Endless (20 page)

She motioned for me to take a seat.

‘I live here full-time at the moment. I needed at least one place where I felt myself,’ she said, as if reading my mind.

I put my bag on my lap and leaned on it. I’d been training for hours. My body was in a world of hurt.

‘Did
you get my note?’ she asked.

‘Yes, thank you. I … Um …’ I didn’t know how to talk about Nyla with her, with anyone, really.

She shook her head again, as if knowing exactly what I was thinking. ‘Take your time. She’s not going anywhere in a hurry, but I believe there is still hope. If I didn’t,’ she flashed me another glimpse at her warrior eyes, ‘I’d finish things myself.’

I admired her optimism but … I was there when Nyla’s soul shattered. She wasn’t coming back.

Rainer kept going. ‘I wanted to ask you if you have considered my offer to be your mentor?’

I had discussed it with Griffin last night and we had agreed it was very generous of Rainer and something I should jump at, but after the class I’d just been through …

‘I don’t seem to fight to the Academy standards. And I don’t intend to change, either.’

She lifted one eyebrow.

Nifty.

‘Did you see Seth adhering to Academy protocol when he took down your partner yesterday?’

‘No.’

‘I believe Nyla and Rudyard included you in some training when they were staying with you, too?’

I nodded, remembering how fierce a fighter Nyla had been.

‘Precisely. Valerie is all about rules and regulations. She has to be in order to run the Academy effectively, but make no mistake, when you stand in front of a roomful of Grigori seniors and the Assembly for your final testing, only one thing is going to matter.’

‘What?
’

‘Winning.’

I shifted in my seat. ‘And you can help me do that?’

‘Yes.’

I had to respect her confidence, given that we both knew there would be a number of Grigori, including Drenson and Josephine, who would like nothing more than to boot me out of the Academy for good.

‘Okay, then. When do we start?’

‘Tomorrow. We train before your classes and directly after every day. Be prepared – I plan on working you hard.’

I’d been so glad to have an ally as my mentor I don’t think I’d been listening when Rainer had explained the working-me-hard part.

Two weeks after signing on with her I felt like the walking dead. From the first day of our training she’d been collecting me at 5 a.m. and not dropping me back at my room until 8 p.m. after our evening session.

My heavy schedule meant that I’d only seen Spence and Zoe in classes and due to the fact that more than a few sets of eyes were trained on everything I did, if Lincoln hadn’t taken to sneaking me dinner in my room, I wouldn’t have seen him at all. Or eaten.

Luckily, we both knew spending too much time apart was not a good idea. Somehow we seemed to have found some kind of medium for our souls. It wasn’t perfect and although the physical pain – not to mention heartache – of being away from each other
and
around each other was constant – it was always intensified by extended periods of separation.

Hence my nightly room
service.

‘I’ll talk to her,’ he said, as we sat on my floor eating cold pasta. Well, Lincoln was eating it – I was basically inhaling it. I had missed lunch, again.

I’d thought Lincoln had been a hard taskmaster, but Rainer took training to another level. When I wasn’t running laps in the enormous rooftop gym with its glass bubble ceiling – I was going through drills, lifting extreme weights, handling weapons or getting hit in the face. Repeatedly. By Rainer. She hit every other part of my body as well, but she focused on my face – reassuring me we’d always be able to gauge my progress by the amount of times I allowed her to smash it in.

I tried to explain I wasn’t
allowing
anything.

She disagreed.

I shook my head at Lincoln. ‘No you will not.’ The last thing I wanted was him coming to my rescue. ‘Only one more week to go and I’m learning a lot.’

Like what the ground looks like from close up.

He nodded, but remained focused on the food I could tell he wasn’t enjoying. I might be fine with microwave dinners but Lincoln was a fresh-produce kind of guy.

‘Is Zoe ever in here?’ he asked, looking at her mess of a bed and opting for a subject change.

