The Hidden Court Read online

“Show them all what you’re made of, sweetie, and become the best godmother you can. We believe in you.”

  Excitement flushed my body with warmth as I watched my parents drive away. For the first time in my eighteen years, I was truly on my own. In the little town where I had been raised, there weren’t many other paranormal beings besides our family and the sentinels assigned to protect us. I’d been isolated. Moving to PNRU brought another first experience into my life, the chance to befriend other teens like me.

  It was like entering a whole new world.

  On my way back to the dormitory, I passed a pair of half-fae twin guys in the same position as me, leading their parents back outside. Hot twins.

  No, no, I’m not here for romance. I’m here to learn. I paused to appreciate them from behind again then hurried back up to the second floor to find the door to my place ajar.

  “It isn’t so bad,” Liadan’s voice spilled out from inside the dorm.

  “These rooms are small,” an unimpressed new voice complained in response.

  In the time since leaving to dine with my parents, the living area had been transformed into a canvas of neutral shades in cream, silver, and gold. Ugh. Dull.

  An enormous television hung on the wall above an entertainment stand stuffed with a fascinating array of movies and video games. Someone had set up my PS4 beside their Lord of the Rings DVD box set. The irritation was fleeting—how could anyone stay mad at a mutual Tolkien lover?

  “Skylar!” Liadan smiled at me and crossed the room. “Well this is lucky.”

  Before I could respond, Liadan embraced me tightly. While I didn’t normally enjoy hugs from strangers, there was something peaceful and reassuring about having her arms around me.

  She must have been an empath—a fae gifted with the ability to always know what to say and when. And after leaving my parents for the first time in eighteen years, I needed a hug to combat the conflicting emotions of elation and anxiety. People like Liadan made amazing crisis counselors and often leaned toward social services as careers.

  “Hey,” I greeted her in return.

  “Have you met our other flatmate?” she asked.

  A fashionable dark-haired girl stepped from the hall into the shared living room, her curves hugged by a pencil skirt and silk blouse mirroring the living room’s elegant colors. Strands of glittering gold shone against her dark hair like a stylist had woven tinsel through it. She didn’t have a single split end.

  “Hello, I am Pilar,” she said. I envied her sultry Spanish accent as much as I coveted Liadan’s hair. “I took the liberty of decorating our living area. Do you mind?”

  “No. Not at all,” I said. “Since my decorative charms always fall to pieces within a few minutes, everything I buy stays in whatever shape it comes.”

  “Obviously.” She eyed my jeans and T-shirt with a frown. After informing us of her father’s importance among government officials in Spain, she settled on the couch and changed the television to the news. According to Pilar, her father and Spain’s prime minister would be meeting with the President of the United States, and she wanted to see him.

  The local news featured a different story, flashing an image of a cemetery across the widescreen display.

  “...police investigators say the desecrated graves are likely the handiwork of local vandals, but promise a full investigation will take place. The disturbance was discovered when responders to a car accident on the Midlothian Turnpike reported seeing lights and hearing voices coming from the forest.”

  “How awful,” Liadan murmured. “Don’t people have respect for the dead here?”

  The reporter continued on about the haunted history of the cemetery and pinpointed the location on a map.

  “That’s only a few miles from here, I think.” I typed Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery into my map app and checked the distance. The answer raised my brows. “Less than a mile away. I guess it’s on the borders of the school.”

  Pilar changed the channel to a vocal competition reality show. “Well, whatever it is, we have no concern of it. We are safe here and will remain so.”

  I took her choice of entertainment as my cue to leave. “I’m going to go explore the grounds for a bit.”

  Pilar waved without looking up.

  “I’ll come with you,” Liadan said in a hurry. She sprang from the couch and slipped into a pair of colorful Star Wars themed flats by the door.

  “Nice.”

  Liadan grinned. “I saw your Tolkien book collection when I was checking the rooms. I think we’ll be good friends.”

  “Is that your empathy talking?”

  “Nooo. That’s me talking.”

