And here he was, bartending.
Scandal!
He sauntered over to her and asked, “What will you have?" His voice was different—common and rough—and his clothes were so normal. On campus he wore luxurious silks and silver jewelry—he was as flashy as they came. But here? He could've been anybody. He might have had his silver and gold hair hidden under a ball cap but Tamsin had recognized him instantly.
“What do you recommend?” she asked.
Gray froze. He hadn’t seen her at first, not really. But now he had. His disguise had been penetrated. The jig, as they say, was up.
“Maybe something in some other bar?” His voice was something between a whisper and a hiss. A hissper?
“I heard this establishment was a good place to beat the heat.” Tamsin winked at him. It was delicious watching Gray squirm. He was always so cocky, so confident. “Come on, barkeep, serve me something cold that will make my toes curl.”
His alarm faded. A hint of a smile played on his lips.
Tamsin grinned at him. “I can’t really keep this act up? So if you could seriously just give me something cold—all I want is to have a nice place to study.”
“Roommate troubles?” Gray put on an accent—he sounded like some noir detective. “Or maybe it’s a fella who’s gotcha down, kid?” He flipped a glass up onto the bar and then spun bottles of rum and triple sec across his palms like glass pinwheels. The move was incredibly slick. How long had he been working here?
“My roommates definitely suck pretty hard,” Tamsin said. “But there’s no fella to have problems about—not that I even have time to wish I had time to have fella problems.”
Gray tossed a cherry into the drink and filled it to the top with soda water. “So what is it then?” He seemed so genuine here, in this environment. Was he a highborn wizard pretending to be a bartender or a bartender pretending to be a wizard?
Tamsin wanted to open up, to tell him that despite being an opener she had the magical oomph of a six-year-old. But she couldn’t. Failing was hard enough. But admitting failure? Especially to a ferociously cute and charming wizard boy? No. No thank you.
Instead she said, “Is this where you vanish to? At night, when everyone else is doing homework or hanging out in the common area, is this where you are?”
Gray leaned onto the bar and tilted the brim of his hat up. His silver hair sparkled in the low light. “Four nights a week, I’m here. Two nights I have social obligations at the Snob House. And on Sunday nights I eat dinner with my parents. They have a modest home at the edge of Dragon Hill.” His manner softened as he spoke. The real Gray emerged. His voice lost its rough accent and his posture elongated. There was no magic involved—just pure acting skill.
Tamsin nodded. “Yeah. But why?”
Gray shrugged. “I need the money. My family needs the money.” He scanned the bar, making sure no one needed any refills. “The extremely short version is that when my fantastically wealthy grandparents died, my evil uncle cheated my family out of any inheritance. He stole the fortune and the throne. And so here I labor. The money goes mainly to my parents. I keep a bit aside to pay for silly things like food and tuition.”
“This is why you’re on academic probation,” Tamsin said.
“No, actually I’m on probation because the administration suspects that I was involved in a rather long-lasting and destructive prank war on campus last year. And they are entirely correct. They couldn’t prove it and expel me, but they had enough to put me on notice.” Gray wiped down the wooden bar with a rag.
Tamsin sipped her drink. It was sweet and fruity with a hint of something potent underneath that burned her throat and tickled her nose. It felt incredible on that hot day. “This is delicious. I really should have started drinking much sooner.”
Gray frowned. “Go slow on that. It’s not your first time, is it?”
“Why does everyone think I’m a virgin?” Tamsin snapped.
“Your first drink, love. Your first drink.” Gray smiled at her, but this time felt different. It wasn’t calculated or cruel. There was no performance in it. For once, he was being genuine. The smile was infectious and soon Tamsin found herself grinning back at him.
“I’ve drank before. Just not anything good, I guess.” She took another big sip of the cocktail. Her toes were tingling now. “I’ve had Zima and wine coolers and a shot of tequila when my Science Quiz team won the state title. Oh my god, is this drink actually magic? Did you slip me a magic mickey?”
