Magic and Shadows: A Collection of YA Fantasy and Paranormal Romances

by T. M. Franklin

  Lucy was strange, too. After a night of singing Caleb’s praises and practically pushing Ava to jump his bones during their next tutoring session, Lucy said nothing. It was as if it never happened.

  “You feeling okay?” Ava asked her as she got ready to head to the library to study, and Lucy sat on her bed, flipping through a magazine absently. “You’re awfully quiet this morning.”

  Lucy shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I had too much to drink last night. I feel a little fuzzy.”

  “Fuzzy?”

  “I didn’t think I was that drunk but, to be honest, I don’t remember much,” she said, rubbing her forehead. “I don’t even have a hangover, so I couldn’t have had that much.”

  Ava slipped on her shoes. “You couldn’t stop talking about Caleb last night.”

  “Caleb?”

  “Caleb Foster? You ran into him at the bar.”

  Lucy thought for a minute, eyes squinted in concentration. “Oh, yeah. I did see him.”

  “Luce, you’re kind of freaking me out, here.”

  Lucy finally smiled, shaking her head slightly. “I’m fine, really. But I won’t be hitting the bars again anytime soon.”

  “Good, because you were about ready to marry me off to my physics tutor.”

  Lucy snorted and stuck out her tongue.

  “Seriously,” Ava joked, slipping into her coat. “You were putting together my dowry. I still can’t find my silver bracelet. And I think you had a goat around here somewhere.”

  “Shut up!” Lucy flopped down on the bed. “Don’t you have to be somewhere?”

  Ava laughed. “You sure you don’t want to come to the library with me? I thought you have an English paper you need to start.”

  Lucy didn’t get up, choosing instead to pull a pillow over her face. “Maybe later,” she mumbled. “I think I need a nap.”

  “Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me,” Ava called as she headed out the door.

  Ava got about an hour of focused studying in before Lucy found her in her usual corner on the library’s third floor. She dumped her backpack on the table, yanking out her books and unceremoniously shoving aside some of Ava’s stray papers.

  “Hey!”

  Lucy ignored her protests, as well as her own books, and propped a chin on her fist with a wide grin. “Guess who called me.”

  “Hmm?” Ava asked distractedly, jotting down a few notes on the Michelson-Morley experiment. What in the world was luminiferous aether again? She flipped to the glossary in the back of her text.

  “. . . and then he said I could fly in his rocket to the moon.” Lucy slapped a hand down on the table, making Ava jump. “You’re not listening to a word I’m saying,” she accused.

  Ava blinked. “Sure I am. Someone called. He’s got a rocket.” At Lucy’s frown, she sighed. “I’m sorry, Luce. I’m just worried about this quiz, okay?”

  “You worry too much. You know what they say about all work and no play.”

  “That it’ll help me keep my scholarship?”

  Lucy laughed. “Anyway,” she said, drawing out the word into about fifteen syllables. “As I was saying, Philippe asked me out to dinner. Très bien.” She kissed her fingers with a flourish.

  Ava raised a brow. “You know, you don’t need to do that every time you say something in French.”

  “But I like it. C’est magnifique!” Lucy kissed her fingers again. “And I need you to help me decide what to wear, s’il vous plaît.”

  Ava groaned. “Luce . . .”

  “Not now,” she added hurriedly. “But before you go to work. We can study, then go have lunch, and then you can help me pick out something to knock Philippe’s French socks off, okay? If things go well, I’ll nab a date for the party tomorrow night.” Lucy fixed a pleading look on her face. “C’mon. Don’t make me waste my Snow White costume. If you’re not going with me, you can at least help me lock up Philippe.”

  Ava eyed her friend warily and sighed in resignation. “Fine, but you have to let me study until then.”

  “I promise,” Lucy said, opening a book and pulling a pen from her bag. “I’ll be good until lunch.”

  Ava made a noncommittal sound, turning back to her notes.

  “When is lunch, by the way?”

  Ava flopped down onto the table in defeat, her physics book cushioning the blow to her head. To her surprise, a masculine laugh drifted toward her.

