Night Witch (Weatherstone College, #2)(38)

Stones scraped as the rest of the class entered the lake, and I was about to do the same, hoping the water would cool me off. Logan’s gaze dropped to the hard beads of my nipples, pressed against the school-issued swimsuit, and he groaned. “This is a bad idea. Let’s just ditch college. We don’t need it. We’ll start our own coven.”

I shoved him gently, shaking my head. “Come on, big guy, time to teach your mate how to connect to water.”

The green of his eyes darkened. “Say it again?”

“Teach me how to connect to the water?” I teased, knowing that wasn’t what he wanted.

His chest heaved as he groaned. “Precious . . .”

It was a warning, but with the heaviness of this morning easing, I was in a playful mood. “Come on, big guy? You like me calling you my big guy?”

Logan’s eyes were a mossy pit as he yanked his shirt off, and now I was the one losing all focus as I stared at his delicious muscles and tattoos. “Mate,” I choked out, huffing in air like a drowning victim. “You’re my mate.”

He hauled me up into his arms and raced us into the water. “Mate,” he agreed, diving below, the icy water washing over us. It was so cold it stole my breath until his power warmed me a beat later when we resurfaced. “You’re my mate, Paisley Hallistar, and I want everyone to know it.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be teaching all of us, Oh Great Spellcaster?” Marcus shouted from nearby, snapping us out of our love bubble.

Logan, without releasing his hold on me, leveled him with a look that would have had me running, screaming, and hiding. Marcus just flipped him off—arrogance was part of the spellcaster package. “Should just kill that fucking asshole,” Logan muttered, but he did release me. “You spend some time connecting with the water. I’m going to hurt a few students.”

When he left my side, I swam out to the main group with the professor. “Since it’s your first day back,” he said, sitting a few inches above the water, held up by a small stream, “let’s get into the basics before you use the water to move yourself around. Taste the elements in the water. I released a few additions this morning, some natural elements that will dissipate in a few hours. If you connect fully, you’ll be able to tell what’s new. Start exploring.”

To my surprise, with small tendrils of my energy seeping through the suppression, I could break down the particles in the lake water. There was hydrogen and oxygen, bacteria and algae, along with fine traces of nitrogen. The professor had released a combination of lavender and oregano, and I separated them into a sheen of oil across my hands.

Logan and Marcus were the only two in the class to list every element that made up the water, but I was mid-level and quite happy with that effort.

“Your gran’s spell is clever,” Logan said in a low voice, standing close as we dried and got dressed. “It’s not fully suppressing the base magic we all have, just the part specific to your affinity.”

“Gran said it was a spell passed down through our family.” My reply was barely audible. “I can only assume that’s why it works so well on me.”

“It still doesn’t feel like a long-term solution,” he added, concern leaking into those words. “We need to learn more about your affinity, and we need to learn how to control it.”

His usage of the word we settled nicely into the spot reserved just for this bond with Logan. A fundamental, integral part of who I was now. “I’ve had a lot of sleepless nights thinking about who I am, and you might be right.”

Being a reaper was my identity, and I was desperate to embrace it, but I hadn’t forgotten what Gran had told Mom: Whenever one of us tried to express our unique brand of magic, it got us dead.

Dead without a head. Because the council were poets.

So, until we figured out a work-around for that, I had no choice but to keep my power locked down and hide half of who I was.





Chapter 17




Logan was in my next class as well, which was Fire Elemental 102. He was busy helping the professor, and on my own I managed to control a small flame—and almost light a candle without any assistance.

Professor Johnstone, a tiny blonde witch I hadn’t had a class with before, was aware of my locked-down energy. She mostly left me alone, making no comment on my lackluster power.

I might not be a standout in the class—other students were already growing their flames into an inferno—but I was touching the element. “I heard you managed to extinguish an everlasting flame in the end-of-year test,” she said when I was packing up my candle and cleaning ash and debris off the table.

“I did, and I have no idea how I managed that.”

Her smile wavered briefly, before it returned. “The only way I know of to extinguish such a flame is to remove not only the oxygen in the air, but all matter completely. You have to create a vacuum, which should be impossible outside of the Purgatory realm. There’s no atmosphere there at all.”

Purgatory. Forcing out a laugh that was seconds too late, I shook my head. “Maybe it was a faulty flame, because no one can touch that plane of existence. Especially not a low-powered spellcaster.”

Her head tilted, as if she were sizing me up. “Right. Of course. That was the consensus from the assessors as well. A faulty candle. At least it got them to check the rest of our stock and ensure we had no other issues.”