She didn’t have to concentrate to let her forbidden magic spill over her body. It happened of its own accord. Either it could sense the danger of the situation, or somehow Jake’s pleading gaze called to it. There was something so very Damien about the way he looked at her. It bypassed her better reason, and it was like an ignition point for her magic. The wizard had managed to flip Jake, and his knee was pressed hard against Jake’s throat. But at the sight of forbidden magic spilling over Felicity, the guy whipped his head around. His eyes spread like groping hands. “What—”

  “That’s right, Felicity – just let it all out,” Jake spat.

  She didn’t have any choice. Her magic spilled out of her. It raced toward the wizard. He had a moment for his true surprise to eat him up, then her magic hit him. It smashed into his chest. Felicity expected it to push him off Jake, but it did so much more. It lifted him off his feet. The wizard jerked around as if he was a marionette that had been pulled up by its strings and given to a cat.

  She lurched back at the sight. “What… what’s going on?”

  Jake pushed up.

  She couldn’t see all of his face, so she couldn’t gauge his full expression, but judging by the fraction of one eye she saw, it widened in greed.

  “What’s happening? I’m not asking my magic to do anything. What’s happening to it?” Felicity screamed. She staggered back, more of her forbidden magic pulsing off her.

  “Don’t fight it,” Jake roared. “Just give in to it. Let it do what it needs to.”

  “But, Jake, I’m not in control,” she screamed.

  The wizard was thrashing about. He looked as if he’d just had his throat cut.

  Her forbidden magic was pushing in through his mouth and nostrils. It was even prying back the edges of his eyes and plunging in through there.

  He tried to scream, but it was a gurgling mess that was rapidly cut short.

  Soon, his head lolled to the side. It had a specific lack of muscular control that told her the guy was about to die.

  She couldn’t just stand there in horror and watch what her forbidden magic was doing anymore. She pulsed forward.

  “No,” Jake roared. “Just stay exactly where you are and let your forbidden magic out. It knows what it needs to do.”

  Felicity reached the wizard and tried to pull her magic back, but it was like trying to grab rain out of the sky and hold it in her hands. Even as she caught hold of a few strands, they soon disappeared from her fingers and went back to feast on the wizard.

  “Don’t fight it,” Jake counseled once more, his voice designed to cut through her fear. “He deserves what’s coming to him.”

  Felicity kept trying, but nothing worked.

  The wizard dissipated. Ordinary human beings do not dissipate. Smoke does when it encounters a strong wind. Something that can be easily ripped apart and dispersed does. Human bodies do not.

  In a moment that would be etched into her mind until the day she died, she watched his body just spread. It turned into gases, then nothing.

  Felicity was frozen to the spot for so long, she wondered if she’d turned into a statue. Then one of her knees gave out, then the other. She fell hard onto the floor.

  Jake was already on his feet. He pressed his hands against his knees momentarily as if he was catching his breath, then he reached her. He patted her on the shoulder, his fingers lingering as they pressed down into her shaking muscles. “Don’t fear it. The magic did what it had to.”

  “It… killed him. I killed him—”

  “Did you have any control over the magic, Felicity?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then you didn’t kill him. He killed himself, anyway,” Jake said, his voice becoming measurably darker. “That bastard chose to throw his hat in with my father. How many victims do you think he’s delivered? He’s a wizard, so I imagine it’s probably somewhere in the range of several hundred, if not thousands. How much blood do you think he has – or had – on his hands?”

  She turned her face up to him, horror filling her eyes as he said had.

  “Felicity, don’t freak out.” Jake leaned in and brushed her shoulders. He let his gaze lock onto hers.

  Once or twice, she’d described Lucifer’s gaze like a set of hands that wouldn’t let her go. Jake’s stare was like a set of fingers that deliberately obscured the rest of the world until it was just you and him and what he wanted you to do.

  “What have you done to me?”

  Jake recoiled slightly. “What have I done to you? Taught you what you really are. I pulled the wool off your eyes, Felicity.”

  “You made me… made me kill someone.”

  “The guy would’ve killed me if you hadn’t intervened. Which one would you have preferred?”

  She shook her head, tears rushing down her cheeks. “That’s not the point. I—”

  “It is the point, Felicity. It’s the entire damn point,” Jake spat as he lost his cool. “The bastards who work for my father don’t care about who they have to kill and maim. They don’t care how many lives they destroy. Lives mean nothing to them. You could’ve left him alive. You could’ve even sent him on his way. But do you know what he would’ve turned around and done?”

  She couldn’t look at him, let alone listen to what he was saying.

  “He would’ve come right back here, he would have found another victim, and he would have bled them dry. Are you the kind of callous asshole who wants that to happen?”

  “What? No—”

  “Then you did the right thing. So stand up. It’s time to go back to school. We’ve only got an hour or two before dawn.”

  “… I’m not going.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because—”

  “You’re a murderer?”

  She wouldn’t answer. She just stared with tear-filled eyes at the point where the guy had died.

  “Let me ask you a question, Felicity. Do you know how this world works?”

  Again, she wouldn’t answer.

