by B. C. Palmer
I stumbled after her like I’d had way more to drink, shaking my head. “Amelia—Amy, I’ve got two left feet. If you wanted someone to dance with, you should have made Isaac come.”
“Pfft,” Amelia blew a raspberry at me before she shooed me away. “Go get me another drink then. Maybe purple this time. I’ve always liked purple.”
She threw herself into the crowd and I made my way back to the bar, ordering her the requested drink. While I waited for her, I let my eyes linger on her dancing. Amelia was gorgeous in the silver dress Serena had threatened her into wearing. She was a spitfire, as ready to laugh as she was to throw a sarcastic or witty comment. I never kept up with societal expectations, but I knew she wasn’t as curvy as some men preferred; neither was she sharp edges like Serena. The memory of watching her come undone while Isaac fucked her made me want to bury my face in my hands and find the closest room to jack off. I don’t think I’d ever forget what she looked like.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one to appreciate her tonight. Devon Kinnear, a junior and an elementalist like myself, sidled up behind her and I wanted to push through the crowd and shove him off of her. Especially when she shook her head and pushed him away, but he wrapped his hands around her hips insistently.
The bartender set two purple drinks by me. They went ignored as I watched Amy scowl at the junior and shove at his chest. The dude wasn’t getting the fucking message. I pushed off the bar and into the crowd, uncaring if I stepped on any toes, literally or metaphorically.
I slid my arm around Amelia’s waist, tugging her back against me as I pushed Devon back with a harsh grip on the shoulder. “She doesn’t want to dance,” I growled. “You’ve had enough to drink.”
He held up his hands, “Fuck, Webb; I didn’t know she was yours.”
“Hey!” Amelia spat in disgust. “Fuck that. I’m my own woman.” But Devon had already disappeared into the crowd and she harrumphed. She turned in my arm, and I didn’t want to let go of her. “Thanks for the rescue.”
“Anytime,” I said, letting myself enjoy the feel of her against me. Her grin turned impish and I narrowed my eyes at her. “What?”
“You have to dance with me now,” she declared as she threw her arms around my shoulders, lacing her fingers together behind my neck.
“You really don’t want that,” I tried to back out.
“It’s fine—”
“I don’t know how,” I blurted, and she blinked up at me.
“It’s easy,” she said and reached down to guide my other hand to her waist. “At the risk of sounding like Serena, it’s like having sex... to music, surrounded by a lot of people.”
I didn’t know which the worst or best part of that analogy was. But I risked pulling her closer and I swallowed hard at the feeling of her hips gyrating against mine. I must not have been awful as I started to move with her, since she closed her eyes and smiled.
I could feel the alcohol hitting me, the magic enhancing the experience, but having Amelia in my arms is what made me feel drunk. I relaxed into the music, moving with her, the crowd pushing against us as the strobe lights flashed in time with the deafening music. I couldn’t help watching Amelia’s face as she danced, losing herself to it. I felt out of breath and I knew it was because of her.
Her hair was falling out of the updo she’d twisted it into, sweat glistening on her forehead, strands of her hair plastered to her face. I reached up to push her hair back out of her eyes.
Her eyes opened, staring into mine. We froze, immobile in the crowd around us, and my stomach dropped, heat racing through me at the look she gave me.
“Hunter.” I read her lips more than heard her whisper my name. I slid my fingers into her hair, tilting her head back.
“Hunter,” Isaac’s Whisper cut through the music. “Nathan’s awake.”
I froze, my lips hovering above Amelia’s. She’d frozen, too, and her eyes widened. “Did you—”
“Isaac,” I said. “He just told me Nathan woke up.”
We parted, though our hands still clung to one another. The ache of two competing desires threatened to tear me in half.
Amelia let go first. “We should go,” she said. “We can… pick this up later?”
I didn’t answer her. Anything I said might have turned out wrong. Instead, I let her lead me away from the dancing, into the thick crowd and to the exit.
The entire walk back to the Academy building and the clinic, my thoughts raced down two lanes, occasionally crashing into one another. Nathan was awake. I had him back. Really back. Amelia could finally meet him. Finally, we’d have answers, and everything could go back to being… well, I wouldn’t call it simple. But at least clear. I hoped.
We pushed through the clinic doors and raced through the main clinic to the room they had Nathan in. He was sitting up, eyes open, talking to Lucas and Isaac. I froze in the doorway, so suddenly that Amelia nearly ran into me. “Nathan…”
“Hunter,” Nathan said. “It’s good to…”
Amelia peeked out from behind me.
Nathan’s eyes went to her, and he looked like he’d seen worse than the Abyss. “No,” he breathed. “No, no—I thought I… she can’t be here.”
“What?” Lucas asked.
Nathan grew animated, then frantic as he pushed himself off the bed. Lucas and Isaac had to grab him to keep him from harming himself as he threw himself in Amelia’s direction.
“Nathan, what the hell is the matter?” I asked. “Talk to us—Nathan!”
“Her,” Nathan howled. “She can’t be here! She’s the harbinger! She’ll destroy everything! She’s what I was trying to stop!”
Amelia and the boys narrowly survived this year—but how long can their luck last? Find out in:
Rosewilde Academy of Magical Arts: Year Two
A Spell for Shadows
Click here to get it now!
