The Vows We Broke

A Murder that Should be Impossible

Chapter Nine

DAYLE

A dead boy was admitted to a hospital ward six hours before he died.

I keep turning it over like a stone in my pocket. Logged in alive at eleven at night. Logged out dead at five in the morning. And somewhere in those six hours, someone strapped him to a table, and something with my brother's voice crawled inside him.

Eleven at night.

The same hour I stepped off the train.

I don't believe in coincidence. So by three in the afternoon, I'm standing in the security office of Itákratos Academy, and the man behind the desk is doing his very best to make me leave.

"Absolutely not," says Cassian Holt.

He's the academy's director of security.

Fifties, gray suit, gray tie, gray eyes, like someone dipped him in cement and let him set. His office is spotless. His desk holds one pen, one tablet, and one framed photograph turned so only he can see it.

"I'm requesting the footage from the restricted medical ward," Billie says pleasantly. "Two nights ago. Eleven p.m. to five a.m."

"And I'm declining."

"It's an active investigation."

"It's a closed one. The ruling was accidental death." Holt folds his hands on the desk. "The academy doesn't share internal security footage with outside agencies."

"Then it's lucky I brought a warrant." Billie lays a folded sheet of paper on his desk.

Holt doesn't look at it. He looks at me. "And Miss Prescott? Is she on your warrant too, Inspector?"

"She's my consultant."

"She's a suspect in the death of her brother."

"Suspended," I say. "Not convicted. You can look it up."

He studies me for a long, cold moment. Then he picks up the warrant, reads it twice, and sets it down with a small, tight sigh.

"Twenty minutes," he says. "In this room. Under my supervision."

"Fine," Billie says.

"And no copies."

"Of course not," says Billie, who absolutely has a camera running in her coat pocket. Holt turns his monitor toward us and pulls up the footage. The restricted ward. A long, quiet corridor. Soft night lighting. Time stamp in the corner: 23:04. At 23:06, the boy appears. I recognize him at once.

Cropped hair.

Thin shoulders.

Walking, alive, in academy sweats, with his hands shoved into his pockets. He doesn't look sick. He doesn't look frightened. He just walks down the corridor toward the far end, steady and calm, like he knows exactly where he's going. At the end of the corridor, there's a door. Heavy. Steel. Painted a dull institutional gray. The boy stops in front of it. Then he opens it and walks through.

"Where does that lead?" I ask.

Holt's mouth tightens. "The east wing."

"What's in the east wing?"

"Nothing. It was sealed seven years ago. Structural damage."

Seven years ago.

Billie and I look at each other.

"Then how did he open it?" I ask.

"He couldn't have," Holt says. "That door is warded. It hasn't opened in seven years. Our logs show no activity."

"Your footage shows him walking through it."

Holt says nothing. I lean closer to the screen. Something's bothering me. The boy's walk is steady, but it's too smooth. Too perfect. His shadow doesn't quite match the way the light falls. I've seen doctored footage before. This doesn't look doctored. It looks wrong in a way I don't have a word for. I don't have the right eyes. But I know someone who does.

Kai arrives in under ten minutes.

I called him. I didn't want to. I sat with my thumb over his name for a long time after Billie said, If you know someone who can read this, call them.

Kai has watched me for seven years. He stood at the end of my lane in the middle of the night, watching my brother's window. He is the only person in this city who can read magic in a recording like other people read a newspaper. He walks into Holt's office without knocking, still buttoning his coat. He doesn't look at Holt. He looks at me first. Quick, careful, as if he's checking for damage. I look away.

"Show me," he says.

Billie replays the footage. Kai watches it once, standing perfectly still. Then he asks Holt to slow it down. Then to stop it on a single frame of the boy's face. He leans close to the screen and looks for a long time.

"It's been altered," he says quietly.

Holt bristles. "Our footage is secure."

"It's not edited. It's remembered." Kai touches the screen, just beside the boy's shoulder. "Vampire memory magic. Someone took the real recording and laid a memory over it. A clean, calm walk. The real one is underneath." He glances at me. "That's why his shadow doesn't match the light. Memory doesn't care about physics."

"Can you see what's underneath?" I ask.

"Not from here. Not without breaking it." He straightens. "But someone with very old, very expensive training did this. It isn't student work."

Vampire memory magic.

In a recording.

In a sealed wing. I look at Kai, whose House trades in memory. He looks back, and his face gives away nothing at all.

