Chapter 3

Chapter

Three

W hen Aimee comes home, Mom is fixing dinner and I’m in my room, lying on my bed, staring up at the ceiling. I hear them chatting but can’t make out the words and I don’t care what they’re talking about. Although I have guesses.

Mom’s probably telling Aimee that I almost set the house on fire, that I was hiding the super-secret magic book, and that I’m grounded, although we didn’t really discuss for how long, so for all I know I’m free right now. And Aimee’s probably being the sympathetic suck-up I know she is with Mom. I don’t care about that either.

For all I know, she could’ve meant grounded until she cooled off. Until she stopped slamming pots and pans. Until she stopped speaking in hushed tones into her cell. Which could still be a while, but who knows? She’s acting ridiculous.

I know because this isn’t my first go-round with my mother, that she didn’t mean it any of the ways other than grounded until she tells me otherwise, but she wasn’t specific. And she’s probably going to use a binding spell to keep me in the house. I sigh. It doesn’t matter. I don’t really have anywhere to go.

It’s not long until Aimee knocks on my bedroom door. It’s open so I don’t bother telling her to come in. She already is.

“Bad day, huh?”

“On so many levels,” I say with a shrug. “I must’ve said the spell wrong. Started a fire.”

Aimee nods. “Yeah. Mom said.”

“And she took the grimoire.”

Aimee doesn’t need it. She’s in Advanced Spell Creation, a class that requires you not only write your own spells, but prove they work by casting them. They’re training her so that she could create a grimoire of her own, so she has the training to form a coven and lead. There are only a few students in that class. I didn’t make the cut.

“We can work around it.” She’s always so confident about magic. I’m not.

Although, this is the part where I shine. I do for self-proclaimed martyrdom what music does for silence. I make it louder and all about me. “No. Mom’s right. I’m dragging you down, Aims.”

She rolls her purple eyes and pretends she’s choking. “Shut up. We’ll figure out how to get you practice.” She sighs. There’s a perfectly legit way for me to get practice and we both know it, but I’m prideful. Too prideful. I can’t stand the idea of anyone knowing I’m inadequate, that my skills shame the well-respected family name.

Aimee has a future. She’s at the top of our class and the magic she commands is twice as powerful as anyone else in school. She needs the space to grow. I’m holding her back. She can’t grow if she’s always being forced to cover for me, to worry about me to the detriment of her own studies .

“So, you and Mom had it out, huh?” She sits on my bed and I sit up and nod. “She’ll get over it. She probably just saw the flames and freaked out.” She pauses. “Did the stain come out?”

I shake my head. “Don’t wear that lipstick around an open flame.”

She fakes a laugh. “It’s your lipstick.”

Of course, it is. She doesn’t need makeup. She’s naturally pretty. I have to work to be passable. Her hair is the color of moon rays, and her eyes are the kind of violet that makes boys want to love her—even though she’s horrible around them.

I am mousier. Brown hair. Brown eyes. I’m a tomboy. She’s a cover girl. I’m not jealous, it’s just who we are. I’m the one who’s confident. She’s…not.

“Well, then it’s always near an open flame because I’m on fire.” I do the shoulder head-swirl combo, and she laughs.

When she stops, she looks at me and asks, “What are you going to do about Mom?”

That is the question, isn’t it? I shrug. “I don’t know. Wait until she cools off. Try to talk to her.” It isn’t like she can hate me forever. She’s my mother. “Right now, I’m going to go for a walk.”

“RJ, grounded means you stare at the four walls. It means you don’t go anywhere or do anything.” As if I am unaware of the situation. I spent most of the years from fourteen to eighteen—nineteen now—grounded. I’m aware of the concept.

“Oh, that’s how it is?” I give her the head-shake sniff combo that is one my personal favorite moves. “How would you know?” She’s never been grounded a day in her life.

Her smirk is of the all-knowing kind and I would roll my eyes at her if I thought she would understand why I was doing it. Instead, I don’t bother, and she keeps talking. “I’ve heard Mom say it before.”

