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  I don’t have an answer for her, and that’s probably good, because the next thing I know, she’s throwing the door open—and I’m staring directly at Jaxon and Uncle Finn.

  21

  Keep Your Enemies

  Close, Unless They

  Bleed a Lot

  Jaxon turns to me and frowns. “What are you doing here, Grace? I told you where I was so you wouldn’t worry. I’ve got this.”

  “No, you don’t.” I shake my head and try to figure out how to explain how I woke up this morning.

  “Sure I do.” For the first time, he looks uncertain. “I didn’t have anything to do with Cole, and Foster knows it.”

  “I know you didn’t hurt Cole.” I take a deep breath. “I know you didn’t, because I’m pretty sure I did.”

  For long seconds, neither Jaxon nor my uncle says anything. They just kind of stare at me like they’re replaying my words in their heads over and over again, trying to make sense of them. But the longer they’re silent, the more confused they look—and the tenser I get.

  Which is why, in the end, I don’t wait for them to say anything. Instead I pour out the whole story, starting with the trip to the art cottage and ending with my blood-soaked clothes, which I pull out of my bag and hand to Uncle Finn.

  He doesn’t look excited about taking them, but then, who would? Especially when I just dumped a problem of massive proportions right onto his sturdy wooden desk.

  “Are you okay?” Jaxon asks the second I finally stop talking. “You’re sure he didn’t manage to hurt you somehow? You’re sure he didn’t bite you?”

  I freeze at the urgency in his tone. “Why? What happens if he bites me? I don’t turn into a werewolf, do I?” Because that would just make the clusterfuck that’s become my life complete.

  A gargoyle werewolf? Or a werewolf gargoyle? Weregoyle? Garwolf? I do not want to be a garwolf.

  Then again, who cares what the proper term is? I shake my head to clear it. I just know that I really, really, really don’t want to turn into one.

  “No,” Uncle Finn interjects in a voice meant to talk me off whatever ledge I’m dangling on—which, okay. Fair enough. “It doesn’t work like that. You aren’t going to turn into a werewolf or anything else.”

  “So how does it work? And while we’re at it, how can I have possibly beaten up Cole and taken it? It doesn’t make any sense. Why don’t I remember it? How could I have just gone to bed covered in blood and not even noticed?”

  Uncle Finn just sighs and runs a hand through his sandy-brown hair. “I don’t know.”

  I give my uncle a disbelieving look. “You’re the headmaster of a school filled with paranormals. How can ‘I don’t know’ be the best answer you’ve got?”

  “Because I’ve never seen anything like this before. And by the way, the whole gargoyle thing is as new to the rest of us as it is to you. We’ve been learning while you were gone, of course, but there’s still a lot we don’t know.”

  “Obviously.” I don’t mean to sound snarky; I really don’t. I know he just wants to help. But what am I supposed to do here? I can’t just go around assaulting people. The whole I-don’t-remember thing is going to get old fast. God knows it’s already old for me.

  Macy steps between us. “So what do we do, Dad? How do we stop this from happening again?”

  I wrap my arms around my waist and hold on tight. “You’re not going to call the police, are you? I didn’t mean to hurt him. Honestly, I still can’t figure out how I did hurt him. He’s—”

  “No one’s calling the police, Grace,” Jaxon tells me firmly. “That’s not how we handle things here. And even if we did, you can’t be held responsible for something you did when you weren’t aware. Right, Foster?”

  “Of course. I mean, we’re going to have to watch you, make sure this doesn’t happen again. You can’t go around assaulting other students.”

  “Even if they deserve it,” Macy interjects. “I know it’s wrong, but after everything Cole did to you last semester, I’m having a hard time feeling sympathy for the guy.”

  Jaxon snorts. “I should have killed him when I had the shot. Then this never would have happened.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have,” I scold him. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”

  “Horrible,” Macy agrees, “but also a little bit true.”

  I shoot her a what-the-hell look, but she just kind of shrugs, as if to say, What did you expect?

