Page 68 of Magical Academy for Delinquents
I scrabbled to get a better hold and swing my right foot away from the damned window. What could possibly be more humiliating than being caught? Nothing. I clutched at the stones like a bear clutches tree branches that are far too small for its massive paws. Beside me, the window slid open and a girl's head stuck out. I pushed a combination of shadows and light at her to blur her vision in case she looked my way. But she didn't look my way. She looked down, leaning out onto the ledge. Her wild mane of dark curls was immediately recognizable. Laura. Grayson's girl.
My eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. I hadn't expected Grayson to be the kind of guy who shared. He came across as such an alpha asshole. My nipples tightened at the thought of him in that light. I didn't bother to scold my body. It was gonna react how it wanted anyway. But my mind was moving a mile a minute. This was all the more reason to get into Grayson's room. I didn't know what was really inside his head. I needed to. I needed to solve the puzzle that was him and figure out what made him tick. And he was occupied right now. I had the perfect opportunity.
"I dunno," Laura's voice drifted up to me as she struggled to close the window. "Maybe a bird flew into it or something."
I waited until she was gone to move, my fingers and toes screaming their disapproval. By the time I made it to the sixth floor and Grayson's window, those same digits were past the point of pain. My fingertips bled as I pulled myself onto Grayson's ledge and propped myself up in the ancient window, thanking my lucky stars that the architect of Metamorphose hadn't made the ledges tiny. Grayson's room was dark, like I expected, though a light shone from under his bathroom door. He must have forgotten to turn it off. Or maybe he'd run in there to snag a box of condoms before his threesome.
The images that rolled through my mind at the thought of that made my stomach tighten. But I also felt a tiny prickle of something else. Something undefined. I wasn't quite sure what. I shook it off. I was wasting time.
It took several minutes before I could pull my travel-size self-inking wand and a bit of parchment out of my shirt.
I fiddled with the parchment, trying to unroll it against the glass and giving up, unfurling it across my knee. I took a deep breath and steadied my hand before I started to write an Unlocking Spell.
The window flew up as I was writing. Shocked, I leaned away on instinct. And that's when I fell. My heart slammed into my throat with so much force that I was choking on it. My head rushed toward the ground. Through my feet, I saw the open window. Grayson leaned out of it, his eyes black pits as he watched me fall. My feet scraped down against the brick wall and smacked against the protruding window ledge on the floor beneath Grayson’s as I fell.
Pain. Rang. Through. Me.
My last thoughts should have been of Mom and Matthew--but Grayson's eyes held me captive and I couldn't think of anything else. They took my breath away. The cold determination in them. The black fire. They slammed into my spine and made me dizzy. I couldn't hold eye contact--thought I wanted to--my eyelids fluttered, and my stomach flip-flopped like I was riding a roller coaster. My eyes closed and my inner ears must have been off-balance because I felt like I was rising, not falling. But everything about my body was off. I'd been flooded with heat when I first fell backward. Now I was covered in goosebumps. I struggled to open my eyes. But my eyelids wouldn't cooperate. Not even when I landed.
That was when I was certain I was dead. My heart must have stopped mid-fall. Because my landing felt as soft as a cloud. Like I'd just lain down in bed ready to drift off to sleep.
* * *
I wokeup to the feeling of something warm and a little bit rough pressing into my cheek. I sighed, leaning into it without opening my eyes, my body sore all over. I wanted that warmth, wanted to steal it and make it mine like that Greek story about the man who stole fire from the gods.
"You dead, nemesis?" A familiar, low, growly voice asked.
I forced my eyelids apart. My mouth dried out.
I stared up at Grayson's face, lit by some warm yellow incandescent bulb that made him glow like an angel. An angry angel, whose thick eyebrows were drawn together as his warm hand moved from my cheek to check my pulse.
The feel of his hand on my neck sent my heart racing. And not entirely from fear.
I licked my lips. My throat was dry, but I managed a jagged, "But you were having a threesome." Not the best thank you, but my mind was still just shifting out of first gear.
Grayson's face contorted. "What?"
"Laura and you and some guy on the third floor ..." I had to pause to swallow. My mouth felt like it'd been stuffed with cotton balls. Come hell or high water, I was not scaling the Pinnacle from the outside.
But I'd hardly completed my thought before my asshole savior had disappeared, leaving the door to his dorm room ajar. I blinked stupidly for a minute before I realized what was going on.
Shit.
I tried to sit up. My muscles weren't having it. My entire back felt like a giant bruise. Grayson must have lifted me back up here with his Force. My fingers stroked his comforter, imagining it. His hands extended, the gust of wind that had rushed underneath me and lifted me until he could wrap me in his arms.
A strange feeling drifted over me. It was a graceful sensation, like an Olympic ribbon dancer was spinning inside of me. It was a long, drawn-out emotion that twisted and turned and made the air around me look like it was full of beautiful hidden shapes and possibilities that I could see if I just looked hard enough.
I used my arms again, trying to sit up. But I still couldn't manage. So, I stared at Grayson's ceiling, looking at the popcorn texture that had been pierced by pencils thousands of times as bored students threw the writing utensils like darts instead of doing their work.
One pencil was still stuck in the ceiling above Grayson's desk. It looked just like mine. So did his walls. I wondered what else we had in common.
It took me several minutes before I realized my state of mind must have been affected by this whole fall thing. I'd been laying here filling my head with unimportant questions for Grayson like "What's your favorite color?" instead of trying to figure out what protection amulets he had hidden around the room to prevent me from antagonizing him.
My eyes turned to the corner behind his desk. I could see a pink amulet there, its light faint in the darkness. Pink light encased in a glass amulet sphere. That generally meant the spell was emotional. Interesting.
I waited on Grayson's deliciously soft mattress; he'd obviously replaced the standard school-issue stone slab with a giant marshmallow. Gradually, my arms started to respond to my demands. I'd just weakly pulled myself back up onto my elbows when Grayson came storming back into his room.
He slammed the door behind him. He grabbed his backpack near the door and threw it across the room. It smacked into his wall with a loudcrack. Grayson started pacing like a madman. "Those assholes! They promised—"
