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I blinked. Oh, I was starting to get what he was saying. I laughed bitterly.
“Incredible! So, I’m even more trapped than I thought I was. I have money, but it’s my father’s money, so it doesn’t count. Brilliant!” I picked up the pace, suddenly an
noyed with the conversation I had started. “Forget about it. I wasn’t going to hire you anyway.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Headmaster Morningstar said the field trip to the Unseelie Court was going to be the last one this year. And the only reason why he allowed it was because half a dozen guards were going to accompany us. Just to make sure we behaved. Naturally, the Violent Death Cabal had the privilege to go first.
“But Headmaster, the students have to see the land of the goblins, the land of the giants, and the Carnelian City, at the very least,” Professor Maat had protested. “How else will the new Grim Reapers find their way once they graduate?”
“Professor, these are difficult times. The decision has been made, and you have to trust that I know what’s best for them.”
“What difficult times?!”
She sounded equally dumbfounded and outraged. And for good reason. The “difficult times” Morningstar was talking about had nothing to do with the supernatural world, and everything to do with him. He couldn’t kill me. So, the next best thing was to have me in his sights at all times. Also, he knew all the student body was against him. Isolating everyone from the outside world was either a power move, or a desperate move. I was inclined to go with the last.
Since the Unseelie were a military nation, we were allowed to take our scythes with us. Which suited me just fine, because on my way down, I was planning a detour.
“I have to check something in my old room,” I told Crassus, even though I didn’t have to explain anything to him.
I walked past Pazuzu and GC, and they both looked at me curiously. I hadn’t gotten a chance to tell them about my dream. I was about to verify if I had, indeed, seen the past. I stopped before the door to my old dorm-room, hesitating for a minute. My life hadn’t been easy back when I slept here, and I probably had a bit of PTSD. I looked down the dark hallway, with its flickering, broken lights. What a world of difference between the corridor in my dream and this one. I touched the wall and noticed that the white paint was peeling, revealing a washed-out shade of blue underneath. Blue? It was green in my dream… They must have repainted many times in the past two hundred years. Taking a deep breath in, I finally unlocked the door and went inside. I still had the key, but no one cared. Because why would the rich girl now living in her rich room ever go back to this old, dirty closet?
I looked at the windows that had once been tall and beautifully arched. Rectangular and boring now. Or maybe the dream was just a figment of my imagination and I didn’t see the past at all. I closed the door behind me, leaving Crassus outside. As long as GC or Pazuzu weren’t in the room with me, he didn’t care. I knelt by the bed, where I’d seen young Valentine kneel, and brushed the thick dust off the wooden floor. I felt around with my fingers, trying to find a crack in the floorboard. Nothing. I straightened my back, huffed in frustration, looked around, and thought for a second. He’d used the sharp edge of his scythe. I grabbed mine and touched the tip of the blade to the floor. Instantly, as if by magic, a silver light marked the invisible places where a rectangular piece of the floorboard could be lifted. I dug my nails in the small cracks and opened Valentine Morningstar’s secret hiding place.
“Huh?”
There was one notebook in there. Just one.
“Maybe he took the rest.”
I grabbed it, stuffed it in my backpack along with the snacks and the bottle of water for the field trip, fixed the piece of wood where it belonged, and got out of there with my head held high and a smile playing on my lips.
Gottcha. Whatever you’ve been hiding, it’s mine now.
I had no doubt that what was written in that notebook would push me closer to retiring the most powerful Grim Reaper alive for good.
* * *
The second I stepped through the portal, I realized why they said the Seelie and the Unseelie were complete opposites. It wasn’t just that it was cold and snowing lightly, but the buildings and the way their city was built and organized made me wonder if the Unseelie even were fays. I’d always had this idea that all fays were supposed to be in touch with nature, but it had clearly been a misconception acquired over a lifetime of consuming cheap fantasy books and TV shows. The city of the Unseelie was highly technologized.
Clean streets, cars neatly parked on the sides, little vegetation, skyscrapers that blocked the horizon. Their court wasn’t exactly a court, and their castle wasn’t a castle at all. King Silas lived in the largest office building in the city, surrounded by trusted advisors, and soldiers armed to the teeth.
“It might sound shocking, but they’re not armed because they expect to be attacked. They see weapons as part of their uniforms,” Professor Maat explained as we entered the main building to see the king.
“Like accessories?” Francis asked.
“Yes. Something like that.”
He was waiting for us in an office that covered the entire top floor. Nothing about him was in accordance with what a king was supposed to look like. He was dressed like a businessman, and he behaved like one. Everyone addressed him with Your Majesty, so we all did the same when Mrs. Maat introduced us. He was a man of few words, and while Queen Lilla had been excited about our visit, he showed no such emotion. The meeting was dry and utterly uninteresting. The best part was that it was also short. Unseelie soldiers escorted us outside, and we spent the rest of our trip visiting a park, a military museum, and a training facility.
We learned about so many types of combat that my mind hurt. The Unseelie soldier who was acting as our guide took us from one room to another, one field to the next, and let us observe for a few minutes how their men and women trained. Some were using swords, others were shooting at targets, and then there were those who fought with… scythes. That certainly drew my attention.
“Don’t worry, they’re not Grim Reaper scythes,” laughed the guide when he saw our faces. “They’re imitations.”
“But why?” I dared to ask.
“Because there’s no weapon in this world that we don’t know how to use.” He grabbed a scythe from a nearby pile and angled it so that the blade caught the sun shining through the tall glass ceiling. “These scythes can’t separate souls from bodies, but they can cut pretty deep wounds.”
