“Yeah, I don’t think that’s true anymore,” I mutter, then chew on my bottom lip. “I may have had an… altercation with her yesterday and possibly… maybe… implied that she should do her worst.”
“You didn’t,” he groans, but to his credit, he doesn’t let go of me-- though his fingers do start to dig into my flesh.Good thing I don’t really bruise.
“She made me mad,” I attempt to defend myself, but it sounds whiny even to my own ears.
“She makes everyone mad,” Nolan huffs through clenched teeth.
Trying to find a silver lining, I blurt, “At least her magic doesn’t work on me.”
“And how do you know that?” Donovan asks, the gravel in his voice so prevalent that my stomach free falls.
The feel of all the guys’ eyes on me is so intense that the whole school looking at me pales in comparison to the flaming heat of this spotlight. A cold sweat collects on my lower back, as I realize that how I know won’t help my ‘just ignore her’ case.Shit.
With my sleeves painfully too short, I twist my fingers together and mutter, “Yesterday, she tried to cast a spell on me, and it didn’t work.”
Connor starts to growl and his amber irises expand, taking over the whites of his eyes. His fists grip so tight, his knuckles are a deathly pale compared to his normal warm, copper skin, and drips of blood leak through his fingers.Oh, that’s not good. That’s very, very bad.
“What did she try to cast?” Kaleb asks evenly, his face a blank mask, but the coldness of his normally gentle baritone freezes in my veins.
He turns, and leans against the lockers, his body blocking me from seeing if he did or didn’t dent the door. The only lingering sign of his anger is shown in the way he still fiercely grips the paper in his right hand.
My gaze skips between Kaleb and Connor. The truth is pressed tight against my clenched teeth as I fight them from breaking free, because there’s no way they’re going to dismiss this as harmless or petty.
“What does it matter?” I answer haughtily, tilting my chin up in defiance. “I know it didn’t work.”
“And how do you know that?” Nolan purrs in my ear, his breath warm against my skin and causing a cascading shiver down my spine.
Felix stops his pacing to move in front me. His hazel eyes are soft as they look into mine, and he gently requests, “Please, Callie. Tell us what happened.”
Yesterday, it didn’t matter what she tried to do, because it didn’t work. But looking at Felix, who died a month after his sixteenth birthday, and being surrounded by the friends that are in this limbo of grieving him, telling them that Gina tried to get me to kill myself… though ineffectual in many ways, seems painfully cruel.
“Please, love,” Nolan murmurs. “It’ll only be worse in our heads.”
“I don’t think it will.” I sniff, a tear sliding down my cheek, but the truth slips from my lips. “She... she tried to plant the idea in my head… to commit suicide.”
“I will kill her,” Connor snarls, the words muffled by what I’m guessing is his wolf teeth trying to break through.
Quickly, I pull away from Nolan and reach out to Connor, but he flinches away from my touch, his eyes wild and his body shaking. My heart hurts over his retreat-- the first time any of them has refused my touch, and I don’t know what to do to help him.
Slowly, Nolan draws me into his arms with my back to his chest, Connor’s eyes trained on his every movement.
“Callie’s okay,” Nolan soothes. “She said it didn’t work, and we won’t let anything happen to her. We’ll protect her and keep her safe. Why don’t you go for a run and cool off?”
Indecision dances in his eyes, and I’m shaken seeing how much my safety means to him. How much I mean to him.
“We’ve got her, dude,” Donovan adds, his casualness a clear lie against the anger I know is boiling inside him. “One of us will be with her all day. Promise.”
After a moment, Connor gives a jerky nod, then tentatively walks toward Nolan and me. My fingers itch to reach out to comfort him, but instead I keep still, while he leans down and breathes in the scent of my hair. His out of control shaking subsides, and my heart leaps when he kisses the top of my head, before he turns and sprints down the hallway toward the front of the school.
All of the guys visibly relax, and Nolan’s arms shift more to a comforting embrace than a sign of vowed protection. I tip my head back to look up at him and find he’s already looking down at me with a searching gaze.
“He wouldn’t have hurt you,” he assures, as if I’m some scared rabbit that needs to be lulled back to safety.
“Of course he wouldn’t have,” I reply, affronted over the idea with a matching expression taking over my face. “Beside the fact you all seem to keep forgetting that I’m practically indestructible, I’ve known since the day I met you all that none of you would hurt me.”
My face softens when I witness the true surprise that washes across Nolan’s features. “At first I thought I was nuts, and that my survival instinct was broken, but it turns out it’s a spirit witch thing.” I give him a weak smile. “Apparently, I see into the core of a person or whatever, so I knew then that you all were good and worthy of my trust.”
Questions flash through Nolan’s eyes, the desire to ask what I see in him resting on his tongue, but before I can answer, Kaleb comments, “So you’ve learned more about being a spirit witch.”
