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Chapter
One
Work was dreadful like it always was at my second job as the night janitor at the college for rich, over-privileged, under-empathetic elites who were so sure of their own superiority that they couldn’t help condescend even if they weren’t blatantly cruel. Most were too indifferent to be intentionally unkind, but one student always troubled himself to go that extra mile for me.
I should have been honored the first time we met when he dumped the garbage can over just so that I could clean it up again while he watched intently. That’s what Rynne said, that I should be honored, but she was being sarcastic when she said it. Rynne is my best friend, my only friend if you didn’t count Poe, the bird that follows me around and makes me weirder than I already am.
I shouldn’t complain about my job because the money was good, and for the last two years, Percival hadn’t given me much grief. Can you believe that someone named Percival Marigold wouldn’t be infinitely teased, derided, and hated? But he was all the things the other students admired, respected, and emulated. That is gorgeous, brilliant, and filthy rich. Forget the mean streak that I seemed to bring out more than anyone else. He was two years older than me so I expected that he would graduate and move on to a larger university after he tortured me for two years since I was sixteen, but instead he stayed on to get a secondary degree in one of the few upper graduate courses at Gray College. Happily, he had to focus on his studies and had no time to torment me. I had only seen him in passing for the last year or so, but I still got tense and nervous every time I saw him.
At Gray College, they had a library reserved for the current magic students. They were so incredibly strict about who could see the forbidden magic that Rynne wasn’t allowed to clean in there because she was studying earth magic at a different community college to follow her dreams and get a forensic degree so that she could catch criminals and see justice served. I’d failed every test on magic all my years of public schooling, so I was allowed to vacuum, dust the shelves, and empty the garbage cans in the library, since I wasn’t in danger of unsealing and reading a book with some evil incantation to raise the dead or something.
Speaking of raising the dead, my mother had worked so hard to instill in me some small bits of useful healing magic in me, but it just didn’t stick. She wasn’t the greatest healer, and I was probably the worst. It fascinated me though, all those books, forbidden, dangerous, filled with wonders that I wouldn’t ever understand. Sometimes when I was vacuuming or dusting, I’d read a few passages from one of the unsealed books just to see what was inside. I’d never had any luck with spells, although I was always at the top of my class academically, but I still couldn’t help my curiosity.
At first I couldn’t understand anything, but after four years spent cleaning the forbidden library, I’d learned enough to know the basics of their theory, enough to wonder what was in the sealed and forbidden books. What knowledge was locked inside the glass cases? Of course, that made me want to check them out, but that would be stupid and careless. I could be careless and stupid when I was riding my skateboard, but never when it put my job at risk. I needed my jobs, both of them, so that I could pay for part-time college and become something useful, like an engineer or an accountant, so I could pay the bills and keep my mother safe. She couldn’t remember very much, so I had to remember for her, worry for her. Sometimes it didn’t seem fair that everyone else’s mothers remembered their birthdays, and that they were supposed to pick you up from school, but no one else’s mothers loved them so much that they wrote your name on their own clothing so they didn’t forget it.
Anyway, that was the dream. I was good at school, but I didn’t feel really excited about it. No, I only had one obsession, and it was about as useful as a papercut.
Gargoyles. They were just so fascinating, the myth, the legend, and then the reality. When had they become true defenders of the light in our world? Was it before or after the great war of 1864 when heaven and hell waged war on earth and almost destroyed humanity before the great alliance when vampires and lesser dark creatures united with elves and lesser light creatures to end the slaughter? I’d read everything I could get my hands on about them, but the origin of gargoyles was as carefully hidden as the race themselves. Their purpose was to blend with humanity and protect it without being a visible target. Maybe someday when Rynne was a higher-up arbiter of justice, she’d learn all about the secret sects, guilds, and orders, and would tell me where I could casually run into a real life gargoyle. I pestered her a lot about that, but she’d be an excellent security person and hadn’t ever given me a promise. Maybe she was a gargoyle.
While in the library running my vacuum cleaner during my midnight shift, I stopped to look up and down the aisle for anyone, but it was two a.m. and everyone was either partying or sleeping. I felt safe enough to grab a book of magical theory I’d been reading. For a long time, I was so absorbed by the complicated ideas that I didn’t notice him until he reached past me for a book on the shelf in front of me. I jumped and whirled around to find Percival the Terrible staring right at me.
He was as evil as he was handsome, with beautiful big eyes above etched cheekbones and soft lips. His long hair framed his face like a dark waterfall. I froze, waiting for the terrible thing that would make up for the last two peaceful years when he got too busy to torment me.
Hopefully he did something terrible, like spell my stupidly long curly hair into a million knots, like he’d done once, or explode the vacuum bag so I’d have to get a replacement and clean up the even bigger mess, but didn’t do the worst possible thing and report me for reading one of the few books that wasn’t sealed.