  She was right. We chatted the whole time we explored the campus, looping around the grounds with a map. There were fields for recreational sports, an obstacle course tucked away behind the running trail, and four large fountains carved from stone, each one featuring a statue memorializing a different supernatural hero from our past from Merlin, the first wizard of the Circle of Sages, to the first Great Fenrir of the shapeshifters. Afterward, we found an indoor, Olympic-sized pool at the campus gym. We discovered another pool outside the student rec center with a volleyball net stretched across it.

  And no matter how far we walked on the trails in the woods when we dipped inside for a look, there always seemed to be more forest, like we’d never reach the end of the boundary line.

  “It’s enchanted,” Liadan said. She turned a page in our brochure. “We’re in a sub-pocket of Tir na Nog. The school exists on both planes, you see, but none of this is in the mortal realm anymore.”

  “Uh… that’s not creepy at all,” I said.

  “It isn’t so bad,” she said. “I went once with my aunt, but… let’s go back, just in case. We need permission to venture farther than this anyway.”

  “Agreed.”

  Last thing I needed on my first day was to get lost in another dimension or chastised. Darklings lost their ability to enter the mystical realm, but other dangerous things dwelled there.

  We returned to find Pilar hogging the bathroom, so we split to our separate rooms, and I resumed setting up my stuff. Someone, probably my mom, had stashed a box of Kit Kats in my fridge. As I stretched across my new bed and gazed out the window onto the courtyard, I wondered how I’d ever live up to our family’s reputation.

  3

  Magic School is Intense

  Orientation for our freshmen class of three hundred and seventy-five had been divided into two morning and two afternoon sessions dependent on dorm assignment. As if to spite the vampires, the serene and cloudless sky shone a merciless, bright sun above the emerald landscape studded with rose bushes, hydrangea trees, and tulips in every rainbow color.

  Dressed in cutoff shorts and a tank top, I moved alongside Liadan after Pilar ditched us for her Abercrombie-wearing friends.

  A blond boy to my right chuckled. His slim nose balanced thin, wire-frame spectacles with transition lenses. They didn’t hide his pale eyes, and they were the prettiest shade of gray I’d ever seen. Almost silver. He wasn’t much taller than me and had a slender frame clothed in khakis and a polo. He would have looked at home with a preppy sweater around his shoulders too. “Wow, they’re feeling brave today.”

  When I followed his gaze, I noticed a pair of handholding vampires sharing an oversized parasol. The female stopped laughing to stare at us with angry, baleful red eyes. She glowered until her companion slipped an arm around her shoulders and nudged her onto their path again.

  “Geez, what was that about?”

  “Who knows with them,” the guy said. “I’m Benjamin, but everyone calls me Ben.”

  “Skylar, and this is Liadan.”

  Ben’s gaze swept over our faces then lingered on our hair. “So it really is true then about your hair, huh? That color’s all real?” Beneath the sun, his dishwater blond hair appeared dull by comparison. “Sorry, I’ve never had the chance to meet fae before.”

  When Liadan smiled, Ben
stumbled over his own feet. “No, it’s fine,” she told him.

  Instead of relying on the map, we let the crowd shuffle us along and fell into step with the current of students who already knew the way to the auditorium.

  Ben traveled alongside us. “Mind if I sit with you two?”

  I shrugged. “Sure. Soooo… I’m guessing you’re a mage?”

  “Mage, yeah.”

  Two stories created an auditorium large enough to host the entire campus at once. It had been split into three sections. Werecreatures and vampires mixed into the outer quadrants. Fae and mages shuffled in the middle like we were the cream of a supernatural creature Twinkie. There was still an empty level on the upper floor with even more seats.

  Most of the vampires reached the auditorium through an underground tunnel, a procession of pale faces filing into the room. Their red-pupiled eyes reflected the same dread, trepidations, and anxiety coursing through me. After all, none of us had been away from home and the loving shelter of our guardians before.

