Chapter 2
Two
The blueberry scones weren’t giving up their secrets anytime soon. Dani took a swig of coffee and squinted at the pastries, channeling the full force of her wrath. Nope. Now they were just mildly blurry blueberry scones that weren’t giving up their secrets.
She’d been only six minutes late to work—not enough to incur her manager’s ire when she reviewed the time sheet tomorrow—and the café had been fortuitously dead since eleven; but even without disruption she hadn’t made any progress on her folk divination assignment.
She picked up her fork and stabbed one scone in the heart.
If there were any prophecies to be divined within these day-old baked goods, she was too anxious to find them.
All she could think about was the way Silva had watched her throughout the evening.
The professor could report the whole group to the disciplinary board for gambling on campus; or tell the school Dani was hiding something; or blackmail her into doing something unsavory; or march into her Intro to Oneiromancy class and publicly humiliate her; or—
The café door opened and the spirit that haunted it gave his ghostly cry, announcing an incoming organism. Dani heard the tip-tap-tup of claws on the hardwood and a red streak of annoyance blazed a fracture in her aura.
“The sign on the door says no familiars,” she said, eyes trained on the scones. “They’ll have to wait outside.”
“Forgive me, mademoiselle,” a boy’s voice said. “And forgive that poor pastry, if you can find it in your heart.”
Dani looked up just as the boy finished sprouting from a scruffy wolfhound to his full height, ears rounding into slightly stuck-out shells, black fur melting into smooth skin.
His teeth were the last things to turn, shortening from fangs into one of the nicest sets of pearly whites that she had ever seen.
“Oh,” she said. She hadn’t gotten the full view of him in dog form, but he was adorable as a human.
He had dark hair that shot out like stalagmites, carob-colored eyes, and eyelashes that looked to be the result of an expensive witch’s glamour.
Throw in the jaw of some crown prince, and you had yourself a deal.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was in a hurry to get out of the rain and kind of forgot I’d shifted.”
“Th-that’s okay. My manager’s just kind of strict about the whole no-animals policy.” Shapeshifting was included, but in this moment, Dani found herself unmotivated to point that out. “What can I get you?”
“Some justice for those little guys, for starters. Any special reason you’re mutilating them?”
It took her a second to realize he was talking about the scones. “Oh,” she laughed. “No, it’s pretty much been a senseless murder. I’m supposed to write five hundred words about what I divined from them for class, and so far, all I’ve managed to predict is a little raw sugar and pecan.”
“Maybe you just need to consult with an outside source.” Without waiting for permission, he reached across the counter and slid the plate over.
Dani was suddenly very aware that they were the only souls in the entire café—not including the door-ghost, of course, who kept mostly to himself.
“What exactly is the method to your madness here?”
“I have none. We’re supposed to come up with our own method of folk divination and report on the results. I picked scones because, well, I get them for free.” She flushed; she never liked to mention money, but the boy took it all in stride.
“You’re a student at the Leap, then?”
“I’m a first-year. You?”
“Likewise. I wonder why I haven’t seen you before. I think I’d remember that hair.”
Dani touched the lavender end of her braid.
She never fatigued of compliments on the one frivolity that remained to her.
Ever since she’d hopped off the moving train that was her parents’ lifestyle, bouncing from Biloxi to Atlantic City, she’d become exquisitely strict with herself about money.
She had to be. She’d been on her own since she was fifteen, sleeping in the back room of whatever restaurant she was working at or on the couch of a less-than-trustworthy line cook.
That was why she didn’t eat out unless someone else was paying and why she only shopped at the cheapest thrift stores.
The only thing she let herself have, for no reason other than it felt like an indispensable piece of her identity, was her hair color—and she got a discount on that by doing everyone in the salon’s tarot first. But she wasn’t about to tell him any of that.
“I work a lot,” she said instead.
“I see.”
Dani didn’t recognize him either. There were far too many students at Fox’s Leap for her to keep track. It didn’t help that she had no semblance of a social life; she went straight from class to work to bed to the library to class again, and so the cycle repeated.
“Aha!” Dani jumped at his cry of triumph. “I think I’ve got it. There, you see?” He indicated a lump in the intact scone, indistinguishable from the rest.
