Chapter 12

Chapter

Twelve

W hen my alarm goes off for school, Aimee is already up and dressed. Of course she is. She didn’t stay up until the wee hours texting a guy. If she had, she would know sleep is impossible when your mind is spinning with fantasies of said guy, and she would hate that morning didn’t give her enough time to properly dream about him.

“Fucking alarm,” I grumble, pulling the blanket over my head while it continues to chime and sing and make its annoying electronic noises.

“I don’t feel well, RJ.” She’s sitting at the foot of my bed with her legs dangling over the footboard.

“Do you want to stay home today?” I can make that work. I’ll text Zane and tell him our field trip is postponed. I sit up so I can see more than the back of her and when she doesn’t answer, I scoot to the edge of the bed beside her. “We can watch TV, make cookies, eat all the chips and snacks.”

She shakes her head. “No. I don’t want anyone to know. I don’t miss school.”

“You’re going to miss this afternoon so we can go to Club Mera.” I shrug a shoulder. “We could skip the morning, too.”

Her sigh comes from deep in her chest and she flexes her fingers, staring at them as if she’s willing the magic back into her body. She turns to me. “I don’t know what to do without it, RJ. Who am I if I’m not a witch?”

I take her by the shoulders and make her face me. “You’re Aimee Baum. And you’re getting your magic back. If it’s the last thing I do, you’re getting it back.” I’m solemn. The words mean something to me.

Aimee nods. She’s the one person I don’t generally lie to. “Okay.”

I wait a minute until I’m certain her breaths are back to normal and she doesn’t have the I’m-going-to-vomit-from-stress grimace on her face. “Thank goodness because I’m supposed to meet Zane at the coffee cart.”

Her eyes widen. “I lose my magic and you make a date?”

“No reason for both of us to suffer.” I grin at her, but she narrows her eyes and shakes her head.

“You might be the most selfish person I know.” Her smile says she doesn’t mean it.

“Yeah, but I have a date.” I wag my eyebrows and she laughs. It’s a semi-normal morning.

“What are you going to wear?” She eyes my closet with the same disdain she’s always had for it. “Bob the Builder overalls, or are you going as a minion?”

“Ha ha.” Not ha-ha at all, but I can give her this one. “Builder, of course.” I roll my eyes.

“At least go glam.” She walks to my closet, shakes her head, then heads to her room. When she comes back, it’s with a white tank and a flannel shirt she ties around my waist.

“This isn’t glam.” I hate to break it to her, but this is me. Everyday.

She nods. “Yeah, but he apparently likes you as you are. We’re just going to dress it up a little.” She hands me some spangly sunglasses. Designer. Her style. But I slip them on and suddenly, I’m not Bob the Builder. I’m a better version of me.

“Sometimes, it’s just about the accessories.”

I nod. “Yeah, but I can’t wear them in class.”

I have naturally wavy, usually frizzy hair. But I also have hair product that makes it shiny and semi-well-behaved. And when she pushes the glasses up and my hair frames my face while the glasses hold the top back, I look kind of amazing on that careless level of not trying that other girls can manage, usually with a messy bun. A simple pair of gold framed glasses is a game changer. Who knew?

Obviously, Aimee knew. And now, I know, too.

I walk into the common area in front of the buildings where the concrete is crowded with witches waiting for their first classes to start. My first class starts at nine. Aimee’s starts at 8:40 and I don’t know what time Zane’s starts, but I see him by the coffee cart. Fuck. There’s no way a girl can resist all that .

He is wearing a tight shirt stretched across what I personally know is a rock-hard chest. Jeans that make his legs look long and his waist look thin. Hair that’s just a little too long, but perfectly styled so that he looks careless but in an artful way.

He looks up from his drink then down like he doesn’t see me, but I know he did. Then, he looks up again and smiles. It’s the smile that gets me. Every time.

I walk over with Aimee, trying for cool, hoping an untied shoelace won’t be the thing that ruins my morning .

As we walk over, Aimee says, “Don’t go and make lunch plans with the pretty boy. We’re going to that club.”

I stop walking because I wouldn’t ditch her for lunch plans. “I already invited him along.” And I flash her a grin of my own.

Before she can respond, we’re at the coffee cart in front of him. Or actually, he’s in front of me and I wait for him to say something, but Aimee motions for me to lift the glasses.

My heart is thumping. This could go so wrong. I could get my hair tangled around the metal that holds the nose pads in place, or rip off my own ear, or something else to embarrass me to within an inch of my life. But I risk it. Because I need to change my game and this is my chance.

