Deny Me: A Paranormal Romance (Legends of the Ashwood Institute Book 2)

by Jayla Kane

  “Good,” I muttered, and she frowned at me. “I’m just glad common sense prevailed,” I said, and she rolled her eyes and sat back down in the chair with a thump.

  “Well, common sense is also telling me I’m going to fail out if I don’t get at least a little work done this weekend—non-magical work. The kind normal people get to do when they go to college.” She kicked her book bag. “And it might be nice to get a break from thinking about all of this.” Raven peered up at me through a sheaf of her black hair. “Do you really think we’re safe here?”

  “I know you’re safer if you’re with me,” I said truthfully, because if someone tried to hurt her while I was around I wouldn’t hesitate to do to them what they’d done to that fucking mouse. I wondered if I could develop some kind of shield, like the one she had yesterday—and today, if the silence in my head was any answer.

  “What shield?” She was quietly staring up at me, and I realized she probably heard my thoughts about the mouse.

  “Sorry, Rae,” I muttered, then braced myself.

  “It’s okay,” she said, and I knew she meant saying her name, and my hands unclenched. I sat down on the carpeted floor beneath the window, feeling the breeze run over my shoulders, and stretched.

  “Yesterday, you said you thought the bond went two ways? And my anger somehow got into you?” She nodded. “It was harder and harder to make you hear me by the end of the night,” I explained. “It felt… Almost physical. As if there were a physical barrier between our minds, one you created to keep me out—I could only get through it if I touched you,” I said, biting my lip, “and I think… I think that only worked because it was my anger to begin with.”

  “So I… I was able to keep my thoughts from you?”

  “Yes. And block mine.”

  “I wish I could do that shit on purpose,” she muttered, and I grinned at her.

  “Right?”

  “Damn,” she said again, and then we both laughed out loud, the sound strange as it echoed around the big, empty room. “Well,” Raven said, abruptly cutting it off, “more to think about, I guess.”

  “I guess,” I said, wishing she would laugh again; I loved her smile. Raven was not a light-hearted person, not really. Seeing her smile was like watching a full moon emerge from behind the clouds. Exquisite—

  “I didn’t know you were a poet, Jake,” she said softly, and I groaned and slid down the wall while she chuckled.

  “Cool,” I said. “So. Like I was saying, about shields?”

  “Yeah,” Raven said, sliding down onto the floor across from me and neatly crossing her legs as she pulled a couple of books out of her bag. “You were the one who was going to get us back into the Vault, remember?”

  Suddenly I sat up and stared at her. “Wait a minute. Raven, my family has been into this shit since the beginning, right? We’ve got our ghost cook, we’ve got this big-ass house—”

  “You think Anna’s a ghost?”

  “What if there are books about magic here? What if some of my creepy-ass ancestors hid them in this house?” Raven stared at me, dropping her book.

  “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “You don’t need to be the smart one all the damn time,” I said, and she cracked a smile. “Let me have a turn once in a while.”

  “Fine,” she said, and crossed her arms, a playful grin on her face. “So where do we start looking, smarty pants?”

  “We could go ask Anna,” I said seriously, and she snorted and rolled her eyes.

  “Anna is not a witch, Jake.”

  “No, but… I mean, doesn’t it seem strange to you that she’s always been here, and she’s never anywhere but the kitchen, and…” Raven was giving me a doleful look, and I laid back down on the floor and stared at the ceiling. “Okay. Fine. Anna’s mysterious presence aside, we could check… Well, there’s always the library.”

  “Great start,” Raven said, nodding.

  “The problem with being here,” I said, propping myself up on my elbows—and noticing, in spite of her careful avoidance, the way her eyes crept across my torso when I did—“is that my family is here too.”

  “You mean… Did Tristan come here?”

  “I think you can guess from the fact that the house is still standing,” I said, and she gave me a sad look.

