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“You’re going to behead her,” says Wes, pulling her off.
“Sorry! Sorry! It’s just so good to see you. You have no idea.”
Wes leans in for a hug next, though his is much less painful, then pulls out the remaining chairs, keeping one hand on the small of Beth’s back as they sit. I know I’m staring, but I can’t stop.
“When did…uh…”
“Oh.” Wes grins, the pride clear on his face as they intertwine their hands on the table. “A few months ago.”
“Wow.” I blink, my smile kicking in a beat too late. “That’s so…great. I’m happy for you guys.”
Beth beams, her eyes shining as she looks at Wes, and I peek at Daniel out of the corner of my eye. He’s smiling, though his gaze is pointedly on his menu.
Daniel and Wes never crossed that friendship line, as far as I know, but I think we were all expecting them to at some point.
“It really is good to have you back, Val,” Wes adds, quieter now, his smile softening. “Never felt right without you. Now”—he grabs one of the menus from the center of the table and pries the sticky pages apart—“why the hell are you guys looking so serious over here at our welcome home party?”
I snort. “I didn’t realize this was a party.”
“Hell yeah, it’s a party!” Daniel jostles my shoulder. “We got our blood bitch back!”
“Figure out what the hell this note means, then we’ll talk parties,” I mutter.
Wes shoots a curious look around the table, and Kirby leans over to fill them in.
“In the mirror…as in the shadow realm?” Beth asks, cocking her head. “So it could mean shadow projecting.” She looks to Wes. “That was one of the other terms for it, right?”
“Oh yeah, that’s right. We had a lesson on that a few weeks ago,” says Wes, but the rest of his words get lost in the static filling my ears.
Shadow projecting.
“We took that class last semester,” Monroe is saying, and she winces as she chews on the inside of her cheek. “That was some serious shit though. Our professor made it seem like one of the riskiest kinds of magic you could do. Said they stopped teaching the advanced version of the class decades ago because of how many…incidents there were.”
Kirby shivers and shakes her head a few times as if remembering something unpleasant.
“Well, that’s if you try to do it alone, for sure,” says Beth, her voice matter-of-fact. “The process can be too much for a single person to handle. Not necessarily because of the power needed, but because there are so many things that can go wrong, so you need someone else there to make sure you don’t flame out or go too far into the dark to find your way back.”
My gaze bounces between them as they discuss this magic I’ve never heard of before, feeling more on the outside than I ever have. My blood magic gave me a leg up in a lot of ways going through school, and as flawed as my mother’s methods were, she did prepare me well.
But I should have known nothing would compensate from missing an entire year of school, and the one with the most advanced classes offered, at that.
I’ve missed out on enough that I couldn’t even figure out what the damn note meant.
Queen Carrington’s words echo in my head yet again.
Valerie’s certainly not in the expected physical shape for her position anymore. She didn’t finish her final year at the academy. I’m merely suggesting we consider a reassignment.
Adrienne meets my eyes, and there’s something about the look on her face that’s grim, resigned.
It’s Kirby, though, who says, “So are we doing this tonight or what?”
CHAPTERNINE
“This is so embarrassing.I wasn’t expecting visitors!” Kirby torpedoes through the house, picking up dirty clothes and old dishes as the rest of us shuffle through the door.
“Kirby, it’s fine—” Monroe starts.
Kirby’s head shoots around the corner, a strand of pink hair stuck to her cheek and murder in her eyes. “Help. Me.”