Chances don’t come around every day, so I flip the glasses up, smile back at him, and say, “Hey.”

But we’re not having the moment I want us to have, the one I’ve gone over in my head ten or thirty thousand times. Instead, he’s almost somber.

“Is everything okay?”

I stare at him because his smile has faded and there’s some sadness in his eyes. “Another girl was attacked.” My head tilts on its own while I wait for the rest of the story. “Ariya Glover.”

“Ariya Glover.” I repeat her name because I know her. We aren’t friends, but we’re friendly. I’ve had a few classes with her. She’s actually one of the people my age who’s talked to me here, who doesn’t think I get special attention and favors because I’m my mother’s daughter. And then I look up at Zane.

This is a hard time for all of us since we’re all equally in danger, but there’s something I can’t quite put my finger on about his reaction. That is, until I figure it out. “ You dated her, too?”

“I mean…” He shakes his head and shrugs, then pulls me away from the rest of the group. “It was a blind date. Only happened once. She was nice enough.” A second later he sighs and rakes his fingers through his hair, pushing it back for a second before it all falls back into its disheveled perfection. “This can’t all be because of me.” I don’t know a lot about distress. I’m not one of those women who is particularly afflicted with things like that, but I can hear his, like an extension of his voice. It makes it deeper. Uncertain. Regretful.

I want to ease whatever he is feeling. And it doesn’t matter that I haven’t really told anyone what I saw. Not my mom, not Aimee, not anyone. I’ll tell him. “I saw the…villain.” It’s such an odd word, but I don’t know another.

“Villain?” When he says it, I think of superhero comics and the green men who try to crash through them.

“Villain.” I nod and say it with some conviction this time because I don’t want to use the S-word. It’s too real and I don’t know what else to call her. “She had black eyes.”

“Black eyes?”

I nod. “It was dark, but I think so.”I take a second because there’s something I’m missing, some random fact that is nagging my mind, that might tie some of the details together for me. “Where?”

“What?” He looks at me with his brow pinched and his eyes narrowed, like he doesn’t understand the question. “What?” he asks again, softer this time.

“Where was she when it happened?” The need to know is burning inside of me even though I’m certain I already have the answer. I can’t look at Aimee or I’ll blurt the entire story out and the secret of the grimoire will be no secret anymore. “I need to know, Zane.”

“At a club downtown. ”

And I know. I absolutely know. Because the grimoire showed me. “Club Mera.”

He nods and I want to tell him so badly how I know, to not have that spark of distrust standing between us.

“How did you know that?” His voice is low, almost quiet, but I look behind us to make sure none of his friends are paying attention.

“I can’t tell you.” And I wish I could. I wish I could go get the book and share it, but I can’t. It isn’t mine to share, and I don’t know that I didn’t summon this syphoner anymore than I know he didn’t somehow mark the victims. I also can’t tell him about the syphoner trying to take from me and failing.

He nods and I don’t know if he’s agreeing to my silence or if this is some ironic guy thing that he’s going to use against me for the duration of whatever this is between us.

“Okay. You’ll tell me when you can, or when it’s too big to keep inside.” He smiles. And then he moves closer so we’re almost pressed against each other. “But you have to be careful.”

“I’m careful.” I smile up at him.

Then the best moment of my life happens. Zane Bradbury slides his hand onto my waist so it rests just over my hip and his fingertips are low—super low on my back. The touch is intoxicating. My pulse hitches. He has moves and he knows it.

Him knowing it doesn’t stop me letting him pull me close enough that only the thinnest beam of light would dare try to fit between us. “I hope so.”

“RJ, I’ll meet you back here at 11:45.” Aimee has to get to class, but I have a couple minutes. Not that I plan to do more with them than linger here and be touched by Zane Bradbury. At least until he either realizes I’m not nearly the right girl for whatever this is or I have to go to class.

“Okay,” I call over my shoulder without turning too far away from him.

He doesn’t kiss me or move closer, doesn’t lean in or do more than smile. “Do you know Ariya?”

“I saw her there. At the club once.” I pull back because it’s what I do when I fuck something up. I pull back from it so that when it falls apart, I’m protected.

He looks at me as I continue backing off. “I should get to class.”

And then he’s beside me, heading to the building where I am expected to sit and study the magic for the test I am not going to pass in a few weeks. “Hey.” I stop and look at him because I want this. I want him. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to figure out how to protect myself. “Are we still on for lunch?”

I should say no.

But I can’t.

“Yeah. I’ll meet you here.”

He grins. “I forgot to ask where we’re going.”

I look at him. He’s going to find out eventually. Might as well be now. “Club Mera.”