  “You’re not curious at all about why he—”

  “Not really,” I said, praying she couldn’t see the barrage of disappointments that swept through me, the losses accrued since he chose to disappear. I decided it was smarter to get back to the original subject. “I meant Lucas and Mina. They’re here—they never go anywhere—and even though I almost never see them, that doesn’t mean they’re locked into that extension. They could come strolling out whenever they want.”

  “Do you… Do you really feel comfortable here, Jake?”

  The truth was that I did—now that she was with me. I hadn’t slept in this room for more than three days in a row in over a year, since I was a senior; I turned eighteen and was gone even more than that. “It’s fine,” I said. “I don’t see them. Not often, anyway, and it’s not like we chat when I do. Mina wants to have dinner whenever Morgan is back, and that’s alright with me—I figure it takes some of the focus off of him, and Lucas,” I said, unable to keep myself from cracking my knuckles as I spoke his name again, “needs the reminder that I’m around.”

  “How old is Morgan now?”

  “Sixteen? Seventeen?”

  “You don’t know?” She stared at me incredulously, but I sat up and shrugged at her.

  “I’m pretty damn sure Morgan doesn’t know how old I am either. It’s not an insult to our relationship; we don’t really have one, any more.”

  “That’s really sad,” she said, but I just raised an eyebrow at her.

  “Listen. When you and Zelle—”

  “Fuck you, Jake—”

  “Right,” I said, unshaken. She blew out a heated breath. “Families are complicated, Keller. Don’t judge me. I did my best by them, if you’ll remember.”

  She did. I always tried to protect Morgan from Lucas; so had Tristan.

  Too bad he ran off and left me with him by myself.

  “Anyway,” I said, once again realizing there was an excellent chance she heard every single one of my thoughts, “do you want to come to the library with me?”

  “Right now?” She looked pale.

  “We don’t have to,” I said, and without thinking about it I was crouching beside her all of a sudden, my hand about to land on her arm. I quickly took a step back. “Why don’t you do some homework—hell, I’ll join you. And then we can walk down together when you’re ready?”

  “You could go—”

  “No,” I said, and let her read my mind this time, pushing the words at her on a light breeze. I’m not doing anything without you. I want us close.

  Irritation mingled with relief on her lovely face. “Fine. Homework, then.”

  “Homework,” I agreed, and we both spread our books out on the floor, plugging our laptops in, and smelled the crisp air coming in from the open window. I got lost in my assignments, and the clock ticked by, and I didn’t even notice because whenever I got bored I glanced over, saw Raven, and smiled to myself for no goddamn reason.

  It wasn’t a bad way to pass the time at all.

  And then there was a knock on the door.

  Chapter Nine

  Raven

  I felt my heart in my throat. I was ashamed of how terrified I became, so quickly.

  Jake and I sat on this floor for a little over two hours, diligently grinding through assignments that had laid dormant and neglected while we were wrapped up in our own interior drama, unpredictable magic, and terrifying invasions of privacy—not mine. The one perpetrated by unknown members of the Society.

  Were they here?

  Jake got up and moved across the room with grim purpose, his handsome face stony. He shoved the chair back and pulled the towel away, ripping the door op
en as the floor began to slightly shake beneath his feet—and then abruptly stopped. “Sarah?”

  “Master Jacob,” the woman said, dipping her head to him in a dated, formal gesture. Sarah, like Anna, had worked here as long as I could remember. She wasn’t anything like her downstairs counterpart, being prim and still and difficult, at times, to even notice; she stood in the shadows when we were children and never once stopped us from having a good time, so no matter her slightly creepy aura she certainly wasn’t someone I considered potentially harmful. My heart started to slow down. “So glad you’re home.” She turned and bowed her head slightly in my direction, never meeting my eyes. “Mistress Keller.”

  I was never Raven to her; all the same, the fact that she’d always shown me such a high level of respect—and everyone else—made me like her. She wasn’t snobby. Just intensely, strangely formal. “Sarah? Are you okay?” If anything, Jake looked confused. He glanced down at me, and I realized he was trying to see if I could read her mind. When I tried—an effort that took an embarrassing amount of effort—I saw nothing. Her mind was completely blocked off to me.

