“If we’re not clan, they could.The Circle owns our asses.”
“They do, at least until we’re eighteen,” Kimmie agreed.“And in some ways, even after.”
“But as part of Fireborn, we’re clan,” Sophie said.“We haverights.Under Were law, they can’t touch us!”
“And did you anticipate that when you made the offer?”Jen asked, watching me.“Did you think it through, talk it over with Cyrus, withSebastian?”
“No,” I admitted, because it was the truth.“But I will.”
“Uh-huh.Then we’ll talk about it after that happens,” she said dryly.
“The hell?”Sophie exploded.“Do you not get what Lia just—”
“We found a dead body on the floor, in that merchant’s shop, down in Tartarus,” Jen said, changing the subject and cutting her off with a look.She wasn’t going to discuss this without confirmation, and I didn’t blame her.
Cyrus was gonna lose his shit.
Sebastian might just kill me.
But this was a hill I was willing to die on, I realized.There was no way I was sending these kids back to the Circle, to be used as cannon fodder in their war.It was bad enough with my old students back at HQ, which I’d had before being tapped for this job.I hadn’t liked training wide-eyed nineteen-year-olds then, but had told myself to give them the best chance they had of surviving this.
But what chance would my new kids have?When the Circle not only didn’t value their lives, but would frankly probably prefer it if they didn’t make it through the war?Fewer problems afterward, that way.
No one had ever said so, but I knew how things worked, like I knew these kids would be put on the harder and more dangerous missions.Their abilities would make that likely, even if the prejudice against them didn’t exist, and I couldn’t allow that.Any more than I was willing to allow Sebastian to use the rest of the clan.
And full status would protect them.
I just didn’t know who would protect me.
“Jen!”Sophie was glaring at her friend.
“I’m done,” Jen told her shortly.“I’m not getting my hopes up for nothing, not over this.And the man hadn’t been dead long,” she added to me, “so I decided to go in and take a look.”
“Go in?”I repeated blankly, and then I saw her again, kneeling on the floor amidst a shattering of glass, reaching into the dead man’s mind… literally.I’d always thought, when I thought about it at all, that a necro’s job was more spirit-adjacent, but she’d just kind of dug in there.
Not that I could talk.
“I don’t know why people always look like that,” she said, frowning at whatever was on my face.“It’s no different than someone doing an autopsy, except it’s on the brain and sometimes more useful.”
“And how did you learn to pick a dead man’s brains?”I asked, wondering if I wanted to know.
“I didn’t know that I could for a long time.My parents wouldn’t let me practice my abilities at home, even when my uncle offered to train me.I think they were hoping they’d just go away.But I was at Meadowbrook one day—”
“Meadowbrook?”Kimmie asked.
“That was the local facility,” Jen told her, and looked at me.“You know, for people like us.They always call them something that sounds pretty, I guess to reassure the parents.Sending your kid to ‘Meadowbrook’ sounds better than magical juvie.”
“Or torture dungeon,” Sophie muttered.
“Anyway, if you’re identified as having necro abilities—or anything else the Circle disapproves of—you have to get tested every year.If your power is weak, they mostly let you alone, as long as you stay out of trouble.But if you test above the threshold—”
“And they never tell you what that is,” Kimmie added.
“Then clang, clang,” Sophie summed up.
“Yeah,” Jen agreed.“I’d been identified because of my uncle—they watch the bloodlines of known necromancer families—but I was only nine, and my power was thought to be weak—”
“Thought to be?”I repeated.
