“You’re not just an asshole,” I said to his muscular back. “You’re also an absolute idiot.”
“If you come here, you’re the one who’s an idiot.” Jensen said. He blew me a kiss, and then he closed the door to the dojo between us.
My hands were trembling with anger. Adrenaline had left me flushed.
I turned back to Lex.
“Come on,” he said again, turning and heading for the stairs.
He seemed almost robotic.
“Are you all right?” I asked. I wanted him to ask if I was all right. After all, I was the one who had just been toe-to-toe with the asshole.
He ignored me, or didn’t hear me. He kept going.
There was something wrong.
“Lex, wait,” I said, running behind him. My heart hammered in my chest, terrified.
He turned, frowning, just as I reached him.
“Kiss me again,” I said softly, bounding up onto my toes, catching his shoulders with my hands.
He leaned in toward me without hesitation, his lips set, his face neutral. I’d said kiss me again and he’d played along, but Lex and I hadn’t kissed once. The real Lex would’ve given me that you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me look I’d seen across his face many, many times already that day.
“Witch, then,” I said, grabbing his face in my hands and sinking my fingers into his scalp as he tried to jerk away. I imagine my magic flowing into his face, revealing the truth, and silver sparks crackle across my palms. “Revelabis!”
His face changed, jerking back and forth, his features shifting and changing, fluid against my palm. I clung to his head, forcing my magic into him as he fought back.
The witch-boy from the woods looked back at me.
He shoved me away and turned and ran for the stairs, all in one fluid movement.
I wasn’t letting him get away.
I slammed into his back, and the two of us stumbled into the brick wall. He changed his mind on running, apparently, because he grabbed my head and slammed it into the brick without hesitation. Stars burst in front of my vision. My head pounded and he turned, trying to get away from me again, but I tackled him around the legs and we both stumbled and went down. My vision was still blurry as I hung onto him while he kicked out, trying to get away from me. I had his legs too tightly for him to hurt me much as his knees slammed into my chest.
Jensen was there suddenly, punching the witch in the face. There was a sickening thud as his fist slammed into the witch’s face, then another, and the witch’s head slammed hard into the polished floorboards. His eyes fluttered closed.
“You all right?” Jensen barked at me.
I sat up, despite the way my head ached, and then scrambled all the way up to my feet. I watched the unconscious witch as Jensen slowly climbed to his feet again, brushing his hands off.
The first two knuckles of Jensen’s right hand had split open, and he absently rested his knuckles against his lips, like an old habit. “You all right?” he asked again, his voice softer, kinder.
“I’m fine,” I said. My heart was still hammering in my chest. I’d been trained to fight since I was a little girl. I didn’t know why I’d reacted so clumsily the first time it came down to a real fight.
He nodded. “You’re welcome.”
His tone was casual, and for some reason, that hurt all the more then when he’d insulted me directly. Maybe he was right. Maybe I didn’t belong here.
But I didn’t have time to dwell on that. Where the hell was Lex?
“Lex,” I said.
His eyebrows lifted, and then he smacked his chest with one hand. “Me, Jensen.”
“What’s wrong with you?” I demanded. “The witch was wearing Lex’s face. He used some kind of glamor spell. So where the hell is the real Lex?”
“Oh,” he said. “I thought you were confused about who was who.”
“You really are an idiot,” I told him.
He shrugged. “An idiot who just saved your life.”
“I had everything under control.”
His lips parted in a smile. “We must have different definitions for under control. You’d have been screwed if I hadn’t been there to help.”
“Whatever. I don’t have time to argue with you. We have to find Lex.”
“You got a plan?” His lip curled up at the corner.
I hadn’t expected that reaction. I’d expected him to be in a hurry to get to the dean. I didn’t want any delays though, not when Lex’s life could be at stake.
“Can you help me move this?” I asked Jensen, nudging the witch with my foot. “We need to interrogate him and find out what’s going on.”
