“Me too.”
It’s so far past lunchtime that food isn’t being served anymore, so we end up going to his cottage, and we have some sandwiches.
“It’s all we have,” Sage says with a shrug.
“It’s fine.”
“It’s no picnic, though.”
Of course that makes me think about our picnic and what we did on the blanket and also how we called me Bay. Is he flirting with me? He has to know what that comment will make me recall.
We finish eating, and as we fly back to the hill, he keeps bumping into me, laughing, teasing.
Oh, yeah, he’s definitely flirting.
We land and settle back to work, but now, there’s more glances, more smiles, more… I don’t know. Happiness? I’m definitely not thinking about murders or anything else. I’m not even thinking about our poor plant either, which is drooping and looking rather forlorn. If we aren’t careful, the plant will die before we even try to cure it of its ailment.
“You love the moon?” Sage asks, reaching over to touch my pendant.
“Do you like it?” I ask, myself reaching to touch it, my hand touching his as a result.
“I do,” he says. “It suits you.”
“Does it now?” I ask, lifting my chin.
“Yes.”
“I would’ve thought you might think that the sun might be more fitting.” I bite my lower lip. Bay saved up for a long time to get the necklace. A gorgeous purple crescent hangs from the black cord, five crystals in the shape of beads on either side. I love it, and she gave it to me. She’s not much of a sharer, so I love the necklace that much more because of it.
“The moon gets a bad rap,” Sage says, slowly withdrawing his hand.
My heart should be racing, but for whatever reason, when I touch the crescent moon, I tend to feel calmer. Maybe I should try to touch it before I fall asleep.
Or maybe it’s not the necklace that’s preventing my heart from racing. Maybe I’m not into Sage as much as I thought I was, and his touch isn’t affecting me as much as it had. Then again, I am having fun teasing and flirting with him, and I’m going to be anything but calm if I try to reason through my feelings right now.
“Are you okay?” Sage asks, touching my knee.
“I—”
“What she is is late.” Damon hovers above us.
I look up and flinch, which causes Sage’s hand to fall away from my knee. “I’m late, aren’t I?” I glance at Sage. “I’m just messing up time-wise in every way I can today.”
“Late for…” Sage asks without asking.
“We have a project to work on too,” I tell him.
“And dinner plans,” Damon adds.
"Nice. Have fun, you two. I'm sorry we got distracted and didn't make much progress today," Sage says.
“We’ll have to try again tomorrow.”
Sage nods but doesn’t say anything else as he gathers the plant and flies off. He backed off so easily. He could’ve made a comment about how we had lunch together or invited me back to his cottage for more sandwiches on another day. Something, anything to try to make Damon jealous. If Sage cares for me and wants to date me, wouldn’t he be jealous of my spending time with Damon? He acted that way before, kind of. Now, he’s flirting, but he’s suddenly okay with my hanging out with Damon? I don’t get it.
Unless he doesn’t think Damon’s a threat. Has Damon started to date someone else? Does Sage know something I don’t? Or maybe Sage thinks I’m too light and wouldn’t want to be with someone like Damon, even if Sage does think I’m a daredevil.
Fire and brimstone, I’m going to make myself go crazy if I keep trying to figure out these two.
“Are you ready for me?” Damon asks.
I smirk. “I think the question is… are you ready for me?”
Chapter 20
Damon chuckles. “You know I am. Ready whenever you are for anything at all.”
"Hmm. Sure, you are."
He wiggles his eyebrows. “What do you have in mind?”
“Our project.”
“All right then.” He crackles his knuckles, rolls his head around, and proceeds to fly around behind me and give me a massage.
“Why do you persist in giving me massages?”
“Because you’re so uptight.”
“How is this going to help us?”
“I think we failed to join our magic last time because you can’t clear your mind. Close your eyes,” he orders.
“I don’t like to listen to demands,” I tell him dryly.
“Just humor me, okay?”
“Fine.”
I comply and try to focus on nothing but his touch. My breathing grows regular and then starts to speed up. His fingers work magic on my knots, and I can feel myself start to feel a little better, a little looser. I’m trying so hard to shut everything out, to just focus on my breathing, but there’s something nagging at me, and my eyes pop open.
“What is it?” he asks.
I glance at him over my shoulder. “How did you know?”
“You got all tense again, right when I thought you were beginning to listen. You like to defy orders.” He gently pinches my nose.
“You would like that.”
“Defying orders from authority? Yes. Obeying orders while in the bedroom? That I don’t mind so much.”
“Why?” I blurt out.
“It’s about trust.”
“If you don’t have control—”
“There can be something very freeing about letting another have control over you.” He brushes his hand along my jawline. “Over your body.”
“My mind is my own.”
“I would love to know what’s going on in that pretty little mind of yours.”
I hesitate. “If you want to ask me a question, I’ll answer it.”
“Hmm. What if I want a specific answer to a specific question?”
I narrow my eyes. “If you want to ask me to blow you, the answer is no.”
Damon chuckles and holds out both hands. I place mine in his.
“Let’s try this again, shall we?” he murmurs.
I nod, and I close my eyes, under the assumption that he’ll do the same.
