He took a deep breath, scratching his head and wishing something would bring him out of his broody funk. He supposed dancing would be better than nothing. “Alright. Fine. Dancing. I promise I won’t brood.”
“Now we’re talking!” Leif punched his shoulder and Jordan managed a smile.
Eventually, the park closed. That didn’t mean there weren’t still some humans and especially some magical folk lingering though, and that was who they kept an eye on, either to make sure they had no nefarious intent relating to the Underground or to protect them. But if the problem was strictly between humans, they generally stayed out of it. Or anyway, they were supposed to. But neither Jordan or Leif were the type to stand by and watch an innocent person get hurt and they stepped into human conflicts more than once even though they were discouraged from doing so.
Jordan’s wolf was big and had a thick coat of fluffy deep gray fur while Leif was brown and had a rougher coat. The two of them ran at a gentle clip from end to end of the park as they looked for any possible sign of trouble. They found two witches about to hex each other into oblivion over a fight about some crystal and shifted back into human form, managing to settle it. That was the most that happened that night.
Yet Jordan had a strange feeling creeping up on him that he couldn’t explain. The late summer wind was cool and it felt eerie on the back of his neck and in his fur. He felt like something was coming, like sniffing out a storm. He couldn’t say what and he didn’t mention it to Leif but it made him feel off somehow and he looked forward to going out with Leif. Maybe it would make the eerie feeling go away if he just let off some steam.
Jordan and Leif were just heading back to the Ramble Cave when they saw their fae patrol leader, Laya, marching toward them. Laya mostly kept to the Underground. She couldn’t always pass for human with her pointed ears that she only occasionally bothered to hide beneath her long silver hair. Her skin also had a silvery sheen that she told humans was just make-up when they asked about it. Laya looked agitated which was completely unusual.
“Jordan,” she said, tossing him a nod. “Hey, Leif. I have something for you. Special uh...task. I guess.”
Jordan recognized the expression of someone who had just been handed a tedious task and was now palming it off on somebody else and braced himself.
“You know Brunswick?”
“The academy?” Leif said. “Sure. For the magic girl geniuses or whatever.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Laya rolled her eyes. She had not attended an academy herself and for that matter, neither had Leif or Jordan. Unlike Leif though, Jordan also had never attended human schools. Everything he knew, he’d learned on his own. “I got a call from them. They’re sending a girl over on some special mission. Or something.”
“Uh oh.” Leif was grinning. He was only ever entertained when Laya was irritated. “I guess you want us to handle her.”
“I wouldn’t say handle,” Laya said, scratching her head, her angular face a little too pinched for Jordan to believe her. “Just ya’ know, help her however she needs. They asked for somebody to show her the ropes… All that.”
“What’s the mission?” Leif crossed his arms as if he might have the choice to say no if the mission was not sufficiently interesting.
“They’re collecting the elemental totems?” Laya shrugged. “I have no idea what that means but apparently, it’s very important.”
“Oh yeah.” Jordan nodded. “The five elemental totems. I heard a theory online that the magical forces or whatever are all messed up because the totems were scattered.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s more than a rumor,” Laya said. “They’ve got four of them now. This Brunswick girl is looking for the last one.”
“Not it!” Leif raised his arms and grinned at Jordan. “Tag. You’re it.”
“Goddammit,” Jordan said.
3
Lilith
Lilith took a train from Brunswick to Manhattan and ended up falling asleep against the window and in such an awkward position that it took her a few minutes as everyone disembarked at Grand Central Station for her to move, shifting her head by degrees and grimacing as the kink worked itself out. She ended up being one of the last passengers to disembark, her heavy backpack bouncing on her back as she found her carry-on suitcase among the luggage and popped the handle out, dragging it behind her as she rubbed her eyes and made her way through the station.
