Strange Academy (Hot Paranormal Romance) (39 page)

He buried his face in her neck. He said it into her ear, just for her. “Mine.”

Sadie stiffened. His hold tightened instinctively.

“You don’t want me, remember?” she pointed out.

He heard a slap of hands on the table and turned to see Klark leaning over it. “You’re with her?”

“Everyone,” he announced. “I’ve been sleeping with Sadie Strange since Christmas Eve. In fact, she was a virgin before she met me.”

“No, I wasn’t—” Sadie started.

He put his hand over her mouth and nodded her head for her. “Yes, you were.”

A pinching pain shot through his palm, which he released in surprise. Sadie spun away, but he kept a grip on her wrist.

“Did you just bite me? No, this isn’t the time to argue.” He pulled his cell phone out of its leather holster on his belt, then handed it to Sadie. “Speed dial number two on my hotlist,” he told her.

When April came on the line, he indicated that she should hold the phone toward him. “Hi, April. Great news. The wedding’s off. I’m in love with someone else and so are you. Send me an invitation to your wedding.”

He pressed the power button with his free hand. Sadie stared at the phone in her palm like it was an incomprehensible device from outer space.

“No,” she told the phone, not looking at him.

“Sadie, why didn’t you tell me about your Talent? Why didn’t you say anything?”

Sadie gave him a blank look. Maybe she was upset about something. He’d have to propose properly later. Get his grandmother’s ring back from April and do it right.

This silence of hers was getting annoying.

“Screw Temple,” he told her, to cheer her up. “I’m busting you out of here.” There had to be a way around the memory-erasing spell.

It didn’t seem to work. Her maroon lips grew tighter on her face. “Think of it, Sadie. In three weeks, we’re getting married in London. Aren’t you excited? I hope April’s dress fits you. She’s a little more...” He used his free hand to indicate yesterday’s fiancée had bigger breasts than today’s.

He heard more than one breath sucked in through gritted teeth. Most of the women in the room grimaced.

Her laugh seemed to indicate the opposite of humor. “I get April’s wedding?”

“It’s all set up.” He smiled at the thought. “Three weeks and it’s done.”

“No.” She tugged harder, but his grip didn’t break.

“I broke my engagement for you. Do you have any idea of the repercussions?” Under his shoulder blade, the stress knot she’d promised to get rid of throbbed.

A dark brown gaze met his. “This is not happening, Gray.”

He pulled on her wrist, making her stumble toward him. “Yes, it is.”

“Let go of me,” she ordered.

He only knew one thing. He had to hang on to Sadie. His grip wasn’t too tight, was it? He closed his fingers a bit more to check. No. See, it wasn’t.

Sadie yelped and wrapped her fingers around his. He stared at her nails clawing at his hand.
Maybe I should let go,
he thought, seeming to disassociate from his body.

“Lorde Gray, maybe—” Cross’s tone was an order.

“Stay out of this.” But some part of his brain flashed a warning.
Sadie doesn’t like being forced to do things,
it said. This was probably bad.

“I said no.” Her voice wavered. “Let me go or—”

“Don’t threaten me.” He pulled her closer, laughing at the idea of Sadie thinking just because she had a little Talent she was anywhere close to his level. “There isn’t a Meta in this room who can hurt—”

He was launched backward through the air before he could finish the sentence. Air rushed around his ears.

But he landed on his feet. Someone—Zhang, maybe—put out a force field to cushion his fall, probably to keep him from downing the other teachers like human bowling pins.

“Actually, several Metas in the room can hurt you.” Sadie’s hands trembled slightly, but her voice was level as the boardroom table. “You just can’t see them. And they like me better than they like you.”

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

“Gray, remember all those times you told me the Gray House was more important than me?” Sadie didn’t wait for his answer. “Well, you finally convinced me.”

Her sweetheart ass swayed out of the room.

Chapter Thirty

No one can avoid you as effectively as someone who has a bunch of invisible friends tracking you, thought Gray, setting his briefcase on his dining table in his sun-warmed apartment.

