Lock and Key

by Evangeline Anderson

  She seemed to realize we were all looking at her for a moment because she glanced up, a slightly guilty expression on her face—what I could see of it, anyway.

  “You…why are you all looking at me?” she exclaimed, frowning.

  “Maybe we’re all just wondering why Ari Reyes flew to your rescue when the ‘lovequake’ happened,” Avery remarked. “And how he knew you were in trouble in the first place.”

  “I don’t know, okay?” Kaitlyn looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know how he knew where I was or why he came. He didn’t say anything to me. He was just suddenly there, untying those awful ropes the witches had on me.”

  She sounded a bit defensive, I thought, and I didn’t like making her uncomfortable.

  “Well, who knows,” I said vaguely, hoping to change the subject. “But did any of you see the size of his Drake? It was huge.”

  “I did,” Emma said. “I looked up and it was like a massive cloud blotting out the sun! And its wings were even bigger than its body. They looked like the sails on those old-fashioned sailing ships you see on historical tours at the harbor sometimes.”

  “I wonder if it’s a fire-breather?” Avery mused. “I think I saw some smoke or steam coming from its muzzle. Do you know, they say a Drake’s internal temperature can reach over fourteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit or eight hundred degrees Centigrade? That’s hotter than a forest fire!”

  Kaitlyn’s one visible eye widened and her creamy skin got pale.

  “Will you excuse me?” she said, putting her mug of hot cocoa down on the coffee table and standing up—a bit shakily I thought. “I’m really tired—I think I’ll go to bed early.”

  “Oh Katydid, I’m sorry!” Avery exclaimed but she only shook her head.

  “It’s okay. I’m just going to turn in.”

  After she was gone with the bedroom door closed firmly behind her, I looked at him.

  “What was that all about?” I asked in a low voice.

  “Oh, Kaitlyn really doesn’t like anything to do with fire,” Emma said softly, answering for him. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but she never even gets too close to the little fire we have in here most nights.”

  She nodded at the grate where our cheerful, friendly little fire was still glowing and flickering under the caldron filled with hot chocolate.

  “It is understandable after what she has been through,” Griffin said quietly. “I just hope Reyes is the patient kind.”

  “What?” I turned to him, frowning. “You don’t really think that Kaitlyn and Ari…?” I left the sentence hanging, unable to finish.

  Griffin shrugged.

  “I think that anything is possible now that the Edict is broken.”

  “Well, we knew Reyes was following her around, keeping her safe from Sanchez,” Avery said. “But I think he’s someone really important back in the Sky Lands—like a prince or something. I really doubt his parents would like the idea of him being married to a Norm. Especially one who…who has gone through what Kaitlyn has gone through,” he finished lamely.

  I remembered what Headmistress Nightworthy had said about how markings and deformities were considered disgusting and hideous, especially on women in the Drake culture. Poor Kaitlyn was so terribly scarred that even my own new magic hadn’t been able to help her—though I had tried and tried. How could a prince of the Drakes—one who had been raised in that culture—possibly feel an attraction to her?

  Not that she wasn’t beautiful, I thought loyally—she was. But I doubted that anyone who came from Sanchez’s clan would be able to see that beauty.

  “I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I think maybe…maybe it’s just an honor thing for him. Like he had to protect her because Sanchez was being a dick and it’s wrong to pick on people who are vulnerable.”

  Griffin shook his head.

  “I hate to doubt your judgment, Megan, but I think in this case you are wrong.”

  “What—so you think that Ari Reyes is in love with Kaitlyn?” I asked, frowning.

  Griffin lifted an eyebrow.

  “It might not be Reyes himself who loves her—though I must admit he shows all the signs of it. Or at least, of wanting to protect her at all costs,” he remarked.

  “What are you talking about?” Emma asked in exasperation. “Why would he be following her around if he doesn’t feel something for her?”

  “You forget that the Drakes are two-natured,” Griffin answered coolly. “Ari is not the only one with a say in the matter.”

