Page 7 of Bonds of Magic (Vesperwood Academy: Incubus #3)

CORY

I spent the rest of the afternoon wondering where exactly Noah lived, and what his quarters would look like. I’d accidentally stumbled on his cabin in the woods once before, but since I’d stumbled on Noah a second later, I’d barely glimpsed the roof before he hustled me away.

Maybe he didn’t really live in a cabin. Maybe he lived in a toadstool that had shingles, or a hollow log that happened to have an attic. The idea of someone so gruff living somewhere so twee made me laugh despite the awful sadness of the day.

And in the end, it turned out I wasn’t that far off.

That night, after a long walk down two different meandering paths in the shadowy woods, Noah and I came to a little clearing with a tiny, quaint cabin, surrounded by night-dark pines and birches, whose bright white trunks gleamed in the moonlight.

The cabin had a sharply peaked roof, a slightly leaning chimney, gingerbread shingles, and carved wooden shutters thrown open to let the glow of cabin light out into the darkness. It was the antithesis of what I knew of Noah as a person, and it only got stranger once we went inside.

There was a warm fire in the fireplace, burning merrily behind a grate. A knitted, knobbly afghan in russet, orange, and gold lay on the sofa. House plants sat on the mantle and all the windowsills, including one behind the kitchen sink.

The place really was tiny. It was all one room, so the kitchen was one wall of the cabin, the living room a second, and the bedroom a third.

Noah’s bedroom . My cheeks heated as I looked at his bed. It was nothing special. A wide mattress held by a solid wooden frame. But it was covered by a quilt made of intricate, colorful hexagons that must have taken someone ages to make. I wondered who’d given it to him, and why.

“What?” Noah said when he saw me staring. It was more a command to speak than a question.

“Your place,” I said. “I—it’s not what I was expecting.”

“It’s not huge,” he said. “But it’s more private than your room, on a corridor with other students. This isn’t the kind of dreaming you want someone else to burst in on.”

I could agree with that.

“Besides, if something goes wrong, it’ll be better for everyone else if you’re not around them.”

I wondered what he thought could go wrong. Professor Romero had never made the dreamworld sound dangerous. But I was beginning to realize there was more danger around me than I’d ever anticipated.

“It would be better for everyone if I’d never come to Vesperwood,” I muttered.

I couldn’t get that thought out of my mind. I never should have come here, and now that I had, I ought to leave. My friends weren’t going to listen about staying away from me. The dean wasn’t going to do the smart thing and kick me out. So it fell to me to do the right thing.

“You need to be here to be safe,” Noah said. It was automatic, like he wasn’t really listening to me. He certainly wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were fixed on the river stones that made up the chimney above the fireplace.

“At the expense of everyone else’s safety?” I countered.

“If you’d never come to Vesperwood, you’d probably be dead by now,” he said, still staring at the stones.

“Then let me be dead.” It should have felt strange, arguing for my own demise, but the feeling had been growing inside me all day. “It’s what I deserve, after all the pain I’ve brought people. All the death.”

Noah sighed, but his eyes remained fixed on the chimney. “Cory, you can’t blame yourself for what happened to Erika. You’re not—”

“Can’t I?” I demanded. Fury and sadness erupted inside me.

“If that guy hadn’t come here looking for me, she would still be alive.

If I’d been able to break through that compulsion on her, she would still be here.

Who knows, maybe the moraghin were after me too.

Maybe if I’d never come here, they wouldn’t have shown up, and then she wouldn’t have been attacked, and maybe she would have been strong enough to—

“Enough,” Noah barked. He finally turned to look at me, his eyes practically glowing.

“Sitting around blaming yourself does nothing to help anyone. It’s self-indulgent and childish.

What happened is not your fault, but if you’re determined to think it is, then use that feeling for something good.

Turn your power into a weapon and use it to fight.

But don’t sit there and wallow. I don’t have time for that, and neither do you. ”

He was as angry as I’d ever seen him, chest heaving, hands balled into fists. His eyebrows drew down in sharp, straight lines that emphasized the angularity of his face.

“I’m not wallowing,” I shot back. “I’m trying to keep other people from getting hurt or, you know, dying because of me. Doesn’t that count as fighting too? Why doesn’t that count as me gaining control?”

“Because it’s coming from guilt. Do you think I don’t get where you’re coming from, kid? I’ve been there. And I’m telling you, this isn’t the way to handle the shame you’re dealing with. It won’t help anyone.”

