Absorb: Book One of the Forgotten Affinities Series

by Analeigh Ford

  I remember what Draven said when I completed the ritual, “tonight you dream of the future,” and my face grows even hotter. The bastard made me perform a ritual to dream about him. Draven’s face, his body, his…all of him…just moments before felt so real. I can still remember it, though the dream is already fading like straws pulled from my hands one by one.

  I’ve got to take a shower, and a cold one too. I am pretty sure that is what I’m supposed to do in this situation. The door to the showers opens as I approach and steam billows out into the hall. A voice, too-high and too-loud echoes out from inside.

  “...like it’s going to have any effect on your relationship.”

  I pause. I had hoped a school for mages wouldn’t be seeped in the same drama that high school was, but I guess that was an unrealistic expectation. We are still teenagers after all...even if we are teenagers who can do magic.

  “But we were supposed to be paired together,” a second person says.

  “You’d think after this many years, you would be.”

  I try to figure out if I recognize the second speaker, but I don’t. I never really thought about the difficulties that the pairing part of the ritual might present. I always assumed everyone was satisfied with who they get paired up with. At least, that is how Wednesday always made it sound.

  “Don’t worry,” the first girl says again. The door opens the rest of the way and I try to focus on making myself look like I am not totally eavesdropping. Two girls emerge from the bathroom in matching white robes. I recognize the tall, gorgeous redhead as the other girl finishes what she is saying. “She’s got three others to manage, apparently. You really think Cedric is going to choose her over you? You know him better than anyone else. He isn’t used to having to share.”

  The way the girl emphasizes ‘her’ makes my skin crawl. I brush the sweaty hair away from my face self-consciously as they spot me heading towards them.

  “Speak of the devil...” the redhead says. Where the other girl shies away at having been caught, she only stands straighter. She is even prettier up close, and it only makes me hate her more.

  “Sorry, were you saying something?” I feign ignorance. After a second of deliberation, she either believes me or decides I am not worth it.

  “Nothing,” she says with a flippant wave of her hand. “I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. I’m Whitney.”

  I take her offer of a handshake even though I think it’s a little overly formal for the occasion. She squeezes my hand so tight it throbs when I yank it back.

  “And I’m—”

  “I already know who you are.” I don’t know how to respond to that, but fortunately I don’t have to. “We were just leaving,” she says. “Enjoy your shower. But be careful, the boilers in these buildings are deceptively old, I wouldn’t want you to get burned.”

  She leaves with a satisfied swish of her long hair.

  I barge into the showers, filled with a sudden overwhelming and completely unjustified rage. I strip and throw my clothes down a clearly marked laundry shoot as I stomp to the furthest shower stall and pull the curtain shut.

  It isn’t like I asked for this. I turn the shower nozzle to max temperature and peel off my bra and underwear until I’m standing, shivering and naked, as close to the shower wall as I can. The water is taking forever to heat up. I know I told myself I was going to take a cold shower, but I didn’t really mean it. At least, not now that I’m actually here. Whitney and her dumb friend made sure whatever feelings I felt before have been thoroughly overruled. Jealousy can do that.

  I try staring into the stream of water and willing it to heat faster, but it has no effect. Alright, one thing a Psychic Mage might not be able to do.

  I close my eyes and lean the back of my head against the stall. I am way too tired for all this. I am about to drift off when I hear the quiet creak of the door open again. The back of my neck prickles a bit. I do not like community showers. Something about knowing I am naked in the same room as someone else, even if there is a curtain between us, unsettles me.

  I’m annoyed when the person shuffles all the way down to the stall directly across from me, but I try my best to ignore the sound of her stripping down.

  The water finally switches from icy to near scalding hot. I’m too lazy to fiddle with the knobs, so I step under it and let the hot water run over the top of my head much to my scalp’s protest. I have begun to forget that I am not alone in here when the other shower head across from me splutters on and the person in the stall across from me curses.

  I freeze and turn my head slowly to the side. Steam fills the edges of my stall. It mutes the sound in the room, but then the person swears again, and I wrap my arms tight across my body again.

  It is no her. That voice is decidedly male.

  I whisper a curse to myself but keep my voice low enough that I hope he doesn’t hear me. There are more footsteps, and through the crack in my curtain I catch a flash of skin as he stomps out into the main part of the bathroom. Whoever it is, he’s naked too.

  Maybe if I stand very, very still he won’t notice I am in here. He may be the intruder, but I’m the one freaking out. For a second I wonder if I’m the one in the wrong here. After all, sometimes you just desperately need a shower. Then I hear the sound of a curtain at the end of the hall getting pulled back, and then another.

  Wait, is this guy looking in all the stalls like some kind of pervert?

  I feel panic rise up in me. The water in the shower is so hot that wherever it touches turns a bright shade of red. I scan the stall for something to cover myself with. I really took a gamble with the laundry shoot without thinking to look for a towel first.

  Two more curtains screech to the side, edging closer and closer to me. I glance around my stall, frantically. Is this guy some sort of psychopath? What the heck is he doing? I start reaching for my bra even though I’m soaked when the next curtain jerked aside is mine. The hand reaching for my undergarment flies back up over my breasts and the other snakes southward to cover my modesty.

