by Celia Kyle
“But it’s just… I mean, he’s a wolf. And I’m a witch. I have a hard time figuring out how that’s gonna work.”
“So? Ronun was a gargoyle statue in Cora’s office before I ever found out what he really was. I think the kind of magic you live under doesn’t really factor into it.”
“Maybe, but witches don’t really do the whole fated mate thing.”
Kelly stepped in front of her and took Aurora by the shoulders. It was an oddly serious gesture for someone who tended to be so free-wheeling.
“Do yourself a favor. Don’t be so shortsighted when it comes to love. The fact that he’s a wolf isn’t as big a factor as you think.”
“But even with him saying all that the first time we met?”
“When you know, you know. Just don’t let your need to be in control of everything make this harder for you than it needs to be.” She probably didn’t mean it in an unkind way, but Kelly’s sudden appraisal of Aurora’s need for control pinched her.
“That’s easy for you to say,” she mumbled.
Defiance was so unfamiliar in her voice that Kelly shook her head as if she hadn’t heard correctly.
“What?”
“It’s easier for you.” Aurora heaved a sigh and then looked her friend full in the face. “Look, you’re a year away from inheriting a fortune. I mean, come on, you’ve already got this house. I don’t have anything like that.”
The wine had loosened her tongue and made her just a little bit maudlin.
“What I do have is a career, even if I’m only at the beginning of it. That’s the only way I’ll be able to make anything of my life, Kelly. And if I just go and let myself get all mixed up over some guy, I could lose what little I’ve got.”
“Hey, hey, hey.” Kelly put an arm around Aurora’s shoulders and pulled her into an awkward little side hug. “You’re not gonna lose anything. In fact, you might run the risk of actually gaining something pretty great. Sure, I’ve got some money coming my way, so I can afford to fuck around a bit, but you’ve got something I’d kill for.”
“What’s that?” She looked up to meet her friend’s eyes.
“Brains. Fashion sense. A great nose for sniffing out a bargain. Okay, so that’s three things, and I’m sure I can come up with a metric shit-ton more.”
She scrubbed at the sleeve of Aurora’s sweater, coaxing a laugh out of the melancholy necromancer.
“Oh, my gosh, group hugs?” Ryan appeared at the door. “Can I get a piece of that?” He draped himself around them and the two girls fell into a fit of giggles. “What are we hugging over?”
“Fashion sense,” Aurora smirked.
“Oooh, good,” Ryan cooed, snuggling in even more. “I love it when I catch people talking about me. Now, where’s the fresh drink I was promised? The natives are getting restless.”
“You got that right.” Nathan stood lazily against the door frame, looking at the trio of huggers with the same lukewarm eye with which he viewed everything.
“Just in time, babe!” Ryan let loose one of his arms and tried to wave Nathan over. “Come on, you want a piece of this action?”
“Not likely. Are we moving things in here or what?”
“All good parties end up in the kitchen,” Ryan smirked.
“Like hell!” Kelly started doling out armloads of drinks. “It’s a pretty night, and we never sit in the solarius. Solanium? Oh, fuck it, the greenhouse. Now, let’s scoot! I’ve got a fresh round and backups for everybody.”
She led the charge toward the door, but Aurora held back.
“Hey, Nathan?”
“Yeah?” he lingered, clearly ready to get back to wherever the others were.
She’d done what she could to make amends, but Aurora felt that he still held just a bit of a grudge.
“I just wanted to say I’m sorry again, about Reavis going nuts and dive bombing you and stuff.”
“Forget it.” He started to leave again.
“No, I’m serious. It wasn’t on purpose, and it’s not something I did to get at you or anything. Actually, I think it was because of the wolf.”
“So you reanimated my favorite bat and turned it against me because of your werewolf creeper?”
“Kind of? I dunno. It’s hard to explain, but I’ve figured out that whenever he’s around, I get all riled up. And when I do, my powers start doing things I didn’t plan on.”