  “Ohhhh!” Avery exclaimed, leaning forward—clearly he was picking up what Griffin was laying down, though Emma and I were still in the dark.

  “What?” I asked, raising both eyebrows.

  “Griffin is saying he thinks it’s Ari’s Drake who’s in love with Kaitlyn!” Avery exclaimed. “Oh my Goddess!”

  “Is that what you’re saying?” I demanded, looking at Griffin.

  He nodded slowly.

  “It’s well known that it is often the Drake who chooses the mate, not the host he shares a body with. Though the feelings of love and protection are often so strong, they carry over and both Drake and host become fixated on a particular female.”

  “But if Kaitlyn is afraid of fire and Ari’s Drake is a fire-breather…” Emma began and shook her head. “God, what a mess!”

  “Goddess, you mean,” Avery said succinctly. “Because nobody but the Goddess can unscramble a mess like that.”

  “Well, let’s hope we’re wrong,” I said, trying to comfort myself. Poor Kaitlyn had enough trouble and pain in her life without also contending with a being she feared being in love with her.

  “Yes, let’s,” Griffin said dryly. But when I looked into his pale grey eyes, I saw the flickering flames of the fire reflected and I couldn’t help wondering what Kaitlyn’s future held…

  The End? Of course not!

  Kaitlyn needs her own book and I promise it’s coming soon. In fact, there’s a little sneak peek further down. But before you scroll, please take a minute to leave a review if you enjoyed Lock and Key. Good reviews let other readers know it’s okay to take a chance on a new series which is essential in the crazy-crowded e-book market. Plus they give me the warm fuzzies ; )

  And to be the first to find out when a new book in my Nocturne Academy series comes out, you can sign up for my YA newsletter HERE. No spam, I promise. I will only send out a newsletter when a new book is out. Hugs and Happy Reading!

  Evangeline

  Fang and Claw

  Nocturne Academy, Book 2

  Turn the page for a preview.

  1

  Kaitlyn

  The flames come for me—vivid orange and yellow. I can feel the heat baking off them and their bright fingers reach for me hungrily—wrapping around me, enfolding me in the terrible searing pain I can never escape…never forget.

  Outside the door, I hear my mother and father screaming.

  The door bursts open at last and they are there, but the flames already have me—I can feel them licking up the back of my nightgown like hungry tongues, setting my hair afire with light. They are ravenous—insatiable. They intended to eat me alive—I know that just as I know there is no escape from them.

  “Katy!” my mother screams as she runs to me, heedless of the wall of fire between us. “Katy—my baby!”

  She dives through the flames, not caring that they catch her too, wrapping around her like the wings of a great and terrible bird enfolding her. She pulls me close and begins to beat at the fire that is trying to eat me, all while my father is shouting for us to hurry, yelling that we have to run…have to get out…

  Get out, I think. We have to get out!

  We will never get out.

  And then I smell the awful scent of burning flesh and know it is my own…

  I woke up with tears in my eyes and my throat closed tight with panic, as I always did when I dreamed of The Fire.

  I thought if it that way—capitalized in my head. Why not? It was certai
nly important enough—it had taken everything from me. It was probably what my English teacher would call “the seminal event” of my entire life and though it had happened over two years ago, when I was barely fourteen, the dream made it seem as fresh as ever. I could still hear my parents screams, echoing above the roaring flames…

  A sob caught in my throat and then another as a vast sense of loss filled me. They were gone—they had left me all alone and they were never coming back. My wonderful, wise mother and my handsome, smartass father, who was always cracking dad jokes to make us groan. I would never see them again—not on this side of eternity, anyway.

  I know lots of teenagers don’t get along with their parents—and my relationship with mine hadn’t been perfect. But we had laughed together and loved each other and really, almost never disagreed.

  I wondered if it would hurt less if we had fought more.

