Page 9 of Legacy Found

Convincing a leopard gecko that air travel is in his best interest is not a conversation either of us enjoys.

"It's one flight," I tell Pickles at six in the morning, easing him into the travel carrier I've spent a week researching — insulated, ventilated, lined with his favorite hide so at least one thing smells like home. "One flight, a car ride, and then you get a professor who's apparently thrilled to babysit you. That's a better week than I'm having, frankly."

He gives me the slow one-eyed blink he reserves for my worst ideas.

"I know. But I'm not leaving you behind, so this is happening. We're a package deal now."

And we are, which is the only reason I'm doing this at all. If Jon hadn't offered to keep him, I wouldn't have come — I'm not the kind of person who ships a living creature off to a stranger and flies to another country. So Pickles comes too, tucked under the seat in front of me the whole flight, radiating quiet betrayal while I check on him every twenty minutes and the man across the aisle pretends not to hear me murmuring reassurances to a carrier. By the time we land in Switzerland, I've decided we've bonded through shared trauma.

The arrivals area at the private airport is where it gets strange. There's a small knot of people clustered near a sign that reads LUFTIS ACADEMY in that now-familiar dark script, and every single one of them is wearing the exact expression I am — the one that says I have no idea what I've agreed to and I'm too far in to turn back now. We are, unmistakably, the confused ones. And it is an instant, enormous relief.

A lean guy with an easy grin takes in the sign, the group, and my lizard carrier, and announces to no one in particular, "Okay… this definitely isn't a university."

Nobody answers.

"Give it time," says a girl with a messy dark bun and — somehow, already, in an airport — a coffee in hand.

"Renzo," the guy says, offering his hand around the circle like he's being introduced at a gala. Italian, all motion and eyebrows.

"Sophia," says the girl, talking with both hands despite the coffee. "Greek, loud, and emotionally unprepared for all of this. Is that a lizard?"

"Leopard gecko," I say. "Pickles. And I'm Jessica."

"You brought a pet to the mystery castle." Renzo points at me, delighted. "I respect it. I looked at you and thought — that woman definitely owns crystals."

"I do not," I say, scandalized. There's a pause. "…They're in a drawer."

Renzo throws his head back and laughs, and just like that, I know he's going to be one of the good ones. Two more drift over as a uniformed driver rounds us up. A tall blonde woman introduces herself as Freya with the absolute minimum number of words, then simply watches everything, saying nothing, which I first read as intimidating and will later understand is just Freya. And a genuinely enormous guy—Declan, from Ireland—shakes my hand like he's afraid of snapping it, then quietly relieves Sophia of the duffel she's wrestling before she can even ask. Last is Torres.

And—oh.

Broad shoulders. Black hair a little too long. Dark eyes already crinkled with a joke he hasn't made yet. A black geometric band wraps one bicep, disappearing beneath the sleeve of his T-shirt, and there are numbers inked across the knuckles of one hand.

Tattoos. Of course he has tattoos.

I have the immediate, completely reasonable thought that it's a damn shame we're in the Alps.

Beaches have swimsuits. I would like to see Torres in a swimsuit.

Possibly for educational purposes. Purely to document his tattoos.

I wonder how many he has. And where they are.

He takes one look at the six of us, then at the guards. "So which one of us do we think is the sacrifice?"

I laugh.

His eyes snag on mine.

And stop.

For a second, he just looks at me. Really looks at me, like he was scanning a group of strangers and suddenly found something he wasn't expecting.

Then he smiles.

Not the easy grin he walked in wearing. This one is slower. Warmer. Just for me.

My stomach gives a strange little tug.