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“Well, I wouldn’t go that far.”
Jess leans forward, bright eyes shining with excitement. “Well, then tell us! What really happened?”
I wave my hand, trying to minimize the events. I hadn’t meant to make such an impact on my first day. But now that I had, all I can do is not make it worse. “The cat, Chonk, accidentally blinked—er—portaled me to the wrong room. The heirs weren’t too happy, I guess.” I shrug the rest of the story off and hope they don’t press for more.
Who knows how much of it I can actually keep to myself. The last thing I need is anyone else knowing how alive I felt being so close to the demon.
Or how electric his touch was.
Only Gael’s touch had ever made me feel…
I stanch that line of thought like a bleeding wound and focus on the pile of roasted tubers on my plate.
Jess’s eyes go wide. “So Chonk found you! I knew it!”
I pop a bite of tuber in my mouth and aim not to moan. It’s firm and fluffy and smooth and buttery all at once.
This is leagues better than hospital food.
It’s an effort not to shovel in the remaining tubers, so I put my fork down and ask, “Does it matter?”
Stevie answers. “Chonk only retrieves magic users with the biggest oomph.”
“Oomph?” The fork is back in my hands and I’m spearing a slice of meat so tender it almost falls from the tines. It melts on my tongue, fatty and rich, and I don’t know what creature this meat was carved from, but I’m forever grateful.
And to think the food was the part I was looking forward to the least.
“Oomph, you know. The ones with the most power, most potential.”
“Ah,” I say and continue the conversation by answering Jess’s questions, hoping that giving them the rote answers Sera and I came up with will keep my mouth from saying things I don’t want it to. “As for what plane I’m from, I’m afraid I don’t really know.”
Stevie and Jess give each other bugged out stares. “What do you mean?” Jess asks.
Sera drilled these answers into me, hoping I could recite them fast enough that my brain wouldn’t blow my cover and tell anyone who asked I’m from Celestus and I’m chock full of delicious magic everyone wants.
Plus, the story we came up with is my built-in excuse for pretty much everything.
“I was raised in a secluded religious cult.” I take a bite of a dinner roll, and finally, I can hold it in no more. “By the Flames, the food here isincredible.”
Definitely didn’t mean to say Flames. Luckily, Stevie and Jess were too preoccupied with what I’d said before that.
If I thought their eyes were big before…
We’d hoped telling that story would grant me some leniency with social and cultural flubs.
I wasn’t expecting pity, but they dealt a heaping pile of it.
Stevie recovers quickest, clearing her throat. “Yeah, the food’s great, but did you just say you were in a religious cult before you came here?”
I nod. “They didn’t let me out much. In fact, I don’t know the first thing about my magic. I’m just glad whatever I did got me out of there.”
It takes the witches a few minutes to process, and I dig into everything else on my plate.
But the twist of it is, that lie isn’t so far from the truth.
The only reason Sera knows what she does about the mortal—human—plane is because she fought her university, and my father, to let her study abroad.
And the only reason I was here two years ago, in the car that got sideswiped, flipped, and ejected me through the windshield, was because my father forbade it.
