As we sat in front of him, in a collection of ragtag chairs that didn’t match, Headmaster Chesterton leaned forward and placed his hands beneath his chin.
“Ivy, you mentioned something about the water bottle on the field,” he said. “And we’ve inspected the water bottle to find a poisoning agent within. We think it’s a foreign substance—something witches brew up in India and parts of Mongolia, although we can’t be exactly sure. If Raphael had been a smaller man; if he hadn’t been filled with such much adrenaline due to the game he’d been playing—this might have really taken hold of him. But he’s a powerful guy. He’s already cleared most of it from his system.”
Mongolia? India? What the fuck.
“Ivy, I recognize that your powers are particularly strange within the ecosystem of Origins Supernatural Academy,” Headmaster Chesterton continued. “Which is why you probably felt this connection toward the water bottle. However, I need to know: do you have any idea who might have done such a thing? Did you have any sight of who it might have been?”
I swallowed and closed my eyes. Again, I had the images—both the premonition and the real-life version of Raphael falling to the ground and convulsing, little white bubbles coming out of his lips.
I shook my head, enraged at myself. Why could I see so much and not this?
“I don’t know. I really don’t,” I said. “But I know that they’re after me. They wanted to lure me out onto the field. Get to me.”
Headmaster Chesterton nodded solemnly. “This is what Professor Binion suggested as well.”
Ezra and Quintin shifted in their chairs. Headmaster Chesterton’s eyes scanned Quintin.
“I heard about the incident over Christmas break,” he said. “I hope that all of you will alert yourselves in the wake of this second attack. Be on perpetual alert. Origins Supernatural Academy is one of the safest places to be in the world—bar none. But right now, we have to get to the bottom of these strange attacks.” He grabbed a handkerchief from his pocket and dotted his brow. “In all my years as headmaster, we’ve never had a single student injured like the way you two have been in the previous month. But the fact of the matter is this. Whoever did this is taking enormous chances. That water bottle really could have been drunk by anyone else on the team. Whoever is doing this doesn’t seem to care if there’s any collateral damage.”
Headmaster Chesterton seemed done with us. We excused ourselves and headed back toward Raphael’s room, our heads jumbled up with what he’d said. It was sinister and frightening and altogether too heavy to handle. Who would be injured next? And would they make it next time?
God, I hated this. Hated what I’d caused.
Raphael had dressed back in street clothes: dark jeans and a black v-neck t-shirt. His muscles bulged out of it and his brown curls swirled down toward his shoulders. When he spotted us, he grinned wide and leaped from the side of the bed. Professor Binion said something to him like, “Be careful, young man!” but of course, this wasn’t anything Raphael could ever be.
He tore through the world and did whatever he wanted with it.
Professor Binion walked up behind us. He told us, in no uncertain terms, that it was essential we return to our rooms immediately. The curfew had been stretched on for the rest of the weekend, until classes Monday morning. We groaned collectively. I wondered if I would be chastised for this curfew, as well. Ivy Whitestone is cursed. It’s all Ivy’s fault.
When I reached the girls’ dorm, I gave each boy a hug and then swept up the stairs, back toward my bedroom. When I reached it, I flung the door closed and went back into my wild pacing.
In all Headmaster Chesterton’s years, nothing like this had ever happened.
Oh, I wonder who the cause of that was?
Fuck. I had to get out of Origin. It had become clearer and clearer with every passing day. I couldn’t let my best friend and the boys I’d fallen for be injured or killed, all because of some bullshit “prophecy.” The prophecy was about the entire world, but my entire world was them. I couldn’t think outside the bounds of that. Not yet.
I collapsed on the rug and stretched out, tears rolling down my cheeks again. When I finally got out of Origins—hopefully by the end of that year—I would never see Raphael, Quintin, and Ezra again. I would never see Celeste again. All the memories we had were now in the past. There would be no fresh ones.
Fuck. I smashed my fist against the ground. Pain permeated through my wrist and up my arm. When I closed my eyes, all I could see was them, the boys—could feel how much they wanted me, how they needed me.
God, I needed them, too.
And someday soon, I would never be allowed to have them again.
I leaped up and grabbed a dark coat from the closet, one with a hood. I had this idea that I could easily slip through the growing darkness with it. Outside, the thundery day had descended into the early evening—and the sky was thick and ominous. When I opened the window, I peered down at the little ledge off to the right, which connected with the ladder. Just as easily as I had before, I scrambled down and then dropped to the ground below. I knew that if I tried to exit the other way, one of two things would have happened: one of the girls would have told on me (I wasn’t exactly the most popular girl in school) or I would have been noticed by Professor Springer, who lived close by and probably lurked around to make sure we remained.
I felt guided by some other, impossible force as I marched toward the main building, away from both of our dormitories. When I reached it, I entered the strange and dark back room, with its massive windows. Lightning struck and flashed across the antique paintings, casting them in an eerie light. I stretched my legs toward the spiral staircase to the right and rushed to the second floor. There, a second library was located off to the left, along with a beautiful parlor-like area, with an antique grand piano in the very center.
I exhaled deeply—not exactly in shock, but overwhelmed with feeling.
