“Sounds like she needed to be,” Dad said.

  “You know what it means that I’m a siren, right?” I asked. I could get caught up in this love fest for hours; it didn’t change the reason for me being here.

  Mom and Dad exchanged another one of those married people looks. “You’re a witch, Olivia. As far as anyone knows, that’s all you are. There is no record of your birth.”

  “What? How is that possible?” I looked between the two of them.

  “She comes from an old family, lots of money and connections,” Dad said. “Her attorney was one of the most secretive men I’ve ever met. She was protecting you.”

  “So what records do you have?” I asked, my head swirling.

  “You were abandoned, and we adopted you,” Mom shrugged. “Iliana knew the world we live in. She made sure you were safe.”

  “Well, I’m not safe now,” I said.

  “You don’t have to stay at Nobledark,” Dad said, the worry creasing the space between his eyes.

  “It doesn’t matter where I am,” I stood up again, pacing. “I’m an Underworlder, and all that comes along with that.”

  “You don’t have to tell anyone,” Mom said.

  “Iliana has tried to contact me,” I turned to look at them.

  “What does she say?” Dad asked.

  “I don’t know.” It was my turn to shrug. “I haven’t spoken to her.”

  “You need to talk to her,” Mom said. “I know you don’t want to, but honey, she loved you.”

  “Well, she’s not my mom,” I said. “Not really.”

  Dad came up to put his arms around me. “Yes, she really is. You’re ours, but you’re hers, too. She gave up everything to keep you safe.”

  “Do you have to be so damn nice?” I shouted, pulling away from him. “Why can’t you be mad at her?”

  They looked at one another and then at me. “Because she gave us the greatest gift she could have given. She gave us her child. And now you’re ours. But it doesn’t change that she lost out on you,” Mom said quietly. “I never forget that. Especially after we learned we couldn’t have kids of our own… “ she stopped, and looked away, but not before I saw the sheen of tears in her eyes.

  “Olivia, you need to speak with her,” Dad said.

  “I’m not ready,” I said.

  “There are things that you’ll need to know, not only because you’re a siren—” Mom began.

  “Don’t forget a demon!” I snapped.

  “We don’t know that,” Mom shook her head. “But if it’s true, then it’s even more reason you need to speak with her. The family connection is going to be a thing, too.” She crossed her arms and sat down on the couch.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, sitting down across from her.

  Dad sat next to me, putting an arm around my shoulders. “The Karidias family is powerful, secretive, and fanatical about their privacy. They don’t come out in public, and no one really knows who the members of the family are, or how many there are, or anything,” Dad said. “Iliana always rolled her eyes when she spoke of her family, and once she told me she didn’t have it as bad as the other siren families.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  Mom shrugged. “She never said why, exactly. I got the impression these were part of the family secrets. So you have to talk to her, Olivia. She can tell you so much more.”

  “I don’t want to be an Underworlder,” I said, feeling like a little kid. I was stuck on this part of things.

  “You can’t change what you are. It’s what gives you your water elemental strength, and you’re very strong,” Mom grinned.

  I smiled then, remembering the floods in the kitchen over break.

  “To my mind, it makes you a stronger witch,” Dad said.

  “You two are very calm about this,” I glared at both of them.

  “We’ve had nearly twenty years to deal with it,” Mom replied. “We always knew this would come. But we wanted it to happen without our interference.”

  “You didn’t think about warning me?” I could feel my anger rising. What if this had come out publicly? I thought of the reaper kid at Nobledark again, and despite Jade’s assurances, a shudder passed through me.

  “What if it never needed to come out?” Dad countered. “If you think we didn’t go over and over this, and round and round with our decision, you aren’t giving us enough credit.”

  I leaned back against the couch, thinking. “So basically, you have a box with a freaky lock, part of a story, and a ring,” I said. “What about the attorney you mentioned?”

  “No joy,” Dad said. “I tried to find him over the years, and I never could. I’m guessing magically hidden.”

  “Great,” I said.

  “You have to talk to her,” Mom repeated. Her voice came out soft, and when I met her eyes, she was smiling a little. “I know you don’t want to, and part of me doesn’t want you to, either—but you have to.”

  “Not right now,” I said.

  “Soon,” Dad said.

  “I’ll figure it out,” I muttered, getting up.

  “I know you will,” Mom stood to hug me, not letting me walk away. “Come on, come and help me cook.”

  I didn’t want to. I wanted to scream and kick and yell and make a huge fucking scene. It wasn’t fair. Why didn’t they have more answers? Why couldn’t they tell me what I needed to know—mainly, how to be a siren and hide it—and then let life go back to normal?

  But even as I walked to the kitchen with Mom, I knew such a wish was merely a dream.

  This was my new normal.

  Chapter Seven

  The portal room was busy when I came back to the school on Sunday night. I’d spent the whole weekend with my parents, eating and talking and going over old pictures where they shared with me how parts of my siren self came out—like when they couldn’t get me out of the water during any of our visits to the beach—without getting any further into the details.