He was going to report me to my boss, and I’d lose my job and maybe get fined or thrown into jail for breaking my contract. He would smile when he did it, a beautiful cruel smile that showed exactly how special he thought I was.
For a moment we just kept staring at each other until he finally reached for another book and very carefully drew on the cover with the metal claw he wore on his pointer finger to do precision magic runing. It was going to be horrible, maybe a light spell that would leave me blind for a month. The book clicked and opened. He’d unsealed it. He put it on top of the open book I was still holding, and then searched the shelves for a moment before he pulled another one, drew the same unsealing rune, and again, the click, and him stacking it on my book, all while the vacuum ran noisily behind him.
Two more books he unsealed and stacked on the one I’d been so clearly caught reading, but he didn’t say anything until he was finished, and I was standing there, waiting for the thing, the terrible, awful, humiliating thing. Maybe he’d make me carry all of his books to his room and then have me dust and organize the rest of his books through the night so that I got no sleep before classes in the morning and my second job in the afternoon at the sushi piano bar.
“I didn’t know that you could read,” he said with that glint in his eye, the one that made my lip curl and my balance shift, preparing to kick him if it came to that. He’d never kicked me back, but he reciprocated in other ways. Terrible things like putting down sticky tar outside of the back doors, leaving me stuck there all night until the morning cafeteria workers came in. It was so humiliating that I couldn’t operate the most basic release spell.
“I can’t.” I scowled at him, waiting for him to say something worse, something that would get me fired.
“No? Hold on.” He dropped down on his heels, flipping out the tails of his leather suit coat so it didn’t wrinkle before thumbing through the books until he pulled out a small volume that he also unsealed and then dropped on top of the stack. “Now you’ll be able to. Oh, that’s right, you don’t have the authority to take these books out. What to do?” He tapped his metal claw to his lips in a way that drew one’s attention even though you knew better. I gasped when he cut into that pink lip enough that a drop of blood welled up. He murmured a spell, and the blood spilled onto the stack of books. At the first contact, a flash of blue left them feeling strangely lighter.
He licked his lip, and the blood was gone, but he wasn’t.
“What are you doing?” I finally hissed, loud enough to be heard over the vacuum, but not by much.
“How can I have a worthy adversary when you’re so pathetic? Learn something, enough that you’re a challenge for me.”
I rolled my eyes, because there was no way I’d be able to learn anything that could compete with his top-of-the-class magical abilities, but I looked down at the books instead of speaking. I could read all the titles, and the small book was a volume on reading texts, a key to the rest. I was going to refuse, but when I looked up, he was walking away.
I hurried after him then stopped and went back to the vacuum. I shoved it after him, balancing books and cord until I reached the door where I could see him already down the hall through the glass pane. Was he setting me up? He’d never involved any authorities before. No, actually once he’d made a mess and when I got called out on it, he’d said that it was his fault, because our war was between us, and no one else. I couldn’t trust him, but his behavior was consistent. If he’d wanted to get me fired, the precious Marigold heir would only have to say a word, and I’d be gone. This was an elaborate prank for certain, and I’d probably regret this, but in the meantime, maybe I would learn something.
I made up my mind and acted the next second, wrapping the cord around the vacuum, then pulling off my hoodie and ugly black janitor’s dress and wrapping them around the books, leaving me in the white slip beneath. I pulled down my hair, shaking it out so that I’d look more like a student when I left this place to the areas monitored by cameras. My hair was dark red, but I happened to know that the cameras were in black and white, and several girls had as much hair as I did. I’d walk through the front doors and keep walking like I belonged there, in a white summer dress that no would ever think the janitor would wear.
That was the plan. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it went absolutely perfectly, except that as soon as I left the front doors to step into the night in my impractical slip, my faithful raven swooped down and landed on my shoulder, claws sinking into my bare skin before he turned his head and squawked in my ear.
What are you doing out early and coming from the wrong doors?
“It’s not wrong,” I muttered so my lips weren’t moving. “I’m just taking books out of the library. I’ll bring them back before they’re missed. I probably won’t even be able to read them and will bring them back tomorrow.”
He tugged a strand of my hair. He didn’t care if it was wrong, he was just curious. I hurried down the steps and walked down the long path towards the front gates where they were open to the street. I held my breath as the cold wind brushed my bare shoulders, bringing goosebumps up on my skin. In a block, I’d pull on my hoodie and then I’d be less likely to attract weird guys from Song who came up at night to see what tasty humans were wandering around looking for a good time.
Working the night shift, I’d seen some weird stuff, but I wasn’t as delicate and sweet as I looked, even when I was wearing pants and a hoodie. I was more nervous about losing the books than I was about a personal attack. They were priceless, and if something happened to them, I’d definitely lose my job, and probably go to jail, and my mom would literally forget about me and end up wandering around without knowing where she lived. Not that my mom didn’t have friends, and if I wanted to ask, Libby would help, but I could take care of my own family.
