Neck-Romancer: A Neck-Romancer Novel

by Elizabeth Dunlap

  This was the most ridiculous 24 hours I’d ever had. Alec being my soulmate. A Lycan claiming me as his mate. Gilbert professing ghostly love. I should just leave and go live like a hermit and never look at another boy again. It worked great for my grandmother.

  I’d just pulled out a high collared black dress and some hex socks from my bag when my phone rang, and I put it to my ear with my shoulder holding it in place as I slipped off my pajama pants.

  “Sup, mom,” I said into the receiver.

  “Jaz!” she exclaimed, her voice buzzing through the speaker. “Your grandmother said she drew cards for you this morning, and you’ve met all three of your future lovers! I’m so proud of you, sweetie. When are you bringing them home for us to meet?”

  “Uhh,” I stuttered, losing my balance with one sock halfway on. “That might be a bit… hinky, mom. One of them isn’t a witch. And besides, I’m not even dating any of them.”

  “Yet,” she added with a knowing tone.

  “Look, grandma can dole the cards out all she wants, but I decide who I’m with, not some twist of fate, or magicae equidem bullshit, or a wolfy mating claim.”

  “Wolf?” Aldrich’s voice interjected, clearly all three were listening in. “Jaz, you… what do you mean by wolf?”

  “Nothing, forget I said anything.” I put the phone down for a moment, switching my shirt for my dress. The phone went back to my ear as I rooted in my makeup bag for a rubber band.

  “You’re coming home as soon as you have a break, and I want to know what you’re hiding from us, Jasmine,” my mother warned, and I could feel the fire of her wrath through my phone.

  “Okay, geez. Don’t set the house on fire. I’ll be home in a few weeks. Maybe. I don’t know. I have to go, the Headmaster wants to see me. Byeee!”

  I hung up before they could lecture me further and put my phone on silent once they started calling me again, stuffing it into my dress pocket. I slid my feet inside some ballet flats and twisted my hair into a top knot, putting a few bobby pins between my teeth. I walked to the door as I put the pins into various parts of my hair until it felt secured, and opened it to find all three boys staring right at me like they’d been able to see through the door the entire time. I’d call it a coincidence, but Alec was an Illusionist.

  “Telling your parents about us, that’s nice,” Alec said, leaning against the hallway wall with a smirk that I ignored.

  “Privacy means nothing to you, doesn’t it,” I said dryly, picking up my coffin backpack where it sat by the doorway, and shutting and locking my door before putting my bag straps on my shoulders.

  Pierce, the gigantic wolf, was going to be hard to miss across campus, even with Alec’s illusion spell on him. I moved my bag to the side, unzipped it, and used a spell to bring out the item I wanted: one of my necklaces that had a Ouija board pointer charm on it. Holding it out, my fingers slid along the necklace, lengthening the string with magic until it was long enough to fit around Pierce’s wide neck, and I leaned over him to clasp it, letting the charm fall against his front scruff.

  “There, now everyone will think you’re my familiar.” I pat at his head a few times. “Good doggo.”

  He sneezed at me in annoyance.

  Alec and I went down the stairs to the common room, Pierce right under my hand and getting more than a few looks from our classmates. Gilbert had disappeared, so we started climbing the staircase outside of the common room, going up several flights to the Headmaster’s office.

  “Stay here with Alec,” I instructed Pierce. “I’ll try to keep Cauldron inside, but if he comes out, hide or something. He can’t find out about you.”

  “I’ll watch him,” Alec assured me, smiling in my direction, and I respected his efforts to keep me happy. It brought a warmth to my chest, not unlike when our magic touched and the world felt right. My eyes automatically lowered to his lips, and the memory of how soft and demanding those lips were was swiftly taking over me.

  Zip it, magic! I’m in charge here, not you!

  I turned and smacked myself in the face on Cauldron’s door, neither Alec nor Pierce bothering to hide their snickers at me.

  “Shut up, butt faces,” I threw behind me, and opened the door to step inside. It was dark like before, but Headmaster Cauldron was packing up a satchel near the only lamp. I shut the door and waited for him to notice I’d arrived.

