Light Up The Night_a Reverse Harem Urban Fantasy Romance

by Jacqueline Sweet

  Grace patted him on the arm and turned to Tamsin. “Come find me next week. I’m in Darden Hall, second floor. I’ll get you a working charm for your phone and you, in return, will owe me a favor.” Her eyes blazed with literal sparks of fire. She seized Tamsin’s face in her cold hands. “You will do the favor I ask without hesitation or question, or you will not get your phone. Do you understand?”

  The dreadlock snakes licked her cheeks.

  Tamsin nodded. Grace was freaking her out, but she needed the phone. She needed to stay in touch.

  Grace rolled her eyes. “You need to use your voice, you noob. Nods don’t count.”

  “I understand,” Tamsin said and it was as if a spider web was drawn between the two of them, connecting them in some barely perceptible way.

  “You can change your mind,” Breakon said. “You don’t have to come.”

  “She’ll come,” Grace said. “Just look at her.”

  Breakon slipped a crystal from his jacket pocket. It was as long as a finger and smooth on the sides, like smoky quartz. With impatient gestures, he drew lines across his face and arms, then his body and legs. In an instant he changed. Breakon grew taller, more muscular. His skin turned an odd gray-green and spiral horns erupted from his head.

  “What are you?” Tamsin gasped. “Are you a troll?”

  Grace laughed a bitter, cruel laugh.

  “It’s a glamour, you doofus,” Breakon snarled. “What’s wrong with you?”

  A glamour. Tamsin’s mind raced back to the student handbook. There’d been rules about glamours. You needed to be a second year student to wear them. They were disguises or illusions. Magical costumes that the students wore in the way that normal people might wear makeup. The list of rules about what glamours were appropriate and which were forbidden had stretched on for twenty pages of cramped writing. Students were forbidden from impersonating each other, professors, university staff, licensed characters, celebrities, and on and on.

  “Oh my god,” Grace said. “She’s a cherry.”

  “A what?” Tamsin said. There’d been nothing in her book about cherries.

  “A virgin,” Breakon sneered. His attitude had been off putting when he looked like a human, but as a horned monster it made Tamsin’s skin crawl.

  Plus his hair still looked stupid.

  “I’m not a virgin!” Tamsin yelled. Then again, in a whisper, “I’m not a virgin. I’ve been with my boyfriend for two years.” She winced as she said it. It wasn’t true anymore, but clearly she hadn’t completely accepted the breakup.

  Other students moved around them, like a river around a stone. They arrived on more buses or cars or bicycles.

  “You didn’t grow up with magic. You have no experience of this world.” Grace spoke slowly, as if she were addressing an idiot. “You’re a cherry.”

  Tamsin crossed her arms. If everyone at Penrose was as nasty as these two, her four years here would be hell.

  “We get a few cherries every year,” Breakon yawned. He looked past Tamsin, searching for something more enjoyable to do. “They get all worked up, freak out, and blow themselves up.”

  “Or go crazy,” Grace added, giving Tamsin a look like she hoped that would happen to her.

  “Or just stop coming to class until they get expelled.”

  “That’s not going to be me.” Tamsin grit her teeth and squared her shoulders. These two punks didn’t know her. They didn’t know her life, what she’d done. They didn’t know that the only thing that made her work harder than her fear of failure was trying to prove someone else wrong. It was her spinach, her yellow sun.

  The thought of these two assholes underestimating her could fuel her ambition for an entire year.

  “It will,” Breakon said dismissively. “I give you six weeks. Tops. And then you’ll flame out like every other cherry.”

  “You’re mixing your metaphors,” Tamsin said.

  The two punks laughed derisively, shouldered their bags, and walked off with their hands stuffed into each other’s back pockets.

  Tamsin didn’t see the cold glances they shot back at her. She didn’t notice the calculating smile on Grace’s cruel mouth.

  She didn’t notice because there was one very important aspect of college life that she had completely forgotten about and that she was unprepared for.

  It was …

  9

  Boys

  Boys.

  She’d forgotten about boys.

