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  Shit, shit, shit. I clasped my hands, twisting, pulling, over and over. “C…c…cleaning duties.” I pulled my cardigan tighter. “Gildron Markyus gave me detention.”

  Blaze’s lips pursed, and his eyebrows drew down in a hard line. I swallowed against the lump blocking my throat.

  “Come with me.” He squeezed my arm, the pressure of his grip hurting me. I wondered if he’d turn a blind eye if he knew I was helping Luna. He had a thing for her, after all. A thing I wasn’t supposed to know about. But I’d read the signs, the doey eyes, the glances, smiles.

  “Blaze, please. I’m helping Luna. Don’t suppose you could pretend you never saw me?” I mentally crossed my fingers.

  He stared at me with crazed eyes, red veins glowing inside them, and my heart skipped a few beats. “Luna?”

  He shook me harder and cold, sticky panic dripped down my spine. Blaze was tough, but never physical. Something was not right with him.

  “Let me go.” I spun, raising my arm, bringing it down over his, trying to break his connection. But his grip held. Unbreakable like steel. He fingers dug into me, and I winced.

  “I need a distraction, dear girl.” His cold, hard voice sounded foreign, and he hissed the S.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” No amount of jerking freed me.

  “You’ll see.”

  ****

  “Why are you interrupting my lunch?” Kymbal, the headmaster’s plummy voice reminded me of the rich, bratty kids from Sydney. “Whatever it is, you deal with it. I have better things to attend to, new reforms to the campus, cleaning up the mess my predecessor left.”

  This guy was an asshole with a capital A. He liked to punish for sport, and none of the students liked him or his boring gargoyle history classes.

  I twisted my hands. Once, twice, three times. Anxious didn’t begin to describe my current state. I could barely catch my breath and hunched forward in the great wooden chair seeming to swallow me.

  “My apologies for interrupting you, sir.” Blaze stood beside me, arms behind his back, his gaze glassy, empty, and spaced out. “But I found this student in the restricted area.”

  Fuck. He hadn’t just thrown me under the bus, he’d driven a nail into my coffin. I still couldn’t believe his weird ass had dragged me here. Wait until Luna hears what a shit you are.

  Kymbal straightened, and he put down his sandwich. He lost his usual bored glaze, replaced it with an alert focus and intensity that reminded me of a tiger who’d just targeted its prey.

  I rubbed my tight jaw three times. Couldn’t let it lock up when I had a lot to say. “You were in the storeroom, too. Pinching something I bet.” I nodded to Kymbal. “You should search him.”

  Blaze shot me a disgruntled glare.

  The headmaster’s turned his gaze back to Blaze. His eyebrows drew together in what I interpreted as annoyance. But I wasn’t the best at reading social cues... “What were you doing in there?”

  “Collecting ingredients for this afternoon’s class.” Blaze spoke with unrestrained aggression. Someone didn’t like having his authority questioned.

  I waved my hands. “Wait, wait, wait.” I needed to at least try to talk my way out of it. “This is just a big misunderstanding, sir.”

  Kymbal folded his hands in front of him. “Breaking into a forbidden area of the Guild is a misunderstanding? Those areas are restricted for a reason, Miss. Nomical. For the safety of the students.”

  I shrugged multiple times. This earned me a strange look from the headmaster. Crap. My habitual repetition made me look guilty, but I couldn’t help it. “I got lost.”

  “Lost?” Kymbal’s eyes narrowed as they panned down my body. “What is tucked into the breast of your uniform?”

  Pervert was checking out my chest. I flicked my hands repeatedly to rid myself of his ick factor.

  Blaze’s deadened eyes found lowered to my chest. The red lines fired then faded away. Creepy. But they’d found the scroll. Crap.

  I crossed my arms over my boobs.

  Kymbal’s chair scraped against the stone as he stood. I shivered at the horrid noise. “Remove the item, or I’ll do it for you.”

  The message was loud and clear: I wasn’t getting out of here until I complied. Hands shaking, I removed the scroll from inside my shirt and handed it to him.

  Maybe I could appeal to his caring side. Show him I wasn’t a bad student. Just concerned for a friend in trouble. “I was just trying to help Luna.”