“Er—”
“Come on, man, be cool,” he said out of the corner of his mouth, like there was someone to overhear. “That lump could be tomorrow’s root canal. Or a rich relative you’ve never heard of dying and leaving everything to you.”
She snorted. “I wish.”
“You’re missing the point,” he chided. “So what if you’re not a natural-born scone-o-mancer? Make something up. They’ll never know the difference.”
“You mean lie?”
“I mean embellish. Or invent! However you want to look at it. I do it all the time.”
“And how has that been going for you?”
“A’s all the way down. I don’t cheat,” he added hastily. “But when a spell just doesn’t work for me—well, you’ve got to write something, right? Even if it’s the fact that it isn’t working for you, and why.”
Maybe he was onto something. Dani was by no means an A’s-all-the-way-down student. “I guess I could compare and contrast my techniques…”
“One left whole, and one forked into oblivion!” the boy said with relish. “Perfect.”
For the first time since her shift started, Dani smiled because she wanted to, not because she had to.
“Thanks,” she said, then noticed the backpack over his shoulder.
“Hey, did you want something to drink? It looks like you came in here to study, but I got you involved in the great blueberry scone incident of the postmodern era.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m not in too much of a hurry. Bit of an insomniac. I’m guessing you know the drill.”
“What gave it away?”
“Something in your eyes,” he answered, and a white-hot blue burst like a firework in Dani’s brain. The boy looked taken aback by his own response, adding hurriedly, “And the fact that you’re working the graveyard shift.”
Her blush spread from her ears to her freckly face, but he moved on as quickly as the blue dissolved, inspecting her name tag. “It’s Dani, then? Short for anything, or just as is?”
“Danica,” she said. “My mom’s an astrologer.” She was when she felt like it, anyway. “Big fan of the planet Venus.”
“Named after the morning star, huh? That’s lovely.” He grinned. “I’m Kass. Short for Lukas. After my father, who got first dibs on Luke, so obviously they had to get cute with a nickname for me.”
A soft mint green flashed this time—he was doing it again, saying more than he meant to. Dani gently redirected him. “Okay, Kass, what’ll it be?”
“I dunno, what’ve you got that would pair well with an energy spell? I’ve got a massive paper on xylophilous magical properties due Tuesday night, and I’ve barely started. It’s going to be a long night.”
Dani elected to ignore the word that sounded like xylophone. “Well, I just made a French press for myself, and there’s a cup or two left,” she said, sensing he was a black coffee sort of guy. “Darkest roast in town.”
“You must have read my mind. You’re not a telepathy major, are you?”
Dani shook her head, unhooked a mug from the rack overhead, and gave him a generous pour, no room for cream. “I prefer for people to tell me what they’re thinking.” She took the bill he offered and rang him up.
“I never could get the hang of any kind of psychic skill. I’m a spellcraft major, hopeless with any kind of divination.”
Yet another reason she wouldn’t have seen him.
Spellcraft meant mages; it was one of the university’s smallest and most exclusive departments.
Mage was a catchall term for a magic user who didn’t need tools or components to conduct their spells.
Theoretically, anyone could do it, but becoming a mage took real aptitude and a ton of work—like years and years of grad school.
The degree got you a serious salary, though, and job security like she would never know.
“Fancy.” Dani spilled his change into his palm and felt the tingle of natural magic when his skin touched hers. He was a mage, all right, if the shapeshifting hadn’t been enough of a hint.
“What are you studying?”
A dreaded question for Dani. Since she’d been admitted to the Leap on a provisional basis, she hadn’t been accepted to any particular program, like the majority of her classmates were.
Part of her defense at the end of the school year would involve justifying her future course of study.
So right now, she technically didn’t have a major.
But it was easier not to explain all that.
“Oracular studies.” As the child of two clairvoyants, it was the obvious choice. “No idea what my concentration is going to be, though. I can do a decent aura reading, pull a passable tarot spread, draw a basic birth chart … a little bit of everything and a whole lot of nothing.”
“That’s called being a generalist,” Kass said, and the absolute lack of judgment in his tone made something in Dani melt a little. “You’ll figure it out.”
“Thanks,” she said, smiling. “I’m trying.”
He slipped a ten into the tip jar before pocketing the rest of his change. “Say, you don’t look too busy in here.” He glanced around the empty shop. “Want to be my study buddy?”