Dad spoke in a jittery tone, his teeth actually clattering when he forced words through them. “He got close to Nick, too close. I can’t-… Gods, I wish I had noticed sooner!”
“What matters is that he’s gone, and we keep it that way. I plan to look into where his card said he dwells and make the message clear that he stays gone.” Seraphine wound her arms around Dad tenderly. “I promise, my sweet, I will not let him get close to you or Nick again. I needed to tell you what happened, so you were aware is all.”
Dad took a steady breath before nodding shakily and leaning into her embrace. “You’re sure he’s gone? Like, gone, gone? I don’t think I can keep it together if I run into him tonight.”
Seraphine slid his bangs behind his ear. “Long gone. My Shadows are guarding the entrance to the Realm, too, to be safer than sorry. There are so many people here tonight… he probably snuck in with someone else as a plus one.”
“Looks like we need to find out who this guy is, and fast. We might have a new threat beyond Pandora to be concerned about,” I thought to my Shadows.
“I was thinking the same thing…” Claude grumbled in return.
Chapter three
Some Things Have to Change
Nicodemus
The following morning, as Blaine and Zephryine coordinated cleanup from the grand scale event yesterday, my Shadows and I took the time to head to the library and see what we could find on Ambermourn while everyone was distracted. A call to Valyce’s library proved fruitless, as there were no records of him there, so we figured we would try our hands at the more extensive archives at Odrikius.
Benjamin was working at the front desk per usual when we got there and looked up from an expansive tome he was bookmarking things in to greet me. “Good morning, Mr. God of Death. How can I help you?”
I kept my tone low so no one would overhear us, “I wanted to know if you have employee records, especially ones from Chandler Academy?”
“Chandler? Hmm, I’ll have to check on that. Give me one moment, please…” He typed into his computer rapidly, his eyesscanning the catalogs so fast that I could barely keep up. Finally, a ding sounded before he scrawled something on a sticky note. “Row 337 on the third floor. It’s not a large shelf, but it has what’s left of public Chandler employee records.”
“You’re a life saver, Ben!” I cheered as I took the note.
He winked. “Nah, that’s your hubby. Let me know if I can assist you further!”
I sprinted up the steps to the third floor, which was void of all life, thankfully. The floor was home to most of the record keeping the Gods of the present and past needed filed, to keep them from falling into the wrong hands. Most of the shelves were locked from regular student access, but since I was a fancy God-to-be, Benjamin was able to give me the passwords to the documents I sought out.
I typed the pin code in before the lock wheezed and slid open slowly. The air inside the shelf was stagnant and arid, smelling of old paper and dust, and made me sneeze quite loudly when I first inhaled in. I brushed my nose clear and started skimming the books carefully, my fingers making marks in the collected dust.
“Employee records, employee records… huh, there’s a few yearbooks? Maybe we start there?” I offered, pulling them off the shelf and setting them on the oak table behind me. Stark, Claude, and Alice popped up behind me and started opening the books, flipping through pages rapidly to see if anything stuck out to them, while I pulled out an employee index from what seemed to be centuries ago. “I wonder how old this guy is, for him to have worked for Chandler for so long. I mean, he’s gotta be at least Seraphine’s age, right?”
“If not older. From what little I know…” Stark squinted as he read the page he was currently stuck on, “Ambermourn was at Chandler from the beginning. He headed the Death Elemental department while Seraphine was a God and only stepped downbecause she had dibs as Phillip’s daughter and an ex-God. We only spoke a handful of times, admittedly.”
“Were elements really that separate at Chandler?” I scoffed as I read my own text.
Stark answered me in such a dejected tone that it seemed almost painful for him to recount the memories. It made me frown, thinking I was forcing this information out of him, but he didn’t seem bothered by answering me, just bothered that he had to talk about Chandler.
“Incredibly. Each element had their own dorms, own educational building, even their own cafeteria. Elements were to stay separate unless for large school functions, which is usually when I ran into Ambermourn. An occasional dance or banquet, or graduation, but nothing more. Even then, the departments tended to stick together. It was a toxic environment from top to bottom. Collaboration was non-existent, which is what you need for the Elemental world to function.”
“And also why Galaxy made Valyce so different. He wanted his students to learn as much as they could about all aspects of Elemental life, to correspond and coordinate when possible. He did a pretty good job in my opinion,” Alice giggled.
Claude spun his yearbook towards me. “Look at this blockhead. Does he remind you of anyone?” he chuckled as he pointed to a picture in theSophomore’ssection.
I gasped in awe at the archaic painted picture of my father, an old and decrepit black and white sketch, but nonetheless, probably one of the first ‘pictures’ ever taken of him. His hair was cut short, something I never saw on him personally, and with it this short, we could have been twins. His expression was flat, though, lifeless even, and that made my smile turn upside down.
“He looks so… miserable. I hate seeing him like that,” I whispered painfully.
Claude turned the yearbook back. “No one enjoyed Chandler, not even the teachers.”
“I think I found something!” Alice came to sit beside me so she could show me the page she was reading. “It’s a cover page on each department’s professor of the year. Ambermourn won for the Death department.”
“‘Evander Ambermourn is an invaluable wealth of knowledge here at Chandler Academy. His expertise in demon hunting has catapulted Chandler to the top in Death Elemental studies and has helped hundreds of students prosper. Evander is a simple man: a fan of the countryside, good tea, and cigars, and puts his students' needs before his own every single time…’” I read to myself.
Alice’s forehead wrinkled at caption. “Seems like a stand-up guy by this interview’s standards. I wonder where it went wrong.”
