Infernals heeded no rules. . save one: No one ever went back on an agreement once dice were on the table.
Abby set her pet locust down, and it skittered out under the door. She stood on her tiptoes to reach the dice and rolled next.
A pair of the dancing dogs. Four. The lowest result yet.
She turned to Sealiah, challenge glimmering in her red eyes.
Sealiah toyed with the dice on the table, as if she could commune with their delectable randomness. She snatched them up and, with one graceful toss, sent them flying across the table, bouncing off the far end-impacting each other and coming to rest in the center. Two sixes, twelve crows on the wing-a
“Congratulations,” Ashmed said. “We have one side.” He looked between Sealiah and Abby. “Perhaps a matchup?” The Chairman’s face was unreadable.
“Perhaps. .” Sealiah plucked up the dice. To Louis’s astonishment, she offered them to him.
Louis held up both hands. “I’m no Board member. I have no place in this.”
In truth, he had no place because he was not a tenth as powerful as his cousins. Engaging in a war with a landed Infernal Lord was guaranteed suicide.
“You were present when we voted,” Ashmed said. “I do not remember specifically excluding you.” He pointed his smoldering cigar at Louis. “Your children should care for you more than for any of us. So your involvement would guarantee them running to your aid.”
Sealiah smiled. “The way I hear it, they might run to aid his destruction.” Her hand remained outstretched, offering him the dice.
“Stop squirming,” Lev told him. “Roll.” He took a step closer, one meaty hand curling into a titanic fist.
“Well. .” Louis’s smile never wavered as he reached for the dice. “Since you insist. I am honored.”
He grabbed the cubes without touching Sealiah.
Louis tilted his palm. . and with the most undramatic of gestures let the dice fall.
The cubes bounced onto the table once and stopped: a one and a two. A total of three.
His heart skipped a beat.
Abby growled and stamped her foot.
“It seems, Louis, we are fated to dance once more,” Sealiah said.
“Not so fast, peddler of poppies,” Mephistopheles said.
Talons raked the Nagas of Dharma across the green felt. Mephistopheles grabbed them, shook, and tossed. They came to rest directly in front of Sealiah: a pair of the self-consuming ouroboros serpents.
She flinched. “Snake eyes,” Sealiah said. “How appropriate.”
Louis almost fell over with relief.
Mephistopheles vanished. Only shadows remained where he had once stood.
“So be it,” Ashmed declared. “The Board sanctions Civil War between Sealiah, Queen of Poppies, and Mephistopheles, Lord of the House of Umbra.” He glanced at Louis with disdain. “You are dismissed.”
The door behind him squeaked open.
“Happy to have been of assistance.” Louis bowed and scraped and stepped backwards and bowed once more-as the door slammed shut in his face.
“Too close,” he breathed.
Louis turned in time to see Amberflaxus tearing the head off Abigail’s locust, munching and crunching its fat body.
“Come, my friend,” Louis whispered. “There’s much to prepare. Chaos and opportunity abound today!”
He paused, however, wondering if placing his children in the greatest of dangers had been the best possible outcome.
For him-yes.
But what of them?
There was a faint, annoying whisper of doubt, a remnant of his mortal being. . Perhaps in time, it would go away like a blister healed after being popped.
No matter. He had plans and schemes and double-crosses to orchestrate.
The clock tower chimed its ninth bell as Fiona and Eliot trampled up the worn marble steps of Bristlecone Hall.
There was a central yard dominated by a large silver tree, and classrooms extended to either side. Four doors down on the right was a sign: PLACEMENT EXAMS.
They sprinted for it, crossing the threshold of the classroom as the tenth and last bell sounded.
Panting, ready to fall over, Fiona saw one wall was floor-to-ceiling panes of glass-panes as small as a postage stamp on up to bedsheet-sized, and each slightly tilted or out of focus, magnifying or inverting the image of the old tree in the yard.
Her eyes adjusted to the darker room and she saw twelve rows of desks, twelve deep. They had rolled tops, ancient inkwells, attached stools that swung out, and wrought-iron footrests. At the front of this room was a massive blackboard, and along the walls were gaslight globes of opal glass.
As the last bit of her vision cleared, Fiona saw students at all the desks save two-and
“S-s-sorry,” she said, and flushed.
“Apologize only if there is reason to,” said a woman with a slight British accent.
This woman was the only person standing in the classroom besides Fiona and Eliot. She might have been thirty years old, and wore a long black skirt and a high-necked linen shirt with black pearl buttons. Her dark hair was up, and she wore octagonal spectacles that magnified her eyes.
She wasn’t human.
The woman’s skin and features were too perfect, too pale, more alabaster than organic, like a Greek statue.
Or perhaps an Immortal.
There was something else, too, in her brown-eyed stare. Fiona felt herself fall into that gaze until the world was swallowed. Fiona had felt this before, staring down the endless maw of Sobek, the crocodile eater of souls.
It was death. It was oblivion.
Fiona blinked, came out of the trace, and shuddered.
The woman opened a tiny leather book and consulted it. “Miss Fiona and Master Eliot Post.” She made marks with a fountain pen. “On time.” She spared them a glance. “By the skin of your teeth. Sit.”
Fiona and Eliot obeyed, taking the only two unoccupied desks halfway to the front, on opposite sides of the center aisle.
The woman walked to the lectern. “I am Miss Westin, the Headmistress of the Paxington Institute,” she said. “I wield absolute authority here.”
No one spoke or shifted in their seats.
“You will find today’s placement exam in your desks,” Miss Westin continued, “along with three pencils and an eraser. See that you have these materials now. Do
Every student opened a rolltop desk.
In hers, Fiona found a stack of twenty pages secured with a cardboard band. All three pencils had been sharpened to a deadly point.
Miss Westin waited as the students settled down, keenly observing all. “I am delighted that you can follow instructions.”
Fiona swallowed and heard the collective inhalation of the other students.
“You will find,” Miss Westin said, “that at Paxington, we take our rules seriously. Last year, two students
