He tasted like bourbon and smelled like ocean mist and warm wood. My hands explored the dips and valleys of his muscle, hungry to delve deeper.
He loosed a moan and whispered my name against my lips. I pushed my hips into him, feeling his impressive length against my waist—I moved against him, giving him permission.
A second later, my back was against the countertop and the jarring motion when my hips connected with it shook loose an image… of Alistair. I’d often wondered what it would be like to have his lips on mine. Would they feel like this?
Would he hold me like this?
With my eyes closed, my still intoxicated mind could imagine the fingers playing at the waistband of panties were his. The lips nibbling at the soft spot just below my right ear—also his.
With my eyes closed, why couldn’t this be real?
4
If I thought Saturday morning was awkward waking up with a very naked Nico in my bed to the sound of my parents coming in downstairs—Monday morning was even worse.
Alistair hadn’t called, or come by. We hadn’t talked at all since Friday night at The Cellar, which was weird for us. We usually talked every day. So, when I portaled from my house to the academy Monday morning, I was tense and covered in a fine layer of cold, clammy sweat.
I couldn’t help it.
I remembered everything from Friday night, or at least I thought I did. I’d left abruptly and had shouted at him. I might’ve called him an idiot. I didn’t remember the details of what I’d said in my state of shock when I found out about Dolores. But I did remember I told him I would keep his secret, and he’d told me I was like family to him.
The sting of those words were a constant lashing against my chest, and every time the echo of them ricocheted back to me, I winced.
I ended up going straight to my dorm room instead of to the dining hall for breakfast. Wanting to see him, but also not wanting to. Afraid that how I’d reacted would’ve somehow cleaved a rift between us.
I couldn’t stand it if that were to happen, and I was fairly certain a simple apology wouldn’t be enough to fix it.
An image of the sigil for making someone forget something came unbidden to my mind, but that was crazy. Forbidden. Illegal.
I shook my head at my absurdity. Those kinds of spells were reserved for Arcane Officers, and could only be used in the presence of the Arcane Council with Magistrate approval. And there was good reason for it, too.
One tiny mistake in the formation of the sigil or the speaking of the incantation and you could completely erase someone’s entire memory. You could effectively lobotomize them if it wasn’t done just right.
Of course, I was confident in my skills, but even I wasn’t crazy enough to do something like that.
Ugh. I sat in the windowsill, glad that Anabella, my quiet roommate had decided to go down for breakfast, leaving me in peace.
The day outside was drab for early July in West Virginia, but the mountain range where the academy was safely tucked away among towering trees and jagged rock tended to make its own weather.
The sky was a dull shade of dusty gray-blue, interspersed with darker clouds that threatened rain. A flash of shiny dark hair caught my eye and my lips fell apart at the sight of him making for the stone bench near the edge of the grounds.
It was our spot and had been since my first year. When it was nice outside, we ate out there, just the two of us, laughing about things the other students did.
He was alone, though. And when he sat down atop the stone, I saw he held a journal of some kind, and into it he furiously scratched notes, referencing a tattered piece of parchment he held up to the faint sunlight to see better.
Best get it over with then, I thought, and sighed.
It took me a precious few minutes to make it out to him, and in that time, the sky had managed to grow even more threatening, the clouds almost green in color. All traces of sunlight vanished.
He was still there, though—still scribbling into his journal, his head bent over in concentration, and his brows pulled together. I thought if he pressed any harder on the page, he’d tear right through the parchment.
I cleared my throat as I approached, not wanting to startle him.
The glaze over his eyes dissipated, and he looked up, spooked. His eyes widening and his face as white as a sheet.
I hadn’t noticed before how his shoulders were curled in and his back hunched. The way he was breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling with the effort of each breath.
It took me a moment to place what I saw in his eyes, and when I did, my stomach fell.
He looked… scared.
“Al,” I said gently, approaching him with caution. I’d never seen him afraid before, not like this. It was more than just troubling. It made me scared, too. “What is it?”
He gulped, and shook his head, blinking rapidly.
I moved to sit next to him, and he quickly folded up the larger piece of parchment and tucked it into the journal, closing it quickly with a resounding thud.
A bit of color leaked back into his face as he smirked, shrugging lightly. “I’m not sure yet,” he said, his voice distant, trying to play off whatever was really going on.
I laughed nervously, trying to ignore the awful foreboding feeling that was trying to claw its way up my back and nest somewhere higher. “Very mysterious,” I joked.
He turned to face me, his expression lacking any hint of jest as he examined me, seeming to decide something in the fraction of a second between breaths. He said, “I think I may have found it, Dee.”
Alistair looked down at the black leather-bound journal he held, his knuckles stark white against the dim olive of his hands.
I didn’t understand, but I’d admit I felt relieved there was no weirdness between us. He was acting strange and detached, but not because of me— it was because of something else.
“You found what?” I asked hesitantly, clenching my hands into fists at my sides. His fear contagious. If whatever he found had this effect on him, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what it was.
