Seeker

  Seeker

  Book 4 in The Academy of Peculiars Saga

  Isadora Brown

  Contents

  1. Brielle

  2. Ellie

  3. Brielle

  4. Ellie

  5. Brielle

  6. Ellie

  7. Brielle

  8. Ellie

  9. Brielle

  10. Ellie

  11. Brielle

  12. Ellie

  13. Brielle

  14. Ellie

  15. Brielle

  16. Ellie

  17. Brielle

  18. Ellie

  19. Brielle

  20. Ellie

  21. Brielle

  22. Ellie

  23. Brielle

  24. Ellie

  25. Brielle

  26. Ellie

  27. Brielle

  28. Ellie

  29. Brielle

  30. Ellie

  31. Brielle

  32. Ellie

  33. Brielle

  34. Ellie

  35. Brielle

  36. Ellie

  37. Brielle

  38. Ellie

  39. Brielle

  40. Ellie

  Newsletter Information

  Did You Like Seeker?

  Acknowledgments

  Thank You!

  Brielle

  The last thing Brielle Morales expected when she graduated from the Academy of Peculiars was another meeting with Dean Ethan Curtis. She hadn’t yet left the Catalina Island campus even though her mother and stepfather offered to help her move her things back to her home in San Francisco. She wanted a couple of days to figure out what she was going to do with her life now that school was over. Her friends, Sophie Harper and Jane Cabot, seemed to have their lives ahead of them. Sophie was offered a recruitment position at AckPec, which she took, but she and Will Bennett were about to leave campus to travel. Jane, while dating Professor Nikolai Depogare, was going to the University of California, Irvine in the fall.

  And Brielle? Brielle was an eighteen-year-old high school graduate with no idea what to do. She knew she could always intern at her mother’s law firm and go to law school - somewhere prestigious like Stanford or Harvard. Or she could immerse herself in the art scene in Frisco as she loved to paint and knew enough about art history to sell art as easily as breathing. If she really wanted to push the limits, she could go to school to be a doctor and use her secret peculiar abilities to heal people.

  But that would be a risk, and Brielle wasn’t one to take risks.

  Except for Greg Kessler, of course.

  Greg was the academy’s physician that took Brielle on as a sort-of apprentice. He was the one who helped her discover powers she shouldn’t have. He was the one who loved her despite the many, many mistakes she had made during the interim of her senior year. He was her first real love, and even now, standing in the safe confine of her empty dorm room, she still blushed just thinking about him.

  She pushed into a standing position from her desk and stretched.

  Brielle had two hours before her meeting with Ethan. The problem was, she had no idea what to do with her time.

  A knock on her door startled her out of her thoughts, and she jumped, shooting her eyes over to it. Her eyes brows crept up her forehead slowly. This was unexpected. As an introvert, Brielle didn’t have very many friends - something she was okay with. However, that usually meant she rarely got visitors. In fact, the only friends she really had were three Ignis girls - Sophie, Jane, and Ellie Moyer. She had no idea why they stayed her friends after what she did to them - especially Jane - but they had.

  She pressed her lips together and padded to the door. As far as she knew, Jane was in Irvine, touring her college, and Sophie was about to leave on some vacation. Brielle had no idea what Ellie was up to, however. There was a chance she was at the door, though Brielle didn’t know why.

  She and Ellie were never close. In fact, she and Sophie weren’t very close either. Jane was her only friend. And Jane was the one she hurt the worst.

  Brielle ran her fingers through her chestnut hair. She needed to stop anchoring herself with guilt. Jane had forgiven her; whether Brielle thought she deserved that forgiveness was a different story. Regardless, she couldn’t just sit around. Someone was here for her; she might as well see who it was.

  When she opened the door, her eyes widened. There stood Greg. She looked around. It was odd to see him here, at her dorm. Granted, her roommate had already left but it was still relatively public. Just because she graduated already didn’t mean their relationship wouldn’t ruffle some feathers. He was a big proponent of keeping things to themselves; no public dates, no displays of affection, no meeting friends and family. The relationship was theirs and theirs alone, like a secret too meaningful to tell.

  This would either be a really good thing or a really bad one.

  Brielle said nothing as she stepped back and let him come in. He hesitated for a moment, dropped his jaw, as though he was going to say something, then thought better of it. Once he came in, Brielle shut the door behind him, slowly following him into her small dorm. Luckily, she was neat and simple - sheets and cover were both tucked in, no dirty clothes littered the floor, no drums on the small table that she also used as a desk.

  “Nice place you got here,” he said, eyes glancing around, patting his thighs with his palms.

  There was awkwardness that clung to him like a lover, and Brielle didn’t understand why. Greg Kessler was the one person she felt comfortable with, the one person she could let her guard down around and trust with who she really was. He was someone who loved her when she didn’t love herself.

  Brielle smiled but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. She looked at the ground, stepped on the carpet, trying to squish a bug she couldn’t actually see.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked, reaching up and curling hair behind her ear.

