From Alex’s stance, I could tell that he’d started working magic. His hands moved through the air, twirling in a graceful manner that, so far, seemed ineffectual. My breath stopped in my lungs, and I hoped more than ever that this would work. If it didn’t, my boyfriend would be a train wreck while I was at the Shifter Academy for Spies.
Seconds passed, and Alex’s shoulders inched closer to his ears. Even though I was far away, I could feel the tension coursing through him.
Calm down. Clear your mind.I squinted into the night, willing him to hear my thoughts, and pictured Alex next to me, victorious. The image was so vivid, so real, that I could almost smell him and feel the heat of his skin as he stood by me.Come on, babe. You got this.
Then, something in the air shifted.
On Alex’s hand, a flash of light—fuchsia—bloomed, while at the same moment, my necklace pulsed red.
My heart skipped a beat, and an alien tingle rippled across the nape of my neck.
What the—?
My hands flew over my mouth, and I released all my power as Alex disappeared and reappeared five feet from me.
His eyes were wide and terrified, but when they caught me, he smiled. “Holy shit! I did it, didn’t I?!”
I blinked. Had he? I didn’t see a warphole and didn’t feel my power respond to it. I hadn’t even felt the powerful bloom of heat and cold that always occurred in warpholes.
My gaze veered down to Alex’s totem on his hand, and then to my necklace. Both still glowed, as if they were telling me something.
“Odie? Are you okay?” Alex rushed forward to stand in front of me. “Did my warphole hurt you somehow?”
“I—” I paused, knowing that what I was about to say might crush the pride I’d seen on his face. “I’m fine.”
Alex’s shoulders loosened, and he beamed. “Surprised, huh? To be honest, I kind of am too. I thought for sure—”
“Babe.” I gripped his arm. “I’m sorry, but you didn’t make a warphole.”
Alex’s eyebrows knitted together. “Yeah, I did. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Something happened—that much is for sure,” I admitted. “But I promise that wasn’t a warphole. That was something . . . I’ve never seen before. Magic neither of my mentors have mentioned.” My fingers found my totem and rubbed it. His totem encircled his finger. Had it actually made that fuchsia ball of light? “Did you see your ring flash before you appeared here?”
“See my ring flash? What?”
Footsteps came closer through the trees, and Eva and Hunter appeared.
Hunter’s handsome face split in a grin when he saw us. “Cuz! You did it! That—”
Alex held up his hand, stopping his cousin. “Odie says I didn’t. But I don’t understand how I got here if I didn’t warp.”
I gulped as my friends’ attention pressed down on me. “I don’t understand it either, but I watched your progress closely. Both our totems lit up, mine was red, and yours was fuchsia, and then you popped into existence over here.”
“I saw fuchsia too,” Eva said. “But I was so shocked that Alex moved, that I couldn’t be sure if it was in my mind or real.”
“Definitely real,” I whispered, “and I’d bet everything I own that what Alex made wasn’t a warphole. It was something else.” I shook my head, trying to piece together the events of the night. “I just don’t know what it means.”
Chapter Forty-One
Alex gripped my hand tight as we marched up the walkway to the fancy restaurant behind my parents. “Calm down, sweets. We’re doing the right thing.”
I gulped. Maybe, but holy universe was I uncomfortable. I’d always kept my romantic relationships fairly private. While my parents knew Alex and I were together, we’d only talked about my relationship superficially. I’d certainly never mentioned that Alex and I were fated to be together and what we were meant to do.
A soft groan left me. What would they say when I told them everything? It was so much.
My eyes flitted down to where our fingers intertwined, and caught on Alex’s totem. After the strange warping session in the woods, we’d spent every possible second of the weeks before winter break trying to discover other totems that had acted like ours.
We’d come up with nothing—which I totally wasn’t buying. We couldn’t be theonlywitches in history whose totems were so connected that they could share magic and make one totem owner appear before the other.
