Page 55 of Strength of Desire

I loaded the bow and raised it, then paused for a moment to exhale, emptying my mind of all thought except the invisible line connecting me to my target. I shot, and I was pretty sure I heard one of the cans topple over.

That was better luck than I’d expected. Shooting up at a building was far harder than shooting down from one, and even though the woods came close to the manor where I was standing, I was pushing the edge of the crossbow’s range. I shot a second bolt, deliberately aiming a little wide, and heard a clatter as it landed somewhere on the roof.

The final shot was what counted, though. I loaded the bolt and shifted my stance, aiming now for Sheridan’s diamond-paned windows. Exhale, pause, release. The bolt flew true. In the stillness of the dusky woods, I heard a shatter of glass, but I didn’t stick around to admire my handiwork.

I dropped the crossbow and three other bolts, then sprinted back into the woods a bit before yelling, “Hey, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Then I pivoted and ran back to the manor. I didn’t think anyone was watching, but I put on the show just in case.

I ran to the back doors as though hot on the tails of invisible miscreants, threw the doors wide, and dashed down the hall to the grand foyer. From there, I sprinted up the stairs, taking them two at a time. I arrived at Sheridan’s rooms not out of breath, but realistically winded.

Most of the students and faculty were at the feast by now, but I continued my charade, looking left and right for the ‘students’ I was chasing. Then I advanced on Sheridan’s door.

“Sheridan! Are you in there? Are you okay?” I shouted.

No answer, of course.

“Sheridan?” I called again. When all I got was silence in return, I threw my body against the door. The lock shuddered, but didn’t give. I backed up a step and kicked it once, then twice. On the third kick, the lock failed and the door slammed inwards.

If the broken window hadn’t already tripped Sheridan’s wards, the door definitely would. The clock was ticking now. I had ten minutes, maybe fifteen, to find whatever I was going to find in here before Sheridan came back.

I shoved the door closed behind me. It didn’t latch right, now that I’d broken the lock, but at least it wasn’t hanging wide open, to catch the interest of anyone in the hall. Then I looked around Sheridan’s living room, shaking my head.

I no longer thought his rooms got cleaned when I was teaching—I didn’t think they got cleaned at all. The place was a mess. Papers were strewn everywhere, along with plates with crumbs, crumpled towels, shoes in little piles, and shirts hanging off of chair backs, doorknobs, even a lampshade. A tie and a single sock stuck out from underneath an untidy heap of books that appeared to have fallen off his coffee table. If I hadn’t known better, I’d say someone had already ransacked the place. The shards of glass from the window I’d broken didn’t make it look any neater.

Still, I did the best I could, going through each room as methodically as was possible in that chaos. Half his wardrobe seemed to be on the floor of his bedroom, and his study looked like the aftermath of a book avalanche. There were two empty bottles of sherry on his unmade bed, and another one next to the clawfoot bathtub. I peered at the labels. Lustau Pedro Ximénez. I didn’t know much about sherry, but I would have bet a month’s salary that these were expensive.

The good thing was that I didn’t think Sheridan would notice my rifling, amidst the mess. The bad thing was that I had to sort through extra layers of detritus to find anything useful. And search as I might, I didn’t find anything—until I reached a drawer in the built-in wooden desk in a corner of Sheridan’s living room.

It was sticking out at an angle, like he’d pulled it off its tracks and hadn’t realigned it before shoving it back in. I made a note of the approximate angle, then pulled on the handle.

It wouldn’t budge. I tugged again, then bent down. Something was stuck, blocking the drawer from opening further. I tried pushing instead of pulling, shaking it back and forth to make the contents rattle around. Finally, it pulled free.

Most of the contents were what you’d expect. Loose papers, a scattering of coins, an actual quill pen with a stoppered bottle of ink, but the strangest was a soup ladle. That must have been what was jamming the drawer, but I had no idea what it was doing there.

I flipped through the papers. They seemed to be notes on chaos magic, but the details were beyond me. Definitely not my area. I slid my fingers over the coins. Most of them were foreign. Euros, Pesos, and a handful of West German Deutsche Marks from the 1960s. There was one other coin in the back that I couldn’t quite see. I pushed the inkwell out of the way, pulled the coin forward, and froze.

The coin was silver. Pure silver, I knew, as soon as I saw it. Twice the circumference of a quarter, and four times as thick. The front showed a raised relief of an open human eye surrounded by seven stars. No date. It wasn’t that kind of coin.

It would have felt heavy in the palm of my hand, but I didn’t want to pick it up. I stared at it warily, like the eyeball might bite me. I needed to see the other side, to confirm it really was what I thought it was.

I grabbed the quill and used the tip to flip the coin over. It landed with a thud in the back of the drawer, the new side displaying a closed human eye, just like I’d known in my gut it would. Instead of stars, a few words in script ran around the edge of the coin.Mine in darkness, mine in light.

Fuck.

I prided myself on not scaring easily. My whole life was dedicated to keeping a cool head in a fight, to keeping control of myself. Standing in Sheridan’s living room, staring at a silver coin, might not have looked like a fight, but that coin was more dangerous than any weapon I had in the gym. More dangerous than the moraghin, even. And it was here, at Vesperwood.

I forced down my rising sense of unease, refusing to let it turn into fear. There would be time for that later, but for now, I needed to keep calm. I flipped the coin back to the open-eye side, replaced the quill, and slid the drawer back into place. I even set the ladle so that it jammed again.

Dammit, I’d only been in Sheridan’s rooms for ten minutes. I needed to talk to Isaacnow, but I also needed Sheridan to show up again. If anyone saw me leaving his rooms in a hurry, they’d assume I was there illicitly. I needed to complete my cover story.

Fucking Sheridan, of all people. Arrogant stuffed-shirt that he was, I wouldn’t have thought he was dangerous enough to carry that coin. But maybe, just maybe, he was foolish enough. Yeah, that made more sense.

Thankfully, he didn’t take too much longer to show up, rushing into his rooms with fear on his face. Fear that turned to fury when he saw me standing there, holding the crossbow bolt that had landed on his floor.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“Looking for this.” I held up the bolt that I’d grabbed a few minutes before.

“But why are you—”

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