Her Kind of Magic: An Academy of Demon Hunters and Angels Romance (Academy of the Supernatural Book 1)

by May Dawson

  “Maybe it’s good for my cover story,” I said. It wasn’t good for my heart. I had my best friend, close enough to touch, and I couldn’t even talk to her.

  “When we’ve fixed all this,” Cade told me, “when Truby is gone, we’ll come back. You can see her again.”

  My chest was tight, but I nodded reluctantly. “All right.”

  Nix got out of the car and offered her his hand. She took his hand and let him pull her out of her seat, then followed him up the stone steps that led up her steep green lawn to the little white house at the crest. I had a photo tacked to the wall in my room of the four of us, Kate and Wendy and Rachel and me, sitting on those steps, one in front of another.

  I had a photo of the pumpkins we’d painted, one for each step, in ninth grade; a bunch of senior boys had stomped and kicked all our pumpkins across the sidewalk on Halloween night, leaving a trail of pumpkin guts and seeds across the concrete. We’d vowed to hunt them down together and get revenge. I’d been the one who made my friends come with me a month later to hide a meatball in their air duct in one of their cars when I found the door unlocked. Kate had been anxious and Wendy hadn’t been able to stop giggling.

  I’d had a life here, a good one. And now I had a completely new life.

  Nix guided her to the porch and stopped her with his hand on her shoulder, as if he was telling her to look into his face. She gazed up at him, with the same look of stupefied wonder, as he spoke a few words to her briefly.

  Nix squeezed her shoulder comfortingly, then suddenly took off running. He slid down the green embankment. Cade reached out and threw open the side door for him, and Nix jumped into the car as it started to roll forward.

  By the time Kate came out of the spell completely, we were almost to the trees between her house and the next. She came to life suddenly, putting her hand to her forehead as if she had a headache, as she squinted toward the road. I ducked down in the backseat, and it spent a spike of guilt through my stomach, as if I had just betrayed her.

  Eventually, I’d be free of Truby and I’d be able to see my friends again. Maybe there was a way to join my new life with what was left of my old life.

  I just had to kill my father first.

  Well, Luke Skywalker had been willing to do it. I could do it too.

  “She’ll be okay,” Nix promised me as he slammed his door shut. The sound seemed to echo in the quiet morning light. The sun was just rising, and it reminded me of the early morning hours when I’d arrived at the academy that first day.

  I nodded, but my heart wasn’t in it. I propped my elbow on the door and gazed out the window, my mind still churning.

  If Truby was my father, no wonder my magic was only activated by fear and rage. No wonder Hunters didn’t trust witches. My family legacy was vile.

  But my magic also sparked when I kissed certain men. I looked up, as Nix reached out and snapped on the radio. Cade glanced in the rearview mirror at me, his eyes worried.

  Maybe my magic worked whenever I felt really strong emotions. Not just fear, but also lust. Or even… the other l-word?

  There was only one way to find out.

  “What are you thinking about?” Cade asked.

  I’d just begun to imagine his lips on mine, my hands slipping under that black t-shirt to slide up the hard ridges of his abs. I opened my eyes wide and innocent as I stared back at him in the rearview mirror, suddenly worried that there was magic that made people psychic. I didn’t need Cade to know how badly I wanted him, when he wasn’t driving me mad.

  “I was thinking about what happened tonight,” I said.

  Cade nodded. “You controlled your magic. Without you, Truby would have inflicted a lot more casualities—”

  “Without me, there wouldn’t have been any casualties,” I interrupted. “Truby came looking for me. That’s why he killed Liam, that’s why he surrounded that town with all those monsters.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Cade said impatiently.

  “No.” I leveled my finger at him, even though he couldn’t exactly turn around and appreciate it while he was driving 70 MPH down the highway. “Don’t start that again. I’m not stupid and I never have been. I’m not blaming myself.”

  Cade’s eyes widened at the heat in my tone. Nix twisted in his seat, leaning back against the window with his arm braced against the seat so he could study me. There was an amused tilt to his lips. Sometimes, I had the strangest feeling that Nix liked watching me go after Cade.

