The Culling Trials 3 (Shadowspell Academy #3)(46)

With them both gone, the room felt too quiet and a soft warning trickled up my spine. Not an immediate danger, more like there was something coming. Like maybe the note from Rory had arrived right when I needed it. I grabbed my five trinkets off the edge of the tub and tossed them lightly in my hand. These had to come with me. I held them loosely in one hand, then went to the bedside table and opened the drawer. My knife was resting there in its sheath. “Supposed to be a night off for you.” I pulled my skirt up, baring one thigh. With a few adjustments, I got the strap to hold to my upper thigh. I’d have to flash people to get to it, but at least I’d have it with me.

“Too bad I don’t have pockets,” I said. A tingle spread through me wherever the dress touched. I slid my hands down the skirt of the dress, finding a pocket on either side that opened to my bare skin underneath. “No way.”

Sure enough, I could easily grasp my knife handle through the opening on the right. I hurried to the bathroom and pulled out one of the long ribbons we’d found from the previous occupants of the room. I lifted the skirt and bared my left leg, tying the ribbon around as tightly as I dared, making a loop in it that would be perfect for another weapon.

A wand.

Where could I find a wand that no one would notice missing? What had the director said? That when someone was booted out or chose to leave, they had to give up their gifts to the school.

Shades gave up their weapons.

Shifters their ability to change form.

Vampires their speed and need for blood.

Necromancers their power over the dead.

Mages their magic and their wands.

Wands. Plural.

I was moving before I thought better of it. Maybe it was stupid, but I didn’t think so. My instincts were saying I would need a wand of my own, so that’s what I was going to get. A grin slid over my lips. One more rule to break, and I’d be done.

Honest.





Chapter 18





My plan consisted of very few details. Go right into the director’s office, ask her a few questions about what I could do to keep my brother and sister out of this place, see if I could distract her enough to lift a wand. She’d been so proud of how many of them she’d collected in that mahogany box. There was no way she’d miss one.

I should have been nervous. But all I could feel was excitement. I was getting me a wand, dang it, one way or another. Maybe Ethan could help me learn how to use it? Train me on the side?

That conjured up an image I hadn’t been expecting. Ethan smiling at me as he faded. I like ’em tall.

A hot flush spread through me, but I pushed past it. Nope, a whole lot of nope on that one. Ethan was a very bad, if very hot, idea. I hadn’t been lying when I’d told his father it would never happen between us.

There was no sign of Adam, so I walked right up to the director’s door, knocked once, and then turned the handle as if I belonged there. “Director, I need to speak to you.”

Because let’s be honest, with my track record so far, anyone who saw me walk into the director’s office would assume I’d been summoned.

Shockingly, the door was unlocked and the room was empty.

“Well, hot damn,” I whispered, shutting the door behind me.

I went right to the box on the desk, flipping it open, and looked down at a dozen or so wands. Which one did I take?

The door clicked behind me and I spun, my hand going for my right pocket.

Ethan stood in the doorway. His suit jacket, pants, and vest were a deep midnight blue, and his collared shirt was white as fresh-fallen snow. Hair slicked back, he was…damn it, he was gorgeous. He raised an eyebrow. “What are you doing?”

I wasn’t sure I trusted him, even now, and that hesitation seemed to bother him. “What are you doing?” I countered.

“I figured you might be in trouble again. Thought you could use a hand.” He walked toward me, and I thought about closing the box. But if I wanted him to teach me to use a wand, I’d have to tell him about said wand.

“No. I’m here for a wand.” I swept my hand over the box and stepped back. His eyebrows shot all the way up to his hairline, his eyes darting from the box to me.

“It’s not a bad idea. It would be smart to have a wand of your own, to train yourself with it. Even if there’s no real reason you should have such an ability with magic.” He leaned over the box and I caught a whiff of his cologne. Expensive was my first thought. My second was that I wanted a closer sniff.

No. Bad, bad, Wild.

“How do I choose one? Yours felt…better in my hands than the tester’s. Her wand was clunky and uncomfortable,” I said, forcing myself to focus on the task at hand.

“You pick them up. See what feels good.” He didn’t touch any of them.

I stared into the box, dipped one finger into it, and soaked in the energy of the different wands. When I reached the bottom, it felt like a tiny spark of electricity shot through me.

Voices came from the other side of the door.

“Hurry!” Ethan whispered.

I grabbed the wand that was calling to me, yanked it out and shoved my hand into my left pocket. The wand slid into the loop I’d created, fitting against my leg more securely than it should have, as though it wanted to ensure it stayed put. For just a moment, I thought I’d end up with another burn mark on my leg, but there was nothing like that. Just the reassuring warmth of the wand’s presence.