Fallen University: Year Two

“Guys? Time to go!”

The other men sprinted back to us as soon as I shouted, and we scrambled to link hands.

“The lobby,” Kingston said.

“No! We can’t teleport into the school. The mineral pool by the gate.”

“But—”

“On three! One! Two!” A purple fireball singed my hair, and I ducked. “Three!”

A portal shimmered into existence, but it was weak and shaky. It wasn’t going to have the power to bring us back.

“Somebody wasn’t concentrating!”

“Who can concentrate at a time like this?” Kingston shouted back at me.

“Fucking focus, goddamn it! On three! One!” Another fireball grazed my body. Gavriel was playing with me. “Two!” A third fireball went way wide. Maybe he wasn’t playing. Maybe the powerful, pulsing magic down here was screwing with him. “Three!”

The portal opened, strong this time, sucking at our hair and clothes. Just a little stronger and it would take us away too. I focused with all my strength,

drawing on every bit of my magical training I had ever paid attention to.

Gavriel was laughing again. God, I hate him.

I opened my eyes just in time to see a purple fireball as big as my head fly toward us. Xero blocked it with one of his own.

“Now or never!” he shouted.

“Never!”

Gavriel’s shout cut through the air like a blade, and he lunged at us just as we jumped toward the portal, magical energy gathering between his hands.

Admittedly, I’d been guilty of not always paying attention in class. I’d never been a straight-A student when I was human, and that hadn’t changed when I’d become a demon.

But there was one thing I definitely remembered from my Guerrilla Warfare class—if you destroyed a portal while someone was inside it, they would disappear forever.

Fuck.

Before I could react to Gavriel’s incoming attack, Xero’s hand slipped out of mine, his bag tangled around my wrist. I reached for him, but my hand closed on nothing, and the portal was closing around us.

“Xero!”

He wasn’t with us. He wasn’t inside.

The last thing I saw before the portal closed completely was the fire demon launching himself at Gavriel’s face.

“Xero, no!”

The portal snatched my voice away as it whipped us through the space in-between realities to deposit us with an unceremonious thud-thud-thud-splash at the edge of the mineral pool just outside the school’s gates. For a stomach-churning moment, I thought Gavriel and his fiends had followed us through somehow. My head still echoed with demonic shrieks, and I could still smell the pure burn of fireballs in the air. I had landed in the pool itself, facing away from the school.

“We have to go back.” I surged to my feet in the water, holding out my hands for theirs. “We have to get Xero!”

“Piper…”

“What?!”

Jayce pointed behind me. Growling, I whirled around. Whatever it was, it could wait until we rescued Xero—