Lilith caught her reflection in a mirror and frowned as she slipped on a pair of dark shades. She had seen better days and train sleeping had put a weird wrinkle in her cheek and her mass of red curls was frizzing out all over the place in the humidity of the summer day. She was wearing a thin black t-shirt with her usual dark jeans because it was unusually hot and it stuck to her sweaty skin. She had an urge to change clothes in the bathroom and fix herself up a little but she had a stronger urge to just get to the magical Underground place in the middle of Central Park and find whatever quarters they had waiting for her. Instead, she contented herself with stopping by the nearest Starbucks and resting for a moment with an iced Chai, composing herself. The walk felt too long from the station to The Ramble in the park as she studied the map on her phone. Instead, she ordered up a ride-share and let it fight through the clog of traffic until it let her off by a park entrance and she stumbled out of the Prius, blinking in the sunlight and sighing as she hitched her backpack more securely over her shoulder and grabbed her suitcase that rattled annoyingly as it rolled over the bumpy cobblestones.
Lilith nearly got plowed by a horse-drawn carriage and she stuck her tongue out at the driver, an urge to hex him with a little fire to his top hat coming over her, though she restrained herself if only for the good of the horse who had done nothing wrong.
It took her a half hour to find The Ramble and then to find the cave stairs where there was supposed to be some kind of hidden entrance to the Underground, the city of magic folk underneath Manhattan. It had taken Friar some explaining before she understood it. She’d been to New York plenty of times and never even heard of the Underground, nor did she understand how the city was hidden especially with the network of subway tunnels all over the place.
Friar had finally rolled her eyes at all of Lilith’s questions and said, “My goodness, Lilith, it’s called magic. You’re a demon. Is this really so outlandish?”
Point taken, she’d supposed.
The Ramble Cave staircase was barely a staircase, it was more like a vaguely staircase-shaped bunch of stones that looked quite hazardous.
When Lilith found it, there was a wolf sitting nearby. The wolf was clearly a shifter. It was much too big to be a regular wolf. It had a deep gray coat so shiny and soft-looking that Lilith had to clench her fist to resist running up to sink her hands into it and find out just how soft it was. But that was considered quite rude amongst shifters.
“Hey.” Lilith pushed her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose and smiled easily. “Maybe you could help me? You know where the entrance to the Underground is, big fella?”
The wolf got to its feet and seemed to squint at her as if trying to make her out, and then turned around, its head hanging low as it slowly walked away.
For a moment, Lilith stood there dumbfounded, thinking she was being rudely dismissed by a very beautiful wolf person. But the wolf looked over its shoulder, right at her, and its ear twitched.
It seemed to say, You coming?
Lilith felt like a slowpoke and cleared her throat, hurrying after the wolf who led her into a gap between the cave and stairs, the world blurring around them. The sunlight disappeared and the shift made Lilith dizzy for a moment as she found herself in a dark tunnel, the park having vanished.
“Not a big talker, are you?” Lilith’s voice echoed and seemed too loud in the narrow tunnel as she followed the wolf, who glanced back at her. If a wolf could raise an eyebrow, this one did.
He didn’t shift and he didn’t make any wolfy noises to give her any clue as to so much as a personality
. Lilith shrugged it all off and surmised that the guy (she was sure it was a male wolf) was just unfriendly. But she resolved to get him to shift before he left her wherever he was taking her.
The tunnel wasn’t very long, about the length of three city blocks, she supposed, and then he led her down a long, wide staircase that led into...an entire city.
Lilith wasn’t sure what she’d expected but she had not imagined that a real functional town could exist under New York even by means of magic. But it did. There were full-sized buildings and stacks upon stacks of little brick structures with catwalks criss-crossing every which way and spiral staircases leading up to them and there were people and animals (shifters, she supposed) seemingly everywhere as well as fae and demons and goblins and the other sorts of magic folk that couldn’t freely walk above ground. Lilith had never seen anything like it and she’d been to some smaller concentrations of magic folk here and there (there was a village outside Boston) but this was something else. It truly felt like what anyone would imagine the seamy magical underbelly of New York City to look like.
