Shadow Magic: Year 3

by Alexa B. James

Bella’s hand shoots out, her clawed fingers wrapping around my arm. “Not so fast,” she snarls. “I’m not done.”

  “I think we are,” I say, jerking out of her grip. But in truth, I can’t walk out. I don’t know what she’ll do if I walk away now.

  “I heard you two talking at the start of the year,” she says. “You and Headmaster Darius. I saw you going in there, so we stopped to listen. Good thing Dirk has such excellent hearing, isn’t it?”

  A cold knot of dread forms in my belly. I was afraid of that. From the moment I walked out of his office and saw her outside, I had a bad feeling. I thought Dirk and I were at least friendly, and now that he’s with Asher… I guess I can’t really blame him. Bella probably blackmailed him into listening for her. But it doesn’t make me any less screwed.

  “And the nail in the coffin,” she says, leaning forward and narrowing her eyes. “Is when Topher told us. See, he could do more than overhear your words. He could overhear your thoughts.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  She shrugs. “You don’t have to. My daddy will believe me, and he’ll have Darius called before the Society of Supernaturals. And they’ll have plenty of telepaths.”

  I gulp down my panic, trying to think of what to do. This is a disaster, and I can’t think of a way out.

  She knows. Fuck. And she’s right. Telepaths will pluck it right out of our heads.

  “Won’t that be a scandal?” Bella asks smugly. “The whole world will know that instead of protecting his precious priestess, he fell under her spell and fucked her like everyone else. Doesn’t look so good for him, does it?”

  “What do you want?” I ask through clenched teeth, crossing my arms to keep from scratching out her eyes. Maybe I could do some kind of spell on her…

  “I want Thorn,” she says simply.

  We stare at each other for a long minute. Bella’s tears are gone, and despite the smudges of mascara on her cheeks letting me know they were real, there’s no sign of sorrow now. She’s steely and hard, a conniving bitch with singular focus.

  “You can’t make him love you,” I say, already knowing she doesn’t care.

  Bella’s expression darkens. Her voice is like ice against my skin, dripping with malcontent. “You think you’re so special,” she says. “Getting him to sleep with you. Getting all the most powerful sorcerers, even two Headmasters, to be totally obsessed with you. I’m not so easily fooled. I see what you’re really about, Jade. You’re just a celestial slut. You can collect your little harem, you can make fate itself kneel to you, but you can never bring back your mother, or your sister, or even return your father’s sanity to him. You think you’re so powerful, but you’re powerless when it really matters.”

  She’s right. My magic means nothing if it can’t save the people I love. Including Darius.

  Except I can save him. I can, but I’ll have to break up with Thorn. Just the thought makes my insides seize up in a painful twist. I can’t do that to him. He’s just begun to trust me. We’ve just established our relationship, just barely started to open up to each other. But how can I throw Darius under the bus? It’s my fault that we slept together. I’m the one who seduced him.

  “Okay,” I say at last. “But there’s one condition. I’m not giving you any magic, or even saying a nice word about you to Thorn. You’re on your own. And you’ll see soon enough that he’s a person, not a trinket from your vacations to be traded. He might not be mine anymore, but he’ll never be yours.”

  “You let me worry about that,” she says, sliding a hand through her shiny blonde strands. “It’s amazing what a wounded ego will make a man do. Two of your men have already come crying to me, and I was all too eager to help them forget you. Don’t think Thorn’s any different, Jade. Under it all, he’s just a man. And he’ll remember exactly how his friends got over you. I’ve always been there for him, and he’ll finally see what a gift that is. He doesn’t even have to share me with his friends. I’m all his.”

  I want to hurl, or more accurately, hurl insults and fists. My mind is spinning, but I can’t think of a single way out of this.

  “So, here’s how it’s going to go down,” Bella says. “You’re going to break up with Thorn. You’re not going to mention me or give him a reason. And then you’re never going to speak to him again. You’re never going to touch him, or bewitch him, or even look at him again. If you do, I’m going to tell my daddy exactly what we heard. I’ll give you until the end of school Friday. I’m going home this weekend, so it’s up to you what I tell him. That I’m Thorn’s girlfriend, or that you’re fucking the Headmaster. My parents are in the Society, you know. They can get Darius fired in two seconds.”

