City of Thorns (The Demon Queen Trials Book 1) Read online

  City of Thorns

  C.N. Crawford

  For my readers, many of you in C.N. Crawford’s Coven.

  I love providing escapism for you.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  39. Lila

  40. Lila

  41. Count Saklas

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  I tried not to stare at the frat boy I’d punched last night, but three things were making this hard. One—the bruise around Jack’s eye was a deep, shiny purple that caught the glare of the classroom’s fluorescent lights. Two—he didn’t even belong in this class. And three—he was sitting in the back making a grotesque gesture that involved waggling his tongue through V-shaped fingers.

  Suffice to say, my presentation was not going well.

  Jack Corwin had been harassing me since high school. I would have expected that by senior year of college, he’d have grown past finger-in-the-hole gestures and fake orgasm faces, but Jack liked to buck convention. Why give up that level of obnoxiousness when it was his defining trait?

  I’d prepared so well for today, putting in hours of memorizing the names of the relevant psychological studies. I’d selected a knee-length black dress with a white collar—cute but professional, and only slightly goth. I’d copied down my notes and pulled my bright red curls into something like a neat ponytail. And yet, my preparation didn’t matter when confronted by that waggling tongue.

  Focus, Rowan. Forget him.

  I squared my shoulders, surveying the rest of the class. My classmate Alison twirled a blonde curl around her finger, looking at me expectantly. She gave me an encouraging smile.

  I glanced at my notecards and started to read again. “As I was saying, the concept of repressed memories is fraught with controversy.” I raised my eyes. “Many psychologists dispute—”

  Jack made a circular shape with his finger and thumb, then slid his other index finger in and out, opening his mouth wide in an orgasm face. The lights gleamed off the strange silver pin he always wore, which was shaped like a hammer.

  “Sorry. Uh, dissociative fugue…” I started again. “Which is in the DSM—”

  In the back of the classroom, where no one but me could see him, Jack was thrusting his crotch up and down in a pounding gesture.

  Anger simmered. For a number of reasons, he was the last person I wanted around, and I finally pointed at him. “Is he supposed to be here?” I blurted. “He’s not in this class. Why is he here?”

  Unfortunately, no one else had seen what he was doing, so I just looked like a dick.

  My professor, Dr. Omer, raised his dark eyebrows and stared at me. When he glanced at the back of the room, Jack looked like the picture of innocence. He held his pen in his hands as if he’d been taking notes the whole time, eyebrows raised. Just a studious kid here, trying to learn.

  Dr. Omer steepled his fingers, then frowned at me. He didn’t say anything because he was doing that psychologist thing where they looked at you in silence and waited for you to realized that you had done something inappropriate. I swallowed hard.

  Here was the thing: Jack had followed me last night and cornered me outside my house. In fact, he’d been stalking me for years. There was a legitimate reason I’d given him a black eye.

  But this wasn’t a therapy session, and I wasn’t trying to be professional. We were here to learn, or at least to get a passing grade on our transcript and move on.

  “He’s not in this class,” I repeated more quietly. “I don’t understand why he’s here.”

  I could feel the class’s eyes on me, and heat spread over my neck. Considering I was pale as milk, it was hard to hide it when I was blushing.

  “He’s auditing the class for the rest of the semester,” said Dr. Omer in a calm voice. “He has permission to be here.” He pressed his fingers against his lips for a moment, frowning. The psychologist stare. Then, “Is there a problem with your presentation? You are usually prepared, Rowan.”

  Normally, I adored Dr. Omer’s calm demeanor, but now it seemed off, like he was calmly ignoring the house that burned around him.

  I took a deep, slow breath and tried to center myself by thinking about my feet, rooted firmly to the floor. Just focus and get through this, Rowan. Tonight, I’d have drinks with my best friend, Shai, for my twenty-second birthday. Beer, pizza, gossip about her amazing new life. All I had to do was get through this next twenty minutes.

  “No problem at all.” I smiled. “I was just confused for a moment. I’m actually very prepared.” I cleared my throat. “Dissociative amnesia is theorized to be a state—”

  Wait. Was he really going to be in this class for the rest of the semester? I had to take this class to graduate.

  I glanced through the window at the City of Thorns—the magical city that loomed over Osborn, Massachusetts. I planned to get in there for graduate school, and I wanted to do so as soon as possible.

  “Rowan?” Dr. Omer prompted, a hint of annoyance in his tone. “It might be better if you try this again on a day when you’re more prepared. I don’t think this is the best use of our class time.”

  Ouch. My hands were shaking, but I wasn’t sure if that was the result of anxiety or anger.

