32. BREAKING AND ENTERING
brEAKING AND ENTERING
FOR A WITCH, THE IDEA OF brEAKING AND ENTERING ISN’T THE same as the general population. The breaking isn’t of locks or windows, but of spells and magical protections, followed by the entering portion of the concept.
Usually.
In the case Embry and Rye were currently facing? They weren’t so much breaking things as trying to slip under them—both magically and literally.
Cloaked in Embry’s spell, they had ten minutes by the time they reached the dormitory to make it into the building before the magic would wear off and their presence would be revealed.
Unfortunately, they’d spent the last three minutes bickering five stories below her dorm window.
Truly, considering the current whims of Embry’s heart, this old pattern was for the best. Even better, because both were cloaked in the spell, they could see each other even though others could not. A happy side effect.
“We’re going through the front door,” Embry was insisting, in a very hushed tone, even though Rye had already thrown up the sound shield.
There were plenty of magic-sensing students inside, of course, but sound shields were the kind of magic everyone expected to be used in close living quarters.
“We wait for someone to go through, slip in as they go out or in, and scramble the magical signal. The wards will accept us because we helped cast them, and our decoy will disguise the fact it’s me in case I’ve been banned. Easy peasy.”
The school preferred to layer wards one on top of one another.
The outgoing prefects (one of whom was most recently Rye) recast their wards, while the incoming senior prefects (including Embry) layered their wards over the old ones ahead of orientation.
They hoped that the combination of the wards’ familiarity with them and the cloaking spell would keep them from tripping the wards and let them safely enter the building.
“Or,” Rye whisper-argued, “no one comes because curfew was literally an hour ago, and in ten minutes we’re completely vulnerable as you run your cloaking spell again. Why does it only last for twenty minutes anyway?”
Yet again, Embry could feel her face heating.
The true answer was because she’d created it on the fly to avoid Rye after he’d berated her for having clear interest in Balthazar.
She hadn’t designed it for longevity; she’d designed it as a hasty way to slip past him as he overtly used his well-hidden musculature to do yard work for Daddy.
“Our best bet is levitating to the window, hauling it open, and getting to work.”
“Stop being obsessed with windows. It’s not as cool as you think it—”
In a blink, Embry halted her retort, grabbed Rye’s hand, and charged up the steps, having spotted a shadow in the lobby to the double doors on the ground level. Someone was leaving. Spine flat against the wall, Embry watched as Headmaster Martinelli herself slipped into the crisp autumn night.
Holding her breath, Embry snaked through the doorframe, hauling Rye through just before the glass door would’ve bounced off the broad width of his shoulders. Seriously, those things were a menace in addition to being distractingly attractive.
Do not think about shoulders. Do your job. Look around. No distractions.
They were in the lobby.
Silently elated, Embry squeezed Rye’s hand in celebration—and smugness—and darted up the stairs, confident Rye’s sound-absorbing spell would hide their footfalls.
The cloaking spell began to wear off just as they hit the fifth-floor landing.
Embry caught sight of their mingling shadows in the magical sconce light and knew if anyone poked their heads out of their rooms at a sound, they were sunk.
She pointed toward their shadows and then met Rye’s eyes in the low light.
The barest nod told her he understood. As quietly as possible, Embry unlocked the door, opened it just far enough that the old hinges wouldn’t squeak, triumphantly regained her grasp of Rye’s hand, and slipped inside.
Thankfully, he’d helped her move in, which meant he was cleared with the wards guarding her room.
Rye closed the door and turned the lock for good measure.
Embry grinned at him. Realizing she was still holding his hand, she reluctantly dropped it. Tried to cover that reluctance by doing a little, effortless twirl that the “Old Embry,” aka the one from a week ago, would’ve done automatically. “Worked like a charm.”
“It did. But why was the headmaster here after curfew? That’s strange, isn’t it?”
It was strange, though it wasn’t that unusual. And after a literal murder on campus? Embry wouldn’t be surprised if the woman had found a cot and a cage for Merlin and was sleeping here. If she was sleeping at all, that was.
“Probably some part of the campus emergency protocol put into place after Oakley’s murder,” she suggested, shrugging into her whisper. “Anyway, it’s literally not our problem because she’s not in this building right now to catch us.”
“Good point.”
“Okay, so the corsage should be…” Not wanting to give away their position through the window, instead of lighting an illumination spell in her hand, Embry blinked until her eyes adjusted and cast out for the vanity she’d added to the standard school pieces. “Here!”
And there it was. The corsage Balthazar had given her on Friday night. In the dark of the room, the ring of white orchids seemed to glow like snow capping the tallest of mountains. A little white beacon through the gloom.
Hand extended, Embry rushed over to it.
“Wait!” Rye snatched her wrist, pulling it away. “We shouldn’t take it.”
“Isn’t it better if it’s in my possession? It proves the one Oakley’s wearing isn’t mine.”
“Or if they gain entry to search your belongings and they don’t find it, they’ll assume the one that was on Oakley’s is yours.”