  She gives me a final triumphant smile, flips her hair over her shoulder, and flounces out of the Great Hall, leaving me standing in the dark, trying to remember why the fuck I came in here to comfort that snake in Barbie’s clothing.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Bella gave me until Friday to break things off with Thorn, which means I have until then to figure things out. Unfortunately, I can’t tell anyone about my conundrum because no one knows about me and Darius, and the whole point of saying I’d dump Thorn is to keep it that way. And since Thorn is the only one who actually knows, and I’m trying to figure out a way not to hurt him, I don’t want to go to him about it. Which leaves one person.

  I tap on the apartment door on Wednesday morning, looking around like I’m already guilty of something. I’ve been here before, and it was no big deal. The guys come traipsing up here every time they have a problem like it’s their right. But then, they’re not fucking the Headmaster.

  Darius opens the door wearing nothing but a towel, gives a furtive glance up and down the hall, and pulls me inside, pushing the door closed behind me. Before I can speak, he backs me against the door, his hips pinning me and his mouth descending on mine. He kisses me hungrily, one hand cupping my cheek while the other slides behind my thigh, drawing it up so he can rock his stiff cock against me. Heat pulses between my thighs, and I almost give in and let him devour me. But I force myself to break the kiss before my mind disappears and my body takes over.

  “I need to talk to you,” I gasp as his lips find my ear, nipping at my earlobe and sending shivers of pleasure through me. Water beads on his shoulders from the shower he must have been taking when I knocked.

  “I need to fuck you,” he growls into my ear. “Then we’ll talk.”

  My hands clench around his shoulders involuntarily, and my core pulses at his words.

  “Darius—”

  I was not expecting this when I came over, but I’ve been worrying myself to death all week, and god, it feels so good. He’s already pulling open my shirt, tugging down the cups of my bra to suck greedily at my nipples while his hand moves under my skirt and lowers my panties. The sensation of his hot, wet mouth on my nipples makes me melt with pleasure, and I open my legs for him, my protest dying on my lips as his fingers sink into me.

  After a minute, he straightens and drops his towel. The sight of his beautiful body standing before me without a stitch of clothes on whisks every thought from my mind. I gape at him, and he stares back at me in the disarray he’s put me in, my panties around my thighs, my shirt halfway open, my tits hanging out the top of my bra. His eyes are hazy with lust as he licks his lips. “Now lift up your skirt so I can see that little wet pussy,” he says, his voice rough with desire.

  “Darius,” I gasp.

  “Now,” he orders.

  I pull up my skirt, wetness slicking my inner thighs and increasing every second that he stares at me with ravenous hunger. After a long moment, he steps forward and rips my panties away before pinning me to the door again. Taking my wrists in one hand, he pins them above my head while he pushes his cock through my folds, coating it in my wetness before driving it deep into me. I give a soft cry, my head falling back against the door as he reaches my depths, his cock throbbing inside me while his balls press firmly against my a
ss. He grabs my thigh, and I wrap my legs around his waist.

  He fucks me hard and fast against the door, pounding into me with quick, sharp thrusts until he pushes me over the edge. I arch my back, thrusting my hips against his as an orgasm crashes over me. Darius growls against my throat in response, giving one final, rough thrust. His cum washes into me, filling me with heat and making me shudder with desire all over again. I love the way he fills me, the heat of his seed spilling into me. It’s all I can do not to come again when he throbs inside me, spilling the last drops into me.

  I slowly draw the magic back into me while Darius stands there catching his breath, his cock still pulsing every few seconds, a shudder running through his body along with it.

  “Fuck, that’s hot,” he mutters against my neck. “Can you come over every morning?”

  The words are a harsh reminder of why I’m here. “About that…”

  “I think I conjured you,” he says. “I was just thinking about you in the shower, and then you come knocking on my door like… Little Red Riding Hood just waiting to be eaten up.”

