Rogue Reformatory: Breakout (Supernatural Misfits Academy Book 3) Read online

  Don’t think about it. But whenever we hit a bump, all I could picture was my father’s body jostling around in the trunk. His head flopping sideways. Was he still covered?

  “We need to...take care of Dad,” I said. “Should we drive the car into town and leave it where the right people can find it?”

  “We can’t. Our fingerprints are all over the inside of the vehicle. Bad enough that the Council is after us. We don’t need local law enforcement involved, too.”

  They’d charge us with murder. Which wasn’t really any different from what had happened already.

  “I have an idea.” His chest rose and fell, and he stared forward through the windshield. “But I know you’re not going to like it.”

  “Tell me.”

  “We can send the car off a cliff on the edge of town. I’ll add magic and incinerate the vehicle.”

  Darting a glance at him, I lifted one eyebrow. “You can burn metal?”

  “No, but I can eliminate...everything else.”

  “I could breathe fire.”

  “Let’s wait and see if we need it.”

  There would be no funeral or graveside service for Dad. The thought gutted me all over again, and my eyes stung with tears I refused to let fall. Enough . I’d spent most of my life crying about my father for one reason or another. There was no reason to keep sobbing now that he was gone.

  Dead, with no chance of a future.

  Do not think like that!

  “All right,” I said, shoving steel into my voice. I needed to think about escape, not what I’d lost. “Tell me how to get to your parents’ place.”

  He pointed forward. “Up ahead about a mile, you’ll come to the intersection for Route 145. Take a right.” He swallowed, and the hand lying on his thigh twitched. “We’ll take care of the car first. It’s not a long walk after that.”

  “Okay.”

  The wind picked up, and the tall grass bordering the road lashed back and forth. I couldn’t stop thinking about what we’d have to do to Dad’s body.

  Dad.

  Why was it so hard for me to separate myself from my emotions? My father had effectively ditched me before I was born. I should’ve ditched him years ago. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shove the image of him from my mind. I didn’t believe in ghosts, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t haunt me.

  “Will your family call the Council on us?” I asked with a sniff.

  “Not Mom or Dad.”

  “But...”

  “The thing is, my uncle’s an unknown, and he’s around a lot.” He shook his head, as if trying to convince himself, not just me. “My parents never got along well with my grandfather, but things were changing for Gramps when I went to Wadsworth. They’ll know where he is.” His fingers tightened on mine. “My parents were talking about sending him to assisted living when I was sent to Wadsworth. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault.”

  “Do you think he’ll remember enough to help us?”

  “When I last saw him, he had clear moments. Hopefully, we can find those windows and pick his brain until we have the information we need.”

  “And then?”

  “Then we’ll figure out what to do next.” He pointed again. “Here. Route 145.”

  I turned on the blinker and made the turn when the light changed to green.

  “Up ahead, you’ll come to a stop sign,” Rhys said, slowly tapping the chair leg on his thigh. He hadn’t let go of it since he’d picked it up at Wadsworth.

  “Are you going to ditch that chair leg?”

  “Nope.” He lifted it and pointed through the windshield. “Go straight. That’s Cross Road. My parents have a house up on the hill, but a few miles before we reach their driveway, there’s a decent-sized cliff. We can...do it there.”

  I didn’t want to think about what that meant. It would be my final goodbye to my father.

  The vehicle chugged up a small hill, and after the road leveled, we climbed again, winding higher. The road snaked, a switchback taking us deep into the woods and away from the prying eyes of the town.

  “Here,” he said, lifting his arm. “Pull over to the left, onto the shoulder.”

  After I’d put the vehicle into park, I stared forward, seeing nothing but what was to come. It wasn’t easy letting all of it go, shoving it behind me. But Dad wasn’t going to wake up and have a sudden change of heart, opening his arms to welcome me fully for the first time in my life. Our last chance hadn’t been lost with his death; he’d stolen it from me before I was out of diapers. Why wouldn’t that realization sink deep enough to give me the strength to put this behind me?

