The Roses Academy- the Entire Collection

by Tara Brown

  “Uhh, I’m going to walk down to the beach for a minute.” I didn’t know what else to do. The whole thing was uncomfortable.

  “No, don’t leave my sight,” Aimee snapped at me but looked at Shane. “I’m sorry, Shane. I won’t come back here again.” She reached for me, taking my arm.

  “STOP THIS, AIMEE!” Shane shouted, grabbing her by the arm as she winked.

  When we landed from our wink, I gagged but Shane went crazy. Not that I blamed him.

  “Holy hell, Aimes. What was that?” Shane shuddered with me.

  “Aimee. You okay?” I backed away from her, certain she was going to scream. But she didn’t. She kept her cool.

  “Where are we? Holy hell, what was that?” Shane spun in a circle.

  Aimee seemed stunned as Aleksander walked out of the house.

  Annabelle appeared, floating next to Shane. “Miss Aimee, would your guest like a beverage? He doesn’t look so hot.”

  Avoiding all that, I hurried for the house, annoyed that my day trip had been cut short but scared for Aimee and the weird moment she was just about to have.

  Chapter 7

  A girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do

  Aimee

  Shane paled as he gawked at Annabelle floating in the air. He blinked and stepped back, shaking. “What the ever-loving hell is going on?”

  “Really, Aimee?” Aleks’ face reddened. My heart sank as a pained expression overtook him.

  Bringing Shane to the house was wrong. It was Aleks’ house too. Since Dorian had forced him to join the Roses, he was usually there when he wasn’t in England.

  “I guess I’ll let you two have a minute.” Aleks sighed and walked away.

  “I’m sorry,” I offered a sincere apology to Shane. “I’m sorry for everything. I don’t even know what to say beyond I’m sorry.”

  “It was you.” Although he had sounded lost before, Shane suddenly seemed certain about something. “It was you, wasn’t it? In the alley that night. What are you? Are you a ghost? Is this real?” He paled even more and pointed at Annabelle. “Is she real? Did we die? Is this shitty neighborhood Heaven?”

  “I don’t know.” It broke my heart to watch him lose his ability to process the situation. “We’re not dead, just something else.”

  “What is something else? What is that? I mean it, what are you?”

  “A monster.” The words slipped through my lips as a whisper.

  “You killed that man in the alley. You are a monster.” Emotions, mostly hateful ones, filled his face.

  “I know.”

  “I don’t know what to believe.”

  “Believe that. I’m a monster.”

  “That man—he was a rapist. Did you know that when you killed him? Are you some kind of vigilante now?”

  “I don’t know.” I closed my eyes for a moment, wishing I could end this. “I can’t talk about this, Shane. Just trust me, we live very different lives.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t even care that you killed that man. I don’t care that you’re a monster. Aimee, all I care about is that you’re okay.”

  “I’m not okay, Shane. I’m a freak.” I hate saying it but he has to see.

  “You’re walking and talking and killing criminals. You’re fine.” His eyes lit with rage. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were okay!”

  “What was I going to say—I’m walking and talking and eating people?” I scoffed, wishing I had Dorian’s magical ability to make people forget everything. “All you need to know is that you should be scared of me. What I did to that man, I could do to you. Not on purpose but it’s a reality of mine. I live this way, every day.”

  “Don’t you care about me anymore?” He stepped in closer again, lifting his warm hands to my cheeks. He held them there, making heat and confusion dance around inside me.

  “Of course I care about you.” I couldn’t lie, not to him.

  “I missed you,” he whispered.

  “I can’t do this.” I stepped back out of his grip and remembered who I was. “I can’t—I could kill you.”

  “I would die for you.” He said it too easily, still young and unaware of exactly what it meant to die for someone. A mistake I once thought was an answer.

  “Live for me instead. Have a life, Shane. Live it to the fullest, for me and you.” I winked myself away.

  Like an idiot, I left him in the driveway of the mansion full of monsters and sat at the back of the house.