  After older students ushered us to fill the rows without leaving a single empty spot, we settled into seats cushioned with luxurious crimson velvet. I ran my fingers over the fabric. Was there any part of this school that didn’t scream extravagance and wealth? At the far wall of the auditorium behind the stage, three motor-controlled projection screens slowly unfurled from the ceiling and lowered toward the floor. Each one displayed an identical welcome message.

  I settled back in the seat and inhaled deep breaths. Calming breaths. Relaxing. So what if my pulse slammed a thousand beats a minute?

  Liadan touched the back of my hand. “Anxious?”

  “A little. It’s just…” All my life, I’d wanted friends like me, and now that I had them, nothing seemed real anymore. “I’m really glad to be here.”

  “So am I. I was the only fae in Clare under age forty.”

  Ben grunted. “You can’t escape your fellow mages when you’re one of us. There’s always some get-together or big to-do, and they don’t invite anyone else. It’s lame.”

  While we chatted amongst ourselves, an older woman strode onto the stage and stepped up to the podium. She wore a chic business suit in royal purple with matching heeled boots. Her graying, ginger hair had been cut into an asymmetrical stacked bob. I adored her on sight and marveled over the wizard’s staff in her right hand. It was all sleek wood painted with dark lacquer, and a glittering ruby was encased at the top beneath a sickle-shaped blade. She resembled a grandmother with an edge, like she was here to bake cookies and kick ass but was all out of cookie dough.

  “Welcome, all of you. I am Doctor Niamh Riordan, provost of this noble institution.”

  “Mental institution,” a mage girl muttered in the row ahead of me. A few people around her chuckled.

  Oblivious to the joke, Provost Riordan continued. “There is no greater joy than to usher in the new generation of mages, fae, shifters, and vampires, and to know in four years you will leave undeniably changed for the better. We, the faculty of PNRU, vow to mold you into fine young adults capable of providing an irreplaceable and selfless service to the world.”

  Volunteers passed out introduction packets.

  Then the provost began reading every page. My head dipped a few times throughout the attempt to endure her long-winded speech, gradually moving my chin closer to my chest.

  Twenty minutes later, as she discussed the university’s intolerance for racial disharmony between our species, I saw one mage zapping his friend with a mild electric discharge to wake him.

  Provost Riordan then brought up the campus curfew for all untested freshmen. We weren’t allowed off the grounds after nine, regardless of what or who we were. I listened, intrigued. My parents hadn’t mentioned anything of the sort. By the time she finished, my legs had fallen asleep, and half of the row behind us had too.

  “At this time, I would like you to open your introduction packets to page sixty-four. If you chose not to follow along with my speech, you may read pages one through sixty-three at your leisure. For now, you must sign these waivers of liability.”

  While listening to the surprised murmurs around me, I skimmed the meat of the legal document and frowned. The school would accept no responsibility for mental, emotional, or physical damage incurred while on or off its property, including but not limited to loss of life.

  Holy shit. What the hell was I getting myself into here?

  We signed our sheets, some of us sooner than others, and passed them all to the end of the row to be collected by her assistants.

  “And now, without further delay, I will allow the mentors to discuss their plans for you this year.”

  Provost Riordan stepped back from the podium and gave an encouraging sweep of her arms, inviting the mages to join her first. I tuned them out while the awkward trio of juniors gave their names and equally long-winded speeches—love of hearing oneself speak must be a magician thing—about scholarly conduct, study groups, and responsibilities to our educations.

  Liadan nudged me awake when the fae reached the stage. Two girls with rainbow hair stood with a guy whose curls gleamed dark silver and gold beneath the spotlights. They introduced themselves as Brooke, Emma, and Julien. The latter had a hot French accent, and all the girls in the lowermost rows were staring at him like sheep. I jotted their names down in my folder, but my mind wandered again when they droned on about planning various social events and musical gatherings in the courtyard. When they left, Riordan introduced the shifters.

  “Wow,” a sorceress to my left muttered while twirling a lock of blonde hair around her finger. “Check out those two.”