There, seated at the piano, was Ezra himself. On cue, Ezra placed his long fingers across the keys and began to play an old New Orleans jazz tune. I stepped closer, my heart beating somewhere in my throat. He played beautifully, hauntingly, in only the way a man who would eventually be forced to live forever could. It was as though he’d already experienced the biggest trauma in his life and would have to live with that fact for the rest of eternity.
When I reached him, Ezra lifted his chin and I dropped a kiss on his lips. When it broke, he smiled at me, his fingers still rolling over the keys. When I lifted my eyes, I found Raphael seated on the large couch behind the piano. One of his feet was perched on his knee and he leaned back, his arms on either side of the edge of the couch. He watched me hungrily, his eyes reflecting the storm outside.
I stepped toward him, unable to breathe. Ezra continued to play, his song growing even eerier. When I was a few feet away from Raphael, he brought his palm forward to stop me. I obeyed him. Slowly, he stood, as though he was still in a bit of pain. His large hands found the buttons of my black coat and undid them, one by one, then pressed the coat off my shoulders. It flipped to the floor. I stood in only a dress, bra-less, my nipples poking through the fabric.
“I knew you’d come,” Raphael said softly, gruffly.
“Am I really so easy?”
“You just always know what’s going to happen next,” Raphael said, his brow arched.
I shook my head ever so slightly. “I don’t know what you’re going to do next right now.”
“Are you sure?” Raphael said.
I shrugged slightly. “Why don’t you try to surprise me?”
Raphael plunged forward to kiss me. The kiss was almost violent. His lips forced mine open wide and his tongue took ownership of me and his hands wrapped around my back and brought me hard against him so that his rock-hard cock thrust itself against my stomach. A moan escaped my lips, nothing I’d planned for, and he hurriedly tore at the buttons of my dress, tearing two of them off the fabric, until it fell to the ground below. He
pushed me against the couch and then dropped his mouth around my nipples, the tongue making little circles around the berry-like tip. His hand fell to my pussy, then pressed my legs on either side and dropped his fingers against the soft, peachy wetness between. Two of his fingers plunged inside me, and I felt myself open wider for him, growing wetter by the second. I grabbed for his belt and flung it open, and he helped me to step out of his jeans and his boxers. His cock was hot in my hand, as stiff as a rod, pulsing as I touched it. With his hand still inside me, he kissed me again and I closed my eyes and then whispered, “Fuck me, Raphael. Fuck me and make me forget today.”
He didn’t have to be told twice.
His cock completely filled me. My gloved hands wrapped over his shoulders and I pulsed against him, growing faster as he thrust faster, matching his movement. Soon, we operated as one. I could feel Ezra’s eyes on us from the piano as he played along and the thought of that, of being watched, turned me on even more. I was so wet, my mind in a million different places and also nowhere at once—and Raphael’s massive chest churned over mine.
Suddenly, he flipped me so that I rode him, my tits bouncing as I thrust harder and harder, faster and faster. I knew he liked it this rough, knew he liked as my gloved hand inched up toward his neck—threatening him. My breasts bounced and he reached up and gripped them and squeezed the nipples harder until pain shot through me. I could feel myself start to crest—could feel it deep in the back areas of my mind, the areas that told me it no longer mattered who I was or who Raphael was or what would happen or what had already come before. Sex, blood, life, all of it was right here, between us, we were creating it.
But just as I felt the orgasm begin, I heard the ominous boom from the hallway, just out of sight.
“Ivy Whitestone.”
I stopped short. My eyes were the size of saucers, and they matched Raphael’s. I got off of him very quickly and grabbed my dress and buttoned it faster than I ever had. Raphael, too, dressed. Ezra stood and marched into the hallway and then led out Professor Binion, who looked a bit stooped, a bit tired. He glared at me, enraged.
My professor—the professor who’d given up everything in his life to come to teach me at Origins Supernatural Academy—had just found me having sex and breaking curfew. I was screwed.
Chapter Twenty
Professor Binion looked from Raphael to Ezra to me with cold eyes. The lightning rattled on outside, flashing us intermittently with terrifying light. I’d forgotten that he was one of the only teachers who lived in the main building. Maybe he’d heard Ezra’s piano playing. Maybe he’d sensed me there since we had a pretty strong connection as it was. There was a whole host of reasons why he’d discovered me—but I knew, ultimately, I’d completely disappointed him.
“Raphael. Ezra. Will the two of you return to your dormitory this instant?” Professor Binion said. He looked absolutely enraged. “Move quickly. Don’t take a single moment’s pause. If anything goes wrong, Raphael, I need you to transform immediately. Attack if you can, and howl if you need help. We’ll hear you.”
It all sounded so sinister, like the script of a movie I didn’t want to be starring in. Raphael and Ezra made heavy eye contact with me. I could feel it; they wanted to stay on with me to make sure I was all right. But I shook my head and assured them. “It’s better if you go.”
When they disappeared down the winding staircase, Professor Binion leaned against the piano and let out a low, horrible sigh. He sounded exhausted. I crossed my arms and waited for his attack. Little wrinkles I’d never noticed before had formed around his eyes. It seemed obvious: I had been their cause.