  “Because I do. If you’re really lucky, you don’t have to fight for yourself. If you’re really lucky, others do it for you. You just get to coast on their coattails. You get to pretend you’re moral and righteous while they get their hands dirty. Does that actually make you moral and righteous, though? Or does it make you ignorant and stupid?”

  “There must’ve….”

  “What? Been another way? Yeah, I already outlined the other way. If you’d let him live, he would’ve either killed me or escaped and killed again. If you know someone can kill someone – and they’ll keep killing people – and you do nothing about it, does that make your hands clean, Felicity? Or does that just make you an accessory?”

  “There must’ve been some—”

  “People who aren’t in a position of power always want to clutch at the fact that there’s some other way. People who have responsibility and the power to act, however, must find the only way. And that,” he pointed to where the guy had dissipated, “was the only way. If you want to bring Broadstone down,” his voice vibrated low, “then you’re gonna have to get your hands dirty. It’s just how it works. Do you really think you will be able to do this without a fight?”

  “No, but—”

  “Do you really think you’ll be able to do this without killing anyone?”

  Felicity just couldn’t answer.

  “I don’t know what you’ve been doing for the past three years, Felicity Smith, but I know what you’ve wanted to do. You wanted to get revenge on Damien. But you never actually imagined what it would be like, did you? You’ve never actually looked at precisely what it will cost you. That’s what it will cost you.” Again he jabbed his hand back in the direction of the dissipated wizard. “You will no longer be able to think you’re a good girl. But guess what, Felicity? You never were. You were always something much better.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “You’re someone who can save others.” He grabbed her by the hand.

  Though she shouldn’t have let him lead her away, he led her anyway.

  7

  She was back at Broadstone.

  She was in her bed. She was staring at the ceiling. Dawn had already come and gone. Her only remaining roommate – Abigail – had already left. Yet Felicity still hadn’t bothered to get up.

  Could she just lie here, ignoring classes, ignoring Broadstone and Jake, and ignoring Lucifer – wherever he was – and just wait out the rest of her days staring up at this drab ceiling? It would be preferable to going out there and facing whatever horrors today would throw at her.

  She’d cried a lot ever since getting back to her room. Now the tears wouldn’t come anymore. But she hadn’t dealt with the horror and sorrow. They were forming this impossible-to-ignore lump of pressure deep in her heart. It felt like it was about to explode. There was nothing – not a damn thing – she could do to relieve it.

  Last night, she had killed a man. Her magic had ripped into him and pulled him apart with all the ease of a butcher carving meat from bones.

  Felicity closed her eyes for the umpteenth time, but for the umpteenth time, the move did nothing.

  It took her another ten minutes before she moved. Even then, it was another five minutes after that until she finally pulled herself out of bed. She was weak. Her muscles felt like jelly. No – at least jelly had some form of cohesion. Her muscles were this disparate mess. It was as if someone had rolled them out, cut them to shreds, then thrown them in a blender for good measure.

  She could barely move in a coordinated fashion. When she staggered against the window, she almost put her hands through it. She clamped a sweaty palm against her brow, stood there, and breathed. “What’s wrong with me?” Her voice was so weak, you could have mistaken it for a far-off breeze.

  Felicity understood how grief worked. It could rob you of even your most reliable strength. But this wasn’t just her body shutting down because of what she’d done last night. She genuinely felt empty.

  She turned, shoved her face against the window, and stared out of one eye at the grounds. Students were already moving across them.

  Could this be Lucifer? Could he have found out what she’d done? Was this weakness him punishing her from afar?

  She was reliant on her connection to him. It did more than just sanctify their contracts.

  It now underpinned her magic completely.

  She sighed again, rolling her face over and pressing it hard against the glass.

  She heard a bell. That would be her last chance to get up and grab some food before heading to class.

  She just couldn’t follow.

  She began to walk back to her bed, but she wasn’t given a chance to sink under the covers like a ship slowly submerging itself under the waves never to return to the surface again.

  There was a pointed knock on the door.

  Felicity stood there, closed her eyes, breathed, and turned.

  Perhaps it was her forbidden magic playing up, or maybe it was just her intuition getting the better of her – but she got the impression that out there was none other than Brown. Sure enough, when Felicity opened the door, it was to the sight of Brown in the resplendent purple robes of the principal.

  Brown wasted no time in bringing two thin hands up through her large, voluminous sleeves and clapping. It was one hell of a direct move.

  Perhaps this was where Felicity needed to at least pretend that she wasn’t crushed under the weight of fatigue. She made no effort to neaten her appearance, though. She just stared at Brown with a dead gaze.

  Brown clapped for entirely too long. Then she steepled her fingers and smiled over them. That smile reminded Felicity of a wolf walking out of its den to find a sleeping lamb in front of it. “I assume you know why I’m clapping you, Miss South.”

  Though, granted, Felicity had a special relationship with Brown – if you could count being tortured by the woman special – Brown was still the principal. That didn’t stop Felicity from crossing her arms and leaning against the doorway. If any other teacher had caught her, they would have dragged her out by the ear and made an example of her in front of the other kids.