“You can’t just sling him over your shoulder?” He mimed me picking the guy up.
“I need someplace to take him,” I said impatiently. “Like your room.”
He grinned. “You’re really working hard to get into my bedroom, huh?”
I was ready to unleash on him, but he was already drawing the witch up and over his shoulders. I’d meant for him to help, taking the legs or something while I took the witch’s shoulders. When Jensen straightened, he seemed comfortable enough, though. He held the witch like he was nothing.
I followed Jensen down the hall and up the stairs. The hallway was mercilessly empty, and Jensen led me to one of the doors, where he pulled out a key on a chain from around his neck and quickly unlocked the door.
“Ta-da,” he said when he shouldered the door open. He barely stooped as he let the witch roll off his shoulder and onto the floor.
Hopefully he hadn’t hurt our prisoner. I looked at the witch at his feet, who looked like a teenage boy, his face innocent at the moment with his lips parted and his dark-lashed eyes closed. Then I glanced around the room. Jensen’s room was neat and orderly: a bed, a wooden locker, a desk with a Macbook. It didn’t give away much personality, but then, I didn’t think Jensen had much personality.
“Your room smells less like wet gym socks and Axe body spray than I expected,” I said.
His room actually smelled nice, like clean laundry and a faint minty scent. I cocked my head, curious about the smell, before I realized Jensen had plucked a package of gum from his desk. He propped himself on the edge of the desk as he popped a piece into his mouth, chewing as he eyed me lazily. “Well. I guess I’m in it now. With you.”
I smiled at him sweetly. “I’m not thrilled to be stuck with you, believe me.”
His smug smile tilted up one corner of his lips, like he didn’t believe me at all.
He must’ve seen the way I’d looked at him when he was shirtless before. Well, it didn’t matter how pretty he was. Personality counted for something, and Jensen McCauley was one-hundred-percent asshole.
10
“What’re you doing?” Jensen asked.
I tucked my necklace back into my shirt. Like Piper, I wore a necklace that was part distress beacon, part magical GPS device. I’d wandered to the window, whispering the spell to myself so softly that I didn’t think Jensen would hear.
“Nothing.”
Jensen snorted. “Sure. You’re a witch too, aren’t you?”
“I am not a witch!”
“You’re doing…wait for it…” He flared his hands dramatically. “Witchcraft.”
“I can use magic for good,” I said firmly. “And I’m still a wolf.”
“The witches all said they were using magic for good,” he said, “and then they started enslaving wolves and killing kids.”
“No,” I said.
“Power corrupts.” He shrugged. “You and your whole pack, you’re going to go darkside one of these days. Your own’s going to end up hunting you down.”
“Really?” I leveled a finger at him. “You don’t need magic to be an entitled asshole.”
In a second, he crossed the room to me and grabbed my finger, folding his hand around mine. The movement was quick and aggressive, but once his hand was on mine, he didn’t seem to know what to do next.
“Yo
u don’t know anything about my life,” he said. “Not a thing. So watch yourself.”
“You don’t know anything about me, but that hasn’t stopped you, has it?”
He released my hand, taking a step back. “I can see everything I need to know about you.”
“Like I said. Entitled asshole.”
His lips parted, but whatever he was going to say next was locked as someone knocked on the door. The two of us exchanged a look. He went quickly past me to the door and cracked it open to glance through, then stepped back.
My sister was in the hall. Her chin was trembling, and Arthur, Callum and Kai all flanked her expectantly.
Piper rushed forward and wrapped me in a tight hug. “Thank goodness,” she said into my hair.
I hugged her back awkwardly, keenly aware that Jensen was watching us with that same begging-for-a-slap smirk on his nicely-shaped lips. This little public display of emotion was out of character for Piper.
“She’s okay,” Kai told her, resting his hand on her shoulder. All of the guys seemed more protective of her than usual today. Maybe now that I was leaving home, all that overprotective energy had to be diffused somewhere.
