“Hey!” Valen bristles on my behalf.
“It’s okay,” I tell my mate, sensing his annoyance. “She’s not wrong.”
“You thought this was a protection spell? Did you not read the whole thing?”
“Well … yeah.” I shrug. “It says use for … oh.”
Jade shakes her head and deletes the photos—going the extra step to permanently delete them.
“There’s a reason I haven’t let you perform spells yet. Your magic is young, untrained, and volatile. That spell isn’t a good one—it’s too open ended, so in this case, you ended up with a demon.”
Levi wiggles his fingers. “Nice to see you, Jade.”
She shakes her head. “Shut up, Leviathan.”
“You two know each other?” I ask in surprise.
“I know a lot of people.” Jade sighs, handing me my phone back.
“Is there anything you can do to uncuff us?” Luna asks desperately, lifting her arm in the air. The glimmering golden chain shines brightly for a moment before vanishing.
Jade shakes her head. “Sorry, but that’s something only you two can do.”
Luna shoots her head to the left to glower at Levi. “How?”
Jade stares down Levi, and he gives a subtle shake of his head. Gathering her hair back in a ponytail, she secures it and says, “That’s for you two to figure out.”
“And if we don’t?” Luna asks, pure panic in her voice.
“Then it’s a good thing you’re both immortal so one of you won’t be forced to drag around a corpse.”
Luna whimpers. “This is the worst.”
“Oh, come on, darling. You could’ve been chained to someone ugly. At least you got me.”
Luna glowers at the demon. “You think highly of yourself, don’t you?”
Levi gestures at himself lazily. “Of course I do.”
“See?” Luna turns back to Jade. “This is impossible.”
“I’m sorry,” Jade says, though I’m not sure how genuinely sorry she actually sounds. “But even if there was something I could do to undo this, I wouldn’t be able to. This is old magic, ancient. It’s something I’ve only read about. I thought it was a myth, but obviously not.” She waves her hand toward the two.
“Elaborate,” Luna demands.
But Levi shakes his head again and Jade shuts up. “You three need to go. Ava and I have a lot of work to do.”
I gulp. “We do?”
“Yes,” she says, pulling items and books off her shelves. “I wanted to take things slow with you, because like I said, your magic is volatile at the moment, but you’ve shown me that you refuse to do that. So today begins the accelerated program. Buckle up, buttercup.”
I can tell it’s on the tip of Valen’s tongue to protest, so I shake my head. “Go,” I tell him. “I’ll be fine.”
He follows Luna and Levi out to the front, and I instantly miss his presence.
Jade holds up a finger for me to wait and heads after the others. A moment later, I hear the door click locked once more.
She returns, smoothing her hands down her jeans. “Let’s get started, shall we?”