"I want to see the east wing," I say.

"Absolutely not," Holt says, for the second time today.

"Then I'll go without your permission."

"The corridor is sealed."

"Then the boy didn't walk into it, and your footage is lying. Which is it?"

Holt doesn't answer. Billie hides a smile behind her hand. I'm already moving toward the door.Kai steps into my path. Not touching me. Just there.

"Get out of my way, Kai."

"No."

"You don't get to—"

"You're not going in there alone." His voice is low and steady. "You can hate me. You can go in. But you're not going alone."

I stare at him. He stares back. He doesn't move.

"Fine," I say. "Keep up."

The steel door at the end of the medical corridor isn't locked.

I expected wards. Sigils. Something to fight. Instead, the handle turns under my hand, and the door swings inward on hinges that don't make a sound. The air beyond is cold and stale and smells of dust and old stone. The lights are dead. Kai switches on a small flashlight, and the beam picks out a long, narrow corridor lined with doors. Plaster has fallen from the ceiling in places. Dust lies thick on the floor.

Except down the middle.

There, a path has been worn through the dust. Footprints. Many of them. Coming and going.

"Sealed for seven years," I murmur.

"Apparently not," Kai says.

We follow the path. Halfway down, it stops in front of a section of wall paneled in dark wood. One panel sits slightly crooked. The dust around its edges has been disturbed. I crouch and work my fingers into the gap. The panel comes away easily. Behind it is a shallow hollow in the stone. And in the hollow is a photograph. I pick it up by the edges. It's old. Creased. The colors faded to yellow and brown. Six young men stand on the steps outside the academy library, all of them around eighteen, arms slung around each other's necks, laughing at something outside the frame. Gabe is in the middle.

Malachi beside him, already broad and serious, trying not to smile and failing.

Dante with his head thrown back, mid-laugh. Kai at the edge, half turned away, the corner of his mouth lifted. Rohan, gentle and lanky. Campbell, stiff and formal, with Gabe's arm hooked around his neck so hard his collar's crooked. And in the corner of the photograph, a skinny thirteen-year-old girl in braids, sticking her tongue out at the camera.

Me.

I don't remember this picture.

I don't remember the day.

I don't let myself look at their faces for very long. I know what I'll hear if I do. Six voices, all talking at once. Gabe's laugh over everything. I can't. Not here. I slide the photograph into an evidence sleeve with hands that aren't quite steady.

"Kai," I say. "Did you know this was here?"

"No."

He's looking over my shoulder at it. His voice sounds strange.

"Then who put it here? And why?" I turn the sleeve over. "Someone knew I'd come into this corridor. Someone knew I'd find the panel. Someone left this for me."

Someone has been one step ahead of me since the moment I stepped off the train.

The flowers.

The note.

The footage.

The photograph. Every move I've made, they've already made. Behind us, something clicks. The steel door we came through slams shut. The sound booms down the corridor like a cannon. Plaster rains from the ceiling. The flashlight beam jerks wildly as Kai spins toward the noise. Along the walls, faint lines of light begin to glow. Old sigils, carved into the stone and painted over, burning back to life one after another, racing toward us down the length of the hall.

A ward.

The air turns ice-cold. My breath fogs. The mark on my wrist burns so hard I gasp.

And from the far end of the corridor, out of the dark, something comes. It's tall. Taller than a man. Thin and pale and wrong, like smoke poured into the shape of a body. It has no face. Just a long, smooth blankness where a face should be. It moves without touching the floor.

It's hungry.

I can feel it.

The hunger rolls off it in waves, cold and old and patient. Kai moves before I can. He steps in front of me and pulls me back against him, hard. My back hits his chest. His arm locks across my collarbones like an iron bar. His other hand holds the flashlight steady on the thing in the corridor.

He's cold.

He's always cold.

But I can feel his heart beating against my spine, fast and hard.

"Don't move," he breathes against my ear. "Don't look away from it. And whatever you do, don't run."

"I wasn't planning to."

"Liar."

The spirit drifts closer. The cold deepens. Frost creeps across the dusty floor. Kai doesn't move. He stands between me and it like a wall. The spirit stops a few feet from us. Its blank face turns. Slowly. Not toward Kai. It ignores him completely. As if he isn't even there. It turns toward me. And from somewhere inside that smooth, empty face, a voice whispers. Low and hollow and ancient.

"Last Prescott."