Chapter 11

11

Another dead body.

And I once again found myself sitting in a small room off of the headmaster’s office faced with my favorite werewolf detective and his habitual stony expression. Because why? I had a habit of being first on the scene.

Detective Wilson stared at me, a muscle near his eye twitching. Today he wore a corduroy jacket with fake sheep’s wool around the collar and his badge pinned to the outside pocket. His brown hair—disheveled in a way I knew: he’d been up all night—refused to be tamed and fell down past his ears. Sharp eyes took me in, judged me, and without his having to speak I already knew he wasn’t happy to be here with me. Again.

The feeling was mutual.

“We really have to stop meeting under these circumstances, Miss Alderidge. You sure do have a propensity for stumbling into crime scenes. Maybe I should hire you,” he said flatly. “At least you know enough to leave the evidence alone.”

His poor attempt at teasing didn’t work. I sat there with my knee bobbing, worrying my lower lip and wondering if I’d ever get used to the things I faced in life. Probably not. And did I really want to?

No.

“I’m sorry. You know if there were any other choice, I wouldn’t be here.” At least I had the benefit of working with someone I’d met before. Not only met, but spoken to, planned with. Shared secrets with. “I found the body by accident.”

“I’m sure you did. You already know how this works,” Detective Wilson said when I failed to answer to his joking. “Take me through the night and don’t leave out a single detail. I need to know everything.” Flipping a notepad and pen out of his jacket pocket, he set both on the table between us and stared at me some more. Waiting.

He prompted me through a cursory interview to get the basic details he needed. Then it was up to me to fill in the little details that might turn out to be clues. I tried to remember everything about the crime scene. My mind flashed back to the blood. The blood and the pieces of slashed body parts strewn around the hallway.

I hadn’t met the chaperone personally, but seeing the way her eyes stared at nothing, the way her mouth gaped open, frozen in a silent scream of terror… Her hands had still been clenched at her sides when I found her. Well, one of them had, at least. The other had been thrown across the space, not far from where her left leg had been flung, and her right leg was missing. No clue where it was.

The recollected images shook me to my core.

“Look,” Wilson said when I finished. Then placed his hands flat on the desk, and when I glanced up into his eyes, I caught a flash of gold. His wolf was close to the surface. Seeking out every point those sharp senses could in the short amount of time we had together. “We both know you didn’t do this, Tavi. I understand your situation at the school is…delicate…and all you want to do is get through your schooling and get the hell into Faerie without looking back.”

“You’re right,” I said. My knee continued to bob.

Wilson shook his head and sighed, letting his lips audibly ripple on the exhale. “You need to keep your nose out of trouble. You can’t keep stumbling into these, pardon my French, fucking fiascos and expect to walk away without an issue.”

He spoke as though I got into these situations on purpose. It wasn’t true. I just seemed to have the worst luck in the world.

“I was walking down the hall! Nothing else,” I insisted.

“And you happened to stumble onto a crime scene. Yes, I understand. Poor kid.” It was as kind and supportive as Wilson could be, with only the tiniest hint of sarcasm. “Keep your nose clean, and in the future if you catch a whiff of anything suspicious—and you know what I’m talking about—you run in the opposite direction.” He hurried to speak over me when I tried to interrupt. “I know it’s against protocol, but you let me do my job. Someone else will discover the scene, or if we’re lucky there won’t be one, and you will be out of the spotlight.”

I slumped down. “Okay, yeah. You’re right there, too.”

“You want my advice?”

“I’m sure you’re going to give it to me whether I want it or not,” I said dryly. “I probably couldn’t stop you if I tried.”

He tapped the side of his nose to let me know I’d gotten it right. “Stay out of damn trouble, Tavi. Whatever is going on here, leave it to me and my people to handle. I absolutely mean it. You smell anything, run.”

“The headmaster isn’t happy you’re involved in another case.” Or on the school premises in general.

“Of course not, but he has no choice in the matter. He knows I can get the job done.”

I remembered the first time I’d overheard a conversation between Wilson and Leaves. Gah, I really did need to stop with the eavesdropping. Leaves had been pissed because a werewolf detective headed up the murder investigations last semester.