  “Hey, is there any soap—” he starts to say. My shriek cuts him off and he turns his head in shock to look at me, and then just as quickly away. The only thing he wears is a pair of thick-rimmed glasses fogged up from the steam. Rather than covering his nether regions with his hands, a towel flies across the room from some far-off corner and wraps around him. It takes a few seconds of blinking through the steam to recognize that it is Flynn.

  I don’t want to get rid of the steam, the only thing even slightly covering me now, but I can’t just stand here batting my eyelids through the scalding hot water while this frustrating, sexy, dark-eyed guy mutters stupidly at the floor in front of me.

  “What are you doing in here?” I gasp.

  His eyes rove the tiles, the stall walls, the ceiling—anywhere but me.

  “I must’ve gotten off at the wrong floor,” he mumbles. “They’re all laid out the same way.”

  “Get out!” I say. “Or magically get me a towel too. Don’t just stand there!”

  I think I see him blush, but a second later another towel appears in his hand and he holds it out to me. I try to motion with my head for him to turn away, but he doesn’t understand, so I grab the towel and shut off the hot water as fast as I can.

  “You could have left it on. It takes a god-awful long time to heat up.”

  I pause as I tuck the corner of the towel under my armpit. “Get out,” I say, then again, louder. “Get out!”

  Flynn blinks in surprise a few times, but he does as I bid. He backs away, grabs a book from off the sink, and finally leaves.

  I am no longer in the mood for a shower. I shiver at the wash of cold air as I step out. I spot the cabinet in the corner and grab a second towel to drape over my shoulders. I’ve already been exposed enough for one day.

  As soon as I open the door, Flynn steps out from behind it—almost making me drop my towel and bare myself to him again.

  “We are st
udying together on Monday,” he says.

  I squeeze my eyes shut for a second and take a deep breath to keep myself from verbally abusing him. I have never been a very violent person, but that could change.

  “Flynn, can you please get out of the girl’s dormitory?” I say. “I really can’t deal with you right now.”

  He blinks at me a few times again, and if he wasn’t already wearing glasses, I would think he lost a contact up in there. Then he surprises me, and not in a good way. “I apologize if I made you feel uncomfortable. I often forget how prudish others can be about nudity.”

  “If you made me feel uncomfortable? And prudish…are you actually trying to make this my fault somehow?” I say. The gall of this guy. I had almost forgotten how rude he was to me yesterday.

  “If it makes you feel any better, I barely saw anything before my glasses fogged up,” he says.

  I just stare at him a moment. “It does not.”

  He looks like he is going to say something else, but then he clamps his mouth shut. I catch a muscle working in his jaw as he runs a hand through his hair. It streaks across his forehead in long, damp tendrils. He looks more vulnerable this way. The soft slant of his almond eyes, his full lips—there is a certain innocence to them. But there is nothing innocent about his exposed torso.

  I almost stop myself from looking, but then I remember that he’s already seen all of me—so I let myself. I suck in a breath at the shape of his abs, at the hard edges hiding under soft, smooth skin, and the V that disappears into a towel wrapped dangerously loose around his hips.

  “What is it?” his voice betrays mild concern. He looks down at his own chest as if he expects to find a massive wound instead of the chiseled body I see.

  I roll my eyes and push past him. No matter how hot Flynn may be, he is impossible. But even as I slam the door to my room, I’m unable to keep my mind off of him. I did get something of a glimpse myself when he first pulled the curtain back. My inexperienced mind feels guilty for even thinking about it, but that doesn’t stop a certain tension from tightening between my thighs.

  So much for a cold shower.

  My phone beeps. When I tap the screen, it illuminates to at least a dozen messages from Wednesday. Shoot, I totally forgot to check it before hopping into the shower.

  Meet me downstairs, NOW!

  9

  Flynn

  As soon as Octavia turns her back to me, I know I’ve somehow made a mistake.

  Aside from the obvious one, of course. How idiotic can I be...mistaking this floor for my own? I should have noticed immediately from the different pattern of cracked tiles on the floor. My eyes flicker over to the door Octavia slammed behind her. At the very least I should have noticed the names on the doors.

  I have been too distracted lately.

  I consider finishing my shower up here anyway, but I figure I’ve already botched things up enough as it is. I climb into the elevator and press the button for the second-year boy’s floor. My eyelids feel heavy with exhaustion. When I transferred over to the New York Academy of Mages, I hadn’t expected to find my second paired. I wasn’t positive there would be a second. My first was...well, I left my first school for many reasons.

  But ever since I met Octavia and discovered that she too has more than one affinity, I have been researching non-stop. I was in the crowd when the runes transformed, and although I haven’t found their exact translation, I was at least able to sketch them out quite accurately from memory. A memory that remained sharp in my mind ever since, until now.

  Now every time I close my eyes, instead of runes, I see Octavia. The steam in the showers did nothing to conceal her body. I tried not to look, but one glance was enough to cement her image in my mind.

  She is going to be even more of a distraction than I thought.

