Life's a Witch

by Val St. Crowe

  She swallowed. “What kind of thing?”

  He gestured back and forth between them. “You know. This. With us.”

  “I thought we said that nothing was happening. I thought we were going to pretend…”

  He fixed her with a dark stare. “It’s only that whenever I’m around you, it’s like there’s… a charge in the air.”

  She felt her stomach turn over. “You feel that too?”

  He reached across the car and put his hand on the back of her headrest. “Yeah, I feel it.”

  She was starting to feel a knot forming in her stomach. It filled with both dread and excitement. She couldn’t break their gaze.

  He leaned closer to her. His voice lowered in pitch. “Trust me, I didn’t plan on this, but now that it’s happening, I just can’t seem to…”

  “What?” She was whispering.

  “Stop myself,” he murmured.

  And then his hand wasn’t on the headrest, but under her chin, and his mouth was on hers, and she was opening her mouth to his tongue, and everything was a shivery pink of promise and desire, and she wanted to surrender to it, wanted to be wrapped up in it.

  So.

  She let go.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Estelle

  They only stopped kissing because they decided that it was a bad idea to be making out in the parking lot behind the school. So, Fox drove back to his apartment, and they got out of the car and ran through the rain to the door to the building.

  She was full of that same feeling of desire and excitement, and she knew that this was wrong and risky, and that only made her want it more. This wasn’t like her. She wasn’t this sort of person. That only spurred her on.

  He held the door open for her, and she rushed inside.

  He was behind her, his hands catching her by the waist, turning her and pressing her into the wall next to the door, his mouth on hers again.

  She’d never done anything like this. She’d never made out in the lobby of a building.

  God, what if Logan and Petra were there? What if they saw?

  She pushed him away. “Not out here,” she gasped.

  “Right,” he breathed, looking at her with this desperate hunger, and no one had ever looked at her that way. He caught her by the hand and dragged her over to the stairs.

  They hurried up them, but they only made it as far as the first landing before they were kissing again. His body against hers, their fingers intertwined, her back against the wall, and everything felt topsy-turvy.

  With effort, he tore himself away from her.

  And then they were racing up the stairs, and they were laughing, and they were out of breath, and she wasn’t sure if it was from kissing or running so fast or what, but she liked it. She liked this. She didn’t think she’d ever felt this good in her entire life.

  Eventually, they made it to the door to his apartment, and there were only three more distracting stops along the way, each one full of feverish kisses that made her feel as if her soul was being squeezed.

  Fox fumbled in his pocket for the keys with one hand. His other hand was roaming over her back, her hips, the dip of her waist, and it was making her feel light-headed. He managed to get the keys out but they slipped through his fingers and fell on the floor.

  “Oh, no,” she laughed, covering her mouth with one hand.

  “Damn it,” he said. He drew her close and kissed her again, hard, and then let go of her to drop to his knees and scoop up the keys.

  She was grinning at him with something like adoration when he stood back up.

  He searched her gaze. “Oh, God, don’t look at me like that,” he whispered.

  “Like what?”

  He held up a finger. “Just let me open the damned door, okay? Once we get inside…”

  The knot inside her tangled pleasantly. God, she wanted in that apartment.

  Fox fitted the keys to the lock and turned it.

  And the door opened.

  But something was behind it.

  Someone…

  The person fell out of the door and landed on the ground between them.

  Estelle looked down at the person and she didn’t understand.

  It was Fox. Fox was lying on the ground and his eyes were wide open and there was a big, wet, red slash at his throat.

  She screamed.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Logan and I were discussing whether we wanted to cook something in his apartment for dinner or go out to eat when we heard the scream.

  It was coming from outside of his apartment, in the hallway, and we both rushed out there. I conjured two guns, one for each of us.

  We burst through the door.

  There were Willoughby and Estelle with a body between them.

  “What the hell is going on?” said Logan.

  Estelle looked up at us, her lower lip trembling.

  Willoughby was staring down at the body, making a face of disgust. “Hell.”

  I had conjured guns, so the skitters were coming. They climbed up the steps, heading for us, making chirping noises.

  Ah, hell. I had conjured regular bullets, not venom bullets. I conjured a handful of the bright green liquid-filled projectiles. More conjuring meant more skitters.

  Logan held out his hand for the bullets.

  I gave them over.

  Quickly, we both emptied our guns of bullets and shoved the venom bullets in.

  By this time, the skitters were at our feet. There were nearly ten of them. One of them spit venom at me. I shot it, but not before its venom sizzled through my pants leg. Damn it, I’d really liked these jeans. And it stung pretty bad too. Hell. I gritted my teeth.

  But there were more skitters to take care of, so there was no time to dwell on this crap. I sighted the next one, pulled the trigger.

  And the next, and the next.

  Logan was doing the same.

  In seconds, we’d cleaned them all up.

  We turned back to Willoughby and Estelle.

  That was when I realized that the body on the ground was Willoughby. There were two Willoughbys. A dead Willoughby and a live one.

  What the hell?

  Estelle took a deep breath, seeming to get herself together. “Sorry. I should have helped with the skitters,” she said.