  With no help from her or Jaxon, I turn to my uncle. “How is Cole, anyway? Is he going to be okay?”

  “He’ll be fine. He got a couple of blood transfusions this morning and will probably spend the rest of the day in the infirmary resting, but he’ll be fine tomorrow. Good thing about paranormals? We bounce back quickly, especially with a little help from our healers.”

  “Oh, thank God.” I slump against Jaxon as relief sweeps through me.

  Defending myself against Lia when she was trying to kill me was one thing. Deliberately going out of my way to try to hurt Cole for no reason is something else entirely. I’m pretty sure Cole is going to think so, too.

  “Has he said anything?” I ask after I give myself a chance to wallow in the relief that I didn’t do any permanent damage. “I mean, he has to know that I’m the one who attacked him, right?”

  “His story is he doesn’t know who attacked him,” my uncle answers. “Which may or may not be true.”

  “It’s a bunch of bullshit,” Jaxon says flatly.

  “We don’t know that,” Uncle Finn admonishes. “And if he doesn’t know it was Grace who attacked him, I’m not about to spread the word. At least not until we figure out what’s happening to her.”

  “He knows,” Jaxon says. “He just doesn’t want to say, because then he’d have to admit to the whole school that he got beaten up by a girl.”

  “Hey!” I give Jaxon a grumpy face.

  “His thinking, not mine,” Jaxon clarifies, dropping a kiss on the top of my head. “I saw what you did to Lia—and Hudson. No way would I want to mess with you. But Cole doesn’t think like that. He can’t.

  “Because if the alpha werewolf admits to getting the crap kicked out of him by anyone while he was conscious, then he might as well hang it up. He’ll spend the next month fighting off every werewolf in the pack who thinks they have a shot at alpha status.” Jaxon glances at my uncle. “Right, Foster?”

  Uncle Finn nods reluctantly. “Pretty much, yeah. After what happened with Jaxon in November…he has to be very careful how he plays this.”

  “Which means you’ve got to be careful, too, Grace.” Macy speaks up for the first time in several minutes. “Because if he knows you’re the one who did this…the one who has threatened everything he’s been working for, he’s going to come after you. He won’t do it blatantly, because Jaxon would gut him, but he will find a way. That’s who he is.”

  “A coward.” Jaxon sneers.

  Uncle Finn holds my gaze. “But that only makes him more dangerous, Grace. Because he’s not me. He’s sly and crafty, and he knows how to bide his time. I would talk to him, but if I do that, he’ll know that you must have told me what happened. And then he’ll be wondering who else knows. And how long it will be before everything blows up in his face.”

  “You really think he’ll try something?” I ask, my gaze darting between Jaxon and my uncle.

  “Not if he’s half as bright as Foster’s giving him credit for,” Jaxon tells me. But the look in his eyes says something different.

  “Oh, he’ll definitely try something,” Uncle Finn tells me. “The only question is when.”

  I don’t know what to say to that, don’t even know what I’m supposed to feel. Except tired. So tired.

  I barely made it through the last homicidal maniac who was gunning for me, and now, here comes another. I mean, yeah, I obviously did some
thing to provoke this one, but that doesn’t make any sense to me, either. Why would my gargoyle try to murder Cole when I have no reason to do so? I mean, I’ve let what happened last semester go. Or at least I thought I had. This whole thing is scary as hell.

  When is this new life of mine going to feel normal? When is it going to feel less like the Hunger Games and more like high school? My wrist starts hurting, and I reach down to rub it, only to realize I’m rubbing the scars from Lia’s bindings. And that Jaxon, Macy, and my uncle can see exactly what I’m doing.

  I drop my hand, but it’s too late. Jaxon wraps his arms around me from behind and rests his hands on mine, his thumb gently stroking my wrist.

