Page 237 of Castings & Curses

Wasn’t that awesome?

I bit my lip, looking down, but my sexy wizard was having none of that. With his hand still cupping my neck, he rubbed my skin until my gaze met his.

“You all right?”

“Yeah. You?”

“Better than all right, Jade,” he murmured, a beautiful grin spreading across his face, and I was struck by how absolutely stunning this man was.

“Okay, well, I’m fucking traumatized,” Mabe growled, running a comb through her cropped hair a bit too rough for my taste.

“That’s quite enough, Mabe,” Arlo said, helping me to stand before gracefully rising from the ground.

He tucked the hospital gown around me before removing his sweater and adding that to my horrible ensemble. I was grateful, since only then did I realize I was freezing.

“How long have you been living in here?” I asked, taking in the damp and dank space.

“Long enough,” she replied with a heavy sigh, dropping the comb into the small duffle bag she seemed to be living out of. “Did he tell you about me?”

My gaze flicked to Arlo, who gave a subtle nod. I did not feel right revealing anything he might have said without his permission. Call me anything you like, but my mother raised me to be polite and use good manners. Having a strong moral compass was something I prided myself on, even if I was not the most powerful witch around.

“He didn’t really say much. Just that you’d gone too long without feeding, and I have to admit, Mabe, I have no idea what that means.”

“I didn’t know what it meant either, until that day I came to 563W,” she began and turned to face me.

“The day I passed out,” I said, just to confirm.

“Yep. And I don’t really know why that is either, except that something about your magic draws me to you. Arlo? You wanna take that part,” Mabe said.

“Yeah, sure. Mabe came to me after meeting you. She was experiencing severe pain, stomach cramping that turned out to be hunger. I ran the usual tests, found nothing, then Elba Green happened to come into the office—”

“Elba is an earth witch. She was in my Forest Cures class,” I mumbled.

“Yes, she is an earth witch and the second she came into the office, Mabe started funneling magic from her. Elba passed out and after securing her in her own room, oblivious, of course, as to why she’d passed out, I got Mabe the hell out of there,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck before catching Mabe’s worried gaze. “It’s your secret, Mabe.”

“You tell her,” she replied in a small voice.

“Tell me what? Come on, stop beating around the bush.”

“When she was invited to Westwood, it was under general acceptance.”

“You mean she has no coven affiliation,” I replied, waiting for his nod.

“That’s right. Mabe is not an elemental like most of the student body here. In fact, what Mabe is, is rather impossible.”

“What are you talking about? What is she?”

“I’m a blood witch,” she whispered.

At first, I thought I was being punked. Blood witches no longer existed. In fact, they’d been hunted to extinction, or so I thought. But there it was, the truth in her red-rimmed eyes and on Arlo’s grim face.

Mabe really was a blood witch.

“Oh shit,” I whispered.

“I believe her powers manifested fairly recently, but there is a catch. She must have a fresh supply of either magic or blood to maintain balance. Because of the shortage of magic, she’s weakening, falling prey to her baser instincts—”

“Which is to feed on blood,” I whispered, recalling the stories I’d read.

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