The wolf led Lilith through a labyrinth of twisting alleyways and down narrow streets crowded with vendors’ carts, finally leading her up another staircase to a landing where he finally stopped in front of one of the many little apartment-looking places that looked strikingly like a smaller version of a brownstone row house in the Village with a front stoop and everything, though the walls had no windows, which she thought strange.
The wolf walked up the few steps to the door of the row house and sat back on his paws, looking up at Lilith expectantly.
“This is me, I guess?”
The wolf nodded and Lilith pushed past him, making her way inside. It seemed inhospitable that the wolf hadn’t shifted and helped her with her bags. But maybe that was a New York wolf thing.
The tiny studio apartment was kind of cute in a quirky way, if small. The place smelled like patchouli oil and lavender and something a little smoky and she dropped her bags on the plush blue carpet that looked ancient but felt thick under her feet. The wallpaper was striped with a pattern of tiny dancing skeletons that made her crack a smile and there were framed prints of famous witches of old on the walls. There was a small but neatly-made bed, an easy chair, a desk and a kitchenette. She poked open the door to the bathroom and found it small but clean. Lilith took stock of the place and nodded, satisfied.
“Yeah, this is nice,” Lilith said. She toed off her shoes. The wolf was sitting by the door looking very impatient to leave. She suspected he was begrudgingly fulfilling some duty assigned to him. Lilith crossed her arms and nodded at him. “So? Are you really not going to introduce yourself? Seems kind of rude, you know?” She smirked at him and he shook his head back and forth and made an annoyed huffing kind of growl before finally shifting into human form.
“Oh.” Lilith breathed in a little and blinked at the absurdly beautiful man standing in front of her.
He wasn’t conventionally hot. Lilith had a feeling that a couple of her friends would shrug and not understand the appeal. But Lilith had always had less conventional tastes, especially in regards to attraction and this guy was… He looked like a painting to Lilith’s mind. He shouldn’t have been wearing a waistcoat and glaring while holding a sword. His nose was bold and his face was a little long but his big dark eyes balanced it all out and there was something poetic and a little sad about them. They drew her in. He was tall too, his head nearly bumping the ceiling and he had broad shoulders. She could see the muscles hiding behind his black sweater, his legs long under black jeans.
Lilith cleared her throat and her voice was low when she said, “Um...hi.”
“Well, you wanted me to shift so I shifted,” he snapped. “Are we good now?”
“Geez.” She was flustered. It sucked to think someone was so appealing, only for them to immediately dislike you for no good reason. She suspected someone had forced him to assist her, but that was hardly her fault. “So sorry to put you out.”
“Whatever,” he mumbled. His voice was low and a little thick. “I’m Jordan. Nice to meet you. I’m two doors down. Let me know if you need anything-”
“I’m Lilith,” Lilith said. She stuck out her hand, determined to at least get him to the point of civility. “And I will need things. So don’t go far. I’m just going to...get settled first, I guess. I’m starving, for one thing.”
Lilith went to the tiny fridge in the little kitchenette. There was, technically, food in the fridge and in the cabinets. But it was all very foreign and strange-looking to her. There was slimy stuff in jars and fruits she’d never seen before. She wasn’t sure the stuff was actually for eating and not for potions. The only normal food was a box of saltines and her stomach rumbled plaintively.
“Alright, maybe I’m not starving,” she said. “Because I am not eating any of this stuff. Where’s a good place? Not too pricey. Nothing weird.”
Jordan threw his head back, shut his eyes, and heaved the most melodramatic sigh Lilith had ever heard in her life – and having gone to an extremely arduous and exclusive girl’s school, she had heard a lot of dramatic sighing.
“Fine. I will take you somewhere. I assume by not weird, you mean you want to go somewhere upside?”
