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Chapter Forty-Eight

RAIN

I 'd never spent the night with a guy before. When we got to Keir's room, he "had things to do" and told me to lie down. The moment my head hit the pillow, I realized just how exhausted I was. Needless to say, I was asleep before he joined me.

Sometime that afternoon, I woke up to him toying with the ends of my hair, only to find the guy with me in the bed, wearing sleep pants, and no shirt in sight. Yeah, there may have been a little making out. I wasn't an idiot, after all.

But Jack didn't have a magic perch in here.

He had to potty, and I couldn't stop worrying about Aspen, so I had to get up.

The last time the Hunt had come, she'd been traumatized.

To have them return again? There was no way I could enjoy our spontaneous day off without knowing she was truly as fine as she'd said this morning.

Thankfully, she was. Over lunch - which was really our breakfast - she explained that Torian was a little shaken, but she was ok.

At least, she thought she was. Since the Huntsman hadn't been able to touch her, the panic hadn't returned.

Her brother, on the other hand, was having his own problems. Mostly about how the Huntsman had made it clear Aspen was on his "list."

But that just led to more questions. What list? Who had made it? How did he know about it? Why had they come back so soon? Because people were saying the Hunt usually came about once a semester. Twice at most. We were barely into February, and they'd already been here twice.

None of it made sense, but I didn't have any way of getting the answers I wanted, so I tried to push it out of my mind. Needless to say, when I headed to my Shadow Magic class the next morning, Ms. Rhodes had her own set of questions - for me.

"How did you know the Hunt was here, Rain?" she wanted to know. "The rush of a cold front isn't typically heard deep inside the building."

I glanced over to my constant companion. "Jack told me," I explained.

"How did you know, Jack?"

The damned bird stood taller and looked almost regal. "Jack. Jack, Morrigan. Jack, Jack."

Ms. Rhodes sighed, but that was the best answer the bird could give, even if it told us nothing.

But on the bright side, my shadow was back.

It had returned at some point overnight, but refused to "wake up" and respond today.

The best I could do was work on my crow-shaped stone, filling the thing with all the excess magic Aspen and Torian had pumped into me.

What bothered me the most was that there wasn't much left.

By calling the night, I'd burned more power than I'd realized. Using even more in first period left me dragging ass. I nearly fell asleep in math, but when my head started bobbing in history, Ms. Rhodes called me out. That made me wake up a bit.

Then, as I left third period, she called me aside. "Rain, drink this." She handed me a small bottle of an amber liquid.

"What is it?" I asked suspiciously.

"Rain!" Jack told me.

Ms. Rhodes ignored him and answered, "Nectar. It'll help refill the magic in your body. That should be enough to keep you awake until lunch, where I suggest you eat a few flowers."

"Oh."

The woman made a gesture with her finger like she wanted me to lift the bottle right now. So, opening the top, I sucked it back. Ms. Rhodes took the empty bottle from my fingers and gestured to the door. Evidently I was now free to go.

By the time I reached biology, I was definitely awake. Maybe not much more than that, and Jack still felt a little heavier than normal on my shoulder, but my exhaustion had been held at bay. Claiming my seat beside Torian, I couldn't help myself .

I leaned in and whispered, "Please tell me you're as wiped as I am today?"

"Probably better than you," he said, offering me a little smile.

But then I made the mistake of looking up and meeting his beautiful green eyes. Damn, it just wasn't fair that we humans never got the cool colors, but the best part? There was a sparkle in there. For the first time in far too long, Torian didn't look at me like he was about to pick a fight.

Which made me hesitate before asking, "But you're ok, right? I mean, you know, mentally?"

Yep, that killed it. He glanced away, his smile slipped, and a sigh fell out. "He doesn't talk to people, Rain."

"He always asks me to ride with him," I countered.

"And you're a human!" He huffed, clearly annoyed. "He doesn't talk to us ."

"Do you think he defines 'us' the same way we do?"

The guy stilled. "No," he said after a little too long. "I think he'd kill anything that stands in his way, though. Human, fae, or anything else."

"Yeah," I had to agree. "That's why I'm going to figure out how to stop him."

