Hunt (Academy of Unpredictable Magic Book 5)

by Sadie Moss

  Her enthusiasm and loyalty honestly make me tear up a little, my throat closing and my eyes growing hot and itchy. God, I love my sister.

  “Mads, I—thank you.” I clear my throat, fighting to keep my voice even. “That means a lot, to know that you’re—that you want to join me. But don’t. You have school to finish; you can’t take time off from that. I won’t let you derail your life for this, for me, or put yourself in danger if you can possibly avoid it.”

  I can practically hear her pout. “I suppose,” she says. “But…”

  “I’m going to be okay,” I tell her firmly. Even though this is possibly the one time in my life where I can’t guarantee that I will be. “I want you to focus on yourself and keep taking care of your education. That’s what’s important, okay? I’m going to take care of this. You just… just be prepared, okay? For whatever happens. I don’t know how this is going to go. I hope it goes in our favor. But whatever does happen, things are going to change in our world, and I want you to be ready.”

  “I will be,” she promises me.

  “And don’t be alone,” I add. I don’t want to say I don’t want her to be on her own in case the worst happens and she needs a shoulder to cry on, but… “I just want you to be with people.”

  “Justin’s here with me. It’ll be fine.”

  There’s a tone in her voice that brings me up short, temporarily pulling my attention away from the hunt for a dangerous madman I’m about to embark upon. “Oh, he is, is he? Are… did you two…?”

  “Um…” I can hear the smile in Maddy’s voice, and the game is definitely up now. Ha! “So, last night…”

  “You two are together, aren’t you? He finally get up the courage to ask you out? Did you guys kiss?” I make kissing noises into the phone.

  Hey, I might love her more than life itself, but I’m still her older sister. I’m going to embarrass her and tease her whenever I can.

  “Ew, stop that! What are you, twelve?” Maddy groans. “Yes, all right, he asked me out, and we—we went on a nice walk, and held hands, and then we came back to my dorm and watched the original Star Wars trilogy…”

  “Oh my God, what is it with you and nerds?”

  “Two of your four boyfriends could compete to win Broodiest Man of the Year,” she shoots back, laughter in her voice. “You do not get to judge me for having a type.”

  Welp. She’s got me there.

  “All teasing aside,” I say, gripping the phone a little harder, “is he making you happy? Are you happy about this?”

  “Yes,” Maddy tells me firmly, without missing a beat. Her voice is light, and I can tell she’s smiling, even through the phone. “I’m—he—it’s amazing, Ellie, it really is. I’m super happy.”

  “Tell him to treat you right or I’ll fuck him up,” I tell her. I mean, I have to tell her that. It’s practically in the big sister handbook that all bad boyfriends must be attacked, thoroughly, with baseball bats.

  She sighs. “I don’t need to tell him; he saw you in the Trials and all that. He knows you could squash him like a grape if you wanted to.”

  “Oh, goodie, excellent.” I grin. “I’m so glad for you, Mads, I really am. You deserve to feel happy. I know that… all my shit’s been on your mind these past couple years, and it’s made things stressful for you. And you’ve probably had to deal with people giving you a rough time because you’re related to me. And I want you to know that I really appreciate it, and I know it’s been hard, and I’m so proud of how you’ve handled all this.”

  “I love you,” she tells me, her voice now soft and thick, and I know she’s holding back tears. “I love you so much.”

  “I love you too. Now go, have fun, do your homework, wear a condom!”

  “Ew! Elliot!”

  I’m laughing as I hang up, but my heart still stings. I don’t know if I’m ever going to see my sister again. If I’ll be around to watch her graduate.

  I look over at the guys in the car. Dmitri and Roman are talking in low voices while Asher’s asleep, his head on Dmitri’s shoulder, still exhausted from his work with Johnson yesterday. Cam’s doing research on his phone. I can tell they’ve all been keeping an ear out for my conversation, but not blatantly listening in. They’re giving me space, if I need it.