I squeezed my sister tight, wondering what was going on with her, and then released her. I gestured expansively toward the unconscious witch Jensen had insisted on depositing onto the cold hardwood floor, not his bed.
“I brought you a witch,” I exclaimed, like it was some great gift.
Callum nodded and knelt next to the witch. “Alliges duplicia,” he murmured, pushing the witch’s wrists down against the hardwood floor. The witch’s fingers stiffened and then relaxed. He’d bound the witch’s hands to the floor, keeping him there until we were down with him.
Arthur cast a quick, hurried glance at Jensen. I didn’t like the idea of Jensen knowing any of our secrets either.
I sat down on the edge of his bed. Arthur knelt on the other side of the witch’s body as Callum began to try to wake him. I had the feeling that Arthur’s big shoulders, blocking my view of the witch and of Callum, were intended to shield Callum’s magic from Jensen’s eyes as much as possible.
The way werewolves feel about magic is stupid and superstitious, but here we are.
Jensen hesitated, his arms crossed over his chest, and then abruptly sat beside me. I stole a glance at him. His jaw was set, a faint tic in his cheek. He looked tense. Of course he was tense—his father was the dean, and yet here he was with me.
Maybe I should limit how many times I called him an asshole.
I flashed back to all the times he’d told me, one way or another, I was unwanted in the eight hours we’d known each other.
Maybe not.
“Wakey, wakey,” Arthur said to the witch, slapping his cheek again. The witch groaned.
Callum began to murmur in Latin. He was speaking the words of a spell that forces someone to tell you the truth. He’d tried to teach me this spell already. I didn’t want Jensen to know anything about it. I didn’t want him using my family’s magic against them.
Impulsively, I leaned to one side, bumping my shoulder against Jensen’s. I had to distract him.
Jensen froze and then turned toward me, his eyebrows tilting over his eyes. From a distance, they seemed to gleam yellow, like a monster’s eyes watching you from the crack in your closet door. Seemed fitting enough. But up close, like this, his eyes looked golden, warm and beautiful under thick, dark lashes. Once my gaze met Jensen’s, it was hard to look away. But that was just because the color was so unusual.
The look he gave me said what the hell was that. It irritated me to think that he would imagine I liked him or wanted him, but still, I was successfully distracting him. That was my mission. We were interrogating a witch in his room—not exactly an everyday happening—and yet his focus was on me.
The thought made me smile. I leaned toward him, gesturing for him to come closer. He regarded me skeptically for a moment, as if he was afraid I’d bite his ear off—good, I liked that, be afraid of me—and then leaned in, inclining his head toward me. I breathed in his musky, pleasant scent again. God damn him. He shouldn’t smell so good.
I whispered, “If I didn’t know better, I would think you had a crush on me.”
He snorted as he sat back. “Good thing you know better.”
Callum straightened. “He says Lex is in a supply closet off the first laundry room. He says he used a spell to put him to sleep. I’ll go.”
“I’ll take you,” Jensen said, standing without hesitation.
Arthur said, “I’ll stay here and ask the witch some questions.” His eyes met Piper’s, as if he was begging her to stay there with him. She smiled and reached out to touch his shoulder, then tousled his hair. It was a tender moment, and I glanced away, feeling like I’d just seen something too tender, something that wasn’t for my eyes.
“I’ll go too,” I said.
“Of course,” Jensen muttered. But he and Callum and I headed down the hall. Jensen glanced at Callum once we reached the empty stairwell. “What if he’s not the only one?”
“We’ll find out,” Callum promised.
“How do you know he’s not lying?” Jensen asked. He reached the laundry room door, and hesitated for just one second, as if it might be a trap. Then he went in quickly, shouldering open the door and going in fast, his fists coming up.
Jensen was an ass, but most of the time when I met a guy who was a jerk, it was because he was a weakling in some way. Jensen certainly wasn’t a coward. I wondered what was wrong with him to make him act the way he did.
