At the top of her lungs, so loud it sounded as if she herself were in the middle of being murdered. There was always at least one screamer a semester and this time, she was it.
Smile plummeting, Balthazar lunged forward. “What are you doing? Stop that!”
What Embry was doing was simple: sounding the alarm. She’dbe found out, for sure, but so would Balthazar. Not a perfect plan, but Embry couldn’t just let him get away.
Unfortunately, her hollering was such a good imitation of bloody murder that Rye broke her immobilization spell and rolled out from under the bed. He’d been there for Daddy’s lessons, too, of course, and knew the secret reversal enchantment—something she’d forgotten.
“Em! Are you—YOU.”
A surge of magic gathered in Rye’s hands, so strong Embry could feel it pulsate behind her as he took in the scene: Embry, head back and screaming; Balthazar reaching toward her, the detritus of his planted evidence in a heap over his shoulder past the open closet door.
A defensive spell shot over Embry’s shoulder, toward Balthazar, its hot signature teasing the hair away from her temples as she renewed her damsel-in-distress howl. The force of it made her watch as the sorcerer’s hands flew out in protection.
But just as Rye’s enchantment met its target, the spell and her raging scream died out.
Like, literally stopped.
As did everything elsebut Balthazar.
The sorcerer held up one hand and coolly reapplied a sparkling, unbothered expression as he straightened. Rye’s spell—meant to stun—sat mere inches from Balthazar’s nose, frozen in time and space, the warm signature of its magic justheldthere like an arrow in suspension.
Embry was suspended, too.
Unable to move, breathe, make a ruckus. Rye was still—a silent wall at her back, his reaching fingertips in her periphery. She hoped his eyes were open, and that he could see this.
So sorcerersweremore powerful than witches.
If Embry could say anything she wouldn’t, because she was speechless.
Balthazar sidestepped the frozen spell, rushed to the window, and hiked one leg up and over the sill, all the while holding fast to his own enchantment, netting the pair of them. Balthazar seemed to make sure Embry could see him as he tipped her a salute.
“Have a nice life behind bars, Princess.”
Then, with the most devastating version of that sparkling Balthazar Hale smile, he vanished into the night. The moment his magic went out the window, time shot into motion as if discharged from a gun.
Embry’s flailing body tipped forward. Rye’s flailing body followed.
She caught herself in a low lunge, facing the empty window. He caught her around the waist. And theybothcaught themselves defying gravity for a split second, looking very much like ballroom dancers in the throes of a particularly dramatic dip.
Embry’s gaze met Rye’s staring down at her—panic rolling in waves off him, his sea-green eyes no longer calm, his lips parted, his breathing shallow and quick. Rye’s biceps contracted, and suddenly she was pulled flush against him, her mouth only an inch from his own. His pupils blew black and full. And then, with the slowest blink of his long-lashed eyes, Rye set Embry upright on her feet. His palms lingered atop her arms, double-checking she was steady.
Embry was anything but. Yet her heart still raced a mile a minute, her mind elsewhere. “The backpack—could it hold clues?”
Rye hesitated, surprised by this aside. “It could…” He trailed off, just as Embry clocked the thundering of footsteps over that thundering of her heart.
Her ploy had worked but without the intended consequence.
Now there was no Balthazar to catch. Only her. And Rye.
Rye.Her pounding heart suddenly quivered. Embry couldn’tbring down Rye with her. A charge of breaking and entering would certainly sink his law school hopes before he even started his freshman year. He had no family to call his own and she wouldn’t take his dreams from him. Not now, not ever.
Without hesitation, Embry shoved her phone into his fumbling hands, muttered the incantation for the cloaking spell, pointed a finger at Rye, and let the magic rip.
All at once, time that had once stood still seemed to triple in speed.
Denial forming on his handsome face, Rye vanished before Embry’s unspelled eyes.
The moment he disappeared, the locked door burst open. Valentina, the dorm manager, rushed over the threshold, the same magical stunning spell at the ready that Rye had attempted to use only a moment earlier.
