Vampires & Vinca (Hawthorn Witches Book 4)

by Tyler, A. L.

  I shook my head, blushing. “I didn’t know!”

  “I have been trying to tell you!” she squawked. “You’re too young and too weak to be out alone! You’re quitting college, you’re ending it with the boyfriend, and you’re coming home to learn right now!”

  A snap of Charlie’s fingers and we were back in the greenhouse. I shook my head in dismay.

  “You’re taking her side?” I asked him in a hot rage. “You set this whole thing up! I was helping you, and you were supposed to protect me, and you’re taking her side!”

  A light turned on, and I heard scrambling before Lyssa came out, dressed for bed and looking disheveled. “What’s happening?”

  “She’s trying to force me to quit school!” The accusation came out more like a whine, and right then, I didn’t need to feel any more childish.

  “Oh, she’s not quitting school,” Lyssa said, crossing her arms and turning to Kendra.

  “You’re being a little drastic,” Charlie added.

  Looking sour, Kendra crossed her arms and silently shot a darting look between them. Then she focused on me and shook her head.

  “I’ve been friends with the wolves, Annie,” she said. “But that’s all. I keep them at arm’s length because I like to know where they are, but don’t be fooled. They want our spells just as much as any other magic-wielder out there, and they’re willing to do things to get them. You need to spend more time here and less time screwing around with things that don’t matter or could get you killed. So fine—I’ll give you a choice. You can keep the wolf or college, but not both. Choose wisely.”

  I scowled. She was being unreasonable, and she was punishing me out of spite, but I was the only one who could see it.

  “Fine,” I said, my voice grating. “I’m going to school.”

  Kendra gave a quick nod before she started to walk away, mumbling to herself. “Better answer than I hoped for from a teenager. At least she’s not throwing it away for a boy…”

  Disgusted, I glared at both Charlie and Lyssa before I started to storm off. Then I went back and tossed the rock I had stolen at Charlie. He caught it.

  “Leave me alone when I’m on campus, and stay out of my head,” I said in an acid tone.

  I left. I went back to my apartment and locked the door, even as I heard Gates calling after me to wait. I didn’t care. I just wanted to feel normal again.

  And I wasn’t ending my relationship with Vince. I walked back onto campus just to make sure that Charlie wouldn’t eavesdrop and called him. He came to meet me by the engineering building at almost three in the morning in the freezing cold, and I told him what had happened. He offered to stay over again, or to have me stay over with him, but I told him I was afraid Kendra would be watching. He wasn’t sure how much he trusted Blake not to tell her mother, either, and if Kendra still had any relationship with Adeline, I knew she would hear about it.

  We were going to have to be more secretive now.

  Of course, Charlie had known that I had gone on campus, and he told Kendra. But it seemed that he was either respecting my order to stay out of my life in those geographical bounds, or else he had decided to keep my secret.

  I told Kendra I had sought privacy to end it with Vince. Charlie didn’t dispute it. If Blake told Adeline that Vince had come home and destroyed some furniture in his room that night before leaving in a fury, or if Adeline told Kendra, she didn’t let on. Lyssa tried to talk to me, and to help me sooth my wounds, and I let her in the lamest way that I could stomach. She was my sister, but after her reaction to the last several problems in my life, I didn’t want to guess how she would react to the truth about this.

  Gates held her tongue, but the look she gave me said she knew I wouldn’t give up so easily. When she spoke out and said it was better that I had ended it, though, I decided our friendship was still on shaky ground. It was better than assuming it had died completely.

  I went to class and then came home and pretended to brood in my apartment or at the workbench, holding out for the rare dates when Kendra would send me out somewhere to collect plants in the wild. Vince and I had become adept at finding the dark corners of campus where we could be together alone, but it was stifling, and he liked to meet me on those nature walks as much as he could.

  I didn’t talk to anyone in my make-do family except to accept instruction on my magical technique, but Lyssa continued to try to weasel her way back into my good graces. From afar, I watched Gates and Kendra getting closer, and magic treated my friend well.

