by Lucia Ashta
As if the doors sensed that I’d already entered, they reversed their trajectory before completing their usual arc—magic was so cool. And finally, I was back within the academy, right where I belonged.
Ky and Boone were moving toward me as I walked toward them when I heard one of Roberta’s sons.
“You have a best friend?” he asked of her. “Since when?”
“Since I grown sick a just havin’ kids around me. A woman like me needs girl time. I can’t be around ya boys all the damn time.”
“What about our sisters?” another asked—Rammer, I think.
“Yer sisters are meaner than a hissin’, spittin’ raccoon. A sophist-uh-cated woman like me needs some different kinda girl time.”
I closed the distance between Ky, Boone, and me, but didn’t slow. “Come on,” I told them. “We can talk later.”
They chuckled because they realized exactly why I didn’t want to hang around, and fell into step with me, flanking me on either side.
Roberta might be content to play with me for now, but no one with any kind of smarts about them didn’t take her seriously when they were in her presence. And I’d up and used my entire quota of diplomacy for the semester. The sooner I got away from the bunny nutcases, the better.
When the gate was far enough behind us that I couldn’t hear the rabbits bickering any longer, I stopped for a few seconds, blowing out a heavy sigh that sent the streak in my hair fluttering. “Damn. What the hell is Sir Lancelot thinking having creatures like them guard the gate?”
“He’s thinking that you’d have to be insane to mess with them,” Boone said. The broad-shouldered werewolf, with the thick brown hair tied back in a ponytail low on his neck, was undeniably handsome. His smile was easy, and it reached his eyes.
Even so, I turned my attention to Ky, drinking in the sight of him, trailing my gaze languorously up and down his body until I noticed he was watching me, amusement lighting up his copper eyes.
But as quickly as the amusement flashed, it disappeared. “Clearly not even creatures as terrifying as the rabbits are enough to keep some away.”
I sighed. He was right. Of course he wouldn’t have been able to forget the attacks of the previous terms as easily as I. After all, he’d been at the center of them, and when he wasn’t, his sister Rina most definitely had been.
The gate and other magically-operated boundaries of the school had proven insufficient during my time at the academy.
“All that’s over now though,” I said, mostly because I wanted to hear it aloud. “Sir Lancelot said the Voice is talking peace, and that everything is getting sorted. Right?”
“That’s what he says.” Boone shrugged in a way that suggested he didn’t entirely believe it.
Problem was, I really wanted to believe. After what had happened to Ky and Rina, and the accident that had nearly killed Wren and me, I needed the next few months to be uneventful—or as uneventful as a school filled with the most powerful shapeshifters, vampires, fae, and an assortment of magical creatures could get.
Hell, who was I kidding? The summer had been long and boring—but for my naughty times with Jabar. I could use some excitement, just of the non-lethal kind.
My inner turmoil must have seeped through to my face, because Boone grinned and scooped me into a crushing hug, knocking my duffel to the ground in the process, and my Betty Boop backpack down to the crook of my arm. “Hey, no worries, Jas,” he said. “We’re all good, aren’t we? We’re all here, or soon to be here at least. Rage is dead, and Fury is under the watchful care of the Enforcers. They won’t be losing sight of him anytime soon.”
Nodding against his wide chest, a weight I hadn’t realized I was carrying lifted from my shoulders and I squeezed him back. “Thanks, Boone. You’re right. This semester is going to be fucking awesome.”
His laughter was warm as it vibrated beneath my cheek.
“If you guys are finished with the cuddle fest…” Ky interrupted, and I stepped away from Boone, thinking I’d step right into the arms I’d been dreaming of for three whole months.
But no.
Ky scowled at me before directing the same at Boone.
“What are you giving us crap about hugging for?” I asked.
“I’m not giving you crap. We just don’t have time for this.”
Hitching my backpack higher onto my shoulder, I arched my brows at him. “We don’t have time for hugs?” I deadpanned. “After not seeing each other for three whole months…?”
