Only Him

Chapter 5

For the next month life went pretty smoothly. We had a small funeral for Jeff in the church a few days after the attack. I'd informed Hans of my suspicions and, while he wasn't overly convinced, he'd allowed me to proceed with caution as long as my methods didn't overtly put Lissa at risk. I'd also informed my team of my uncertainties and, along with Dimitri and Christian, they were the only people I trusted unconditionally.

Meanwhile, Dimitri was filling in Jeff's position on Lissa's guard until Hans appointed a new guardian permanently. It wasn't ideal but I did enjoy the amount of time we got to spend together even if the only reason Lissa left the wards over those few weeks was for school.

One night in early February Dimitri and I had just crawled into bed after a long day at Lehigh and a following patrol when my phone rang.

"Nooooo," I groaned into Dimitri's side, wishing that the ringing would stop. It didn't and Dimitri sighed.

"You might as well get it," he said, pulling a pillow over his head.

I muttered a string of dirty words and groped for the phone on the nightstand.

"What?" I snapped once I'd managed to bring it to my ear.

"Rose!" Lissa practically burst. I hadn't even looked at the caller ID.

"What, Liss?" I asked wearily.

"You and Dimitri need pack right now," she said without preamble.

My eyes flew wide. "Excuse me? Why? I just got into bed." Dimitri made a noise of inquiry from under the pillow but I ignored him. "Where are we going?" I demanded.

"Saint Vlad's," she answered promptly. In the background I could hear the zipp of a suitcase as she threw it open and started to pack.

"Why?" That was a shocking and unexpected answer. "I kind of swore I'd never go back there." True enough. With all of the bad memories that haunted that campus I'd been all too eager to avoid it. I hadn't been back since graduation.

"Kirova called me a few minutes ago. She asked us to come."

"Stop trying to build suspense," I sighed, rolling back over onto my back and rubbing the sleep from my face with my free hand. "I am appropriately curious. Why does she want us there?"

I could practically hear the smile in Lissa's voice. "Mrs. Carmack found another spirit user."

"What?!" I shrieked as I sat up straight in bed. Dimitri jumped in reflex, landing with catlike grace on the ground beside the bed. He gave me a dirty look for startling him but I ignored it. "When? How? Is she sure?"

"Just now! He's showing symptoms. They're pretty sure but they want me there to confirm. He's a sophomore. Apparently he's been complaining about weird lights for a while—auras!—but nobody believed him because he's been known to take pills. So, he was in detention today—for the pills—and was helping clean out the old greenhouse before spring. And he brought one of the plants back!"

"Holy shit!" I gasped. We hadn't found any spirit users through any academies yet. The last time we had found one it had been a Moroi girl who Restored her dhampir half sister and things hadn't exactly ended well there. She'd gone insane from the side effects and we hadn't found any other spirit users since.

Dimitri had given up on getting answers from me but was moving around the room, throwing clothes into an overnight bag. He may not know the details but he'd gotten the gist of the conversation.

"I know! Get dressed. We're meeting at the jet in twenty."

I wasn't surprised to see Sonya waiting on the jet. She'd been as fully invested in the search for spirit users as Lissa had been, even more so considering her failed attempts at creating an anti-Strigoi vaccination a few years back. She'd successfully inoculated one of Jill's guardians, Neil, against becoming Strigoi but without any new spirit users popping up or Restorations happening she hadn't had the proper material to work with and the project had been sidelined. I was a bit surprised by the lack of her usual entourage though.