“It couldn’t be a Fae,” Thatch said. “Mr. Khaba would know. He is a master of—”
A loud rapping thudded on the door.
I was so startled I sat bolt upright.
Khaba’s voice came through the door. “Mr. Thatch, we have a situation.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Hackers
Khaba’s presence outside Thatch’s room only reaffirmed my fears. If a Fae had gotten in through our wards, he would be the first to know.
Khaba repeated himself. “Mr. Thatch, are you in? I’ve announced a lockdown. I need your assistance.”
A lockdown? That meant no one was allowed in or out of the school, but I didn’t know why. In a regular school that usually meant there was an intruder with a weapon. In a school like this it could only mean we were under magical attack.
“I’m here.” Thatch gave me a meaningful look. “Give me a moment. I’m—” He paused, a wicked grin spreading across his face. “—indecent. I’ll be out shortly.” He started dressing.
“Ew,” Josie whispered from the other side of the door. “I bet he’s all naked and whacking off or something in there.”
That was exactly the kind of thing Josie would say.
“Behave,” Khaba whispered.
Thatch pulled on his pants. “I can hear everything you say, Miss Kimura.”
I scooped up my clothes. I had only gotten my underwear and bra on by the time Thatch had finished dressing.
He placed a hand on my elbow, guiding me over to the bathroom. His voice was a low murmur. “Stay out of view, and don’t say a word.”
I shook my head as I stared at the room where I had sensed a Fae presence. “I don’t want to be alone in there. That’s where she was watching us from.” My sweater fell onto the floor.
He placed a finger to his lips and shook his head. He shoved me into the bathroom, swept up my sweater, and flung it in after me before closing the door.
I hated it when he didn’t listen to me. I glanced around the bathroom. It looked normal enough. I didn’t sense anything evil.
Thatch’s words were muffled but clear enough on the other side of the door. “Let me guess, the wards are down? A Fae presence has been detected?”
“That’s only the start of it,” Khaba said.
“Clarissa is missing,” Josie said, her voice high and worried. “No one knows where she is. Vega actually came to my room—voluntarily—and told me she hasn’t seen her since yesterday.”
The only reason Vega hadn’t seen me that morning or the night before was because she had been out all night again and hadn’t been back when I had woken. I doubted she was concerned. More likely she was trying to stir up trouble. I hated the idea that Josie was concerned about me when I’d been here the entire time. I craved to tell her I was safe, but I knew now wasn’t the time.
“Miss Lawrence left my office after a private lesson not long ago. I imagine you’ll find her in her classroom, that is, if you bothered to look, Miss Kimura.” Thatch lied flawlessly, distracting Josie with insults.
“I already looked there,” Josie said.
I peeked through the keyhole of the bathroom door. All I could see was Thatch’s bed.
A hint of suspicion laced Khaba’s tone. “How did you know about the wards?”
“I sensed a disturbance with my superior Merlin-class Celestor magic.”
Khaba bit out his words. “Then perhaps we could use your superior magic to locate Miss Lawrence and help repair these wards.”
“Yes, of course. I’m always prepared to assist with menial tasks unrelated to my job. Shall I meet you in the principal’s office in five minutes?”
I wondered why Khaba couldn’t sense me here in Thatch’s room. Perhaps this room was heavily warded against Fae—which included djinn. Or perhaps Khaba had given up that much of his djinn power for the semblance of normalcy.
The bathroom door abruptly opened. Thatch scowled. His voice remained low. “Why aren’t you dressed?”
I still held the bundle of clothes to my chest.
“Why didn’t you just tell them? Is there some reason you don’t want people to know about us?” I whispered. “They aren’t evil like Vega.”
“It isn’t any of their business.” He drew a spiral symbol in the air. A wall of blue light shimmered between us and the exit from his quarters. It was the spell he used to muffle sound.
I didn’t have to whisper now. “It is their business. They’re my friends, and they’re worried about me.”
“Khaba is looking for an opportunity to fire me.” His tone remained level. “Josie might be your friend at the moment, but she is also a bitch. She isn’t going to be very nice to you once she finds out we’ve been together.”
“Josie is a nice person.” When she wasn’t trying to eat me. “I don’t want us to be a secret. I’m not ashamed.”
He glanced at the door and sighed.
“Are you ashamed of us? Of me?”
“I don’t have time for your insecurities. If you don’t mind, I would like to walk you to your classroom and speak with Mr. Khaba about the school’s defenses. We’ll talk about this later.” He closed the door in my face.
I stood there, stunned.
Immediately after I dressed, Thatch escorted me to my classroom. I waited until he left before I headed toward the principal’s office, which was essentially Khaba’s office. On the way, I thought better of it. What excuse did I have to show up where everyone already was meeting? I supposed I could say I heard they were looking for me, but I didn’t want to get caught up in a lie. Not everyone could smooth over falsehoods with insults like Thatch.
The moment I stepped into my classroom again, I found Josie sitting in the chair at my desk.
She leapt to her feet when she saw me. “You’re safe!”
“Why wouldn’t I be safe?”
