Bear Charm: Shifters Bewitched #2 Read online

  She was easy to deal with on her own, but when she was around her legacy friends, she could be a downright bully. I didn’t like the effect Esme and Dozie had on someone I called my friend.

  I briefly considered taking my breakfast outside instead of joining her.

  “Cori,” Kendall yelled to me, ruining my thoughts of a private breakfast on the lawn. “Come here and tell these guys what you told me last night.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked stupidly.

  “That thing you said about the tower,” she said, grabbing my tray and placing it on the table in front of the seat next to hers.

  I surrendered and sat down. “It was nothing,” I said, looking down at my toast.

  “Did you really see the ghost?” Esme asked, placing her own toast down primly and leaning forward with interest.

  “What ghost?” I asked, unable to resist.

  “Actually, there are two ghosts,” Dozie said in a bored way. Though in fairness, Dozie said almost everything in a bored way.

  “Don’t mess with me,” I said, rolling my eyes and taking a bite of buttered rye. For being so far off the beaten path, Primrose Academy sure did have some fresh bread. I wondered idly if there was some kind of magic involved. There seemed to be some kind of magic involved in just about everything here.

  “We’re not kidding, Cori,” Esme said. “We would never kid about the ghosts.”

  “It wasn’t a ghost,” I said, taking a sip of coffee and grimacing at the bitterness. Whatever magic they were using to keep the bread fresh, it must have been all used up by the time they got around to the coffee.

  “What exactly did you see?” Kendall asked.

  “There are claw marks on the door,” I told her. “Other than that, I didn’t actually see anything. But I heard roars. And when I got up there, something flung itself against the door. Something big.”

  “That’s the ghost alright,” Esme said, nodding wisely to herself.

  “Sounds like the man,” Dozie said. “He flings himself against the door to get to his lost love.”

  “The lost love is the other ghost?” I asked, unable to help myself. The business of flinging himself against the door to get to his love actually seemed accurate. The noises had been filled with just that kind of anguish.

  “She was a student, and now she wanders the staircases of the school, looking for him,” Esme said, her eyes wide. “But because the tower is off limits to students, she never finds him.”

  My face must have given away the fact that I was considering this scenario. After all, I was surrounded by witches, and my best friend’s boyfriend was practically a werewolf. Was believing in ghosts really that much of a stretch?

  “Ha,” Kendall barked. “She believed it. You really had her going there, Esme.”

  “Jesus, Kendall,” Dozie said moodily. “You weren’t supposed to give it away like that. We could have played with her all year.”

  Esme giggled and wiped her mouth daintily. “You really are very gullible, Cori,” she said.

  “That was fun,” I said sarcastically. “Well, I’ve got to get moving. Glad you could entertain yourselves at my expense.”

  “Get over yourself, Cori,” Dozie said. “It was just a joke.”

  I turned to Kendall, but she didn’t meet my eye.

  Her shame didn’t matter though, if it didn’t change her behavior. It was clear that being one of the legacies was more important to her than being a friend to me.

  I dumped my uneaten breakfast into the trash and headed to the auditorium for morning meeting.

  I was surprised to find Headmistress Hart was there already, pacing the floor. Most mornings she swept in after everyone was seated and shouted out a few words of admonishment or encouragement before leaving the school secretary, Miss Twillbottom to very slowly read off the day’s announcements.

  More students were filing in now. Anya headed my way, and we sat together in the front row.

  “Why is she so freaked out?” Anya whispered without even saying hello.

  “No idea,” I said. “But I’m guessing it’s not good.”

  By now the auditorium was full. Thankfully, Anya had put her books in the seat next to hers to reserve it, so there was still a seat when Bella dashed in just as the lights were dimming. She spotted us right away and moved to join us.

  “Women of Primrose Academy,” Headmistress Hart said in her loud, clear voice. “As you may have noticed, there have been some changes in our agreement with the guardians.”

  I could feel all the eyes on Bella. But she sat tall and proud, unembarrassed to be bonded to a guardian and back at school. I smiled, trying to memorize her happy confidence so I could learn to emulate it.

  “From now on,” Headmistress Hart continued, “any witch chosen for the honor of the mating may choose to continue attending school if that is her desire.”

  A murmur went through the gathered witches. And although this should have been fantastic news to all of us, there was still a salacious quality to those whispers.

  “Furthermore,” the headmistress continued, “there have been some other changes. Because of the recent break-in, there will be a guardian on duty in the tower every night, until we get to the bottom of who broke into the library and why.”

  She went on, but the world seemed to fade away around me as I took in this news.

  There was a guardian in the tower.

  I pictured the man with the golden eyes and the huge muscular frame.

  Was he the one who had called on me in my dreams, pulled me up to the top of the tower in the night and tried to break down the door between us?

  I knew that he was here to guard the library, but was he also here… for me?

  3

  Reed

  I lope through the trees, massive paws kicking up the fragrance of pine needles and loamy soil.

  But nothing can erase her scent.

