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CHAPTER TWO

The rest of the day and the next morning was so busy with getting ready to go back to school, that I barely had time to think about what had happened with Mrs Spencer Spencer. I didn’t have a chance to talk to Tennyson about it. It wasn’t as if I was hiding it from him, there just wasn’t a right time. By the time I’d packed, argued with my brothers about being homeschooled again , broken up an argument between Althea and Harper about a leather jacket I’d never seen either of them wear, and repacked because Nikolai had swapped all my regular clothes with his fashion “improvements”, I barely remembered what had happened myself. I was back at school before I knew it, in my little corner room with Hannah, only this time on the top floor of the Red House.

“This year is going to be amazing,” Hannah said, stretching out on her bed like a starfish. “We’re seniors, I have my magic back. I have a hot boyfriend?—”

I snorted. Nikolai was not hot. He was a bug. Not even a cute bug but a creepy bug, with poisonous antennae. I pulled open another drawer to unpack more of my stuff.

“Tennyson is alpha, so we don’t have to worry about stupid Henry. Everything’s coming up Hannah!” She shot some silvery sparks toward the ceiling with her fingertips.

I didn’t want to ruin her good mood, so I didn’t remind her that my evil father was still out there with his evil plans brewing. Or that Sam was still missing. Nobody else even believed he was still alive anyway, or seemed to miss him that much.

“Are we still doing Wicca club this year?” she asked me.

I took a deep breath, thinking I had to tell someone, and Hannah would be the last person to judge me. “About that,” I said. “If the goal is still to help me with my powers, it might be less of the magic and more of the…” I waved a shoe around vaguely in the air. “Spirit… something.”

Hannah sat up and stared at me. “You’re changing again ? Geez Louise, girl, pick a lane!”

I told her what had happened with Mrs Spencer as I finished unpacking.

“I don’t even know what it would mean, to change into spirit form, or whatever,” I said, sitting down on my bed with a sigh. “Will I lose my body completely or just be able to astral travel around or something?”

Hannah shrugged. “Nobody knows much about them, as far as I know. But I can ask my –” She broke off. Out of habit, she’d been about to say she’d ask her aunt, but her aunt was gone now, like so many others my father had murdered. Hannah forced a smile. “You should talk to Nikolai; his family has all sorts of connections. You had access to the library at Wilde Manor all summer, you didn’t look it up there?”

“I’ve been trying to get a handle on the powers I do have, not ones I might have someday in the future. It’s not as if I’ve been slacking.”

“Sure,” said Hannah in a sing-song voice. “And I’m sure that having that big old manor with all those empty bedrooms and the alpha curse broken didn’t distract you at all.”

I shoved the last of my clothes into the bottom drawer and forced it shut with a slam.

“… or not,” said Hannah.

To her credit, when I looked over at her, she was doing her best not to smile. I smiled back, at least she wasn’t thinking about her dead aunt, so I could take some teasing.

“Now that Tennyson is alpha, we barely had five minutes alone all summer.” I flopped down onto my bed and buried my face in the pillow.

“Well, I’m sure he wants to… you know. I mean, you do, right?”

I lifted my head a little to glare at her. I’d been so busy worrying about whether he wanted to, whether he was avoiding me on purpose so that it wouldn’t be an issue, that I hadn’t given a lot of thought to my own feelings on the subject.

“I guess I want to,” I said. “I mean, that’s just what people do when they’re… you know…”

“Young and in love?” suggested Hannah, clasping her hands together and gazing up at the ceiling. “A fated couple whose bond has grown unbreakable through danger and suffering? A classic enemies-to-lovers Cinderella story worthy of a K-drama?”

I rolled onto my side and propped my head on my hand. “I was going to say ‘together’.”

Hannah shrugged. “That too. I mean you’re right, it’s what people do.” She looked so smug and self-satisfied that it gave me no doubt as to how she’d spent her time with Nikolai over the summer. Which wasn’t something I ever wanted to think about. “Well, maybe he isn’t sure you want to, since you’re not sure yourself. You should talk to him.”

“It’s fine.” I couldn’t even imagine how that conversation would go. We barely had time to discuss the weather these days, let alone that . And if it was too awkward to talk about it, then the actual doing was probably a ways off.

“Sure,” said Hannah. “It’s probably way better to just stew about it for months and get all resentful, then blurt out all your feelings while having an argument about something totally irrelevant.”

“I’m glad you agree.”

The only time I saw Tennyson over the next few days was in classes, and even then, he seemed distracted. He was always messaging someone, or making notes about something. He barely even looked at me. I knew he was busy and it was an insane amount of responsibility for a teenager who wasn’t even out of high school. And I wanted to be supportive, I really did. But I also wanted the old Tennyson back.

But of course, if he’d shirked his responsibilities, skived off his alpha duties to hang out with me, he wouldn’t have been Tennyson. I knew that. Logically, I knew that. I just also wanted to know I was still important to him. That all this pack business hadn’t totally pushed me out of the way on his list of priorities.

Finally, Thursday rolled around, which was the day we’d scheduled the room for not-wicca club, which meant I’d get him almost all to myself for an hour, at least. Hannah, Nikolai and I left our bags by the door and sat in a circle on the floor, waiting for Tennyson to show up.

“So,” Nikolai said, after we’d waited in silence for almost ten minutes. “Hannah tells me you’re about to change again. You might want to slow down there, or by the end of college you’ll be unrecognizable.”

I faked a laugh but couldn’t stop staring at the door.

“I just thought it was interesting because just after Hannah told me that, I got a message from Vucari. He wants to meet with you.”

That was enough to make me look away from the door. Vucari was a shady guy connected to Nikolai’s family, who’d helped me out one time in the past. I owed him a favor, which he’d reminded me of the last time I’d seen him, when we were trying to get the five councils to help us out with Henry and my evil dad.

“He’s ready to cash in his favor?” I asked.

Nikolai shrugged. “Seems like it.” He leaned in toward the center of our circle, as if he was about to share a secret. “Might want to keep it from Tennyson though. He doesn’t trust Vucari and wouldn’t want you meeting up with him.”

I looked back to the door, then over to the clock. Quarter past. “I don’t think that’s going to be an issue,” I told him.

I would meet with Vucari, whether Tennyson liked it or not.