Strange Academy (Hot Paranormal Romance) (35 page)

For some reason, their desks were no longer in straight lines but instead formed a kind of misshapen U, facing each other like a ten-year-old version of the Knights of the Round Table. Iffie the hydra lounged in a sunny spot on the window ledge.

As he headed toward an empty desk, the hair on the back of his neck prickled. Looking around, he realized a pair of forest-green eyes in a freckled face tracked his movements.

The girl raised her hand. “Miss Strange?”

“Yes, Portia.” She didn’t turn from the chalkboard.

He caught the girl’s suspicious gaze. One corner of her right eye glowed with a burning yellow light. Her Talent. She could see him.

He raised a finger to his lips.

The girl’s face turned from suspicious to curious.

“Portia, there’s a hall pass on my desk,” she said.

“Never mind.” But Portia kept her eye on him.

He settled into a too-small desk and watched elegant letters flow from Sadie’s hand, white loopy whorls decorating the black board.
What did Porph
—

“Henry, put the note in the garbage.” Sadie didn’t turn from her writing.

The ginger-haired boy slipped something into his poetry anthology. “What note?”

“The note you were about to pass to Shakti to pass to Marius telling him to meet you at the Aquatic Center at five thirty.”

“I—” The blood drained from Henry’s face as he realized how busted he was. “Okay.” He slumped to the front of the room.

How had she seen that? There was something different about her, and it wasn’t just the white hair falling over her eye.

“Henry.” The stocky boy froze in place, his back stiffened in anticipation of his punishment. Sadie still didn’t look away from the board as she spoke. “About your Talent. Do they call you ‘Nine’ because you’re a clone of Henry the Eighth?”

Henry blinked up at her. “Yes.”

“Cool,” she said. “But no more notes.”

—
yria’s lover do
? As Sadie stood back to admire her own handwriting, the bell rang. The kids jotted the lines before escaping into the sunshine with a chorus of goodbyes. He ducked as Iffie the hydra nearly winged his head.

He watched Sadie putter around the room, straightening desks and returning books to shelves. His throat went thick. He’d leave soon and life would go on for her. From the smile on her face as she tidied up, she was happy here. Part of him liked it. The rest of him wanted her to be miserable every waking moment they weren’t together.

He was about to slip into the hallway when someone slammed the door back on its hinges. Instinct had him reaching into his jacket pocket for a defensive potion, taking a crouching stance.

A redheaded teen girl stalked into the room, waving a piece of Strange Academy stationery. “You did this.”

“Regina.” Sadie’s voice dripped cold calm. “You’ve made bad choices all year. Now you have to pay for them.”

“You should have got me an extension for Mr. Day’s paper. This is your fault.” Regina’s lips turned back in a snarl. His senses went on high alert. He inched closer to Sadie.

“
Gotten me
,” Sadie corrected, crossing her arms and standing her ground. “You should have
gotten
me an extension. I promise that if you morph in order to threaten me, you will be suspended.”

Regina stepped closer. So did Gray.

Sadie softened her voice. “Regina, I know you can do better than this.”

Regina’s snarl trembled. Her fierce eyes shut, squeezing out tears. “Everything’s changing all the time. I can’t keep up. Everyone else knows who they are, but I don’t.”

The door to the hallway slid shut. The breeze again.

Sadie put her arm across Regina’s shoulders and sat her down at the teacher’s desk. “You’re young. You don’t have to know who you are yet. You only have to know you’re capable of great things. You don’t have to actually do the great things yet, but you have to do your homework.”

Regina hung her head in her hands, crushing the letter against her skull.

Watching Sadie made his chest hurt. She cared for these kids, even ones who had nearly assaulted her. No matter what she thought, she belonged here.

In fact, he could no longer imagine Strange Academy without her.

“Have you seen
Raiders of the Lost Ark
?” Sadie asked.

“Uh, ee-yes.” Regina narrowed her eyes, unsure where Sadie was headed with this. He shared the sentiment.

“Indiana Jones loses every fistfight. But every time he loses, he gets up again.” Sadie petted Regina’s wavy red hair. “The true test of being a hero is what you do when you lose. You lost this one, Regina. What will you do about it?”

“Get back up again?” Regina asked, desperate for approval.

