Big Mage on Campus 1

Dante King & Neil Bimbeau

Copyright © 2025 by Dante King & Neil Bimbeau

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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Contents

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter One

Sixty seconds before my car plunged into the icy-black waters of the Potomac River, I found myself engaged in one of the fiercest arguments of my life. Of course, it was about video games.

“Look,” Patrick was saying. “I’m not saying the new one isn’t great, okay? Everyone loves the new one—it won like a billion game of the year awards. But Baldur’s Gate just isn’t the same if I’m not looking down at little polygon guys from a hundred feet in the air!”

Groans filled the car. I chuckled as I turned the radio down.

“But you can do that,” Jennifer countered from the passenger seat. “If you really want to zoom the camera all the way out and pretend it’s still the 1990s, you’re allowed. It’s just weird, that's all.”

“It’s still not the same,” Patrick said. “It’s just not.”

His voice sounded about twenty decibels louder than usual—although to be fair, so did everyone else’s. The three passengers in my car had had about twenty drinks between them over the last few hours, which was why I was the one driving my old Subaru from the party we’d just attended in Rockville back to Tysons Corner.

DC traffic was hell sober; drunk, no one else in the car would have stood a chance.

Tonight, though, the Beltway was wide open. If some TV director had wanted to shoot a pilot about a post-apocalyptic version of our nation’s capital, he would have found no better time to do it than now. It was an hour after midnight and the streets were nearly empty. The ever-present construction cranes and scaffolding that dotted the urban landscape looked almost peaceful in the moonlight.

“You know what I don’t miss about those old games?” I asked, turning the radio down a notch further. “The discs. Didn’t the old Baldur’s Gate games have like, six of those things?”

“Five!” That was Will, my friend who’d invited me to the party. He’d been staring out the window in a drunken stupor until video game trivia brought his consciousness floating back to the surface. “Man, it was a pain in the ass keeping track of those! My brother scratched up the last one, and it wouldn’t work no matter how much I cleaned it. I never finished that game when I was back in high school.”

Jen clucked her tongue. “See? Another point in favor of modern gaming.”

“Whatever.” Patrick leaned back in his seat, looking up through the back windshield.

“He is right, though,” I continued. One advantage of being the only sober guy in the car was that I could remember the points of an argument for longer than thirty seconds. “There’s something about those old games, man. Something magical. Back when I was a kid, I could play the same game over and over again and not get bored with it. Today, though…” I shook my head. “I start a game, I get a few hours into it, and I just lose all interest. Maybe it’s not the same.”

Jen shook her head and adjusted her glasses. “That’s because you’re not twelve any more,” she said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts. She’d drunk less than the rest of my passengers at the party, but only just. “You have responsibilities now. A job. A grown-up life.”

Fair enough, although I didn’t know how grown up we all looked driving back from a party that had mostly consisted of craft beer and Mario Kart. When Will invited me to this get-together with some of his friends from Howard, I’d waffled back and forth on whether or not to attend. In the end, I’d been glad I did. I’d had a lot of fun, and Will’s friends seemed very nice.

Lord knows I could use some new friends. I’d just moved into town, and I hadn’t been here long. Other than Will, I didn’t know anybody. Only a couple hours drive separated my old suburb from DC, but it still felt like a whole new world.

“Thank you again so much for doing this,” Jen said from the passenger seat. “We all really appreciate having someone who makes sure that we all get home safe.”

“It’s really not a problem,” I assured the car. “Will knows I’m not much of a drinker anyway—even if I wasn’t being the designated driver, I wouldn’t have had more than a beer or two.”

“Dude, you’re awesome,” Patrick said. Some of his enthusiasm came from drunkenness, but not all of it. “I can’t believe Will never introduced us to you before now. We’re going to have to make this a regular thing.”

“Speaking of Dungeons and Dragons…” Jen said. She pushed her glasses down the bridge of her nose and looked at me over them. “We were thinking of starting up a game this semester with Will as the GM. Maybe on Saturday nights, after class. Would you be interested…?”

I glanced over at her, my answer halfway to my lips as we reached the toll bridge.

A set of headlights cut across two lanes of traffic and lit up her face like a fucking spotlight.

I moved without thinking, acting on pure instinct. From somewhere that felt like a great distance away I could hear the sound of horns—both the driver’s and those of other motorists, who were reacting to the sudden catastrophe with the same slowness I saw blooming on Jen’s face. The steering wheel twisted in my hand, and the car let out a banshee screech as we went from four wheels to two.

The move was as deliberate as it was desperate. Whatever car had just jumped the lane was now pointed directly at the driver’s side door—at me. Not that I particularly wanted to die; I just did it without thinking. Better me than them, I guess. Stupid, probably, but in moments like that, people show you who they really are. Whether they’re selfless or selfish, brave or cowardly.

Maybe that’s why what happened next happened.

I braced myself for impact. In the backseat I saw Patrick sit straight up, his eyes filling with horror in the rear view mirror as he saw what was coming. Will shot forward, reaching for me and Jen at the same time. Someone screamed—

Then we hit.

It wasn’t a direct hit; given how fast we were going that almost certainly would have killed me. Later on, I’d find out that the driver who jumped the median was drunk, but that they’d regained enough presence of mind at the last second to also turn, transforming a deadly crash into a glancing blow that sent both of our vehicles skidding in opposite directions. My driver’s side door buckled inward, and I felt a pressure against my left thigh that quickly turned into pain, but we were otherwise unharmed.

The car, on the other hand, was nowhere near as lucky.

I’d already hit the brakes—hell, I was pumping them like a bellows—but it didn’t matter. The tires squealed in protest as the car slid across the slick pavement, and the guardrails on the side of the bridge loomed larger and larger until suddenly they weren’t there any longer. The safety feature designed to keep us from going over the side snapped like a twig.

The bottom dropped out of my stomach. We were falling!

“No!” Jen shrieked. She put her hands on the dashboard, gripping it like getting her fingers into it might turn back time and put us back on solid ground. Behind me, Patrick and Will rose flew an inch above the backseat, the belts around their waists the only thing keeping them from slamming into the car’s roof.

There was a horrifying moment of recognition as the car’s headlights illuminated the black, inky water. Then we hit.

The impact hurt worse than the car crash. A huge crack spiderwebbed across the windshield, and my airbag went off with a whoosh and a pop. Stars swam in my eyes as the center of my steering wheel exploded and what looked like a huge fabric balloon hit me in the face.

What no one tells you until your airbag goes off is how hot those things are. For a moment it was all I could think about.

Then the water started pooling around my feet, and I realized how much trouble we were all in.

“Holy shit,” Jen was whispering as she stared down at the water. “Holy shit holy shit holy shit…!”

“Get out! Quick!” Patrick had his seatbelt off and was slamming himself against one of the doors. “Before we go under…!”

I rubbed my face, still stunned by the airbag. What the fuck!? How had things gone so wrong, so fast?

“It won’t open!” That was Will, who’s good humor had just turned to panic. “Edwin, unlock the doors! We can’t get these fucking doors open!”

“They are unlocked,” I managed to mutter. In the back of my head was an old safety video I’d been forced to watch as part of my Driver’s Ed program back in high school. I only remembered the gory parts, but there’d been something about how to get out of a car when you crashed into water. Something about pressure…

“Oh my GOD!” Jen scooted up into her seat, crouching like a gargoyle. Water poured in from underneath the dashboard; several inches of it already filled the wheel wells and the front of the cabin. The headlights flickered and died, and all the lights inside of the car went out at the same time.

We were plunged into darkness.

“Nobody panic!” I shouted. “I know what to do!”

No one listened to me. Thirty seconds ago I’d been thinking about how nice it was to be the only sober person in an automobile—now I knew just how bad that could be. Patrick roared, slamming himself against the driver’s side back door with his meaty frame. I couldn’t see Will. Jen sounded like she was praying.

You can’t get the doors open because of the pressure, I thought, words coming back to me from God only knew how long ago. Even if you could, you have to open the damn things outward, which means pushing against hundreds of pounds of water. You have to equalize the pressure by breaking…

I shot around in my seat.

I didn’t carry any tools capable of cracking auto glass. I usually had a pocket knife on me, which might have been useful, but for whatever reason I’d balked at bringing it to Will’s party. Maybe I’d been afraid it might slip out and freak out the people I was supposed to be making friends with. Stupid.

But the headrest…

There! I yanked it free. Two long pieces of metal attached it to the back of my seat, which now stuck out from the bottom of the headrest like a set of claws. I vaguely remembered that these were designed to shatter the glass.

More water poured in. I hadn’t even unbuckled my seatbelt, and the water was already up to my groin. The front end of the car was tilting downward, sinking faster than the back.

“Fuck!” Patrick shouted, smacking the window so hard with his elbow he probably caused a hairline fracture. “Fuck!”

I’ve got this, I told myself, gritting my teeth. Break the windshield, then get everybody out. We can swim for it—the shore’s not that far away. We can get out of this.

I was not going to die tonight.

With a bellow, I swung the tines of the headrest at the windshield. I aimed directly at the most cracked part of the glass—right where the pane splintered as we struck the water. In my mind’s eye I could see it shattering, breaking into shards like a plate-glass window someone had thrown a brick through.

The tines bounced off of the glass.

Nothing happened.

What!? No! I reared back and swung again, this time more out of desperation than anything. One of the tines left a scratch that looked just like the one I’d gotten on my first car when I was sixteen and a piece of gravel flew off a truck and hit my windshield. But it didn’t crack. It didn’t shatter.

We were trapped.

Animal panic took hold. One hand unbuckled my seatbelt while the other—already knowing what was going to happen, already dreading it—grabbed the handle of the dented driver’s side door and shoved it open as hard as I could.

It didn’t move.

The water was up to the bottom of the window now. The entire front of the windshield showed nothing but blackness—we’d gone completely under. Only the rear of the car remained above the waterline.

What had been a wonderful evening just a few minutes ago was now a nightmare.

Patrick kept screaming fuck over and over again, slamming himself against the side of the car like a zombie in a horror movie. Will had gone eerily silent. In the passenger seat, Jen stared at the rising water lever like a deer in headlights, her fight or flight instincts gone completely haywire.

None of them were going to achieve a goddamn thing.

We’re going to die, I thought. I’m going to die.

The panic rose higher and higher. My pulse surged in my ears, the sound of it almost blocking out the roar of the water as the mighty Potomac claimed my automobile. The river sucked the vehicle downward, pulling us in like the mouth of a hungry monster.

“Hail Mary full of grace,” Jen muttered. In the last fading rays of moonlight I could see tears streaming down her eyes.

“ThelordiswiththeeblessedarethouohgodohJesusSAVEME…!”

I can’t! I thought. I can’t! I’m too young to die!

Fireworks exploded behind my eyes. My hammered against my ribcage, every rapid beat filling my bloodstream with pure adrenaline.

The water climbed higher and higher. A scream rose in the back of my throat.

And a feeling unlike anything I’d ever experienced before took hold of me.

“NO!” I roared.

What happened then happened so fast that later I’d swear to myself I hadn’t seen it. A brief, bright flash filled the cabin of the car, as if someone had cut on a halogen bulb in the middle of the center console. It lit us all up like the noonday sun, freezing us for a single moment in all our youthful panic and terror—Patrick clawing the ceiling of the car like a trapped rat, Jen shaking like a leaf and muttering prayers, Will with his head in his hands. We looked awful.

Each of them looked up, their expressions transfixed by that glowing point of light.

Then it exploded like a miniature sun—shattering every piece of glass in the car.

The windshield buckled inward, admitting a flood of dark water. The windows exploded outward, filling the churning river with shards that quickly sank and disappeared. Even Jen’s glasses broke—I saw her cry out just before the flash faded, holding the broken frames of her spectacles.

I had no idea what had happened. I had no fucking clue what I’d just done.

But I wasn’t going to waste it.

“Everybody out!” I shouted, grabbing Jen—the closest—first. I shoved her forward, showing her the way to freedom. “Swim! Now!”

Jen’s shocked expression cleared, and she plunged into the water.

Patrick was already halfway out of the space where the rear window had been a moment before. I don’t think he even saw the rest of us. All of the higher reasoning functions of his brain had shut down, leaving only a core lizard brain that fought to survive. Given the circumstances, I couldn’t blame him.

“Will?” I turned around in my seat. Without a windshield or windows, water poured into the cabin. Only a foot or so of air remained between the surface and the roof of the car. “What are you doing, man!? Get out of there!”

He didn’t move.

Swearing loudly, I dove. The chill of the water struck me like a blow, and every time I kicked with my left leg to swim it cried out in pain. I’d probably hurt it pretty bad, but the adrenaline kept me from feeling much besides a dull ache.

I swam into the backseat. Will lay curled up in a little ball, his head barely above the water. His eyes bulged, and I realized with a start that I’d never seen a human being look this scared before.

“I’ve got you,” I told him, holding on tight. “We’re going to get out of this, okay? You just need to listen to me!”

Will blinked like someone snapping out of a trance. “Edwin?” he blurted, panic filling his features. “What—?”

It was as far as he got. Water surged to the roof of the car, and both of us were pulled beneath the waves.

I grabbed hold of Will and dragged him. By some miracle, he’d retained enough sense to unbuckle his seatbelt after the crash. He flailed madly in the water, pure animal panic ripping away his senses, but I didn’t let go. I couldn’t.

Something had changed inside of me. I couldn’t explain it, and I wouldn’t be able to even start forming the right words to describe the effect for a long time. But the moment I’d conjured that brilliant flash into existence, I’d become a different sort of man.

I didn’t know who that man was yet, but I knew he’d never have left a friend behind to drown.

My hand reached out and grabbed the roof of the car. I’d stuck it right through where the back windshield used to be, and I used that leverage to pull me and Will out of the Subaru. As soon as the two of us got free, the car began to sink and we began to rise. I kicked up, ignoring the pain in my leg, opening my mouth every few seconds to feel the bubbles against my face and assure myself the two of us were still heading for the surface. The water around me was so dark, like ink, that it looked like we’d sunk a hundred fathoms deep.

My lungs had just begun to warn me they were in dangerous need of some relief when my head broke the surface. I coughed and sputtered, hauling Will’s head out of the water along with me. As soon as he realized we were no longer underwater, he stopped thrashing, and he began coming back to his senses.

We’d floated downstream a bit from the bridge, but I could still see it. The moon hung low in the sky, and in the silvery moonlight the spot where we’d crashed through the guardrails looked horribly unnatural—like a missing tooth.

Two ambulances had already pulled up to the side of the bridge, and a police officer was shining one of those massive spotlights back and forth across the surface of the water. When it reached me and Will, it stopped, and I heard him shouting something I couldn’t hear over the waves.

I didn’t need to hear it. Help was on the way.

“We made it,” I told Will, looking back and forth from one side of the river to the other. “Are you okay?”

Will looked mortified. “I… I couldn’t move,” he whispered, his eyes haunted. “I always thought I knew what I’d do in a situation like that. And I didn’t do jack shit.”

“It’s okay,” I said, treading water. Another van had pulled up on the shore a little ways down, and a half-dozen rescue personnel were treating Patrick and Jen. They’d made it to safety, too. Two divers swam against the current with long, sure strokes, coming to get us. “We made it, man. We’re alive.”

“Fuck,” Will said, shaking his head. “I even saw the fucking Mythbusters episode about this!”

I couldn’t help it—I laughed. “I saw it, too,” I said, shivering. “The headrest trick didn’t work, man. Shit, here they come. I hope they’re strong swimmers…”

Just before they reached us, I glanced over at Will. And saw him staring at me like he was seeing me for the very first time.

“How did you do that?” he whispered. “That… man, what the fuck was that?”

I didn’t have an answer.

“I wish I knew,” I said.

Then we were in the arms of the divers, being dragged back to shore.

Chapter Two

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The heart rate monitor’s steady tick filled the room. An even heartbeat, all things considered. Especially for a guy who’d just stared his own mortality in the face and come through to the other side with about a minute to spare.

My leg hurt like the devil. The paramedics did what they could to bandage it up, but just having it on the bed sent a dull ache through my entire lower body. According to the nurse it wasn’t broken, just sprained, but it sure felt broken. I’d fractured my wrist back in sixth grade from a nasty fall off my dirt bike, and that had hurt a hell of a lot worse than this.

I kept that leg away from my blanket as I lay back in the hospital bed, listening to my own pulse keep time like a cheap wristwatch. No visitors, as apparently I rated a private room tonight. I was a hero.

I didn’t feel heroic. I felt confused.

Right up until Will asked me that question, I’d managed to convince myself that bright flash had been a hallucination. Stress did funny things to the brain—the killing kind doubly so—which meant I couldn’t be blamed for getting things a little mixed up. Obviously I’d confused the experience of being trapped in the car with the relief of seeing the floodlight on the water, and so my brain had kind of slapped the two together like a lazy projectionist splicing together a film reel.

The shattered glass? Easy to explain—I must have broken the windshield with that headrest after all. Maybe my desperate blows cracked it, and the weight of the Potomac squatting on top of it like a goddamn gorilla did the rest.

Yes, it was a nice, neat little explanation. In a week or two, I’d probably have even believed it.

If only Will hadn’t asked me that question.

I hadn’t had the chance to talk to Jen or Patrick. The nurses assured me both of them were fine: Patrick was rattled, and Jen had some strange cuts on her face, but neither of them had been seriously injured. They’d almost certainly be released before me: in fact, they’d probably have already been on their way home if not for the police.

I craned my neck to the side, getting a glimpse of the hospital hallway. Though he took pains to conceal himself, I could sense the cop out there, keeping an eye on things. I’d seen him earlier. The nurses told me they were here to arrest the drunk driver who’d sideswiped our car once she was stabilized. I got the impression she’d wound up more banged up than the rest of us.

Serves her right, I thought. Unkind, perhaps, but I didn’t feel particularly kind with my leg throbbing like a second heartbeat.

The cops had talked to me too, of course. It took about thirty seconds. They took my ID, assured me I wasn’t in any trouble, and verified that I was indeed the driver of the vehicle that had gone over the side of the bridge. Then they left me to convalesce, with just this single officer in the hallway keeping watch.

I wondered if they’d talked to Will and Jen and Patrick.

I wondered what they’d had to say about tonight.

I was still wondering when the door opened, and a smartly-dressed older man entered the room. From his bearing I assumed he had to be with the police, though he definitely wasn’t a beat cop. An eyepatch covered one eye, and his hair was thick and black with streaks of gray cutting through it. His beard matched.

“Edwin Sawyer?” the man asked. I’d seen The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and he sounded just like one of the characters from that movie. Was that Norway or Sweden? “My name is Lavrans. Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”

So this was the guy in charge. I had no idea why a police detective would want to interrogate me about the accident, but I wasn’t about to make myself look more suspicious by refusing. I hadn’t done anything wrong—and if I didn’t like the tone of the man’s questions, I could always ask for a lawyer.

“Is everyone okay?” I asked. It had been a more-or-less constant refrain over the last few hours. “My friends…?”

“Are fine,” Lavrans assured me. He took a chair from the other side of the room and brought it to the side of the bed, then sat down. “They’re resting comfortably. You took the worst of it, I’m afraid—other than Miss Delage, of course. She’s in surgery now, but I’m told the prognosis is good.”

Up close, he looked even more… luxurious? That wasn’t a word you normally applied to people, but something about Lavrans’s clothing and demeanor made me think he was used to money and privilege. Way more than an ordinary police detective, anyway. He looked like he belonged on a billboard or in a crime drama, not a hospital room.

Then his words sank in, jogging my memory. Miss Delage. The drunk driver.

I swallowed hard. A moment ago, I’d been glad that she was hurt, but now…. “How bad is she?”

“She hit the barricades on the opposite side of the bridge,” Lavrans said, putting his hands on his knees. “Unlike the one on your side, hers did not break, as they were made of concrete instead of rebar.”

“Lucky her.”

Lavrans nodded. “An error I’m certain the highway department will be rectifying as soon as they begin repairs on the bridge. To answer your question, Miss Delage broke quite a few bones. Her arm is the worst of it: she fractured her humerus in two places, and her wrist is quite the mess. Setting it correctly requires surgery.”

It was my turn to nod. “And everyone else…?”

“Will be fine,” Lavrans assured me with a smile. “Even the woman who hit you will be fine eventually, Mr. Sawyer. Though it would be perfectly understandable if you wished that she did not, given what you’ve been through this evening.”

If that was some kind of opening to vent, I didn’t feel like taking it. “I don’t want anybody to be hurt,” I said, shuddering as I remembered the icy black water closing in. “Oh shit. My car…!”

Lavrans chuckled at that. “The one thing that will not be alright, I’m afraid. But I’m certain your insurance will handle it.”

I hadn’t even thought about my Subaru before now. Had I left anything important in the glove compartment? The trunk? Any documents, any items I couldn’t live without? Suddenly I was very glad I hadn’t decided to bring my guitar with me to Will’s party, even though he’d insisted his friends wouldn’t think I was trying to be that guy by doing so.

No. No, I’d cleaned the car right before picking Will up. I hadn’t left anything important inside. I let out a sigh of relief.

“I wanted to ask you a few questions about the crash,” Lavrans said, continuing in a sympathetic tone. “Specifically, what happened after the crash. When your vehicle went into the water.”

I managed to keep from shuddering again, but only just.

“What do you want to know?”

Was that a glint in Lavrans’s good eye? “Well, it’s quick thinking,” he said, sticking out his bottom lip. This was the part where I expected him to pull out a notepad or a little audio recorder, like a detective would have done in a TV show. Instead, he just stared at me knowingly with those eyes. Eye. “The boys with the dive suits tell me they’re usually searching for bodies in a situation like yours, not helping survivors swim the rest of the way to shore. Most people freeze up when they go through a thing like that. Decision paralysis takes over, and they grip the steering wheel trying to convince themselves that what’s happening isn’t happening. Until they don’t have to hope for anything ever again.”

“That’s… a morbid way of putting it,” I said, looking at him side-ways. “Jesus.”

“That is who they normally ask for help from,” Lavrans agreed. “That’s what your friend Miss Stillwell was doing when you pulled her out of the passenger seat, right? Asking God’s help?”

So he’d talked to Jen. Of course he had—this man had probably interrogated the whole car. He’d probably insisted on peppering the drunk driver with questions right up until they put the mask on her face for surgery.

“Look, I don’t see what this has to do with anything,” I said, letting a little anger into my tone. “We all panicked when the car hit the water. It’s a miracle we all survived. The four of us ought to be dead, but we’re not, and my leg is really starting to hurt, so if you could maybe leave me alone and have the nurse come in to give me another dose of whatever those pills were—”

“Oh!” Lavrans’s face lit up. “You misunderstand me, Mr. Sawyer. This is not a criminal investigation. I’m not saying you’ve done anything wrong. Quite the opposite, in fact! You were a real hero tonight!”

As he said the word hero, his hand came down on my knee. I winced, bracing myself for the pain, but it didn’t come. In fact, as he withdrew his hand, my leg almost felt… okay?

That stuff the nurse gave me must have kicked in at last, I thought, glancing down at my wrapped-up leg.

Lavrans gave me a thin, knowing smile. “You’re right that it’s a miracle you all survived,” he conceded. “But you did tell me a lie just now, didn’t you, Mr. Sawyer? May I call you Edwin?”

I nodded. My throat had suddenly gone dry. “What lie?”

“That you all panicked when you hit the water,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “The other people in your car certainly panicked—we give everyone in these situations a quick blow into a field sobriety test, and your friends’ results were quite impressive on that front. Not as impressive as Miss Delage, who scored three times the legal limit, but still—”

“Why are you mocking my friends?” I growled.

Lavrans leaned in closer. Something dark glittered in his eye, though his face remained kind. “I don’t mock them,” he said in a low tone. “But all three of them had absolutely useless reactions to tonight’s crisis, Edwin. Their attempts to free themselves were… well, let’s say they were perfectly mundane.” He snickered at that, as if at a private joke. “I spoke with all of your friends, and all three of them agree—were it not for you, they’d be dead. They credit you with saving their lives.”

The longer Lavrans spoke with me, the stranger I felt. A ball of ice formed in the pit of my stomach, and no amount of assuring me that I was a hero or that I wasn’t in any trouble could make it melt away.

If I’d been the man I was twenty-four hours ago, this would have been the part where I stopped the conversation and demanded a lawyer. It would have been the safe and sane thing to do, and it would have gotten me out of this conversation before I said or did something stupid. Maybe that’s what I should have done.

But the man who’d pulled my friends out of the Potomac didn’t like Lavrans’s tone.

And he sure as hell didn’t like the way he was talking about Jen, Patrick, and Will.

“You keep circling around something,” I said, looking Lavrans in the eye. “Like a goddamn vulture, actually. So why don’t you just ask me already?”

For the first time since he’d entered the room, Lavrans looked thrown off-balance. His good eye widened, and I could see his brow flexing beneath his eyepatch as his bad one did the same. It only lasted for a moment, but I savored it all the same.

His surprise faded. “Very well. How did you manage to get out of the car, Edwin?”

I’d been bracing myself for this, I realized. Been waiting for the shoe to drop ever since I woke up in the hospital. “I broke the windshield,” I said, thinking of that old Mythbusters episode. “Pulled the headrest off of my seat and used the metal parts to shatter the glass.”

The man nodded slowly. “I see. That’s good thinking. Quick thinking.”

“No, quick thinking would have been rolling down the windows before we hit the water,” I countered. “Even getting them down a few inches probably would have let the pressure stabilize fast enough for us to escape.”

Once again I savored the look of surprise on the man’s face.

“Wow.” Lavrans whistled through his teeth. “You really do know your stuff.”

“I just watch a lot of TV,” I said, shaking my head. “Tell me—what did my friends tell you about our heroic escape?”

Something about the word made him snicker. “Your friends were drunk, disorganized, and panicking,” he said, batting my question away with a gesture. There was something underneath his words—a faint tinge of disgust?—that I seriously didn’t like, but it vanished so quickly I barely noticed it. “They don’t know how they got out of that car, Edwin, but they all agree on one thing. It was you who saved them.”

I swallowed a sigh of relief. Good. Nobody talked. Not about that, anyway.

Something told me if this guy knew about the flash, he’d never let it go. I’d end up in some government lab, getting experimented on like a lab rat until he learned exactly what it was that made me tick—

“You go to Howard?” he asked mildly. “Howard University?”

The question was so unexpected that it took my mind a moment to adjust to the fact that the interrogation was over. “Um, no,” I said, shaking my head. I started to rise, stopped myself, only to realize that my leg no longer hurt at all. Some drugs, I thought. Wow. “Will does, and his friends are all incoming freshmen, but I’m not. I’m just up here looking for work.”

“Work?” Lavrans cocked his head to the side. He looked almost amused. “A young man like you should be focused on his studies. Why did you not follow your friend to university?”

The laugh was out of my mouth before I could stop it. “Not everyone’s rich enough to afford private school tuition,” I said, shaking my head. “Will went to a gifted school, and I didn’t. He was practically guaranteed a scholarship of some kind. He’s an A-plus student. I’m more like a B-minus. B-plus on a good day.”

“And yet you saved his life and not the other way around,” Lavrans said.

I shrugged. “So I’m an A-plus in breaking windows,” I said with a smile. “I guess.”

Lavrans rose from his chair. There was more I could have told him, if I wanted to. Like how I’d been planning to look for community colleges in the area, once I got my feet underneath me. How I wasn’t sure if I could pay the rent on my apartment next month. How I’d been counting on my grandparents to help me out with tuition, right up until they got scammed by some guy halfway across the world into turning their inheritance into visa gift cards. How I couldn’t quite shake the fact that I felt subtly inferior to Will and all of his college friends during that party.

But I didn’t. I was just glad the interrogation was over.

Or was it?

As Lavrans stretched, he reached into the pocket of his jacket. Inside was a cream-colored business card with black ink, which he placed on the table next to my hospital bed. I expected his name and badge number, along with his contact info—but what I found was something quite different.

Written across the top: Blackwater University.

“What the hell is this?” I asked, holding the card between two fingers. I’d never heard of the place before. “A joke?”

“Not a joke at all,” Lavrans said. “Though I admit the name is somewhat inappropriate on a night like tonight. I want you to go to the address on that card, young man. I’d like you to let them know that Lavrans sent you.”

I blinked. Now this was getting really strange.

A suspicion I’d had for some time hardened into certainty. “You’re not a police detective, are you?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

Lavrans smiled as if to say guilty as charged. “I work with the police every now and then,” he explained. “When there are certain incidents of a… let’s say sensitive nature, they call me in to get my opinion on things. To speak to heroic young men like you.”

A sensitive nature, I thought.

Again I saw that brilliant blue flash in my mind. Saw the way that the horror and panic on the faces of every one of my friends turned to something different as that light filled their eyes.

Turned into hope.

What the hell had I done?

He knows, I thought, the ball of ice in my stomach growing frostier by the second. He’s known from the second he walked in here. He’s been toying with me this entire time. Why? For what purpose?

And why give me the business card?

Lavrans smiled as if he could read my thoughts. “I think you’ll find Bridgewater to your liking, Edwin.”

I was already shaking my head. “I can’t afford it—”

Lavrans scoffed. “I didn’t say anything about the cost. Between you and me, I have a strong suspicion Blackwater will be able to work with you where that’s concerned. Actually, I’m totally sure of it.”

I wondered how he could be so certain. And who the hell this man really was.

Lavrans looked around the hospital room like a man who’d tarried too long. “Miss Delage should be getting out of surgery soon,” he said, almost absentmindedly. “Once the police have finished with her, they’ll be releasing you all. No need for a designated driver—the police will be happy to give each of you a ride home.” He smiled.

I didn’t. “My leg…”

I blinked. My leg didn’t hurt at all.

Twisting it back and forth brought no twinge of pain. Flexing my toes didn’t cause the fragile network of bones in my ankle to scream like a medieval torture chamber.

In fact, like Lavrans, I was beginning to have a certain suspicion.

Namely, that if I got up right now and walked, I’d find my leg as strong as if it had never been injured at all.

“Looks like it wasn’t as bad as you thought,” Lavrans said, giving me a knowing look. “I’m sure the nurses will be pleased to see your progress.”

I shook my head. Just another thing that didn’t make sense: like the flash, like that strange feeling I’d had as the water covered my car, like the burning certainty that I could get Will out of the Subaru before we all drowned.

I couldn’t explain any of it.

Could Blackwater?

“Oh, by the way,” Lavrans said, turning on a heel. He’d been halfway to the door, now he smirked like a man with a secret. “Your friends mentioned the anecdote about the headrest and the metal bars. But none of them saw you break the windshield.” He paused, the corner of his mouth curling in a smirk. “In fact, I’m sad to report that you happen to have one of the few models of that brand without tines capable of shattering auto glass. An unfortunate mistake by the manufacturer, which I’m certain they’ll hasten to correct once word of this gets out.”

He looked at me like he expected a response. My throat felt as dry as a desert.

“The windshield was already cracked in the crash,” I said, sounding about as believable as a toddler caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “Probably would have broken even if I didn’t do anything.”

Lavrans chuckled. “I sincerely doubt that. Have a good night, Mr. Sawyer.”

He turned to go. I should have let him leave, but the strangeness of the whole conversation washed over me and I couldn’t stop myself from saying something.

“Wait.”

He paused at the door. “Yes?”

There were about a hundred different questions I could have asked. But at that moment, only one seemed to matter.

“Why?” I asked, holding up the business card. A business card with the implicit promise of attending a college I’d never heard of until five minutes ago. “Why me?”

Lavrans shrugged. “You’re a hero,” he said, as if it were obvious. “Aren’t heroes supposed to get a reward?”

Before I could give him an answer, he was gone.

I stared at the little white card for longer than I cared to admit. The whole encounter had felt like a dream, like some strange post-accident hallucination, yet the sharp edge of the paper against the pad of my finger assured me it was real. Hesitantly, I pushed the corner of the card against the pad of my middle finger, almost hard enough to break the skin.

Blackwater University, I thought. Crazy.

What to do with this?

One thing was for sure.

I needed to find out who the hell these people were before I made any decisions.

Chapter Three

Blackwater University did not exist.

That was the conclusion I’d reached after two hours of research.

Lavrans had been as good as his word: shortly after he left my room, the doctors cleared me to be escorted home. There’d been some concern about my leg needing to be x-rayed and possibly set back into place after the accident, but one look at it after taking off the bandages convinced the hospital I was fine. The nurse who’d taken care of me when I first arrived looked shocked at how quickly I’d healed up, but no one else seemed to think anything strange about it.

I’d ridden home in the back of a squad car with the lights off and the siren silent. A rental car would be arriving in the morning—or so my insurance claimed. I’d find out after a good night’s sleep.

Right.

As soon as I got home, I took a shower, threw on some comfortable clothing, and climbed into bed with my laptop. Sleep felt less important than figuring out just what the hell had happened to me after I took the plunge off that bridge, and so I started digging. When that turned up nothing but bullshit links about extra-sensory perception and links to science fiction novels about telekinesis, I switched to looking up reviews of Blackwater College.

I was only partially surprised to find that there weren’t any.

Oh, the address Lavrans gave me on his business card existed. It even pointed to a college. But not Blackwater. A quick Google search confirmed it: the address on the business card was located deep in the heart of DC, at the enrollment offices of Exeter-Cross College.

Exeter-Cross. Even the name sounded expensive.

I’d heard of Exeter-Cross, but only in the way a medieval peasant had heard of his lord’s mansion. The chances of me ever setting foot there hovered just around nil: it was an ultra-exclusive, incredibly pricey private college where the rich and privileged sent their children. The website showed sloping green hills and students in ascots clustered around a table with books and laptops—and every outdoor picture made sure to have at least one DC landmark framed in the background. By the time I got halfway through their introductory page, I was already sick of seeing smiling young people in front of the Washington Monument.

What the hell did this mean?

I checked and double-checked the business card just to make sure I’d read it correctly. The words remained on the paper, the serif font seeming almost to mock me: Blackwater University.

A college that didn’t exist, with the address of one that did.

It made no sense. The most likely explanation was that Blackwater was some kind of program within Exeter-Cross, but I couldn’t find any evidence of that on their website. Likewise, searches for ‘Lavrans’ came up completely empty, though I kind of suspected that would be the case regardless.

“Well, one thing’s for sure,” I said into the darkness. The screen of my laptop provided the only light, while the fan in the corner of my bedroom filled my ears with a soothing backdrop of white noise. “There’s no universe where I get to go to Exeter-Cross for free. Or even on the cheap.”

It didn’t matter how much of a hero I’d been. No one would be willing to pay what it cost to send a guy like me to Exeter-Cross. Tuition there wasn’t just high—it was frankly disgusting. That wasn’t my kind of world.

And yet…

And yet Lavrans had promised me something. Something that I’d find when I showed up at Blackwater University and gave the enrollment officer there his name. Something that—if the way he looked at me was any indication—had the potential to change my life forever.

Could I really turn that down?

On any other night, the answer would have been a resounding ‘no’. The sleepy, ordinary part of my brain—the ‘B-minus’ brain, to go with what I’d said to Lavrans—wanted nothing more than to curl up under the covers, pass out for twelve hours, and begin the long work of convincing myself nothing supernatural had happened during that car crash. That guy would have tucked Lavrans’ card away, telling himself that maybe tomorrow he’d investigate the offer a little further. Eventually, he’d have forgotten all about it.

But not me. Not Edwin Sawyer.

I hadn’t died in the waters of the Potomac. I’d escaped with my life. But it was certainly starting to feel a little bit like I’d been reborn.

The blankets vibrated against my thigh. I reached down and pulled out my cell phone, then winced and turned down the brightness as the screen blasted the bedroom with light. A cursory glance at top informed me it was after two in the morning, but texts were still slowly rolling in from friends and family members. News of the crash had traveled—by tomorrow, it might even be on the local websites.

This was a group text from Jen. I’d been added to it, along with Patrick and Will. It was a minor miracle that all of us still had working phones after what we’d been through—sure, the tech companies claimed their newest models were all waterproof these days, but how many people had the opportunity to check like we had? Either way, I was glad we could all talk. Except I hadn’t expected having to explain myself to them this quickly.

Aw shit, I thought, rubbing the back of my neck. Here we go.

Everybody okay? Jen texted.

Dots appeared under her message almost immediately. I couldn’t help but chuckle as the words ‘multiple people are typing’ filled the bottom of the screen. Guess they didn’t feel like going to bed either.

Still shivering, Patrick wrote. I’m wrapped up in every blanket in the house and I still feel like I’m going to freeze.

OMG I know what you mean! Jen sent an emoji of a man gritting his teeth, along with one of a snowflake. I think I’m going to be tasting that river water for weeks. I grabbed my backup set of glasses when I got home, but the prescription isn't as strong. Everything’s blurry! :(

I typed with two thumbs. I’m just glad everyone’s okay, I wrote to the group.

In the blink of an eye, Jen had reacted to the message with a heart emoji. A second later, it was three hearts.

Dude, you saved our lives, Will wrote. If it weren’t for you we’d be fucking dead!

Seriously, Jen added. You get to be whatever level you want when we start that D&D game.

Did you guys talk to the guy with the eyepatch? Patrick asked.

I froze. Lavrans said he’d spoken to all my friends. Now I had proof.

OMG yes, Jen wrote. SUPER creepy.

Was he a cop? Will asked.

I frowned. I dunno, I wrote. I don’t think so.

There was a pause in the conversation, then everyone started typing at once.

He talked to YOU!? Will wrote, the panic coming right through the screen.

Dude, we thought he was going to take you to the nuthouse or something, Jen added. He had SO many questions about you.

It was like the secret police! Patrick wrote. He added a GIF from some TV show of a buffoonish interrogator, with the caption: “Ve have vays of making you talk!”

I got a chuckle out of that, but the rest worried me. I’m fine, I assured the group. I mean, they let me go, right?

Check mark reacts flooded in. But deep down, I was starting to wonder if I’d been let go after all. It occurred to me to bring up Blackwater then, and see what they thought of it. My thumb paused above the keyboard, but in the end I lay back against the pillows with a sigh. That wasn’t something I wanted to put on them—not on people I’d just met, no matter how friendly they might be.

I might talk to Will about it later. But that would be just between us.

After that, the conversation wound down to pleasantries. No one brought up the weird flash that broke all the glass in the Subaru, though it hung unspoken like a sharp sword over all of our heads. No one else in the group chat wanted to broach the topic, and I felt glad they didn’t.

It’s not even that I didn’t want to explain myself. I didn’t know how.

I didn’t understand what I’d done any better than they did.

Once I finished saying my goodbyes, I turned back to my laptop. The page for Exeter-Cross still filled the screen, covered in pictures of smiling coeds and gorgeous marble buildings. Elegance and wealth oozed from every pixel.

Forget it, Edwin, I told myself, rubbing my eyes. Exeter-Cross might as well be on the moon as far as you’re concerned.

Still, what a coup that would be.

I put the business card on the bedside table (I’d already taken a picture of it just in case it got lost) and set my laptop to the side. I didn’t particularly feel like going to sleep, but exhaustion thrummed through me like a second pulse. If I just lay back against the headboard for a second and closed my eyes…

I’m not going to be able to get any sleep, I told myself. Not after a shock like that.

In the blink of an eye, it was morning. I started awake from confusing dreams of ink-black water, gasping as I sat up straighter. The rhythmic pulse of my alarm must have woken me from my slumber. I could hear it in the back of my mind as I reached over and grabbed my phone.

“Holy shit,” I whispered, looking around. I’d passed out sitting up—I hadn’t even had time to lay down. I must have been even more tired than I thought.

I tapped the phone’s screen to turn off the alarm, only to realize there was no alarm. I hadn’t set one before I passed out.

Then what was that knocking…?

Rap. Rap. Rap.

It was coming from another room. Was someone knocking on the front door?

I rose from the bed, rubbing sleep out of my eyes as I went to investigate. The sound grew louder as I walked down the hallway to the living room, though it never rose above a muffled thump that sounded strangely hollow to my ears. Once when I was a kid, we’d had a family of woodpeckers make a nest in our attic, and the racket they produced reminded me of that sound.

I was halfway across the living room when I realized the sound wasn’t coming from my front door. No delivery man or Jehovah’s Witness stood out on the stoop; the rhythmic knocking came from the window in my attached kitchen.

Where the biggest damn bird I’d ever seen perched on the sill.

“What the hell?” I did a double take, blinking rapidly. For a moment the vision of the bird got all tangled up with my dreams, and I had the strange feeling that the creature might vanish like a phantom in the morning light. But it remained, squat and feathery and very much real.

“Caw Caw!” the bird said.

Its beak smacked the window a half-dozen times, beating a tattoo. The sound was far louder out here, so much so that it tempted me to put my hands over my ears. Its beady eyes glistened with something like intelligence as it hammered the glass.

Hammered it the way I’d hammered the windshield with that headrest.

A shudder traveled down my spine. You should let it in, a little voice whispered. It’s trapped out there. Trapped like you were trapped…

That was silly. The whole world was on the other side of that window. If anything, I was the trapped one, not the bird. Besides, that beak looked sharp. If I let the damn thing into my house, it could very well peck my eyes out.

The bird stopped pecking. I could have sworn it was staring at me.

I took a step closer. It was a raven, or maybe a crow—I didn’t know exactly where the difference between them lay. Either way, it was easily the largest bird I’d ever seen outside of a zoo. Its feathers were jet black, so dark that the creature almost looked like a shadow against the early morning light. Only its eyes carried a speck of color—when the light hit them, the insides of them glowed a faint red.

“Bird gift!” the bird cried.

I froze in my tracks. Did that thing just talk?

“Bird friend! Bird gift!” The bird repositioned itself on the sill, giving me a look that somehow looked stuffy and reserved. “Good place!”

I’m hallucinating, I told myself. I never got out of the car. I’m sinking a hundred feet beneath the surface of the Potomac, and my dying brain has conjured up a giant freaky bird to torture me in my final moments…

Shaking my head, I pulled out my cell phone. Turning on the camera only took a few seconds. I pressed VIDEO and held the phone up to the window, my hands shaking.

The bird stared at me.

“Well? Go on!” I felt like an utter fool, but I couldn’t back down. “You were talking a second ago, you big bitch! Do it again!”

The bird cocked its head to the side, then pressed a claw against the window. “Open up!”

Holy shit. Holy shit, okay. It wasn’t a hallucination.

I hit stop, then played back the video. The camera shook terribly from how freaked out I was, but the two words the bird spoke were as clear as day: Open up.

The bird could talk.

I mean, that wasn’t completely insane, was it? Parrots could talk. They could repeat phrases they’d heard, at the very least. Could ravens and crows do the same thing? Vaguely, I remembered hearing somewhere that crows were the smartest birds.

The bird outside my window sat placidly while all this happened, waiting for me to open my window. Which, after a few moments of feeling like I was losing my mind… I did.

What can I say? It was a day for firsts.

The bird flew into the room, spreading its majestic wings, and landed square in the middle of my coffee table. It looked around the apartment, seeming almost to size it up with its avian eye, then it spoke. “Good place!”

“Yeah,” I muttered. “Yeah, it is a good place. It’s my place.” Belatedly, I glanced around the room looking for some kind of weapon if this thing tried to put its beak through my eyes. “Shit, Will and the others are never going to believe this.”

“Good friend!” the bird screeched.

I blinked. This bird… it wasn’t just reciting phrases like a parrot.

It understood me.

“That’s not possible,” I muttered, shaking my head. “Okay, fuck, um… if you can really understand what I’m saying, then tell me what this is…!”

I held up my phone, intending to pull up a picture of something easy enough for a bird to identify—a shape or a color or some toddler thing like that. But before I could, the bird flapped its wings and snorted.

“Dumb box!” it croaked.

I stared at the phone for a long moment. Later on—much later, when I’d already learned a lot about the things that had begun to happen to me that night in the Potomac—I’d recognize this as the moment that I truly stepped into the unknown. My sanity had gradually been stretching further and further, and now I stood at the snapping point—where I’d either accept that the things happening to me were beyond ordinary human understanding, or I’d lose my mind and go completely nuts.

I looked from the phone to the bird.

And started to laugh.

“Yeah, it is a dumb box, isn’t it?” I said, tossing my phone onto the couch. I turned my back on the bird and started to brew my morning pot of coffee. I knew now that it wasn’t going to hurt me.

As I worked, I could hear the bird shuffling back and forth across my coffee table. Its claws dug into the finish, leaving tiny indentations that would probably drive any girls I brought over crazy but didn’t really bother me.

“So what’s your deal?” I asked, my back still to the bird.

The bird let out a plaintive squawk.

I held my cup directly beneath the dispenser as the coffee began to bubble, too impatient to wait for the pot to fill. The coffee never quite tasted as good that way, but this was not a morning to sit around wasting time.

When coffee reached the top of the chipped mug, I replaced the cup with the pot and turned around, taking a sip. “First I shatter all the windows in my car with a wave of force like I’m the Silver Surfer, then I get a business card from a mysterious man with an eyepatch.” I took another sip, regarding the bird evenly. “Now I’ve got a giant talking bird sitting in the middle of my apartment. I’m guessing you’re related to all the other weird shit.”

The crow seemed almost to nod. “Bird gift! Bird friend!”

A gift. Someone had sent this thing to me?

That almost made sense. A bird that could talk, at least in a limited fashion, had to be a trained bird. The bigger question was who would send me a creature like this, and why. The only person I could think of was Lavrans, which begged the question: how did that man find out where I lived?

No, it didn’t make sense. But I’d finally begun to roll with the idea that things in my life weren’t going to make sense for a little while.

Hell, maybe a long while.

“You’re a gift,” I said, taking a step forward. “And a friend. Mind if I take a seat?”

The bird took off from the coffee table and landed on my kitchen counter. Of course, it seemed to be saying. It’s your house.

With a chuckle, I sat down right in front of where the bird had just been standing. Up close, the little indentations in the coffee table looked deeper than I’d expected. Terrible, but the thing had come from IKEA to begin with. It could be replaced.

So I have a talking bird now, I thought. Let’s test this out.

“What’s two plus two?” I asked, taking a sip of my coffee.

The bird cocked its head to the side, squinting.

“Okay,” I muttered. “You can’t do math. Who sent you to me?”

The bird flapped one wing and did a stutter step. “Bird friend!”

I bit back a sigh. “I guess I have to come up with a name for you,” I said, lying back against the couch. An urge hit me to take another video of my new avian friend and send it to Jen’s group chat, but I didn’t need to blow their minds this early in the morning. Besides, most of them were probably still sleeping off their near-death experience. “You’re a black bird, so maybe I should call you Paul. Or maybe Ringo?”

The bird’s head shook back and forth. “Squawk!”

A frown tugged at the corners of my mouth. “Did you just squawk at me? Or are you saying your name is Squawk?”

The bird did a little hop. “Squawk good! Squawk watch!”

I let out a mad little laugh. “Okay, Squawk it is,” I said, setting down the half-empty cup of coffee. I needed to slow down on that, or I’d get the jitters. Clearing my throat, I asked the most important question I needed an answer to from my new friend.

“Squawk. Why are you here?”

I could have sworn the damn bird smiled at me.

“Go school!” Squawk squawked.

School!?

A pulse of shock shot through me. “You want me to go to school?” I asked, dumbfounded.

Squawk flapped a wing.

“Blackwater University,” I said, rubbing my chin. Stubble covered my skin—no matter what I did today, I needed a shave before I did it. Probably another shower, too. Patrick wasn’t the only one who could still feel that icy, ink-black water.

“Blackwater doesn’t exist, bird. I don’t know if it’s some kind of prank, but the address is for a different place—”

“Go school!” Squawk insisted. “Squawk watch!”

Fuck me. The bird wanted me to go to the address on the card. It insisted.

And yet, the idea almost sounded… fun?

I mean, if a talking bird gives you instructions, it probably means you’re on a quest. What was it that Lavrans said last night? That I was a hero, and heroes deserved a reward? Heroes definitely went on quests. Adventures.

Although I never would have told Will or any of my other new friends, I’d spent the last two years in desperate need of an adventure. Seeing my college dreams dashed and replaced with a life of drudgery and retail hell had taken more of a toll on my mental health than I’d realized. I’d been working myself to the bone, saving up for the move I’d just finished, and I still barely had enough savings to last another month without some kind of gainful employment.

A dark little part of me had been hoping that if I ingratiated myself with Will’s new college friends, it might have opened up a few opportunities. Gotten me in the door with one of the big engineering firms in town, or working an internship for someone’s rich parents. Put me on the map, in other words, and given me a leg up.

Now, though? Now I was in uncharted territory.

And I kind of liked it.

I did a little mental math. I’d put the address on Lavrans’ card into Google Maps last night, and it was about a forty-five minute drive from my apartment to Exeter-Cross. If I really did somehow become a student at Exeter, commuting would be doable but a bit of a pain. Night classes would help, since it would keep me off the road at high traffic times—

Look at you, I thought. You really don’t think this is some kind of prank? You’d better check that bird’s beak for hidden cameras, Edwin.

Maybe. But if that was the case, then what did I have to lose?

As if fortune itself had smiled on my endeavor, my phone chose that moment to vibrate. An agent will be on his way to pick you up shortly, it informed me. Miguel will be arriving at your location in approximately 45-60 minutes to escort you to our rental agency…

My rental car. Shit, I needed to hop in the shower.

“Alright, I’m on it,” I told Squawk. It felt strange to talk to a bird like it was a human being, but something told me I’d get used to it sooner or later. “Listen, though, I don’t think the rental agency’s going to take kindly to me having a big-ass bird in my backseat…”

Squawk let out a non-committal noise. “Squawk watch!”

Okay. The talking bird would be watching me as I went about my quest.

That was more than a little spooky.

I could worry about it later. For now, I had a mystery to solve.

Chapter Four

I shaved, showered, and hopped into a fresh set of clothes just before my ride to the rental agency showed up. Someone must have greased the wheels before I arrived, because I’d never had such an easy experience.

“Our policy is normally to get one of our customers into a rental of equivalent value to the car they’re having repaired,” the rental agent informed me. She was a perky blonde with the kind of smile that probably won her all the Employee of the Month awards. “For you, that would mean an economy sedan. But given the extenuating circumstances surrounding this situation, we’ve decided to do a little better than that…”

She wasn’t kidding about better. I drove off the lot in a late-model Range Rover, freshly detailed and with all the little extras. It even had that new car smell. I’d have it until my claim with the insurance company finished processing, which was going to take a long while considering they needed to prosecute the drunk driver who’d hit me first.

I might not have felt like I belonged with the students of Exeter-Cross. But at least I’d be driving a car that fit in perfectly.

According to the hours listed on Exeter-Cross’s website, I had time to kill before the admissions office opened. The thought of sitting in beltway traffic for three-quarters of an hour held no appeal, so I pulled off of the highway as quickly as I could and grabbed a greasy drive-thru breakfast and an oversized cup of coffee. Even for me, the extra cup was a lot of caffeine, but the food would absorb most of it.

Rather than go inside, I pulled into a spot in the rear of the parking lot and idled the engine. The radio played classic rock at a barely audible volume as I chewed, watching the cars go by and thinking about life. How quickly it could change.

How quickly it could end.

I didn’t mean to be morbid, but it felt unavoidable. As much as the strange events of the last twenty-four hours distracted me from the accident, the simple fact remained that there’d been a moment in that car where I hadn’t just suspected but truly believed I’d been about to drown. To die.

Nothing could make a guy reconsider his priorities like a brush with his own mortality.

I was supposed to be looking for a job today, I thought. My rent’s due in two weeks, and I don’t even have half of what the landlord is expecting. I’m totally screwed.

My financial situation was precarious. My future was uncertain. Difficulties loomed like storm clouds on the horizon, dark and ominous.

Yet these things didn’t worry me the way they did a few days ago.

Life could end at any time. Everything else was bullshit; set dressing on the great stage of existence. Maybe it was cheesy; probably it was just a feeling that would pass in the next few weeks as the horror of my near-death experience faded away. But in the grand scheme of things, problems like finding a job, getting an education, or attracting a girlfriend no longer felt like the heavy weights on my back they’d once been.

In fact, they were as light as a feather.

As one of Squawk’s feathers.

As if on cue, the radio started playing that old Blue Oyster Cult song about not fearing the reaper. The serendipity of it made me laugh, until I wondered if it was a coincidence that that song would start playing right as I started thinking big thoughts about my own mortality. I took another bite out of my bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit and downed it with bitter black coffee, pushing the thought to the back of my mind.

While the clanging cowbell filled the cabin of my rental car, a sense of surrealness washed over me. I caught myself checking the sky over the fast food restaurant, trying to see if a certain familiar bird flew in circles over my head.

Nah. Clear skies.

I chucked the trash into a nearby receptacle when I was done and started on down the road. The rest of the drive to Exeter-Cross passed without incident, and my eyes stayed on nothing but the road until I reached my destination.

I’d never been to Exeter-Cross, but I’d heard plenty about it. The campus functioned as its own little world, tucked in the heart of the greater DC metro area, just a few blocks from some of the most expensive real estate on the East Coast. The scenery matched what I’d heard. The buildings all had an ultra-modern motif, with lots of glass-walled windows and burnished metal furnishings like the headquarters of a multinational corporation. The students I saw were all dressed to the nines, and my fancy rental car didn’t stand out so much as barely meet the criteria for admission to this part of town.

I don’t belong here, I thought. What the fuck am I doing at Exeter-Cross? These kids were born with silver spoons in their mouths, and I lived in a freaking trailer park until I was twelve years old. This isn’t my world.

The light in front of me turned red, and I stopped. Dozens of students hustled past me, trying to reach the other side of the crosswalk before the signal changed back. One of them—a blonde in a cheerleading outfit with a heavy satchel at her side—stumbled, nearly going down on her ass on the pavement. My brows rose, and I nearly got out of the car to help her, but she sprang back up like a cork, all smiles.

She saw me looking at her and pointed, pursing her pouty lips with a faint laugh. “You didn’t see that!”

Cars honked as she double-timed to the other side of the street, just barely beating the DON’T WALK sign. As I watched her go, I couldn’t help but chuckle knowingly.

Okay, I thought. So the people here aren’t perfect after all.

Maybe Exeter-Cross wasn’t as unassailable as I believed.

I found the admissions office without much fuss. The building stood at the far end of the campus, and as a result looked a little bit more like an ordinary college department than the rest of the college. This section of the campus was a bit less insulated than the rest of Exeter-Cross, and I could see a handful of convenience stores and quick-service restaurants a couple of blocks away. A sign advertising the price of gas peeked out from between two apartment complexes.

This close to the start of the semester, I’d expected the enrollment offices to be fairly empty. What I hadn’t foreseen was the last-minute crush of students trying to switch classes or straighten out their course schedule just before the deadline. The hallways were packed full of students, standing room only in some spots, and everyone looked unhappy to be there. An irritated air filled the hallways, and the lines stretched all the way to the front doors.

Shit, I thought. This might take all day.

A bored-looking receptionist sat at a desk in the front lobby. The area in the immediate vicinity of her kiosk was one of the only places where there weren’t a bunch of students clustered around, so I pushed my way there first, apologizing every time I bumped a coed or stepped between two students having a conversation. This really wasn’t what I’d expected.

As I reached the desk, I realized the receptionist wasn’t a member of administration. A student intern sat there, her backpack sitting on the edge of the counter next to her and her attention fixed on a social media site. When she noticed me looking at her, she closed the window like she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

“Incoming freshman?” she asked. She chewed slowly as she talked; a pink piece of bubble gum appeared in the corner of her mouth every few moments. “You need to go back to the orientation meeting in the student commons. If you’ve got your phone, I can show you on Google Maps which way you need to walk—”

“I’m not a student,” I said, shaking my head. Something about the ordinariness of this girl threw me off my game. What was it Lavrans said about my friends when we were talking at the hospital? That their lives were mundane?

These were about the most mundane circumstances I could think of. The long lines, the harsh lighting, the irritated little remarks—they made me wonder if anything I’d been through in the last two days had really happened at all.

“Then how can I help you?” The coed popped a bubble.

A sudden urge welled up within me to prove I wasn’t crazy. I reached into my wallet and pulled out the business card Lavrans gave me. It, at least, remained refreshingly solid. Placing it on the counter, I watched the girl glance down at it with a frown.

“I was, um… given this card,” I said, feeling foolish. “Someone told me to come to this address. And to tell you that Lavrans sent me?”

No light bulb went off over the coed’s head. Her frown deepened as she picked up the card, her well-manicured nails pressing against the creamy-colored cardstock.

“Huh,” she said flatly. “What is Blackwater University?”

My stomach sank. “I was kinda hoping you could tell me,” I said.

The woman—a girl, really—shook her head, smacking her gum as she handed me back the card. “That’s our address, yeah,” she said, giving me a sideways look. “But I’ve never heard of Blackwater. Did someone in the commons give you this?”

“No.”

“Well, there’s a lot of pranks that get played on incoming freshmen right before the semester starts,” she said breezily. “This feels like one of them. I probably wouldn’t worry about it.” She tapped the counter, trying to look sympathetic. “Do you have everything settled with your schedule this semester, sweetie?”

“I don’t—” I bit back the anger. This wasn’t even a real receptionist—just some student they’d hired to fill a chair. Probably at minimum wage. No wonder she didn’t know about the card.

It couldn’t have been a prank. It just couldn’t.

“Maybe I should talk to one of the coordinators,” I said, glancing at the line of students. “They might be able to help me.”

The coed shrugged. “Knock yourself out,” she said. “The lines are long, but they move fast. With how many people are waiting right now, it shouldn’t be much more than an hour before you get seen. Maaaaybe an hour and a half?”

An hour and a half, I thought, watching the line. Well, it’s not like I have anything else to do today. I came here for a reason, right?

In for a penny, in for a pound.

“Sure, thanks,” I said, looking around for the back of the line. “I’ll just figure out where to stand…”

It took two or three tries. As it turned out, the students at Exeter-Cross were quite vigilant about people cutting in line. Every time I thought I’d found the spot to begin waiting, someone got angry and jerked a thumb even further back into the bowels of the building.

At some point, I found myself walking past the bathrooms. The thought of taking a pit stop flickered through my mind, but I didn’t feel like waiting in line any longer than I already had to. Besides, I was fine…

Huh. That was strange.

A pair of water fountains stood between the entrances to the men’s and the women’s bathrooms. That in and of itself wasn’t weird—it was the opposite of weird, in fact—but the way they were being treated was.

One had a line of students six feet deep standing in front of it, waiting with metal thermoses and those big plastic Stanley monstrosities to fill up their vessels with the day’s hydration.

And the other had no one.

The people in the back grumbled while the people in the front took their time. I knew I probably should have just ignored it, but I really was thirsty. I walked over to the unoccupied fountain and tested the button. Water flowed from it, clear and cold.

I bent over and took an experimental sip. Tasted fine.

“Hey,” I said, glancing over at the long line waiting for the other water fountain. “You guys know this one’s working, right…?”

I paused. Only one of the people in the other line glanced over, and they appeared to be not looking at me but through me. I thought I detected something dismissive in their eyes, and so I didn’t push the issue any further.

Once I finished drinking, I walked to the back of the line and waited. That was fucking weird, I told myself, frowning. Why wouldn’t they just use the water fountain that didn’t have anybody waiting for it?

Maybe I didn’t understand everything about Exeter-Cross.

The student intern, as it turned out, was wrong—but in a good way. According to my wristwatch, it took less than forty-five minutes to reach the very front of the line. Before I’d had time to do much more than check a few sports scores and do a sudoku, I found myself being waved at by an elderly woman with thick glasses and a gold placard in front of her station. I hustled over.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

I pulled out the business card Lavrans gave me and slid it across the counter.

“I was told to bring this to you,” I said, holding back the note of hope in my voice. “And to ask for Lavrans…?”

She stared at it. My heart sank. The look of recognition I’d been hoping for failed to materialize.

The woman squinted as she read the card, frown lines appearing at the corners of her mouth. “Black… water?” she asked, glancing from the business card to me. “Did you get this on campus, young man?”

Forty-five minutes of waiting, I thought, to get asked the exact same question.

“No, I didn’t,” I said. I tried to keep the irritation out of my voice, but all of a sudden my quest felt completely hopeless. I’d gone on a wild goose chase, and wasted a whole day driving into DC in order to find a college that didn’t actually exist. Why had I bothered?

Why had I allowed myself to be fooled?

The clerk gave me a sympathetic smile as she handed back the card. “I’m sorry, young man,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s our address, but I’ve never heard of this Blackwater University. Maybe there are two streets around here with the same name?”

Or maybe someone is fucking with me, I thought, shaking my head. “Never mind. Thanks.”

With a sigh, I stalked away. All of a sudden the lobby of the admissions office felt very claustrophobic. I needed to get outside, back into the fresh air and into a world where things made sense.

The accident. The business card. The freaking bird.

Was all of it a lie? Was I losing my fucking mind?

