Page 27 of Phoenix Academy: Madness

"Don't call me that." The feisty blonde wrinkles her nose. "I've got to get to class, though. Not my class, of course—Dani's class. You three got this?"

"Definitely," Xavier reassures her. "I won't let anything bad happen to Ari."

A tingle goes through me, and I can feel bright spots of color on my cheeks. Suddenly Xavier seems...handsome. I know I've noticed it before just now, but hearing him say my name, remembering the feeling of his arms around my waist and his strong chest on my back as he carried me to the academy, it hits me all at once just how handsome he really is.

Strong cheekbones. Beautiful dark brown eyes. A blinding white smile, and lips that say kind words. I can't stop looking at him.

Then his twin.

Who's watching me with a distinctly knowing smirk.

Oh shit.

I jerk my eyes to Petra. "We'll be fine. I'll try not to step into any more runes and let the spirits of the dead take me to the spirit realm." Even though I really, really want to see my mother again. "I've heard all the stories about what a bad ideathatis. I was raised a witch, remember? Worst comes to worst, I'll start hexing people."

Looking at me askance, Reggie says, "You won't like, hex our dicks off or something?"

"Would I warn you beforehand?"

"Aw, shit." He cups his hand in front of his crotch, while Xavier just rolls his eyes. "Petra, don't leave us alone with a witch."

"This is your class now, boys. Have fun!" To the mage she adds, "Mage Auerbach, you have my number if you need anything."

"Yes, thank you, Miss Smith. See you around."

Petra leaves, so now it's just me, the mage, and the trio of mad shifters. Who, I have to admit, don't seem that mad anymore. Which begs the question: when my magic hit them yesterday in the woods, did it really make them feral? Or was it just drawing them to me for some reason, and I let myself leap to the wrong conclusions?

A question for another day. Right now, I have to figure out what just happened, so I confront Mage Auerbach. "You said that you saw those spirits come for me. What was that? Why did it happen?"

"I'm figuring that out." He holds, of all things, a monocle up to his left eye, its surface shimmering with a light dusting of gold magic. "There's a disturbance..."

"In the Force?" Reggie ventures.

Mage Auerbach doesn't seem to get, or respond to, the joking reference. "In the spirit realm. I've never seen anything quite like it. I don't think it was your magic, Ari. Something led them here. A rip or tear." He frowns. "And I don't think it wasyouthey were looking for."

"You can tell all that just by looking?"

"Here, have a look." To my surprise, he holds the magical glass monocle out to me, making me feel a little like I'm in some kind of knockoff Harry Potter franchise. "Go on, it won't hurt you. It just reveals magical traces."

I take the monocle delicately, feeling a little foolish as I raise it to my eye. It seems gimmicky, but then again this is mage shit we're talking about. They're always a little cheesy with the choices they make.

As soon as the glass is close enough that my eye focuses on looking through it, I can see what he's talking about. There are deep traces of magic in the middle of the rune, places where the world opened up and the spirit realm just beyond our own world spit out and whole host of ghosts. Shaped like slashes in the ground, the magic traces remind me of long scratches or claw marks.

"Something tore open the spirit veil to get here," I venture.

"Yes, exactly." Mage Auerbach sounds proud of me, and I don't know how to respond to that. "Look over that way, too. There's something I want you to see."

I swing my head in the direction he indicates and frown. Up against the edge of the rune, clawed into the ground and leaving magical traces behind, is a name.

DANIELLA.

"What does it mean?" I ask him, passing the glass back.

"I don't know yet. But if I had to venture a guess, I'd say that the spirits are upset about something, and they're coming through to make that known. Whoever this is, they want her—or it—for some reason. But I've no idea who they're searching for, or why." He shakes his head, while the trio of shifters stare at us, no doubt wondering what we're talking about. "From now on, we'll lay off the spirit magic. Let's see if one of these runes can give us other answers instead. Maybe about what drives the bond I can clearly see between the four of you."

I blush high in my cheeks, not wanting to look over at the twins to see their expressions. "There's no bond! They just found me in the woods."

"I don't mean arelationshipbond," Mage Auerbach says. "I mean a magical one. What happened the day you met these three shifters?"

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