  “No, I’ve got it. Sorry. I was thrown off by the projector not working.” I swallowed, ready to regain my composure. “What I’m talking about is an inability to access memories in the unconscious…” I flipped my notecards around, trying to weave my thoughts together into something coherent. “Particularly autobiographical memories, the things from your life…”

  I looked up at Jack again to see him leaning back in his chair, massaging his nipples with his tongue lolling out of his mouth.

  At that point, two ideas became tangled in my working memory. One was the next phrase on my notecard, which was “If you could imagine…” The other was I’d love to hit that fucker again. With my brain tripping over the two thoughts, I stared right at Jack and blurted, “If you could love fucker again…”

  Which made no sense but definitely sounded inappropriate.

  Shocked, half-stifled laughter interrupted the silence.

  The class turned back to Jack. He’d immediately adopted his innocent note-taking pose again, looking baffled at my pronouncement. His eyebrows rose, innocent.

  My stomach plummeted.

  Kill me. I’m praying that the floor could swallow me up now.

  I felt the warmth creep over my cheeks as a terrible silence fell. The lights buzzed and flickered above me, and my mouth went dry. “I said the wrong thing.” I gestured at Jack. “He was making faces…” I trailed off, realizing how lame this sounded.

&n
bsp; Jack’s obsession with me had started years ago when he asked me out as a freshman at Osborne High. I’d said no, and that had made him mad. So he’d started rumors that I’d banged the whole baseball team. Everyone had believed him. They’d called me Home Run Rowan for the next four years, and he’d even photoshopped my face onto nude models. That was what my high school experience had been like.

  But no one needed to hear that. They wanted to get this over with and move on to Taco Tuesday in the dining hall.

  “I just said the wrong thing,” I added again.

  Dr. Omer pressed his two palms together in front of his mouth. “Okay, I don’t know exactly what’s going on here, but I sense there is some interpersonal conflict, and I don’t think this is a productive forum for discussion. If there’s an issue between you two, we can explore that after class.”

  Jack looked sheepish and raised his hand for the first time. “I think I know what’s happening. Rowan was upset when I turned her down for a date last night, and she didn’t know how to handle it. She lashed out.” He gestured at his eye. “But I swear, I’m ready to put the physical assault behind me. I’m ready to focus on Abnormal Psych. I’m a very good student. If you’ll look at my transcript, I think you’ll find that I’m one of the best students you’ve ever seen.”

  “Oh, my God!” Alison’s eyes were open wide. “Did you really give him that black eye, though?” she asked me. “I’m not trying to be dramatic, but I’m literally physically scared right now.”

  Someone said something about calling the police. Others guffawed, half shocked and half thrilled. From their perspective, this was probably the best thing that had happened to them all semester. This was better than Taco Tuesday. This was drama.

  I crumpled my notecards in my hands, and my heart slammed against my ribs. “Wait. I hit him, yes, but he deserved it. He’s the problem here, not me.”

  Already, I could see the recommendation letter from Dr. Omer disappearing before my eyes. Goodbye to grad school in the City of Thorns; goodbye to my lifelong dream of closing an unsolved crime.

  Unhinged. I seemed completely unhinged.

  They had it all wrong, but nothing makes you seem crazier than trying to scream that you’re the only sane one.

  “Okay, you know what?” I tossed the notecards in the trash can. “I think my presentation is over.”

  My entire body buzzed with adrenaline as I rushed out of the room.

  Chapter 2

  I sat on the bed in my basement apartment, sketching the gates of the City of Thorns.

  After my shitty day, I’d gone for a long run. I’d pushed the pace hard, and my muscles still burned as I stretched them on the comforter. Running was the best way I had of dealing with stress, losing myself in physicality. It was also the one time I felt really good at something. The only problem was that sometimes, when my feet pounded the leaves in the woods, I’d have glimmers of flashbacks to the night Mom died. I’d hear her voice, telling me to run.

  I shook my head, clearing my mind of the dark memory. Instead, I focused on trying to perfect the picture of the gate. This drawing served no purpose, but I’d become completely obsessed with the gate’s contours—the wrought iron entrance to the demon city, decorated with a skull in the center, strangely beautiful and forbidding at the same time. Maybe it wasn’t the healthiest obsession to draw the same thing repeatedly like a psycho, but at least I wasn’t thinking about Jack Corwin.

  I exhaled as I shaded in the skull. Living here was all part of my plan to save money for grad school in the demon city. Down here, I was saving every dime I could, living in a cellar with six other broke students. Our rooms were divided by thin wooden walls, and we shared a bathroom and a kitchenette that was mostly a hot pot and kettle.

  My phone buzzed—a call from Shai—and I swiped to answer. “Hey.”

  “Oh! You actually answered instead of pretending you were busy and then texting two minutes later.”

  I grinned. “Who talks on the phone anymore? It makes everyone nervous except you.”

  “So what are we doing for your birthday? Because there’s this amazing Thai takeout place I want to try, and I could bring it to you with, like, a couple bottles of wine.”