  She seemed to have a knack for the spells I just couldn’t master, and on the day she came to me to ask assistance collecting cactus thorns, I knew she had surpassed me. Kendra had been giving us the same assignments, and I had no clue what cactus thorns were used for.

  I wanted to be happy for her, but I wasn’t. Magic continued to spit in my face while it smiled on her, and even though I had never wanted to be a witch, Gates’ success at being a warlock made me flaming jealous. I hadn’t managed to replicate the show I had put on shattering the door at the geology building, though Charlie assured me that I had, in fact, been asserting my magical prowess at the time.

  As the semester progressed, Vince got busier with his assignments, and the scheduling for our group assignments started to take precedence over our trysts. Even then, he all but disappeared seven to fourteen days each month when the moon started to wane and the wolf took over. I had thought he was getting better at controlling it, but he would disappear for days at a time and then show back up without warning. He said he was going to the pack commune in the mountains to “run off the wolf.” I knew it was necessary, but on top of everything else, a small voice in my head told me he was avoiding me. Kendra had made things too difficult, and we were growing apart.

  I buried myself in my studies on campus more and more, avoiding Gates and Kendra’s soul mate connection and Lyssa’s condescending tone when she repeatedly assured me that I had made the right decision breaking up with Vince. When Kendra finally granted Lyssa a reprieve to go and see her family for a week, I told her I was happy for her.

  Late on a Thursday evening, just after my astronomy lab, I was joking with Tristan about the wisdom of pursuing a career as a professional astronomer. He had kindly listened to a twenty-minute rant about how I was struggling with an unreasonable jealousy after my aunt had given a precious family heirloom to my best friend, so I figured I owed him at least a few minutes of feigned interest in his motivational pep talk.

  He said I was a natural at understanding stellar parallax, and I said that the odds of ever becoming a professional paid astronomer were slim to none.

  “They save the jobs for the best in the field,” he said, lowering his chin and shaking his head at me. “Devote yourself, and your odds are better than average.”

  I scoffed at his apparent delusion, and for the third time, the janitor walked in and interrupted our conversation. Tristan gave me a silent wink and loaded his laptop into his backpack, and we both gathered our things and wordlessly exited the room.

  He usually went west on campus. I went east. But today, when he continued to walk with me, I felt a touch of discomfort, but I didn’t know why.

  He saw me looking behind, the way he usually went when we called it a night, and started to apologize profusely.

  “Oh, geez—” he said, hesitating. “I feel like a creep now. I’m so sorry. I have a friend picking me up for a concert tonight, and we’re meeting off of where the highway comes into town. I didn’t mean to make you feel like I was following you in the dark.”

  “No, of course not!” I shook my head and pulled my jacket tighter. I had been being paranoid, but a girl couldn’t be too careful. I took the more popular and lit paths back through campus, and when we went under the highway overpass, I quickened my pace to make sure we went under with two other girls who were also making their way home. We had been laughing and talking and joking the whole time, but I know he noticed, and he didn’t comment or try
to stop me.

  Safe on the other side, he slowed his pace beneath a street lamp, smiling.

  “Well, I suppose this is it, then,” he said. He nodded at the sandwich place behind my apartment. “Do you know if that place is any good? I’m still early, and I am really not waiting in the cold.”

  I raised my eyebrows, stamping my feet and rubbing my hands against the fabric of my pockets to try and get some heat from friction.

  “Yeah,” I said. “They’re great. I actually eat there a lot. I’m not a vegetarian, but check out the vegetarian options. Best thing on the menu because they give you double guacamole.”

  “Will do,” he said. “Thanks. Um… would you care to join me?”

  Taken aback, I tried to find any clues in his voice or face that would tell me if he thought it was a date. He was standing with his hands in his pockets, though, and with his scarf pulled up and only little curls of his dark hair sticking out comically around the edges of his hat, there wasn’t much to go by. I didn’t see the harm.

  “Sure,” I said brightly.