I’d heard people could crack from stress, but this was a unique way to go insane to say the least. Even the business card felt less certain than it had a few minutes ago. Those things were easy to fake—any printer would whip up a batch of a few hundred for a couple of bucks…

I squeezed my eyes closed tightly. Through them I could see the noonday sun, bathing the Exeter-Cross campus in light and heat. I’d been right all along. This wasn’t my world—

“Excuse me?”

I turned. A short blonde girl with glasses stood a few steps away from me, concern written across her features. A heavy backpack rested between her shoulders.

Oh great, I thought. She thinks I’m some new student who’s having a mental breakdown because he didn’t get the classes he wanted.

“I’m fine,” I assured her, forcing myself to smile. “Really—”

“Did I hear you say Blackwater?”

I froze. For a moment, the tile floor beneath me felt about as solid as a bowl of pudding. The world rocked on its axis, and a dizzy feeling swirled in my ears.

”Uh, yeah,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “Apparently there’s some kind of prank going on at this campus?”

I looked at the girl, really seeing her for the first time. My first thought was that she looked like she was auditioning for the role of the ugly duckling in one of those teen comedies from the early 2000’s—if she ditched the glasses, untied her ponytail and switched out her severe-looking uniform for something more fashionable, she’d probably have guys chasing her up and down campus. My second was that she had the most brilliant, piercing green eyes I’d ever seen—like emeralds. Something about the way she looked at me made me feel a little bit like a bug under a microscope, though.

All of a sudden, she looked nervous. Powerfully nervous.

She’s shy, I realized with a start. It probably took all of her courage to step over here when she heard me say Blackwater.

The blonde cleared her throat, forcing herself to regain control. “What do you know about Blackwater? Where did you hear about it?”

Something about this had the feeling of an interrogation. A few students in line were starting to stare at us, which made me want to leave the building as soon as possible. Having to explain my situation to the student intern and the clerk had been traumatic enough—I didn’t want some coed laughing at me, too.

It must have shone in my eyes. The blonde glanced back at the line and noticed the way we were both being stared at. “Come with me?” she asked.

I nodded.

She led me back into the lobby of the admissions building. There were a couple of couches and a glass coffee table right near the revolving door at the front, and she sat down at one of these before gesturing for me to take a seat across from her. I did.

”Sorry about that,” the girl said, making a face. “I didn’t realize I was putting you on the spot. I’m not great about things like that.”

I can see that, I thought. Her remorse appeared genuine; I didn’t hold it against her.

“Not a problem,” I said.

She extended a hand. “I’m Sabrina,” she said. “And you?”

Sabrina. I liked the name.

“Edwin Sawyer,” I said, taking it. “It’s nice to meet you, Sabrina.”

Honestly? It really was. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was something different about this girl. Despite her shy, reserved nature, she seemed alive in a way the bored students standing in line waiting for their class assignments didn’t. If the student body of Exeter-Cross were NPCs in a video game, this girl would have been one of the main characters—the people with actual choices and dialogue attached.

But that would make me the main character, I thought with a smirk. And even I’m not that arrogant.

“Likewise,” she said. “Listen, that word isn’t one that you hear very often around these parts.”

“What, Blackwater?” I couldn’t help but grimace. “Yeah, no one seems to know what the hell it is…”

I trailed off. Sabrina was staring at me intensely, her green eyes flashing.

“Well, I do,” she whispered. “And I need to know who told you to come looking for it, Edwin.”

Despite the noonday sun outside the office, it felt as if the temperature dropped twenty degrees. The air behind Sabrina looked somehow shadowy, blurring like I had sand in my eyes. Except I didn’t.

I’m wrong, I thought, a chill going down my spine. I don’t think you’re all that shy after all, Sabrina.

“Edwin?”

Finally, it clicked. “Here,” I said, taking out my wallet. “I came here today because of this.”

I took out the business card and handed it to Sabrina. She took it between her fingers like it might be radioactive, staring at it so intensely I wondered if she was trying to look right through it at the floor.

“I see,” Sabrina said in a little voice. “Where on Earth did you get this?”

Relief burst in my chest like a soap bubble. I’d finally found someone who didn’t dismiss all of this Blackwater business out of hand. Sure, it was just a student, but that was a start. The quest continues, I thought, a little thrill shooting through me.

“I got it from a guy named Lavrans,” I said. “He told me that if I came to the address on the card, I could…”

I trailed off.

Because Sabrina had just turned as white as a sheet.

“I can’t believe it,” she whispered, looking at me like she couldn’t decide whether to be thrilled or terrified. “You’re telling me Headmaster Ravensson personally gave you his card?”

Chapter Five

Headmaster!?

“Wait, what?” I blurted.

Sabrina snorted, her nostrils flaring. “Of course he didn’t explain anything to you,” she said, shaking her head with scorn. “I bet he just gave this invitation to you and disappeared into the night, didn’t he?”

“More like disappeared into the hospital hallway,” I said, frowning as I remembered the details of my meeting with Lavrans. “You’re telling me that guy with the eyepatch wasn’t a cop?”

“A cop?” Sabrina looked startled. “I mean, he is in charge of Blackwater. Nominally. But disciplinary actions are normally handled by each department’s coven, not the headmaster himself.”

Whoosh. The train of thought I’d believed the two of us were on had just derailed in a terrific fireball.

“Coven?” I repeated in disbelief. “Like… witches?”

Sabrina scoffed. “Headmaster Ravensson’s a good man, but he doesn’t understand what it’s like for people who grew up with mundanes. They didn’t have their parents to prep them for all this stuff. At the very least he should have given you an overview of what the school is all about…”

“Hold on!” I said. Sabrina was starting to get on a roll, and I sensed that if I let her keep talking uninterrupted we’d wind up on even further tangents. “What school? Sabrina, everyone keeps telling me this Blackwater place doesn’t exist!”

She stared at me. “Of course it exists,” she laughed.

“Then where is it?”

A strange smile flickered across her face. “Edwin, you’ve already found it. You’re standing right in the middle of it.”

What? None of this made sense. It all still felt like a prank. Just a far more complicated prank than I’d originally been led to believe.

“I don’t understand,” I said, looking around the lobby. If a hidden camera crew had burst out of a side hallway just then, telling me this had all been filmed for some kind of prank-based TV show, I probably would have been relieved. “And what do you mean by mundane? Lavrans kept using that word, too. Does it mean something other than what I think it does?”

A sympathetic smile spread across Sabrina’s face. “Follow me,” she said, rising from her seat.

What else could I do? I got up and moved across the lobby, catching up with her in a few steps. She moved like a woman with a purpose, ignoring both the long lines of students and the confused receptionist who kept trying to get our attention.

“If I had to guess, I’d say you’re probably not fully there yet,” Sabrina said breezily. “You’ve mostly started to see, but there’s a part of you that’s still firmly mundane. Most transfer students who come to us have a little bit of an adjustment period.”

“I’m not a transfer student,” I protested. “I haven’t been to college yet.”

“That’s fine,” Sabrina said with a shrug. “The important thing, Edwin, is to not freak out. Even if things stop making sense for a little bit, I’m going to need you to just roll with it, okay?”

I laughed. “Things haven’t made sense to me since I got into that car accident,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ll manage.”

Sabrina turned on a heel, one blonde eyebrow shooting skyward. “Car accident?”

“I’ll tell you all about it later,” I promised. “Right now, I need you to tell me what the hell Blackwater University is.”

She nodded. “Alright. Our first stop is right over here.”

To my surprise, she’d led me back to the hallway where I’d first queued up in line. The line for the water fountain was a lot shorter than it had been when I’d arrived, but there were still three people waiting on the left one and no one using the right. Dimly, I wondered if there was something wrong with it that they knew about and I didn’t.

“So strange,” I muttered. “Sabrina, there’s not something wrong with the water in here, is there?”

Sabrina looked like she’d swallowed a bug. “Why do you say that?”

Huh? I pointed at the water fountain. “People are avoiding that fountain like it’s got the plague. There were like ten people waiting to use the one next to the men’s room when I first got here, but no one would touch the one next to the women’s even when I asked about it…”

The blonde blinked, the corner of her mouth curling in a smirk. “So you do understand. Nice!”

What!? “Look, I don’t understand shit—”

“No, but you’re going to. There’s something off about this hallway, isn’t there? That water fountain, you noticed it even before you made the connection about the lines. Didn’t you? Admit it.”

Had I? I tried to remember if I’d felt strangely drawn to that section of the hallway and came up empty.

“Sabrina,” I chided her. “It’s just a bathroom.”

The blonde was already shaking her head. “Edwin, look at those fountains. Really look at them. And then answer a question for me.”

I frowned. Part of me thought this had to be another prank, but from the look in Sabrina’s eyes, she expected me to take all of this seriously. I’d probably be totally mundane if I didn’t.

“Alright, I’m looking,” I muttered.

“You’re looking, but you’re not seeing,” Sabrina whispered. Then, in a louder voice, “Edwin, how far apart are those fountains?”

Huh? I blinked, measuring the distance with my eyes. “They’re right next to each other. Two or three feet, maybe?”

To my surprise, Sabrina laughed. “No. Those water fountains are fifteen feet away from each other. In fact, they’re on opposite ends of the hall.”

I couldn’t help it; I laughed. Was she deluded, or just fucking with me?

“They’re right next to each other,” I insisted. “I could stand right in front of them and touch them with either hand.”

Sabrina crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “Then do it,” she said smugly. “Show me.”

This was an odd dare, to be sure. “There’s a line—”

But there wasn’t. The crowd had completely cleared out while I stood there arguing with Sabrina. In fact, we pretty much had the hallway to ourselves.

With a shrug, I stepped forward. Sabrina watched me, that smug look on her face getting smugger.

“Alright, watch and learn,” I muttered. “I don’t understand what the hell you’re trying to show me…”

I leaned over and put my hand on the button for the water fountain on the left. A thin stream of cold water arced from the spout. Then I stretched my other hand to the one on the right, feeling for the same button.

There wasn’t one.

Huh?

I opened my eyes.

“Remember,” I heard Sabrina say from what sounded like the bottom of a well. “Try not to freak out.”

A double image greeted me. The water fountain hung before my eyes, the edges fuzzy and insubstantial, while… a second fountain floated in the distance?

It made no sense. I blinked, expecting the vision to fade, but it didn’t.

The longer I stared, the faster my pulse raced. I could hear the surge of blood in my ears, like my body’s fight or flight response had just been kicked into overdrive.

What the hell was happening to me? Was I on drugs? I hadn’t even reacted like this during the car crash!

“It’s okay, Edwin.” Sabrina’s voice echoed somewhere behind me. “Just open your eyes.”

They were open, goddamnit! And what I was seeing made me feel like I’d dropped acid without knowing it.

There was a water fountain next to me.

There was just a water fountain.

There was…

A bubble popped in my brain.

And the world suddenly made perfect sense.

I stood in the back hallway of the admissions office, with my hand on the button of the water fountain in front of the men’s bathroom. To my right, a row of offices stretched into a part of the building that hadn’t existed a second ago—a part that was right where the wall had been. On the opposite side of it was an identical entrance to the women’s room—with another water fountain.

The fountain I’d tried to touch.

And had no hope of reaching, unless I was one of the Fantastic Four.

“What…” I took a step backwards, my hands shaking. Students were streaming in and out of that hallway; students who treated this section of the building like it had always been there. They were dressed more conservatively than the Exeter-Cross kids, in outfits that looked like…

I gasped. Like what Sabrina was wearing.

A hand came down on my shoulder. I nearly jumped into the air before I realized it was just Sabrina.

“I am so sorry,” she said, sounding like she meant it. “I know that wasn’t pleasant. I was six when my parents pushed me into the Unseen World for the first time, and I’ve heard that the older you are, the more difficult it is to adjust.” She snickered. “I didn’t forgive them for a week…”

A trio of girls with raven hair and dark makeup came walking out of the hidden hallway, carrying little slips of paper with their class schedules on them. One of them saw me and Sabrina and waved. “S’up, teen witch! Who’s the new guy?”

Sabrina frowned. I got the impression she didn’t like being called teen witch one bit. “This is Edwin Sawyer,” she said, introducing me. “He’s new. He actually just peered into the Unseen World for the first time…”

All three of the women stared at me, their mouths hanging open.

“What the fuck?” One of them asked. “How old are you, kid?”

Kid? “Twenty,” I said, blinking rapidly. Part of me still expected that hallway to disappear, even though I was beginning to understand that it had always been there. Ordinary people just weren’t able to see it. Hence why none of them used the water fountain.

“Woah,” another girl said. “And you just got your cherry popped?”

“That’s gotta turbo-suck,” the third chimed in.

The first girl rolled her eyes. “We all know you can turbo-suck, babes!”

The third girl punched the first on the shoulder. “Shut the fuck up!”

“Aren’t partials supposed to be walked through this when they’re, like, kids?” The second girl looked like she’d already grown bored with this conversation. “That’s kind of mean to do to an adult. Like, wow…”

“I don’t think he’s a partial at all,” Sabrina insisted. “Headmaster Ravensson personally invited him to campus.”

The three girls did double takes, all whistling at me. “Wow!”

“I don’t… I don’t know what any of that means,” I said, shaking my head. “Who are you people? What the fuck is going on?”

“Well, we‘ll leave you to it, teen witch!” The first girl stepped away, and the other two—both giggling at the insult—followed her. “Good luck with the new guy!”

Sabrina looked pissed. “Bitches,” she muttered once they were out of earshot. “I swear most of Blackwater’s students aren’t like that, Edwin. They’re a hell of a lot more welcoming, for one thing.”

Students. Those girls—all the kids coming out of the phantom admissions office—they were all students.

Except they weren’t attending Exeter-Cross.

“It’s here, isn’t it?” I said, the pieces clicking together in my head. “Blackwater. It’s like this hallway. You can’t see it, you can’t touch it, but it’s there…”

The look Sabrina gave me told me I’d hit a bulls-eye. “Blackwater is one of the most decorated institutions of magical learning on the East Coast,” she explained. “We’re fully entangled with Exeter-Cross—the boundaries of our campus and the mundane one are the same. Except obviously, there are some differences.”

Differences. That was one hell of a way to put it.

“Magic?” I asked.

Part of me, I was realizing, had always known. The way my leg had stopped hurting and healed in ways that startled the nurses after Lavrans left the hospital. The talking bird that was smarter than any parrot that greeted me at my window the next morning. None of it was natural. None of it could be explained with logic and reason.

But magic? A literal college for it?

That was… crazy. Totally crazy.

“Wait,” I blurted.

Sabrina paused. She’d just been about to launch into another one of her explanations. “Yes?”

“Lavrans…” I saw Sabrina flinch at me using her headmaster’s first name and started again. “Headmaster Ravensson gave me that card with the promise that the admissions office would be able to help me out with tuition. He implied that they’d cut me some kind of deal, because of everything that happened with the accident.”

“You’re still going to need to tell me about that,” Sabrina said, frowning slightly. “But yes, that sounds like something he would do. Deferred tuition agreements are common with promising students, particularly ones who’ve transferred from the mundane world.”

“Mundane,” I repeated. “That’s what you people call ordinary sons-of-bitches, don’t you? The ones who’d look at those water fountains and see nothing but two bathrooms sitting next to each other.”

Sabrina nodded. “That’s right.”

“And partials? I heard one of those girls call me that.”

The blonde cleared her throat. “Partials are people who can access the Unseen World, but lack magical ability. They can come in and out of our world and see what we see, but they can never be fully part of our culture. Several of the clerks working in the admissions office are partials.”

Mundane. Partials. And… what? Witches? Wizards?

Blackwater really existed. It had been here the whole time, hiding the shadows. And now I could see it.

“I’m like you,” I said, the words washing over me in a rush. “I can do magic, can’t I? That night, the accident… that wasn’t just dumb luck?”

Sabrina’s lips formed a tight little line. “I don’t know what you did, Edwin, but if it was supernatural, then I assure you it was no accident. Headmaster Ravensson wouldn’t have extended the opportunity to attend our college if you didn’t have the gift.”

“I… wow.” I looked past Sabrina, down the hallway which hadn’t existed to my eyes a few minutes before. I understood what she meant now by the ‘admissions office’—those three students we’d seen earlier weren’t the only ones walking away with class schedules in hand.

The same way this building functioned as the admissions office for Exeter-Cross students, these hidden hallways contained admissions for Blackwater. And the line in this hidden section of the school looked a hell of a shorter than the one I’d just waited in.

A faint flush rose to Sabrina’s cheeks. “Yeah, it’s a lot to take in,” she said, stepping just a bit closer to me. “A lot of people your age wouldn’t have been able to adjust so easily.”

“No?”

She shrugged. “Psychotic events aren’t very common—at least not anymore–but you hear stories. Someone ends up in an asylum, or the shock hits them so hard they start doubting whether everything else in their lives is real.” She paused. “It is real, by the way.”

I knew that. “I think I got a little bit more prep work than I realized,” I said, thinking about everything that had happened to me since I’d gotten sideswiped by that drunk driver. “I’ve been given a few hints over the last few days that there’s more to life than what we can see with our mundane eyes.”

If Sabrina noticed the faint tinge of disdain in my tone, she was too polite to bring attention to it.

Or maybe she was distracted.

“Listen,” she said, the blush on her cheeks deepening. “I’m guessing this is your first time at Blackwater, right?”

Hmm? “I’d never heard of it until about eighteen hours ago, so yes,” I said.

Sabrina nodded almost eagerly. “Which means that you don’t know any of the stuff you ought to know about the campus!” she said in a rush. “How to get set up with your classes, where everything is, even how magic works… you should have been told all these things!”

I just nodded. I had an idea of where she was going with this. And I appreciated it.

“So, if Headmaster Ravensson hasn’t provided you a guide, then… then I guess I’ll just have to volunteer,” she said, standing up a little straighter. “It seems like you could use some help, Edwin.”

I met those brilliant green eyes with my own. Sabrina’s bottom lip disappeared, and my suspicions about her shyness came roaring back with a vengeance.

“I mean, if that’s alright, that is,” she said, glancing at the floor between her legs. “If you’d even want someone talking your head off about Blackwater and how the Unseen World works…”

I took a step closer. “Sabrina?”

She glanced up.

“I would appreciate that more than you can possibly know,” I told her with a smile. “I mean that.”

The blush spread all the way to her collarbone.

“If it weren’t for you,” I continued, “I’d have walked out of here, gone home, and torn up that business card. So thank you, seriously.”

Her mouth worked soundlessly for a few moments. “You’re welcome,” she blurted, grabbing the straps of her backpack. “The first thing we ought to do is get you enrolled, I guess! If you bring that business card from the Headmaster to one of the enrollment clerks, they ought to be able to get you started…”

Sabrina had already started to move down the phantom hallway. I held up a finger.

“Those girls,” I said, nodding in the direction the trio of goth witches had gone. “They really were being bitchy to you.”

Sabrina flashed an awkward smile. “I’m used to it.”

“Why did they call you that?” I asked. “Teen witch?”

Her expression fell. “Isn’t it obvious?”

I shook my head. “Not to me…”

A mirthless laugh escaped her. “I’m a witch, Edwin. And my name is Sabrina.”

Seconds later, it clicked. “What, like the TV show? That’s why they’re making fun of you?”

Sabrina rolled her eyes. “Naming your witch daughter Sabrina is like a pair of Italian plumbers naming their son Mario. It’s so obvious that you can’t help getting teased for it.”

She played it off like it was no big deal, but I could tell it stung. “Well, I won’t make fun of you for it,” I promised the girl. “I’ve never even seen that TV show. And after everything you’ve done for me today, I’d be a dick to do anything to make you upset.”

Slowly, Sabrina smiled. “Thanks, Edwin. Now, why don’t we get you set up?”

That sounded like a good idea to me.

Chapter Six

“Name?”

“Edwin Sawyer,” I said, just a hint of nervousness in my tone as I slid the business card across the table. The first two times I’d tried this, the odds hadn’t been in my favor. Was the third time the charm? “I was given this card, and—”

“Mr. Sawyer,” the enrollment coordinator said, hardly even glancing at the card. “Yes, I’ve got you right here, Mr. Sawyer. You’re in our system as a new student.”

Now that was news.

I sat in a small office in the rear of the building. Sabrina occupied a chair in the corner, a weathered grimoire in her hands as she pretended to be scanning the pages instead of listening in. As soon as I’d presented myself to the clerks, we’d both been hustled back to this private room. Evidently, I was expected.

The enrollment coordinator could have been thirty five or sixty. She had an unlined, strangely ageless face, and her robes were of a much finer cut than most of the employees I’d seen in Blackwater. From the brusqueness of her manner and the way everyone else had deferred to her on the way through the halls, I got the impression she was one of the people in charge here.

Probably only ever interacted with students when there was a ‘special’ case–hence the frostiness.

“I see that you’ve already been assigned a set of introductory classes,” the coordinator continued. “Headmaster Ravensson set them up when he entered you into the system.” Her brows rose. “Are you transferring from another district, Mr. Sawyer?”

“No.” I shook my head, wondering how much I wanted to reveal. “I was in a car crash a day ago. A drunk driver sideswiped me and my friends, and we fell off of a bridge.”

Sabrina let out a strangled little sound. If she’d wanted to give the impression she wasn’t listening to us, she’d just botched it.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” the coordinator said without a hint of sympathy. “I wasn’t aware our headmaster was out here collecting accident victims. Must be a new amusement for him…”

I didn’t like her tone. I probably should have kept my mouth shut—this woman had a schedule of my classes in front of her, after all—but her dismissive nature made me bristle.

“I don’t think it’s amusement,” I shot back. “I saved three people’s lives that night. I… I did something I didn’t realize I was capable of. There was this bright flash, and all the glass broke in the car. I guess it was some kind of spell.”

“Holy shit,” Sabrina whispered. When I glanced over my shoulder, she was staring at me open mouthed. “You did that without training?”

“I didn’t know magic existed until about an hour ago,” I said, smiling at her. “Unless you count casting spells in Skyrim, I haven’t had any formal training in the magical arts.”

Sabrina snickered at that.

The enrollment coordinator looked shocked—and more than a little embarrassed about how she’d been behaving before. “I see. Clearly there were some extenuating circumstances surrounding your enrollment, Mr. Sawyer.”

“That’s a good way of putting it,” I agreed. “No, I’m not a transfer or anything like that. I’m a completely new student.”

“Well, you certainly have the proper workload for a new student,” the coordinator said with a glance at the screen. “We’ve got you enrolled in four courses currently—one less than a mundane university, but seeing as our classes frequently require more extracurricular work than an ordinary college course, it balances out…”

Sabrina was up and out of her seat. “Can I see that schedule?” she asked, gesturing at the screen.

“Give me just a second,” the coordinator said, a little taken aback. “I’m just printing it out now.”

She was. Evidently even wizards and witches hadn’t found a better technology than the laser toner printer. The sheet came hot off the presses, with my name and my student ID at the top.

Sabrina snatched it up before the coordinator could. “This all looks about right,” she murmured, her eyes rapidly scanning the page. “Potions, Battle Magic—oh, sweet, you’re even in my Introduction to Beast Taming class!” She beamed at me, then frowned as her gaze returned to the printed page. “Who enrolled him in that?”

She pointed at the schedule. I craned my neck, but the text was too tiny for me to make out from where I was sitting. I had to rely on her reaction, along with that of the admissions coordinator, to know whether Sabrina’s complaint registered as serious or not.

The coordinator blanched. “It’s a bit unusual for a first-year student to be enrolled in that subject, I agree. But Headmaster Ravensson put this schedule together personally. It was his idea.” She frowned. “And I’m not in the habit of correcting the headmaster.”

“What is it?” I asked, unable to contain my curiosity. “What’s Lavrans signed me up for?”

The coordinator blanched at using the headmaster’s first name, but Sabrina didn’t even flinch. “21st Century Curses,” the blonde said. She stared over the rim of her glasses at the piece of paper, frowning deeply. “Being taught by Sexy Hexy, no less.”

I blinked. “Sexy what?”

Sabrina did a little double-take, and I realized she’d normally never have said that with an authority figure in the room. “Irina Dragovich,” she said in a sepulchral tone. “She’s… well, you’ll find out when you meet her, I guess. She’s got quite the reputation on campus.”

“Professor Dragovich is one of the top experts in her field,” the coordinator said in a stuffy tone. “Her credentials are unmatched. Several of her top students have gone on to win awards for their work with curses, hexes, and blights…”

“And just as many have gotten arrested for putting what they learned from her to different uses.” Sabrina narrowed her eyes. “They say she’s cursed—that her whole class is cursed.”

“Balderdash,” the coordinator insisted.

Sabrina snickered. “They also say she seduces her students, then kills and eats them afterwards like a praying mantis,” she said with relish. “You’ll have to let me know if that one turns out to be true, Edwin.”

I had no intention of finding out myself, and told Sabrina so.

She frowned. “Under normal circumstances, I’d tell you to swap out of Sexy… out of Dragovich’s class,” she said, amending herself quickly as the coordinator gave her a look. “But if the Headmaster himself wants you in that class, then you’ll probably just have to grin and bear it. Even if it’s the most infamous lecture course in the whole damn school.”

That made sense to me. Lavrans must have had his reasons. But curses?

Curses aren’t real, I assured myself. Belief in them is nothing more than a mild form of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Right. And talking birds were just a sign you needed more calcium in your diet.

“Other than that, these are good classes.” Sabrina handed me the sheet. “They’re exactly what I’d sign you up for if I were the one sitting behind that desk. Well, except for the curses one.”

“They will begin on Tuesday,” the coordinator informed me. “You should familiarize yourself with their locations before then. Blackwater University’s teachers have a zero-tolerance tardiness policy.”

Sabrina rolled her eyes. “Technically, yeah—but almost no one enforces it.” She clapped me on the shoulder. “Besides, your first class is going to be with me. Tuesday and Thursday, Introduction to Beast Taming. Professor Fym is supposed to be amazing.”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” I said, the smile on my face fading. All of this sounded wonderful, but I hadn’t forgotten where I was. Even if Sabrina and I technically stood on the grounds of Blackwater University, we still shared all of our space with Exeter-Cross. This place wasn’t cheap. I didn’t even want to know how much tuition cost at Blackwater.

But I was going to have to ask.

Sabrina noticed the change in me. “What’s wrong?”

I turned to the coordinator with a sigh. “Look, I’m not exactly a wealthy person. Before I met your headmaster, my plan was to look for a community college in the area—and I was going to have to save up for that.”

“Hmm?”

God, she wasn’t going to make this easy, was she? “Lavrans told me that if I showed up at the admissions office with his card, that you might… I don’t know, cut me a deal.” It sounded like the stupidest thing in the world when I said it like that, and inwardly I cringed. “That there might be a discount on tuition, or something like that—“

“Mr. Sawyer,” the coordinator said. “I don’t understand.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” I muttered. “Your campus is incredibly nice, but I’m broke, okay? I don’t even know how I’m going to pay my rent at the end of the month, much less afford to go to a place like this…”

The coordinator turned to Sabrina, her brows furrowed in confusion. “Has he not been told?”

Sabrina looked as confused as I was. “Told what?”

“Yeah, what?”

The coordinator smirked, not unkindly. “Mr. Sawyer, your tuition has already been handled.”

All the air seemed to go out of the room. Sabrina probably could have knocked me over with a feather. My tuition was handled? Did that mean paid?

“You mean I don’t have a bill this semester?” I asked. It was almost too much to hope for.

The coordinator chuckled. “Mr. Sawyer, when I say it’s been handled, I mean it’s been handled. You won’t have a tuition bill at all.”

My jaw dropped. So did Sabrina’s.

“He’s completely paid for?” she asked.

You’re a hero, a little voice whispered in the back of my head. Doesn’t a hero deserve a reward?

Maybe. But this seemed almost too much for what I’d done.

“Four years paid up front, in full,” the coordinator said blandly. “Oh, and there’s this as well…”

She reached into a desk drawer and pulled out an emerald-green envelope. I had just enough time to mentally compare it to the color of Sabrina’s eyes when she popped it open and removed two plastic cards from inside. She slid them across the desk the same way I’d been sliding Lavrans’s business card all day to anyone who’d look at it.

“Your student ID,” she said, stifling a yawn. “And your card for your personal account.”

My what? I wasn’t sure which surprised me more. The Student ID had my name on it along with my picture—an old snap from high school that I had no idea how they managed to get their hand son. It looked dorky, but whatever—it worked.

The second card really caught my attention. It had a magnetized strip, like a credit card, though there were no numbers on it or the name of a company. Just my name with the word OWNER listed next to it, along with a row of strange arcane symbols on the back.

“What…” I trailed off, a feeling so hopeful it threatened to shame me spreading through my chest. “Ma’am, what is this?”

Sabrina spoke before she could. “It’s a stipend card. They’re given to students who meet certain criteria during their application process. Usually they’re lower income, or they’re here on such an ultra-exclusive scholarship that the opportunity cost of having to work during their academic career outweighs what the school would have to pay to house and feed them.”

“That’s right,” the coordinator agreed. “This is not a credit card, Mr. Sawyer. I want to stress that. It will not pay your Netflix bill, nor will it continue working if you put it into an ATM at a Las Vegas casino. It is for authorized purchases only.”

I didn’t watch TV and I’d never been much of a gambler. “Authorized expenses? I mean, that’s amazing. Don’t get me wrong. Any financial aid is—I mean, it’s more than I’d ever expected to get. But what do you mean when you say authorized expenses?”

“Food,” the coordinator said blandly. “Books. And living expenses.”

Living expenses? “Like rent?”

No way. No freaking way.

I saw myself paying my rent on time at the end of the month. Not having to beg my landlord for an extension, or to desperately start picking up cans by the side of the highway in the hopes of making a few bucks via recyclables…

The coordinator cleared her throat. ”Precisely.”

The single word made my heart skip a beat. “You’re… you’re sure?”

“Mr. Sawyer, I’m shocked this wasn’t explained to you before you received your invitation…”

I felt dizzy. This was too much. Too good.

”What’s the limit on it?” I asked. “I mean, what percentage of my rent is the school willing to pay?”

Again the coordinator looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “There isn’t a ‘limit’ per se, Mr. Sawyer. As long as your purchases are for necessities—the categories I outlined—the school will cover them.”

All the books and materials I’d need for Blackwater. Food. Gas. My fucking rent. All of it was taken care of.

Like a wizard had just waved a magic wand over my life.

”I can’t believe it,” I said, laughter rising in the back of my throat. If this was all a hallucination, then I never wanted to sober up. “You’re telling me that all my money problems are solved?”

The coordinator gave me a strange look. “That’s the idea, Mr. Sawyer—that Blackwater students are able to concentrate on their studies. But again, I warn you—don’t take the school’s largesse for granted. I’ve seen students use those stipend cards on video games and designer clothing like no one at Blackwater double checks those statements. Misuse of funds is a serious offense…”

I was on the verge of tears. “Thank you!” I said, putting my head on the desk. “Sabrina, is this real? I’m over the fucking moon about this…!”

The blonde was grinning just as wide as I was. “I mean, yeah. It’s not something we really talk about, but students are allowed to use their school-provided cards within reason. I mean, I never thought of trying to pay rent with one instead of living at the dorms, but since you’re a commuter with your own apartment, I’m sure it’s fine.”

Fine. It was all just part of the school’s largesse. Wow.

Sabrina chuckled. “I forget that mundanes don’t get those kinds of perks at Exeter-Cross. Oh, not that I’m saying you’re a mundane, Edwin…!”

I didn’t care. She could call me mundane all she wanted. If it meant getting my bills and my rent taken care of for four years by Blackwater University, then this school and its student body could call me whatever the hell it wanted to.

This was incredible. I felt like I’d won the goddamn lottery.

After getting a few more assurances that yes, Blackwater really was willing to do all these things for me, the coordinator managed to end the meeting. As Sabrina and I made our way back into the admissions office proper, I felt like a guy walking on a floor made of clouds. The whole world looked brighter, shinier—newer.

”I don’t think I’ve ever seen a guy so happy before.”

Sabrina’s voice brought me back to myself. I shook my head, still grinning. My cheeks were already sore, but I probably wouldn’t be able to go back to making normal facial expressions for a week.

“You probably haven’t,” I told her. “Sabrina, today is the best day of my life. And considering that last night I survived a crash that should have killed me and my friends, it had some stiff competition to win that title.”

”It’s not over yet,” the blonde assured me. “Would it be alright if I gave you a tour of the campus, Edwin? I mean, you’ve barely even peeked into the Unseen World yet. You’re going to be totally confused if you come back on Tuesday and don’t know where everything is!”

That sounded like the greatest idea I’d ever heard.

“Please,” I said, grinning at the blonde who was starting to become more and more of a friend to me. It hadn’t escaped my notice that Sabrina was growing markedly less shy where I was concerned, too. “Lead the way, Sabrina. I want to see everything. I’ve got a lot to learn.”

With a smirk, she put her arm in mine. “Let’s follow the yellow brick road,” she giggled. “I’ve got a lot of wonders to show you, Edwin Sawyer.”

Together, we made our way out the door and into a perfect afternoon.

Chapter Seven

“Blackwater isn’t really like any other college,” Sabrina explained. “For one thing, it’s inside of a completely different college.”

Two hours after leaving the admissions office, I finally understood what she meant. When Sabrina used the term Unseen World, she wasn’t just talking about a hallway here or there, tucked away inside of administration buildings. Blackwater occupied the exact same space as Exeter-Cross—the two colleges were layered on top of each other, like slides of animation in a cartoon. At times it was tough to see the lines where one started and the other began.

With her help, I was starting to recognize those lines.

The two of us walked through a campus lecture hall, auditoriums on either side. Classes had just switched over, and students filled the hallway—so many that she and I had to squeeze ourselves against a wall to let them through. Students laughed, joked, flirted and checked their cell phones. It was a totally ordinary building in a totally ordinary college.

Until you looked closer.

With my new powers, I saw what I’d missed before. Namely, the fact that about three-quarters of the young people making their way through the halls were dressed like ordinary college students, while the rest either wore a uniform like Sabrina’s or a set of robes that looked like something out of one of the Harry Potter movies. As that minority made their way from one room to another, or from a completed lecture to the exits, the sea of ordinary students parted around them the way raging rapids part around a rock in the middle of a river. The effect was disconcerting until you got used to it.

“They don’t even see us, do they?” I asked, looking over at Sabrina.

She shrugged. “Yes and no,” she said, pushing her glasses up the brim of her nose. “It’s complicated.”

Any lingering shyness in Sabrina had faded away during her makeshift campus tour. It was clear that this girl loved Blackwater—loved it in the way only a student who’d been preparing to go to her dream school since she was in kindergarten could love it. Through me, she got to experience what made it cool all over again, seeing it through my eyes.

“Then explain it to me,” I said, smiling at her. “Come on, we both know you love explaining complicated things. I’m surprised you’re not a Professor here yourself.”

She blushed, and it hit me that that was probably exactly what she wanted to hear from me. “I’m too young for that!” she insisted, brimming with glee at the compliment. “Besides, you can’t apply for a position with faculty until your senior year. Then you become an adjunct, and if you perform well enough, you might get a job at some other college—or at Blackwater.”

Uh huh, I thought. And I know which job’s at the top of your list.

Sabrina turned back to the flowing river of students. “When you get down to it, our eyes don’t really see nearly as much as we think they do,” she said, pressing up against me so I could hear her over the din. “For every item we focus on, there’s three that we’re overlooking. And you have a blind spot, which you can’t even tell exists unless you do an experiment…”

I’d done that experiment in grade school. It involved looking at a piece of paper and trying to read it from different angles, only to realize that certain words disappeared depending on where you were looking. When I told Sabrina this, her face lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Then you get it!” She chuckled. “Your brain looks at the stuff around your blind spot and fills in the gap with what it thinks ought to be there. But it’s not what you’re really looking at.” She gestured at the group moving through the halls. “Like this. You’re walking through the halls and you see a bunch of students…”

“You see more students,” I said, nodding. “And your brain doesn’t take into account the fact that one in three of them look like they’re on their way to a Renaissance Faire.”

“Or you see a wall instead of a hallway,” Sabrina agreed. “What little research wizards and witches have done on this suggests that it’s a defense mechanism for mundanes. You saw yourself that it can be… traumatic to look into the Unseen World without preparation.”

I remembered the way my heart had felt like it was about to beat out of my chest and nodded. “Like Lovecraft.”

“Hmm?”

“H.P. Lovecraft,” I said, a little surprised that Sabrina didn’t know who I was talking about. “Horror writer from the 1920’s. His whole thing was monsters so terrible you couldn’t look at them without going insane.” It sounded a bit like what I’d been through, the more I thought about it. “He wasn’t a wizard, was he?”

Sabrina shook her head with a smile. “No. He was a partial, though.”

I did a double take. “What?”

“Attended Miskatonic University,” Sabrina said, turning back to the flood of students with an impish grin. “Which is entangled with Harvard the same way Blackwater is entangled with Exeter-Cross.”

“You’re shitting me,” I blurted, startling a nearby student. “Miskatonic University is real?”

“My Dad’s an alumnus,” Sabrina said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts. “Has the bumper sticker on his car and everything—not that mundane drivers are capable of seeing it.”

Holy shit.

Sabrina led me past the lecture halls. If I’d come here a few days ago I would have said there was nothing out of the ordinary about them, but now I could see the way ordinary students were walking past the stranger classrooms like they couldn’t even see them. A seven-foot tall man with a bushy white beard and a strange horned cap stood outside of one of the lecture halls checking an ancient-looking pocket watch, yet none of the regular students so much as glanced his way.

“They walk right past,” I said, amazed. “They don’t even see what’s happening right in front of them.”

“Oh, it’s even stranger than that,” Sabrina confessed, laughing. “They don’t even perceive those classrooms as existing. If you asked any of these students to measure the length of this building, they’d come up with a figure dozens of feet shorter than the actual number. While a magical student would easily be able to arrive at the number on the blueprints.”

“That’s crazy,” I muttered.

“Totally. It’s even weirder with the dorms.” She looked over at me, nibbling her bottom lip. “Can I show you the dorms?”

The answer to every one of Sabrina’s questions today was yes. I wanted to see everything Blackwater had to offer—to know as much as I could about it before I officially started classes here.

Because I was going to take classes here. I’d decided.

Even if the whole wizard thing still freaked me out a bit, I couldn’t turn down the deal Blackwater offered me. Only a fool would have. Free rent for four years, along with a magical credit card (no matter what the coordinator called it) capable of buying anything I needed? Anyone would have signed up for that bargain. Even if I just stayed here for a semester or two, getting my feet wet in the magical world, that flexibility meant my life would never be the same.

“There are a few areas on campus that are entirely Blackwater or entirely Exeter-Cross,” Sabrina was explaining as we made our way through the public park at the center of both colleges. “Lecture halls, for one thing—along with most administrative buildings, despite what you saw at enrollment. But most of the campus is what we call blended, meaning there are a mix of mundanes, partials and actual witches or wizards—”

“I’m not a fan of using that term for people,” I grunted. “Mundane.”

Sabrina shrugged. “That’s what they are,” she insisted. “They’re normal, unlike you and me. “You can’t change that, no matter how much you want to.”

Interesting. I’d been wondering about this for a while now, and this seemed to be a decent time to bring it up. “Is that true?”

Sabrina turned. “Is what true?”

“That people can’t change.” I pointed a thumb at my chest. “I mean, I considered myself a pretty ordinary guy until a couple of days ago. I couldn’t see any of this stuff, either. If you walked past me on the street, you’d have thought that I was mundane as hell.”

Her smile told me she thought I was anything but. “Yes, but you always had the potential,” she explained. “An ordinary person without the potential can’t become a wizard or a witch, no matter how hard they try. They couldn’t even become a partial—not even if they had the best tutor in the world trying to expand their mind. They’d just never see Blackwater.”

That… disappointed me. I didn’t like the idea of people’s destinies being fixed, of being unable to change your fate. The idea that I was some kind of wizard because of a freak accident in my genetics, while someone like Will or Patrick or Jen never would be because of theirs, held no appeal to me at all.

But Sabrina was right about one thing. I couldn’t dispute the facts.

Just then, a girl jogged past us wearing black robes. A snow-white owl perched on her shoulder, hooting gently at passerby as she ran. Those who could see her moved when the owl gave warning—those who couldn’t see her simply stepped around her route automatically, and probably would have given some excuse for why they’d done it if you pressed them.

I was more interested in the bird than the brain stuff. “Woah, neat owl,” I said. “Is she a Beast Tamer?”

I couldn’t lie—of the subjects listed on my class schedule, that was the one that really interested me.

Sabrina noticed. “Why, is that what’s calling to you?”

I shrugged. “When I was a kid, I’d either wanted to grow up to become a veterinarian or one of those people who do tricks with the whales at Sea World. Neither one turned out to be in the cards.”

A little smile lit up Sabrina’s face. “Well, that’s just her familiar,” the coed explained. “Lot’s of students have them. Maybe I’ll introduce you to mine some time—Voynamir likes meeting new people.”

Another piece of the puzzle clicked in my head, and my stomach did a flip. “Voynamir?”

“My familiar,” Sabrina explained. “She’s a black cat. Edwin, why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost…?”

I thought about the visitor who’d taken over my coffee table that morning. “I think I might already have a familiar myself,” I said. “Except I didn’t know that’s what he’s supposed to be…”

As we walked to the dorms, I told Sabrina about Squawk. She chuckled at the name, and by the time I finished my story she was nodding along.

“That’s definitely a familiar,” she explained, running her fingers through her blonde hair. “They’re a lot smarter than ordinary animals. I’m not surprised yours can talk.”

“He only says two words at a time,” I said. “But sometimes he makes a disturbing amount of sense.”

“I can’t wait to meet him,” Sabrina said. “Okay, here’s the dorms…”

I looked up. And up.

I’d seen Exeter-Cross’s dormitories on their website, back when I was researching the place while trying to find any evidence that Blackwater University existed. They were new, and newly furnished, and so the campus made a big deal out of them. Twelve stories of lodging and amenities ensure Exeter-Cross’s students get the best possible experience while concentrating on their studies, the website had said—as if most of the kids going to such a fancy school weren’t going to spend most of their time with Wordsworth instead of sneaking pot into their rooms.

The dorms resembled the picture on the website in some ways. Both were tall and ‘U’ shaped, with a clever little fountain in the front and greenery on all sides between the walls and the street.

But there, the similarities ended.

Everything looked just like the pictures until you reached what I presumed was the twelfth floor. Above that, the ultra-modern concrete gave way to a Gothic monstrosity. Turrets and buttresses extended every which way from the final six or seven stories of the dormitories, and the high narrow windows each room sported looked more Shirley Jackson than corporate headquarters. The contrast was stunning.

“That’s…” I trailed off. There didn’t seem to be anything to say.

“I know,” Sabrina said. “Isn’t it great?”

It was certainly something. The design clashed so badly with the rest of the campus that it would have been a major eyesore if the ordinary (I tried not even to think of them as ‘mundane’) students and teachers had been able to see it. But the longer I looked, the more I began to realize the method within the madness.

Everywhere else on campus, Blackwater had to co-exist with Exeter-Cross. They used the fancy, exclusive college as a base to build their magical world on, and they’d mostly been forced to use the building blocks they had on hand.

But here, the wizards and witches could express their full creativity.

And what they’d built looked like what Dr. Seuss would have put in a picture book version of Wuthering Heights.

Sabrina picked up her pace as we approached the front door. At the first step leading to the entrance, she turned on a heel and looked at me, her lips a tight little line. For the first time in a while, she looked nervous.

Really nervous.

“Hey, um… can you wait here for a few minutes?” Sabrina bit down on her bottom lip and looked up at the section of the dormitories where she and the rest of the magical students presumably lived. “There’s one more place I really want to take you, but I need to drop my backpack off in my room. I’ll be back as quick as I can?”

I couldn’t imagine what had Sabrina in such a tizzy all of a sudden. Either way, though, her request didn’t bother me in the slightest.

“Go right ahead,” I said, realizing only when it was too late that I really should have offered to carry her bag for her a while ago. “I’ll just hang out down here.”

“Cool. Be right back!” Sabrina disappeared through the big double doors, leaving me next to the ornate fountain all by myself.

I leaned over and looked into the water, staring at my own reflection. Up until right that moment, I hadn’t had any time to think about what had happened to me today. The revelations came one on top of each other, from learning that Blackwater was a real college after all to finding out that not only was my tuition covered, I wasn’t going to have to worry about money at all for as long as I remained enrolled here.

I had so much to think about. So much to process.

And yet, all I could think about was Sabrina.

God, she’s cute, I thought, shaking my head. A little shy, yeah—I’ve never really been the kind of guy who chases after shy girls. But damn, what a knockout…

Her clothing style didn’t bother me in the least. If anything, I liked that she wasn’t prissy about her looks the way some of the girls I’d dated had been. She seemed like a very practical, down-to-earth person—which I realized was a strange thing to think about a woman who literally could do actual magic.

I stood by the fountain for a while, watching the mundane and the magical mingle. Exeter-Cross and Blackwater stayed far away from each other, even when they walked so close that they were practically shoulder-to-shoulder. It wasn’t the physical distance, but the mental. The magical students walked in a whole other world than the rich, normal kids.

Like me, I thought, remembering how I’d felt when I first pulled into town. I felt like I didn’t belong in this world.

And as it turned out, I didn’t.

I belonged at Blackwater.

Sabrina came down a few minutes later without her backpack. When I saw her, I did a double-take.

“Hey,” I said, unable to keep myself from looking her up and down. “I like your outfit…”

The witch hadn’t just discarded her backpack. She’d slipped out of her uniform and into an old Smashing Pumpkins t-shirt, with a gray-green Navy jacket over the top. Her skirt was black, she’d swapped her tennis shoes for a pair of black shit-kicker boots with crisscrossing laces almost all the way up to her knees, and she’d put on a silver necklace with a pentagram and matching earrings.

But the biggest shock was the makeup. Her lips were ruby red, matching the intensity of her emerald gaze, and the mascara she’d applied along with her eyeshadow made her eyes look almost feline behind her glasses.

This was not the way a woman dressed for a campus tour.

It was the way she dressed for a date.

The blush was back on her cheeks. “Thanks,” she said, suddenly unable to meet my eye. “I figured I might as well get comfortable. Those uniforms kind of suck, which is why half the students opt for robes instead.”

“You have to wear one or the other?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No, but it’s traditional.”

I nodded. “So where’s this last place you want to take me, Sabrina?”

I don’t think I’d ever seen her so nervous before.

“Well, um, I figured you’d be hungry by now,” she said, making a vague gesture with her hands. “You’ve been trudging up and down campus for hours. And since you’re a transfer, your stipend card won’t officially kick in and start working until Tuesday, when classes start. You mentioned you were kind of short on funds…?”

Oh. Suddenly I was the one who felt like blushing.

“It’s not like that,” I said. “I’m doing okay—”

“My card works fine,” she said, swallowing hard. “Did you… would it be okay if I bought you dinner?”

“Dinner?”

“Yeah.” Sabrina looked to the side. “If you don’t want to, I get it. It doesn’t have to be anything other than a friend thing, either. I’m weird enough for most people, and you’ve already had an exceedingly weird day—”

“Sabrina,” I said, thinking what a lucky son of a bitch I was, “Nothing would make me happier.”

She blinked, surprised—like she was the lucky one. “Yeah?”

“You’ve got to let me pay you back, though,” I insisted. “I’ll do the same for you once my card works?”

The corner of Sabrina’s mouth curled in a smirk. “Absolutely. That would… that would be really cool, Edwin. I’d really like to get to know you better.”

“I’d like to get to know you better, too,” I agreed. “So where are we going? We picking up some gas station taquitos?”

Sabrina looked horrified, which tickled me pink. “Are you serious?” she asked, looking like she was going to be sick.

“Hey, I’m a cheap date,” I told her, laughing. “As long as it’s edible, I’m happy.”

“It’s better than edible,” she insisted. “It’s just a couple of blocks away. I’ll show you.”

She moved to lead the way. I was about to let her when an impetuous impulse took hold of me. I stepped up beside her and linked my arm with hers, taking her hand.

Sabrina’s eyes widened. Her cheeks went pale, then turned very, very red.

I nodded in the direction of some rich kids playing hacky sack on the green. “Now they’ll have to walk around both of us,” I joked.

Sabrina looked down at my arm. And grinned.

“Yes they will,” she agreed.

She didn’t let go of me once the whole way there.

Chapter Eight

The restaurant Sabrina took me to turned out to not be a restaurant at all.

A few blocks from the student dormitories, we found ourselves walking down a side street. This was still Exeter-Cross territory, far from the borderland of gas stations and convenience stores I’d noticed on my drive in, so it surprised me to find what looked like a quaint English pub waiting on the next corner. Small groups of magical students lounged around outside, smoking and vaping and waiting for their tables to be open. The sign above the door marked the place as the Wand & Anchor, with a gnarled branch that looked like it came from Gandalf’s closet overlapping the nautical theme.

As we approached, I noticed who was going inside—and who was walking past without a second look. “They don’t see it, do they?” I asked.

I didn’t need to specify who I was talking about. The look on Sabrina’s face let me know the two of us were on the same wavelength. “Not a bit,” she said, giving me an impish grin. “The Wand & Anchor is the only fully Blackwater eatery on campus. Everything else is shared.”

I could tell. The customers filled a spectrum, from the fairly-ordinary young people in uniforms to the full-on warlock cosplay of some of the older patrons. The hostess took our info and gave Sabrina a little coin with a rune etched into it, which she held outside while we chatted about classes.

A few minutes later, the coin began to pulse like a heartbeat. It freaked me out, but Sabrina just smiled. “It means our table is ready,” she said, rolling the coin over her knuckles. “Come on!”

Despite the bustling traffic at this time of the evening, the interior of the Wand & Anchor managed to feel almost intimate. The lights being down low helped a lot, but it was probably more the floating candelabras bobbing slowly back and forth over the main floor. I stared at this bit of magic for an inordinately long time, until Sabrina had to take my hand and escort me to our table with a small smile.

“It’s dazzling, isn’t it?” she asked once we sat down. “By the way, do not worry about price. Everything’s inflated to hell and back here, since they know only students are going to be eating here anyway.”

Once I looked at the menu, I felt grateful for the warning. Whew!

“So what’s good here?” I asked the blonde, peering at her over my menu. “Fish and chips, I’m assuming?”

“It’s all good,” Sabrina said with a smile. “Have you ever heard of the freshman fifteen?”

The tendency of new students to gain weight when they first get to college, I thought. Definitely not an affliction the cool kids at Exeter-Cross were familiar with, considering the buff guys and svelte ladies in their American Apparel. “Of course.”

“It’s more like the freshman twenty-five at Blackwater,” Sabrina replied with a smirk. “And the Wand is most of the reason. Honestly, everything here rocks.” She studied the menu. “Although fish and chips is never a bad place to make your jumping off point…”

We ordered drinks and food once the waitress arrived, then settled in. Sabrina leaned back in her seat, her smile going from awkward to confident to awkward again as she waited for one of us to start the conversation.

“I’m sure you have a ton of questions,” she finally said, placing her hands on the table. “Anything you desperately want to know about the magical world, Edwin?”

I thought it over. And decided that any aspect of this new world that I really needed to know, I would learn about soon enough one way or another.

This was a date, right?

So I was going to treat it like one.

“I’m actually way more interested in you,” I said, shocking her.

“Me?”

“You seem so knowledgeable about this world,” I said, taking a sip of my water. “You said that it’s really tough for people to adjust when they don’t have someone prepping them to understand places like Blackwater. That tells me that most students who come here are not like me.”

“Not at all.” Sabrina shook her head. “You really want to know about me? I mean, you just found out that magic is real. You’ve got a class schedule about potions and curses, and a giant talking bird that’s probably waiting for you back at your apartment—”

“I’ll have to deal with all that bullshit soon enough,” I said. “Right now I just want to relax. You seem like a really cool person, and I’d like to get to know you better.”

Just then, the waitress emerged with our drinks. A mule for me, something tall and pink for Sabrina but with a vicious-looking black streak running through it—a cocktail for princesses who listened to death metal when no one was looking, maybe.

“Well, I mean… yeah, things are different for me,” she said, taking a sip of the sweet cocktail. “Oh wow, that’s good. You want a sip?”

We traded drinks and took a taste. Even I had to admit that her fruity-looking cocktail tasted better than mine.

“Ooh, I like that ginger,” Sabrina said, handing me back the copper cup. “Makes my nostrils tingle. Are you a spicy guy, Edwin?”

“I don’t mind a little heat,” I said, thinking of some of the Korean dishes Will’s Mom used to make whenever I came over to his house for dinner.

Sabrina nodded. “Guys who like ginger and wasabi usually aren’t shy about spice,” she said sagely. “Me, I’m mad for it. If I’m not crying messy tears and gasping when it’s done, then I haven’t had a good time…”

She trailed off as I stared at her. When she realized what she’d just implied, her cheeks went beet red.

“Oh Jesus,” Sabrina whispered, putting her face in her hands. “Please forget I said that, Edwin. That was totally the wrong context…!”

“I mean, I said I like it hot,” I admitted with a shrug. “I opened the door; you walked through it.”

“Ass,” she shot back. But she was smiling.

I decided to move to a more neutral topic for the moment. “So Miskatonic University is real. I’m guessing there are other colleges of magical learning up and down the East Coast with names I might have heard of?”

“I mean, it’s possible.” Sabrina was still trying to recover from accidentally making it sound like she liked rough sex; it took everything she had not to start laughing behind her hand. “There’s fewer magical colleges in the US than mundane colleges, if that’s what you were wondering. And they’re not all intertwined with a mundane institute of higher learning.”

This wasn’t what I wanted to talk about. We were getting away from her.

“Is Blackwater where you always wanted to go?” I asked.

Her expression brightened. “Yes. Mom went here, once upon a time. Dad, I already mentioned, was up in Massachusetts.” She paused, her giddy look replaced by a frown. And I didn’t really want to go there.”

“Something wrong with Miskatonic?” I asked, taking another sip of my drink. “Other than the fact that their frat boys probably have the Innsmouth Look?”

That brought a belly laugh out of her. “Hey, that’s my Dad you’re talking about. All that ‘making love to the fish’ stuff is a myth—don’t get it twisted.”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

She stared into the depths of her cocktail for a few moments before replying. “I’d be, like, the third person in my family to go to Miskatonic,” she admitted sheepishly. “And if I did, I’d have no hope of matching any of their accomplishments. I’m kind of the black sheep in my house.”

I found that hard to believe. “You’ve got a big family?”

She nodded. “Three sisters and one brother. He’s the baby, I’m the second youngest. All three of my sisters have already graduated college.”

I whistled through my teeth. “You’d think having so many graduates in the family would make your choice of alma mater less important, not more.”

A strange smile spread across her face. “You would think that, right?”

“I’m guessing that’s not the case?”

Her expression turned flat. “Josie is an alchemist. Her business is totally booming up in New England, and she’s making money hand over fist. Lysandra graduated first in her class—they never let me forget it—and now she’s basically the most respected haruspex in the whole damn country. Thursday’s in magical law, and my little brother just got a scholarship to go to Terminus U and play forward on their Zuzizzakazae team.” She frowned deeply, looking over at the nearby wall like it had suddenly become incredibly interesting. “And there’s me, with no declared major. No real plan for the future. So you can understand what a disappointment I am.”

I sat up a little straighter. “That doesn’t sound like a disappointment at all. Some of the smartest people in the world didn’t know what they wanted to be when they grew up when they were our age. Also, what is the thing you said your brother does? Zoo zephyr…?”

“It’s basically pickleball but with magic involved,” Sabrina said, rolling her eyes. “People go absolutely nuts for it—don’t ask me to explain.” She sighed. “Both your parents are mundane, yeah?”

“I wouldn’t call them mundane,” I said. I was really going to have to get used to not being offended by that word. “But neither of them could do magic, if that’s what you’re asking.”

It was. “I guess it’s different for people without a magical background,” she said, glancing down at her hands. “My father is a warlock, and my mother is a witch. And their parents were warlocks and witches, too. We go back six generations, all the way to Salem.” Her eyes took on a faraway tinge. “You said I’ve got big shoes to fill. Have you ever heard the nursery rhyme about the old lady who lived in a shoe?”

I chuckled. “I might have.”

She looked at me over her glasses. “Those are the size of the ones my parents are expecting me to step into. I don’t really have a choice.”

That sounded almost painful.

“Sabrina, of course you do,” I said, looking almost as offended by the notion as by calling my parents mundanes. “Our parents want what’s best for us, sure, but their expectations don’t define us. You don’t need to have everything in your life solved the moment you come charging out of the gate. Figuring that stuff out is part of what college is all about.”

Sabrina was quiet for so long that I wondered if I’d said something wrong.

“That’s what I like about you,” she whispered. “You don’t let anybody push you around, do you, Edwin?”

I thought it over. “I’m not in the habit of it, I guess.”

“You’re a lot like me, I’m guessing,” Sabrina said, smirking at me over her glass. “You say what you mean, and you mean what you say. Sometimes it turns people off how blunt you are, and it means you struggle a little bit in social situations. Maybe a lot, sometimes. But it’s who you are.”

I nearly choked on what was left of my mule.

“I…” I opened my mouth to deliver some sort of clever comeback, only to start thinking about the accident again. Not the crash itself, but the party we’d all been on our way back home from on our way across DC. I’d been invited to that party because of Will, hadn’t I?

That and because you’re always willing to be the designated driver, I thought. Would everyone’s attitude towards you be the same if you weren’t doing something nice for them?

I wasn’t sure. For Will, I knew it didn’t matter. But for his college friends?

“I wish I could be like you,” Sabrina said, looking wistful. “With some people I can do it—I honestly don’t care when bitches like Ashley call me teen witch like they’re the ones who thought of the insult. But sometimes I wish my folks would just look at me and see me, you know? Instead of the glaring gap of disappointment between me and my siblings.”

Before I could say anything else, the waitress arrived with our food. By the time she finished setting it down (and taking orders for seconds on both of our drinks), Sabrina was all smiles once more.

“God, that got deep, didn’t it?” she asked, sounding a little sheepish. “I’m sorry to put all that on you, Edwin.”

“It’s really not a problem,” I said, taking a nibble of my fish. Sabrina was right—this was fantastic. I was going to need to watch out for that freshman fifteen after all.

Sabrina was already shaking her head. “No, it is a problem,” she said, still smiling. “This is supposed to be a first date, and I’m dumping my trauma all over you. I shouldn’t be doing that, and I’m sorry.”

I started to deflect, only to realize that wasn’t what Sabrina needed.

“Apology accepted,” I told her, looking in her eyes.

She nodded.

“Besides,” I added with a smirk. “I kind of have to forgive you. I mean, you did buy me dinner…”

Sabrina snorted. “Tell me about you,” she said, leaning forward. She barely seemed to care about the fancy salad the waitress brought—instead, I had her full attention. “What was this accident you were in? How did you meet the headmaster?”

I cleared my throat. I’d been bracing myself to do this since before the date began. I knew at some point, I’d need to tell Sabrina the whole story.

A candle floated by, bathing the table in shadow as it turned away before starting back the way it came. The moment felt strangely intimate, and I leaned over and put my hand on top of Sabrina’s. She let me, and only blushed a little.

“So, I was on my way back from a party in the city,” I explained. “It was me, my best friend Will, and two of his buddies from college. I was the designated driver…”

Over the next few minutes, in between bites of fish and fried potatoes, I told Sabrina the whole story. She remained quiet and polite the entire time, and in fact seemed to be hanging off of my every word. She asked a handful of follow-up questions when she needed clarification, but mostly she just listened.

I hadn’t realized how badly I’d needed someone to listen until that date.

“...by the time I got him out of the car, there were ambulances on the shore,” I said, downing the last of my second mule. The alcohol burned in my stomach, giving a gentle and pleasing warmth to the romantically lit restaurant. In the firelight, Sabrina’s eyes seemed almost to dance. “A couple of divers came swimming over, and they dragged us kicking and screaming to safety. Will asked me what the hell I’d done, but I didn’t have an answer for him. I still don’t.”

Sabrina wiped her eyes. It was only now that I realized she’d been holding back tears for part of my story. “Holy shit, Edwin!”

“It’s a hell of a story, huh?”

“You almost died,” she said, with a tone like she was replaying my story in her mind like a film reel. “Fuck, I’m so glad you didn’t die. You saved those people’s lives, Edwin. You… you really are a hero, you know that?”

I shook my head. “I was just moving on instinct. You know the difference between bravery and courage?”

Sabrina shook her head. “Don’t they mean the same thing?”

“No. Bravery is acting in the moment, without thinking about it. You don’t have time to be afraid in a situation when you’re being brave, because if you stop for even a second, you or someone you care about is going to be injured or killed. Courage is acting with bravery even when you have the time to be afraid. To be scared shitless.” I shuddered. “I was brave that night, but only because I had to be. Really, I’m a coward. Because every time I think about that night, I start shaking.”

When I looked up at Sabrina, she had an eyebrow cocked. “You think you’re a coward because you get the shakes? From a situation where you and three other people were almost drowned alive in a car?”