  “Sure.” He nodded once, casting his eyes to the carpet. Reaching up to scratch the back of his head, he stepped forward, shoving his other hand in his jean picket. “Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?”

  Brielle furrowed her brows and looked up. She contemplated sitting on the edge of the bed but wasn’t sure if that would imply she wanted him to join her, and she didn’t want to do something like that just yet. Or maybe she was just thinking too much about it. Maybe now that she had officially graduated and they could technically be together, Greg was here to get more serious with her.

  “I mean,” she said, “you’re here. You never come here.”

  “You’ve never invited me,” he pointed out.

  “I...” Brielle pressed her brows together, fiddling with the edges of her sleeves. She finally picked her eyes off the floor to lock with his. “I guess I always assumed you didn’t want to.”

  “Hmm.”

  The word slid down her face like the wet tongue of a dog, slobbery and sticky and uncomfortable. That wasn’t an interested hmm. It was more regretful, maybe even a touch disappointed.

  “Brielle,” he said through a sigh, dropping his chin towards his chest and running his palm across his brow. “I think there are many things you have on your mind. Many things you still have to figure out about yourself.”

  Brielle furrowed her brow. “Is that why you came here?” she asked. Immediately, she pressed her lips together. She didn’t want to fight with him. Her chest tightened and it was suddenly hard to breathe. Her throat constricted and she forced herself to swallow it down. It wasn’t worth it. She didn’t want to fight. Not when this was the first time he was here in her dorm. She pictured it being very different than what was playing out right now. “To tell me what I need to do for myself?”

  He shook his head, kicking up his foot and then putting his foot down.
r />   “Let me start that again,” he said, locking eyes with her once more. “You graduated.”

  Brielle tilted her head to the side. She had been growing out her golden brown hair. Before, the ends used to kiss her shoulders and she always had an itch to sweep them towards her back. Since her hair had grown, the itch remained but it was different. Instead of kissing her shoulder, it overwhelmed her, long, straight hair tangling together and around her skin. However, she barely noticed the sensation. Not when she was hit with a bout of clarity.

  “You’re awkward,” she stated.

  He blinked once. “I’m not –“ He cut himself off, thought about it. “Yes.”

  “You’re never awkward.” She stepped towards him, her furrow deepening. At least she had something to focus on. At least she could work this out, like some sort of a puzzle. “Why are you awkward?”

  “Are you trying to diagnose me?”

  If anyone else had asked the question, Brielle knew he would have been offended. But it wasn’t. This was Greg, and he was amused by this sort of thing. Like it was a game. She had her puzzles; he had his games.

  “I’m trying to understand,” she corrected, her voice gentle. Except there was a slight edge to it. She held up her hand, hoping he would understand that she wasn’t trying to offend him; she just wanted clarity. How had he not even been here for five minutes and it was already turning into this?

  He opened his mouth, thought better of it, then crossed the room. When he reached a chair next to her desk, he took a seat and stretched out his legs, leaning back carelessly against it.

  “We need to talk, Brie,” he said. His hands went to his knees and he leaned forward. The angle of his jaw was tilted to the sky, the wrinkle in his brow prominent as he thought about what he was going to say.

  Brielle held her breath. It was never good when the conversation started out with that sort of phrase.

  “I’ve been up a lot, thinking about what would happen to you and me once you graduated,” he said. He locked eyes with her, one hand lifted, rubbing the lower half of his face. She wondered if he even noticed the scruff anymore. “And I think you need to explore that.”

  “Explore… what?” she asked. She began to pick at her fingernail without even thinking about it.

  “Who you are,” he said. “Who you want to be. I know there’s a lot about you that you haven’t considered. What you are. What you can do. And I think it’s important that you take that time for yourself and figure it out. I don’t want to be the one holding you back.”

  “Why would you think…”

  “Because I know you.” He stood up and stepped towards her. “Because you’re loyal to a fault, Brielle. And you don’t like confrontation, so even if I do something that’s going to piss you off, and I know I have and I will because that’s just who I am, you won’t call me on it. You’ll just be there. And I need someone who can challenge me.”

  “You… want me to fight you?” She shook her head, causing hair to fall in her face. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Maybe not to you,” he said. “Hence, the reason why you need this time to figure out your life. You need to find someone who makes you passionate and angry and frustrated. Someone who annoys the shit out of you.”

  “Why would I want any of those things?” He was speaking to her like she should know all of this. Honestly, she didn’t understand why she didn’t. He wasn’t making any sense, and he was the smartest person she knew.

  “Because that’s how you know you love someone,” he said. “When you find out how much of their shit you’ll tolerate.”

  “That doesn’t sound healthy,” she said.

  “Maybe not, but do you think our relationship is healthy? Brie, I love you. But I love you knowing you’ll never love me quite the same way because of –“

  “My inexperience?” she asked, her voice flat. Her cheeks pinched, her brow furrowed low. She could not believe this was the reason he was breaking things up with her. Because she chose not to fight with him. Because she chose not to let him piss her off.