He quickly tucked the journal into a large pocket on the inside of his jacket, and ran both hands over his hair, pushing it back from his face. “I think it might be the key to undoing the curse,” he breathed, his gaze darting left and right, as though afraid someone could be listening to us.
I snorted. “Ok, now I know you’re kidding. Stop messing with me, Al. You scared me!”
But there was no light in his eyes. And he didn’t laugh with me. Didn’t tell me I was right, or playfully shove me like he usually did. He looked at me as though he could see right into my soul. And then through me as though I wasn’t even there as his thoughts wandered.
“Al?”
“You have to swear not to tell anyone, Diana,” he said, hanging his head. “This is dangerous information.”
My spine shilled, a column of ice running up my back. I shivered.
Dangerous?
Alistair was always safe. He was my safe haven. What was he doing? He was ruining it. He would ruin everything.
First Dolores, and now this?
Sure, he wanted to change things—wanted a seat on the Arcane Council so he could petition for us to live freely among the humans and have the power to undo what our ancestors had done. I knew that—everyone did. But everyone also knew that at least one of his grand goals was entirely impossible…
When Cyprian laid the curse on our immortal homeland, his targets had been the Vocari and the Endurans—the two other races of Emeris who sought to challenge his family’s right to the throne.
And he’d succeeded. The Vocari, a peaceful race who lived in the shadows of the Ash Mountains once had the ability to compel the minds of others—now the curse had made them blood-sucking fiends. Bound forever to the shadows. Cursed to never walk in sunlight again. Only the strongest of bloodlines could still compel.
The Endurans lived on Thunderhead Isle among the great dire wolves they bred as comp
anions. They were a race of smiths and fighters. They made the most beautiful weapons of the strongest iron known to man. But the curse had changed them, too. It’d made them into the beasts they kept as pets. Cursed to change at each full moon.
It was an alchemist who laid the curse, though the knowledge of the magic used to perform it was lost in the voyage from Emeris to the mortal lands along with the Alchemical Codex, so, there was no hope in undoing it.
It was a hopeless endeavor to even try.
So, then why was Alistair looking at me like I was the one who was crazy for not believing him.
“Dangerous?”
Alistair inhaled deeply, looking up at the academy as though only just seeing it for the first time. “There are people who would kill for this sort of information.”
Did he say kill?
“And there are many in the witching community who would seek to do the exact opposite of what I intend to. They’d use this,” he said, patting his breast where the journal sat, swaddled in the fine fabric of his jacket. “To finish what Cyprian started.”
He wasn’t making any sense. What he was saying—it couldn’t be true.
As though sensing my panic and disbelief, he shrugged, and I saw something guarded enter his eyes. He laughed, and the sound was forced. “Forget it, Dee,” he said. “It’s probably nothing, anyway. I’m still not even sure what I found. It will take years to decipher—a lifetime.”
But he would find out. If there was anything at all I knew for certain about Alistair, it was that he never gave up. He was persistent to the point of annoying when he wanted something.
“Ok,” I replied, standing from the bench on suddenly shaky legs. I swallowed hard, flabbergasted at the complete flip-flopping in his mood in the span of only a couple of days. With Dolores he’d seemed happy—excited.
Now he was drawn and tense. I had no doubt he found something. But that something certainly wasn’t what he thought it was.
He’d see that soon enough.
I’d done enough research for him over the years to know that there was no such thing as a reversal spell for a curse of the magnitude of the one Cyprian created.
I thought about changing the subject and asking him about Dolores. Where she was. Ask him if he was sure she wouldn’t tell anyone about him.
It worried me how easily he was willing to trust this girl.
I turned to the academy, laying a hand on Alistair’s shoulder. “We should head in,” I said, keeping my tone light. “Looks like it’s about to rain and the bell will ring any second.”
“Hmmm? Oh, right. You’re right.”
He stood to follow me to the entrance.
I opened my mouth to say something about her, but decided better of it. I’d ask him when he was less… well, like this.
Besides, he would realize the danger of what he was doing, eventually. And the danger he was putting his Dolores in, too. I didn’t need to say anything. He would do the right thing on his own because he always did.
All I had to do was wait, and I was known for my patience.
We walked into the old stone building only a second before the sky burst open and a torrential downpour began soaking the grounds.
“Ah, Ms. Granger,” Professor Graystone said, rushing out from the library at the exact moment the bell rang.
“Yes?”
“Would you be a dear and run down to my office in the staff wing—I seem to have forgotten my glasses on my desk.”
The Potions professor barely waited for me to respond before backing away down the corridor towards my next class. “You’ll be excused for your tardiness, of course.”
“Of course, sir. I’ll head there straightaway.”
“There’s a good lass,” he called over his shoulder as he rushed away. Sometimes the professors seemed to forget that the females in the building we no longer just helping hands, but able to attend as students. I didn’t mind, though. I got the honor my mother and her mother before her never had by being able to enroll.
I stopped Alistair as he turned to go into the library. “Hey,” I said, and he turned, looking at me, but not really seeing me. “Don’t you have Ancient Languages this period?”