“Like my dancing lesson?”
Aurora blushed deeply at the reminder. “That, too. That was the first time I saw him. For whatever reason, I felt like I had to get out of that room immediately and I needed a diversion. Before I knew it…”
“I was high-kicking and tapping. I remember.”
“Sorry,” she cringed.
He just shrugged and looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Eh. Ryan liked it, so I’d say we’re even on that one. But tell me something.”
“What’s that?”
“You say that every time you’re near this werewolf guy, you get all flustered and shit starts happening? Then he comes at you with his fated mate talk and you’re surprised? I mean shit, girl. You broke out the Fourth of July fireworks inside a courtroom. You might wanna think about that.”
“Language,” she murmured to herself. But everything he said made a terrible kind of sense.
“I had your back out there because you seemed really resistant to the idea, but fated mates are a thing.” He pushed off from the wall and gave her a sly smile. “But if you really want to make it all up to me, you could help me have a bit of fun.”
The glint in his eye along with the mischief lurking there was so rare for him, she couldn’t help getting a little giddy at the thought of being complicit.
“What is it?”
“The collar of Ryan’s jacket is mink. If something were to happen that made him, I don’t know, take his jacket off, I’d say we’d be square.”
She shared in his evil smile. “I think that can be arranged.”
“See you in the solarium.”
He sauntered off, and Aurora took a moment alone to beam at herself. It was the first time she felt like she might actually become friends with Nathan.
Weaving back to the door, she stood for a moment and looked at her roommates laughing in their little circle. However mixed up she might be about certain things, it warmed her to think she could call these people friends. Friendship had been a rare thing in her life, so she appreciated the preciousness of it.
One thing Kelly had said was very true. She worked hard to keep herself under control—from the way she dressed down to what she allowed herself to feel. Maybe that was part of why so many crazy things were happening around her. The energy she kept pent-up had to get out somehow.
“Are you just gonna stand there all night, mooning over your wolfman?” Tiffany had an eyebrow up and was giggling at her own joke before she’d made it to the end.
“Heaven forfend!” Aurora put a hand to her pearls in a gesture of mock indignation, eliciting another crack of laughter from the group. Even Nathan chuckled. She was never goofy and it actually felt pretty good.
Heading back to her seat, she met Nathan’s eyes, and he kept flicking them toward Ryan, who was in the middle of some story nobody seemed to pay much heed to. Settling in, she closed her eyes and contrived to be daydreaming.
Really she was letting all that nervous energy she’d been squirreling away coalesce into that familiar ball of light in her core, growing it by gentle degrees. It was only a small patch of mink, so she wasn’t going to need to go full bore. Just a glimmer trickled down her arms, and she raised her fingers enough to point them at Ryan’s collar.
“Holy shit!” He was on his feet, fretting his arms up to his neck. The collar flapped wildly at him, tugging in every direction at once.
“Ryan,” Aurora chastised in her most matronly tone. “Language, please!”
The laughter grew to epic proportions as the fairy writhed and tugged at his clothes. At last, he clawed
at the buttons and threw his jacket to the ground in a heap.
He was shirtless underneath and his pale skin nearly glowed under the moonlight streaming in through the windows. His translucent wings flapped. As soon as the jacket was off, Aurora released the collar and it fell back into stillness. For a moment, Ryan looked around, feebly trying to cover up his chest.
“What’s everyone looking at?” he demanded.
“Nothing, darlin’,” Nathan said, wryly lifting his beer to his lips. “It’s just a relief not to be the only shirtless one around here.”
Ten
Aurora sat hunched over her work, trying even harder than usual to shrink into herself. Her head throbbed lightly after the drinks she’d had the night before. In her typical fashion, she’d deprived herself of anything to chase away the hint of hangover. It was her penance for letting herself go.
Even more so, it was a way to erase what had passed between her and Dane in those chambers. And she was aching with the hope that the viper pit around her would let things rest. As always, in this room with eight other juniors, at least one of them was bound to do something to rattle her cage.