  “It’s cool,” I said. “You were in shock.” I gestured at the dead body. “What’s up with that?”

  “It’s a long story,” said Willoughby. He bent down and got the dead body by the legs. “Come on in.”

  Logan, Estelle, and I all exchanged a look. That was a pretty casual way to deal with a dead copy of yourself. Huh.

  *

  We were sitting at the kitchen table in Willoughby’s place and the dead Willoughby was lying on the floor inside the front door. The apartment was laid out mostly like Logan’s except the kitchen area was at the opposite end of the apartment. Pretty much everything in the place was still in boxes, although Willoughby had managed to get his bed made.

  “It’s a decoy I made,” said Willoughby. “It’s not real.”

  “It looks real,” said Estelle.

  “Well, I wanted it to look real,” said Willoughby. “If it disappeared the minute it died, then it wouldn’t have fooled those trying to kill me. But considering that it’s been brought here and left in my apartment, I’m guessing it didn’t fool them after all.”

  “Wait, hold on,” said Logan. “People are trying to kill you?”

  “I don’t know if I’d call them people,” said Willoughby. “It’s those shapeshifting things from the other dimension. The ones with all the… strands in their regular form.”

  “Oh, we call them scribbly things,” I said.

  “Very technical term,” agreed Logan.

  “Why are they trying to kill you?” said Estelle.

  “I may have made them angry when I killed one of their own,” said Willoughby. He raised both his hands, palms out. “It was self-defense. I didn’t have a choice.”

&n
bsp; “How’d you kill it?” I said. “The only way we know to do it is with a weapon called the hearthstone.”

  Willoughby shrugged. “To be honest, I don’t know if it is dead. I know that I got it to back off and that it wasn’t moving when I ran off. The thing attacked me, though.”

  “They’re not supposed to do that,” I said. “There’s a treaty—”

  “This was before the treaty,” said Willoughby. “I’ve been setting up decoys like this ever since. I thought I’d managed to get away. I thought they figured that they’d killed me, but they must not have.” He sighed. “You know, I probably shouldn’t have set up so many different decoys. The minute they found a duplicate, it obviously would have clued them in that something was wrong.”

  “Look,” I said. “There’s a treaty now, and if we go to the mage authorities—”

  “No,” said Willoughby. “This could jeopardize the treaty, right? If it came to light they weren’t following it?”

  “Yes,” said Logan in a quiet voice. “It might turn into all-out war. And the primals are the only ones who can fight them. But the four of you against all of them?” He shook his head.

  “We can’t allow them to keep killing Professor Willoughby,” I protested.

  “I don’t think it’s all of them,” said Willoughby. “It’s some subset, probably young bucks acting like dicks. You know how teenagers are.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But if you’re in danger—”

  “We could handle a small subset,” said Logan, turning to me. “We could take them out ourselves.”

  “Well, that would mean we were violating the treaty,” I said.

  “Don’t you have contacts?” said Estelle to me. “The scribbly things that helped you get the women out of captivity?”

  “Not really,” I said. “Sure, there were a few scribbly things that helped me out when I was freeing the captured pregnant women, but they didn’t exactly give me their phone numbers. I wouldn’t know how to get in touch with them. The only scribbly thing that ever talked to me with any regularity was Malachi, and he’s gone.”

  “This is my problem,” said Willoughby. “I’ll handle it.”

  “You’re in danger,” said Logan.

  I narrowed my eyes. I wondered if Willoughby was telling us the whole story here. It seemed to me like maybe he was leaving something out, because it didn’t quite add up for me. I bet it wasn’t self-defense. I bet he’d attacked that scribbly thing. After all, back when they first showed up, they were scary. No one knew what they were. We’d fought them too, and if we hadn’t been primals, who knew what would have happened to us afterward.

  “I’m not in danger,” said Willoughby. “I can take care of myself. Seriously, I mean it. Forget all about it.”

  “I don’t know,” said Logan.

  “Yeah,” said Estelle. “If they’re trying to kill you, that’s not good.”

  Logan turned to her. “Hey, what are you doing here, anyway? Why were you with Fox?”

  Estelle’s eyes widened.

  Oh, holy crap. She had lied to me. They were not at all stepping off this thing between them. They were probably here to consummate their forbidden attraction or whatever. I shook my head.

  “She was trying to convince me that I should share with her how to turn Petra back into a human,” said Willoughby.

  “What?” said Logan. “That’s a thing that could happen?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. I had forgotten all about that in all the student-teacher-affair-ness. “Estelle said you knew how to make that happen.”

  “I might,” said Willoughby. “But it would be very dangerous, and there wouldn’t be a good chance of it working at all. It could backfire badly. It’s a very intricate sort of spell. Not something to enter into lightly, as I was telling Estelle here.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Telling her in your apartment when we all know how twitchy you are about socializing with students.”

  “That’s my fault,” said Estelle. “I followed him back here and pestered him.” She turned to me. “Really, that’s all it was, Petra. I swear.”

  Huh. I was not getting the vibe from her that she was lying. But then, I realized, I had no idea how good or bad of a liar Estelle actually was.

