by Elena Lawson
His compulsion lifted from me the moment I broke eye contact, and I wanted to scream—to lash out at him, but I didn’t. He was so close, and I was afraid. I was powerful, but he could control my mind. And he was stronger. So, so much stronger.
“Please,” he said, the hunger in his gaze never dissipating. His smoke and rose cologne enveloped me, and I felt drawn into him. “Please don’t be afraid.”
It wasn’t a command infused with compulsion, it was a request, and he was waiting for a response.
“You won’t,” I swallowed. “You won’t hurt me?”
He shook his head and grimacing, reached down for my blood covered hand. As though trying to prove himself, he bent all the fingers on my hand down save for my pinkie finger, getting my blood all over his own hand in the process.
My body heated, and my toes curled as he plunged my little finger into his mouth, between his fangs, and licked it clean of blood, moaning as he did it.
An intense heat pooled between my thighs and my lips parted. Why was this so hot?
Draven placed my hand back down into my lap with slow, practiced movements, his point proven.
So, he could control himself.
“I didn’t hurt those girls,” he said, rising and extending a hand for me to rise, too. I took his hand and he pulled me up, pulled me close. “I came here to tell you what I saw. Not what I did.”
“You saw something?” I asked incredulously. “What did you see? Was it an animal?”
Draven solemnly shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”
“Then what?”
“When I came to see you, the girl was already dead. I smelled her blood when I came to your window, and call me an idiot, but I followed the smell through the academy.”
Through the academy?
He took both my hands and pulled me down to sit. “I found the start of the blood trail near the library. The blood itself had been cleaned up, but not well enough that I couldn’t smell the stain of it on the tile. The trail led me outside and into the woods—to where she was lying dead beside that shed.”
My skin had turned to ice. The more he spoke, the more my hands shook in my lap, and I had to clench them together to keep them steady. I tried to find any trace of a lie in his eyes, or in his expression, but I found none.
He was telling the truth, and whether I wanted to admit it or not, I could sense that.
“It’s not an animal then…”
Draven dipped his head, shook it once, sharp. There was an apology in his eyes as he sighed, taking my hand between the two of his to squeeze it gently, trying to offer me a modicum of solace. It didn’t help, but it was nice to have something to hold onto.
“No, Harper. I’m afraid it’s not an animal. Not a what at all, but a who. The murderer is someone in this academy.”
I went to class the next day. After a revelation like the one Draven handed me last night, I had to. If only to see if I could find the murderer lurking behind someone’s eyes in the halls. I wanted to go to Granger with what Draven learned, but that wasn’t possible.
There was no way I’d have discovered the faint blood trail myself. And Draven wasn’t supposed to be here. If anyone—even Granger—knew he was here, there would be hell to pay for him and his queen. His entire race if the Arcane Council had anything to say about it.
Trespassing here without permission and killing a student—because of course, they’d immediately blame him—would be seen as an act of war. One the council would be more than obliging to return.
Knowing they would use it to their advantage and get what they seemed to always want—the archaic asshats—to rid this world of the lesser races made me absolutely furious. A world without Cal and Adrian wouldn’t be a place I wanted to live in.
There had to be other witches who felt the same way.
“Hey!” I turned at the sound of the voice, finding Marcus jogging to catch up with me in the hallway.
I looked behind him, thinking Bianca wouldn’t be far behind, but I didn’t see her in the thinning crowd milling through the halls between classes. Marcus was in our class for the new Magical Defense lesson, and it seemed some of the students had returned from hiding at home to see what it was all about.
Or perhaps their parents thought it prudent they learn in light of recent events. Even if the academy was now considered a dangerous place to be.
“Hey,” I replied. “Where’s Bianca?”
“That’s what I was going to ask you,” he said with a crooked grin. “Guess neither of us knows then. Does she do that a lot?”
Confused, I asked,” Do what?”
“Disappear,” he said simply by way of explanation, and I saw in the late afternoon glow coming down from one of the skylights in the corridor just how handsome Marcus was. I had to give Bianca points for her taste. He was absolutely delicious. His skin was a flawless shade, like the darkest of rich clay with cool sapphire undertones. He had kind eyes, too. I could see why she was so attracted to him. Who wouldn’t be?
Shaking my head and focusing on his words again, I pursed my lips. “What do you mean?”
Seeing the confusion in my face, he slowed and tugged me into an alcove off the main hallway. He looked uncomfortable and swallowed hard, dropping my arm. “I’m worried about her.”
Crap. I thought she was feeling better since Lacey. She didn’t seem upset all that much this past week. “But she was doing better. She only knew Lacey through her uncl—”
He shook his head. “No, it’s not that. She told me she’s losing time… hasn’t she told you? I thought you guys were, like, best friends.”
I winced at the accusation in his words. It was like he’d jabbed a knife into my heart and was twisting the handle. “No,” I breathed. “She didn’t tell me.”
Now it was his turn to look uncomfortable. “Shit. Was I not supposed to say anything?”
