Tarot Academy 4 - Sarah Piper Page 0,38

Baz whispers next to me. “Get a room.”

I elbow him in the ribs, then shift positions, trying to prevent my legs from going numb. Unless we want to out ourselves, we’re going to be here a while—might as well get comfortable.

I send a quick text to Cass with an update on the situation, then Baz and I settle in for the long haul. Fortunately, Agent Quintana and Casey work quickly and efficiently, and by the time she’s cleared Phaines’s room of anything incriminating, Quintana’s got all the important jars and baggies of hair secured in a few of the file boxes, along with some spellbooks he found with the essence.

“Let’s take the boxes up to the main storage area first,” she says. “Put them somewhere out of sight. Then I’ll call it in and we’ll start taping off the area. We’ll need to seal off the entrances to the main building as well—I don’t want anyone accessing the scene.”

“Sounds like a plan.” He grabs two of the boxes and she takes another, following him up the narrow staircase to the next level.

Certain they’re gone, we get to our feet.

“What’s our move?” Baz asks. “Set Phaines’s dead ass on fire?”

“And fuck up my sister’s investigation? We’ll never hear the end of it.” I force out a quiet laugh, but the truth is, I don’t want to even look at that traitor. Because that’s all it would take—one look. One look, and I’d be losing my shit, bringing down the whole damn place on our heads.

“We need to get back to Red Sands,” I say. “Sounds like Casey and Quintana are headed there too—we’ll catch up with them later. Can you portal us?”

“Not all the way home—I’m running low on fuel.”

“Just get us outside, then. We’ll use the portal at Time Out of Mind.”

He takes one last look around the place, barely suppressing a shudder. “Goddess, if I never see a creepy-ass basement again, it’ll be too fucking soon.”

He grabs my arm and calls on his earth energy. The first twinges of purple magick have just appeared before us when a commotion explodes near the top of the staircase.

Baz drops the spell. “What the fuck?”

“Casey, behind you!” Quintana shouts.

We bolt for the stairs, but before we can see what’s happening, a flash of blinding yellow light barrels down on us, slamming us onto the floor.

And then all hell breaks loose.

Fourteen

CASS

I tear down the mud-soaked banks of the river, ignoring the burn in my calves, the wild thud in my chest as I charge through the darkness. Minutes? Hours? Time means nothing here, and I’ve lost all sense of direction too.

All I know is I must find her.

One minute, Stevie was holding my hands, imploring me to heed her warnings about this place, and the next minute, she was gone, slipping away like water through my fingers.

My heart burned at the loss—I damn near forgot how to breathe. But just before the darkness took me, her face appeared in my mind again. Her voice, urging me to fight.

I staggered to my feet, and something told me to run. That I’d find her, if only I didn’t stop searching.

“Stevie!” I call out now, scaring off a few bats nestled beneath a rocky overhang. “Damnit. Where are you? Stevie!”

I stop running only long enough to listen. There’s no response. There’s never any response.

“Starla Milan, where are you?” I shout, the echo of my voice a mockery. Deep in my chest, my heart burns again, shooting fire through my veins with every thud. “Stevie!”

“She’s probably not coming back,” someone says, a small voice cutting through the darkness. “They never come back.”

“Who’s there?” I ask.

“It’s true. They don’t.”

I follow the sound further down the river’s path. Just after a bend, I find a small boy seated on the riverbank, thin and pale, digging in the muck with an old porcelain bowl. Water seeps up through the rivets he’s made in the mud, red and viscous between his fingers, and my stomach churns.

For a brief moment, he looks like a ghoul digging into a rotting corpse.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath, steadying myself. When I open my eyes again, the boy is no longer a monster. Just an abandoned child playing in the mud.

“What do you mean, they never come back?” I ask.

“I already told you. He takes them. Well, not the little ones. The little ones he eats. But the big ones, he takes.”

He says this with such confidence, it’s hard not to take