  “He’s already proven he’s willing to kill to get his way,” Macy says after an awkward pause that makes me feel even worse. “And that was before his reputation was on the line. Now that he stands to lose the only thing that matters to him? Yeah, he’ll try something. We just have to be ready for it.”

  “We will be ready for it,” Jaxon tells me, his midnight-sky eyes never leaving mine. “If he actually comes after you, I’ll—”

  “Let me handle it,” my uncle interrupts. “I gave him another chance after everything that happened with you because of extenuating circumstances. But if he tries anything else, he’s gone.”

  “What about me?” I finally ask my uncle when I can actually think past the throbbing in my head.

  “What about you?” he answers.

  “I’m the one who caused this problem. I’m the one who went after Cole for no rhyme or reason that I can figure out. You said he’ll be expelled if he comes after me. But what about what I did? What’s going to happen to me?”

  22

  Family Is My

  Favorite F-Word

  “Nothing,” Jaxon grinds out. “Nothing is going to happen to you. This isn’t your fault.”

  “We don’t know that,” I answer him, pulling out of his arms. “We don’t have a clue why I attacked Cole.”

  “You’re right, we don’t,” Uncle Finn says. “And nobody is doing anything until we figure out what’s going on with you.”

  He wraps an arm around my shoulders and squeezes reassuringly. “I’m not in the habit of kicking students out who are struggling with their powers, Grace. Or who make bad choices with their power for the right reasons. That’s why Flint is still here, even after everything that happened last semester. Jaxon, too. And it’s also why Katmere has the best healers around. So that when mistakes happen, we can fix them.”

  “We don’t know this was a mistake—”

  “Did you want to hurt Cole when you left your dorm room?”

  “No.”

  “Did you make a plan to hurt or kill him during the time you were gone?”

  “Of course not.” I pause, rethink it. “I mean, I certainly don’t remember doing something like that.”

  “Okay, then. I’m going to operate under the assumption that what happened with Cole last night was some kind of slipup with your new powers. And we’re going to treat it as such. I already called a couple of the gargoyle experts who consulted about your case earlier, hoping they could give me some advice about your missing memories. But now that this is going on, I’ll see if I can talk one of them into coming to Katmere this week to work with you.” He gives me a reassuring smile. “I promise you, we’ll get to the bottom of this, Grace.”

  My eyes burn a little at this new proof that Uncle Finn has had my back all along, that he’s been moving so many pieces around in the background, trying to figure out the best way to help me.

  It’s not quite like having my parents back—nothing will ever feel like that again. But it’s something good in the middle of all this mess. And it’s a lot better than the lost and lonely feeling I had when I first got to Katmere four and a half months ago.

  “Thank you,” I murmur when I can finally squeeze the words past the giant lump in my throat. “All of you. I don’t know what I would do without you.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s a good thing, considering you’re stuck with us,” Macy says, moving in for a hug just as the chimes ring, signaling the first class of the day.

  “I’ll take you,” I answer, hugging her back.

  “All right, all right,” Uncle Finn says, and I could be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure he sounds like his throat is a little tight, too. “Get to class. And for the love of Salem, all of you try to stay out of trouble.”

  “Where’s the fun in that?” Jaxon murmurs in my ear as he walks me through the door into the hall. We’re going out the normal exit this time, not the secret passage.

  “The fun is I don’t wake up covered in werewolf blood ever again,” I answer him and shudder. “Which is pretty much a win-win for everyone, don’t you think?”

  “I think you forget that you’re talking to a vampire,” he teases, and his mouth is still close enough to my ear to cause all kinds of shivers in all kinds of places. I lean in to him, and for a beat, we both just enjoy the way it feels to rest against each other, the hardness of his body cradled by the softness of mine.

  But then he shifts a little, leaning down as if to kiss me, and I freeze up all over again. Again I try to hide it, but Jaxon notices—of course he does. Not for the first time, I wonder how long it’s going to take my gargoyle side to accept a vampire for a mate. Or why my gargoyle side even has an issue with vampires in the first place.