  I smiled. “My new place is a shabby basement with spiders. And compared to your fancy Belial University dorms, it’ll seem like a full-blown shithole.”

  “Is it really that bad?”

  “Hang on.” I snapped a few photos to get the point across, then emailed them to her. “Okay, check your mail. See, if we were texting like normal people, this would be going much more smoothly.”

  After a moment, I heard her say, “Oh, okay. Well, yeah, it’s small. Nicely decorated, but small. I don’t love the idea of spiders…I wish I could have you here, but I think you could be legally murdered by demons if I sneaked you in.”

  I nodded. “I’d like to avoid that. Maybe just a drink somewhere in Osborn?”

  “Hang on…I’m zooming in on your photos to see if I can find anything embarrassing.”

  “I’ve drawn thirty-two pictures of the City of Thorns gates, and most are taped to the wall,” I said, “so that’s fairly embarrassing.”

  “Yeah, but I already knew you were a weirdo. I was hoping to find you were some kind of secret sex freak, too. For a second, I thought I saw giant red dildos by your bed, but now I can see they’re fire extinguishers.”

  “What’s the opposite of a sex freak?” I asked. “That’s me.”

  “Okay, but why do you have two fire extinguishers next to your bed?”

  I sat up straighter, getting anxious just thinking about it. “There’s no way out of here, Shai. There’s a tiny window over the bed, but it doesn’t open. So if the house were on fire, I’d have to fight my way out from a far corner of a basement while the walls burned around me.”

  She inhaled sharply. “Oh, shit. Can you find another place? That doesn’t sound safe even with the fire extinguishers. Is that even legal?”

  “Probably not, but I installed fire alarms, too. And I stocked up with the stuff stuntmen used to get through flames.”

  “Wait, what?” she cried.

  I mentally reviewed what was under my bed. “Fire-retardant clothing and gels to stop my skin from burning, Hollywood-style. I could walk through flames if I had to. Oh! And I bought a gas mask in case I need to get through billowing smoke. I’m pretty much set with the fire stuff.”

  “Of course. So you’re still kind of a prepper, I’m guessing?”

  “Yes, so in the event of a demon apocalypse, come here. I’ve got several large bags of beans and rice and some fish antibiotics.”

  “Nice,” she said. “Are we going to kill the demons with burritos and penicillin?”

  “In case the shops and doctors’ offices close. And I’ve got a water purifier in case the reservoir is contaminated.”

  What I didn’t mention was my weirdest prepper item: the fox urine, which was something hunters used to disguise their scent. If the demons rampaged around Osborne, hungry for blood, I’d drench myself in fox pee. They’d never find me. But Shai didn’t need to know that. Even with my best friend, I had a line of weirdness I didn’t cross.

  “Okay,” said Shai. “Well, since there’s no apocalypse going on right now, let’s figure out somewhere for margaritas, okay?”

  “I’m happy with wherever. It’ll just be fun to see you and get out of the basement. And I definitely need a drink. I gave an absolutely disastrous presentation today in my Abnormal Psych class.”

  “Shit. Okay. Just give me a chance to call around and see if I can get us reservations, huh? I’ll text you in a few.”

  She hung up, and I leaned back against my pillows. A flicker of movement caught my eye, and I glanced at a spider skittering over the floor. The scent of mildew and mold hung heavily in the air.

  I pulled my drawing pad and pencil into my lap, then finishing the filagree on another image of the gates to the City of Thorns.

  There w
ere only two kinds of mortals allowed in the city: the servants born into their roles, and the students like Shai who could afford it. Every year, Belial University in the City of Thorns accepted around three hundred mortal applicants. At Belial, the demon university, they learned to suffuse their careers with the magical arts. Graduates like Shai always landed plum positions in whatever field they wanted.

  But in my case, education wasn’t the real reason I wanted to get into the demon university.

  I wanted revenge. I wanted to find the demon who killed my mom.

  When the picture of the gate was finished, I flipped over the page and started jotting down some financial numbers. Right now, I owed seventy-five thousand in student loans, with seven percent interest. If I was going to pay that back, and also save up the hundred grand to get into Belial University on what would likely be poverty wages after graduating…

  My stomach churned.

  Whenever I started making these calculations, the weight of impossibility started pressing down on me. I’d done it a million times, but the numbers never added up. With my loan interest, I’d save up the hundred grand roughly…

  Never.

  I would never have a hundred thousand dollars to get in.

  Increasingly, I was starting to think about plan B: break into the city, then find a way to blend in. There had to be a way. Even an ancient demon city would have a weakness.

  As I started to mull over my more dangerous and unhinged plan, my phone buzzed with a message from Shai: Cirque de la Mer. Two for one cocktails tonight. Meet me there at 8:30 xo