All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [281]
Great for them.
For the living, though—namely her, Eliot, and Robert—they’d missed most of spring semester, the last two matches in gym class, and finals . . . which was why Miss Westin had called them up to her clock-tower office.
Fiona had no doubt the Headmistress was going to fail them. She could see her chewing them out and then having Mr. Dells march them off campus and slam the gates shut on them.
She checked the time, scared that it’d somehow slip away from her again.
Four minutes to go.
She looked at her text messages. Nothing new . . . just that last message from Mitch—how he told her he had some family business to take care of (technically, not a lie).
She felt a twinge and something hollow where her stomach used to be as she remembered how he had taken her on magical walks . . . how she’d loved his company then . . . and that last moment together in Hell . . . and everything that could’ve been between them.
Before her ex-boyfriend had planted a sword in his back.
She pushed that thought aside. She had to focus on the disaster that was about to happen.
What was Audrey going to say when they got kicked out? And the League of Immortals? Their two new star members were going to flunk their first year.
Of course, Audrey hadn’t even been home when they’d come back. Cee had been all over them, tried to feed them, coddle them, and then she’d told them that Audrey had heard what had happened. She’d gone to the League Council to decide what they were going to do.
Decide what they were going to do, that is, without her or Eliot’s input. As usual.
She cast a sidelong glance at her brother. Time, however, hadn’t been the only thing that had gotten away from her in Hell.
She’d lost a part of Eliot down there.
Okay—first off, she acknowledged that them missing school wasn’t entirely his fault. There was no way he could have known about that time-in-Hell thing.
And it wasn’t his fault that Amanda had exploded. No one could have seen that coming, either.
She swallowed, feeling as if she were still drowning in guilt about that, though.
But Eliot had made the choice to take a piece of the Infernals’ lands and become the lord of that domain. No matter how small his land was . . . that still made him an Infernal Lord.
He’d gotten exactly what he set out to get: his evil, backstabbing, sort-of girlfriend was now free of Sealiah. Eliot would be able to handle her as well as he could control a runaway nuclear chain reaction with a pair of pliers and a screwdriver.
He was in way over his head.
And what was he going to tell Audrey? Hi, Mom. Guess what happened while we ditched school? I joined your enemies, the fallen angels.
And there he sat, looking as smug as if he’d just won seven rounds of vocabulary insult. His hair, uncut all year, was all curls and cowlicks, but he was finally able to pull back. Despite the astonishing and astronomical odds against it, Eliot almost looked cool.
Crazy. This entire situation.
Maybe Uncle Henry could help her slip Eliot some quick electroshock therapy to bring him back to his senses.
But really, what did it mean to own land in Hell and be called an Infernal Lord? It was just a title, right? He couldn’t really be one of them.
The door to Miss Westin’s office opened and the pale boy who had ushered them before emerged. He bowed. “Good Lady and Master,” he said. “Please, the Headmistress will see you now.”
Fiona’s heart pounded in her throat. She was like a little kid again about to be punished for leaving her clothes on the floor. How did the adults in her life always do that to her?
Eliot got to his feet.
There was no way she was going to let him be the brave one, so she stood, got ahead of him, and led the way.
Fiona remembered Miss Westin’s office as being long—but today it seemed like it had stretched to the length of a football field as they walked past dozens of Tiffany lamps, acres of walnut paneling, a hundred different doors (which Fiona was sorely