John the driver shot Rory a look that said it all. He thought Rory was going to get him in the crapper with the Sandman. Rory leaned forward to John and spoke quietly. “Some of the kids will figure out where we’re headed. If we said nothing, there would be questions, and the last thing we need is a bus full of panicked trainees. I’m just heading off their questions.”
John gave a reluctant nod. “The Sandman dinna want no one knowing what happened,” he said in an undertone. “Keep it to yerself, boy. Got it?”
Rory sat back with me and, of course, all the questions wanted to pour out my mouth. Did he have any idea who’d attacked the other houses? Was stuff like this normal?
What the hell was going on? That last one kept circling through my head, and I worried at it like Whiskers rubbing his horns on the oak tree. Did this have anything to do with Director Frost, the former director of Shadowspell Academy? The vampire I’d killed had been her lover, and I’d helped oust her from her position. Needless to say, she was pissed. It didn’t seem likely she’d be able to cause trouble because she’d been wrapped up in chains and shipped off to a prison specializing in magical criminals. At the same time, I wouldn’t put it past her.
What really surprised me was that the kids still didn’t question the change in direction. Again, they were supposed to be joining the House of Shade. A training ground for assassins and high-end bodyguards, among other things. They should be learning to question everything.
Especially when the rules suddenly changed.
I asked Rory what was up with the lack of curiosity, and he said, “I gave them a reasonable excuse. You’re one of a kind, Wild. You ask questions no one else would think to. You dig into the shadows when other people are content pretending everything is okay. That’s good and bad. Here, in school, mostly bad.”
“Did the Culling Trials teach them nothing?” I asked, still keeping my voice low, though I knew it was intense. “I mean, come on, this is beyond dumb!”
Rory shook his head. “The Culling Trials were harder on you and your crew than I’ve ever heard of in the school’s history. You have to understand that the kids on this bus weren’t put through the same stuff. They were tested, but not to that level. They just had to show their skills—they didn’t have to fight to survive the same way.”
Of course they didn’t. Because no one was actually trying to kill them.
“Yay for being special,” I muttered and slid over to the window so I could watch where we were going.
Or watch for anything that might be coming our way so I could be ready. I tuned in to my intuition, waiting for one of the trickles of warning that had saved me and my crew more than once in the Culling Trials.
But it never came.
An hour ticked by in seriously slow moving traffic through the south end of New York City without anything happening. My energy fizzled, and while I had more questions, I kept them to myself. I didn’t think Rory would be able to answer them anyway. He was in the dark with the rest of us.
We pulled into a ritzy part of New York City with all sorts of boutique shops lining the street. SoHo, I heard someone behind us mumble. My lip curled up as I snorted, though I knew very little about the area other than that it was high end. “How am I not surprised this is where the House of Wonder trains? Seriously? How are they going unnoticed?”
One of the girls behind me leaned forward. “I heard they get the best trainers from all the houses to work with them here. The rest of us have to scrape the bottom of the barrel.”
I twisted around to look at her. “Explain.”
She shrugged, seemingly pleased now that she had my attention. And Rory’s.
He gave her a warning look, which she ignored. It made me like her a little more. “Each house has trainers from the other houses to help the students hone their skills and prepare to deal with other types of magic. But the House of Wonder takes only the best. The rest of us are left with the worst of the trainers. It’s a way to keep us in line, you see? No one ever gets to move up the ladder that way.”
“Enough, Genevieve,” Rory said, his voice hard.
Genevieve flipped her long blond ponytail back and smiled at me. “I’m just saying. It will be interesting to see who has been taken to mentor the House of Wonder kids.” Her eyes darted to Rory and then back to me—as if she already knew, and so did he.
“You train the kids here?” I asked.
Rory’s face tightened. “I help the Sandman at the House of Wonder from time to time, yes.”
We parked in front of an enormous building that rivaled the Empire State Building in size and prestige. The carvings in the stone were gilded, and the façade was made of glittering stone that reflected light like a freaking beacon and screamed look at us, we got all the money.
“HERE? This is the House of Wonder?” I mean, I didn’t really have to ask. I just had to look at the place to know it was true.
He nodded, his lips tight in a grim line.
I stared at the building in front of us. I didn’t know much about New York, admittedly, but I knew about all of the “must see” sights on tourists’ hit lists. This wasn’t one of them. How could that be?
The structure literally shone like a spotlight to anyone walking by, sparkly and so full of magic and money, I couldn’t believe it wasn’t the ninth wonder of the world.
My eyes tracked the humans walking by, eyes forward or heads down. They didn’t so much as look up at the massive highrise that shimmered in the sun. Like they didn’t see it. Or the simple fact that we got parking with a big-ass school bus in SoHo. Even I knew that wasn’t possible without some serious magic.
“What do they see?” I asked, narrowing my eyes even as I looked at the massive structure. The image wavered as if my eyes were suddenly watering, and the building I’d been staring at disappeared into nothing.
An empty lot in the middle of New York was all that I saw now. Garbage and rubble were heaped up over the narrow space, all surrounded by a chain link fence plastered with warning signs. Condemned. Slated for demolition. New owners. Coming soon. There was even a distinct smell of piss and rotten food that drifted into the bus through the closed windows. My nose wrinkled.
A large black cat scooted over the highest pile of garbage, a mouse in its mouth as it darted away with its prize. But was that even real? I wondered if it was some sort of spell that played over and over again, and if that cat would show up again in a few minutes with the same mouse in its mouth. Like some magical version of the Matrix.
Rory stood. “Let’s go, everyone inside now.”
“What?” Shaw grumbled from the back. “Why are we here?”
“Sandman wants to talk to everyone,” Rory said, his tone sharp. “If you’d been listening, you would have realized that. This was the closest house for everyone to get to. Boss man will fill us in on the rest.”
I wasn’t sure that was true based on the rumbles of some of the year two and three students, but again no one questioned Rory. Apparently he really was the top dog in the House of Shade.
“This is going to put a twist in the panties of everyone at the House of Wonder, all of us showing up,” Genevieve said as we filed off the bus. We lined up next to the metal fence, and she placed herself next to me. “You can call me Gen. You were good in the trials.”