Page 20 of Phoenix Academy: Madness

Headmaster Towers gestures towards the chair on the other side of the desk, which I take as a sign to sit down. The others arrange themselves in chairs against the wall at Petra's instruction, which I guess means they're sticking around. Maybe they're here to be friendly faces, like Reggie suggested, but I get the sense they're also something more: bodyguards.

I just can't tell if they're supposed to be protectingme, or if I'm the threat they're containing. After this morning, I couldn't venture a guess either way. Apparently I'm more dangerous than I could've imagined.

"So, Ariana. We didn't get the chance to go over much last night. I wanted to let you have a night's sleep before doing the necessary admissions interview." I cover up my trepidation with a long sip of coffee and milk froth. "The boys said they found you alone in the woods, far from civilization. Is that true?"

"Yes." I can sense the next question before it comes, and try to think of a way to answer it that won't involve admitting to my broken heart. Hastily, I add, "I'm kind of... on my own."

"I'd guessed as much," she says gently, tapping her fingers on her desk. "Rare phoenix tend to only be born through death, not just of the phoenix themselves, but also due to tragedy around them. It's the fuel that creates our powers."

"Right." My throat closes up as I think of Lizzy's body in the bottom of the Heretic's boat, a blanket covering her up, only a bit of her hair visible. "Tragedy."

"There's something I have to ask, though, simply because it came up when doing a background search on you."

"A background search?"

"It's for our genealogy project," she explains, which doesn't reassure me. "Each time a rare phoenix or shifter comes to the school, we look into connections they might have with the old blood of this world, to see if there's any reason why they're born out of certain lines."

"Oh." I grab onto the armrests of the chair, my pulse skipping a bit, heart in my throat. There are certain things that turn up in my genealogy. Unsavory things. "Is something wrong?"

"No, of course not." Headmaster Towers smiles hesitantly, which just makes me that much more nervous. "It's just... well, let me be direct." Grabbing her computer monitor, she angles it towards me so that I can see the mugshot onscreen. "Is this man, Wesley Grainger, your biological father?"

Chapter 10

She's still talking,but I can only half hear it, because my mind is flashing back to what it felt like to have his knife open up my veins. He didn't even flinch when I screamed. If anything, the sound of my pain and terror just bent him to the task with single-minded focus.

Father.What a name for a man like that.

"His name was on your birth certificate, you see, so I looked him up because I didn't want there to be any issues with your enrollment here. Sometimes, even estranged parents file missing persons reports... in any case, there was a hit in the system right away, but I wanted to check with you personally before jumping to any conclusions."

My lips feel numb as I tell her, "I didn't know he'd ever been caught by the police." There are words on the screen, something aboutmass murderandten countsandviolent homicide."He looks different now. Less... soulful."

The headmaster's brows crinkle, and she turns the monitor back towards herself, apparently sensing that I never wanted to see the Heretic's photograph in the first place. "I see." Chewing on her bottom lip briefly, she asks, "Do you think he might come looking for you? Or anyone else in your family, for that matter? I couldn't find any records about your mother. But this man seem...dangerous."

I don't know how to answer. I'm back in that cabin in the woods, watching the sharp knife slice Mom open, only this time my mind is substituting her body with Lizzy's instead. I wasn't there to see him kill her—wasn'taliveto witness it—but my imagination fills in the blanks.

If Lizzy hadn't been my sister, he never would've gone after her. He wasn't her father. He wasmine.Still is.

Will he come looking for me? Until the heat death of the universe. Until one or both of us dies, permanently this time. He'll probably follow me into the afterlife, Orpheus and the lyre following a woman into the underworld, except for the Heretic it will be hate that sets him down the river of death, not love. I expect to spot him any day now, just beyond the gates of this mage-enchanted campus, blank eyes watching me, waiting for the moment when he can slice me open and look at my insides all over again.

But I don't know how to say that to the prim and proper woman with her red hair in a bun. Somehow, I doubt she has the kind of father who flays witches alive and drains their blood to try to "fix" them.

She's waiting for an answer. Before I can summon up the courage to give one, and lay it all out there, someone else pipes up.

"I don't think he's really human anymore, so I wouldn't really consider him her father, if that's who he was." I glance over my shoulder in shock at David. "I saw him when we followed her to the river. He was in this boat. Something about him smelled...off.I think he was that strange scent trail we found in the woods. There was something corpse-like about it. It was like he was dead."

He says the last part with a grimace, his words explaining what I find myself at a loss to say aloud. The Heretic has been a part of my life since I was a little girl, understood in flashes: being woken in the night by my mother as she threw me into a car and drove me to a new city. There was always a new couch to crash on, another coven, the two of us staying with whatever witch might take us in. There were long days in the woods, and a warning she gave me that chilled me to the bone: that if I ever saw a man who reminded me of the lumberjack painting on our brand of paper towels, to run away and scream for help.

I've never really thought of him as my father, though she finally broke down and explained that part when I was sixteen, after years of me piecing things together from what little I did know. Lizzy, thankfully, wasn't saddled with the same genetic curse as me. Her father was a one night stand in a bar, as far as I can guess now that I'm older, someone my mother turned to when the loneliness was too much.

Once, when I was old enough to understand everything and resented her for it, I asked her how she ever managed to love a man likehim.She gave me a look that said it all: she'd never loved him, but she did love me. Then she told me that when I got old enough, I would understand. All I needed to know, she claimed, was that he wasn't dead-souled when she met him, and something had gone wrong to make him the not-quite-man who chased us relentlessly.

"He'll follow me." The words are hard to admit, but I force them out. "It's all he's ever done. He... he's the one who killed me." My fingers dig into my palms,hard, as I fight to keep the emotions at bay. "He killed my mom and sister too. He won't stop until he puts me in the ground. It's all he lives for, if you can call it living. Hunting witches, and chasing me."

Headmaster Towers grimaces, but she doesn't look shocked or afraid. I wonder if something has hardened her heart. Maybe it's just the fact that she deals with Grims, who are necromancers and demon puppeteers, that makes her capable of learning about my soulless, murderous biological father without batting an eye.

"Do you know what he is? If he's not human."

A question for the ages. "Alive, somehow. My mom used to think he was Risen, but there's no one pulling his strings. I think..." Hesitantly, I admit, "I think he's something rare. Like me, I guess."

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