The question was redundant, of course. I knew his whole schedule and had since the first day of the term.
“It’s the last week, Dee,” he replied. “Does it really matter? I already know I’ve passed… and there’s something I want to look up in the library.”
He was skipping class?
I gulped. “Alright. Um… see you at lunch, then?”
“See you at lunch then,” he repeated and disappeared into the stacks.
It was a good thing Professor Graystone had given me a free pass to be tardy for doing him a favor. I took my time going from the tip of the south wing all the way to the tip of the west wing, where the faculty residences and offices were. I needed the time to clear my head and get into the mindset for class.
Alistair will be fine, I told myself.
I’d accept no other option. Dolores or no Dolores, he was my Alistair and I would take care of him, even if he was acting like a lunatic.
I nodded to myself, yeas. Everything was going to be fine.
I lifted my chin and picked up speed as I walked past the Headmasters offices, and turned the corner towards the faculty wing.
It’d been a while since I was down in this part of the academy. Students technically weren’t allowed, but I was often asked favors by the many professors at the academy. I assumed that was a good thing. They trusted me not to mess around with their things. Not to touch what they didn’t ask me to touch.
And I didn’t. I wouldn’t dare.
It wasn’t worth the risk of getting caught. Having to face even more disappointment than I already had to on the weekends with my parents.
Just like I’d known they would, they’d almost completely dismissed my ACE scores that I’d casually left out on the kitchen counter. After Ma complaining about me leaving my school things on the counter, I’d shown her and my father the grade. I’d gotten a pat on the back from Pops and a good job, dear from Ma, but that was it. Afterwards, they’d told me that it was the sixth-year ACE exams that really mattered, but it was a comfort to know I was applying myself.
Applying myself?
Is that what they called a ninety-six? I thought I was doing a fair bit more than just applying myself.
Ugh.
I stopped as I neared the staff offices. The living quarters were up the stairs at the end of this hallway, but between me and them were eleven doors. Eleven offices. And I couldn’t for the life of me remember which one belonged to Professor Graystone. I wracked my brain trying to think.
The first one was Professor Denton’s, I knew that. And either the third or fourth one the right was Professor Sterling’s. Hadn’t Graystone’s been beside his?
Yes, that was right.
The hallway was quiet at least. All the teachers either in class or in their quarters by the sound of it. If I got it wrong, I supposed I could just try another.
With strengthened resolve, I inched open the third door on the right side of the room and peeked inside.
No, this didn’t look right.
I had almost closed the door when a flash of colored light bloomed to the left and I craned my neck to find Professor Sterling opening a doorway against a tall patch of bare wall between two bookcases. The wall fell away to reveal the inside of another office.
A much larger—much grander one with a huge mahogany desk, and a bank of fine wood cabinets to the left. In the middle of the room was an intimate sitting area, with plush leather armchairs and a little coffee table squatting in the middle.
In one of the armchairs sat a man. Tall, with dark hair, and in an expensive looking suit. I could only make out the side of his face, but I thought I recognized him.
Yes, I’d seen that face before. Seen it several times—so then why couldn’t I place the name that went with it?
Sterling hurried through the portal. “Sir! I wasn’t expecting—” he exclaimed, the doorway sealing up behind him, leaving me staring at a blank section of wall.
The man had turned—just before the portal shut, and I’d seen more of his face.
I cringed, hoping he hadn’t seen me spying. I hadn’t meant to. I was just… curious. And now I wished I’d been a good little lass like Graystone asked me to be and shut the door the moment I realized it wasn’t the right office.
Because I was pretty sure the man who was waiting in the grand office beyond the walls of the academy was none other than Godric Montgomery, the Magistrate of the Arcane Council.
5
Alistair had retreated further and further into himself all week. I tried to bring him out of his dark shell, but it was no use. He pretended to listen to me when I blathered on to him about what I planned to write for my English lit essay. He pretended to be with our group at lunch when we ate, but he wasn’t there, not really.
He was somewhere else.
Twice more between Monday and Friday I’d caught him scribbling away in his journal, his fingertips stained with ink, and looking more and more calloused by the day. I was starting to doubt he’d come out of it.
Especially since when I asked him about Dolores—a last-ditch effort to get some form of emotion out of him—he’d regarded me as though he had no idea who I was even talking about before he muttered something about how he meant to see her this weekend and don’t talk about her here—it’s not safe.
As though I was putting the mortal in danger. Ha! What a laugh.
“Dear, could you pass the Chronicle?”
“Hmmm?” I replied to my father as I finished slicing my apple into perfect little uniform half-moons.
“The Chronicle Diana, it’s there on the counter.”
It was Saturday and I was sad to find my parents seemed to be staying in this weekend. Even worse since Alistair told me he’d prefer to spend the weekend alone when I asked if he wanted company over at the Abbey. I could go visit Nico in the boathouse, but after I’d snuck him of the house last Saturday, I hadn’t seen him. And things between us felt tense and awkward that morning after we’d slept together.
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