“So what happened up there?” Zander asked, nudging close to her. “What was all the noise about?”
“Yeah, Rory!” Dion relished using a nickname he knew made her shudder. “We had to evacuate the building. What was the deal with the fireworks?”
“I don’t know.” It rankled her to lie, but she wasn’t ready to admit the truth to herself, and she certainly didn’t owe it to the rest of them.
“Aw, come on.” Dion rocked forward out of his chair and ambled over to her. “You mean to tell me there was a New Year’s Eve celebration in your courtroom and you have no idea what was going on?”
“That’s a stretch, little miss,” Zander cocked his head impishly to one side. “Even for me.”
“I’m telling you. I have no idea how it happened. The second I walked into the room, the whole place went berserk.” It wasn’t exactly a lie, but it still tasted bad in her mouth.
“Sounds to me like that courtroom has it in for you,” Heather cooed at her own reflection in her compact. “Maybe you should give this kind of thing up? Just to keep safe, of course. I’m sure one of us would be willing to stand in for you.” She turned her freshly mascaraed lashes to Aurora and batted them innocently.
“Damn straight,” Eric said. “I’d crush it in there.”
You’d love to think that. Wouldn’t you?
The door clacked open with its usual vigor and Paul surged into the room. As always, everyone’s eyes dropped to whatever files they had in their hands, feigning deep concentration. Without missing a step or even looking her way, Paul called out his directive.
“Rhonelle. My office.”
Just like last time, the command chilled the marrow of her bones. Except on this morning, she was certain there wouldn’t be conspiratorial smiles on the other side of his door. A chorus of thinly veiled snickers rose around her, and Aurora once again crossed the threshold into his muggy, intimidating realm.
“Do you mind telling me just what the fuck happened with our case yesterday?” Yeah, there was no hope of a turning of the tide this morning. He didn’t even gesture for her to sit—just glared at her with those piercing, unblinking eyes of his.
“They called a postponement.”
“Yeah, no shit,” he barked. “I could have gotten that info from the briefing. Or more directly, from the ass-chewing Widarin gave me. You were up there. What the fuck?”
Her palms immediately went damp and her mouth dried. She could say so many things, but nearly all of them would leave her feeling incriminated. If she could have died on the spot, she might have welcomed it.
“A series of explosions sent us out of the room.”
“Fireworks. A whole damn parade’s worth. Any idea what that was all about?” It looked as if he were reading into her guts, as if he already knew, and was waiting for her to prostrate herself in confession. No wonder he had this job.
“No.” She comforted herself that it was only half a lie. She knew she was responsible for them, but couldn’t pinpoint exactly why.
He stood from his desk, hitching up his belt. “Okay, then maybe you can tell me why, after it all died down so quickly, they called a continuance.”
“Because Mr. Abernathy failed to show up, sir.”
At her answer, Keenan stabbed an accusing finger in her direction.
“Exactly. Finally, you’re getting to it.” He perched on the corner of his desk, folding his hands over a crossed knee. Paul’s face melted into a mask of benevolent questioning. “Why wasn’t he there?”
The question caught her short and she sputtered for a second. “I… I don’t know.”
“Why the hell not? You mean to tell me you were entrusted with the particulars of this case, yet you didn’t have the wherewithal to actually escort the witness to court?”
“Nobody told me to,” she answered in a tiny, bewildered voice.
“Nobody told...” He shook his head in disgust and then rose again and stepped toward her. “Did anybody tell you to wipe your ass the last time you hit the can?”
The sudden vulgarity shook her, and she resisted the urge to cringe.
“You’re telling me, with all the studious shit you get up to out there in the pit, it never occurred to you that escorting the witness might be part of your job?”
Shame bloomed inside her. He was right. It was the kind of thing she should have known. She grasped for whatever weak defense she might have.
