“No, there are others, but I haven’t paid too much attention, to be honest. I was kind of distracted by trying to be good.”

  He laughed. “A hard task for a demon witch.”

  She laughed back. She was feeling so much more at ease.

  “Anyhow, I learned a few things. I made a lot of enemies, too.”

  “I thought we agreed that you would keep your head down?”

  “I tried. But they locked onto me the second I walked in the door. I think it’s better in some ways to have enemies, because then I can see just how far they are willing to go.”

  “Indeed. What else did you learn?”

  “I met the granddaughter of the groundsman who got killed three years ago.”

  He looked right at her. “And?”

  “She hates the elites just like I do. She pulled me into a maintenance corridor and told me to get out while I still had the chance. Apparently the Queen Bee – Belinda Hamilton – almost killed a girl several weeks ago. The same girl whose bed I’m now in.”

  “I see.”

  Felicity frowned. “Speaking of which, why did you put me back in my old room?”

  “I didn’t. You are a bursary student, and that was the room they selected for you. I’m assuming that it is full of surveillance spells.”

  Felicity nodded. “Yep.”

  “Do not assume, however,” he added quickly, “that those surveillance spells have all been placed there by malicious students. I go back to the fact that you were given this room by the school.”

  Felicity looked at him sharply. She hadn’t thought that through yet. She frowned. “Wait, you think the faculty might have something to do with this?”

  “I think if the school is full of bloat spells, there is a functioning blood spell on the roof, and students are almost dying from excessive bullying, then yes, the faculty are involved on some level.”

  She tilted her head back. “I don’t want to go back,” she said simply. “I want a bottle of whiskey and a day off.”

  “I can give you a bottle of whiskey, but you cannot have a day off.”

  She made a face. “I don’t like that deal.”

  “Well, it is the only deal I will make.” He shifted away from her abruptly.

  She almost reached out and grabbed him to pull him back. What was the point? The spell was done. She looked at her hands. There was no longer blood covering them.

  Then she remembered they were her hands. She got stuck looking at them. She went to grab her face, but she didn’t get the opportunity. Lucifer snapped his hand forward, locked it around her left wrist, ran his finger over the tattoo, and reconnected it. And there, in a flicker of magic, she returned to her disguise.

  She frowned at him. “Why did you do that so quickly? What? Are you worried that I’ll go back to being pathetic if I see my old face?”

  He arched an eyebrow. “No. There is no part of you that is a victim anymore, Felicity. I ensured that you know precisely how to defend yourself.”

  She didn’t point out that it hadn’t been completely down to him. If it hadn’t been for her grunt and sheer will, she would’ve crumpled on the first of his missions.

  She finally pushed off the bench. She didn’t stagger. She walked over to the shelves. She selected an old and very expensive bottle of whiskey, made a sweet face at him, went to open it, and then said, “It’s a deal, remember?” She uncorked the magical stopper with her teeth.

  “You could pick something cheaper. That particular bottle of whiskey is over 700 years old. It belonged to a French wizard who spent almost all of his time distilling whiskey and hunting demons.”

  She made a face as she chugged down a mouthful, pressed a hand against the back of her lips, and looked at him pointedly. “Why would you drink something from a man who tried to kill your kind?”

  “He was a true artist.”

  She shrugged. “It’s pretty good. So I can take this back with me?”

  “I would prefer you to not drink on school grounds.”

  “But I’m not a student. And I’m not a kid.” She wagged a finger at him as she took another long draft.

  He just looked at her. “You need to go back.”

  “What?” she spluttered, several golden drops of liquid splashing onto her cheeks. “Now? You mean now, don’t you? No way. You said I could stay here tonight.”

  “Not the whole night. You’ve already been healed. You need to go back. I need you to find out who put that blood spell on the roof. But I need you to be careful,” he growled.

  “You’re gonna send me back up there?” She gestured with the bottle. A few droplets splashed out.

  “I need you to watch. I fear something is about to happen. I require your eyes to see what that is.”

  Why didn’t he just say that he needed her body? That’s what this was, after all. She was just a pawn in his game.

  If she’d been thinking rationally, she would have corrected herself quickly. But screw rationally. She strode toward the door.

  He grabbed the bottle off her before she could take it away. He looked at her. “You will not be in danger. Do not think that I would ever let you go,” he said, his voice practically dropping through the floor.

  It was enough that it held her on the spot. As did his gaze.

  “I will never let you go,” he repeated.

  It wasn’t a threat. Maybe someone who didn’t know him well enough would think that, owing to the fact he was a demon and she was contracted to him, but this wasn’t him throwing his power around.

  No, it was a promise.

  She looked at her feet then up at him. “What do you think is gonna happen?”

  “Something interesting. Just watch. Maybe it won’t happen tonight, maybe it won’t happen for several days, but I feel something is quickening.”

  She shivered. When a demon said that something was quickening, you had to batten down the hatches and go for your guns.

  She trailed her lip over her bottom teeth. She nodded. Then she did something stupid. She saluted. It was all because he was close and she had to do something with her hands.