  “What kind of chance of it working are we talking here?” said Logan.

  Willoughby gave him an odd look. “I thought you’d be a bit more concerned about the danger.”

  “I am,” said Logan. “Very concerned.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “Screw danger. I’m already dead. What worse thing could possibly happen?”

  “This magic we’re toying with is incredibly volatile,” said Willoughby. “If anything goes wrong, it could terrorize hundreds—thousands—of people.”

  “Okay, I get the picture,” I said, wrinkling my nose.

  “It does sound too dangerous,” said Logan in a quiet voice.

  “I’m very sorry,” said Willoughby.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The next day, I did not have spellcraft, so I didn’t see Willoughby at all. Instead, I had potions. I hadn’t been very good at potions the first time I gave the class a whirl, mostly because there was a lot of math, and I wasn’t really big on math. But I’d worked hard all last year in my potions class and then I’d taken summer school classes, and I was feeling like I was pretty caught up on the whole thing. That day being our first day of class, we hadn’t had to actually concoct anything, though, so I guessed I’d see how bad it got the following time the class met.

  Potions met on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which meant that it was a longer class that started around 11:00 and went until 12:15. Afterward, I was starving, because I hadn’t gotten up early enough to get breakfast in the dining hall that morning. I beelined it for the dining hall.

  That day, they were serving sloppy joes, fries, and green beans. Typically, not my favorite meal ever, but I was really freaking hungry, so I didn’t care. I stood in the line, salivating.

  Someone tapped me on my shoulder.

  I whirled. “What?” I practically growled. Hunger does not do great things for my politeness.

  It was Reid, and he was oblivious to my annoyance. Instead, he handed me a square piece of paper. “You are officially the first person to get an invite.”

  I scrutinized the paper, which had a big disco ball printed on it and the numbers 54 printed in big block letters. “What is this?”

  “It’s an invitation to my Studio 54-themed party,” said Reid.

  “You’re throwing a party?” I said.

  “Do ducks swim?” said Reid. “Parties are what I do.”

  “Yeah, but the last time I saw you, you said that you didn’t know who you were anymore.” I brightened. “Hey, did you and Tatum—”

  “Forget about Tatum,” he said. “She’s frozen me out, and there’s nothing I can do about that. I could wallow and feel sorry for myself, but I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to let this ruin my plan for this school year.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I didn’t realize you had a plan.”

  “Of course I do.” He looked at me as if I was crazy. “My plan is and has always been to have a sweet apartment and throw the best parties in the whole school.” He tapped the invitation. “I’ll see you there, okay? Costumes mandatory.”

  More costumes? The togas weren’t bad enough?

  I scrutinized the invite. Studio 54, huh? What were the odds I could get Logan into a pair of bell bottoms?

  Yeah, no way.

  Reid nudged me. “Hey, the line’s moving.”

  My stomach growled.

  I blocked Reid out until I got my food. Well, mostly. He was giving invitations to everyone, and I couldn’t help but register that. But I did my best to focus only on getting my freaking sloppy joes. While I was there, I noticed that they had sloppy joes made out of some kind of fake vegan meat, and I thought of Tatum.

  Then, as I was looking around for a place to sit, I saw her. She was over in the corner o
f the dining hall, sitting by herself.

  “Damn,” Reid breathed in my ear.

  I turned to look at him.

  “She’s right there,” he said. “Should I go and talk to her?”

  “I…” Actually, I was wondering the same thing. She looked lonely.

  “You said I should give her space,” he said.

  “I said you shouldn’t force anything.”

  “I’m going to go talk to her.” He pushed past me and headed for the corner of the dining hall.

  Slowly, I went after him.

  He got there before me.

  Tatum looked up at him.

  I stopped. I stood in the middle of the room, clutching my tray of food, and just watched them. I was too far away to hear what they were saying.

  Reid gestured at the chair across from her.

  She shook her head.

  He set his tray down anyway.

  She sighed. Then she leaned in.

  They began to engage in a very serious conversation, both of the looking solemn. They were pretty intent on it, though. Neither of them ate a bite while they talked, and both of them made a lot of gestures with their hands.

  Then, finally, Tatum stood up.

  Reid did too. He grabbed her by the arm.

  She shook her head at him.

  He let go of her.

  She looked really sad, like she might cry. She picked up her tray and walked off.

  I hurried over to Reid. I set my tray down on the table. “What was that?”

  He sank down into his chair, looking stunned. “She broke up with me,” he said in a bewildered voice.

  “Oh, hell,” I said. I reached over and grabbed his hand and squeezed. “I’m so sorry.”

  He blinked hard. “I can’t… believe…” He raised his gaze to me. His eyes were shining.

  “Reid,” I whispered.

  He sucked in a shaky breath. “No, you know what? I have a party to worry about.” He grimaced down at his food. “You, um, you want any of this?”

  “Maybe your fries,” I said. Hey, I was really freaking hungry.

  *

  When I got back to my dorm room after class that day, Tatum was lounging on the couch eating microwave popcorn and watching TV. She looked up at me when I came in and then looked back at the screen.