Dread Delight: Rosewood Academy for Witches and Mages (Darkly Sweet Book 2)

by Juliann Whicker

  We were halfway across the parking lot before I said, “Drake, we forgot the fortune cookies.”

  He growled and pulled me faster. I loved it, him pulling me around. My heart raced as we neared the car. Maybe he would forgo the car and instead drag me into the woods and tie me to a tree.

  He opened up the back door and gestured me inside. I scrambled in and turned in time to see him slam the door in my face. He stalked back into the Chinese restaurant while I sat there, frowning at his back. Was he cold in just his white shirt? I shivered a little bit in spite of the heavy jacket.

  Finally, he came back out, stalking across the parking lot towards me, the sign’s light turning his hair into fire. He opened the back door, handed me a fortune cookie with a bow. I grabbed his hand, ignoring the cookie and tugged him over onto the seat.

  He sat up and stared at me, his position very awkward, half in, half out of the Suburban. “I got your cookie.”

  “And I have you.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Really,” he drawled. “And what do you intend to do with me?”

  “First, I’m going to make you close the door.”

  He did so, getting all the way into the backseat first. “And then…”

  I slid my hands around his ribs and dug in my fingers, waiting for him to gasp and writhe like I did. He stared at me, his face close to mine, his strong muscles beneath my fingers.

  “I’m tickling you,” I whispered, staring at his lips.

  “While you do that, I’m going to kiss you until you faint.”

  “But there’s no music,” I breathed as his lips brushed mine.

  He smiled and brushed his lips over mine again. “Oh, but there is. With you there is always music.”

  He kissed me, soft, sweet, lingering, kiss after kiss while I slid my hands over his chest, leaning against him. Dizziness swamped me as I clung to him. When he bit my lip I gasped and my eyes opened wide.

  His eyes gazed back, sparking green. I tasted blood, my blood and then things got really weird. I shoved him against the door and scraped his lips with my teeth, holding the soft delicate skin in my jaws like a weasel. He was mine, and I would utterly consume him. It was like the time in the woods, only I had no rope, his chest already bore my name, and he wasn’t passive. He pulled me against him, crushing me into his chest while his lips bruised mine. I wanted more and more, deeper and deeper until the flicker of something slick and serpentine against my tongue had me pulling away to blink at him in shock.

  “Was that tongue?”

  He threw his head back and laughed. His laughter was the most beautiful, terrifying thing, I wrapped my arms around myself while I trembled. I could still feel his fingers digging into my skin, his lips, teeth, tongue…

  That’s when I fainted, which was kind of pointless since it was after the fact, but whatever.

  Chapter 33

  Mage

  I carried her to her room, her body limp, head resting on my shoulder, my shirt ripped along with the skin beneath my shirt.

  I felt ridiculously alive. Not only alive but sated. I never felt like that, satisfied in any way. I always craved more, but this, that, her crashing against me like a wave and pulling me under, I’d been waiting so long to drown in her. Finally, finally I’d kissed her without having her faint, and she’d actually kissed me back.

  I left her on the grotesque lavender-eggplant floral couch in Lilac stories and turned to find Viney, arms crossed over her chest, staring at me with this strangely blank stare.

  “Good evening,” I offered.

  She nodded and then shifted her gaze down to my chest, my ripped and blood-stained shirt. She didn’t say anything, simply stared at my shirt unblinking.

  “She fainted.”

  She stood there, staring.

  I hesitated. “All right. I’ll see you later. Have a lovely evening.”

  It was a lovely evening, and morning the next day, and afternoon when I went into the auditorium to watch her dance with Ian. She wasn’t dancing with him. Instead, she was with Zach, but she was distracted and a bumbling mess. That shouldn’t have made me happy. She had to be brilliant and perfect. The absolute best, but I just wanted her to be in my arms.

  Zach said something to her and she frowned and wrinkled her adorable little nose at him. In her hair, one green feather, and one gold star poked out of her bun. I’d tied it while she’d been lying limp against my chest before I decided that if I didn’t drive her home and put her away for the night, I’d worry less about her state of consciousness than I would about how much I needed to taste the rest of her.