  Or rather, she’d been so focused on her goal of finding a treatment for her father and brother, and so sure of her relationship with Thomas, that the prospect of meeting boys at college had seemed preposterous. Why bother dreaming about all the guys when she had one already and anyway she’d be too busy conquering her studies to even think about wasting time with boys

  She’d never been more wrong in her life.

  When Tamsin turned away from the receding punks and toward her dorm, the reality of the boy situation sucker-punched her.

  It took her breath away.

  There on the sidewalk for anyone to see, were boys.

  Handsome boys.

  College boys.

  Some you could even call men without being too generous. They were tall and short, muscular and thin. There were so many of them walking by, surging into the open waiting doors of the dorms again and again, that she couldn’t even keep track of them. They weren’t individuals. They were a teeming sea of men.

  Boys.

  Whatever.

  Tamsin sat down on her trunk and held her large duffel in her hands and just breathed in their presence. It was unreal. Back in high school, she’d never been particularly interested in the boys beyond Thomas and a few others. But here, at Penrose, all of the boys knew magic. They could show her so much. They weren’t just handsome faces and incredible bodies, they were resources and teachers.

  And one of them was walking towards her with a helpful look on his face.

  Tamsin blinked. She looked to the left and right, looking for the person this boy was walking toward.

  But it was her.

  He was coming right at her and he was going to talk to her.

  Her brain started to sizzle.

  What should she do?

  “Hello,” he said with a nod. “Do you need help with your bags and luggage?” He had a bright and open smile, as if he’d never even heard the word lie in his life.

  Next to her, a witch snapped her fingers and her pile of trunks sprouted little mouse feet and followed the girl down the street.

  Tamsin couldn’t say anything. She of course did need help. Her trunk was far too heavy for her to manage on her own and she’d been relying all day on other people to get it along.

  “I’m Rye,” he said. “I’m a move in volunteer.” He nodded as he spoke. Tamsin caught a hint of an accent in his voice, something unusual that tickled her ears as he spoke.

  Rye stepped closer and Tamsin jumped to her feet. He was tall. Super tall. Maybe six and a half feet, if she had to guess and ridiculously in shape. He had short black hair, brushed back neatly from his forehead and held in place with a tasteful amount of product. He had an open, honest face with high cheekbones that gave him a slightly feline look. He was wearing a hoodie with a Penrose Move-In t-shirt that looked like it was one size too small, not that Tamsin minded seeing the taut curves of the muscles beneath. He had dark jeans on that were splattered with more paint than a Jackson Pollack painting. Flecks of paint clung to his fingers and earlobes.

  He coughed politely.

  Tamsin was staring. How could she not?

  It wasn’t until she met his eyes and saw how bright and blue they were that she felt really in trouble. Meeting his gaze was a bad idea, she told herself. This boy was like some monster out of myth who could freeze you in place with a glance.

  Though frozen was the last thing she felt.

  “Your bags?” Rye prompted. He pulled a piece of paper and a pen from his back pocket. “What’s your number?”<
br />
  “My number?” Tamsin blushed fiercely. This was so forward! Her brain had abandoned her. It was just her, Rye’s blue eyes, and her screaming hormones.

  “Your room number?” Rye asked gently. Did he know the effect he had on her? Did every girl he approached with an offer of help do this—just completely fall apart? Surely this kind, enormous, muscular cake of a man must be spoken for?

  “My room number. Right. I have a room number. A room number is a thing I have.” Tamsin patted her pockets and then remembered that the recruiter hadn’t told her. “I have no idea. I know I’m supposed to be in Wilde Hall, but that’s it.”

  Rye looked back at the gothic building behind him. “That’s Wilde Hall. They can surely tell you at the front desk. I’ll just write your name and the hall name on your luggage tag, and it’ll be delivered once you have an assigned room.”

  “Thank you,” Tamsin said. She reached out and patted his chest involuntarily. Why did she do that? She hated touching people. But something about his solidness, his weight, it drew her to him. It was completely a mistake though. He was so firm it was like touching a very warm steel beam. She gasped—actually gasped—at the feel of his too, too solid flesh under her fingers. She’d be thinking about it for days if not weeks.

