The Dragon’s Aide (Charmed Away Temp Agency #2)

Chapter 24

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Isaac knew the minute it came out of Taron’s mouth, it was going to make Maverick suspicious. While yes, Isaac had some tools to keep Maverick’s mood stable, he in no way controlled the dragon, and wouldn’t pretend otherwise. Taron was stirring up trouble unnecessarily.

“I don’t remember a meeting scheduled with you and Mr. Van Buren. Did you need something?” Isaac snapped.

Taron laced his fingers behind his head, a shit-eating grin on his face. “Nope.” He popped the ‘p’ obnoxiously. “I’m here because I’m part of team Mav and wanted to make sure our resident grump was going to make it through the afternoon without biting someone’s head off. We all want him to succeed, after all.”

Isaac gave him an exasperated look. “And how does you hanging around making stupid accusations accomplish that?”

To his surprise, and Taron’s based on the look on his face, Maverick chuckled at Isaac’s quip. They both jerked around to look at him, but he was more focused on his meal than either of them. It was good that Isaac thought to buy him the extra long sub, because Maverick was inhaling the thing. Isaac brushed aside his shock, not wanting to draw attention to it and irritate Maverick.

“Elijah went to lunch a little while ago. He asked that I keep him updated on your whereabouts so he didn't have to chase you when he returns. How long do we have to deal with this man again?”

“A week,” Taron answered. “Longer if he’s concerned about Mav’s behavior. But day one is going well, aside from the smoke thing in the conference room. Maybe we should always have conferences involving you in rooms with open windows. It’ll give the smoke a place to go.”

Maverick grunted, but didn’t weigh in. Stubborn dragon.

“I’ll make sure to do that,” Isaac said, pushing to his feet. He scooped the trash off Maverick’s desk, replacing it with the contract he’d been working on instead. “I compared it to past contracts and I think I got it all, but let me know if I missed anything. Or if you’re too busy, I can take it to Schultz.”

Maverick waved away the suggestion, flipping through the pages. A part of Isaac wanted to stand over him and watch, see if he could come up with anything written on the dragon’s face. But he was also afraid to see the disappointment on Maverick’s face if he got it wrong, so he distracted himself with cleaning up from lunch and gathering the materials Schultz had given him to return once he was through.

Maverick’s grunt caught his attention right as he was about to go over the schedule again. He turned to find Maverick holding the contract out to him. “Send it to the head office for final approval. I don’t see any problems with it.”

Elation swelled, and Isaac had the distinct urge to kiss him. He immediately banished the thought, taking the contract and scurrying out of the room. Be professional, Isaac, he silently berated himself. Just because they’d been sleeping together didn’t mean he could act unprofessionally.

He dropped off the contract with Mr. Hawksley’s assistant and headed back downstairs to find Taron gone and Elijah back, sitting in the corner taking notes. Maverick seemed irritated, but didn’t complain about the intrusion. Still, Isaac sent the telepath a few wary looks as the three of them worked quietly throughout the afternoon, interrupted only by a few phone calls and a phone meeting for Maverick.

When the work day was done, Isaac was relieved to escape. So relieved, in fact, that he forgot who’s class he had that evening. Freaking Larson…

He hurried into class only a few minutes before the cut off time, ignoring the glare Professor Larson shot at him as he stalked past to lock the door behind him. Isaac was right that he would lock it early just to screw people over. In order for Isaac to arrive before the doors were locked, he had to full-blown sprint across campus to get here and he was always out of breath for the first few minutes of class. Maybe he needed to work out more.

“Alright, now that everyone has arrived, we will begin,” Professor Larson said in his pompous drawl. The vampire thought he was better than everyone else, and it showed in how he spoke and held himself, his chin always high as he looked down at everyone in the room. “I’m assuming everyone did the reading on issues excusing contractual performances?”

Isaac resisted the urge to scoff. The book they referenced in class was written by Larson himself and was beyond biased. Before he agreed to help Maverick, he’d spent a lot of time on weekends finding contradictions between Larson’s teachings and actual law practices. But if he wanted to pass the class, he had to write down the answers Larson expected. Not that it did him much good.

No one spoke up in reply, which only seemed to annoy the surly vampire. He scowled at the class and Isaac braced himself for the backlash. It never went well when Larson was annoyed. He almost always decided to do a–

“Pop quiz then, since everyone should have done the reading. No notes allowed. Pull out a pen and a piece of paper, and answer the questions, then hand them in to me once we’re finished.”

Isaac let his chin hit his chest in a dramatic sign of defeat. He hated pop quizzes. This class already had weekly tests, to ‘see how well they understood the law so far’, or in laymen’s speech, to torture his class for not knowing the textbook verbatim. But whenever Larson did pop quizzes, he almost always forgot exactly how he worded the questions, and the class inevitably would fail the thing. Isaac tried writing out the questions exactly as he had stated them, but that only made things worse and Larson would say he misunderstood him just to mark him incorrectly. If Larson wasn’t the only professor who offered this class during night-time hours, he’d have dropped it a long time ago.