  We crossed the street together.

  There was a part of me that wanted to believe it was a date, and another part that felt guilty for that. I hadn’t seen Vince in two weeks, though, and he hadn’t said goodbye or tried to make plans before he went. I didn’t know what was going on with him, and the part of me that really loved being a student didn’t understand why I kept the drama around. As much as I loved Vince, being with him meant that the magical world would always be a part of my life, but Tristan…

  Tristan was as normal as anyone. And just for a half an hour, it was nice to feel like a normal girl.

  We ordered, and paid separately, and sat down to eat. And like a switch, he went from discussing school assignments to more personal things.

  “No one in my family eats vegetarian,” he said with a nervous smile. “I hardly know anyone brave enough to even try the vegetarian options.”

  I shrugged. “Like I said, it’s mostly about the double guac. The turkey isn’t bad here, either, but stay away from the chicken. I think not enough people order it, so it tends to hang around a day too often sometimes.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at the menu, and then back at me. “You come here a lot?”

  “I live around here,” I said. “It’s cheap and convenient.”

  “Oh, are you from here?”

  “Yeah,” I smiled. “I grew up in Bellmoral, and then came here for college. My dad moved away just recently, but my sister lives nearby…” I paused, frowning. “She used to, I mean. But she’s still around a lot.”

  “Must be nice.” He stared at me a little too long, and I worried I had gone too far into my personal life. Then he shook his head and sighed. “I’ve got five brothers and sisters, I mean, and I’ve never gotten along well with any of them. They’re all extroverts, and I’ve never been able to really get why they’re so concerned with what other people think of them. I mostly hide in the kitchen with my mother at family gatherings.”

  “Making the non-vegetarian dinner,” I joked.

  “Yeah.” He breathed a smile. “I only have one brother, and he’s kind of a jerk. So, that’s all I mean. It must be nice for you to have a sister you get along with.”

  I pursed my lips, and I started shaking my head without meaning to. Tristan caught my eye again.

  “Mostly,” I said. “Sometimes. We kind of have different belief systems, and she can be a little preachy with hers. That’s all.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Oh, you’re not… Sorry, that’s rude. I shouldn’t ask.”

  “She’s kind of a modern witch,” I said with a little laugh. “And I’m kind of not. Agnostic, I guess.”

  He laughed, nodding. “A preachy witch. I’d like to see that.”

  If he only knew. “What makes your brother such a jerk?”

  Tristan coughed, and I saw his smile fall a little. I wondered if I shouldn’t have asked, but talking this much about our personal lives was new to me. I didn’t know where the boundaries were.

  “He thinks that he’s better than the rest of us,” he said. “He married into a wealthy family, and he’s kind of lorded it over me since I was little. He’s the eldest, and I’m the youngest, so he’s got ten years on me.” He smiled at me sardonically. “He keeps trying to set me up with these socialites he meets, because I’m an academic and I’ll never be able to earn enough to feed myself, and it’s just… Forget it. If we keep going this way, I’m going to get bitter. It’s just you, then, here with your sister?”

  I nodded. “I had a cat for a while, but it didn’t work out. She… went to live with my sister instead. At her greenhouse.”

  I had almost said she went back to live at home. It was strange, but I did miss having a cat sometimes, and I momentarily wondered if getting a shelter pet might help me mellow out.

  “What’s your cat’s name?”

  “Martha.”

  Tristan smiled, and then he laughed.

  “What?” I asked.

  He shook his head and made a face. “Most people name their cats Whiskers or Shadow. Lucky. That kind of thing. Martha? You’re really letting something named Martha cuddle up next to you?”

  A glimpse of Martha in her previous, flirtatious life flashed into my head, and I had to grin. “Oh, she’s definitely cuddly, with the right person.”

  Just when I started to think that the concert and the ride had been a ruse to take me out to dinner, Tristan’s cell phone rang. He apologized as he wrapped up the second half of his sandwich and told his friend where he was. We said good night, and I watched him get into a gray sedan that pulled up in the parking lot.

