"Indeed. You're in a fair amount of trouble, I hear."
My smile turned into a grimace. "Tell me about it." I glanced around, even though I knew we were alone. "You didn't get in any trouble, did you?"
He shook his head. "No one knows what I did."
"Good." At least one person had escaped this debacle unscathed. My guilt couldn't have handled him getting caught too.
Mikhail knelt so that he was eye level with me, resting his arms on the table I sat at. "Were you successful? Was it worth it?"
"That's a hard question to answer."
He arched an eyebrow.
"There were some... not so successful things that happened. But we did find out what we wanted to know--or, well, we think we did."
His breath caught. "How to restore a Strigoi?"
"I think so. If our informant was telling the truth, then yeah. Except, even if he was... well, it's not that easy to do. It's nearly impossible, really."
"What is it?"
I hesitated. Mikhail had helped us, but he wasn't in my circle of confidants. Yet even now, I saw that haunted look in his eyes, the one I'd seen before. The pain of losing his beloved still tormented him. It likely always would. Would I be doing more harm than good by telling him what I'd learned? Would this fleeting hope only hurt him more?
I finally decided to tell him. Even if he told others--and I didn't think he would--most would laugh it off anyway. There would be no damage there. The real trouble would come if he told anyone about Victor and Robert--but I didn't actually have to mention their involvement to him. Unlike Christian, it had apparently not occurred to Mikhail that the prison break so big in Moroi news had been pulled off by the teens he helped smuggle out. Mikhail probably couldn't spare a thought for anything that didn't involve saving his Sonya.
"It takes a spirit user," I explained. "One with a spirit-charmed stake, and then he... or she... has to stake the Strigoi."
"Spirit..." That element was still foreign to most Moroi and dhampirs--but not to him. "Like Sonya. I know spirit's supposed to make them more alluring... but I swear, she never needed it. She was beautiful on her own." As always, Mikhail's face took on that same sad look it did whenever Ms. Karp was mentioned. I'd never really seen him truly happy since meeting him and thought he'd be pretty good-looking if he ever genuinely smiled. He suddenly seemed embarrassed at his romantic lapse and returned to business. "What spirit user could do a staking?"
"None," I said flatly. "Lissa Dragomir and Adrian Ivashkov are the only two spirit users I even know--well, aside from Avery Lazar." I was leaving Oksana and Robert out of this. "Neither of them has the skill to do it--you know that as well as I do. And Adrian has no interest in it anyway."
Mikhail was sharp, picking up on what I didn't say. "But Lissa does?"
"Yes," I admitted. "But it would take her years to learn to do it. If not longer. And she's the last of her line. She can't be risked like that."
The truth of my words hit him, and I couldn't help but share his pain and disappointment. Like me, he'd put a lot of faith into this last-ditch effort to be reunited with his lost love. I had just affirmed that it was possible... yet impossible. I think it would have been easier on both of us to learn it had all been a hoax.
He sighed and stood up. "Well... I appreciate you going after this. Sorry your punishment is for nothing."
I shrugged. "It's okay. It was worth it."
"I hope..." His face turned hesitant. "I hope it ends soon and doesn't affect anything."
"Affect what?" I asked sharply, catching the edge in his voice.
"Just... well, guardians who disobey orders sometimes face long punishments."
"Oh. This." He was referring to my constant fear of being stuck with a desk job. I tried to play flippant and not to show how much that possibility scared me. "I'm sure Hans was bluffing. I mean, would he really make me do this forever just because I ran away and--"
I stopped, my mouth hanging open when a knowing glint flashed in Mikhail's eyes. I'd heard long ago how he'd tried to track down Ms. Karp, but the logistics had never really hit me until now. No one would have condoned his search. He would have had to leave on his own, breaking protocol, and come skulking back when he finally gave up on locating her. He would have been in just as much trouble as me for going MIA.
"Is that..." I swallowed. "Is that why you... why you work down here in the vaults now?"
Mikhail didn't answer my question. Instead, he glanced down with a small smile and pointed at my stacks of paper. "F comes before L," he said before turning and leaving.
"Damn," I muttered, looking down. He was right. Apparently I couldn't alphabetize so well while watching Lissa. Still, once I was alone, that didn't stop me from tuning back into her mind. I wanted to know what she was doing... and I didn't want to think about how what I'd done would probably be considered worse than Mikhail's deeds in the eyes of the guardians. Or that a similar--or worse--punishment might be in store for me.
Lissa and Christian were at a hotel near Lehigh's campus. The middle of the vampiric day meant evening for the human university. Lissa's tour wouldn't start until their morning the next day, which meant she had to bide her time at the hotel now and try to adjust to a human schedule.
Lissa's "new" guardians, Serena and Grant, were with her, along with three extras that the queen had sent as well. Tatiana had allowed Christian to come along and hadn't been nearly as opposed as Lissa had feared--which again made me question if the queen really was as awful as I'd always believed. Priscilla Voda, a close advisor of the queen that both Lissa and I liked, was also accompanying Lissa as she looked around the school. Two of the additional guardians stayed with Priscilla; the third stayed with Christian. They ate dinner as a group and then retired to their rooms. Serena was actually staying with Lissa in hers while Grant stood guard outside the door. Watching all this triggered a pang in me. Pair guarding--it was what I'd been trained for. What I'd been expecting my whole life to do for Lissa.
Serena was a picture-perfect example of guardian aloofness, being there but not there as Lissa hung up some of her clothes. A knock at the door immediately shot Serena into action. Her stake was in hand, and she strode to the door, looking out through its peephole. I couldn't help but admire her reaction time, though part of me would never believe anyone could guard Lissa as well as I could. "Get back," Serena said to Lissa.