Page 113 of Every Shade of Shadow

I actually laugh at this. “So no one’s caught your eye?” I tease.

She returns back to staring into the fire. “Please. Technology surpassed a simple human penis a long time ago.”

Lily leans over to where I’m sitting, whispering. “She doesn’t get much action.”

“I can fucking hear you,” says Ava.

I stifle a laugh. “I’m with you,” I announce to the room. “Boys, men…I’m not sure I see the appeal sometimes.”

Lily shakes her head. “The both of you need a good dicking.”

I laugh. “A good ‘dicking’? Are we in good Britian awaiting an audience with the Queen?”

“Fuck off,” laughs Lily. “You know what I mean.” She leans forward to where random books are stacked on the table in front of her, selecting one at random and flicking through the pages. “Didn’t you say your grandmother was into herbology, Ana?”

I nod. “Definitely liked plants more than people, which I have to say, I kind of get.”

Which draws me back to Gran attending Lumina. What did she learn here? What did she discover?

Lily picks up another book, reading out the title, “Summoning the Elements in Times of Crisis.” She tosses it back onto the table. “Jesus, when are they going to get some new material around here? I’d kill for a Cosmo.”

But Ava seems more interested in me. “You haven’t decided to follow in your grandmother’s footsteps, Ana?”

I almost tell them the answer is in ‘her-bore-ology,’ but no, I never share her obsession with plants. She claimed that unlike people, the plants weren’t going to fuck her over or bite her head off—at least not most plants. And that always made me question what someone must have done to her, what she must have experienced to think this way. Maybe she experienced it right here.

“My tastes have always been a little darker,” I confess.

“So how do you plan to do us in then?” Lily asks casually. “I bet it’s the fire poker for Ava, and for me? Please tell me it’s death by orgasm.”

Something I’m sure the Professor could arrange, but I laugh back, “Guys, do I look like a murderer?”

They both look at each other across the room and answer together. “Yes.”

I throw my hands up. “Really?”

Lily picks up another book. “It makes sense. You and your sweet ass showed up here completely out of the blue with,” she pinches her fingers together, “very little practical experience in the Arts, and that’s only because a certain Professor took a shining to you inais.”

I remember his words: watching you.

I pick at my fingernails. “You should give me more credit than that. I knew plenty before I got here. I just didn’t practice much is all. Like, please don’t tell me you guys were free to practice whatever the hell you felt like back home?”

They look at each other and both shrug. “Pretty much,” they answer in unison, which is making me start to question if there isn’t some telepathic fuckery going on between these two I’m unaware of.

Ava speaks up. “It’s not to say I did so openly, but it wasn’t exactly discouraged. I’d head out into the forest in summer and go nuts. I’ve probably destroyed a dozen trees or more trying to perfect Fulgur Flagellum.”

“And they say spells can’t be sexy,” Lily laughs. “I wish I had a forest to practice in. Our house is pretty big by any standard, and maybe I blew up the kitchen once, maybe twice, might have blown out the windows too, but in the grand scheme of things? No biggie. And don’t get me started on the poison ivy I was growing in the basement. I thought it was weed.”

I crack up. “How the fuck do you mix that up?”

Lily throws her hands in the air. “I had a sheltered upbringing, okay? Besides all the teenage sex and drugs, that is.”

“Charming,” says Ava, deadpan.

Lily tosses a book at her, but she misses, poor Magical Governance: A Treatise landing square in the middle of the fire and bursting into ghoulish green flame.

Ava leaps back. “Fuck, Lily!”

The hands go up again. “Sorry. Sport’s not my strong suit.” Lily points a finger at Ava. “Wait, didn’t you have some story about an orb? You tried to shove it up your pussy or something, right?”

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