  Then I saw Kendra, not even bothering to hide her disdain as she stared at me from just outside the storefront window.

  Chapter 7

  I wrapped up the remainder of my sandwich and went out to meet her. When she didn’t immediately snap at me, I was a little confused.

  “He seems like a nice guy,” she said after a pregnant pause. “Are you going to mind when your jealous ex rips him to pieces?”

  My confusion dissipated. “We’re not dating. He’s the teaching assistant in my astronomy lab, and Vince isn’t really the jealous or violent type.”

  She laughed low, and then bit her lip, considering. “I’ve dated more than warlocks, Annie, and I’ve known a considerable number of werewolves besides. They’re all the jealous and violent type for at least half the year. Our deal was no boyfriends, and you got to stay in school. Are you breaking the deal?”

  “Our deal was no Vince and I got to stay in school,” I nearly growled. “And no, I don’t think consulting with my TA about an assignment after class is breaking any deal I have with you.”

  She crossed her arms, exhaling through her nose as she looked away. “You’re lying to me, but it doesn’t matter. I need you back at the greenhouse. Now.”

  I told her I was tired, and that I had a lot of homework. Somehow she had found out that I only had two classes on Thursdays, though, so it was hard to justify that I hadn’t had enough time to do my assignments after leaving at eight in the morning. With Lyssa gone and no one to jump to my defense, I didn’t want to push her. We went back to the greenhouse.

  When I got there, the first thing I noticed was that all of the exterior displays had been removed from the greenhouse grounds, and under the icy bright moon, the place looked eerily abandoned. Charlie had done something to keep people from wandering in once Kendra returned, but I didn’t see why she would go to the trouble of clearing everything away. The healthiest plants we had always grew outdoors.

  Then I saw them.

  There were figures moving on the ground in the dark. They crawled along and dug at the dirt and rocks, and at first, I thought the vampires had arrived. Then, one of the rolling lumps sat up, and the streetlight caught her face. It was Gates.

  “You have to help her,” Kendra ordered. “We’re planting the grounds with vinca in case Draven sends hi
s necromancers after us, and Gates can’t make it grow the way you can.”

  “I can’t make vinca grow,” I said automatically. I didn’t even know why she had assumed such a thing. “And why can’t Gates do it? She’s better at everything else.”

  “She’s a fair warlock, but she’ll never be a born witch,” Kendra said, walking over to where I assumed Charlie had been planting for her. “Just get down and start planting. We have to finish before dawn.”

  “I want a day off,” I said.

  “You just had a day off,” Kendra said derisively.

  “Yeah, well…” I stared up at the sky. With Vince being so flaky, I had somehow forgotten that tonight was the full moon. When it started to wane tomorrow, Vince would be back. “I want another day. For me and Gates. She hasn’t left this place in two weeks, and she does have a family.”

  “Oh, I don’t need a day—”

  “Shut up and take my help,” I said. “A day for me and a day for Gates, one every two weeks, and leave us alone when we’re off. My privacy is important to me, and it would go a long way in this relationship if you would respect that.”

  Kendra was already on her knees and donning gardening gloves, but she didn’t snap back at me. Her tone was quite reasonable.

  “I can respect that, actually,” she said. “But no werewolves. No boyfriends. And you’ll set hours you’re going to be here, at least twenty a week, and you won’t hide on campus just because Charlie refuses to do my spying for me.”

  He spoke low. “I’m not taking sides—”

  “—in a fight between bridges,” Kendra finished. “Got it. Deal, Annie?”

  I nodded. “Deal.”

  I went to the greenhouse and grabbed a coat and a set of work gloves, and then I came back out and got down on the frozen ground to dig next to Gates. The slimy, wet, cold, bare roots of each hydroponically grown vinca vine seemed to crawl in my numbing grasp as I tried to get them adequately buried, and Kendra wanted to get at least one per square foot surrounding the greenhouse. As many as we could, and it had to happen at night on the full moon.