Aurora Witch (Paranormal Hunter Academy Book 2)

by Rae Hendricks

  Jake is look at me funny, and I give him a stink face back. “What?”

  “I have seen the way he looks at you. Kagan isn’t going anywhere. He may just be busy. Remember that for him, school has been going for a few days now, and it’s close to the end of the year. He has to be ready for graduation, as well as handle all his tutoring and assistant teacher duties.”

  “I didn’t even think of that, the fact that he will graduate this year. Ugh, maybe that’s it. He doesn’t think he should be so wrapped up with a new student when he’s about to be an adult.”

  Jake rolls his eyes at me. “I think you are reading this all wrong. Text him. I was with you the last few days and on the train.” Jake gets up to go, but I stop him.

  “Wait, could you discreetly go get me some info about Aurora Witches in the last 200 years, while I deal with this?”

  He grimaces. “Sure, I’ll do that, but don't refer to Kagan as a ‘this’, okay?”

  It’s my turn to roll my eyes. “See you later, Jake.” I wave at him before he’s gone and shutting the door behind him.

  I bite the bullet and send a message to Kagan even though I hate being the first one to contact the other, today of all days. But I guess it can’t always be on him.

  Hey! What are you doing? Want to come see my new dorm?

  My text is so lame, I doubt he will say a word to even tell me no. So, imagine my surprise when I get a message back only two minutes later.

  I have a couple more papers to grade and then I will be right there.

  Would it be too much to send an emoji back?

  Yes, it would probably be too much.

  I scrap that idea and put my phone down to wait for him instead. “I hope you like Kagan,” I say to Ursula as she finally goes to curl herself back up on her bed. Like that, she looks sweet and totally not like a magical killing machine I know she is, especially after watching these memories she gave me, that I cannot oddly play on a loop whenever I want.

  It’s strange, getting to know my father this way, but it’s more than I have had of him my whole life. If I am going to be a hunter then I need to know him, learn from both his strengths and his mistakes, so I know better than to get myself killed, by a demon.

  I am sure it will be to my advantage that I have angel blood as well, but with my hellfire vulnerability, I know I can’t always count on that to get me out alive.

  I listen expectantly for a knock on the door, but instead, what I get is a phone call.

  “Jake?” I answer, seeing that it’s him in the caller i.d.

  “Yeah, it’s me. Sorry if I am interrupting, but I just got back to my room with some historical accounts of other Aurora Witches. There is something strange about all of these.”

  “Do I even want to know?” I ask him, tensing up at the thought that a lead might actually come from this. That will mean admitting that I trust Adriel again, which is risky territory.

  “So far, I haven’t found one that’s made it to 35, and even that seems to be pushing to for most of them.”

  I let out the breath I was holding. “Well, that’s not so shocking. You know what my uncle said about the angel blood. I am sure a lot of people couldn’t handle it, especially without all the knowledge we have now.”

  “No, Riley, these deaths aren’t because of blood. They’ve all been killed under suspicious circumstances.”

  Damn it, it looks like death is determined to follow me around, until it gets the upper hand.

  I hope my teacher has some tricks up his sleeve to make sure I don't end up six feet under.

  Chapter Eight

  "How are you?"

  The question somehow goes in one ear and out the other without reaching my brain for computation.

  How am I?

  Let’s recap.

  I am an Aurora Witch and not a Blood Witch, made this way by an angel who’s supposed to be on the side of good, but it’s about as complicated to explain as our relationship status. Oh, and now I get to see the guy I am supposed to be getting over almost every day while trying not to fall for him all over again. My boyfriend's father is part of a group of people who are supposed to be good and have spent the better part of a week torturing me in the name of magical discoveries. Now this boyfriend has practically ignored me since I’ve made it back to school this morning, despite me overhearing him tell the other guy, I am not supposed to love anymore, that he loves me too.

  I feel out of breath just thinking about it.

  All that finally comes out is, "Umm...I am okay, considering. My new schedule kind of blows. I didn’t expect anything else since I technically flunked out."

  I shrug as if it is no big deal, not meeting the eyes that are fixated on me.

  "I've upset you, haven’t I?" he asks, and guilt hits my stomach. Jake was probably right about Kagan having been busy. It is his last year, and he does have a job to do.

  I force my body to relax and sit down next to him, nervously running my fingers along the pearls he gave me. "I'm sorry. I don’t have a right to be that upset. I am sure you have been busy, it’s just that...you haven’t said anything since I've gotten back, at least not to me." It’s time to fess up. "I overheard you and Adriel this morning by accident. I can’t help feel, with the fact you're graduating and Adriel is going to be in our lives so much now, that something is ending."

  Kagan lifts my chin and forces me to look at him as he brings his lips to mine. The kiss is short and soft, but it gets his point across.

  "Adriel is just another thing we have to get through. And truly, whatever happens or doesn’t happen between the two of you is none of my business, even if it irks me. It’s only natural to be jealous. As for the rest, I have been busy. I shouldn’t have even taken the time to fight with Adriel." He shakes his head, a smirk on his face. "I guess I just couldn’t resist a little testosterone filled, petty argument with the guy. Even if he is an angel. That’s stiff competition."