He groans, and I pop my eyes open again to see disappointment in his eyes. A muscle in his jaw twitches.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, worried.
“You have no idea how badly I want to kiss you right now.”
I start to pull my hands free, but he tightens his grip on them.
“I won’t. Not until you ask me to,” he assures me, “and you will ask me to.”
“You’re a little too confident for your own good, you know that?”
“Not possible.” He smirks. “And again, let’s try this.”
“For real this time?” I tease.
“For real.”
We've decided to practice first on plants that do respond well to magic. That's the point of today's session. Separately, we both made a particular type of bush grow, so we know what we're capable of independently. Now, we're going to join our magic, and the results should at least be double, if not more. If we can get the hang of using joined magic, then we'll try it on our assigned plant.
But it doesn’t work. I can almost feel Damon’s magic through our linked hands, but the magic is slippery, there but not, untappable by my own.
Damon mumbles a curse and loosens his grip on my hands enough that I can pull away. “Figures,” he grumbles.
“What figures?” I ask, confused.
“Today isn’t a good day. I’m surprised you and Sage were so happy and cheerful.”
My brow furrows, and I eye him curiously. “Why? What happened?”
“Ah, I should’ve realized that meant you didn’t know.”
My heart skips a beat, and I’m so nervous I’m ready to get sick. “What happened, Damon? Was there another murder?”
“Yes.”
I close my eyes.
“Rosemary?”
&nbs
p; I open my eyes.
“The victim is someone we know.
“W-Who?” I stammer.
“A friend of your sisters from what I hear.”
My hand flies to my throat. “Not Thistle. Bracken?”
If Damon’s shocked that I kind of almost sort of want one of my sister’s friends dead, he doesn’t react. And it’s not that I want Bracken dead. Out of all of them, he’s the one I would be least sorry about.
“Holly,” he murmurs.
“Holly,” I breathe. “A fairy victim this time. Are we sure it’s the same person responsible?”
“Same MO. Daggered in the back.”
“Did it happen on campus?” My thoughts are a blur. “If it happened off campus, maybe there won’t be a campus-wide lockdown again. That had been so terrible. You were lucky to avoid it. Seriously.”
“Rosemary?”
I shut up.
“I shouldn’t have told you until we were done working.” Damon sighs and runs a hand through his hair.
“No. I’m glad you told me. I needed to know. I would’ve found out eventually.” I touch his arm and then lift up to kiss his cheek. “I’m going to go.”
“And check on your sister?”
I nod, try to smile, but can barely move my lips. Quick as I can, I jet back to the cottage. Bay’s door is shut, and I almost plow into it, expecting the knob to turn in my palm, but it doesn’t. Her door is locked.
Instead of banging on her door, I leave the cottage and fly around to her windows. The glass windows are all shut, which is really odd. Normally, we leave them open.
Now, I hit the glass with my fists. “Bay! It’s me. Open up.”
She doesn’t answer, so I use magic and force the windows up to enter the room. Bay’s on her bed, curled up, but as I fly over, I see that her eyes are open. She’s not sleeping.
All I do is climb into bed and hold her. Bay pats my hand, and we don’t say a word. We don’t need to. Sometimes, just being there is enough.
When I wake the next morning, still in Bay’s bed, I know that being there is no longer enough. Bay deserves more. Holly does too. All of the victims.
Yes, I can't help myself anymore. I have to start investigating, and I'm not going to ask anyone for help. Not after so many specifically asked me not this. No, I won't even ask Thistle. He had been friends with Holly too, so his judgment will be off, and as worried as I am that he'll relapse with all of this, I think it will be better to give him some space.
Off I go, locking myself in my room, reading as many articles as I can about all of the victims. The Internet might be for humans, but there’s a secret portal for a whole other Internet just for fae, angels, and demons.
It’s there that I do all of my research for the sole fae victim.
I’m so buried into my research that nothing else matters. Not time, not food, not anything. I’m not even sure if Orchid talks to me. The world around me doesn’t exist. There has to be some kind of link between the victims, something that caused the murderer to pick them and not someone else.
A hand lands on my shoulder, and I jerk away, mumbling a shriek.
Damon’s smirk dies as he glances at my computer. His gaze falls onto my notes.
“Don’t touch that,” I say, but he’s already lifting the pad.
“You’re looking into the murders, aren’t you?”
“So what if I am?” I lift my chin and yank my pad out of his hands.
“How very noble of you,” he says, “or is it?”
I scowl. “I’m not doing this to be noble.”
“That’s good, considering you waited until a fairy was murdered to look into this,” he mocks. “After all, we’ve known for a long while not that a fairy might be responsible for the murders.”
“Or a demon,” I say coolly.
Damon blinks a few times, his expression blank and emotionless, but it doesn’t matter. I can tell that he’s upset.
Feeling more than a little guilty, I open my mouth, but he just holds out his hand to stop me and flies off. Great. This is just what I need, for Damon to be mad at me. Plus, he's going to tell the others if they don't already know. It's pathetic that I don't even know if Orchid's aware of what I'm doing. Why did Damon even come around?
Oh. Probably because I’ve been missing classes. I’ve lost track of the hours and even the day of the week.