  When I’d asked something about being a siren, my mom looked at me and said, “You need to talk to Iliana. If she was really gone, that would be one thing. But she’s not.” And she’d pressed her lips together in a way that told me I wasn’t going to get another thing out of her.

  Dad opened his mouth to say something then, and Mom had whipped her head around and given him a glare of such ferocity he immediately closed his mouth.

  And that had been that.

  I could feel my teeth grinding as I walked back toward my dorm. Pushing the door open into my pod, I saw that both Thalia and Jade’s room doors were open. Normally, I loved the pod. It was how I’d met both of them, and part of why we’d become such good friends. But today, I unlocked my door and shut it behind me quickly. I wasn’t in the mood for an interrogation.

  The ring Iliana left me bit into my finger as I tossed my backpack onto the bed. I flopped down next to it. Out of desperation, I’d done my homework while still at home, and I didn’t have anything to do.

  I thought about my Spells homework. I’d spent the better part of a week working on it. Unlike a lot of the work last term, I’d integrated my elemental strength of water. I felt nervous regarding whether anyone would question me and realized that there were plenty of people here who had a water affinity without being a siren.

  Jade was right. The only person making this weird was me.

  That didn’t mean I had to go around telling everyone my parentage. In fact, I planned to keep that well under wraps.

  With a huff, I got up, unpacked, and changed into my pajamas. I stared at the dark ceiling over my head, unable to allow myself to sleep and relax. Was it really that simple? Just be myself and stop worrying? That went against everything that made me who I was. The thought made me laugh.

  First thing tomorrow, I was going to the library. I needed to learn more about sirens, and while I wanted the information, I wasn’t going to contact Iliana. Not yet. That would come later, but not yet.

  Feeling like I’d solved a problem, even though I hadn’t, I closed my eyes.

  I didn’t know how long I’d been asleep, but I woke up immediately as the floor beneath me shifted, and the fire alarms went off. I sprang out of bed, hands out in front of me, calling up a protection spell, and wrenched open the door.

  Thalia was in front of my door. “Hey,” she half-shouted over the alarm. “What happened?”

  I joined her in the small hallway.

  Jade opened her door at that moment, pulling a shirt over her head. “What the hell is going on?”

  Sarah, the fourth girl in our pod, came out of her room. “Are we on fire?”

  Our pod was made up of four rooms, with a bathroom in the center. I ducked into the bathroom to see if there was fire there. Nothing.

  “It’s not in the pod,” I said over the still screeching fire alarm.

  Jade rolled her eyes as she put her hands over her ears. “For goddess’ sake,” she said.

  The four of us walked out into the hall. Other students were coming out of their pods in various stages of undress.

  The completely inappropriate thought that I wished Matty, or Caspian, were on my floor went through my mind, and I pushed said thought away. What would Caspian even wear? He looked like he should be striding around in a long, flowing robe through a dark forest. Matty probably slept naked. A giggle escaped me at the thought.

  “You all right?” Jade peered at me.

  I nodded. “Just… “ I shrugged.

  She nodded back at me.

  One small crisis averted. Jade and Thalia were up in my business enough without adding men to the mix.

  The fire alarm stopped and then Madame Karathos’ voice came over the speakers. “All students are to remain in their rooms. We’ve had a fire in the main building but it’s under control. Classes will resume as normal tomorrow.”

  The hall went quiet, and then a burst of noise rose from the students, all of them talking at once.

  “That’s not cryptic or anything,” Thalia crossed her arms.

  I looked around and turned back toward our pod. “It’s like the theme of the month. Come on. We’re not going to get any information from hanging around here.” I pushed open the pod door.

  “You sure about that?” Jade asked even as she followed me.

  “Everyone else got woken up by the alarm just like us,” I said.

  “I’m going back to sleep,” Sarah said. She was a quiet girl, and she studied more than I did.

  “Night,” the three of us chorused.

  Her door closed, leaving me with Jade and Thalia.

  “How was the weekend?” Thalia asked.

  “Come in,” I said, giving up on going back to sleep.

  “What did your parents say?” Jade asked. She closed the door behind her.

  “Not as much as I wanted,” I said, flopping back onto the bed. I shared what they had told me and showed them the ring.

  Thalia took the ring from me, rolling the red bead with her finger. “There’s a lot of magic in this,” she said.

  “How can you tell?” I asked.

  “What does it feel like when you wear it?” Thalia didn’t answer my question.

  “I don’t even really notice it,” I said. “When I put it on, I was expecting something, I don’t know. Like a spark, or something?” I shrugged. “And I didn’t feel a thing.”

  “It’s old, and there’s magic from more than one person,” Thalia said.

  Jade took the ring from her. “You can tell all that?” she asked.

  Thalia nodded.

  “I can’t feel anything different,” I said, watching Jade twirl the bead.

  Jade handed it back to me. “You need to find out what it means,” she said.

  I threw up my hands. “I don’t want to find out anything!” I said.

  “Yes, you do,” Thalia sat down at the chair in front of my desk. “You’re pissed about this, but I know you. Research is your favorite thing.”

  “It’s true,” Jade said.

  I glared at them both and then laughed. “You’re right. I just don’t want to get in touch with Iliana.”