  “It’s never easy to say goodbye,” Rhys said, reading my thoughts.

  I sniffed. “Nope.”

  “I lost my favorite aunt to cancer a year ago, and it just about ripped me apart.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Not the same as a father, but I feel for you. I know it hurts.”

  “We didn’t…” I gulped. Shit, my damn tears had started up again. They trickled down my face, and there was no way to stop them. “He hated me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  No denial. No telling me that of course my father hadn’t hated me, something too many people had said to me in the past. Nope, this was Rhys, offering comfort, not platitudes, when I needed it most.

  The rain kept falling. The wind kept blowing. And life...life sucked, but it kept on going.

  “Let’s get this over with and go to your parents’ house,” I said, stiffening my spine.

  “If you get out and wait on the other side of the road, I’ll do the rest.” He squeezed my shoulder. “It’ll be over soon.”

  That was how it had to be. Quick. Like pulling off a Band-Aid. Tugging slowly only drew out the pain.

  We got out of the car. As I walked across the pitch-black road toward the tree line, gravel crunched behind me. Something squeaked. Bangs and crashes were followed by a subtle ‘poof’. Flames erupted, then slowly died down.

  A thud was followed by more flashes of light. They reflected off the ring I’d found at Wadsworth, and I could have sworn that shadows flitted through the dark blue stone, but it had to be my imagination. The banging was followed by a low roar that built in volume, drowning out my sorrow long enough that I could catch my breath.

  There was something cathartic about fire. It seared through everything in its path and left behind something new and achingly wonderful. As Rhys crossed the road and put his arms around me, I knew I’d found it.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Cece

  I stumbled through the portal, my heart in my throat, and fell over coughing. Apparently, non-fey weren’t exactly built for the trip, according to Sarah, who seemed to delight in that fact as I wheezed and sputtered and fought to catch my breath. Aidan hovered over me, his nerves on edge.

  “I’m okay,” I said as I finally stood upright. “No need to worry about the witch in Wonderland—”

  I cut myself off for two reasons. One, judging by the way Aidan wasn’t looking at me at all, I wasn’t the source of his worry; and two, the real cause of it came into focus. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected Faerie to look like, but it certainly wasn’t the desolate wasteland we stood in, devoid of trees and grass and anything lush that would scream ‘fairy tales take place here’. Barren, arid land stretched on for as far as the eye could see, with little more than a hill or two to break the monotony of beige and brown.

  “Um…Aidan...?”

  “Why did you bring us here ?” he asked Sarah over my head.

  “Well, it’s not like I had a lot of time to plan, thank you very much,” she snapped back. “Besides, we needed somewhere safe to emerge on the off chance that we were followed.”

  “So this isn’t Faerie?” I asked, thoroughly confused.

  “It’s Faerie,” Aidan replied, turning his tense blue eyes to me. “The wastelands.”

&nb
sp; “It’s where things go to die ,” Sarah added. Her emphasis on that final word when she looked at me sent my hackles up.

  “Die?”

  “It’s where things are relegated to be forgotten or imprisoned—not unlike Wadsworth.” Aidan’s tone contained a strange blend of awareness and disbelief that I couldn’t quite make sense of. “We need to get out of here. Now.”

  “You could always just call for—”

  “No!” Aidan shouted, cutting Sarah off. “We’re not calling them. We’ll do it ourselves.”

  “But time is of the essence,” Sarah said with a sly smile, “remember?”

  My head snapped back and forth between the two while they spoke in code. Normally, I would have gotten pissed off and started demanding answers, but everything about Aidan’s vibe told me to sit tight and keep my mouth shut—that things were even worse than being trapped in a fey desert without a way out that I could see would imply.

  “Can you get us close?” he asked. His expression looked like asking had pained him greatly.

  Sarah’s haughty attitude gave way to true contemplation. “I have enough juice to get us to the edge of Fiddlehead Forest. We’ll be on foot from there, but it won’t matter. Our presence will already be known by then.”