“Khaba thought Thatch had done something to you. His wards got hacked, and he felt a Fae presence downstairs. He wanted to know if I had seen you, but I hadn’t. I couldn’t find you, and I was so worried.” She threw her arms around me. “I thought Thatch must have handed you over to the Raven Queen.”
The rim of her witch hat bonked into my forehead as she hugged me. It fell off her head. The plan for not touching Josie wasn’t working out with all the hugs she gave me.
“I’m safe.” I pulled away. “And just so you know, Felix Thatch would never hand me over to the Raven Queen.”
“I don’t know why you stick up for that bag of dicks.” She grimaced. “Come on, let’s get you up to the administration office before they send hellhounds out looking for you.”
I suspected that was a joke. I had never seen hellhounds at the school. We headed down the stairs from the front door of my classroom.
I wished I could tell Josie that Thatch was my boyfriend. If she knew him like I did, she would understand. “Thatch isn’t a bad person. He can be grouchy, but he’s actually pretty nice once you get to know him.”
Her eyes filled with pity. “Please don’t tell me you actually can stand his presence. You’re going to make me barf if you do.”
“Why do you have to be like this? You know he didn’t eat your prophecy chocolate to be mean that one time. It was Vega. The only time he ate your chocolate, he poisoned himself so you wouldn’t eat it and die. Would an evil jerk who worked for the Raven Court do that?”
She bit her lip.
I stopped on the steps. “He’s saved my life multiple times. He isn’t my enemy or yours. Why do you hate him so much?”
“You don’t understand. I don’t hate him.” Josie drew in a shaky breath. “I love him.”
CHAPTER NINE
Tainted Love
“What? No! What?” I stared at her in confusion, followed by horror. I was sleeping with someone my best friend had a crush on? I had never expected this from Josie.
I wished I had guarded my face more secretly, channeling my inner Thatch
so that Josie wouldn’t misunderstand my mortification.
“I don’t want to love him. I just can’t get over him.” Tears filled her eyes. She plopped onto the steps and cried.
“Oh no. I’m so sorry,” I said. And I was.
It wasn’t like I would have not slept with him, but I would have done something differently, though at the moment I wasn’t sure what. Would I have told her? Told him? Was this why he was always so cruel to her? To push her away?
I didn’t doubt it was why she was cruel to him.
I sat on the steps beside her, awkwardly patting her back as I tried to keep three Holy Bibles’ worth of space between us.
“It was the first year I worked here,” Josie said. “He was nice to me. I mean, as nice in his way as Thatch is to anyone in his way. We went to Lachlan Falls several times and even had dinner together once. He shared a couple of books with me that he thought I might like. They were insipid children’s books that I had never been interested in as a teenager and certainly had no interest in as an adult. Morty stories like Black Beauty and Little Women and Little House on the Prairie. I could never tell when he was trying to poke fun at me or when he was being nice.”
I knew the feeling, but from what she was relating, I suspected Thatch actually had been trying to be nice to her. He enjoyed the classics and more than that, he found solace in the magicless world Morties wrote about. If I hadn’t known that about him, I might have suspected his claim to favor such literature was a jest as well. It made me wonder how often I had misunderstood his intentions.
Josie leaned against the wall as if she needed a rock to steady the emotions fighting to unloose themselves. Even without trying, I could sense the heartache heavy in her chest. I liked this new magical skill, but I didn’t like it working without me trying to use it.
“You can’t blame me for thinking he’s hot. He’s as beautiful as a Fae, only he isn’t covered in glamour.” She looked to me hopefully, searching my face for disapproval.
I didn’t want to come across as too enthusiastic. “You’re right. He’s handsome. He has nice hair.”
She snorted. “That’s what someone polite says who can’t see what I see in him.”
Oh boy. This kept getting harder and harder to endure. I didn’t want this façade to separate us from being friends.
She removed her glasses and wiped her eyes on her lavender sleeve. “I can’t explain why I was drawn to him. Maybe I have a thing for bad boys who toy with my heart for their own amusement and then forget about me.”
“Yeah, probably,” I agreed. She probably was still chasing after Khaba, even though he had no interest in her and never would unless some evil witch cursed him to change his sexual preference to women.
Her shoulders sagged. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
The raw ache of her heart radiated gloom. I hugged her around the shoulder, ignoring Thatch’s warning about touching her. I would have done anything to alleviate that pain in her.
“Nothing is wrong with you. We can’t help who our heart loves.”
“But I should be over him by now. I’ve dated other guys since then. Thatch and I weren’t even dating. Not officially. He never said we were dating. He didn’t claim to have feelings for me.”
My chest tightened with apprehension as her words resonated with my own fears. Thatch hadn’t said we were dating. He didn’t write me love poetry or whisper sweet anythings in my ear. He didn’t talk about his feelings much. It worried me he wouldn’t allow anyone to know about us.
Our relationship wasn’t like it had been with him and Gertrude Periwinkle. He hadn’t cared who had known about his love affair or his engagement.
I drew back. “What happened between you and Felix Thatch?” Jeb had once told me he thought they had been friends, that he had even hoped for a romance between them. Vega had mentioned it, but Josie had denied it.
