Page 27 of Bonds of Magic (Vesperwood Academy: Incubus #3)

The jelly was both hot and cold as he rubbed it onto my skin with his fingertips. Or maybe it was Noah touching me that made me feel that way. His strokes were delicate—more gentle than I knew he could be. I bit my lip, willing myself not to moan or otherwise embarrass myself.

He didn’t look at me as he pulled his fingers away, which was just as well. I already missed his caress, and I didn’t want him to read that on my face.

“This should help with the pain for the next twelve hours or so,” he said, pulling out one of the inscribed rolls of bandages. “It’s not as strong as those plasters, but it’ll keep the salve in place. And by the time twelve hours have passed, you should be through the worst of it.”

He began unrolling the bandage, and I reached for it.

“Here, I can—” I said, at the same time as he said, “Lift your—” and our fingers touched.

“Sorry.” I pulled my hand away. I hated how breathless I sounded. Hated how the brush of his fingers was enough to send me flying.

I lifted my arms so he could wrap the bandage around me, and closed my eyes, not letting myself watch his strong hands working so close to my skin. When I opened them, he was looking down at his handiwork.

“There.” He sounded pleased, and even gave me a quick smile. I smiled back.

Ridiculous. I’d been annoyed at him a minute ago, and now I was ready to throw myself at his feet? Great job with the emotional consistency, Cory. You’re a paragon of reason and temperance.

“Where did you get that stuff? Does Cinda have it too?” I nodded at the kit. I had to say something, so that I didn’t blurt out, ‘ Please put your hands on me again ,’ instead.

“Cinda has this and more,” Noah said. “She’s a healer, and could actually use spells to help you. This kit is just something I’ve cobbled together along the way.”

“Along what way?” I asked, genuinely curious now. “How did you learn how to do all of this? First aid and fighting and all that?”

Maybe it was stupid to ask, but I wanted to know where he’d learned to take care of people. Where he’d learned how to touch me so gently.

He looked at me for a long moment, and right when I thought he wasn’t going to answer, he said, “I used to be a bounty hunter.”

Of all the things I’d expected him to say, none of them were that .

“What?”

“You’ve never heard of them?” Noah said with a short laugh, putting the salve back into the kit and stowing it under the sink again.

“No, I mean, obviously I have. But I didn’t expect… That is, it’s not exactly a common job.”

He shrugged. “It made sense. For a while.”

“Who did you, um, hunt?”

Noah shot me a sharp look, and I hurried on.

“Like, was it other paranormal beings? Or witches? Or regular people?”

“I didn’t discriminate. There are people who need capturing—or killing—from all walks of life.”

I shivered. He said it so easily. Like killing was an everyday kind of thing. Maybe, for him, it was.

“Did you still have your powers, when you were doing that?”

He nodded. “They helped. You can learn a lot about a person from their dreams.”

I cocked my head to the side. “Is that why you and Dean Mansur want me to learn to control mine? So I can spy on people’s dreams?”

“You figured that out, huh?”

His tone wasn’t condescending, but I flushed anyway. “Who do you want me to spy on?”

“Let’s worry about you getting control first.” Noah gave me a once-over, then nodded. “I think you’ll live. Get dressed and meet me in the living room.”

He turned and exited the bathroom, leaving me with more questions than I’d started with.

It didn’t take long to get my clothes back on.

I was still in pain, but the bandage was already helping.

I looked at my face in the mirror when I was done, frowning.

I still looked tired. Gaunt. No wonder Noah didn’t want me.

What bounty hunter would date someone who couldn’t even take care of themself?

I snorted. Date. As if that would ever happen. Even if Noah had liked me, he was right. We couldn’t exactly date normally. Not as student and professor.

I realized, looking in the mirror, that this was the first time I’d been alone in his cabin. I could almost hear Ash urging me to go through the medicine cabinet. But that felt wrong. So with a final swipe at my hair to straighten it, I headed back into the main room.

Noah was already sitting in his usual chair. I lowered myself onto the couch slowly, lying on my back.

“Doing alright?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, and for once, I wasn’t lying.

“Good. Because I’m going to push you tonight. I want you to try to find the dream of someone you know.”

I looked at him in surprise. “Isn’t that a little creepy?”

“Not necessarily. You should be able to find anyone’s dreams, once you know who you’re looking for. Even people who aren’t attracted to you. Their dreams will appear more muted, but they’ll still be there.”