“That’s right. The mountain locked you out. The rest of us all got in just fine. After what happened last term, I’d think you’d be a little more preoccupied about figuring out what the hell is going on than losing yourself to Boone’s hug.”
He said hug like it was a dirty word. I barked out a laugh.
“What are you laughing at?”
“You.” No point beating around the bush.
I grinned. Ky’s nostrils flared a bit, and Boone looked down like he was trying hard not to laugh at his friend.
“You’re jealous,” I said.
Ky puffed an incredulous laugh. “I am no such thing.”
“Uh, yeah, you are.”
“And how would you know that?”
“I know you, Ky. We slept together last semester, remember?”
Boone coughed into his hand, but didn’t remove his eyes from us.
“We didn’t sleep together, Jas,” Ky said. “We haven’t even kissed.”
“We did too sleep together. We slept in neighboring beds in the exact same room. That’s the precise definition of sleeping together. Unless…” I waggled my eyebrows. “Unless your dirty mind went right to sex, and in that case I don’t blame you. I am a fine specimen of hot woman. The good news is that you don’t need to resist your urges. You can kiss me whenever you want.”
Ky stared at me until his copper eyes flashed with something akin to heat. Then he scoffed and crossed his arms over his chest, making it clear he had no intention of hugging me anytime soon.
With a heavy sigh, I slid my backpack off my shoulder and laid it atop my duffel. “What crawled up your butt?”
“You,” he snapped.
I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or be pissed, because it was obvious from the redness creeping beneath his stubbled cheeks that he hadn’t thought before he’d spoken.
Boone tried to hide a snicker behind me as I fully faced off with Ky in the middle of the sidewalk leading to the large, grassy quad that connected most of the buildings on campus.
“I crawled up your butt?” I clarified.
“You know what I mean,” Ky said.
“Oh no, I sure as fuck don’t. Clarify it for me, won’t you?” My sudden smile was fake while I batted my lashes at him.
“You’re doing what you’ve done since I met you. You’re all up in my business, and my friends’, like it’s nothing.”
Fake smile or not, it dropped from my face. “If I’m up in your business, it’s because you’re my friends.”
“Friends? Is that really what you and I are?”
“I haven’t made it a secret that you turn me on, Ky, so what’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is that you’re my sister’s best friend.”
Jeez! How many best friends could a girl have forced on her?
“Rina isn’t my best friend,” I said. “We’re friends, but not best friends.”
“The distinction isn’t important. The thing is that I don’t cross the line with my sister’s friends.”
“So then why’d you agree to share a room with me at the end of last term?”
“Because all my friends were sharing rooms with other girls, and you just wouldn’t let it drop.”
“That’s not how I remember it,” I said, narrowing my eyes to perilous slits. I couldn’t see myself, but I suspected I was starting to look as dangerous as Roberta.
“You spin things however you want, Jas, that’s the problem. You don’t listen to me when I tell
you I can’t go there. You just keep inviting me to dances and wearing slinky little hot dresses, and you sleep in the bed next to me, stripping down to your panties and tiny, see-through tank top like you don’t care what it’ll do to me.”
I blinked at him. “And what do I do to you?”
His nostrils flared again and he growled under his breath, reminding me that this man was a mountain lion shifter, and his animal, like my skunk, always rode close to the surface. He threw his hands in the air, spun on his heel, and stalked away, muttering under his breath.
“Where the hell is he going?” I asked Boone, who was staring after his friend.
“I have no idea,” Boone said.
“We’d better go after him. I think he took a double dose of his crazy pills today.”
“It would seem like it,” Boone said, scooping down to pick up my duffel while handing me my backpack. Then he set off in long, smooth strides after Ky, while I hurried to catch up. Damn short legs. Still, at least I had a fine view while we chased Ky. His angry steps did nothing to detract from the way his jeans and fitted t-shirt accentuated all those hard planes of muscles I was jonesing to get my hands on.
