“Why do I need to keep my mouth closed?”
He chuckles, hefts me up a little higher. “Bugs.” That’s the only warning I get before he starts running.
The last time Sel ran me across campus, I’d been half out of my own mind with fear from hellfoxes and mage flames. All I remember is a blur. This time, it feels completely different. This time, it’s exhilarating.
He’s fast, all right. Not as fast as the uchel, but far faster than any human being.
I wonder if he makes an extra attempt to keep the ride smooth, because my shoulder barely jostles.
The gravel road, trees, and streetlights all pass in a smear of colors, and then he turns up a paved road that winds through one of the historic neighborhoods where the professors live. I see just a glimpse of a two-story brick manor at the end of a cul-de-sac and a second later we’re in its backyard. Sel releases my legs, and I slide down, wobbling only slightly this time.
“Whose house is this?” I ask as he strides forward to bend down at the back door.
“This”—he lifts up a weathered rubber mat, feels under it for a moment, and produces a spare key—“is where Nicholas and I grew up.”
I stare up at the house with new eyes. And a slow, dawning horror. “I can’t go in there.”
He scoffs. “Why?”
“Because it’s trespassing.”
He rolls his eyes. “I was raised here. The Davises took me in when I was ten.”
“But—” I stammer, trying to put my hesitation into words. “Why don’t we just wait until Nick and his dad get back from the airport and ask Lord Davis in person?”
“Because I don’t trust Lord Davis to speak the truth,” he says simply. Nothing in his tone holds rancor or spite. It’s a simple statement of fact.
“Why not? Didn’t he raise you?”
“The two are not mutually exclusive. And the reason I don’t trust him is because that man is Oathed to the hilt, just like I am. He is sworn to do the Regents’ bidding by an Oath of Service, the same way I am sworn to the Legendborn. We could ask him what he knows, but if your theories are true, his Oaths would force him to lie to keep their secrets.”
“But why are we at their house?”
“This is Lord Davis’s house. Nicholas doesn’t live here any longer. We’re here because his father is the Viceroy of the Southern chapter, and because I have excellent hearing and old paper smells different than new. I happen to know that Lord Davis keeps historic chapter records and archives locked away in his personal study.”
“Why didn’t Nick bring me here before?”
“Nicholas rejected the Order’s history, so he didn’t know to look. The truth about your mother’s history with the chapter might be here. Why are you hesitating, Matthews?”
Because Nick and I are supposed to do this together, I think. Sel watches me, waiting for an answer. “It just doesn’t feel right.”
Sel sighs and looks up at the sky. “We have an hour at most before they get back. It’ll go faster if you help me look, but if morals are getting in the way, you can tell Nicholas I brought you here against your will and stay out here in the yard.” He gestures behind me. “There’s an old swing set there. Watch out for splinters.” He turns back toward the door with the key.
I hate the offhand way he dismisses me, but I do want answers. And if Lord Davis can’t be trusted…? When would I get another opportunity like this? Nick will understand, won’t he, if I tell him right away? I shift from one foot to the other in indecision while Sel opens the door and disappears inside.
It doesn’t escape my notice that he’s left the door cracked open behind him.
* * *
With a quiet curse, I follow him in.
* * *
I trip twice walking up the basement stairs and stumble into Sel’s back when we get to the main level. As I follow him into the foyer, he mutters, “I can’t believe I thought you were a creature of the night,” under his breath. I scowl at his shoulders.
He moves through the house easily, with both the familiarity of long residence and Merlin night vision on his side. I stare at the dark shape of Sel’s back as he walks to the interior stairs at a human pace—for my sake more than anything, I’m sure. “Why can’t we turn on the lights?”
“Because the neighbors are nosy.”
Light filters in from a window on the second-floor landing, so I can see a little now, enough to make out the framed pictures of both boys hanging alongside us in the stairwell. Nick in a PeeWee football uniform, grinning wide. Sel at a violin recital, looking thin and dour even as a small child. I’m torn between a deep curiosity and the feeling that I’m violating Nick’s privacy.
Right as I get to the top of the stairwell, the LED-bright headlights of a luxury car flare through the large picture window. Sel grabs my hand, yanking me down as the car approaches. His fingers are five sizzling points that sear into my bones, and I cry out, yanking my hand away. He blinks down at me in confusion. My heart thuds against my chest so loud his sensitive ears must hear it. The car passes. A garage door lifts—but it’s the house next door. We exhale in unison.
I move to stand, but he presses me back with the flat of his palm on my uninjured shoulder. “Wait until they go inside.”
Once the garage door descends, he looks down at where I’ve started rubbing my wrist with my other hand. “I didn’t touch your wounded arm, or grab you that hard. Why did you scream?”
“I don’t know,” I say truthfully. “It felt like an electrical current. Like static, but worse.”
Several questions flash across his face before he decides on one. “You never answered me that night at the Quarry. Do you feel something when I look at you?”
I stand up to put distance between us, suddenly hesitant to talk about this part of my abilities. I haven’t mentioned how his gaze affects me, or any of the other more sensory parts of what I can do. “Yes.”
He stands. Looks at me like he’s trying to see inside my brain and assess its contents. “Explain.”
“It’s going to sound weird.”
“Weird is relative.”
Understatement of the year. “When you look at me, it feels… prickly. When you’re mad, your eyes feel like sparks.”
His eyebrows raise in the middle. A strange sort of tension runs through his shoulders—like anger, but not quite. He looks like he wants to press the issue, but instead he turns down the hallway. “We need to hurry.”
I follow behind him until a familiar smell reaches my nose halfway down the hall. I stop. To my right is an open door, and suddenly I realize why the smell is familiar. This room belongs to Nick. The color scheme is similar to his room at the Lodge—blues and whites on the twin bed in the corner and in the checkered curtains. There’s a small desk and two large bookcases.
“We don’t have time for you to snoop around your boyfriend’s childhood room.” Sel sounds utterly annoyed.
I scowl at him in the darkness, knowing full well he can see it, but catch up to where he’s standing at the very end of the hall. I join him in front of a wide wooden door.