Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Wilder
“We’ll go together to scope the place out,” I tell Izzy later that day, while the five of us are talking about the painting from Myth class. “I want to see the library anyway.”
Her lips purse in a faint smile, and the two of us exchange a look.
Izzy and I both used to seek refuge in the library all the time when we were growing up.
It was part of how I got to know her so well, or at least is what connected us, since we spent most of our time reading in companionable silence.
“I can go,” Aiden says.
“I think we’ve got it,” I say, quickly enough to give myself away.
Aiden flashes me a knowing look, and it just irritates me more.
The five of us are in the industrial kitchen off the dining room, trying to rustle up something for dinner.
The fridge is well-stocked with ingredients, but I’ve always been more of a freezer-to-microwave chef myself.
Sprinkling extra cheese over the top of a frozen lasagna is about the limit of my culinary expertise.
“Maybe they’ll realize it’s suspicious if you go to the library,” I tell Aiden. “How much do these people know about who we were before we became gods?”
Aiden rolls his eyes. “It’s a whole new world. We’re new...people.”
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of sometimes,” Izzy murmurs.
I give her a sharp look, wondering what she’s getting at. She’s rummaging through cabinets, though, and bounces to her feet holding a bag of spaghetti aloft. “Let’s make pasta.”
“Let’s get out of my kitchen,” Beth grouses from the doorway, startling us all.
I stare at the older woman with her long hair tied back at her nape.
The strands are messy about her stern face, a weaving of dark and grey strands that make her seem older than I think she might be.
Yes, she has wrinkles, but only around her eyes and mouth.
In reality, I’ve never met someone who’s age I was as confused about as hers.
She shoos us off, waving her hands at us like we’re misbehaving chickens, which is strangely a relief. When I first met her, she’d paled at the sight of us. Now, Beth seems unimpressed by the gods.
“We didn’t know you were coming back,” Reid says defensively.
“I’m always here.” She heaves a dramatic sigh, reminding me of my grandmother, and points toward a glass jar on the counter. “You want pasta for dinner? It’ll be ready in an hour. If you need something to tide you over, I made cookies.”
I lift the lid to the cookie jar, and offer one to Izzy first before I bite into one myself.
Delicious, homemade, chocolate chip cookies. Everyone here might be trying to kill us, but there are some definite perks to this school.
“We can all head to the library and see what resources are available to help us study,” Reid says.
“Great.” I run my hand over my hair, hoping my tone doesn’t give away just how much I don’t think us all going together will be “great.” I wanted Izzy to myself. We have unfinished business from the day before.
I still feel kind of weird about confessing to her how I feel about the past, and what I want for the future. I hope I didn’t come on too strong. Yeah, I could blame it on my near-death experience, or the fact that I was injured, but I don’t want to. I kind of like that she knows now.
In the end, I want Izzy. I can’t fix the past--as much as I’d love to go back in time and slap my thirteen-year-old self in the back of the head--but I can show her this time, we’ll be different. If she gives me a second chance, I’ll be worth this bright, beautiful, kind girl.
It’s only when we’ve headed out of the house that Van looks over his shoulder, checking that no one is around, then asks, “Anyone else think it’s interesting that Beth is, like she said, always here?”
“You think she’s spying on us?” I ask.
Izzy’s lip parts, a flicker of hurt crossing her face. Jeez. Izzy is getting attached already, and we don’t know anything about Beth.
“Why else would the school set us up with all this?” I ask, sweeping my arm back toward the house, even though I hate to see Izzy even the tiniest bit upset. “The gorgeous house. The full-time chef…”
“Maybe that’s just what it’s like here,” Reid says, sticking his hands in his pockets.
He looks awkward; I swear, our once-geeky friend has grown three inches since the day before, and he doesn’t seem to know what to do with his new height and muscle.
“It’s not as if we’ve been invited into any other dorms.”
“Yeah, I’m going to avoid those invitations, personally.” Given how things have gone so far. Just thinking about it makes me scratch my hand absently across my abs. The vampires’ claw marks itch as they heal.
“We have to get to know other students here, or they’re never going to accept us,” Izzy says. “They can’t all be bad.”
“No one’s saying they’re all bad,” Van says lazily. “That’s a rather black-and-white perspective. But they’re all potentially dangerous to us because they think we’re bad.”
Aiden snorts at that. Aiden certainly has taken a black-and-white perspective, bordering on murderous.
Van flashes her a sexy smile, the kind that always made the cheerleaders hang on his words. “Until you win our fellow students over, we have to be careful.”
Izzy frowns; Van can never win her over as easily as he wins over all the other girls, but I certainly don’t want to be the one to argue with her. Luckily, the library is ahead of us. It rises like a castle at one end of the quad, spires jutting into the darkening sky.
When we step inside, we enter into the same kind of hush that blankets a cathedral.
