might be watching through the window.” He lifted the one extra mug of coffee even though he was never offered one and took a sip, grimacing. “This coffee is shit.”
“No one asked you,” Adrian said and sat down. I slumped into the chair next to him, and Elias fell into the chair next to me, lost in his own mind.
I hoped he wasn’t too upset that they’d figured it out.
It wouldn’t be all that difficult for anyone to figure out if they were looking hard enough. Hell, even Professor Donovan probably had his suspicions. Which was why it was so reckless for us to carry on like this.
After a few minutes spent in an awkward silence, the four men all staring at each other, sizing one another up, considering where their places were, I felt ready to crawl out of my skin and flee.
It was painful.
Halfway into my coffee, it was Elias who finally broke awkward tension. “Well, would somebody mind sharing this supposed plan with me?” He jerked his head in the direction of Draven. “And what the hell he’s doing here in daylight? Or, you know, at all?”
Draven grinned mischievously at Elias, his fangs slipping from his gums. “Hasn’t Harper told you? I’m her own personal vampire liaison,” he said with a wink in my direction that made me blush.
I was in so, so much trouble.
28
Harper
We didn’t have much time after we finished filling Elias in on everything he’d missed. There were only about forty minutes until classes started for the day, and they wanted me to plant the information, i.e. lie to Bianca, before we left for class, and then tell Marcus to back off.
For the plan to work, I’d have to lie to him, too. Tell him I was watching Bianca when I really wasn’t. We had to give whoever was doing this the opportunity to hear the false information or the entire plan would crumble.
Adrian was in the shower, and Cal was having his third coffee of the morning outside to keep watch in case anyone else happened to join the accidental pow wow we seemed to be having around my familiars’ table. I wasn’t sure how it would look if anyone found two Enduran shifters, a vampire, and a student and teacher all in the same room…
There was a joke there somewhere, but I couldn’t figure out the punchline.
Elias had my father’s journal with him and was showing me something within its pages that he’d decoded, Draven and I looking over his shoulders to see what he’d found.
“You see,” Elias said, pointing out the section in the journal and the piece of parchment he’d used to note the decoded version. “This section here refers to a jeweled box and dagger. It says they are essential for the spell, but it doesn’t say which spell precisely.”
I think I know. A flash of the dark memory I’d glimpsed in the nightmares after the origin spell came back to my mind. Cyprian had shown me what he’d done the day he died. How he spilled his blood all over the jeweled box with the dagger he himself plunged deep into his chest. The box had to have been spelled, or perhaps it held some sort of amplifier. But I’d known since seeing it then that it was important.
“He had a box and dagger,” I found myself saying blankly. “Cyprian used a jeweled dagger and a jeweled box in the casting of the curses of the sun and moon.”
“How do you know that?” Draven asked, aghast, leveling an intense stare on me without any hint of his usual jest in his eyes.
My eyes watered. Why had I said that?
Elias knew. But Cal and Adrian and Draven—they didn’t. I hated keeping it secret and had already tried to tell them several times. Maybe this was my subconscious giving me a little boost. “Because he’s my ancestor,” I said after a moment.
Draven seemed confused. “That’s not possible. Cyprian’s line died with him in Emeris. Everyone knows that.” But even as he said it, I saw some of the disbelief leave his eyes.
What reason would I have to lie about something like this?
“Not before he got some poor soul pregnant apparently.” I shrugged, unable to look him in the eyes. Elias reached out to take my hand atop the table and I glanced up at him, finding pride and unyielding support in his eyes.
When I finally chanced a look at Draven, I found him looking at me as though I were