  “Don’t be sad, my love.” Annabelle was suddenly there, stroking my head.

  I let the ghost hold me, the best she could anyway, and wondered about Ari’s abilities.

  “Is Ari in the house?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m gonna go see.” Winking inside, I hurried around, searching until I found her. “I need your help.”

  She scowled at me over a glass of water. “Super sorry about that whole five minutes there.”

  “That’s not what I want to talk about. I need you to try to send me back to the crossroads.”

  “No.” Ari put the glass down. “It doesn’t work on something like you.”

  “How do you know?” I asked bitterly. “You’ve never tried.”

  She glanced over at Lydia as she walked into the kitchen, looking less than impressed. “Why is a police officer pacing in my driveway?”

  “Something went wrong.” I covered my eyes.

  “Now we have the answer to what can possibly go wrong on the trip to Port Mackenzie?” Lydia leaned against the counter.

  “I guess,” I groaned. “I have to fix it. We need to call Dorian to make him forget.”

  “Aimee wants me to send her back to a crossroads,” Ari blurted.

  “Dear God.” Lydia looked horrified. “You want to be sent back?”

  “Maybe.” I gulped. “If it’ll work, I do.”

  “No,” Lydia countered. “So far on every supernatural being we’ve tried, it hasn’t worked. So far Ari can’t send fae or anyone whose soul is gone like Aleks, or vampires like Andy. We don’t know anything, Aimee. Your soul could be gone enough that it doesn’t work on you either.”

  “I know.” I nodded. “But I’m willing to try.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t. It stings, Aimes.” Lucas walked past us to the fridge and grabbed a huge container of yogurt. He took the lid off and ate from it with a spoon, even though it was a family-sized container.

  “You’re back.” Ari’s eyes darted to him as hurt crept across her face. She was into him, hard.

  “Yeah.” He said it nonchalantly. He acted weird around her, making me feel bad for her.

  “You really want to go back?” Lydia asked again, ignoring Ari and Lucas.

  “I do.” I smiled, fighting the lump in my throat. “That guy in the driveway is part of a life I want back.”

  “Fine.” Ari sighed. “I’ll try.”

  I winked from the room to where Shane was pacing in the driveway. “I might have a solution. There’s no guarantee.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Maybe I can change.”

  “Are you gonna come home with me?” he asked, making my heart flutter. Home and Shane were the two forbidden fruits in my life.

  “Not yet.” I took his hand and winked us into the kitchen.

  “That’s nasty, Aimee. Warn me next time.” He swayed, looking sick.

  “Right.” I blushed. “Sorry. I’m used to it.” I held a hand out to the group of people in the small kitchen. “Everyone, this is Shane. Shane, this is everyone.”

  He was clearly confused.

  “Dude.” Lucas lifted a dark eyebrow as a flicker of humor crossed his lips. “Is he a human?”

  “Yes, he is,” Aleks murmured as he entered the kitchen and leaned against the wall.

  “He’s a human and a cop?” Lucas laughed.

  “Stop,” I snapped at Lucas.

  He put his hands up—yogurt, spoon, and all. “Okay! Jeeze, Aimee, just
thought I’d point out the lawful elephant in the room.”

  “Shane, you remember Aleks?” I pointed at Aleksander.

  “Not really.” Shane’s chest puffed slightly. “I don’t believe we were ever introduced, Aimes.” He put a hand out. Aleks looked down at his hand and smiled bitterly. He was gone within a second, creating his warm wind. Shane pulled his hand back, shrugging. “It’s annoying the way everyone keeps doing that.”

  “Tell me about it. Fortunately, not all of us do it,” I muttered.

  “Anyway, back to my terrible plan? I think Ari can send me back to before I became what I am. It will be a fresh start if she can do it.”

  “Send you back?” Shane’s smile started to fade.

  “She can make portals and send people back in time, changing their lives.” I nodded at Ari. “She forces you back to a crucial moment in your life and makes you take a different path, changing everything in your future.”

  “Seriously?” Shane asked in disbelief.

