Page 21 of Dancing With Demons

My gaze drifted down to the fingers curled around Kama’s soft, supple, and practically bare ass, and my own curled too.

“You okay, Barley?” Dora’s face blotted everything out. “You’re not happy anymore.”

“What?” I jerked back, shaking loose my clenched fists. “What are you talking about? Of course I am.” I forced a laugh. “All good here.”

Spinning away, I glared down at the journals—screaming at myself. What the hell is wrong with you? You are not jealous! It does not matter how many princesses fling themselves on Ronin’s lap, you can’t stand that guy, and you want nothing to do with him!

The door flew open again, letting in a fresh wave of students flying very close to being late.

“What’s up, everyone?”

A cold, icy shard pierced my heart as that voice filled my ears.

“Did you miss me?”

I held still—head and eyes down as I busied myself putting away the journals, and taking out my notes and textbooks.

A shadow fell over me.

“I know someone missed me.” A hand clamped down on my shoulder. “Got to be my good friend, Charlie, here. He— No, wait, she...” Kazuya rolled the pronoun around on his tongue, then spat it out on my head. “...has been waiting all this time for us to finish our conversation.”

The cat-faced dickhead plopped down in the seat next to me. “And now we can,” he purred, those feline eyes boring into me, “without that mutt to interrupt us.”

I was a good person. I worked hard. I told the truth. I respected others’ boundaries, and I never demanded more than I earned. I was the kind of person that had good reason to believe I wouldn’t end up in this place when I died.

But when I looked into the same face that grinned down at me as he threw me off a cliff into the snapping maws of starving hellhounds, I couldn’t help but wonder why the hell I stopped Tristan from killing this jerk?

Following on his heels, the other two feline demons that I begged Tristan not to kill took up the seat behind and in front of me—closing me in on three sides.

Kazuya opened his mouth, no doubt to ooze more slime, when a tall, stately demon swept into the room. Unlike Professor Radu who preferred wearing slouchy cardigans and a bored expression, this large, imposing man was dressed in a three-piece suit.

Stopping before his desk, he turned to face us—giving me a full look at his large, curling, ram-like horns; thin, pursed lips; wide-set ruby eyes; and very humanlike face.

I couldn’t assume that every demon that didn’t have animal features was using a glamour, but if this guy was, I was having a real hard time understanding the choice. If he chose this face, why did he go with the meanest-looking mug in the shop.

“You will stop talking,” he stated, “or you will leave this room and be marked absent.”

Everyone stopped talking.

“I am Professor Connard, and I am your new The Great Invasion instructor,” he began, pressing his fingertips together as he paced. “Now, your instruction in the history of this event up to this point has been... inconsistent. That ends now.” His darker-than-red eyes swept over us. “From this moment on, your textbook is your life. It is your guide. You will have every word of it memorized by our next lesson or—”

“Next lesson?” blurted a meerkat demon in the front row. “Are you fucking kidding me? That’s tomorrow! You expect me to memorize—!”

He snapped his fingers, and the demon’s left ear ripped free of his body.

I clapped my hands over Dora’s ears, cringing as his bellows filled the lecture hall.

“You insane fucker!” Meerkat Demon shouted. Snap! Snap! Snap!

He snapped his fingers in rapid succession and explosions lit under Connard’s feet—sending a shower of carpet, dust, and stone all over the front row.

I held Dora tighter, screams bleeding through my teeth, as she nonchalantly kept to her task—scribbling in the notebook.

The dust and debris slowly settled to reveal Connard standing exactly where we’d left him—completely unharmed. He crooked a brow at the meerkat demon. “Normally, attacking an instructor would be grounds for immediate expulsion, but that pathetic display could hardly be called an attack, can it.”

The meerkat demon didn’t reply. He was too busy clutching the bleeding hole in his head and penning in his groans.

Those two had everyone’s attention, except for Kazuya’s. He was fixed completely on me.