Page 10 of Spirit Witch

No, I didn’t eat or drink anything strange in the last twenty-four hours.

No, I hadn’t rejected any advances from a witch or wizard on campus.

“Geez, you guys make me feel so boring.I’m basically a coven-less witch with no elemental talents and no social life,” I muttered, sipping my still hot tea.

“Yeah, right,” Rio snorted.“I can’t believe you don’t get asked out constantly, Enid.I mean, you are so pretty.”

I scoffed and shook my head, looking up when I felt five pairs of eyes on me.

“What?”

“You seriously think that’s not true?”Mabe asked, black eyebrows disappearing into her hairline.

“What?That I’m pretty?I mean, I don’t know,” I replied and shrugged.

“Is this like one of those things where beautiful people fish for compliments?”Tana asked Maia, and both witches frowned.

“I don’t know.I mean, Enid doesn’t strike me as someone who needs us to compliment her,” Maia replied, like I wasn’t still in the room.

“Um, what the heck are you talking about?”

“You,” Jade answered, the duh remained unsaid.“You’re ridiculously beautiful.I mean, you know that, though, right?Your face is perfectly symmetrical.You have an hourglass shape.And you have lavender eyes, for Pete’s sake!”

“Um, thank you, I think,” I muttered, realizing they weren’t actually being nice, more like incredulous.

But whether I was beautiful was not the issue.Fact was, I had no mate, man, mage, shifter or wizard, and no prospects.Just a dream boy who’d disappeared the moment I opened my eyes.

I wondered if he’d be back when I closed them again, and suddenly I could not wait to find out.But I knew it would be hours yet before I could slip back into my dreamscape.Back to him, I secretly hoped.

“Enok’s back!”Maia announced with a smile on her face for her handsome mate.

It was still strange to me, using words like mate to mean boyfriend.

But that was just another byproduct of finding out I was a witch, wasn’t it?

The magical world took some getting used to and for now I was still Alice walking around in a daze in this wonderland of a place.

“Hey, so I checked the archives for any mention of cases where a witch had gone into a sleeplike trance and spoke in tongues,” Enok began after greeting Maia with a poignant kiss.

Fine.

I was still kinda amped up after my almost kiss with dream boy and watching the two of them share so freely in their love was making me feel the teeniest bit jealous.Not like I could help it.But I hated feeling that way about two people I genuinely cared about, so I tried to refocus on what was actually going on and not my made-up would be lover.

Sigh.

“Look at this,” Enok said, thrusting a dusty old tome at me.

I opened it gingerly to the page he’d marked with a long black ribbon, and tried not to cough on the dust.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Maia mumbled and sent a blast of wind aimed at the book, swooping up the dust and carrying it out the window.

“Thanks,” I told her, smiling at her neat trick.

Controlling the elements with magic must have been some sort of awesome rush, far as I could tell.The only good I had ever accomplished with my magic was sometimes singing people into a healing daze.I’d done it twice that I was aware of.Once with a stranger back in the human world after I blew up a shed belonging to the last family I’d lived with.I hadn’t known that before, I only recently read it in the addendum Stolbright had added to the file she gave me the day we met.And once more here, in room 563W, with Jade.

Mabe had inadvertently fed on Jade’s earth magic, rendering the latter unconscious.I didn’t know what was happening at the time, but something compelled me to go to her and I was filled with this confidence that I could really help her.And miracle of miracles, I did.

Of course, being me, I hadn’t been able to duplicate anything like it since.It was difficult enough just trying to get through my days without feeling like an utter failure and poser.I was lying to my roommates about seeing fades, having strange meetings with the headmistress, and even stranger dreams about a hot guy with wings.

---