  “Yeah, but it might not work, and then we’ll be back to square one.”

  Shane stepped back, giving Ari a doubtful scowl. “You can send people back in time through a portal?” He sounded impressed.

  “Yeah.” Ari looked miserable. “But it isn’t Back to the Future, bro. You don’t ride in a DeLorean. It’s me forcing you to make a decision, a different one than the one you’re currently living with. We use it on crackheads and hookers and change their lives for the better. I don’t know what’ll happen to Aimee.”

  Shane was quiet for a moment as though processing what Ari had said before turning back to me. “What happens if you go back? Do I just stay here while me in the past is with you?”

  “No,” Ari answered for me. “You’ll disappear and reappear wherever that path would have taken Aimee and how her choice would have interfered with your life.” Ari appeared worried. “It isn’t an exact science, and I can’t choose when or where you’ll go back. I just force you to pick a different path. It could be you at seven years old making a stupid choice.”

  Shane frowned. “Wait, so you could send Aimes back to any moment and make her change her mind on anything?”

  “Yeah.”

  I took a guess at what he was getting at. “Shane, I won’t change my mind about you.”

  “I don’t care about me. What about Giselle?” He paled again.

  “What do you mean?” I paused. “I don’t understand?”

  “What if you never went to the party? You wouldn’t have gotten sick, and then instead, Giselle would have died from drinking the whole drink. He never would have been caught.”

  “Oh.” I looked down as the truth punched me in the gut. “Right, that part. I would have stayed home, and I wouldn’t have died in the hallway and seen Aleks.” I felt sick. “I can’t risk that.”

  “No. You can’t.” He pressed his lips together.

  “Shit.” I grabbed his hand and winked us back to his house in Port Mackenzie.

  “Ugh.” He shuddered for a second. “That’s nasty.”

  “I shouldn’t have come, I’m sorry.”

  “Aimee, we need to talk about this. You can’t just show up after not speaking to me for a year and a half. I want to know what’s going on. Where are you going now? Back to that Aleks dude?”

  “No. It’s not like that. He and I aren’t like that.” I looked up at him. “Don’t be mad.”

  “Mad?” He laughed bitterly. “Mad? Why would I ever be mad? Oh, you mean because last I heard, my girlfriend was secretly dating some dude and then she sort of died, and we never really broke up. She just vanished, leaving her family, everything, and me. Oh, but I guess you never really vanished without a trace. I mean, we did see each other that one day when you were murdering that man in the alley. I mean that counts, right? And now you’re back with that friggin’ guy, holed up in some shack, living like a member of a gang. You’re right. I shouldn’t be mad.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Stop!” He clenched his fists and took a deep breath. “Just save it. You can’t just cut me out and then show up and expect not to talk about it.”

  “I know.”

  “Are we done? Is this it?”

  Knowing I should say yes, I hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you want to be done?”

  “No.” It was the wrong thing to say, even if it was the truth.

  “Then you have to let me in. There can’t be an us if our relationship consists of me ripping my heart out and handing it to you to crush over and over again.”

  “I know.” A tear dripped from my eye, ran down my still cheek, and fell to the ground below. The sound resonated across the open space, even if he couldn’t hear it.

  “What did you do in that alley, Aimes?”

  “I killed him.”

  “How?”

  “It’s complicated.” I slumped against the garage door and rubbed my forehead. When he didn’t budge or stop staring at me, I sighed and tried to explain, “I’m death. I’m a reaper, a grim reaper. I touch you and my fingers pull your soul out and free it from your body. They don’t have any choice—they just do it.”

  He took a step closer. “Can you control it?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Not completely. It’s only been a year and a half. I’m a lot better but sometimes—”

  “Why are you so strong?” He took another step closer.

  I shuddered from the feel of him in the air around me. I savored the smell, closing my eyes, breathing it in. After a few seconds of imagining the life we could have had, I spoke flatly, “Demon blood.”

  “What?”