I took another huge mouthful of spaghetti. ‘She’s usually hanging out with Spence and the other students.’ From her late-night stumbling around in our room, it was clear they got up to no good – aka … a lot of fun. But I was always too exhausted to tag along and find out what they really did.

‘I tried to
call Steph today, but I can never get through. Has Griff heard from them?’

Lincoln nodded. ‘Today, briefly. Nothing new. Still on-track,’ he said discreetly, not wanting to go into any more detail while within Academy walls. ‘Griffin saw your parents today,’ he added, trying to sound casual.

We’d had this conversation before. ‘I’ll go and see them soon. I haven’t exactly had a lot of free time.’

‘That’s not the reason and you know it.’

True. It had more to do with still not knowing what to say to Dad and my inability to process the fact that I’d spent so long hating Evelyn – thinking she’d traded me off for her own advantage – that I couldn’t even look at her now. I’d treated her so badly and I didn’t know how to fix it. And … I had a feeling the two of them were growing … close, and I just didn’t know how to deal with that.

‘Is she still having fainting spells?’ I asked.

‘No. They gave her something to jumpstart her internal organs and it seems to have worked. They think it was something to do with her body readjusting to its earthly form.’

Made sense. Griffin had said something like that, too.

We sat in silence for a while. I finished off my pasta, cleaning the plate with a piece of bread. Lincoln had given up on his dinner.

‘What do you think it was like for her?’ I asked quietly.

‘I can’t imagine. According to her official debrief, she has no memory of being in Hell. Only that she was there.’

But I knew better. She’d told me never to ask her and not because she didn’t remember – it was because she did. I suspected Lincoln knew that too.

‘She’s
your mum, Vi. She gave up her first seventeen years with you, but she’s here now. I …’ He put his plate down on the tray beside him and stretched out his legs. ‘I was so mad with my mum after she died. I was mad at her for getting sick – thought she’d been too weak and made it easy for Nahilius to brainwash her.’

‘That’s not true.’

He half smiled. ‘I know, but it was what I felt for a time. I guess it was my way of dealing with things until I was able to see the truth, that I just missed her.’

I leaned my head back against the bed. ‘I’ll think about it.’

He nodded and passed me a bowl of melted chocolate ice cream.

Yum.

I ate while he filled me in. More missing children. Phoenix had been spotted in a few places, a couple of times in the New York area. There hadn’t been any sightings of Lilith, but exiles in the area seemed to be moving in mixed packs. It was clear that Lilith had them out doing her dirty work for her – and it made sense since the lure of the Grigori Scripture would be the only explanation for exiles of both light and dark continuing to work together.

‘I hate being stuck in here. I feel like I should be out hunting.’

‘Right now, I think this is the best place for you. If you were out in the open they might’ve come for you. At least this way you’re training and getting stronger. There are Grigori searching worldwide and all the senior Grigori in New York are hunting her. We’ll find them.’

The problem was
– I didn’t feel stronger. I was exhausted. I slumped back even further. Lincoln smiled and started to get up, collecting the food trays as he did.

‘I’ll leave you to get some rest.’ He paused at the door. ‘You know, I’m really … You’re doing great. The testing will be a breeze. I know it isn’t easy and being locked up is hard but I’ve been really … proud to be your partner.’

I swallowed hard at the praise. Lincoln was talking to me as my trainer and it was a big thing for him to hand over a compliment like that.

‘Thanks,’ I said, wishing he wasn’t leaving but knowing I couldn’t ask him to stay.

He nodded. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

After he left, I tried calling Steph again. We hadn’t been having much luck reaching each other. She was either off hunting ingredients for the Qeres or I was busy training. Tonight was no different, my phone going straight to her voicemail. I left a message telling her I would try and email, but we both knew that however we made contact, neither phone nor email was secure so she wouldn’t be able to tell me much.