“I think he’s heading to Acquaine Hall,” Boone commented once we took a left at the fork in the sidewalks that veered around the open quad between them.
“Ah,” I said, because it finally made sense. Not Ky’s reactions, but his direction. All students had to go to the admin building to check in upon arrival.
“I can’t wait to deal with more cranky creatures,” I muttered under my breath, thinking of the pygmy trolls who manned the admin counters, and Boone laughed, light and joyous.
Why couldn’t I have a thing for the happy, hot shifter at my side instead of the moody, disgruntled fucker stomping his way across the grounds?
5
Ky waited at the entrance to Acquaine Hall, holding the door open for us. I climbed the steps in front of the building, looking at him all the while. When I slipped inside the double doors, I brushed my arm along his firm chest, unable to help myself. His scowl was firmly in place, but his copper eyes were conflicted, and I couldn’t make sense of what that meant. He didn’t pull away from my touch; if anything, it seemed like he might have leaned into it by an infinitesimal amount.
Damn complicated man.
I cut across the marble lobby, sensing Ky and Boone behind me. My back, legs, and everything in between, pricked with the sensation that one of them—or both—was staring at me as I went. I put a little extra sashay into my step as I took a right into the main administration office.
Right away, I grinned. Unlike most students at the academy, I actually liked the pygmy trolls that performed tasks around the school, like manning the office, running the dining hall, and patrolling the grounds. Others were intimidated by their constant snarling and short tempers. I looked forward to seeing them—mostly because it was so much fun to mess with them. I appreciated how they didn’t hold back when they spoke their mind. With them, you always knew exactly where you stood, even if they usually pegged you lower than them, and given that they were barely waist-high—including their fluorescent fro-hawks—they generally thought of the student body as annoying scum.
“Well, don’t just wait there to see if you’ll catch a pixie!” one of said trolls barked at me from his place at the counter that lined three sides of the room. His hair was a blindingly bright pink tuft of hair, and his little-old-man face made him look like he was battling constipation.
“Are you wasting my time, pupil?” the troll prompted when I didn’t respond quickly enough. He made pupil sound like a nasty insult. I liked him already.
“How does one go about catching a pixie?” I asked, while Boone and Ky sauntered in behind me, waiting off to the side. Presumably they’d already checked in. Nice of them to come with me now…
The troll let loose a long-suffering sigh, and I decided right then I’d call him Happy Puff, though I knew not to call him that to his face.
He brought four-fingered stubby hands to either side of his hips, flanking the loincloth I knew he’d be wearing just beneath my line of sight, blocked by the counter. “Are you messing with me?” he asked like a growling cartoon bear.
I chuckled at the thought of the pygmy troll in a cartoon before realizing what I’d done. The troll widened his black, pupil-less eyes at me, took me in for a few beats, then narrowed his eyes to small slits. Ky and Boone took a few steps farther into the room, standing closer to my back.
“You are messing with me,” Happy Puff accused, snapping one of the hands from his hips to jab at the air in front of him.
Three other trolls manned the rest of the counter on other sides of the room, but at Happy Puff’s accusation they all stopped what they were doing to glare at me. One thing could be said about the trolls: they stood by their own. I’d only ever witnessed them being pissy with other magical creatures.
Violet, midnight-blue, and highlighter-yellow fro-hawks turned in my direction.
Ky mumbled something unintelligible under his breath.
I smiled at Happy Puff, swiping my gaze up and down his pudgy little body. His pot belly rested on the counter in front of him. “I genuinely don’t know how to catch a pixie. Since we’re at the Magical Creatures Academy, I figured I’d ask. You could tell me.”
“I could tell you,” Happy Puff said like sandpaper with extra grit, “but then we’d be wasting my time. There’s no time for students’ ‘figuring.’”
The trolls with the violet, midnight-blue, and highlighter-yellow fro-hawks hmphed their agreement.