  He arched an eyebrow. “You don’t work for me.”

  “I don’t?”

  “No, Felicity,” he turned away, pushed his hands into his pockets, and went for the door that led back into the club, “one of these days, you will realize you work with me.”

  10

  “One of these days, you will realize you work with me,” Felicity didn’t speak those words out loud, but mouthed them into her pillow. She was back at school.

  Dammit, she’d been hoping that she would never have to sleep in this dormitory. She’d planned to use a clone spell to ensure that the other girls never realized anything was wrong.

  But now she was here. Repeating the last words that Lucifer had said to her was literally the only thing stopping her from going insane.

  Lucifer was right. This room was chock full of surveillance spells. Some of them would just be crappy little things that Belinda had left behind – some of them were too sophisticated for that.

  The question was why the hell was the faculty surveilling their bursary students like this?

  Felicity had to stop herself from laughing out loud. It might have something to do with the fact that three years ago, she trashed the place, and they wanted to prevent something like that from happening again.

  Then again, it might be something a whole lot darker.

  Just before she could mouth Lucifer’s words again, she locked her lips together and pushed her eyes against her pillow. She blinked them open. She stared at the pattern on the fabric.

  It was dark, but that didn’t matter. Her night sight was pretty darn good. That’s what happened when you were contracted to a demon.

  But if her skills were that good, why hadn’t she been able to see that blood spell? Why hadn’t she recognized it was being protected by a time spell? Wait, why the hell was it being protected by a time spell?

  She could have kicked herself for not asking Lucifer that question.

  She grabbed her bed covers in her hands. It didn’t matter that it was 4 o’clock in the morning – she got the urge to slip out and see him again.

  “That bastard promised me that I could spend the night with him,” she mouthed.

  She didn’t bother correcting herself. She would not be spinning her nights with him. She would be spending her nights at The Devil Man club in her room. Sure, it was a nice room, but it was not his room. Not that he slept, anyway.

  “Just shut up and try to sleep,” she muttered.

  She did not sleep. For the next 2.5 hours, she lay wide awake. She thought through every possibility.

  Why was someone using a time spell?

  2.5 hours later, she had her answer.

  It would be to bleed people quickly, right?

  Blood spells that were after people’s actual body fluids and not there to outright kill them, tended to be slow affairs. If they were quick, that could be problematic, because odds were your target would find out. If they were slow, and they only took a dribble of blood every few seconds, then it was more likely that the intended target wouldn’t notice and the spell would be able to operate without being detected.

  If you needed to take a lot of blood quickly, though, why not speed up time?

  She doubted you could have a functioning blood spell on that roof without a time spell. Because why would anyone be spending that much time up there?

  As dawn split through the windows, and several of the girls started to rise, Felicity sat up abruptly. Her covers fell off her.

  Jane had just woken, and she looked at Felicity directly. There was a haunted look in her eyes.

  It was likely programmed to tell Felicity that today would probably be her last chance. If she didn’t get out now, she’d never get out.

  Felicity got out of bed.

  She walked over to the window. God, she wanted to open it. It was such an old body program, but she wanted to thrust her head out, close her eyes, and breathe the fresh air. That little routine had always reminded her that there was a world outside of Broadstone, even if she’d been too weak to grasp it.

  She dressed quickly.

  All the while, she wondered what the hell her next step would be. Lucifer hadn’t told her.

  He wanted her to find out who’d cast that blood spell. Fine. She had to go back to the roof for that. She also had to protect herself from said blood spell.

  And she would have to wait until night.

  Screw the days. She didn’t want to go to class.

  One of the good things about working for a demon was that school was never mentioned again.

  She had no option, though. She got to class. And every single minute she spent was like plucking her hair out.

  She had another potions class, another ethics class, a magical accountancy class, and even another defense class. And yeah, the teacher was brutal. Felicity was a lot better at keeping her magic in check this time.

  That didn’t stop Jake from looking at her. A lot. It seemed that every chance he got, he would stare her way.

  She kept feeling his attention on the back of her neck as she walked through the halls.

  By the end of the day, Felicity was this pent-up ball of energy, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that in every class Belinda had been using her remote sound spell to hound Felicity.

  She had tuned it out in the first quarter.

  By the time classes were finally over, all she could do was pray that the night would come quickly.

  As she walked up the stairs to go back to her room to have a better look at the surveillance spells there, she wasn’t at all surprised to encounter Belinda.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Felicity mouthed.

  Belinda crossed her arms. “Oh dear, you’re looking terribly pasty. Have you had a hard day? Did you not sleep well? Did you have nightmares?”

  Belinda’s yes-girls sniggered.

  Felicity just slipped her gaze across all of them then locked it on Belinda. “I’m fine.”

  Pull your head in, Felicity, she told herself quickly, but the damage was done.

  Belinda looked shocked. “Haven’t you been hearing things?”

  “Hearing things?” Felicity put her finger in her ear and waggled it around as if she was cleaning out wax. “No, I’m hearing fine. Why?”