I guess when she put it like that, it did sound a little ridiculous.

“Edwin, what you did is amazing,” she whispered, giving my hand a squeeze. “Given the choice, I’ll take a brave man every time. I’m sure your friends would say the same thing.”

“Shit, my friends!” It hit me that I hadn’t texted any of them today — not Will, not Patrick, and not Jen. I hoped they were doing alright. “Man, I’m really awful. I should be checking up on them…”

Sabrina scoffed. “They should be checking up on you. Honestly, they should be kissing your feet, Edwin. No wonder Headmaster Ravensson invited you to our campus.”

I nodded slowly. I’d told the whole story about the crash, but the part that kept playing in my head when I was talking about it with Sabrina was a single moment. That brilliant flash of light that shattered all the glass in the automobile—and that strange wave of anger I’d felt when I made it happen. That wave of power that answered.

Was that… magic?

If it wasn’t, then what else could it be?

“I take it this isn’t the usual recruitment process for freshmen,” I managed to joke.

Sabrina made a pleased noise. “No, it’s not. You must be terribly skilled, Edwin. To have cast a spell like that, with no training and with no guidance? It’s not something most people would be able to do. Even wizards your age might have trouble with a spell like that in the heat of the moment.”

I figured it had to be something like that. But it still felt good to hear it.

“I’m really looking forward to seeing what you do this semester,” Sabrina said, with a smile like she hoped she was on that to-do list. “I have a good feeling about you, Edwin. I really do.”

“I have a good feeling about you, too,” I murmured.

After dinner, I walked Sabrina back to the dorms. Night hadn’t quite fallen over the Blackwater campus, but the sky had darkened considerably from where it had been when we’d first entered the Wand & Anchor. A party atmosphere prevailed on both sides of the Blackwater-slash-Exeter divide: students walked around dressed to the nines, heading for this or that party off-campus.

This time I entered the lobby with Sabrina. Despite the magic, it looked like the lobby to every college dorm I’d ever seen in a movie or TV show: a circular reception desk, a half-dozen large elevators in the rear, some couches with an old Xbox 360 console and a foosball table. A few students were hanging out; most of them were in robes.

As we passed the reception desk, Sabrina stopped walking. She turned to me, those spots of color I was already starting to think of as cute blossoming on her cheeks like rose petals. I’d rarely seen her this flustered, and looked around the lobby to see what might be the matter.

As it turned out, it was me.

“Edwin…” Sabrina sighed. “Can I be honest with you?”

I blinked. “Of course,” I said. Over at the reception desk, I saw a girl’s ears perk up.

Her mouth worked soundlessly for a moment as she gathered her thoughts. “What I told you over dinner about being blunt, and saying what’s on your mind? I mean that. I really do. I know that it makes me different, especially in social situations, but I prefer to be honest and direct whenever I can. Especially where matters of the heart are concerned.”

Matters of the…? I cleared my throat.

“Honestly, I find that refreshing,” I told her.

Sabrina blinked. “You do?”

I was thinking of all the girls I’d known who weren’t honest or direct. Who’d been the exact opposite: who’d expected me to make every move, who’d played games or toyed with my emotions or played insufferably coy when it came to dating.

I mean, I’d toyed with my fair share of emotions, too. So it wasn’t all a woman thing.

“Yeah,” I said, meaning it. “It’s a change of pace from what I’m used to.”

The smile was back on Sabrina’s face. “Good. Because I’m trying to figure out whether or not I’m going to invite you up to my room.”

Oh. Oh.

The look on my face must have been something indeed. “That’s kind of why I’m waffling,” she admitted, taking one of my hands in both of hers. “Look, I… I like you, Edwin. I really do. And I’m not the kind of woman who thinks that because you like a guy, and he’s a good guy, that it means you have to make him wait way longer than you would some random hookup.”

This is moving awfully fast, I thought. I kind of liked it.

“I just don’t want to give you false expectations,” she said, shaking her head. “Because I don’t know that anything would happen, because I don’t honestly know if I’m ready for something like that, and the last thing I want is to make you think I’m going to jump all over you and then you’re walking home all hot and bothered…!”

“Woah, okay!” I said, holding up my hands. “Where’s all this coming from?”

Sabrina started to continue, then stopped with a sputter. “I always overthink things like this,” she said, looking disappointed in herself. “I overthink it and I ruin it. I need to stop being so goddamn analytical! I tell myself, ‘Sabrina, just take the cute boy up to your room and introduce him to Voynamir! If something happens, it happens, and everyone else is doing it—!”

If I let Sabrina go on like that, she might talk herself right into a panic attack.

“Can I say something?” I asked her, cutting her off. “I’ll be honest, too. Promise.”

Sabrina stopped, blowing a lock of hair out of her face. “I wish you would,” she whispered. “Sometimes I swear I just need a guy to tell me what to do…”

That unlocked something inside me, but I ignored it for now.

“Expectations,” I said instead. “Two days ago, Sabrina, my only expectations were that I was going to start tracking down some crummy job at a call center and hopefully get enough pennies to rub together to pay my rent for the month. Maybe I hoped that one of Will’s friends could hook me up with a decent job or get me a lead on an affordable community college.” I looked around the lobby, grinning like a mad fool. “Those expectations have been blown so far out of the water that I’m still half-convinced I died when my car hit the water. I feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven.”

I was looking right at her when I said that last part. Sabrina practically swooned; I thought I saw her start to fan herself before she caught the gesture and stopped it.

“You just keep giving me reasons to like you, Edwin Sawyer,” she murmured.

“I don’t have any expectations of you,” I finished. “Other than that I want to keep hanging out with you, because you’re really cool. I mean, look at you—”

I was about to launch into a little diatribe about how Sabrina reminded me of the hot alt-girls I’d pined for all throughout high school. The girls who wore black lipstick and listened to the Smiths and were so much cooler than me that it honestly hurt. It probably would have made me look like a total dork, and ruined any chance I had with her.

Fortunately, she didn’t let me do that.

Instead, she kissed me.

Sabrina went up on tiptoe, grabbing the back of my neck as she covered my mouth with her own. Someone shouted, and I thought I heard someone break out in sarcastic applause, but I ignored both.

My body knew what to do. My hands went to her waist, holding her close as her lips parted beneath mine.

Holy shit. Fireworks exploded behind my eyelids. That was the good stuff.

By the time we broke the kiss, I could feel Sabrina’s heart pounding. She looked up at me, and for a second I felt certain she was about to change her mind about the whole ‘bringing me upstairs and introducing me to her familiar’ thing.

“I had a wonderful time tonight,” she whispered, still holding onto me. “I’ll see you on Tuesday? Bright and early, for Introductory Beast Taming?”

In all the excitement, I’d somehow managed to forget about classes entirely. “Yeah, of course. I’ll be there.”

“Good.” She slipped out of my arms with obvious reluctance. “I guess I’ll see you on Tuesday, then…”

She’d turned to go and was just about to make her way over to the elevators when something occurred to me. “Hey, wait!”

Sabrina turned. “Yes?”

“Can I get your number?” I asked, taking my cell phone out of my pocket. “That way we can still get in touch even if something happens on Tuesday. Plus, you know, I can call you if I get lost or something…”

It felt like a lame excuse, but Sabrina didn’t see it that way. “Yeah, totally,” she told me, beaming. “Give it here?”

I did. She put her number into the phone and added herself as a contact. She added that little emoji of the grinning purple devil with the horns next to her name, which didn’t quite match her personality but was cute enough that I wasn’t about to change it.

As she gave it back to me, a strange look spread across her face. “Hang on a second,” she said, holding up one finger. “I can actually do better than that.”

Huh? “Better than your number?”

“We don’t really use phones all that much at Blackwater,” she said, shaking her head. “I know this is a lot, but could I ask you to wait down here for just another minute? I will be right back. I promise not to change my clothes or switch up my makeup this time…”

I couldn’t help but grin. “Go for it.”

Sabrina hopped in the elevator and was gone.

As soon as she was gone, the woman at the front desk spun around in her chair to face me. “Nice job, dude,” she snickered.

Oh shit. Had everyone in the lobby just seen that?

“Sorry if there are rules against that kind of stuff,” I said. “I’m new here.”

The RA shook her head. “What I just heard are more words than I think I’ve seen Sabrina say to anyone at once since she got here. And I’ve definitely never seen her kiss someone.” Her eyes narrowed. “You’d better treat that girl right, dude. She’s a good person, even if she’s convinced she’s weird as hell.”

I nodded. “I intend to.”

“Good.” The RA turned her attention back to her magazine. “It’ll be good for that girl to finally let her damned hair down…”

Sabrina returned a couple of minutes later with a slender book tucked under her arm. “Here,” she said, handing it to me. “This is for you!”

I took it and flipped through the pages. They were all blank. “A journal?” I guessed.

She giggled. “It’s called a scribing book,” she explained, tapping the top of the page. “You’d know about them if you weren’t completely new. Most students have one. Now you do, too.”

I waited to see if something else might happen–something that explained the purpose of the journal. “I don’t get it.”

“It has a mild enchantment on it,” Sabrina said with a smile. “This one is currently linked with the scribing book up in my dorm room. If you write anything on the pages, I’ll be able to see it. And vice versa.”

That did sound convenient. Almost like texting, but with a magical twist. How quaint, I thought. And romantic.

“You can spread the enchantment to other people, too,” she admitted with a sheepish smile. “So you could have me on one page, someone else on another, something like that. Right now, it’s only linked to me, though.”

“I like it that way,” I told her, putting an arm around her waist. “Thanks.”

We kissed again—longer this time. By the time I pulled away, Sabrina was gasping.

“Thanks for being so understanding,” she whispered, all red in the face. “I, um… I’ve gotta go!”

She raced to the elevator and headed back upstairs. The girl behind the counter shot me a look as I exited, then gave me a thumb’s up and a smirk. “Treat her right,” she reminded me. “You break that girl’s heart, I’ll break your fingers.”

I snickered at that.

Outside, I found a familiar face waiting for me. Squawk perched on one of the topiaries along the side of the dormitory, watching me with his head cocked almost ninety degrees to the side. How long had that bird been watching me?

Squawk watch, I remembered it telling me earlier. Probably it had been following me all day. A little creepy.

But then again, wasn’t that what a familiar was supposed to do?

“Edwin school!” the bird cawed. “Edwin good!”

“Yeah,” I said. “Edwin’s doing pretty okay. When were you going to tell me that you were my familiar, bird?”

Squawk straightened up. “Good friend!”

I laughed. “Yeah, I’m sure you will be. Come on, let’s go home. I’ve got a lot of preparations to make before I start classes…”

Chapter Nine

On Tuesday morning, I took my stipend card to a gas station first thing and filled up my rental car. I was only mildly surprised when the transaction went through without a hitch.

Only three days had passed since my first visit to the Blackwater campus, yet my life felt so different that it was sometimes hard to tell whether I’d woken up as a completely different person. Despite everything that had happened to me, I still found myself occasionally worrying if I hadn’t hit my head and hallucinated my entire trip to Exeter-Cross, along with the strange events that had occurred there.

The worry never lasted for long, though. I had enough things to remind me now that magic was real. Like the stipend card I used to buy my breakfast on the drive into DC. Like the big-ass bird sitting on the passenger seat as I waited in Beltway traffic, calm despite the bumper-to-bumper backup.

And like the scribing book I’d received from Sabrina.

I know you’re ‘supposed’ to wait a couple of days after your first date to message a girl again. But the way I figured it, those rules were written for people with cell phones — not wizards with a magical book sitting on their nightstands next to their paperback horror novels and Nintendo Switch. Pretty much as soon as I’d arrived home, my curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to know if Sabrina’s magical book actually worked. So I’d written her a brief thank-you message, telling her I had a great time.

A few seconds after I wrote the words, they disappeared into the paper. My heart started pounding faster, and it only took fifteen or twenty seconds before a reply started to appear:

“I had a wonderful time, too! See you Tuesday!”

Underneath it was the impression of a pair of lips. Sabrina had actually kissed the page. That left me feeling all warm and fuzzy inside, and I hadn’t dared spoil it by bombarding her with dozens of messages the rest of the weekend. The book was still with me at all times, though.

What I had been dealing with were messages from the ‘mundane’ world. When I went incommunicado on Saturday, I wound up missing some texts from Will and his friends, wanting to get together for drinks. The fact that I didn’t respond worried some folks, and I wound up getting a number of calls I hadn’t paid any attention to while Sabrina and I were flirting up a storm in the Wand & Anchor.

Needless to say, this behavior wasn’t like good-old Edwin at all. My pals were worried about me.

Part of me had been tempted to just call them up and lay the whole thing out from beginning to end. After all, they’d seen the same thing that I did—that strange flash as the Subaru sank beneath the waves, saving all of us when we were on the verge of destruction. If anyone would believe my crazy story, warts and all, it was them. Or at least Will.

But I kept it to myself. Maybe I wanted to hold my cards close to my chest. Or maybe, just maybe, I didn’t want them to share in the glory. This was something nice that had happened to me, not any of them. For once.

I’d fobbed them off by telling them that I spent most of the weekend in bed. They understood, considering everything that we’d been through, but I knew it wouldn’t hold them at bay for much longer. Just last night, after everyone else gave up, I’d gotten a text message from Will telling me we needed to talk.

I knew what he wanted to talk about. Just like his friends, he wanted an explanation for what I’d done that night in the river. The only problem was, I still couldn’t tell him. Maybe when I understood my powers a little bit better, I’d be able to.

That’s what I told myself, anyway, as I took the exit off of the Beltway. The remainder of the drive to Blackwater was almost pleasant, and my stipend card worked to reserve a spot in one of the parking decks near the center of campus.

I was walking through Exeter-Cross on my way to my first class when my phone vibrated. I picked it up to see a new text from Jen, sent to our whole group:

Can’t focus on classes with everything that’s going on. You guys want lunch?

Before I had time to read the message, three dots appeared at the bottom. Everyone was typing at once:

Absolutely! Let’s hit up that diner near Edwin’s place!

My eyes narrowed. No way did they all respond to texts this quickly. There had to be something else going on here.

They want to interrogate me about that night, a little voice whispered in the back of my head. They’re not going to let it go. Not until they understand what they saw.

Well, I’d have to understand it, first.

What do you say, Edwin? That was Will. Got any lunch plans?

For some reason, the fact that he of all people dealt the final blow irritated me. Will was supposed to be on my side, not with those rich college kids. Doubtless he thought the ends justified that means: that I could use an afternoon out, a chance to socialize. He’d pay for my meal, of course, assuaging his guilt.

He didn’t yet know that I had no need of his money. Or Jen and Patrick’s ‘connections’.

I glanced up at the stony front of the engineering building as I passed. Unlike most of the structures on campus, this one wasn’t entangled with Blackwater at all: the wizards had set up no classrooms or lounges inside. The students who came in and out of the doors were pure Exeter-Cross, with the expensive clothes and attitudes to match.

A wicked idea occurred to me. Before I could think better of it, I took a quick selfie with the massive logo of Exeter-Cross in the background.

Sorry, guys, I wrote, sending the photo along with my text. Classes start today! Maybe sometime this weekend?

No one responded for a few moments. I swore I could feel their disbelief radiating through the phone.

Then the texts started coming in, one on top of the other.

Exeter-Cross!?

Holy shit, you’re a college boy now?

Dude, when were you going to tell us you were a secret millionaire?

That last one made me snicker. It’s a long story, I explained. I’ll tell you guys all about it. But later, okay?

They had to be satisfied with that. I knew that none of them were stupid: they could figure out how a guy like me had managed to get a pass into the halls of power. It had to do with that night in the river.

But that would keep them guessing about the details for a while yet. And I couldn’t help but feel a little gleeful at the fact that I had them on the back foot for once.

I made it to the lecture hall just in time. The hallways were packed with students; the bell would ring any minute, and after it did, teachers officially had the option to consider you late. Sabrina had assured me they almost never actually did that, but I didn’t want to find out the hard way that she was wrong.

The Introductory Beast Taming classroom was in the basement. I found the stairs and made my way down, the temperature dropping every few steps. Down here the hallways were wider, with store rooms for janitorial staff and the cafeteria crew jockeying for space with the few lecture halls beneath the first floor.

I immediately noticed the difference in the atmosphere. Upstairs, the students had been mostly from Exeter-Cross: down here, nearly all of them were budding witches and wizards. A few gave me odd glances as I walked by, which confused me until I realized that unlike them, I wore neither a Blackwater uniform nor a set of Ren Faire robes.

I’ll have to add a touch to my wardrobe to help me fit in better, I told myself. Maybe a wizard hat or something. Although that might look a little too much like a dunce cap…

Professor Fym’s lecture hall was the final one in the row, past a chilly server room and a space filled with pipes that probably provided heating to the building. A couple of students stood around outside, chatting before the first lesson began. One of them watched the hallway nervously, shifting from one foot to the other.

I smiled. That last one was Sabrina.

Her face lit up when she saw me. “Edwin!” she called, lifting a hand. “I thought you were going to be late!”

“I wouldn’t dare,” I told her. My phone buzzed in my pocket again, but I ignored it. Probably just Will peppering me with questions about Exeter-Cross. “I didn’t even know they held classes down here.”

“The mundane students have no idea,” Sabrina said with a smile. “Come on, I saved us a couple of seats in the back.”

I entered, following Sabrina. She wore her uniform, the same as the first day I’d met her, but she’d clearly put a bit more effort into her ‘look’ than she had before. Her hair was teased up, she’d applied lip gloss and eyeliner, and she’d swapped out the dowdy uniform dress for a shorter skirt and her black patent boots. She looked great, and I told her so.

“If you think flattering me’s going to let you crib off my notes, Mr. Sawyer, then you’re wrong,” Sabrina answered with a smile. “I do appreciate the compliment, though.”

A bird squawked.

I stiffened, wondering how my familiar had managed to get into the basement of the lecture building without me knowing. But it wasn’t Squawk: just a bird in a cage. Dozens of cages hung from the ceiling on thick black chains, and each contained a half-asleep creature. Some were birds, some looked like lizards, and a few—

My nostrils flared. A few of them were incredible.

A bird with iridescent feathers stood proudly in a cage on the far side of the room, and there were flames pouring off of it. Next to it, a skeletally thin beast that looked like a wolf hit with a shrink ray paced lazily back and forth before settling down in the straw and taking a snooze. The next one held a winged beast covered in scales—one I thought I recognized.

“Holy hell,” I whispered, stiffening in my seat. “Sabrina, is that a dragon?”

“Hmm?” The blonde didn’t look at all surprised by the baroque menagerie on display. “Oh, that’s a wyvern. A juvenile, by the looks of it. Professor Fym would never be able to fit a full-grown one in this classroom!”

My mouth went dry. “Um. Dragons are real?”

Sabrina blinked, thrown off guard, then let out a little laugh. “Shit, you really do have a lot to catch up on, don’t you?” she whispered. Though Professor Fym had yet to show up in the flesh, the students were already anticipating his arrival, turning down the volume on their conversations. “I really should have spent more time catching you up this weekend. I’m sorry, Edwin. I’ve had a lot of prep work to do…”

“That’s totally cool,” I assured her, staring at the dragon. Wyvern. Whatever. It blinked at me, extending a tongue that was about twice as long as that guy from Kiss’s, except this one brought with it a puff of acrid smoke. “Just tell me one thing.”

“Whatever you want,” she purred, not even realizing how she sounded.

“We were talking about H.P. Lovecraft earlier,” I said in a low voice. “Cthulhu doesn’t actually exist, does he?”

Sabrina let out a disbelieving laugh. “What? Of course not! There’s no giant tentacle monsters living under the sea!”

Something inside of me relaxed. “Okay, good,” I said, tearing my attention off of the cages. “I was a little worried that—”

“There’s no room for him with all the sea dragons,” Sabrina added with a smile.

My heart jumped into my throat. “Wait, what?”

Before Sabrina could answer me, a woman stepped into the hall. She wore long, flowing robes the color of a forest floor—the longer I looked at them, the more they reminded me of a really fancy version of those camouflage patterns hunters wear. Bits of brown and auburn blended with shades of viridian, forming a tapestry that gave such fancy dress a strangely earthy vibe.

Her hair was long and blonde, the color of wheat. A single long braid hung down her back, in intricate curls that must have taken hours to get just right. Or maybe a magic spell in the morning handled it for her.

She took in the class with piercing azure eyes, a set of books under her arm. On her shoulder perched a purple, fox-like creature with a single hooked wing. It looked like it was asleep, but I wasn’t fooled. That must be her familiar.

“Good morning, class,” the woman said, walking to the front of the lecture hall. “My name is Professor Fym, and I’ll be your instructor for Introductory Beast Taming this semester.”

“Huh,” I muttered. “I thought Professor Fym was a guy…”

I thought I’d said it quietly enough not to be heard, but suddenly Professor Fym’s penetrating gaze was right on me. I froze, realizing the insult.

She held my gaze for a long moment, and I felt certain I was about to get blasted with some kind of spell. Then the corner of her mouth curled in a smirk, and she turned her attention back to the class at hand.

Relief flooded me. Having her staring at me like that was like sitting beneath the Eye of Sauron. Sabrina glanced over at me, concerned, and took my hand beneath the table. Shh, she mouthed.

I decided to take her advice.

“Before we begin, I want to tackle a question some of you may have about this class. Sooner or later, someone in nearly all of my classes eventually voices this concern, and so I’d rather address it here and now, head on, rather than have it spoken to my back at some point in the future.”

I swallowed hard. Had I done something wrong?

“Some people,” she began, “consider Beast Taming a lesser discipline than the others you’ll be learning at Blackwater University. Your parents and friends might even have expressed the same sentiment when talking about college. ‘Beast Taming is half-mundane’, or ‘there’s no magical skill involved in working with beasts’. They might have even implied that those of us in the discipline are little more than the janitors at your local zoo, just with a magical twist.”

By the time she paused, half the class wore grimaces. I’d never heard anything like that, of course—I hadn’t known magic existed until a few days ago—but evidently, the prejudice Professor Fym spoke about was common among the witchcraft set.

“I want you to take that notion out of your head right here and now,” she commanded. “Beast Taming isn’t just about playing with phoenixes or loitering with lynxes. The strides we’ve made in domesticating magical creatures have made life easier for hundreds of thousands of witches, wizards and warlocks: but we must never forget the before times! When seven-headed dragons reigned in the British Isles, who tamed the beasts and turned them into the lynchpin of our medieval economy? When our Lyceum sends expeditions to the far-flung corners of the world, whom do they rely on to ensure the local flora and fauna won’t send fireballs at their backs when they’re not looking?”

No one had a good answer to that.

“We think of magical beasts in terms of pets and familiars,” Professor Fym said firmly. “But it was not always so. And if we are not vigilant—if Beast Tamers are not treated with the respect they deserve and allowed to ply their craft—those times may very well return.”

The whole room looked chastened. I hadn’t realized there were such divisions in the magical world. I guess I’d expected them to be a lot more advanced than ordinary mortals. But people would be people, even when they could do magic.

“Anyway,” Professor Fym said, cracking a smile. “This year, you’re going to learn all about beasts. How to tame them, how to identify them in the wild. And, God forbid, what to do if some powerful creature like a griffin or a greater gremlin sets its sights on you as its prey.”

The atmosphere in the room lightened. Professor Fym clapped her hands.

“Let’s try to have some fun, shall we? Please open your textbooks to page thirty-five. The introduction is blasted boring, so we’ll start with the good stuff.”

Thankfully I’d prepared for this. The correct books for each of my classes lay inside the backpack I’d purchased on Monday, practically stretching the seams. I pulled the Beast Taming tome out and placed it on the table in front of me, trying to keep my hands away from the curses grimoire I needed for Professor Dragovich’s class. That one gave me a weird feeling whenever I looked at it.

Next to me, Sabrina set her textbook on the table. Somehow, she already had a bookmark on the right page. Clever girl, I thought.

“Alright,” Professor Fym said. “Let’s see what I have to work with.” She looked around the room, her gaze finally settling on… me. “You there!”

“Me?” I blurted.

“Here’s a gimme question,” Fym said, that smirk back on her features. “Say you find a clutch of pixies in your backyard. What offering would you leave out at midnight to ensure they protect your domicile instead of moving items from their proper places?”

I swallowed hard. This was probably the sort of thing magical kids grew up learning along with their ABCs. Sabrina was trying hard to catch my eye, mouthing words behind her hand like she could give me an assist without the professor knowing.

Fuck it, I thought with a sigh. “I have no idea.”

Snickers of laughter filled the room. That really must have been an easy one.

Even Professor Fym, who’d undoubtedly set out to humiliate me, looked surprised. “Not even a shot in the dark?”

I shook my head.

Fym frowned. “Let me guess. The salt and the bread went missing a lot in your house…?”

A number of students found this funny. Sabrina gave me a pained look.

“Not really,” I shot back, unable to keep the scorn from my voice. “We didn’t really have pixies where I grew up.”

The professor scoffed. “Where on Earth was that, then? Shangri-La?”

I was about to ask if she was joking or if that was really a real place when Sabrina spoke up. “Excuse me, Professor Fym—he’s not a natural-born wizard.” She flashed an awkward smile, her cheeks going beet-red as the eyes of the class turned to her. “He doesn’t know these things…”

Fym’s wheat-blonde brows furrowed together, as thick and furry as harvest bushels. “He can speak for himself,” she said sharply. “What’s your name, student? Stand up for the class, please.”

Shit. I’d been in enough classrooms to know that I was about to be made an example of. I doubted this would be pleasant.

I got out of my seat. “I’m Edwin Sawyer, Professor Fym,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. I’d already decided not to play her game. “Do you have a last name?”

A few students let out surprised noises. Fym’s eyes widened a fraction, though in anger or amusement I couldn’t tell.

“Your parents are partials?” she asked, ignoring my questions.

I laughed. “My parents are boomers,” I said. “One’s a retired mailman, the other worked as a receptionist in a doctor’s office. Neither of them had a drop of magical blood in their bodies.” I stared her down, unwilling to feel the shame she wanted me to display. “I didn’t know any of this existed until about a week ago.”

Everyone was staring at me now. I felt like I stood under a spotlight.

“Then what on Earth are you doing at Blackwater?” Professor Fym chortled.

My hands balled into fists.

“Your Headmaster invited me,” I said, unable to keep the anger and dripping condescension out of my voice. “Lavrans Ravensson.”

Students gasped. Even Fym looked taken aback.

“Clearly he saw something in me that you do not,” I snarled, nearly reaching out to scoop up my textbook before thinking better of it. “Do you spend your first lecture interrogating all of your students this way, Professor Fym? Or do you just pick someone you think is weak because they don’t look like the others, and won’t stand up to you?”

Someone groaned like they were watching a car crash. Next to me, Sabrina watched me in mingled fear and awe, like she wished she had half the courage I was displaying.

Professor Fym glared at me for a long moment, waiting for me to say something else. To apologize, to fall all over myself—in other words, to break. I didn’t. I waited.

And after a few seconds, she smiled.

“You, young man,” she said, tugging her braid, “have exactly the attitude I’m looking for.”

The entire class relaxed as one. I’d been ready to defend myself against words (or possibly spells), and it took me a second to readjust.

“Too many students are… passive creatures,” Fym said, wiggling her hand back and forth in the universal hand sign for mediocrity. “But passivity won’t work in the jungle or on the Arctic tundra. If a yeti senses an ounce of fear in you, or a crimson stinger sees a bead of sweat rolling down your temple, you’re in for a very bad time.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You mean to tell me you insulted me as a compliment?” I blurted. “To see if I ‘have what it takes’ to be a Beast Tamer? That’s what you expect me to believe?”

The amused look fell off of Professor Fym’s face. “I don’t give a good god damn what you believe, Mr. Sawyer. This is my class, and while we’re all in it, I get to conduct the lesson however I feel like.” Now she crossed her arms beneath her breasts. No man in the class could fail to notice how big they were when not hidden beneath the forest-colored fabric. “Tell me something. You see that cage over there?”

She pointed. Inside sat a creature the color of granite, with scaled skin the color of an elephant’s hide and a spiny, arrow-like head. As the class turned to look at it, it leaned back and flapped its stubby wings, which looked too heavy to lift it off the ground. A brusque little cry broke from its throat.

It knows we’re all looking at it, I thought. More than that, it knows where it is. This thing is smart, the way Squawk is smart. A familiar in training?

A little brass tag on the front of the cage bore the inscription: Stone Dragon, 1 yr.

I nodded.

“You stood up to me without fear,” Professor Fym said, the smirk back on her face. “If I bring you up to the front of class and open this cage in front of you, are you going to stand up and meet the challenge? Or will you start your first day at Blackwater by running screaming from my class?”

Students shared worried glances. I couldn’t help but wonder how many of them would have volunteered to be Professor Fym’s first guinea pig.

The stone dragon let out a blast of steam from its nostrils. The creature looked supremely uninterested in all the commotion in the room, like a starlet who just wants to be left alone. Put a pair of dark sunglasses and a bathrobe on the beast, and it could have doubled as a pop star at the end of her world tour.

It’s made of stone, I thought, bracing myself. That means it’s heavy. And slow?

Probably slow. I couldn’t be in that much danger, right? Professor Fym wouldn’t do anything that could really get a student injured. No institute of higher learning in the world would stand for something like that.

But then again, most colleges didn’t have magical healers on staff. How much damage could that beast do to me before they’d have to break a sweat patching me up?

I marshalled my courage and glanced over at Sabrina.

She had both her hands clasped together beneath her breasts, her eyes as wide as saucers. Her bottom lip trembled, but the way she was looking at me was like… like…

A hero, I realized.

Fuck it. What did I have to lose?

“Alright,” I told the Professor. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

Professor Fym smiled. “Come on down, Mr. Sawyer. Class, for our first lesson, I’m going to show you the necessary qualities it takes to be a truly great Beast Tamer. Mr. Sawyer has graciously agreed to be a willing test subject.” Then she grinned wickedly. “If he fails, we may be forced to end our first lecture a little early…”

Hell. What had I just gotten myself into?

Chapter Ten

As I made my way down to the front of Professor Fym’s class, I found myself thinking about the difference between bravery and courage.

Bravery, like I’d told Sabrina, was acting fearlessly in the moment — not letting yourself get wrapped up in your own head, and letting your instincts take control. Courage was doing the same thing even when you had time to be afraid.

And stupidity was putting your life on the line against a creature you’d never seen before, just because a teacher pissed you off and a pretty girl you have a crush on was cheering you on.

A few students did cheer as I made my way to the front of the hall. But I think most of them were just waiting to see if I made it out of this in one piece. Most first lectures were boring and dry, little more than going over the syllabus and talking about the attendance policy. This promised an unexpected entertainment.

Once I was up front, Professor Fym produced a long, slender wand. It didn’t look at all like the one on the logo of the Wand & Anchor. That one was gnarled and solid; Fym’s looked like the branch of a weeping willow that fell from a tree in the middle of winter. When she flicked it, it cracked like a whip.

A rumble shot through the floor. Someone shouted in alarm, and several students grabbed hold of their benches and went pale.

The wood beneath me split. Suddenly I was no longer looking up at the students in their rows: first I was looking straight at them, then above them. The floor had become a platform, lifting me six or seven feet into the air until I could almost touch the ceiling of the lecture hall if I stuck my hands in the air and jumped.

This brought me almost eye level with the classroom’s cages. Up here I could see the creatures in them more clearly, and what I saw scared the living hell out of me. Beasts that had looked almost normal from my seat showed clear signs of being fiercer and more dangerous than they first appeared. That glittering phoenix had a beak as sharp as a diamond and murder in its eyes; in the cage behind me, something gray and dripping moved wetly across the straw, slumping across the iron bars.

“You alright up there?” Professor Fym had moved to the top stair of the classroom’s rear wall. She stood almost close enough to Sabrina to put her hand on the coed’s shoulder. “Remember, Mr. Sawyer, if you change your mind we can end this at any time. I’ll see if I can get another volunteer—”

“Not a chance,” I snapped. I understood Professor Fym’s game now, and I wasn’t about to back down.

She hadn’t chosen me to get peppered with questions at the beginning of her lecture on accident. She’d picked me on purpose. She knew I’d been chosen by the headmaster of the whole university to go to college here, and she probably wanted to know what the hell he’d been thinking when he decided to give a free ride to a guy like me.

She wanted to find out if I was really special, or just lucky.

I knew the answer to that. And today, I was going to show it to this entire class.

Students whispered to each other, staring up at the raised platform. “Did he really say Headmaster Ravensson invited him to campus?” someone hissed.

“I bet he’s a partial,” someone else snickered. “This is probably all part of some elaborate humiliation ritual the teachers go through every year…”

“Maybe the Black Moon’s involved,” someone else added. “You think?”

The what? I tried to look to see who’d said that, but everyone had their hands over their mouths. In the back of the auditorium, Sabrina appeared to be praying for me.

That cheered me up somewhat. But given that she wore a pentagram on date night, it made me wonder just who she was praying to.

Professor Fym snapped her wand like a whip. “Mr. Sawyer! In a moment, the cage containing the stone dragon is going to open! When it does, I want you to be ready!”

Fuck! This wasn’t at all what I’d pictured when I thought about my first class at Blackwater!

Alright, Edwin, I told myself. Calm down. Focus. You survived a car crash; you can survive this. Besides, Professor Fym wouldn’t put you through this if it was really dangerous. Right?

“I’d like to be ready, too!” I said, laughing. “You maybe want to tell me what the hell it is I’m supposed to do?”

Several students laughed at that. If I was about to die, at least I was going to go out with a receptive audience. I had that to keep me going through the fear, if nothing else.

Professor Fym chuckled. “I intend to.”

I stiffened, my heart skipping a beat. I could hear her speaking gently from the floor, standing at the back of the desks—yet at the same time, her words sounded as if they came six inches from my left ear. Like she’d teleported up here to speak to me directly.

“Don’t fall, Mr. Sawyer.” Professor Fym kept right on talking. She must have noticed the way I nearly lost my balance from the shock. “If you listen to everything I have to say, you should make it out of this introductory lecture without a scratch. Can you do that?” I could feel her shit-eating grin. “Listen, rather than yell at my entire class?”

“I’m listening now,” I said, my eyes on the cage. It swung gently back and forth, the stone dragon inside practically insensate. “Tell me what to do.”

From the back of the stands, Professor Fym raised her voice so that her students could hear her loud and clear. “The stone dragon is a powerful creature, but skittish! The dragon’s anger is slow to rouse, particularly when in a juvenile form. Provided that Mr. Sawyer does nothing to antagonize it and makes no sudden movements, he should have a window of several minutes to attempt to tame the beast!”

Tame? The damn dragon looked pretty tame already. If we weren’t all staring at it, it probably would have been asleep. Was I supposed to make it even tamer somehow?

“Alright, Mr. Sawyer,” Professor Fym said. I swore I could feel her words caressing my ear, and suddenly I was painfully aware of how nice her body had looked for those five seconds she’d drawn her dress tightly across her bust. “A stone dragon is not the easiest beast in the world to tame, but it’s far from the most difficult. Here is what I want you to do.”

I listened. And prepared myself.

“In a few moments, that cage is going to open,” she said into my ear. “When it does, I want you to remain perfectly still. Do not run. But also, do not go to the creature. The time is not yet right.”

That wasn’t going to be a problem. I felt no urge to run up to the big stone beast and give it a hug. That felt too much like suicide.

“Okay,” I muttered, keeping my voice low. “You can hear me too, I’m guessing?”

I saw her nod from a distance. “As clearly as if you were standing right next to me.”

So whatever enchantment this was, it worked both ways. Good to know.

“Alright. So is this something that happens every year, and I just ended up drawing the short straw this go around? Or am I just that lucky?”

I could feel her smile against my ear. “This is a regular part of the curriculum,” she admitted. “As Headmaster Ravensson considers you important enough to bring into our organization on such short notice, I decided I should also see what all the fuss is about.”

The cage door swung open on its hinges. The stone dragon’s head lifted as it realized it was free, then it took a hesitant step towards the edge of its enclosure. Its head poked out, its pink tongue tasting the air.

“Alright,” Professor Fym said, her voice tightening. “Just keep your eyes on it for right now. Let it step outside of the cage and adjust to its newfound freedom. Once it’s comfortable, you can approach—”

The stone dragon shot like a rocket out of the opened cage.

Screams filled the classroom. Students hit the deck in their shock, even though the creature wasn’t going for any of them. It charged across the raised platform, stubby wings outstretched, its mouth snapping open and shut like a guillotine.

Jesus Christ!

I threw myself at the ground. The stone dragon’s jaws snapped down on the spot where I’d been standing just a moment ago, its fangs flashing like knives. It hopped right past me and landed on the edge of the platform, hitting it so hard that the beast slid like a baseball player going for home plate.

I sprang back up to my feet. “Was it supposed to do that?”

“Hang on!” That was Professor Fym, who was racing down the stairs towards the front of the lecture hall. “I’m coming to subdue the beast!”

That didn’t give me much hope. Fym was all the way down there, and I was all the way up here. On a platform too high to jump off of, with a mad beast I’d been told was docile and friendly.

The stone dragon spun on its heels, hissing at me. Pure rage flashed in the beast’s eyes as it charged like a linebacker across the platform, claws extended. A roar broke from its throat, loud enough to send the students in the front rows running for the exits.

“Remain calm!” Fym yelled. “Don’t run! It will only make the beast angry—!”

The beast was already plenty angry. It came in at me again and again, snapping those massive jaws. Lacking a weapon or any magical training, I backed away, ducking and diving, staying just far enough out of reach to keep its teeth from taking a chunk out of my hide.

Then it grabbed a chunk of my jacket.

The fabric tore, but the damage had already been done. The tug caused me to lose my balance, and I slid to the floor of the raised platform. My head smacked the wood, and I saw stars.

A moment later, the dragon’s head filled the world. It looked down at me and let out another one of those pained, rage-filled roars, so loud that I swore I saw the air ripple in front of its maw. My ears rang, and I felt something wet trickling down the side of my head.

Ruptured eardrum, I thought, staring up at the monster. Kind of a small issue considering everything else that I’m dealing with…

Fym began climbing the platform, striking it with her whiplike wand. Later on, Sabrina would tell me that every strike left an indentation in the wood, deep enough for the professor to use them as hand and footholds to reach the top. Why she didn’t just send the whole thing down to ground level with a snap of her fingers was beyond me — that seemed like the easier option.

Actually, in a cynical part of my brain, I knew why. Because up here on the raised platform, the stone dragon could only get to me. Bringing it down to floor level would have exposed every other student in that classroom to whatever the monster could do.

Smoke poured from the stone dragon’s mouth as it roared in my face. It washed over me in a cloud that made me cough, and left my face and hands tingling like I’d washed them with novocaine. What the hell?

“What did you do to me?” I yelled, trying and failing to shove the creature backward. “You fucking freak—!”

A massive foot came down on top of me. I grabbed it with both hands, holding it inches from my chest. Vicious black claws extended from the toes, sharp enough to cut right through my clothes and puncture my heart.

The dragon pushed with more weight. And more.

My vision began to blur. The creature was heavy, but it wasn’t that heavy—and it hadn’t reached anything like its adult size. A full-grown man should have been able to shove it back, but I couldn’t.

Every passing second sapped my strength.

When I looked down at my hands, I realized why. A gray tinge covered my skin, growing deeper and darker by the moment. The fingers were already halfway numb, and my face wasn’t far behind.

Stone dragon, I realized with horror. It must be able to turn people to stone. To petrify them…

No wonder Fym didn’t want it among the other students!

As the darkness enclosed on the edges of my vision, I had a sad realization. By keeping this beast occupied up here while Fym climbed the raised platform, I’d probably saved some lives in the classroom. For the second time this week, I could properly be called a hero.

Only this time, I wouldn’t live long enough for anyone to thank me for it.

The creature pushed, and my head slammed against the wooden boards again. I saw stars, with the monster’s big clawed toes poking through them. Each talon looked as sharp as a dagger and longer than my hand.

Except for one, which was short and stubby. And… red?

In fact, it was glowing.

With a start, I realized the thing wasn’t part of the creature at all. It had some kind of thorn in its foot — a glowing crimson thorn that pulsed like a second heartbeat. Veins of red and black extended from the wound, thrumming all through the creature’s leg and up into its groin.

It’s hurt, I thought weakly. Something’s maddened it…

With my last ounce of strength, I grabbed that sharp red shard with my free hand and tugged it free. The second it was out, a brilliant red flash of light filled the classroom.

Somebody screamed.

And I went unconscious.

Chapter Eleven

“Edwin? Edwin!”

I groaned, stirring in my slumber. Water washed over me—black water, just a degree or two above freezing, and I couldn’t get above the waves no matter how I tried. Something dark and angry sucked me beneath the surface, grinning as it opened a maw wider than the Grand Canyon…

“He’s going to be okay! I told you, just give him a minute…!”

A wave of warmth washed over me. The taste of mint filled the back of my throat, and the horrors of the cold black water retreated. With it came the knowledge that I was safe, that I was above ground, and that I’d been having a terrible dream about the accident—one that would probably keep recurring for a good long while.

My eyes opened.

What felt like a hundred people surrounded me. Most of them were students, but a couple wore the fancy robes favored by the campus’s educators. The one thing that united them all were their near-identical looks of fear and concern.

“Hey,” I managed to say. “How long was I out?”

Two of the heads stepped away, replaced with the crying face of a girl I recognized. Sabrina.

“Edwin!” the girl shrieked, throwing her arms around me. “Oh my God, baby! You’re alright! You’re gonna be just fine, okay?”

She looked almost worse off than me. Tears streamed down Sabrina’s pretty face, and the makeup she’d put so much effort into for me had been all messed up. I didn’t mind one bit. Just seeing her felt like a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day.

“Are you okay?” I asked, putting an arm around her waist.

Just then, it hit me that I’d moved my arm.

I lifted them both, putting them on either side of Sabrina’s head. The gray tinge I’d seen after the stone dragon spit up all that acrid smoke on my face and arms was gone, as if it had never been there. I flexed my fingers experimentally, testing to see if that pins and needles feeling would come back. It didn’t.

“The dragon!” I said, nearly sitting up in Sabrina’s arms. “Where is it…?”

“The stone dragon has been placed back into its cage,” a stern voice said. “And moved into a high-security storage facility for dangerous creatures. I expect it will stay there for the rest of the semester.”

Professor Fym extended a hand to me, offering to help me to my feet. After another quick hug from Sabrina, I took it.

“Don’t try to walk,” Fym warned me. “Come over here and sit, Mr. Sawyer. With what you’ve just been through, you might be disoriented for the next few minutes…”

The aisles were packed. Dimly, I noticed that the benches seemed to have way more students sitting at them than they had when class began, but I couldn’t think about it too clearly. Two people who’d been sitting down cleared out as Fym led me to the bench, and I managed to sit down on it without too much trouble.

What I saw made me gasp.

The whole front of the auditorium looked like a disaster area. Whatever enchantment Professor Fyg had used to conjure up the elevated platform in the middle of the stage must have been forgotten in the fight with the stone dragon. It had collapsed inward on itself, turning the formerly smooth floor into a pile of rubble. Some of the rafters had cracked, dangling inward in a way that made me wonder if the floor above us wasn’t in danger of buckling.

Fym stood in front of it, with a half-dozen men and women in robes flanking her on either side. Half of them looked exhausted, while the others looked like they’d been trying to keep order until I regained consciousness.

Sabrina walked over and sat down next to me on the bench. Without a hint of her usual self-consciousness, she threw her arms around me and buried her face against my shoulder.

Huh, I thought. Nothing like a near-death experience to get a girl to show her true feelings, I guess…

Professor Fym did her best not to notice the way Sabrina clung to me. She ran her hands over me, doing a passable impression of a doctor. Only when she leaned in close and opened my eyelids wider with her fingers did I flinch away, swearing.

“You seem like you’re doing okay,” she said, tugging her braid. “How are you feeling, Mr. Sawyer?”

How was I feeling? “Like I’ve been run over by a truck,” I grunted.

“I was so scared,” Sabrina whispered. She sat up straight, but kept her hands in mine. If any girls saw my heroic antics and thought they might be able to flirt with me, having Sabrina practically in my lap definitely dissuaded them from that notion. “You should never have been up there with that beast, Edwin! It’s your first day!”

I shook my head. “The stone dragon was fine,” I said, flashing back through the fight. “Like Fym said, it’s normally not like that. It only went crazy because—”

“A full investigation will be conducted into this incident,” Fym said firmly. “You don’t need to concern yourself with any of that, Mr. Sawyer.”

I opened my mouth.

And Fym’s azure eyes stared into me like daggers.

“The beast was in a bad mood,” the professor said through gritted teeth. “I didn’t see the signs before I opened the cage. The fault rests with me, Mr. Sawyer. You have my sincere apology for placing you in such a dangerous situation.”

I searched those eyes. She knows, I realized. She knows about the thorn.

Why wouldn’t she let me talk about it?

Still staring at me, Fym gave her head an almost imperceptible shake. Later, she mouthed, showing me her teeth.

I glanced past her to the men and women in robes. They spoke in low tones, putting their heads together. None of them looked particularly dangerous, but all of a sudden I found myself looking at them with new eyes.

That stone dragon hadn’t accidentally stepped on a shard like that. Someone punctured its foot on purpose.

Why? Why deliberately turn a docile, easy-to-tame creature into a rampaging monster?

The answer struck me like a slap in the face. To hurt me. Maybe even to make sure I didn’t walk out of this classroom alive.

A chill shot down my spine. I looked up into Fym’s eyes, my arm around Sabrina’s waist, and nodded. “I accept your apology. You couldn’t possibly have known the creature was going to do that.”

The blonde woman relaxed a fraction. “Still, the responsibility was mine. I should have been looking out for you and the other students.”

I waved off her apologies. “It’s really fine.”

“Dude.” The rest of the class sat in a hush; only a very brave or very foolish student would have raised their voice to speak. “You fought a dragon!”

Other people started to whisper. The robed figures shot them dirty looks, but they didn’t call for silence. They let it continue.

Sabrina put her hand on my cheek. She looked star-struck and had been since I’d opened my eyes. “If you hadn’t kept that dragon busy while Professor Fym climbed up the platform and subdued it, it would have attacked the whole room,” the witch whispered. “It might even have gotten out of the classroom and made its way through campus, turning kids to stone left and right! Edwin… you saved us!”

I didn’t know about all that. But I’d definitely made one hell of a first impression.

Students were getting up out of their seats, milling about now that the risk of my imminent demise had ended. A couple of the robed figures stepped away from the crowd, staring up at the broken sections of the ceiling as they rolled up their sleeves. They discussed what to do about the damage in low tones, their words peppered with exotic words and phrases I’d never heard of.

Spells, I thought. Those were the names of spells.

“I wouldn’t worry about the classroom,” Professor Fym said. She must have seen my expression and misjudged what I’d been thinking. “Our kinetic mages are quite good. They’ll have the foundation shored up before anyone from the mundane world even notices the difference.”

“Good,” I said. “Can I, um… can I speak to you in private for a minute?”

Fym stiffened. “I don’t think that would be a good idea at the moment,” she said. “Perhaps later, when I have office hours, you and I can discuss today’s events.”

I understood. Fym would talk to me about the strange thorn, or shard, or whatever it was that had been stabbed into the stone dragon’s foot. But not here. And not now. Not with all these people around, in any case.

Sabrina hugged me tighter. “You’re not going anywhere,” she whispered. Her tone made me melt. “Nuh uh.”

I was going to need her to let me go sooner or later. But for right now, it felt good to have her in my arms. Damn good. Maybe I really was something of a hero.

Two of the robed figures broke off from the pack and approached. “Edwin Sawyer?” one asked.

I reluctantly turned my attention away from Sabrina. A tall man stood before me with an angular face and a severe expression. A shock of brilliant white hair stuck up from his head like the plume of a pen. I got the sense no one would have dared joke about it to his face, though.

“Archibald Frantz,” he said, extending a hand. “I’m with campus security. Are you feeling alright?”

No warmth filled his tone. When I first saw Lavrans walk into my hospital room after the accident, I’d assumed he was a cop, and I’d been wrong. This time I was certain. This man’s job title might have read security in some file cabinet in the administrative offices, but everything about his tone and his bearing screamed at me like a police siren.

“I’m fine,” I lied, ignoring my lingering dizziness. “Feeling great, actually.”

He let out a harrumph. When he looked right at me, I noticed that his eyes were two different colors—one icy blue, the other nearly as red as the crimson thorn that had maddened the stone dragon. The blue one looked glassy and fake.

“Our healers were able to reach you quickly, before the worst of the petrification set in.” Frantz nodded in the direction of the other robed figures, all of whom were trying their best to pretend they weren’t eavesdropping on our conversation. “You may notice a bit of stiffness in your limbs for the next few days. A temporary change in your gait is also not uncommon. These things will pass.”

I nodded. I felt certain they would, though I hadn’t noticed any aftereffects from the stone dragon’s attack. I wondered if Sabrina would mind a little stiffness, considering the way she clung to me.

“I would like to have you examined,” Frantz continued in that strange accent of his. “Just to ensure that there are no lingering effects from the petrification. If you would follow me…”

Suddenly Sabrina clung to me tighter. Next to me, Professor Fym’s expression fell.

Yeah, I thought, suspicion rising in me like a cloud. I don’t feel like doing that.

Something told me if I went off with this man, it wouldn’t be medical care on the top of his mind. More like a police interrogation. Normally I wouldn’t have seen anything wrong with that—after all, I hadn’t done anything to be nervous about.

But thinking about that strange red shard sent spikes of panic through my guts. Someone had done that on purpose. Someone had done that to hurt me.

Who could do such a thing?

“I’m fine,” I assured the man. “Really.”

Frantz smiled a thin-lipped smile. “I’m afraid I really must insist,” he said, cocking his head to the side. “What happened today was highly unusual. An introductory class for first-year students nearly caused a campus-wide catastrophe. There are questions that will need to be answered—”

A speaker in the ceiling crackled with static. My gaze shot upward, along with about three dozen other students.

“Good morning, Blackwater students and faculty,” a smooth voice said. Instantly I recognized it as Lavrans. “I trust that we’ve all been having a safe and productive beginning to the fall semester.”

I couldn’t help but snicker. Productive, sure, but safe? Not a chance.

“Can mundanes hear that?” one of the students asked, jerking a thumb in the direction of the ceiling.

Fym shook her head. “If they’re hearing anything at all right now, it's just a noise. Like pipes clanking in the walls.”

I wondered what that might sound like to ordinary students. But not for too long, because Headmaster Ravensson was already speaking again.

“In recognition of the beginning of another season of opportunity on campus, I’d like to invite all of our students to the Great Hall. I will be giving a brief speech about our goals for this year at Blackwater, and also greeting the newest members of our student body. Refreshments will be provided.”

“A speech?” Sabrina gave me a confused look. “That’s out of the ordinary.”

“In addition the afternoon class period for today has been cancelled,” the headmaster said with an audible smile. “I look forward to seeing each of you there.”

Another burst of static traveled over the line, and the speaker went silent.

There was a moment of silence when Headmaster Ravensson’s address ended. Then everyone started speaking at once.

Younger students started asking older ones questions. Professor Fym frowned at me as if I’d somehow caused the unorthodox announcement to come over the airwaves, while Frantz simply stared up at the speaker with an inscrutable expression.

Then he muttered something. The rest of the class couldn’t hear it, but I was close enough to pick it out. “What is that man playing at…?”

Suddenly Sabrina sat up. “Edwin, can you stand? I’ll help you get to the Great Hall. I mean, I know you could probably just follow the crowds, but it’ll be easier if you have some help.”

Frantz turned, his red eye whirling in its socket. The blue one moved not at all; it looked like a piece of glass.

“Mr. Sawyer is needed,” he protested. “He requires a full medical evaluation after his incident with the stone dragon. And there are questions about the creature’s containment break that I would like some answers to—”

“You heard the Headmaster,” Sabrina snapped. There was more steel in her words than I’d ever heard from her before. “All students and teachers are to come to the Great Hall for Headmaster Ravensson’s speech. That includes Edwin.”

Wow. Where was that shy, blushing girl I’d taken to the Wand & Anchor? Sabrina’s hand closed on mine in a way that was almost possessive as she stared the ‘security’ officer down. I waited for one of them to blink, fully aware the person with only one eye would probably hold out the longest.

Frantz looked back at the robed figures behind him, as if trying to work out whether or not they could grab and subdue me before I put up a fuss. Then his gaze traveled back to Sabrina, saw the way she glared, and he let out an irritated pfft.

“Very well,” Frantz grumbled. “But if Mr. Sawyer experiences any untoward side-effects, you will be responsible for his well-being!”

Sabrina grinned. “Gladly.”

Before I could protest, she hauled me to my feet. The room spun around me, the ground seeming to shift beneath my feet—yet I didn’t dare give Frantz or any of his lackeys a sign that I was still disoriented. They’d probably use it as an excuse to keep me detained.

With my arm across Sabrina’s shoulders, I managed to escape the classroom before something untoward happened. Whispers followed me, most of them amazed.

“You okay?” Sabrina glanced over at me, speaking through her teeth. “I can take you somewhere to sit down where those jerks won’t see if you need me to.”

I shook my head. “I’m already feeling better. Honest.”

To my surprise, it was true. The dizzy feeling I’d been fighting since regaining consciousness faded with each step, like my body had just been waiting to ‘walk off’ the effects of the stone dragon. Part of me wondered—was I lucky, or were my powers protecting me somehow?

I supposed I’d figure it out eventually.

The corner of Sabrina’s mouth curled in a grin. “Sorry about making a scene back there,” she said, letting me stand up on my own. “I just can’t stand it when people talk down to my friends. After the way you saved that classroom, the security team should be thanking you! Not interrogating you!”

“Your friend?”

The blush Sabrina managed to hold back during her argument with Frantz came back with a vengeance. “You know what I mean,” she said in a lower voice. Then she pressed her lips together. “That’s if you still want me after half the campus throws their panties at you…”

Huh! “Sabrina, what are you talking about?”

We stepped out into the warm sunshine, followed by nearly the entire student body. Everyone looked happy to have the unexpected half-day holiday. The few college kids from Exeter-Cross out on the green at this hour found themselves frowning, the mental illusion created by the magical barrier between their college and ours stretched to its limit by the sheer number of robe-wearing and uniform-clad witches and wizards.

Sabrina laughed as we stepped to the side to let a guy on one of those goofy Segway things pass us on the sidewalk. “You must still be punch-drunk from the dragon, Edwin. You didn’t see the way the other witches in Fym’s class were looking at you when you kept that monster from reaching the rest of the students. I bet by the time Headmaster Ravensson finishes his speech, the story will have made it all the way around campus.”

Embellished all to hell, no doubt, I thought. By the time I hear it come from somebody else’s lips, they’ll probably say I stole Professor Fym’s wand and felled the beast in single combat…

Still, what Sabrina said left me feeling confused. “You sound almost happy about that,” I said, frowning at her.

The blonde shrugged. “Every guy in that classroom wishes they were you,” she said, putting her arm through mine. “And every girl wishes she was with you. You’re about to become a pretty popular guy, Edwin.”

“I don’t need to be popular,” I insisted.

This was getting stranger and stranger. Call me naive, but I’d kind of thought I already had Sabrina locked down. Sure, I didn’t own her, and we hadn’t done much other than go on a friendly dinner and exchange a quick smooch in the lobby of her dorm. But that meant something to me. I was interested in taking things further with her, and I’d gotten the distinct impression that she wanted that just as much as I did.

So why joke about other girls hitting on me?

“Oh,” I said, putting my free hand around her waist. “I get it!”

Sabrina blinked. “Get what, Edwin?”

I favored her with my most winning grin—the same one I’d deployed at the party Will dragged me to the night my life stopped making sense. “Girls don’t want a guy who isn’t wanted by any other girls,” I said, feeling like I’d cracked the code. “You’re excited by the competition. You know you’re making all those other girls jealous. You know, like the ones who called you teen witch—”

Suddenly Sabrina was out of my arms.

Losing the feel of her against me was like being dunked in cold water. Moreso for the fact that I still wasn’t entirely stable on my feet; she’d been helping keep me upright more than she knew.

“What?” I asked, swaying gently. We’d fallen behind the flood of students pouring out of the lecture halls, and now we had the green almost totally to ourselves. The few Exeter-Cross students standing around didn’t seem interested in listening to our conversation. “Did I say something wrong?”

Her expression remained unreadable. “I just…”

A cold fist gripped my guts. I didn’t like that tone. “Just what?”

Her lips formed a tight little line. “I just forgot how different guys who grew up outside of the magical world can be,” she said, shaking her head. “Listen, I forgot something in my dorm. Are you okay to make it to the Great Hall on your own?”

What. The. Fuck?

What had I done? I made a fucking joke, for God’s sake! Thirty seconds ago she’d been hanging off me like I’d just come home from a victorious war—now she looked at me like she was about to turn and run. The only thing that told me she still liked me was the familiar blush on her cheeks and collar.

“Sabrina,” I said, sounding hurt. “Babe, I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m sorry?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” she assured me. A little bit of the cute witch I already felt like I was in a relationship with shone behind her eyes, and I felt a little bit better. “Trust me—I’m the one who’s being unreasonable, not you. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to be sorry,” I insisted. “How about you tell me what the hell I just did wrong, instead?”

For a second, I thought she’d do just that. Then Sabrina frowned and shook her head.

“I already said, you’re not the one who did anything wrong,” she insisted. “I’ll catch up with you at the speech, alright? Try and save me a seat!”

And before I could say anything, Sabrina raced across the green, her face so red it looked like a freaking stop sign.

“What the absolute hell?” I asked the space where she’d been standing. “What did I say to make her act like that?”

A shadow fell across the sidewalk as a weight fell onto my shoulder.

No matter how many times it happened, I still hadn’t managed to get used to Squawk’s sudden arrival. The black bird paused on my back for a few heartbeats, then let out a plaintive wail and hopped down to the sidewalk.

“Hey,” I muttered. “I guess you saw that whole thing, huh?”

The bird turned one beady eye on me. “Girl!” Squawk croaked.

“Yeah, a girl,” I said with a laugh. “One who’s got issues. I just triggered her something awful, and I have no idea what I said that did it…”

“Girl!” Squawk cried, oblivious. “Good girl!”

“Yeah, I know,” I snapped. “You don’t have to rub it in—”

“Oh my God!” a voice cried. “Holy shit, that bird is huge!”

Chapter Twelve

I spun on a heel, turning towards the source of the voice. A woman stood at the edge of the sidewalk, one heel on the green grass and the other on the pavement. Long red hair cascaded down her back in shimmering ringlets, framing a model-perfect face with high cheekbones and soft, pouty lips.

Those lips were currently open in a half-scream as the woman stared at Squawk.

“Get away from that thing!” the redhead said, racing forward. “It’s probably rabid!”

Squawk took off into the air, then flew across the pavement and landed on my shoulder. The woman’s eyes nearly fell out of her head.

“It’s okay!” I said, holding up my hands. “He’s no threat. This is Squawk. He’s my familiar…”

No light bulb went off over the woman’s head when I explained myself. As her confusion deepened, I took another look at her and did a double take. Those weren’t the robes of a witch, and what she had on definitely wasn’t the staid, conservative uniform the old guard at Blackwater preferred.

She was wearing a cheerleading outfit.

The outfit was black and gold, with a logo of a ram-like creature sporting short, curved horns stretched across the front. The letters ECA were stenciled just above her left breast. I’d seen them enough times to know what they stood for: the Exeter-Cross Antelopes, the campus’s men’s basketball team. From what I understood they had a pretty great track record.

“Hey,” I blurted, pieces clicking together in my brain. “You’re…”

I trailed off. An Exeter student was what I’d been about to say, but as the words touched my lips a memory replayed in my head like a TV blooper reel.

Me, stopped at a pedestrian crossing on the outskirts of the college, watching a cheerleader take a tumble and nearly fall on her ass in the middle of the road. Only for her to spring up with a smile, point a finger at me with a knowing look, and declare ‘you didn’t see that!’

“You’re that cheerleader,” I said, doubly amazed. “The one who nearly face planted in the intersection the other day.”

The woman’s lips parted in an ‘o’ of surprise. “Holy shit, you’re the guy in the Range Rover!” she said, her face lighting up. “Oh my gosh, I thought you were just some asshole! I didn’t know you were a student at Exeter!”

I’m not, I almost said. My brain worked feverishly, trying to make sense of what was happening right now.

Because according to Sabrina, this was supposed to be impossible.

The cheerleader’s attention returned to Squawk. “Why do you have a giant bird?” she asked, smiling like she couldn’t wait to hear the answer. “Are you a zookeeper or something?”

You’re not supposed to be able to see me, I thought. What the hell?

I wasn’t invisible, of course. Sabrina had explained to me that when the students at Exeter-Cross looked at a group of wizards and witches from Blackwater, they still saw people. Their brains just filled in the gap, the way the blind spot in your eye managed to trick you into thinking you were seeing everything in your field of view when you weren’t. Any Exeter student who walked up to me should have seen the world’s most generic student. And unless there was a life-or-death emergency, they should never have been interested enough in me to strike up a conversation.

