Dread Delight: Rosewood Academy for Witches and Mages (Darkly Sweet Book 2)

by Juliann Whicker

  “What about your grandfather?”

  He shrugged. “All he wanted was for me to be friends with you, and look where that got me. No, you’re as much family as I’m ever likely to have. You and Teddy, I suppose.”

  “Teddy? Family? If so, he’s the black sheep no one discusses.”

  He laughed. “Oh no, we always talk about the black sheep. Gossip is what they’re good for. I heard that he has bound half the girls in school to him, but not like Wit. None of them resent it. Sounds like I’m going to have to learn some lessons in seduction from him.”

  “That is a conversation I need to hear.”

  “What, you’re looking for ideas for your sweet little lollipop?”

  I cleared my throat. “No. Ideas aren’t what I lack. Hearing the two of you talk about it will reinspire me not to relegate Penny to nothing more than a conquest.”

  “As though you need it. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were in love with her.”

  “But since you know better?”

  He studied me intently, searching my eyes, my face. “You’re afraid that you’re going to hurt her and that she’s going to let you. You’re trying to be what you aren’t to protect her from your darker nature. It’s beautiful.”

  I scowled and pulled away from him. “Hearing you call me beautiful is a little too much for even my ego. You’re going to make me blush.”

  I headed out, leaving Ian laughing behind me.

  Chapter 39

  Witch

  It was the Monday morning a week after the whole Pitch fight and Drake’s bed thing. I tried not to think too much about it. But waking up with him in his bed, seeing his eyes all soft and delicious, wrapped in his arms, it was so simply perfect, I couldn’t seem to think about anything else. I shook my head and pulled my knees closer to my body. I was waiting at the Northeast delivery entrance with a very delicate parcel, but it was cold. It had snowed the day before and there were still patches here and there on the shadowy edges of the lawn.

  I waved as Signore drove up. He nodded at me while he got out. We studied each other as we walked until we met in the center of the little paved lot.

  “Cara Mia, how are you enjoying civilian life?” he asked in our secret language.

  I frowned at him as I handed him the parcel. “What other kind of life do I usually enjoy?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “A life of piracy suited you, but I suppose as a Daysider, you wouldn’t have much use for expressive scars and deformity.”

  I laughed and put my hands on either sides of his face. “I had no idea they were useful anywhere.” I’d arranged this delivery specifically to take his pain. I hadn’t touched it for a long time. I tugged on it, drawing it out like a silk cord, into me, a reservoir that could hold more and more as I got older, as I practiced.

  “Cara Mia, that is too much,” he murmured as he put his hands on my arms. I smiled at him before the dizziness hit. He walked me over to the truck, lifting me to put me in the driver’s seat as though I were still a little nine-year-old girl. Not that he’d ever let me into his truck. It had always been strictly off limits, but apparently I’d broken that unspoken rule when I’d asked him to delivery me home.

  I glanced innocently into the back, trying to see into the depths before I sighed and turned to face him where he stood, leaning against the dash. “I don’t have any whiskey to give you, but I want you to tell me a story.”

  He opened a compartment in the front area, revealing several bottles and glasses. “I came prepared.”

  “I love that!” I reached for a blue bottle with contents that danced with orange flame. “I used to drink this all the time until one day the bottle disappeared.”

  “You like Hogsnass? It’s a drink for old folks who sit on their porch and miss the good days.” He lifted the bottle from the case along with a glass, and poured the contents. I took it from his hand and inhaled deeply. It smelled a bit like soap, but in the best way. I drank deeply then held out the glass for more.

  He shook his head slightly while he filled my glass again. He took another glass and filled it, but he only sipped at the blue contents with leaping orange flames. “The drink’s effects might be too much for you after you’ve been weakened from taking my pain.”

  I patted his chest. “You worry too much. Tell me about Hansel and Gretel.”

  He smiled, his uneven lips tilting dangerously. “There was a witch that lived in the woods in a gingerbread cottage, that one?”

  I nodded. “I want to gobble up all the children in this school and lick my fingers from their sweetness. I’m failing, my friend. I have failed to find anyone that I can use to fulfill the requirements of the will.”