If Leaves still felt the same way this time around—and I had no reason to assume he did not—then it already made for a tricky situation. Not to mention the, well, murder.

My insides felt like I’d scrubbed them in espresso, letting the caffeine sink in until the whole of me trembled and not in a good way. My mind kept flashing back to the body.

To the pools of cooling blood.

I’d thought we were finished with this kind of thing last semester when we caught Roman. What were the odds of having another murderous student in the building?

Apparently, they were pretty darn good.

Wilson stashed his notebook in his jacket pocket again. “Let me do my job, you study and keep practicing your woo-woo magic”—he wiggled his fingers for emphasis—“and I’ll solve this case before we have any other unfortunate accidents.”

“Yes, because being ripped to shreds is an unfortunate accident.”

“Quit the sarcasm and get back to class. Call if you need anything. The phone line is always open.”

“I appreciate it.”

He stood and took a step away from the headmaster’s chair, distinctly uncomfortable and trying his best not to look it. It didn’t matter. I could read him. Part and parcel of being pack.

He sent me on my way with an awkward pat on the shoulder like he wasn’t used to contact. But it was good to have him in my corner. Being a shifter himself, he understood the delicacy of my predicament with the school.

What would the others have to say when they realized we had another incident on our hands? And how I was smack in the middle of it again?

* * *

I tried to force the murder out of my mind and do what Wilson said: focus on my studies and keep out of trouble. It was much easier said than done.

Call if you need anything.

I refused to call him and put more focus into this random incident than I needed to. Sit down, shut up, and study. My new mantra.

The first few weeks of school flashed by in the rearview mirror and brought us into February, leaving me little time to do anything except study and work on developing my cognitive manipulation power. The focus of the curriculum changed from the first semester. This time, instead of following through on our basic History of Faerie lessons, we were moving on to more magic and more specialty classes. Divination, herbalism, talismans and charms.. Earth spells. Water magic.

Less memorization and more application, which was right up my alley. I could appreciate hands-on lessons versus tests on chapters we were forced to read.

Friday night I sat next to Mike in the quiet of the library and listened to him moan about his own innate power. His head dropped to his hands with a harsh thud and golden strands of hair poked through his fingers. “Time manipulation. Do you know how hard it is to figure out? Just trying to remember the rules is supremely difficult,” he complained. Shooting me a pleading look through the hair. “Help me.”

He looked like an adorable, sexy elf. I wasn’t sure whether to ogle him or laugh. Or leap across the table and lock my lips on his, although surely he wouldn’t appreciate the gesture.

“You’re lucky,” I tried to tell him. Pulling at the suddenly stuffy collar of my blouse. “Think about everything you can do with your power. The possibilities are literally endless. You can travel to the past. Or the future! You can travel, can’t you?”

He nodded sadly. “Yeah, but I’m too nervous to try anything. Think about it. You make one wrong move, you even breathe wrong, and everything can change. Like the butterfly effect. You know, a butterfly beats its wings in Africa and causes a snowstorm in Colorado, that kind of thing? There are so many rules to potentially screw me up. Or over. Nah, I’m going with the second one. Unquestionably screw me over.”

Another moan and this time his head dropped all the way to the table and fluttered the pages of our texts.

I winced at the sound. “There are risks with any kind of power. We’re here to practice, to get better. To learn to control our power before we mess up and get hurt, or hurt someone else. The school isn’t going to release you out into the world with a half-assed grasp on something as big as time manipulation.” I’d had to give myself the same kind of pep talk on my cognitive manipulation. Which was kind of ironic.

I might not have as many rules as Mike did, but the same worries applied. I had just as many chances to hurt myself or someone else.

My soothing did nothing for him. He looked up, sighed, continued to drum his fingers on his book—the same giant-sized literature he’d been given at the testing—with his gaze fastened on anything but the words in front of him.

“I’m going to fuck it up, Tavi,” he admitted. “I’m going to fuck it up and get kicked out of school and probably do something crazy to erase myself from history.”

I rolled my eyes at the melodrama. “You aren’t going to fuck it up. It’s going to take a lot of practice and focus and time but you will get it. Trust me.”