From what Griffin had gleaned from Dapper, they’d already found nine of the ingredients they needed and Dapper had enlisted a few old friends of his family to help keep them hidden. We didn’t know exactly what that meant but he assured us they were all safe and together. The last three ingredients were proving more difficult to find – the original sources of one, seemingly extinct. If we had to, we would use an inferior mutation of the herb but Dapper still felt it was worth persevering and since we hadn’t got any further at our end, Griffin agreed. No one seemed to want to deal with the outstanding problem of the angelic thirteenth ingredient.

The odd text I
had received from Steph mostly complained about her lack of ‘alone time’ with Sal, until, two days ago, a simple smiley-face message, which I presumed meant she’d finally found a way to rectify her problem.

I had a shower, washing off the blood from the evening’s session with Rainer. When I walked out of the tiny bathroom, wrapped in my towel, every muscle aching to the extreme, and considering giving myself a quick healing once-over, I found Zoe and Spence both sitting on her bed.

‘Hey,’ I said. Then I saw the clothes – not mine – laid out on my bed.

‘What’s going on?’

My confusion didn’t last long when I saw the smiles plastered on their faces.

I shook my head. ‘No.’

They kept smiling, sitting there in the kind of clothes that screamed: planning no good.

‘No!’ I reinforced. ‘I can barely stand up and Rainer will be back here banging on my door in,’ I looked at my watch, ‘six hours.’

‘Oh, come on, Eden. You used to be fun. We’ve barely seen you and some of your classmates are starting to talk …’ Spence said, trailing off.

‘Talk about what?’

‘That you think you’re too good for us. I mean, look at it from their point of view, you haven’t even been showing up to meals.’

I knew there was
probably truth in what he was saying. I hadn’t been showing up for things because of my training but that didn’t mean people wouldn’t take it in another way. I didn’t want to be an outcast.

‘A few of them will be out tonight and it’ll give them something else to talk about over breakfast if you show.’ Spence’s eyes were alight. I knew he was baiting me, setting me up to give in.

I bit my lip.

‘Come on.’ Zoe chimed in. ‘I’ve even put out a hot outfit for you so you don’t have to think, and don’t pretend you can’t swing a little of your own power on yourself for some healing. We all know you can.’

I gave her a snarky look. ‘In case you’ve forgotten, I’m not allowed to leave the buildings.’

Spence rolled his eyes. ‘Technically, neither are we, but in case
you’ve
forgotten, we have particular talents when it comes to getting out of high-rises.’

At that, I couldn’t hold back the smile.

Fifteen minutes later, I was in Zoe’s favourite pair of black leather pants, high-heeled boots and a gold beaded halter-neck, which was crying out to be danced in.

Zoe yanked my hair up into a high ponytail while I smudged on some eyeliner and a layer of mascara.

Spence stuck his head back in the door. ‘Coast is clear. Mission Bridge is a go.’

Mission Bridge?

Zoe grabbed my hand and yanked me down the corridor.

It was getting late so not many people were walking the halls. We stayed close, travelling through three buildings and over two skywalks, Spence hiding us under glamour whenever we were at risk of being seen. Finally, on the lowest of the Academy levels in Building D, Spence and Zoe came to a service lift.

‘Zoe,
you’re look-out,’ Spence said.

She nodded and kept a watch on the hallway while Spence started to pry open the doors.

‘Are we going to die trying to get out of here?’ I asked.

‘Don’t think so,’ he said, as he pulled them apart. ‘Zoe, let’s go,’ he whisper-yelled.

She ran straight for the lift and … jumped.

‘Holy hell!’ I yelped as I looked over the edge to see she had grabbed onto a ladder on the far side of the shaft.

Spence chuckled. ‘After you, sunshine.’

My shock quickly morphed into a smile. This was going to be fun.

Following Zoe I leaped into the lift shaft, landing easily on the ladder and following her down. Spence was close behind.

When we reached the second floor, Zoe stopped climbing down and started heaving open the doors there. When we had clambered out, she led us straight through a fire door onto a balcony.