  “Luna is an enemy of the Guild.” He snatched up the magical parchment like he’d found a gold bar.

  Blaze’s eyes widened, and he stared at the document with the greed of a man who wanted to obtain a powerful talisman.

  The headmaster shoved the scroll into the top drawer of his desk. “Thank, you, Blaze. You may leave now.”

  The Gildron hesitated, his gaze glued to the desk. He wanted that document. Well. Didn’t we all? Tightness around his mouth revealed his annoyance as he departed the office.

  Kymbal fixed me with a piercing stare. “How’d you know about this parchment and its location?”

  I didn’t respond. No point incriminating myself.

  Obsidian shuffled closer and we both looked at him. He wilted. Damn gargoyle had a terrible poker face.

  “Gargoyles are Guild property and not supposed to be used in this fashion.” I flinched at the snap in the headmaster’s voice.

  Guild property? Obsidian was my protector. Each Guild member received their own guardian upon appointment to the Guild. He belonged to me.

  “Do you realize what might have happened if this”—he laid a hand over the drawer where he’d shoved the parchment—“got into the hands of our enemies?” My brain seized with anxiety. Too many questions. Too fast.

  I rubbed my hands together. Nitty gritty time. “You stole from Luna’s mind, sir. That information belongs to her, not you. I was giving it back.” Normally I spoke my mind, a symptom of my Asperger’s. Sometimes, I could control it, but not today when my hostility surged. “You didn’t tell her you were going to expel her before you extracted the information. You took it under false pretenses.”

  I thought he might back off. But no. “Stealing from the Guild is a crime.”

  Oh, shit.

  If I had to do it all over again, steal for Luna to stop the Guild’s enemies, the Serpent Brotherhood, from claiming dominion over Earth and all the supernatural creatures, then sign me up.

  Incited by the heat of my anger, my feisty side took over. “That’s a little pot and kettle, don’t you think? The Guild—you now—is in possession of stolen memories. Yet you have the wherewithal to lecture me about theft? Hypocrite.” Oh, shit. His eyes flashed and I leaned back in my chair. “Just saying.”

  Stupid with a capital S to poke the bear. Hypocrite might’ve been a little strong. But the headmaster was a hypocrite with the power to kick me out of the Guild.

  His face flushed, and he snapped to his feet. “The previous headmaster was too easy on you. No more. You’re going to the Guild of Guardians.”

  This guy was really busting my lady balls. I shook my head. “Excuse me, what, now?”

  The guardians were the low lives of the Guild. Criminals, villains, and traitors. I didn’t belong with them. All I was doing was trying to help a friend figure out what information her parents hid inside her mind so she could stop the Guild’s enemies. I intended to return the scroll after Luna reviewed it. How was that bad?

  Silver Blazes. I rubbed my forehead over and over trying to ease the rising anxiety. I had to make a new plan. Figure out how to get the information to Luna. I couldn’t let down my friend.

  “Sentries!” His voice, dark and deep, tore through the silence. When they arrived a few moments later, he pointed at me. “Take this thief to the Guardians.”

  Chapter 3

  Astra

  “Hands out.” The sentry, a warrior in charge of defending the Guild, clutched a pair of energy cuffs.

  I blinked
and raised my hands to shield my eyes from the bright light behind him. For the last ten hours, I’d been stuck in the back of a dark, cold, steel van, with no air. The guard who sat opposite me had eaten beans last night and farted all the way from Bathurst to Broken Hill. Probably did it on purpose to torment me. Motherfucker. If it weren’t for the spelled runes etched into the van, preventing me from using my magic, I’d have transformed those farts into their chemical components. Nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, oxygen, carbon, and a lot of stinky methane. Then no more smell. Chemical one-oh-one. It was kind of my thing since that was how my magic worked.

  Rough hands jerked my wrists forward. This was how I was going to be treated from now on. Like dirt. Metal handcuffs clicked onto my wrists, activating the magic in them while dampening mine. I wrung my hands.