  “I don’t think you can absorb it that way.”

  Ava looked up to find Caleb leaning against the table, a teasing grin on his face. “Caleb!” she sat up, quickly removing a post-it note stuck to her forehead. “What are you doing here?”

  He hitched his backpack up on his shoulder. “Studying, same as you. Well, except I tend to try and read the material instead of sleeping on it.”

  “I wasn’t sleeping.” She glanced at Lucy, who was watching the two of them with a curious look on her face. “I was expressing my frustration.”

  “You shouldn’t take it out on your physics book. What has it ever done to you?”

  “It exists,” she said with an exaggerated grimace. “And why are you studying on a Saturday, anyway? I thought one of the perks of being a genius was not having to study.”

  He shrugged. “Research for Quantum Mechanics. We all have to put the nose to the grindstone occasionally.” With a smile, he turned to Lucy, holding out his hand. “Hi. I’m not sure if you remember me. I’m Caleb? We met last night at the Palace?”

  He seemed to be almost searching her features for some reason, and Ava felt a pang of . . . something at his interest in her friend. Not that she could blame him. Everybody loved Lucy.

  Lucy hesitated only briefly before shaking his hand. “Oh, yeah. Sure. Nice to see you again.” Her eyes darted between them. “Did you two have plans?”

  Ava’s cheeks heated as she remembered Lucy’s matchmaking from the night before—which was even more embarrassing now that she suspected Caleb might actually be interested in her roommate. “No. No plans,” she said quickly.

  Caleb laughed. “Well, don’t sound so scandalized at the idea. You sure know how to stroke a guy’s ego.”

  Ava took a deep breath. “Sorry.” She smiled. “I’m just a little tense about this quiz.”

  “You need any help?” He started to pull out a chair.

  “Oh, no. I couldn’t ask you to do that. Not on your own time.”

  Caleb shrugged. “It’s no problem. Really.”

  So for the next hour, he explained—or rather, re-explained—luminiferous aether, Avogadro’s Law, and the Peltier effect, and Ava tried to retain as much as possible. Lucy seemed focused on outlining her English paper, but popped into the discussion now and then—most pointedly when it got to be close to lunchtime.

  “Please, tell her she needs to take a break from all of this,” she begged Caleb. “I need her to help me with my pre-date preparations.”

  Ava watched him closely to see how he’d respond to the knowledge that Lucy already had a date for the evening, but he didn’t seem upset at all. Instead, he turned to Ava, trying to maintain a serious expression.

  “You need to take a break from all of this,” he said, lips quirking.

  “Tell her she’ll do fine,” Lucy added.

  “You’ll do fine.”

  “And she needs to help her best friend before she has a nervous breakdown.”

  “You need to help your friend.”

  “And she needs to loan me her cute, black boots with the buckles.”

  Caleb laughed, and at that moment, his cell phone beeped with a text. “Sorry,” he said to Lucy as he quickly read the message. “You’re on your own with that one.”

  Lucy stuck out her tongue. “Spoilsport.”

  “I’ve got to run,” he said, pocketing his phone as he stood and shouldered his backpack. “Lucy, good luck on your date. Ava, good luck on your test. If you need any more help, you’ve got my number.”

  “Thanks, Caleb.” A
va watched him until he disappeared behind the stacks, then noticed Lucy’s raised eyebrows as she turned her attention back to their table.

  “What?” She busied herself flipping through her notebook.

  “What do you mean, ‘What?’ What is going on with you two?”

  “Nothing’s going on. I told you. He’s my tutor.”

  “Yeah, right. That’s why he was so eager to toot you on his own time.”

  “Toot?” Ava snorted. “Nice. Besides, I think that was more about you than me.” Ava fought to keep the note of resentment out of her voice, unsure of why it was there in the first place.

  “Oh, that had nothing to do with me, sweetie. That was all you.” At Ava’s doubtful look, she rolled her eyes. “You know my gaydar is on the fritz, but my lustometer is working just fine, and that boy lusts for you.”

