were shifters. I glanced at their names, but didn’t recognize either. He wasn’t the mentor in the group. So who was? Were any of them, or had Mason simply arrived at the school early and joined a pack? We needed to find Mason’s file next.

Interesting. Tad belonged to Jacques and Mariel’s pack–the shifter twins who’d been expelled after setting fire to the Academy. What did that have to do with me, though? I hadn’t had much to do with either of those two. They were King Sebastian’s spawn. Could the attack have had something to do with Faustine? She didn’t even seem to know that she had any siblings; she had told me that she was an only child. It was none of my beeswax to tell her otherwise.

“Somebody’s coming,” Quinn hissed.

Sure enough, I heard footsteps approaching from the corridor.

 
Quinn transformed instantly and jumped up to chuck the folders back in the cabinet. He grabbed my hand. “The window…”

“Wait! We’re five floors up,” Jagger warned.

“No problem. Transform, Cordelia.” Quinn pulled me onto the window ledge. We jumped off and crashed to the hard ground. Although Quinn and I had managed to land without breaking anything, my heart skipped a beat when I saw Jagger lying on his back writhing in pain.

“Jagger,” I whispered, going over to him. “Jeez, you shouldn’t have jumped.”

“No. I shouldn’t have. I wasn’t thinking, just blindly followed the two of you. Fuck. That was really stupid. I can’t move.”

Quinn joined us. “Anything broken?”

Jagger winced. “Don’t know for sure. Do you think you can get me to the infirmary?”

“Hey, buddy. I can get you there, but I don’t know if I should move you. Your legs are messed up.”

I looked down at Jagger’s legs. His left leg was bent the wrong way–that must’ve been painful.

“Plus,” Quinn continued. “What if you’ve done something to your back or neck? I should probably go find Dr. Marks and bring him down here.”

Jagger closed his eyes. “Could you call Octavia instead?”

“Sure.” I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. Luckily, it was still in one piece.

Octavia answered on the first ring. “Cordelia?”

“Hey. Jagger’s hurt. Can you come over?”

“Where are you?”

“Underneath Mrs. Stone’s window.”

Silence.

“Octavia?”

“Just trying to figure out how to get out of the building and find you. Are you alone with Jagger?”

“No, Quinn’s here as well.”

“Good. Send him to the vamp building, to the west tower, and ask him to stand outside. I’ll try to climb down the wall once he gets there.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“I heard,” Quinn said from behind me. “You’ll be okay?”

“Yes, just hurry.”

When Quinn left, I sat down by Jagger to wait.

“Cordelia, don’t look so worried. I’m fine, really. I think I’ve just twisted something. I’ll heal in no time when Octavia gets here. Talk to me. Help me get my mind off the pain.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“Anything.”

“I’ve been dying to ask you about Ryker. Did you tell him that he’s your brother yet?”

“Nope, and he has no clue.”

“Wow. Are you gonna tell him?”

“The only reason I know is because Frau Schmelder didn’t want to keep it from me, as she wants me to be part of his testing, with the disclosure being part of his initiation. He doesn’t know that he’s a faery, apparently.”

“So what does he think he is?”

“Well, I’m not sure. Let’s say that he’s a Wanderer, then he probably knows that. But I don’t know what he knows, just what he doesn’t know. And he wasn’t particularly sharing at dinner.”

“Boy, that’s going to be hard for him to swallow, then. I wonder how the faery part will manifest.”

“Yep, I know. It sure will be interesting. He seems like a nice guy. Into tennis, by the way. I told him you played. I saw how you stared at him…”

I shook my head. “Don’t be silly! I gotta say, though, he’s hard not to stare at. There’s something fascinating about him. He’s like art.”