Crooked Magic - Eva Chase Page 0,2

the Bloodstone point on the pentacle while Rory finished her schooling. Now they’d rule together.

It all sounded incredibly complicated to me, but Rory and the other scions seemed happy about the new arrangement, so who was I to judge? I had zero interest in ruling over anybody myself.

I gave Rory a teasing nudge. “Make sure you take the time to celebrate afterward. You had to work a lot harder to earn this honor than most barons do.”

She grinned. “Oh, I bet the guys will make sure of it. I’ll see you soon. And if you need anything, you’ve got my number.”

Rory got into her car, and I hightailed it toward Nightwood Tower. I took a certain pride in my punctuality, and that was twice as important when it came to Illusion, where I was working as a teacher’s aide under Professor Burnbuck.

A fleeting shiver of sensation—a flash of sky, a ripple of air—told me Percy was soaring by overhead. My falcon familiar swooped closer, but I shook my head. There wasn’t time now, but I’d have to run him through a few exercises this evening. He got bored if we didn’t hang out.

Okay, so I had one friend left—just one that happened to be one foot tall and covered in feathers. The dribs and drabs of fear he provoked in the rodent community around campus provided most of my magical fuel these days.

As I reached the green between the triangle of the university’s three main buildings, I picked up my pace. The stone face of Nightwood Tower loomed over the grass, ominous even in the bright midday sunlight. A few other students passed by, none of them offering more than a watchful look my way.

I was almost at the door when an unfamiliar guy standing at the edge of the green caught my eye. The fact that I didn’t recognize him was enough to make me slow just slightly.

He wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous by any means, but plenty appealing with his wind-blown cinnamon-brown hair and square jaw. Since most of the families loyal to the former barons had pulled their kids from Bloodstone University to have them tutored privately instead, the campus wasn’t crowded at the busiest of times, and half of even the typical student population skipped the summer semester. If he was a student, I should have seen him around before now.

He definitely didn’t look young enough to be just starting. Actually, I’d have put him at around twenty-five—too old to be a student at all when the typical age of graduation was twenty-one. Maybe he was a new professor or part of the maintenance staff? The latter might explain the gloves he was wearing despite the summer warmth, tan leather ones that fit his arms nearly to the elbows. He wasn’t working, though, just… standing there, watching.

His gaze traveled over me and caught me in mid-stare. Jerking my eyes away, I hurried to the tower door.

I made it to the Illusion classroom no more than thirty seconds shy of lateness, but Professor Burnbuck didn’t look bothered by the close call. He motioned me over to stand in my usual spot by his desk and cleared his throat for the students’ attention.

The TA gig had been Victory’s suggestion. She’d done the same thing in her specialty, Persuasion, during her last year, and she’d said helping teach our classmates had made her twice as confident in both magical practice and theory. That was a big deal to Victory, who true to her name was never satisfied unless she could say she was the best at something.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt completely confident about anything... even before I’d come to Blood U, to tell the truth. That was probably why I’d gravitated to Victory’s side in the first place, wanting to absorb some of her immense self-assurance. And the teacher’s aide job had been something to keep me occupied, maybe even an opportunity to get a better idea of what I’d want to do with myself when I graduated and didn’t have even the school as a home base.

Of course, I wasn’t Victory, and so it hadn’t worked out quite the same way. Victory might have been a jerk to Naries and lesser mages in the past, but her parents had sided with the scions rather than the other barons in the clash. That’d seemed to be enough to convince people she wasn’t some kind of double agent.

When I moved around the classroom after Burnbuck’s lecture, answering questions