  I’m so fucking glad they’re all here. I like to think I could do this by myself if I had to, especially magic-wise. Once I find him, I’ll kick that son of a bitch’s ass into next week. But I have a feeling I’m going to need their support in other ways. Mostly emotionally.

  And, well, if this does goes horribly sideways, at least I’ll be with the men that I love.

  Chapter 12

  “Okay, Professor X,” Cam says, turning to look at Asher as Dmitri gently nudges him awake. “What did you find out while rummaging around in that jerk-off’s head?”

  Asher rubs at his temples, blinking as he shakes off the fog of sleep. “It wasn’t easy. Johnson’s got a lot of magical training, and he’s strong willed, and that’s not even counting the enchantments our guy put on him to keep him from talking.”

  I clench my jaw, a fresh wave of anger coursing through me. No wonder Asher looks so damn tired. Maybe I should’ve gone in and had a little “chat” with Johnson myself before Asher tried to break into his mind.

  “But I did learn that Johnson met with our guy in person just once,” he continues, sitting up straighter. “The rest of their communication was all through encrypted messages. The guy didn’t like to meet in person, to show himself, but I think he had to be face-to-face with Johnson to put up the locking wards on the provost’s mind, and Johnson seemed… wary about the guy.”

  Asher pauses, frowning slightly. “It’s not… people don’t usually talk to me in their minds. It’s not full sentences. It’s more like I register an emotion or an impression. And Johnson had a huge amount of wariness about this meeting. He wanted to see this guy in person so he’d know he wasn’t being set up by someone.” He closes his eyes, as if digging around inside himself for every scrap of information he was able to extract from the toadish man. “That meeting really made an impression on Johnson. It was vivid in his memories. I got an image of the place where they met—a bar, in the city.”

  “Could you see what the guy looked like?” Cam asks.

  Ash shakes his head. “No. The mental block was too powerful. When I saw them talking at the bar, the guy’s face was just a blur. But when I was in the memory… it’s not like I’m reliving it with the person. Not exactly. I mean, you can’t exactly relive your own memories. You can think about them, but it’s not like you feel as though you’re actually there.”

  “That’s so fucking trippy.” My head spins just thinking about it—what it must feel like to be inside someone else’s mind.

  Soft green eyes dance with amusement as Asher catches my gaze. “It is, a bit. When I go in, it’s like I’m looking at a watercolor. Or a chalk drawing on the sidewalk where the water’s starting to make it run a bit. There are always parts that are fuzzy and indistinct. But I’m an observer, so I can kind of see things better than they can in their own memory.”

  He pauses and bites his bottom lip, as if he’s trying to find the best way to describe it.

  “What I’m getting at is—this guy put an enchantment on Johnson, but he might not have put an enchantment on the other people at the bar. Meddling with non-magic users is risky, especially fiddling with their memories. And I know what those people look like now, the people who were there when Johnson met this guy, because inside his memory, I was able to look around and see them.” He leans forward a little, and even though he still looks exhausted, I can feel excitement radiating from him. “So we just need to go to the bar and see if we can find the people who were in that memory—any regulars, anyone who was there that night—and hopefully I can read their minds a lot more easily than I could read Johnson’s.”

  “Are you sure that you’re up to that?” I ask. “Getting into Johnson’s head took a lot o
ut of you.”

  Asher shakes his head. “I’m good. I want to do this; I can do this.”

  I’m still unsure, but I really have no room to judge other people for choosing to overwork themselves or put themselves in harm’s way. It’s practically my hobby by now.

  We reach the bar, which turns out to be a dive called Ace in the Hole—Jesus, Johnson, have some fucking class for crying out loud—and Roman orders drinks at the bar while the rest of us look for a place to sit.

  It’s early evening, so the place isn’t that crowded yet. Or maybe it’s not the kind of place that ever gets crowded.

  Dmitri makes a beeline for a booth in the back corner, because the man wouldn’t be caught dead in the middle of a room where strangers might actually, gasp, try to talk to him. I’m kind of chuckling inside. These are four insanely hot men coming into a bar, does he really think nobody’s going to come up and try to hit on them?