  The vast ocean of grief—its waters as deep and black and cold as space—threatened to overwhelm me. I felt like I would drown in it sometimes.

  Sometimes I even wanted to.

  The loss of my parents filled me for a moment and my heart ached almost as much as my scars, which covered my arms and the entire left side of my body. Sometimes I tried to remember what I had looked like without them—back when all of my face—not just the right side—was pretty and pleasing to look at. Now the left side looked melted and what used to be smooth, light brown skin had been replaced by pinkish-white tissue, knotted and lumped and ugly, so ugly.

  I avoided mirrors these days and except for when I was alone with my coven-mates at Nocturne Academy, I kept to myself as much as possible.

  I wished I was there now—wished I could reach out to Emma or Megan, the newest member of our little clan—for some comfort or at least some distraction from my bleak thoughts and the awful memories.

  But it was the weekend and I was home. Well, at Mr. and Mrs. Breedlove’s home, anyway. I had been babysitting their little girl, Allegra, almost from the time she was born. After the fire and the weeks I spent in the hospital, I had no home of my own to go back to so Alastair and Anastasia Breedlove had taken me into their house and given me a room of my own—right next to Allegra’s. They had even sponsored me for Nocturne Academy—paying the extremely expensive tuition out of their own pocket.

  I was grateful for their kindness though, being Nocturnes, neither one of them was exactly very warm. But Allegra made up for her parents’ coolness and distance by being sweet and bubbly and incredibly loveable. I knew what my friend Avery said—that I was basically the Breedloves’ nanny, at least on the weekends—but I didn’t care. Allegra was a ray of sunshine in my dark life and I loved her as though she was my own.

  As though my thoughts of her had called the little girl, I heard the light patter of footsteps in the hall outside my door and then the door creaked open. In the darkness of the hallway, I saw the soft glow of her pale blue eyes.

  “Katy?” she whispered, approaching my bed. “Katy, I had a nightmare. Can I sleep with you?”

  “Sure, sweetie.” I opened the covers for her and she slid into bed beside me and snuggled close. Like all Nocturnes, her body temperature was about ten degrees below human normal so she felt like a cold little lump beside me until my body heat warmed her.

  “Was it a bad one?” I asked as I wrapped my arm around her. “Your nightmare? Do you remember what it was about, Allegra?”

  “Don’t know. Just…it was scary.” She snuffled and pressed closer, her back to my front. She had on the expensive white lace nightgown her mother insisted she wear and her long, pale blonde hair mixed with my own black hair on the pillow. In the moonlight spilling through the window, I thought it looked like silver.

  I barely noticed when she pulled my wrist to her mouth and sank her little fangs in. The skin there was deadened and knotted with scar tissue—it was a wonder she could find a vein at all. But she always seemed to manage and though she never took more than a few mouthfuls of blood, it relaxed her enough to go back to sleep.

  This time, however, I felt a strange little tingle run up my arm as she sucked my wrist. I frowned in the darkness—what was going on? I usually didn’t feel a thing after she had first sunk her fangs in. Maybe some of the nerves in my deadened skin were regenerating at last? It seemed like too much to hope for so I shrugged the idea off and ignored the burning tingle.

  If this sounds weird—the babysitter letting the kid she’s watching bite her—well, it was pretty routine for us. As I said, I’d been watching Allegra since she was a baby and she was four now—almost five and a “big girl” as she liked to point out. But big girl or not, she was a Nocturne and they live on blood—though they mostly drink bagged and chilled animal blood. Allegra, however, tended to get hungry between meals and I didn’t mind letting her “snack” on me from time to time.

  I knew my friend Megan got wonderful intense sensations when her Nocturne, Griffin, bit her, but when Allegra bit me, all I felt was a mothering-kind of love for the little girl. In fact, I had been surprised when Megan talked about how pleasurable she found it when Griffin sank his fangs into her flesh—“better than sex” she’d called it. Though, as Avery pointed out, she wouldn’t know since she was still a virgin and Griffin refused to do anything about said virginity until she turned eighteen and was completely legal.