“Above the ground?” Lilith raised her eyebrows hopefully. She was willing to try some of the Underground’s cuisine (whatever that meant) but...maybe not just yet. “Yeah, that would be great. Can you just give me a minute to freshen up?”
“Yes, yes,” Jordan said under his breath and he went outside to wait.
Lilith had intended to only change her shirt and fix her hair but even if Jordan was rude and even if he was...colorful, he was still attractive in exactly the way that appealed to her and she found herself putting on a dash of mascara and some lip gloss. She changed into another t-shirt that was low-cut and just a little loose-fitting to acclimate to the heat outside and grabbed her wallet and phone, sticking them in her pockets.
Being a demon, Lilith often faced the prejudice of people assuming she was evil or at least rather dark, even from other ignorant magic folk. She wondered if Jordan was like that. Maybe he didn’t like demons. Although he seemed more generally annoyed than biased against her specifically. There was even something a little amusing about his childish impatience. It was almost performative.
“So where are we going to eat?” It was loud in the Underground as they made their way to the staircase leading up to the outside. “You can pick what kind of place. I’m not picky. Except I don’t like corn dogs!”
Jordan stopped short on the landing, his hand on the rail that led to the staircase, and he spun around to glare down at her. He had to be a foot taller than her. He was well over six feet.
“Corn dogs,” Jordan said gravely. His voice was so deep it made everything sound just a bit funny, especially when he thought he was being very serious, and Lilith clapped a hand to her mouth, stifling a giggle. “I don’t eat corn dogs.”
“Well, good,” she finally said, her eyes still tearing up from holding back the laughter. “Then we have nothing to worry about.”
“I like pho.”
“I’ve never had pho!”
“How can you not have had pho?” His mouth was all pinched. He reminded her of Ms. Friar when she was impatient. “They don’t have pho in Massachusetts?”
“I think they do,” Lilith said. “I just never tried it. But I’m fine with trying it. Let’s go have pho.”
“Fine.”
Jordan spun around and they continued on her way and Lilith wiped her eyes, still laughing to herself.
Maybe this rude wolf wouldn’t be so bad after all.
4
Jordan
Jordan was, at best, annoyed. That Leif had left him with the lion’s share of responsibility for this girl, Lilith, from Brunswick was not surprising. It was a classic Leif move and it was mostly meant to tease him when really, if Jordan needed any help, he knew Leif would magically appear because Le
if had never left him in the lurch before. But it was still irritating. Leif knew Jordan had a tendency to isolate himself because of the curse. That was nothing new. But Leif always tried to “help” Jordan come out of his shell and be around people because Jordan tended to mope and feel even more lonely when he avoided others. Leif was right about that and Jordan knew it. But it was still...irritating.
It became even more irritating when Lilith showed up.
Lilith was adorable. That was the first word Jordan thought of when he saw her. She was sexy too and both of those traits co-existing in one person threatened to make Jordan short circuit. Lilith had a massive tangle of obsidian and opal hair that made her pale little face seem soft even when she was regarding him sardonically. She had bright red lips that she was always absentmindedly biting (she probably didn’t even realize it) and she was petite and curvy. She looked soft and tough at the same time and he resolutely did not look at her chest even though her plump breasts were just a little big for her small frame and her sweaty t-shirt clung to them quite nicely…
He had stayed in his wolf form because he was sure he’d make a fool of himself if he was in human form and had to walk beside her as he led her to the quarters Laya had found for her. He had no idea how to talk to girls he found attractive, knowing they would eventually hate him or look at him with cold indifference because they were being worked by a curse’s magic.
Leif liked to remind Jordan that there was nothing stopping him from being friends and that he was being a real douche not pursuing friendship with girls he liked and Jordan thought he was right, but when he felt particularly despised or depressed because he couldn’t help but have some interest and the fates were being absolute dicks, it was difficult to make that switch.
So a lot of times he came off as a bit of an asshole.
The Wolf's Curse (Brunswick Academy for Gifted Girls Book 5) Page 2