A Witch Among Warlocks: The Complete Series Box Set Read online

  Except that Monty didn’t seem repentant at all.

  But when she struck his name out of the book with that fateful word and told me he was no longer my friend, she also said, “Well, he probably only has a few years now, before the curse of all vampires catches up with him, so I suppose I won’t have to worry much longer.”

  Chapter Ten

  Charlotte

  I slogged back up the stairs with my basket of bread. Alec was in the shower. The door was shut, I heard the water running, and that meant he was naked in there. Just…right on the other side of the wall from my bed. Soaping up his Greek-god-hued muscular shoulders and his…

  I shoved a mini baguette in my mouth and took the opportunity to plug in my laptop, since he had implied that if I used it in his presence, it was going to be A Thing.

  “Want to kill a few kobolds real quick?” Firian asked. “I’ll use his plug.”

  “Okay! If the internet works.” My laptop fired up and I saw an open network for MerlinStudent. It seemed pretty fast too. “Yesss…I’m in.”

  We both got in the game and went to Kir Forest to try and grab some quick Kobold Hides we needed for our current quest. Kir Forest was dangerous because the kobolds here were undead and they always came in packs. It only took a second for a band of them to pop out of the bushes. I cast a ghostfire spell and incinerated one with blue flames while Firian swung his oversized sword.

  I glanced over at Firian, his face lit by the glow of his laptop. I opened the chat window. we’ve never played in the same room before.

  yeah. now I can’t imagine you as a broody mage anymore.

  well, you’re definitely not a scantily clad elf babe.

  i wasn’t trying to make her scantily clad. they don’t have many options.

  i’m not stupid! they have a full armor option.

  …but it’s ugly

  I shook my head at him.

  you’re the one deep throating a baguette right now while casting furtive glances toward the shower, he typed.

  “Oh my god.” I threw down my laptop and shoved him.

  don’t get mad at the truth

  “He might hear you!”

  “I said that in the chat.”

  “Oh. Right. I forgot.” Sheepishly, I went back to my computer and hastily tried to cast Doomshadow to make up for it.

  gamer girl has forgotten the difference between chat dialogue and real speech, he said. i think it’s good you’re getting out in the world.

  well, i think it’s good you’re wearing pants.

  Doomshadow spells were tricky to cast because I quickly had to mix two ingredients, but I pulled it off. The kobolds went down and two of them dropped a hide.

  “Nice.” Firian grabbed them.

  “Two in one go! Dude! Even if that’s all we get done, that’s a successful outing.”

  “How many do we need?”

  “Um…six more.”

  The door opened and Alec came out in black pajama pants and nothing else.

  “Speaking of pants,” Firian said.

  “I thought I sensed computers. Doesn’t that make you feel nauseous?” Alec asked.

  “I guess I’m used to it…,” I said, as my eyes raked over his abs and chest and arms and then his abs again because why not. He was mostly dry but there was one spot in the hollow around his collarbone down to his ripped left pectoral muscle where droplets of water still clung to his skin.

  I could lick those off you, I thought, and then my skin temperature rose a hundred degrees. Why was I having these thoughts? They just appeared, completely unbidden.

  He’s talking to you. Brain? Brain, hello? He’s talking to you like a normal person. Pay attention.

  “You should probably try to break the habit,” he was saying. “You won’t be able to perform magic up to school standards if you use computers often. Sorry, I’m going to need my outlet back.”

  Firia left the game, the chat window said, as Firian’s character abruptly vanished.

  This place really was no fun, shirtless gods aside. I was pumped to get six more undead kobold hides. If I was home, we would have been up until two in the morning working on it. I yanked the plug out of the wall and dumped everything on the chair, and grabbed Outlander out of my bag instead. Firian turned into a fox and curled up at the foot of my bed.

  “He doesn’t need to stay,” Alec said. “I can’t hurt you.”

  Firian’s ears flattened. “I don’t trust you.”