  “But there’s no point in lying about the fact that this is all about me. Truby wants me.”

  Cade’s lips tightened. “We made a mistake, using you as bait. We had all those Hunters to back you up. We thought we were ready if he came.”

  “Next time we will be,” I said.

  But the thought of facing Truby again, with the hordes of monsters he had surging in front of him, was overwhelming. The car was suddenly quiet. Maybe I wasn’t the only one remembering the sight of all those monsters, who had sealed us—and the helpless civilians—into that town. We hadn’t known he had such a terrible army at his disposal.

  “It’s interesting that he attacked with all those monsters, but only projected himself,” Nix said quietly. “He hasn’t had such a show of force before.”

  “You think he’d want to save that to surprise us with,” Cade said.

  Nix and Cade exchanged one of those looks, as if they were picking up what the other one was thinking. It had annoyed me at first. But maybe they were just such good friends that they thought the same way.

  “Maybe he can raise an even bigger army when he wants to,” I said. Maybe it didn’t matter that he had showed us how many beasts he could control, because we could prepare all we wanted. There would still be more.

  The thought was sobering. Even with all the young Hunters at the academy—with all the Hunters everywhere—Truby and his coven backed by those kind of superpowered monsters would be hard to fight. At least, he would be hard to fight without leaving more young Hunters strewn across the ground, staring up at the stars like Liam had.

  “What did he want to say to you so much, anyway?” Cade asked.

  I shook my head, because I didn’t want to answer. “He wanted me to go with him.”

  I swallowed a sudden lump in my throat that made it hard to tell them more. Hunters didn’t trust witches, and I was worse than a witch. I was Truby’s daughter. Nix thought Truby was responsible for the deaths of his family.

  “There’s got to be another way to fight him than just going against him, force to force,” I said. “A way to trick him.”

  “Maybe we can reverse-engineer his magic and figure out a way to take control of his own beasts,” Nix mused.

  “That’s a good idea,” I said.

  Cade kept glancing at me curiously. It gave me the itching feeling that he knew more than I wanted him to.

  I met his gaze frankly, staring back at him. His eyes flickered to the road, and even though he had to look at the road so we didn’t drive off the highway and meet a fiery death, still, he’d looked away first. It felt like a cheap victory.

  “What do you mean,” Cade said quietly. “Trick him?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, even though the first seeds of a plan were beginning to root in my mind. “Maybe we could get someone on the inside. In his coven.”

  “We had someone on the inside,” Nix said drily. “They’re dead now. I’m not sure anyone’s going to volunteer for that—or should.”

  “It’d be different if I went,” I said.

  “Oh, no.” Cade gripped the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles went white. “That’s not happening.”

  “Even in the worst case scenario, one Hunter’s life doesn’t matter more than stopping Truby,” I said. I raised my eyebrows at him. Unless I was more than one Hunter to him. I didn’t think Cade would want to admit to that, though.

  I couldn’t tell if Cade felt the same way about me that I felt about him, or if I was just imag
ining the desire in his gaze sometimes because I wanted so badly for it to be real.

  “Let’s hold off with those kind of plans, Deathwish,” Nix said. “What exactly did Truby say that made you think you might be welcome in his coven?”

  “You’re jealous he isn’t trying to draw you in too, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “Deidra.” Cade’s voice was impatient. “What did he say?”

  “He said I couldn’t trust any of you.” I was stalling, buying myself time, as I tried to decide whether I could trust them or not.

  My gut instinct told me yes, but the way Hunters as a whole felt about witches gave me a twinge in my gut, as if I was doing something reckless, as if I was at the top of the biggest drop in a roller coaster car. Once I told them, I couldn’t take it back.

  “And he said I’m special. That I’m powerful, more than any other witch.” I reached out to pat Nix’s shoulder. “Sorry.”

  “I already knew you were special,” Cade said in a deadpan voice. “Specially exasperating.”

  I hesitated. I wanted to trust them, even though my stomach dropped like I was falling.

