Chapter 12 #2
But the feeling stays. The quiet. The sense that my magic has a mode I've never accessed—not destruction, not creation, but communion. Like it was designed to talk to the earth and nobody ever taught it how because they were too busy teaching it to sit down and shut up.
"That was insane," Nellie says. "You just stopped the flow of the creek."
"I didn't stop it. I think it just... listened."
"Same difference." She's grinning. "Calypso Dellaby, bayou whisperer. I'm putting that on a t-shirt."
We sit for a while longer. The sun climbs. The bayou resumes its ancient, wet, unbothered business. And I let myself have this—the dock, the water, the friend beside me, the magic in the mud.
A Saturday morning in a small town. A life I could want if things were simpler.
If I learned to get myself under full control.
We walk back toward the main strip. Nellie spots someone across the street—a girl with box braids and a wide grin who's already waving both arms.
"Oh my god—that's Tiana. We were in girl scouts together. I haven't seen her in—" She turns to me. "Give me five minutes?"
"Go."
She sprints across the street. They collide in a hug that involves jumping and shrieking and I stand on the sidewalk and watch and feel the specific warmth of being near someone else's joy without needing to own it.
"Miss Dellaby."
He’s next to me in a flash, the air whipping as he stops suddenly.
I don't jump this time. Progress.
"Professor."
We stand there. Side by side on a sidewalk in Thibodaux, watching Nellie and Tiana talk with their hands. I keep a careful foot of distance between us. Casual. Intentional. Ignoring the way my pulse does something quick and stupid when the sunlight catches the line of his jaw.
"You can call me Aamon," he says. "Outside of the academy, the title feels unnecessary."
"I think I'll stick with Professor."
"Suit yourself." The words land and we both hear the echo—suit yourself, his office doorway, my burned arms—and for a second the air between us goes taut. He clears his throat. I look at my shoes.
He breaks the silence first. "Last night. On the porch. I heard the conversation with Odette."
Right. Vampire hearing. He was ten feet from an open window all evening while we talked about the rune at Odette's kitchen table. Of course he heard every word.
"The rune on your door," he says. "I didn't know about it."
"You didn't see it?"
"I haven’t been by your cottage. Much less close enough to see details in the door." He says it factually, without defensiveness. "But I've been waiting since last night to talk to you about it."
I don't say anything. He watches Nellie across the street but his attention is on me—I can feel it, the same steady, total focus from the training room, pressing against my awareness like a hand on a closed door.
"You could have come to me," he says. Quiet. "When you first found it. That's part of what I'm here for, Calypso. Not just the training."
The way he says my name makes the careful foot of distance between us feel like it's shrinking even though neither of us has moved.
"I didn't know who to trust," I say. Honest. Maybe the most honest thing I've said to him.
I just barely met him. And we don’t exactly have the dynamic for fast friends.
"And now?"
I look at him. At the hazel eyes catching the light. At the composed, unreadable face that cracked open for three seconds in a doorway when he saw my burned arms. Maybe I imagined that?
"I'm working on it," I say.
He holds my gaze. Nods once. Doesn't push.
His eyes drop to my forearms. I'm wearing Nellie's t-shirt, the sleeves stopping above my elbows. My arms are bare. Smooth. Unmarked. The handprint burns are gone. Completely.
"You went to the infirmary," he says.
"No."
A pause. He processes that. I watch him do the math—the burns were deep, blistering, would have scarred without magical intervention. The infirmary uses witch-based healing, which is effective but probably gradual. It wouldn't erase scarring that clean.
Not in a week.
"Vampire blood," he says. Quiet.
I don't confirm or deny.
"Whose?"
I look at the sidewalk. At the crack in the concrete where a weed is pushing through. At anything that isn't his hazel eyes asking a question I'm not going to answer.
And I do anything I can not to think about who gave me their blood.
"Calypso." His voice is different. Lower. The professional cadence stripped back to something underneath that sounds dangerously close to personal. "Whose blood is in your system?"
"Does it matter?"
"Yes,” he hisses.
"I'm handling it," I say.
His jaw shifts. The centimeter tell. But this time it's followed by something else—his nostrils flare, barely perceptible, and his chin drops a fraction. Like he's scenting the air. Like he's trying to pick up the residual trace of whoever's blood healed my skin.
Don't think about it. Think about the market. Think about the rosemary. Think about literally anything else.