  “I’m serious. Here…” He plucked up one of my hands from the paperback and kissed the back of it. Or tried to, anyway. Immediately, he got jolted back as if I’d slapped him.

  “Rest assured,” Alec said. “I can’t touch her for more than a moment without that happening. Not that I want to, anyway. But if I should lose control because of my magic, well, that’s not a concern. Do you want word to get out that you still sleep with your familiar?”

  “I really don’t care what everyone thinks.”

  Firian slowly stood up. “I am bad for your reputation, it’s true. I belong in Etherium.”

  “I don’t care about my reputation, Firian!”

  “You will.”

  He melted away before I could convince him otherwise. Now I was more dejected than ever. I’d been run out of the restaurant and now I wondered if I would ever spend the night questing with Firian again. Plus, I couldn’t even call my dad without finding the “house phone”, and I couldn’t drive home to see him on weekends. It felt like everything I really cared about, everything that defined me, had been taken away.

  Alec walked over to the small dresser, yanked open a drawer, and pulled out a shirt. I tried very hard to stare at the pages of my book instead of him. A slow fierce blush burned its way up from the lacy jabot…

  This was not a good part to be reading.

  “What were you so excited about?” Alec asked.

  “I’m not excited! Oh…you mean…in the game. We got two uncommon drops at once, which is…good.”

  “You and Firian are close, huh?”

  “We’re—we actually didn’t know each other until recently, except he’s been watching over me, I guess. Through the game, and as the backyard fox.”

  “So he’s been stalking you.”

  “No.” I brushed breadcrumbs off the bed onto the floor. “Do you have a familiar?”

  “Yes. Everyone here has a familiar. If I had been born without one, I would be considered an incubus, not a warlock. But since I do have a familiar, I take after my dad.”

  “So I guess I take after my mom… Did you know your mom?”

  “No. She dropped me off and she was out. Really screwed my dad over. He wasn’t prepared to have an incubus son. That’s why…you don’t have to worry around me.” He came over to my bed and sat down next to me, sort of putting one arm behind me. “Yes…my body does want you. That’s a fact, the same way a hungry person wants a meal. But…like I said…I’m glad to be tested like this. I’m not going to be ruled by my nature.” His eyes roamed from my lips down to my legs. My eyes moved similarly, except they roamed even more places.

  I think a slow fierce blush might have burned its way up from the breadcrumbs on my shirt.

  ‘My body wants you’? Like I was supposed to have no reaction to that?

  “Well…I’m glad I was here to test you,” I said, a little sarcastically.

  “Yes,” he said. “Me too. We’ll both be stronger for it, I’m sure. If my presence bothers you, remember, it’s only my inherent magic trying to lure you in. It’s not real.”

  “It doesn’t bother me,” I said.

  “Good. We should probably get some sleep. Big day tomorrow.” He went back to his own bed and threw back the covers.

  It’s very hard to sleep when you can hear someone else breathing and you know it’s a very sexy man whose body wants you. Just so you know.

  Chapter Eleven

  Charlotte

  In the morning, I had an orientation class. I knew this bec
ause Firian told me he had read over the packet of information I was given when I signed up, and he appeared in the morning and told me I’d better get ready for orientation class. Alec was already gone. First, I was starving for anything that wasn’t bread. I went downstairs and found a spread of fruit, cheese and pastries in the common room. A few boys were in the room, and they stared at my every move.

  “Hey, guys,” I said, as I grabbed almost all the fruit.

  They all glared back like they didn’t know what to make of me.

  “You don’t belong here,” one of them said in a low voice. He was a tall guy with spiky dark hair and a glower, and I thought again about how everyone in this dorm was at risk of turning to dark magic.

  “Yes. I know. I have cooties and get periods. It’s been made abundantly clear to me that I am in the wrong place.”

  “Your familiar definitely doesn’t belong here.”