What happened? Was it Squawk?

Or was it the fact that we’d run into each other before?

“Uh, no… I’m not a zookeeper,” I said, shaking my head. “Just a student. This is my first semester at Black…” I hastily corrected myself, “...at college.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding vaguely disappointed. “I thought you were, like, the East Coast Crocodile Hunter or something!” She held out her hand. “I’m Courtney, by the way. What’s your name?”

I took it. “Edwin. Edwin Sawyer.”

“Squawk!” Squawk squawked.

“And this,” I said, jerking my chin in the direction of the bird, “Is Squawk.”

The cheerleader approached hesitantly, her eyes on the bird’s. “Can I… can I touch him?” she asked, giving me an excited look.

Could she? I glanced over at my familiar, wondering how the bird might react to a hand that was anything but. I could see that going south very easily, and was tempted to tell her ‘no’. To say something about him not liking people.

But before I could, Squawk flapped his wings. “Good girl!” he insisted.

Courtney put a hand over her mouth. “Ohmigosh, he can talk!” she said, her eyes lighting up. “I thought only parrots could do that!”

“Squawk’s a pretty smart bird,” I said. Good girl? I thought he’d been saying that about Sabrina! Squawk didn’t even know whether Courtney was good or not.

I mean, she certainly looked good. She had the kind of figure that made men glance over their shoulders even when their girlfriends were walking next to them—athletic but curvy, with a fresh-faced smile sweet enough to give a man a toothache.

“That is so cool,” Courtney said. “Hi, birdie! Oh, look at your adorable feathers!”

The redhead put her hand on the back of Squawk’s neck. I tensed up, praying the creature wouldn’t try to bite off one of her fingers.

He didn’t. Instead, Squawk let out a cry like he’d just slipped into a bubble bath.

“Good girl!” the bird crowed, craning its neck.

Courtney giggled as she stroked the bird’s back, smoothing down his black feathers with her long, slender fingers. She looked amazed—like Snow White lost in the woods, watching with disbelief as the forest’s creatures brought her food and led her to shelter.

Squawk spent the whole time preening. I knew he was only a bird, but I swore he looked like he was in Heaven all the same. Bad familiar, I thought.

He really shouldn’t have been fraternizing with a student from Exeter-Cross.

Hell, I wasn’t supposed to be fraternizing with one, either. But I guess it wasn’t technically against the rules.

The cheerleader pulled away after a few moments, adjusting the straps of her backpack. “I’m surprised nobody else wanted to see your bird,” she said, tucking a lock of strawberry hair behind her ear. “Did… did all those people seem like they were in a hell of a hurry to you?”

I blinked. Were we that obvious?

“Must have just been classes changing,” I said with a shrug. “And yeah, a few people have been interested in Squawk. Nobody’s been brave enough to come up and give him a scrub behind the ear, though.”

Courtney grinned at that. “You don’t take him to class with you, do you?” she asked, glancing over at me with obvious interest. “Half the teachers here would probably shit a brick if they saw this guy staring at them when they stepped into a classroom!”

“Uh, not really,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck.

“Yeah, the teachers here are so uncool,” Courtney snickered. “I swear, they all have, like, sticks up their asses or something. Hey, do you know what time it is?”

I glanced down at my watch: a chunky old G-Shock I’d set to military time because I thought it was cool. “Twelve-thirty,” I said.

Shit. Lavrans’s speech was going to start any minute now. Sabrina had probably beaten me to the Great Hall. I could picture her looking around for me, a sinking feeling spreading through her gut when she realized I wasn’t there.

She probably thinks she pissed me off, I realized. I need to go find her.

Courtney looked surprised as well. “Shoot! I’ve got to get to practice! Listen, um… do you have a pen? Like a Sharpie?”

I thought about her request. “Yeah, I think so,” I said, sliding my pack off my shoulder. “Do you need one?”

“Just for a second,” Courtney said. “Sorry. You’ve been so cool. I wish I had more time to talk with you!”

So did I. I opened a zipper on the side of my backpack, where I’d deposited a bunch of random pens I’d gotten from old school functions and nerd events. I reached for one, only to notice a chunky black Sharpie half-hidden by the fabric.

Well, she did ask for one…

“Here,” I said, handing the marker to her. “Don’t worry about giving it back.”

A smile spread across her face. “Yeah, I wish I had more time to talk to you,” she purred, popping the cap on the marker. “So why don’t we do this…”

Before I could stop her, she grabbed my forearm. Her grip was surprisingly strong, and before I knew what she was doing she had the marker moving rapidly over my skin. The tip of the Sharpie felt cold, and tickled me wherever it touched.

“Hold still,” the cheerleader said with a chuckle. “Boys are never used to this…”

She finished with a flourish and stepped back. I looked down to see a phone number written across my wrist like a tattoo.

My mouth went dry. Did she just do that?

“Call me, okay?” With a grin, Courtney put the cap back on the marker and slipped it under her shirt. She winked at me, her heels clicking against the pavement as she sashayed in the direction of the athletic field. “We’ll do lunch or something! Just bring that cool bird with you, alright?”

I looked down at the numbers on my arm, expecting them to puff into smoke at any moment. Wow. A hot redhead cheerleader just wrote her phone number on my arm.

It was the sort of thing I would have dreamed of a few months ago. How was any of this real? How was it my actual life now?

“I will!” I said, waving. “I’ll text you!”

She waved back, her form already retreating. In another few moments she’d disappeared completely, breaking into a jog. She must have been even later than she’d realized.

And so was I.

I double-timed it across the green, heading for the Great Hall.

“Tell me the truth,” I said, panting a bit as I hoofed it. “You set that up for me, didn’t you, Squawk?”

The bird shifted on my shoulder. “Good girl!”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “She’s a very good girl. Probably has half the basketball team trying to get into her pants.”

“Edwin good!”

Was I?

“She also isn’t supposed to be able to see us,” I said. “None of the students from Exeter-Cross are. Did you have something to do with that too, Squawk?”

“Squawk!”

I wasn’t sure whether to take that as a yes or a no. Really, if the bird was so smart, we ought to have been able to work out some kind of system. Two ‘squawks’ for ‘yes’, one for no, three for maybe… that kind of thing.

The bird took off like a rocket as I reached the Great Hall, soaring into the air without a word. I nearly cried out, until I noticed two dozen or more black-winged creatures slowly turning in the air over the building. Squawk wouldn’t be the only familiar keeping an eye on this shindig.

Like the upper floors of the student dormitory, the Great Hall was one of the few buildings on campus where Blackwater had no entanglement with Exeter-Cross. Official records listed the structure as a hundred-year old theater, which put on plays and later showed movies to paying customers before eventually going out of business a couple of decades ago. Every couple of semesters a rumor spread through Exeter-Cross that it was slated for demolition, destined to be torn down and replaced with condos or convenience stores, but said rumor never made the transition into fact. The area bore a ‘Historic Heritage’ seal, which protected it from any interference by the college.

In reality, the building was one of the few pieces of architecture in Blackwater’s portfolio they hadn’t had to mess with. It was a colonial-era relic, with Moorish turrets and onion domes that gave it a distinctly foreign flair. It looked like nothing else on campus—which was good, as the greater part of the campus couldn’t see it.

No crowd lingered outside. My heart beat a little faster: had I missed the speech?

I got inside as quickly as I could. The main ballroom was large enough to seat the entire student body twice over, with an ornate stage and second-floor balconies like a Broadway theater. Nearly all the seats in the front half of the auditorium were occupied by students, laughing and joking and swapping stories.

No one stood on the stage.

Good, I thought, relief rushing through me. I didn’t miss it. Now where’s Sabrina?

Something about the run-in I had with that cheerleader made me want to find her as quickly as possible. I didn’t like that there was friction between the two of us, even if the blonde witch assured me that I hadn’t done anything to deserve it. Whatever problem Sabrina had with me, I wanted to solve it as quickly as possible.

I definitely wasn’t thinking about the witch’s little jokes. How half the witches on campus were about to start mooning over me like some kind of hero…

“Woah!” someone cried out as I approached. “There he is!”

A wave of applause rippled through the nearby rows. To my shock, only some of it was sarcastic. Someone stuck their fingers in their mouth and whistled, which was a skill I’d never quite managed to master.

“Hey hey, have a seat!” The speaker was a young guy, maybe a year or two older than me. He wore a black robe instead of the standard Blackwater uniform, but it was baggy on him and so I could see the heavy metal t-shirt and blue jeans he had on underneath of it. “You’re him, right? Edwin?”

Everyone was staring at me. What the hell…?

Sabrina was wrong for once, I realized. It didn’t even take an hour for the story of what I did to circulate through campus.

“I’m Toby,” the guy said, clapping an arm on my shoulder. “Toby Heck. Hey man, let me see those arms…!”

Before I could stop him, the guy lifted up my hands. He turned them this way and that, verifying for the rows in front of us that no trace of my petrification remained. Then he spied the digits written in Sharpie on my wrist and grinned.

“Holy hell, you’ve already got groupies,” he said. “Damn dude, maybe I ought to get beaten up by a dragon sometime!”

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” I grunted, looking around the room. I didn’t see any sign of Sabrina—maybe she’d elected to stay in the dorm instead of coming down for Headmaster Ravensson’s welcome speech. I didn’t like that one bit.

“Yeah,” Toby chuckled. “You got lucky—something sexy attacked you. My first Beast Taming lesson, I got attacked by goddamn bees!”

Bees? “How!?”

Toby grinned. “Have a seat and I’ll tell you all about it,” he said. He talked fast and moved even faster. He had a strangely manic energy, like some of the kids I’d gone to high school with who chased their Ritalin down with Mountain Dew. “By the way, these are a couple of my friends. That big guy over there’s Matt, and the soulless dude with the bad attitude is Henry. Say hi, guys.”

Matt waved at me without looking, his nose in a book. The other guy had his arms crossed on top of the next seat and was busy spying some girls across the way. Unfortunately for him, they were all looking at me.

“Soulless?” I asked, taking a seat. “Is that a thing here?”

“Huh? Oh, no,” Toby said. “We call him that because he’s a ginger.”

“There’s no such thing as a soul, though,” Henry added. His nose had been broken at some point in the past—probably by someone he’d used that line on—and had healed at an awkward angle. “What philosophy and religion call the soul is actually the residue left behind by a cosmic resonant frequency called an aiua. Gingers actually have more of it than everybody else. Hence why we’re so popular.”

My eyes nearly popped out of my head. “Is he bullshitting me?” I asked.

“He does that to everybody,” Toby said, putting his feet up. “Next he’ll start telling you all about how the Earth is hollow and filled with crab people. Try not to listen too much to him; his ranting’s been known to cause mental breakdowns in people with weaker psyches. Now, about the bees…”

Unfortunately for him, he didn’t get the chance to continue.

Just then, the lights flickered and dimmed in the theater. Several students oohed and ahhed sarcastically, until the level of illumination returned to just a hair less than what it had been before.

“Good afternoon, students.”

The voice came from everywhere at once. Several people near me jumped when they heard it; Toby’s group was not among them. I recognized the trick pretty much instantly—it was the same one Professor Fym used that morning during my first Beast Taming class.

Toby Heck noticed. “Nice,” he chuckled, winking. “You might just be alright, new guy.”

Fuck, how did I fall in with these weirdos? More than anything, I wished I had Sabrina at my side. My gaze traveled to the phone number scribbled on my wrist, and I felt an absurd spike of guilt in my guts. Absurd because I hadn’t done anything wrong, and it wasn’t like we were exclusive or anything.

Fuck it, I thought. I grabbed my phone and entered the number quickly, saving it in a text just in case my arms got accidentally scrubbed later.

“Thank you all so much for coming,” the voice continued. “It’s always a pleasure to see new faces mixed with old ones—to shepherd a new crop of students through the rituals and traditions that make Blackwater University such a unique institution.”

I blinked, staring at the stage.

“Uh,” I muttered, looking over at Toby. “Is he not up there, or am I just blind?”

The voice spoke, but the stage was empty.

“Yeah,” Henry snickered. “He’s gonna make an entrance.”

Huh? “I don’t see anything—”

An explosion rocked the auditorium.

Chapter Thirteen

Black smoke billowed across the stage. A crash like a thunderclap rolled across the rows of students, popping ears and tossing perfectly coiffed hairdos out of joint. Somewhere far above the arena, the dozens of flying familiars who’d separated from their masters and mistresses dive-bombed the roof of the Great Hall, sensing a great disturbance in the fabric of magic.

They needn’t have bothered. Like Henry said, the Headmaster was making an entrance.

As quickly as it appeared and spread, the black smoke rolled backward. It moved with a stuttering, unnatural motion, like an old VHS tape being rewound and played at the same time. When the smoke reached the level of the stage it lit up with bright colors, as if fireworks exploded from somewhere within the maelstrom.

Then the cloud of smoke shrunk into the form of a pillar, and the pillar shrunk into the form of a man. Lavrans Ravensson, Headmaster of Blackwater University, stood before us all.

He looked resplendent.

There was really no other word for it. The Headmaster wore neither the stereotypical robes of a wizard nor the power suit a man who ran a private university would have been expected to wear. Ceremonial robes sheathed his body, the silk thick and stiff like a samurai’s armor. Here and there, little bits of fur stood out on his wardrobe, and his hands were covered in rings sporting jewels and arcane symbols. The only thing the same from that night in the hospital was his eyepatch.

He looked over the audience with a stern expression, his arms at his sides.

Henry yawned. “Told you,” he said, chewing something. “Making an entrance.”

As the last of the smoke faded, a podium appeared at the front of the stage. Lavras walked to it, his gait a little stiff. The Headmaster hid his amusement well, but I could tell he’d greatly enjoyed throwing a brand new class of students off-balance.

“Hello, students,” Lavrans said. “I trust you’ve all had an excellent morning?”

No one answered. Most of them were still trying to process the blast, or to fix their hair. I used the moment of respite to lean forward and look out over the crowd, but there was no sign of Sabrina. Had she really decided not to show?

A dark notion filled the back of my mind. What if she’d gotten into trouble?

If that were the case, then I needed to get out of here. But there was little chance of that happening—not with Headmaster Ravensson taking the stage.

“It is my sincere hope,” the man said, nodding at the front row, “that this semester is a wonderful time of growth and experience for each and every one of you. Though we walk in the Unseen World, we walk together—students and faculty alike.” He gave the crowd a smirk. “I’ve heard there’s already been an accident or two on campus today. But what’s growth without a few growing pains, no?”

A few people chuckled at that, but most remained silent. The thought of a rampaging stone dragon petrifying students and teachers at random was frightening enough to keep most people from laughing at the idea. Me least of all.

“Hey,” Toby stage whispered, loud enough for the next row to hear. “He’s talking about you!”

“I know that,” I snapped. “Shut up. I’m listening.”

“Oooh,” Toby said, clutching his chest like he’d been stabbed. “Sure thing, hoss.”

“Before we give you an hour or two to mingle, take refreshments and ask questions of the faculty, I’d like to remind you of a few things. There are some expectations that you should keep in mind throughout the school year—and some announcements that may affect some of you in the shorter term.”

I leaned forward. For some reason, I got the sense that Lavrans was still talking about me.

“The various clubs and organizations on campus will begin their recruiting next week,” he said, his hands moving atop the podium. “Those who are interested can find out more information from the bulletin board in the student commons, or by checking the campus intranet through their deck. As always, I will be assuming my customary role as president of the Blackwater Chess Club. Anyone who wishes to audition for the team need only try their hand against me. As a reminder, taking three of my pieces off of the board during a game will grant you automatic acceptance into the club…”

“Three freaking pieces,” Henry muttered. “You’d think more people would be able to do that.”

“I can,” Matt snickered. His eyes hadn’t risen from his book the whole speech, except for briefly when the blast of air shot through the stands. “I’m a member.”

That interested me, but something else interested me more. “Our decks?” I whispered, glancing over at Toby—who seemed to be my new friend whether I wanted him to be or not. “What the hell are those?”

Toby blinked. “You don’t have a deck?”

I shook my head.

“You should have gotten one with your Student ID. It lets you access the campus’s Intranet—it’s like a computer, but it doesn’t suck.”

“Computers don’t suck,” I protested.

Toby snickered. “Yeah, sure. I’ll take you to get one later if you want. But even if you go down to the campus department of Technomancy on your own, they ought to be able to hook you up.”

I made a mental note to do just that.

“Our various athletic departments will also have tryouts beginning next week, as well,” Lavrans continued. “Although there is no crossover between Blackwater’s athletic programs and those hosted by the Exeter-Cross college, we do share some of their facilities. As such, some sports will be familiar even to new students. Some will not.”

I doubted I’d try out for any sports. Clubs, maybe—though I didn’t relish the thought of playing a game of chess against Lavrans Ravensson. I wasn’t that good.

“Tryouts for track team, soccer, shotput and volleyball will take place on the athletic field next Monday,” Lavrans explained, still wearing that faint smile. “Anyone interested in joining the Quadcross team should meet there next Tuesday afternoon, while the Zuzizzakazae and Uqbar tryouts will be held at yet to be determined spots on campus. Those interested can once again check the bulletin boards in the student commons and other places, or reach out to a member of the respective team via your decks.”

There was that strange word again: a deck. It made me think of a cyberpunk hacker cracking a mainframe, like a character in a video game. I’d learn soon enough how close I was to the truth, but for the moment, I sat there listening to Lavrans.

“Our sororities and fraternities will also begin their pledging processes within the next few weeks,” Lavrans said. “Those of you with more experience in the non-magical world may be surprised at how much smaller our Greek system is than what can be found at a comparable mundane college. But our communities are strong, and they offer much to those willing to complete the rites and rituals required to gain membership.” He paused, and I could feel the students around me sitting up a little straighter. “As a reminder, the so-called Black Moon Society remains forbidden on campus. Known membership is, of course, grounds for immediate expulsion.”

Black Moon? I’d heard that name before, but I couldn’t quite remember where.

To my surprise, Lavrans’s mention of them sent a ripple of laughter through the auditorium. The other students acted like this was some kind of inside joke; even the mention of being expelled failed to bring any real fear out of them.

That didn’t make any sense to me. Unless they all knew something I didn’t?

I leaned over to Toby. “What is he talking about? Black Moon?”

“Huh?” His brows rose. “How do you not know about Black Moon?”

“I don’t know about anything,” I countered. “I didn’t know magic existed until like yesterday.”

“I’ll tell you later,” Toby said. “Hang on — this is the actually important part.”

It did seem like the auditorium was listening to Lavrans a little more intently than before. The Headmaster rambled on for a few more minutes, giving the sort of speech that college administrators probably rehearsed in front of the mirror each morning. I didn’t hear anything important in it, just a lot of words about accountability and excellence. Eventually, I started to wonder just where he was hiding the part worth listening to.

My attention had just started to drift and I was scanning the crowd one more time for any sign of Sabrina when I heard something that snapped me back.

“Of course, we don't want you to think of your Grand Conjuration as merely your final exam," Lavrans was explaining. "It's the culmination of everything you'll be learning during your first semester at Blackwater University. Yes, you'll need to choose one subject to specialize in, totally. But that doesn't mean we want you neglecting the rest of what Blackwater has to offer you..."

Huh? Grand Conjuration? Clearly I'd missed something.

I didn't know exactly what he meant, but I could guess from context clues. Some kind of test, I thought. Not a final exam, but a hell of a lot closer to it than Lavrans wants us to think.

The crowd leaned forward in their seats, lapping it up. Lavrans finished up the rest of his speech with a few more platitudes, then took us all in with a smile.

"And now, I believe refreshments will be served in the convention hall," he said, gesturing at a set of doors to the right of the room. "Please avail yourself of the lovely food and drink. Several teachers and other members of the administration will be on hand to answer questions or simply to introduce themselves to you. And remember—have a wonderful semester..."

Before I knew it, the whole congregation had risen from their seats. Lavrans left the stage with a great deal less fanfare than he'd entered it, walking behind the curtain rather than disappearing in a puff of smoke. Someone came out a few moments later to direct us to the festivities, but there was no need—everyone had already figured out where to go.

As I rose, Toby patted me on the shoulder. "That was cool, huh? Listen, I'm gonna mingle. Try to score some chicks, you know? You wouldn't happen to be down to be my wingman?"

Somehow I held back my laughter. "I don't know about all that," I said, shaking my head. "There's something I want to talk to the Headmaster about, and then I've got to get out of here." I was still thinking about Sabrina, and how she hadn't come back after running away during our conversation. I hadn't teased her that badly, had I?

No, she'd said I hadn't done anything wrong. So what was the matter?

Toby took it in a good stride. "Yeah, alright," he snickered. "I get it. Hey, have you gotten a scribing book yet?"

As a matter of fact, I did. I could have mentioned it, but for some reason I held back. Maybe later, I'd fill the book Sabrina gave me with enough students to stretch a Rolodex, but for right now that tome felt like something just between us. Something special.

"A what now?" I asked.

Toby rolled his eyes. "Another thing I've got to get you squared away with, new guy. I'm sure you've got a phone, right?"

I did. He put his number into it, saving himself as a contact.

"Cool. Hit me up later, and I'll help you get set up with a deck and a scribing book."

"That would be a big help," I said. “Thanks.”

He gave me a long, appraising look. Probably he meant it to be friendly, but I couldn't help thinking of a used car salesman with a customer he's just decided is going to make him a hell of a lot of money. Even if Toby's heart was in the right place—which I didn't doubt—he was a little too sleazy to be taken entirely seriously.

The reception area was a converted ballroom, with a large table on one side covered in food. Waiters and waitresses flitted about the crowd with fancy little drinks in glass goblets that turned out to be plastic once you held them in your hand. Students schmoozed shamelessly, and there wasn’t a whiff of Sabrina around.

Lavrans arrived a few minutes later, still wearing his lavish robes. I headed in his direction but was beaten by a small crowd, who gathered around the headmaster and peppered him with questions. To distract myself and kill some time, I went to the buffet table, which had been piled with everything from hors d'oeuvres to tiny chicken wings that almost certainly were from some more exotic animal than a chicken. There was even a sushi tray, which kept getting refilled by furtive waitstaff shooting in and out of the kitchen.

Finally I managed to approach. The crowd had thinned out a bit, though three people were battling over Lavrans’s attention when I managed to maneuver myself over to his section of the party. The headmaster saw me, smiled, and waved them off for the moment.

“Ah, Mr. Sawyer!” he said, his smirk widening as he shook my hand. “I am so glad that you decided to join us after all. How has your first day at Blackwater been going?”

I felt the eyes of the nearby students on me, wondering what made me special enough for Lavrans Ravensson to look so happy to see me.

“It’s been… interesting,” I said. “Did you hear about the, ah, incident with the stone dragon?”

His pleased laugh told me he had. “I expect it must have been quite a shock for you,” he said, his one good eye crinkling with mirth. “Of course, Professor Fym tells me you were never really in any serious danger. But not knowing about the capabilities of our healers, you must have felt yourself brushing closer to death with each passing moment…”

The gazes on me sharpened. I could hear people whispering about me, and at least one strangled ‘that’s HIM?’ from a woman in Lavrans’s entourage.

“It certainly felt like I was in danger,” I said. I’d have to agree to disagree with Lavrans on that point. “I wanted to speak with you, Lavrans.”

“I’m speaking to you right now,” he said. “And call me Headmaster, please,” he added, inclining his head with a nod at the other guests. A couple of them looked shocked to hear me address their leader by his first name. “We’re in polite company now, Mr. Sawyer. This is no hospital room.”

Sure. “Headmaster,” I corrected. “Are you the one who paid for my tuition? Did you send that talking bird to my apartment the other day?”

Lavrans stared at me blankly for a moment, as if my question bored him. Then he began to chuckle.

“You ask a great number of questions for a man who just had his dreams fulfilled,” Lavrans said. “One must think that even heroes should show the proper amount of humility. Be they a modest stable boy or a Knight of King Arthur’s fabled Round Table, only the rude would ever look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“I’m not a knight,” I said, shaking my head. “And if I sound ungrateful, then I’m sorry. I’m still just trying to wrap my head around all this.”

Lavrans’s expression grew grave. “I see. I should have explained things better to you, Mr. Sawyer. For that, it is I who ought to be apologizing to you.”

The woman next to Lavrans stared at him in shock, her nostrils flaring.

“All I can tell you is that the answers you seek await you in the future,” the headmaster continued. “Once your Grand Conjuration is complete and your place at Blackwater is secure, you’ll have more time to follow the paths these questions lead.”

“My Grand Conjuration?” I asked.

“At the end of the semester,” Lavrans said, nodding like I should have already known about all this. “Once students at Blackwater complete their introductory subjects, they are required to declare the field of study they wish to major in for the rest of their college career. In order to be accepted, they perform a magical feat—a Grand Conjuration. As long as it passes muster, the student’s petition is accepted.”

“You’re locked in after your first semester?” I asked, my brows raising.

“It’s possible to change your field of study after the fact,” Lavrans said with a shrug. “But few students do. This isn’t mundane college, Mr. Sawyer—by the time you’ve gotten your feet wet in your introductory courses, you’ll know which field of magic you want to delve deeper into. You’ll still have lessons in the other disciplines, of course, but you’ll focus on one.” He paused, giving me a canny look. “Professor Fym was impressed by your quick thinking with the dragon. She thinks you might make an excellent apprentice in the Beast Taming school.”

Really? I’d thought the complete opposite.

“Apprentice?”

“A wizard or witch with experience in your chosen field,” Lavrans explained. “They become your mentor during the remainder of your time at Blackwater, and guide you through a course of study designed to sharpen your skills. They have limited slots, so some mentors are more prized than others.” He paused. “In general, the best result a student can hope for is the leader of their school taking them under their wing. For you and Beast Taming, that would indeed be Professor Fym. So it’s good that she likes you.”

I blinked. I hadn’t decided on Beast Taming as a major. I hadn’t even had classes in my other four subjects yet.

But something else worried me far, far more than having to impress Professor Fym.

“But…” I swallowed hard as the implication hit me. “What happens to students who don’t succeed in their Grand Conjuration?”

Lavrans looked a touch confused. “They leave, of course,” he said, as if it were obvious. “If a prospective student hasn’t mastered magic well enough to perform a Grand Conjuration by the end of the semester, then there’s no point in continuing their studies.”

It felt like all the air went out of the room. Ice filled the pit of my stomach. I looked at Lavrans, hoping he was about to tell me he was just joking, but in my heart I knew he wasn’t.

“Another thing I should have explained to you,” he said with a shrug. “Apologies.”

Expelled, I thought, the word hitting me like a punch in the gut. Holy shit.

I hadn’t realized such a thing was possible.

Everything I’d been given since the accident. The free tuition, my rent and food paid for for the next four years. The new friends I’d made. Sabrina…

All of it could be taken away from me at the end of the semester.

It must have shown on my face. “Mr. Sawyer, are you alright?” Lavrans asked. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost, young man.”

I cleared my throat. “I just didn’t realize I needed to pass some kind of test in order to stay at Blackwater,” I said.

He clapped me on the shoulder. “Then you’d better start working on passing it,” Lavrans said, startling the people nearest me. “It would be a shame to lose a promising student like you, Mr. Sawyer. And a shame for you to lose us, I think.”

Lavrans had that right.

If I was going to prove my worth at Blackwater, I had some work to do.

Chapter Fourteen

Doomscrolling had never been quite like this.

I sat in bed, back at my apartment after my first day at Blackwater College. Hours had passed since the sun went down. I should have been in bed snoring away, preparing my body for another day of magical classes.

Instead, I kept on browsing. I’d had my deck, as the other students called it for less than twelve hours, yet I feared I was already addicted to it.

When Toby first told me about them, I’d pictured something from a cyberpunk novel—a netbook but even smaller, probably decked out with a neon 1980’s color scheme and pre-loaded with hacker tools. The real thing was even stranger. It was a laptop, alright, and a decently powerful one. But the operating system…

Imagine the world had decided back in the late 90’s that Windows 98 was the pinnacle of user interface design. And that everything that came after should basically be that, except a little bit nicer and easier to use. Blackwater’s laptops were powered by something called EnchantmentOS, which as far as I could tell was neither Windows nor Linux based. Using it made me feel like I’d been sent back in time to the era of dial-up and the You’ve Got Mail! sound.

And browse I did.

I could connect to Blackwater’s intranet even when I wasn’t physically on-campus. Lavrans hadn’t been joking about the thing being a digital bulletin board: it seemed like everything a student needed at the college had a digital equivalent, if a painfully 90’s-inspired one. There was even something like a social media network on there, though I hadn’t created a profile yet.

My backpack lay open on the bed next to me. A book poked out from inside, with more piled next to my knee against the blankets. I’d been perusing them while I worked, matching up the titles with the tomes listed on the syllabi I’d been given by my instructors. As it turned out I’d gotten emails from each of them, including Professor Fym, before the semester even began.

Lacking the proper hardware, I’d missed them. Now I was doing some catching up.

I had a lot of catching up to do. Not every student who came to Blackwater was like Sabrina, with two magical parents to guide them into the Unseen World—but nearly all of them knew way, way more about Blackwater before enrolling here than I had. I felt like I’d entered a marathon twenty minutes late and could only see the runners as tiny silhouettes on the horizon.

I’d gotten a text from Toby, but I’d ignored it. I’d also ignored the group texts from Will and his friends, which I probably shouldn’t have. They’d been peppering me with questions all afternoon, wanting to know more about why I was at Exeter-Cross and what I was doing there. I couldn’t blame them for being curious: after all, it was kinda my fault for sending them that selfie.

But I couldn’t think about the so-called ‘real world’ right now. My hold on the magical one was so tenuous that I needed to make sure I had a stable footing before reaching out to them.

One person who hadn’t texted me was Sabrina. I’d gotten no messages from her in the scribing book, either: it sat on my bedside table, like any other journal. Honestly, I was starting to wonder if the ‘enchantment’ on it had been a prank, a spell she’d cast in the moment to convince me it was more than just an old diary she had laying around.

Either way, I couldn’t worry about it.

I needed to knock my Grand Conjuration out of the fucking park.

After digging through the syllabi and reading some of the introductory course materials for my classes, I’d come to a surprising conclusion. Professor Fym and Lavrans might be right. Of the five classes I was enrolled in, Beast Taming seemed like the most fun and the most likely for me to excel in despite the catching up in magical knowledge I had to do. My other options—Charms and Illusions, Battle Magic and Potions—looked interesting, but less like the sort of thing I could master quickly enough to impress Blackwater’s faculty by the end of the semester.

Of course, there was still the wild card: Curses and Hexes. While my other teachers sent over detailed PDFs with their lesson plans for the years, the email I received from Professor Dragovich could probably have fit on the back of a postage stamp. Her book still rested in the bottom of my backpack—I got a weird feeling from it, and I probably wouldn’t touch it until I absolutely had to.

I doubted I’d be good at cursing people, but from what I understood, even the students with more magical experience knew little about curses and hexes. In her class, we’d all be more or less equal, which gave me a slightly better shot at picking it for my Grand Conjuration. We’d have to see.

I was just starting to dig through my books for a couple of examples of what a Grand Conjuration might actually look like when I noticed the vibration.

At first, I assumed it was my cell phone. I even dug it out from between the blankets, certain that I’d find a call from either Will or one of the people who’d been in the car with me during the accident waiting to be answered. But the screen was blank.

The vibration was coming from my bedside table.

I used the phone’s screen to illuminate it. The book trembled back and forth gently across the wood, shaking in almost the same way my phone would have if it had been ringing. It reminded me so much of a phone that I caught myself staring at it.

I leaned over and scooped the tome up. Opening it revealed two words written across the first journal page, their edges already beginning to fade:

You up?

I couldn’t help but snicker. How many late-night hookups had been started by those exact words?

I reached for my phone to text Sabrina, only to think better of it. If she’d messaged me through this scribing book, it meant that she wanted to use this to talk to me, not a phone. Oh shit, I thought. Where’s that pen…?

The words had totally faded by the time I dug it out of my backpack. I hoped Sabrina hadn’t taken it as her cue to roll over and go to sleep.

“I’m here,” I wrote. “Just doing a little late-night research.”

I’d never been more self-conscious about my handwriting than at that moment. I wondered if the scribing book would have taken it upon itself to clean up chicken scratch, or if the words would come through unscathed no matter how poorly written. I resolved to place each letter slowly and carefully, just in case.

I leaned over and clicked on the bedside lamp as I waited for a reply. The scribing book might have been cool—and magical—but it lacked a backlight.

The words vanished, replaced with hesitant pen strokes. “Good.”

Then: “I hope I didn’t totally blow it with you this afternoon.”

Huh? She was apologizing to me? This I hadn’t expected. I’d spent all day assuming that I’d done something wrong; made some faux pas that could only be explained by someone with a careful understanding of the magical world. The fact that she hadn’t even bothered to show up to the faculty’s welcome luncheon seemed to seal it.

I thought for a few seconds about how to reply. Should I make a cocky remark? Play it cool? A dark little part of me wanted to make her feel bad about the way she’d blown me off so casually. Could I make her sweat by going cold on her?

I shook my head. Fuck all that. I might as well just be honest.

“You haven’t ruined anything,” I wrote—then, after a moment, added underneath it: “But I’m awfully confused right now.”

That was fair, right? It happened to be true.

There was a long pause while I waited for Sabrina’s reply. If we’d been texting, there would have been three dots along the bottom of the journal while she wrote. Because this was magical tech, I didn’t get any sign she was writing until her words appeared on the page:

“I know. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have run off on you like that.”

It… it felt good to read those words. I couldn’t lie.

“Apology accepted,” I wrote.

The words faded. Then a little smiley face appeared in the corner of my journal, sticking its tongue out. A heart formed around it, and then both were gone.

Okay, maybe this is a little more like a cell phone than I thought, I chuckled.

“I’m glad,” she wrote. The next strokes of her pen came through hesitantly, and I could almost feel the anxiety in her fingers as she added them to the page. “Because I like you, Edwin. I really, really do.”

Oh, thank fuck. Deep down, I knew she felt that way about me, but I’d allowed myself to second-guess it with all this shit around the luncheon. It was gratifying to know that I hadn’t blown my chance with Sabrina—and even more gratifying to know she evidently worried about whether or not she’d blown her chance with me.

“I know things are moving super fast,” she added before I could respond. “We barely know each other, and I want you to know that I am DEFINITELY not the kind of girl who normally does things like this!”

She’d actually written in all-caps on the word ‘definitely’. Cool.

“I’m not normally the kind of guy who moves this fast, either,” I wrote back. “But it feels right.”

“It’s why I ran instead of going to the assembly,” Sabrina wrote. “I know you won’t believe this, Edwin, with what you’ve seen. But I’m SHY.”

I couldn’t help but snicker. Thankfully Sabrina couldn’t see it. She didn’t seem like a particularly shy girl to me—but she did seem like the kind of girl who had been convinced by all of her friends that she was shy and reserved. Often, they weren’t the same thing.

“I’m cool with that,” I told her. “Sabrina… why DID you freak out this afternoon?”

There was a long, long pause after those words faded. Long enough that I started to wonder if my new witch friend had closed the book and gone to bed.

Just when I’d begun to think about maybe doing the same, a few hesitant pen marks appeared. They quickly faded, faster than the normal decay process—I could almost see Sabrina rubbing them out, swearing at herself as she tried to come up with a better way to think of what she wanted to say.

“Can you do me a favor?” she wrote instead.

I thought it over. Then nodded, forgetting that I was looking in a freaking book.

“Sure.”

This time, the response came faster. “Can you just forget I did that?”

Hmm? My brows furrowed together as I read, then re-read the words.

Almost as quickly, more words appeared beneath those. “It was weird, and I won’t talk about it again if you don’t. It’s not something that we need to discuss right now. Not for a long time… if at ALL.”

The way she kept dancing around the subject wanted me to know even more what the hell she’d gotten herself so hung up over. But I respected her desire to keep her feelings private. Whatever it was, we could cross that bridge when the time came. There was no reason for it to drive a wedge between us when our relationship had only just started.

“So yeah,” Sabrina wrote. “I’m totally sorry that I, like, trauma vomited all over you. That was totally uncool. If you’ll forgive me, I’ll totally make it up to you.”

I paused as I reread that last line. That sounded like an open opportunity.

Did I have the guts to go for it?

Of course I did.

“Consider yourself forgiven,” I wrote back. “Now… how are you going to make it up to me?”

The pause this time was almost as long as the previous one. When the first strokes of Sabrina’s pen began to appear on the front page of my scribing book, my heart jumped into my throat.

She’d written four simple words.

What are you wearing?

As so many millions of men had done before me, I glanced down at my outfit. What was I wearing? I had no idea.

An old t-shirt advertising a roller coaster from a local theme park. A pair of basketball shorts, worn threadbare and in need of replacement. Boxer shorts.

“You know,” I wrote back. “Pajamas.” I paused. “How about you?”

This time the pause was short. “How about I show you?”

I frowned, glancing over at my phone. I expected a selfie or something like that—possibly even a naughty one. My heart thudded harder in my chest, and those boxer shorts suddenly felt almost uncomfortably tight.

But when the picture came, it didn’t show up on my phone.

It showed up in my book.

Lines moved across the page, forming a sketch that looked like it had been dashed off by an extremely talented artist. Sabrina took up the foreground, her smile lovingly rendered, with the lines of her dorm room fainter and less defined behind her. She wore a pair of puffy pajama pants and a tight white t-shirt, and she was facing me with a pillow tucked between her legs.

Woah, I thought. Reminds me of that ‘Take On Me’ music video…

This time, the lines didn’t fade. Instead, the front page of the scribing book suddenly flipped to the next, then back again. Open, closed, open, closed.

Every time it moved, the picture did, too.

Sabrina’s smile widened. Her thighs tightened gently around the pillow, and though the sketch was totally in black and white, I thought I could see her familiar blush rising to her cheeks.

Finally the page stopped flipping and froze in place. I grabbed the pen and wrote words along the side of the paper, like the chat window to the side of a live broadcast on YouTube or Twitch.

“Holy shit! Are you… drawing this?”

The pages flapped, and Sabrina laughed. Her mouth started to move.

“No,” she said, the words printed in block letters on the side of the page. “It’s magic, of course. I can see you too, by the way.”

Suddenly I was majorly self-conscious. She could see me? I hadn’t clicked any box or button to turn my magical paper camera on. If I had, I would have cleaned myself up a bit first.

Sabrina leaned forward a bit, squinting. I love that rollercoaster, she said, the words appearing in block letters along the side of the paper. It really was like a chat box — the next thing said appeared beneath what had already been written, slowly crowding the old lines out. One of my sisters threw up on it! I think they had to change the track because it was making people pass out…?

I knew exactly what she was talking about.

“You… you look amazing,” I said, staring right at the book.

The words appeared on the side of the page underneath Sabrina's. Woah. That was freaky.

The sketch of Sabrina bit her lip and gave me the kind of look that convinced men to go to war. Tell me what to do, she whispered, the words appearing by magic. Tell me what you want to see.

I cocked an eyebrow. “You sure?”

I saw her snicker. I’m supposed to be making it up to you, she said through the book. You’re not supposed to be asking my permission for everything. You’ve already got it.

Fuck. That was hot.

Alright, if I had permission, then it was time to have some fun.

I leaned back against the headboard, knowing she could see every second rendered in sketch form by an invisible hand. Knowing that she was savoring every moment of this, and that her cheeks were probably hotter than the burners of an oven turned all the way up to high.

Maybe some other parts of her were warming up, too.

“Take your top off,” I said, my boldness outweighing my caution at last. “Let me see those tits.”

I saw Sabrina moan before it carried over the link. For a second she looked every bit as shy as her ersatz reputation made her out to be, but that shyness faded before my gaze. She grabbed the bottom of her tight white top and peeled it off of her young frame, slowly revealing herself for me.

My nostrils flared. I’d expected her to be wearing a bra. She was not.

Sabrina’s breasts fit her frame perfectly. They were perky and pert, topped with achingly hard nipples that (if the phantom hand making these sketches wasn’t exaggerating) looked like they’d fit perfectly in my mouth. She tossed the sweatshirt away and ran her hands over them, squeezing them together with a smile.

Is this what you wanted to see? The words appeared on the side of the book almost in the same moment I watched her lips form them. Fuck, you look so cute right now, Edwin. I love the way you look at me.

I grinned like a fool before catching myself. Sabrina did the same. I loved that we could be goofy, even during a moment as important and serious as this.

“More,” I said, nodding. “Keep going.”

Sabrina did. She was good at teasing me, angling her body in sensual poses that made me throb as she slowly worked her pajama pants off, first untying the strings then by hooking her thumbs in the puffy fabric and sliding them down her thighs.

I watched her, getting harder with each passing second. “Fuck,” I grunted to myself. “Goddamn if you were here right now with me, Sabrina…”

She glanced over at me and smiled. What would you do?

Shit! I didn’t realize she could hear that! I hadn’t meant for the book to pick it up.

I got flustered, which made her laugh. You are SO freaking hot, she said, peeling the sweatpants the rest of the way down her ankles and kicking them away. I don’t know what you’re thinking, Edwin, but I can tell you this. Whatever it is you’d tell me to do? I’d DO it.

God damn. How could I ever have been worried about this girl? We were rock fucking solid. I was so ready to be college sweethearts with this babe.

With the pajama pants off, Sabrina wore nothing but a pair of cotton panties. I couldn’t tell the shade through the sketch, other than the fact that they were light, but I could tell that they were soaked—they clung to her mound, showing every little contour of her soft, perfect pussy.

God damn I wished I had her in my arms. In my bed. I was half-tempted to hop in my car and drive like a madman down the Beltway to get back to Blackwater, but deep down I knew that it only would have spoiled the moment. Sabrina’s ardor would have cooled if she’d been made to wait an hour for me, and I didn’t want to spoil what was already shaping up to be one hell of a night.

One of Sabrina’s hands stayed at her tits. The other slid down her taut little belly, pausing only for a moment at the top of her panties before going even lower.

Holy shit.

Sabrina rocked her hips forward, straddling the pillow between her legs like a jockey at the Kentucky Derby. Her fingers kept right on moving—not under the fabric, the way I’d expected, but over top of the cotton. She palmed herself, rubbing the heel of her hand back and forth over her mouth, slowly.

Her face was a mask of pleasure. My cock ached, poking up through my shorts so hard I was lucky there wasn’t a visible tent in the sheets. If Sabrina saw it, I don’t know what she’d think.

Yes you would, a little voice whispered in the back of my head. She’d think it’s hot as fuck. She’d ask to see it…

Sabrina licked her lips, humping the pillow slowly. Take it out.

Holy shit. Was she a mind reader on top of all the witch shit?

No. She just had eyes. She could see the way I was looking at her—and she certainly was looking at me in exactly the way I wanted. Her eyes never left mine as she ground her soaking wet snatch against the pillow, the fabric clinging to the contours of her mound as she used it the way she’d have used me if I were in her dorm room.

Fuck it, I thought. You’re only young once.

With a grin, I tossed back the covers. The basketball shorts came off, leaving me in just a pair of boxers. My cock indeed made a tent of the fabric, so hard that it hurt.

Sabrina bit her lip when she saw it. The side of the scrying book interpreted her moan as a long string of vowels, which I decided to take as a compliment.

Touch yourself, Sabrina said. I want to see it. I want to watch you while you watch me…

No straight man with blood running through his veins could turn down a request like that.

I tugged the elastic of my boxers down and tucked it beneath my balls, then wrapped my fingers around my shaft. Sabrina ground herself against the pillow harder and harder, her sketch moving back and forth so quickly that it almost looked real. Like one of those flipbooks we used to make when we were kids.

I was anything but a kid now. I was a man.

“Fuck, you’re gorgeous,” I growled, bliss coursing through me as I stroked myself to the sight of her. “Sabrina, holy fuck…”

She looked into my eyes through the scrying book and lost all control. Sabrina’s tits bounced up and down as she furiously fucked her pillow, grinding her thick thighs against the fabric as she panted and moaned. With a wink, two fingers disappeared between her soft, pouty lips and into her throat, like she wanted to give me a sneak preview of what her mouth could do.

It was the hottest fucking thing I’d ever seen. Something about this magical witch woman performing for me like this while she was getting off made me feel like a king. And the fact that she was watching me while she did it made me feel sexy as hell. Desirable.

I couldn’t wait to fuck her for real.

With the fingers of the hand she didn’t have buried down her throat, Sabrina finally pulled her panties to the side and fingered her bare pussy as she rode the pillow. Even in sketch form, I could see the thin tuft of pubic hair above her slit, along with the glistening surface of her folds. Her fingers moved so quickly they blurred in the sketch, and I pumped myself harder to match.

The familiar tingle worked its way from my balls to my shaft. My nuts tightened up, my dick swelling bigger and thicker as I rode the edge. Holding back was hard as hell, but there was no way I was going to let myself go over the peak before Sabrina.

A few strokes later I was rewarded. The blonde looked at me, blowing a lock of sweaty blonde hair from her face. Her fingers moved even as her thighs trembled, still against the pillow.

I’m going to cum! The words appeared the moment they left her lips. Edwin, baby, I’m about to lost my fucking mind!

“Do it,” I growled, something dark and dominant taking hold of me. “Cum all over that pillow for me, naughty girl. Drip your honey all over it the way it’s going to be dripping on my dick the first time I can get you alone in that dorm room…”

Sabrina arched her back and howled as she hit the peak, her hips slamming into the pillow with reckless abandon. I couldn’t hear her scream, but I swore I could feel it. It vibrated through the vellum, rippling the pages as the gorgeous blonde came her brains out all over her pillow.

In the silent maelstrom of her orgasm, I saw her lips shape the syllables of my name.

It took me over the edge. With a groan I closed my eyes and rested my head against the wall, cum frothing like a geyser over the crown of my cock. Every muscle from the waist down clenched as I shot, the afterimage of Sabrina’s naked body burned onto the backs of my eyelids.

When I opened my eyes, she was watching me through the book. Grinning. Satisfied.

Mine.

“Holy shit,” I groaned. “That was intense…”

Sabrina bit down on her bottom lip, her shyness coming back with a vengeance. Strange how she could do that even after stripping off all of her clothing and fucking a pillow in front of me. It made her even cuter, though.

All at once I realized what a mess I’d made. I figured she could use a minute to collect herself too, so I held up my hand to get her attention.

“Hey, I’m going to, uh… deal with all this,” I said, gesturing down at the milky stains. “I’ll be back in a second, alright?”

Sabrina nodded, relieved. The sketch of her faded away, leaving only the last few words we’d exchanged behind.

I went into the bathroom, grabbed a box of tissues, and took care of business. Thankfully I hadn’t gotten any friendly fire on my deck; that would have been a hell of a thing to have to explain to Blackwater’s technology department. Once I tossed all the tissues I climbed back into bed, feeling a little lighter and a hell of a lot happier than before.

This time I picked up the pen. I’m back, I wrote, directing my words to the center of the page. That was fucking amazing. Even more with the book…

I swear I wasn’t trying to gas her up. Something about the whole sketchbook thing was hot—even hotter than if we’d been sharing dirty selfies over my phone while moaning to each other in a call. It made sexting… I dunno, magical. And classy.

When my words faded, a giant heart appeared on the paper. Aww!

Tell me about it, Sabrina wrote, putting a little heart on the dot of the ‘I’. Seriously, I’m SHAKING. I need a cigarette, and I don’t even smoke!

“Looks like you’re not so shy after all,” I chuckled, writing the same thing on the parchment.

Next time I get you in a room alone, I’ll show you how shy I am, she promised. So am I forgiven?

God damn, I was a lucky man.

You can take that to the bank, I told her. What are you doing this weekend?

I hoped the answer was me.

Chapter Fifteen

“The key to a good curse,” Irina Dragovich explained, “is hate.”

An open document lay before me on my computer deck, the name of the file already pre-filled in as Curses101.docx. Dutifully, I added a bullet point beneath the header, then typed the word ‘HATE’ in 18-point bold font.

This class is getting off to a great start, I thought.

“Any fool can say the proper words,” the Professor continued, her icy gaze sweeping the classroom. “An utter moron can take nightshade, belladonna, and widow’s tears and grind them to a fine powder in a mortar and pestle. If that’s all you believe curses and hexes are, my darlings, then I must sadly disabuse you of that notion.”

My fellow students looked neither abused nor disabused—though from the looks of them, some of them clearly would have liked their teacher to abuse them. Irina Dragovich, the de facto leader of the college’s Curses and Hexes department, could be called a striking woman. The same way the hammer of a pistol could be said to strike the powder and charge. The same way someone would describe a lightning bolt striking a building and utterly destroying it.

She was beautiful, dark, voluptuous. A stick of dynamite painted neon black.

Thirty seconds after meeting her, I was convinced she was dangerously insane.

“Throughout the course of this semester, you will be given recipes for the creation of cursed potions and hexed items. And on all of them, one key ingredient will be missing. One that you will have to provide yourself, from the bottom of your black little hearts.” Professor Dragovich smiled, showing pearly white fang-like teeth behind her jet-black lipstick. “Avarice. Spite. Hate.”

This classroom was possibly the only one on Blackwater’s campus that looked even more like a dungeon than Professor Fym’s. The room was so black and the atmosphere so funereal that it was hard to remember we were on the top floor of one of the school’s tallest buildings. Actually, we were in a turret. A no-shit turret.

This room had separate desks instead of benches, which had been arranged in the shape of a ‘U’ around Professor Dragovich’s podium. She claimed it was so we could see her better, but I kind of figured she just wanted to show off. With a body like hers, I suppose I couldn’t blame her.

Sabrina called Irina Dragovich ‘Sexy Hexy’. It was a nickname given to her by most of the student body—and the first time I walked into her classroom, I understood how she’d earned it. She looked like she’d been poured into her robes, which flowed around her feet and clung to her ample curves like a second skin. Her skin was paler than milk, and her hair—done up in a bun with a pair of black chopsticks stuck through it—formed a striking contrast with it, being as black as midnight.

If that hot redheaded secretary from Mad Men showed up as a convention cosplaying as Elvira, Queen of the Dark, she might have looked a little bit like Irina Vukovich. Nearly as sexy, but nowhere near as scary.

“Do not listen to those who tell you ‘we must all get along’!” she said, lapsing into a Russian accent so thick it sounded absurd. “Human beings emphatically do not get along with each other. Petty grudges, revenge plots, the desire to see your friends rewarded and your enemies ground into dirt before you—it’s these things that truly separate us from the animals. To hate is as natural as to love.” She gave the class a desultory look, pursing her pouty lips. “Looking at you lot, I can see that many of you haven’t had the opportunity to do either.”

Next to me, Toby Heck laughed uproariously. Most of the class looked too freaked out to respond to Irina’s jibes, but the lanky student seemed almost not to notice how creepy this room and its instructor were. With everyone else he was a fast-talking ball of energy: here, he just sat back and snickered along with Professor Dragovich.

Curses was the only class I had with Toby, just like Beast Taming was the only class I had with Sabrina. Even though the two of us were becoming fast friends, I’d gladly have swapped him for her. It had been three days since my first ‘sketchy’ sexting session with the beautiful blonde witch, and I couldn’t wait to see her again.

The two of us had a date planned this weekend—dinner at the Wand & Anchor, then Sabrina taking me around campus to show me a couple of used bookstores she was fond of. Both of us knew it would either end up at my apartment or at Sabrina’s dorm room. The energy between us was electric, the sexual tension so thick you could cut it with a knife. I needed that girl in my arms. I needed to be the one getting her off, not the one watching her get off while she moaned my name.

“You there!” Professor Dragovich’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts. “Are you even paying attention?”

I blinked. “Um, sorry. Hating people?”

The professor gave me a dagger-sharp glare. “I believe I’m getting a lesson in spite right now, young man.”

This time, several students felt comfortable chuckling.

“Since you have your head in the clouds today, you can assist me in getting the class ready for their first lesson.” Professor Dragovich stepped down from her podium and waved her hand. A cabinet at the far end of the room opened by itself, revealing rows of glass jars. “Pass those out to the students, please. And place one on your own desk when you’re done.”

I approached the jars, reaching in and taking hold of one. The interior of the cabinet was too dark to see, so when the first flash of motion happened I nearly dropped what I was holding. My stomach did a flip.

“Gaaah!” I blurted.

Every head turned. Professor Dragovich had been explaining something to the class; now I’d missed it, and I’d made a fool out of myself. Great.

“Are you alright, young man?” The professor looked more concerned than amused.

I held up the jar. Inside, clinging to the interior of the glass like a barnacle, was the biggest damn cockroach I’d ever seen.

“They’re full of roaches,” I said, making a face. “They must have got in somehow—”

“They did not get in,” the professor said, rolling her eyes. “Have you not been listening? I put them there.”

I glanced into the cabinet once more. All of the jars in the cabinet had roaches in them—specifically, one roach each. The things lazily climbed up and down the walls of the jars, their wings flickering and antennae waving.

Fucking gross, I thought. I hated roaches.

Which, I realized a second later, was probably the point.

“Do not worry about the safety of the creatures,” Professor Dragovich explained in a sarcastic tone as I handed out the jars. “There are pinholes in the lid to allow air to enter and escape. As you’ll soon see, they’re what allows us to conduct this experiment, as well.”

The students shied away from them, as grossed out by the pests as I was. These things were bigger than an ordinary bug—and hairier, too. If you found one of these monstrosities running across your bathroom floor when you turned on the light, you’d probably move out and never look back.

I set out the other jars and carried mine to my desk. As Professor Dragovich said, the jar did indeed have pinholes in the top, punctured through the metal of the jar’s lid. Fortunately they were far too small to let the roaches escape.

“Cockroaches,” Professor Dragovich said with pride. “Some of the most loathsome creatures to ever exist. It is easy to hate a thing like this, da? With its nasty little legs, and its mouth, and the diseases it spreads as it lays eggs all over your house…”

One of the girls in the front row went green. Toby punched me in the shoulder to get my attention, watching her like he couldn’t wait to see if she puked.

Dragovich saw. “Perhaps I’ve gone a little too far,” she said with a chuckle. “Please open your textbooks to page two hundred and three.”

Gingerly, the other pupils reached into their bags and removed their curse books. Like mine, they were all black, bound in the hide of some unknown but doubtless hideous creature. The edges of the pages had a black border around them, which made the whole book look like the empty space where a book ought to be when you looked at it from a distance.

Hoping I wasn’t infecting myself with anything, I flipped to the proper page.

The Curse of Malodorousness, the top of the recipe read.

“Today’s curse is quite simple,” the Professor said, bringing our attention back to her. “It’s not deadly, and it's not even particularly dangerous. But if done correctly, it will make your target’s life a living hell. Put quite simply: it will make them stink.”

I read through the rest of the page while Professor Dragovich pontificated on the ability of smell to affect the way other people perceived you. The curse looked fairly simple: just a few words in an ancient tongue, combined with a hand signal that looked enough like a classically rude gesture that I couldn’t help but wonder if we’d based our own signals around it. I mouthed the words silently as I listened to the professor, occasionally glancing over at the cockroach in the jar.

“I want each of you to try casting that curse on the cockroach,” Dragovich said, her hands on her hips. “If you are successful, then the proof will come wafting up out of that jar. Ideally, the entire class should be able to smell it.”

“Gross!” someone said, wrinkling their nose.

Professor Dragovich laughed. “Indeed! Remember, you have to hate the little bugger! Spite and avarice are essential tools in the kit of any truly great hexer. If you can’t muster up the disgust, just shake the jar up a bit and watch your roach fly!”

A few of the students in the class did just that. The cockroaches jumped from one side of the jar to the other, skittering and making horrible noises. More than one student had a slight green tinge as they set about practicing the words of the curse.

I focused on the cockroach.

It stared back at me placidly.

I tried to think of spoiled food, of a disgusting kitchen overrun with pests. I pictured myself as a poor child, raised by negligent parents, battling roaches in my bedsheets every night. A sickly feeling spread through my stomach, but the hate I’d expected to feel failed to materialize.

At the front of the room, one of the students made the rude gesture at their jar and spoke the words. The syllables came out in a guttural rush, and everyone stopped what they were doing to see if the girl had been successful.

Professor Dragovich picked up the jar. She leaned over it with a frown, sniffing the pin holes at the top of the enclosure like a sommelier taking in a freshly-poured glass of wine. Weird, but also weirdly hot.

Be real, I told myself. It’s only hot because SHE’S doing it. I bet Sexy Hexy could read the phone book and turn half the class on.

“I’m afraid I don’t smell it, dear,” Professor Dragovich said sadly. “Try again!”

The black-clad instructor walked up and down the aisle, checking each desk. Students roared the words of the curse, making rude gestures at the cockroaches sitting in the jars over and over again as they attempted to spread the Curse of Malodorousness to their target.

A few times, Irina let out a pleased cry at the stench wafting from the jar. Two or three students got their kudos, though none of them had managed to curse the cockroach strongly enough for anyone else in the room to smell the reek. “Very good!” she said whenever this happened. “You’re on the road to hatred, my dearies! The rest of you keep it up! Focus!”

Within a span of about fifteen minutes, the class was divided into two groups. About half of us had managed to conjure at least a small stink from the cockroach in the jar, and had received the proper praise when we did.

The other half hadn’t managed even a tiny curse.

I was one of them.

Irina put her hands on her hips, surveying those who’d yet to curse correctly. “Still not able to do it, are we?” she asked, a note of scorn entering her tone. “I never let a student leave their first lesson until they’ve at least cast a single basic curse! If you haven’t made your cockroach stink, then you simply don’t hate it enough!”

“We’re trying,” a guy in the back protested. “This is harder than it looks!”

Irina shook her head. “To hate is the easiest thing in the world,” she insisted, her breasts jiggling in her top as she sashayed to the young man’s side of the room. “If you don’t hate that cockroach enough just yet, then perhaps we should switch things up a bit?”

Professor Dragovich snapped her fingers. The top of my jar twisted a half-turn clockwise, becoming so loose that it almost popped right off. Several students let out cries of alarm. Only the fact that I bit my tongue kept me from being one of them.

One girl actually shot from her seat, gagging. “Eeeek!” she cried, shaking her arms like there were already roaches crawling on them. “Don’t let it get on me!”

Irina glared at her. “Start. Hating.” she insisted. “Hard.”

At the desk next to mine, Toby had already managed a small but putrid stench inside of his jar. Ever since, he’d been sitting back in his chair with his hands behind his head, watching the other students struggle. Now his face lit up.

“Holy shit, dude,” he said, leaning over to me and stage whispering. “You’d better hurry up! Sexy Hexy’s about to cover this whole class with bugs…!”

She wouldn’t really do that, would she? I pictured cockroaches crawling all over my body and got a chill. The thought of their creepy, crawly limbs all over me made acid rise in the back of my throat. I hated the idea of having their dirty little bodies all over me.

But did I hate it enough?

I frowned deeply, staring at the cockroach. It was true that I didn’t like the little bug, but I couldn’t quite hate it as hard as Professor Dragovich wanted me to. I could almost feel something happening inside of me when I spoke the words and performed the gesture, but the actual explosion of magic remained frustratingly out of reach.

The lid turned another quarter of an inch. It was almost open!

The more squeamish students in the room were moaning now. Irina cackled, her arms crossed beneath her ample breasts as she watched her pupils struggle.

“Hate!” she cried. “Avarice! Spite! Come on, you can do it! You’re not so young as to never have a nemesis! You’ve seen spite! You’ve felt frustration! Show it to me!”

Hate.

If I was going to cast a proper curse, I needed to hate something. Hard.

If I didn’t, the jar was going to open. All of them were going to open, and my fellow students would be crawling with bugs. I couldn’t let that happen! I had to stop it.

I might not have hated the cockroach to the proper degree. But there was certainly something I hated…

Grabbing the jar with both hands, I flicked the gesture at the cockroach and growled the words. My lips peeled back over my teeth as the memory replayed in my head, and my fingers tightened against the glass so hard it nearly cracked.

“Oh please!” Professor Dragovich was saying. “It’s just a few bugs, darlings! There’s nothing to… to…!”

She paused. Her expression went from triumphant to utterly disgusted.

“Phaugh!” Professor Dragovich covered her nose. “Bozhe Moi, what is that…!?”

Toby saw it first. “Hot damn!” he cried, slapping my knee. “You got it, dude!”

From the pinholes in the top of my jar, tiny threads of green smoke rose into the air. They looked like cartoon stink lines—and by God, they reeked. Tears sprang to my eyes as the fragrance hit my nostrils.

When I was a teenager, I’d worked as a dishwasher in a restaurant. One summer a terrible storm hit our town, and the restaurant (and everything else) lost power for nearly a week. After the state power crews got the juice running again, I’d gotten double pay to go into the restaurant’s freezers with a couple of guys and clean out all the rotten, spoiled food. I’d thrown up twice.