Embry waved him off. “Rye, you know Daddy’s lawyers aren’t going to allow them to search this room.
And even if they fail, which they won’t because he’s paying them an exorbitant amount, they will have to interview me about what they do or do not find in this room, during which time I can tell them I took the corsage with me off campus and produce it. Duh.”
“All of that could happen, Em, but we don’t know if Martinelli or some other admin clocked it while watching you pack.” He was so annoyingly thoughtful. “If they did, they could contradict your statement and—What’s that?”
Rye swiveled toward a scratching sound.
“It’s just the bats.” Embry rolled her eyes, mainly to undercut the sadness tingeing the next sentence of explanation.
“Oakley could shift into a bat and started doing so to sneak in and out of the dorm past curfew. The Bitches loved it, but so did the actual bats, who thought this building, particularly the attic right above us, would be a good place to hang out. And because they’re endangered, they can’t—”
The sound came again. This time much louder. And not from the wall or the ceiling.
“The window—” Rye whispered just as it started to lift beyond the pulled curtain.
There wasn’t time to spell themselves invisible. So, Embry did the only thing she could think of in this circumstance: She snagged Rye’s wrist, then dove to the floor and under the bed.
It was a much safer option than the closet, which was across the room. That said, even head prefects were given a standard-issue twin bed. Room enough for one person to hide under, yes, but two? That was a challenge of physics.
They’d come to a rolling stop thanks to Rye’s shoulder being wedged into the box spring above. He was ostensibly on his side, while Embry was flat on her stomach, head facing the narrow space under the footboard, hopeful to get a glimpse of whomever was about to step into her room.
The window must have been completely open now. The curtains rustled noisily as they were pushed aside. Rye slowly, carefully, repositioned himself, so that his right arm draped over Embry’s back. His right leg tangled with hers as he got it to fit in the tight space.
Somehow, even though less of them was technically touching than in the drama closet, this felt…
more intimate. Embry furiously tried to convince herself this was no more sexual than a summer solstice game of lawn Twister, but her body wasn’t listening to her brain or reading the danger in the situation.
Because Embry was acutely aware of the fact that their current, slightly tangled position was one that might naturally occur in the middle of the night when two people shared a bed.
Rye’s arm wrapped over her upper back, the sides of his thigh, knee, and calf sprawled over the backs of her thighs and the backs of her knees.
His breath was reassuring in her ear, the smell of rosemary assailed her, and his warmth—she wanted to burrow into it.
Swallowing, she berated herself. Focus, Woodcross. Focus.
Unfortunately, her inner condemnation sounded like Rye’s voice. Which made it worse.
Setting her jaw, Embry squinted hard through the small gap between the floorboards and the scrolled edge of the footboard, following the sound of the person stepping into the room from the window, somehow circumventing the wards, and walking around her dorm room.
Embry strained to see the person’s footwear, hoping to know the soles on sight. She did have a fantastic photographic memory for fashion choices at Raven’s Head. One had to appreciate the ways students shouted their individualism despite the requisite uniform items.
But the view she had was too narrow to see anything.
Instead, she felt the vibrations as this person clomped about her room as if it were their own.
It was clear they were familiar with the layout, and maybe had even been in her room previously, given the wards’ silence at the intrusion.
They didn’t use a light—magical or otherwise—yet wound around the bed, the love seat and ottoman, the vanity, desk, dresser.
Then the footsteps went toward the closet.
At first, Embry felt a surge of glee. Whomever the intruder was, they were checking the closet for someone lying in wait, but they hadn’t even considered the bed, hadn’t even come near it. She had little experience in eavesdropping, yet she’d made the right choice in a split second.
But then Embry’s glee faded to anger.
This was her room. And they were here trying to find answers and this person, in the same room with her right this very instant, was the person who’d turned her into a pawn. Who was trying to ruin her life after taking Oakley’s. And maybe Balthazar’s. Perhaps even Alistair’s.
Suddenly, Embry Woodcross was done being a pawn.
Her mind was made up and she was moving before the thought fully processed.
She began to wiggle away from Rye, toward the edge of the bed.
He immediately tensed his arm that’d been draped over her back, his hand wrapped around her upper arm, trying to hold her in place.
Embry wiggled harder and faced Rye. They were close, but the light was dim, and she didn’t want to squander her element of surprise by warning him with a whisper.
So Embry carefully placed one pointer finger to Rye’s soft mouth.
Even in the pewter illumination, Embry could see his eyes widen.
Her temporary immobilization spell hit him before he had time to blink.
All the tension fell out of his grasp—his arms as pliable as a mannequin’s.
Just as she’d practiced with Daddy when she was twelve.
The spell wouldn’t last long, but it would keep him safe enough as she confronted the intruder.
Slipping away from Rye, she rolled out from under the bed and shot up.
“Stop right there!” she whisper-shouted, magic snapping at her fingertips as she thrust them out in an obvious threat to the trespasser across the room…