Page 131 of Twisted Ties

He glances at me, then his watch. It’s midnight. “She’ll be asleep.”

“Then we’ll wake her.” I’ve been trying my best to avoid her. That pull in my stomach is becoming more and more insistent, though. It wants to be as close to her as is physically possible. I’m damn tired of fighting it.

Tristan thinks about it, then nods, wiping his brow with the back of his wrist.

At her dorm, I try to blast her door open, but there’s some protection spell on it that I can’t penetrate.

“How the hell did she do that?” I say. The girl may have wielded crimson magic, but that was some damn fluke. She can’t handle even the most basic of spells.

“The roommate?” Tristan suggests, hammering his hand against the door.

It’s the roommate who opens the door looking fucking terrified.

“Where is she?” Tristan demands.

“It’s the middle of the night. You can’t be here,” the roommate insists, shutting the door in our faces. Tristan simply forces it open and we push our way inside, ignoring the outraged protests of the other girl and some snorts from the pet pig, running circles around our feet. The pig girl is sliding off a top bunk, dressed in sleepshorts and a tank, her dark hair braided over her shoulder.

“We need to talk to her,” Tristan says, striding right over to the pig girl and grabbing her upper arm.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she hisses. She doesn’t seem like someone who’s just woken up. Is she also unable to sleep?

“I said, we need to talk to you,” Tristan says.

“In the middle of the night?”

He glares at her, holding her angry gaze in a way that feels personal. I look between the two of them.

“You can’t simply barge into our room and drag Rhi out of bed. I don’t know who you think you are–”

“You don’t know who we are?” I growl at the roommate. “Are you stupid? We can do whatever we like in this school. And if we want to talk to her, then we will. So go back to sleep and stop screeching in my ear!”

“Don’t talk to her like that,” Pig Girl says, directing her attention at me.

“I’ll stop talking to her, if you move your goddamn feet and come with us.”

The roommate grabs Tristan’s arm and tries to pull his grip from the girl.

“Don’t make me hurt your roommate,” Tristan says darkly.

The pig girl scowls some more, then relents. “Fine.”

Tristan forces her forward and the three of us walk towards the door.

“Should I fetch Professor Stone?” the roommate asks in desperation.

Professor Stone? Again? I look at her, sure I see her cheeks pinken in the darkness. “It’s okay, Winnie. Let me find out what these dickheads want, and then I’ll be back.”

The roommate wags her finger at the two of us. “If she’s not back in twenty minutes …”

“We’ll return her safe and sound,” Tristan says with sarcasm, forcing the pig girl out of the door.

“This couldn’t wait until the morning?” she says, sounding bored as we march her out of the dorm and into the woods. Somewhere our conversation won’t be overheard.

“Too many pairs of ears listening in during the day,” Tristan says.

“Like the pair belonging to your girlfriend Summer? Does she know you have a penchant for dragging girls out of their beds in the middle of the night?”

“No, usually, they’re trying to drag me in with them. And she is not my girlfriend.”