What leaked from the jar with the cockroach inside took me right back to that summer. Vomit filled the back of my throat, and only a very great effort kept me from spewing right on my desk.

“Well done!” That was Professor Dragovich, who had her fingers clamping her nose shut. “Idi Syuda!”

She waved a hand over the jar, and the stench faded. A snap of her fingers and the heavy curtains over the windows pulled away, the glass panes opening to let the room air out a bit. It didn’t fully clear away the stink of my curse, but it at least made it bearable.

“That,” Professor Dragovich said once everyone had calmed down, “was an excellent first attempt.” She looked around the room, giving the remainder of the students who’d failed a disappointed look. “Since that stench was so pungent, I suppose we won’t be able to tell for a while if your curses work or not. We’ll repeat the experiment next week.”

The girl who’d nearly puked earlier relaxed, her body still trembling with adrenaline. Several of the other students looked similarly shell-shocked.

“Way to go, hero,” Toby snickered. “You saved half the class from having bugs crawl all over them. And you pissed off Sexy Hexy something fierce…”

Huh? Now that Toby mentioned it, I could see that Professor Dragovich wasn’t disappointed by the students—she was upset that her fun had been cut short.

“Of course the teacher in charge of curses and hexes likes to torment her students,” I muttered. “They probably wouldn’t have promoted her otherwise…”

Professor Dragovich called on Toby to gather up the jars and put them back in the cabinet, which he did without protest. None of the lids popped off, despite his attempt to loosen one and dump the bug down the shirt of the girl who was still shaking. They’d been magically tightened.

“As you’ve just learned,” Professor Dragovich said, “intent is one of the three pillars of a successful curse. Some believe that it is the most important—that with enough hatred in your heart, you can overcome even a sloppy, scattershot presentation or impure ingredients.” She grinned. “I happen to be one of those people.”

Toby chuckled at that. “This is totally the subject I’m doing for my Grand Conjuration,” he whispered. “You think Sexy Hexy’ll let me be one of her padawans?”

“I think she looks like the kind of woman who treats her younglings the way Anakin did,” I muttered. “It’s your funeral, pal.”

“For now, we’re going to discuss the importance of presentation,” Professor Dragovich continued, leaning over her podium suggestively. “Flip all the way back to page twenty, to the column called ‘Glottal Stops and You’...”

The remainder of our first lecture was all dry and theoretical. At some point, the room aired out enough that Professor Dragovich closed the windows and shut the curtains with another spell.

By the time we finished up, the document I’d started on my deck as a joke was covered in notes. That single word HATE still adorned the top, large enough to be seen from the adjacent desks, but tinier lines filled the page beneath it. Someone glanced over at it as I saved and closed the document, chuckling knowingly.

Just as I got up to leave, Professor Dragovich pointed at me. “You,” she said, a not particularly kind smile spreading across her face. “Mister Stinkbug. Remain behind after class for a moment, if you please. I wish to speak with you.”

Shit. What did I do?

Toby sympathized. “Good luck, dude,” he said, packing away his bag. “Hey, maybe it’s not bad. Maybe Sexy Hexy wants to make you her boytoy—”

“I can hear you, Mister Heck,” Dragovich drawled, her Russian accent returning with a vengeance. “Unless you wish to learn about the panoply of hexes capable of shrinking or withering the male member, I suggest you restrict your comments to classroom matters only.”

Toby swallowed so hard I could see a visible lump jump in his throat. “Yes, Professor Dragovich,” he said, his face pale.

He gave me a quick nod and headed off, following the other students.

Leaving me alone with Irina Dragovich.

Once the two of us were the only ones left in the room, Irina walked to the door and closed it. I might have been imagining it, but I swore I heard a little click—like she’d engaged the lock. I didn’t see her fingers touch it, but she could have used a spell.

Oh boy. What did I do now?

At least this time I don’t have to fight a stone dragon, I told myself. But Professor Dragovich might just be worse.

She stepped forward, giving me a gaze so frank that I felt color rush to my cheeks. “You are Edwin Sawyer,” she said after a few moments, then clucked her tongue. “The student our Headmaster recruited, yes? I understand you were in some kind of mortal danger and were forced to use your power in front of a bunch of mundanes?”

She had it about half right. “I was in a car accident, yes,” I said. Keeping my eyes off of her cleavage was a struggle. “I didn’t know that mundane was a thing until a little over a week ago. I’m new to…” I looked around the room, gesturing with my hands to encompass it. “All of this.”

She nodded like she understood perfectly. “You would not be the first young man to come to us in such a manner,” she said, stretching languidly. “But you are certainly one of the most interesting.”

Was she flirting with me? Jesus, she’s a teacher, I thought. But the signs were unmistakable. Professor Dragovich wanted me to focus on her body. She wanted me to stare.

Like I said: crazy woman.

“I’ve been told that Professor Fym has her hooks in you,” the dark-haired teacher said. Her arms were back beneath her breasts, lifting them so high they threatened to spill out of her top. Her pale cleavage was almost impossible not to stare at. “You have already decided that Beast Taming will be your primary discipline?”

Irina Dragovich looked like she had a couple of beasts she wanted me to tame. “I’m doing well in that subject,” I said, forcing myself to keep eye contact. “I’m sure you’ve probably heard about the incident with the dragon—”

Irina snorted. “Who has not?” she said, her eyes traveling skyward. “I’m certain you’ll be wonderful at it, young man. But that curse you cast today in my classroom… that was phenomenal.”

The compliment hit me right in the chest. Even knowing how crazy and dangerous this woman was—having heard about her reputation on campus—I couldn’t help but be a little enchanted by how highly she thought of me.

“Hexers are a rare breed,” she said, stepping closer. She wore a grin like she was confiding in me, like the two of us were already as thick as thieves. “Not everyone has what it takes to do the evil, dirty, necessary things that magical society sometimes needs. Not everyone can hold the pure spite in their heart required to cast the sorts of curses that damn a man’s family for ten generations.” The corner of her mouth curled in a smirk. It was very close now to my own. “It’s a beautiful thing, spite. I see a seed of it in you, Edwin Sawyer. If nurtured in the correct soil, it might very well blossom.”

I swallowed hard. “What kind of soil?”

Irina grinned. Her teeth were almost fangs. “Dark,” she purred. “And fertile.”

God damn.

I was normally a pretty smooth guy, but no straight man could have taken that gaze for long without getting flustered. I took a moment to compose myself, then stepped back a couple of feet. Fucking hell, just being close to her made me dizzy. She was poison, for sure, but the sweet kind. An old Alice Cooper riff rang out in the back of my head. Your lips are devilish poison…

The thought was mad, but it wouldn’t go away: I felt like if I took Irina in my arms and bent her over my desk right now, she not only wouldn’t try to stop me but would welcome it. This woman wanted a chance to corrupt me, to stain my soul—to make me as wicked as her.

God damn, but it was tempting.

“I’m flattered,” I said, trying to maintain my composure. “I just don’t think I have the killer instinct you’re talking about. What happened today was just beginner’s luck.”

Irina snickered. She looked amused by how disoriented her presence made me.

“You think yourself a lion,” she said, cocking her head to the side. “But I think there’s more of a fox in you than you want to believe, young man.”

Huh? The conversation had just jumped the tracks. “A fox?”

“You have not read Epictetus?” The corner of Irina’s dark, pouty lips curled in a smirk. “The Discourses are one of Blackwater’s prerequisites.”

“Like I said, I didn’t know Blackwater existed until about ten days ago.”

She chuckled. “I will explain it to you. Epictetus divided society into three classes of people. Lions, who are powerful but filled with too much pride. Wolves, who reward those closest to them but treat those outside of their ‘pack’ with deceit, like enemies. And Foxes.” She grinned. “Wicked. Spiteful. Lurking in the shadows.”

I think I was starting to understand.

“Professor Fym loves lions,” Irina said with only a tinge of disdain. “As does our esteemed Headmaster. They are the so-called ‘great’ men and women of the world—the ones who flip the table of society over and bring great change. Never mind the little people who get crushed when they do.” Her grin turned wicked. “It’s the way of the world.”

“And wolves?”

“Tribal.” Irina sniffed. “Good to their friends, bad to their enemies. Most mundanes, if they had enough essence in them to be sorted in such a manner, would probably fall into this category. Professor Locke—our chief of Illusions—knows all about wolves. Many of our students with such inclinations gravitate towards him, or one of the instructors he considers disciples.”

I nodded. I’d only been in Professor Locke’s class once so far, and he hadn’t looked at me a single time during the whole lecture. So that tracked.

“You see something different in me,” I said. “Don’t you?”

I should have probably left, but I liked this. Having her attention on me. I liked it more than I wanted to admit. And to be honest, I was a little curious.

Irina nodded. “Foxes are cunning creatures,” she purred. “Deceitful and spiteful, yes, but also clever. We must be, for otherwise we would never be tolerated.”

I’d heard a little bit about that. Even the students who’d grown up with two magical parents knew barely more about curses and hexes than I did. ‘Decent’ people didn’t push their children down that path. And the ones who followed it…

Well, they weren’t shunned, exactly. But they were poorly understood.

Irina leaned in close. For a moment, I thought she meant to kiss me. But she just stared deeply into my eyes. Hers were violet, and looking at them this close felt almost like drowning.

“There is something I must know,” she said in a low voice.

I waited, trying to think of baseball scores. I hoped she didn’t look down.

“Earlier, when you cast that most exquisite curse,” she said, a naughty look in her eyes. “You were not thinking about the cockroach, were you?”

There seemed to be no sense in denying it. I shook my head.

Her eyes lit up with triumph. “I knew it,” she whispered, looking almost like I’d kissed her. “Such hate. Ah, the purity of it makes me shiver! You must tell me, young man—who tucked such bitterness inside of your young heart?”

A chill went down my spine. A chill like black, churning water closing over me.

When I didn’t respond right away, Irina Dragovich smiled. “A lover, perhaps?” she asked, nodding like she expected me to start nodding along. “Perhaps a girl you wished to become your lover, but chose another. One who broke your heart?”

I shook my head. I wasn’t thinking about a girl at all.

The person who sideswiped my car was a woman. A drunk woman, whose moment of thoughtless selfishness nearly killed me. Nearly killed my friends.

Nearly put us all in a watery fucking grave.

“I…” I began.

Professor Dragovich leaned in closer.

How close had I come to never experiencing any of this? Another second, a slight twist of the steering wheel, and it wouldn’t have been me pulling my friends out of the Potomac. It would have been a moment of darkness, a fraction of a second of pain, and darkness.

Endless darkness.

And all because of some drunk fuck.

I bit back the rage working its way up my throat. “I think I’d rather keep that to myself,” I said.

Professor Dragovich stared at me, clearly disappointed. “No?”

Somehow I managed to shake my head.

For a moment, I expected her to sink those fangs of hers directly into my neck. But no pain came. She simply stepped backwards, looking almost flummoxed by my lack of cooperation.

“I see.” Her arms went back beneath her breasts, propping them up as she stuck out her bottom lip. “Well. I won’t force you, Mr. Sawyer.”

Oh, so it’s ‘Mr. Sawyer’ now, I thought. What happened to ‘young man’?

“I look forward to working with you this semester,” she said, extending an olive branch song with a smile. “You are a fox, Mr. Sawyer, whether you believe it of yourself or not. I’m excited to see how you will develop in my class.”

As was I.

A naughty little smirk spread across her face. “If running with the lions turns out to be less exciting than you thought it would be, young man, then come to me. The foxes will accept you with open arms.”

I had little doubt that they would. What would Sabrina think?

She’d want you to succeed, a little voice whispered in the back of my brain. Why would she care how you did it? Being the best at one discipline at Blackwater is pretty much the same as being the best at another one. Right?

“I’ll…” I paused, caught for a moment between the darkness and the light. “I’ll think about it.”

The grin she gave me when she heard that was very much like a fox. One who’d just found out it had been promoted to hen house inspector. “That’s all I ask,” she said, her hands clasped behind her back. “I’ll see you later, Mr. Sawyer. Oh, don’t leave your textbook behind! Those things get up to all kinds of mischief when they’re left to their own devices…!”

I packed up and left the classroom, my head still spinning. I didn’t stop walking until I made it to the bottom of the stairwell, where the turret met one of the main halls of the lecture building. Down here there were other students, and vending machines, and the world began to feel real once more.

Holy hell, I thought, clutching my throat. That was intense.

I wasn’t sure if Irina Dragovich wanted to have sex with me or eat me alive.

Maybe the two weren’t as different as I thought.

Eventually, my pulse slowed down and the dizzy feeling retreated. A couple of students gave me strange looks as they passed in the hall, but mostly they left me alone.

That… wasn’t so bad, I thought. Honestly, I should probably be flattered.

Even if I didn’t wind up working with Professor Fym in Beast Taming, I had another instructor at Blackwater champing at the bit to recruit me.

Either way, my semester had just become a hell of a lot more interesting.

Chapter Sixteen

“There he is,” Toby said. “Have a seat, man! Out of the lion’s den in one piece!”

At this time of the day, Blackwater’s cafeteria was almost standing room only. The warm yellow light streaming in from the modern building’s windows contrasted sharply with the dark curtains, ornate chandeliers and Gothic furnishings of the walls, the tables, and the tile floor. It gave the whole place a slightly surreal look, which was why Sabrina preferred to go get lunch at places like the Wand & Anchor rather than drop by the canteen.

Toby sat with several of his other friends, all of them gathered around a round table near the wall of the dining room. Matt had his nose in a book, while Henry was cutting his pork chop into smaller and smaller pieces of meat, muttering something about curses.

I’d just taken a seat and placed my backpack on the table when something stepped on my foot.

“What the hell?” I glanced down. The table had the standard stainless steel fixtures and formica top of cafeterias the world around, but instead of metal legs, it had silver dragon’s paws holding it up. One of them had just idly placed one of its claws over top of my shoe.

“Don’t mind that,” Toby assured me with a laugh. “The teachers enchant the tables to help keep the cafeteria clean. They pick up all the bits of food and trash with their claws and rake them into a little pile for the janitors.

Toby was right. I could see a small pile of leavings at the center of the table. Crazy, I thought.

"You alright, man?" Toby asked, leaning back in his seat. "I’m not trying to be rude, man, but you’re looking a little pale. You didn’t get cursed by Sexy Hexy, did you?”

“I… I don’t think so,” I said, shaking my head. “We just talked about the curse I cast during class today.”

“Curses,” Henry said, popping a tiny piece of meat into his mouth. “Nasty stuff!”

“Professor Dragovich thinks I have a natural aptitude towards curses and hexes,” I explained. The part about her acting like she wanted to seduce me I kept to myself—for the moment, at least. “She wants me to consider it for my Grand Conjuration. I think she might have even offered to mentor me herself.”

Toby’s eyes got so wide they nearly fell out of his head. “You’re going to be Sexy Hexy’s top pupil?” he asked, whistling through his teeth. “Lucky!”

“I don’t know about that,” I said, shaking my head. “I didn’t feel very lucky. I was kind of worried she was going to try and drink my blood or something like that.”

Toby chortled. “Man, I’d let her,” he said, doing a wolf whistle. “You just know any teacher who dresses like that around her students has got to be red hot!”

“She’s not a vampire,” Henry said, popping another piece of meat into his mouth. “Vampires are obsessive-compulsive. You could throw a bunch of toothpicks on the ground in front of them and run off while they’re forced to stop and count them all.”

Matt glanced up from his book with a frown. “Do you ever listen to the words that come out of your mouth?”

“Obviously he doesn’t.” Toby took in the whole table with a grin, then nodded at me. “Go grab some lunch, Ed. I’ll keep watch over your stuff.”

I came back a few minutes later with a tray of food. Pork chops felt singularly unappetizing after watching Henry cut his into postage-stamp sized bits of Shake and Bake, so I opted for a caesar salad with some grilled chicken in it. As I sat down, a couple of girls walked by. Sabrina wasn’t among them.

“Hey, Edwin!” one of them called. I didn’t even know her name—she might have been one of the trio of witches who’d picked on Sabrina earlier, but I couldn’t really be sure. “Looking good!”

The other girls with her giggled, giving me a look that was probably a bit more curious than I would have liked. News of my battle with the stone dragon traveled fast, and by now nearly every student at Blackwater knew about the freshman who’d saved an entire classroom full of Professor Fym’s pupils from being turned into statues by a rampaging beast. I was a novelty to some and a dating prospect to others.

The girl who’d spoken wiggled her fingers at me as she walked away.

Toby watched her go, sighing like a character in a romantic comedy. “Goddamn, Edwin. It must be good to be a hero.”

Something about the word jogged my memory.

I’d promised Sabrina that I wouldn’t bring up her weird behavior where other girls at Blackwater were concerned. And I fully intended to keep that promise. But I never told her that I wouldn’t ask anyone else about it.

And I really needed to know. Things were getting hot and heavy between Sabrina and me, and they were getting that way a hell of a lot faster than I’d expected. My scribing book was filled with ‘sketchy’ sexts the blonde coed sent me late at night, which I’d stored on a rear page of the journal. They were invisible to the naked eye, and I’d learned through trial and error that they only appeared at my touch. An interesting security system, and I wondered if the other students at Blackwater used theirs for the same purposes.

There was something I wanted to know even more, though.

“Listen,” I said, glancing around the room. Suddenly it felt like there were far too many ears surrounding us. Even with the background din of the cafeteria to muffle noise, I felt exposed. “There’s something I need to talk to you about. In private.”

Toby perked up. “What’s wrong?”

“Yeah, what’s wrong?” Henry chimed in. “Anything you can talk about in front of the Lord of Heck, you can talk about in front of us!”

The Lord of…? “I didn’t even know we were friends,” I blurted, cocking an eyebrow at the redheaded man.

Henry had the temerity to look hurt. “I told you about aiuas,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “You think I do that for just anybody, man?”

“He cares,” Matt added. The hefty student glanced up from his book—a thick tome whose name was in Latin. “Just because he’s crazier than a shithouse rate doesn’t mean Henry doesn’t care about you.”

I glanced over at Toby in disbelief. He shrugged.

“We’re pretty tight,” he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. “And yeah, they call me the Lord of Heck sometimes. Kinda like the ‘Lord of Hell’, like Lucifer himself, only a little bit more chill, you know? They came up with it—”

“You came up with it,” Matt snapped, pushing his glasses up the brim of his nose. “You begged us for like two weeks to start using it.”

Toby acted like he hadn’t heard that. “Anyway, whatever you’ve got to say to me, you know you can say in front of Matt and Henry,” he said, gesturing at his friends. “Unless it’s about something fucked up or illegal that I did. If that’s the case, I’d prefer to keep the number of people who can testify against me as small as possible.”

I rolled my eyes. “Well, you probably can’t help me anyway. It’s about girls.”

Toby perked up. Even Matt and Henry looked interested.

“Woah,” Toby chuckled. “Hang on.”

He shared a look with his two chums, and all of a sudden the three of them surrounded my seat at the table. Matt left his book; Henry had forgotten all about his meat. A couple people gave our little knot weird glances, but this wasn’t even all that strange for Blackwater.

“Okay.” Toby leaned in, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial register. “So what’s going on, man? Tell us!”

“Who’s the lucky lady?” Henry asked with a lewd grin.

“Ladies, probably,” Matt drawled. “You’ve heard the way the girls talk about him…”

I was already shaking my head. “Just one girl,” I said, holding up my hands. They were making far too big of a deal out of this. They reminded me of schoolgirls after prom, daring each other to kiss and tell. But gentlemen never did.

“Riiiight,” Toby said, slapping the back of his chair. “Teen Witch, right?”

“Her name’s Sabrina,” I said, feeling a surge of irritation on her behalf. “Honestly, I don’t know why people harp on that so much.”

Matt shrugged. “Gotta harp on something.”

I ignored that. “We’re dating, right? We’ve been out a few times, and things are… you know. They’re starting to get a little serious.”

“Totally get it,” Toby said. “I mean, I get it. I don’t know about these two.”

Henry gave Toby the finger.

“I’m sure you don’t need the speech about the birds and the bees,” Toby chuckled. “And hey, I heard your friends in the mundane world have to, like, wrap their dicks up before they get frisky with a lady?”

“Ugh,” Henry spat.

I stared at the man. “Only if you don’t want her to get pregnant,” I shot back.

Toby’s smile widened. “All that’s taken care of here,” he assured me. “Magic, you know? You don’t gotta do nothing like that with a Blackwater girl. They’re not like those mundane chicks you probably chased back in high school.”

“That’s not what I’m asking about,” I said. Honestly, I hadn’t even thought it through that far yet. Though part of me was glad I didn’t need to worry about any ‘accidents’ during my tenure at Blackwater.

Toby leaned back and propped his elbows up on his chair. “Then what?”

I glanced over his shoulder, making sure that no one was listening in too closely. Everyone near us seemed interested in their own conversations or focused on finishing their meal. Speaking of which, I hadn’t even touched my salad. Oh well. I could always grab something out of a vending machine later.

“It’s…” I struggled to find the right words. “Sabrina was acting weird the other day.”

All three guys nodded sagely. “A woman’s prerogative,” Henry said, like he was quoting from Professor Dragovich’s sermon on Epictetus.

“No, I mean weird for Blackwater,” I corrected. “Not ordinary girlfriend weird.”

Henry and Toby shared a look.

“What’d she do?” the ginger student asked.

I sighed. Then I told them.

I related the whole story about our walk through the student commons. How I’d briefly been the center of attention for a couple of girls walking past us, and how I’d expected Sabrina to get jealous and maybe tease me about it. I told them about her strange reaction, her little jibes about other women throwing their panties at me—the tone in my voice letting them know just how strange I found it all. Finally, I let them know that when I made it to the luncheon with the Headmaster, Sabrina was nowhere to be seen.

“We’ve made up since then,” I told the trio. “But Sabrina never explained to me what caused the friction between us in the first place. And she doesn’t want to talk about it anymore, so I can’t exactly ask her without causing another fight.” I searched their faces. “Do any of you have any idea what happened?”

Their reactions were not what I’d expected. They looked confused by my story, just like I’d been—except their confusion seemed directed at me, not Sabrina.

Henry was the first to speak. He snorted, rolling his eyes as he dismissed my tale with a gesture. “Way to humble brag,” he said, glancing back over at his plate.

“Yeah, that was not at all what I expected,” Matt added.

I could feel my brows furrowing together. “What do you mean, it’s not what you expected? It’s not what I expected, either!”

Toby blew air from his teeth. “I don’t see why not.”

I turned to him in disbelief, looking him full in the face. Letting him see how confused I was, and how much I was in need of guidance.

“Look, explain it to me like I’m five,” I said, my lips peeling back over my teeth. “Clearly this is something where the magical world is radically different from the mundane one. And everyone here thinks I’m the weird one, because I grew up not knowing that magic even existed!”

Toby nearly went cross-eyed looking at me. “You’re not fucking with me?”

I sighed. Finally we were getting somewhere. “I am emphatically not fucking with you. Dude, I don’t have a clue.”

The youth smiled. “I mean, Teen Witch said what probably anybody stepping out with her would have expected her to say. And then, from what you’re telling me—and I’m totally not judging you, dude—it sounds like you were seriously uncool about it.”

His words left me taken aback. I was the one at fault?

“But Sabrina told me…”

“She let it run off her back because she likes you, dude,” Toby insisted. “Isn’t it obvious? I mean, she’s probably not going to be the only girl you go out with this semester, right?”

I understood every word that came out of Toby’s mouth individually. But put together in a sentence, they made no sense at all.

“What?” I nearly shot out of my seat. “Why would I date other girls?”

“Because they’re, like, all into you,” Henry snickered. “You’re not leaving any for the rest of us, man!”

“Told you,” Matt added. “Humble brag.”

Nothing about this made sense. And then, horribly, it did. Pieces snapped together in my brain, and a piece of the picture revealed itself. At least I thought it did.

“You expect me to date multiple women,” I told Toby. Coming from me, it almost sounded like an accusation.

Toby gave his friends a little look, like ‘can you believe this guy?’

“Yeah,” Toby said. “Why wouldn’t you? Hell, I’m surprised you didn’t get Sexy Hexy’s number, the way she was mooning over you. ‘Schtay back in classsh, young man!’”

My jaw dropped open. “She’s a teacher here!”

Toby stared at me for a long moment. I could almost see the pieces coming together in his head, the same way they’d been doing in my own over the last few minutes. Suddenly he laughed.

“Shit,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “You still think like a mundane.”

“I pretty much am a mundane,” I countered. “Please. Explain to me what I’m missing, Toby. Because right now, I’m really confused.”

My plea cut right through his jokey, over-caffeinated manner. When he leaned forward and placed his elbows on the table—kicking away one of the dragon’s feet as it quested for a scrap of a dropped wrapper—he looked about as close to calm as I’d ever seen him.

“Okay,” he said, clearing his throat. “So… you’ve noticed Sexy Hexy, right?”

“I’ve noticed Professor Dragovich, yes,” I said. Finally we were getting down to the heart of it. “I don’t see how any male student in her class couldn’t notice her.”

“And all the other faculty members,” Toby added. “Have you noticed yet that none of them are married, Edwin? That they all shamelessly flirt with the students? Hell, I heard Professor Locke purposely put all the cutest girls in the front row this semester so he can waste lecture time hitting on them!”

That was true, actually. I hadn’t been lying when I said that during my one lecture with Professor Locke, he hadn’t so much as spared a glance in my direction. That’s because he spent the whole class period holding court to a group of sultry witches sitting up front.

At the time, I’d thought they’d just clustered up there like groupies, on their own recognizance. The fact that they’d been picked…

Well. That added a whole new dimension to it.

“That’s allowed here?” I asked, aghast. “I mean, what about the age difference?”

“Age difference?” Matt stared at me like I’d grown a second head. “Wait a second. You don’t know, do you?”

“Duh,” Henry said. “We’ve already established that Edwin doesn’t know shit.”

“Ed,” Toby said, giving me a look that was almost sympathetic. “The teachers at Blackwater are all hundreds of years old.”

I nearly fell out of my goddamn chair. Hundreds!?

“You’re kidding me,” I said. My lips suddenly felt numb. “Professor Fym… Professor Dragovich…”

“Professor Dragovich emigrated here in Catherine the Great’s day,” Toby said breezily. “I’m pretty sure she’s the one who started that nasty rumor about her and the horse.”

“And Fym is like, crazy old,” Matt said, looking at me like I’d just admitted I didn’t know who Taylor Swift was. “She’s a Viking, Edwin. Literally.”

“Magic extends your lifespan,” Toby explained. “The more powerful of a wizard or a witch you are, the longer you can expect to cheat death. Even partials live for, like, a hundred and twenty years—and they don’t have any real magic at all.”

The world shook on its axis beneath me.

“Wait,” I said, my concerns about Sabrina suddenly replaced with an even greater shock. “You’re telling me I’m immortal?”

Both Matt and Henry snickered.

“Nah, you’re still gonna die eventually,” Matt said. “Or ‘have your cosmic energy returned to the core of the Earth’, as Henry would put it. There’s no spell that lets you defeat death. And believe me, it’s been tried.”

“But that’s not gonna happen for a really, really long time,” Toby said, leaning back in his seat. He tucked his hands back behind his head and grinned. “People like our instructors have lived for hundreds of years already, Eddie. Thousands in some cases. Shit, old Ravensson’s probably got a cameo in the Bible somewhere.”

Centuries. Maybe even a thousand years of life.

Even after everything I’d been given over the last few weeks: tuition, magic, a new lease on life—this felt like the greatest gift of all.

I’m almost immortal, I thought. Holy fucking shit….

“So you can see where I’m going with this,” Toby said, snapping me out of my thoughts. “That whole ‘monogamy’ racket that mundanes do? That’s not really a thing here. I mean, what would be the point? Who would want to be shackled to the same witch or wizard for hundreds of years?”

My mind swam. “What about love?” I asked. “If you really loved someone, wouldn’t you want to spend the rest of your life with them? Even for a thousand years?”

All three of them—Toby, Matt, and Henry—shared a look.

Then they started to laugh.

“Are you kidding me?” Toby said, giving me a good-natured clap on the back. “You really were raised by mundanes, weren’t you, Edwin?”

“Love is a conspiracy cooked up by corporations to sell chocolates and greeting cards,” Henry said, sliding into one of his tinfoil hat modes. “It’s a means of social control: a way to keep you working and producing and pushing that rock up the hill like ‘ol Sisyphus. We’re not like that, Edwin. We’ve escaped the Matrix!”

“We’re not mundanes,” Matt said derisively. “Sheesh.”

That couldn’t be true. How could a whole society function like that?

I searched my mind for an objection and found one. “But Sabrina’s parents are both magical,” I protested. “And they’re still together.”

Toby gave me a sympathetic look. “And now you know why she gets teased, Eddie.”

My jaw dropped open. “You’re shitting me.”

“I would never, Eddie boy,” Toby said. He put an arm around my shoulder, his words coming out rapidfire like he was a little nervous to be saying all this out loud. “Listen, we’re not like those little people, Edwin. We hook up with who we want, we do what we want, we live how we wanna live. We’re all successful, thanks to our magic. It gives you charisma, even if you were born with a face like a pet rock and a voice like that teacher from Ferris Bueller. Hell, even Henry gets mundane girls, at least, and his pick-up lines are all about the JFK assassination! Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law, no?”

I scooted away. I’d heard that phrase before. “Aleister Crowley said that,” I said, my eyes narrowing. “Isn’t that the motto of the Church of Satan?”

“Get a load of this guy,” Toby chuckled. “Edwin, who the hell do you think Aleister Crowley was? A freaking mundane?”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Surely that couldn’t be possible…

A shadow fell over the table.

Matt shied back into his book, while Henry and Toby both gave me looks like they’d gotten caught with their hands in the cookie jar. I froze, expecting the worst. A hand came down on my shoulder, but the squeeze it gave me felt surprisingly gentle.

“Mr. Sawyer?”

I glanced over my shoulder. Professor Fym stood over me.

“I’d like you to come with me, please.”

Chapter Seventeen

Professor Fym’s office was far less… dungeon-y than her classroom.

In fact, the office she’d led me to after our confrontation in the cafeteria appeared almost normal at first glance. Basic black desk, ordinary pictures and degrees hanging on the wall, a couple of comfortable chairs for her and whoever she needed to meet with to sit in.

It was only once you looked at the place for a minute or two that you noticed the desk wasn’t made of wood but from some kind of scaled material. And that the people in the photographs on the wall had their feet floating about six inches off of the ground.

“Have a seat,” Fym said, gesturing at the oversized chair on the subordinate side of her desk. “Sorry to interrupt you in the middle of lunch, by the way.”

“That’s fine,” I assured her. “Honestly, you probably did me a favor.”

She turned to me, a little amused. “About to get into a fight?”

I shook my head, settling into the chair. The cushion felt almost alive—I swore I could feel it wrapping itself around my lower back as I relaxed. “Just learning some things that take time to process.”

Fym looked like she would have liked to ask me about that, but it wasn’t why she’d asked me here. Both of us knew it. “I wanted to bring you up to speed on what’s been going on,” she said. “Regarding the… incident in my classroom.”

‘Incident’ was a funny way of putting it.

I watched Fym take a seat. Strangely, she didn’t settle into the big, stately chair behind her desk; instead, she parked her rear on the edge of the tabletop, smoothing down her robes as she stared at me with those piercing azure eyes. She hadn’t dressed up any more than did any day of the week for her teaching classes, yet I could sense something different about her. More makeup, maybe? She seemed to have some kind of aura about her in any case.

“How’s the stone dragon doing?”

The corner of Fym’s mouth curled. “You would ask that,” she said, looking as proud as if I’d nailed a difficult question in one of her pop quizzes. “The dragon is fine. Clearly, we can no longer use that particular specimen in classroom exercises, but there are any number of facilities who can make good use of a creature with petrification powers.” She paused, studying the expression on my face. “Did you think we would euthanize him?”

I had. “I figured… you know, a dog bites a kid, they put the dog to sleep.”

“That’s not how we do things around here,” Professor Fym said. “And even if it was, Edwin, I wouldn’t have let the school do it. Because both of us know it wasn’t really the dragon’s fault that it attacked you.”

We did at that. Despite my brush with death, I was glad the stone dragon hadn’t been killed. It wouldn’t have made anything better, and it might have made things a hell of a lot worse.

“Did you find something out?” I asked. A pause. “You did, didn’t you?”

A look that was almost guilty flickered across Professor Fym’s face. “We have not been able to track down the person who caused that unfortunate incident,” she admitted. “But after some preliminary investigation, we have a much better understanding of what happened.”

Part of me wanted to ask who we were, but Fym was already reaching into a pocket of her robe. When her hand withdrew, she held a long, glittering shard of red metal, shaped roughly like a thorn. I recognized it immediately.

I’d pulled it out of the stone dragon’s paw.

“That’s it,” I whispered, my nostrils flaring. “What is it, exactly?”

Professor Fym’s lips formed a tight little line. “Would you like me to show you?” she asked.

My heart beat a little faster. The beginnings of panic began in my gut—the beat of a butterfly’s wings, rather than the cyclone halfway across the world they created. “Show me? Show me how?”

“It won’t hurt,” Fym promised. “And it will only take a moment. I promise it’s perfectly safe.”

She gestured for me to extend my hand. After a moment or two of deliberation, I did so.

Professor Fym pricked me in the center of my palm with the shard.

The moment the sharp edge pierced my skin, my vision went red.

Darkness pushed in on the edges of my eyes, blocking out my peripheral vision. Sweat beaded on my forehead as a wave of heat washed over me, the comfortable office feeling like the room temperature had just shot up to one hundred and twenty degrees.

I could hear blood in my ears. “What are you doing?” I growled, an itchy feeling spreading down my arm. “Stop it!”

“Just a second,” Fym said. Her voice sounded like she was standing on the moon.

The itching had become stinging. It felt like ten thousand fire ants were crawling just beneath the surface of my skin, biting and clawing with every step.

“God damn it!” I roared. “Take it out! Now!”

It was maddening! It made me want to scream, to rage and howl and do anything I could to make it stop—!

Just as the sensation became unbearable, Fym removed the thorn.

And the world was normal again.

I stared down at my palm. In my mind’s eye I saw peeled flesh, exposed bone, thousands of tiny punctures from the fire ants' jaws—but the skin was smooth and unbroken. Even the tiny prick the red thorn caused was quickly healing, with only a single drop of blood oozing from the wound.

I grabbed my wrist, both hands shaking. Even though the sensation had fled, the aftereffects lingered. I felt as if I were going to be sick.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Professor Fym said, sounding like she meant it. “But given the circumstances, I think you’ll agree that experiencing the thorn took far less time than explaining to you what its effects would be.”

I slowly clenched and unclenched my fingers. The worst of the pain was gone—only the impression remained. Like waking up from a dream of being boiled alive in a cauldron, and wondering if it might have been real.

“That thing,” I gasped, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, “is evil.”

Fym nodded. “It’s cursed,” she said, tucking the glittering red shard back into the pocket of her robe. “Enchanted with an extremely powerful and dangerous curse, actually. Professor Dragovich nearly wet herself with excitement when I let her examine it.”

Hearing her name made me do a double take. “You’re working with Sex… I mean, Professor Dragovich?”

Fym gave me a wry look at my near-miss. “Blackwater has no finer expert where curses and hexes are concerned,” she explained. “Once I realized what you’d pulled from the stone dragon’s paw, I realized I needed to pull her into the investigation.” She paused. “Headmaster Ravensson has been informed, as well.”

“Before or after that luncheon?” I asked. If it was before, it explained some of the strange behavior I’d seen from Lavrans during our last conversation.

“Before,” Fym confirmed. “Of course before. An incident like this needed to be reported as quickly as possible.”

I understood. “So you know what it is that drove the stone dragon mad,” I said, staring at Professor Fym’s pocket. I swore I could see a faint glow emanating from beneath the fabric, though that was almost certainly a trick of the light. “I’m not… it was safe to stab me with that thing, right? You didn’t just put me under some kind of hex?”

“If that were possible, I wouldn’t have done it. The effects of the thorn only last while it’s embedded in flesh. And not just any flesh. It has to be touching your blood; otherwise the curse cannot activate.”

I swallowed hard. “Blood?”

Fym nodded gravely. “Blood magic is powerful stuff,” she continued in a low voice. “It’s not forbidden, exactly—but it’s extremely frowned upon. Blackwater has no department dedicated to hematurgy, and I’m not aware of any reputable institute of magical learning that does.”

The way she put emphasis on the word ‘reputable’ made me wonder if there weren’t a few private colleges out there with fewer scruples. “So blood activates it?”

“Yes. The second the thorn touches blood, it curses the person whose blood it has touched. It—well, you’ve felt it. It maddens you. Even the kindliest person could be turned into an utter beast under that sort of curse.”

She didn’t need to tell me twice. I felt an unexpected kinship with that stone dragon now. What would it have been like to have that thorn buried in your flesh for minutes, hours, days? Even the few seconds Fym pressed it into my palm had felt unbearable.

“There’s another aspect to the curse,” she added, tugging her blonde braid. “I asked Professor Dragovich to look into it, because something about the incident confused me. By all rights, the stone dragon should have been able to simply pluck the thorn from its paw. Its claws aren’t particularly flexible, but its snout should have been able to easily grab the shard.”

Shit. I hadn’t thought of that. “The curse makes it so you can’t,” I guessed.

Fym looked a little surprised. “That’s right. The person who has been cursed cannot break contact between the thorn and their blood, no matter how hard they try. Only another person can sever the contact and break the hex.”

“Which was why you wanted to show it to me personally,” I said, stunned. “Holy shit. This is bad magic, Professor.”

“It is,” she agreed. “And I don’t think it was an accident that the shard found its way into the stone dragon before your initial examination, Mr. Sawyer. I think… I think someone tried to kill you.”

Unexpected laughter spilled from my throat.

Professor Fym looked at me like I’d gone insane. When I’d recovered enough to get a handle on what I was doing, I wiped the tears from my eyes and looked up at her.

“They wouldn’t be the first,” I said. “Did you hear about how I ended up at Blackwater in the first place?”

Fym nodded, her lips almost invisible. “I have. Clearly you’ve been marked for some sort of special destiny, Mr. Sawyer. But destiny is a double-edged sword. For example, there’s something about that incident in my class that wakes me up in the middle of the night.”

Oh? I couldn’t imagine what that might be.

She told me. “I didn’t choose you to go up on that platform ahead of time,” she admitted, crossing her arms beneath her breasts. “If you hadn’t corrected me in front of the entire class, I likely would have chosen Miss Sabrina Bishop for our first interactive lesson, or one of the other students.”

I blinked. “Are you trying to imply what happened was my fault?”

She shook her head, surprised. “No, Mr. Sawyer. I’m saying that whoever tried to kill you knew you’d be trying to tame the stone dragon before I did.”

That… wow. That really was a lot to process.

“How is that possible?” I asked. “There aren’t spells to read the future, are they? Is time magic a thing at Blackwater?”

Professor Fym was already shaking her head halfway through the question. “No. Not even magic can violate the laws of cause and effect. This is something else.”

That was profoundly disturbing.

“You see why I wanted to warn you,” Fym said cautiously. “I even suggested to Headmaster Ravensson that you be taken out of classes for a time, stored somewhere safe. Just in case whoever tried to do this takes another shot at you before the end of the semester—”

“Hell no!” I said. The words left my lips before I could call them back.

Fym chuckled. “That’s more or less what the headmaster told me. And Professor Dragovich was against the notion as well.” She paused, giving me a knowing look. “She seems to think you have a knack for curses…”

I cleared my throat. “I don’t agree with her,” I said. “Actually, since I’ve got you alone, I was wondering if I could ask you for a favor.”

Now it was Fym’s turn to look intrigued. The blonde woman cocked her head to the size, her azure eyes seeming almost to glow in the reflection of her office lamp. Looking at her, I had an uncomfortable reminder of the fact that even if they weren’t as provocatively dressed as Irina Dragovich, pretty much every female teacher at Blackwater was an absolute smokeshow.

“Go ahead,” she said. “I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”

“Great.” I steeled my courage and asked. “Can you help me prepare for my Grand Conjuration?”

I could tell it was just about the last question Professor Fym had expected me to ask. Her blonde eyebrows shot almost all the way to her hairline, and her expression told me she was almost as flattered by the question as she was surprised.

“Your Grand Conjuration?” she asked. “Have you already decided your major, then, Edwin? You have your heart set on being a Beast Tamer?”

It didn’t escape my notice that the two of us were suddenly on a first name basis.

Did I have my heart set on Beast Taming?

Honestly, not really. I liked it—at least I did when the magical creatures I interacted with weren’t trying to kill me—but it didn’t exactly get my blood pumping or anything like that. But I enjoyed it more than the other introductory subjects. Potions was a snooze, Battle Magic still eluded me, and the Illusion school seemed completely uninterested in finding out what I had to offer.

That left me with Beast Taming and Curses.

And as scorching hot as Sexy Hexy was, the idea of being the freshman who came from a house with mundane parents and the one who specializes in spells that ruin people’s lives wasn’t at all who I wanted to be. I liked having friends and a social life, thank you very much.

“I’ve tried all the introductory classes, and it’s the one I like the best,” I said. It wasn’t even a lie. “And… you seem like a really good teacher. You’ve already saved my life once—the least I can do to repay you is stick with your major, right?”

A little smile spread across Professor Fym’s face. “That would… I would like that, Mr. Sawyer. Edwin. You have a great deal of promise in Taming, and I think you’d be a good fit. I’ll help you prepare your Grand Conjuration, certainly.”

Relief flooded my chest. I’d been worried about bombing it and losing everything I’d worked for. “Thank you, Professor Fym.”

Her smile widened. “When we are in private, feel free to refer to me by my first name. It is Freja. Once you complete your Grand Conjuration and declare Beast Taming as your major, I will volunteer to be your mentor. We might as well get comfortable with each other now, rather than later.”

For a moment, I was almost speechless. “Of course. Thank you, Freja.”

Even a guy like me could see what an honor this was. Every student who declared Beast Taming as their major at the end of this semester would be fighting to have the head of the department as their sponsor—and she’d chosen me instead of the other way around. With a few weeks to spare.

I should have felt like the king of the freaking world. So why didn’t I?

Okay, so I didn’t love Beast Taming. I still enjoyed it well enough. How many people really got to work their dream job, anyway? Unless you were a rockstar or an actor or a bestselling author, most jobs involved at least a little bit of bullshit and drudgery. And Professor Fym really did seem like the most reasonable person I could choose as my mentor at Blackwater. I hadn’t ruled out her trying to seduce me somewhere down the line, but at the very least I was reasonably certain she wouldn’t try to murder me.

Professor Fym—Freja—lifted her braid over her shoulder and began idly stroking it as she spoke. “It is a great honor,” she whispered, “and I’m happy to bestow it upon you. Knowing that it is an honor, Edwin, and that I grant it to you as a sign of favor—will you do something for me?”

Oh shit. Maybe that seduction was closer than I’d anticipated.

“Sure,” I said, trying to stay smooth. “Fire away.”

Her expression turned grave. “Keep your wits about you,” she said, suddenly as serious as a heart attack. “Professor Dragovich and I are both working hard in secret to track down the person who created this cursed shard and bring them to justice. We have the Headmaster’s backing, and I have every intention of stopping this madman—or madwoman—before they strike again.” She paused. “But it’s possible that they might.”

The pieces clicked together in my head. “They might try to hurt me again.”

“Indeed.” Professor Fym looked less like an instructor than a Viking berserker. “I look forward to teaching you, Edwin. Please do not die before I can declare myself as your mentor.”

Why, that sounded almost romantic. In a weird, pseudo-barbarian sort of way.

“I’ll be careful,” I promised Professor Fym. “Believe it or not, I don’t want to die, either. I’ve already had two near-death experiences this year. I’m really hoping that the whole superstition about bad things coming in threes doesn’t apply to wizards…”

“You’re not a wizard yet,” Freja said, giving me an appraising look. “But I think you’ll make a good one. Go, Edwin. I will contact you as soon as I know more about the shard.”

I was just about to take my leave when Freja lifted a hand. “One more thing.”

Here we go, I thought, steeling myself.

“The shard,” she said, those azure eyes peering into my soul. “If the person behind this could place a curse like that on one thorn, they could do it on another. Anything sharp enough: a dagger, a nail or even a little piece of glass, could do the same thing that this shard does. And all it has to do is pierce your skin…”

Shit. What a morbid thought.

“I’ll watch out for sharp objects,” I promised the professor. “I’m not dumb enough to go running with scissors, Freja.”

She nodded, her face a mask. “I will not let students be harmed on my watch,” she growled, her eyes filled with determination. “If you see anything suspicious, Edwin, anything that might be used as the vessel for a blood curse, you must let me know as soon as possible.”

“I will,” I told her. Then I had an idea. “Actually, I’ve got this book…”

A few minutes later, I made my way out of Professor Fym’s office with her enchantment on a page of my scribing book. I now had the power to write messages to one of Blackwater’s faculty whenever I needed, and to have them write messages back to me. It was cool, and secret—like the fact that Freja had already declared herself as my mentor.

I thought she’d given me a knowing look when she placed her name at the top of the page, but probably I imagined it. Freja and I weren’t on the same wavelength. I was thinking about sex, she was thinking about death. They weren’t that compatible. But maybe someday…

Hell, I thought. Toby said it’s apparently not uncommon for faculty members here to get boned by their students. And Freja and Irina are both so incredibly boneable…

I was going to get myself in trouble thinking like that.

I could worry about crossing boundaries with authority figures later. Right now, I needed to keep my head on a swivel and make it to the end of my first semester in one piece. Nail the Grand Conjuration, declare my major, and I’d be set for the next four years—all my expenses paid by the magical college. Awesome.

I whistled as I made my way through the halls. I was thinking about a different set of boundaries I was planning on crossing—ones that the girl on the other side of them desperately wanted me to cross.

It was almost time for my date with Sabrina.

I needed to get ready.

Chapter Eighteen

“It’s a shame the Air and Space Museum closes so early,” Sabrina said. “What are they thinking, shutting the doors before the sun even goes down?”

The sun might not have gone down yet, but it was certainly hanging low on the horizon as we exited the metro station. Rush-hour commuters streamed down the stairs as we made our way up, heading from their offices in downtown DC to their homes in the suburbs around Fairfax and Tysons Corner. There was nothing glamorous or magical about the DC metro, but at least it got you where you needed to go.

Tonight, for Sabrina and me, that was everywhere.

Our night started with a lovely dinner at the Wand & Anchor. It was fast becoming our place, although the same could probably be said by half the students currently enrolled at Blackwater. I liked our romantic table in the back, though, and I liked sharing a quiet meal and some good conversation with Sabrina.

Most of all, I liked her.

We’d had a couple of drinks at the old W&A as well, so Sabrina suggested we take the Metro into town rather than drive. I’d been only slightly surprised to find it had no magical equivalent; be you mundane, partial or full-blooded wizard, you had to crowd onto the same trains and take the same transfers as everyone else.

Something about that cheered me. Made me feel a little less different.

We hadn’t exactly stopped drinking, but neither of us wanted to get sloppy, either. We’d hit a couple of bars in the museum district, stopping just long enough to check the scenery, flirt a bit, and then move on. Sabrina kept promising me there was a bookstore around the next corner she wanted to show me, but mostly it was a bar.

I didn’t mind. Tonight, I was drunk on her.

It was the strangest thing. Technically, nothing had changed between us—but it felt like everything had. Some barrier between us had been broken through when Sabrina sent me those sketches of her topless with her pillow clenched between her legs. The shyness the cute blonde witch showed during every other meeting with me hadn’t reared its ugly head yet, and I was starting to believe it never would. She was all smiles, flirtatious glances, and stolen kisses.

To be fair, what also released some of the pressure on my end was knowing the truth. I hadn’t told Sabrina that I’d interviewed Toby and his friends about wizard and witch relationships; as far as she knew, I had no idea about the hookup culture at Blackwater or how ‘uncool’ monogamy was among the magical set. I preferred to keep it that way. Sabrina had insisted that we forget the whole friction between us where my exploits at Blackwater were concerned, and I had zero desire to rock the boat.

For now, I was just enjoying the ride.

“I think you’re messing with me,” I said, holding her hand as we reached an intersection. “I don’t think there really is a bookstore out here.”

In the distance, I could see the ever present silhouette of the Washington Monument against the night sky. The two blinking red lights near the top looked like glowing eyes, which was just as much of a joke to the students at Blackwater as it was to the mundane citizens of the city.

Sabrina turned, grinning. She’d gotten a little drunker than me, but the spots of color in her cheeks had nothing to do with alcohol. She was enjoying this night even more than I was.

“You think I’d lie to you like that?” she asked, her tone all mock-offense. “Of course there’s a bookstore, Edwin. I wouldn’t drag you across the center of the city just to look at closed museums and the grass on the National Mall…”

“Oh, I’m sure there’s a bookstore,” I teased. “There’s gotta be one somewhere around here. I just don’t think it’s the one you’ve been raving about since last week.”

Sabrina looked up at me and pursed her lips. “How dare you doubt me, Edwin Sawyer! I have half a mind to leave you stranded out here for that!”

“I’d like to see you try,” I snickered. “I’ve been coming out here ever since I was old enough to beg my Dad to take me to the Smithsonian. Meanwhile you could have looked at that metro map all night long and not figured out where we were supposed to go…”

With a giggle, Sabrina punched me in the side. “We’re almost there,” she said, her tone filled with promise. “I’ve just been dragging you around the city for so long because you’re so stinking cute. McDowell’s is a very real place, I assure you. You’ll love it!”

I was still recovering from her calling me cute. Although when a girl gets herself off while watching you take care of business, it’s safe to say she thinks you’re more than ‘mildly interesting’.

As if to mock my earlier teasing, McDowell’s turned out to be right at the end of the next block. It stood between a bank and a cafe, both of which had already closed for the night, with a big brick front and a bunch of colorful signs hanging in the windows.

“So this is it?” I asked, peering through the glass. “Hell of a place.”

Sabrina grinned. “You haven’t seen the half of it. Come on.”

She moved to open the door, but I was faster. I held it for her, like a gentleman, then grabbed a handful of her ass as she stepped past me and into the store proper. She looked back at me over her shoulder and rolled her eyes, but there was a smirk on her face that hadn’t been there before.

At first, I thought McDowell’s a small store—smaller than I’d expected. It wasn’t until we’d walked past the front counter where a smiling saleswoman sat sliding paper bookmarks into new releases that I realized the place grew upward,not backward. All three floors of this building were given over to the store, and there were both stairs leading to the other levels along with an elevator for those not capable of going up or down them. New releases filled this section, and the stacks were busier than I'd expected them to be.

The saleswoman up front sat up a little straighter. “Anything I can help you two kids find?”

Kids, I thought, snickering internally. “We’re alright,” I said, smiling back at her. “I’m sure my girlfriend will ask if she has any questions about anything.”

The saleswoman nodded, then went back to her task.

And I realized what I’d just done.

I could practically feel the heat rolling off of Sabrina’s cheeks. She was too good to say anything to me directly, but all it took was a single glance to recognize the combination of shock, longing, and awkwardness on her beautiful face. She grinned, showing her teeth, but turned her attention to a stack of romantasy paperbacks so quickly that her blonde ponytail moved like a whip.

I’d just called myself her boyfriend.

“This place is pretty neat,” I said, trying to paper over the moment. “Is there anything in particular you keep an eye out for when you come here?”

Sabrina’s cheeks looked like stop signs. “The horror section is great,” she said, swallowing hard. “A lot of rare stuff you can’t find anywhere else. But there’s something else I brought you here to show you, Edwin.”

Hmm? If it would get us past the unfortunate awkwardness, then I would be happy to see it. “What am I looking for?”

“It’s d-downstairs,” the blonde stammered, looking like she was fighting off laughter. “We’ll take the elevator.”

“We should save that for someone who needs it,” I corrected. “Let’s just take the…”

I trailed off. There were no stairs leading downward from the first floor at McDowell’s. In fact, I was pretty sure none of the buildings in this part of town had basements to begin with.

I followed Sabrina into the elevator. Her expression had softened, and I couldn’t tell if she was angry at me for my presumption or silently cheering in her heart of hearts that I wanted to take the next step with her. Maybe both.

The elevators had a button for the first floor, along with the three above it. But the panel had nothing to push that would take us to the basement.

Sabrina leaned over and pushed the ‘Door Close’ button, then waited. The moment stretched out, until I couldn’t help but clear my throat.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

Sabrina just smiled. “I’m just… really surprised by what you said back there,” she whispered.

Okay. One look at her face was enough to get me to make up my mind. Sabrina wasn’t horrified by what I’d said–she was enthralled. And maybe a little worried I planned to take it back.

Instead, I took her hand. “It’s the truth, isn’t it?”

She sucked in her pouty lip. “I’d like it to be,” she whispered, the tip of her tongue protruding from the corner of her mouth. “I’d like that a lot, actually.”

Kiss her, you idiot! a little voice muttered in the back of my head. I leaned forward, intending to do just that.

But Sabrina was already snapping her fingers.

The elevator gave a groan and began to move–downward. This building had no basement; it had no button for a level beneath the ground floor. And yet our little box sank into the earth as if someone had tied a heavy stone to it.

Still grinning, Sabrina turned to me. “You’ve probably figured it out by now that McDowell’s isn’t an ordinary bookstore.”

The elevator descended into the earth, and–to my surprise–kept right on descending. We hit what would have been the first-floor basement, then the second, and still the walls hummed as the box steadily sank.

“Sabrina, where the hell are we going?”

The witch leaned against me and rested her head on my shoulder. “Just give it a minute,” she assured me. “It’s really cool.”

Once the elevator had dropped maybe a dozen stories beneath the floor of McDowell’s, it slowly ground to a stop. A friendly little ding rang out from the panel as the doors opened.

And I found out why Sabrina had been so keen on bringing me here.

The elevator opened onto a positively cavernous space. Shelves filled with books covered almost every available scrap of wall space, with more forming aisles that ran down the center of the floor. Floating candles filled the room with the sort of warm illumination that was simply perfect to read by, and there were comfortable chairs and tables scattered all over the place. Customers in robes browsed the wares, chatted amicably, or sat and drank tea while perusing their recent purchases.

Sabrina turned to me, her smile widening. “Welcome to the real McDowell’s,” she said, gently elbowing me in the side. “Now you see why I wanted to show you this place?”

I did. The smell of cinnamon and cedarwood filled my nostrils as Sabrina and I stepped out of the elevator. The doors sealed themselves shut behind us so quickly it took me a second to notice the way the wall around it was wood-paneled and looked almost unbroken and solid save for the little call button. This place was magical as hell.

Of course it is, I thought. It’s made for us.

“McDowell’s is one of the few booksellers in the city to serve both mundane and magical customers,” Sabrina explained as we walked. “There’s a few other ones, of course, but this one might just be my favorite. It’s so comfortable down here.” She gestured to my left, where a row of freshly minted grimoires occupied the shelves. “You can even buy school books here. They have some kind of arrangement with Blackwater.”

Now that she’d brought it up, it was obvious that more than a few of the customers were students. A couple of them I even sort of recognized. Fortunately, none of those girls who’d called Sabrina names earlier were here.

“This place…?” I looked around in amazement. “I mean, how? Is the owner a witch?”

“Sort of.” Sabrina’s smirk turned impish. “It works a lot like the college, actually. The mundanes have no idea any of this exists, and we keep it secret from them.”

“And the tax man?” I couldn’t help but ask. “How does that work? Is there some sort of magical equivalent of the IRS that handles the revenue this half of the business brings in?

Sabrina looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “Oh, we got rid of that a long time ago,” she said with a faint frown. “Honestly, it’s barbaric. Chasing after hard working people for a few pennies… it’s such mundane behavior, you know?”

“Yeah,” I agreed. Privately, I wondered how the magical world made any actual money without a thriving financial system. But I got the feeling I’d figure it out sooner or later.

Sabrina led me through the stacks. She ran her finger along a row of spines, practically cooing at the number of magical and mundane books on display. A quick glance at the titles on my part confirmed they were rare—I'd never seen so many dead languages gathered in one place before. The witch's hand lingered on one volume in particular for a while before she moved on, and seemed almost to be on the cusp of pulling it out and taking it with her.

"I brought you here to browse, mostly, but I'm actually here looking for something," Sabrina admitted. "There's this book I need for one of my classes."

"Oh really?"

Sabrina nodded, distracted. "Have you ever heard of The King In Yellow? Not the horror novel, of course—the real thing."

"I haven't even heard of the horror novel."

A strange smile curled at the corner of the witch's mouth. "Well, it's not a big deal," she said, glancing around at the other shelves. "Honestly, it's just a history elective. But I like to stay on top of things, you know?"

I knew. The more time I spent with Sabrina, the more I began to feel like I truly understood her. Despite being such a young, vivacious girl, she had to feel a little bit like her candle was burning at both ends. On the one hand, the depth of her parents' expectations clearly weighed on her like a boulder strapped to her back. And on the other were the students who teased her—who called her demeaning names like 'teen witch' and all that. It couldn't have felt good, and I knew it pushed her to succeed academically even harder than it ought to.

I was glad I could put a little fun into her life.

"Tell you what—let's see who can find it first," I said, rising to the challenge. "We could treat it like a scavenger hunt?"

Sabrina was clearly intrigued. "Sounds fun. What are the stakes?"

"Stakes?" I hadn't thought that far.

Sabrina's gaze traveled around the room, searching the stacks for a head start. "If it's a game, then we have to be playing for something," she said, already throwing her concentration into the search. Anything to get a little head start, I guess. "Don't you agree?"

I did. "What did you have in mind?"

Sabrina made a show of thinking about it. "When you said... what you just said to the woman up front. Did you mean it? Or were you just not thinking?"

"Oh, I definitely wasn't thinking," I said, giving her hand a squeeze. "But yeah, I meant it. If you're cool with that, I mean."

Sabrina looked more than just cool with it. "Alright," she purred. "Here's the deal. If I find the book first, you have to buy me drinks next week after I ace my History of Magical Mishaps exam."

I would have done that anyway. "And if I win?"

She nibbled her bottom lip. "And if you find the book first... then I'll give my new boyfriend a surprise."

I cocked my head to the side. "That doesn't seem entirely fair," I said, loving how easy it was to wind her up. "Your reward for victory is something tangible, with a dollar amount attached to it. Mine's a vague promise."

The witch's eyes narrowed. "I promise you'll like what I have in mind," she whispered, her gaze traveling up and down my body. "Deal?"

Hell, sure. Either way, it sounded like I was really the one winning.

"Let's do it," I said. "On three. One, two..."

As I said three, a guy sitting on a couch behind Sabrina pointed at one of the shelves on the far wall and winked.

"Three!" Sabrina said, turning around and power walking. In the opposite direction. "Good luck, babe!"

The guy on the couch watched her go, smirking. "I heard you talking," he said, gesturing now with his chin. "Go grab it before she finds it, dude!"

Bro code, I thought, chuckling internally. It's nice to have a wingman…

I made my way over slowly, not wanting to tip Sabrina off to the fact that I knew where the book was. It turned out to be a heavy tome, bound in dark leather, with a symbol carved on the front like someone tried to write out the entire Greek alphabet all at once. There was no title on the spine—I glanced back over at the guy on the couch for confirmation. He nodded.

Hell yes.

I took a leisurely stroll to the front of the store. The magical section of McDowell's had its own checkout counter, probably because the people who shopped there didn't want to unpack massive grimoires and magical items in front of the ordinary customers. I'd been standing up there for a couple of minutes when Sabrina made her way back to the elevators. Her shoulders rose and fell rapidly, and there was a lock of sweaty blonde hair stuck to her forehead.

Her face lit up when she saw me holding her tome. "Damn!" she swore, though she looked happier than if she'd managed to find the thing on her own. "You got me! How'd you find it so fast?"

"Beginner's luck," I told the coed with a smile. "Looks like I won the bet. So what's my surprise?"

A mischievous smile spread across Sabrina's face. "It wouldn't be much of a surprise if I just told you, now would it?"

She held her hands out for the book, and I gave it to her. She nearly dropped it when she realized how heavy it was, and she had to hold it in two hands.

We went through the checkout. Sabrina paid, using her stipend card from Blackwater, and she tucked the heavy tome into her purse once the transaction was done. It hung slightly better on her shoulder than it had in her palms.

I thought the surprise might happen after that, but it didn't. Sabrina instead led me to the elevator and took me back up to the above-ground sections of McDowell's. Rising out of that magical store felt like returning to the real world after being sent somewhere else.

"That was really cool," I said. "Are there any other bookstores you wanted to hit up...?"

Sabrina's smile told me she had something else in mind. "Maybe after your surprise."

Hmm? My surprise was happening now?

It was then that I noticed the elevator hadn't stopped on the first floor.

It would have been insane for it to ascend right through the roof of the building, but that was some Willy Wonka nonsense. It stopped at the top floor, letting us out with a friendly little ding. This section of the store had tables heaped with books all over the place—clearance titles, mostly, along with the less-popular sections of the trade. Coffee table books, manuals on cooking, collections of portraits and other artistic photography.

