The Hunter's Curse (Monster Hunter Academy Book 2) Read online

  “Sounds good,” I agreed, all cheerful acquiescence. She smiled thinly back at me, making it clear once again she wasn’t buying my act.

  “Who is your family, Nina?” she asked. “Specifically?”

  I jolted—less with surprise at the question than at her narrowed eyes, which rendered her into something more like a bird of prey than a grumpy old woman. Still, if anyone would know about my family, it had to be a woman who commissioned surveillance cameras on unsuspecting students. Which I was pretty sure was illegal, at least everywhere that wasn’t connected to a monster hunter academy. The fact that Mrs. Pendleton had to ask the question, however, made me think that maybe she didn’t know as much as she thought she did.

  All that having been said, however, I was still trying to shake loose any information about my mom’s family I could. If this busybody could help… “My mother was a teacher in North Carolina, though she started here,” I offered. “Janet Cross.”

  She hmphed. “That’s not a name associated with Wellington Academy. I would know. Who’s your father?”

  “I don’t know,” I shot back, unreasonably stung. “I never knew him. He wasn’t part of our lives.”

  Mrs. Pendleton leaned forward, her nostrils flaring. “Oh, I think he was more a part of your lives than you may have realized, if your mother was that good at hiding you away,” she murmured. Then she straightened. “Either way, you are no longer a child playing an adult game. It’s time that you started acting like the hunter you truly are, and to own your birthright. Whatever line you’ve come from, we’re glad you’re back in the fold.”

  We? “I’m—what?”

  Mrs. Pendleton flicked nonexistent lint from her sleeve and gave me an arch look. “We will be in touch. And don’t worry, I’ll give Dean Robbins a full report on how helpful you were, the miserable little toad. But we’ve work for you to do, and plenty of it. Never mind campus politics, young woman. Don’t stray too far from your team. Ever.”

  While I was still grappling with how to respond to that, Mrs. Pendleton turned smartly on her heel in the middle of the corridor and marched off.

  I was happy to let her go. I wasn’t sure how long I stood there staring as students flowed around me, but eventually, my phone buzzed again.

  I pulled it out of my pocket, then stared down at the text from Tyler. Keep moving. Go to class. Eyes on you.

  As coolly and calmly as possible, I pocketed my phone and headed down the hallway. My next class was animal husbandry, but for once, I didn’t dread it. I just wanted to duck out of sight for another hour.

  By the time I emerged from the next class, however, Liam reported in with news that made me scowl down at my phone for an entirely new reason. Reverend Williams had already left the academy, heading back home to deal with urgent matters of his congregation—effectively leaving us holding the demon bag. Frost was in a foul mood over a raft of meetings that he’d been scheduled into with the first families roaming the campus. He wanted us out of sight—unless we wanted to be roped into more dog-and-pony shows.

  No, thanks. I exited the classroom building, momentarily at a loss as to where to go. I was uneasy about returning to my apartment, but frankly, I didn’t want to spend the night in Fowler Hall either. That was a level of crazy I could do without in my life, at least not tonight. I was standing uneasily at the arched opening to the campus when I heard a slight shuffling beside me. I turned sharply, and there was Grim.

  “You shouldn’t leave campus,” he said, as if he’d somehow smelled my desire to flee. His preternatural tracking ability should’ve unnerved me, but I was getting used to it—and his warning reminded me of Mrs. Pendleton, which almost made me smile. Then he continued. “Not alone. Zach will be here soon. He’ll go with you.”

  “He’ll…how do you know that?”

  As usual, he didn’t respond to me directly. “You’re nervous. Why?”

  I shrugged. “It’s nothing. My off-campus apartment sort of freaks me out.”

  He grunted. “Then you shouldn’t go back there.”

  “Well, that’s a cute idea, but I need to sleep somewhere, and I don’t suppose you’re offering up your couch.” The quip was out before I could stop myself, and I winced, feeling the blood rush to my cheeks as he studied me long and slow.

  “Don’t answer that,” I said, when the silence dragged out too long. “My mouth gets ahead of my brain sometimes.”