The question was more for himself, and I didn’t answer. I was too busy thinking of that time a few weeks ago when she said she couldn’t remember why she was over in the faculty wing. The day Marcus had seen her, but she couldn’t remember seeing him.
Oh! I gasped. And when she came home from visiting her brother last weekend and I asked her how she was feeling… she had seemed confused, hadn’t she?
Not to mention her zombie-like appearance that Friday after Lacey when I helped her upstairs and into bed.
“When you saw her that day in the faculty wing, did she seem pale? Sort of disconnected, like… like a…”
Marcus’ eyes widened, catching on to what I was saying. “Like a goddamn zombie.”
Oh my god. What was happening to her?
Had her uncle’s death been too much? Was it stress? She’d been obsessively straightening and arranging things for weeks. I chalked it up to a bit of stress. Maybe some anxiety over the upcoming ACE exams… but not this.
How did I not see it?
How often was it happening? How much stress did a person have to be under to lose entire chunks of time?
“I’m the worst friend.”
I hadn’t realized I’d said the words aloud until Marcus put his hand on my shoulder and I huffed, looking up into his soft brown eyes. “You’re not. I don’t think she wanted you to know. It’s not your fault.”
But in some way or another, it seemed anything bad that happened around me was my fault. Couldn’t he see that? Couldn’t everyone?
“Why are you being so nice to me?”
Marcus didn’t play stupid. He knew exactly what I meant. Even now, as students passed us on their way to study, or to the newly minted Magical Defense class, they whispered. What is he doing with her?
He was hurting his own reputability just being near me. No one else except Bianca deigned to speak to me anymore.
Marcus shook his head. “I know your familiars wouldn’t do what everyone thinks they did. Bianca told me about them. And if she trusts them, then so I do, which means I also trust you,” he dropped his hand and turned to go bac
k into the hallway. “Come on, maybe Bianca’s already at the Magical Defense lesson.”
I looked into the hallway at all the students staring, and Marcus dragged me out from the alcove. “I don’t care what they think, and neither should you,” he said. “Now let’s go find her.”
18
Marcus was right. And I needed to stop being such a damned baby about everything. How the hell did I expect to absolve Cal and Adrian of the sins everyone believed they committed if I was sitting quietly in the corner—whining.
How would I help Bianca? Or anyone.
So, instead of walking into Magical Defense with a huge chip on my shoulder, I pulled my hair into a tightly coiled bun and tugged my headband into place as I walked into the completely new training room with my head held high.
They could whisper all they liked. I just hoped whoever the MD instructor was, he planned to allow sparring so I could knock a few of them on their asses.
Marcus and I found Bianca standing near the back of the room, near to the other students, but not with them. We shared a look before weaving our way through the bodies waiting for the instructor to arrive.
“Hey, B. Where were you?” Marcus asked lightly as we approached, with a smile that didn’t touch his eyes.
Bianca jumped a bit, only just noticing we were there. “What? Oh, I was…” she trailed off, and looked like she was about to cry.
Oh, shit. What were you supposed to do when people cried, again? Hug them? That’s what Bianca did when I was upset. I wrapped her up in an awkward sideways embrace and lowered my voice. “You don’t remember, do you?”
She shook her head and peeked up at Marcus before her gaze rested back on me and she stepped out of my grasp. “He told you?”
I nodded. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I could’ve helped.”
I wasn’t sure what I’d have done, but I would have at least tried to do something. “You had enough to worry about already, I didn’t want to give you another thing to stress about.”
She didn’t want to give me another thing to stress about. She was the one blacking out from her own stress. “You’re an idiot,” I told her, and she gave me a sheepish smirk. “Let’s get out of here,” I said. “We can skip this today and I’ll take you to the infirmary. Maybe the nurses will—”
“No,” she said with a harshness I didn’t know her to be capable of.
“Harper is right, and it’s what I’ve been saying all week,” Marcus agreed. “You have to get help. Whatever is happening to you—it isn’t normal.”
Bianca narrowed her eyes at him, glaring like only she could. He shrank back from her stare. “You think I don’t know that,” she snapped in a rushed whisper, checking to make sure no one nearby was listening. “When I turned eighteen, I took legal guardianship of my brothers,” she said as though repeating herself, and I got the feeling they’d had this conversation already once—without me.
“I know—”
“No, you obviously don’t, Marcus. If something is wrong with me—with my… my head, then they’ll be taken away. The council will take them from me!”
“I thought maybe if Harper—”
“What? You were trying to get her to help you convince me to see… what? Some sort of magical psychologist? No, thank you. I can deal with this on my own.”
She crossed her arms, not able to look at either of us as she shoved her blonde hair from her face and stared with her glittering brown eyes at anything else.
No wonder we get along so well.
We’re both stubborn as hell.
If our positions were reversed, I didn’t think I would go to the infirmary either. There was too much at stake for her if she was found to be an unfit guardian. Where would her brothers even go? Maybe it was just some magical glitch. Elias said they happened a lot more frequently these days. That was it. Just a stress-induced magical blackout. Totally made sense, right?
“Ok,” I said after a minute. “We’ll figure it out, then. Just the three of us.”