I smile. “What Mom doesn’t know won’t extend the period of time I’m grounded.” I put my finger to my lips and shush her. “Just tell her I’ve gone to bed. She won’t check.”

I slide the window up and climb out onto the roof of the porch. I close the window because I don’t need the responsibility of Aimee tonight. I need to clear my head, and for hell’s sake, I need to figure out what I’m going to do if I can’t pass that exam. There’s no way I can do either locked up like a prisoner.

In this town there aren’t a thousand places I can go. The beach, the mall, the football field to sit under the bleachers at the regular high school. But the beach is the other direction, and I’m a year too old and at the wrong school to be the homecoming queen.

Instead, I head into town, past the barber shop and the corner market, around the random stairwell that ends at almost the middle of the sidewalk and leads to the rooftop bar that isn’t really on a rooftop. I stop in front of Books & Brews. It’s one of those vintage bookstores, hip and fashionable with a coffee shop inside. It’s crowded, and I can lose myself inside in the stacks of books and overstuffed couches. Although, I have no idea why everyone is here on a weeknight. Kind of strange in a town that’s usually wrapped in bed by eight.

I stop at the coffee counter for a caramel latte. “Midnight madness sale?” It’s only seven fifteen but who knows? In this town they even roll back midnight for things like sales, Christmas church services, and all forms of bewitching. Or so I’ve heard.

She shakes her head. “Some big-name author is here, giving a reading of her new best seller.” Her tone along with the eye roll says she doesn’t think much of big-name authors or the clientele that comes out of the woodwork to be close to them.

Funny. I thought once they were best sellers, they didn’t have to do things like seven p.m. readings in tiny bookstores populated by young adults and old ladies. But what do I know?

I take my drink, remove the lid for a big sip of whipped goodness, then head to the other side of the store, away from the crowd but still in watching distance.

They’ve moved entire racks of books to make room for their author, a reading podium, and an audience, and I sidestep many a pile of classics.

I’m probably three steps into the Victorian romance section when I see him. Zane Bradbury. My entire body tightens. He’s been dreamy since we were kids. But now…fuck. It’s not fair for a man to be so…delicious and so out of reach.

And because he’s the kind of guy a girl could see herself getting cozy with, me being the girl, I stop watching where I’m walking. Who can blame me, really, when watching him is so much more entertaining. He has a way of standing that makes me want to see what he’s like lying down.

He is grade-A, top of the line, fantasy file material.

Unfortunately for me, he’s more Aimee’s type. All-star smart. Master of magic, and apparently of wearing really well-fitted pants. We’re both legacy students. Both fifth year. Both immersed in the life we hope to lead. But he’s hot.

Everybody, not just in school but in this town, knows who he is. Maybe because he’s gorgeous, which I know is the same as hot, but it deserves a second mention because it’s that true. He’s the definition of eye candy, and I wouldn’t mind a nice big bite. He’s also rich. Like his parents own a bank, a car lot, and a furniture store kind of rich.

He’s got brown hair that’s shot through with auburn streaks. It’s a little bit too long, like he doesn’t care enough to get a haircut but cares too much to let it get out of hand, and it looks like satin.

His eyes are the color of melted chocolate, and he has a lean athletic body, plus a voice that could rival warmed butter for its smoothness. Zane Bradbury is the total package. And I’ve been crushing on him since we met in middle school.

And when he lifts his hand to wave, I look behind me because I’ve never had a conversation with him before in my life.

Except for that time when we were both in our third year that I borrowed a pen. Not because I didn’t have one but because I was wearing a blue miniskirt with my Institute blazer. I’d thought I was Gossip Girl fashionable and he would have no choice but to talk to me because I looked so good.

Plus, I wanted him to see the mile of leg Cosmo said would turn him on. It didn’t. Turned out, Cosmo was wrong, and he didn’t care whether I had a mile of leg or a half inch and a stump. He didn’t have to talk to me at all. Just handed me a pen and grunted when I said thanks. I retired the mini, canceled my subscription to Cosmo , and went back to wearing jeans and rock band T-shirts.

