Page 8 of My Blind Date is a Warlock

“What makes you say that?”

Instead of answering my question, he flicked his eyes in the direction of my fingers tapping away on the table, and he couldn’t see it from where he was seated, but I bet he knew one of my legs was bouncing up and down as well. Shifting in my seat once more, I consciously stopped fidgeting and searched for something, anything, to say and drew a blank. A part of me was waiting for Jacob to show his true self, the cruel and cutting arrogance and disregard for everyone else that all warlocks seemed to possess. I couldn't relax in his presence because I was on the lookout, waiting for him to do something that would give me an excuse to bolt out the door.

“So, Miss Sophia Barnes, you said you were just filling in for your grandmother at the bookstore today. What is it you do when you’re not being a doting and helpful granddaughter?”

That was a safe topic. As long as we steered clear of talk about magic and anything related to it, we’d be fine. “I run a cosmetics boutique down at the beachfront. Co-run actually. It’s called Midas Touch and I have two business partners. The three of us make our products from home. Soaps, lotions, face washes, and the like. We also sell trinkets and a bunch of souvenir-ish stuff as well.” I’d meant to play it cool, but every time I talked about our boutique, an enormous sense of pride swelled within my chest at how far the Rhodes twins and I had come. From selling our products out of the twins’ garage and online to saving up enough capital to lease a prime spot at the beachfront promenade and expanding our client base. Naturally, I didn’t mention to him that we sold potions and charms for those in the know. The potions were, of course, mixed by moi, and the twins blessed the charms—we did sell those to the mundane folk sometimes. Charms we could disguise as meaningless trinkets, and even though the greater population thought of our existence as a paranormal community was the stuff of fiction, they still liked to believe in the idea of magic charms that brought them luck and protection. With potions, there was no way of explaining them without exposing ourselves and bringing the wrath of the Elder Council down upon us.

“That sounds interesting…and a bit tiring, to be honest. I’m guessing the location of the store means that you have a steady rotation of customers. How do you keep up with the supply?”

“A lot of late nights and caffeine,” I replied blithely. Rachel came back with our drinks, a pitcher of water, and let us know the food would be out in a few minutes before winking at me and sauntering on to the next table. Jacob waited until she was gone before speaking.

“And I’m sure a dash of magic goes a long way. Don’t be shy to admit it. I’m always telling my students not to rely on their magic, but whenever I fall behind on grading papers or just plain feel lazy, I have no qualms about enchanting a few pens to work by themselves,” he mused with a fond smile on his face.

Bringing the straw of my frozen margarita up to my mouth, I asked, “You’re a teacher?”

“A professor. At both Redwood Academy and Redwood College,” he announced proudly, only for his smile to be wiped off his face a second later when I spewed the drink all over our table. Shocked by this revelation, my drink had gone down the wrong pipe, setting my lungs on fire and setting off a chain of hacking coughs as I tried to ease the suffocating pain irritating my lungs.

“Redwood?” I croaked, the name tasting like ash on my tongue. “You’re a professor at Redwood Academy?”

“Yeah,” Jacob answered slowly, getting up to pour me a glass of water. He grabbed a wad of napkins from the table next to us and wiped down the mess I’d made. I should have apologized, but my mind was still reeling that this man, this warlock, worked at the one place I detested more than anything. Ninety percent of my traumatic childhood memories were linked to the long and damp halls of the academy, characterized by the gloomy baroque architecture. To this day, I could not look at saltpeter without gagging, remembering how Jerome Clarke and his band of sycophants cornered me in one of the labs and stuffed the powder down my throat. Every time I caught sight of one of the kids wearing a school uniform, I felt sick, even if it didn’t resemble the one for Redwood. I made sure the nightlight was on whenever I went to sleep because I feared the monsters in the dark, feared the crushing weight of the endless, black nothingness.

When Jerome and his wife Hailey, another one of my tormentors, came to town a fortnight ago, I’d nearly passed out from an anxiety attack when I ran into them at the grocery store.

* * *

“All you’ve gotta do is say one simple spell and you’ll be free, Barnes. Better hurry, I hear this particular phouka has a penchant for nubile witches. But then again, you’re not a witch, so I suppose you’ll be fine even if you don’t get out,” Jerome’s reedy voice called to me from the other side of the locked door, followed by the sinister laughs of his buddies. He and his group had followed me when I sneaked out of the dorms to my secret garden after dinner. No one should have known about that garden, but there they were, waiting for me. I didn’t even get the chance to get a single word in before Jerome cast a sleeping spell on me and the next thing I knew, I was waking up in the school’s underground crypts where the headmaster and professors imprisoned all manner of dangerous creatures. Not only had the doors been made of concrete, they'd been enforced with security spells that Jerome and his friends should not have been able to break through. They’d replaced the security with a simple locking spell, one that a five-year-old witchling would have been able to break, but I was so laughably powerless that all I could do was beg them to let me out. I’d banged my hands bloody on the door, terrified of the hair-raising growls and the jangling of chains I could hear coming from across the room. The darkness in that crypt was so suffocating that for a terrifying moment, I thought I’d gone blind.