  Firian looked a little twitchy, like he would love to punch the guy, but instead he just crossed his arms and looked impatient for me to fill my plate.

  Montague came down the stairs. “Good morning,” he said, whisking the last clump of grapes out from under my hand. He glanced at the rest of them and then raised an eyebrow at me. “How was your night with Alec?” he asked. “Poor Alec. An incubus who hates sex is a sad life.”

  “Good morning to you too,” I said. “This is an interesting choice of morning conversation.”

  “Do you know where to go?” Montague asked. “I imagine you have some kind of orientation.”

  “I have the map,” Firian said. “No problem.”

  “Well, I am trying to make some amends for last night, if that’s not obvious,” Montague said.

  “Then why did you take my grapes?”

  He looked at my plate, which was already heaped with grapes, and put them down. “I heard you’re a Caruthers,” he said. “I heard you were recommended to this school by Samuel Caruthers himself.”

  There was a murmuring around the room.

  “Samuel Caruthers?” said the glowering guy. “Are you freaking serious? But why did he want her to go to a warlock school?”

  “I don’t know, but I bet he had a reason.”

  “Why does Samuel Caruthers matter?” I asked. “I’m not even sure how we’re related.”

  “Wait right there,” said the nervous guy I’d seen on a laptop yesterday. He dashed up the stairs and came back with a magazine called CAST. On the cover was a guy who looked like a celebrity, around forty or so, ruggedly handsome, wearing black on black. Samuel Caruthers: Reinventing Necromancy, it said, right over How to Cast Date Night Glamours and Drinking + Magic: Hottest Speakeasies.

  “I heard that he’s your mom’s cousin,” Montague said.

  “Huh,” Glowering Guy said.

  “Respect,” Nervous Guy said.

  “Can I borrow this magazine?”

  “Sure.”

  “Have you ever met Samuel Caruthers?”

  “I haven’t even met my own mom,” I said. “Not really. But…hopefully he’ll turn up and explain all of this to me someday.” I opened the magazine to see photos of Samuel Caruthers holding a skull like he was in Hamlet while wearing some sort of pirate-y looking outfit. A quote popped out: “I’m here to shake up the status quo.”

  No kidding. He sent me to this school.

  There was some relief in putting a face and—style, I guess—to the person responsible for all this. I just had to wait for Samuel Caruthers to show up and explain why I was here.

  Harris came down the stairs. “Hey, why are there no grapes left?” he said.

  “Let’s go,” Montague said, steering me to the door.

  “You still have forty minutes until the orientation,” Firian said.

  “That’s okay. We can take a little tour,” Montague said. “The school extends along the whole mountain ridge here. It was all built by wealthy warlocks in the 1890s. Blah blah.”

  “Where do y’all hang out?” I asked, then paused. “So I know what area to avoid since everyone hates me.”

  “Don’t say that. You have to give them a chance,” Montague said. “As word gets around that you’re related to a celebrity warlock who sort of sponsored you, and it occurs to everyone that you are a genuine woman…” He gave me a cocky grin. “Well, I hope you’ll remember that I was good to you from day one. I would never shun a woman’s company.”

  “Blech,” Firian said behind us.

  “You know, there is a reason familiars disappear as you hit puberty,” Montague said, giving him a glare.

  I wasn’t ready for Firian to ‘disappear’. To me, it was disturbing to think that all of them had familiars who had already vanished into Etherium or whatever. But I didn’t want either of them getting in each other’s business. “So what stick is up Harris’ ass?” I asked.

  “A stick full of family history,” Montague said.

  “That sounds painful.”

  “Very. He’s practically a prince in the warlock world, and his parents have high expectations of him. He’s the only boy after six girls.”

  “And I guess they wanted a boy.”

  “It’s not that boys are more valued, it’s just…well, with different types of magic being practiced by both sexes, every parent hopes for one of each, at least.”

  “Is that why Harris is at risk of turning to the darkness?”

  “Who said he was?”

