The Golden Lily Page 0,68

myself. Today, my mind wasn't there.

We were almost halfway through the period when I finally tuned in enough to really process what I was working on. It was a spell from Late Antiquity that allegedly made the victim think scorpions were crawling on him or her. Like so many of Ms. Terwilliger's spell books, the formula was convoluted and time consuming.

"Ms. Terwilliger?" I hated to ask anything of her, but recent events weighed too heavily on me.

She looked up in surprise from her paperwork. After the cold war we'd entered into, she'd grown used to me never speaking unless spoken to. "Yes?" I tapped the book. "What good are these so-called offensive spells? How would you ever use them in a fight when they require concoctions that take days to prepare? If you're attacked, there's no time for anything like that. There's hardly any time to think."

"Which one are you looking at?" she asked.

"The scorpion one."

She nodded. "Ah, yes. Well, that's more of a premeditated one. If you've got someone you don't like, you work on this and cast it. Quite effective for ex-boyfriends, I might add." Her face grew distracted, and then she focused back on me. "There are certainly ones that would be more useful in the kind of situation you're describing. Your fire charm, if you recall, had a lot of prep work but could be used quite quickly. There are others that can be cast on extremely short notice with few components - but as I've said in the past, those types require considerable skill. The more advanced you are, the less you need ingredients. You need a lot more experience before you're at a level to learn anything like that."

"I never said I wanted to learn anything like that," I snapped. "I'm just... making an inquiry."

"Oh? My mistake. It almost sounded like you were, dare I say, interested."

"No!" I was grateful that the healing magic in my tattoo had cleared up most of the bruising on my face from last night. I didn't want her to suspect that I might have serious motivation for protection. "See, this is why I never say anything in here. You read too much into it and just use it to further your agenda to torment me."

"Torment? You read books and drink coffee in here - exactly what you'd be doing if you weren't here."

"Except that I'm miserable," I told her. "I hate every minute of this. I'm almost ready to stop coming and risk the academic fallout. This is all sick and twisted and - " The last bell of the day cut me off before I said something I'd regret. Almost immediately, Trey appeared in the doorway. Ms. Terwilliger began packing up and looked over at him with a smile, as though everything in here was perfectly normal.

"Why, Mr. Juarez. How nice of you to show up now, seeing as you couldn't make it to my class this morning."

Looking back, I realized she was right. Trey hadn't been in her history class or our chemistry class. "Sorry," he said. "I had some family stuff to take care of."

"Family stuff" was an excuse I used all the time, though I doubted Trey's had involved taking vampires on a blood feeding run.

"Can you, uh, tell me what I missed?" he asked.

Ms. Terwilliger slung her bag over her shoulder. "I have an appointment. Ask Miss Melbourne -

she'll probably explain it more thoroughly than I can. The door will lock behind you when you two leave."

Trey sat down in a nearby desk and pulled it up to face mine while I produced our history and chemistry assignments, since I assumed he'd need the latter as well. I nodded toward the duffle bag he had on the floor beside him.

"Off to practice?"

He leaned over to copy the assignments, his dark hair falling around the sides of his face.

"Wouldn't miss it," he said, not looking up as he wrote.

"Right. You only miss classes."

"Don't judge," he said. "I would've been there if I could." I let it go. I'd certainly had my fair share of weird personal complications come up before.

While he wrote, I turned on my cell phone and found I had a text message from Brayden. It was one word, a record for him: Dinner?

I hesitated. I was still worked up over last night, and although Brayden was fun, he wasn't the comfort I needed right now. I texted back: Not sure. I've got some work to do tonight. I wanted to