  “So don’t,” Thalia said. “There’s plenty of information here.”

  I smiled. “I had plans for the library after classes tomorrow.”

  “We’ll help you,” Jade said. “But I’m going back to bed. This is already messing with my sleep.” To emphasize her point, she yawned widely.

  “See you tomorrow,” Thalia said.

  I found myself smiling for the first time in days as I got back into bed. Unlike Jade, however, I couldn’t sleep. I stared at the ceiling, willing my brain to shut off, but the brain wasn’t cooperating. I kept thinking about the fire. First the earthquake, or whatever it was, because no one had given us anymore information, and now a fire?

  Everything I’d learned had made me paranoid. I knew this. But I kept feeling like the two events were connected.

  “Damn it,” I whispered as I threw back the covers. Getting dressed, I eased open my door, and carefully walked out of the pod. The hallway was deserted.

  Madame Karathos had said the fire was in the main building. That meant the dining hall, and some of the classrooms, along with the school’s administration offices and the original dorms. Originally, the main building was the entire school, but Nobledark had grown over the centuries.

  I walked through the deserted hallway, and then out of my dorm into the yard that led to the main building. The building was dark. Being out this late made me nervous. What if I got caught?

  My feet carried me past the dining hall with the three odd, mismatched statues. The torches that all the statues held were lit, emitting a soft orange glow. But the statues themselves made me shudder, and I looked away.

  I could smell the fire. It was a strong burning smell, and there was something in it that I’d smelled before. But where? I hugged the wall as I continued toward the classrooms. There was a courtyard off to my left, and when I looked out of the window, my mouth fell open.

  The far side of the courtyard was black. I could see that even in the dark. Small fires of dark red flame still burned, and the stench nearly overpowered me.

  Hell. That’s where I’d smelled this before.

  Sweet goddess. Was this something from Hell? Demon related?

  It had to be. Nothing else smelled like that.

  I stood, staring, trying to take it all in when a hand on my shoulder made me scream. As soon as I opened my mouth, a second hand went over it, stifling my shriek.

  “Shhhh,” a voice said into my ear.

  Chapter Eight

  I closed my mouth, even though I wanted to bite the hand over it, and focused on calling my hot water cannon spell. Turning my palms toward my attacker, I whispered the words to the spell, hoping I got them right.

  Twin jets of hot water flew from my hands.

  With a yelp, the person holding me let go, and I heard a thud behind me.

  Whirling around, hands out, I saw a big, dark guy on the ground.

  “Who are you?” I hissed.

  He pushed himself up onto his elbows. “Hey, easy! Easy! I just didn’t want to scare you!”

  “You failed miserably, asshole!” My voice got louder, and I took a few steps toward him. “That’s not the message you send when you grab someone from behind!”

  He stood up, brushing himself off, and held out his hands in front of him. “Sorry. You’re right. That wasn’t the smartest move on my part.” He peered at me. “I don’t think I know you. Who are you?”

  “Who are you?” I asked, not lowering my hands or my suspicion.

  “Silas Tomberle,” he said promptly. “First year. Earth elemental, and shifter.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “I didn’t know we had shifters here.” Most shifters were Underworlders.

  “Elemental mages come in all shapes,” Silas said, not looking concerned at my less than welcome tone. “And you are?”

  I stared for a moment longer. He was big, as I’d suspected. But seeing him standing up made me realize how big. His shoulders were broad, and his hair was wavy, falling down past his jaw, which was very strong. He had a long, straight nose, and green eyes.

  Silas was extremely well-built and very handsome.

  “I’m a student here, like you,” I said, not wanting to give my name.

  “Why are you out of bed, creeping around?” Silas took a step closer to me.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” I said, deciding honesty wouldn’t kill me. “I wanted to see the fire.”

  Silas tilted his head back. “It’s demon fire,” he said, inhaling deeply.

  “How can you tell?” I asked, horrified. It was as bad as I thought.

  “The brimstone in the fire,” he replied. “It’s what makes the fire smell so strong.”

  “Why are demons coming here? Why now?” I asked.

  Silas shrugged. “Who knows why demons do anything? Hey, are you all right?”

  I didn’t want this to be about me, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was. That me learning about where I came from, my recent field trip to Hell and now things happening at school—all of these things felt connected.

  Silas came closer to me, and I could smell him. He smelled like the forest, with pine trees, and water, and the forest floor. The smell calmed me for a brief moment, overpowering the smell of demon fire.

  Silas reached out a hand. “You look really pale,” he murmured as his hand brushed my cheek. “Tell me your name,” he whispered.

  “What is this, twenty questions?” I asked, mesmerized by his touch, his eyes gazing down at me.

  “If that’s what it takes to keep you here,” Silas whispered.

  I felt myself lean into his touch, the feel of his fingertips against my skin making stars explode around me.

  “I can’t believe demons are setting the school on fire,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound insane.

  “It will be all right,” Silas said, leaning down. The air between us grew heated.

  I couldn’t move. I was rooted to the spot, my world narrowed down to the delicious smell of the evening forest and the large form of Silas.