  To my surprise, he drew in a sharp breath and hesitated—almost as if he was going to say something…then another voice sounded in the distance.

  “Hey,” Zach called out as he jogged out of the trees in runner’s gear. “Nina. And Grim, what’re you guys…”

  Grim shot me a sideways glance, his mouth going flat. “That’s my cue to leave,” he said, and so quickly that I almost couldn’t track it, he faded into the shadows.

  21

  “Where’s he off to so fast?” Zach asked as he stopped beside me. He’d turned to peer after Grim, giving me a second to recover from monster hunter whiplash. Where Grim’s energy was all feral and fierce, Zach’s was a combination of beauty and darkness that seemed to weave a spell around me, whispering of possibilities and danger in the night—and his black running pants and deep crimson shirt left very little to the imagination. My imagination really didn’t need any help on that score, and I swallowed, trying to ignore the line of perspiration that trailed down between my shoulder blades.

  “I honestly think I freak him out sometimes,” Zach continued. “Which is like the night freaking out the wolf.”

  I shook my head hard as images of Grim loping though the shadows scattered, leaving only Zach. Gothically gorgeous Zach, looking as perfect as when the angels first made him. Which…wait a minute. “How are you even upright?” I blurted, swinging around as my feet started moving again. I needed to walk. I needed to move. “You weren’t doing so great when I last saw you.”

  “Yeah?” He eyed me as he fell into step beside me, his brow furrowing. Then his face brightened. “Oh! That’s right—Liam said you were there at the very end, the first time. Was it bad? When I woke up, I mean?”

  I shot him a hard glance. “You don’t remember me being there?”

  He winced, then rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “Not all of it, not by half. I had the usual shitty nightmares, getting attacked by demons, caught, set on fire. That happens more than I’d like.”

  “Nightmares,” I echoed weakly. My own skin felt like it was on fire again, and I dearly hoped I wasn’t flushing. “Ah… How’d this one go?”

  “Better than usual, in the end.” He brightened. “Normally, I have to tap something I don’t want to trigger, an anger deep inside me, and then I explode and the dream stops. Not this time.”

  “Yeah?” For the barest moment, I fantasized about what Zach thought had occurred in the thrall of his demon fight. Had I been an angel, racing forward in a blur of white light? A fierce warrior with a winged helmet and silver armor, battling back the creatures of darkness? “What happened?”

  He huffed a short laugh, shuddering. “One of the demons broke through the flames—ugliest piece of shit you’ve ever seen, and old—so old. Coming straight for me. He got near enough to me that I didn’t have to dig deep. I reacted out of pure instinct and blasted my way right out of the… You okay?”

  “Totally good,” I said, nodding rapidly, then glancing away, scrambling for a saner reaction. “You were…delirious when you woke up the, um, first time, I guess.”

  “I guess so. I remembered Liam being there, but not you. When I woke up for real, he was gone, but when I contacted him, he told me what had gone down. He texted me a shit ton of directions on what pills to take from the stash he’d left behind. I ignored all that, because, well, I wanted to find you.”

  “Me,” I said, sounding remarkably less crazed this time. Almost like a normal girl. Go, me.

  “Yeah. It was awesome that you came to… I don’t know. To help. Liam said you were on hand,
right along with Tyler. That you were worried about me.”

  “I…well, sure,” I said. “I mean, you’d been through a demon attack already, and then you were getting hit again—in your mind, anyway. Of course I was worried.”

  As I kept talking, Zach’s gaze sharpened on me, something shifting in his purple-hued eyes. “Did something—actually, forget all that,” he said. His face cleared, and I found myself sighing with relief. “It’s a gorgeous evening, Frost has cut us loose, and I’m glad I found you. Where are you headed?”

  My tightly wound nerves finally unraveling, I peered around. We were already a few blocks away from Wellington Academy. No wonder I’d started feeling better.

  “I was thinking I’d go back to my apartment off campus.” I winced, belatedly remembering what awaited me there. “I don’t suppose you know anything about electronics?”

