Page 36 of Reckless Witch

“Be careful,” someone whispers, and I recognize the voice of the thirteen-year-old kid from Defensive Magic class. He pushes through the bushes. The knees of his pants are stained with mud. I squint at the dirt smudges on his cheek, then glance in the direction Thomas and Ariel went.

I look back at the kid. Oh, no they didn’t.

“Did they do that to you?”

He doesn’t reply.

I will beat that fucking asshole and his sidekick Ariel. “You’re the one who needs to be careful, kid,” I manage in a low voice.

He nods and scurries away.

I head to the dining hall and eat, but can’t shake the feeling I’m being watched. I shove my tray aside and head back to my dorm. The feeling of being followed persists and I’m convinced I’m a victim of some kind of spell. I break into a run. It’s with some sense of relief that I finally reach my room and lock the door. I back up to the bed. I wish I could set wards, but I can’t, not with the damn sigil embedded in my flesh. The best I can do is shroud my room and myself in white light. The back of my legs bump into the edge of the bed and I drop onto the mattress.

I burrow beneath the blanket, wishing Stony were here. I need to find her. Maybe I can convince her to assume the shape of a proper mouse and return to The Academy with me. Why did she leave?

She’s not Grams. She isn’t. And she’s not my parents. She flew close before she left. My throat constricts. Had that been goodbye? I bury my head in my pillow. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe she can survive without me. But I can’t survive without her. I try to picture myself alone in Grams’ big house, but can’t.

By the time the moon rises high in the sky, I’m done tossing on the bed. I can’t live with the stress of wondering why Stony left.

As I shrug into a black hoodie, the Penncarrow Hall clock chimes in the common room below, announcing the 11:00 p.m. curfew. Curfews and I have never been on speaking terms. Probably one of the reasons why Grams kicked me out. I don’t follow orders well. Why start now?

I slip from my room and hurry down the dorm hallway as quiet as a cat, a trick I learned when I was thirteen. Grams wasn’t easily fooled. Aside from the spells she cast to keep me inside, she had damned superhuman hearing.

I reach the main doorway, which is, of course, locked with a key and a damned good spell that’s likely to fry the sigil if I attempt to break through. I would have preferred to leave by the front door because that exit offers a shorter route to the wall I plan to scale, but I’ll have to settle for the girls’ bathroom, which has a small window. I turn and hurry back the way I came, then duck into the bathroom at the far end of the hallway. The window has an old-fashioned crank. It probably hasn’t been opened in a decade, but I don’t sense any magic surrounding it. A painted shut window is doable.

I wind the handle and quickly break the paint seal. A dozen more winds, and I have the window open wide enough to squirm my skinny ass through. I’m one of those lucky women who has a high metabolism. The downside is, I’m hungry two hours after a meal.

I drop three feet and land on the moist ground in a crouch. One of the perks to studying martial arts is learning how to land on your feet from just about any position. The bathroom, being on the ground floor, saves me from trying something foolish like rappelling down the side of the building using tied sheets.

I creep along the building to the rear. The stone wall is a hundred feet beyond the trees, but I must cross the school grounds without getting caught by the patrolling Watchmen. I consider trying to reach the perimeter wall in one shot.

About thirty feet away stands an old willow that’ll provide cover while I observe the patrols. I scan the darkened grounds. No Watchman; although, one can never be sure they aren’t there. I dart across the path and hightail it across the grass to the tree. I reach the tree and wait. I consider making a run for the stand of trees. I’m fast, I can outrun any Watchman. Yeah, and I can sing like Beyoncé. I climb the tree and find a comfortable branch.

The night is warm for early January, just the way I like it, so I lean against the trunk and wait. No more than ten minutes pass before two large figures materialize on the pathway ten feet away. They’re quiet. If I hadn’t been looking for them, they might have been able to sneak up on me. I breathe in controlled breaths as they approach.

Moonlight illuminates two very large men in black body armor. I wonder whether this is what Raith, Ethan and Blade wore when they fought The Shadows. No, that can’t be how they dressed. They defeated The Shadows in their dream worlds. But they might have worn armor like that to fight the crime bosses who used The Shadows to acquire their power. I grew up in the aftermath of the apocalypse, yet the reality has never hit me as hard as it does in this moment. Irrational, I know. But The Academy wouldn’t employ men in full body armor to patrol school grounds just for the hell of it.

For some strange reason, needing Watchmen on school grounds makes me angry and sad at the same time and I fight an unreasonable need to cry. I bite down on the inside of my cheek and hold my breath as the Watchmen pass below me. After they vanish into the darkness, I slowly release the breath.

God, I need Stony.

Minutes tick by as I contemplate the strange actions of my familiar. Bright moonlight provides more than enough light to observe the Watchmen patrols for the next hour. They patrol every twenty minutes. All I have to do is wait for the next patrol, then I can reach the wall and scale it.

The crunch of bootfalls snaps me to attention. Not a single one of the patrols made this kind of noise. I squint down through boughs and leaves and a shiver ripples through me. I’d recognize those wide shoulders and that fluid, powerful gait anywhere.

Ethan.

Part of me—the newly discovered nymphomaniac part—wants to drop from the tree and pick up where we left off that first day. Memory of his hard cock pressed against my ass sends butterflies skittering across the insides of my stomach. I lift my leg over the branch and silently drop down to the branch below me.

“Ethan, wait!” a female calls.

I stiffen. Fuck, it can’t be…

Ethan slows. He’s nearly under the willow when the woman catches up with him and a shaft of moonlight reveals, as expected, Miss Mack. She wears a slinky, slip-like dress that screams ‘desperate.’ Am I witnessing a lover’s quarrel? Was that why Miss Mack had been shocked to discover Ethan’s cock pressed against my nearly naked ass? I’m startled by the mixture of jealousy and hurt that swirl in my stomach.

“Miss Mack.”

The formality in his tone is like cool water on the burn of my jealousy. I grin. No one talks to a lover with such distant reserve.