Page 17 of Radiant Shadows

“I will teach you magic,” she said a little more loudly. “I couldn’t save your mother from her own magic, but it seems I can’t keep you from it either. I won’t leave you unarmed with monsters on your shadow. And maybe if I coach you, you won’t befall the same fate as she did.”

She kept her gaze fixed on her lap as she spoke, but I could hear the sadness in the wavering of her voice. I could also hear the love she held for both me and my mother, the daughter she’d lost too young.

Tears welled in my eyes. I’d never considered how painful it must be to lose a child, no matter how old they got. And I finally really understood that her smothering came from a place of love. Aunt Janette and I were all she had left, and she was all I had I ever really known.

“Thank you,” I said, blinking back my tears.

She nodded. “We will start tomorrow. I’ll ask Janette to come over to help. She can at least teach you whatnotto do.”

I laughed through my thick throat. “Does this mean I’m no longer on house arrest?”

She pursed her lips as she put the key in the ignition and started the car. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“At least during the day? I’ll have to go back to school next Monday anyway.”

That one got her. “Fine. But I want to know where you are at all times. And absolutely no staying out any later than 4 o’clock.”

“Deal,” I said.

“I mean it, Shea,” she warned, giving me the side-eye.

“I know, I got it.” Not like I had anywhere to go anyway, with Julian and Caesar still sulking.

I had only briefly wondered if I should tell Gram about my involvement with Julian, but I’d immediately thought better of it. That could be a conversation for another time, or not at all if he chose to walk away…

I turned on my phone as Gram pulled out of the parking lot, opening the text stream with Julian as we drove toward home. Though we weren’t technically speaking at the moment, Icouldn’t keep the Adam thing from him. He needed to know that he was under suspicion.

What more had Adam discovered about Julian’s doings? What things had he already reported to Hadrian?

Though I felt rejected and slightly resentful toward Julian, I didn’t know what I’d do if I never saw him again.

Chapter 8

Julian

It was two days into the new year when I was summoned back to Heritage Prep. Hadrian called to inform me that he was sending his own private jet to collect Piper and me.

“I don’t want to go back,” Piper lamented from where she sat cross-legged on the floor after I’d hung up the phone. “What if he knows what we did—what I did? Why else would he send a private jet?”

I shook my head, though I, too, thought it was odd, especially after reading the text Shea had sent me about the Initiate who’d been spying on her. “If he knew, he wouldn’t bother with the cost of sending for us. He’d just have us killed outright.”

I didn’t quite believe that either. Hadrian had already told me he’d torture me for years if I failed him, and gods only knew what he’d do if he discovered my betrayal.

“Then why is he calling us back when we haven’t fulfilled our mission?” she asked. “What if he interrogates us about Solomon?”

I sighed. “As long as we stick to our story that we never saw him, there’s nothing to investigate. I’ve made certain that Solomon will not be a problem.”

That night after Shea left with Piper—and Caesar left without a word—I took great care in disposing of the corpse in my living room. The body itself was a simple task. All I had todo was take it to the roof of my building and watch as the sun’s glorious rays incinerated it to ash.

Watching Solomon burst into flames, his flesh melting off his bones, was a gruesome chore, and I had never been so grateful for my ability to walk in the daylight. If he hadn’t already been dead, I couldn’t imagine a more hellish way to die.

And it wasn’t quick the way it was in movies. There was no exploding in a burst of flames and crumbling into oblivion. The older a vampire was, the longer it took for sun exposure to kill them.

I didn’t know Solomon’s exact age, but he had existed before I was turned, and judging by the slow blistering and crisping of his skin, the bubbling of his eyes as they oozed out of his sockets over close to an hour, he’d been old enough.

When the sun had finished the job around 9 a.m., leaving behind the charred and brittle remains of his bones, I stomped them into a fine debris, kicking the dust into the merciful breeze to scatter in the wind over the city. Even with the vast scientific resources the vampires had at their disposal, they’d have one hell of a time finding even a single particle of his remains.

But my job hadn’t been over yet. I also had to remove all evidence of his presence in my apartment. I’d spent the next day scrubbing the floor, walls, and doors with bleach, peroxide, and enzyme solutions to rid all traces of blood and fingerprints. Then I burned both mine and Piper’s clothes from the night before, again on the roof.

---