Page 41 of Magical Academy for Delinquents
"Okay! Ready," Potts sent the iPad on her end down on a table or something. My view of her was still slightly askew, but it was steady at least. She held up a coffee mug shaped like a toilet bowl and took a sip.
I cringed. "Seriously? How can you drink from that thing?"
She laughed. "It was my Christmas present to myself. Nobody steals your coffee mug when it looks like a toilet full of liquid--" she tilted her cup so I could get a full view of the interior.
I set down my muffin. "Now I'm not hungry."
"Good," she countered. "That's less I have to wait for you to talk."
How could she be so annoying and endearing at the same time? She reminded me of Zavier. "There's a guy here' who's just like you," I told her.
"Not today. Today I want to hear about the guy you hate. Deets. Gimme."
I sighed and picked a berry out of my muffin. "Fine. He's ... he was Matthew's best friend."
"Ah," Potts leaned on her hand and stared sympathetically at me on the screen. "He made the change, didn't he?"
I nodded, turning away from the pitying look on her face to stare out at the trees. "And it was all his fault."
"His fault?"
"His idea."
Potts took a deep breath and let it out. "You know, the guys that made it through that night I was there?" She didn't specify, but I knew she meant the night she observed the Unnatural spell. "Two of the three of them committed suicide."
I sucked in a breath and stared back at the screen. "What?"
"Survivor's guilt. It's a real thing. When you know you didn't deserve to make it through any more than the next guy." She shook her head. "Especially with all that new talk about vamp security."
"What about the other guy? The third one." I asked, searching for anything to think about but that. I didn't want to picture that. Didn't want to picture Evan doing that. I just wanted him to go away. I didn't want him to die.
"The other guy ... well, I fuck his brains out every now and again, so I think he's doing okay," Potts winked at me with her good eye.
"Are you trying to give me an eating disorder? Because seriously, between that mental image and your coffee cup, I don't think I ever want to eat again."
"Your loss."
"My loss is your loss. Because if I starve then mommy's not gonna pay you."
One of Potts' cats jumped onto her lap and she ignored me for a solid minute before turning back to our conversation. "All I'm saying is, hate him with a little bit of discretion. No matter what he did, he's hurting inside. Just like you. And unlike you, you nasty little spitfire, he's got a whole lotta self-loathing mixed in."
My face closed down. I did not need this woman to tell me to be nice to Evan Weston. That was never gonna happen. “Is the hour up?”
“Not yet. I get to torture you a bit longer,” she retorted. “I’m thinking about getting a new cat. There’s a guy down the road who found some feral kittens. Was thinking about naming one Marlowe. After Christopher Marlowe.”
“Who?”
“Don’t you read the classics at the rich-kid school?” Potts took another sip of coffee. “He wrote Doctor Faustus. That play about selling your soul to the devil.”
“Hmm,” I stared down at my nails, which were starting to chip. I doubted MAD would give me a pass to leave campus for a manicure.
“You know, the moral of that play is that a guy thinks he’s getting what he wants … but he’s not. He doesn’t realize the cost…” Potts kept talking, but my thoughts drifted away, and my responses started to go auto-pilot. One lecture a day was my limit and I wasn’t ready to deal with another. If Potts was going for a one-two punch, she was swinging at the air because I’d already lain down and gone to sleep. Mentally at least. My answers became a random mix of, “Yes.” “Mm-hm.” “Sure.”
“Great!” Potts yelled into the phone. “I’ll tell your mother you asked for me to come down there and meet you in person! Next weekend’s meeting will be so much better!” Then she broke into song, this ridiculous seventies number that my dad used to sing to us:So Happy Together.
I just stared at her dancing around for a minute before what she’d just said sunk into my brain. “No. Wait.”
“Too bad kid. You’re my ticket to a free vacation. I have it all on video. You said yes. I’m not letting you ruin it for me.”