  He smiles and kisses my lips before stepping away, easing me back down onto my feet. He picks up the towel and cleans himself off before handing it to me.

  “Got any spare underwear?” I ask, picking up the shredded pair I wore here. They were one of my favorite new pairs, too. Comfortable and sexy. I realize I never thanked Rocco for them.

  “I can fix those,” Darius says, taking them from me.

  “You’re secretly a seamstress as well as a lover of trash TV?” I tease. “I’m beginning to think you’re a little old lady with a disguising spell on.”

  He laughs and hands back my underwear, good as new. “Not a seamstress,” he says. “A sorcerer.”

  “Thanks,” I say, pulling them on. “Now, can we talk?”

  “Are you breaking up with me?” he asks, his voice teasing. But I see a hint of seriousness in his eyes.

  “To break up with you, I’d have to be your girlfriend,” I say, keeping my voice as light as his, even though I’m sure he can see the resentment in my eyes as well as I can see the fear in his.

  “I’m going to get dressed,” he says, all business now. “Coffee’s on. If you’ll make us a couple cups, I’ll be out in a minute and we can talk.”

  I curse myself for ruining his good mood, but I have serious things to talk about. I pour us a couple cups of coffee, realizing as I do so that I don’t know what he drinks. It makes me a little sad as I stir milk and sugar into mine. Some part of me feels like we are about to break up, and I’m filled with the regrets of all the things we didn’t do, all the things we’ll miss.

  Darius emerges a minute later, fully clothed in a pair of dress slacks and a button-up lavender shirt I remember from one of the first times I saw him. “Jade,” he says. “I shouldn’t have been all over you the moment you walked in. I didn’t realize you were ending things.”

  “I’m not,” I say. “And don’t be sorry. I… Liked it.” I push the coffee to him, biting my lip and smiling up at him. “You can throw me down and ravish me any time, Headmaster.”

  He gives a small smile, quirking an eyebrow. “I’ll remember that,” he says, his voice low, his eyes locked on mine over the brim of his cup as he lifts it to his lips.

  “I didn’t know how you liked your coffee,” I say.

  “Black is fine.”

  I sit down on a barstool, and he pulls one around the bar to sit opposite me. I quickly go over what Bella said about Thorn, and Dirk overhearing us, and her threat to go to her parents. Darius listens with a frown of concentration, not interrupting until I’m done. “So, what do you think?” I ask after spilling the whole story. “What should I do?”

  “I think it’s curious that Topher would tell Bella such a thing,” Darius says. “I know he disapproved of our relationship, such as it is. But the very reason for that was that he was a by-the-book sort. He took his role as a teacher very seriously, which is why he stopped seeing your friend. As a teacher, he would never gossip with a student about something he suspected about another student. Especially something that involved the Headmaster or risked someone’s job. He would have come to me and told me directly.”

  “Why would Bella lie about that? Just because she knew he was a telepath, and she was trying to scare me?”

  “Maybe,” Darius says. “If she wasn’t lying, we need to be asking a different question.”

  “Like what Bella had on Topher,” I say. “If he did tell her, she must have been blackmailing him, too.”

  Darius nods. “I think it’s time I had a little talk with Miss Goodwin.”

  “Be careful,” I say. “She’ll do anything to get Thorn. If you talk to her alone, she’ll probably say you propositioned her.”

  “I won’t be alone with her,” he says. “I’d like you to be there as well as Thorn and Rocco.”

  “She’ll feel like it’s an interrogation,” I say. “She won’t talk.”

  “Then just Thorn, you, and I,” Darius says. “We’re all involved in the situation, so there’s a reason for us all to be there. Let’s meet tomorrow afternoon. That gives me a little time to get my thoughts together.”

  “Okay,” I say, sliding off my stool and smoothing my skirt. “I’ll be there.”

  “And Jade?” Darius says, turning to me as I head for the door.

  I pause and turn back. “Yeah?”