We stand in an enormous lobby with soaring ceilings high above, and through the domed glass roof above, the stars are beginning to blink into view.
Beyond the lobby are multiple wings of books, and I glimpse elaborate staircases twisting up to more floors.
We glance at each other. This place gives me a strange, unsettled feeling, but it also ignites the strange spark that only bookworms know. This place is amazing.
“We’ll split up,” I say, checking my watch. “Just...get the lay of the land. Start to figure the place out. Meet back here in half an hour.”
Izzy nods, but when everyone else heads off, I add, “I’ll go with you.”
She shoots me a look as the two of us head into the east wing of the library. “You guys are driving me nuts, you know.”
“You’re driving me nuts,” I shoot back. “Yesterday, someone beat me half to death, so you’ll excuse me for feeling a bit protective of you.”
She turns and faces me, arms crossing her chest. “Maybe I won’t excuse you. Are you sure it’s protective that you feel?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Not possessive?” Her brows arch.
This isn’t how I pictured our time alone going. I shrug. “Whatever. You want to flirt with the creepy vampire, I don’t care.”
“Right.” She fixes me with a challenge in her gaze, as if she knows that’s a lie.
“Let’s go look around.” I touch the small of her back to urge her forward with me.
When my fingers brush her back, her spine stiffens, her chin rising. Maybe she’s mad, or maybe she feels the same crackle of heat that I do. Just touching her in the smallest way has butterflies rising in my stomach and my cock suddenly hardening.
I move ahead of her so she won’t see the effect she has on me. Everything with Izzy used to be so comfortable. She was one of my best friends.
I miss her, but I don’t want to go back to just being her friend, either.
The two of us skulk through the library. There are students scattered around, studying at the carrels or meeting in small groups. They speak in hushed voices, like everyone feels the spell this building creates.
The other students are easy for us to avoid, though.
We’re looking for a hidden floor. It makes the most sense that there would be basement subfloors, but when we move quietly along the perimeter of the library, avoiding the stacks, we don’t find any entrances to a basement. It’s almost as if there isn’t one.
Suddenly, Izzy grabs my hand. I arch my eyebrows as I turn to her.
She looks pointedly in the direction of Mr. Time, who is headed our way. His head is down, studying the stack of books in his hands. He hasn’t seen us yet.
I pull Izzy into the stacks to our side.
To my surprise, she bobs up onto her toes, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. She gives me a meaningful look right before her lips press against mine.
Right. We’re just hiding from Mr. Time, watching where he goes and pretending we’re innocent--
But there’s nothing innocent about the way my body responds to Izzy.
Her hands slide over my chest, and her lips caress mine.
For a minute I forget to breathe. How can anyone’s touch make me feel this way? It shouldn’t be possible, but it is. It makes me feel alive and charged, full of electricity, even though her lips are soft and her hands on my body are tentative.
Shaking myself from her spell, I relax and let myself kiss her back, my hands sliding down, cupping her hips. It makes more sense to hide her behind my broad shoulders, I tell myself, as my fingers glide lower, tightening against the curve of her ass before I turn us both.
Now she’s hidden, her back pressed against the books. If Mr. Time looks down the aisle, he’ll see a big, blond guy making out with an unseen girl. Hopefully, he won’t recognize the back of my head. There are a lot of big guys here.
Suddenly, she breaks our kiss, and I look down at her, my thoughts spinning away. Izzy’s eyes have darkened with desire, and her teeth catch her lower lip in a way that only makes me want her more. My heart beats faster as I lower my face to hers again.
The two of us trade quick, wild kisses. Now that we’re touching, we can’t seem to stop. Hell, I hope we don’t stop. I hope she lets me lift that maddening little plaid skirt and take things in a direction I’ve only ever fantasied about with her.
Down the aisle, Mr. Time murmurs, “Liceat mihi, cor meum intrare pura.”
And just the sound of his voice makes me open my eyes and look toward the direction it came from.
A flash of blue-green magic comes from the end of the aisle. Izzy tears away from me as the strange light moves over us for the briefest moment. I groan softly when her body leaves mine, even though I know we have to separate.
When she creeps to the end of our aisle, I follow her without thinking. We reach the end just in time to catch sight of a hidden door in the wall fading away.
Izzy’s mumbling something under her breath, over and over. The words of the spell. I rush to get out my notebook and jot the words down. Together, the two of us capture the spell.
“We should get out of here,” I tell her, thrusting the notebook back into my backpack and reaching for her hand.
When she knits her fingers around mine, it feels comfortable and right, even though her touch sends sparks flying across my skin.
She nods, and the two of us head down the aisle away from the door, trying to keep our pace slow and even so we won’t look suspicious.
“We’ll be back soon,” she says, glancing up at me.
I hope we’ll be back to more than just this library. I hope we’ll be kissing again.
Because that didn’t feel like it was just a trick.