  “Alec said everyone in the dorm was.”

  “Not true,” Montague said, a little defensively. “I will never practice dark magic. And I’m sure Harris won’t either. I was placed there because I became a vampire, just as a rule. But I’m not any risk to you or anyone else. We have so many ways of suppressing the vampire instinct.”

  “That doesn’t explain why Harris is in the dark magic dorm.”

  “Well, like I said, it’s not a big deal. It’s just that Harris is powerful.”

  “My dad said my mom became a dark witch…”

  Montague looked at me. “You won’t,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Whether you are an ethereal witch or a sinistral one, that is for you to decide, and not anyone else. Understand?” I must have hit a nerve. I could feel Firian tensing behind me, but he stayed out of it.

  Montague’s hand was very strong. I could just tell, even though he wasn’t gripping me hard. I just sensed this potent force inside him. His skin was cold, too, and I flinched ever so slightly before something in his eyes caught me and held me.

  He was a vampire.

  Like, I just felt that fact sink down inside me. And even though I knew that he was a college freshman and the other guys’ friend, in the moment, I hardly believed it, because something in his eyes seemed ancient and predatory. His youthful face was both handsome and beautiful, from the black hair that brushed the back of his neck and framed his high cheekbones to his mesmerizing lips. But he seemed like something else, wearing a young man’s skin.

  “I’m not a sinistral and I’ll never ever be one.” He backed off, mastering himself with a quick breath. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Good.” He seemed light-hearted again, but I wouldn’t forget the way he looked just then. It was only a second, but it was a second of this pure vicious and dark hunger that set every one of my nerves on edge. And I knew Firian wouldn’t forget that either. I had no hope of ever being left alone with Montague. Well, maybe I didn’t want to be left alone with him, anyway. This was all getting a little too intense.

  “Did you hear something?” Montague asked, looking toward the woods.

  “No…”

  “I was asking the fox.”

  “Maybe,” Firian said. “But I have to get a little more familiar with the landscape before I judge.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Anyway.” Montague waved a hand as I glanced at both of them curiously. “This building is the ‘hang out’,” Montague said, pointing across a green space to a building with two towers on the ends
. It had a grand entrance with statues of two Victorian-esque nymph girls clad only in their swirls of long hair. Inside was a wide promenade-type central hall and on either side of this was a roller skating rink, a bowling alley, a dance floor, and a movie theater. The rooms were silent and empty now.

  “Whoa. This is where you guys hang out? Down at the roller rink?” I giggled.

  He opened the door of the roller rink and looked back at me with a raised eyebrow. “So you don’t want to skate with me?”

  “Now?”

  “Ever. Because you are too cool for such things, clearly.” His eyes were a warm brown and he smelled really good. I don’t know if it was cologne or like, vampire musk, but it was this sexy, vaguely exotic but distinctly male aroma that was somehow very subtle and very hard to ignore at the same time. It made me think about how his skin would feel under his shirt. How it would feel if he grabbed my hand while I tried to learn to roller skate. “It might be quaint, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be fun.”

  “I’ve never been, actually. I didn’t say it was uncool… I mean, roller derby is cool. It just seems funny for an all-guys school.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “It’s…strange, isn’t it? I remember…” His eyes seemed far away for a moment, and then he stopped and looked troubled. “I remember.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I just—yes. We’ll go skating sometime. You know how, right?”

  I did not. I kept that to myself. I could tell something was wrong, but I couldn’t imagine what could have struck him. If he had been a normal person back home, I would have pressed him, but I realized there was this tiny part of me that was terrified of Montague. It was a pure instinct. Don’t push a vampire.

  “Shouldn’t you be getting to your orientation class?” Firian drolled behind me. I’d almost forgotten he was there, which was strange, because I was pretty aware of him since he’d appeared. “I mean, as delightful as it would be to spend our afternoon in an abandoned roller rink with a vampire…”

  “You’re right,” I said, the spell broken.