  “Are you kidding? Who do you think had to keep the church running all those years out in the middle of nowhere?” Zach laughed at my surprise. “Oh, come on. It’s not like I planned to become a full-time exorcist my whole life—though I knew from the start that preaching wasn’t for me. I pretty much thought I’d go into engineering, thank you very much, before we got the scholarship announcement from Wellington the fall of my senior year. Up to that point, I was the church’s main handyman, especially when it came to tech. I dealt with all the computers in the house and the electric crap around the property, figured out how to manage the tent’s portable lighting and heat during all kinds of weather, even jerry-rigged the surveillance cameras to work with sat phones when our cell service crapped out. Which was often. Why? Did you blow a fuse?”

  “Ah…something like that. Mind walking me back to my apartment?”

  “Absolutely.” He agreed so quickly, a shiver of awareness slid through me before I tamped it down again. Zach was my teammate, nothing more. Kissing him to give him strength was part of the job—as insane as that was. Besides, when I’d blasted through the flames of his terror to rescue him…he’d thought I was a hideous monster. I needed to play it cool, was all. I could do that.

  “So…I thought you were living on campus now?” Zach asked as we turned the corner onto Newbury Street. “Or maybe coming to Fowler Hall?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it. It looks like you have the space.”

  “That’s for sure. Hell, you can have a whole wing to yourself, which matters. If I had to see Grim on the regular, I don’t think I’d be okay.”

  I laughed and felt relief all over again as we continued away from the academy. This was the first time we’d really chatted, I supposed, at least not when there was the prospect of a demon lurking around. It was good. It felt right. “So really, you were heading to engineering school? Do you still want to go?”

  “What, you mean after my illustrious career as a monster hunter is over?” Zach cocked a self-mocking brow. “Nah. I think part of me always knew I’d end up doing something like this. I just didn’t want to do it in a backwater congregation in the middle of nowhere Georgia. It takes a certain kind of person to want to live in such a remote place, and I’m not that guy.”

  “Yeah? Where would you rather be?”

  He gestured around. “Bright lights, big city, I’ve loved it here in Boston. There’s so much noise and chatter that you don’t get caught up in the thoughts of people so much. It makes a huge difference.”

  That made me think. “Can you hear people’s thoughts all the time? Or do you have to focus on it to make it happen?”

  “It used to be something I couldn’t control.” We’d stopped at another light, and he had his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels. In the half-light of the streetlamps, he looked even fairer than usual, his jet-black hair curling around his face, skimming his neck, and his purple-hued eyes almost otherworldly. “Now I can dial it back to sort of a dull roar, unless I’m trying to parse somebody else’s thoughts out, and assuming they aren’t warded against me.”

  He smiled and pointed to the bracelet dangling around my wrist. “Liam really knows what he’s doing when it comes to magical trinkets and gadgets. He’s absolute shit when it comes to real-world electronics, don’t let him tell you otherwise, though he knows his way around the internet and the dark web like nobody I’ve ever seen. The components he used in that bracelet and the magnetized ink he found for the tattoos are top shelf. Really good stuff. So as long as you’re wearing that, you’re safe. But if you ever need me, don’t wait and think you’re going to have time or the presence of mind to keep your wrist covered. Rip the damn thing off, and I can find you. We can always give you another bracelet. Liam can make them out of damned near anything, and Tyler can now recite every spell to activate them he’s ever looked at, chapter and verse. We can get you set up.”

  “Good to know.” Another rush of emotion zipped through me, warm and comforting, and I blinked. “But you can’t read my mind at all when I’m wearing it, right?”

  He made a face. “Absolutely not,” he assured me, then slanted me an intrigued, more assessing glance, holding my gaze. We’d stopped—why had we stopped?—in the middle of the sidewalk, the few other walkers moving around us like leaves skirting rocks in a stream. “Why, do you want me to?”

  “Oh, of course not.” I swallowed, then heard my own words as if they were coming from far away. “That would be crazy.”

