“Don’t mind me, just having a heart attack.” I whisper-yelled. “What are you doing here? You’re not allowed in a witch’s dormitory after curfew.” His small smile was lousy with amusement. “You’re already in trouble! What if you get caught in here?” I looked around, making sure for the third time we were alone in the common room.

  With a cheeky smile, he pointed his wand at the door and muttered a locking spell with sass. “All fixed.”

  “You really think an RA doesn’t know how to undo a locking charm?” I rolled my eyes.

  “No, but it’ll give me enough of a heads up to,” He snapped his fingers, disappearing before my very eyes. “Disappear.” Another snap and he was back, smile ever present as he reached his fingers into my candy bag and stole a toad.

  Which reminded me, “Speaking of disappear, I need to give you your shawl back.”

  “Keep it.” He shrugged.

  “Those things are crazy rare and expensive, I can’t keep it.” Big gestures or favors made me uncomfortable.

  “Honestly, it was my Mum’s, and I really don’t want it anymore. Plus, I mastered the invisibility spell recently, so I don’t have a need for it anymore.”

  “Okay…thanks.” I was even more uncomfortable now that he had mentioned his mother.

  “You’re welcome, but this is the price.” He stole another toad from me.

  Not that I wasn’t pleased to see him, the look on my face should have been evident of that, but I still had to ask, “Why are you here?”

  “I missed you.” His face twisted in confusion, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

  My heart rate increased, fluttering as erratically as Nokia when she flew tired.

  “Oh,” I couldn’t help but smile back, mouth open like I wanted to talk but unable to do so.

  “Do you like watching non-magicals try to ghost hunt? There is a hilarious duo on YT that does it all the time, they’re called Watcher.” He typed the website into my laptop, pressing play on a video of two non-magicals walking through an old prison with frequency machines. ”It’s so funny when the non-magical try to connect with the supernatural.” He laughed heartily, leaning back into the couch and slinging an arm casually around me. As if he had done it a million times.

  My body froze under his touch, and I quickly cataloged everywhere he was touching me. Arm across the shoulder. Outer thigh against outer thigh. Hip to hip. Pinky finger tickling the outside of my hand.

  Seven hells he was grabbing my hand!

  With one hand resting near my shoulder, his other had crept its way into my lap, pinky finger brushing against the outside of my closed fist. My heart was thrumming in my throat, a nearly deafening sound in my ear. I was on the verge of panicking and there he was head straight forward watching the show as his finger scratched at my hand.

  As I opened my hand to accept his, I could only think about two things. One, did my breath reek? Two, were my hands sweaty?

  In slow motion his fingers threaded into mine, his lips pulling up in a pleased smirk as he cuddled into me further, sinking comfortably into the couch.

  One of the guys on the video screamed when a door blew open beside him, sending me into a fit of giggles that finally released the nervous energy in my chest.

  Milo looked over at me with amusement in his eyes. “See? They’re funny, right?” I nodded my head in response, not trusting my dry mouth to respond verbally. “We should do this every night.” His eyes bounced hopefully between mine, waiting for an answer.

  “Every night?” I tried to sound casual, teasing even. “When would I do my homework?” He shrugged, a playful smile on his lips. “And when would we look for the relic?”

  “Okay, fair points. A compromise, then.” He released my hand and pulled his arm from my shoulder – I instantly grieved his touch. He leaned down to a backpack on the floor, pulling a brown paper sack from it. “What if we do this every Tuesday and Thursday, so I can bring you dinner.” He handed me the bag, one I instantly noticed came from my favorite tavern in town.

  “How’d you get this?” I asked in awe, touched that he not only remembered I hated the food on Thursdays and Tuesdays, but also that he bothered to bring me something.

  “A super-secret and magical way.” He opened the bag and pulled out a cheeseburger and fries. “I walked to town, paid the cook money, and he gave me food. If you can believe it.” He smirked, clearly amused with himself.

  I rolled my eyes. “I mean you’re banned from town…” I said it slowly like he might have forgotten.

