“Can you help me or not?”
“Don’t budge. I’ll use your phone to pinpoint your location. We’ve got a guy on the inside. He’s posing as a janitor. He can let you in and keep you safe. Don’t leave his side until Linus comes for you.”
“Okay.” I bobbed my head like he could see me. “I can do that.”
“Talk to me, baby,” he coaxed. “Quiet on your end makes me want to kill things.”
“You called me baby.”
“Did I?”
“Yes.” I kept sweeping the area for signs of my escort. “When a guy calls a girl something as unflattering as Squirt, she notices when he mixes things up.”
“Ah, but you’ll always be my Squirt.” His rough chuckle had me rolling my eyes. “What are you wearing?”
“Really?” I laughed and felt better for it. “That’s what you want to know right now?”
“I have to tell Victor what to look for,” he lied smoothly.
Glancing down, I fessed up to my wardrobe choices. “Pink pajama shorts with white polka dots, a pink camisole, and a knee-length charcoal pea coat. I’m also wearing what used to be white ballet flats, if that helps.”
“Grier?” He sounded far too reasonable in that moment. “How would he see your pajamas to ID them?”
“I never belted the coat.” I didn’t much see the point now. “My taste in sleepwear is on display for everyone to see.” A husky groan rattled in his throat, and I flushed. “I miss you growling at me.”
“I miss growling at you too.” A soft curse fell from his lips like he hadn’t meant to say that, but he came back at me, all business. “There’s an elderly man wearing a navy uniform walking your way. He’s pulling a trash can on wheels behind him and wearing an Atlanta Braves ball cap. Do you have a visual?”
“No. Wait.” I bumped into Cletus, who seemed more substantial than ever, trying to get a better view. “Yes. I see him.”
“I’ll stay on the line until you’re inside the wards.”
Throat going tight, I admitted, “That’s more than I thought I’d get.”
“I’m always here for you, you know that.”
“It hasn’t felt that way lately.” I took a chance and told him the truth. “I need you.”
His voice broke on my name. “Grier…”
“Ms. Woolworth?” The janitor—sentinel?—grunted in my direction. His stooped shoulders and the graying hair frizzing from under his cap made him look old, but the way he moved… “Young lady, belt your coat. You can’t walk around campus flashing your goods. It’s not allowed.”
“Give me a break. The disguise isn’t that good.” Boaz snorted. “He’s nineteen and still wet behind the ears.”
“That Boaz?” Victor, the sentinel janitor, asked while digging in his pockets.
“Yes,” I told him, ignoring Boaz. “Would you like to say something to him?”
“A janitor using a student’s phone would look far more suspicious than one letting a student in who forgot her keycard. Trust me, I do this all day. I can’t remember the last time I touched a bag of trash. I might as well wear track shoes and let them call me the concierge.” He reached through the wards, taking my hand in his. “Stop sidetracking me, whippersnapper.”
One big step got me through, but Strophalos had been compromised too. There was no safety to be found here. “Thank you.”
After releasing my hand, Victor tipped his can back on its wheels and started rolling. “This is a hell of a lot more interesting than what I would be doing otherwise.”
“Poor newb,” Boaz tsked. “He’s tired of babysitting rich geeks. He doesn’t get that’s ninety percent of the job.”
Pretending the jab at the High Society didn’t hurt, I asked, “Why don’t you tell him?”
“And ruin all the fun?” I heard a smile in his voice. “He’ll become a disillusioned soldier all too soon. Let him enjoy the fantasy. The reality will never measure up to what he’s got cooking in his head. See, he was a voluntary enlistment. He really does want to be out there saving the world one necromancer at a time.”
“He still yammering?” Victor kept his voice pitched low and added a creaky note to it now that we were on campus. “Goddess knows he loves to hear himself talk.”
“I was wrong,” Boaz deadpanned. “Tell him the truth. All of it. About the early mornings starching uniforms and shining boots, the hours standing statue-still at assemblies while fighting for your life not to fall asleep and face-plant in front of our charges, the crap pay and constant travel, being at the beck and call of every necromancer with a shred of power and the ability to pick up a phone and dial in an order for their very own sentinel.”
“Your bitterness is showing,” I teased to snap him out of his anti-High Society rhetoric. “Tuck it back in before your superior officer notices.”
He didn’t snark back or laugh or give any of the responses I expected, and that made my stomach churn.
“We need to talk,” he said. “Soon.”
Full-blown cramps tightened my gut. “This isn’t good news, is it?”
“You need to get somewhere safe, and I…” He bit off the thought. “We’ll talk soon. I promise.”
Boaz ended the call before I could thank him or say goodbye, and I was halfway to dry heaves wondering what he meant. We need to talk was code for this isn’t working in relationships, but we had barely gotten started. How could he know this was a bust when we hadn’t gotten to try? Maybe slow and careful wasn’t how the race was won, but if he wasn’t willing to pace himself, then we never had a chance.
“I thought you were a myth,” Victor murmured, keeping his head forward to make it look a little less like he was shadowing me. “To hear Boaz tell it, you’re the ideal to which all other women should aspire. And yes, he used those words. Must be the wearing-pajamas-in-public thing. I can see how that would appeal.”
“Yeah.” Not really feeling it, I put away my phone. “That must be it.”
Picking up on my weird mood, he tucked away the personal questions. “Where are we headed?”
“Professor Reardon’s office.” I checked with Cletus. “Linus is still there, right?”
The wraith bobbed in answer.
“Who are you talking to?” Victor lowered one hand to the slight bulge next to his hip. “You put your phone away.”
Leaning forward, I examined his cap. “Do you have eyes in the back of your head?”
“Answer the question.”
“Linus assigned a wraith to me. They share a bond, so I was double-checking his location.”
“It’s damn creepy knowing those things are flying around and not being able to see them.”
“Boaz can.” Cletus was one of the few entities most necromancers could see without aid.
“I’m the next best thing to human. Boaz doesn’t have much juice, but he’s got more than most of us. That’s why he gets all the fun jobs.”
Until this exact moment, I’d had no idea Boaz had any juice. Amelie would have burst a blood vessel trying to manifest if she had any hope of there being real power in their bloodline. Unless…
Maybe that explained her obsession with the haves and have nots of magic, and Ambrose too.
Carefully, I tiptoed around what I wanted to know. “How long have you known him?”
“Eight months, more or less.”
How could a recruit who met Boaz eight months ago know more about him than me?
“Seems to me he’s been getting more and more fun jobs lately.” I poured a dollop of pouty girlfriend in the mix. “I never see him these days. He’s always off on a mission.”
“That’s messed up if they won’t let you guys spend time together.”
“He visits when he’s able.”
“Still, he’s stationed in Savannah. Why force him to stay in the barracks when he could live at home?”
I tripped over my own two feet and almost went down, would have if Cletus hadn’t caught me in his arms. The fact a wraith could support my weight ought to worry me more than it did, considering his teeth and claws should be his only substantial features, but I had gone numb.
Boaz was stationed in Savannah. Savannah. How was that possible?