Gray shushed her. “No, love. No. It’s just a Cosmo made with cream soda. And served in a pint glass.” Again the grin. “People think you’re a virgin because like it or not you’ve got an innocence about you. A youthful energy. An optimism that those of who grew up in the magic using community entirely lack.”
“Because magic makes things too easy.”
“Not everything.” Gray indicated the bar and presumably the serious amounts of bullshit he had to put up with there. “But yeah. You can do whatever you want, when you have the skills, so why do anything at all? What can I do that anyone else can’t do at a moment’s notice? What does any achievement mean? Magic makes things easy.”
“Not for me,” Tamsin said.
“Clearly not for me either.”
“No, I mean, I can’t do magic. Not really. I can open this door inside myself and let, like, raw energy pour through. But I can’t do anything more than the simplest charms. In the lab yesterday, we were supposed to make a frog invisible.”
“Renault’s Hidden Amphibian,” Gray interrupted. “A ridiculous spell but the motions in it are the foundation of—”
“Everything, yeah. I get it.” Tears welled up in Tamsin’s eyes. Why was she crying? This was the worst time to be crying. “But I can’t do it. I made the frog turn orange, and that took half an hour.”
Her tears plunked onto the bar. She could feel an ugly cry coming on. The ropes of snot and puffy eyes and messy hair kind of crying. It was one hundred percent not what she wanted to do in front of Gray.
He decided to distract her. “I got dumped. Did I tell you that?”
Tamsin sniffed. “I didn’t even know you were seeing anyone.”
“We were together for three years. We met when I was seventeen and she was eighteen, at a ball. It was just before my grandfather passed. I was still an heir to the Winter Throne. Her name was Esmé. It still is, actually.” Gray grinned, but the smile didn’t reach his sad eyes.
“That’s a pretty name,” Tamsin said. Though if she was being honest, she already kind of hated Esme.
“We dated and courted. After my uncle seized the throne, we kept the engagement secret. She goes here, by the way. And, yeah, she broke up with me with a letter.”
“I saw you that day. I could tell something was wrong.”
Gray looked surprised, as if he never expected anyone to remember him. “I’m sorry. We were talking about your magic issues and I stole the microphone.”
Tamsin sipped her drink. “Nope. I have been listening to myself all day. Pray, sir, continue.”
“She slept with my best friend.”
Tamsin spit her drink back into the glass. “You jumped ahead a bit there.”
“It rather colors all that came before it.”
The scraggly man waved Gray over for another refill. Then Gray went and checked in on the other patrons before returning to Tamsin.
“She always had these romantic notions of men fighting for the women they love, Esmé did. She would ask these questions endlessly when we were out together, like Do you see that big brute over there?” Gray’s voice was high and breathy and vaguely British. “If that man came over and groped my bottom, what would you do? And I’d reply some nonsense about giving him a right good thrashing or cursing him into a newt or whatever.”
“Your impression is wonderful,” Tamsin snickered. “You should always talk like that.”
“So then she fucks William, my bestie. My B.F.F. My brother from anoth
er mother. We’d been tight since grade school. But apparently not tight enough.”
Tamsin tapped her empty glass and smiled at Gray. The world felt lighter and bubblier and her toes were very tingly. A warmth burned in her chest that for once didn’t come from an extra-dimensional magical portal, but from something far more wholesome—alcohol.
If one drink made her feel this happy, what would two do?
Gray talked while he obliged her. “She’d always been a bit threatened by William, to be honest. She never liked sharing my affection. So she decided to destroy our friendship as a way of controlling me. She fucked him. Repeatedly, it seems. And then after weeks of both of them dodging me, William comes to tell me he’s in love with her and Esmé writes me a letter explaining how she was weak and I wasn’t around and so what choice did she have?”
Gray was very still now and Tamsin sensed him closing up, turning inward and away from her.
She reached inside and found her opener gifts. She grasped that golden key inside of herself and pushed it out of her chest and into Gray, just for a moment.