  I stomp out of the elevator on my own floor, still wearing nothing but a towel around my waist and wet hair across my face. I briefly regret giving Octavia that book. She made no indication that she read it, but she must know it is from me, right? Who else would give her a book of ritual spells only a mage with multiple affinities can cast? It isn’t as if anyone else is able to use it, but I should have at least read the entire thing first since I did go through all the trouble of stealing it from the principal’s office.

  I still don’t really know what possessed me to do it. I’ve never been a thief before.

  I shake my head to clear my thoughts. I didn’t give her the book expecting to be thanked, I gave her he book because she is the only one who can use it. Maybe it can teach her something about herself; about both of us. It isn’t much, but it is a start.

  But before I can even begin to spiral down that line of thought once more, someone barks a laugh at me and draws me out of my own mind.

  “What happened to you?”

  At first I expect Draven, that good-for-nothing Ritual Mage Octavia is also paired up with. Instead I spot Cedric coming out of one of the rooms. He is the last person I expected to run into here.

  “You don’t live in the dorms.”

  Cedric continues walking towards me until he is standing between me and the showers, though it’s obvious I am on my way there. I have to stop or be forced to walk around him. This is the kind of thing that makes me despise Cedric, though I have only known him for a couple months. He is too much like his father—a compliment I am saving for a better occasion.

  “No, but I like to keep close to my investments.”

  I glance over his shoulder at the room he just left. I’m not sure who’s room it is, and I don’t think I care to find out. I don’t need to get any further entwined in the various goings-on of their family. It can mean only trouble.

  “Of course. If you will excuse me,” I say, stepping to the side and around Cedric, “I’ve better things to be doing with my time.”

  “Like Octavia?”

  I halt, and then turn around slowly. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Nothing at all,” Cedric says. He’s got something in his pocket, and he is fiddling with it. “Only that it’s awfully convenient she just happens to get paired with you, a transfer student who also has multiple affinities.”

  “I don’t understand your meaning.” Of course, I understand his meaning, but I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that.

  Cedric takes a step towards me. Even his slow, careful step comes across as menacing. Or would, if I was afraid of Cedric, like most everybody else seems to be. Power can only get you so far with me.

  “All I am saying, is that some of us have interests in Octavia that are not only driven by unfeeling logic.”

  I raise an eyebrow at him. “That really is interesting to hear you, of all people, say.”

  I feel a pressure on the front of my mind, and then against my temples. I focus my mind into a secure place, one with thick walls and no cracks for him to seep through. The pressure strengthens for another moment and then dissipates.

  Cedric glares at me. “Just don’t get in Octavia’s way. I know she is nothing but a distraction to you. But for once,” he jerks the book out from under my arm and barely glances to look down at the title before he shoves it back to me. “At least pretend to be concerned, like a normal human being.”

  And then once again, I am left in the wake of someone who I didn’t mean to anger.

  Now that I am finally in the correct shower with both soap and hot water, I am unable to keep my concentration on the book of magical law that I have been reading. My mind keeps wandering back to what Cedric said. Hot water pounds against the surface of my skin. It drowns out all noise with its rhythm, and the air grows warm and thick around me.

  I hadn’t thought about the others. Yesterday, Octavia was nothing but a nuisance to me. Sure, even I can’t ignore the fact that my body is attracted to her—very attracted to her—but I haven’t let that make me lose sight of my own mission. Not before, not now.

  I need to find out why I, of all people, have been bound to tw
o affinities.

  Octavia’s arrival immediately threw off all my current theories. Now, with the scalding water reddening my face, I remember how angry I was when she was announced. All that anger, all the pent-up rage I had prepared to throw at her for ruining a year’s worth of research and study immediately drained away when I barged into that office and laid eyes on her.

  From the beginning, she has distracted me. And a distraction is nothing but an hindrance keeping me from the truth. So yes, Cedric is right. I have been treating her as if she is just another part of some calculation I must make. It didn’t bother me that Octavia is matched to three other men. I hadn’t considered the possibility that I might welcome her distraction.

  Until now.

  Maybe I should burn the thought out of me. I plunge my head further under the water. I thread my hands together and feel the touch of water on my skin spreading to touch all the other water, to move it, to make it rush from faster through the pipes. I feel the heat increase a fraction and stumble back. No, I don’t need to burn this out of me.

  I am the master of my own mind. I grab my towel and use it to pat my face dry. But as soon as my eyes are shut, all I can see is Octavia and how she looked in those brief moments upstairs. Even her words, laced with spite and fire, bring a tingle to the base of my spine.

  Maybe instead, she could be something more than just a distraction. I look down at the towel in my hands, and then at the spout of boiling water. Had I used my Psychic Magic earlier without thinking?

  For nearly a year now, I have been unable to do any Psychic Magic. To call my relationship with my other paired complicated would be a vast understatement. It is toxic. Always has been, always will be. Because of this, any time I would try to do any Psychic work before, it always backfired.

  Up until Octavia arrived. I have resisted Cedric twice without even trying. He’s a talented Psychic, and everyone can see why. It is to be expected coming from a family like his. I hadn’t noticed the shift. It’s like...my mind knew that Octavia was mine before I did.