There were maybe a half-dozen other patrons on this floor. None of them looked up to notice us.

"This is the surprise?" I asked. "I don't get it."

Sabrina took my hand and led me past rows of books. "McDowell's is special," she said, taking me around the corner. "It's really two bookstores in one, of course, and we just left the magical one to return to the mundane. But there's something else, too."

As she spoke, Sabrina stepped right into the path of a customer—a middle-aged woman wearing a beret. As she did, the witch let her heavy purse fall to the floor and did something I didn't expect. She put her thumbs in her ears and stuck out her tongue, making a face.

I froze, expecting the woman to go into full-on Karen mode. But she just stared blankly at Sabrina. She looked a little confused, but not upset.

"Excuse me," the woman muttered, stepping around us both. "Sorry."

I watched her go, a suspicion bubbling in the back of my head. "What was that?"

A naughty look lit up the witch's face. "It's just like Blackwater," she explained. "Now that we've visited the downstairs and made a purchase, the mundanes can't see it—when they look at us, they only see what they expect to see. Customers."

Oh. Oh wow.

"So we're basically invisible right now?" I asked. “Or at least generic?”

"Something like that."

I glanced around the room. "That's really cool. I bet the number of people who shoplift from the mundane section after going downstairs must be through the roof, though..."

Sabrina grabbed her purse and slipped it back onto her shoulder. "I was thinking about getting into a different kind of trouble," she gasped, taking my hand. "Come here!"

She practically dragged me, only I let myself be dragged. Around the corner and behind the next row of shelves waited a narrow hallway, with a pair of bathrooms at the end. The atmosphere here was quiet, even beyond what would have been expected in a bookstore.

As soon as we were out of sight, Sabrina tossed her purse to the carpet and kissed me.

It was a good kiss. Damned good. I took my time with it, letting my hands roam over her sides and along the small of her back. The blonde witch went up on tiptoe, putting a hand on the back of my neck to support herself as we made out hot and heavy.

Her hands went under my shirt, and mine did the same to her. She gasped as I reached for her breasts, the thin fabric of her bra doing nothing to hide how hard her nipples were. Sabrina was outrageously turned on, and the fact that we were out in public only added fuel to her fire.

She bit down on my bottom lip, giggling. "Surprise," she whispered, guiding my free hand lower—and then lower. "You can do anything you want to your girlfriend and nobody up here will be the wiser. Fuck, it makes me so hot just thinking about it..."

It made me hot, too. Something about the whole situation had my cock as hard as a diamond, above and beyond the tiny, beautiful blonde in my arms. All the higher functions in my brain switched off, leaving only lust behind. The desire to use Sabrina's ass and tits as my own personal stress ball—to turn her into a human poke-and-chew toy.

Would I have gone all the way right then and there? In a hallway in a public bookstore, with only the power of our anti-mundane field to keep us from getting spotted? I don't know.

Because just as I was sliding my fingers into Sabrina's panties, a figure rounded the corner and let out a shocked scream.

Chapter Nineteen

Sabrina went as stiff as a board in my arms.

“Edwin?” Courtney took a step forward, her eyes narrowing to slits. “Is that you?”

Oh shit. Shit shit shit…

“I thought you said we were supposed to be invisible,” I muttered, glancing over at Sabrina. Maybe it worked like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. If we didn’t move, then the cheerleader wouldn’t see us.

“We are,” Sabrina hissed, even more surprised than I was. “What the fuck!?”

It was Courtney. The red headed cheerleader was dressed in a much more casual outfit than she’d been the last time I saw her, but there was no mistaking those dimples. Or those curves, even hidden beneath a puffy Exeter-Cross sweatshirt.

Courtney took another tentative step towards me, her brows scrunching up in confusion. “Who’s that you’ve got with you?”

Huh? “Excuse me?”

Courtney rubbed her eyes, frowning. “Something’s wrong with my eyes,” she said, grimacing as she pressed the heels of her hands to the orbs. “Why’s everything so blurry all of a sudden?”

Sabrina slid out of my arms as the coed continued rubbing her face. She smoothed down her skirt where I’d put my hand beneath it, then fixed her hair and checked the side of her mouth for lipstick. Her eyes were wide, and her shoulders rose and fell rapidly. It was impossible for me to tell if she was angry or ashamed.

“You never called me,” Courtney said, sounding a little disappointed. “I’m not used to giving a guy my number and not getting a response. What gives?”

Sabrina stepped to my side, watching Courtney like she was some exotic species of animal she’d never seen before. The blonde witch cocked her head to the side, pursing her lips as the cheerleader continued to rub her eyes.

“She sees you,” Sabrina said. “How does she see you, Edwin?”

“Who are you talking to?” Courtney asked.

I glanced from her back to the witch. “Um, this is Sabrina,” I said, a wave of awkwardness rising within me. “We were just fooling around. It’s not what it looks like—”

Courtney’s hands left her eyes. She blinked, her attention snapping back into focus. “Oh!” she said, looking at Sabrina like she was seeing her for the first time. Slowly the wheels behind her eyes spun as she put two and two together, and her eyes widened like saucers. “Oh shit,” she said, lifting a hand. “Someone’s busted…!”

A spasm of guilt filled me, seeing her that way. Then I remembered it was her who’d put her number on my wrist, rather than the other way around. The two of us hadn’t even been on a date yet, or anything like that, so why did I feel like I’d been caught with my hand in the cookie jar?

“Now I get why you didn’t call,” Courtney said wryly.

Sabrina extended a hand. “Hi,” she said, her face still filled with wonder. “I’m Sabrina. Do you and Edwin know each other…?”

“We ran into each other a few days ago,” Courtney said, giving me a knowing look. “Almost, like, literally.”

Sabrina whirled on me, giving me a look like I’d hidden a surprise of my own. “When were you going to tell me about all this?” she asked, jerking a thumb over her shoulder at Courtney.

God damn it! This was the last thing I needed. I’d been so certain that this would be the night where I finally sealed the deal with Sabrina, and now my whole plan had been thrown into jeopardy. All thanks to one ditzy cheerleader who—for some reason—was interested in going out with me. Or used to be interested.

“Sabrina,” I began. “I can explain…”

Before I could start, Courtney cut me off. “I am so sorry,” she told Sabrina. “If I knew Edwin was taken, I wouldn’t have given him my number. It was just a spur of the moment thing, you know? He’s so charming, and he saw me fall on my ass in the middle of a crowded intersection and didn’t laugh at me.”

“You did what?” Sabrina asked.

“It’s a long story,” I said, biting back a sigh. “It’s good to see you again, Courtney. Yeah, I didn’t message you back, sorry. I kind of have this thing going on with Sabrina right now, and while I was flattered that you wanted to hang out, I just—”

“Baba Yaga’s tits,” Sabrina swore, giving the redhead a look like she’d never been so charmed in all her life. “You’re beautiful!”

Courtney’s mouth dropped open. “Um, thanks!”

“Shit, you two would make such a cute couple,” Sabrina insisted. She looked from me to Courtney and back again, and then—I swear to God she did this—she actually put a hand on the cheerleader’s lower back and shoved her over to me. Courtney looked almost as shocked as I was.

“Babe, it’s not like that,” I insisted. Naive man that I was, I still thought Sabrina was planning to tan my hide the second Courtney left earshot. “I’m here with you—”

“When did you want to go out with him?” Sabrina asked, turning to the redhead.

If I hadn’t had that conversation with Toby Heck, I might have passed out. Even knowing what he’d told me, I still felt a little dizzy. Witches and wizards were casual when it came to relationships, sure, but I’d never expected anyone to be this forward. Unconventional was one thing—this felt downright insane.

I could tell Courtney thought so, too. “I thought you two were together,” she blurted, one perfectly tipped nail swiveling between me and the witch. “Aren’t you, like, on a date right now—?”

“Yeah, but we’re not exclusive,” Sabrina said, the words coming out too loud. She even let out a little laugh, as if she considered the idea that I had to be a one-woman man ludicrous. “He can totally go out with you, Courtney! It’s fine! I’m okay with it, I promise.”

Courtney looked around like she expected a hidden camera crew to come from around the corner and inform her she’d been pranked. “That’s not what I expected you to say,” she said, some of her bubbliness returning. “Honestly, when I saw you with Edwin, I totally thought we were about to have a catfight or something!”

The thought of Sabrina and Courtney getting into a catfight entered my head and refused to leave. Both of them rolling on the carpet, tearing at each other’s clothing. The anger slowly boiling over into lust as Sabrina grabbed the sides of the redhead’s face and covered those pouty lips with her own…

I shook my head. Get a grip, Edwin. That sort of stuff only happened in movies.

“Not at all!” Sabrina took my hand, beaming up at me like the world’s best wingman. Wingwoman. “In fact, what are you doing right now? You should come hang out with us!”

My eyes nearly fell out of my head! Was this girl for real?

Courtney looked only moderately less surprised. “Um, I totally would, but I really can’t tonight?” She made a face. “I came here to get this stupid book for one of my classes. I’ve got an assignment due at the end of the week that I haven’t even started, and if my GPA takes any more hits they’re totally going to bench me from the cheer squad. I had to blow off Sandra and Jessica for drinks, too.”

“I get it,” Sabrina said. “But listen, you and Edwin really do seem like you’ve clicked. You’ve got such great energy—”

I grabbed Sabrina’s shoulder. “Courtney, would you excuse us for a second?” I asked, the words coming out through my teeth. “I need to speak with my girlfriend for a minute.”

Courtney had the kind of smile that could light up a room, and she deployed it with great gusto. “Yeah, I’ve got to get running anyway,” she said, that smile turning just a touch awkward. “It was really nice to see you again, though, Edwin. You and your girl…”

I was already dragging Sabrina away. I hesitated in front of the two bathroom doors; after a moment of deliberation, I shoved open the door to the men’s and pushed the blonde witch inside.

She didn’t go quietly. “Hey, what gives?” Sabrina asked, trying and failing to signal for Courtney to stay with us. “Edwin, that girl is totally into you. You should set up a date with her—”

I’d heard enough.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I said, staring her down. “I’m on a date with you, Sabrina! Right now! And you’re trying to set me up with some cheerleader from the Exeter-Cross campus who you don’t even know?”

For a second, I thought I’d been too harsh with her. But Sabrina didn’t cringe backwards the way I expected, or get all flustered beneath my anger. Instead, she seemed to grow before my eyes, rising to her full height with unrepentant integrity.

“Of course I did,” she said, looking at me like I was somehow the one who’d erred. “You got her freaking number, Edwin! You did two-thirds of the work for me! Why on Earth would you fumble an absolute smokeshow like that?”

Something about the directness of her words cut through the fog of disbelief inside of me. Up until that very moment, there’d been a part of me that refused to believe what I’d learned in Blackwater’s cafeteria. But it was all true.

I took a step backwards, shaking my head. “Toby tried to tell me,” I muttered, catching a glance at myself in the mirror. I looked like a man who’d just been given news that was going to change his world forever. “He said relationships were different with witches and wizards. I don’t think I realized how different…”

“Toby Heck?” Sabrina asked, her blonde brows shooting to her hairline. “You’re friends with Toby? You know he summoned an entire beehive during his placement exams and nearly got himself killed—”

He’d alluded to it enough times that Sabrina’s words didn’t shock me. “You’re all crazy,” I blurted. “How the hell do you live like this? How is anyone supposed to date when the whole school is like this?”

“It’s not just the school.” Sabrina swallowed hard. “It’s society, Edwin.” She made a pained face, as if the reality of my situation had just washed over her. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about any of this before. I ran away after that crack about the other girls, when I should have been explaining what I meant by it. God, I can’t believe you had to hear about this from Toby Heck!”

“Well no one else would tell me!” I protested. “Not the Headmaster, not any of the teachers—not even my girlfriend!”

My words hit Sabrina like a slap in the face. All at once, she could see how badly she’d hurt me—and how much she ought to have faced this head-on and explained it to me rather than running away the day of Lavrans’s luncheon. She took it well, but her bottom lip trembled and her eyes watered.

“I didn’t realize I was hurting you, Edwin,” she admitted, running her fingers through her hair. “Shit, I thought I was protecting you. Even partials have a lot of trouble adjusting to the way the magical world does things. Someone like you, with zero experience coming straight to Blackwater… it was always going to be a culture shock.”

Culture shock was one way of putting it. It occurred to me that I’d discovered yet another thing that Headmaster Ravensson should have told me about prior to extending that invitation to Blackwater University. So maybe not all of this fell on Sabrina’s shoulders.

“I don’t blame you,” I said, swallowing hard. “It’s just weird. I want you, you know? I’m not running around campus chasing other skirts, or trying to hookup with every coed from Exeter-Cross who’s looking for a good time…”

I trailed off. Sabrina had just stepped forward, and was pressing her body against mine. I felt the edge of the sink digging into the back of my jeans.

“Well you should,” she said. The look on her face was the kind that convinces men to make very fun—but very stupid—decisions. “Why wouldn’t you, Edwin? It’s what you want, right?”

What I wanted? What did I want? Really?

Well, Sabrina of course.

But what if I could have even more?

Before I could react, Sabrina shoved me against the sink. She went up on tiptoe, moving with a surprising strength and speed for such a tiny girl, and lifted herself into my arms. Her mouth smothered mine, and her hands took hold of my wrists and guided them to her breasts and ass, begging me to squeeze them.

I squeezed. Fuck, she felt amazing.

“I know you want me,” Sabrina panted, her fingers working at the buttons of my shirt. “And I want you, Edwin. Which means I want you to have everything you deserve. I don’t want you to have to be bored with one girl, or tied down to a single girlfriend all through college. I want you to have fun! Explore! Get fucking wild with it!”

A picture formed in my mind: me getting ‘wild’ with Sabrina and Courtney at the same time. At any other moment, voicing those thoughts out loud would have felt suicidal. But with Sabrina looking at me that way, I grew bold.

“Would you join me?” I growled, letting my eyes roam over the blonde’s beautiful body. “If I asked you to? Would you be there when Courtney and I…?”

Sabrina’s face lit up. “Oh fuck,” she groaned, sliding my hand between her thighs. “You and I are going to have so much fun at college!”

I couldn’t hold back any longer. Sabrina felt like wildfire in my arms; having her so close to me made me feel like I was at risk of a sunburn. I felt dizzy as I kissed her again, squeezing and groping her.

She let me. She wanted it. She’d wanted me to be this sort of man all along.

With a growl, I wrapped both hands around her waist and flipped her around. Sabrina let out a squeal as I bent her over the sink, her back arched and her lips parted ever so slightly before the mirror. Her eyelashes fluttered as her eyes rolled back into her head, and her legs trembled against me.

“That’s right, take charge,” she whimpered, wiggling her ass against my hips and crotch. “Show that little bitch outside what she’s missing, Edwin. Make me fucking scream!”

Holy hell, I thought, amazed beyond words. Where did YOU come from?

The girl pinned between me and the sink couldn’t have been more different from the shy, reserved student I’d walked into this bookstore with. I’d seen flashes of the real her before, mostly in sketch form when the two of us traded dirty talk late at night. But she’d never dropped the mask like this before.

I loved it.

I hiked up Sabrina’s skirt. She wore nothing but a pair of thin cotton panties underneath—with a grunt, I realized they were the same pair she’d had on that first night with the scribing book, when she’d ridden her pillow into the stratosphere while screaming my name. It made me hard as a rock to see it.

Her hands were already at my belt, unfastening it. The sound of a zipper filled the bathroom as she put her naughty little fingers to work. The first touch of her fingers against what I had inside my pants felt like a lightning strike, and I growled with need.

“Oh wow,” Sabrina panted. “Holy shit, that’s huge!”

No man could resist a compliment like that. “Yeah?”

Sabrina braced one hand against the sink. “Uh huh. It’s one thing to see it—or to see a sketch of it in my scribing book. But feeling it… shit, it’s even bigger than it looks…”

I rocked my hips forward, pressing the crown of it against Sabrina’s inner thigh. “Yeah it is,” I said.

She tossed her head back and growled like a feral tigress. My manhood ground against the roughness of Sabrina’s hip, then pushed in deeper. Fuck, I could feel the heat from here!

I looked up and stared into the mirror. The pornographic sight of Sabrina bent over the sink greeted me, her body pressed against me with my pants unzipped and only the base of my cock visible beneath the swell of her ass. She’d unbuttoned the top three buttons of her blouse at some point, and her cleavage was nearly popping out of her top. She looked pleasingly disheveled, ready to be rode hard and put away wet.

Were we really going to do this? Bang like bunnies in a public restroom, with god only knows who outside walking around the bookstore? With Courtney maybe overhearing us?

Sabrina gazed at me over her shoulder, her heavy-lidded eyes filled with lust. When she ground her hips against me like a cat in heat, I knew the answer.

Hell yes.

“Don’t worry about pulling out,” she purred in a naughty tone, guiding my free hand to her hair. “You can hit it raw. It’s taken care of.”

I hadn’t even thought about it until that moment. “What’s been taken care of?”

Sabrina wiggled her cute rear against me, teasing my cock with her folds. “Every girl at Blackwater gets an enchantment placed on them when they enroll,” she explained, pursing her pouty lips. “It’s optional, but everyone does it. It makes sure that we can’t get pregnant until we graduate.”

Magical birth control, I thought, watching the glint in Sabrina’s eyes. Will wonders ever cease?

“Just the girls?” I asked, curious. “That doesn’t seem fair.”

Sabrina sounded surprised. “I mean, we’re the only ones who can get knocked up, right?”

Interesting. “I thought you said all the boys at Blackwater chase after mundane girls, though?” Like me, with Courtney.

The blonde witch grinned, then reached behind her hips to wrap her fingers around my cock. The feeling of them gripping the most sensitive part of my anatomy drove me wild, and I couldn’t wait to bury myself inside of her.

“Nobody cares if we get mundanes pregnant,” she giggled. “Why, do you think Courtney is interested?” Her smile widened, almost looking a touch cruel. “Are you going to turn that hot little redhead cheerleader into your baby momma by the end of the semester—”

Something came over me when she said that. It was like something tore loose deep in my core—something dark and dominant that wanted to do every dirty thing Sabrina was trying to coax me into. Except I didn’t want her walking me through it. I wanted to guide her. I wanted to be in charge. I wanted control.

Little did I know I’d just found the key to unlocking my true love’s heart.

I grabbed a handful of Sabrina’s hair and tugged on it, hard. Her whole body tensed up like she’d just been struck by lightning. Her mouth dropped open, her nostrils flaring as she shut her eyes tight against the mingled pain and pleasure.

When those eyes opened again they looked glazed; like she was a million miles away. She looked like an animal in the middle of mating season, nothing but biology and need, and the primal pleasure in those orbs made my heart skip a beat.

How long had this creature been living inside of Sabrina? How many times had this shy, reserved witch secretly wished for a guy with the balls to bend her over in a public bathroom and use her the way she knew she deserved to be used?

I decided to test the boundaries a little more.

My other hand shot out like a cobra. My fingers wrapped around her throat, applying pressure—not too hard, but not too gentle, either. The sort of grip that made a guy feel like a God, and made a girl feel so vulnerable that her pussy boiled over.

The sort of grip that Sabrina loved.

She locked eyes with me, watching me watch her as I pushed my cock against the opening to her channel. Whatever I said next, I knew she’d remember for the rest of her life. So every word needed to be perfect.

I gave my cruelest smirk.

“I didn’t come into this bathroom with Courtney, did I?”

As I spoke, I reached around her thigh. The crown of my cock already pushed against the opening of her channel—now my free hand slid down there, the pads of my index and middle fingers finding her clit. She was so turned on that I could feel it pulsing like a second heartbeat.

"That's right," I growled, tracing swirls across her clit. "That's because you're mine. My girl."

Something about the way I said that drove Sabrina fucking wild. "I'm your girl," she whimpered, arching her back. She rocked her hips backwards, trying to get more of both my cock and my fingers inside of her. "Yes, ohmygawd I'm your girl, Edwin..."

She made me feel like the king of the fucking world. "You're mine, no matter what," I told her, teasing her slit with my cock. "Even if we play with other girls—even if I take half our fucking graduating class to bed with me... you're still my girl. You understand that?"

I wasn't saying I was actually going to do those things, mind you. Those sorts of things were often far more fun to talk about in the middle of sex than to try and make a reality. But at that moment, I felt like I could. Like I wanted to.

Hell, Sabrina seemed over the moon about this whole Courtney thing. Even if I just used it to make things between us hotter, that was one hell of a kink for us to discover together.

Sabrina had no qualms about agreeing. "Yesss," she purred, the word coming out of her like steam from a boiling kettle. "I think you're starting to get it, baby. I think you're finally starting to see how much fun this could be—!"

Thwack!

My hand came down on her bare ass where I'd slid her panties to the side. Sabrina cried out in pain and pleasure, her back arching so hard it nearly put her face in the sink.

"Holy shit, Edwin!"

That hand was back in her hair a moment later, tangling her long blonde locks around my fingers. "Before I fuck you, I need you to know something," I said through gritted teeth. "I need to make sure we're on the same page."

Sabrina looked like she was ready to get onto whatever page I wanted. She'd have burned down the whole damn library if it was what I told her I needed before she could ride this dick.

"Tell me," she begged. "Please, Edwin! Tell me what I need to do to be your girl!"

Fuck. A man could get used to hearing things like that.

“I don’t know how witches and wizards do things,” I said, chuckling as the hand not buried in Sabrina’s hair caressed the swell of her ass. “But I’m not the kind of man who shares my toys. If we’re going to do this, you’re going to have to be mine. I don’t mind if you have fun when we play with other girls—”

I took the hand on Sabrina’s ass and slid two fingers into her soaking wet pussy. Her walls clenched around me, dripping with honey, and I knew at that moment she’d agree to whatever I wanted. But I wanted her to want it, too.

“—but only when I give you permission,” I growled. My fingers flexed, finding that special spongy spot deep inside her that I knew would drive her wild. “That might not be fair, but that’s what I want. You understand me?”

Sabrina understood. “I want you to get everything you deserve,” she groaned, her voice tight with pleasure. “It will be no trouble at all staying faithful to a man like you, Edwin. I promise! Will you please fuck me now?”

No man on earth could have resisted a request like that. I thrust my hips forward and entered Sabrina, stretching her walls as I bottomed out inside of her.

Good lord! The feeling was so good that I almost went over the edge on the very first thrust! I’d been lucky enough to hook up with girls a time or two in my life before this, but something about Sabrina’s tight body and witchy pussy made me feel like I was experiencing all this for the very first time. My body trembled with excitement as I pushed a little further in, going all the way down to the balls as deeply as I could.

The sink shook beneath Sabrina as she slammed against it. One of her tits popped out of her top, the nipple as stiff and pink as the eraser on a pencil. Her mouth opened wide with pleasure, her eyes rolling back in her head as a wordless cry of passion escaped her.

“Mmmh, yeah!” Sabrina’s tongue lolled from the side of her mouth. “Fuck me! Fuck me hard!”

I did.

My fingers dug into the back of Sabrina’s head for leverage as I pounded her pussy. Any lingering worries I had that we might get caught, that there might be magical or mundane people out in the bookstore proper who’d hear us fucking, disappeared by the time I’d gone a half-dozen heavenly thrusts inside of Sabrina’s walls. She was so tight, wet, and slick that it drove me a little bit insane. Every time I pulled back to see more of her gorgeous honey coating my rod, it made me want to bury myself in her that much harder.

Sabrina couldn’t decide which view was hotter: watching me fuck her over her shoulder or watching herself get fucked in the bathroom mirror. Every thrust knocked her perfect blonde hair out of place, made her cheeks sizzle with lust, set the walls of her pussy clenching around me like the world’s snuggest hug. By the time we really got going she had both hands on the sink, her nails digging into the porcelain as she threw her beautiful body back onto me as hard as she could.

It reminded me of the way she’d shamelessly humped her pillow for me that night with the scribing book. Sabrina gave herself over completely as she rode me, her flushed face split with the world’s biggest grin as she cooed and sighed and moaned. Her eyes rolled back in her head as her back arched like a bow, the sight so hot that my free hand moved from her long blonde hair to cup her chin. My fingers pressed against her shapely neck, which made her purr like a kitten as I fucked her.

The sounds of hot, raw fucking filled the bathroom. My hips slammed forward with enough force to shake the sink off of its fixtures, while Sabrina threw herself back on me with reckless abandon. Part of me wanted to cover that gorgeous mouth, to keep her quiet so that no one interrupted us. But a bigger part of me—a darker part that I’d never really reckoned with inside of my head—didn’t care.

Scratch that.

I sort of wanted them all to hear.

Where had this Edwin come from? When had I become this man? The old me, the pre-Blackwater me, would never have done this in public. And he’d never have fucked some chick from behind in a bathroom while holding onto her throat and making her watch herself like some kind of porn star.

For a second, ice flowed through my veins, and I was back in the river.

“Oh fuck!” Sabrina panted. Her walls gripped me tighter than tight, getting even hotter and slicker than before, and I knew she was about to cum. “This is so fucking good! I had no idea it was going to feel this good to have you inside me, Edwin! Please, please don’t stop! Ungh, right there baby, keep going…!”

I didn’t let up for a second, even as the realization washed over me. More than just magic came out of me that black night in the Potomac. Something deep inside my soul had torn loose, making me aware of a brutal but beautiful truth. Life could end for any of us at any moment. Anyone could get knocked off the road by some drunk asshole and have their ticket punched without warning, any day of the week. All of us were working against an expiration date, whether we knew it or not.

With that hanging over a man’s head, who cared about a few people overhearing two college students having sex? Why not enjoy it to the fullest, and do all the nasty things you could think of right here and now?

As I thought it, I looked into Sabrina’s eyes. A spark seemed to leap between her and me, carrying with it an understanding deeper than words. The blonde witch groaned, then pressed her body against mine even harder as her eyes rolled back in her head.

“Ahhhhh yes! There it is! Oh fuck yes, oh fuck—!”

Sabrina’s body went weightless in my arms as she came. Every muscle in her body went taut as her eyes rolled all the way back in her head, her toes curling and the walls of her sex rippling as the pleasure infiltrated her. At the very last moment I did clap my hand over her mouth to muffle her screams, but it was already too late. Her ragged cry of bliss echoed off the walls, loud enough that anyone browsing the top floor stacks at McDowell’s had to have heard it.

“Mmmmmph!” Sabrina finished her moan against my palm, her whole body shaking like a leaf beneath mine. “Ah, oh my gawd that was so good…!”

Orgasm left everything between the blonde witch’s legs even wetter and tighter than before. Both of my hands went to her hips for leverage as I jackhammered inside of her, pounding her lithe little body harder and harder against the sink. The mirror on the wall shook, blurring our reflections: me with my teeth showing, Sabrina with a look of shock like she couldn’t believe how hard she was getting fucked.

“Thank you,” she panted, savoring the words like she’d just had a taste of her favorite dessert. “Thank you, oh fuck, thank you baby! Mmh, I love being your girl! Oh fuck, I think I’m a bad, bad girl…!”

She certainly was. Sabrina shook her hips as she spoke, using every inch of her soft, silky walls to tease and milk my prick. Every thrust between her legs felt better than the last, and went deeper inside of her. I was planting my flag inside of her, hitting spots that her moans told me she’d never even touched when flying solo, and I wasn’t going to stop until I’d completely emptied myself inside of her.

She knew it, too.

Sabrina built herself back up, slamming her hips on me hard and fast. Each backshot filled the room with the sound of skin on skin, and my balls slapped her inner thighs hard enough to make an audible sound every time I bottomed out inside of her.

“I know you need to come,” Sabrina whispered. Both of her breasts were fully out of her top now; she squeezed them together like a magazine model, sticking out her tongue and winking at me. “Don’t hold back, baby, fucking shoot that load inside me. Drench my fucking pussy in it! Come on, give every last fucking drop to me, give it all to me…!”

God damn! I held onto the edge by my fingertips, just barely managing to keep from toppling over. As much as I wanted to come, I never wanted this moment to end.

Sabrina had my number. “You’re trying so hard to hold that load,” she purred, stretching like a cat as I pummelled her pussy. “I can feel you getting even bigger and thicker inside of me, Edwin. Fuck, you’re stretching my tight little kitty out so much! I can’t fucking take it, baby, you’re gonna make me cum again! I want you to come with me, Edwin—I want you to cum inside me when I do it!”

The tingle in my balls turned into a head rush. The pleasure built and built inside me, the pressure rising to levels that felt fucking unbearable. Even if Sabrina wasn’t about to cum, there was no way I could hold back.

It didn’t even matter if Courtney walked in now. Hell, the campus police could have come in kicking the bathroom door down and I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself. I was locked in, every thrust bringing me so much pleasure that I half-believed Sabrina was some kind of succubus designed to milk every last drop of lust out of me…

But if that were the case, she had an impossible task. Because every time I looked at her sweet, innocent face I wanted to do this to her.

“Cum for me!” Sabrina groaned, her voice tightening along with her walls as she hit the peak. “Fuck, Edwin, I’m cumming, please cum inside me baby…!”

It was too much for me to take. Just like the nights the two of us spent sending each other dirty messages through our scribing books, the sight of Sabrina surrendering to her orgasm sent me right over the edge into my own climax. One more hard thrust inside of her and I was past the point of no return, crashing into her like a freight train.

Sabrina met me head-on, her second orgasm colliding with my first.

My cock jerked inside of her as her walls clamped down, and the first hot jet of seed sprayed inside of her. The ridges along the inside of her pussy wrapped around me like a fancy sex toy, milking my prick as I shot again and again and again. I could feel the force of it, each spurt going off like a tiny bomb against the silky walls of her womb. I grabbed her ass hard enough to bruise it as the pleasure reached its peak, her cry mingling with my own as the world dissolved in a haze of bliss.

When I came back to myself, I was still inside of Sabrina. The blonde witch lay slumped against the sink, panting gently. For a second I thought I’d hurt her, that I’d lost control and slammed her right into the bathroom mirror—but then she looked over her shoulder at me, smiling. She was fine.

Better than fine. Way better.

Both of us were still feeling it. Each little movement of Sabrina’s hips made me moan with aftershocks as her slick walls slid across the sensitive flesh of my cockhead. As soon as she realized she could do it, she started rolling her hips in tiny little circles, prolonging my pleasure with a naughty smile.

“I love the way you look at me when I do that,” she whispered, rocking herself back onto me with agonizing slowness. “Fuck, you’re so cute right now, Edwin! You want to keep on fucking me, or are you good?”

I won’t lie—part of me wanted to go for a second round. But fuck, we were in public. And Sabrina had been pretty freaking loud when she finally went over the edge. Every minute we spent in this bathroom increased the risk that someone would come in and find us in this compromising position.

“That feels incredible,” I agree, matching her grin with one of my own. “Maybe we ought to take this back to your place?”

It sounded like that was exactly what Sabrina wanted to hear.

She slid off of me and pulled her panties back to the side. I went to tuck myself into my pants, but before I could Sabrina slid down onto her knees and put her hot, wet mouth on my prick. What the hell?

Her tongue swirled around me, her cheeks hollowing out. Just when I thought she was going to finish the job and start blowing me for real, she slurped the last of mine and her juices off of my prick and pulled back, planting a little kiss on my crown as she stood up.

“To be continued,” she said, giving me that naughty wink of hers. “Come on, let’s get out of here before someone catches us.”

Like you don’t secretly want that, I thought. I didn’t judge her for it, though. I wanted it, too.

No customers were browsing the aisles on the top floor of McDowell’s as we exited the bathroom. Either no one had come up here, or they’d heard the banging and decided to head somewhere else for the time being. I expected to see Courtney, but the cheerleader was nowhere to be found.

“Shit,” I said, realizing what we’d just done. “We really left her in the lurch, didn’t we?”

Sabrina shrugged. “You’ve got her number,” she said. “You can text her and apologize. And set up plans for your date.”

My date.

“You’re serious about that, aren’t you?” I asked, looking down at her. Despite how many times she’d insisted on me dating and pursuing other women while I remained in a relationship with her, part of me still believed she’d been doing it all as some kind of kink—some naughty fantasy that got her off good and hard when she was with me.

One look in her eyes was all it took to disabuse me of that notion. Sabrina believed in this stuff. She meant it.

“Of course I am,” she said, blowing a lock of sweaty hair out of her face. “You’re going to go out with that hottie, Edwin. I’ll come with you, if you really want to make it a double date, but I’m not letting you ghost her. There’s no way I’d let my man fumble a baddie like that!”

I shook my head, amazed.

“You okay?” Sabrina asked, concern in her eyes.

I grinned. “I’m fine,” I told her. “Just thinking about what a lucky man I am.”

She took my hand. “You’re going to be even luckier when we get back to that dorm room,” she purred. “Come on, let’s get out of here!”

Chapter Twenty

Courtney was more than willing to accept my apology for ditching her at the bookstore. If anything, she seemed more amused than upset by the whole thing. Getting her forgiveness was easy.

Setting up a date turned out to be harder.

As Sabrina and I soon learned, we’d chosen what was almost the worst possible time to try and start a relationship with Courtney. Exeter-Cross’s cheer squad had their own version of tryouts, pledging and rush week, which meant that the red headed cheerleader was busy in the extreme. Even her studies fell to the wayside (not that she missed them much), given how badly the team needed her.

I understood. For the moment, flirting with Courtney was more than enough for me—particularly as I had a kinky, insatiable witch for a girlfriend who had started spending nearly every night sleeping over at my apartment. But Sabrina wanted more, I could tell, and she had trouble keeping her nose out of my business.

“She never misses a gym day,” Sabrina explained one night as she held up the latest batch of photos Courtney posted to her Instagram. The redhead wore a tight athletic outfit emblazoned with the logo of Exeter-Cross College, and the sheer number of backhanded compliments from other coeds made both of us snicker. “You should go work out with her, Edwin. Get physical. Girls appreciate that!”

“I’m getting more than enough of a workout already,” I’d told her, grabbing a handful of her puffy pajama pants and pulling her to me. “Put those pictures down and kiss me, unless you want to switch over to the camera and start making a movie…”

We hadn’t done that, but we’d done just about everything else. Sabrina wasn’t the first girl I’d ever dated, but I’d definitely never fallen for a woman this hard, this fast before. From the way she acted around me, I could tell she’d never let herself fall for a guy this way, either.

Honestly, even if Courtney did come around, I wasn’t sure if I could devote the time to her that she truly deserved. My next few weeks at Blackwater were a whirlwind, my academic workload fighting alongside my new relationship to take control of the greater part of my waking hours. Until classes really got started, I hadn’t realized how intense magical school could be.

None of my other classes clicked in quite the same way as Beast Mastery and Curses, but all three of them were at least interesting. These were Potions, Battle Magic and Illusions.

First-year students at Blackwater took potions class three times a week, rather than the normal bi-weekly courses. According to Sabrina, the class had a sort of curve to it, with most of the learning front loaded and focused on the basics. Advanced courses only met once a week, or even less often, as the class size gradually winnowed down to the few students who’d chosen potions as the subject for their Grand Conjuration and their major.

Potion class was fun, but about as ‘magical’ as arithmetic. Mostly we just followed recipes, with the only real application of our powers coming at the very end. I understood why my fellow students considered potions a 'half-mundane' doctrine: most of the time, I felt like you could have pulled me out of class and swapped me with any student from Exeter-Cross, and they could have done the work nearly as well as I did. I enjoyed it, and I did reasonably well in the class. But the thought of making it my major held absolutely no appeal to me.

Neither, to my surprise, did Battle Magic.

I'd expected a great deal from it: after all, what could have been more fun than tossing spells at other students and defending yourself against enemy magic? Such things were the backbone of any number of young adult fantasy novels I'd devoured in my youth, and I'd expected similar treatment at Blackwater. Maybe I'd even stumble into an underground dueling club or something similarly exciting, run by a group of outcast students looking for a leader.

If there was any such club at Blackwater, I'd yet to find it. Professor Thurman allowed us to use offensive spells, but we were strictly forbidden from deploying them against another living being: be they human or animal. First-years were only taught the basics and only allowed to practice their craft against wooden scarecrows—which went up in flames so easily from the touch of magic that students joked the things were pre-soaked in gasoline. I had no idea what spell allowed Professor Thurman to create so many of them.

Once, when he'd left the class halfway through due to some personal issue, we'd taped pictures of the teachers to the scarecrows' faces before blasting them.

So Battle Magic might have been fun, assuming I could get far enough into it to reach the point where I actually got to do more than send waves of force and fist-sized fireballs at stuffed straw monstrosities. But it too didn't feel like my major. It didn't call to me the way I expected my chosen path would.

That only left Illusion magic.

At which I was not very good.

In my defense, I was pretty sure my not being good wasn't my fault. Most of the students in my illusion class felt the same way. Professor Locke’s classes were an exercise in frustration—we rarely if ever got to learn any practical matters. I hadn't even cracked my grimoire a single time this semester.

He seemed to have already chosen which students would follow him into the discipline on the first day of class. They were his chosen clique, and he spent most of our class time regaling them with anecdotes about his many adventures as a master of trickery and illusions. Maybe it made a few freshman panties wet, but I'd begun assuming most of his stories to be nothing more than tall tales by the end of the first week.

By the mid-point of the semester, I'd learned a single illusion spell: nowhere near enough to base a Grand Conjuration on. I doubted I'd even take another class in it once I declared my major. I wished Professor Locke’s chosen students well, but there was no doubt in my mind that I didn't belong in their number.

Which only left me with two options.

Beast Taming… and Curses.

I preferred Beast Taming. Almost always preferred Beast Taming. I was good at it, I enjoyed it—well enough, anyway—and I not only got along with Professor Fym but also considered her a good mentor. Choosing Beast Taming as my major and her as my sponsor felt like stepping onto a wide, paved road with gentle slopes, clear markings, and ample space to pull over in the event of an emergency.

Professor Dragovich’s path, by comparison, wasn’t a highway at all but an angry river filled with raging rapids, the surface of which was broken by razor-sharp rocks. Selecting curses as my primary field of study practically guaranteed I’d always be considered something of an outsider—and when you were already an outsider merely by dint of birth, that was no small thing to consider. Sure, it wouldn’t change anything with Sabrina. And my close friends wouldn’t care. Toby would probably think it was cool.

But people would look at me funny. Professor Dragovich—Irina—included.

So why did I hesitate? Was it the flush of pride that filled me when the dark, busty professor of hexes and curses proclaimed me to have ‘the soul of a true spite-master’? Did the darkness hold a raw, dangerous, dare I say sexy appeal that called to me?

Did it have something to do with that person I briefly became in the bookstore bathroom with Sabrina beneath me?

We’d made love plenty of times since that night. We’d fucked just as often. But none of the sex we’d had since she officially declared herself my girl had that note of darkness I’d felt in McDowell’s. That beastly, unhinged sensation I’d felt while spanking Sabrina’s ass and making her beg for my cock had yet to come back to me, even when I enthusiastically gave in to my new girlfriend’s demand to have her hair pulled or her bottom smacked.

Honestly, I didn’t know why I couldn’t make up my mind. Ninety percent of the time, I felt ninety percent certain that Beast Taming was the choice for me. And yet sometimes, late at night, I’d feel certain that I was meant for something different.

Something more.

These, I had to admit, were good problems to have. Most students spent the mid-point of their first semester at Blackwater scrambling to find a subject for their Grand Conjuration—I already had two department heads fighting each other to be my mentor. I had a steady girlfriend, which I’d learned was something of an anomaly among the witch and wizard set, and I had another girl who wouldn’t be able to put off her date with me forever. In both my personal and professional life, I had an embarrassment of riches.

Things were looking up for me. I’d started to see Blackwater as my real home, and my friends from my former life as words on a screen that texted me every now and then. My future in the magical world seemed almost comically secure.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that the other shoe was about to drop.

It started, of course, with blood.

“And that is what can happen if you get your mushrooms mixed up,” Professor Dragovich was saying. “One wrong choice and you end up like those poor girls in the castle, sad and all alone. Or worse, you accidentally overdose and make a total ass of yourself!”

Only about half the class were listening. The rest had their concentration on the ornate clock hanging on the wall above Sexy Hexy’s head. The ponderous hands had but a minute or so left to tick before the bell would chime to release us from this Friday’s lecture in curses and hexes, and most people had already packed their bags. Professor Dragovich looked to be working herself up to a rant, but even she respected the bell.

“Remember, you will not always have an apothecary or an herbalist to sell you these ingredients!” She gestured with a black-tipped nail at the chalkboard, which was covered in drawings of a half-dozen species of poisonous mushroom. Little arrows pointed to the distinguishing characteristics of each, from the fronds of the Black Belladonna to the glob-like protrusions covering the cap of the amanita muscaria. “And there will be times when you wish to gather these things in secret, so that your target is unaware that you have them! Knowing the difference between high-quality and low-quality poisons may very well save your life—”

The bell rang.

“—and they certainly can save the life of the person you’re trying to hex, which is very much not what we’re going for, am I right?”

Professor Dragovich favored the class with a smile, clearly waiting for her students to laugh. None of them did.

“Bah!” She waved the lack of response away like an irritating fly. Her voice rose to a louder register over the sounds of students leaving. “As a reminder for those of you who have decided to make my department your permanent home, I will have office hours later this week to discuss your Grand Conjurations! Don’t put it off until the last minute, sweeties! The last thing you want is for your curse to fall flat in front of representatives of the whole school!”

I could have sworn she looked at me when she mentioned office hours. Even after telling her to her face that I planned to choose Beast Taming as my major, Professor Dragovich hadn’t given up hope that she could sway me to the dark side. In a way, it was admirable.

Maybe she knew something I didn’t.

“Oh, Mr. Sawyer?” the professor tossed over her shoulder like an afterthought. “Could you remain behind for a few moments, please?”

Huh? Me? I hadn’t even done anything wrong! I’d barely said six words during class today; mostly I’d been thinking about all the fun Sabrina and I were planning to have over the weekend. Had I nodded off without realizing it?

I hung back until the lecture hall was empty save for Professor Dragovich and myself. As soon as we were alone, she snapped her fingers and the doors on both sides of the room slammed shut. Had they locked?

I didn’t know. I hoped I wouldn’t have to find out.

“Ah, Edwin!” Professor Dragovich leaned on the podium in a way that put her heavy breasts even more on display than usual. “Come here, young man—don’t be frightened. Despite whatever rumors may float around our campus, I don’t bite!”

Unless you want me to, that smile said. I swallowed hard as I approached, thinking of all the chatter I’d heard about teachers at Blackwater sleeping with students. Was it really true? Was Irina Dragovich—Sexy Hexy herself—trying to seduce me?

If not, she was doing a hell of a good job of pretending. I couldn’t tell if she wanted to sleep with me so she could lock me down as a Curses prospect, or if she wanted to lock me down as a Curses prospect so she could sleep with me.

I approached, trying to keep my eyes off of any sensitive parts of her anatomy. She grinned at my hesitation, and I swore she arched her back just a little bit more to put herself on display. She really did look like a gothic version of some 1950’s pin up model, and she was a total bombshell decked out in all black like that.

I couldn’t help but wonder what Sabrina would think of the two of us together. She’d been so eager to add a mundane to our relationship—would she balk at someone with Irina Dragovich’s reputation?

Like you’ll ever find out, I told myself. Keep your head straight, Edwin.

“Is everything okay, Professor?”

Professor Dragovich pursed her pouty black lips. “You know, it is perfectly alright for you to refer to me by my first name when we are alone,” she purred, acting as if the opportunity was a very great gift. “As long as no one else is around, I’m not ‘Professor Dragovich’. I’m Irina.”

Are you Sexy Hexy? I wondered. Something told me she wouldn’t like me calling her by that nickname.

“Sure,” I said. “That’s fine. Irina.”

She smiled wickedly to hear those three syllables come from my lips. “Thank you, Edwin. Before you ask: no, you are not in any trouble. And I did not call you to stay back after class because of your Grand Conjuration.”

“You didn’t?”

She shook her head, her dark locks shimmering. “I have accepted that you have not yet allowed yourself to realize your true path,” she said, that grin of hers widening. “Rest assured, Edwin: when you do decide that the spite in your heart is a precious flame that must be stoked to the very heights of its power, I will be waiting for you. It is uncommon for a student to change their major after their Grand Conjuration, but not unheard of.”

My jaw dropped open. “You think I’m going to change my major after I declare it? That I’m going to… what? Tell you I made a mistake?”

“I know it,” Irina whispered, running her tongue along the inside of her lip. Her accent thickened as she spoke, lush and lusty and slavic. “Don’t worry, I won’t hold it against you. My wrath is as bitter as wormwood, but for you, my forgiveness will be as sweet as honey.” She leaned forward, staring right into my eyes like she couldn’t decide if she wanted to fuck me or eat me alive. “The instant you come to me I will embrace you, name you my heir apparent, and you will know that this was your true home all along. I’ll personally guide your studies in the dark arts. You and I will be… well. Partners in crime, no?”

I shivered—though in fear or lust, I wasn’t certain. Maybe both.

“But that is neither here nor there,” Irina said, stepping around the podium with a smile. “I asked you to stay back because I need a favor from you, Edwin.”

A favor?

“What do you need?” I asked.

“A simple thing,” Irina said. “Just a few drops of your blood”

I froze, suddenly hyper-aware of the way it flowed through my veins. My heart beat faster, filling my ears with a sound like an ocean surge.

“You want my blood?” I asked, taking a step back. “Irina… are you a vampire?”

Irina laughed as if this were the funniest thing she’d ever heard. “Of course not!” she said, slapping her thigh. “Would I teach in the daytime if I were a vampire, Edwin? Silly young man!”

That didn’t fully convince me.

“Professor Fym asked me to do this thing,” she said, her accent weaving in and out. She could reign it in normally, but whenever she got excited she started sounding a little bit like a femme fatale from an old James Bond movie. “It is related to the you know what. You know, the thing you found after your unfortunate incident in Beast Taming class? Yet another reason why you should choose me as your mentor, by the way…”

I didn’t listen to that last part. Pieces were already clicking together in my head. If this was about the stone dragon that had attacked me in front of the Beast Taming class, then it had something to do with that freaky red shard. The one Professor Fym showed me that drove a man mad as soon as it touched his blood. The one that had been created by someone powerful, someone evil. Someone who wanted to hurt me and other students like me.

“Is it necessary?” I asked Irina.

She’d been in the middle of another speech about becoming my mentor when I asked. “It may very well save your life,” she said, sounding like she meant it.

Fuck it, then, I thought. “Alright, let’s do it.”

To my disappointment, Irina Dragovich did not actually have fangs. She drew a slender needle from a hidden compartment in her podium, then asked me to extend my hand. I placed it on the wood.

She pricked the pad of my middle finger with the metal. There was a short, sharp spike of pain, then just pressure. Irina had my finger in what felt like a vice grip, squeezing out droplets of blood into some kind of tiny glass tube.

It only took a couple of drops. In no time at all, the miniature glass vial was full. A touch from Irina sealed it closed, the glass flexing like rubber until the surface was smooth and unbroken.

“See? I’m as good as my word.” Irina looked pleased with herself. “I bet you don’t even feel dizzy, Edwin. I took hardly a teaspoon out of you.”

Already the wound had begun to clot. One more drop of blood oozed from the puncture, but none after that. I put the finger into my mouth anyway and sucked it, tasting the copper-bright tang of my own vital fluid.

As I watched, Irina strung the tiny vial onto a silver chain. Once she’d finished, she put the chain around her own neck, wearing it like a piece of jewelry. The vial of blood, no bigger than the nail on my pinky finger, nearly disappeared in her pale cleavage.

She’s wearing a drop of my blood around her neck, I thought, a little dizzy. What in the Angelina Jolie is going on here?

“Thank you,” Irina said seriously. “What you’ve just done will help us to locate the people who created that cursed shard. And it will allow us to protect you as well.”

“Protect me against who, though?”

Irina’s lips formed a tight little line. “I am not supposed to speak of this,” she whispered, glancing around the room as if another teacher might be lurking in the shadows and listening in. “But as you and I are alone—and I am certain that my future apprentice can be trusted—I will let you in on what we’ve found.”

I didn’t want to comment on the whole apprentice thing. I hadn’t agreed to throw my lot in with Irina’s department, and I kind of doubted I ever would. But if it would get me the inside scoop on what was really going on at Blackwater, then I could pretend for a little while.

Irina leaned in close. The little vial with my blood in it sparkled in between her tits.

“Professor Fym and I are not certain,” she said. “But we think that what happened in her Beast Taming class may be the work of the Black Moon Society.”

She stared at me, clearly waiting for some sort of horrified reaction.

Instead, I felt only confusion.

“I… don’t really know who they are?” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “Lavrans mentioned them during orientation. I’ve heard Sabrina bring them up a time or two.”

Irina’s face fell. I could almost feel her disappointment.

“You have not heard of the Black Moon Society?” she asked. “Really?”

I shrugged. “Enlighten me.”

Irina pursed her lips and crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “Officially, the Black Moon Society is a co-educational fraternity,” she explained, her face letting me know what she thought of the ‘official’ spiel. “Albeit one that has been banned from nearly all magical campuses because of the actions of certain members.”

“And unofficially?”

Irina’s eyes flashed. “They’re pure evil,” she whispered. “Specialists in curses and hexes court controversy with the areas of study they search for discoveries in, Edwin. Members of the Black Moon don’t believe there should be controversy at all. They believe that any and all forms of magic should be openly practiced and espoused against one’s enemies. Even forbidden means of power like blood magic and necromancy.” A strange look spread across her face. “For the Black Moon, power is the only rule. The strong may kill the weak, and the weak must die according to nature’s law.”

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law, I thought. Where had I heard that before?

“If the Black Moon ran the school—instead of someone sensible like Headmaster Ravensson—what happened to you in Beast Mastery would be perfectly legal. If you’d died, it would have been your fault for not being strong enough to defend yourself. That’s how they wound up banned from schools of magic: inevitably, the followers of the Black Moon would begin putting their principles into practice. People died.”

I searched Irina’s eyes as she spoke, peering into that darkness. As much as I wanted to believe she loathed the Black Moon, I couldn’t deny—they kind of sounded like they were right up her alley.

“You almost sound as if you admire them,” I said.

A stormcloud passed over her face. “If this is the Black Moon, then they are fools,” she spat. Literally spat: she turned to the side and let some saliva fly to the floor. “You are the most gifted spite-slinger I’ve seen in a generation. You should be the very last person a group based around strength and power should want to destroy!”

That… was a good point, actually. If the Black Moon Society truly existed at Blackwater, why wouldn’t they pick on the weakest students in the freshman class? I could almost see the rationale if they had: by culling the weakest and slowest members of the student body, the more promising pupils who remained would get more time and attention to grow into the witches and wizards they were meant to be.

Not that I would agree with that reasoning, mind you. It was still monstrous. But at least that would be logical in a horrifying sort of way.

This, though? This made no sense?

I could see it bothered Irina as well. “Professor Fym and I are on the case,” she said, nodding. “If the Black Moon Society has tried to reform at our school, we will find them and root them out, Edwin. They cannot be allowed to remain on our campus.”

She hesitated. I could sense there was something else she wanted to say, but was too nervous to speak it aloud. I couldn’t help but wonder what it was.

“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked.

Irina’s mouth moved silently, her lips pressed together tightly. She looked queasy, and I decided to push on her just a little bit.

“Partners in crime, right?” I asked, letting out a little laugh. “If you can’t trust me to keep your secrets, Irina, then maybe I’m not the student you’re looking for…”

Her eyes widened, and I knew I had her. “Of course you are!” she snapped.

“Then what?”

Irina glanced to the left and right. After a moment, she sighed.

“Professor Fym thinks that the Black Moon wants you dead,” she said, cocking her head to the side. “I do not necessarily agree.”

Now that was interesting. “You don’t?”

She leaned in close, dropping her voice to a whisper. “Killing you makes no sense, as you’ve said,” she told me. “But what if the attack wasn’t a true assassination attempt? What if it was a test? A test that you passed, Edwin. With flying colors.”

My feet felt bolted to the floor. “You think they might be planning to recruit me.”

Irina nodded. “And Edwin?”

I waited.

“If they do,” she said, spots of color rising to her pale cheeks, “it might not be a bad idea to accept.”

My eyes nearly fell out of my head. “You just told me—”

Irina held up a hand. “Better to be at the right hand of the devil than standing in his path, Edwin. You would learn… much, hidden in the shadows cast by the Black Moon. Yes, much and more.” Suddenly she was almost manic. “But if they do make you an offer, Edwin, you must tell me! I can protect you, keep the other teachers from learning the Black Moon has risen once more. And protect you from yourself, as well.”

“Myself?”

“I can teach you to use the Black Moon’s gifts without corroding your soul,” Irina insisted. “The forbidden arts.” Suddenly she was grinning. “I told you the truth, didn’t I? I would forgive you and accept you no matter how long it took you to realize you belonged beneath my wing, Edwin. Whether you come to me from Beast Taming, or from somewhere darker.”

My head felt like it was about to pop off. “Irina. You can’t be serious…?”

Her lips formed a tight little line. “I’m not saying it will happen,” she assured me. Some of the darkness in her voice and face retreated, and the room around us looked like an ordinary lecture hall once more. “More than likely, the Black Moon is not even involved in this. They’ve been gone for over a decade now.”

Unless you’re one of them, I thought. The way she smiled when she talked about teaching me the arts of darkness…

Well, they made me shiver. And not in the same way I did when I looked at her curves.

“We’ll locate the perpetrator and turn him or her over to Headmaster Ravensson for judgement,” she said. “You won’t have to worry about it. But if you do hear anything, please stay in touch, Edwin. You will promise me that? For Blackwater?”

I told her I would. What else could I say?

After a few more pleasantries, Irina let me go. I left her classroom unsure as to whether I’d just escaped a trap or fallen into one.

Professor Dragovich warned me about the Black Moon, I thought as I walked through the halls. But she’s so cozy with the dark side that I’d wager half my tuition she has more connections to them than she’s letting on. Why else encourage me to pretend to join them…?

I wasn’t sure if some long-dead secret society had come back to Blackwater, or if they had anything to do with my near-death experience in Professor Fym’s class. But I knew one thing for sure.

Irina Dragovich now had my blood hanging on a cord around her neck.

And the thought of what she might do with that made me very worried indeed.

Chapter Twenty-One

“You did what?”

“It’s not like I had a choice,” I said, gathering the blankets around my waist. Sabrina and I lay naked on her bed in her dorm room near the top floor of the Blackwater dormitories, smiling and spent. Through the cracked window she’d opened to let a little air into the stuffy, sex-smelling room, I could hear the sounds of students getting ready for Friday night parties on campus. Classes had just let out, and I’d come straight to Sabrina’s dorm to tell her all about my meeting with Professor Dragovich.

She’d been waiting for me at the foot of her bed, mouth open, on all fours.

Wearing nothing but a pair of panties and a smile.

Obviously, that took precedence over telling her about my day.

Once we’d finished burning off some steam (and making enough of a racket that her roommates all decided to find other places to hang out), I told Sabrina the whole story. She listened to me with her body curled up next to mine, one hand gently scratching my chest as I related the bits about the vial full of blood and the Black Moon Society. Saying it all out loud made me keenly aware of how ridiculous it sounded. It felt like I was explaining the plot of some sleazy 1970’s horror movie.

Sabrina, however, took it seriously.

“Edwin, you gave her your blood,” the blonde witch whispered. I couldn’t tell if Sabrina was more horrified or aroused by the concept. “I can’t believe you didn’t take that vial back from her the moment the words ‘blood magic’ left Sexy Hexy’s lips. Do you have any idea what sorts of things she could do to you with hematurgy?”

Something told me I was better off not knowing. “She didn’t tell me that stuff until after she’d already sealed up that little ampoule and stuffed it in her cleavage,” I protested. “What did you want me to do—fish it out?”

“Maybe,” Sabrina said with a laugh. “I don’t think she would have complained.”

My brows shot skyward.

“Oh, come on,” Sabrina chuckled, resting her head against my shoulder. She peered up at me through her lashes, giving me the sort of look that made me want to throw her over my knee and spank her until she was sopping wet. “You can’t tell me you’re that naive, Edwin. She wants you. Hell, she practically offered you a position as the Luke Skywalker to her Yoda! She’s trying to get her hooks into you, babe!”

I swallowed hard. “It’s really weird,” I admitted. “I mean, she’s a professor at Blackwater. Seeing her openly lust after a student… I mean, it’s crazy.”

“It’s not so crazy when you look at it logically,” Sabrina said, yawning explosively. I must have tired her out, which filled me with pride. “The top pick for each department in a first-year class is a hot commodity. They’re full of power and promise—and they’re going to be joined at the hip to you for at least three years once you agree to take them on as a protege. There’s going to be feelings involved no matter what you do.” Her hand stroked my stomach. “So instead of having a ton of angst and frustration over the whole thing, why not just pick someone you can see yourself being fuckbuddies with for a few years and discard the guilt?”

She was trying to tease me, I knew. “What about the Black Moon?” I asked.

A touch of seriousness infiltrated Sabrina’s expression. “The Black Moon is no joke,” she admitted. “If they’ve started recruiting at Blackwater, then more incidents like what happened with the stone dragon are waiting for us in the future. I don’t know if you surviving means they’ll move to weaker targets, but either way I’m glad you’ve got a couple teachers looking out for you.”

I let out a non-committal grunt. “Professor Dragovich told me she was worried the Black Moon Society was planning on recruiting me.”

That was a bit of a lie. She hadn’t been worried about it, exactly. More like excited.

Sabrina could tell the difference as well. “That does surprise me,” she whispered. “I mean, we all laugh about it when the Headmaster reminds us that the Black Moon Society is banned on campus, because half of their ideas about power are just the way the wizarding world works. But the only thing keeping the school from descending into total anarchy are the rules we do have and the ones we do follow. If they do try to recruit you..."

She trailed off.

"What?" I asked.

For a few seconds, I thought she was about to continue on in that vein. But then Sabrina seemed to catch herself, and she shook her head with a smile.

"I'm more interested in Sexy Hexy recruiting you," she said. "It sounds like she wants to make you her latest conquest."

"I'm being serious," I replied.

"So am I!"

I rolled my eyes. "Even for wizards, this is a weird conversation. I've just told you that some evil secret society everyone knows about might be back on campus. That they might have tried to kill me, and that they very well could be planning on doing it again. And all you can think about is sex?"

Sabrina was quiet for a few moments, her fingers doing the talking. One reason you're going to be my main girl no matter what happens, I thought. Other ladies just don't know how to scratch. Fuck, but it felt good to have her doing that with her nails after a roll in the hay. I wondered if she'd put those nails of hers between my shoulder blades later.

"You're thinking of them as two separate problems," the blonde witch finally said. "I don't think of them like that at all."

"No?"

"No." Sabrina was firm. "If someone wants to hurt you, or the people that you care about, the absolute best thing you can do is to hurt them first. Hurt them badly enough that they can't lay a finger on you. But trying to do that to the Black Moon Society is a fool's errand. They don't officially exist. It's like trying to box smoke."

"If that's the case, then Professor Fym and Irina have their boxing gloves on," I protested. "Both of them seem pretty adamant that they're going to be able to catch the culprit—"

"Did you say Irina?"

Sabrina's face lit up, and I realized I'd made a major mistake. No one was supposed to know that Professor Dragovich and I were on a first name basis. Not even my girlfriend.

"I mean, yeah," I said, trying to play it off. "I mean, that is her first name, right?"

Sabrina wasn’t about to let me off the hook. “You call her Irina? When did that start happening, Edwin?"

Damn. I could feel my chances of getting out of this without an explanation evaporating before my eyes. Sabrina watched me expectantly, a touch of mischief playing about her eyes and the curve of her mouth. She was naked from the waist up, with only a sheet covering the swell of her ass and her thighs.

"Recently," I admitted. "Look, it's not what you think—"

Sabrina bit down gently on her bottom lip. "What I think?" she asked.

Her hand moved lower.

"What I think," she repeated, putting her lips near my ear, "is that the hot goth curses teacher at my college wants you to call her by her first name. That she's been offering you all kinds of power and privilege if you'll agree to switch your major and become her number one protegee while you’re at Blackwater. And, oh yeah—that she's so into you that she literally has a vial of your blood dangling in between her tits."

Sabrina's hand gripped my thigh. Slowly, the tips of her fingers moved inward, teasing me in time with her naughty words.

"What I think," Sabrina growled, grabbing the base of my cock, "is that Sexy Hexy wants you to fuck her brains out."

God damn. There it was.

The blonde witch's mouth opened wide, her lids drooping in shock. "Oh shit," she purred, chuckling as she nibbled at my earlobe. "I thought I was going to get you hard, Edwin. But you're already a fucking rock, aren't you?"

There was no sense in denying it. Sabrina could feel it for herself. Her fingers slowly slid up and down the length of my shaft, adding heat and friction to my member. As if proving her right, it jerked in her hand, oozing precum all over her palm to make it even easier to stroke me.