  Darius give me a small smile. “Whatever happens, it was worth it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Are you finally going to tell me why you’ve been avoiding me all week?” Thorn asks as we head for Darius’s office the next afternoon.

  “I haven’t been avoiding you.”

  “You’ve been acting strangely.”

  “I haven’t been doing that, either,” I say. “We spent time together on Tuesday.”

  “When I was on guard duty.”

  “And I told you I didn’t regret anything that happened between us,” I remind him.

  “I know you, Jade. I can tell when something’s wrong.”

  “To answer your question, yes, this has to do with that.” I know I shouldn’t say more. Bella will consider our deal broken if I tell him, but I can’t just dump him. I could never hurt him like that. “Bella knows about me and Darius,” I blurt out. “She threatened to tell her parents and get him brought before the Society of Supernaturals, which will get him fired, if I didn’t break up with you.”

  “With me?” Thorn asks. “She thinks that’s what’s holding me back from being with her?”

  “Apparently.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” he says. “She was after me for years before I even met you.”

  “I know,” I say. “But it’s Bella. Does anything in her psychotic mind make sense? She had a complete meltdown because someone wore the same Halloween costume as her. That’s a tantrum kids usually outgrow by eight years old.”

  “What did you tell her?” Thorn asks.

  “I had until this Friday to dump you before she goes to her parents,” I say. “Tomorrow. I’ve been trying to come up with a way where neither of you get hurt. But you know that even if we have to break up, I love you, Thorn.”

  “And you know that I wouldn’t go out with Bella even if you weren’t here,” he says. “But… I guess for you, if it would make you happy, I would pretend. But nothing would ever happen between us.”

  “I know,” I say. “I wouldn’t ask you to do that.”

  He shrugs. “Then we’d better figure out a way to fix this.”

  I nod, more determined than ever to get him out of Bella’s clutches. Thorn’s commitment takes my breath away. As fucked up as it sounds, I’ve never felt more loved than when he offers to date another girl for me. Because he’d date his nightmare to save one of my other boyfriends. That’s how much he wants to see me happy.

  Still, I can’t believe he’d consider it, even for me. I don’t want him to have to do that for me, even if he’s wil
ling. I know he’ll insist if it’s the only way to save Darius’s job, and not just because he respects his mentor. The fact that he’d do that for me makes me just about melt. He didn’t flip out on me when I told him what Bella asked. He didn’t ask me to give up anything. He just dived in, no questions asked, like this problem is our problem to solve instead of just mine.

  Before I have a chance to express how much I appreciate him, we’re at Darius’s office. The door stands open, and when we step inside, Bella is already there, sitting in one of the chairs with a sour expression on her face. When she sees me, her eyes fly wide, and her gaze darts between me and Thorn before locking on me. “You told him?” she hisses.

  “He’s my guard,” I say. “Do you want him to stand outside the door?”

  “That might be wise,” Darius says. He’s seated behind his desk, looking as poised and professional as a Headmaster should be. Only the paddle on the wall reminds me of his indiscretions. It’s all I can do not to squeeze my knees together and squirm when I see the wooden instrument and remember the effect it had on me. I wonder what naughty thing I could do to get him to use it again…

  “Leave the door open,” Darius says to Thorn, who exits and stands against the wall outside.

  Bella crosses her arms and pouts. “What’s going on? I have classes to go to.”

  “I’d just like a moment to speak with you about some things you seem to think you overheard.”

  “I did overhear them,” Bella says, lifting her chin and giving Darius a haughty look. “You have no power over me now. I know what you are. A pervert.”

  Darius clears his throat and adjusts his tie. “I want to ask you about Topher,” he says. “Jade says you spoke to him before he died.”

  “I didn’t speak to him,” Bella says. “I didn’t do anything. And you can’t prove otherwise.”

  “You know that’s not true,” he says. “It’s easy enough to prove a lie with magic.”

  “I didn’t do it,” she says again, but she drops the bitch act. “I just wanted to know what he knew. That’s it. I had nothing to do with his death.”