Keep reading for a sneak peek of Chapter One!
Excerpt from A Spell for Shadows
Chapter One
Amelia
There was something in the house with me.
I woke up before dawn to a dark room. I was breathing heavy and loud, and my skin was damp and cold from night sweats. More nightmares, probably. At least I didn’t remember them. I pushed the blanket off my legs and started to throw them over the edge of the bed but had an old irrational fear of my feet being grabbed before I did, and hesitated.
Well, it wasn’t so irrational anymore, maybe. There really were things that lived in the dark corners of the world. I had almost brought one of them out in the open. After a year at Rosewilde, I could officially call myself a magician, and with knowledge of magic came the knowledge that there was a lot more in the world than I ever imagined.
Plenty of it was dangerous. Hell—most of it was dangerous.
I raised my hands for a simple revelation spell to peer into the darkness, but when I looked through the rectangle formed by my thumbs and forefingers there was nothing to see. Just a room. Still, I held my breath and called to mind one of the handful of defensive spells I’d learned over the summer as I checked the opened bathroom door, the ceiling, and then shifted my hands into a more in-depth spell that revealed the lines of protection spells knitted to the doorframes and glowing around the windows and beyond.
I held my breath.
Which meant that loud, slow panting noise was coming from something else.
Fear tried to scramble my thoughts. I pushed it away as it clawed at the back of my brain and focused on the words and gestures of a spell. A shield, just to buy time for something more creative, but when my hands moved the gestures were all wrong. They were sharp and primal, instead of the delicate and precise movements I’d learned in school. I tried to speak the words, and they should have been clipped Latin but instead the sound I made was guttural, the tongue harsh and scraping in my throat.
A set of white teeth spread into a grin in the darkness at the foot of the bed, and the teeth were needle-sharp and lon
g. They opened, and a slender black tongue slipped through them dripping ichor and saliva. The mouth floated forward, like some fucked-up Cheshire cat. There was weight on the bed. I was summoning it. I recognized the cadence of the spell, the nature of the gestures. I was calling this thing and I couldn’t stop myself.
I screamed, and slammed my hands together flat to stop the casting. Not that it mattered—whatever it was, it was here, and I scrambled away from it on the bed, threw a pillow, and managed to gain control of myself long enough to snap my fingers into place for Koin’s Static Discharge. Electricity crackled around my fingers as I rushed through the Attic Greek and pointed—
“Amelia!”
Reality snapped on like someone had thrown a switch.
Someone had. Lucas was on top of me, holding my wrists, muttering… was that Belmont’s Elemental Suppression? The air smelled like ozone, acrid in my nostrils. Isaac was coming back to the bed from the door, where he’d turned on the overhead light. “Amelia, what’s wrong?”
My body took a minute to catch up with my mind and continued to struggle against Lucas’s grip until I finally woke up the rest of the way.
“Lucas,” I muttered, “Isaac?”
“Shh,” Lucas breathed and let my wrists loose as he sank back down beside me and pulled me to him. “You’re alright. It was a dream. Inhale, exhale. You were casting in your sleep. It’s all right now.”
Isaac reached up and, with a thumb, wiped moisture from my eyes where I had apparently been crying. Well, that was embarrassing.
I cleared my throat and reached up to wipe them more thoroughly. “They’re getting worse,” I said as I held an arm out to Isaac, inviting him closer.
“Probably because school is around the corner,” Isaac said softly as he slipped an arm behind my head and under Lucas’s shoulder. “That can only mean bad memories.”
“Not all of them,” I murmured, snug between them, my anxiety gradually draining away. “But you’re probably right. It was so real, though. And casting in my sleep? How?”
Lucas kissed my forehead. “Using your dream body. It’s exactly like this one but exists only on the dream plane. You’ll have your anatomy class this year, in preparation for the advanced casting courses next year. Doctor Ashworth will go over it in painstaking detail. You must have a particularly robust dream-self. Feeling any better?”
I nodded slowly and nuzzled against Lucas’s chest. He kissed me again over the tangles of my bed-hair, and Isaac pressed closer to comb my hair back and kiss the side of my neck. Between them it was warm—warm enough that at some point in the night we had kicked most of the covers down to the foot of the bed.
The last of the dream faded, the last bit of anxiety bled away, and what was left was the realization that the two of them were naked and pressed against me.
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About the Authors
Marie Robinson
Marie Robinson lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband Michael, their son Kal, and their two aging-but-young-at-heart pit bulls who love to sleep on the couch. After years of helping out authors as an editor and literary agent, she took the time to write her own book and has never looked back. She loves magic, adventure, and romance—and so that’s exactly what she spends her days writing about.
To keep up with Marie, join the Tower Sirens Facebook group or follow her on Twitter.
About the Authors
B.C. Palmer
B.C. Palmer (call him Brian) is originally from the Pacific Northwest but trekked the wrong direction on the Oregon trail and ended up in Sun Valley, ID with his husband Scott and their adorable dog Mac. Brian is a fantasy author who delights in the torment of unsuspecting characters and readers. He loves to haunt coffee shops and wine bars with his laptop and practice his writerly brooding.
Connect with Brian on Facebook or Twitter.