  “You have attracted sufficient interest…”

  I waved my hand in front of his face then studied his black beady eyes. “You’re so dark, so mysterious, so sexy. Do you still refuse to have me? Do you remember how I was going to make your mail truck into a cute little gypsy wagon? With goats and chickens on the roof.”

  “I remember.”

  “You could defeat Revere and I could disarm my mother, and we could drag her to safety while the bulldozers pulled down the house.”

  He shook his head. “You sound tipsy. I should not have let you take so much. I don’t fight men like your step-father. He’s only trying to protect those he loves. There are enough people in these worlds who only protect themselves. I’m afraid I’m much more like that than you think.”

  I wrinkled my nose at him. “You’re not any fun.” I drained my glass and handed it to him then slid out of the truck. I blinked rapidly while I tried to keep the world from spinning. Maybe drinking Hogsnass after taking Signore’s pain wasn’t the best idea. Oh well.

  I walked away from him, walking carefully so I wouldn’t stumble. Hogsnass didn’t even have alcohol in it, did it? I walked around the corner and ran into someone.

  “So sorry,” I said, smiling then not smiling so much when I saw who it was. “Oh look! It’s Pitch’s plaything.”

  Zach leaned close to me and inhaled deeply. “Are you drunk?”

  I waved him away, but then I stumbled into him. “Get away from me.”

  He sighed and swung me up in his arms. “As though I’m going to let you pass out in the cold. Viney would never forgive me.”

  I struggled in his arms. “I am not drunk. I used to drink bottles of Hogsnass and be just fine. Put me down. I am not a princess, you know.” My words were so slurred, I giggled because princess came out, ‘priss’ which would work just as well.

  Zach grunted slightly while he took my weight, which made me giggle again.

  “I am so heavy.” I patted his face. He had such a face-shaped face.

  “And definitely drunk. What’s Hogsnass? How much did you have?”

  I answered in a stern voice, interrupted by giggles. “Two glasses. Penny shouldn’t drink and walk at the same time, not that I am drinking, am I?”

  I squinted into Zach’s blue eyes, but things were getting very fuzzy and I kind of drifted until I came down with a whoosh on a bed.

  “Poppy, you smell like fireworks. Have you been crying?” I grabbed Poppy’s hand, tangling my fingers in hers and pulling her against my back while I circled my fingers around her wrist. I stroked that wrist, the raised scar along the skin. “It’s going to be all right. We just have to hang on until light comes.”

  I woke up wrapped in someone’s arms, but it didn’t smell like black cherry. I gasped and sat up, staring at the poster on the wall of action Pitch ready to hurl an explosive at somebody. I swallowed down nausea.

  “You should drink this.” Zach was sprawled on the bed beside me. He reached over and grabbed a green bottle with a skull-shaped cork out of the stand by his bed and handed it to me.

  I stared at it, trying not to feel sick from waking up with the wrong person. Nothing had happened. Of course not, except for that humiliating moment of utter weakness when I’d clung to him like he was Poppy. He was not my Popp
y, except that maybe he was the one that Pitch would destroy like she’d ripped Poppy apart. Except it had been me who wanted to hurt Poppy the way she hurt me. Pitch didn’t know limits. Hurting was hurting, and me wanting to hurt someone was more than permission to annihilate.

  Did I want to destroy Zach? I slid off the bed away from him, but he only cocked his head and stared at me like I was a complete idiot. “Now you’re trying to stay away from me? You held me so tight for hours and hours. It’s already done. As Drake said, I already smell like you. Have some,” he said again, pushing the bottle towards me. “It’ll help with the headache. Apparently Hogsnass isn’t gentle. Take a few swallows. As much as you can handle without puking.”

  I took it, uncorked it and had one swallow. I almost threw up anyway. I shoved the bottle back at him while I rubbed my tongue on my sleeve. “Gross.”

  He grinned as he capped the bottle and put it back. “Yeah, but it’s medicine. Supposed to be gross. Why were you drinking Hogsnass with your delivery guy? You looked very companionable.”

