Page 64 of Ares' Shield
Jayden rests a hand on my back and I jump, pressing a hand to my chest as my heart thumps.
“You scared me.” I glance at Jayden.
“Sorry. I was trying to offer support and I fucked it all up.” He shakes his head.
Raven pushes open the door to the conference room and we all follow her inside. There’s nothing sinister about the place but a chill runs down my spine.
“What are we even looking for?” Raven asks.
“Can you feel any traces of magic?” I ask as I walk around the long stone table.
There are ten chairs lining the sides of the table and one bigger chair at the head of it.
“I don’t feel any residual magic.” Raven bends down to look underneath the table.
Jayden sighs. “Would you though? The magic holding Dax was undetectable to the healer.”
“So, this is just a waste of our time.” I flop into one of the chairs and flip around.
“Yeah, it looks that way.” Jayden reaches out, stopping the chair from spinning.
I blink up at him as he holds out a hand to help me from the chair. “Let’s go. We aren’t going to find answers here.”
“They could have been in one of the other conference rooms,” I suggest.
“You want to check all of them even though we’re sure that there will be nothing to find.” Jayden raises a brow.
“Okay, when you say it like that, it does sound stupid.” I follow him out of the conference room.
As we step out the door, Cross rounds the corner.
“Beth, Raven, I thought we’ve had this discussion before.” Cross plants his hands on his hips, glaring at us.
“But we were just seeing Rebecca,” I say.
Jayden squeezes my hand. “We were just leaving, Professor.”
“What were you doing in the conference room, then?” Cross lifts a brow.
I open my mouth to answer him, but Jayden shakes his head and squeezes my hand. “We heard a noise.”
“You heard a noise and went to investigate a closed conference room?” he asks. “Why don’t I buy this story?”
“I’m sorry, sir, we were just leaving.” I tug on Jayden’s hand.
Cross follows us out of the admin building and doesn’t take his eyes off us until we are out on the stone steps.
“There will be consequences if I catch you all in the admin building loitering again,” he says and storms off.
“You don’t really think that Cross has anything to do with this, right?” I ask Jayden.
“I don’t know. I would like to think he isn’t helping the very people who sabotaged his lake but we have to be careful.”
“Right, there’s a possibility that he wouldn’t even know he was doing it.” I squeeze Jayden’s hand.
What if Cross was being controlled by someone else and was helping them?
“What do you mean?” Raven asks.
