Page 41 of Fortune Academy: Year Three
She squeezed me. “We better.”
I hoped I didn’t just make a promise I couldn’t keep, because I’ll be damned if I let anyone else I cared about down.
Chapter 16
Five months, twenty-nine days and twelve hours. It felt like an eternity and now I had precious time left before I got yanked into Hell.
The last gem on my bracelet had already started to emit a faint glow and that didn’t help ease my nerves any.
It had been a long five months and I missed my Virtues, except Orion. He found plenty of occasions to warm my bed even if the others had kept away, although he hadn’t been pleased when I’d explained the bracelet to him.
My other Virtues, though, didn’t know I was on a timer, and I preferred it that way. Something was messing with the mate-bond and until I found Kaito and Cole, I knew I wouldn’t be able to repair it.
Still, I couldn’t hear their thoughts and they didn’t seem to be able to hear mine, and it made everything feel… off. Orion thought it had to do with Cole after I’d told him about my dream. He also said that the Dean was watching us, so while it wasn’t so odd that I might hook up with the god of sex, messing around with my other Virtues might get me the wrong kind of attention.
I’d kept myself busy trying to get to Kaito and Cole while figuring out how to deal with the Dean. Once I had Cole, the mate-circle would be complete and I would have the strength to face Calamity. Plus, I didn’t have to fight the Conduit. I just had to distract her long enough to trap her in the Angelstone.
Still, I knew that wouldn’t be easy. Gwen was a powerful supernatural in her own right and with pure chaos driving her madness to new heights, I’d only get one shot to do this right.
Once I trapped the Dean and had control of Fortune Academy, I would get to Hell and Sonya would help me figure out how to deal with Lucifer.
One problem… my plan hinged on finding Cole and taming him.
Step one of that plan was proving difficult.
Now that the demon attacks had stopped—at least Lucifer was living up to his end of the bargain—the Dean decreed that student life must go back to normal. Which meant homework, exams, and a ton of shit I didn’t have the time or energy for.
Thanks to Olivia, I didn’t completely fail my classes. I was still a sophomore and even if I didn’t care about graduation, I couldn’t afford to get kicked out just because of poor grades.
Wouldn’t that be hilarious.“Sorry, humanity, I couldn’t stop the Third Echo of Calamity because I slacked off and failed magical histories.”
On top of my general classes, I also had to mentor with Olivia under the guise of being monster experts as part of our plan to find the vampire from her vision, which meant I needed to be a certified mentor.
Olivia was the bookworm… not me. I was totally screwed.
As predicted, the Dean had grilled me on my knowledge of vampires, sirens, incubi, demons, and a number of supernaturals I’d never heard of before to see if I was suitable for the role. Olivia luckily had an orb in my ear to feed me the right answers. I was suddenly very grateful for all that time she’d spent in the library while I’d been running around trying to get a handle on my Virtues.
Or as Olivia put it, wasting far too much time doing the hanky-panky.
Regardless, we took on our roles and got to work. Today was day ninety-one of our daily grind and I still didn’t feel like I was getting any closer to finding this mystery vampire Olivia had seen in her visions, no matter how many vampires we’d come across as part of our jobs as mentors of Monster Studies, much less seeing any hope in gaining entrance to the Monster Arena.
Today was supposed to be different, though. Dante had brought in a unique vampire, one who had warlock powers. Of course I heard that through Olivia. The Hunter still wouldn’t see me, all for the sake of pretenses. He was being a bit too thorough in making sure the Dean didn’t figure us out.
So, instead of enjoying “hanky-panky” with my mates, I got to sit and thumb through a massive textbook on vampires with Olivia and Yuri while we unsuccessfully tried to figure out what the heck we were going to do next.
“You say he keeps asking to see someone named Evie?” Yuri asked, popping out her cherry lollipop before tapping it on her fang as she pondered. “Why does that name sound familiar?”
I rolled my eyes. Either the vampire was a total idiot, or Olivia’s memory tampering on the girl was having some serious side effects.
Olivia shoved a glass at her filled with cherry-blood champagne, by far our best bribe when trying to jog the memory of our ally from Monster Academy. “Because Lady Evelyn is one of Fortune Academy’s founders,” she said. “That sounds kind of like Evie.”
Yuri chuckled. “Wouldn’t it be hilarious if he was friends with a founder! You guys would be in biiiiig trouble.” When Olivia glared at her, Yuri grabbed the drink. She took a sip and wiggled with delight. “This stuff is the best.”
I shoved the textbook at her, pointing at the vicious vampire with blood dribbling down his chin. “Focus, Yuri. What can you tell me about warlock vampires?”
She shrugged. “It’s not really that unusual. All warlocks came from vampires, and witches too, originally anyway. They just don’t like to talk about it.”
Olivia’s eyes went wide. “Who told you that?”
