Page 27 of Malcroix Bones Academy (Bones and Shadow #1)

Closet Negotiations

He stared at me, gold eyes reflecting florescent light from the ceiling of the Underground station’s entrance. He never stopped staring at me. No one else seemed to exist to him, the instant he laid eyes on me.

It was only me who saw him appear out of that wall.

I stared back, sure my eyes were playing tricks.

His molten-gold eyes studied mine. His bow-shaped mouth hung partly open, his dark eyebrows raised. He gaped at me, like he found me as odd to look at as I found him.

Although he was roughly my age, instead of a schoolmate, my mind conjured a storybook prince. Some of that was his clothes, some his hair, some his unearthly beauty. Possibly a faerie, my child’s mind decided, although he didn’t have pointed ears.

Yet, he also looked like me, somehow.

He looked like me, in a way I couldn’t explain.

We gaped at one another, two halves of a mirror, then his eyes flickered up above my head, like he saw something there he’d only just noticed. Whatever it was, it made the astonished look on his face turn to shock. What he saw made him uneasy, afraid, yet also left him utterly transfixed.

I looked up, too.

Once I had, I was as transfixed as him.

Floating above his disheveled white hair hung a black, smoking crystal, surrounded by a writhing cloud of black fire. The flames and smoke rippled as if under a high wind.

I wanted to point at it.

I wanted to ask him what it was.

I remained silent, though, maybe afraid to break the spell.

Then the first light flashed from directly behind me. A thunder-like peal jerked and rumbled the pavement, and I got thrown forward until I sprawled on the cement.

There was a high, horrible, sickening, whining, buzzing sound?

I had no idea how I made it back to my dormitory.

Somewhere after the magi-physician walked away, something inside me must’ve crashed, because everything went blank. I didn’t remember anything after that, nothing at all until I woke up again, at something like four in the morning.

Someone left water by my bed, which I drank down greedily, not even considering there might be something in it that could kill me. I instantly felt better. I felt worlds better, suspiciously better, and decided someone, Jolie probably, must’ve put a healing potion in the glass.

I was too grateful to question it.

I still wore the bare bones of my school uniform, but someone had removed the tie, my shoes and socks, my formal robes, and my earrings.

I wandered to the bath wearing only the skirt and blouse over my knickers and bra, my feet stuffed into a pair of fuzzy slippers.

When I saw a stack of clean towels on the inbuilt shelves, along with shampoo, conditioner, soap, moisturizer, and a dozen other bottles and sprays, I decided to take a shower.

The hot water felt like a religious experience. I swore I saw more of that black smoke seep out of my skin as the high pressure nozzle pounded down on me.

By the time I made it back to our room, it was getting light outside, and Jolie was gone.

Had she been gone before? I had my doubts, but honestly, I had no idea.

I took a few minutes to explore my new room.

Inbuilt bookshelves filled the walls around my bed?twice as many as I remembered from the evening before, and twice as many on my side of the room as Jolie’s.

My own books filled half the shelves already.

A desk lived under my window. I also had a small bureau, a filing cabinet, and a leather-upholstered chair.

Jolie’s side had a framed painting of a bird of paradise on the wall, and several detailed maps of the Magical body, with colorful energy centers outlined in one map, bones and muscles in another, internal organs, veins, and the Magical nervous system in a third.

I decided our room was perfect.

I fought back the whisper of unease that tried to worm its way into my head.

Someone tried to kill you. Why are you acting like everything’s normal?

I disappeared into my closet, chucked my damp towel and dirty uniform in the hamper, and got dressed in clean clothes, a dark-red skirt and cream blouse, along with knee-high socks and my uniform shoes.

I didn’t have to wear a uniform to attend lectures, which is all I had that day, but I didn’t particularly feel like standing out, either.

I threw my course books in my satchel and grabbed my map, then added an additional book on the history of Malcroix Bones that Miranda had lent me.

According to the map, breakfast just started.

I should have plenty of time to eat, and still make it to the library before my first class.

Bones University Library was supposed to be magnificent, the largest in Magical England. It had its own five-story building in the middle of campus, with four more sub-levels filled with nothing but old texts, school archives, and rare scrolls.

I fought away the uneasy, anxious feeling that lingered, and reminded myself of all the good new things so far: new friends, new roommate, and they’d taken care of me the previous night.