Other than that one very brief and mostly one-sided almost conversation, I have no reason to even think he knows who I am. But when I twist to look, there’s no one and nothing behind me but a wall. And for five seconds, maybe ten, I’m one of those girls I hate. Bubbly, gushing, blushing. Over a boy. Where’s the feminism? The independent woman? I’m pathetic.

But he’s still gorgeous so I don’t care.

Not until he’s on his way over. Then I care a lot, and I want to be worldly. I want to be the one who crosses to him like I know how to work a pair of legs, who at least meets him in the middle. And I could be worldly. With someone else’s feet, someone else’s body, maybe.

But alas, I’m me, and so karma and fate and the deities whoever step in and I trip, flailing forward, coffee flying out of my cup in a stream of brown wetness, aimed directly for Zane.

He doesn’t have time to duck, or to make any other evasive move which would get him out of the path. And so my latte becomes a hot caramel weapon and the new pattern on his shirt. Because I can’t stop time—haven’t learned the spell for that one yet—there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

When I land, with my face at crotch level, he looks down at his shirt then at me. I don’t have anything to rub the stain out. And even if I did, I wouldn’t dream of it. But I know a spell. Backward and forward. I can say it in my sleep.

“Hang on. I can fix this.” I hear the spell in my head. It’s a cleaning spell. How can this go wrong? It’s a question I should’ve asked myself before I started speaking. But I don’t. Instead, I flex my fingers and say the words slow. And I’m almost a hundred percent certain they’re in the right order.

When I finish, I glance up, feeling the power that means the magic is working. But as I stand in front of him, staring at the stain, it doesn’t lift or fade. As a matter of fact, the stain isn’t removed at all. Instead, his shirt rips off, shreds itself, then falls on the ground in a pile of white fabric strips.

“What the fuck?” I look at the floor, not daring to lift my gaze to his chest.

His voice is soft, warm against my cheek because he’s leaned in but before I look up into his eyes, those pools of dark chocolate goodness that I want to drown in, I can hear the smile I don’t have to see. “You did a heart’s desire spell.”

Sweet sweaty fuck! I couldn’t have heard that correctly. “I did a-a-a what ?” My skin is so hot I could bake cookies on it. A heart’s desire spell takes the speaker’s desire and makes it happen even without said desire being spoken.

His grin is everything. And it’s pointed at me, even as he crosses his arms over his gloriously defined pectoral muscles. “It’s a heart’s desire spell. When you put the words desiderium cordis in any spell…” He shrugs. “The magic searches your heart for what you truly desire.”

Oh. My. Ever-loving mother of fucking pearl.

If the world could just open and swallow me right now I would be oh so grateful. This is worse than the walking into class naked dream. This is the walking into a bookstore and stripping my crush half-naked reality.

I look at the floor and then my shoes and then anywhere but at him and the five-acre chest in front of me.

“Hey.” He curls his finger under my chin and tilts my head up so I have to look at him. “Hey. It’s okay. The shirt was tight anyway and I think I might like being your heart’s desire.” Oh, the smile. It’s everything.

Not quite enough to drown out the taste of my own stupidity, which is very similar to the flavor of caramel latte but a bit more bitter. I don’t have enough good sense to be ashamed. Or to keep my hands to myself .

Instead, because I am my own comedy of errors, I run my fingertip down his chest, over his rippling abs then to his belly button. It’s an innie that I swirl said fingertip into. If I knew the spell to make myself burst into flames and disappear, I would say it. Right now. Instead, I go with “Damn,” because I can’t stop humiliating myself until I’ve gone to the deepest depths of embarrassment.

But his skin is like silk. Smooth and soft over a batch of hard muscles. Lickable.

And because there’s one wrung on the mortification ladder I haven’t touched quite yet, I turn, run out of the store and all the way home, into the house through the front door.

It’s in that moment, when I see my Mom’s face, that I remember I’m grounded. And the rest of my night implodes.