“That’s a first.” Clem looped her arms around my neck and pulled me in for a tight hug. She lowered her voice and held her mouth close to my ear so only I could hear her next words. “Whatever trouble you’re about to stick your nose into, you’d better invite me.”
I squeezed her back, then shook hands with Eric and Abi. I locked my room’s door behind us, and we split up. While my friends headed to their rooms to rest and get ready for the first day of school tomorrow, I marched off to talk to someone I hadn’t seen since the end of the Empyrean Gauntlet.
A person who wouldn’t be any happier to see me than I was to ask for her help.
I hesitated outside the door to her office, took a deep breath, then knocked on the stained-glass window in its center.
“Come in,” she called, her voice crisp and frosty.
“Headmistress,” I called out as I closed her door behind me. “How was your summer?”
Cruzal peered up at me from behind her desk, her eyes hidden by the glaring reflection of the desk lamp off her glasses. She pushed her chair back, crossed her hands on her knee, and let out an exaggerated sigh.
“To what do I owe the displeasure of this unwelcome, but hardly unexpected visit?” Cruzal said, her words dripping with ice.
Clearly, she had not forgiven me for stealing the hollows out from under her nose and sending them off to live in Shamballa. I was annoyed that she’d taken my maneuver so personally. All I’d wanted was to move the kids out of the church’s reach. That they couldn’t provide Cruzal with a return on her investors’ time and money was an unavoidable side effect. I bowed low to show my respect, hoping that would take the edge off Cruzal’s anger. I needed her help, and I wouldn’t get it by fighting.
“There’s a problem at the Dallas annex,” I said.
The headmistress removed her glasses and smoothed an errant lock of dark hair back into place over her ear. Though she maintained an outward calm, Cruzal couldn’t hide the worry and anxiety aspects that flickered through her core like poisonous fireflies. A single breath was all it took for her to banish those telltale sparks, but a single breath was more than enough time for someone at my core level to detect them.
“I have received no reports of trouble from the annex,” she scolded me. “I’m curious why you believe otherwise.”
“I was there yesterday,” I replied calmly. “Trust me, you need to step up security for the next few days. Nothing serious, just a few Guardians to monitor the situation.”
Cruzal chewed on the stem of her glasses and eyed me like I was a rattlesnake who’d just showed up on her desk. She said nothing for a moment, then reached over to the quantic laptop on a stand beside her and tapped a few keys. A crystal on Cruzal’s desk glowed blue, and an image of a burning building snapped into focus between us. Security teams formed a protective cordon around firefighters struggling to get the fires under control.
The headmistress flicked her fingers across the image, and a blackened crater surrounded by scorched scrivenings pushed the flames aside. Another flick, and the crater gave way to silver ribbons screaming through the hull of a cargo drone high above the sleek skyline of an overcity. Another image, this one of bald figures in tattered robes bounding through rubble and firing automatic weapons.
“As you can see, Jace, the Guardians are quite busy with other problems.” She raised a finger to stop me from answering, then recited aloud a list she’d obviously been mulling over in her mind for some time. “The heretic attacks have only stepped up over the past months since your stunt in the Empyrean Gauntlet. And even if there were squads available, I don’t have the budget to pull them from their normal duties to cover the annex.”
Cruzal’s last words were practically shouted and hit me harder than I wanted to admit. That the headmistress of the world’s most prestigious school for Empyreals couldn’t request a few Guardians to make sure her teachers and students were safe was troubling. It made me wonder if Cruzal was being honest with me, or if there was something else at play here. Maybe she’d refused to punish me for going around her during the Empyrean challenge. Or maybe her wealthy patrons were punishing her for letting those hollows slip through her fingers. In the end, it didn’t matter why she’d refused to guard the annex.
Rachel was still in danger.
And I couldn’t allow that.
“Then let me go,” I said. “I’ll portal there and back every day for the next week. That should solve the problem, and you won’t have to ask the guardians for help.”
Cruzal considered my offer for a few seconds. She leaned forward and motioned for me to take a seat in the chair on my side of her desk. She waited for me to sit, then spoke so low I had to strain to hear her words.
“You are the strongest student here at the School of Swords and Serpents,” she said. “But you are not an elder, or a sage, and the whirlpool of danger that swirls around you has already pulled those mighty ones down. You have powerful enemies, Jace, and they won’t hesitate to strike at you if they believe they can do so without attracting the attention of those who would keep you safe.”
What the headmistress said was news to me. The Locust Court had all but wiped out the sages during their attack on Kyoto, and those leaders of Empyrean society had only briefly shown their faces since. Other elders had died in those attacks, and my mother’s heretics had put my clan’s leadership on the ropes. I’d had the Inquisition after my neck until I’d uncovered their scheme to sell the rest of humanity out to our long-time enemies. But I’d
