Free Archon by Sabrina Benulis Page B

and gave it a light kiss. “And I’ll make sure that you don’t regret it.”
    His lips were as cool as his voice and soft.
    “Now why don’t you follow me until we’re safely indoors?”
    Angela strolled behind him, slightly aware of the crow dancing straight ahead, wings flapping. She was feeling sick inside, and a little queasy at how easily their little rendezvous had been planned. They were going to talk—that was all—but already it seemed defined as something taboo. Kim’s looks weren’t helping either. He was finely built, with a delicate nose and thin lips, and his eyes and skin contrasted artistically with the inky mess of his hair. His voice promised secrecy and savory things. How many female students—how many blood heads—did he investigate like this on a regular basis? Stephanie might have been the prime candidate to be the Ruin, but she could hear the priests granting Kim a special kind of dispensation to determine how well that theory held. They’d probably schooled him to be clever and charming.
    “Are you keeping up?” he said, pausing to wait for her.
    She caught up to him, watching him fiddle more with whatever was in his coat pocket. This time he pulled out a strip of paper. Its edges had curled in the humid air, slightly obscuring the Latin words written along its length, but Angela recognized a prayer of some kind. Kim tossed the paper at the crow, muttering something under his breath, his voice taking on that shaky, nervous quality she remembered hearing before they’d left the church.
    The bird spiraled up and away, screeching in a fury.
    It wasn’t until they turned the corner of the street that they saw the dead body.
    Or saw what was left of it splayed in a large puddle near the corner of the Theology Center. The academic building was a tower so tall that it dwarfed most of the others in the Academy’s Eastern District—its walls all poorly set brick, stone, and the buttresses and gables one would expect of a cathedral. Lightning raced across the sky, webbing the clouds around its central spire, and at the peak rested heavenly shadows, the terribly beautiful statues of angels and demons, some grasping flickering lamps. One of the demons even seemed to shift position, though Angela was certain it was an illusion caused by the rain, the mist, and the difficulty of picking out details from such a distance. The corpse, though, rested in a dank corner of the alley opening out near the tower, the stone street eventually slanting toward a cliff that spoke of one of Luz’s older, lower levels.
    The dead student was a young woman, one missing an arm and a leg.
    Surprisingly, what Angela saw disturbed her less than the mangled rat at her bedroom door. Mostly because she was struggling with the disappointment that it hadn’t been her lying there, bloodless and ravaged. Dead at last. The crow Kim had chased away must have been picking at the body, warning them away from its meal.
    “Aren’t you glad you had me for company?” Kim was saying. He sighed, sounding more angry than afraid. Sweat ringed his collar, and he brushed back a few drops from underneath his bangs. “Luz”—his tone was unforgiving—“tends to devour the naive. I hope you’ll learn from this.”
    Actually, you wouldn’t believe how disappointed I am.
    “Yes,” she said instead, very slowly. “I guess you’re not a serial killer after all.”
    Kim grabbed her by the arm, pulling her out of the alleyway and into the stark lamplight near the Center. No one had noticed what street they’d used to enter, and a passing trio of academic officials nodded at them, smiling slightly as they entered the building. Once inside, Kim assumed his usual calm demeanor, the terse professionalism in his voice mixing well with the greetings of the other novices, most of them milling and spilling into various classrooms. A few students glanced at Angela but quickly sped off to their assigned rooms, while others sat beneath an