  “Do it.”

  Without hesitation, Sarah started to chant, and a soapy oval began to form between her hands. Her volume increased as she spread her arms wider, and the oval grew large enough for us to walk through. Unlike last time, Aidan showed no sense of urgency, no desire to rush. Wherever we were headed, he had reservations about going there.

  He reached down and took my hand in his, staring at me for a moment like he was soaking in every little piece of me—like he was trying to memorize what he saw.

  “Whatever happens, Cece, I need you to remember one thing and one thing only, understand?”

  “Not really, but—”

  “Remember the word filleadh .”

  “ Filleadh ? But what does it—”

  “If you need to leave here…if you need to escape Faerie for any reason—”

  “Escape?”

  “—I want you to say that word and think of where you want to go—”

  “But—”

  “—and a portal will open up and lead you there.”

  “Can we get this shitshow on the road, please?” Sarah groaned behind us.

  “Cece,” he said, ignoring Sarah, “tell me you understand.”

  “I understand—”

  “Good. Now, tell me you’ll do it if you need to, no matter what.”

  “But Sarah said we have to go together—that your magic is a part of me now and you can’t—”

  “Promise me!” The ground shook under the weight and power of his words. Then his hand wrapped around my other hand—the one that bore his mark. Energy coursed through him into me as his eyes darkened to black, and I felt the magic, the binding neatly woven into it. Real fear spiked though me as the cocky boy I’d once punched in the face stared at me like the fearsome fey lord he was. “Promise me, Cece,” he said, his soft tone at war with the harsh cut of his shadowed features.

  “I promise.”

  With a deep inhale, everything stopped. The ground calmed, his eyes lightened, and his inky magic withdrew. I stood there staring at him, shell-shocked, wondering what in the hell had just happened, all while Sarah held the portal open, much to her disdain.

  “You’re so dramatic, Aidan,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “ Now can we go? Before something that’s lost here manages to find itself?”

  I looked over my shoulder at the thought. In the distance, I caught a glint of light in the sky, like a sun that wasn’t there had winked at me.

  “Yeah, I’m good. We should go,” I said, heading toward Sarah. Aidan tightened his grip on me, and his hold kept me from advancing. I turned to find him staring at me once again, a world of emotion buried deep behind his calculated façade; the armor he’d worn when I’d first met him. I stood there and watched as, piece by piece, it fell into place, leaving only the thrum of recognizable energy in its wake.

  I wondered exactly what war he was preparing for.

  What precisely we were headed into.

  But I didn’t have long to think about it. As my mind pondered his behavior, he tugged me toward the portal and made sure to step through it at the same time as me. Seconds later, Sarah followed. This time, the fairy tale awaited.

  Dense, lush forest greeted us, along with a flock of sweetly-singing birds that sounded nothing like anything I'd ever heard. I searched the trees that seemed to rise forever for them, to no avail. The orange glow of Faerie’s sun broke through the canopy that towered above, and for a moment, it reminded me of home—of autumn in New England.

  The birds went suddenly silent, as though my sharp turn of thoughts had scared them somehow. It was Faerie, after all. From what little I knew of the place, nothing seemed too farfetched to entertain.

  “Cece?” Aidan called, pulling me from my wonder. “We have to get going.”

  “Yeah. No problem.”

  He gave my hand a squeeze and then we were off through the woods, headed toward a break in the trees not far ahead. The light beyond shone so brightly that I couldn’t make anything out, but it seemed that was where we were going. I wasn’t sure that a glowing mass would have been my first choice, given our experience in Wadsworth, but Sarah and Aidan seemed calm enough about it, so I kept my mouth shut and trudged along.

  “Sarah,” I said, my mind shifting to something else to keep me distracted from the blinding light.

  “Mmm?”

  “You said something before about what’s haunting Wadsworth—”

  “Not haunting,” she said abruptly. “It’s not a haunting. It’s a possession. There’s a big difference.”

  “Right. Possession. Do you know what it is—or who?”