Josie smoothed a handful of dark hair out of her face. A spider clung to her sleeve, scuttling up her arm and over her shoulder. “I got up my courage and kissed him. He told me he didn’t date subordinates. Since I teach in his department, technically he’s my supervisor. He said I could transfer to another department—and I wish I had—but not for that reason. I hate looking at his pretty face at department meetings and seeing how he looks down at me.”
“So why didn’t you transfer out and date him?” There was something I was missing here.
She drew away, arms wrapped around herself. “It isn’t a secret anymore, I guess—about me being a jorogumo. But he didn’t know at the time. Not exactly. He knew I had a secret. I don’t know how.”
Another spider scuttled across the wall behind her. As casually as I could manage, I scooted back.
Josie might not have known how she’d given herself away, but I suspected I did. Thatch brought out her affinity and made her more powerful like I did. He must have recognized this.
Josie fidgeted with the lace patchwork of her dress. “Thatch said he wouldn’t consider dating someone unless they had a hundred percent honesty in the relationship. He said I wasn’t an honest person.” She sucked in a breath. “He knew I had been lying about my affinity. He knew what I was. He didn’t say it out loud, but I was afraid of what that meant if he knew.”
Even without trying, I could feel her heart drumming against her rib cage, fear coursing through her as she relived the memory. I drew my awareness back into myself, not wanting to invade her privacy.
She closed her eyes. “I couldn’t tell if he was poking fun at me or . . . being cruel. He offered to tie me up with spider silk and do . . . I don’t even want to say what he suggested. I’m not into that.” She opened her eyes. Her expression became fierce. “I know you won’t believe me after what I did to you, but that’s not what I want—not when I’m me. I don’t want to be that other person, a spider woman. I’m not into sadomasochism, which I guess he is. Or maybe he was just saying that to get a reaction out of me. You can never tell with him.”
That was true.
She placed her glasses back over her nose. “It was bad enough that asshole knew what I was, but then he looked at me in that way he does—you know the look—that Merlin-class Celestor way of his, lording his superiority over everyone. He said he would consider a relationship with me if I was my true self with him, if we could both be ourselves and give in to our darkest fantasies. When I refused, he laughed like it was a joke.”
“Oh, Josie,” I said, not knowing what else to say. She had thought he’d been making fun of her. But I didn’t think he had. Trust was important to him. He’d wanted someone he could be himself with as well.
I could understand why he would think she was into bondage and biting. Paired with his pain magic, that might have been a draw for him.
I wanted to tell her this, but I couldn’t do so without giving away his affinity or mine. My relationship with Thatch felt even more complicated than it had before.
“Well, well, well.” Vega sauntered into the stairwell, one hand on her hip as she stared at me. She managed to look down at me even from a flight below. “I should have known I’d find you two moping in a dark corner, lamenting over your lack of love lives. The entire school is looking for you, thinking the Fae snatched you. Khaba sent me to find you. And I have. Crisis averted, bitches.”
Josie let out a frustrated growl. She kicked her foot, sending her Birkenstock sandal sailing through the air toward Vega. My wicked roommate chuckled and sauntered off, in no particular hurry. Josie’s hippie sandal thudded against the wall.
Just when I thought things between Josie and me had a chance to return to normal, she had to drop this bomb on me. How could I be her friend when I was keeping such devastating secrets from her?
Josie and I joined in the staff meeting at the tail end. All staff—save for me—were given important duties strengthening wards, gathering up students in Lachlan Falls, and doing magical tasks. I was stuck in the cafeteria on duty with Mrs.
Keahi to ensure the students didn’t go into full panic mode. After the wards were strengthened, Khaba stood in front of the student body before the start of lunch.
“I imagine today’s lockdown has put everyone on edge,” Khaba spoke smoothly from the dais, his voice projecting over the sea of four hundred faces in the circular room.
“I appreciate your patience as we fixed the school’s defenses today. Everything looks fine right now, and there is no reason to panic, but we do want to continue to keep you indoors today. If all goes well, we’ll lift the lockdown tomorrow.” He gazed out at the student body. “I just want to remind you about the danger of accepting gifts from strangers. If someone you don’t know offers you food or drink, or something pretty that makes you want to sell your soul, anything too good to be true—you need to understand it is too good to be true. That is how traditional Fae traps work.”
The students stared at him with rapt attention, treating the danger with the seriousness it deserved. I caught a few students murmuring. “Isn’t Mr. Khaba Fae? Why would he tell us how one of his traps work?”
“Khaba isn’t a bad Fae,” another student said.
“How do you know? Didn’t he kill the principal to get his job?”
I shushed the students.
Khaba made eye contact with students in the crowd. “Don’t bring back items from Lachlan Falls or off school grounds until we sort this out. One of the easiest ways for a Fae to break a ward is to gift one of you with something. That gift creates a thread of magic to follow into the school. A malicious Fae can use that as a portal.”
A gift with strings attached. I imagined a red line leading through the invisibility of our wards into the school, down into the depths of Thatch’s dungeon. I shivered.
Of Curse You Will Page 10