  Belinda’s yes-girls didn’t know what to do. They looked at Belinda. She paled. She frowned, too. Felicity could actually see Belinda concentrating. She accessed a remote sound spell. Because she even had them in the girls’ dormitory, apparently, even though it was highly illegal to practice environmental magic up here.

  “Bitch,” Belinda suddenly screamed in Felicity’s ear with one of the remote spells.

  Felicity had been expecting it. She didn’t even flinch. She just looked at Belinda and tilted her head down. “You okay?” She walked to the side of Belinda.

  Belinda’s expression was priceless. That didn’t stop her from jerking a hand out and grabbing Felicity’s wrist. “You don’t belong here.”

  “What? In the corridor? I guess you’re right. That’s why I’m heading to my room.” Felicity pulled her hand back. It was easy as pie to break Belinda’s grip.

  Belinda staggered a little. She blinked. “You don’t belong at the school. People like you,” she cut her gaze up and down Felicity’s form, “don’t belong anywhere near here.”

  “Okay,” Felicity said as she walked away.

  “You’re dead,” the remote spell screamed in Felicity’s ear, and it was clear Belinda was using all her force.

  Felicity just scratched her shoulder, arched her neck, and kept walking.

  Belinda wasn’t about to let up.

  Felicity reached her room, opened the door, and walked in.

  Belinda? She walked right in after Felicity.

  Felicity stopped and turned. “How come you can walk in here? I thought the room was coded?”

  Belinda launched forward and slapped Felicity.

  Felicity just stood there and took it.

  Jane was in the room. She straightened, her cheeks paling.

  Felicity slid her gaze over to Jane and just shook her head slightly. Then she looked back at Belinda. “Isn’t it a violation to enter someone else’s room?”

  “You have no idea what you’re dealing with,” Belinda snarled.

  Felicity scratched her brow. “A dumb ass who has no clue how the real world works and who thinks if she stuffs up, her dad is just gonna fix it.” The words were out before Felicity could do anything to retract them. A sinking sensation plowed through her stomach, pointing out how stupid she’d just been. But it was done.

  Belinda quite rightly looked as if she’d been slapped.

  Felicity turned quickly and walked over to the window. She had to control herself, dammit. She had to control herself before she got way out of line.

  She stared out the window. That’s when she saw a certain person walking across the grounds.

  She didn’t have to struggle to remember who it was – the memory was as fresh as a bird that had just had its head cut off and had been served to you on a platter.

  It was Sidney.

  “What the hell?” she stammered. She grabbed the windowpane and leaned against it.

  Belinda wasn’t done. She whipped out her wand.

  Felicity paid absolutely no attention.

  Sidney was walking across the grounds. He was behind the principal.

  Sidney, the smalltime idiot damn criminal she’d attacked two days ago.

  What was way worse was that he had a wand in his hand. She watched as he casually shifted it to the side and cast a few showy spells as if he was taking it for a ride like a new car.

  Even from here, she could tell that wand was about as expensive as they came.

  Belinda shrieked. Felicity could tell that she was gearing up to cast a spell.

  Felicity turned.

  Belinda’s wand was right up against Felicity’s neck. Deathly yellow charges were building in it. To an ordinary student, it would be terrifying.

  If Felicity didn’t have the experience with magic that she did, and her body wasn’t as primed to disperse it, that spell right there could knock her out. Hell, it could almost kill her.

  Belinda began to cast.

  Felicity grabbed the wand. She threw it out the window.

  Belinda was dumbstruck. Hell, everyone who saw it was dumbstruck. In order to interrupt someone’s spell, you had to have a heck of a lot of power.

  “What the hell?” Belinda stammered.

  Felicity ignored her.

  There was no damn way that Sidney would have his magic back. Everything he’d said to her in the back of that van had been crap, right?

  So what was he doing here casting magic?

  As soon as Felicity hit the corridor, she pushed into a run. No one really paid attention to her. The Queen Bee’s Hornets hadn’t come into the room. Presumably, they weren’t coded to it. As they saw Felicity running out, they laughed, wrongly assuming that she was running for her life.

  Felicity reached the stairs and took them two at a time.

  She made it down to the atrium in time to see Sidney walking through.

  He still had a wand in his hand. He wasn’t casting magic anymore, but that didn’t matter. She didn’t need to see it to know that he was magical again. Worse than that, he was a hell of a lot more powerful than he’d once been.

  This… this could not be happening.

  The power required to give someone back their magic once it had been stolen was insanely expensive.

  She could not deny what was before her very eyes, though.

  She’d either given Belinda the slip, or she was too focused on getting her wand back. She fortunately didn’t come tearing down the stairs to finish the fight.

  That meant there was nothing to stop Felicity from falling into step behind Sidney.

  It took her too long to realize she was being too obvious.

  She saw an opportunity, ducked into the girls’ bathroom, ensured it was empty, and cast an invisibility spell. When she walked out, no one looked her way once.

 

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