wants anymore.” He gestures wildly with one hand. “Look around you! They shove us off into a ‘special school’ where we’re contained, or they cut us off from magic altogether. Because they’re scared of us. We’re too much for them, too powerful for them, so they call us freaks and lock us up. When we should be the ones in charge! We’re more powerful!”
“Okay,” I say, trying to adopt the soothing tone I use with customers when they’re drunk and getting worked up. “You have every right to be upset with how Unpredictables are treated, Raul. I understand that, you’re right. I really do get it. But hurting other students?”
“I had to do it!” he snarls. “They poked their noses where they shouldn’t have! It’s not my fault. And I needed to create panic. I needed to get everyone into the same place on campus—my time freezing spell wasn’t big enough to cover the whole school, just this building. I had to rough them up a little.”
“You killed a student,” I say, keeping my voice calm. I take a few steps toward him, ignoring the worried hiss of breath from Dmitri. “That’s not just roughing someone up. Trevor was a fellow Unpredictable, and he didn’t deserve to die.”
“He knew too much!” Raul is unraveling a little. His voice goes higher with every word, and I’m starting to see the side of him that’s capable of attacking his classmates, of committing murder. “I couldn’t modify enough of his memory. He was going to tell! And Roman was right on my tail, so I killed two birds with one stone.”
“That was a very powerful spell you cast on his body, Raul,” Roman says casually, authoritatively. Even in this totally inappropriate moment, that tone sends a shiver of heat up my spine. “Who taught you that? That’s not the kind of thing you can learn on your own—how to keep someone from being able to raise the dead.”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Raul sneers. His chest is rising and falling faster, his gaze darting quickly between me and the guys.
We’ve got him outnumbered by a good amount, but a rock of fear still sits in my stomach. Roman’s not wrong. Raul may be a first year like me, but he’s obviously got a hell of a lot of power at his fingertips.
And the five of us are the only thing standing between him and what he wants.
Chapter 27
“Raul, please.”
Holding my hands out placatingly, I take another tentative step forward. If I can get close enough, maybe I can try tackling him. It’s not the fanciest move, but in moments of high stress, I tend to revert back to what I know works. And I’ve always been a good scrapper.
“Look, I get why you’re doing this.” One more step forward. “I was so angry with my dad when he left. And I was angry with the Circuit for just waltzing in and taking my sister. And for telling me I could either come here or lose my magic. I felt like I didn’t really have a choice, and that sucks. But hurting innocent people? Do you really want to do that? What are you even looking for here? What are you hoping to achieve?”
Raul shakes his head. “No, I can’t tell you.”
I hear someone inhale sharply and glance sideways out of the corner of my eye.
While I was moving toward Raul, Asher was moving toward the crate. He can see into it now, and whatever he’s seeing, I don’t think it’s good.
“Are you serious?” he whispers, looking up at Raul. “What are you even planning to do with this?”
“What is it?” Roman asks, still standing several feet away with Cam and Dmitri.
Asher swallows. “It’s a Brimstone Orb.”
I have no clue what that is. My gaze flicks to Raul, my brows pinching together. “A what?”
“Think of it like an insanely powerful, massive grenade that also causes fire to rain down from the sky,” he says, “and you’ll have a pretty good idea. ‘Brimstone’ as in fire and brimstone—hellfire raining down.”
“Nobody thought to call it the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch?” I ask.
Silence. The guys all blink at me.
“Monty Python and the Holy Grail?” I glance around, shocked despite my fear. Or maybe I’m just focusing on Monty Python so I won’t pee my pants. “No? None of you? Goddamn it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Raul cuts in, waving his hand in a slicing motion to show he’s done with this conversation. “I need this orb. We need