Add it to the million other things I had to figure out… but this was for Bianca, so it rose to somewhere near the top of my list of mysteries to solve.
“I can’t find anything about it,” she grumbled. “Trust me, I’ve looked.”
And I thought she was studying in the library. Turned out she hadn’t been honest with me about that, either. But I couldn’t be mad now.
I bit the inside of my cheek hard, trying to come up with something else to try when I realized there were probably tens of thousands of books in that library. There had to be something on what was happening to her in there, she just didn’t know where to look. And by her unwillingness to tell even me what was going on, I’d stake money that she never asked the ancient librarian who knew at the drop of a hat where to find anything in the old stacks.
There was definitely something there, and if I was the one asking the librarian for the books then she would only think it was me who might be experiencing the symptoms, not Bianca. And everyone already thought I had a screw or two loose, why not a few more? “I’ll ask whatsherface in the library. She might know. And I can ask Granger, too.”
She opened her mouth to protest.
“If they ask why I’m looking into it, I’ll tell them it’s me. That I’m the one who’s losing time, not you. Ok?”
She cocked her head at me. “You would do that?”
I shrugged. “Why not? I’ve got a legacy of crazy to uphold,” I added with a wink. “No sweat.”
Marcus seemed confused at my statement, but Bianca gave a small laugh and it was enough to ease some of the tension out of his broad shoulders. I’d almost forgotten no one save for a small handful of people knew about my true heritage. I’d need to be more careful, so I didn’t end up being the one to spill my own beans.
I wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
“Everyone gather ‘round!” An authoritative female voice called from the front of the room, and our three heads turned at once to the command.
Into the room strolled a woman. It took a moment for me to draw the connection that she was the Magical Defense instructor. Granger was still the only female faculty member at the academy, and I didn’t think the council would be allowing another female on board any time soon.
I supposed I was wrong. And glad to be.
She was maybe a few inches shorter than me, but what she lacked in height, she made up for in muscle. Dressed in a black combat outfit made of thick-looking material and heavy-soled black lace-up boots, she looked like she was ready to crush someone’s skull with her bare hands—not teach a bunch of seventeen and eighteen-year-olds how to not be helpless little butterflies.
She was younger than I thought an instructor ought to be and had short silvery hair that glimmered with hues of purple and blue in the light and a no-nonsense expression that made the three of us stand at attention, rushing to take our places with the others forming an audience around her.
Whoever she was, this bitch wasn’t messing around.
And I liked her already.
19
“Pay attention,” she hollered, her haughty stare resting on the fist-bumping douche I’d learned was called Chad. Shut him up right quick.
“You sure you’re okay to handle this right now?” I whispered to Bianca, careful to make sure I the new instructor didn’t see or hear so I didn’t earn myself a steaming pile of her scorn, too.
Bianca shook her head, blushing. “I’m fine,” she said. “Just because I’ve developed early onset Alzheimer’s doesn’t mean I’m made of porcelain, too.”
I didn’t laugh at her attempt to make a joke out of it. Lara’s mother had something like that—I’d never got a chance to meet the woman, but I knew the disease was no laughing matter from what she told me.
“Not funny?” she asked with a pained expression.
I shook my head.
She sighed. “Yeah, maybe not.”
We turned our attention back to the instructor, and I wondered
if we were supposed to wear combat clothes for this class, too, because if we were, I didn’t get the memo. I wouldn’t mind trying her outfit on for style though.
It looked so much more and less constricting than the kilt and starched blouse I currently had one.
“You can call me Sloane. Not Professor Sloane. Not Miss Sloane. Just Sloane. Got it?”
No one replied, but a few in our large group nodded.
“Now, since we had to split everyone into two groups, I only get you two days a week. That’s two days a week to try to teach you what I learned in my first year at the Officers’ Academy. And they want you to learn it all in the next four weeks.”
She was an Arcane Officer? I wondered if there were many females in the same position. If there were, they must’ve been shoved behind desk jobs, because Sloane was the first I’d ever seen.
There were some grumbles from the group, and some genuinely excited looks and whispers from the others.
“Yes,” Sloane continued, bellowing out her speech so it echoed all through the cavernous room. “It’s going to suck.”
I knew Granger was working on a temporary addition to the academy to host this class, but I didn’t expect it to be quite so large. The ceilings were fifty feet above us. And the floor was made up a sort of springy black material. The rest of the room was plain off-white walls—windowless. The whole place buzzed with magic, and I wondered how many witches it’d taken to slap it together basically overnight.
“You’ll be sore, and tired every day by the time we’re through, but it’ll be worth it when we’re done.”
As if I wasn’t already sore and tired anyway. Bring it.
Sloane clapped her hands together, and the floor vibrated before two straight lines of training dummies sprang up from the floor out of nothing. We had to jump back to avoid getting hit by the one closest to us. “Everyone square off in front of a dummy. Let’s get started.”
I was a ball of hurt later that evening after I’d hauled my aching bones to the showers and then back down to the library. Sloane decided it was best to focus our efforts on the physical aspect of Magical Defense for the first day. Like reflexes, and strength.