“Don’t ask me.” Sadie shrugged. “It’s your choice.”

Regina’s lips hardened to a determined line. “Miss Strange, will you be my faculty advisor next year?”

Both he and Sadie blinked in surprise. Sadie recovered first. “I don’t know if I’ll be advising next year.”

Regina hung on the edge of her seat as Sadie slid open her desk drawer and took out a thin yellow paperback.

“Rainer Maria Rilke,” Sadie said. “
Letters to a Young Poet
. Read it. When you’re finished, if you still want me as your advisor, write a letter to Dr. Cross. He’ll decide.”

After Regina left, he waited for Sadie to turn away. When she did, he removed the invisibility spell. He opened and shut the door. Sadie turned, her face brightening.

“Gray.” The iceberg tip of desire in her voice made him want to cross the room and lift her off her feet.

“What’s with Regina?” He watched her sweetheart ass as she put books on the low shelves under the bank of windows.

“Something you want to say, Gray? Made any life-altering decisions?”

Her bizarre questions sent him reeling. They came out of the blue, strange non-sequiturs, yet on another level, he felt he should know what she was talking about. “Altering whose life?”

Sadie rolled her eyes. When she spoke again, the brightness was gone from her voice. “Regina’s being held back. I have something for you.” She replaced the last book, then went to her desk and opened the drawer. She rummaged around and produced a bottle of black liquid. “It’s a bad luck potion.”

“My God, Sadie.” Bad luck potions were the nitroglycerin of spells, liable to detonate with the slightest provocation. Any idiot with a chemistry set could make one, and you’d have to be an idiot to do it. She just stood there, vial in hand, unaware of the danger.

“What?” She shook the spell slightly. “Just take it.”

“Shhh.” He pulled a silver silk handkerchief out of his inside pocket and approached the potion with all the care of a cop in an explosives disposal unit. The mystic runes woven into the cloth would disable the potion if he could just...

Only after he wrapped the silk around Sadie’s hand, gingerly extracted the time bomb and placed the parcel on the desk to let the runes do their job did he let himself breathe.

“Sadie, you don’t have any idea what could have happened.”

She picked an apple off her desk and sank her white teeth into flesh that crunched as she chewed. “I’ve encountered a bad luck spell before.”

He wanted to rip into her when he noticed a black spot marring the fruit. Instead, he ripped the apple from her hand. “What are you doing? Didn’t you see this? It’s a choking spell.”

“Well,” she said calmly. “I wasn’t going to eat that part.”

He refrained from throttling her. “Sadie, I don’t want to make you panic, but I think someone’s trying to hurt you. These aren’t accidents. They can’t be.”

“No kidding.” She turned and hit CTRL-ALT-DEL on her laptop. “I’ll be fine as long as I’m not alone with one particular student. I can take care of myself.”

He plopped himself into her desk chair. It seemed she could. She didn’t need him. That was good, right? “There’s something different about you.”

She froze in the middle of closing her laptop screen. “What do you think it is?”

“You handle the kids like a pro. Like Pippa.”

“Someone once told me there should be a law against comparing me to her. She was a witch, after all.” Sadie had the same expectant look in her eyes she’d had when she asked Gray about the life-altering decision. She wanted something from him and he had no clue what it was.

“The kids love you,” he said. “I never thought a Non—”

Before he could finish, she slammed her laptop shut so hard it made him flinch. “Hey, don’t you have to love Mr. Laptop?” he asked.

She forced a smile. “Mr. Laptop and I are having a spat.”

“Maybe Mr. Laptop is really bad with the emotional stuff and has no clue what he did wrong,” He ran his hand up her spine. His throat caught at the sensation of the silky material of her black blouse stuck to skin moist from the day’s heat. Touching her was risky. Someone could see them together. It would ruin everything.
Wouldn’t it
?

As Sadie’s back arched under his hand, ruin was looking pretty good to him. Fascinated by the velvet softness of her hair on the back of his hand as he caressed her neck, he forgot all the reasons they couldn’t be together.

Then chalk motes in a shaft of afternoon light beaming onto Sterling’s desk caught his eye, reminding him of his obligation to the Gray House.

He couldn’t offer her his life, so he gave her the next best thing. “Sadie, I love you.”

“Come to me tonight,” she whispered.

