The dreads shrank, and the purple transformed until it was her natural black. When she was done, short braids hung just below her earlobes, a colored bead on the end of each one.
“A week?” I shot her a sidelong glance. “I just stole the dean’s car, Wendy. You’re doing it for a month,andyou’re gonna take my kitchen and dining room shifts until Thanksgiving.”
She winked at me. “That’s a fair trade.”
This kid.
It took longer than I thought to get to the bookstore, since it was in Downtown Chicago. Even this late on a weeknight, traffic wasrough, and I wasextracareful to stay right below the speed limit, use my signal, and stop ateveryyellow light.
“Ooh!” Wendy squealed as I circled the block trying to find parking. “We’re gonna be early.Yes! We’ll get a decent spot in line.”
“Yeah. It’s great. Fantastic.”
The store was well hidden from thenormalpopulation, tucked into what looked like an abandoned strip mall. Even from the distant parking spot I’d found, I could sense the magical barriers placed around it to keep humans away. Only people with our gifts would be able to get into the store. Yet another secret hidden right under the humans’ noses.
Even with a warming spell on our jackets, it was freezing outside. After waiting and shivering in line for almost thirty minutes, the bookstore’s doors opened, and dozens of people filed in. I held Wendy’s hand, paranoid that she might get separated from me and vanish. Kidnapped—or worse.
“This place is so cool,” Wendy said as we stood in yetanotherline to get her book.
That much I could admit. Apart from the books that took up a majority of the building, there were large sections for educational toys, magical supplies, enchanted board games, and vinyl records. It was the best of both the human and supernatural worlds.
“It is,” I said.
At the front of the line, a harried-looking woman handed Wendy a hardcover book from a huge cardboard box. On the cover, awoman sat astride a massive, crimson dragon, holding a flaming sword in the air, with a lightning bolt striking the tip.
“I supposed that’s the main character?” I said, nodding to the cover as we moved aside to let others get their copy.
“It is.” Wendy sighed the words with relish and hugged the book to her chest. “Torian. She’s a badass. Can we look around a little more?”
We needed to get back to the academy, but it was midnight, and we’d driven nearly an hour to get here. No one back at the mansion would still be awake, and even if they were, it would only be students up late studying. If we got in trouble, we alreadywere, and another fifteen minutes of browsing wouldn’t make the punishment any better or worse.
“Fine,” I said, relenting. “You’ve got, like, fifteen minutes, not a second longer.”
Wendy squealed, then bolted off to the other sections. As much as I didn’t want to get into trouble, I couldn’t help but smile at how happy she was. I pushed my lensless glasses up my nose and started browsing the shelves.
A few minutes before her time was up, Wendy ran up to me, holding the hardcover book, a paperback, and a pair of reading glasses.
“I didn’t know you needed glasses,” I said.
“Uh…” Wendy glanced down at them, then gave me an awkward smile. “I don’t. I thought, uh, maybe I could pop the lenses out and wear them to be fashionable. You know, like you.”
A pang of happiness twisted in my chest. I’d always been a little self-conscious about the glasses. They were useless now that Icould shift, but there was somethingsafeabout wearing them, like I could hide behind them. Seeing this vibrant and precocious girl want to emulate something I’d considered a weakness gave me a new outlook. Maybe I wasn’t as invisible as I thought.
“Really?” I said as I led her to the register. “You want to wear those?”
“Yup,” she said. “Here, take this, I’m gonna wear them now.”
She popped the barcode tag off and slipped them on her face.
“Oh, gosh,” she said, taking them off and blinking dramatically. “Some people have really terrible vision.”
Chuckling, I took the glasses from her and popped the lenses out. Wendy slid them into her blue jeans pocket as some sort of souvenir, then put the frame back on. When she looked up and grinned at me, I couldn’t help but smile back.
“You look great. What’s the other book?” I said, pointing to the paperback. “More dragon warriors or something?”
Wendy shrugged. “Nah, this is nonfiction. It looked interesting, and it all happened not far from here.”
Slipping the book from her hands, I flipped it over, and blinked in surprise at the title.The Davernfield Incubus: A Succubus Nightmare.