  “Yeah, well,” The look he gave me was equal parts wicked and adorable. “Some things are worth the risk.” And then he winked. Winked! Never had a single blinking blue eye ever been so adorable.

  “And Sundays.” I blurted out.

  “What?” His voice was amused.

  “We should watch shows on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays.”

  His smile grew. “I like the way you think, E.”

  “E? What happened to Ace?”

  “Consider it an addition, not a replacement.”

  His arm slung back around me, somehow even more close and cozy that it was before.

  And then he kissed me!

  Sort of.

  On the temple, touching my hair line, with the smell of peppermint wafting around us…not that I remember every moment of it or anything.

  Chapter Eleven

  “I love cryptid zoo day!” Circe squealed, blue hair fanning out around her as she turned to look at me and Joey.

  “Why?” Joey’s gaze was judgmental. “It’s the same thing every year, Bigfoot tour guides, baby Champys and Mothmen in aviaries that are far too small. Cryptid zoos are inhuman.” Her arms crossed defiantly over her chest, but not even her low vibe would dampen Circe’s good mood.

  “You forgot about the Yetis serving snow cones.” She chirped with excitement before climbing into our school carriage. On the outside it looked every bit like a vintage 1800’s non-magical carriage, but the inside was spelled to carry fifty beings and was outfitted with plush couches and low lighting. A perfectly comfortable and cozy way to travel.

  “I’m going to sit by her and make sure she doesn’t get so excited she floats away.” It had happened before. I watched my dusky-tone-clad friend follow the bubblegum-drenched creature that was Circe to the front of the carriage. Sometimes I wondered how we all were friends, all of us being so different. Circe was an eternally sunny, egghead. Joey a rock-and-roll, hippie activist with sass. And me…I’m not really sure what I added but somehow we worked.

  “Sounds good.” I threw a thumb over my shoulder. “I’m going to sit in the back and try to get some reading done on the way.” The back of our carriage was always notably less rowdy than the front. I hear it’s different on non-magical buses, but this was true of our self-driving carriage.

  “See you there.” I watched her eyes cast down gently, eying my Nessie baby t-shirt with contempt. She didn’t have to get my style choices, just like I didn’t have to understand why she was wearing the same shade of black from head to toe.

  Honesty hour, I wasn’t going to the back of the carriage to read, but to hand Milo something I’d made for him. Well, I guess I made it for us.

  I instantly spotted his mop of dark hair in the second to last section of couches in the back. He was perched with a book in his lap, alone on a couch that was back-to-back with another. I sat directly behind him, my hair brushing lightly against his neck as I did so. With what likely did not look like a convincing stretch I reached back and dropped a single headphone piece into his lap.

  Milo didn’t miss a beat. “Earpods?” He chuckled. “How mortal of you.” I could tell from his tone that his signature smirk was playing on his lips. “Did you make a playlist for me?” Yes. But that’s not why I gave him a headphone.

  I looked around before answering, noticing just how few people were paying attention to or in close proximity to Milo. While sad, it gave me the ability to speak semi-freely to him.

  “How much of a basic witch do you think I am? Just put the earpod in.” He did so, the earpod in my own ear chirping and vibrating to alert me his was in. “Think outside the box, Pumpkin.” I thought, which went directly into his head via the earpod.

  He chuckled aloud before thinking back, “You clever little witch.” I smiled, pleased to have impressed him after he had shown me so many magical feats of his own.

  “Since you got your owl privileges taken away I had to get a little more creative to talk to you. I spelled these myself and they will reach between our dorm rooms as well, so we can talk at night.”

  “Desperate for me to whisper sweet nothings into your ear at night, E?” His thoughts were sensual but teasing, that tone he used when he wanted to flirt while also making me slightly uncomfortable.

  “Or to share information about the relic hunt.” Back to business. I opened the book on my lap, just in case one of my friends came looking for me.