“Aperi hanc ianuam, that’s all you gotta say, sweet cheeks, and you’ll be home free,” Jerome snickered.

“How about ‘open sesame?’ I’m sure even someone as lame as her can manage that.” A familiar voice laughed from the other side. Hailey, my one friend other than my sister in this hellhole. The only other person I’d trusted enough to show her my safe space. It wasn’t me she was interested in, though, but Jerome Clarke. And since tormenting me was his favorite pastime, she’d used me to get closer to him.

CHAPTER 8

“Sophia!”

Jacob’s hand clasped mine, dragging me back from that night. He was still standing next to me, the corners of his lips turned down in a frown, concern written all over his face. Something told me that he’d called my name out more than once while I was zoned out, remembering one in a long line of tortuous “pranks” the warlocks of Redwood Academy had played on me.

That night, the boys and Hailey had locked me in there for what felt like an eternity. Later, I found out that it had only been an hour as I cried and pleaded with them. It was only when one of them panicked after I went silent and stopped responding to their taunts that they let me out, only to bust their guts again when they saw that I had peed myself. And what punishment did they get? Headmaster Pritchard assured me he would give them a “stern talking to” and that I should stop exaggerating. Such pranks were to be expected in a school like ours. Never mind the fact that I didn’t possess the skill set to defend myself against such pranks.

“You drifted off again. Where did you go?” Jacob asked, going back to his seat after I extricated my hand from underneath his.

“Sorry, I was just taken aback by your choice of profession. You don’t have the look of a teacher.” I had admitted to him the partial truth. Nothing about Jacob suggested that he spent his days in a classroom, prattling on about magic or whatever it was he taught to half-interested students. The professors at Redwood definitely did not look like him back in my time.

“Believe it or not, you’re not the first person to tell me that. But Headmaster Pritchard had been on my case to take up a post at the school for ages and I finally relented a year ago. At first, I intended to stick it out for a single semester as a guest lecturer. I didn’t expect that I’d take to teaching like a fish to water.”

“Oh? And what did you do before that?”

He perked up at my question, a lopsided roguish smirk curling across his face, transforming his features from handsome to wickedly sexy. Jacob had strong, symmetrical Roman features—a powerful and defined jawline, a broad forehead, an aquiline nose, and wide eyes. Even his curly, black hair made me think of all the sculptures that filled museums across the world. His face bore a faint resemblance to that one famous sculpture, Michelangelo’s David. I wondered if he had Roman ancestry. I could picture him in a Centurion military uniform, commanding lesser men on the battlefield. And I was drifting again. I surreptitiously pinched my thigh and brought myself to the present and focused on what he was saying instead of tumbling down the dangerous road of fantasizing Jacob as a handsome Roman warrior.

“Would you like to hazard a guess?” he asked, taking a swig of his drink, showing off the elegant column of his neck. I gulped, watching his Adam’s apple bob up and down, and, of course, Rachel had to show up at that exact moment and catch me ogling him. I waited for her to leave before speaking. Cocking my head to the side, I took him in once more, watching him watch me as I tried to guess at his past career.

“I can’t see you doing anything that requires you to wear a suit or be stuck behind an office desk all day.” I took a bite of my salad and hummed in pleasure at the taste. Rachel’s cook had outdone himself this time. I took another bite and then tried the ribs, sighing as the spicy taste danced on my tongue. When I licked the sauce off my fingers and lips, I became aware of Jacob’s heated gaze following the movement of my tongue lashing across my upper lip, and wow! When was the last time a man looked at me like that? Like he wanted nothing more than to splay me out on this table and have me for his meal?

He cleared his throat and shifted on his seat. “You’d be right. Before taking that post at Redwood, I was more of an adventure and outdoorsy type of guy. Being stuck doing the same thing day in and day out was not my cup of tea; it still isn’t. But there’s never a dull day with my students, so my feet haven’t started getting itchy yet. I’m satisfied with where I am for the moment.”

“Outdoorsy type, huh? I’m guessing you weren’t doing anything mundane, or something that any normal human does. Were you a beast hunter?” I guessed. There were a lot of rare and magical beasts littered around the world—and folks who didn’t mind dropping a pretty penny to get their hands on one. I knew of such a man, the old-as-dirt vamp I was talking about earlier. He was rich as Croesus and had an entire menagerie built in his home to collect such beasts. The last time I’d been in his mansion, there’d only been two beasts, a selkie in an aquarium, and a teeny tiny pixie with a bad temper.

Jacob made a whistling sound through his teeth. “Good guess. I was a hunter, but not a beast hunter. I find that line of business rather distasteful. I actually used to be an archaeologist and a magical artifact treasure hunter.”

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