  I swallowed hard. “He’s the best delivery specialist around. He can deliver anything without getting blown up, or giving away secrets. What was in that poison?”

  He shook his head and held out his wrist, where he had a good thick scar. “You were hanging onto this. Called me Poppy. Did Pitch give her a scar like this one? She gave me mine one night after a tourney. One of her last tourneys. The crowd was crazy, pushing forward to get to her, and I was there holding them back, trying to show her how cool I was and not like the mob, and she saw me. I swear for like five seconds she saw me and then she smashed this bottle and slashed me across the wrist. That’s when Drake decided she wasn’t as cool as he thought, and when I knew I belonged to her.” His eyes got glassy looking.

  “Get away from me. I don’t want to deal with Pitch anymore.” I stared at the scar, ran my fingers over it and felt something, a resonance that I couldn’t deny. I pulled my hand back as if electrocuted.

  He swallowed before he leaned closer, so intent. “Who is Poppy? Did Pitch kill her?”

  His eyes took on that fervent glow of a true Pitch fanatic. The world got fuzzy, distant and my own heart pounded, racing while my body ached to scream and burn. I jerked my hands out of his then opened the cupboard beside his bed where the medicine had been along with a small knife I’d seen. I grabbed the knife, flicked it open then threw it over my shoulder, straight into Pitch’s pitch-black heart.

  “Penny, what are you doing?”

  I grabbed Zach’s shirt and pushed him down on the bed, straddling him while I glared down at him, my own eyes burning. “Lit!” I thumped his chest as hard as I could. “Have you ever heard of her? Poppy was Lit, but now she’s dead and it’s all the fault of that black-hearted witch. You don’t care about her, though, do you? No one cares about Lit, just Pitch, Pitch, Pitch! Do you think she’s the only one I crafted for? Because she was the best she was the only one who mattered? Poppy was worth a thousand Pitch’s, but no one cared. No one cared!” I hit him and shook him while he stared at me with his blue eyes wide and shocked.

  “Lit? Is she dead? Did Pitch kill her?”

  I snarled at him before I arched up, gasping for breath, trying to find some kind of control, some happy macaroon bubbly place. Somehow I didn’t scream, didn’t rake my nails across his face. I rolled off of him, limp and stared at the ceiling.

  I took deep shuddering breaths until I could answer without screaming. “No.” Pitch would hurt me so much after this. So much. It was lucky that Drake was getting better at healing. He hadn’t had time to waste healing me, but he’d spent the entire day on Sunday putting me back together, and now Pitch would rip me apart again. I’d slept with Zach and hurt him. He’d have bruises on his chest from my pounding on him. What was wrong with me? So much. So, so much.

  He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry.”

  I inhaled shakily before I shrugged. My voice sounded ragged and empty, like I felt, except for the rage that ebbed. “You wanted Pitch to kill her?”

  We lay like that, spread out on his bed staring at the ceiling for a long time. After my heart had almost returned to normal he sighed deeply. “I’ve really missed you. I get that you don’t want to make Pitch jealous and suffer again for it, so why does it bother me so much? I have everything I ever wanted but I’m not happy. Sometimes I think that I’m going to tell Pitch that I don’t want to see her anymore, but she hasn’t shown up and the longer I go without her, the more I realize that I’m addicted to her.”

  Addicted to Pitch? How unpleasant. I’d been addicted to Pitch too once upon a time. The rush, the freedom, the absolute and utter lack of anything like fear when we were together, but it couldn’t last. Maybe it would for Zach. Maybe he didn’t have a conscience and wouldn’t mind the fallout she brought down on the heads of everyone around her. But he couldn’t have his Pitch and Penny too.

  So, why was I still on his bed? Such a good question. Somehow, psychologically in my deepest, most messed up brain, I’d made Zach my friend, my Poppy, the one I trusted even though it was in their nature to betray my trust and hurt me over and over again. I shouldn’t feel like this, shouldn’t be like this, shouldn’t be such a weak, pathetic, idiotic mess, but I was what I was.

  “Poppy was my friend. We lived together since I was eight or nine, I don’t know. We were like sisters, only more. Best friends, only more. One day she left me and it’s all Pitch’s fault.”