  I didn’t stay long. I had to rehearse with Wit. She had ideas about our musical number, which was ridiculous, almost as ridiculous as the extremely short skirt she wore along with a top whose sweeping neckline left very little to the imagination. She beamed at me when I came in, but her calculated charm couldn’t erase the tactile memory of Penny in my arms, burrowing into me as though I were her breath, her salvation.

  Speaking of salvation, the necromancer’s pet wasn’t doing well. He’d started to compile lists of his wrong-doings and it was very long. He should go to church with some of the other rehabbers. I needed to do something about that, but after Wit, I had to head into Darkside where a shipment of a very special chemical compound waited for my signature. It wasn’t for the tourney, but just business. I had to stay on top of Huntsman inc. along with all of my other responsibilities. I liked it, the business, the endless complicated juggling of people and projects, but what I liked best was happening upon Penny in the cafeteria and dropping into the seat beside her, then watching her blush when she noticed me.

  There was something utterly perfect about a life where every hall could end in a turn that revealed Penny handing out lollipops to a stunned student. Her beauty was so much more than beauty, more than any physical attributes. Beneath every racing moment was a sense of contentment. I would have a tea party with her on Sunday, and on Tuesday, I would experiment with other methods of keeping her conscious.

  Friday, I had no intention of going to the tourney. Penny wouldn’t be going because Viney had banned her very publicly that afternoon in the dining room, where I sat next to her, my fingers brushing hers.

  Did she realize how often I touched her? It didn’t seem like she noticed.

  At any rate, I had no intention or time to attend the tourney, except as I was walking down the hall, late that evening, a woman stepped in front of me, blocking my path.

  She wore a heavy cloak, so her face was covered, all but a pair of black lips and her moon pale chin.

  “Drake Huntsman. If you cared about her, you would leave her alone.” The voice was so strange, so empty of emotion but full of something else that the hairs on the back of my neck prickled.

  “If I cared about anyone, I would do any number of things. Do I know you?”

  She raised her head slightly and I caught my breath. There was something terrifyingly absent in those black eyes, but I had the uncomfortable sensation that I was looking at the emptiness of my own soul.

  “I’m a friend of Penny’s.” Her voice continued low, expressionless. “If you are not a friend to her, I will end you.”

  I blinked at her while I focused and prepared to summon five defenses and three attacks. “Imagine that. Has anyone ever told you how much you look like Pitch? I don’t suppose you’re here for the tourney.”

  “The tourney.” With that, she dissolved into smoke.

  I stood there staring at the empty hall and put a hand to my forehead. Witches didn’t step throughside the way mages did. They stepped through mirrors, and flew, at least some of them. This girl just dissolved. I pulled out my phone and called Zach. He didn’t answer. It rang then went to voicemail.

  I had things to do, so many things, but if Pitch was at the tourney, that was a historical moment, and possibly a deadly one, that I didn’t want to miss. I dressed in black, threw on a cloak and headed into the darkness of the midnight tourney where Viney
reigned. Pitch was a friend of Penny’s? It didn’t compute, but it did explain the Creagh adventure. Or at least the dead bodies. It also explained Zach, his brotherly not brotherly attitude towards Penny. She was his gateway to his fantasy. But, Pitch and Penny? What could they possibly have in common?

  I strode across the hard frozen ground, my breath misting in the air. It was a clear, cold night, and the stars were sprinkled like dice across the black velvet night sky. I gathered my cloak around me as I joined the throng heading towards the bleachers. There were more people than usual and I heard the hisses, Penny’s name mingling with Viney’s, like they would finally have an epic battle where Penny’s heritage would be revealed in full glory.

  Well, I couldn’t miss that, or the tourney where Pitch fought in Penny’s place. How would Viney do against Pitch? I found a seat close to the back in the bleachers, and soon Pete and Ian gathered around me, sensing me or finding a place closer to the back more convenient for any hasty exits we might have to make.