  “He said that he’s my father.”

  Cade didn’t say anything, but the car suddenly surged forward, the engine whining, as if he’d accidentally pressed down on the gas. He eased off.

  Nix didn’t look surprised.

  “You suspected,” I accused him, anger suddenly spiking through my chest.

  “I didn’t have anything but a hunch or I would’ve told you,” he said. “Truby wanted you so badly. And your magic is really…something.”

  “When it works,” I said wrily. “But given that I’m Truby’s kid, maybe it’s for the best it doesn’t.”

  “You’re not Truby’s anything.” Nix said forward, irritation suddenly crinkling his brow. “You’re Conner’s kid. Ellie’s kid. Liam’s kid. But not his.”

  I’d rarely heard Nix sound so passionate about anything, and even though he was back to yelling at me, he still lit a strange warmth in my chest.

  “My parents tried to sacrifice me,” Nix said. “My birth parents. To make their magic stronger. I don’t belong to them, Deidra. I belong to myself and to the people I choose to trust. And so do you.”

  Who’s that? I wanted to know who Nix trusted. But I didn’t ask, not when he was impatiently settling back into his seat, as if he’d revealed more of himself than he was comfortable sharing.

  I was sure one person Nix trusted that way was Cade. When Nix said that he belonged to the people he trusted, it was such a strange, powerful phrase. I’d never thought about it that way. But it was nice, too. It felt true.

  When you love someone, when you trust them, you give them a piece of yourself. Maybe you never get it back. Even if they weren’t worthy, or if they die, there’s still that chunk of you that goes with them. But we’re not meant to stay whole, either. We’re meant to live our lives in pieces.

  Cade’s big, competent, scarred hands were quick and competent on the wheel, and his hazel eyes were fixed on the road. As if he weren’t even listening.

  “Well?” I asked Cade.

  “Well what, Ainsley?”

  “Do you think I’m a monster now?”

  He huffed out an exasperated breath. “No. I do think you’re kind of an undisciplined brat. And an absolute bad idea factory, Ms. I’ll-Just-Go-With-My-Evil-Dad-And-Take-Down-His-Coven-From-The-Inside.”

  “Okay, but—”

  He cut me off. “And I think you’re a total drama queen. Am I a monster now? Really?”

  “Oh, we’re doing this again,” I said to Nix. “Where he tells me all the things that he thinks are wrong with me.”

  Nix shrugged. “You brought it on yourself.”

  “And I think you’re freaking nuts if you—”

  As Cade went on lecturing me, Nix searched the side of his seat, then pressed down on the lever so that his seat popped down. He’d almost inclined into my lap, bringing us far too close for comfort. I tried not to gaze down at his lush-lashed blue eyes, the sharp angle of his cheekbones, or those kissable lips as I shifted over into the middle of the seat.

  Nix started to unfold his sunglasses, raising them to cover his eyes as if he could take a nap while Cade scolded me.

  But he paused just long enough to wink at me, a quick flicker of his dark lashes over those icy blue eyes. Then he slipped his sunglasses on.

  The wheels hummed against the road, carrying us toward home.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  By the time we got back to the academy, it was mid-morning.

  “Since you already missed classes, we might as well train,” Nix said as we got out of the car.

  “Really? Now?”

  “No rest for the wicked,” he said. “Or their unlucky students.”

  “Just give me an hour first,” I said.

  Nix crossed his arms. “What are you up to, Deidra?”

  My gaze flickered to the academic building. Malcolm was probably in his office, if he wasn’t in town trying to spin a completely plausible explanation for why the town had been overrun by bloodsuckers and wild boar. “I need to have a talk with my grandfather.”

  Cade started to say something, and Nix cut his eyes at him. “He owes her answers.”

  “Fine.” Cade raised his hands, as if he was surrendering. “You’re right. He does.”

  The thought of facing Malcolm when he didn’t want to talk to me was uncomfortable, and I was glad someone was on my side.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Cade’s lips quirked up. “Don’t thank us yet. He’ll be waiting for you at the Tank.”