“Are you here to check in or not?” Happy Puff asked, leaning forward over the counter. A grin tugged at my mouth when I imagined the view the wall behind him was getting, and his eyes narrowed impossibly smaller at me.
“Cut it out, Jas,” Ky admonished from behind me.
But I couldn’t exactly help myself, could I? The trolls wore loincloths that—like proper loincloths—exposed their little round butts to all who dared to look.
“Mister Mont, Mister Zimmer, is this student a friend of yours?” Happy Puff inquired without moving his stare from me.
“Unfortunately,” Ky grumbled while Boone said a simple yes.
“Then you’d be wise to keep a handle on her.”
Ky reached to wrap an arm around my shoulder, and I slipped out from under him before he could so much as lay a possessive finger on me.
“Excuse me?” I snapped at Happy Puff, whose nickname I was now swapping out for Jerkwad. “Did you just suggest I needed keepers or some crap?”
Jerkwad straightened and crossed his hands over his protruding abdomen like he was some kind of Saint Nick with a bowl full of jelly in his belly. “I call it like I see it,” he said with a grin that widened his eyes to normal proportions.
“You’re ‘calling’ me on my shit because I dared to ask you how to catch a pixie? Are you for real right now?”
“Jas,” Boone whispered his warning.
“No,” I shot back—at all of them. “This is ridiculous. I’m being punished for asking a damn question about magical creatures. Do you not see the absurdity of this?”
“You’re overreacting,” Ky whispered. “They’re pygmy trolls,” he continued, as if I was supposed to bend over backwards and then lie down so Jerkwad could walk all over me. “It’s just how they are.”
“Yeah?” I said, snapping a quick glare at Ky. Damn him, he still looked beautiful even when he was pissing me off. “Well, if that’s how they are, then this is how I am. I don’t like being mistreated for no goddamn reason.”
“It does seem like you’re being a bit intense right now,” Boone said, and when I whipped around to glare at him, his hands came up, suggesting surrender.
“I’m intense because it’s the logical reaction when someone bites my head off for asking a question. I don’t understand why the entrance through the mountain wouldn’t let me in, and instead of confirming my attendance here, the pygmy trolls
are giving me shit.”
“You gave me shit too,” Jerkwad said.
I crossed my arms over my chest and began a stare-off with the little-old-man face trapped in the body of a pygmy troll. When enough time passed that I could feel the tension rolling off Ky and Boone behind me, and the stares of the three other trolls skimmed my skin like tingles, I finally asked, “Are you going to confirm my attendance or not?”
I didn’t give a damn about pixies anymore, and I was done giving a damn about pygmy trolls and their attitudes.
Jerkwad tilted his head to the side and nodded once. “That, pupil, is my job. Not answering random questions.”
“And who said customer service is dead?” I injected every ounce of sarcasm I possessed into my question, which was a healthy portion, even though I doubted students would qualify as customers. We didn’t actually pay to attend the academy. Healthy donations from the magical community took care of all the interlinked academies.
“What do you mean by customer service?” Jerkwad asked.
I grinned ferally. “I don’t answer random questions. I’m only here to confirm my attendance.”
I was sure the troll would have something to say about that, but he finally nodded again and asked, “What’s your name?”
“Jazz-mine Jolly.” I put heavy emphasis on the best part of my name to make up for the fact that I had to admit to that flowery-crap birth name in public.
Jerkwad hopped off the stool, which allowed him to peer over the counter at us, and turned to riffle through some file folders on the shelves behind him. Drawn to the sight as passersby are drawn to a car crash, my feet moved as of their own accord. When I was close enough to the counter to see over it, I stopped and took in his round little troll butt, mooning the world in all its glory. Ky and Boone didn’t follow me.
Chuckling, I realized how much I’d missed the school and its extreme oddity. One thing was guaranteed about this place: wherever you looked, there was always something bizarre or magical, and even better yet: bizarrely magical. I might have been around magic all my life, always knowing what path I’d take, but parts of it never got old.