  Brown just narrowed her eyes, her smile fixing over her lips even harder. It looked like it would need a crowbar to remove it now. “You look tired, Miss South. I’m surprised.”

  “Can we just cut to the chase?”

  “I would expect nothing less from you.”

  “I defeated Josephine Lay last night,” Felicity said. It took all her strength and then some to ensure that her voice did not waver. All she could do was think of the moment she’d woken up to see that Josephine wasn’t moving at all anymore.

  That particular image had haunted her as she’d stared up at the ceiling of her room. It would haunt her for many, many nights to come.

  “Yes, you did. Unfortunate that she was stupid enough to use all of her most powerful spells at once. She hammered the nails into her own coffin – silly girl.”

  Felicity just watched with pale-faced fascination. She hadn’t actually expected Brown to talk about the fact that Josephine was dead. In her mind, Brown would’ve danced around the topic. The fact that she was being upfront about it meant something, didn’t it? And it wasn’t just that none of the other students were around to overhear. Even if the corridor had been packed with Felicity’s contemporaries, this was Professor Brown – she could probably cast an obstruction spell that would linger and act like a black hole that would suck up visual and auditory data for centuries to come.

  “I would suggest you have a day off, considering your escapades last night,” Brown continued, “but that is not how this great school works.”

  One good thing about being so tired was that Felicity didn’t actively have to try to hide her reactions. Which was good – because at that statement, her cheeks should have become cold and pasty white.

  Brown couldn’t be referring to what she’d done with Jake last night, right? Though… though Felicity hadn’t had a chance to really think things through, Jake was on her side, right? Or at least, they were both going in the same direction, intent on destroying the school, no matter what it took.

  The look in Brown’s eyes quickly disappeared. She clapped her hands once more, but it was no longer in appreciation for the fact that Felicity had killed a student. She inclined her head over her shoulder. “You have a full schedule of classes today, Miss South. And considering your show last night,” Brown pressed her lips together and pushed her tongue against them, “the games will continue today.”

  Everyone who referred to Magnum Optimus was always careful not to equate it with a game. When Felicity had suggested that comparison to Jake, he’d flipped. It was clear that Magnum Optimus was a sacred institution. Yet here Brown was, bucking that trend and finally accepting the truth.

  “Who will I fight next?” Felicity asked point-blank, even though she understood they were meant to be random encounters.

  Brown smiled. “I could not answer that even if I wanted to. It is not up to me who you fight next.”

  “It’s up to the school, is it?” Again, Felicity had to celebrate the fact that she was tired. It was the only thing that stopped her tone from shaking out with raw anger.

  She didn’t want to believe a word of what Jake had said, but what… as stupid as it sounded, what if this school really was intelligent?

  She didn’t mean that it was like a human being. But perhaps over the years it had become so imbued with not just magic, but also the malevolent desires of those who ran it, that it had formed its own kind of brutal mind – one that would carry on the school’s dictates, no matter if they were changed.

  It was its own self-perpetuating cycle.

  “It’s not healthy to skip breakfast, Miss South. Especially in your condition. So I have brought you some myself.” Brown chuckled as she jammed her hand up her sleeve, ferreted around in it, then pulled out a glowing potion.

  Felicity did not jolt forward, grab it up, uncork it, and spill it down her throat, even though she could tell it was a truly powerful energy enchantment. Judging by its exact glow, it would leave her raring to go. It would wash away the fatigue that had haunted her since she’d returned home.

  No, you idiot, she corrected herself quickly. The fatigue had set in the moment her forbidden magic had dispersed that wizard.

  Though Felicity had been doing a good job of not reacting until now, her track record broke as she gave a fearful shudder.

  Brown laughed. “Don’t worry. None of the other students will know that you’re getting preferential treatment from the principal. Now, take it.”

  When Felicity didn’t reach out and grab it up, Brown snatched up Felicity’s hand and shoved it into her palm.

  As Felicity’s fingers closed around the potion, its magic sang to her.

  This would be better than one of Lucifer’s bottles of whiskey.

  … It would even be better than Lucifer himself, a distant part of her mind added.

  She’d tried not to think of Lucifer too much. And that had been criminally hard.

  … What she was doing now… it was right, wasn’t it? He’d lied to her. He’d failed to tell her what she was. Come to think of it, what if he’d been using her all along for her magic? She still didn’t understand enough about what a blood witch was, but Jake had mentioned several times that she could create multiple living blood contracts. What if she didn’t have a standard deal with Lucifer, and rather he used her for power?

  “Miss South.” Brown cleared her throat. “You are staring off into space. I suggest if you are that tired that you waste no more time in uncorking the potion,” she nodded at it stiffly, “and drinking it. As I already said, today will bring you a new challenge.”

  Felicity wasn’t thinking. She uncorked the potion. It wasn’t as if she had much choice, anyway. If she made a face and chucked it over her shoulder, Brown would start to suspect her. Plus, Felicity’s magic wasn’t reacting to the potion. It seemed pretty standard. While that didn’t mean that Brown hadn’t cast something nefarious on it, it made it unlikely.

  Felicity uncorked the potion with her teeth. Once you made a habit out of something like that, it was hard to stop it.

 

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