Page 98

Goddess, I just hope it doesn’t come back to bite me.

* * *

When I wake up the next morning, I smile at the sound of birds chirping in the tree outside, and for about two seconds, life is utterly blissful.

Then last night comes rushing in.

I put my hand over my eyes.Make it all go away.There are bits of yesterday I can’t remember either—getting ready, that’s gone. And there are some lost memories from the party last night, but I’m not sure if alcohol or magic is to blame for that.

Still, I remember enough. And in the sobering light of day, one detail in particular catches my attention, one I didn’t spend much time musing on last night.

We are soul mates, little witch.

I scramble off the bed, cursing when I step on broken glass from my window.

“Broken glass, stop being a bimbo. Repair yourself and mend this window.”

Really need to work on my rhymes…

As the glass levitates off the floor and fits itself back into place, I make a beeline for my bookshelf. My fingers skim over the spines of my journals.

Being a soul mate isn’t just some offhand thing. It’s an aspect of a supernatural that manifests when their magic Awakens. One that’s formally recorded and acknowledged.

So, if Iwerea soul mate, I would have written that down somewhere before my mind stole that information from me. It would have been too important not to.

I pull out the notebooks one by one, and frantically flip through them.

Nothing, nothing,nothing.

Of course there’s nothing. There wouldn’t be because I’mnota soul mate. Not to that brutal bastard.

Still, I spend over an hour sitting on the floor of my room, notebooks scattered around me, flipping through page after page of notes I wrote years ago, looking for any clue that I may be a soul mate. It’s only as I get to the earliest of my journals that I realize I didn’t keep good records until about halfway through my junior year at Peel Academy,monthsafter my Awakening.

Regardless, what I do have is thorough enough. And not once do I find any mention of my being a soul mate.

I exhale. I know Ishouldfeel relieved, but there are those few damnable months that are unrecorded. And then there’s the fact I no longer have the memory of my Awakening, when I would’ve first learned of whether I’m a soul mate.

I rub the skin over my heart, frowning. The more I focus on it, the more I swear theremaybe something there.

It was just the sorcerer’s trick, nothing more.

There’s one other place I could check that would know for certain.

Peel Academy would have files on hand about my Awakening. They have them for all supernaturals who attend their boarding school. I just need to get a copy of mine.

I open my laptop and head to my email account. Once there, I send out a quick request to Peel Academy’s Records Department to forward me my official results.

Goddess, but I hope this settles things once and for all. I’m still holding on to that damnable hope that I’m right.

Otherwise, I’m screwed.

CHAPTER26

Bzzzzzzz.

The sound of my phone has me rising from my computer chair. I’m not sure where it’s coming from, but it’s not on my nightstand, where it should be.

Bzzzzzzz.