“Oh, it’s nothing, but I was talking with some of the other students about what happened to Professor Roberts, and one of them mentioned seeing you the first two weeks.”
Her entire demeanor changed, and she smacked her forehead as if it were something she’d forgotten. “You know, now that you mention it, I’m pretty sure that was the class I dropped. It ended up conflicting with one of my nursing credits, and so I made other arrangements to finish that gen ed.”
Okay, that made sense, but I still couldn’t help but think she was being evasive about the whole thing. My suspicions grew when she flashed me a brittle smile and changed the subject.
“How’s the job hunt going?”
“It’s fine. No hits yet.”
A low growl sounded near my feet, and I looked down to find Loki staring up at Zoe. He must have sensed her caginess and wanted to bring it to my attention. I made a little motion with my hand to get him to settle down, but he trotted over to her and whined. He looked as if he was about to chew on her shoes.
“Did you hear that? It sounded like a dog whining.”
“Nope. I didn’t hear anything.” I bit the side of my cheek and cursed inwardly. The fact she could hear him wasn’t good. It meant Loki was trying to defend me by using his haunting abilities. The last thing I needed was for him to appear, seemingly out of thin air, and give her the scare of her life.
“Loki, no!” I hissed.
The dog let out a final growl then settled down. He floated back to my side and sat by my heel.
Zoe furrowed her brow. “What did you say?”
“Um . . .” I fumbled for an answer, feeling my neck warm. “I said low-key. As in, I’m trying to find a job that is low-key after what happened at the country club. I’d love to find something with no drama.”
Zoe gave me a stilted nod, looking unconvinced. Her gaze tracked the ground near her feet, and then she checked the time on her phone. “Sorry, Elle, I have to go.” She backed away with a little wave and sucked the last bit of slushy out of her cup.
I watched her go then climbed into my car and gave Loki a scolding stare. He had the nerve to peer up at me with a pair of soulful eyes.
“You can’t scare my friends like that.”
Loki whimpered and placed his chin on his paws.
I put the car into drive and pulled out of the lot. “Don’t act cute. It’s bad enough people catch me talking to my feet when we go on our walks. I mean, don’t get me wrong, scare the crap out of anyone trying to hurt me, but let’s save it for the demons, okay?”
Loki barked his answer, and I reached over and gave him a little floating pat on the head.
Returning my attention to the road, I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. “Zoe was acting a little strange, wasn’t she? I guess I can’t blame her. Everything is so weird lately.”
I sighed. What we needed was a girls’ night. Margaritas and a movie marathon to get us back on track. I’d finally tell her the truth, and if it didn’t go over well, I’d blame it on the tequila.
Alcohol had been blamed for worse. Might as well add spells and demon-hunting to the list.
Chapter 13
“Take it from the top.” Oscar waved a translucent hand in the air as if he were a magical maestro and signaled for me to restart the spell.
“Really? Again?” I slumped into a chair, exhausted from performing the same spell over and over. We’d been at it for hours, and my first magical training session was veering into failure territory.
Can you get carpal tunnel from too much witchcraft?It certainly seemed like a valid medical question. I massaged my aching fingers and glared at the spell book taunting me from the tabletop.
To be fair, I hadn’t come close to mastering the Chaos Seal spell, or what I’d decided to call throwing spaghetti at the wall. The idea was simple: toss an object against a surface and get it to stick in place with the goal to keep control over the object. That was step one. Step two, applying the magic to a demon-hunting scenario, was a little trickier. It was one thing to fuse inanimate objects; another when you were dealing with a moving target.
So far, both steps had eluded me, and I’d accumulated a pile of junk resting at the base of the wall.
My next toss sent a marble chess piece through the only unbroken window. I winced as the glass shattered, knowing Caden was working on repairs in the room beneath us. His exasperation echoed throughout the house.
“Seriously, Graves?” he shouted.
I examined the vaguely horse-shaped hole in the window. “Sorry! I almost had that one.”
