Cruel Magic (Royals of Villain Academy #1)(13)

I went to venture into the common room, and my pulse jumped at how easily the doorknob turned. Banefield had given me a keycard for the dorm, but my bedroom door didn’t appear to have any lock at all. No keyhole on the knob, no bolt I could slide over from the inside.

I’d assume respect for personal belongings operated on an honor system, except from what I’d seen honor wasn’t a quality fearmancers valued highly.

When I came out, two different girls were at the dining table, perched at opposite ends. One fidgeted with her mousey-brown ponytail as she hunched over the bowl she was eating from. The other was cutting into a filet mignon, her tawny waves pulled back from her face with a silver clip in the shape of a raven. The girls who’d been eating steaks earlier had moved to a sofa at the other end of the room where they were paging through a fashion magazine together.

And Victory was lounging on the sofa closest to my room, her bare calves sprawled over the lap of a girl with a shiny black bob. She’d thrown her head back in a laugh at some comment made by her other friend, whose ice-blond french braid was streaked through with purple and pink. At the click of my door, her gaze shot to me. I ignored her, but I could feel her narrowed eyes studying me as I tested my doorknob from the outside.

“No locks in here, your highness,” she cooed. “But I’m sure someone as special as you can figure out other ways of keeping your door secure.”

Oh. They must all use magic to prevent intruders. And if someone was better at magic than you, they’d be able to break in no matter what you did, if they wanted. Of course that was how security would work at Villain Academy.

At least I didn’t have much in there I wanted to protect. The only things that actually belonged to me, I was wearing. Deborah could hide herself just fine.

I turned away from my room, fighting the urge to hug myself defensively, and considered which of my dormmates would be the safest to ask where I could find my own grub. I hadn’t gotten any farther than eliminating Victory and her sidekicks when the dorm door whipped open, and four guys who definitely didn’t belong to this room strolled in. Apparently even that lock opened to the right spell.

The guys moved through the common area with total confidence, as if they walked into girls’ dorm rooms every day. Which for all I knew, they did.

At the head of the pack was the divine devil from earlier, his wickedly flawless face split with an easy grin and a small cloth bag dangling from one hand. He was flanked by the redhead and the musclehead from before, which was no surprise, but ambling along behind them was the striking guy with the swept-back black hair and hazel eyes who’d tried to reassure me during my parents’ murders.

“Mal!” Victory cried. She and her friends sprang up, and she sashayed over to give the divine devil a kiss on the cheek while the other two batted their eyes at the whole pack. Her hand lingered on his forearm.

“Hey, Vic,” he said, his expression pleased if not exactly warm. The fact that he enjoyed this girl’s attention only solidified my initial opinion of him.

The guy with the dark copper hair tugged on the end of Victory’s friend’s braid with a teasing smirk. “Does your hair just grow this way, Cressida? I never see you with it down.”

The other girl arched her eyebrows, but an eager flush colored her cheeks at his touch. “Maybe someday you’ll get to, if you prove yourself up to the challenge.”

“What, you haven’t been sufficiently impressed so far?”

The divine devil—Mal?—shot his friend a knock it off look, and the copper-haired guy let go of her braid with a breezy flick of his fingers. Victory gazed up at the ringleader coyly. “To what do we owe this visit? Got big plans you need company for?”

His gaze found me where I’d stiffened just outside my bedroom door. He aimed his smile my way with no hint of his earlier animosity. “I figured a little housewarming was in order for our newfound scion.” He lifted the cloth bag higher. “We come bearing dinner, made by Jude’s family chef. Best roast duckling you’ve ever tasted.”

That wouldn’t be hard, considering I’d never tasted roast duckling before, period. Why was this guy being so friendly now? Victory’s smile had tightened, and she was as close to shooting daggers from her eyes as she could get without actually fileting me.

I’ll admit that being homeschooled most of my life had its downsides, the main one being the isolation. The only people I’d socialized with on a regular basis were my parents. I liked to think that these days I didn’t put my foot in my mouth anywhere near as much as I had in the first few months of college, but my capacity for complex social navigation was still pretty limited. And if the tricky situations I’d encountered at my old school had been algebra, this right here felt like advanced calculus.

“Um,” I said brilliantly.

The divine devil’s gaze darted across the room and settled for a moment on the mousy girl hunched at one end of the dining table. He murmured a few words with a clench of his hand. She slumped back in her chair, her eyes glazing.

My shoulders came up. I didn’t need any practice to know how to respond to that. “What the hell did you do to her?”

He cocked his head as his gaze came back to me. “We can’t talk freely when there’s a feeb around. When I snap her out of it, she’ll just think her thoughts wandered off for a minute.”