  Her mouth turned downward, and I could have sworn I saw her shiver.

  “I think it’s Hagan...he’s a notorious fey. His power is a thing of legends.”

  My features scrunched. “If he’s so powerful, then why would he be trapped in a building?”

  “And why do you think it’s him?” Aidan asked, his grip on me tightening so slightly that I wondered if he even realized how nervous he was. Even all that armor couldn’t hide his feelings from me.

  Sarah shook her head as if trying to rid herself of the thought. “I don’t know…maybe it was the crystal ball...or that painting,” she said, jerking her chin toward the canvas clutched in my other hand. “I can’t say for sure. I just know that a memory of some kind sparked, and he popped into my mind. And you know how I feel about coincidences.”

  “What can he do?” I asked.

  “According to the stories, there isn’t much he can’t,” Aidan replied. “Glamour, mental control—”

  “Like you?”

  He nodded. “But there’s more. He has empath ability like no other. Can move things with his mind. Can manipulate time and space—”

  “He can shapeshift, and he can call magic like witches and sorcerers.”

  “So, he’s basically all the supernatural factions in one?” I asked, horrified by the thought.

  “Basically, and he used them for terrible things…allegedly.”

  “Terrible like what?”

  He hesitated for a second. “Destroy worlds…” I opened my mouth to reply just as we reached the tree line, but the bright light distracted me and I was forced to shade my eyes from the ethereal assault. “Here,” he said, waving his hand in front of my face to dim the light with magic. “I forgot that the magic here can affect you differently.”

  “And be affected by her differently, too,” Sarah grumbled. “Try not to touch anything, and for the love of everything human, keep your emotions in check. I can’t even imagine how catastrophic those could be.”

  I wheeled on her to tell her off, but Aidan’s words stopped me short.

  “She’s right, Cece. You need to
stay grounded and steady as best you can, got it?”

  “What exactly could go wrong?” I asked, my gaze darting back and forth between them.

  Their shared grim expression was not encouraging.

  “Faerie wasn’t made for your kind,” Sarah said, though not nearly as unkindly as I would have expected. “Just don’t do anything stupid.” Her eyes slipped to Aidan and back. “I wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  I swallowed hard against her subtext. It wasn’t necessarily me that would be hurt. Aidan was up for grabs, too. I wondered if that was courtesy of our bond.

  With that thought clouding my mind, we stepped through the trees to a glorious sight. I literally stopped in my tracks to gawk at a city made of glass that extended so high into the sky, I wondered how in the hell it didn’t topple over. Then reality slapped me. Magic . That was how.

  “So, Aidan,” Sarah said as she headed for a black marble path that led to what I could only call a castle set square in the middle of the other architectural phenomena, “are we headed to see your parents?”

  “You should go home.”

  “But that would be rude.” She tutted at him like he was a child. “They’d never forgive me and you know it.”

  “Do what you want, Sarah. You always do.”

  She smiled back at us like a cat with the cream, and I couldn't help but feel like I was walking into a trap of some kind. Like shit was about to pop off, and I’d be helpless to stop it—in fact, I’d make it worse, apparently.

  Aidan had long said that he had unfinished business to attend to when he escaped Wadsworth. Though he’d remained tight-lipped about what that business was, I'd pieced together that it had to do with his parents. Something had gone terribly wrong there—wrong in ways I couldn't fathom. And with every step toward that fantastical castle, I felt the weight of what we were doing pressing down upon me. Whatever Aidan had come to deal with—whatever issues he had with his family—I knew that they would have to wait until we got the answers we came for. Aidan wouldn’t have chosen then to go get his own vengeance; not if doing so would put me in danger.

  As I contemplated that reality, Sarah walked ahead of us, her hands clasped behind her back. We approached the massive entrance of the castle, where a man and woman stood, waiting for us. Power emanated from them, and it nearly pushed me backward. Magic, strong and ancient, rolled off of them, and I realized what it meant just before Sarah slowed and dropped to a knee.