  I remember when I first saw the three guys, actually—Cam, Asher, and Dmitri—at the bar where I used to work. It’s a popular place, so I’m not surprised a lot of the students from Griffin would go there.

  I actually considered going up to hit on the three of them that night myself. It didn’t work out since they were gone by the time I got off my shift, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a few enterprising ladies come up to us tonight to try their luck.

  Dmitri sits in the middle, making himself the most difficult to get to if you’re, say, a woman who’s trying to hit on him. He also yanks me in to sit next to him and puts his arm around me, practically hauling me onto his lap.

  “I think everyone gets the message, babe,” I tell him, planting a kiss on his cheek.

  Dmitri rolls his eyes at the teasing endearment, but he doesn’t tell me to knock it off, so I call that a win.

  Cam slides in on my other side, then Roman on Dmitri’s free side, then Asher next to Roman, our resident mind reader positioning himself so he’s able to easily get up and out of the booth if he spots a familiar face.

  Roman passes us all beers. Cam and Dmitri make faces—Cam likes cocktails, and Dmitri is a snob who will lecture you for hours about proper whiskey and wine if you give him a chance—but we all take sips and nurse our drinks. We’re not actually here to get drunk or to relax, we’re here for work.

  It does kind of feel like we’re here on a casual date though. Asher keeps his gaze on the entrance, but after twenty minutes pass and he gives no signal that he recognizes anyone, we start to loosen up a little. This is the first time we’ve all hung out together outside of Roman’s house, out in public, and it’s… it’s really nice.

  It takes a little bit, but everyone starts to properly relax. Cam teases Dmitri, who snipes back at him. Roman’s foot nudges mine under the table. I hum along to a song playing on the jukebox as we all talk and laugh with each other.

  We’re actually having a good time.

  If it wasn’t for the whole Unpredictable bullshit hanging over our heads, this would be a perfect evening. Me with my four men, all of us joking and laughing, relaxed, together, safe.

  I turn to Cam, about to tell him that, when Asher stops speaking mid-sentence, his entire body going stiff. “That’s one of them. There,” he whispers, his gaze zeroing in on a patron who’s just entered.

  Everyone falls silent and tenses up.

  “Great. So… what do we do now?” Cam asks.

  In answer, Roman stands up, nudging Asher out of the booth. “We go and we talk to him.”

  Hoo boy.

  Chapter 13

  My heart is pounding as we all get up and walk over as a group. People must be wondering what we’re doing, moving in a pack like this toward the old guy.

  The man Asher recognized looks like he’s probably a regular here. He’s old enough to be my grandfather, and he appears cranky, thin, and worn down.

  Oh God, I hope he doesn’t think we’re here to rob him or some shit. If he’s uncooperative, I don’t know what we’ll do. We can’t afford to make a scene.

  As we walk up, the guy glances at us, looking completely unamused and done with this shit already. He probably thinks we’re here to mock him and harass him or something, I don’t know.

  “Hi.” Asher sits down across from him. “I’m sorry to bother you, but do you have a moment?”

  Leave it to Asher to be the polite one of our group. Cam stands behind him and gives a warm, friendly smile to the guy. Roman and Dmitri and I are hovering in the background with our arms folded like bodyguards. Which is probably not helping the situation.

  “Maybe,” the old guy replies, wariness evident in every line of his face.

  “We’re trying to track down someone,” Asher says patiently. “We work for a private detective agency, and I’m afraid time is of the essence for our client.”

  Something about Asher’s voice sounds strange. Oddly… soothing. It makes me want to trust him—which doesn’t make sense because I already trust him.

  And then I realize what’s going on. Reading people’s minds isn’t Asher’s only power; he can influence their thoughts too. I don’t know if he’s ever done it before outside of assignments where he had to. Asher’s big on free will, and I completely understand that. But as he speaks, the old man in front of us starts to relax, to adopt a more laidback posture.