“I did call him,” she said meekly. Something in Paul’s demeanor changed and he rocked back on his hips just a bit.
“You did?” His face cocked away from her, one eye squinting.
“Yes, sir. More than once, actually. There was no answer, so I assumed Mr. Abernathy was already on his way.”
A queasy silence hung in the air as he regarded her. Then, nodding almost in dismissal, he took a few steps closer. Within a breath, he was almost directly over her.
“I took a big chance on you. You know that, Rhonelle? And do you know why I did that?”
“No, sir,” she answered, barely above a whisper.
“I gave you this responsibility because I thought you could handle it. Was I wrong about that?” She remained frozen, staring at a faint stain on his tie to avoid his eyes. “Rhonelle.” As much as she wanted to resist him, his voice called her face up to his. “Was I wrong?”
“No, sir. I can make this right.”
She desperately hoped she could keep the promise. Screwing up even the smallest thing filled her with horror, so something of this magnitude pushed her into a state of full-tilt mortification.
“How?” His gaze remained firm, his gray eyes cutting into hers as if he was trying to read her brain.
“I’ll find Mr. Abernathy. I’ll track him down today. Trust me. I won’t leave his side until he walks into that courtroom.”
“You’d better.” With that, he idled away from her. In the wake he left behind, Aurora found herself able to breathe again. Taking a few steps away, Paul pointed a firm hand toward his door.
“If you can’t manage it, I’ll find somebody who can. Eight other juniors out there would leap at the chance to be my bloodhounds. If I cut them all loose at once, they’d have Abernathy within the hour.” Turning back to face her, he ground his fists into his hips. “Think you can beat that?”
“I’ll do everything I can.”
“Do more than that, kiddo. I expect you to do things you think you can’t.” With a wave of his broad palm, he shooed her out of his presence.
Despite the fact that she was quivering under her smart little blazer, Aurora glossed herself over with a veneer of composure. They had all heard it. Nobody pretended not to be able to hear when a superior bellowed behind closed doors. But she didn’t have to act like she’d been screamed at.
Crossing the room with even steps, she waited until she was in the empty hal
lway to risk coming apart. Only there did she allow herself to convulse against the wall and then scurry down the hallway to the ladies’ restroom.
Leaning over the sink, she turned the water on and gripped the porcelain with both hands, waiting for her meager lunch to come back up. By some miracle of resolve, it stayed put.
Thank the goddess for little mercies.
Grabbing a fistful of paper towels, she dampened them and pressed the cool moisture to the back of her neck before tracing it along under her jaw. It soothed her a bit, but only a bit. When she had the courage, she faced her own brown eyes in the mirror.
They were wide and did little to conceal the terror behind them. At least she had avoided crying. Her eyeliner was meticulously in place. For a moment, she wanted to batter her fists against the mirror and shake the façade she lived behind.
“What the heck were you thinking,” she asked her reflection. “Just what are you going to do now?”
In full truth, she had no idea how to track down a missing witness. She could call him again or even go so far as to knock on his door, but if Theophilus Abernathy didn’t want to be found, she hadn’t the faintest clue how to find him. Nothing in her paperwork alluded to any places he might frequent.
She might as well set off wandering the streets and calling his name as if he were a lost dog. The impossibility of it swarmed over her, and she braced her hands against the sink again. Not in anticipation of retching, but to keep herself from buckling onto the floor.
Get it together, Aurora. This isn’t you. You’re so much better than this.
But was that true? It had to be. Reaching inside herself, she found just enough steel to pull herself upright again. Another quick dab of wet paper towels, and she stepped back into the hallway to start for the doors to the outside world.
If there was one place she was certain not to find Theophilus Abernathy, it was the ladies’ room of the Othercross Judiciary. Simply getting out of there was already a step in the right direction.
Eleven
A bit of fresh air did her good. Really, just about anything would have, so long as it wasn’t walking back into the office and all those expectant, spiteful faces.