Phoenix Academy - Lucy Auburn Page 0,20

from my shoes. I stop, surprised. The stalks respond, stretching up towards me and gently wrapping around my injured ankle. Several of them press against the bruised and bloody skin. Something seeps out of them, like dew, and settles onto the wound. When they pull away it's gone, and so is the pain.

Around me, something similar is happening to the guys. The grass stalks weave through their fur and settle into their skin. I blink, and a moment later Reggie has shifted back, then Xavier. David follows—and this time, thankfully, he's still wearing the clothes he borrowed from the twins.

I don't know what we'd do if he wound up naked again.

Weave him a loincloth out of long stalks of grass, maybe.

Or just let it happen. At this point, I'm not sure it matters. We either get out of Hell or we succumb to it—because I don't even know if my magic will restore itself down here, where time runs differently and reality seems to be a thing of the past.

I feel like anxiety is nipping at my heels. Consuming me. Turning me into someone I don't recognize.

The lake seems so calming and soothing.

It pulls to me.

Promises things. Escape. My mother pinching my cheeks. The taste of wild onions and stewed rabbit meat. Sighing, I push my shoes off and pad towards the shore of the lake, staring down at the still blue water.

Xavier comes to stand beside me, his glasses pushes up against the bridge of his nose, hair hanging in long braids. "I don't see the door anywhere. Do you think it's in one of the trees? Or besides it?"

"Who cares?" His twin brother stretches his arms up above his head and inhales deeply, eyes fluttering closed. "We're still alive, which is basically a miracle down here in Hell. This place seems to be protecting us. It might have hidden thorns and traps and shit, but I'm not gonna worry about things that haven't fucking happened. Especially when I need to wash myself off."

Reggie yanks off his shirt, brown skin rippling. Light dapples his chest and abdominal muscles, coming from seemingly no source, bouncing off his dark cheekbones and broad shoulders. His pants soon follow, kicked into the grass with abandon. Throwing a smirk in my direction, he runs straight towards the lake—and dives in headfirst, his palms clasped together, rippling below the water like a dolphin.

I find suddenly that I'm having trouble breathing.

There's heat and desire deep within me, begging to be released. Sparks flutter in my chest and heat splashes across my cheeks. I want Reggie in a way I've wanted little in my life. Just watching him make laps across the surface of the water wakens a deep, strange hunger in me.

Suddenly I understand the phrase climb him like a tree. Also why all the girls in teen movies and women in rom coms go mad over the dumbest of the male species.

"The water does feel cool." David walks over to the edge of the lake and crouches in front of it, carefully dipping his fingers in. "I'll let Reggie find out if it's poisonous or not, though. As a matter of science."

"I feel like I haven't washed up in days." There's longing in Xavier's voice, and he looks over at me with something like hunger in his eyes. "Do you think we could? Or should? It seems so dangerous... but then again, everything here is."

Looking over my shoulder at the demons prowling around us in the darkness, just barely kept at bay by the strange protections of the grove, I find myself agreeing.

"Whoever made this place—and it definitely seems like it was made, probably by a mage or a witch, hopefully the latter—I doubt they wanted demons to kill us. Otherwise they already would have." I'm not sure I agree with myself until I hear the words fall from my lips and find that I quite like them. "Also, we need a break. All of us. To rest and... restore. Sleep maybe? If that's something people do in Hell. So we might as well take a dip first."

"Can't argue with that logic." David stands up and strips off his shirt, revealing skin paler on his chest and abdomen than it is on his tanned arms. "X, promise to mourn me if a tentacle monster rises up and drowns me."

With that he's off, wading into the water until it's hip deep, then smoothly launching off from the bottom and swimming further in. The lake is large,