  “He does not!”

  Lucy rolled her eyes. “Okay, maybe not lust, but I’m getting a definite like vibe. He’s interested.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Maybe, but that has nothing to do with this.”

  “Luce—”

  “Av!” Lucy leaned over the table. “Explore the evidence. One—” She held up a finger. “He offered to help you out with your studying on his own time.”

  “You said that already,” Ava muttered. “He’s a good tutor. Devoted to his job.”

  “Two.” Lucy held up another finger, ignoring Ava’s protests. “He’s completely focused on you. I mean, it’s like he’s trying to look right into your soul or something. It’s kind of disturbing, actually.”

  Ava just shook her head. “You’re imagining things.”

  Lucy sighed heavily. “Oh, yeah? Well, how about the fact that he totally lied about why he was here?”

  Ava started slightly at that. “What do you mean, he lied?”

  Lucy smirked, satisfied that she’d at least gained her friend’s attention. “Well, he said he was here researching quantum mechanics, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, then, Miss Observant, tell me why he’s on the third floor of the library—the literature floor, where you always study, I might add—when all the science-y stuff is up on five?”

  Ava opened her mouth to offer a reasonable explanation, but couldn’t seem to think of one. Instead of admitting that, she shrugged nonchalantly. “Well, maybe he happened to see us here and wanted to say hi.”

  Lucy gave her an indulgent smile. “No one can happen to see us back here in this corner. So he just happened to be wandering the stacks between the Renaissance poets and Shakespeare?” She waved randomly up the stacks as she spoke.

  Ava frowned. “It could happen.”

  “Sure it could.”

  “Well, what are you saying? That he was looking for me? He didn’t show up until you did, so it makes more sense that he was looking for you.”

  Lucy rolled her eyes. “Sure. He went to the trouble of looking for me so he could spend an hour talking to you. Makes perfect sense.”

  “You’re giving me a headache.”

  Lucy laughed. “All I’m saying is there’s something there, Av. And if I’m not mistaken, it’s not all on his end.”

  “And all I’m saying is that you’re imagining things,” Ava said, packing up her books. “So, how about lunch?”

  Lucy grinned, sufficiently distracted. “Now you’re talking.”

  They made their way out of the library, and if Ava kept running over in her mind what Lucy had said, she could hardly be blamed. If she kept trying to find a reason why Caleb had stopped by their spot in the library, it was only because she was curious. And if she could have sworn she spotted him a few times as they made their way back to the dorm, it was only her imagination playing tricks on her again.

  Caleb cursed to himself as he lost sight of Ava. The campus was vibrant with costumed partygoers celebrating Halloween a day early, even though he expected there would be a repeat the following night.

  College students never turned down an opportunity to party.

  Well, most students, at any rate. Ava, however, was spending the next two nights working, which was the only reason Caleb wasn’t fighting his way through the crowd to keep her in his sights. He knew where she was going, and he knew the crowd ensured her safety, at least to a certain extent.

  He needed to be more careful, however. He was aware that Ava had spotted him that afternoon as she walked home from the library and chided himself for getting sloppy where she was concerned. It was one thing to run into her coincidentally at the library so he could check in on Lucy and make sure he’d sufficiently blurred her memories of the night before. It was another thing altogether for Ava to suspect he’d been watching her, following her. Ava wasn’t stupid. If he didn’t get his act together, he would be lucky if she didn’t end up calling the police. Regardless, it would mean the end of his mission, and Ava would be at the mercy of the Council. He couldn’t let that happen.

  Ava entered the diner, and Caleb moved to an empty doorway where he could easily see through the front window. When she reappeared at the counter, he let out a breath and started back down the road, planning to return when her shift ended later that night. He froze at a familiar prickle of awareness, eyes darting wildly until he spotted Katherine in the shadow of some trees about a block away.

  She wasn’t alone.