His fingers on her neck tightened from a touch to a grip. He twisted her head to look at him. “Ow,” she said. “Stop it.”

He dropped his hand. “I tell you I love you and you offer me sex.”

Her face blanked, showing no emotion. It made his tongue go thick in his mouth. Love, he could take. And anger. But not this nothingness.

“Would you like to hear a story?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Once, a woman loved a man who was planning to leave her. Every day she begged him to stay, putting a little piece of her soul in her words. After a while, the villagers noticed they could see through her body. You are disappearing, they said to her.
Don’t put your soul in your words anymore,
they told her, but she didn’t stop. He left. She disappeared. The end.”

He flinched, seeing through the symbolism. “I like the Indiana Jones story better.”

Sadie leaned on the edge of the desk, not touching him. The white lock in her hair fell forward, a vanilla band against her chocolate hair. She spoke in a voice edged with pain. “You set the rules. ‘Nothing changes,’ you said.”

“I can’t stay.” His gut writhed, a serpent inside him trying to eat its own tail.

“I didn’t ask you to. And I won’t beg.” Her slim fingers touched his temple in an intimate gesture between lovers. He almost grabbed her hand, but he was afraid if he did, he’d never let it go. She continued. “Gray, someone told me I’d learn something about you if I asked your name. I know it’s not ‘Lorde with an e on the end.’ That’s your title.”

He pulled his international driver’s license out of his Gucci wallet, a birthday gift from April. He handed it to Sadie.

She blinked at it. “Damn. Your name really is Lorde with an ‘e’ on the end. Why does everyone use your full name?”

“I’ll be lord of the Gray House one day. They’re just anticipating the title. Could have been worse. My brother got ‘Dominus.’” He shrugged. “What did you learn? That I’m telling the truth?”

Sadie stared at the license. “Your family didn’t bother to give you a name. You’re just a role for them, aren’t you? You fill a space and that’s it.”

His jaw clenched. He was important, he wanted to tell her. Somehow, it didn’t come out.

She laughed without humor. “I thought you had a life of privilege. But I’m more privileged than you’ll ever be.”

*

***

******

****

*

“Pippa, I’m losing my faith in him,” Sadie leaned back against the scarlet pillows of her window seat. Monday through Thursday, the Quad was populated with blue-gray tartan, but the dress code was lifted on casual Fridays and weekends. The spectacular June Saturday had sprinkled dozens of students and teachers across campus like decorations on a birthday cake. The Senior Coven was having a witchy picnic near the bell in the center of campus. A Frisbee hurtled toward the head of a goofy-looking boy walking the path with his nose stuck in a thick text, then spontaneously fell at his feet, as if hitting an invisible wall. As he stared at it in confusion, a girl ran up and collected the Frisbee, tucking her hair behind her ear and smiling.

But her attention drifted to the figures descending the Lost Arts Building steps. The tall one dressed in gray flipped on a pair of sunglasses. The black hair of the shorter one ruffled in the same breeze that blew through Sadie’s window.

“All you have to do is tell him.” Pippa sounded like a cartoon devil sitting on her shoulder. “Everything would be perfect. Happily ever after. Why haven’t you told him already, instead of sitting here like the Lady of Shalott?”

“’I’m half sick of shadows,’” she quoted Tennyson. “If I tell him, I’ll always wonder whether he would have married her instead of me. I want
Sadie
to be good enough for him. I don’t want to have to be
MetaSadie
.”

“MetaSadie. Sounds like a superheroine.” Pippa indicated the graphic novel in Sadie’s hand.

Sadie smiled and put the issue of
Witchblade
back in its plastic sleeve with the acid-free cardboard. As an undergrad, she’d eaten mac and cheese for weeks to save money for comics. Some had gone up in value, but even at her poorest, she couldn’t part with a single one.

“What would MetaSadie do, Aunt Pippa? I adore your company, but seeing ghosts isn’t a really useful superpower.”

“Is that what you think your Talent is? Then how do you explain the fact that Sterling and Argent, identical twins, look completely different to you? No one else can tell them apart.” Before she could come up with an explanation for that one, Pippa’s head jerked up. “I have to go.”

Then she was gone.
But where
? Sadie’s speculation was interrupted by a rap at her door.