But I understood how he felt, and it made a difference. Being at the academy not only represented a way out for me, but an open door for parts of me to come alive. To expand and step into my true power. Learning to work magic meant something important for me. I felt it in my exhausted muscles, the thrill of happiness at seeing my power manifest. Like watching a garden you tend burst into bloom in the spring.

“How can I trust you on this?”

Oh, really? “I haven’t steered you wrong before,” I said. “Have I? No, you know what, don’t answer that because I really don’t want to know. Unless you have some kind of compliment for me. A compliment I will gladly take.”

Mike and I always got a decent amount of studying done together during our sessions in the library. I didn’t even mind putting the work in when we sat there, the two of us, as close to alone as we could be. This week it seemed as though we spent most of our time at this table, late into the night, with me trying to help Mike with his magic by tutoring him.

He wasn’t a bad student, don’t get me wrong. He simply wasn’t…the best. Not even in the top twenty. Though his confidence had surely skyrocketed since the start of the semester. He almost made me believe he could rise to the top.

Whatever he felt he needed to prove by doing well, I was determined to help him achieve those goals. If he wanted to be the number one student, then I’d get him there, through sheer grit and determination, giving blood if I had to. In my mind, he wasn’t my competition.

A partner, maybe…

Okay, I had to stop getting ahead of myself.

I liked him too much to think of him as a competitor. And if it ended up being the two of us at the end of this adventure, then even better. A small part of me warmed at the thought. The thought of the two of us getting snuggly on our way to Faerie—

“Okay, enough chitchat,” I told him, clapping my hands together as softly as I could to avoid the attention of Mustardseed. “Are you ready to practice this spell?”

I’d been putting off looking for the Augundae Imperium box artifact thingy thanks to my class workload. Pretty much whatever I could do to not look for the artifact, I did, telling myself I had plenty of time. I had more important areas to focus on at the moment.

I placed a pen in front of Mike. Then I gave it a little push and it rolled to the left about two feet. “The spell is simple. Rewind time and put the pen back to where I first set it down.”

“Easier said than done,” he muttered, staring angrily at the pen as though it was to blame for the bulk of his worries. “You say simple. I say big deal.”

“Not a big deal. Move the pen to its original position. It’s a few words, a few seconds. You’re starting small. Remember and repeat. It’s your magic.”

“Starting small,” he repeated obediently.

“Absolutely right. You have to start somewhere. You aren’t going to test positive for this power and then suddenly be an expert overnight, no matter how badly you may want to be. You might be the crown prince with your adoring fan club, but underneath all the glitz and status you are just like the rest of us,” I teased, fluttering my eyelashes and trying to lighten the mood in the only way I knew how.

Endless teasing on a sensitive subject.

“Hey, you leave my adoring fan club out of this.” Mike’s brows drew down in mock sternness. “I haven’t been asked for an autograph in twodays.”

That made me grin. “Two whole days? How are you coping?” I raised a hand to his forehead to check for a fever. Definitely not as an excuse to touch him. “Coming down with any kind of ailments? You’ll have to let me know how you feel without life-giving admiration.”

Mike swatted my hand away and scowled. “You know I hate it when they swarm me like gnats. It’s not like I ask for the attention.”

“Oh, I think you love the attention.”

“Do I?” he said, leaning closer. “Have you figured me out? You now know my desperate need to be in the spotlight?”

“For sure,” I said. “I think you secretly thrive on it. Now start with this spell and see what you can do. Rewind time to place the pen in front of you again. Maybe I’ll compliment you when we’re done. Make you feel like you’re the only person in the world.”

Except to me he was.

“You are a hard taskmaster.” He shook his head and when he met my eyes, the air went out of the room and I could hardly breathe. Close, so close to me. Close enough I could reach out and kiss him if I wanted to. If I had the nerve.

“Am I?”

“Yes. Cracking the whip. Making me work double time for you with only a shred of incentive.”

I didn’t have the nerve, no matter how badly I wanted him. No matter how I melted when he looked at me. Mike moved toward me inch by inch and he didn’t pull away. He did nothing except stare.

“What are you doing?” I asked him breathlessly.

“What do you mean?”

His voice had dropped low and part of me wanted to groan.

“You…you aren’t working on the spell.”

“There are some things more interesting than the spell.” His gaze dropped to my lips. “More interesting and more important.”