  “Not the inexperience you’re thinking of,” he said. “The kind of experience where you’re so utterly and completely broken because someone you loved slipped through your fingers and you don’t know if you’ll ever love again.”

  Brielle looked up at him, blinking back tears. “How do you know all of this?” she asked, her voice hitched and quiet. She was going to cry and she didn’t want to do that in front of Greg.

  “Because that’s how I feel right now,” he said, kissing the crown of her head.

  Before she could say anything else, he walked out of her room and she finally was able to burst into tears.

  Ellie

  “Don’t cry, okay?” Sophie Harper said as she and Ellie slowly walked arm-in-arm across the rich, green campus of the Academy of Peculiars and to the garage around the back. There was a light summer breeze, and if Ellie closed her eyes even for a moment, she knew she’d be able to hear the soft lull of the Pacific Ocean waves crash into the shores below or smell the wildflowers that had come into bloom recently, thanks to the shifting seasons. “Because if you cry, then I’ll cry, and after Jane left yesterday to do a campus tour, I am already cried out.”

  Ellie snorted, but that didn’t stop the tears from filling her eyes. This past semester had been hard for her. Sophie and Jane had been busy saving the small peculiar community from discovery. Panpi - regular humans with no peculiar abilities - didn’t have a clue peculiars existed.

  Well, most didn’t know.

  General Arbuckle, a military supervisor, did. He wanted to take over the Academy of Peculiars and turn the students into weapons for the government, and either breed or kill those who were opposed. If it hadn’t been for Sophie and Jane, they probably would have succeeded too, but he was killed as well as his men. For now, AckPec and its community, was safe.

  “Where are you and Will going?” Ellie asked, deciding to change the subject. A blonde curl smacked her in the face and for the thirteenth time, she wished she had put her hair into a ponytail. Her unruly curls were particularly bothersome thanks to the unexpected wind, and they kept swiping against her mouth.

  Sophie glanced up ahead. Will Bennett was standing by the mouth of the garage, a small, black bag by his feet, hands shoved into his jean pockets. When he saw Sophie, his gaze softened, but the guard he perpetually had up did not drop, probably because Ellie was here. Despite the fact that he and Sophie were together, Will was still the dorm director, and there was a hint of awkwardness in the air.

  Will was rough in all the right places, barely scraping by six feet tall, with muscles packed onto his compact frame. He was a shifter, his animal a wolf, and he had a hard look about him. As far as Ellie knew, he had been alive for over two centuries, had made his way through the world with a chip on his shoulder, and only softened for Sophie.

  “Ready?” he asked in his gravelly voice, hazel eyes fixed on the redhead.

  Sophie nodded. “Ellie offered to walk me,” she said.

  He glanced over at Ellie, suspicion in his eyes. “So I see,” he said.

  “Thanks, Professor Bennett,” Ellie teased. “I’ll miss you too.” She turned back to Sophie and wrapped her arms around her friend. “With both you and Jane gone, I’m going to be so bored.”

  “Why not go home?” Sophie asked, dropping her arms and stepping back so she was closer to Will. Her cerulean eyes were filled with concern.

  Ellie made a face, waving a dismissing hand. “And hear it from my parents that their daughter is the only Ignis in a family full of Aqua? I’d rather not. I’m not sure they’d even let me come back anyway.”

  It wasn’t something she liked to talk about, but there was a reason she didn’t talk to her family if she could help it. She had gone home over Christmas break as a way to try and forge the relationship she had with them, but that was stiff and uncomfortable. Tom, her twin brother, hadn’t even shown up. He happened to be born a couple of
minutes before she was, guaranteeing his Aqua status while she was born a few minutes after midnight, pushing her to Ignis. Her family never let her forget it, blaming her for what was a huge infraction against the family. She knew her parents probably wouldn’t forgive her, but that didn’t mean Tom wouldn’t. But she never got the opportunity to talk to him, to see for herself, because he was just gone and no one knew where he went.

  “Maybe you could hang out with Brielle,” Sophie said. “I don’t think she’s left yet.”

  Ellie frowned, shifting her legs and fiddling with hemline of her dress. She was used to wearing an obnoxious school uniform, but considering school was out and there was no dress code, she could adorn her favorite dresses and not get in trouble.

  “I don’t know, Soph,” Ellie said, brushing hair from her face. “She literally told Michael where you and Jane were to save her rapist stepbrother. How can I be friends with someone like that?”

  Sophie blew out a breath. She glanced over at Will and there was a flash of communication between the two of them, something Ellie couldn’t read. She looked away. It felt too intimate to look upon, and she felt she had to look away to respect their privacy. Her heart ached but she tried to ignore it.

  “She did what she had to do,” Sophie pointed out, sweeping her hair over her shoulder. “Jane forgave her, Ellie. And if anyone had a reason to hate her, it was Jane. Then again, Brielle saved Jane’s life, risking everything to do so.”