  He looked up at me, smiled briefly, and went back to putting some papers into his bag. “Ahh, there you are. I was about to go after you. We’ve been summoned to the High Council. They want to meet you.”

  “The High Council?” I stammered, coming closer to the light so I could see better.

  “Yes, the High Council, what other one is there?” He slung his bag over his small frame and walked to the door to open it again. “Let’s go, we’re already late.” I hurried out, hoping Pierce and Alec had hidden somewhere, but they were right there by the benches, stunned still as Cauldron surveyed them with an absent look, adjusting his bag a bit. “They can come too, just hurry up.”

  “Thank you, Headmaster,” Alec said, falling in step with me, and I saw him reaching for my hand before Pierce pushed between us. “Not cool, dude.”

  Pierce ignored him, padding down the steps with us, all the way to the bottom floor where we met a group of students waiting for breakfast. With Cauldron distracted from a teacher asking him a question, all of the girls flocked to my wolf, petting him and scratching his chin, and Pierce drank it up like honey, panting with a wide, toothy grin.

  “Such a cute puppy, aren’t you?” one of the girls cooed, hugging his face to her breasts.

  I was not jealous. Not.

  “Aww, you just love your mommy Jaz, don’t you? Yes you do, you good boy, Pierce.”

  Alec and I froze, looking at each other and back down at the girl who had spoken.

  “How, uhh,” I started, clearing my throat. “How’d you know his name?”

  She glanced up at me, smiling and pressing a kiss to Pierce’s ear. “Telepath. He loves you so much, Jaz. He…” Her face went pink with shock and she stared down at Pierce, straightening away from him like he had rabies. “He was thinking about humping you.”

  Pierce carefully checked my face before panting again, trying to play it cool and looking the other way when my glare threatened to bore a hole into his stupid skull.

  “Oh you are so never getting a doggy treat!”

  Cauldron tugged on my dress to get my attention, having finished his conversation with the teacher. “Let’s go, Miss Neck.”

  I stomped out behind him, and Pierce followed Alec with his ears turned down in a pout. We went through the village, only stopping for one second to grab some fresh pastries for breakfast, and we ended up on board the Incantation Express within minutes.

  Alec sat across from me, Cauldron to his right, and Pierce jumped up on the seat beside me to put his giant head in my lap before I could protest.

  “No, bad dog. I still haven’t forgiven you for that humping thought.” I shoved at him, but he remained like a block of cement.

  Cauldron watched me struggling and hid a smile when I grunted, trying to move the wolf but not succeeding. “You can’t get mad at him for that. He’s a dog.”

  “Oh, I’m sure I can,” I answered, glaring down at Pierce, who I could swear was grinning at me. “You’re getting it later. And not the fun kind of getting it.” Pierce whined at me, loudly snuffing his nose, wolf speak for ‘you’re a chicken weenie and I’m not scared of you.’

  “Not the best idea, bringing him with you,” Cauldron noted as he settled in his seat, his short legs hanging off the edge. Alec and I exchanged a worried look, wondering silently if we hadn’t managed to fool the Headmaster with the masking spell. “You’ll have to register your familiar officially once we get back to school, you know the rules, Jaz. I wouldn’t have chosen a wolf, but since you have, it had to be a fated pairing, given your power level.”

  Seeing as Pierce wasn’t my real
familiar, our pairing was anything but fated. Eventually, maybe I’d actually find a familiar, whether it was from the pet shop or somewhere else. I hoped it would be something interesting, like a ferret or a koala.

  I almost forgot to nod, confirming Cauldron’s question that would allow Pierce to stay with me. “Yep, totally. Saw him, felt the connection, it was epic.” Pierce lifted his head to look up at me, hopeful I was telling the truth, but I raised my eyes to the train car ceiling to avoid his stare.

  “Funny,” Cauldron said quietly, tapping his finger against his knee. “I would’ve thought your familiar to be a rarer beast. It’s usually the way with higher power levels. The more powerful witches attract a more exotic and more rare familiar. Something about it makes them more influential with bigger magic.” The look in his eyes made me uncomfortable, as if he was smelling my bullshit, and I automatically started stroking at Pierce’s furry head to stay calm.