By the time he returned to his apartment, he had a headache and his muscles were beyond tense. Isaac had been careful to study that reading, and he’d thought he did well on the pop quiz, but Larson corrected them immediately while having everyone reread the assignment and when he got it back, the big fat zero made him want to hurl. He twisted every question to make it the exact opposite of what Isaac wrote, just to screw with him.

Isaac had never done so poorly in a class in his life. He was barely scraping a passing grade, and it was dragging down his GPA significantly. He didn’t know how he was going to get through the rest of the semester with this jerk.

Maeve was already home, her homework scattered across her lap and over the couch. She looked up when he came inside, doing a double take when she noticed Isaac’s face. She winced.

“Larson again?”

He whimpered, waiting only long enough for her to clear a spot for him next to her before flopping onto the couch and resting his head on her shoulder. In everything else in his life, he was confident and determined. But he needed Larson’s class to graduate. He couldn’t afford to piss the man off. So he had to cow himself, even though it was painful to do so, just to get a passing grade.

“How did you pass that class?”

“I didn’t,” she scoffed. “I dropped out because he kept screwing with me. I ended up working it out with my boss to have long lunches so I could go to the daytime class instead.”

Yeah, Isaac couldn’t pull that off. Not with how things were going right now at Spellbound. He wasn’t willing to risk not being there to help Maverick. He could put up with Larson. Maybe.

“Your mom called me while you were in class. She said she was having trouble getting ahold of you.”

Isaac winced. That was because his mom always called him after work was done and he shut his phone off while he was in class. He almost always missed her and no amount of reminding her to call on weekends got through to her. She was too busy to remember his schedule on top of her own.

“I’ll call her. Thanks, Maeve.”

She waved him off, turning her attention back to her studies. She actually did homework on weeknights so she could get ahead on weekends. Isaac was too exhausted once the day was through to pull that off. He did his homework on weekends so he could veg on weeknights after class and turn off his brain for a while.

It took a few minutes to will himself to move. He forced himself to his feet when his stomach growled in frustration. Thanks to Professor Larson’s new locked door policy, Isaac didn’t have time to grab something before getting to class. He used to eat on the way, but that brief stop would have him arriving exactly on time, and the door would be locked already by then.

He trudged to the kitchen, warming up some leftovers from a few days before. While that was in the works, he called his mom back, grimacing when he noticed how late it was. Both his parents went to bed early most nights, and Isaac usually knew better than to call right after class. A text would’ve been better. He blamed the very active, and fucking amazing, lunch with Maverick. He was worn out after that and a whole day of work and classes.

Luckily, his mom must not have gone to bed yet because she answered on the second ring. “So my youngest son is alive. That’s good to know,” she teased.

Isaac forced a weary smile. She’d hear it in his voice if he was unhappy. “Hi, Mom. I feel like I should email you my schedule once a week, so you remember I have classes after work and turn off my phone. What’s wrong with calling me on the weekends?”

“I have errands to run on the weekends. Don’t be a smartass.” There was no venom in her voice. His mom was a good person, just busy. She and his dad were low-level mages who lived paycheck to paycheck. They didn’t have time to do much else besides work. They took great pride in the fact that their children were better off than they had been. Except for Isaac, of course.

“Have you given any more thought to that recruiter’s offer? He mentioned a higher bonus if you joined.”

Isaac bit back a scowl. This was a conversation they had dozens of times. His other two siblings were powerful like him, and became battle mages once they graduated from high school. Only Isaac refused the offer.

“No. I haven’t given it more thought because my answer was final the first time. And the other dozen times the guy asked.”

For mages, being asked to become a battle mage was something to brag about. Not every mage was powerful enough to get that kind of attention. Most were like his parents, who could do magic, but not for long periods without needing a rest. They also didn’t pack quite the punch Isaac and his siblings could. But Isaac didn’t want that kind of life. And he resented being constantly pestered about it.

“Isaac,” his mom pleaded. “You should think about it. Your life would be so much better if you joined. You’d be paid well, you could own your own house, maybe meet someone like you…”

Meaning powerful. That was another major reason why Isaac refused to even consider becoming a battle mage. Anyone in that arena became like a show pony, trotted out in front of other powerful mages in hopes of making powerful mage babies. Almost all relationships that started there were marriages of convenience and never ended well. It happened to both his siblings. Their marriages were barely relationships. They only saw their spouses on special occasions or when they were making more niblings for the cause. Isaac refused to be part of it. If he was going to be in a relationship, he wanted to be in one for love.

His mind automatically flicked to Maverick. Being in a relationship with a temperamental dragon wouldn’t be what he considered easy, but he’d bet all his magic it’d be full of passion and devotion. Dragons were possessive by nature. If Maverick decided he wanted to keep Isaac, there wouldn’t be a power in the world that could take him from the dragon. Isaac liked the idea of that a lot more than forcing himself to be with someone who only wanted him for his magic. He’d rather have no magic at all and be done with all the pressure he got about it.