  “Have you seen Zach?” I asked them.

  Pete shook his head and Ian shrugged. “Other than the three hours I spent with him this afternoon, no. You saw them. What do you think?”

  “I think that after only a week in your hands, she’s nearly an entirely different dancer. Flexibility, grace, posture, all is greatly improved.”

  Ian flashed a golden smile. “She has lovely lines.”

  Pete snorted and elbowed him. “Yeah, like you need to tell Drake that.”

  Ian elbowed him back, hard and sudden, leaving Pete gasping. I put a hand on Pete’s shoulder and frowned at Ian. “Is there a problem?”

  Ian leaned towards me, frowning. “You know Zach. You know how he is, what he is. If he disliked her, he’d be showering her with compliments. Instead, he mocks her, insults her, jibes her, basically everything to convey how ambivalent he is towards her.”

  I considered for a moment, and it was suspicious, but if he was trying to get Pitch through Penny, we couldn’t hope for consistency in his behavior. I was about to say something about that when Zach’s head appeared above the crowd while he climbed the bleachers. At his side, in a swirl of shadows and black fabric was a figure that moved like black oil, liquid and viscous. Vicious? Both probably.

  Ian stiffened while Pete gasped when they saw Zach and his escort. Zach looked somewhere between terrified and euphoric while his date looked mysterious, deadly, and remarkably like Pitch.

  Ian stood there scowling at her while Pete’s mouth flapped open and closed. I gripped them both by the shoulders and pulled them down.

  The tourney went as they did, witches hurling hurters at each other, catching on fire, running around on the field screaming, that sort of thing. One contestant after another fought while the figure besides Zach sat perfectly, unnaturally still.

  The rest of the audience was unnaturally quiet, seeming to watch Zach’s date as much if not more than they watched the tourney. It couldn’t be Pitch. Pitch might fight in a tourney, but she would never go on a date to one. That was far too ridiculous. She was some girl who looked like Pitch, moved like Pitch, and Zach was a sucker. Maybe he’d actually end up having a real relationship with her. I’d convinced myself that she was a fake by the time Viney came out in her cloak with the flaming skull on the back. Viney spun around, hurled three hurters at various witches then crouched down to take their attack beneath her heavily armored cloak.

  The girl beside Zach made a sound. It wasn’t too loud, but her voice carried, the meaning conveyed clearly, that of disgust and contempt. I expected her to start harassing Viney, like Penny would, but the girl stood up and walked down the stairs, one at a time while Zach trailed behind, a look of panic on his face.

  Did she not like his date? Poor Zach, if not even pretend Pitches liked him. That’s what I thought the moment before she moved. Movement wasn’t the right word. I could say fly, but it wasn’t flying but a launch forward, vaulting forward fifteen feet down the steps to perch on the tourney railing for a blurry moment before she jumped again. Thirty feet, landed with a crunching sound on one of the witches who fought Viney, then she moved again, a blur that left the other witch flying backwards to somersault fifteen feet away, then the other witch who seemed like an afterthought. Pitch simply hit her with her face until her opponent crumpled bonelessly.

  Pitch stood for a moment on the last witch in this body skimming uniform, black, bumpy, cloak fluttering around her before she turned to face Viney. Viney stared at the newcomer, a strange look on her face. It wasn’t fear but excitement, eagerness. Viney had been waiting for a worthy adversary, and now she faced the best.

  Viney dropped all showiness and focused on spare, meticulous defense and attack. It wasn’t an ordinary Pitch tourney. Pitch was a marvelous showman. I could admit that she might even have been better than me in some ways. Her entrances were always incredible, mind-blowing, and her hurters, sound effects, and costumes were always cutting edge brilliant that were quickly copied by all the other contestants. This Pitch wasn’t putting on a show as much as she was humiliating Viney. Pitch didn’t use hurters and seemed to brush off the ones Viney threw, or somehow lob it back at Viney who fell back choking beneath the screaming, sparking, and smoking explosive.