  “What’s yours then,” Alec challenged, smoothly crossing one of his legs over the other and fiddling his fingers, no doubt wishing he had his vape pen.

  Cauldron gave a sheepish grin, shrugging. “Don’t have one. Never found a fated pairing match, and being a higher level means I can’t have a familiar without it, as both of you can attest.”

  Meeting Alec’s gaze, he was smiling a secretive grin at me. “Don’t you have a familiar?” I asked him, even though I’d never seen him with anything other than his vape pen.

  “I do, but I keep her hidden. Can’t be caught with her around humans, she’s an endangered species. And I uhh… I kind of stole her. From a zoo.”

  “You stole…” Cauldron cut off with a groan and rolled his eyes, sighing. “I can’t believe I’m actually condoning the theft of an endangered species.”

  “Wasn’t my fault, she was just sitting there looking pink, and my damn magic was like, ‘Oh, hey, Alec. See this Pink Fairy Armadillo? You need it.’”

  “Aww!” I cooed before I could stop myself, and Alec’s grin made my stomach flutter. “Can I see her?”

  He looked around, making sure no one was passing by our compartment, and he reached into one of his inner jacket pockets, pulling out a tiny fluffy pink thing with scales on her back. She lifted her head up to sniff at me, and I automatically held my hands out to let her crawl onto them without even thinking, but she took the invitation gladly and let me bring her close to my face.

  “She likes you,” Alec observed, watching the animal carefully like a concerned parent.

  Slowly, I reached a finger to her little head and stroked at her scaly armor. “You think?” Humans were an enigma to me, but animals I understood perfectly.

  Scratch my head, give me food, love me all my life.

  “I can hear her thoughts. She’s drawn to your magic because you’re my soulmate. I think in a pinch, she’d be able to aid your spells too, just not as efficiently as she does with me.” The armadillo turned in my hands and jumped from me back to Alec who cuddled her against his neck so affectionately I was almost jealous. Jealous of an armadillo. “Her name is Astella.” He scratched at her underfluff, and they cutely rubbed their noses together. “I promise to buy you more cockroaches, don’t worry, sweetheart.” It was so uncharacteristically him, it was very hard to resist the growing warmth in my chest. He had a sweet side. I preferred it to his aloofness, but that didn’t mean I was going to accept him as my soulmate just yet. I needed more from him than a snuggle with his familiar, even if it was damn adorable.

  “Well,” Cauldron spoke, startling me away from staring at Alec like a drooling idiot. “I’m going to get some rest, it will be several hours until we get to the High Council. As you’re both adults, you are free to do whatever you like until then, just don’t leave the train, please.” He laid down on his side, his small body taking up the exact space of his seat, and he rested his head on the armrest.

  Alec waited a few minutes until we could hear the soft snores of our Headmaster, and Astella disappeared into Alec’s coat. “I could use a drink. Please tell me this damn thing has a drink car.” He bent to look out the compartment window to the aisle outside as if he could tell exactly what goodies the train offered by staring at the hallway wall.

  “You’ve never been on the train before?” I asked as I stood up, Pierce’s fur still clasped in my hand.

  Raising his eyebrow at me, Alec fanned his hands out as an explanation. “I’m rich.”

  “Ahh, right. Lots of money in the toy business, I hear.”

  He hopped up, joining me at the door, his hand slamming into the wood above mine to stop me from opening it. “Every time you make a Santa joke, I’m going to make you breathless beneath me. You’ve been warned.”

  I narrowed my eyes and leaned in, my body heating up from the smell of him because effing Christ, I wanted him so badly I felt damp in all the right places. My voice thankfully stayed steady when I told him, “You assume I’ll let you come down my chimney in the first place.”

  As Pierce growled at my come-on, I left the train compartment and turned to the direction of the drink car, both of them on my heels. I diverted my steps towards the bathroom and I was so focused on getting to the women’s restroom so I could gather myself together and forget how much I was burning all over for Alec, I didn’t notice something on the carpet in front of me. I tripped and sailed over the object, hitting the floor of the train hard.