As guilty as I feel, I reorganize my notes and get back to my research. So far, the police—both fairy and human—have been unsuccessful. It’s probably wrong for me to even contemplate my being able to be of assistance, but I’m done acting like I can just let terrible things happen, especially considering one happened right here on campus. Yes, Holly had been murdered on the grounds. It’s only a matter of time before we’re under lockdown once again.
Chapter 21
Try as I might, there’s just not much that I can find that ties the victims together.
The first was a sixteen-year-old girl named Hope Rina. She lives out of state, but she had been in California to visit her aunt and uncle. The humans don't realize this, but there's land to the west of California. That's where the fairies are, hidden away, not attached to their world in any part.
Except for now.
Anyhow, back to Hope. She's an honor student, which means she's smart, and she's active in sports. She had been out for a jog when the murderer, well, murdered her. I don't like running. Clearly, as a fairy, I prefer to fly, but if I'm not flying, I'm walking. Running just feels like work. Flying is different. I do know that some like it, and some humans are crazy enough to run marathons. Now, I really don't understand. To each their own, I guess. But it's sad to think that Hope, who had been training up toward running her first half-marathon according to her relatives, had died working toward a goal. She had been driven. Too many people—both fairies and human—have no drive, but she had goals and a plan to reach them, and it had all been for naught.
So that’s the first victim. Gary Walker was the second one. He was a butcher, which sounds like an absolutely horrific job title, and I thought he might’ve gotten what he deserved until I looked into it. He cuts up and sells animal parts. Unlike some butchers, Gary actually will go out and hunt down the animals he then sells. Er, He cut up and sold animal parts and went out and hunted the animals. He did what he could for his community. Oh, and he lived in Washington, not California. Still on the west coast, at least as far as the humans know. Yes, they have access to the ocean, we’ll give them that, but we have the real ocean. They just have a fake one, an illusion. Shh.
As for what Gary would do for his community, he was famous for giving away extra meat to families in need or widows or widowers. He gave scraps to mutts and dogs with no owners and basically adopted a pack of them. In fact, I hadn't even realized this until I did my research, but authorities found one of his dogs about a mile away from Gary's body. The dog had been killed too. In my mind, the dog tried to defend Gary, loyal to the very end. From what I've seen and have been taught in Animal Companions with Professor Fox is that animals are only loyal to good and just people. They can sense how light or dark a person is, whether human or fae. Now, naturally, there are good and bad animals, just like humans and fae, so there are some animals that gravitate to the dark and dark people, but that hadn't been the case here.
The last human had been Annie Dull. She lived in Sin City. Las Vegas. She worked as a, well, as a prostitute. She was paid to have sex. I'm naïve in some ways, I'll admit it, but since coming to Light Fae Academy and talking to Bay and even my other friends, I've learned a lot. Yes, Sage has been a teacher too. One day, Bay sat me down and explained about oral sex, anal sex, precautions, all of that, but no one told me about the women who sell their bodies for sex. And I guess some women are desperate enough to do that to provide for their families. Who knows? Some might even take pride in it. I’m not going to judge.
Annie had a rough childhood, been in and out of a juvenile detention facility. She had no parents. They di
ed in a car crash when she had been two years old. For the most part, she seemed to enjoy life. Went out to parties, had some friends, enjoyed singing and dancing. Her boyfriend had proposed to her two nights before she had been killed. Her engagement ring, a ruby ring, had been stolen. As far as I can tell, she’s the only one to have had anything missing from her body. Did someone stumble on her body and steal it? Did the murderer take it? I can’t say.
Oh, and I even looked at pictures of their faces. Holly had long blond hair, bangs, and huge brown eyes hidden behind glasses. Gary was bald with a huge smile in every picture I saw of him. His skin was the darkest of the three human victims, and his teeth were a dazzling white. Of them all, his eyes were the kindest. Finally, Annie had strange hair, blond almost white for the last six inches, the top a dark brown. No bangs, blue eyes.
And then there's Holly. She had blue eyes, like Annie, only Holly's are more of a lighter shade. She's also far paler in skin tone than the others. Holly isn't—hadn't—been the best of students, and she seemed to still try to find ways to get fairy dust even after my sister stopped dealing. Maybe that's why Bay stayed away from Holly some this year, to put some space between Bay and the drug.
Maybe it’s time for me to talk to Bay some. Wearily, I rub a hand down my face, rub the back of my neck, and rub my hands together. My palms are sweaty and cold, clammy. I’ve been sitting for so long that my back aches, and as soon as I stand, I stretch. My muscles are tight, and I need a massage.
Immediately, I think of Damon.
Shaking my head, I walk over to Bay’s room and knock on her door.
“Come in,” she calls.
“Bay, how are you?”
She takes one look at me and does a double-take. “When’s the last time you showered?”
“I’m not sure.” I pat my hair. It doesn’t feel grimy or greasy.
“Are you all right?” she asks.
I nod. “You?”
“Hanging in there. I… I feel terrible.” She heaves a sigh and sits down crossed-legged in the middle of her bed.
“Why?”
Light Fae Academy: Year Two Page 10