  “Demon blood.” I kept my eyes closed, not wanting to see the disbelief in his again. “I drank it. It killed me, but at the same time made me—well, this. I told you this all last year. None of you believed me, remember?” I opened my eyes, wondering if he was different now.

  “Have you killed innocent people?”

  “Yes.”

  He winced but continued on, “Do you eat food or sleep?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t need food. I eat from the tiny spark that happens when a soul is set free. It’s like a tiny whisper of energy that happens as they die and their soul is freed.” My face darkened. “I try not to kill innocents. I’m supposed to hunt my own kind. The bad ones that kill humans or live against the ancient creed, ‘Do what ye will but harm none.’”

  He cringed. “Kind of sick.”

  “Super sick.”

  He stepped closer, not smelling of fear or rage. “Why did you choose this?”

  “It was live or die. I chose to live a half-life over no life.”

  “Did you watch us this last year?” His eyes sparkled with emotion. “Do you sit in the shadows and watch us all?”

  “Yeah.” My chest cracked a little more.

  “I wish I believed you, before.”

  “I know.”

  He leaned in, just about to kiss me, but I winked, taking the smell and heartbreak with me.

  Chapter 8

  The kiss

  Ari

  Lucas bent and picked up firewood, carrying it into the house. His muscles were unbelievable for a guy his age.

  From the shadows, I watched him like a stalker, unable to take my eyes off him. It had been months of this: him coming and going and me always watching him as he avoided me.

  I wondered sometimes if it was a silent arrangement we were both aware of.

  He confirmed it as he passed by the window and smiled directly at me, winking. A blush covered my face as I stepped back. I’d thought I was hidden by the thick black curtain that hung in the window.

  Embarrassed, I bit my lip and had an impulse to run from the study but worried I would meet him in the hall. As I was about to leave I heard a creak outside the door. My first instinct was to hide. I could wrap myself in the curtain and not breathe. Although, I knew if it was Lucas outside my door, I’d be discovered. He seemed to be able to find anything. His senses were
uncanny.

  When I asked Lydia what he was, the old witch always said that everyone had to speak about themselves when they felt ready. Lucas hadn’t told me anything about himself. He might’ve had the chance, but we didn’t speak much.

  The dark study grew eerie, which normally I would have enjoyed. I liked dark places where I could hide. But the walls had begun to close in on me.

  The door opened slowly, making my heart race.

  Lucas stepped through the shadows. When our eyes met my face lit up. I contemplated a thousand excuses as to why I was watching him, but they would’ve all sounded ridiculous. I decided to own it. I could let the street version of me be cheeky and thank him for the show.

  But he didn’t speak. He watched me from the doorway, leaving the door ajar. Maybe he’d paid attention to the things that set me off. Closing the door would’ve been too much for me. “Wanna go for a walk?” he spoke in a soft tone.

  “Uhm, sure.”

  He stepped back out of the room, giving me space to leave. He did everything the way I wanted him to. Not the old me who grew up in the desert, but the new me who hated tight spaces and sudden moves. We all had to accommodate her.

  He offered his hand, not dragging me when I took it, but squeezing gently.

  “How’s it going?” He kept his voice low as he led me outside. We walked to the dock, the one he’d jumped off to rescue me when we first met.

  “Bored stiff.”

  “I bet.” He chuckled. “I don’t know how you and Aimee do it. She was here months before she was approved to train too.”

  “Approved to train?”

  “With the Roses Academy.” His eyes flickered to mine. I almost sighed, staring into the green pools.

  “Do you think they’ll let me train?”

  “I don’t know.” He sounded distant as we got to the end of the dock. The scared side of me feared he’d brought me down to the water to drown me. The old me swooned as we stood in the chilly air.

  “Do you miss your family?” he asked after a moment.

  “Yeah. The weird side of me doesn’t. She hates my uncle. But the normal me misses him a lot. There’s a cook named Cookie—well, that’s my pet name for him. I miss him too. He used to razz me about running in the heat all the time, but I knew he was proud of me for training so hard.” I turned and grinned, proud of the girl I used to be. “I did Ironman competitions.”