"Yeah you are," she panted. "You're fucking diamonds!"

Sabrina rolled to the side, pressing her body more firmly against me as she stroked. The movement of her fingers became steady, rhythmic, each beat filling me with a pulse of pleasure. "You want her, don't you, babe? You're thinking about her right now."

My eyes rolled back in my head. Shit, that felt so good!

"Sabrina," I managed to gasp. "You're my girlfriend..."

She grinned, then planted a kiss on my cheek. "I am," she agreed. "And I think it's hot as fuck! Imagine those big, pale titties bouncing up and down in your face while Sexy Hexy rides your cock. Fuck, I bet she's such a total freak in the bedroom..."

It was almost like some kind of spell. As Sabrina spoke, images filled my mind. All the dirty things she described entered my mind's eye, like a film reel unspooling inside of my head. I saw Irina on top of me, her hips pumping up and down in time with Sabrina's naughty fingers as she milked me. I saw her gorgeous breasts, her pouty lips, her long dark hair surrounding us both like a black halo.

"That's right," Sabrina said, as if she had a direct line into my dirtiest fantasies. "Picture that, baby. Now picture me and Courtney lying next to you while you fuck her."

I was. Holy fuck I was.

"That perfect, all-American cheerleader," Sabrina groaned. She sounded like she was almost feeling more pleasure than I was, though how that could be possible I had no idea. “And your gorgeous little witch, all gathered around you. Practically worshipping you while you empty those balls into Professor Dragovich. Is that what you want, Edwin? You want to have all three of us in your dirty little harem?”

I couldn’t have responded with words if I wanted to. I let out a roar like an angry lion as my hips bucked upwards, meeting Sabrina’s hand stroke for stroke. This was no mere handjob: I was fucking her fist, and if my mind hadn’t filled with the pornographic phantoms of Irina and Courtney kissing and licking and riding me, I’d have rolled Sabrina onto her back and pushed into her like I owned her.

“You’d be so fucking evil if you were a curses major,” Sabrina whimpered. “But fuck, baby, I kind of like it. It sounds hot, doesn’t it?”

I hadn’t thought so until now. But when Sabrina put it that way, it kinda did.

“You and her together could really fuck up the school’s enemies,” she whimpered, grinding her hips against me as she stroked. “You’d be so fucking powerful, Edwin! Nobody would dare fuck with you—if they so much as laid a finger on you, Sexy Hexy would rip their faces off and eat them…!”

The pleasure built until it was blinding. My body shook against Sabrina’s as I hit the point of no return and crashed right through. I saw them all inside my head: Irina, Courtney, Sabrina. All on their knees, or crawling all over me in bed, their hot wet mouths and pussies at my disposal whenever I wanted—

Sabrina moaned into my ear, and I hit my peak.

I came.

At the last second, she rolled herself onto her side and pulled me close. Caveman grunts and growls escaped from me as my cock jerked in her fist, swelling and jerking and spurting. She pulled back the covers and let me shoot all over her naked body. Thick, hot ropes of cum sprayed from my cock, streaking across her stomach, her hips, her breasts.

I kept right on shooting as she let out a triumphant cry. The fact that we’d just had sex didn’t seem to matter—I painted her tanned skin in pearly white, glazing her tits and tummy with my load.

As I finally came down from my peak, Sabrina started to laugh. Her lips covered mine, and the nails she’d been using to scratch my chest finally reached between my shoulder blades and hit that special spot that’s so hard to reach. I let out a final grunt and unloaded a half-pressure spurt of seed on her thigh, then relaxed into her arms and let her hold me.

“Wow,” the witch purred as she broke the kiss. “You’re definitely not as resistant to this idea as you were a couple of weeks ago.”

She had me there. “You’re good at selling things,” I told her, meaning it.

Another chuckle left Sabrina’s lips. She rose from the bed as I rolled onto my back, her breasts and stomach glistening with seed, and went over to grab a towel hanging off the wall. She made no attempt to cover up as she cleaned herself.

“That was super hot,” the blonde said. “I had no idea you and Professor Dragovich were already on such intimate terms.”

“It just happened,” I said.

“I’m picturing the two of you together in her office,” she told me, sashaying her way back to the slender dorm room bed. “Her calling you Edwin, flirting with you shamelessly, talking about all the things she can do for you if you agree to sign up for your major under her…” A little shudder of lust passed through my girlfriend. “I’m surprised you didn’t ask her for a blowjob right then and there.”

“I…”

I trailed off. What had I been about to say? That I wouldn’t have done a thing like that? That wasn’t entirely accurate any more, was it?

I couldn’t stop thinking about the image Sabrina put in my head. Me as some kind of rule-breaking bad boy, using Irina and the curses school to increase my personal power instead of the other way around. The more I thought about it, the more certain I began to feel that all the negatives of siding with her could be turned into positives.

And if the idea turned Sabrina on this much, well…

What might it do to the rest of the female half of the student body?

Sabrina climbed back into bed and laid down next to me. She ran the towel over me to get the last few gobs of my load cleaned up, then deposited it on the floor next to her side of the bed. I’ll get it later, her eyes told me.

“I didn’t even realize that was an option,” I admitted. “That I could just ask one of the faculty members at Blackwater to suck my dick. I kind of figured a guy would get expelled for doing that—or at least get pulled into some kind of harassment tribunal…”

“Please,” Sabrina giggled. “You think the queen of the curses school is going to complain about harassment? If you went for her and she didn’t want you, she’d probably just make your dick fall off. Problem solved.”

I let out a little urk at the thought.

Sabrina climbed into my arms and cuddled up next to me. “That was fun,” she whispered, giving me a long, lingering kiss. “I kind of like corrupting you, babe.”

“Mmh hmm,” I agreed. I glanced down at the valley between her thighs. “Your turn?”

To my surprise, Sabrina shook her head. “I’m fine,” she yawned, relaxing against me. “Very satisfied. I just wanted to talk dirty and watch you cum.” She paused. “You’re so fucking adorable right before you spurt, babe. I can’t wait for Courtney to see it.”

I shook my head to clear the last of those erotic hallucinations, including those of Courtney. The hot redhead cheerleader was never far from my thoughts, especially when Sabrina and I had time to spend together. Hooking up with her was definitely near the top of my girlfriend’s mind.

As if she’d read my thoughts, Sabrina suddenly stiffened. “Oh!” she cried, sitting up and reaching for her phone. “Shit. What time is it?”

Hmm? I glanced down at my watch to check the time. Pushing the little button on the side to light it up revealed hands pointed roughly straight up and straight down.

“It’s almost six,” I said, glancing back at my girlfriend. “Why? Is there some bookstore you want to take me to that’s about to close?”

Sabrina shook her head. “No. I had a different plan for our date tonight.”

I hadn’t even realized there was a plan, besides hooking up in Sabrina’s dorm and maybe getting some dinner. But she was about to enlighten me.

“I got us tickets,” she said, opening the email app on her phone. “Since both of us are students, we get a discount rate. Not that it really matters, since I put it on my stipend card anyway. But it’s still pretty cool—”

“Sabrina,” I said, cutting her off. If left to her own devices like this, she’d keep going for an awfully long time. “Tickets for what?”

She’d raised herself to a sitting position on the side of the bed. Now she looked back at me over her shoulder, her free hand in the middle of tying her blonde locks into a ponytail. Her eyes sparkled.

“You really don’t follow news on campus, do you?” she asked. “Courtney’s only been talking about it for weeks!”

Courtney?

Suddenly it clicked.

“The game’s tonight?” I asked.

Sabrina’s grin told me I’d gotten it in one. “Yep! First game of the season, and it’s at home. The Exeter-Cross Warlocks are facing off against the Stillwell Sharks. Should be a pretty fun game. And guess who’s going to be right there, literally cheering the home team on?”

I couldn’t help but snicker at the pun. Of course Courtney would be front and center. She’d been training for this for weeks. It was most of the reason why the two of us hadn’t had the time to go on any real dates before now.

“You already got us two tickets?” I asked. “Really?”

Sabrina snickered. “Read ‘em and weep,” she said, passing me over the phone.

She’d copied the information from her email over into one of those apps that holds all of your memberships, tickets and gift cards. The legend beamed up at me from the screen: 2X ADULT EX-CROSS STADIUM. DOORS: 5:00 PM GAME 6:30PM.

“We’ll be able to see Courtney,” Sabrina explained. “I mean, we probably won’t be able to go up and talk to her—she’s going to be busy after all—but once the game is over, there’ll be a party. Especially if the Warlocks pull off their first win of the season. Maybe tonight could be the night…?”

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know what Sabrina was thinking.

We’d been dancing around it for weeks. From the way she spoke to me on the phone and over text, Courtney clearly wanted to give this thing a shot. She’d wanted it from the moment she wrote her phone number on the back of my hand. Only fate had kept the two of us from hooking up with each other before now.

But tonight?

Tonight, there’d be no obstacles in our way.

The more I thought about it, the more excited I became. Not aroused—Sabrina had taken care of that—but by the time the after party rolled around, I’d be more than ready to perform.

Shit, I thought. She’s right. This could be the night we take things to the next level.

“I think that’s a great idea,” I said, nodding. “Nice pick up, babe.”

Sabrina gave me a knowing smile. “Tickets went fast,” she admitted with a shrug, looking pleased with herself. “But they always hold enough over for students. I need to hop in the shower and get ready, but then you want to head out? Maybe we can grab some dinner on the way there?”

That sounded great, and I told her so. Except I had one other thing in mind.

As Sabrina rose, I rose with her.

“Where are you going?” she asked, looking confused.

I put my arms around her waist. “To take a shower with my girl,” I growled, looking down into Sabrina’s gorgeous eyes. “And give her a reward for planning such a clever date night.”

Spots of color rose to Sabrina’s cheeks. “I mean, if you insist,” she whimpered, squeezing her thighs together. “Gawd, as if my roommates didn’t already hate me enough…”

What happened next happened purely on instinct. I hadn’t planned it.

“Then move in with me,” I said, still holding onto her. “Come live at my place.”

Sabrina’s mouth dropped open. One hand went to the back of her neck, rubbing it as she fought off a wave of nerves. “You… yeah?” she asked. “You mean it?”

Now it was my turn to shrug. “Why not? Whatever else happens the rest of this year, you’re the girl I want to wake up next to every morning.”

I kind of figured Sabrina would be happy to hear it. But I hadn’t braced myself for the sheer wellspring of emotion my offer would bring out of her.

“I… I would love that!” she cried, burying her face against my chest. She composed herself well, but from the subtle shake of her shoulders, I could tell that she was holding back tears. Happy ones. “That would be, like, so incredibly awesome, Edwin!”

“I know it’s a bit of a commute,” I said, thinking about Beltway traffic. “Maybe at some point we could find a place a little bit closer to campus, since we’ve got Blackwater to supplement our budgets now—”

Sabrina let out a merry, tinkling laugh. “Edwin, I love your place,” she said, putting her hands on my shoulders. “Honestly, I’d live in a fucking trailer if it was with you. I just…”

“Just what?” I asked, frowning.

She shook her head, still smiling. “I just never expected this to happen to me, that’s all.”

I still didn’t understand. “For what to happen? Sabrina, you know you’re gorgeous—”

“I know,” she said, shaking away the tears. “This just isn’t the way we do things in our world, you know? Magical people don’t… they don’t do the whole ‘move in together’ thing. They don’t yearn for white picket fences and big backyards and massive families. Well, most of them don’t.”

I couldn’t help but tease her. “And you’re an exception?” I asked, tilting her chin upward.

“More like I’m a pervert,” Sabrina replied, snickering. “Wanting to move in with a guy this quickly—meaning at all during college—basically makes me an extreme outlier among the women at Blackwater.”

“Well, I won’t say anything if you won’t,” I assured her, my hand going to her ass. “And between you and me, I think those girls are dumb for not knowing what they’re missing.”

Sabrina laughed. “So do I. I was going to warn you about dating other witches on campus, actually. But I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.”

“No?” I cocked my head to the side. “Why?”

“Because,” Sabrina chuckled. “If you really do end up becoming Sexy Hexy’s new boytoy, it’s going to intimidate the hell out of your other dating prospects at Blackwater. Nobody wants to risk being on the business end of one of those spells…”

Huh. “That doesn’t sound like much of a problem to me.”

Sabrina watched me through her lashes. “You really think you’d be satisfied with that?” she whispered, her lips pressing together. “Me, Irina, and Courtney? Just the three of us?”

Just the three?

Things really were different at Blackwater. Especially if my girlfriend was concerned that I might only have two other hookups on campus besides her. I couldn’t even explain it to Sabrina in a way she’d understand. Just having her by my side felt like an utter embarrassment of riches.

I smirked down at her. “I don’t think I’ll get tired of it,” I told her, pulling her towards me. “And I definitely don’t think I’ll ever get tired of you.”

We kissed.

By the time we broke it, Sabrina looked dizzy. “You,” she whimpered. “Me. Shower. Now.”

I grinned.

“Yes ma’am,” I said, taking her hand.

Something told me we were going to make it to the big game just in time.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Sabrina and I arrived at Exeter-Cross field with about twenty minutes to spare before the big game. This, unfortunately, meant that the place was packed.

Until we reached the stadium, I hadn’t realized just how much football meant to the mundane half of the campus. Cars with out-of-state license plates filled the parking lot, most of them from Virginia and Maryland but more than a few bearing the New England plates of the visiting team. The ticket-taker up at the front gave us a strange look when Sabrina pulled out her phone, evidently because of how close the two of us had decided to cut it.

“We’ve got seats in the bleachers,” Sabrina told me once we were through the security checkpoint. “We ought to be right by where the cheerleaders are warming up.” She gave me a wicked grin. “Want to go see if Courtney is down there?”

Sabrina had all but promised me a party after the big game, but it looked like one had already started at the stadium. The halls thronged with people, nearly all of whom wore the familiar black and gold colors of the Exeter-Cross Warlocks. I’d never seen so many people dressed up in sports regalia, and before long I started to wonder if Sabrina could illusion us up with some threads to match.

When I suggested it to her, she smiled. “We don’t have to worry about fitting in,” she assured me, her hand in mine. “This area wholly belongs to Exeter-Cross, but the ordinary rules still apply. People who look at us here see what they expect to see. You could probably be walking around naked and no one would notice anything wrong.”

Huh. Neat.

“I wonder what they’d think if you walked around naked,” I said, teasing her.

Sabrina turned, making a faux offended face. “Mmh, nah. I think I’ll save that for my man.”

Then she went up on tiptoe and kissed me. It was a good feeling.

I considered checking out the concession stands. Our fun in the shower meant that Sabrina and I had almost been late for the big game, and so we hadn’t had time to catch dinner before we headed to the stadium. I’d worked up quite an appetite, but the sheer number of people waiting gave me second thoughts. I made a mental note to come back and grab snacks once the lines had thinned out and put a hand on the small of Sabrina’s back as we stepped out into the evening.

Exeter-Cross had a full-size football field, with rows of metal bleachers on either side. The visitor section was perhaps a third full, while the home team section swelled to bursting. I had no idea how Sabrina and I would find our seats.

“Over here,” the blonde told me. She led me to a smaller side section of the stands, closer to ground level but further down from the center of the action. No one checked our tickets to ensure we were meant to be in this section, which I found interesting. Did they just trust the customers to seat themselves?

Probably. Exeter-Cross’s fans were certainly well-heeled. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen this many Rolex watches and designer jackets in one place.

The Warlocks’ cheer squad stood a short distance away from the field, doing warmups. Three or four of them practiced jumping onto the top of a human pyramid, causing the people in the stands near them to break out into applause, while the rest of the squad did splits and stretched in anticipation of their routine.

One of them was Courtney. I’d recognize those cherry red locks anywhere.

I went for caution, but Sabrina didn’t. She came rushing over to the waist-high chain link fence separating the playing field from the stands, wearing one of the biggest grins I’d ever seen on her outside of the bedroom. Courtney didn’t notice her; she was in the middle of doing the splits, her hands touching her toes in a way I couldn’t help but think of as suggestive.

“Hey, Court!” Sabrina waved from the fence. “Looking good, girl!”

The redhead noticed. Courtney shot to her feet with a surprised grin and made her way over, waving first to Sabrina and then to me. By the time she reached the fence I’d made it there too, leaning on it with a jaunty air.

“Oh my gosh!” Courtney looked so happy to see us that it made my heart hurt a little bit. “I can’t believe you two made it! I thought you were busy with… you know!”

Her reluctance to say anything magical in this crowd endeared her to me even more. “We’re never too busy for this,” I assured her, leaning over the fence with a smile. “How are you doing?”

“You ready for this?” Sabrina asked.

The grin Courtney gave us both in return told us that she was more than ready. “I can’t wait to get started,” she said, glancing over at her fellow cheerleaders. “Kendra and Jessica have put together a killer program this year. We’re really going to do some great stuff as the season rolls on.” Suddenly she leaned in close, dropping her voice to a whisper. “Can I tell you a secret?”

I wish you would, I thought. With her leaning like that, she was almost close enough to kiss. Part of me wanted to go for it, but not with so many members of her squad around. The last thing I wanted was to throw her off her game right before her big performance.

Afterwards, though, we’d celebrate.

“Go for it,” I said.

The redhead gave us both an impish smile. “Kendra said that if I perform this season at the level I’ve been showing in rehearsals, she’s going to put my name forward as cheer captain when she graduates!”

Both Sabrina and I looked surprised.

“I know! Me! Captain of the whole cheer squad!” Courtney put her hands over her mouth, her cheeks turning red. It looked so damned cute that I wanted to pull her over that fence and kiss her right then and there, no matter who might be watching. “Can you believe it!”

“I definitely can,” Sabrina agreed. “You’ve worked your ass off for this, Court. I’m proud of you. Edwin is, too.”

Courtney turned to me, her gaze smoldering. “Yeah. I’m, uh, I’m really sorry that I’ve been so hard to reach lately,” she said, looking me up and down. “It was kind of rotten to give you my number so close to the team’s crunch time.”

“That’s alright,” I said, putting an arm around Sabrina. “I don’t mind waiting for good things.”

“Party after the game tonight?” Sabrina asked.

Oh. Oh wow. Clearly the three of us were all on the same wavelength, because Courtney lit up like a Christmas tree at the suggestion.

“There’s definitely going to be one,” the redhead purred. “Over at the Delta Omicron house, I think. Half the squad is probably expecting the quarterback to throw me over his shoulder and drag me there like a caveman. Won’t they all be surprised when I turn up with you two…”

“I can throw you over my shoulder and drag you if you want,” I told her.

The spots of color came back to Courtney’s face with a vengeance. “Ohmigawd,” she panted, laughing. “I think I might like that, Edwin. You promise?”

Sabrina and I shared a look. Tonight’s the night, the blonde witch’s eyes told me.

Hell yes. It was go time.

Before I could respond, a mocha-skinned cheerleader with her hair in braids came jogging up. “You ready, Court?” she asked, glancing over at us with a half-interested look. “We’re just about to get started with the routine.”

“Oh, totally!” Courtney rolled her shoulders and tossed her hair to the side. “Just saying hi to my friends. Edwin, Sabrina, this is Kendra, the captain of the cheerleading team.”

“Nice to meet you,” Kendra said, sounding absent minded. “Courtney, we really need to get started…”

“We won’t keep you,” I told them both. “Come on Sabrina, let’s find our seats. Good luck!”

Together, we made our way into the stands. By the time Sabrina and I found our seats and got settled in, the cheerleaders for the Exeter-Cross Warlocks were busy tossing each other into the air, earning adoring cries and waves of applause from the crowd.

Sabrina punched me playfully in the shoulder as we watched Courtney go. She and Kendra both jumped to the top of a human pyramid before striking a pose, one leg up like Supergirl taking flight. I couldn’t believe the human body was capable of such things—at least not without magic.

“She totally wants you, dude,” my girlfriend whispered. “Tonight is going to be fucking great.”

“We’d better hope the home team wins,” I said, leaning over. “Keep everyone in a good mood…”

There was little reason to worry on that score. By the time the first quarter of the game was over, the Warlocks had scored two touchdowns on the Stillwell Sharks. Every time I glanced across the playing field to the visitor’s bleachers, I saw a whole lot of morose New Englanders staring back at me.

As the sun vanished over the horizon, all the lights surrounding the stadium kicked on. The playing field was lit up like noonday, while moths buzzed around the most brilliant lights far above the stadium.

When the shadow fell over my face, my first instinct was that someone had tossed a football far outside of bounds. I jerked to the side in my seat, reaching for Sabrina to move her out of the way. The object slowed at the last moment, shot to the side—and landed on my shoulder.

“Squawk?” I blurted.

“Good game!” the bird cawed, its beady eyes swiveling back and forth. “Good friend!”

I put a hand over my chest, waiting for the adrenaline to fade. Sabrina stared at my familiar, her eyes as wide as saucers.

“What are you doing here?” I asked the bird.

I’d seen Squawk around, of course. Pretty much every morning when I drove to Blackwater I saw his shadow in the sky, and he perched on the roof of lecture buildings while I was inside taking classes. Evidently my familiar would become more important after my Grand Conjuration, since I’d be expected to use him frequently in advanced Beast Taming courses.

“Hey,” someone said behind me. “Move that thing, buddy! I can’t see!”

Huh? It took a second for me to realize. The people at the stadium were almost all mundane—when they looked at a Blackwater student carrying his familiar, their mind bent the sight into a more familiar shape. When he looked at me, he probably just saw an ordinary person standing up a bit in his seat, or holding up a sign.

“Squawk, in my lap,” I hissed. The bird obediently hopped off of my shoulder, planting his tiny claws into the fabric of my jeans.

“Thanks,” the guy behind me said.

“Hi, Squawk,” Sabrina said, reaching out to stroke the back of the blackbird’s head. “How are you doing, angel? Gosh, it’s been a while since I’ve seen you, hasn’t it? You want a treat?”

“Squawk treat!” the bird said, sounding excited. “Good treat!”

“Hold on just a second,” Sabrina purred.

She picked up a small pebble sitting next to the bench and passed her hand over it, whispering a few words from some incantation. When she withdrew her palm, a tiny pellet of what looked like bird food lay nestled in her hand.

“Here you go,” the blonde witch said.

Squawk leaned over and snatched up the pellet, downing it in a single bite.

“Good treat!”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

“Squawk, what are you doing here?” I asked the bird. It hadn’t been that long ago that I would have felt silly addressing a bird in such a manner, but those days were long gone. “Is everything alright?”

“Curse!” the bird cawed, shuffling back and forth on my knee. “Bad curse!”

My stomach fell. I had the feeling I knew what my familiar was talking about.

“Do we really have to discuss this now?” I asked, leaning in to converse with my familiar. “Look, I know the curse school is bad. I haven’t decided which subject I’m going to declare as my major.” I paused, realizing something I maybe should have figured out earlier. “Since you’re my familiar, you probably have an opinion, don’t you?”

“Squawk friend!” the bird cawed.

I shared a look with Sabrina. “You probably think I should stick with Beast Taming,” I said, returning my attention to the bird.

“Squawk!” Squawk said. “Bad man!’

My eyes narrowed. Bad…?

“I’m not a bad man,” I protested. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Sharp!” Squawk cawed, jumping from one leg to the other. “Sharp man!”

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to say,” I blurted. “Sabrina, is this making any sense to you?”

The blonde witch shook her head. “I’m not following at all. Some familiars have the power of speech, but it’s severely limited in most of them that do. Familiars are intelligent, certainly, but a lot of them… well, they’re not exactly smart.”

“Nice lady!” Squawk retorted, as if confirming Sabrina’s suspicion. “Treat!”

Just then, my stomach gave an undignified rumble.

“I could use a treat,” I said, thinking about those concession stands I’d passed on the way in. “Would you like something to eat, Sabrina?”

She nodded. “I’m famished,” she admitted, giving me a sheepish grin. “I worked up quite the appetite this afternoon. I could use a nice big hot dog.”

“You might have to wait a couple more hours for that,” I said. Both of us laughed knowingly, remembering what we’d been up to right before we arrived. “How about two diet sodas and a couple of corn dogs?”

Sabrina said that would be fine. “And some popcorn for Squawk,” she insisted, patting the bird on the back of the head. “I don’t know why your familiar decided to come visit now of all times, but I like having him here.”

“Pretty girl!” Squawk trilled. “Bad man!”

“He can be,” Sabrina said, giving me a lusty glance. “But between you and me, Squawk, I kinda like it when he’s bad.”

I started to get up, then paused. “No one’s going to stop me from carrying a bird around the stadium?” I asked my girlfriend.

Sabrina shrugged. “They see what they want to see,” she said, gesturing around at the mundane masses. “You should be fine. No one’ll give Squawk a second glance.”

“Cool.” I kissed her. “Be right back.”

Sabrina was right. A couple of people made faces as I passed, but only because I was blocking their view as I walked. It was kind of hard not to, as Squawk jumped right to my shoulder the second I got out of my seat.

Just as I’d hoped, the lines had thinned out by the time I reached the concession stands. Most everyone had moved outside, watching the game, and there were only a few groups hanging out in the hallways. I ducked into the bathroom, Squawk still on my shoulder, to take care of some business before I grabbed snacks for me and Sabrina.

I expected Squawk to hop off of my shoulder at some point, but the bird stayed there the whole time. Weird.

Three or four people were in front of me in the line as I reached the concession stand. The smell of popcorn filled the air. A cook in a stained apron and one of those round paper hats stood in the back tending a grill covered with hot dogs and burger patties. My stomach growled just looking at it.

“You want some popcorn, right?” I asked, glancing over sarcastically at the bird on my shoulder. “Or should I get you a Pepsi while I’m at it?”

“Bad man!” Squawk cawed. “Sharp man!”

I bit back a sigh and rolled my eyes. “You’re not making any sense,” I muttered, watching the line slowly move. The person at the far front got their popcorn and soda and headed off in the direction of the stands. “I’m not a bad man. I don’t get what you’re trying to say—”

“Edwin good!” Squawk cried. “Man bad!”

My fingers began to tingle. A feeling washed over me like I’d forgotten something. Something very important.

“Squawk,” I whispered, looking back the way I came. “What man…”

I saw him.

Just past the bathrooms stood a black shadow in the shape of a human being. For a long, heart-stopping moment, I tried to convince myself that I wasn’t seeing what I was seeing. That it was some weird trick of the light. That I’d gotten so hungry that I was starting to see things.

The shadow moved.

“Bad man!” Squawk cried.

Oh shit.

The figure strode down the hallway, not slowly but also not in any hurry. Its steps were steady, like a hunter tracking its prey. The light bent around its body, shielding the fine details of its outfit from view, but I thought I could see a man wearing a dark hood through the gloom.

The man carrying soda and popcorn came walking right down the hallway in the opposite direction. The figure stopped, paused, and waited.

No, no, I thought, panic flaring in my veins. Get out of the way, he’ll kill you!

At the last second, the guy with the popcorn took a big step to the side. He kept on moving like nothing had happened, walking around the shadowy figure as if he wasn’t even there.

A scream wormed its way into the back of my throat.

“Squawk,” I whispered, forcing it down. “Go to Sabrina. Warn her. Now.”

My familiar took off, sailing across the hallway. Squawk flew right over the shadowy figure’s head, flapping his wings. As he faded from view, the figure pulled what looked like a long, ice-blue dagger from a pocket in his robes.

I ran.

I abandoned the line for the concessions and booked it down the hall, racing in the opposite direction. Behind me, the figure gave chase, walking at a much faster pace as he tracked me.

Shit shit shit! What the hell was that thing?

People moved around the black figure as he followed me. They stepped out of his path without being consciously aware of doing so, as if a magnet pulled them out of the figure’s way at the very last second. Maybe it did.

Whatever it was, it didn’t work for me. No one moved out of my way; I had to shove my way down the hall at several points, despite the thinning of the crowd.

“Out of my way!” I roared, keenly aware of the black figure gaining ground behind me. “Security! Security!”

But no one heard me. People wrinkled their noses, glancing over in my direction as if they’d encountered a bad smell, but no one stepped in the monster’s path—and no one tried to get help. It was like… like…

Like they didn’t even see him.

I kept on running. The passageway ahead of me curved to the left, forming a wide circle around the edges of the stadium. If I got far enough ahead of the monster, I’d eventually find myself back where I started at the entrance where I met Sabrina. If I could just lose the monster, I might be able to grab her and get her out of there.

I passed a table covered in Warlocks memorabilia, with a wall of t-shirts behind it. A booster stood behind the table frowning at me—a young woman who looked like she could have been a backup member of the cheer squad outside.

“Hey!” she called after me. “No running in the halls!”

I turned, pointing at the black-robed figure. “He’s a killer!” I roared. “Call the fucking police!”

She frowned as if she hadn’t even heard me.

The figure was gaining on me. Their outline had solidified as they walked, and each glance over my shoulder showed me a tall figure with a masculine build and a face shrouded by a dark hood. The dagger in their hand glowed with veins of blue-tinted magic, and the smile illuminated by that cold light was wide and unfathomably cruel.

Bad man, I thought, remembering Squawk’s words. Sharp man.

Now I understood—my familiar had been trying to warn me. Had this man been among us for some time now, shielded in a cocoon of stealth? If so, he’d probably had to drop it in order to attack. Which meant he’d waited for me to separate from Sabrina.

That was my only silver lining. Whoever this was, whatever they were, they hadn’t felt confident in taking on two people at once. Maybe I had a chance.

Or maybe I didn’t. I had no idea what would happen if that figure caught up with me. I really didn’t want to find out.

At the next turn, I managed to briefly break line of sight with the robed figure. I shot to the side, ducking into a maintenance hallway, and found a set of bathrooms that looked like most people didn’t realize they existed. The women’s room door had tape across it, declaring it closed; I ducked into the men’s and slammed the door behind me, hoping my pursuer didn’t see it.

I climbed into one of the stalls and stood on top of the toilet, performing a trick I’d seen in God only knew how many movies. As I braced my hands against either side of the stall I tried to steady my heart rate, muttering words I’d heard in one of my very first classes at Blackwater.

I had an idea. I didn’t know if it would work, but it was my best shot.

I’d counted to twenty when the bathroom door slammed open. It took everything inside of me not to jump from the toilet and scream.

A pair of booted feet strode across the tile floor. I could see them through the little slit of light under the bathroom door, and knew instantly who those boots belonged to. Him. The tails of a black robe swayed back and forth as he walked, fringed on the end with a band of silver covered in runes.

The man kicked open the stall door on the right. I winced as it slammed against the side of the stall, making a noise like a gunshot.

The feet moved closer. The man stood in front of the middle stall now.

I kept on muttering, speaking the words of the spell as quietly as I could. If I screwed this up now…

Blam! The stall door slammed open. The boots stood there for several moments, watching impassively, then began to move.

He didn’t go in, I thought, clinging to that desperate hope. Please. PLEASE—

This time the man didn’t hesitate. He kicked the stall with a boot, slamming it against the wall. The door opened, revealing the hooded figure standing just outside of arm’s length.

I couldn’t see his face. But I could see his smile. There was nothing human in it. Instinctively, I knew that whatever stood before me was no man. This was a thing, a creature, plain and simple. A fucking monster, sent to kill. To assassinate.

He held the ice-blue dagger in his off hand, the faint glow illuminating my stall.

The stall where I was standing right on top of the toilet like a fucking sitting duck.

He stood there. And stood.

Statue, I thought. Be a fucking statue. Don’t make a sound.

I counted to three, then five, willing the man to move. Finally he turned away from the stall with an impetuous growl, breaking into a jog as he abandoned the bathroom.

I waited for ten more seconds, then slumped against the wall. The spell I’d cast fizzled, and my body became visible once more.

It was a first-level illusion spell. One of the only things I’d learned in that class—and only because I’d gotten so bored with watching the professor flirting with coeds that I cracked the textbook and started practicing some of the exercises myself.

A simple light-bending trick that was little more than a prank just saved my life.

But I wasn’t done yet. I’d managed to elude the monster for now, but he’d still be out there. Waiting. And if he couldn’t get me, well… he’d do the next best thing.

Sabrina, I thought. I have to get to you!

My girlfriend was in terrible danger.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The crowd rose to its feet, screaming and throwing their fists in the air. Exeter-Cross had just scored another touchdown.

I wished I could celebrate with them, but the score of the football game had suddenly become the least important thing in the world to me. The mass of people stamping their feet and singing along with the college’s fight song were suddenly nothing more than obstacles in my way, figures that obscured my view of my girlfriend. Was Sabrina okay? Had that shadow man managed to reach her before I could?

I prayed she was still in her seat. Or that Squawk showed up and gave her the hint, and that she’d run off to the car to wait for me to drive us out of here.

I rounded the corner moving just slow enough to plausibly be not running. Near the end of the lane, the Exeter-Cross cheerleaders did high kicks, their pom-poms flashing in the lights burning above the stadium. Sabrina sat in the stands, a confused look on her face, as Squawk jumped up and down in her lap.

A wave of relief washed over me. I wasn’t too late!

I booked it to the stands. Sabrina looked down through the crowd, her eyes lighting up as the rows in front of her began to sit.

Edwin? I saw her mouth my name.

I took the steps two at a time. The handful of people sitting in our row between the end and my seat with Sabrina were subject to some rude treatment as I pushed past them. I could apologize later; this was life or death.

“Come on,” I said, taking Sabrina’s hand. “We’re leaving.”

“Bad man!” Squawk squawked. “Run far!”

To say my girlfriend looked freaked out would have been a major understatement. “Edwin? What the hell is going on, baby?”

I didn’t have time to explain. “I’ll tell you about it when we’re out of here,” I said, trying to keep the brusqueness out of my voice. “Trust me. We need to leave now.”

Something changed in her face. Maybe it was the way I was looking at her; maybe it was the fact that my hand shook gently in hers as I guided her out of her seat. Whatever it was, Sabrina knew I meant business. I wouldn’t have pulled us out of the game—or Courtney’s afterparty—without a damned good reason.

“Alright, babe,” Sabrina said. She took one final look at the cheerleading squad like she was silently mourning the wild, totally insane after party we’d have had with the Exeter-Cross squad, then gripped my hand tightly and walked with me down the row.

Out in the field, the Warlocks caught a ball tossed by the Sharks’ quarterback. The crowd was back on its feet in an instant, roaring with shock and amazement at the sudden reversal. Our team was doing well, which made it even more of a kick in the pants to have to leave.

But I’d get over it. Being alive was much more of a reward.

As we made our way down the steps, I saw the cheer squad’s latest formation break back down to individual members. Courtney cast her gaze across the crowd, then saw me and frowned. Her mouth started to open, and I saw her start to head in our direction before catching herself and remaining in formation.

I’m sorry, I thought, trying to beam my apologies through the air to the redhead. I promise I will make it up to you later.

I’m not sure if Courtney understood or not. Psychic powers weren’t part of the curriculum at Blackwater University—I wasn’t even sure if they really existed. But I tried. Either way, I could explain myself once Sabrina and I were safe. Hopefully.

I kept my head on a swivel as we retraced our path through the stadium. There was no sign of the black robed figure or his ice-blue dagger, though that didn’t stop me from jumping at every shadow on our path. Sabrina noticed my behavior, and it made her clutch my hand even tighter.

“What are you looking for?” she asked, matching my movements. “What should I be keeping an eye out for?”

Good girl, I thought. “Guy with black robes,” I said, watching the path ahead for any sudden movements. “He came at me while I was in line at the concession stand. He’s got this dagger that looks like the shard I pulled out of the stone dragon’s paw.”

Sabrina’s face went pale when I said that last part. “That’s not good,” she whispered, looking at me aghast. “Where would he have gotten a weapon like that?”

“I have no idea,” I told her. I wanted to tell her all about hiding in the bathroom and the illusion spell, but it would have taken too long to relate the story. By the time I would have finished, we’d already have been in the car and on our way to safety. “But he’s bad news for sure. He almost caught me earlier. We need to be careful.”

The main lobby was just up ahead. A massive set of doors opened up onto the parking lot, which was bathed in a brilliant white light from all the spotlights overhead. The security checkpoint had already been dismantled. Only a few strands of tape remained where the aisles had been, along with a couple of those tables with the fold-up legs.

The figure stood in front of the glass doors, surveying the scene with an almost casual air.

I froze in my tracks. So did Sabrina.

“Is that him?” my girlfriend whispered, with a note in her voice like she hoped it wasn’t true. “Is that the guy?”

I nodded.

The robed figure appeared to be in no hurry. He held that glowing blue dagger at his side, its pale glow illuminating his thigh. He stood like a sentinel in front of our only exit, poised right in the middle of the aisle so that he’d be in stabbing range no matter what angle we used to try and get past him.

Two security guards lounged barely fifteen feet away from the figure. Neither of them had so much as stirred.

Sabrina saw them and sputtered. “H-hey! That guy’s got a knife! Get him!”

The guards looked up at Sabrina briefly, then returned to what they were doing as if they’d realized she was talking to someone else.

“He’s dangerous!” Sabrina cried, her voice going shrill. “Please, help!”

“It’s not going to work,” I said, ice filling the pit of my stomach. “You told me yourself, Sabrina. People see what they expect to see.”

When mundanes looked into the magical world, their brains filled in the gaps. With people like me and Sabrina, it meant that they saw ordinary student uniforms instead of wizard robes and winged familiars.

In the case of this thing chasing us, it meant they didn’t see anything at all.

The figure popped off the wall and stretched like a runner preparing for a sprint. With the long dagger in his hand and that hood over his face, the thing reminded me of a killer from a slasher film—Ghostface, maybe, or one of the bad guys from those ultra-gory Italian horror flicks from the 1970s’.

I knew what I had to do.

I reached into my pocket and handed Sabrina my keys. “Get ready to run,” I told her.

The man took an unhurried step forward. He seemed to enjoy toying with us, secure in the knowledge that we had nowhere to run.

“What!?” Sabrina hissed. “Edwin, I’m not leaving you—”

“I’ll distract him,” I said. A serene feeling filled me, washing away my stress and leaving nothing but peace and purpose behind. “While I’m fighting him, you get to the car and you drive. I don’t care where, just far.”

Sabrina’s lips formed a tight little line. “I’m not leaving you. Not to that thing…”

My mind was already made up. With a grunt, I shoved Sabrina to the side, my keys in her trembling hands.

“Get the fuck out of here!” I roared, lowering my head and charging.

The robed figure was caught off-guard. He’d expected us to run—hell, he’d been bracing himself for it—but when the moment came, he’d been prepared for us to try and run around him. Maybe even away, in the opposite direction.

A frontal assault was just about the last thing he’d expected.

He feinted towards me, then noticed Sabrina running past him to the left. His dagger flashed in his hand as he turned, practically ignoring me.

Big mistake.

“You son of a bitch!” I roared, reaching for the arsenal of spells I’d been learning in my first-year classes at Blackwater. “Put that dinky little sword down and fight me!”

As I closed the distance, I lifted my hand. Fire shot from between my fingers, arcing across the lobby in a fan of flame. A simple, powerful spell, taught by Professor Thurman in Battle Magic.

The wave of flame struck the robed figure head-on. His clothing began to smoke and smolder as the fire rolled over his body, and suddenly he had far more important things to worry about than running after Sabrina.

I won’t lie—it felt good to use that power. Especially against someone who so richly fucking deserved it.

I reached the still-smoldering figure and kicked the ice-blue dagger out of his hand. It hit the floor and slid across it as if it were greased, traveling way farther than the laws of friction would have implied it could. The robed figure let out a howl, then turned away and raced for the big glass doors.

Sabrina was already through them. The glass pane swung shut behind her—and the figure got his hand between it and the frame before it could shut all the way.

In another instant, the figure was out and into the night.

What the fuck? I’d just hit him with enough fire to boil a keg of beer. He shouldn’t have been batting out those flames—he should have been rolling on the floor, desperately trying to make the burning stop.

This creature was terrifying. I couldn’t let it get Sabrina!

The chilly evening air washed over me as I pushed out into the night. Sabrina was far below me, racing down the stairs with the black-robed figure hot on her heels. Already the thing had drawn another dagger from its robe, this one knotted through with bleeding veins of glowing, green energy that looked radioactive.

“Where’d you get your dagger?” I yelled after the figure. “A Monster Energy drink contest?”

At the sound of my voice, the fiend paused. For a second I thought he might actually come charging up the stairs to fight me like a man, but the moment passed and he began to run. After Sabrina.

Fuck no.

I hopped down the stairs as fast as I could, practically jumping from one landing to the next. A shadow stretched across the sky, letting out high, piercing cries, and I knew I had backup. Squawk was with us.

Sabrina reached the bottom of the stairs and ran into the parking lot, holding my keys over her head. As I watched her frantically press the door button, I had a realization that would have been funny if it wasn’t so horrific: she’d forgotten where we parked the car.

The robed figure was nearly at the bottom of the stairs. I had to stop him.

A metal railing ran down one side of the staircase. I clapped my hands together, reaching for the same power I’d used that night in the Potomac to shatter glass and save my friends from the frozen water. The familiar wave of force rose within me, only this time I focused it on that distant object, almost commanding it to spring from the ground and leap.

It worked. The railing tore itself from the concrete and flipped onto its side, cutting in front of the robed figure. The double railing formed a makeshift wall, floating in front of the figure and holding him back.

Hell yes! It worked.

“That’s right!” I yelled, closing the distance. “Pick on someone your own size, you fucking putz!”

The figure turned, almost frantic. It saw me coming and lifted a hand, buried deep inside one of the sleeves of its dark robe.

A beam of darkness shot from within.

I hit the deck with an instant to spare. The very air sizzled as my shoulder collided with the edge of one of the steps, sending a spike of pain through me that was so sharp I almost wished I’d taken the projectile head on. Almost.

Because I could feel what had just passed over my head. That beam was a powerful hex. Whoever commanded it was either one hell of a wizard or a creature possessed of nearly as much power as one of Blackwater’s professors.

Squawk dove in behind me, flapping his wings. “Bad man!” my familiar shrieked. “Dark man!”

Dark. Yeah, he was definitely that.

Squawk extended his wings to their full span and soared at the figure, pecking and howling. The robed man was forced to contend with two obstacles at once: the enchanted railing tossing itself at him on waves of force and the seriously pissed-off giant bird trying to peck his eyes out. The figure tried to summon another one of those hateful beams of darkness, but Squawk wouldn’t let him.

Finally the figure resorted to brute force. He hauled off and cold-cocked my bird right in center mass, slugging Squawk as hard as he could.

Squawk!

My familiar let out a croaking cry and retreated. “Bad man!” Squawk hollered, making the two-word phrase sound like an accusation.

Sabrina hit the keyfob. A car a few rows down let out a familiar beep, the headlights of my rental flashing for just long enough to illuminate the way. “Edwin!” she cried. “Come on! Get to the Rover!”

I raced down the stairs. As I reached the bottom, the robed figure suddenly shrugged off the metal around his waist and charged, the green dagger held high above his head. Fuck!

I ducked, then swung. As I did, I summoned a wave of force to add extra oomph to my blow. The figure didn’t see it coming: even after witnessing what I could do with my fledgling Battle Magic, he continued to underestimate me.

He probably thought I was a baby compared to a real wizard or witch. But even a baby magician is powerful enough to be utterly terrifying in a fight against mundanes.

My punch hit him right in his twisted smile. The figure backed up, staggering, clutching his mouth. All of a sudden he turned and retched, spraying black blood all over the pavement.

“Fucking gross!” I gasped, more out of shock than anything. “Jesus, man, what the hell are you—”

The figure recovered more swiftly than I thought possible. So swiftly, in fact, that the stun had to have been faked. He’d tricked me into thinking I was stronger than I appeared. Into dropping my guard.

Before I could twist away, the figure slipped into my grip. He stabbed with that glowing green blade, sinking the metal into the side of my gut.

Pain flared through my body. Pain and something else.

A sense of horrifying numbness spread a heartbeat behind the pain. Everywhere it touched it felt like pins and needles being driven into my skin, followed by almost no sensation at all. My knees buckled; my arms went into noodle mode as I reached for the hilt of the dagger, my fingers first going clumsy and then refusing to move at all.

I toppled. The pavement rushed to greet me, slamming into my shoulder. I barely felt it.

It’s cursed, I thought, staring down at the wound. The veins of green running through the blade pulsed like a second heartbeat as blood oozed from the cut. Each drop that fell to the pavement sizzled, cut through with glowing green threads like someone had added poison to my veins. It’s cursed, like that shard in the stone dragon’s paw…

Except that curse maddened people and beasts. This one disabled them completely.

I struggled to rise from the asphalt. No use; each beat of my heart pumped more of that cursed blood through my veins. I could barely lift my head, much less draw that hateful dagger from my side.

The robed figure turned away from me with a snarl. He wiped his mouth, more droplets of black blood raining down on the pavement. He bled a surprising amount for such a strange creature; there was practically a puddle of that stuff in front of me on the asphalt. It made me wonder if he might be weaker than he appeared.

Not that it mattered. I didn’t have the strength to pluck a grape.

The cold washed over me in an icy wave. Suddenly I was back there, sinking into the near-frozen waters of the Potomac that awful night the drunk driver sent my friends and I over the side of the bridge. I shivered, my teeth chattering together, and I swore I felt the phantom water closing over my head.

No!

“Edwin!” Tears streamed down Sabrina’s face; she held a half-formed spell between her hands and was desperately trying to cast it. “Get up, Edwin! Oh God, oh fuck—”

The robed figure was on her in an instant.

Sabrina dove to the side, the knife in the robed figure’s hand slashing through the spot where she’d been standing a moment ago. He held another one of those glowing green shards, with veins of poison running across the metal. I knew what would happen if that monster sank that blade into my girlfriend’s flesh.

A curse. A hex. One too powerful to stop.

I watched as Sabrina turned to run. She got five steps away from the robed figure when she stumbled, tripping over a line of concrete separating one of the handicapped spaces from the walking path. She went down in a heap, swearing as she lifted a hand to ward off the fiend.

The man didn’t stop. His shadow fell over Sabrina’s body as he leaned over her, the shard flashing in his hands.

No…

He stabbed Sabrina in the shoulder. The cut didn’t look particularly deep; only an inch of the metal pierced her skin. But an inch was more than enough. The blonde witch sank to the concrete, gasping as the strength leached from her limbs.

I watched as her skin turned gray and her lips turned blue. Only belatedly did I realize that the same thing must be happening to me.

The man in the robe stood up, surveying his handiwork. He must have looked pleased beneath his hood; he wiped his gloved hands off on the legs of his pants, taking his time as he watched Sabrina struggle. My girlfriend lay on the pavement gasping like a fish, her eyes glazing over with horror.

I couldn’t let this happen. I couldn’t let her drown!

Because that’s what it felt like. Drowning.

A pedestrian made their way across the parking lot, less than a stone’s throw away from where we lay on the asphalt. They glanced up at the man in the black hood as they passed, but their eyes were as sightless as a blind person’s as they glanced over what would have normally looked like a fucking crime scene.

Sabrina saw it, too. A frightened wail escaped her nerveless lips as she rocked back and forth on the ground, trying and failing to remove the dagger from her shoulder.

Fuck. We were toast. Even if help arrived—even if the cops came running out into the middle of the parking lot with their guns drawn and their sirens blaring — it wouldn’t save us. No one would save us, because no one could see us.

They couldn’t see Blackwater. They couldn’t see magic.

The hooded figure leaned over Sabrina, savoring his victory. Slowly, he drew another weapon from his robe—another one of those glittering shards shaped like daggers. This one had veins of scarlet running through it, almost like the one I’d pulled from the paw of the stone dragon.

Sabrina’s eyes widened. Though her lips had turned blue and her skin had the tint of printer paper, she could still see that shard. A single tear rolled down her cheek.

You’re going to lose her, I thought. You’re going to lose her, and then you’re going to die.

I was trapped. No less trapped than I’d been inside of that sinking car.

Trapped like a fucking rat.

No. No.

I wouldn’t let it happen. I couldn’t…

“Get the fuck away from her!”

The robed figure looked up a fraction of a second too late. A woman barreled into him full force, knocking the glittering shard from his hand. My vision was blurring, the edges turning gray as the cursed dagger drew the life force from my body and pumped poison into my heart, but I still recognized that cherry red hair.

No one at this stadium could see us. With one exception.

Courtney.

The cheerleader’s face twisted into a snarl as she shoved the robed figure backward. He stumbled on the same piece of concrete that had tripped up Sabrina, landing hard against the side of a parked car. The alarm went off inside, the headlights going nuts as a high-pitched blaring sound filled the parking lot.

That’ll bring people, I thought, my consciousness fading. But would they make it?

Courtney looked from Sabrina to me, aghast. Her face went pale as she leaned over the blonde witch, brushing a lock of hair out of her face.

“I’ve got you, okay?” Courtney looked horrified by what she was seeing. “We’re going to get you some help! Just… just hang on!”

Take the fucking shard out! I wanted to scream. It would have been so easy to free Sabrina from the curse, but the thought of it didn’t even occur to the cheerleader. She saw the shard embedded in Sabrina’s shoulder, but I doubted she knew it was cursed or magical. She just saw a knife. And taking it out would only make the wound worse.

Meanwhile, the man in the black robes had recovered. He stalked over to Courtney, moving faster than I thought possible, and kicked her in the shoulder when she wasn’t looking. She hit the ground and rolled, coming up in a crouch.

“Help!” Courtney howled, making no move to run. “Somebody! There’s a fucking murderer on the loose!”

The figure’s lips twisted in a vicious smile. He was going to kill her, I knew; even without his cursed daggers, he’d make Courtney’s life a living hell.

I was going to watch both of these women die.

Suddenly I was underwater in my mind. The darkness encroaching at the edges of my vision pushed inward, ripping away my senses. I floated, drifting, on the edge of passing out.

Something told me that if I did, I’d never wake up.

It would have been so easy, though. Just close my eyes, slump against the concrete (which now felt as soft as a pillow) and… and what?

Give up?

I hadn’t given up that night.

All the rules insisted we’d been dead the second our car hit the water. We’d been trapped in a sinking coffin, my car turned into a death trap.

And we’d lived. We’d survived. Because I did the impossible.

Could I do it again?

I reached deep down inside. And found something waiting for me. That same something I’d touched in a moment of panic on that horrible night, that ball deep inside of my chest that felt like a wordless cry of rage against the unfathomable cruelty of the world. It felt like pain. It felt like fury.

It felt like spitting blood in the eyes of the Grim Reaper.

And it felt good.

My fingers flexed as my vision returned. Somehow, someway, I managed to get the digits around the shard in my side. Tugging it loose felt like pushing Sisyphus’s boulder all the way up the hill, yet I did it—an inch at a time, I did it.

The curse retreated, and I was free.

Yet I wasn’t out of the woods. I was still drugged with poison, bleeding from a wound in my side. I couldn’t have gotten to my feet if you’d paid me a million dollars to do it. What I’d just achieved should have been impossible—yet it wasn’t enough to save me.

To save Courtney.

To save Sabrina.

The robed figure punched the cheerleader in the stomach. Courtney retreated a step behind Sabrina’s prone form, gasping. Another hit like that and she’d be on the ground. Then all of this would be over. There’d be nothing left but bodies and blood.

Blood…

Blood surrounded me on the pavement. A great deal of it was mine, dark and red like a spilled glass of wine. But some of it was jet black. Tainted. That thing’s blood.

What was it that Professor Dragovich told me?

The curse inside the shard activates the moment it touches the victim’s blood.

The monster in the black robe wrapped his fingers around Courtney’s neck.

“Hey!” I yelled.

The thing turned, shocked to see me still conscious. I held the shard in my free hand, lifting it high, my blood wiped from the weapon with the sleeve of my shirt. It glittered in the Friday night lights.

I stabbed the blade as hard as I could into the pavement.

Into the center of the puddle of black blood.

The robed figure froze. For a heart-stopping moment I thought I’d miscalculated, that Irina’s words were some kind of trick. Then the fiend swayed on his feet, his fingers leaving Courtney’s throat, and toppled.

The green veins in the shard glowed where they touched the creature’s blood. Whatever curse or hex they’d placed inside of my veins, they were doing the same fucked-up voodoo to this guy. It looked like he enjoyed it about as much as I did.

Courtney, meanwhile, stared at the downed man like she couldn’t understand what had just happened. Sabrina lay beneath her, her eyes rolling back in her head.

“Take the shard out!” I yelled as loudly as I could. It came out as a hoarse croak.

In a move that I would be forever grateful for, Courtney didn’t question me. She grabbed the hilt of the green-tinted blade in my girlfriend’s shoulder and pulled it free. Sabrina began to recover almost immediately.

A whoosh filled the parking lot. I looked over my shoulder to see a plume of white smoke rising into the sky, fading as it passed the halo of the lights. Standing in its center were two familiar figures.

Professor Fym and Professor Dragovich.

They were with us in an instant. Fym knelt before Sabrina, putting her hands against the coed’s shoulder, while Irina raced to me and clasped my side. A wave of tingling washed over me, and a taste like fresh spearmint gum filled the back of my throat. Irina’s hands were as cold as ice. The look on her face made me realize I’d gotten a hell of a lot closer to death than I’d realized.

Finally the dark-haired teacher withdrew her hand. My shirt remained torn, but the skin beneath was smooth and unbroken. She’d healed me—no mean feat for someone whose speciality was normally in doing the exact opposite.

“No, don’t try to rise,” Irina said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “You’re still very weak, Edwin. The curse claimed a substantial fraction of your blood, and I was only somewhat able to mitigate the damage. You’re going to be woozy for a while.”

“I can take woozy,” I told Irina, looking right into her dark eyes. “Help me to my feet.”

I was pretty sure no one had ever dared to command Irina Dragovich. Not in a few hundred years, at least. But she didn’t hesitate, or even crack a joke as she put an arm beneath my shoulder and helped me upright. My legs nearly gave out beneath me, but a few moments of concentration kept me from falling over.

Still, I had to lean on Irina to stay balanced. In doing so, I found my face was nearly buried in her pale, expansive cleavage. The little amulet she’d made with my blood sparkled in between her breasts, red and black—

Red and black?

Irina must have caught me looking, because she smiled. “You did not think I wanted your blood merely for prurient reasons, did you, Edwin? The moment the drops of blood in the amulet began to sizzle, I knew you were in danger. Professor Fym used the connection to locate you.” Her gaze traveled over to Sabrina. “I did not realize there were multiple victims…”

Sabrina looked a lot better than I did. Her wound had been shallower, and the hex had had less time to infiltrate her bloodstream. She managed to remain upright without Professor Fym’s help.

“Edwin.” My girlfriend’s face was filled with wonder. “How did you…?”

Irina frowned. “How did he what?”

“He overcame the curse,” Sabrina whispered. “I saw him—he was nearly unconscious. Then he just sat up and yanked that dagger out of his side like a toothpick…”

Irina’s eyes nearly fell out of her head. “That’s impossible,” she insisted, her arm around my waist to brace me. “That curse was moments away from claiming Edwin’s life. He should have been weaker than a kitten…”

Courtney stood in the middle of all of this, her jaw on the floor. “Will someone please tell me what the fuck is going on!?”

Professor Fym’s head snapped to the side. “She can see you?”

“It’s a long story,” I grunted.

The robed figure lay sprawled on the ground, panting gently. The hex inside of the glittering green shard did not appear to be affecting him as strongly as it had Sabrina or me, but at the very least it kept him from attacking or running away. He just lay there, waiting. The bastard.

Fym’s blonde brows furrowed in confusion. “Where is Captain Frantz?”

The question caught me so off-guard that I nearly stumbled. “The guy with the weird eyes? The one who wanted to interrogate me in his fucking cell? What do you want with him?”

“He’s supposed to be here,” Irina said, holding me a little tighter. “We sent him an alert before Professor Fym opened the portal.” Her frown deepened. “I’m surprised we didn’t find the three of you surrounded by every wizard on Blackwater’s security team…”

Professor Fym had moved over to the robed figure. Lifting her long blonde braid over her other shoulder, she grabbed the assailant’s hood and pulled it back.

“I see why,” Fym growled. “Irina, come look at this!”

She needn’t have bothered asking. All of us could see the man’s face in the moonlight.

Lying prone on the pavement, struggling to fight off the effects of the curse he’d created, was Archibald Frantz.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“Friends!” Squawk cawed. “Good friends!”

Sabrina, Courtney, and I all sat on a bench together, overseen by members of Blackwater’s medical wizardry corps. A woman who couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than Sabrina shone a flashing purple light in each of my eyes, checking for some symptom of poison or another. After a few moments, she lowered the device and nodded.

“You’re doing better,” she said. “I’d wager you feel better too, Mr. Sawyer?”

I did. Mostly.

The parking lot of the stadium resembled controlled chaos. A few minutes after Professor Fym tore the mask off of Archibald Frantz, Blackwater’s security team really did arrive in force. They’d blocked off a large section of the area with the magical equivalent of police tape, which both kept mundanes from interfering and provided some kind of illusion to keep our dealings hidden. Every minute or two I heard some sports fan from the stadium remarking on ‘the size of that sinkhole’, which told me no one thought any crime had been committed tonight.

A good thing, too. I have no idea how I would have explained any of this to the DC police force.

Magical paramedics saw to Sabrina and Courtney as well. Both of them looked rattled, and I could tell Courtney would require some serious explanations in order to parse what she’d just accidentally walked into tonight. But neither of them had taken any serious damage, thanks to Courtney’s quick thinking.

And to whatever surge it was I’d grabbed hold of when things looked their darkest.

“I had a bad feeling,” Courtney said by way of explanation. “When I saw you and Edwin leaving the stadium, you both looked like you were being chased by an axe murderer or something. I just… I knew that something bad was going on, and that you needed my help.”

“You were pretty close to the truth,” I told the redhead. “I’m glad you showed up when you did. I’m sure someone from Blackwater can smooth things over with your cheer squad…”

Courtney shook her head. “That doesn’t even matter to me. Edwin, you almost died? Those knives—they were like something out of a video game! And who are all these people?”

After everything she’d been through, I felt Courtney deserved the truth. “They’re wizards,” I said. “And witches. Sabrina and I aren’t actually Exeter-Cross students—we go to the magical college that exists alongside Exeter-Cross. It’s called Blackwater, and most students can’t see it.”

“Or the students who go there,” Sabrina chimed in.

Courtney took this surprisingly well. Maybe she’d already put a little bit of this together from how goddamned weird I’d been acting since that day she scribbled her phone number on the back of my hand.

“But I can see you,” she protested. “I could even see that guy, although I didn’t notice his daggers were glowing until you pointed them out.”

Sabrina nodded. “I think that’s because you got close to us,” she said. “Specifically, because you got close to Edwin.”

To me?

On the other side of the lane, a medic tended to Archibald Frantz. The man looked dreadfully out of sorts, though he sat up straight and answered every question put to him quickly and concisely. A pair of handcuffs bound his wrists, and three of Blackwater’s finest wizards watched him to make sure he didn’t get up to any funny business. But they needn’t have bothered.

“I’ve told you, I don’t remember.” Frantz’s tone was resigned, rather than angry or pleading. “You’re telling me it’s Friday night, and the last thing I can recall is eating dinner on Tuesday. What have I missed?”

If he was lying, he was doing a damned good job of it. The thing was, I thought he was telling the truth. From the looks on their faces, so did the wizards looking after him.

He glanced across the road at Sabrina, Courtney, and me. There was something odd about his gaze, which only occurred to me after a few moments of staring back at him.

Before, when he’d interrogated me after the incident with the stone dragon, his blue eye had been as dead as a stone. Now it was the blue eye that looked around and perceived, while the red resembled an inert glass jewel.

Squawk landed on my shoulder. “Sharp gone!” the bird cawed, cocking its head to the side. “Sharp man! Man gone!”

“Yeah,” I said, my gaze aimed at a point somewhere above Frantz’s head. “The sharp man is definitely gone.”

Whatever had been animating Captain Frantz had fled. The man had no idea where he’d been for the last seventy-two hours. Despite the fact that he’d tried to kill me and Sabrina, I found it hard to muster up much hatred for him.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t feel any real sympathy, either. But going over and punching Archibald Frantz in the face wouldn’t have made me feel better. I wasn’t hitting the thing that had actually tried to do me harm.

What was the sharp man? Some kind of spirit? A specter, haunting the Blackwater campus? I had no idea. Smarter people than me would likely figure it out. For now, I just felt lucky to be alive.

And happy that my women had made it through with me.

Another plume of smoke erupted near the center of the parking lot. The medics glanced up at the sight, one of them letting out a cry as a well-heeled figure stepped out of the portal. “It’s the Headmaster!”

Lavrans looked like he’d been roused in a hurry. His ceremonial robes were nowhere to be seen—instead he looked almost exactly like he had the night he’d come to visit me and my friends in the hospital after the accident. His suit appeared vaguely rumpled, as if he’d been wearing casual clothing before the college’s functionaries came to get him, and his one good eye rapidly took in the situation.

