Page 16 of Strength of Desire

Ismene crossed the room, making what looked like a bee-line for me, only turning at the last second to take up a spot on the wall a couple feet away. She gave me an enigmatic smile, then watched the room with a blank expression. She didn’t talk to anyone, but she didn’t lean or cross her arms or do anything else that might imply this wasn’t exactly where she wanted to be, standing alone in a crowded room, staring off into space.

I wished I could appear that at ease.

A moment later, Isaac stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. I should have known. Isaac wasn’t the kind of man who liked to be seen waiting on anyone else. He was probably standing just outside the room until Ismene arrived.

Seb wasn’t with him, but I had no chance to wonder what that meant. Isaac spoke as soon as the door closed.

“Good evening, friends.” His voice managed to be warm and cool at the same time. “I appreciate you all taking the time to come here tonight.”

As if we’d had any choice.

“As you’ve no doubt noticed, there are questions circulating among the student body concerning today’s attack. I’m sure I’m not mistaken in imagining that there are many questions among you as well. I meant what I said at the assembly. We will be launching a full-scale investigation into what occurred, the first step of which is to pool our knowledge of today’s events. While understanding the entirety of the assault may take time, we should at least be able to reassure the students that their wilder theories are false. To that end, let us begin at the beginning. Noah, why don’t you walk us through your freshmen class today.”

I stiffened as all eyes in the room turned towards me. I clamped my lips down in a firm line, annoyed at myself for being unprepared for the attention. I should have expected this.

“It’s more or less what you’ve heard,” I said, knowing the freshmen would have spread the details through the entire student body by now. “It was a normal enough class. We were working on evasive maneuvers. The attack didn’t occur until the very end.”

My stomach twisted. I should have been quicker to notice something was wrong. Should have been up near the rest of the class. If I hadn’t waited until the last moment to give Cory his jacket, hadn’t pulled him aside so no one else could hear, maybe I could have prevented anyone from getting hurt.

“Unfortunately, I was on the other side of the gym when the moraghin appeared, in the middle of the largest group of students. Attracted to the magic, obviously. I have no idea how they got in. They simply appeared, out of thin air.”

A shiver ran through the room. We all knew how unlikely that was. How much magic it would have taken to breach the wards, to drop the moraghin right into a cluster of students. The moraghin couldn’t have done that themselves. Someone else had sent them.

“Most of the students were frozen,” I continued. “One of them, Erika Martinez, went down. I yelled at the rest to back up and spread out. Most of them did, though a few tried to cast spells at the moraghin. A couple of others grabbed weapons. Luckily, I was able to take the moraghin down before anyone else could injure themselves in the fight.”

“Impressive,” said Teresa, still standing by the sink. “That’s no mean feat, taking down three moraghin on your own. In the middle of a crowd of bystanders.”

It was four, actually, but I didn’t correct her.

“Nigh impossible, some might say,” added Leon, stirring a spoon in a mug of coffee.

Those might have sounded like compliments, but I knew Teresa and Leon well enough to know they weren’t. As the head of Hex, Teresa was suspicious of anyone who wasn’t a witch at Vesperwood. Leon was the head of Hunt, and had resented my presence at the school since he’d arrived three years ago.

I’d never understood why. Leon talked constantly about how Hunters weren’t meant to be tied down. He refused to work with underclassmen entirely, and only worked with the best of the juniors and seniors in small tutorials.

Isaac had told him that if he hated being stuck in one place so long, he was welcome to leave, but Leon had muttered something about the honor of Hunt Haven not being carried by human hands like mine.

“Not impossible,” I said. “Just luck.”

We’d all been lucky. Me. Erika. Cory. God, especially Cory. That had been close.

But he was fine. I’d checked him myself, and then Cinda had. I’d seen him at the assembly earlier this evening. She wouldn’t have let him go if there’d been any doubt.

Cory. Of course. That was where Seb was.

Seb must have been working with him right now, teaching him…what, exactly? How to dream? Could Seb even do that for him, not being an incubus himself? I stifled a strange flare of jealousy at the thought of the two of them alone together.

“Thank you, Noah,” Isaac said, pulling me back to the present. “Let us now turn our attention to the wards. They are designed to protect Vesperwood from attacks like this, and have functioned flawlessly since the initial enchantment was cast when the school reopened. But today, they were breached.”

He paused, giving the words time to sink in. Then he turned to look at the pair on the sofa.

“Hans, Autumn, you’re two of our wardkeepers. Perhaps you would explain today’s events from your point of view.”

It wasn’t an accusation. Isaac would never stoop to something so tawdry. It was merely an invitation to explain their side of the story—and justify their failure, if possible.

Hans cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses. “Yes. Well. As you said, the events of today were certainly unexpected. I wish we could have—that is, all of us are as shocked as anyone else as to how this could have occurred.”

He launched into a wordy explanation that took five minutes to get through and boiled down to, ‘We don’t know what happened.’

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