  “Sir, I am very well, thank you for asking.” Sarah’s choice of words always made it seem like she should have a British accent, but she didn’t. “I was coming to ask you to attend dinner tonight with Miss Keller on Lady Mina’s behalf.” Mina was hardly a lady, but I wasn’t about to say that. Jake seemed to hear me, though, and the corner of his mouth quirked up.

  “Why?”

  “She was alerted to your presence,” Sarah said, unruffled as usual, “and requested you attend.”

  “Sarah, you tell her—”

  “She wanted both of us to come?” I stared at Sarah, and Jake caught my meaning and glanced back and forth between us. “She knew I was here?”

  “Yes, Miss,” Sarah said, placid and still in the doorway.

  “Jake, we—”

  “We’ll be there,” Jake said suddenly, nodding quickly at Sarah as she stepped back into the hall. He closed the door before crouching down beside me. “Raven, we have to go. If they know you’re here, there’s a chance—”

  “Jake, they don’t know shit,” I said, shaking my head at him. “And I don’t want to see Lucas. Or Mina.” They hurt you, I thought, then buried it. I hated them as much as anyone could hate anything. His face was distractingly close—tantalizingly close, in fact, his long lashes skittering across those tawny cheeks, the gold lowlights in his hair shining in the afternoon sunlight. His eyes were darker right now, the brown overwhelming the green, and as he watched me from only a foot away I wondered if he could hear what I was thinking or just read it on my face. He bit his lip and something sparked inside of me—like the fire he lit in my heart wasn’t quite dead, and he’d managed to stir it up and make it breathe.

  “Raven, I keep trying to warn you,” he said, his low voice a barb, burying itself in my skin. “You keep thinking things like this, and I’m going to have a hell of a time convincing myself to keep my distance.”

  “I can think whatever I want,” I said, but there was an uncertain waver in my haughty words. I blinked up at him, desperately fighting off the urge to reach out and run my fingertips over those copper cheekbones, his full bottom lip… “And you need to keep your distance.”

  He slid back a foot, but still crouched in front of me; he was two feet away now, our heads not quite level, his overwhelming physicality making my cheeks hot as the breadth of his shadow loomed over me. “Why?” Jake tilted his head, watching me, his pupils dilated. I sucked in a breath and forced myself to break our gaze and stare down at the floor, my chest a muddle of mixed emotions and desires. “No—Raven, no, I get that you… I get that you’re pissed. But…” His own thoughts were jumbled, too, a puzzle of feelings and images—some of them painfully familiar, the slide of my skin under his slipping past my consciousness and making my nipples hard even as I scowled down at the carpet.

  “Because I can’t have sex with someone I—”

  “Yes you can,” he said quietly, and I couldn’t stop myself from glancing up at him; his eyes burned into mine. “You hated me then. You kind of hate me now… I think you might actually hate me less.”

  “Well, I don’t have to explain myself to you,” I snapped, and he quickly backed another foot away, a swirl of green and grey mist coloring his gaze.

  “I’m not trying to… To persuade you, I promise,” he told me, and I could tell from the earnestness of his tone this was true. He was making a valiant effort to keep his thoughts PG-13 as well, but it was difficult for both of us; my whole body felt hot with the memory of his touch. “And if I could stop thinking about it, or at least get my head to stop telling you I was thinking about it, I would. I just… I don’t know, Raven. I’m confused.”

  “About what?”

  “Everything,” he sighed, and when I allowed my eyes to stray towards his form again, his expression this time was genuinely sad. We were quiet for a long moment. “I’m wondering if I can let it go, maybe. Or if there’s a chance you’ll ever forgive me.”

  “That’s definitely pressure, Jake.”

  “Okay,” he said softly, standing up and walking across the room to look outside at the beautiful day passing us by, the blue sky pale with sunlight. “Fair enough.”

