Page 90 of Radiant Shadows

Curiosity hastened my steps.

“Sorry for the late hour, but I really need to talk to—Shea!” Caesar’s chestnut eyes lit up with a relief that tugged on my heart when they landed on me over Gram’s shoulder.

“Hey, what’s going on?” I asked as I came up behind Gram, concern blooming in my gut. “Is everything alright?”

“Yes, what’s this about?” Gram asked him.

Caesar cast cautious glances over his shoulders in either direction, which only heightened my anxiety. “That’s a long story. Can we come inside? I’ll explain everything.”

With curiosity evident in her own wizened face, Gram stepped aside and held the door open for them in invitation. Caesar quickly entered and made his way to the couch in the living room. His Asian friend looked awkward and uncomfortable as he did the same.

As much as I wanted to sit beside him, the situation didn’t feel comfortable enough for that. Gram didn’t know about the intimate nature of my relationship with him, and I doubted his friend did either. This seemed like shifter business. Was his friend a professor from the school, come to interrogate the witch Caesar wanted to bring into his student body?

So I sat on the opposite couch, and Gram settled onto it next to me.

Caesar’s posture was stiff, even as he leaned forward and braced his elbows on his thighs to confide in us. “Due to circumstances beyond my control, I have been removed as Director of the Dome.”

“What?” I shouted, scooting to the very edge of my seat cushion in shock and outrage. “Why?”

“They found evidence that he was cavorting with a vampire,” his friend replied. When I cocked my head at him, he stood and bent over the coffee table between us to extend a hand. “Sorry, I’m Kai Inari, also aformerprofessor at the Dome. As Caesar’s lifelong best friend, I resigned along with him.”

“Ah, a kitsune.” Aunt Janette, having suddenly emerged from the kitchen at overhearing our conversation, inserted herself between us to accept his outstretched hand. “I’ve never met one of your kind before.”

“Oh, er, thanks?” Kai replied, blushing at the unabashed flirtation in her tone.

She perched herself seductively on the arm of the couch beside Gram, watching him like a hungry lioness as he turned to offer his hand to me.

But I couldn’t pay any mind to her weird fascination with shifters right now. In an awkward, robotic fashion, I shook his hand, struggling to process the implications of the first thing he’d said. Even as he went on to shake Gram’s hand, I couldn’t find the words to respond.

This was the worst possible thing that could happen to Caesar. He loved that school, loved his students and his purpose there. What would happen to Arya without him?

“Wh… Um… What kind of evidence did they find?” I eventually managed to ask.

He gave me a knowing look that I didn’t understand until after he answered. “A few video clips of my meetings with Julian, as well as a record of our correspondence about our business together.”

I relaxed only a little. He was trying to cryptically reassure me that his mutineers didn’t know about the part I played between him and Julian. Not that it would make much of a difference at this point. In the shifter world, allying with a vampire was a far bigger crime than fraternizing with a witch, even a young witch.

And I couldn’t even fault them for their prejudices against either group. Vampires had been slaughtering their kind for centuries, and witches had apparently cursed entire shifter bloodlines for the misdeeds of one person. It was human nature—and apparently shifter, witch, and vampire nature—to condemn entire races for the actions of the few.

But if there was anything this experience had taught me, it was that there was good and bad in all living things. Not every vampire was bad, and not every witch was good. Not everydragon was a pompous, unredeemable asshole, and not every mermaid was an elitist snob. We all needed to strive to look beyond each other’s labels.

“I am so sorry that happened to you,” Gram said sincerely. “Shea has told me about this vampire, and he seems like a true diamond in the rough. Considering your position against vampires, I respect your ability to look beyond what he is to who he is, as Shea has done.”

Caesar attempted a humble smile that didn’t quite land. “Well, thank you. A whole lot of good it’s done me. Arthur Dracul, the general of the shifter military, has taken control of the school. All so he can have Arya to himself.”

“Wait, Arya?” I asked, worry knotting my guts anew. “What does he want with Arya?”

He rubbed the back of his neck, looking so much more tired than I’d ever seen him. It made me want to wrap myself around him and comfort him.

“Has Arya spoken to you about the prophecy?”

I shook my head, proud of my restraint in keeping my distance from him.

He let out a sigh. “Seven years ago, after the destruction of the original shifter school on Framboise Island, our resident seer made a prophecy that a stray mermaid would emerge as a siren and that she would be the one to kill Hadrian and bring an end to this war.”

My heart seemed to be pounding in my throat. “And you think Arya is that siren?”

“I don’t think she is. I know she is,” Caesar said with conviction. “I’ve been personally seeing to her training. Well, I was before now, anyway.”

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