  It was official. I was a prisoner. A member of the Guardians. Home to all kinds of villains who had committed crimes while working for the Shadows. A prison of sorts, where Guild criminals, paid for their offenses through dangerous missions. As a Guardian, I was considered an expendable asset to the Guild, my freedom nonexistent, my life someone else’s property for the next twenty-five years, as sentenced by the Gildron Council, under pressure from Kymbal.

  Fuck, this was my fault. I messed up. More than I’ve ever messed up before. Worse than the time I punched Michelle back in high school for being a racist bitch and got kicked out thanks to zero fighting tolerance. Anger management had nothing on the promise of prison. This was worse than the time I snuck out in junior high to meet my friends and got grounded for a month. Worse than the time I called one of my gamer friends a precious little princess and got kicked out of my gaming team.

  I was a convicted thief. Something I could never erase from my record.

  Worse still, I’d failed Luna. I hoped she was okay. I wondered how she was doing. Whether she’d been able to get the information she needed to fight her grandfather and the Serpents. It was information that belonged to her. I wondered if she was safe outside the protection of the Shadows. How she was handling being expelled from the academy. If her men had rallied around her to protect her and help her where I couldn’t. Hopefully Blaze had snuck the magical parchment out for her. That asshole. If he hadn’t taken me to the headmaster’s office, I never would have ended up here.

  I sighed and glanced at the metal cage beside me housing Obsidian who looked as miserable as I felt. Poor little guy was just as freaked out as me. We made the worst pair.

  My gaze drifted to my suitcase and backpack. Keychains dangled from the zippers: Deadpool, Batman, Pokémon Pikachu, Storm Troopers and Harry Potter. My fan girl ode to pop culture. I was surprised they’d let me bring all this since I was considered a thieving scumbag crook.

  The guard climbed down the van’s steps carrying my baggage and gargoyle cage to hand off to a weary, rugged older sentry outside.

  Unease crawled under my skin, and I wanted to scratch it away.

  “Get out.” The authority in his tone told me not to mess around.

  My gut twisted as I shuffled to the back of the transport van.

  I squeezed my hands again. Here, in this new Guild, in a new city, far away from those I loved, I was out of my element. The dose of magic that had calmed me earlier began to fade and another episode lingered close.

  I gripped the necklace gifted to me by Blaze, the same asshat who got me sent here. When I first started at the Guild of Shadows, he’d noticed I wasn’t coping, and I’d confided in him about my condition. He’d infused his magic into my necklace. It glowed with the five colors of the djinn. Use this. It will settle your brain chemistry and the neurons that trigger your episodes.

  All I had to do was hold it and whisper the words he’d told me. Except with the handcuffs on, it wouldn’t work, and I was about to erupt into a full-blow meltdown. I held it tight, testing to see how I coped in this new and strange environment. An environment I didn’t belong in.

  “Move.” The sentry shoved me with his spear, and I stumbled forward. Charming. Hadn’t said a word to me the entire drive from Bathurst to the Broken Hill—a city in the middle of fricking nowhere. A desert.

  Obsidian growled when the dickhead shoved me a second time, and I would have tumbled down the steps if he hadn’t grabbed me by the back of my shirt. The material hissed as it tore.

  He was going to pay for that. Just like the guy I’d kneed in the balls for snapping my Disney Gargoyles collector pen. This wasn’t just any shirt. It was my Comic Con shirt. It read Eat, Sleep, Fan Girl, Repeat, and pretty much summed me up. Pop culture collectibles were my pride and joy, and I was very particular about them. And when I made this bastard pay it would be way worse that something that earned me a month’s detention and limited activities.

  Hysteria surged inside me. “Watch it. That’s my favorite shirt.”

  I spun to enact my vengeance but a heavy and drawn voice distracted me. “Thank you for delivering the prisoner. Take her belongings inside. Then you may go. The sentries will deal with it.”

  Saved by the warden. And I needed to make a good first impression if I wanted to find a way out of the Guardians. I’d have to be on my best behavior for a while until he realized my sentence was a joke and returned me to the Shadows.

  “Yes, sir.” The sentries both nodded and returned to the transport van.

