Blood Pledged (Arcane Arts Academy #3) - Elena Lawson Page 0,70
If you think you’ve been a victim of memory wiping—”
“Hypothetical, remember?” I said with a smile, eager now to get the hell out of there. This was some really messed up shit. But at the same time, I didn’t know how I hadn’t thought of it before. Draven had compelled me a couple times now. He didn’t order me to forget anything, I didn’t think, or to physically do anything, but I knew that could definitely be what was happening. The other option—that her memory was being magically erased by another witch—was less likely since the spell was incredibly complex and highly illegal. But not impossible.
“Thanks,” I added hastily before I sped out of the library and into the hall.
26
Harper
I held the books up side by side, not sure what I would tell Bianca. It seemed her memory problems, if they weren’t explainable with human science, were either to do with vampire compulsion or magical memory erasure by another witch.
Either way, I knew for certain she was going to lose it when I told her.
Not wanting anyone to see what I was carrying back to my dorm, I clutched the books tight against my chest, making sure that the titles on the spines were covered with my fingers as I rushed back through the halls and up the stairs into our room.
I shut the door behind me and leaned against it, my mind whirring with all the new information it was trying to sort through. So, I didn’t notice right away that Marcus was in our room, with Bianca, and by the blushes on their cheeks and their closeness I had to guess they had been doing more than studying the books they had laid out between them before I came in.
“I can leave,” I said in a hurry, and Marcus jumped to his feet, smoothing down the creases at the front of his uniform shirt.
“No, that’s alright. It’s late. I should—”
“No,” Bianca said, her eyes down-turned. “Stay? Just a little longer?”
Marcus turned to her and one side of his mouth quirked up into a dopey smile. “Of course, if you want me to,” he said, then turned back to me. “And if it’s alright with you?”
“Tell you what,” I said, stuffing the books into a tote bag of Bianca’s before I slung it over my shoulder. “Why don’t you stay here tonight?”
I winked at Bianca when Marcus wasn’t looking and she gave me a wide-eyed glare that said what the fuck are you doing?
I stared right back at her, quirking a brow in a way that I hoped communicated, You know you want him to.
“I don’t know if I could.”
“No, really,” I said before he could finish. “I’m going to see Cal and Adrian. I haven’t seen them since…” I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence. I didn’t want to bring it up.
Marcus cleared his throat and sat back down next to Bianca. “I’ll stay if you want me to.”
She nodded shyly.
“But how will you get out to them?” Marcus asked me, watching as I stuffed some pajamas into the tote with the books.
Bianca nodded, shifting uncomfortably where she sat. “Yeah. We aren’t allowed outside after dark right now. And definitely not alone. It isn’t safe, Harper.”
Pushing the window open, I looked down at the ground a good twenty, maybe thirty feet below and gulped. “I’ll be fine. They’ll sense me coming and come meet me. Besides, it’s like fifty meters away.”
“You don’t even know how to levitate properly,” she challenged me, and I realized she didn’t think I was actually going to do it, which just made me want to prove her wrong.
I could do it. I could totally do it.
“Hey, wait, did you find anything at the library?” Bianca asked.
I grimaced, not wanting to tell her what I found just yet. I had to be sure one way or the other what was happening to her before I scared the living hell out of her with whatever these books contained. I had a lot of reading to do.
“Nothing definitive,” I replied, and stepped up into the window sill.
Bianca jumped from the bed to stop me. “Harper!”
“Leviticus,” I said and let my body fill with magic. I focused it with my mind and imagined it like a soft bubble wrapping around me. A bubble filled with helium that would carry me where I needed to go. I fell forward, holding my breath, trusting fully in my magic to save me from the fall.