“All right now.” Callum put his hand on Jensen’s shoulder and steered him out of the way, to one side. He was alpha-ing him just like he did to me, apparently. Callum’s gun was in his hand as he crossed the laundry room to a green door in the back of the room. One of the fluorescent lights overhead was flickering. Even though the white-tile room was still brightly lit as Callum headed past the rows of washing machines, the questionable light still made me tense.
Callum paused near the door, listening, and then looked to me, not Jensen. I moved past Jensen on quiet feet to take the door handle in one hand, and when Callum nodded again, I yanked it open. Callum aimed toward the closet.
Nothing happened. No trap. After a heartbeat, he holstered his gun. I stepped from behind the door to look into the closet.
Lex stared up at us from the floor, looking irritated. His hands and legs were bound, and there was duct tape over his mouth. I knelt next to him quickly and grabbed the edge of the duct tape, peeling it away as Lex winced.
“We caught the witch,” I told him as I crumpled the duct tape into a ball in my hand. I pulled Lex’s knife out and began to saw through the duct tape on his wrists. “Are you all right?”
Lex didn’t answer. When his hands were free, he propped his elbow on his knee and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He moved slowly, like his head ached.
“You okay?” Callum prompted.
“Yeah,” Lex muttered. “Just…that was weird. I saw him take on my face…”
“You let a witch get the better of you, huh?” Jensen asked. “Never thought I’d see that day.”
As my knife sliced through the last of the duct tape around Lex’s legs, Jensen offered him a hand up. Lex ignored him, and climbed to his feet, still wincing as he tried to shake out his legs like they’d fallen asleep. Jensen stuck his hands in his pockets.
“So, same witch?” I asked.
“Yeah.” Lex nodded.
“Why the hell haven’t they attacked yet?” I asked. “What’s going on?”
“I would expect that witch came in to bring down the wards so the coven can attack while no one can shift to defend themselves,” Callum said. “But if that’s the case, why is the witch running around in the dorms?”
“Maybe Lex and Maddie here scared him off and he just had to find somewhere to hide,” Jensen said, in a way that didn’t seem sincere at all.
Lex was still limping as the four of
us headed back to Jensen’s room. Lex cast a skeptical glance at Jensen’s door as we neared it, and once we were inside and the door was closed again, he asked, “How’d the first-year get involved?”
Jensen looked at me expectantly. I rolled my eyes at that face. Then, before I could explain, Jensen said, “I saved your girl here.”
“So many problems with that sentence,” I muttered.
“What did you find out?” Callum asked.
The witch was sitting up now, cross-legged on the floor.
“He’s got a crazy story,” Arthur said. He held his gun in one hand, over his crossed arms, as he perched on the edge of Jensen’s desk.
“You let him go,” Callum said.
“I’m not here to hurt any of you,” the witch said. “And I’m not behind the attack on your shifter magic.”
Lex transferred his weight from foot to foot beside me. Wolves hated when anyone referred to their shifting as anything as disgusting as magic.
“You did hurt me,” Lex said drily.
“And you smashed her head into a brick wall, not that it did much damage.” Jensen casually palmed my head, resting his hand on top of my hair. His touch sent tingles racing down my spine. Strange tingles.
Impatiently, I shoved his hand away, and he returned his hands to his pockets, smirking. He was so close that his shoulder almost brushed mine.
“What did you want with me?” I asked. “You tried to get me to go with you.”
“I need you to break the spell,” he said. “I thought I could do it on my own once I got close enough, but I can’t.”
Callum exchanged worried glances with Piper. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
The witch sighed. “Fine. I’ll start at the very beginning. There are two kinds of witches in your world. It’s getting rather ridiculous that you wolves want to kill all of them. Some of us are trying to bring peace.”
“Like I said.” Arthur shook his head disbelievingly, but the witch couldn’t lie. Could he? “Crazy story.”
“We’re all for peace,” Piper said. “But you admit yourself there are witches right outside those gates trying to murder everyone at the academy…”
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