Page 63 of Soulmates

Maddox grimaced at that. “Bathroom.”

“Such a delight in the mornings.”

“Hmm. Get used to it.”

“I plan to.” He kissed Maddox’s nose before getting himself up and taking care of morning business in the bathroom.

Maddox stumbled in after him and took up his toothbrush immediately.

Once they were done, in fresh clothes, and had exchanged a few kisses, he dragged a still-half-awake Maddox to the stairs. He was in no way prepared for a blonde attack missile to hurdle at Maddox as soon as they reached the bottom. Maddox’s arms came up automatically to catch whoever was attached to the streams of hair as Jake looked around the room. Carter Randall stood also staring after the blonde, eyebrows raised, making the person attached to the hair…

“Lizzie…what are you doing here?” Maddox asked.

Lizzie pulled back and smacked Maddox on the arm. “I thought you were dead, asshole.”

“What? Why?”

“You disappeared during the challenge. I was so scared you were dead. But then…”

“Lizzie, let’s sit,” Carter said. Lizzie glared at him, but unlike almost everyone else, Lizzie never seemed to scare Carter. She scared Jake. That icy glare could freeze the ocean.

“Fine.” She turned and stalked to the living room, where Carter met her with a smile and an outstretched hand, which she took. Jake looked away with a shake of his head to find Santiago staring after them, crinkling her nose. She turned to Jake and Maddox. “Coffee?”

“Please,” Jake answered for them both.

“Maddox, your eyes are even weirder than Santiago said they’d be,” Carter said.

“I’ve heard,” Maddox said.

Once everyone had settled with their coffees into a strained silence, Maddox turned to Lizzie. “Why did you think we were dead,”

Jake sometimes forgot that Maddox and Lizzie were as close as they were. Jake stayed away from her for several reasons, none of which were void discrimination. He had no issue with voids and was even friends with some of them, but Lizzie grated on Jake. He didn’t like unpredictability in his friends, and Lizzie was a wild card. Maddox tolerated her moods with casual acceptance, sitting in silence with her when she was dark, biting back when she was testy, and doing whatever it was they did when she was happy.

It was similar with Carter. Jake liked Carter well enough, but they weren’t friends. Maddox was around him more because of Lizzie and because they were both elementalists. Carter was intense in a way Jake wasn’t. Carter’s intensity presented itself in a firm conviction in his own rightness that had only been shaken recently, according to Maddox. Something had changed in Carter, but Maddox had been unable to explain exactly what it was.

“I thought you were dead because you disappeared during the challenge. Just the three of you; everyone else is accounted for and still in one piece. No one would tell us anything. Forrester was being cagey about it and told us all to go about our classes as if nothing had happened. I was frantic. If you were dead, why would no one tell us?”

“Even stranger,” Carter said, “was that not only were you missing, no one could say anything about what they did during the challenge unless you were part of the challenge—only final years could talk to each other about it. When we tried to tell the other students, we couldn’t speak. Just like during the challenge, the words stuck in our throats. How is that even possible?” Carter gestured to Cricket. “And now we can talk to you about it? And Forrester and Professor Hooper? Why?”

“Forrester and I are both too powerful to be manipulated by something we already know the function of. I would suspect Em…Forrester would have helped Maggie along if needed.”

“But you can’t silence an entire subject anyway. It’s impossible,” Carter said.

“You can with enough power,” Cricket said. “It would take a lot. More than any one mage has in their reserves no matter how powerful they are. The only way I know of to do a thing like that is cooperative magic, which I don’t believe you are taught at Reinhold.”

“Not much more than a few mages working together for something small. Nothing like what you’re talking about,” Maddox said, then turned to Lizzie. “How did you go from thinking we were dead to showing up here? And how did you even find this place?”

Lizzie and Carter shared a meaningful look.

“What is it?” Maddox said.

“We have to, Carter. He has to know,” Lizzie said. To which Carter nodded. “Maddox, your families showed up. The Santiagos were in hysterics. So were the Ostermans.” She turned to look at both Jake and Santiago. “When you’re done hearing what we have to say, you need to call your families—carefully. They were all panicked, and while the dean calmed them down, they’ll want to hear from you. They tried tracing you. Your phones, credit cards, but nothing.”

“Yeah, Maggie and Forrester did some sort of block on all of our stuff so no one would find us here,” Jake said.

Maddox looked at Lizzie. “My family?”

“They were upset. But not in the same way. Your mother was scared. She was pale and shaking but not crying or demanding answers like the others. I went to her and grabbed her hand, but it was like ice, and she stared right through me as if she couldn’t hear me. She seemed…shocked and afraid, which would have been normal except that your father looked like he didn’t have a care in the world. Like you being missing or dead meant nothing to him.”

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