I also reminded myself of my very useful new map, my new bookshelves, the more-than-decent food, my new magic, my first day of classes, the new library, that lovely common room in Malcroix Mansion, and all the other interesting places I’d yet to explore.

I succeeded until I made it to the bottom of the Grathrock College staircase.

I’d just rounded the corner, frowning down at the map in my hands as I tried to work out exactly where the doors were to the dining hall?

?when strong hands grabbed me, dragged me through a doorway, and threw me into the dark.

I was halfway in a fighting stance before I knew what’d happened. I shoved the map into my satchel, shoved my satchel behind my back, and held up my hands defensively.

I was deeply aware of my limitations here.

I was no longer in human England. I knew that.

I couldn’t bloody my attacker’s nose and expect that to be the end of it. Someone just tried to kill me, using magic. They’d likely try again with magic until I either found a way to stop them with magic, or ran out of luck.

I opened my mouth to scream, but a hand clamped over it.

I bit one of the fingers there, hard.

“Ouch!” a voice snapped. Male. Annoyed. “Gods and dragons… you bloody maniac! I’m not going to murder you, Shadow!”

I froze, stunned when I realized I recognized it.

I knew that voice.

He still hadn’t taken his hand away from my face.

For some reason, I didn’t bite him again. I stood there, half in shock, breathing too hard. He spoke some low words, guttural, not in English, and magic surrounded me, surrounded the closet space, tightened my chest.

He released me, and I almost fell.

Light sparked and flared in the dark. I looked around at the half-dozen miniature flames now floating in the air, all of them a sickly green.

I faced the mage who’d cursed at me.

Caelum Bones stared back.

I opened my mouth. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do or say next, but he held up a hand before I could decide.

“Don’t scream,” he warned. “I’ve put a chimera over the room. No one will hear you, anyway.”

“Then what do you care if I scream?” I retorted.

“It will annoy me,” he said.

I stared at him, and he stared at me. His primal, that strange dragon made of bones, perched on his shoulder, watching me with black, flamelike eyes. Up close like this, I noticed its eyes looked just like the flaming crystal over his head.

I was still struggling to breathe normally.

“What do you want?” Adrenaline and charge still made my arms shake. “Did you seriously just lock me in a closet?”

“It’s a utility room, actually.”

I bit my tongue, mostly to keep from saying what I wanted to say to that. He’d scared me, and maybe he knew that or maybe he didn’t, but I wasn’t sure if making that even clearer would help me or hurt me with him. He didn’t strike me as the overly-empathetic type.

Staring at my eyes, he exhaled, and ran a hand through his bone-white hair. It glowed green under the magical flames he’d conjured, but I noted it remained perfect, despite his fingers. He probably filled it with product and magicked the hell out of it for it to look like that.

“I saved your life,” he muttered. “A little gratitude wouldn’t be amiss, mongrel.”

“Why did you?” I asked. “Save me?”

“I don’t know.”

I stared at him.

“Liar,” I said.

His eyes narrowed. He took a step closer, and I took a step back, nearly tripping over a mop bucket someone had left on that part of the floor.

“I have a proposition for you,” he said, once he loomed over me. “A request, if you prefer. Or an arrangement, maybe.”

“What kind of arrangement?” I struggled to breathe, more so as his true height over me became uncomfortably apparent.

He wasn’t bulky, but he had broad shoulders, and I knew a fighter when I saw one, and I’d definitely seen a few in Southampton.

He moved like a fighter. He had the easy physical confidence of one.

I would have believed it of him even if I hadn’t already heard he’d sent Magicals to the hospital in primary school.

The bone dragon crouched on his shoulder. It also looked ready to pounce, its eyes gleaming like a raptor’s.

“What could you possibly want from me?” I asked.

As soon as the question left my lips, I realized it was sincere.

I hadn’t really had time yet, to think about why he’d helped me the night before, but now it struck me as bizarre, given how he’d talked to me in that tea shop.

I also remembered that, despite my dreams, I didn’t know him at all.

Why was I so sure he hadn’t been the one to curse me?

What if the whole thing about saving me was just a ruse?

“I didn’t bloody poison you,” he said, irritated.

Exhaling, he stepped back, staring at me with those strangely cat-like eyes. He rested his hands on his hips, and I couldn’t help but notice his long, large-knuckled fingers. He still wore gold and silver rings, like he had as a kid, but they fit his hands now.

“I have a problem,” he said.