  “Boring.” He thought. “But okay, whatever you say. Speaking of which, I found a chapter in this book about Iliana’s first home. It was a little house in the Dark Wood, wouldn’t surprise me if she hid some of her relics there.”

  “It would be a good hiding spot given all students are forbidden to go there and most beings fear it.” I thought back. I leaned my head back into the couch, which let me just far enough into Milo’s space that I could smell the spice of peppermint wafting off of him.

  “Which is what would make it hard to get to. Not only is there a hexed bridge from our school to the Wood, we also would have to sneak off campus before even getting to the bridge.”

  “I think I have a solution to both problems.” That boring book I read in the library all about Gabalter was actually paying off.

  “Tell me, Ace, what’s the solution to crossing the hexed bridge? A student hasn’t snuck over it successfully in decades.”

  “One of the mundane books I read whilst searching for this relic told of a trick to cross the bridge. I’ll check the book out again before we go.” I loved how confident I sounded. A part of me still didn’t quite understand why I hoped he found it alluring.

  “And the escaping part?”

  “I have a potion for everything, Milo. Trust me.”

  “Okay.” He chuckled again. “I trust you.” I sensed that this was truth. “So, what creature are you most excited to see?” Seems he had taken a lesson from me, Queen of the Segue.

  “Nessies for sure. You can’t see it now, but my shirt has a cute little baby Loch Ness Monster on it.”

  “No, trust me, I saw it.” Why did that make my cheeks hot? “It’s very cute.”

  What time is it? That’s right time to hide from my feelings with another segue. “What about you?”

  “Same actually, I saw a Nessie at Loch Ness last summer.”

  “Really? That’s so cool! My dad has seen one too, he travels a lot since he’s a cryptozoologist, but he never takes me with him.”

  “I’ll take you this summer,” My ear filled with a long pause. “If you want.”

  “Yeah,” My smile was obnoxiously big. “I’d like that.” I forced myself not to think about just why I liked that idea because I was currently mind-melded with Milo and didn’t want him to hear all my lascivious thoughts about him. “We still on for movie night tomorrow?”

  “Absolutely, I snagged us a ton of snacks from town and already picked what I want to watch.” We had started taking turns picking. Tuesday I picked a silly, early 00’s rom-com, which meant Thursday would be his pick. “How do you feel about horror?”

  “Slashers I’m here for, all the rest less so.”

  “Perfect,” I could practically feel his smile. “We’re watching Scream!”

  “I love that movie!”

  “You’ve seen it?” He sounded disappointed. “So you won’t be startled by the scares and inevitably jump into my arms every few minutes?”

  I bit back my smile. “We can still cuddle even though I’ve seen the movie.”

  “Promise?”

  “Would I lie to you?” I asked.

  “No.” He sighed. “You wouldn’t lie to me.”

  Though I spent all my time at the zoo with my friends, Milo was never far behind. When we toured the massive dome-shaped aquatic center he was especially close, whispering thoughts into my ear via earpod about the Nessie facts posted on the walls and telling me he knew the perfect place we could eat lunch after we visited Loch Ness this summer.

  I could even hear Milo chuckle when a baby megalodon, which was still larger than an adult great white shark mind you, swam over us and Circe raised her hand, yet again.

  “Yes.” The Bigfoot tour guide gruffed. “You with the blue fur.” Hair. Circe had hair – but what would a Bigfoot care about that. Plus, she was annoying him. Circe had asked a lot of questions that day.

  “What do you do with the megalodon once they get full grown? I know they couldn’t happily live in here.” Though vast, the aquatic center was not big enough to house several megalodon happily.

  “We dump them in the Bermuda Triangle. Someone has to keep those conspiracy theory loving non-magicals in business.” He answered in a monotone voice as he typed something into the tablet in his hand. “Moving right along.” He waved his hand at us, ushering us toward the path that would take us into the aviary.

  The aviary was a dome as well, an enormous open-air space for all the flying cryptids to live in harmony, with tunnels on the ground for visitors to pass through safely while observing the elusive creatures of magical lore.

