Chapter 28
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
EMBER
Interfering with your Counterpart’s dreams almost always results in intimacy.
— Helen Blackburn, Echelon to the
School of Mental Magic
Today was the day. The first essay, the first time Leland reviewed the piece of writing I’d spent weeks perfecting, and today I got my grade. I wasn’t afraid of Leland, not anymore, but I was afraid of this moment, of finding out he thought I was dumb, lazy, or unoriginal.
He hand-delivered each paper to his fifty students.
Not in alphabetical order like a considerate person, but at utter random, basking in his unhurriedness, savoring our panic.
It was intimidating when he looked at you and worse when he didn’t, but worst of all was waiting for him to bear down on your desk, only to have him Shred your paper to confetti with a simply stated, “Zero.”
Maybe I’d have a better handle on my insecurities if I’d done the assignment properly.
But the essay topic was “Strength in Covens: Why Witches are Stronger Together,” and after my first two drafts had felt inauthentic, I chose to write about the strength in not joining one instead.
The most notorious witch to reject covenship? Jaxan.
The last paper to be handed out was mine, and Leland looked up from eyeing it critically, still holding on to it as he projected to the class, “Everyone except Ember Blackburn is dismissed.”
The class scrambled and leapt to their feet, scurrying to collect their scattered parchment and pens, but not fast enough for him.
With startling suddenness, every desk Vanished from his classroom.
Loose sheets of parchment fell in zigzags to the floor, the crinkle of pages landing on stone in a gentle rain — and stayed there as everyone dashed out.
The door slammed and locked.
My eyes locked with Leland’s.
“Come here,” he said.
I had no idea where my paper had gone, but he was no longer holding it. I walked to the long table at the front of the room, the place he sat when he wasn’t lecturing or striking terror in our souls with his slow and critical pacing. Then he Vanished the table, and we were separated by only air.
“Come. Here,” he repeated.
The instruction confused me.
There was nowhere else to go. Unless he meant into his arms, which —
“Ember.” His arms opened in a low, wide circle. “You know what I mean.” He dipped his chin to his chest. “Right here.”
I approached him tentatively, and he enfolded me in his arms, enveloping me with the kind of touch I never knew I needed.
“You hated it,” I said, stiff and afraid to look up at him. “I’ll rewrite it. I’ll follow the instructions.”
“Please don’t.”
“Then I’ll take the zero, but let me redo it,” I begged.
“Stop.” His arms wrapped around me tighter, his breath warm against my ear, his unshaved face rough against my cheek. “Your paper was incredible. You are incredible.”
I looked down to check he meant me. That it was really me standing there. Me he thought incredible. And it was, but —
My shirt was gone.
I was standing in front of him in one of the questionable bras Skye had picked out, my boobs swelling over the edge of the delicate cups, my nipples tight and pushing against the almost completely sheer jade mesh.
Ember. Leland’s voice, but it had lowered roughly and didn’t appear to be coming from him.
“I told you not to wear this to class,” he said, dissatisfied-sounding as his hand glided up my back to stroke the closure of my bra clasp.
A thrill coursed through me, my heart rate increasing as I moved my hand down to his belt, drawing him in closer.
Ember.
Ember.
“What?” I asked impatiently. There were too many Lelands.
“Take the bra off, Em.”
Ember, do not take the bra off.
I reached around to my back, but his hands caught mine firmly.
“Off, Ember,” he said, urging me to do it, even as his fingers gripped my hands too forcefully to let me.
Ember, it’s Leland. You’re dreaming, as we discussed. I’m in your dream. I’m seeing all of this. You need to wake up. I can’t end the spell without hurting you.
“I don’t know how,” I said to the Leland I was in the arms of — the one who blinked and breathed and was warm and gazing down at me. The one whose eyes were so, so . . . if I looked close enough, I could find every single color in them.
“It’s your dream,” he said, “You can do anything you want. You want my shirt off? You can take it.”
No, Ember, Leland said, like I should know better, but I wasn’t sure I did.
“Why does Leland keep yelling at us?” I asked.
“He’s conflicted,” he said.
“He is?”
Fuck the Goddess. I’m coming to your room and we’re never doing this again.
“Very. You should do it before he gets here,” dream Leland suggested, his hand trailing from my neck to the top curve of my breast. My skin prickled in response. “Let me see you,” he said softly.
“He’ll be mad.”
“He won’t.”
He will.
I undid the clasp and slid my bra off.