  “Better hurry,” Nix said. “The longer you make me wait, the more time I have to come up with ideas to test your magic.”

  I already had some ideas about how to test my magic, and they were a lot more pleasant than anything that Cade and Nix might cook up in the Tank.

  I headed for the academic building. As I crossed the quad, the lightness I’d felt when Cade and Nix teased me dissolved into so much smoke. They’d been completely unimpressed by the revelation I might be Truby’s daughter. I couldn’t expect everyone to react so coolly.

  So far, Malcolm hadn’t been much of a grandfather, but I still liked the idea of having one.

  I ran up the steps of the building and headed down the hall to the stairwell. I didn’t want to walk past my classrooms. Even though my mission right now was more important, I couldn’t shake a fear that one of my teachers was going to pop out, chide me for missing class, and take yet more points away from my house.

  Not that I cared about any of that.

  As I headed down the hall toward Malcolm’s office, my heart started to beat faster. No matter how weird the circumstances, I’d been thrilled to learn I had a grandfather. I’d spent the last week trying to talk to him, but what I’d really wanted was for him to reach out to me. I’d wanted my grandfather to hug me and tell me that, even though he hadn’t been part of my life, he cared.

  Instead, he’d avoided me, as if he were a total asshole.

  Maybe he was. Maybe that was why Liam and Conner had cut him out, but he had seemed so kind in the little bit of time I spent with him.

  The pulse of anger through my blood was hot and dangerous, but the rise of hope I felt was even worse.

  His door was closed.

  But not locked. I grabbed the door handle, turned it, shoved inside. I left the door open to the hall behind me as I stormed in, even though part of me wanted to slam it. I was trying to be a better, more mature version of myself. Slightly more mature.

  He was standing at the windows, which were open, looking over the quad. He turned, his brows arching with surprise, and his face brightened when he saw me.

  The twin pulses of hope and fury heated even higher.

  “You owe me some answers, Grandfather,” I said.

  His face shifted. “I do,” he said carefully. “I’m glad you’re back safely, Deidra. Your friend is safely back at home?”


  “Yeah.” I crossed my arms, steeling my hope-filled heart. I couldn’t let my emotions get the better of me. “I’ve wanted to talk to you all week, ever since Julia’s father said you were my grandfather.”

  “Yes,” he said simply. “You and Julia are cousins. I hope you’ll put aside this rivalry the two of you have, especially now that you’ve fought side-by-side.”

  “It’s not a rivalry,” I said. “She can’t compete with me. But are you really my grandfather?”

  He hesitated.

  He wasn’t going to tell me the truth unless he had to.

  “Truby said that he’s my father,” I said. “That’s why he wants me so badly.”

  His eyes widened in genuine surprise, before his face shifted back to neutral. “I thought that might be what this was about.”

  “Everyone but me put that together, apparently,” I said. “You knew you weren’t really my grandfather?”

  He shook his head. “It’s complicated, Deidra. I wish I had been your grandfather. I wish I’d taken that role willingly, the way Conner took his role as your father. He loved you so very much.”

  Those words made it hard for me to hang onto my rage.

  “What happened between you and my father?” I asked.

  He ran his hand through his short, salt-and-pepper hair, pausing as if he was steeling himself. “It’s not a story that I’m proud to tell.”

  “We all have one of those.” His big mahogany desk was almost bare, and I boosted myself up to sit on the edge.

  Malcolm raised an eyebrow at me, but said, “I suppose we all do.”

  “What happened?” I asked again. “Why didn’t I ever hear anything about you?”

  He sighed. “That part hurts. When Gretchen said the boys never really had a father… I made my great mistakes later in their lives. I was there when they were young. I love them both.”

  His slip into present tense did not escape me. It was hard for me to remember to speak of Liam in the past tense.

  “When I found out that Ellie was pregnant by another man, I told Conner not to marry her,” he said. “I was a fool. He kept my thoughts a secret for the sake of my relationship with Ellie. Her father was long dead and she asked me to walk her down the aisle…”