  Her companion looked in his direction and turned to say something to Katherine before he disappeared into the darkness. Katherine watched him go and leaned back against the tree, focusing on Caleb with a satisfied smirk. She wiggled her fingers at him teasingly, and his eyes narrowed as he made his way back to the empty doorway, settling in for a long night.

  Ava appeared briefly in the window and he saw Katherine stiffen, pointedly looking toward her, then back at him, a brow arched in challenge. He glared at her, and she laughed, slipping deeper into the shadows. He knew she wasn’t gone, though. He could still feel her nearby.

  Watching him. Watching Ava. Waiting for the order they both knew was coming.

  Caleb sighed in frustration.

  Time was running short, and if he didn’t figure out what to do next, Ava was going to be in serious trouble.

  Ava yawned as she gathered up the trash at the end of the night before slipping out the side door and kicking a rock into the jamb to keep it from locking behind her. Dragging the garbage bags behind her, she spared a moment to mourn her sore feet and aching back. It had been a crazy night, with crowds dropping in on their way home from Halloween parties to gorge on greasy food and coffee before heading back out. She frowned, realizing that it would most likely be more of the same the following night.

  Lucy had texted a couple of reports from her big date with Philippe, and had apparently had a great time. The two would be going to the Halloween party together, and Lucy very unsubtly suggested Ava call in sick to work and call Caleb so they could double.

  Ava ignored the text.

  It was enough to put Caleb on the brain, apparently, because she could have sworn she saw him through the front window of the diner. It was only for a second, though, and then he was gone. So, most likely, she imagined it.

  Probably.

  Or Caleb was some kind of stalker.

  Immediately, she felt a wash of guilt at the thought. Caleb was a nice guy and had done nothing but try to help her. He’d never given her any reason to feel uncomfortable around him, and she wasn’t going to let her own paranoia destroy a blossoming friendship that was becoming important to her.

  A friendship. That was all, despite whatever Lucy said.

  Ava sighed as she heaved the bags into the dumpster then pressed her hands against her lower back, stretching out her spine with an exhausted moan.

  “This is why I’m going to college,” she muttered to herself. “So I don’t have to do this for the rest of my life.”

  After a moment, Ava turned to head back into the diner, only to freeze as an uneasy feeling wafted over her, the hair on the back of her n
eck standing on end. She glanced out toward the street, daring to take a few steps so she could look one way, then the other, scanning the shadows for whatever was making her feel so jumpy.

  Why did she constantly feel as if someone was watching her? The mysterious dark-haired woman. The huge man with the frightening eyes. Even Caleb, who was obviously not threatening in any way but seemed to be everywhere lately.

  She took a deep breath, searching the shadows but seeing nothing.

  The feeling didn’t leave her, though, not even when she made her way back into the diner, pulling the door tightly closed behind her. And Ava was beginning to wonder just how long she could ignore the lingering suspicion that maybe she wasn’t being paranoid after all.

  4

  The sun shone the following afternoon, but Ava didn’t notice, absorbed instead in a constant parade of sandwiches, coffee, and slices of pie. The diner was busy again, with costumed diners either heading out trick-or-treating or to another round of parties, and it wasn’t until after the dinner rush that Ava had time to take her lunch break. She sat at the counter, mindlessly munching on the meatloaf special as she flipped through her physics notes.

  “Crap!” Callie, one of the other waitresses, glared at her phone in irritation, twirling a lock of curly blonde hair around a finger.

  “Everything okay?”

  Callie blinked at her, crossing to fill Ava’s coffee cup and leaning on the counter as she chewed on her lip. “Babysitter just called. My little one’s got a fever of a hundred and one.”

  Callie was a single mother of three boys under the age of six. She worked two jobs and took online classes in the hopes of becoming a paralegal one day. Ava liked and respected her a lot and often wondered how in the world she did it all.

  “Oh, no,” Ava said, setting down her fork. “I hope he’s okay.”

  “He’ll be fine,” she said with a wave of her hand. “But he feels awful, and he’s crying for me. Jake’s gonna kill me if I ask to leave early.”

  Ava didn’t hesitate. “I’ll close for you.”