  The two men walking across the auditorium stage belonged in a photo shoot. Or a sports field. So did their female companion, an Amazonian girl with mile-long legs and waist-length golden-red hair. She had arms and thighs like a professional tennis player, the latter revealed by a tight miniskirt.

  “I know, right?” I whispered back, mesmerized by the shifter I suspected of being a raven. He lacked the larger male student’s professional wrestler-sized bulk, his build still streamlined, defined, and no less impressive to behold. His eyes were like milk caramel—brandy even, golden beneath blue-black hair.

  “That bear is smokin’ hot.” The blonde pointed at the largest of the three. He had close-cropped, pale brown hair and towered above his peers.

  Pilar sniffed in disdain from her seat in the row in front of me. “It doesn’t matter if the guys are attractive when they’re half beast,” she said.

  “Hey,” I defended, “there’s no harm in looking.”

  Two of her snooty friends laughed at my discomfort, bringing a new rush of heat to my face.

  Her disgusted expression spoke volumes, so I dropped the subject in an attempt to maintain domestic peace and focused on checking out the eye candy instead. The girl beside me rolled her eyes.

  “I’m Holly,” she whispered. “I’m across the hall from you three.”

  “Oh, nice.”

  “So, did you see the news report last night? The one about the murder?”

  “Er… no?” Curiosity divided my interests between listening to her gossip and the shifters. Their names were Gabriel, Rodrigo, and Amalia.

  Holly’s eyes lit up. “I’m a Chicago native, and there’s been, like, five deaths in this underpass area downtown. All homeless. All drained of blood.”

  The only report I’d seen was the one about Bachelor’s Grove. A chill snaked down my back. “Vampire kills.”

  “You got it. I bet that’s why they put a curfew on us. I heard she told the morning sessions to adhere to the rules or hit the door.”

  “Don’t they Bind us if we drop out?”

  “Yup.”

  I cringed. As part of the pact between supernaturals and mortals, we were all held captive for four years until the school administration decided we were worthy of carrying on in the real world.

  Too many magical beings decided to abuse their gifts by going rogue. And
when anyone magical went rogue, people from both walks of life died.

  So four years of training and instruction were the only way to prove we’d be responsible, and failure meant we’d get dragged before the Conclave to be stripped of our gift. I didn’t know what the ritual entailed, but I knew it took the most powerful member of all four races to magically neuter one of us so we’d never be anything more than a simple human again. The worst part about it? Binding was a one-way street, irreversible and permanent. Afterward, you were just a sad little shell who reminisced about the good ol’ days of being able to conjure donuts or turn toilet tissue into sushi.

  Shifters and vampires had it worse. Shifters lost their animal sides and vampires were almost always put to rest. The Queen and King of the Sanguine Court had them staked and called it a day. Queen Nadezka was particularly ruthless about cleaning up after her own kind.

  The unfortunate fae, mages, and shifters who underwent the ritual were known as Talentless, always shunned and often disowned from their families. There was no greater shame than to have a child stripped of their gift.

  My attention returned to the stage where the wereraven addressed the audience. “We’re also officers of the Wild Hunt Club, and we invite any members of the fae community to join us during our excursions to Tir na Nog if you’re into that kind of thing. Some of y’all’s kind already participate. We meet the first and third Thursday of each month at eight on the edge of the quad.”

  Although Brooke made a face and Emma appeared indifferent, Julien cheered from their section, changing my opinion of him immediately.

  The trio spoke a little longer. Then Rodrigo the bear, Amalia the wolf, and Gabriel the raven left the stage after promising their afternoon availability to any of their peers.

  Three vampires stepped up to the podium next, their skin pale and flawless despite their varied ethnicities. One of the two girls took the microphone.

  “Welcome, my blood brothers and sisters, to your first year at PNRU. I am Abigail,” she announced in a clear, resonating voice. She introduced her companions as Elijah and Charlotte, before speaking of vampire things, a haunted house they organized for the university during the Samhain celebration, and the bi-annual blood drive.