  Asher describes Johnson in detail, and the old man listens, his head cocked to one side

  “This was sometime last year,” Asher adds. “So I understand if you can’t remember well. But do you think you could recall seeing this man? And who he was with?”

  The man squints, and I see a furrow appearing in Asher’s brow. He must be trying to read the guy’s mind as discreetly as possible. I’ve never had Asher rooting around in my head—he’s only projected a thought into it, and I’ve projected thoughts for him to hear in return—but I can imagine that generally, people know when someone’s trying to poke around in their mind. Asher must’ve practiced his ass off to be able to do it without alerting the person.

  “Yeah, I remember a bit,” the guy says, his voice rough like he’s been gargling rocks. “I think I saw… yeah, there was a guy with him. Tall… dark hair… brown—er, no, maybe it was red—or that might’ve been the lighting… maybe dark blond…”

  Oh my God, are you kidding me? So he could have basically any natural hair color. Our mystery man doesn’t dye his hair bright green. That’s super helpful, thanks so much, really appreciate it.

  It’s a struggle not to roll my eyes.

  “Thank you so much,” Asher says, still in that soothing voice. “Anything else you can remember? Did the man do anything unusual?”

  “It was a year ago, sonny, what do you expect me to remember?” the man grumbles.

  Shit. We’re not getting anything useful here. We should wait until someone else who was there that night comes in—someone who’s not a senior citizen.

  Asher’s eyes narrow, and the old man flinches. I think he felt it that time. But the man’s eyes light up with the spark of memory, so I guess—I hope—he shrugged off whatever he felt of Asher’s influence. “Wait! There was one thing—I remember at the end of the night, when they’d finished talking… your friend sat at the bar… looked a little out of it.” He scoffs. “Lightweight. But the man you’re looking for… he went into the back hallway. But he didn’t come out.”

  “So he left through the back door?” Cam asks.

  The old man glances at him, perplexed, then shakes his head. “Couldn’t have. The alley back there is completely blocked off, you can’t reach the street from it. But I never saw him come back out… sat here another couple hours, I did…”

  A surge of relief rises up inside me.

  Thank fuck. That’s something we can work with.

  I immediately peel off to check out the alley. I hear Roman saying something to Dmitri, something low that I can’t quite hear, and then I feel the heat of him at my back as he catches up to me, following me outside through the rickety back door.<
br />
  It’s dark out here and smells a bit stale, the usual alley deal. I can’t help but smirk, though, and feel a little rush of heat as I walk along it. The door didn’t close all the way behind us, so dim light from the bar spills into the alley, giving us enough illumination to see by.

  “What’s that look for?” Roman asks as he catches sight of my expression, his voice low and rough.

  “Oh, just that it’s you, me, and a back alley again.” I wink at him.

  Roman and I first met at the bar where I used to work, and because neither of us was willing to bring a stranger back to our home, we ended up having sex in the alley down the street from The Den. It was hot as fuck, and I tried to make myself forget it, to call it just a one-night stand, but I couldn’t. Especially not when I got to Griffin and found out Roman was one of my professors, someone I’d be seeing almost every day.

  Of course it didn’t take us long to get back to hooking up again. And again. And again. Even though both of us tried to deny how we felt.

  Actually, I was the one who did most of the denying and running away. I’m lucky as fuck that Roman was patient and stubborn enough to wait for me while I worked through some of my intimacy issues.

  “Just like old times,” I tell him with a grin. “Wouldn’t you say?”

  “No,” Roman replies, to my confusion.

  Before I can ask what he means, his hands grab my hips, pushing me back, pinning me to the wall. A moment later, his whole body is pressed against mine, his mouth devouring me, kissing hotly up my neck before sliding his tongue into my mouth as I whimper and cling to him.

  “Now it’s just like old times,” he whispers.

  Goddamn. I yank him back down and kiss him again, melting under his touch. Roman’s hands tighten around my hips, making me shudder, making heat slide through me like lava. Fuck, it’s so easy for him to bring me from zero to a hundred, to make me wet, worked up, and desperate. Lucky for him, I don’t mind it at all. Quite the opposite.