  “We just need to… To make it through this,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest, trying to lock in my own wayward emotions. “We need to see if we can get out of this situation—”

  “Raven—”

  “Just let me imagine it, okay?” I swallowed the sob in my throat, and he spun around and started towards me, his face pained, then lurched to a halt before I said anything. I was still trying to reconcile the fact that when he did that now—an image of him rushing towards me in the recent past would have given me a heart attack, but now… Now he wanted to comfort me. It was so fucking confusing. “Just let me imagine that I could have a normal life—for once. A life where I never believed I was a murderer, where the only person I ever…” I bit that one back, but when I glanced at Jake he looked… Frozen. “I wish I could not be this,” I said, waving a hand over myself, “whatever the hell this is--a witch? A girl whose whole life was dedicated to this one mission and now—”

  “Raven I get it,” he said, tentatively coming closer. When I didn’t stop him, he crouched down so that we were face to face again, but a few more feet apart. “I get it. I promise, if there’s anything I can do to get you out of this, I will.”

  “Part of me wonders if our whole lives were just a set-up for this,” I confessed, smearing my tears away; he stared at me, considering, and I nodded. “I mean, you and I have been thrown together since we were born. Do you think that… That the way we felt when we were young was just part of someone’s spell?”

  “Raven, don’t do this,” he said, shaking his head. His eyes were wide. “You’ll go fucking crazy.”

  “I might go crazy anyway,” I said, the tremble in my lip making my words fuzzy. Jake winced as if I’d cursed him.

  Raven, please let me touch you, he said, staring at me, and I sniffled and watched him, confused; he shifted on his strong legs, his quad muscles flexing under his jeans. I said I wouldn’t beg, but right now, I’m fucking begging. I can’t stand seeing you like this—I know I’m a prick for asking, but I can’t.

  It took me a long time to nod, but as soon as I did I was immediately enfolded in his arms, hauled onto his lap as he settled on the carpet and pulled me tightly against his chest, tucking the top of my head beneath his chin. And he… He radiated that warmth, that comfort and heat that felt so good yesterday when his fingers brushed mine. He was full of it, waves of it pulsing into me wherever we touched, even through the fabric of our clothing. I felt myself uncoiling, the desperate unhappiness that had seized me a moment ago slowly draining away as he held me close.

  We stayed like that for a long time; the sun edged across the carpet, casting longer shadows as it sank beneath the rim of the world, and I finally pulled b
ack to look up at him. His face was mostly hidden to me, the light too low to show me his features, but the warmth, the comfort he gave me, was just as strong as before. He watched me for a long moment before lowering his forehead so that it touched mine. You’re right—this is hard. It’s all been hard. But for what it’s worth… I don’t think there’s enough magic in the goddamn world to make a spell that could contain how I feel about you. How many different facets to this relationship we’ve had to explore. To endure. The way I feel about you is entirely my own, and no one can take it away. Not even you, Raven. He leaned back and stared down into my eyes for what felt like an eternity while I absorbed the meaning of his words.

  “We should go check out the library,” I whispered, and he nodded. It still took me a minute to stand up, and when I did, leaving his body felt like ripping away from my own self—as if I were leaving a limb behind. Cold, stark aloneness stole back across my mind, pulling me away from the comfort he’d given me, and I shook my head, wondering if the bond between Sineater and Magi was like some kind of barbiturate, or hallucinogen.

  But I didn’t think so. In fact… I felt restored. I felt a lot less hopeless and out of control, and even… Rejuvenated. New. I looked down at Jake and offered my hand to help pull him up, enjoying the way it made the corners of his mouth turn up. He pretended to let me help, and then we stood there and looked at each other, and it took everything I had not to tell him to kiss me.

  He was right; I could obviously be very attracted to someone I hated—well… Had I ever hated him? Really? I thought I had. I thought I did yesterday, when he was deep in his own crappy hell and took it out on me, when he made me feel small and disposable.

  I guess I could forgive him for that. A little. Now that I was starting to understand what magic made you feel like—‘crazy,’ as it turns out, is a really vague word, encompassing depressed, manic, irritable, hopeless, angry… I didn’t control my gift well enough to siphon off enough power to keep me out dark places. And he helped me.