He opened the windows to let in the breeze. With classes finished for the day and very little homework due in the last week of school, students were bunched in little groups in the Quad. The teachers had traded suits for jeans and t-shirts.

But he couldn’t do it. He knew it made him stick out, but he needed the tightness of his necktie to keep his untidy emotions in check. His stress knot had pulsed non-stop for three days. The maximum dose of ibuprofen—as good as a spell—coursed through his blood, barely keeping the pain down.

He watched the blur of color and motion below him in the Quad, but he couldn’t focus on anything in particular. It was all the same: life going on without him.

He leaned against the wall and just stared.  Tomorrow was the last day of classes. Only one more day to make this right.

He’d just come from Sadie’s apartment. She hadn’t been there. She hadn’t been there any of the times he’d used magic to let himself in during the last four days. And nights.

The physical ache of Sadie avoiding him mixed with a surge of pride. His Sadie had turned out to be a powerful Meta. He had to talk to her, to convince her.

It’s more than that. You screwed up,
he thought.

What? What did I do?

You figure it out, Dumbass,
his inner voice said.

But I’m really bad with the emotional stuff,
he argued.

A pale figure with a streak of ice white in dark brown hair appeared on the steps of the Lost Arts Building, making his breath stop. Her swirly black dress swung in the breeze.

Sterling and Carmina joined her. The two had seemed inseparable over the last few days. Gray was warming to Burana’s daughter. She’d been loyal when the other students weren’t sure about the rumors about Sterling.

Sterling walked more slowly than usual as he left with his friend. Gray hurt for his nephew, who still blamed himself, and burned to help the kid. He just didn’t know how.

Sadie would. She knew all the stuff he didn’t. They were great together.

She’d wanted him to break the rules of the Gray House. That was the life-altering decision she’d kept asking about. The price she’d asked—defying the Gray House—had been too high then. Now, Sadie was a Meta and things were easy for him.

He had the feeling things were
too
easy now. She’d made it clear his chance in the library had been his last one.

As he watched, he felt, more than ever, the acidic hole her absence left in his life. And in his heart.

She raised her dark gaze three stories to his window. Even at this distance, awareness jolted him like the bolt of lightning that had changed both their lives.

He headed for the door. He had no clue what he was going to do, but whatever it was, he was damn well going to do it now.

An angry knock shook the solid wooden door. He froze, his hand solidified on the brass doorknob warming with the sweat of his palm. His throat tightened. He didn’t have to open the door to know who was behind it.

Suddenly, the powerful mage was a thirteen-year-old boy, and he’d just gotten caught breaking the rules.

He took a deep breath and twisted the knob. He met a pair of eyes the mirror image of his own. Gray’s stress knot threatened to burst the fabric of his button-down shirt. Behind his visitor, Thalia the muse’s wide smile was pure mockery.

“You are not bringing a Non into the Gray House.” Lord Gray’s voice could have cracked concrete.

Gray deflated. “Hello, Father.”

*

***

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*

Gray stalked his prey through the roiling mass of students exiting from the year-end assembly. Her dark hair glistened as she moved through the excited crowd.

He followed her at a safe distance as she walked out of the auditorium and into the Chapter House hallway. He couldn’t let her escape him. After last night’s confrontation with his father, his whole world depended on it.

Part of his life had ended. A new one had to start.

His only weapon was the ten-page document he was carrying in his briefcase. He’d been up all night working on it, sweating out the words. He could only hope it would be enough.

The crowd thinned out as the kids rushed into the bright June day, escaping teachers, books, and dirty looks. But she walked with quiet dignity, her shiny black shoes clicking on the tile floor. Spotting him, her dark eyes glistened with nervous energy. She hugged a textbook to the front of her black dress.

Now or never. He lunged forward and caught her shoulder. “I need to talk to you.”

She didn’t smile, but looked up at him with unblinking black eyes fringed with black lashes.

“Please,” he said. “I need you.”

A couple of teen witches in baby pink t-shirts passed by and, noting the scene, began whispering behind their hands.

“I need your help,” he told her. “Please, Carmina.”

Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. His stomach soured. Of course she was scared of him.