“Mad’s not the word . . .”
A violent spray of water shot up my nostrils, and I awoke. Coughing and sputtering, I looked up to Skye standing over me holding an upturned water glass. I blinked confusedly at her as the last drops drained and hit my forehead in delicate splats.
“Your boyfriend is in the hall,” she said, shaking the glass to thoroughly empty it.
I wiped my face on my sweatshirt sleeve. My hair was wet and sticking to the sides of my face and my pillow was drenched.
“Who, Leland?” I asked.
“I can think of no other.”
“Leland’s not my boyfriend.” He had now seen my tits though. So that was perfect.
I peered around Skye to glimpse the spiral at the end of the entry vestibule, hoping I wouldn’t see him. But he was really there, lifting a guilty hand in greeting.
My eyes narrowed in anger.
Lust was not the emotion we agreed on him channeling into my brain before I went to bed.
* * *
He stood across the way, his back to the two low-slung, tan lounge chairs overlooking the arcade.
The first rays of soft morning sunlight filtered in through the skylight, and to add to my embarrassment, I was wearing Leland’s beige hoodie.
I’d slept in it, and now he was staring at it, trying to figure out what it meant.
He was in black sweats and a loose running tank, annoying me with his slow blinks.
His chest, shredded masterpiece that it was, was far too visible through his low-cut sleeves.
A few moments passed before I registered the loud beating sound was my pulse and regained the sense to stop looking so intensely at him.
Skye hovered protectively over my shoulder, snacking on a baby carrot and preventing Leland and I from saying what needed to be said. Things like: What the hell was that dream? and I don’t know, Ember, why’d you take your bra off?
My hair dripped down my front.
“Why are you wet?” Leland asked.
“Probably because we’re low on clementines,” I responded, turning back to the small wire fruit basket on Skye’s desk to confirm.
“Clementines,” he said, not understanding.
“I pelt them at her,” Skye said cheerfully. “For her reflexes.”
Yep. I pointed a backward finger over my shoulder at her. It was her favorite way to wake me from naps that were really daydreams.
“So you poured water on her?”
“You said it was urgent!”
“Ember,” he sighed, wisely giving up on this. “Can I talk to you in the hall, please?”
“Depends.” I folded my arms over my chest. “Is this going to be a happy conversation?”
He knew what I meant.
Happy was the emotion we’d agreed on before bed. Happy, we’d said, and a striptease was not one of the potential consequences he’d listed. I thought I’d be picking wildflowers alone on a hillside or something.
Skye stopped crunching on her carrot and waved the bite-marked stub of it around like a teaching implement. “Should you two be fighting this early on in your relationship?”
I gave her a long look, her sparkling green eyes countering mine in a challenge as she bit down on the last of her carrot with a crunch, thoroughly pleased with herself. I joined Leland in the hall.
Privacy fell into place as I sat, pulling my legs underneath me. Leland planted his arms on the arms of his lounge chair.
“Why?” I demanded.
“I don’t know,” he said, his eyes handsome with apology. “What I think might’ve happened was . . . I was going for warm, safe, secure.” He wet his lips. “And I think you had a hard time placing those feelings with a happy memory. Which made it — ”
“Embarrassing?” I guessed, and avoided his reaction, instead gazing over the stone balustrade that connected the stone arches winding up the column of the arcade.
Below, it was still. Not how mornings used to be when Rayne and Belinda had their routine.
They’d decorated the arcade with floral arrangements.
Belinda used to hum like a fairytale princess, Creating vases, following behind Rayne.
Now the arcade was silent with brown-edged petals collecting in sad puddles, and no one wanted to clean them up.
“I was going to say complicated,” Leland said. “I wouldn’t have held your essay over you. I would’ve messaged you the second I read it. I would’ve asked you, privately, if you wanted to stay after class. For time with you. But I’m not sure you see that.”
That’s what was complicated for him?
“I was referring to the part where I took my clothes off.”
His eyes did the sad thing. “You wanted physical affection. That’s what made you feel warm and safe in that moment, and it was with me because I put the emotions in your head.
I influenced your dream more than I knew would happen when we agreed to this.
That was my classroom. That essay is an assignment on my syllabus.
That bra is a memory burned in the back of my head.
The physical affection was both of us. Nothing about that is embarrassing. ”
I slumped in my chair and hid my face. “I showed you my tits.”
“I didn’t look,” he lied.
I banged my head on my knee, intentionally.