Compounding Traumas (Artemis University #6) - Erin R Flynn

1

After I finished my run in Faerie with Chief and his pack, I went through my new cooldown routine and made sure to hydrate. Then I flipped the playlists and instantly felt lighter when Derek Hough’s “The Ones” came on. I wasn’t sure if he was a supe, but I would bet money he had fairy blood in him to sing and dance as he did.

Then again, I’d heard from my friends that several of my guesses of being supes were human. Maybe everyone had a bit of fairy blood in them? Like what the Irish said around St. Patrick’s Day that everyone was Irish then.

That sounded nice to me. Inclusivity, instead of division and pain.

And I was currently in a lot of pain which was why I’d put together a playlist of songs helped lighten my heart. I smiled at the dogs as they watched me dance to the music. I’d been spending a lot more time in Faerie after the blowup at my end of the year party. I realized Faerie didn’t simply need me… I needed it just as much.

When I’d come back through the portal, I was shocked to find out many things—but one of the main ones? Natalie and our friends had opted to have the memory of learning I was a fairy taken away to protect me. That was crazy to me and healed a lot of my hurt. I did have true friends and they meant to the world to me.

But when Mel had told me Craftsman had lost his temper and almost killed Collins for taking advantage of me, that was a harder pill to swallow. I didn’t think he would have cared enough, but then again, I was the last fairy, and a professor traumatizing me to simply—and selfishly—get my blood was pretty damn horrible.

Apparently, he wasn’t the only one who wanted a piece of Collins. According to Mel, Collins had better get his affairs in order if he so much as looked at me funny again. Even White had threatened to burn him to ash.

I really should have called her first, but in my panic, I couldn’t think straight. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

The mess got cleaned up though. Collins and White made everyone who crashed the party think they were sent to a different address about twenty minutes south of where we were. And just for good measure, that Holly was an idiot because she’d only had one shot to locate my phone, and I’d probably been on the move shopping or something.

So everyone was pissed at Holly for wasting their time and pissing me off to not even be able to find out where I lived.

Geiger was on a warpath. He’d not only made sure the guy who broke the rules and worked in that office lost his job, but he was fighting to get my number taken off the registry. People were losing their minds over me and as such, couldn’t be trusted. He petitioned for his office to be the guardian of mine and the numbers of anyone working for me, and tracking me should be their responsibility in an emergency.

Until then, we were bouncing our phones all over to keep from being tracked because it wasn’t only me they could pull this on. Next, it would be Ray or Zack… And were they ever furious. It was like a sacred emergency only thing of trust among supes to keep us safe and it was abused that way.

Which was why we made sure other councils and a ton of people found out. Holly was going to have some serious explaining to do with her family, and maybe even her council, as she was a vampire, and the vampire council were the ones in charge of handling all of this. And dayumn did this make them look bad.

My heart was bleeding for the corrupt fuckers for sure.

I wasn’t worried. Geiger would handle it, or we could just keep fucking with our signals and fuck them. I had a hard time not saying “I told you so” to the others as it had been a huge red flag for me that I’d brought up a few times.

The house in Spain was being worked on and was ready for us to stay there a few days after the party. It didn’t have a portal to Faerie though, so I still had to come back to the Townsend estate for that. The dogs were happy with that. I might bring