  The man turned back to me. “Welcome, Miss Nomical.” He was a little kinder than the sentry, but obviously, he wasn’t in the business of making friends. He managed hundreds of criminals. His eyebrows were drawn into a fuzzy line. Weary grey eyes carried the weight of many years, dealing with difficult inmates, Guild politics, and other dramas. “I’m Vartros, custodian of this facility of Guardians.”

  He wore jeans and an old tweed jacket that had seen its fair share of years. I guessed his age to be about two hundred. His jacket, mustard with brown stripes, said it had seen the Elvis era—Presley not Costello—and I was surprised he didn’t wear a turtleneck with it when he wore an old grandpa hat. This guy needed to go to Gazman and get some clothes from this decade.

  “Hi,” I muttered, not sure what else to say to the warden.

  Vartros gestured for me to walk with him. “You’ll find things here are different from other human prisons.” His firm and penetrating words struck like a bell tolling.

  He eyed me, probably waiting for me to bolt while I sat there wondering if I could make it to the outside before they killed me. I gripped my amulet again and smoothed the wrinkles from my now wrecked shirt.

  Twenty-five fricking years for stealing something. Ridiculous. They could have taken my extracurricular activities for a month. No gaming, movies, parties. Detention for six months. Taken away my chocolate, my dildo, my beloved romance audiobooks, my damn hair straightener, but jail was excessive.

  I brushed a shaky hand through my orange-streaked dark hair. Hot tears stung my eyes, and I glanced at my wrist, shackled with a menacing glowing metal.

  I gritted my teeth. Kymbal, that asshole, used me to set an example. To tell the other Guild students that if they broke the rules they’d be severely punished. Claimed he was sick and tired of the previous headmaster’s leniency, but I called bullshit. This wasn’t about me. It was about him. He led with a heavy and dictatorial hand. I’d make him suffer somehow for this.

  “You may reduce your sentence through various means,” Vartros said. “Good behavior, extra chores, more dangerous missions.”

  That one perked my interest.

  I took off my glasses and cleaned them with the lower hem of my shirt while he explained things like the Guardians was a co-ed prison, working with teams, the accommodations and how they were chosen and prisoner leave every month to visit family.

  That last one eased the ache in my chest at missing my mom, sister and dog. I’d be counting down the days until I could visit them again.

  When I put my glasses on, I studied the Guild of Guardians facility. Thirty foot stone walls lined with barbed wire. Gargoyles p
erched everywhere, scanning the perimeters. Towers in every corner with armed guards, overlooking the yards inside. Gloomy grey skies that carried the threat of lightning. Depressing. My anxiety peeked, and I teetered on the edge of another episode.

  Silver Blazes. I desperately needed another shot of magic from my necklace. Not happening with the cuffs on. I didn’t want to rely on his powers, but they were like a drug. And they helped me get through situations where I was way out of my comfort zone.

  A stone rumbled in my stomach as heavy steel doors rolled open, the mechanical clogs clacking, making me jerk. That rock settled at the base of my gut when those doors clunked shut behind us.

  The warden led me to two sentries posted by what looked like a metal detector. My baggage and gargoyle’s cage sat beside it.

  Nervous sweat dampened my armpits as one of the sentries removed the handcuffs and placed a metallic bracelet on one wrist.

  “This bracelet is your tracker.” The warden stood at my left, his frown probably appropriate but not at all comforting. “If you don’t return from a mission by the specified time and date, this bracelet will emit frequencies that will make you ill, give you migraines, weaken you. Do you understand?”

  I twisted my wrist to examine. Symbols carved into the metal held dark shadows along with a little red light. I sighed. I didn’t want to be here. So far from my family, my friend, and old life at Bathurst. “I understand.”

  “Take off anything metallic and walk through the body scanners,” the sentry ordered.

  Before I obeyed, I picked up the necklace with Blaze’s powers embedded inside. I needed another hit. My anxiety needed another hit.

  Obsidian scratched the cage with his lion paw the way he’d often do to my shoulder; his way of trying to calm me. He was like an epilepsy dog, sensing when an attack might come on. But not even his comfort helped today.

  I whispered the magical words to activate my necklace. But nothing happened.

  The warden stretched out a hand. “No magic is permitted inside the prison. The dampeners will take care of that.”