  He touched my arm, barely a brush of his fingers, but a shock went through me. I grabbed his wrist and pulled him against me, pressing my face against his beating heart. Why? Why would I touch him like this? It would end badly. I was finished with Pitch and everything she represented.

  Zach whispered, so low that I could barely hear him in spite of how near his lips were to my ear. “Why do you blame yourself? I can feel it, the twisting in your chest, the guilt that eats at you. You don’t just hate Pitch, but yourself. Not only hate, but fear. You’re afraid of what you’ll do, what you’ll make Pitch do.”

  I should have shoved him away but I only laughed, muffled against his shirt. “That’s right, Zach. I am. You should be afraid too. You should be so afraid. Pitch would like to hurt you. All I’d have to do is say the word, think the thought, feel the desire, and she’d be filleting your skin from your bones, drying them in the sun to make me a wind chime. She may hurt me, break my legs and crush my organs, slash my eyeballs open, and shred my skin, but it’s nothing close to what she would do to you. You should be so afraid.”

  He put a hand on my head and pressed down, heavy. “Fear isn’t one of my natural emotions. I love danger, risk; it’s all part of what makes life bearable. The only thing I worry about is hurting you. I think I’m like Pitch. I can’t seem to help it, hurting you.”

  I pulled away from him, feeling like I was losing Poppy all over again. I needed therapy. “You have more imagination than Pitch. What time is it?”

  “Four a.m. Tuesday morning. It’s your Drake day.”

  I turned to stare at him. He’d sounded bitter. “Do I really smell like you?”

  He shrugged. “I thought me smelling like you was the problem.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be an idiot. I don’t want to smell like some stupid teenage boy. Drake will smell me in dance. I actually get to practice our dance today in class. I mean not in class because we’ll be in the small auditorium, and if I smell like you…” I wrung my hands until he covered my fingers with his.

  “You think Drake will be jealous because you spent the night with me? You slept with him all night Sunday.”

  I ripped my hand away from him. “Most of the night he was healing me, idiot. It’s not that Drake and I are together, because we’re not, but you and I are definitely, absolutely in no possible universe even close to together, and it will look slightly like we may be, and I don’t want anyone including Drake to get that idea.”

  He grimaced. “The whole school thinks that I’m dating Pit
ch. I’d be an imbecile to spend the night with you if it puts whatever I have with Pitch at risk.”

  “Yeah, well, I think it’s more likely that she’ll feel like since I spent the night with you, she should too. Then she’ll spend the night with me.” I made a face.

  “Did she really break your leg? You seem fine.”

  “Three fractures, but clean breaks. My mother commented on how clean they were.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Your mother?”

  “Didn’t you notice I wasn’t here on Saturday? Where did you think I was?”

  He cleared his throat. “I don’t know. It’s just hard to believe that Pitch would ever hurt someone like you, someone so vulnerable and weak that you can’t heal yourself.”

  I laughed. “You are so stupid. No wonder I like you. I’m really stupid too. Pitch can flay us together.”

  He scowled at me. “Thanks. I don’t mind Pitch hurting me. I have so many healing spells soaked into my skin, it would only last a few minutes, hours at the most. You really took all weekend long to heal?”

  “And I had to trade Drake a really rare spellbook to get him to heal me. And he’s a terrible spellsmith. He healed my leg wrong four times. Not that I minded. He was really sweet to try.”

  Zach’s face went kind of pale and sick looking. “Drake actually used spells on you? He’s a horrible spellsmith. It’s a miracle he didn’t replace your bones with fruit or something.”

  “That would be interesting. I can’t be picky. He’s the one who reset the spell you so idiotically shattered, so he’s the only one who can do healing spells on me. Revere was super pissed.”

  “Revere?”

  I shrugged. “My step-father. He’s supposed to be this incredible spellmaster, but I don’t know. To me he’s just a really good housekeeper, although he’s been slacking lately. When I went home the parlor was so dusty. Not that I’ve been in there for years. Maybe no one else has either. I miss my grandmama so much. Do you ever miss anyone so much you think you’re going to die?”