Torian looked back at me and smiled again, a little of that spark returning just as a pair of girls entered the room. They were giggling about something and making a fuss about it. It wasn't anything abnormal, but when they sat down behind us, I could see Torian starting to get annoyed again.

"Let them have fun," I whispered. "You've been pissy for weeks now. That doesn't mean everyone else has to be."

But then their words got loud enough for me to hear what the pair was talking about.

"I didn't even wake up!" said the one I thought was named Oriana. Maybe Auriana? No, I was pretty sure it started with an O.

Then her friend Briony replied, "I was out until they came for a head count. I heard Jasmine had snuck out of her room, though. She got so busted!"

"Was she outside?" Oriana asked.

Briony made a noise, proving that was silly. "The Never - with a guy!"

"Oh, that's going to suck," Oriana agreed. "But from what I've heard, that's the worst that happened this time. So, the Hunt showed up and we got a day off because of it, nothing else? Talk about a win."

"I wish they'd do it more often!" Briony giggled. "I got out of a test in lit!"

"I'd love to have the Hunt come every night if it meant no more school," Oriana tittered.

"What?!" Torian demanded, twisting on his stool to glare at the pair of them.

"Torian, leave it alone," I pleaded. "C'mon, the Hunt didn't get in. This is a good thing."

"It's still the Hunt!" he growled. "How fucking funny do you think it would be if he came now? Would you laugh if you'd been the one he asked to ride with him? If he'd pointed at your friends and said he was after them? Would you - "

The air grew thick. The lights in the room began to sputter like the bulbs were going out. In the distance, a sound was growing louder.

"Court," Jack said softly.

"What's that?" Briony asked, turning her head like she was trying to listen.

Torian growled under his breath. "The Hunt isn't funny! He's - "

The first scream came from the girl beside the door.

The guy next to her didn't bother to make a sound - he simply ran.

The motion made me look, just in time to see the Huntsman slowly march into the room.

His desiccated eyes scanned all of us, jumping from person to person.

While they were milky and dead-looking, I could still tell who he focused on and when.

"The fuck?" I breathed, jumping to my feet.

I hadn't heard a storm! And yet, the thought barely crossed my mind before the sound of wind and thunder filled the halls outside the classroom.

The Huntsman made it another step as I pulled at my shadows, reaching for some kind of weapon, since my sword wasn't allowed in here.

Beside me, Torian grabbed a handful of white light from the air, clenching it in his fist.

Everyone else was scrambling. Books were pushed off desks, chairs toppled over, and students tried to find someplace to hide.

Under the lab desks was a favorite, but much too obvious.

At the back, I heard the supply closet door bang.

A glance showed someone trying to get under the sink, because the Huntsman was between all of us and the exit. That meant I needed to -

"Rain!" Jack cawed. "Rain-Jack!"

"Help me!" I begged my bird .

But it was the Huntsman who replied. "Why do you need help, Rain?"

Fuck, he knew my name!

Jack didn't even seem bothered, though. "Rain! Rain, court! Morrigan."

"I'm trying!"

I got the last out just as Jack flapped to the table before me, turned, and looked me right in the eyes.

I wanted to look away, but couldn't. I needed to stop the Huntsman before he started dragging off the faeling students in here.

I had to do something, but Jack was making those rattling noises like he was trying not to laugh and staring straight into me.

"Rain!" he demanded.

There was an audible little pop in the back of my mind as the glamour burst. Sucking in a breath, I looked back to the Huntsman just to see our teacher standing there, looking very confused. Oh shit, that meant...

I grabbed Torian's arm with one hand. The other wrapped around his fist, sucking up the magic he was ready to throw. His head snapped over to me, so I pushed, trying to get him out of the glamour as well.

But who could've done this? Who would think such a thing was a good joke, and how many of us had they dragged into this?

Had it just been Torian and me? Some way to make us look stupid?

But the sounds were real. The scurrying and frightened whispers proved everyone else was freaking out the way I wanted to - except Torian.

"Torian, it's glamour!" I hissed.

He blinked hard, squinting his eyes shut in the middle before looking back at the rest of the room, then over to the teacher. Yet under my hands, he'd gone still. Too still. It was as if every muscle in the guy's body had just forgotten how to move.

But that didn't last long.

"Fuck!" he roared, slinging out a hand even as he pushed past me.