  I was so emersed in the exhibit and listening to the monotone, and yet still engaging, voice of our tour guide, that I didn’t notice a groundskeeper had opened the door to the aviary – and that I was standing right beside it. I was observing a lone mothman, perching in a tree eating, when a jersey devil appeared out of nowhere beside me. It neighed loudly in my ear, causing me to jump back into the waiting arms of another – and once the smell of peppermint hit my nostrils I knew who it was.

  Milo had one had at my side, clutching mine for comfort, and the other poised to battle, with wand in hand.

  “Back beast!” Milo yelled, drawing the attention of our fellow students and the employees of the zoo. Several students screamed, afraid of what might happen if all the aviary animals got out and we had a real-life Jurassic Park moment on our hands.

  The jersey devil had it’s teeth barred, eyes staring menacingly at me as its bipedal legs inched closer and closer.

  My hand clutched Milo’s even tighter, no doubt cutting off circulation, and it was only his voice in my ear that called me.

  “Don’t worry, E. I will protect you.” The next words he uttered were aloud. “Reothadh!” And the jersey devil froze were he was, unable to even blink an eye while under Milo’s spell.

  “Students out of the aviary!” A teacher instructed as the employees shoved the frozen jersey devil into the dome and shut the door.

  I released Milo’s hand as we were ushered out of the aviary, but not before I saw Joey’s perceptive eyes on our interlaced fingers.

  Chapter Twelve

  The earpod chirped in my ear, alerting me that Milo was now wearing his. He was in my head once again – though this time it was conversationally and not in one of my own maladaptive daydreams.

  “Status update, over.” He made a noise like a walkie-talkie, followed by a giggle. Yes, he giggled. And curse me it was adorable.

  “On my way to the potion’s lab for a little free lab time. Professor Malley has a meeting, so he said I’ll have the lab all to myself.”

  “Not even the prying eyes of a teacher? Must be nice.” Milo hadn’t gone more than a few seconds without eyes on him since returning to Gabalter. No one trusted the son of two heretics.

  “Yeah, I guess so.” I shrugged even though he couldn’t see me. Conversational habit, I suppose. “Did you read the chapter about sneaking into the Dark Wood from that book I left by your door?” I had dropped it by before my herbology class while he was in a hexes seminar. All the while being grilled by Joey about why I was giving Milo Lancaster (she had said his name like it was a vile illness) a book and why he protected me at the zoo. Finally, I broke down and told her he was helping me find the relic as a favor for his aunt and that he wasn’t as bad as everyone said that he was. She gave me that signature Joey appraising eye, trying to use some of her ancestorial fairy powers to detect truth in my words – and she must have, because the only thing she said before dropping it was, “Be careful.”

  The heavy, wooden door to the potion’s lab creaked as I pulled it open, and I was instantly greeted by the flickering of the magical glow that always permeated the room.

  “I did. Do you really think wearing wreathes of Sambucus around our necks will do anything?” He sounded more than skeptical. To be honest, I was a little unsure as well, but it was the only lead we had, so I was going to try it. The tome had said the Sambucus (elderberry) glitches the ancient magic that safeguards the Dark Wood.

  “It better be! My fingers are stained purple from picking them for us today. Also, if Professor Ivy asks, I have a cold and that’s why I needed so much elderberry.” I began collecting my ingredients, after how many times I had read the potion instructions I basically knew them by heart.

  “Duly noted.” The chuckle he gave after that was warm, like a hug.

  “I’m less worried about getting into the Dark Wood than getting through it.”

  “Don’t worry about that, Evie.” His voice was smooth, comforting even.

  “Aren’t you afraid of what’s out there?”

  “I used to be,” Milo admitted. “But not anymore.” He paused, for so long that I thought he might soon take the earpod out, but then his voice hummed in my ear again. “If there is something in the Wood I will protect you from it.” A shiver ran down my spine when I heard the conviction in his words. The sincerity. My hands temporarily stilled my potion-making, and only once I took a few breaths did I continue and respond.

 

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