Page 70 of Magical Academy for Delinquents
My hand felt the spell first, like a gentle spring breeze. It was warm and hesitant. It entered my skin and flowed through my body. My sore muscles grew calm and stopped screaming. The ache that had filled me head to toe retreated like the tide. My eyes widened as I realized what Grayson had done. He'd healed me.
I sat up, feeling fresh and revitalized. Grayson watched from his chair, a solemn look on his face. I tested out my feet, which minutes ago had been as useless as an empty tissue box. I stood up and my eyes locked on Grayson.
I opened my mouth to say 'thanks’, but he cut me off.
"Truce?" he asked, tilting his head to study me.
I stared into his eyes for a long minute before I responded. He'd just found out that his somewhat girlfriend was a cheater. Should I go easy on him? I weighed my options like a penny-pinching shopper weighs the fruit in the produce aisle. His eyes looked dull, duller than they had when he'd made me twerk.
Sometimes, people needed nice when they were hurting. Sometimes, they needed easy. But other times, as I knew far too well, they needed a goal. A distraction.
I walked toward Grayson until I was right next to his feet and he had to tilt his head to look up at me. I reached out and put my hand to his cheek, mirroring how he'd checked on me earlier. Then I gave his cheek a hard pat. I leaned in and whispered, "Truces are boring."
I walked out, knowing his eyes burnt a hole in my ass.
Chapter 28
I putoff telling the guys for one more week, mostly because I wasn’t certain what to tell them or how to phrase it—I could hardly believe that the time had actually come—though I told myself that I was waiting to hear from Potts.
I’d given her cash to order us a couple burner phones. Mine came in on Wednesday and I carried it around in my pocket, checking it constantly— like a stereotypical girl the morning after a hookup. Anxiety built throughout the day. Was she gonna call or not? Dammit.
Finally, a video call buzzed the phone around five p.m. I’d been sitting outside enjoying a rare random evening of dry weather by studying at a bench instead of in my room. I snatched up the phone and jabbed at the green answer button.
Potts immediately started in without a greeting. “Well, I think that’s about as good as I can get it. Nobody should see him.” She flipped the camera view on the phone so that I could see the stark cement walls of the visitor’s viewing room at the Institute. She walked closer to the window, the view shaking in her hand like it was some horror movie.
My heart started to beat quickly in anticipation.
She held the camera up to the mirror and I flinched, expecting Matthew’s long claws to strike out at any second. But they didn’t.
“See? In the corner?” Potts asked.
I squinted and tried to see the dark corner she was showing me.
“I don’t see anything,” I responded, frustrated by the awful signal.
Potts rapped on the glass. Movement flashed in the corner. Tiny wings and a small black creature … “Is that a bat?” I asked.
“Yup.”
“But only Unnaturals can shift.”
“Technically true.”
“So…”
I could hear Potts sigh. She flipped the view from the vampire containment cell back to her face. She bit her lip, looking a little like a child expecting a scolding. “Sometimes you have to shake things up a little and try mashing two things together. I did the Unnatural Spell on him again, only, I wrote the spell to apply to him instead of myself. And while Unnaturals can’t technically pick their animals … I combined it with a bat mating scent spell in the hope that—”
Fury. My vision flickered to thermal imaging unconsciously. Potts became a flat mass of red and orange on screen. I stood up from my bench and nearly dropped the phone because I was shaking so much. “You didwhat!?”
“Well, it’s not like he could turn vamp again!” she protested.
My hand clenched on the phone. “You are so lucky you’re across the country right now,” I growled at her. If I was in that room right now, I’d have jumped her like the Fangs did here.
“The glass window is spelled against magic, so that vamps can’t accidentally blast their way out, but I’m gonna write a level eight illusion spell and lay it in front of the glass so nobody can see or hear him flying in there,” Potts added. “If they look, they’ll just see an extra blanket. If they go in there, for some reason, they’ll just feel an extra blanket. It’ll all be an illusion … and it’s a strong one, so I’ll have to come back every few days and redo it … but I think it should work.”
I closed my eyes and forced myself to take a couple deep breaths. Potts was right. I talked myself down. I might not love her methods, but the guards would never notice him now. And it was a lot of work on her part to do all of this, any of this, for me. She had no reason to help. Gratitude trickled into the cracks of my angry shell and broke it apart. I could hack into the system now and put in some fake transfer paperwork.
“Thank you,” I told her, my tone stiff. I blew out a breath and tried again. “Thank you.”