A half-dozen wizards fanned out around Lavrans as he entered the fray. They fanned out in every direction, seeking out the highest-ranking people on the scene and taking over command. Clearly the cavalry had arrived.

“Good eye!” Squawk cawed.

Lavrans came walking over, his entourage nowhere to be seen. Both Professor Fym and Dragovich went to him, conversing in low tones. While they spoke, another wizard in white robes came up and delivered a report, gesturing at the two ambulances, the tape surrounding the parking lot, and the medics treating both my group and Frantz.

The Headmaster listened impassively, then nodded. He dismissed the wizard with a gesture. Irina and Fym both started to talk at the same time, but Lavrans silenced them with a slight shake of the head. Neither of them took it personally.

I thought Lavrans would head straight for me. I was wrong; he crossed the lane right away and spoke briefly with the medics taking care of Archibald Frantz. The guards watching over the former Chief of Blackwater’s security looked on uneasily.

As I watched, Lavrans seemed to come to some sort of decision. He walked over to Frantz and sat down on the bench next to the man, affecting a sympathetic smile. Frantz gave him a resigned look and began to speak, no doubt launching into a litany of excuses.

Yet again, I had to marvel at Lavrans’s command of everyone else at Blackwater. Even this man—this traitor who’d nearly killed two of the school’s most promising students—instantly obeyed his every command. At a gesture, Frantz fell silent and waited for the Headmaster to speak.

What happened next I could only guess at from context clues. Lavrans asked Frantz a few questions, his hands on his knees as he watched the man with his good eye. Just like with the other wizards, Frantz answered quickly, but the look on his face said he wasn’t terribly happy about the situation.

“Big fish!” Squawk croaked from my shoulder.

No sooner had my familiar spoken than Lavrans half-rose from the bench. He leaned in close and clapped a hand on Frantz’s shoulder, his face right next to the gangly man’s ear. He whispered a few short, sharp words.

Frantz reacted as if he’d been struck by lightning.

The tall wizard jerked from the bench, his eyes rolling back into his head. His jaw clenched shut like a vice as his back arched like a bow, shuddering spasms shooting through him from his heat to his toes. For a moment he almost seemed to be floating six inches off of the ground.

“Grab him!” Lavrans commanded, pointing at the medics. They rushed in, working with the other wizards to keep Frantz upright. One grabbed the man’s handcuffs and twisted, practically forcing the wizard to sit back down.

A ripple of shock traveled through the magical crowd. Immediately on its heels came knowing nods, as if Lavran’s words had just proven some long-held suspicion. I wondered what everyone looked so certain about, but I figured I could ask Sabrina or Professor Fym about it later.

Frantz slumped over, coming out of whatever seizure the Headmaster’s words had triggered within him. Sweat beaded on his brow, soaking through his robes as his blue eye spun madly in its socket.

Lavrans nodded and rose from the bench. “Don’t worry,” he told Frantz, his voice loud enough that everyone nearby heard it. “It’s not your fault. You just proved that. We’ll get you the help you need, old boy.”

Strangely, the witches and wizards in attendance seemed to relax after hearing that. The men in charge of watching over Frantz were still keeping an eye on him, but from their bearing they were only doing it as a formality; as something expected.

The other wizards took custody of Frantz as Lavrans made his way over to me. Both Professor Fym and Irina Dragovich followed in his wake, casting glances in his direction like they wanted to debrief him on everything they’d been through in the last few hours.

I didn’t understand how they couldn’t see it. Lavrans already knew.

“Mr. Sawyer,” Lavrans said, giving me a nod. “You seem to have a knack for getting yourself in trouble on my campus, young man.”

Next to me, Sabrina laughed. “It’s not Edwin who’s been causing the trouble.”

“Good friend!” Squawk blurted.

Lavrans gave my familiar a slightly startled look, then turned his attention back to me. “Indeed. I fear I underestimated your skill, Mr. Sawyer. Even as the one who originally recruited you for our school, I feel quite the fool.”

“Headmaster, no!” Irina was aghast. “You couldn’t have known we had an inviolate roaming around the campus!”

“The fault was ours,” Professor Fym said, casting a desultory glance at her fellow teacher. “You assigned us to investigate the incident with the stone dragon. We should have seen this coming.”

Lavrans snickered. “No, the fault is mine,” he said, looking into the sky. “After decades of hiding in the world’s secret places, the Black Moon is rising once more.” He looked over at me and Sabrina. “I’m afraid your time at Blackwater is going to be far more turbulent than I anticipated, Mr. Sawyer.”

I was already shaking my head. “If you’d seen my old life, Headmaster, you wouldn’t be apologizing.” I was thinking of the way Sabrina and Courtney were both clinging to me, like they couldn’t get enough of me.

“We’ll stop them,” Fym said firmly. “We always do, Lavrans.”

The Headmaster let out an uncharacteristic sigh, his gaze turning skyward once more. “I’m not even certain that they should be stopped,” he said, rubbing his temples.

No one had anything to say to that. Both Fym and Irina looked utterly gobsmacked.

“No moon!” Squawk cried.

Suddenly Lavrans began to laugh. “You’re right, bird,” he said, giving my familiar a sideways glance. “Tonight is a rather moonless night. Are you trying to imply that my fellow faculty members and I are being too hasty in our judgments?”

What!?

Squawk didn’t say anything—just shifted from side to side.

“I don’t think Squawk was implying anything,” I told the Headmaster. “He just does this. He speaks in one or two word phrases all the time, like a parrot.”

“I see.” Lavrans leaned in close, studying my familiar. The smile he gave Squawk looked quite genuine. “I would listen to what your little bird has to say, Mr. Sawyer. He may be the very best counsel you receive during your time at our college.”

Little bird? Squawk was anything but. If my familiar was a home appliance, he’d be the type you had to put on layaway.

“Headmaster?” Sabrina had finally found the nerve to speak. “What was that thing? It wasn’t really Captain Frantz, was it?”

“No,” Lavrans agreed. “It was not. I want to apologize for what happened to you—you and Edwin, along with your lovely mundane friend. Rest assured that Archibald Frantz will get the help he so desperately needs. In time, we will be able to rid him of the invader which used his body to try and destroy you.”

An invader, I thought. I’d heard Irina call it an ‘inviolate,’ or maybe she meant that it was ‘in violet’. I remembered an old horror story I read when I was a kid about an invisible monster attacking a small town, and how the only way for the townsfolk to see it at night was to replace all their streetlights with violet-tinted light bulbs.

Something told me that the old horror tale was more than just a story. We had an invisible monster of our own right here in Blackwater, and if it had been pacified in Archibald Frantz, there was still no telling where it might strike again.

I made a mental note to ask Irina about all of this later. Any barriers that might have been between us were long gone—the woman had saved my fucking life tonight. Mine, Courtney’s, and Sabrina’s. If she hadn’t taken my blood and hung it on that chain in her cleavage…

Well. I didn’t want to think about what could’ve happened if she’d shown restraint.

“With all due respect, Headmaster, that doesn’t answer my question.” Sabrina stood firm—no easy feat with three faculty members as powerful as these standing before you. “Those daggers that Frantz used to incapacitate us were cursed. Infused with incredibly powerful curses. I felt one for myself.” She glanced over at me. “Edwin may not know quality from quantity yet, but I do. That curse wasn’t created by a student at Blackwater. It wasn’t created by an ordinary wizard, either.”

Behind the headmaster’s back, Fym and Irina shared a look.

“I agree,” Lavrans said, looking almost amused. “What are you implying?”

Sabrina steeled herself. “The Black Moon isn’t just rising, sir. It’s returned. And whatever they’ve got stalking the halls of Blackwater isn’t afraid to torture students before it kills them.”

Lavrans nodded gravely at that. “I'd ask you to keep that under your hat for now. All three of you," he added, turning his attention from the blonde witch to Courtney and me. "We're going to get this situation under control. In a very real sense, we already have the situation under control. Captain Frantz has done a terrible thing, but he will be seen to and taken care of in due time. Fortunately, no one was hurt—"

"Are you kidding me?"

Everyone turned. The last person I would have expected to speak had just risen from the bench. Courtney.

"No one was hurt? That madman stabbed two of your students! And you're treating him like he fell down and had a seizure or something!"

Both Irina and Fym looked shocked to hear someone talking to the headmaster like that. They probably would have stopped her if they could, but Courtney had an advantage none of them had anticipated. An advantage they probably would have called a weakness.

She was fully mundane. Which meant she had no inborn fear of what people like them could do.

Headmaster Ravensson looked at Courtney like he was seeing her for the first time. "Ah, yes," he said, touching his chin with the tip of a finger. "The future captain of the Exeter-Cross cheerleading squad! Courtney... Haddonfield, is it?"

"That's right," Courtney replied, taken aback. "I'm a little shocked you know my name."

Lavrans gave the cheerleader a knowing smile. "You've been through a terrible shock, Miss Haddonfield. It must be strange, learning the world is so much larger than you believed it to be only a few hours ago." His gaze traveled to me and Sabrina. "Though you may have suspected these things for a while now. If I don't miss my guess, Mr. Sawyer has been... 'expanding your horizons' for some time?"

The double entendre was unmistakable. Professor Fym looked mortified, while Irina grinned at me like she'd have slapped me on the back if the optics wouldn't have been terrible.

"My horizons...?" Courtney trailed off. "Edwin and I are dating, not that it's any of your business."

"She's started to see Blackwater," Sabrina said. "It started with Edwin and me—she could look at us and see what we were really wearing, even when the other students couldn't. Then she could see Squawk, Edwin's familiar."

Lavrans was nodding. "And now she sees everything," he finished, his arms crossed over his chest. "Otherwise she couldn't have come to your rescue when you were attacked by the inviolate, could she have?"

Sabrina's lips formed a tight little line. Obviously, my girlfriend had an idea about what was causing that, though she hadn't dared speak it aloud before. But now, with the evidence unmistakable, she cleared her throat and connected the dots.

"I think Courtney is a partial," my girlfriend said, taking both the cheerleader's hand and mine. "I think she's always been a partial, and she just didn't know it until now."

Courtney stiffened. "A partial?"

"Someone who can see into the Unseen World and interact with wizards," Sabrina hastened to explain. "You can't cast spells or anything like that, but you're also not a mundane. You're kind of a half-witch—"

"Hmm." Lavrans's face was unreadable. "No. No, I don't think so."

Sabrina froze.

"Well," she said with a little laugh, "I don't know what else it could be. She couldn't see magic before she met Edwin. Now she can."

Staring right at the headmaster, Sabrina couldn't see what I saw. Namely, that both Professor Fym and Professor Dragovich looked as if they'd swallowed a live goldfish whole. They know something, I realized, ice filling the pit of my gut. What are they not telling me?

"It would be incredibly rare for a partial to go this long without being discovered," Lavrans explained in a voice that was almost kindly. Sympathetic, even. "And what a coincidence, for them to have just happened to attend one of the few colleges on the East Coast which has an institution of magical learning tucked inside of it."

Sabrina swallowed hard. "If not that, then what?"

Lavrans didn't answer directly. Instead, he turned to me.

"Edwin," he said.

I rose from the bench, keenly aware of how many pairs of eyes were on me. Especially those of Sabrina and Courtney. I couldn't let them down.

"I took the liberty of checking Miss Haddonfield's records," Lavrans said, as if he'd just hopped down to the department of vital statistics a few hours ago. Later, I'd realize he'd done this long ago—probably before I even realized Courtney planned to ask me out. "She has no witches or wizards buried in her family tree. Before she met you, there wasn't a drop of blood in her body that was anything but mundane."

I could feel the other shoe about to drop. Pieces clicked together in my head, forming a picture that made my heart skip a beat. There was only one explanation. Simple, easy to understand. And totally impossible.

"I did this," I said, looking over at the cheerleader. "That's what you think, isn't it? That somehow I'm the one who gave Courtney the ability to see magic."

"There are a number of advanced disciplines in wizardry," Lavrans explained. "In general, first-years have no idea they exist. They're rare enough that if a student shows an aptitude for one prior to their Grand Conjuration, they're immediately identified and promoted into that speciality."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. From the look on her face, neither could Sabrina.

"I've heard about that," the blonde witch said as she turned to me. "But there's no magic that can turn a mundane into a wizard or a witch!"

She was wrong. I could see it in Irina's eyes. In Professor Fym's.

In the headmaster's.

"They're called Awakeners," Lavrans said mildly. "And there hasn't been one at Blackwater for over a century."

You could have knocked me over with a freaking feather.

Fym stepped in. "Edwin, we think you have a very rare and very powerful gift," the teacher explained, tugging on her long blonde braid. "The ability to turn ordinary mortals into witches... it could change the course of magical history. If we could study it, learn how it works, understand what makes you tick..."

Suddenly I felt dizzy. "You want to experiment on me?" I blurted, thinking of how eager Archibald Frantz had been to lock me up in his interrogation chamber. "Like what? Some kind of lab rat?"

Before Lavrans could say anything, Irina pushed forward.

"Never," she growled, putting herself between me and the rest of Blackwater's faculty. "I won't let you put a hand on this young man, Lavrans! He's proven himself a dozen times over already. If it weren't for his blood, we'd never have caught the inviolate—"

Lavrans raised a hand, and Irina's mouth snapped shut.

"We are not monsters," he said, sounding amused. "No one is going to experiment on Edwin." He turned to me. "But we will be watching you, Mr. Sawyer. This ability of yours—if it truly turns out to be what we think it may become, then you will have some very important decisions to make before you leave Blackwater."

I shook my head. I could cross those bridges when I got there. For the moment, I just felt lucky to be alive.

"Wait a second," Courtney blurted. "I'm... you mean I'm a witch? Like in Harry Potter?"

Both Irina and Fym looked like they were on the verge of laughter. Even Lavrans, who'd been as sober as a stone until a few moments ago, managed to crack a smile.

"Not entirely," the headmaster explained. "Awakeners are poorly understood. It's believed that extended contact with one can begin to make mundanes aware of the Unseen World. Particularly certain forms of, let's say, intimate contact."

I knew what that meant. So did Courtney and Sabrina. Sexy Hexy was grinning at me like a stuffed shark.

"What I mean to say is, you may find this process accelerating very soon," Lavrans chuckled. "If you find you have the aptitude for it, Miss Haddonfield, I highly recommend you join us at Blackwater."

"You could learn much," Fym murmured.

This must have been the last straw for poor Courtney. She'd gone through more than one shock tonight, and this last one—an invitation to Blackwater, with all the upheaval in her personal and professional life that implied—was finally too much for her to process.

"Right now, I just want to go home," Courtney murmured, leaning against me. "Will you take me home, Edwin? I... I don't feel safe right now. Not without you."

Having her in my arms like that flipped all of my protective switches at once. "Of course I will," I promised.

Lavrans nodded like he'd planned this all along. "Don't worry. It's going to be a long night for myself and the other members of the faculty." He glanced up at Irina. "Professor Dragovich?"

She blinked. "Yes, sir?"

"I'm letting you off the leash tonight," the headmaster said. "We're going to track down the rest of the entities that could possibly threaten the student body and destroy them. Are you prepared?"

Irina's face lit up like a Christmas tree. She looked at Lavrans like he'd just asked her if she wanted to go to a Joy Division reunion and buy fishnet stockings after.

"It would be my pleasure," the goth teacher said, grinning fiercely. "We'll handle all of this, Edwin. Remember, there's a piece of you right by my heart now." One of her hands caressed her cleavage, where the little ampoule of my blood sparkled. "Should anything happen to you again, I'll sense it immediately. And whatever is trying to hurt you will wish it had not."

I couldn't help but shudder. That grin wasn't just fierce; it was primal. Irina Dragovich struck me as the kind of woman who'd make a lioness look lazy when it came to defending the tribe. Remind me to never get on that woman's bad side, I thought.

"We can go?" I asked the headmaster.

Lavrans nodded. "Our crews will finish up here. I would send an escort with you to ensure your safety, but you won't need one. I can sense it would be... awkward to have a fourth person with you at the moment."

He had that right. Both Sabrina and Courtney looked slightly traumatized, but when either of them looked at me, they saw a man who'd saved their life tonight. That meant something to the three of us. Something important.

We made our way across the parking lot back to my rental car. In all the excitement, I'd forgotten where we parked, and so we had to criss-cross the rows a few times until my keyfob got close enough to make the alarm beep.

Sabrina climbed into the backseat, giving Courtney shotgun without being asked. She knew the score tonight.

So did I.

As we pulled out of the space, my headlight beams illuminated a group of college students. They'd just come from the stadium, and more were exiting behind them -- the big game must have just ended. Dimly, I wondered if the Warlocks had managed to pull it out over the Stillwell Sharks. From the celebratory atmosphere of the crowd, I figured we probably had.

Strange how little that mattered to me now.

"Edwin?"

Courtney's voice snapped me out of my thoughts. "Yeah, babe?"

The redhead leaned over and put her hand on top of mine. "Thank you," she said, the beginnings of a smile on her face. "I... I still don't understand what the hell happened to us tonight. Not really. And I sure as hell don't have a clue what all this 'Awakener' stuff means. But I'm glad you and Sabrina are with me tonight."

I squeezed her hand, favoring her with my best smile. "I'm glad, too."

"Hell yeah," Sabrina chimed in from the backseat. "We're alive. Let's fucking celebrate!"

As if her words were a cue, the crowd in front of us began to cheer. They scooted to either side of the aisle as I drove through slowly, singing the school's fight song and pumping their fists in the air.

One of them saw Courtney sitting in the passenger seat and waved. The redhead rolled the window down.

"Court?" It was Kendra. "Honey, what are you doing? Where have you been? You missed half the game and the party's about to start..."

Courtney's lips formed a tight little line. For just a second, I thought she might hop out of the Range Rover. That the cheer squad, which had been so important to her for weeks, would win out over Sabrina and me.

Then she smiled, and I knew I had nothing to worry about.

"I'll explain later!" she promised her fellow cheer captain. "Let everyone know I'm super proud of them, okay?"

Kendra opened her mouth to protest, but Courtney had already pushed the window up button. The glass rolled to the top of the window, cutting off any further debate.

"Drive," Courtney said with a giggle. "Let's get the hell out of here!"

We drove.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The drive to Courtney's place didn't take long at all. As soon as we left the stadium parking lot she plugged her address into my GPS. Ten minutes later, we found ourselves driving down a quiet neighborhood street, in one of the nicest parts of the city. Million-dollar homes stretched up and down the lane, with freshly-cut lawns and in-ground pools.

Sabrina leaned up against her window and whistled through her teeth. "You live out here?" she asked, clearly impressed.

"I live at my Mom's house," Courtney said, sounding just a trifle defensive. "Technically, the place belongs to her, but she's letting me stay there while I'm at Exeter-Cross."

Sabrina frowned. "Are we, uh, going to have to explain ourselves to her?"

Courtney shook her head. "She's never home. My parents aren't in the US very often. Business."

"In five hundred feet, your destination will be on the right," the GPS informed me. I slowed down, the Range Rover's headlights illuminating the road ahead. Two houses up, I found Courtney's place.

It was freaking huge.

I'd grown up around some big houses, but those were all in rural Virginia, where the land was cheap. Courtney's house stood at the top of a small hill, three stories tall and practically a mansion.

"What kind of business?" Sabrina blurted, shocked. "The fucking CIA?"

It certainly looked like the kind of house a secret agent would call home. The foundation looked mid-century colonial, but the front of the house had Roman columns and a wrap-around porch. There was even a tiny parking loop out front, which had no cars in it. When I looked at it, I could picture George Washington and the other founding fathers hashing out the finer points of the Declaration of Independence.

I pulled into the parking circle and cut the engine. "Nice place."

Courtney's smile looked awkward. "I know. We're rich. I won't make a big deal out of it if you don't."

"I'm just thinking about how many bedrooms there have to be in that place," Sabrina purred, licking her lips. "I bet you could literally get lost in there..."

The impression of wealth grew even stronger as we stepped inside. I could see little of Courtney's mother in the home decor—everything about the home's interior felt masculine, from the rows of revolutionary-era law books on the shelves to the oversized paintings of ships in the harbor and cannons firing at a fort hanging in the study near the foyer. The place smelled like sandalwood and money.

No wonder Courtney didn't live in the dorms. Hell, she probably could have made a small fortune subletting this place to a few of her fellow cheer team members.

Wouldn't that be something? I thought, unable to keep the idea from my mind. A bunch of hot cheerleaders all living under this roof, with Courtney as their hot, ginger queen. Sounds like the kind of movie they used to play on Cinemax late at night…

I shook my head to clear it and followed Courtney upstairs.

None of us were interested in playing around after everything we'd been through. Courtney led us straight to the bedroom—one of what I was guessing was many. This one looked like a master, with an attached bathroom and a massive four-post bed. A sliding glass door opened onto a balcony showing the peaceful houses on the other side of the street.

“Make yourself at home,” Courtney said, shrugging off her jacket. Underneath it she wore nothing but her cheerleading uniform, snug around her curves. “After the night I’ve had, I need a hot shower and some comfy pajamas.”

“I’m right there with you,” Sabrina said with a grin. “You wouldn’t mind if I raided your closet, would you, bestie? I bet we’d look so cute in the same outfit…”

I expected Courtney to light up at the idea the way Sabrina had. Instead, a cloud passed over her face.

“Are we just going to pretend nothing completely insane happened tonight?” she asked, giving us an awkward smile. “Like the three of us didn’t just almost get killed by some thing carrying a bunch of vampire daggers?”

Sabrina looked at me, licking her lips. Evidently she was going to let me answer.

I cleared my throat. “What do you want to know?”

Courtney stayed quiet for a few moments, gathering her thoughts. Then she turned to me, watching me beneath her eyelashes. God damn but she was gorgeous. All of Sabrina’s earlier dirty talk about the ‘all-American cheerleader’ came back with a vengeance when I looked at her, seeing her in that tight little outfit. She had such an athletic body that any man who looked at her couldn’t help but wonder the sorts of things she could do with it.

Soon—very soon—I’d find out.

But not until Courtney satisfied herself in a very different way.

“I guess…” Courtney trailed off, blushing gently. “I guess I don't need to know as many things as I told myself I did. I mean, I’ve kind of always known there was something up with you, Edwin. Maybe that’s why I’m so drawn to you. Why I was the one who chased after you, even though I’ve never been the kind of girl to make the first move on a guy before.”

I nodded. “Stuff like that’s been happening to me since I came to Blackwater. Sabrina says it’s because of the way I am. Because of my magic.”

Courtney shook her head with a smile. “It’s not the magic. It’s you.” Her lips formed a tight little line, and I knew she was about to broach that topic that she’d really been worrying about ever since that chat with Lavrans. “Edwin, am I a witch?”

Sabrina started to laugh. “Court, you’re about the least witchy woman I’ve ever met. Blackwater girls are more into fishnet stockings than pom-poms.”

“I’m serious.” The redhead turned to me, one hand balled into a fist between her breasts. “The guy in charge of your school, he said that I’m becoming more like a witch the more time I spend with you. And that you and I… if we, you know, go all the way…”

I shared a look with Sabrina. “You want the truth?” I asked.

A wave of relief washed over Courtney. “Yes, please,” she insisted. “I’m a big girl, Edwin. I promise I can handle it.”

“Rawr,” Sabrina chuckled.

I ignored that. “The truth is—I don’t know. I’m just as new to this whole magic thing as you are. I’d never heard the word Awakener before tonight. But I do know that there’s something special about you, Courtney. I felt it the moment I saw you, before the two of us had ever spoken a word to each other. Even if you hadn’t wanted to go out with me, I’d still feel it.”

“I feel it too,” Courtney admitted. “And I want to do a hell of a lot more than just go out with you, Edwin. You know that, right?”

I nodded. “I do.”

“Does that scare you? Because it scares the hell out of me.” Courtney looked from me to Sabrina, then to the bathroom attached to the side of her bedchamber. “I’ve never fallen for a guy this hard before, this fast. And this whole sharing thing? That’s not me at all. I’ve never, ever, been the sort of girl who’d entertain the idea of sharing her man with another woman. I didn’t even watch threesome porn!”

“I did,” Sabrina said sheepishly.

“What I’m trying to say is,” Courtney whispered, “I know I’m on the verge of something big and scary. This is my last night in the ‘normal’ world, isn’t it? After this, everything in my life is going to be different.”

I walked over to her and put my arms around her waist. “It just might,” I told her. “But I’m going to be here for you, Court. Me and Sabrina.”

“And anybody else Edwin thinks is hot,” the blonde witch added with a giggle. “By the way, that pale hottie who looks like Elvira you saw earlier? She’s totally got a crush on our Edwin—”

I held up a hand to stop Sabrina before she could go even further. “I don’t want you thinking about any of that tonight,” I assured the redhead. “But I won’t lie to you, either. If you, me, and Sabrina do this tonight… I think the stuff Lavrans was talking about might be permanent. I think you’ll see magic, and you’ll see the Unseen World. And once you see it, I don’t think you can stop seeing it.”

Courtney nodded. Her fingers dug into my sides greedily, like she’d never been so happy to be touching another human being before.

“I don’t want to stop,” the redhead whimpered. “Fuck, I can’t believe I’m saying this. I can’t believe this is actually my life now! I mean, this is totally crazy. You, Sabrina, the magic, the fact that I’ve got two gorgeous people in my bedroom right now and I’m about to share you with one of them… it’s nuts. Totally nuts.”

“I know,” I said, snickering. “I feel the same way. All of this is crazy. But I like it.”

“Me too,” Courtney said.

She went up on tiptoe and kissed me.

Her lips covered mine as her hand grabbed the back of my head. Over on the other side of the room, Sabrina let out a whoop of delight as Courtney and I made out hot and heavy. After the weeks of dancing around each other, of making plans and putting them off and breaking them and just barely missing our dates, having her here and in my arms felt like just about the greatest thing in the world.

My hand slid beneath her skirt. She wore a thin leotard underneath the frilly fabric, which did nothing to keep me from digging my fingers into the firm, luscious flesh of her ass. Courtney’s rear was so pert I bet I could have bounced a quarter off of it, and the way she groaned when I manhandled her made me want to test out the theory.

Before I could do much more than cop a feel, though, she broke the kiss and took a step backward.

“So,” she said, glancing between me and Sabrina. “Ground rules.”

The blonde witch leaned forward, perched at the end of Courtney’s bed like a gargoyle. She’d been waiting for this, I could tell, and now she looked as excited as a kid on Christmas morning.

“Go right ahead,” Sabrina insisted. “Tell us what you’re thinking, babe.”

Courtney smiled at the word babe. “First, I’m thinking you and I need to get ourselves ready,” she said, taking the blonde witch’s hand. “Sabrina and I are going to hop in the shower, and we’ll yell when we’re ready for you to join us.”

“That’s fine with me,” I said. “Those weren’t really the sorts of things I was thinking of when you said ground rules, anyway.”

A hot flush spread across Courtney’s face, almost as red as her hair. “Yeah, um… so, about that.”

Sabrina and I shared a look. She didn’t know what was wrong, either.

“Is there something wrong?” I asked. “You know I don’t want to do anything you’re not comfortable with—”

“Of course,” Courtney agreed quickly. “It’s not that. I’m, like, super comfortable with you, Edwin. It honestly kind of scares me a little bit how strongly I feel about you…”

“The feeling’s mutual,” I said with a chuckle. There were only a couple of things I could think of that could be holding her back at this point, and so I decided to take a wild guess at what the most likely problem could be. “I have condoms, Courtney. If that’s what you’re worried about.”

She blanched, and I knew I’d hit a bullseye. “I don’t trust condoms,” she whispered.

I frowned. So did Sabrina.

“They could break,” the cheerleader continued. “Or slip off in the middle of the action, which might be even worse! And the last thing I want to feel is some shitty piece of rubber my first time—”

Her mouth snapped shut like a guillotine.

Sabrina and I glanced at each other to confirm that we’d really just heard what we’d heard. “Your first time?” Sabrina whispered.

Courtney looked so embarrassed her head could pop off and go flying around the room. “I’m not a weirdo!” she snapped, holding up both her hands like Sabrina and I were about to attack her. “I’ve had plenty of opportunities to go all the way, okay? And I’ve had plenty of fun since coming to Exeter-Cross. I just…”

She glanced down at her cheerleading uniform, biting back a sigh.

“I just care a lot about cheer team,” she said, looking at me with an almost defiant expression. “If something unexpected were to happen to me, I’d have to quit–and that would be letting the whole team down. And that would just kill me. It’s the last thing on Earth I want to do. So… no. I haven’t ‘gone all the way’. Laugh if you want.”

“I’m not laughing at all,” I told Courtney. “I think that’s admirable.”

Her eyes widened. “Really?”

“Of course.” I pulled her close and kissed her again, longer this time. “Your boundaries are your boundaries, Court. Sabrina and I aren’t going to do anything you’re not enthusiastically saying yes to.”

Courtney looked amazed. “Awesome! Like I said, I’m not a prude. I’m down for whatever else you two want to do. I just really cannot risk getting knocked up right now. Like, not at all.”

That was fine with me.

“That’s the only thing holding you back?” Sabrina asked.

Courtney blinked, her attention drawn away from my face. “Um, yeah,” she said, laughing as she brushed a lock of dark cherry hair away from her eyes. “Trust me, I’m more than ready to find out what all the fuss is about. And Edwin, you seem like the perfect guy to have my first time with—”

“What if I could promise you, one hundred percent, that there was a way to make sure you don’t get pregnant the whole time you’re at Blackwater?” Sabrina replied.

“How?” Courtney asked.

Sabrina grinned. “Magic.”

The cheerleader was at a loss for words.

“I can’t do it tonight,” Sabrina said, rising from the bed and lacing her fingers through the redheaded cheerleader’s. “But if it’s something you really want, I can get someone from the faculty to put an enchantment on you. It’s completely fool-proof. It’s what I’ve been using with Edwin.”

Courtney’s eyes nearly bugged out of her head. “You can’t get pregnant?”

“Nope.” The blonde leaned forward, nibbling her bottom lip. “Edwin gets to hit it raw, every fucking time. The feeling when he cums inside of me, Courtney… it’s out of this world. Trust me, there’s nothing better in this world than riding the cock of a guy you really care about and watching the look on his face when he can’t hold himself back any longer and blasts every last drop of that hot spunk inside of you…”

Holy shit! Courtney’s shoulders rose and fell rapidly, her eyes glazed over with lust.

“Okay, new ground rule,” the redhead panted. “I get to watch you do that.”

Sabrina laughed. “Let’s go get all sudsy,” she purred, putting an arm around the redhead’s shoulders. “Edwin, you stay here for a bit. I’ll call you in a few minutes…”

With that, the two girls disappeared into the bathroom. Giggling like besties.

I guess that’s what they are now, I thought, taking a seat at the foot of the bed. The Edwin Sawyer I’d been a few months ago could never have processed all of this: the luxurious bedroom, the existence of magic, the two gorgeous babes who were about to share him. A small, dark part of me still wondered if I hadn’t drowned that night in the Potomac–if all of this wasn’t some incredible fantasy conjured up by my dying brain, intended to give me comfort on my way into the Great Beyond.

I shook my head and chuckled. I knew it wasn’t. This was real. This was my life now.

And I was going to enjoy every minute of it.

Part of me would always remember that terrifying night. A near-death experience wasn’t the sort of thing a guy forgot about after a week or two. But I was going to be alright. I’d heal. Eventually, I might even be able to laugh about it.

“Oh, Edwin…” Sabrina’s voice rang out from where the door to the bathroom was open a crack. Steam billowed from within. “We’re ready for you, babe!”

I could hear Courtney giggling underneath her words. Grinning, I stripped off my clothes and stepped into the bathroom.

It felt like entering a sauna. Sweat broke out on my skin immediately. Every bit of glass in the room had fogged over from the heat.

Courtney’s bathroom was every bit as luxurious as the rest of her home. Marble and chrome dominated the fixtures, from the industrial feel of the faucets and the sink to the sleek curves and rough angles of the large shower stall. In fact, the shower took up about half of the total space–a glass door separated it from the rest of the bathroom, and it had a shower head on either side. Both of them were running, filling the room with steam. In each corner lay a small marble bench to sit or keep shampoo and other necessities.

Sabrina stood in the middle of the shower, wearing nothing but soap and a smile. Next to her stood Courtney, whom I was seeing fully naked for the very first time. One glance at her tight, athletic body and I thanked my lucky stars all over again for surviving that accident. Holy shit, what a babe.

“This place is insane,” Sabrina giggled, gesturing around the bathroom. “Courtney’s parents spent a truckload of cash remodeling this place. She was telling me it’s like a hundred years old, and when it was built they didn’t even have indoor plumbing…”

My cock swelled to life at the sight of the two beauties, throbbing against my thigh.

Sabrina trailed off, her mouth forming a perfect little ‘o’ of shock. “Oh wow,” she giggled, grinning as she brought her fingertips to her lips. “Fuck, you like what you see, baby?”

I did.

“You weren’t kidding about him being big,” Courtney panted. “All that really goes inside of you, Sabrina?”

“Edwin fits me perfectly,” Sabrina said proudly. “I’d lie and say that it’s a huge struggle to take that much cock, but the truth is, I love every minute of it.”

“I could get used to compliments like those,” I said.

Courtney’s eyes hadn’t left my cock the whole time. “You deserve them,” she whispered, the blush on her cheeks from way more than the shower’s heat. “Listen, Sabrina and I were, um, talking? And we decided… oh wow, it’s getting even bigger—”

“Courtney wants to take things slow,” the blonde witch said, hugging her new bestie from the side. “She’s going to watch us for a bit before she joins in, alright, babe? Is that cool?”

Cool? Was it cool to have one of the hottest women I’d ever met watching me bang the brains out of my stunning witch girlfriend? Or was it just about the greatest fucking thing I’d ever heard?

My chest pounded against my ribcage. Sabrina and Courtney could see how turned on I was–what they couldn’t see was my excitement. I had to play it cool.

“Sure,” I said with a smile. “Whatever you want. And when you’re ready, just let me know.”

Courtney squeezed her thighs together. “Fuck,” she whimpered.

I knew exactly how she felt.

I slid the glass door to the side and stepped into the shower with my new harem.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Steam billowed around my legs as I stepped into the shower. The bathroom had been warm; in here it was hot. So hot that sweat rolled down my back as my gaze traveled between Sabrina and Courtney’s naked bodies.

I decided to do something about that.

A quick step to the right put me directly into the spray of one of the shower heads. Hot water ran over my hair, cascading down my back, dripping all over the tiles. The muscles in my shoulders unknotted, stress flowing from me like water as the powerful spray soothed away the last of my aches and pains from the fight with Frantz.

I groaned with bliss. It was almost the same groan I made every time I pushed into Sabrina’s pussy, and it made both women in the shower with me blush.

“Here,” Sabrina said, dripping some fragrant-smelling body wash into a loofah. “Allow me…”

I’d never had anyone else bathe me before. The sensation was strange, but not unpleasant in the slightest. Sabrina embraced me from the front, working the loofah over my neck and chest as she beamed up at me. She treated me like a hero who’d just come back from a victorious battle–which wasn’t too far off from the truth, to be honest–while Courtney sidled up behind me and ran her shampoo-covered fingers through my hair. That part felt fucking great, especially with those sharp nails she had.

Then Sabrina’s hands reached my waist, and things started feeling even better.

She dropped the loofah when she reached my cock and started running the soap up and down my prick with her fingers. Her lips pressed against my neck as her hips ground against my side. Her nipples were as hard as if we were standing in the middle of a blizzard.

“Fuck yeah, you’re so fucking hard,” Sabrina panted, massaging my balls with her free hand. She kept on working me for a few more strokes, then ran her hands under the spray until they were dripping and wiped the soap away. “Normally I’d go for some more foreplay, babe, but I really need to get fucked right now. Will you please fuck me?”

“Do it,” Courtney whimpered. The redhead’s eyes were glassy as she swayed on her feet, like a woman in a trance. Courtney had never been this horny before in her young life, I could tell, and it overwhelmed her to the point that she looked more like my devoted servant than my girlfriend. “Fuck her. Pound her tight little pussy!”

I leaned over and kissed the redhead, hard. As I did, Sabrina wrapped her fingers around my cock and stroked me harder. Something broke in my brain at the combination of sensations. Until that moment, I’d known intellectually that I was sharing the shower with two beauties. But it wasn’t until I started making out with one while the other gave me a handjob that it really sank in that I was about to have a threesome.

Holy shit, Sabrina knew just what to do with those fingers.

Courtney’s mouth opened against mine. My tongue slid down her throat, and she sucked on it greedily, as if she wanted to give me a sneak preview of what she’d be doing for me later. In front of me, Sabrina sank to her knees, using two hands to stroke my thick meat. Seeing her on her knees in front of me made me throb.

But she couldn’t stay on her knees for long. I wanted more than just her mouth.

With a grunt, I took the blonde witch’s hands and hauled her to her feet. Courtney’s hands remained on my shoulders, the redhead embracing me from behind as I guided Sabrina over to one of the benches in the corner of the shower. She turned around and put one leg up on it, sticking her round ass in the air and arching her back.

Behind me, Courtney grabbed one of the shower heads and turned it. The spray landed at my feet, bathing Sabrina and I in a thick plume of steam.

“Don’t fucking tease me,” Sabrina begged, watching me over her shoulder. “Fuck, Edwin, I need it so fucking bad. I really thought we were gonna die back there, you know? I thought that was fucking it, and I was never going to get to tell you how I really feel—”

Thwack!

My hand came down on Sabrina’s ass, stifling her words.

“Nnnngh oh my gawwwd!” she groaned, spreading her legs wider for me. Her pussy boiled over as I pressed the head of my cock into her folds, and her rear wiggled back and forth from the stinging slap. “Fuck I love how forceful you are, Edwin! I love it so fucking much…!”

I tangled my fingers in her hair, keenly aware of Courtney watching me. The redhead had one shoulder against the wall of the shower, her pose and her beautiful body a study in lust. Her long red hair trailed between her breasts in wet curls. One hand squeezed those breasts together, while the other played idly with the thin strip of pubic hair above her swollen mound.

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” I promised Sabrina. Really, I was speaking about both of them. “Because you’re mine. My girl.” I paused, using the hand that had spanked her ass to slide two fingers into her channel. “My slut.”

It was just what she wanted to hear.

“Yes,” Sabrina panted. “Yes, oh god I am! I’m your slut! I fucking love that there’s another woman watching us right now, babe! It makes me feel so fucking sexy!”

I pushed into her slowly, just the head of my cock entering her channel. Just that point of contact was enough to drive Sabrina wild; she writhed like she’d been struck by lightning, bracing herself against the cold wall with both hands.

I knew what she meant about having an audience. There was something incredibly hot about knowing Courtney’s eyes were on us both–it turned Sabrina into my personal porn star. The little moans and groans coming from Courtney’s side of the shower told me she enjoyed it just as much as we did.

Sabrina closed her eyes, biting down on her bottom lip. “You love making me beg, don’t you? Please, baby, can I please have your cock? Can you please fill me all the way to my fucking tonsils with that massive prick—”

Sabrina screamed as I entered her, thrusting the full length of my manhood into her tight wet pussy. She hadn’t been lying to Courtney—her walls really did fit me perfectly, wrapping around my dick like a glove as I went balls-deep into her channel. The first hammering strike of my cock against her back walls nearly made both of us cum.

“Oh fuck,” Sabrina moaned, rocking herself back on me. “I love it!”

I loved it, too.

The bench was wide enough for me to put one leg up on it, too. I did so, using the change in angle to go hard and deep into Sabrina from behind. The wet smacking sounds of flesh-on-flesh filled the shower as we fucked madly, passionately, like animals in heat.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who’d had my priorities rocked by that near-death experience.

My fingers tightened in Sabrina’s hair, using her blonde locks as leverage to savage her even harder. The blonde witch winced as I tugged, then chuckled knowingly, the walls of her pussy growing even hotter and tighter as I fucked her.

“You like hurting me just a little bit, don’t you, baby?” she groaned, throwing herself back on me just as hard as I was giving it to her. “I can feel how much harder your dick gets when you pull my hair like that…!”

I pulled her closer, kissing the side of her neck as I fucked her. Sabrina tossed her head back and laughed, her eyelashes fluttering as I found a steady rhythm and started really rearranging her guts. “Oh fuck, baby, right there! Fuck yes, keep hitting it just like that!”

I knew exactly what Sabrina liked. Fucking her was like going down the big hill on a roller coaster: slow at first, then faster and faster until you felt like your skeleton was going to come ripping right out of your body. I’d leave her gasping with this long, steady strokes, stoking her inner fire until she begged me to fuck her hard and fast. Then, when she was right on the edge of cumming, I’d go Beast Mode and send her into the stratosphere.

That was the plan, at least. But then I felt a presence just behind me, and remembered we had a third member of this harem now.

Courtney embraced me from behind, whining like a bitch in heat. “Oh my god, look at that,” she whimpered, grinding her wet pussy against my thigh as she watched me fuck her bestie’s brains out. “You’re not even wearing a rubber or anything. You’re fucking her bare right now, and she’s dripping all over your dick…!”

I couldn’t not hear that and do something about it. I made a snap decision.

I pulled out of Sabrina. The sudden lack of my cock inside her made her whimper with frustration, her head turning around to see what was the matter.

“Suck it,” I commanded, cupping Courtney’s chin. “Right now.”

Courtney didn’t hesitate for a second.

The redhead dropped to her knees in the shower spray and opened wide, devouring my cock with the hungriest look I’d ever seen. I groaned as the heat and tightness of Sabrina’s pussy was replaced by the warmth of Courtney’s mouth, with the addition of that naughty little tongue. I put my hand on the back of her head, coaxing her even deeper.

Courtney might technically have been a virgin, but she knew exactly what to do with my dick. She slurped the head of my shaft, her cheeks hollowing around it as she savored the mixture of mine and Sabrina’s juices, her eyes rolling back in her head. One hand slid between her thighs, shamelessly rubbing her slit as she bobbed up and down on me like a cork.

I glanced down and locked eyes with the beautiful cheerleader. My heart skipped a beat at the look in Courtney’s eyes. She looked at me like I was her hero, her savior: like no man had ever deserved a blowjob more than the one she was in the middle of giving me. Like she was already madly in love with me.

Sabrina slid off the bench and got on all fours next to Courtney. For a second I thought she was going to kneel next to her bestie and take turns blowing me, but my naughty little witch had something even kinkier in mind.

She knelt in front of Courtney and spread the redhead’s legs, showing off the tanned valley between her thighs. Outside of that narrow band of cherry-red pubic hair she was completely shaved, her soft folds glistening with juice. I knew I wanted to bury my cock in those folds, badly, but I’d promised Courtney not to cross that boundary while there was any chance I could be fucking up her cheer career.

Soon, I told myself, thinking of Blackwater. As soon as we can get her a spell.

Of course, it was easy to hold back from going all the way when you were getting head from the hottest redhead you’d ever seen in your life. Not to mention the fact that I could have pulled out of Courtney’s throat at any time, pinned Sabrina to the wall and fucked her brains out. Both of them would have loved that.

Courtney let out a little urk as Sabrina buried her face between the redhead’s thighs.

“Good girl,” I said, smirking down at the pair. “Show me what a good little slut you are, Sabrina. Fuck, you’re gonna get such a reward after I’m done with this mouth…”

Sabrina buried her face in Courtney’s box. The blonde witch ate out her bestie like there was a bowl of ice cream between her legs, lapping at her clit and the folds of her labia. Courtney lost her rhythm, gasping at the pleasure, then went at my dick with a vengeance, sucking it like she’d die if she stopped.

It was just about the hottest fucking thing I’d ever seen. Courtney sitting in front of me with her legs spread, her nails gently grazing my balls as she gave me the most enthusiastic blowjob I’d ever received, while Sabrina used her face and fingers to get the cheerleader off.

The shower felt almost cold compared to the action. I suppressed a shudder of lust as Courtney took me all the way down her throat, gagging gently around my prick as she deep-throated me.

A moment later, I found out why. Courtney grabbed my legs with both hands and howled with bliss as she came, her thighs tightening around Sabrina’s face. One heel rested between the blonde’s shoulder blade, pressing her in deeper as the redhead moaned and shuddered and rode out the waves of her bliss.

All with my cock buried hilt-deep inside of her sweet little mouth.

As Courtney came down from her peak, Sabrina lifted her head and crawled to me. She knelt before me, watching with adoration as the redhead bobbed on me like a cork. With a nasty grin, she put her hand on the back of Courtney’s head and grabbed a handful of her hair, using it to slam her harder down on my meat.

“Am I a good girl?” Sabrina asked. Somehow, she managed to sound almost innocent—one hell of a tall order with honey from Courtney’s pussy covering her chin. “Am I your good girl, sir?”

I couldn’t take it any longer. I grunted, thrusting my hips forward into Courtney’s mouth.

“I love you,” Sabrina said.

My jaw dropped open. Courtney didn’t miss a beat, even though I felt her shoulders tense with shock at the admission.

“I love you so fucking much, Edwin!” she said, smiling. Were those tears in the corners of her eyes, or just water from the shower. “I love you, baby, I love you! Cum in her mouth, okay?”

Jesus! How hot could one woman be?

“Shoot that fucking load in her mouth for me,” Sabrina said, smiling from ear to ear. “You look so fucking hot right now, I want to see you spray ropes in her mouth. I want to help her eat them! I love you so fucking much, Edwin, cum for me…!”

Your wish is my command, I thought, going over the edge.

Courtney felt me swell even bigger and thicker in her throat as I hit the point of no return, but she didn’t miss a beat. She sucked me greedily as my pleasure went stratospheric, a tidal wave of bliss ripping away my senses and contracting the entire universe to these two beautiful women kneeling before me. It built, and built, way past the point of being unbearable.

When the wave broke, it felt like a bomb going off inside my brain.

I roared with bliss as I came, holding onto Courtney’s head with both hands. My cock swelled and jerked inside of her throat as I shot my load, thick and hot and creamy. I grit my teeth as the pleasure crested, each double-time beat of my heart coinciding with a spurt of sperm to coat Courtney’s tongue.

It went on for what felt like forever. I wasn’t there; I was floating somewhere in a haze of bliss, the sheer relief of shooting my load so sweet that I never wanted it to end.

Of course it did. It always does.

The next thing I knew, both women were kneeling before me. Courtney had pulled off of me and guided my prick with her fingers into Sabrina’s waiting mouth, allowing her to finish me off as I came down from my peak. The witch’s naughty tongue worked slowly around my prick, hitting each special spot on my crown in turn as she milked me of every last drop of hot cum.

When it was finally done, she planted a kiss on the tip, then leaned over and started making out with Courtney. Both of them had mouths full of my load, and it dripped all over their chins and their breasts. I wished I had a waterproof camera to capture the moment, but I supposed my memory would have to do.

Sabrina broke the kiss first, her fingers gently stroking me back to full hardness. Unlike Courtney, who’d yet to learn, the blonde witch knew exactly how quickly I could get myself ready for a second round.

“Good girl,” I grunted, stroking her hair. “Good girls.”

Sabrina beamed up at me, nibbling her bottom lip. “I can’t believe I said the L-word,” she whispered, rising to her feet. “I hope I didn’t freak you out, Edwin.”

I shook my head.

“Good. I’d been thinking it for a while, actually. I just… I know things are moving fast. But this is real, you know? You’re my man, and I’m your woman. We’re rock solid. And I don’t ever, ever want that to change.”

Courtney looked a little woozy as she got to her feet. “You two are the cutest couple ever,” she said, licking a gob of my cum from her lips. “Did I ever tell you that?”

Sabrina laughed. “I guess we’re more than a couple now. A throuple? A harem?”

“I like that last one,” I said, grabbing my girlfriend’s ass. “How about we go with that one?”

She giggled. “Sounds good to me, babe.”

“Fuck, that was awesome,” Courtney said. “I cannot fucking wait for you to get me one of those spells, Sabrina. Watching you with Edwin, it was…” she shuddered with lust. “It was super intense.”

I was already fully hard once more. Both of them noticed.

“Mmmh, it’s not over yet,” the witch purred. “You want to finish what you started, babe? Should we do it here, or in that big four-post bed I saw back in Courtney’s room?”

I thought about it. For about five seconds.

“Court?” I asked, wrapping an arm around Sabrina’s waist. “You wouldn’t happen to have any handcuffs, would you?”

The redhead laughed. Sabrina looked a little shocked.

“Oh, you are a bad boy, aren’t you?” the cheerleader giggled. “I think I might have something you can use to act out your depraved fantasies. As long as you let me have a little fun, too…”

Sabrina cleared her throat. “Of course. But I do want you to know something, Court. I like fooling around with girls in front of my man, and helping him share them. But as far as this whole harem thing we’ve got going on is concerned, I’m strictly Edwin-sexual.”

“It’s my fault,” I said, giving Courtney a rakish grin. “I’m jealous.”

The cheerleader rolled her eyes. “I guess I’ll have to tuck away my fantasies of torrid lesbian affairs for another day,” she teased, hugging me from my other side. “Seriously, though, that’s totally fine. As long as I can maybe fool around with Edwin sometimes when you’re in classes…?”

Sabrina looked like she liked that idea. A lot.

“Ohh yeah,” she panted, her fingers straying to my cock. “Fuck yes. My man definitely gets as many hall passes as he wants.”

“Then it’s settled.” Courtney cut off the shower head. “How about we seal our new arrangement with you tossing this cute blonde onto my bed and fucking her brains out?”

I couldn’t help but grin. When had I gotten so lucky?

“I think I can do that,” I told the pair. “C’mere, Sabrina. Lemme carry you over my shoulder like a fucking caveman…”

She came squealing all the way to the bedroom.

And in the bedroom, too.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The next morning, I woke up in Courtney’s bed with two beautiful women curled up naked beside me.

Nothing had really changed since yesterday, and yet it felt as if my life would never be the same. My ‘arrangement’ with Sabrina and Courtney was less than twelve hours old, but it already felt as if I’d been dating both of the girls for months. The way we bantered, the way Sabrina slapped Courtney’s ass while the former brewed us a pot of coffee and the other made bacon and eggs on the stove top — even the way we sang songs together over the radio on the drive back to Blackwater.

None of us really said anything about it, but all of us felt it. Surviving those cursed daggers had brought all three of us uncomfortably close to our own mortality, and deep down I knew the sudden rightness of our relationship had more than a little to do with this newfound change in perspective. None of us wanted to waste time any longer; the thought of doing so was almost unfathomable. With danger lurking behind every corner, why spend a single moment apart from the people you cared about the most?

The drive into town was pretty muted. Sabrina kept her hands to herself more than usual—the satisfied smile on her face she’d been wearing since she fell asleep in my arms last night probably had something to do with that—and Courtney spent most of the commute scrolling through her phone looking for any news articles that mentioned the disturbance at Exeter-Cross’s stadium. Other than a couple of small blurbs about a ‘sinkhole’ the city was taking care of, there weren’t any.

“The mundane news won’t have anything about it,” Sabrina said confidently. “But Blackwater will be buzzing about the attack. I’m sure you and I are going to have to tell our stories a couple dozen times today, Edwin.”

I laughed. “Toby Heck will probably corner me in some closet and threaten to torture me with bees until I spill the beans,” I said, shaking my head. “That guy’s got a weird relationship with the insect kingdom…”

“Blackwater,” Courtney muttered as we pulled into the parking deck. Her own car was still at the stadium; she’d walk over there later, after classes. “That’s still so crazy to think about. That there’s a whole other college inside of mine, that no one knows about…”

I should have realized it right then and there. All I can say is that in the excitement of the attack and the incredible high of the night I’d had with Courtney and Sabrina, my mind was far away from the magical world.

If I’d been thinking more clearly, I would have warned Courtney in advance.

It didn’t happen at all once. The walk from the parking deck to the student commons was almost normal, although Courtney kept glancing around at the crowds of students like something was subtly off her about her day. “Man, there’s a lot of students on campus this morning,” I heard her mutter. “They must be doing renovations on the dorms or something…”

It wasn’t until we reached the student commons that we realized what had changed.

This was how it happened: Courtney, Sabrina and I made our way past the technology center, where Toby Heck took me to get my deck after Lavrans’ orientation speech. There was nothing out of the ordinary about it—but as we reached it, Courtney stopped dead in her tracks, frozen solid.

“That…” She trailed off, cocking her head to the side. Her brows furrowed together, her eyes grew as wide as dinner plates. “Has that always been there?”

It clicked for Sabrina a second before it did for me. “Oh shit! Courtney, you might want to sit down…”

Too late.

“Fuck!” Courtney yelled it loudly enough that heads turned around the commons to stare at her. The redhead swayed unsteadily on her feet, grabbing her head with both hands. “What is wrong with me? There’s… there’s something weird about this place!”

I knew what Courtney was feeling. I’d felt it myself a few weeks ago—only my moment of truth had involved a pair of water fountains, not a storefront that hadn’t been there before. But the sense of dislocation and disorientation was the same.

Courtney could see the Unseen World. She’d awakened, just as Lavrans said she would.

“Here,” I said, throwing Courtney’s arm over my shoulders. “Let’s get you somewhere you can sit down.”

Somewhere turned out to be a small shaded outcropping a short distance away from the technology center, beneath a set of stairs leading to the second floor of the commons. A big pillar stood right in front of it, half-hiding anyone who lounged there from view, which made it an attractive spot for slackers of both magical and mundane means. I saw Toby and his friends here all the time, but on that morning the alcove was empty. Good.

By the time we got her settled down, Courtney had already begun to recover. “It was always there, wasn’t it?” she asked, her voice shaky but unafraid. “Just like all the students wearing those weird outfits we saw on the way in. They were always here, and I just couldn’t see them.”

“Your mind filled in the gaps,” Sabrina explained in a soothing voice. “It won’t do that anymore, though. Welcome to Blackwater University, Courtney.”

“Shit.” Courtney closed her eyes tight, smiling through the awful feeling of nausea I knew from personal experience was churning in her gut. “Does this mean I’m a witch now, Sabrina? Like you?”

“We don’t know.”

I nearly jumped out of my fucking skin. Someone had just come up to the alcove and was standing next to the pillar, watching Sabrina and Courtney and me.

It was Lavrans Ravensson, Headmaster of Blackwater.

“The literature on Awakeners is somewhat inconclusive,” the headmaster said, gently scratching the skin next to his eyepatch as he spoke. “Some have been able to raise any mundane to the rank of full witch or wizard, as long as they knew the mundane intimately. Some have been unable to achieve that feat. Oh, I’m very sorry if I startled you.”

“Headmaster!” Sabrina sat up straighter, caught between her natural deference to authority and her desire to soothe Courtney. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to welcome our newest student,” Lavrans said, smiling. “I’m not certain if Miss Haddonfield is a full witch or just something a little more powerful than a partial, but I do know one thing for certain. There is much she could learn from attending Blackwater. Both about magic and herself.”

To say Courtney looked stunned would have been a massive understatement. “Blackwater? You mean you want me to take classes here?”

Lavrans nodded. “Dual-enrollment is the term,” he explained. “It’s uncommon, but not unheard of for a magical student. And do not worry, Miss Haddonfield—your spot on the cheer squad will not be affected. I’ve spoken with the people in charge at Exeter-Cross.”

“You did?” Sabrina asked, aghast.

“Our schools have a longstanding agreement where these matters are concerned,” Lavrans said with a thin smile. “Your mundane course load will be decreased, and you’ll be allowed to attend some introductory classes at Blackwater to test your mettle. If you do turn out to be powerful in one or more disciplines, you may of course transfer if you wish. But that will be your decision.”

Courtney looked stunned. “That’s… wow,” she whispered, turning to Sabrina. “Will you help me, bestie? I’ve got a lot of catching up to do…”

Sabrina’s smile was as bright as the sun. “Are you kidding me? Literally nothing would make me happier!”

“We’ll be watching your academic career with great interest, Miss Haddonfield,” Lavrans mused. “It will be interesting to see just how much of a leg up our Edwin has managed to give you. Something tells me this awakening has been very great indeed…”

I could read between the lines. Lavrans thought that Courtney would eventually become a full witch, just as capable in the magical arts as Sabrina or anyone else at Blackwater. All because I started to date her. Because of my powers.

Don’t lie to yourself, Edwin, a little voice whispered. She can see the Unseen World because you shot your load in her mouth and she swallowed it. It wasn’t a date that awakened her—it was fucking.

If just a blowjob could do all that, then what could we expect from Courtney once we went all the way? It made me dizzy to think about it. And if those results could be replicated with more test subjects, more girls from Exeter-Cross…

Well. In that case, I was about to get even more popular with the ladies.

Lavrans put his hand on my shoulder. “Might I borrow Mr. Sawyer for just a moment?” he asked, favoring both of my women with a smile. “I need to speak with him in private. It concerns his ability, and I wouldn’t want to embarrass him.”

Of course that was fine. Lavrans led me away and into the technology center, where the wizard behind the counter opened a door into an empty service hallway.

In here, the walls were thick concrete, deadening the sound. Lavrans leaned on the wall, sizing me up with something like a smile.

“How’d the hunt go last night?” I asked. “You and Irina catch anything?”

“Professor Dragovich has pledged to bring the activities of the Black Moon Society to an end,” Lavrans said, looking amused. “I of course cannot comment about any specific actions undertaken by faculty members at Blackwater, but between you and me—I wouldn’t want to be one of the creatures she’s hunting. Attacking you seems to have set off a peculiar nerve with her.”

I cleared my throat. I was no dummy: I knew Lavrans knew all about me and Irina. Hell, he’d probably given her his personal stamp of approval to seduce me. But that didn’t mean I had to sit here and listen to him needle me about it.

“The attack is actually not what I wished to speak with you about,” the headmaster said. “Have you given any thought recently to your Grand Conjuration, Edwin?”

Shit. Now Irina wasn’t the only one who’d hit a nerve.

I had been thinking about that. Specifically, over the last twelve hours.

After Irina saved my life.

I bit back a sigh and looked Lavrans in the eye. “To tell you the truth, sir, I’ve been thinking about changing it.”

Lavrans looked interested. “Oh?”

I nodded. “I know everyone’s been expecting me to go into Beast Taming. Professor Fym has pretty much told me that she’ll be my mentor if I agree to learn under her. I know that’s an honor; I know that there’s people in that class who’d gladly stab me in the back and walk over my body to get the honor of being tutored by the actual head of the Beast Taming school.”

The headmaster nodded. “But you don’t feel that way any longer.”

He had my number. Smart man.

“No. Irina—I mean, Professor Dragovic—she told me that I have the soul of a true spite-master. What that means, I’m still not sure, but I do know that I’m good with curses and hexes. I figure me being able to pull that dagger out of my side had something to do with that.”

Lavrans made a non-committal sound.

“Even if it didn’t, Irina’s teachings saved my life,” I said, so defensive that I forgot again to use her title rather than her first name. “I turned the curse on that dagger back against the person who created it because she taught me how. She saved my life. And… and there’s just something between us…”

Well. I figured Lavrans didn’t need to know all about that.

“…anyway, I think she’s right. As much as it pains me to admit, I don’t think Beast Taming is right for me.”

“I agree.”

I braced myself for his reaction. “I want to work with Professor Dragovich. I know there’s a stigma, and with how close the two of us are I’m sure there’ll be all kinds of gossip about it—”

Lavrans held up a hand. “I’m certain that Professor Dragovich will be thrilled to hear that you wish to learn everything she has to teach you,” he said with a knowing smile. “She’s a good person, even if she has something of a fearsome reputation on campus. But Edwin, surely you must know that things like Beast Taming or Hexes are no longer here nor there. Have you not realized this?”

Huh? “What do you mean?”

Lavrans laughed. “You’re an Awakener, Edwin,” he said, his gaze getting serious. “A rare and powerful wizard with the ability to let mundane people bridge the gap and enter the magical world!” He gave me a hearty clap on the back, grinning. “No wonder they tried to kill you!”

“Gee, thanks,” I muttered.

“No matter what else you choose to do, Edwin, we both know there can be only one major for you. Only one subject for your Grand Conjuration, and for your studies at Blackwater. Awakening.”

I paused, thinking it over. The more I did, the more I realized that Lavrans was right. This power of mine—I needed to know what it could do. How strong it was. And how many people’s lives it could change.

In a way, I supposed that Courtney already was my Grand Conjuration. I could probably just bring her to the evaluation and show her off. Assuming the people in charge at Blackwater even needed me to prove myself any longer.

Hell, maybe we can just skip that step, I thought. Though I felt certain that even if I did, new challenges were on the way. Blackwater wasn’t about to let me skate on through without expanding my horizons in the classroom.

Even if I’d already done so in the bedroom.

“Alright,” I said, nodding along. “In that case, I guess you’ll assign Professor Fym to me for my lessons. I’m sure Irina will be devastated…”

I trailed off. The headmaster was giving me one of the strangest looks I’d ever seen.

“Are you joking, Edwin?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No, why? Who’s going to be my mentor?”

Lavrans leaned in close.

“I am,” he said.

Hell.

Oh, hell.

My college career had just gotten a hell of a lot more complicated.

END OF BOOK ONE