"Handling it," he repeats. Flat. Testing the words. "You didn't go to the infirmary. You didn't come to me. But someone else's blood is in your system and you're handling it."
"That's what I said."
"The burns were deep. Second degree at minimum.
Whoever healed them gave you a significant amount.
" His voice is level but the composure is costing him something—I can see it in the tension along his forearms, the way his hands have gone from relaxed at his sides to slightly curled.
"That kind of healing doesn't happen with a drop. You had to ingest it."
The word ingest hangs between us. He chose it deliberately. Clinical. But underneath the clinical is the image—a wrist at my mouth, blood on my tongue, a cold chest against my spine—
Nope. Rosemary. Bayou. Nellie's mom's cornbread. Think about cornbread.
I can’t think about what happened without my magic surging. I curl my fingers into my palms preemptively. Check for sparks. Nothing yet.
Good.
"Did you choose to?" he asks. ‘
"What? Aamon—"
"Did you choose to take their blood, Calypso?"
The way he says my name sends a shiver down my spine.
And the way he's looking at me—steady, unblinking, something burning behind the professional surface that I've never seen aimed at me before.
It's not anger. It's hotter than anger and colder than anger at the same time, and if I had to put a name on it I'd call it—
"Hey!" Nellie jogs up, slightly breathless, grinning. "Sorry, that took way longer than—" She stops. Looks at me. Looks at Aamon. Reads the four feet of charged air between us and her brows lift. "Everything okay?"
"Fine," I say. Too fast.
Aamon steps back. The burning thing behind his eyes banks—sealed, controlled, filed away behind five centuries of practiced composure. But his hands are still curled at his sides and I notice, as he turns to resume his distance, that his thumb is pressing hard into the center of his opposite palm.
Just like the first time I met him.
"Mom says she's ready," Nellie says, still watching Aamon's retreating back with narrowed eyes. Her phone buzzes in her hand. She looks at me. "Hey, are you sure you're okay?"
"Yeah." I watch him walk away. The measured stride. The rigid shoulders. What the hell was that?
Was he… jealous?
I didn't answer him. But I also didn't say yes.
And from the look on his face, he heard that loud and clear.
Nellie and I walk back to the shop. The neon sign is dark—Odette closed up for the day, SORRY WE'RE CLOSED hand-written on a card taped to the glass. Nellie pushes through the door. The bell chimes its ward-check. Aamon takes his post on the porch without being told.
The grimoire is still open on the table. Odette is sitting behind it with a fresh cup of coffee and an expression that makes me slow. The lines around her mouth are a little deeper, her shoulders are just a little too tight.
"Sit down," she says.
We sit. Odette puts both hands flat on the table. Looks at me.
"So, I’ve nailed down what your special little rune is. It's called a summoning anchor," she says. "Old magic. From an era when vampire noble houses kept grimoires full of techniques designed specifically to circumvent witch protections."
She pauses. Lets that land.
“A summoning anchor?” I ask.
"You know the threshold rule? A vampire cannot enter a witch's home uninvited, or a human’s for that matter.
It's one of the oldest protections we have—woven into the magic itself, not just law.
A vampire can be stronger, faster, more powerful in every way, and they still can't cross that threshold without permission. "
I nod. The threshold. One of the only safe havens non-vamps have against the bloodthirsty among us.
"A summoning anchor bypasses it." Her voice is steady but her hands are pressing hard enough against the table that her knuckles have gone white.
"It's carved into the entry point of a witch's dwelling, keyed to a specific vampire's blood.
It creates a loophole—the ward tells the threshold that the vampire isn't entering uninvited.
It tricks the magic into believing the witch issued an invitation. A technicality."
My heart skips a beat. Odette’s cat perks up.
"Whoever carved that anchor into your door can walk into your home whenever they choose. Past the academy's wards. Past your locks. Past your enforcers sleeping on the other side of the wall."
My hands are cold. My chest is tight. The threshold.
The one protection I thought I had—the ancient, baked-into-the-magic rule that said no vampire could cross my doorstep without an invitation.
The thing that let me close my door at night and think at least in here, I'm alone.
At least in here, nobody gets in unless I say so.
That was never true.
"I checked the residual signature three times," Odette continues. Her voice drops. "Calypso, the anchor has been used. Recently. Someone has already gone through."
The words hit me like ice water.
Someone has already been inside.