“I’m fine,” I muttered.
He turned to walk backward and gave me his signature prickish smile. “Sure you are. I guess we’ll see when the grades are handed out,” he said, and winked at me once before finally turning around and continuing on his way.
I cursed under my breath and pushed my glasses up my nose as I walked.
Most of the students in other classes were making their way down to dinner. I chose to head to the library instead. No amount of bravado I showed Virgil would dispel the feeling that I was way too far behind the other students. There would be time for a snack or something later. What I needed right now was more time to study for the test.
Skipping dinner meant the library was completely vacant, and I managed to get quite a bit of research done and notes taken with no interruptions. When my hand started to cramp from writing,I moved on to working on my levitation spell. It was one of my stronger bits of magic, and I enjoyed practicing it.
Staring at the ballpoint pen on the table, I dug deep into the recesses of my mind, touching on that part of my subconscious that allowed me to access the unseen magical threads of power witches and sorcerers could connect with. My vision blurred slightly as I watched the pen with intense interest. Imagining an unseen hand reaching out of my head toward the pen, I wrapped invisible fingers around the pen, mentally muttering the spell that would keep the magic powered. The pen rolled, then rose an inch. Concentrating, I held it aloft using magic and my own mind.
“Whatcha doing here?”
The voice, unexpected and surprising in the empty library, broke my concentration. The pen clattered to the table. I blinked, irritated by the interruption. Gwendolyn Freedman came skipping toward me from the door, looking every bit the twelve-year-old child.
“Oh, hey, Gwyn—uh, I mean, Wendy,” I said, glancing at her. “What did you say?”
“Isaid,what are you doing here? Why aren’t you in the dining room?” she asked, coming to my table and resting her elbows on the wood beside the pen.
“I wanted to get some studying and practice in.”
“Hmm,” she said with a shrug. “Aren’t you hungry? You look like you’re starving.”
My stomach gurgled at the mention of food, but I ignored it. The girl was bright, but she had all the tact of a rock. Not herfault. Most kids that age had no social barometer when it came to interacting with people older than them. Honestly, it was kind of endearing, watching her spout off whatever was on her mind and seeing the professors or students react. And shewassort of right. I’d always been the scrawny type, thin to a fault, but at least I had a decent amount of athleticism from my shifter metabolism. I wasn’t a beanpole, and I’dthankfullygrown some muscle after gaining my abilities, but I was still fairly thin compared to most people.
“Not hungry,” I lied. “I’m more concerned with my grades than I am eating.”
“I guess,” she said, leaning over my table to peer out the window.
I leaned back to give her room, growing more flustered by the minute with the interruption. Though, maybe Ididneed a break. Practice wasn’t going well. My brain was totally drained after a day of studying.
“I wonder if any of them know about magic?” she said, still gazing out the window.
Craning my neck to see what she was looking at, I managed to spot an airliner cruising through the dusky sky above, maybe headed somewhere glamorous like New York City or Los Angeles, though it was most likely going somewhere a bit more boring. Cleveland, maybe? Or Denver?
“Most non-magical humans don’t know about us.”
“Doesn’t mean they can’t learn,” Wendy said, turning her attention back to me. “Like me. I like learning. That’s why I like you so much.”
That caught me off guard. Shelikedme? I’d done a decent job of being nice around her. ShewasBalthazar’s niece, after all. It behooved me to stay in the girl’s good graces, and by association, in Balthazar’s. She was also pretty funny and witty in the classes we had together. Like most students, I felt a little weird being in a class with a girl so much younger than the rest of us, but she fit in well enough and usually blended in fine. I’d never really done much to make herlikeme, though.
“Me?” I asked, my natural curiosity getting the best of me. “There are other people better and smarter than me that you could hang out with.”
Her eyes gleamed with excitement as she grinned. “You’re ashifter! That’s, like, really freaking cool. I’ve never met one until you.”
“Oh,” I muttered, trying to think of a good response. It was hard to accept a compliment about something you had no real control over. It always sounded strange when a person complimented things like your eye or hair color, like,gee, thanks, I spent a lot of time working on that in the womb.
“Besides, you don’t treat me like a little kid. The others do. When we hang out, it’s like we’re real friends and not like you’re babysitting me. Anyway, what’s it like to turn into a wolf?” Wendy asked. “Does it hurt?Oh!Do you use the bathroom when you’re in your animal form? I always wondered that.”
I grimaced. “I’d prefer to not discuss my bathroom habits.”
“Fair,” she said with a shrug, then the inquisitive look on her face vanished, replaced by what I could only call hesitance. “Can I ask you something, and will you swear not to laugh at me?”
This conversation was getting weirder by the second, but I decided to go with it.
“Sure,” I said. “I promise I won’t make fun of you.”
Wendy glanced over her shoulder toward the door, then back to me, her bottom lip clamped between her teeth. She looked more anxious than ever.