  “Oh, shut up, Avery,” Megan had snapped, half-laughing as she shot him a glare. “Like you’ve had so much experience yourself.”

  “Like any of us has,” Emma sighed, staring into the fire—a fire I stayed well back from, despite the fact that it was small and friendly—nothing like the blaze that had taken my parents and house and changed my life forever.

  We had been staying up late one night, not long after Megan and Griffin had Blood-Bonded—which was supposed to be a big no-no, since the main law of Otherkind—the Edict—stated that Others of different races must never mix. However, Megan had broken the magic of the Edict when she became the Witch Queen and Griffin became her Blood Knight. They tried not to flaunt their new relationship but it was easy to see, by the way they looked at each other, that they had found a love that would last forever.

  I sighed and shifted in my bed as I thought of my coven-mate and her Nocturne. I was never going to find a love like that. Not with the ugly scars I wore.

  You might think that as a human going to a magical school, I could have the scars removed easily but it wasn’t so. Both medical and magical treatments had been tried and even Megan’s immense magic hadn’t been able to make them fade, though she had tried several times to help me.

  “I’m sorry, Kaitlyn,” she’d said after the last attempt when my scars stubbornly remained in place, though she had cut herself three times for me. (Megan does Blood magic—something else that’s supposed to be outlawed in the Other World but she has a habit of making her own rules, as Avery puts it.)

  “It’s okay.” I sighed and shook my head. “It’s not your fault—thank you for trying.”

  “It almost feels like they’re resisting me magically—your scars, I mean.” Megan had frowned, a furrow forming between her green-gray eyes. “But how can that be? How can I have enough power to abolish the Edict but I can’t get rid of your scars?”

  I could see the frustration on her pretty face and knew that my coven-mate wanted to help me so badly she could almost taste it. But I had no answers.

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged helplessly. “But, well…thank you for trying.”

  “I’m not giving up,” Megan had declared. “I’m going to have a look in Corinne’s grimoire. There are tons of healing spells in there. Maybe one of them will work for you.”

  The book she was talking about had belonged to her ancestor, Corinne Latimer—one of the most powerful witches to ever have lived. Megan seemed to have all of her power and then some…and yet she couldn’t heal my scars.

  As Allegra slipped her fangs out of my scarred wrist with a contented sigh and the tingling faded, I wondered if Me
gan was right—if my scars were somehow magically resistant to healing. But that didn’t make any sense, did it? The house fire that had taken my parents and marked me so horribly had been caused by faulty wiring—or so the fire marshal’s report had said. There was nothing magical about it—it was just terrible luck.

  That was what I told myself, anyway, as I cuddled Allegra closer and slipped back into sleep. I might be scarred for life, I told myself, but at least I had people who loved me. People who cared enough to stick by me—no matter what I looked like. My coven mates, Megan and Emma and Avery to name a few, and sweet little Allegra who was already fast asleep in my arms to name another.

  People who loved me. People who wanted to protect me…

  A new thought entered my mind—the image of a vast black shadow with wings like sails hovering in the sky, looking down on me…

  Watching over you. Protecting you, whispered a strange little voice in my head.

  I shivered and pushed the disturbing thought away. I didn’t want to think of that shape—of what it meant—of who it might be. Better, far better, to snuggle under the covers with Allegra and let myself drift back to sleep knowing the nightmares were in the past and that nothing worse than The Fire could ever happen to me.

  Or so I thought.

  2

  Ari

  I woke up in the night, knowing she was upset, though I didn’t know how I knew it.

  I felt her terror—it woke me in a cold sweat, my heart pumping, my muscles bunching as everything inside me drove me to go to her.

  My Drake woke with a roar. I felt him inside me—spreading his wings—trying to emerge.

  “Wait—wait a minute!” I shouted at him mentally. “Para, estupido!”