  “Perhaps we will be neighbors?” Rye smiled at her. His eyes crinkled when he smiled wide and big dimples appeared in his cheeks. “I live on the sixth floor, in the Bentham wing.”

  “Six floor, Bentham,” Tamsin repeated. “Cool. Maybe I’ll see you around?” Or stalk you, she added mentally. Or find every excuse to wander through sixth Bentham.

  “Six floor, Bentham,” Rye agreed.

  “Sex floor, Binthem,” Tamsin said, blushed furiously at her slip of the tongue, then quickly walked away from Rye before her mouth could betray her any more.

  She was stopped at the door of the dorm by a flustered girl with a stack of clipboards in her hands. The girl had half-moon glasses and was wearing a prim blazer with a long skirt. She looked like Velma from Scooby-Doo, if she’d gone to Catholic school. “Name?” the girl asked in a voice that suggested she expected to be argued with.

  “Lee. Tamsin Lee.” The doors behind the girl opened for a moment. A boy came running out. Through the doors Tamsin could see paper flying in the air. Smoke billowing out from under a box and several people screaming at each other. “What’s going on in there? If you don’t mind me asking?”

  The officious girl flipped through her clipboards until she found the right entry. “Tamsin Lee. Bentham hall. Sixth floor. Room 27. That’s 627 Bentham. Can you repeat that?”

  “627 Bentham,” Tamsin said. “I’ll write it down.”

  “It won’t matter!” the girl shouted. She dropped her clipboards onto the steps and pressed the back of her wrist to her forehead. “Every year it’s something new! Every year! I’ve worked the front desk for four years now and every move-in day something goes terribly wrong.”

  Furious shouting burst out of the dorm doors whenever someone opened them.

  “Okay. I’ll just find my own way,” Tamsin said as more students arrived to ask for their room assignments. “How hard can it be?”

  She shouldered her heavy duffel, trudged up the stairs and pushed her way into the dorm through the heavy oak doors.

  Inside it was pandemonium.

  Students ran down the halls, dressed in togas or covered in paint, whooping and laughing. The air was full of colored smoke that smelled like lavender. Papers floated in the air like helium balloons, edging away from anyone who tried to grab them. Books, too, floated through the air, flapping like birds, and students were devising clever means of catching them. To one side of the entry way, Tamsin saw a group of students fashioning a net from electrical cords. To the other, a student had a sort of toilet plunger-javelin device he was throwing at the books floating above him.

  The entry hall had low ceilings and cold stone floors. The walls were made of a burnished wood, dark and stately and were crowded with portraits and class photos and empty display cases. Peering in, Tamsin saw that each case had a paper placard flitting about within it, trying to find a way out. The card looked like it should have been listing an exhibit in a museum, but the words were gibberish.

  They weren’t even proper letters.

  Ahead was the front desk, where a red-faced boy sat stubbornly not answering an old-fashioned telephone that rang endlessly next to him. Above him was a sign that also was written in nonsensical squiggles. In fact, as she watched, the squiggle letters moved and rearranged themselves in a way that made the back of her eyes itch furiously.

  “What’s wrong with your sign?” Tamsin asked. “Is this a test?”

  The red-faced boy frowned at her. “It’s not just the sign.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He pointed at his shirt. “Does my shirt say Penrose Welcome Staff?”

  Tamsin shook her head. “It’s all squiggles.”

  “It’s not just the sign,” he sighed.

  “It’s all text?” Tamsin asked.

  The boy nodded.

  “But then why aren’t you answering the phone?”

  “Because it’s all people calling to ask what room they’re assigned to or some such and I can’t help them. I can’t read the bloody stupid directory.“

  “It’s just inside the dorm though, isn’t it? That’s why that other girl was outside helping people.”

  The boy ignored her and glared at the phone like he was going to murder it.

  The phone kept ringing.