I scoffed and turned away from him. He could see how fun it was, talking to someone who wouldn’t look you in the eye. There was no way he could know what I was going through. He was trying to play the role of responsible, caring professor in the dean’s absence. He sucked at it, though.

“I’d think you’d be happy to hear I wanted to leave.” I glared at the afghan on his sofa. “I always got the impression you wanted me gone.”

“Cory, I—”

“But if I can’t leave, the dean should close the school or something. People aren’t safe here.”

“Maybe not. But you’re safer around other people.”

“That’s not fair.”

“The dean has his reasons. You’ll have to trust him. You’re important, and keeping you safe might be worth a few other risks.”

I whirled around to face him. “You can’t really mean that.”

“The dean does, and that’s what matters.”

“Then explain it to me.” My tone was more pleading than I wanted. “And don’t tell me I’m safer not knowing.”

“You’re safer not knowing.”

“I just said—”

“For fuck’s sake, Cory, I don’t know. I can’t read Isaac’s mind. I’m trying to do my job. If you’re really determined not to go through with this lesson, if you want to give into that weakness, then go back to the manor and explain your reasoning to him yourself.”

“It’s not weakness!” I shouted. “It’s just the least bad of a shitty set of options. I’m doing the best I can here. Why can’t anyone see that?”

I realized then how loud my voice had gotten, how close I was standing to Noah. I was basically yelling in his face. I took a step back, feeling my cheeks heat up. I hadn’t meant to explode like that. And now that I’d gotten it out of my system, I felt like an idiot.

I expected him to shout back. To tell me how stupid I was. To kick me out of his cabin and tell me we were done.

What I didn’t expect was for him to inhale deeply, exhale for even longer, and apologize.

“I’m sorry.” He sighed, then scratched at his chin, where his five o’clock shadow was rapidly becoming a fully-fledged beard. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper with you. I apologize.”

I was so taken aback that I found myself saying, “It’s fine,” before I even knew I was speaking.

“It’s not,” he said. “Really, it’s not. If you want to tell Dean Mansur, I’ll understand. I can’t imagine you’d be comfortable working with me after that.”

“I mean, I yelled too.”

I looked down at my feet. I couldn’t parse the emotion I saw in Noah’s hazel eyes, but I wasn’t going to admit that his gaze made me more uncomfortable than shouting ever could.

Did he really think I was weak? My chest tightened. I didn’t want him to, and I couldn’t explain why. Half an hour ago, I’d been convinced that I should leave Vesperwood tonight, and now…

“You have to do what you think is right,” Noah said after a long moment.

“I don’t know if this makes a difference, but I understand the desire to give up.

I wanted to, for a long time. But eventually, I decided that I owed the dead better than that.

I couldn’t bring them back, but I could avenge their deaths, and that’s something. ”

I looked up. I wasn’t giving up . But he kept talking, not giving me a chance to speak.

“Cling to vengeance, if that’s what keeps you going. Let it hold you up. Until you’re strong enough to hold yourself up, and do what needs to be done.”

Vengeance. Was that what I wanted? To avenge Erika’s death?

If I were being honest, I’d never even thought of that. I’d never considered myself strong enough to take vengeance. I wasn’t sure I could. But I knew one thing.

I didn’t want Noah to think I was weak.

I didn’t know what would happen if I got control of my power. There was so much Noah and Dean Mansur weren’t telling me. There was so much I wasn’t telling my friends. It was a thorny problem, and any way I turned, I was bound to bleed.

But with Noah’s eyes boring into mine, I couldn’t say no.

“Fine,” I said heavily. The tug inside me was screaming anyway, begging for me to fall asleep and dream. It was easiest to give in. “Fine. Let’s do this. The lesson, the whole—whatever. How do we start?”

Noah held my gaze another moment, like he wasn’t sure I meant what I’d said. Then he nodded and pointed to the couch. “Sit.”

I did. He pulled a beat-up wooden chair out from the kitchen table and turned it to face me. It had a deep, squiggly gouge on one arm, like someone had taken a pocketknife to it and tried to carve their name. I looked from the chair to Noah’s face.

“Tell me what you and Seb were working on,” he said.

“Seb?” I asked.

“Professor Romero,” he corrected himself. “How far have you progressed?”

I told him, and watched as his face went from mildly interested, to concerned, to surprised, to aghast.

“How many weeks have you been working on this?” he asked. He didn’t seem to want an answer, because he kept right on talking. “And you still can’t even remember who you are or what you’re doing in a dream?”