  He didn’t drop his gaze for another second, maybe two, his eyes seeming to reach inside me, searching, exploring. I felt myself shift toward him without consciously trying to, my breath catching in my throat—

  Then he grinned. “Well, we’re all a little bit crazy here, right?”

  The moment of tension between us flashed away as quickly as it’d arrived, and we started walking again. Had we stopped? We had to have stopped, turned toward each other, but now we were facing forward again, moving easily, and the flow of people around us felt unchanged. That strange time-displacement thing had happened before when we’d kissed but—we hadn’t kissed this time.

  Right?

  Our chatter returned along with our movement. Zach asked me about my search for Mom so far, my classes. I pointed out my favorite coffee shop as we passed, and we moved on, almost like normal people. We reached my apartment a few minutes later, and without a word, I led Zach upstairs, pausing only briefly to disengage all the locks. He made no comment, but as he opened the door and stepped inside, he looked around, startled.

  “Do you live here with somebody else?” he asked.

  I snorted. Only Mrs. Pendleton, staring at my feet. But I got the feeling Zach meant a real person. “Not at all. I mean, Tyler was here the other day. Is that what you mean?”

  “No, this doesn’t feel like Tyler. I know his energy.”

  I gave him another sideways glance. “Ah…is that a thing? Knowing energy?”

  He shrugged. “You know how I can read people’s thoughts, right? Well, sometimes they leave, I don’t know, a sort of residue behind. That…probably sounds strange, now that I think about it. But there’s something off here. A ward maybe? I don’t know.”

  I blinked, remembering Mrs. Pendleton’s comment. “Actually, I may know what you’re picking up on. At the risk of sounding pushy, wanna check out my bedroom?”

  Zach’s grin was immediate and broad, but I turned away, laughing before he could get in a full eyebrow waggle.

  “It’s back here.” He obligingly followed me down the hallway—but we didn’t make it far. He stopped in front of the bathroom, moved forward…then backward. Then he leaned down and peered toward the toilet.

  “Do I even want to know?” I groaned as he fished out his phone.

  “You fix things for long enough, you see things that shouldn’t be there. It’s ninety percent of figuring out what’s broken. And you, my friend, have something that damned sure looks like a surveillance camera where it absolutely shouldn’t be, under the tank.”

  “A camera. Under the toilet.”

  “I know, right? You’d be su
rprised at how many apartments have cameras now, but…generally not where this one is.” He continued scrolling through his apps. “Lemme check this other thing…”

  He pointed the phone into the room, scanning quickly. “Just the one, looks like.” He glanced back to me. “I don’t suppose you’re trying to keep track of how many times you go to the bathroom?”

  “No.” I choked off a laugh as he handed me the phone, then entered the bathroom. He angled his long, lanky body to the side, bending down until he was eye level with the camera. “Huh,” he said.

  “Huh, what? What does huh mean?”

  Zach wedged himself closer to the device, and I sent up a prayer of thanks that I kept the entire apartment reasonably clean. “It doesn’t appear activated. The indicator light isn’t covered or anything, it’s just dead.”

  “Oh.” I breathed out a sigh of relief. “That’s good, then, right?”

  “It’s less bad, anyway. This is better.” With a discernible pop, he pulled the camera off the wall, then straightened, handing over the small device. “This isn’t top of the line, and it isn’t new, but it’s not like it’s ancient either. Someone installed it, though I can’t imagine why they put it here.”

  He shot a glance along the line of the camera trajectory and shook his head. “It’s not a wide-angle lens. All that camera’s going to get is foot traffic. And seriously, we’re talking only feet.”

  “Well, feet are important.” I opened the medicine cabinet door and tucked the camera inside the pristine shelves. Meanwhile, Zach poked at the rolling bins I’d set against the wall by the toilet.

  “That’s a lot of gauze for one girl,” he noted, and as I winced and turned back to him, he looked at me with something different in his eyes. Something darker, more focused. “Good thing you’re not just any girl.”

  My breath died in my throat, and the errant thought struck me again. Had we kissed, out there on the sidewalk? Had I somehow forgotten? My cheeks burned, and I forced myself to stay focused.