  Tamsin dropped her heavy bag, jumped up onto the counter and unplugged the phone from the wall. “If you’re not going to answer it, at least spare yourself the noise.” She smiled at the boy, but he just frowned at her harder. It didn’t seem to be a good day to be the front desk crew. “Which way is Sixth Bentham?”

  The boy pointed to a sign and then hung his head. “I was going to direct you to the prominently placed signs on either side of the desk, but never mind.” He gave her directions and tried to draw her a map, but the drawing began crawling around on the paper and rearranging itself into squiggles like a plate of spaghetti.

  Shouldering her pack with a grunt, Tamsin followed his directions through the maze of hallways to Bentham hall.

  10

  Resting Witch Face

  Every Penrose University of Magic residential dormitory operated under its own structure.

  According to the student handbook, each was designed meticulously to appeal to the psyche and soul of its students.

  For students who craved order and logic, Achebe House was their sanctuary. It was laid out in a perfect grid and every student was given the exact same accommodations and square footage.

  For students who craved competition over all things, West Quad was their home. It was divided into three separate warring houses and the size and luxuriousness of one’s room changed from week to week, depending on your house ranking.

  Wilde House, which Tamsin now called home, was where the misfits went. It was full of anarchists and free thinkers. The students who didn’t belong elsewhere, who ran afoul of the universities rules, or who like in Tamsin’s case, arrived too late to get their pick of dorms lived there. Wilde House was divided into two Halls—Bentham and Mollystone. Bentham housed the scofflaws and the late arrivals, whereas Mollystone housed the terminally weird.

  Most of Wilde House was devoted to classrooms though, and it was past these that Tamsin navigated. She couldn’t resist looking through the windows into each room and marveling at the objects within. There were descriptive plaques on every door, of course, but these plaques offered nothing but eye-itching squiggle letters.

  By the time Tamsin found the stairs to Bentham Six, her back ached from carrying her duffle. Why hadn’t she left it with Rye, with the trunk? Rivers of sweat poured down her back. Her armpits were similarly damp. It didn’t help that the dorm had the heat cranked up as high as it would go. Tamsin sat on the floor beside the door
to the stairs. She put her head between her knees and breathed deeply.

  Out of nowhere, a bright and airy voice asked, “First year?”

  There was a girl standing over her with a cocky half-smile on her face.

  “How can you tell?” Tamsin asked.

  The girl pointed at the stairs with her chin. “It’s the way you new students look at things honestly,” she laughed. “First years have this sort of goggly eye thing they do. Oh you poor dear, look how sweaty you are. And you haven’t even taken the stairs yet. You think they’d install an elevator.”

  The girl was tall and slender and moved with a slow grace. Her porcelain skin had a faint golden glow. She wore a white silk dress with a stylized dragon printed up the side. White gold bracelets hung on her wrists and ankles but made no sound and seemed to move at a different speed than the rest of her body. Next to her, suspended in the air ,was a silver metal box, like a half-size traveling truck. She had long straight white-blond hair that floated around her as if in a light breeze. And she wore a bemused expression on her precise face.

  “That’s a cool trick,” Tamsin said indicating the floating luggage. “When do I learn that? Please tell me it’s like right now because this bag weighs a ton.”

  The girl threw her head back and laughed. “This is a family heirloom. My mother used it when she went to school her, and my grandmother before her, and before that it belonged to the University’s Chancellor, who was my great-grandmother.” She shook her head. “No, they don’t make them like this anymore.”

  Had she come here just to flaunt her superiority to Tamsin?

  “So you’re a legacy?” Tamsin asked. Legacies hated being reminded they were legacies. It reminded them that they weren’t smarter or harder working than other students. They were just born to the right people.

  “My family were amongst the founders of Penrose.” The girl regarded Tamsin with an appraising stare. “You’re in Bentham? That’s odd. Bentham is for second years on probation.”

  “I’m a late arrival,” Tamsin said. The girl’s manner was starting to wear on her. “Which house are you in?”

  “Bentham,” the girl replied with a wink. “I’m on probation.” She stuck out her hand. “Hannah Oleander Hearthhome.”