  I don’t try to make an excuse this time. Instead, I just smile sadly at him and mouth, I’m sorry. He doesn’t answer, just shakes his head in a “don’t worry about it” kind of way. I can see that it hurts him, though, even as he shifts to drop a kiss on my forehead.

  “Can I walk you to class?” he asks as he pulls back.

  “Of course.” I wrap an arm around his waist and squeeze him extra tight before looking around for Macy’s hot-pink hair as we fold into the crowds. I don’t want her to feel left out.

  But, per usual, she’s already up ahead of us, talking animatedly to Gwen and another one of the witches who are making their way to class.

  As we start to walk, I lean away again, grab hold of Jaxon’s hand, and thread our fingers together. I may not be able to kiss him right now, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love him. And it doesn’t mean I don’t want to be with him any way that I can.

  Jaxon doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t object, either. And when I look up at him, I realize that the small smile he’s got on his face has an extremely goofy tint to it. Because of me.

  I’m the girl who turns badass vampire prince Jaxon Vega goofy.

  Not going to lie, it feels good.

  “So where am I walking you?” Jaxon asks as we finally reach the main hallway.

  “I don’t know. They switched my science class. I went from basic Chem to the Physics of Flight, but I don’t know why.”

  “Really? You don’t know why?” Jaxon asks, brow raised, a teasing glint in his eyes.

  “No.” I shrug. “Do you?”

  “I mean, I can’t say for sure, but I’m guessing it has something to do with the big, beautiful wings your alter ego carries around.”

  “My alter— Oooooh.” That has my eyes going wide. “You mean the Physics of Flight is about actually being able to fly?”

  “Yeah.” He looks at me incredulously. “What did you think it was about?”

  “I don’t know. Airplanes, I guess. That’s why I was so confused.”

  “No, Grace. At Katmere, the class about flying is actually about flying.”

  “I just— That’s— I mean…” In the end, I just shake my head. I mean, what else is there to say about that? Except: “Flight class. They think I should be in flight class.” What on earth am I supposed to do with that?

  “Well, wings are pretty much a prerequisite for flying,” Jaxon teases as we turn down another hallway. “And so is figuri
ng out how to use them.”

  “Oh yeah?” It’s my turn to raise a brow at him. “Because I’m pretty sure you can fly without them.”

  He laughs. “Oh, hey! I’ve got a new joke for you.”

  “A new joke?” My brows hit my hairline as a grin splits my face. “Awesome. Lay it on me.”

  The look he gives me is suddenly steaming hot, and it says very clearly that there’s a whole lot he wants to lay on me, and very little of it has to do with the cheesy jokes I love.

  There’s a part of me that wants to look away, that feels uncomfortable with the sudden intimacy of the moment. But that isn’t fair to him—isn’t fair to either of us, really—so I keep my gaze steady on his, even as heat and uncertainty surge in equal parts through my body.

  For a moment, just a moment, I think Jaxon is going to follow up on the feelings I don’t even try to hide, his midnight eyes turning to a deep, unrelenting black as his jaw goes tight.

  But then the moment passes, and I can see him make the choice to let the tension, and everything that comes with it, slip away.

  I don’t know if I’m relieved or disappointed. Probably a little bit of both. But when Jaxon takes a very deliberate step back, physically and emotionally, it seems only fair to go with it.

  “So.” He grins down at me. “What sound does a gargoyle make when he sneezes?”

  “A gargoyle joke? Seriously?” I roll my eyes at him.

  He laughs. “What, too soon?”

  He looks so pleased with himself that I can’t deny him anything. “No, go ahead.”

  “What does a gargoyle say when he sneezes?”

  I eye him warily. “I’m afraid to ask.”

  “Stat-choo!”

  “Oh my God. That’s awful.”

  He grins. “I know, right? Want to hear another one?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer, skepticism ripe in my voice. “Do I?”

  “You do.” He squeezes my hand. “Why don’t gargoyles go out during the day?”