After a long, serious moment, she nodded. He closed his eyes. Maybe, just maybe, he had another chance.

“I promise not to bite,” he said to Count Burana’s daughter, fighting a smile. “Let’s go somewhere quiet.”

She nodded again. As they walked down the hall together, past empty lockers with their metal doors swinging open, he realized Carmina had been wearing only black ever since Sadie had put away her ugly brown suits.

“Let’s break a rule,” he said as they approached the principal’s office. Putting his hand on Carmina’s shoulder, he steered her through the door and past the secretary with steel-blue hair.

Carmina lifted herself into a leather wing-backed chair. Gray shoved Cross’s terrarium out of his way and watched the black widow inside skitter across her web. Then he sat on the marble corner of Cross’s desk, next to the slanted box of dials controlling the school’s decades-old P.A. system.

“What do you want from me, Lorde Gray?” Carmina’s accent seemed thinner than it had that first day when he had reluctantly shown her to her homeroom.

“It’s really just ‘Mr. Gray,’ Carmina. Before I ask you for anything, I want to—” He took a deep breath. “Apologize.”

Carmina’s round eyes opened even wider.

“I’m sorry you were suspended. I know the potion in the apple wasn’t your fault.”

Carmina looked around as if she expected Ashton Kutcher to jump out and tell her she’d been punk’d. He didn’t blame her. If anyone had told him in September he’d end the school year by apologizing to a Non, he would laughed in their face.

“You’ve been a good friend to Sterling, too,” he said.

Carmina blushed.

Someday, this girl sitting in front of him would have the chance for immortality and power. He had never considered it before. She was a Non now, but she could be like her father someday. What must her life be like, with that hanging over her head? “When will your father offer you the choice?”

Carmina blinked at the change of topic. “When I’m nineteen.”

“So young.” He shook his head. “When you make your choice, remember you’re special just the way you are.”

Carmina hugged her textbook tighter. “But I’m a Non.”

“The day Sadie—Miss Strange—ate the poisoned apple, it wasn’t a Meta who ran to get the potion I needed. It was you.”

Carmina looked at him from under a fringe of black bangs.

“I fell in love with Miss Strange because she is brave, like you. And because she cares for you kids. I’d love her even if she didn’t have a Talent. Explains why I told my father he could stuff the Gray House up his—” He stopped himself before he taught Carmina just a little too much.

“I don’t understand.”

He shrugged. “My father heard a rumor I was going to marry a Non, so he came here and said I had to marry April.”

“So you told him Miss Strange is a Meta.” Her bottom lip jutted out, black brows drew together, the picture of confusion.

It had been the most amazing thing. With his father ranting about the rules of the Gray House, informing him that his decisions were not his own to make, that he had an obligation to both the Gray House and to future generations, a crystalline vision had come to him. A stillness had drawn over him, allowing him to see his father’s every action, hear each word, with detached clarity.

He saw himself playing his father’s role twenty years from now. And he realized that after everything he’d experienced since November, he would give Sterling or Argent very different advice.

He would give him a choice. It didn’t mean he betrayed everything he believed in. It didn’t make him like his brother. It just meant that the rules were no longer the greatest ideal when they didn’t serve the people they governed.

“You didn’t tell him.” Carmina’s voice was breathy with admiration.

He knew he should be angry with his father, or at least irritated by the man’s staunch support of outdated legalities. Oddly, he felt none of that. He felt kind of sorry for his father, actually. His father had been was married to a great woman, sweet and pushy and loving, and he had always turned up his nose at her. “I thought of everything she’d done when we didn’t know she had a Talent. I decided I didn’t want to be part of anything that would only accept Sadie if she had the right DNA. So my father kicked me out. I’m not the Gray House heir anymore.”

Carmina gasped. “How could your father do such a thing?”

He smiled down at her and shrugged. “My father’s not like yours. Yours will love you whatever you decide. Remember that when you make your choice. You don’t have to be a Meta to be special—” His own words hit him, making him shove himself up from the desk and stand straight. “Holy shit, I’m having this conversation with the wrong person, aren’t I?”