  I am about to refute that but then he laughs, and I see he is joking.

  I breathe a sigh of relief. "Glad to see you acting like your typical, jokester self. I've been lacking that in my life," I tell him, letting him pull me into his lap only to have him start tickling me.

  "Wha - what are you do - doing?" I gasp out between giggles as my sides cramp up trying to keep him from getting any more good ones in.

  I like how I can have fun with him. How even if he does get jealous, he lets the whole thing go so easily. But it’s exactly those things that also make me feel guilty because he looks so good on paper.

  He is so good! Why would I need anyone else in my life - especially someone who betrayed my trust so thoroughly?

  I guess the heart wants what it wants.

  My heart must have a defect.

  We melt into a more routine feeling as we talk about how our breaks went - mine shorter and more mundane than his if I don’t count what happened at headquarters. Those, I just don’t feel like recounting again and again. Especially not to him.

  I don’t know how much of the truth he knows through Julian, but it’s enough that he is aware nothing good happened. He doesn’t need his view of his father and his world to be twisted like that, when I feel weird enough about the whole thing.

  I mean, until then I was still thinking Adriel was crazy and wrong about them. Though now, it makes me sick that I have to consider some of his paranoia is a reality.

  I shouldn’t feel that way about people we are supposed to trust to protect us.

  As soon as we both notice it’s too late for me to stay any longer, I get my goodbye kiss and slip back to my room where I find Jake is back inside.

  "Do I want to know how you got in?" I ask him, looking at Ursula as if she has betrayed me by not attacking the person who broke into my room.

  "You left it unlocked. Pretty careless," he teases, and I roll my eyes.

  I am about to go and give him a good play smacking when I notice the stack of books on my bed. "Are those…?"

  "Yes
, they are what I was telling you about. I thought you wouldn’t be able to sleep thinking about this," he answers before I can even finish the thought.

  I approach slowly, scooting my soles along the floor like I am afraid of getting to them too soon. I don’t know that I am ready to see exactly what it is Jake has found.

  There is a part of me that wants to close my eyes and go back to the way things were before, a time when I knew my father died protecting people. He was doing what he thought was right for the good guys and knew nothing else of the way the Magistrate operated or what angel blood did if consumed by a witch.

  But that’s not me anymore! She died at that party.

  As I sit down on the other side of them, Jake lounging on my bed behind me, I see that he has marked the pages I need to look at with slips of paper.

  "You don’t think there’s a spell that would have worked better for this?" I prod him, but he shakes his head, his mouth full of whatever snack he has brought with him.

  Looks like he’s moving in.

  "It would leave a trace if I did that, you know that."

  Of course, I should know that. I've at least known magical basics since around the time I learned how to read and write. I never thought I’d be in a situation where I worried about someone knowing what spells I was doing - especially if it pertains to reading a book. "It’s that bad?"

  "I think so."

  I dive in, flipping through every volume and reading carefully to see if this whole thing has a logical explanation.

  The first one is from the 70s - the last bad mistake that was made. The report on that one is that the Magistrate tried to use him as a hunter to bring in the every angel that had done this to him, and he didn’t survive the quest.

  That one isn’t necessarily suspicious when read by itself. Angels are hard to kill and just as hard to capture, even if it is an Aurora Witch going after them. If the Aurora Witch was aggressive with the angel, then the angel would take them out and call them a lost cause, right?

  With a healthy dose of skepticism, I begin to go backward in history, all the way back to the American Revolution, oddly enough.

  The early 1900s list three known Aurora Witches, two of which were a couple in 1907. Neither of them survived very long, and their bodies were supposedly taken for study, which led to the discovery that angel blood and witch blood didn’t always have a good end result.

  They used this to explain away every open mystery death prior to this point and called it good.

  On the surface, it makes sense, but something about the whole thing gives me goosebumps and not the good kind.

  A child believed to have been euthanized, a sprinkling of a hunter or two turned Aurora Witch throughout the 1800s whose deaths are unsolved. Then dozens made on purpose, during the time leading up to the American Revolution, only for them all, every single one, to disappear as soon as the war was over.

  I have never been the type to follow or buy into conspiracy theories, whether it is in the witch community or human. It is only natural for the human mind to connect dots where there are none and make up crazy stories to explain the unexplainable. I can't think of any other thing to say here, other than, there are obviously people out there wanting to make sure beings like me don’t exist for very long.

  "You do know that the Magistrate was not founded until 1917," I mention, though it means little, especially considering there is an instance in history of known Aurora Witches in almost every decade until the long stretch between 1920 and now. There was only the one.

  "Just because the Magistrate is new doesn’t mean that a ruling class is in league with the angels didn’t exist. Witches have had organized communities for centuries," Jake explains, and he’s right. It isn’t like the Magistrate is the only ruling class out there; Europe and Asia are full of them and have been for much longer than us. "And how long has Reyes been a vampire?"

  I rack my brain and realize that I don’t even know the answer to that question. The man is a cornerstone in our community. Everyone knows who he is and respects him in his position. Yet, what do we know about him, other than that he was a witch who got turned during a fight with vampires, who helped found the Magistrate?