The sensation was even stronger this time. Her skin fizzled and long slow licks of electricity ran up and down her spine. She had to grab the bar with both hands and bite her lip to keep from groaning. Was it the alcohol doing this to her? Or would the opening magic feel better every time?
“She wanted me to hurt him,” Gray continued. “In her letter, she encouraged me to declare a challenge. To fight William at dawn, on the old dueling grounds, with wands and pistols like in the old days. It was ridiculous.”
“Did you hate her?” Tamsin asked. “After Thomas dumped me, I still sort of loved him. At least at first.”
“I still love her.” Gray had a look that said can you believe what a sucker I am? “And if she asked me to forgive her, I would. But I could never forgive myself for being played that way.”
“Did you fight William?”
Gray shook his head. “I’m not much of a fighter. I’m terrible with a pistol. And I have never paid much attention to destructive spells. But,” he leaned close and spoke low, “I have always had a good hand with mind magic. And so while William was asleep, I cursed him.”
Tamsin couldn’t breath. The suspense was killing her. And somehow her entire second drink had vanished.
“My dear friend, William, first Earl of The Waters, has a condition now. Whenever he hears the words highway or waffle or marzipan he suffers violent and debilitating orgasms.”
Tamsin laughed so hard, she fell off her chair.
17
Revelations
Soon the bar got busy and Gray had no more time to talk. Through the haze of the cosmopolitan and creams, Tamsin studied her magic books and found she was just as bad at magic drunk as she was when sober.
She decided to stay until Gray got off his shift. The prospect of trying to find her way back when she was, yes, a bit drunk was not very appealing.
Gray walked close to her and told her about the pranks of his first year at Penrose, his first year roommates, and his parents. Tamsin didn’t talk as much as him—who did?—but she did tell him all about her family, though she didn’t mention the illness. Gray seemed fascinated by the family dynamics of a normal family and by her twin, Jiro.
“Are you sure he doesn’t have gifts, like you? It’s almost unheard of that twins aren’t both magical.”
“Not that I know of. My mom said there’d been little incidents all my life. She didn’t say the same about him. But honestly, it didn’t even occur to me.” Tamsin made a mental note to talk to her brother the next time she could. If he did have potential, he should know about Penrose.
The long walk back seemed to take but moments. Good company will do that. A dull walk lasts a lifetime, but a walk with a beautiful boy? It’s goes by in the blink of an eye.
The red-faced boy at the front desk gave them the eye when they walked in together. Tamsin suspected he was the nexus of all gossip in Wilde House. She knew he’d be telling people in the morning about the two of them. So why not give him something to talk about?
“Front Desk Dude is watching us,” she whispered to Gray.
“Well we are strikingly attractive.”
“All your talk of pranks—I feel mischievous. Put your arm around me.”
Gray didn’t argue or ask why. He was a scoundrel and scoundrels picked up on a con very quickly.
She’d been expecting an arm thrown loosely over her shoulder, like Thomas used to do when they walked around school. Instead, Gray’s arm slid around her waist, the flat of his palm settling on her hip. His fingertips settled on her upper thigh.
It felt so good and right to have him hold her like that.
Suddenly, they were both speechless.
The Front Desk Dude, whose name Tamsin had never learned, watched them like an owl. As they moved slowly across the lobby to the elevators. Gray’s body moved in time with hers, his hand never leaving her. But his fingers stroked her inner thigh with the lightest of touches.
What had she started? Did she want it to stop?
They rode the elevator up to the sixth floor together in silence.
Gray was still touching her. Tamsin wanted to reach out and touch him back, but if she did it would start something.
The air vibrated with that unique energy known as are we going to kiss or not? It had been years since Tamsin had felt that particular vibe from anyone. She wanted to bottle it and wear it around her neck.
But when the elevator doors opened, Rye was there, sitting on the floor outside the room.
“Hello, friends,” he said. “I again am sexiled. As are you, my roommate.” He was reading a textbook in his pajamas. They were crimson and gold and had the name of the school printed on them.