  “Jaz! Are you…” Alec trailed off and he took a few steps back when he saw whatever I’d tripped over.

  A dead body. It was a dead body.

  The entire train shook as I screeched and my body seized up in terror. The last time I’d seen a dead body… No, no I couldn’t remember that day. It was too horrifying.

  My hand reached out as my cheeks became wet with tears. “Alec!” Calling out to him came so easily I should’ve been embarrassed, but he was beside me in mere moments, pulling me up enough to hold me in his strong arms. I was so deep inside my own head, so deep inside my fear, my entire body trembled beneath Alec’s embrace, and it had nothing to do with being so close to him.

  “Jaz, breathe,” Alec soothed in my ear, his lithe fingers running through my hair, and I sucked in a deep gasp of air, my chest heaving so hard it hurt. Pierce’s wet nose pushed against my arm, and I weirdly wished he was in human form so I could hug him too. Hugging him as a wolf wasn’t the same as hugging a person.

  “Jasmine, is everything… Oh, heavens,” Cauldron said, his voice approaching from the hall. “Are you two alright? I wonder what happened…” Several people approached and I saw through a curtain of tears Cauldron stepping aside to let them pass.

  One of them crouched to the body and felt its neck. “What happened here?”

  Alec shook his head against me. “We don’t know, we were walking to the drink car, he was already here on the floor.”

  Cauldron spoke up before the conductors could continue asking us questions. “These two are my students, they were with me until a few moments ago, I can vouch for them. Alec, take Jasmine back to the compartment, I’ll join you later.”

  Both Pierce and Alec helped me up when my limbs refused to move, and Alec directed me towards the bathroom first, shutting the door on Pierce and leaving him in the hallway.

  Half-blind from my tears, I found my way to the sink in the small bathroom and searched around for a cloth to wipe my face. Alec got one first and wet it in the sink before gently putting his fingers on my chin so he could run the rough fabric across my cheeks.

  “You’re frightening me, Jaz. With all your bravado, I’ve never seen you react like you did just now, not even with Cole and his sluts in your face.”

  I didn’t answer as he finished cleaning me up and tossed the rag into the sink. Again, my hands went out without me thinking about it, so easily taking his fingers into mine.

  Had I really become so comfortable around him in such a short amount of time? The more important question was could I actually trust him, not just with my secrets, but with me?

/>   “I…” I stopped and pressed my lips together, because if I let the words out, I’d have to feel everything that went with them. “I was the one who found my dad’s body when he died. I was barely old enough to remember four times four, but I’ll never forget that day.” Alec swore under his breath and tightened his fingers around mine. “Alec.” I looked up at him, fresh tears coming from my eyes, my lower lip trembling, as vulnerable as I’d ever been. “How am I supposed to be a necromancer when every time I see a corpse I’m seeing my dad’s body?”

  My magical soulmate had no smart remarks, no sexual come-ons, he wordlessly let go of my hands and wrapped his arms around me so gently, so tenderly, it brought more tears to my eyes.

  When was the last time I’d been treated like that?

  Never, that’s when.

  “I’ll be right here for you, Jaz. You don’t ever have to worry. If you’re scared, I’ll be your shield. If you’re doubting yourself, I’ll hold you up. If you need to feel safe, I’ll protect you. From anything. From anyone.”

  And feeling incredibly stupid, I asked him an unfiltered question, because we were already hugging so it wasn’t like we could get more intimate. “Alec, are you being sappy because we’re soulmates?”

  “I recall promising to care about and for you before we kissed, so I think you can answer that question on your own.”

  While that was a solid point, the mention of us kissing brought me from zero to sixty, and every part of my body became aware that I was pressed up against him. He went rigid —all over, I might add— as he sensed the shift in me. His hands slid a slow path from the middle of my back down to my hips, burning me as they went and stealing the breath from my lungs.

  With my body heating up, my scent must’ve changed because Pierce started clawing at the bathroom door, whining loudly for us to let him in.

  “He’s probably…” Alec swallowed and his hands tightened on my dress. “…trying to make sure I’m not touching you.”