  Almost nothing.

  "I think we have more books to find. We're going to have to look into Reyes."

  Jake purses his lips at me. "You know that’s probably suicide, right?"

  "Only if you are actually right that the Magistrate now still practices anything like this or that he has anything to do with it. It could just be he is law-abiding to the point of harshness."

  In truth, I've only said it because I would like to believe it. I don’t know what it means for me and my future years as a hunter for them, but it can’t be good.

  "I really want that to be it, Riley," Jake says, for the first time showing that he is still not over the trial. He has put on such a brave face this whole time. Now the edges are cracking to show the vulnerable young man underneath. "I didn’t like the Magistrate before or their rules and prejudices, but I understood it. I don’t know what I understand now."

  I reach out and place my hand on top of his, forgetting about my problems for a moment. The family I have left is at least safe.

  I don’t think it would ever be held against my uncle or Vivi, if I went rogue or couldn’t learn to be a good hunter. However, Jake’s mother is in prison, and after that, she is basically banished. If Jake is going to be a hunter here, then the chances of them seeing each other again are slim to none, unless they break the rules, which is a risk.

  "I'm sorry for not being there for the verdict or after."

  "It’s not like you could help it. You were a hostage. I was so freaked, though; we all were. Wish you would have told me sooner what you were."

  "I thought that I would be able to on the way home."

  "Oh, while I was looking for the books, I also stopped by the kitchen and got some raw meat for you to feed Ursula with. I already gave her a little. We bonded," he says with a cheesy grin, changing the subject.

  I turn to Ursula who is sound asleep, probably with a fuller stomach than she’s had in years. "Thanks, Jake. That'll do for now, but I think she'll probably want to go out and hunt at some point."

  "Oh yeah, wolf and all."

  I pick up the stack of books and tuck them under my bed; the best hiding place I have for the time being. Then, I slip on some pajamas and lay down next to Jake who already seems to be out and drooling.

  With a laugh, I use my magic to turn out the light and close my eyes, not knowing if I am ready for what the next day has in store for me.

  By the end of the day, exhausted is a word that doesn’t even begin to explain how I feel, and yet I still have to go and train with Adriel.

  I head out to field 4, my stomach in knots and betraying me. I’d like to make an excuse about not getting enough for lunch or too much physical activity with a full stomach, but it’s just butterflies … on steroids.

  He is standing there, his back to me, and he is in a powder blue suit. How many people can I think of, can pull this off?

  Only him.

  “Isn’t this a little formal for a training session?” I ask, coming up behind him. He turns around and fixes that stare on me that makes me feel like I am under a spotlight. I am already sweating from athletics, and now his gaze is enough to cause me to sweat even more, though it is still too cold to put away the hoodies and jackets yet.

  “I am simply representing the Magistrate well. We are technically out in the open,” he says, his tone flat.

  It’s so much worse than when he is wearing his heart on his sleeve. I would rather him be tempting me with how he feels for me than be this frozen hole of darkness he is giving off.

  Like a black hole that will take me down with him.

  “I looked up what you told me to.” I don't know if I say it because I am grasping at straws. Is it due to what we used to have for the brief moment, a flickering flame, or if I need to get it off of my
chest because it’s been there at the back of my mind all day.

  “So, do you trust me?” he asks, and that was not the reaction I expected, but I should have. It was what he had told me to do – to look up the history of the deaths of the Aurora Witches of the past. It was so I trusted what he was trying to tell me.

  “Me being here should be enough. Let’s drop it and get going before we both get in trouble. This is supposed to be a part of my class schedule.” I stand across from him and drop my bag behind me, kicking it out of the way.

  He approaches me, and thinking it has to do with training, I don't move a muscle. But then he bends down to my ear and whispers, “I am not letting you get away with not answering me.”

  Chapter Nine

  My body goes stiff. I will it not to respond to him, but who am I kidding? Even Kagan knows there is still something between us.

  The fight we had yesterday and what he said to me last night told me as much.

  I don't know how long I have that pass, to date more than one guy at the same time. I don't think my heart cares at all about passes, rules, or even that it was supposed to be broken only a moment ago.

  I am not a shy person, just not someone who likes to be the center of attention. What I don't expect myself to do, is what I end up doing next.

  As Adriel pulls away from my ear, I catch his bottom lip between mine and kiss him, savoring the moment because I know I could get punished for this later.

  Heck, he could choose to punish me for this now.

  The kiss is slow moving and sensual, but I put all of my need, my anger, my sadness over what’s happened to me because of him in there. I think I know now why people say that love and hate are so close to being the same thing.

  When I pull away he looks bewildered.

  “For both our sakes, I am going to pretend that didn’t happen.” He tries to use that monotone he had, when I first walked out here, but he fails miserably. I can read all of the emotion on his face anyway, even if he didn’t have a catch to his voice.

  “You have got to stop saying things like that. You told my boyfriend this morning that you loved me. You came up here against orders to stop me from letting the Magistrate in on the fact of what I was. Now that I think of it, you even apologized when I was passing out from you giving me your blood.”