“Ivy. I just cannot fathom what on earth you were thinking when you came here tonight,” Professor Binion said. He removed his glasses to show little red marks on either side of his nose. “It’s been one of the more terrifying days this campus has ever had, and we set up the rules of curfew to keep everyone safe. Namely, we set them up to keep you and those boys safe. And you—you don’t care, do you? You just want to march around this campus like you own the place. Like there isn’t a world of hurt coming your way if you mess up.”
“Professor Binion, I’m sorry you had to find me like that...” I began, my throat constricting with panic. “I—“
“No. I don’t care that you were having sex,” Professor Binion cut out. “That’s what students do. You’re seventeen years old, at the very beginning of your life. Of course, this is what you’d do. As I’ve already said—the issue here is you taking risks that you know very well you shouldn’t be taking. Here, as night descends, it’s arguably the most dangerous part of the night.”
My cheeks were bright red; I could feel it. My eyes dropped to the ground. A million thoughts sprung into my head.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Professor Binion said, his voice growing softer, kinder. “I know you think that you just want to be normal. That you want to be this normal teenage girl who can do normal teenage things, like sneak out and hook up and... But Ivy, you’re not normal. I don’t know how many more times I need to remind you of that. It’s not going to change any time soon.”
I kicked the leg of the piano, and the belly and guts of the piano clanked together and echoed through the parlor.
“You care for these boys, don’t you?” Professor Binion asked.
I nodded. How could I even fathom the right words to describe what these boys meant to me?
“Then you have to make sure you all play by the rules,” Professor Binion added, exasperated now. “If you’re worried about one of them, see them in the daytime. If you’re horny... the same rule applies.”
I winced at him, saying, “horny.” I probably looked like a tomato, with all my embarrassment. I placed my hands on my hips and waited for the storm of embarrassment to pass. When I lifted my eyes, Professor Binion looked softer, as though he’d decided that his embarrassing me had been enough of a reprimand.
I’m just so worried I’ll never see them again.
I’m worried that all this love for them will be for nothing after it’s over.
I’m worried that once I go into hiding once and for all, nobody will ever see me like this again.
This might be my only chance.
My last chance at love and sex and life.
It’s all slipping through my fingers, Professor Binion. Don’t you understand? Can’t you imagine it?
But there was so much I couldn’t say.
I did have one thing I wanted to mention, though. Something that would take our conversation to another, less-“don’t have sex at night” arena.
“I was curious about something, Professor. Is there any way to check in on the families of the students here at Origins?”
Professor Binion raised an eyebrow. “Check in on them? What do you mean?”
“I really think it’s possible that the school has been infiltrated in some way. What if one of the students is the son or daughter of a tribe member, whose entire tribe is out to get my Aunt Maria and me? Or, if not that, what if someone has threatened a member of the student body. Maybe the student has been told that if they do their bidding like poisoning Raphael’s water bottle, they won’t injure their family. And if they don’t?”
Professor Binion nodded in understanding. “I see.”
“I think it’s important that we follow up on every possibility,” I told him.
“Of course. This is unmapped territory for all of us,” Professor Binion affirmed. “I’ll look into it.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Professor Binion insisted on taking me back to the girls’ dormitory after our little awkward chat. Throughout the dark walk, we had nothing at all to say to each other. When we reached the dorm, he looked like he wanted to say something, something that would close off the evening with an air of optimism. But instead, he just said, “Goodnight, Ivy. Get some rest and remember to stay inside. We don’t know what’s after you, and we can’t all keep our eyes on you constantly. You must understand that.
”
I nodded and said goodnight, then paused at the doorway of the enormous stone dormitory, my hand on the large golden-carved knob for a long time. Professor Binion hustled back to the main building, turning his face in either direction with an air of paranoia. I exhaled to myself, then whispered, “Jesus. That was awkward.”
When I stepped back into the dark shadows of the dormitory foyer, I clicked the door closed behind me, then stepped toward the staircase. The moment I did, however, I felt a presence. Someone else lurked in the foyer. I could feel them off to the left in the shadows. Every single cell in my body froze. My eyes swept toward the darker shadow, the figure of a teenage girl.
Celeste? Could it be Celeste, up waiting for me?
But no. Of course not. Celeste would have approached me by then.
My heart bolted into my throat. I stepped toward the figure and boomed, “Come into the light. Immediately.”
Was it possible that some of my powers were ready for whatever this was? I’d practiced non-stop for the past few weeks; my mind felt focused and agile.
Suddenly, Zelda stepped into the light. Her long, black hair glittered in the soft candlelight and she looked oddly beautiful, her chin high. A small, friendly smile stretched between her cheeks.
“Ivy, hey. I stopped by your room and saw that you were gone. I was kind of afraid of... of what might have happened and...”
She turned her eyes to the ground, embarrassed.
What the hell?
“Um. Why did you stop by my room?” I asked incredulously. Zelda had done nothing but made my life a living hell the past months.
Zelda gave a light shrug. “It’s stupid. I just. Remember that day when you pushed me out of the way of the broken statue?”
I nodded, my brow furrowed. How could I forget something like that?
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