That made sense. Some of the stars in the sea appeared brighter, more tempting, than others. “I get that. But I still don’t know how to find anyone specific. I never did find that guy Romero wanted me to locate.”

“It’s really not that difficult.”

I rolled my eyes. “Thanks. That makes me feel great.”

“It’s similar to being able to influence events. You just have to be centered. Rather than forcing things, let them come to you.”

I looked up at the knots in the tongue and groove ceiling, rising to a peak above us, and wondered what it would feel like to be centered. I wondered if I ever had been.

“You don’t impose your will on it,” Noah continued. “You recognize that part of you is the dream, so what you imagine becomes what you see. For you, in a dream, there is no difference.”

“That’s easy to say,” I objected. “Become one with the void and all. But it’s not so easy in practice.”

“It will be easy, once you’ve done it for the first time.

And it’s not a void. It’s…” He trailed off.

“Imagine spending all your life looking up at the sky on sunny days and thinking how beautiful it is. But on cloudy days, all you can think about is how much you miss the sun. But then you realize, you are the sky. You’re the sky when it’s blue and the sky when it’s cloudy, and you can see the sun whenever you want, because you are the sun. ”

“Was that supposed to make things clearer?” I asked.

“I don’t know how else to explain it. This is how it was explained to me.”

He and Rekha could start a club. I rolled my eyes again.

“Well, I’m not you. Clearly. And I’m having a little more trouble.”

“You’ll get it,” he said. And the weirdest part was that he sounded like he meant it. “You’re growing more powerful with each lesson.”

“But maybe this is where I max out.”

“It’s not. Trust me.”

Again, he sounded strangely positive. Did he really mean it, or was he trying to keep me from psyching myself out?

“It still feels like I’m invading someone’s privacy,” I said.

“They won’t know. And if it’s someone who’s not attracted to you, it will just be a regular dream to them.

You’ll still need the other kind of dream later, but I think I can trust you to take care of that yourself, once you’re back in your room tonight.

For this lesson, pick someone you know well enough to sense their essence. ”

Ash , I thought immediately. Not only was I sure he wasn’t interested in me, but of all my friends, he was the one who’d be least bothered knowing I’d spied on him. At least, I hoped so.

“Okay,” I said, hoping I knew Ash’s essence enough to do this. “I’ll try, anyway.”

I let Noah talk me into sleep, though I didn’t really need it anymore. His voice was comforting, though I’d never tell him that. The slip into sleep was seamless, and when I was in the starry sea, I remembered the words he’d said right before I went under.

Don’t try to find the dream. Let it come to you. Remember that you are dreamstuff, so you’re simply finding part of yourself.

A part of myself, but also Ash’s essence. Hmm. I closed my non-existent eyes so I could concentrate. What was Ash’s essence?

That was simple. Ash was all motion, all mirth, all mischief.

He was a laugh you couldn’t stifle during a sermon, a wink in the middle of an interrogation, a flower blooming through a crack in the sidewalk.

He was loyal and curious and my friend, no matter how many times I tried to tell him not to be.

Warmth rushed through me as I realized how grateful I was for Ash—he was the first person I’d met at Vesperwood, and the first one to offer me friendship.

When I opened my eyes, I was in a different spot. Had I moved? Or did the sea floor shift beneath me. I didn’t know, but floating in front of me was a star made or swirling music. Not music notation, not musical sounds, but the essence of music.

It was a little muted, compared to some of the brighter stars nearby, but I realized with a flash of recognition that this was Ash’s dream.

I smiled, remembering him teasing me about getting sex lessons from Noah.

Not tonight, as it turned out. I leaned forward and touched Ash’s dream with a fingertip, letting it swallow me up.

When the world stabilized, I was in the woods behind Vesperwood.

It was spring—no, summer. Warmer than I’d felt in ages.

The sun was setting to the west, casting long, low shadows through the trees.

Tiny specks of pollen danced in the air, except they weren’t pollen, they were little specks of gold, and I had the sense that they were actually alive.

I was standing at the base of a massive cedar. Small blue flowers clustered at my feet and spread forward into a glade with the lushest, greenest grass I’d ever seen. The whole clearing hummed with a vibrant energy. It felt almost conscious.

Ash stood in the center of the glade, which was ringed by other cedars. Pink and blue flowers mixed with the soft blades of grass at his feet. He spun in a slow circle, scanning the treeline until his eyes fell on me.