Gray gave Tamsin a look. It was definitely a look. It smoldered. If they had been alone, they could have smoldered together. But Rye was here and Cash had the room to himself again.
The are we about to kiss energy faded..
“Rye, my friend, what would happen if we burst into the room?” Gray was exasperated..
“We would see Cash naked again.”
“He’s always naked.”
“And he would bite us.”
“That is true,” Gray bowed deeply to Rye. He had fallen back into his persona. “It’s been an enchanting evening, my dear.” He took Tamsin’s hand in his and gently kissed her knuckles. It was chaste, but the look in his eyes said to be continued.
Tamsin swallowed hard. “I myself have not been locked out by a thoughtless roommate and his booty call, so I will go to sleep.” She opened the door was rewarded with MacKenzie loudly shushing her.
She threaded her way around Hannah’s piles of clothes—did the girl know what a laundry machine was?—and plopped onto her bed. The alcohol was making the room spin alarmingly. Or maybe Hannah had hexed her bed again. Tamsin could ask her, the silver-haired menace was in her bed with headphones on, writing in her journal.
Tamsin was trying to keep the spinning to a tolerable level when a knock sounded on the door.
MacKenzie shushed it.
Whoever it was knocked again, louder.
MacKenzie leapt up from her desk in a rage. For a moment, Tamsin though she could she faint glowing runes on the girl’s back.
Her roommate threw open the door and shushed Gray, who was about to knock again.
“MacKenzie, isn’t it? We’ve never properly been introduced, though I believe you once forcefully shushed me while I was walking down the sidewalk. Quite a charming habit, that. You look ravishing in that black sweater ensemble. I have heard so much about you and your tireless dedication to your education, excuse me are you shushing me right now?”
Before MacKenzie could escalate from shushing to screaming, Hannah was on her feet and inches from Gray. She was all smiles and boobs and big eyes. Little sparkles of light fell from her hair. She’d been hitting the glamours hard. “Hi, Gray,” she said in a voice that Tamsin mentally categoriz
ed to as sexy baby. “What brings you here at this time of night?”
Gray smiled brightly at her. Based on his Esmé stories, Hannah was exactly his type. “It’s about the Lughnasa dance,” he said.
“Yes?” Hannah was almost pressing her cleavage into his face now. “What about the dance, Gray?” Her sparkles intensified.
He peered around Hannah, into the room, and caught Tamsin’s eye. “I wanted to know if Tamsin would do me the honor of being my date to the ball?”
MacKenzie glared at her, like the interruption was all her fault.
Hannah turned and if looks could kill, the entirety of western Canada would be scraped from the face of the earth from the strength of her glare.
Gray watched her, with his hopeful and wounded golden eyes.
Shit.
“I’d love to,” Tamsin said.
Gray beamed at her and swept into a bow so low his silver hair brushed the floor. “I am delighted. We can discuss details tomorrow evening.”
MacKenzie slammed the door shut with a flick of her wand.
Tamsin held her breath. The room spun, but she didn’t mind it so much anymore.
What had just happened? How could she agree to that?
The dance was only in a few days time and she had no idea what a magic school dance could possibly be like. What should she wear? What kind of dances did wizard people do? She’d been to dances before, of course, but more as like a member of the organizing committee? Even at her prom, she’d only danced the minimum socially required number of dances.
Thomas had always hated dancing so she had never really learned.
"I can't believe he did that,” Hannah said. There was something new in her voice.
"What? Why?"
Hannah turned and her face was crumpled with pity. "The dance is only for Penrose students. And it's not like you'll still be a student then."
A dark chill spilled through Tamsin. “What the hell are you talking about?" The door inside Tamsin shook. It wasn’t flames this time. The energy behind the door was dark and cold, full of whispers and spiderwebs.
Light Up The Night: a Reverse Harem Urban Fantasy Romance (Lick of Fire Book 2) Page 9