  What fascinated me was when Pitch nearly strangled Viney with her cloak until Viney slipped out of it, facing the other, taller girl in nothing besides her basic black, reinforced suit. Pitch moved in with an attack that a Freshman could have blocked. Viney side-stepped and went ahead with her own punch, lunge, drawback and kick. Pitch should have fallen on the ground, legs knocked out from under her, but when Viney kicked the back of her legs, Pitch used that kick to launch her up and over, flipping over Viney and landing in a graceful defense pose that she held for barely a breath before she attacked with a move I’d never seen before. Neither had Viney or Viney was getting slow.

  It was very clear after only a few seconds of Pitch taking over the tourney that she wasn’t there to win. She was there to humiliate. Blood streaked Viney as she moved in with another attack that Pitch simply stepped away from, then knee up, and Viney was gasping out of breath.

  “She’s teaching her.”

  I glanced at Ian. I’d forgotten all about him.

  He gave me a slight smile then frowned at the field, studying the exchange. Yes, it was very interesting. Viney fought Pitch for fifteen minutes, the most brutal exchange I’d probably ever seen, then Pitch suddenly got bored, punched Viney in the face, laying her out, limbs spread eagled like she was making snow angels on the dirt.

  “And now she’s going to eat Zach.”

  I glanced at Pete who watched the whole thing in rapturous awe.

  I stood and smiled at the mages. “Maybe I can have a word with Zach before…”

  “Not likely.” Ian nodded towards the field, and I followed his gaze to where Zach was, striding like he wasn’t a mage on the sacred Makiss territory.

  Zach moved fast, dropped down beside Viney and worked some magic on her that lit her up blue and purple until she stirred and tried to sit up. Oscar came up beside Zach and they both tried to help her when apparently, she didn’t want helping.

  Laughter filled the night, blood-chilling laughter that resonated inside my bones. That wasn’t a laugh you heard every day. I’d have nightmares of that laugh. Zach stiffened and turned to Pitch, hesitating between Viney and the most incredible fighter the world had ever seen.

  He walked towards her, drawn as though by a spell. She laughed again and turned, ducking through the doorway beneath the tourney. It wasn’t until after she left that anyone else moved, like they were waking up.

  “What is she?” Ian asked no one in particular, but Pete answered.

  “Now that’s a witch.”

  Chapter 34

  Witch

  I woke up to laughter, the kind that sent chills all over my body and then my feet hit the floor as I threw myself off my bed and landed in a crouch, facing the shadow that stood, motionless
as though she’d been waiting for me. I straightened slowly, staring into her dark eyes.

  “Macaroons and bonbons, what?” I demanded, sounding like I didn’t appreciate being woken up in the middle of the night.

  “Zach.” She made it sound like a delightful weapon she’d found in her arsenal that she hadn’t expected. Of course Pitch being delighted couldn’t be called delight, more sadistic pleasure.

  “What did you do to him?”

  She smiled, drawing back her black lips and showing me her teeth. At least they weren’t blood-stained. Yet. “Do you really want to know?”

  I moved away from her but too late. Her hand gripped my throat, and her face loomed over mine.

  She brushed her fingers over my lips. Ow. No, like agonizing torture, and that’s why I screamed before I inhaled and forced the scream back into my throat. It would only make me hoarse and make her happy. The worst thing about that touch wasn’t the pain that shot through my body like firehot needles of anguish, but the feel and taste of Zach’s lips on mine through that pain. She’d kissed Zach.

  I hissed at her and jerked back and down. Yes, I was fighting Pitch. Stupid, stupid Penny. She laughed, I screamed, she compared me to Viney, I compared her to a black hole of rotten anchovies, and so on until I was wrapped in layers and layers of helpless anger and pain. When the pain changed, I slid down to the floor and she stepped away from me.

  I started shaking, felt like my insides were outsides, and my head. I couldn’t function with elephants stampeding in my brain, crushing every mental synapses and strand until I couldn’t think anything but agony, my body far away while pain suffocated and squeezed me raw.

  I curled up on the floor, helplessly clutching myself like I could hold the pieces together.