  The memory of it wafts around me like thoughts of summer during a blizzard, and I am lost. She is sweet and pure. She is deliciously sexy - the more so because she doesn’t revel in it the way the other witches do.

  Mine, my heart sings. She is mine and I will claim her.

  Deep inside, my human protests. He believes no woman could love a bear.

  But I know better. This mate is different. She will accept both sides of our nature. She has already done so, even if she doesn’t know it yet.

  Though my human side might have made eyes at her when they met, it was the bear that called to her, this form that she answered.

  I can still taste the flavor of her dream, hear her heartbeat from across the castle.

  I still revel in the scent of her as she flew up those stairs to me, her nightgown billowing out with the sharp note of soap and the softer, sweeter scent of a sleeping woman, craving her mate.

  When she cut her finger on the door, I nearly went mad at the fragrance of her blood, slamming myself into the door, desperate to claim her with my bite.

  Thankfully, the door held fast. My human side would never have forgiven me for claiming her without her understanding and consent.

  But I had to claim her soon.

  I wonder where she is and what she is doing. Whatever it is, it can’t be as important as sealing our bond.

  My human side cries out from my depths, reminding me that tonight is the ceremony at the full moon. If I waited this long, surely I can wait a few more hours.

  I push thoughts of her as far from my mind as I can, and the forest around me fades back into my consciousness.

  I’m following the faint trail of something that doesn’t belong. It winds loosely around the castle grounds, growing slightly stronger as I follow.

  The scent is human, so it could be one of the handful of people who come here to camp each year. But I doubt it. The weather is too cold, and this part of the forest is too thick. And something about the scent is just… wrong.

  More likely it is a member of the Order of the Broken Blade, searching for magi
c on the outskirts of the castle campus.

  My lips pull back from my canines in a sneer. The fae had organic magic. The witches earn it with their discipline, or by paying a price. The guardians are shifters by nature.

  But the Order can only siphon and steal power from others. There is no honor in it, they are thieves like any other, no more noble than the pickpocket at the train station down in the village, though their elaborate ceremonies pretend at greatness.

  A new trail joins the old one and I stop in my tracks.

  There is a hoof print, and the scent of sulfur.

  Fire…

  Panic engulfs me and I freeze in place, heart pounding, as my human swims for the surface, convinces me to rest so he can take over.

  4

  Reed

  I straightened up into my human form, took a deep breath, and ran my hand through my hair.

  Although I handled the idea of fire better than the bear does, I still didn’t handle it well. I realized I was breathing in short gasps and forced myself to slow down.

  But the memories tore through my brain anyway, and I let them play out. There was no point trying to forget. They were seared on my heart as indelibly as the scars on my back.

  They were why I spent most of my life in my bear form. He lived in the present most of the time. The pain of the memories didn’t tear him to pieces the way it did me.

  I let the memories wash over me, watching the scene play out in my mind’s eye.

  In the memory, it was nighttime, and I was so small, wearing flannel pajamas, curled up like a cat in my mother’s bed. I’d had a nightmare, and she had pulled me into her warmth. Still too frightened to sleep, I clung to her, drinking in the comfort of her scent.

  The fire revealed itself first by smell, and then by sound. The acrid odor curled into my nostrils and I tried to wake her up again.

  “Let me sleep, or you’ll have to go back in your own bed,” she moaned, unable to detect the danger.

  Even then, my superior senses gave me an edge she didn’t have.

  I would forever be haunted by this moment, the childish side of me too frightened of being alone to forcefully wake her.

  A few minutes later there was a keening sound as the smoke detector in our apartment sensed what I already knew.

  By the time we were out of bed, it was too late. The door was hot to the touch, smoky tendrils reaching for us from under the frame.

  We didn’t have a key for the barred window - that was in a kitchen drawer. But as the flames devoured the curtains, I squeezed my small frame between the bars.

  “Jump down to the porch roof,” she told me. “Tell the neighbors where I am.”

  “No, no, no,” I moaned, not wanting to leave her, knowing there was too much fire. It was already in the room, already upon us.

  The flames licked my pajamas and they ignited, the terrible pain distracting me enough for her to give me a little push.

  The rest faded - the fall, the burning of my back, the screams of the neighbors, the sirens…

  And then my first shift, brought on by pain and fear in the back of the ambulance. I screamed for my mother until my screams turned to roars.

  The guardians got word somehow. They came for me at the hospital.

  I knew by then that my mother was gone.

  I didn’t care about leaving with strangers. I had no one else.

  I pushed the memories aside and took a deep breath, focusing my mind on the present, on the trail I was following through the forest. All of that was in the past. The scent of an old fire didn’t mean new loss.

  It was my duty as a guardian to protect, and that is what I planned to do.

  I studied the print, drawing on my considerable skills to learn what I could from it.

  The impression was large for a horse, but I wasn’t sure what other animal would make those crescent-shaped hoof marks. And that was a bad thing. I was an expert on every animal that called this forest home. If I couldn’t identify a track, it meant the creature that made it had no place here.

  I picked up a handful of earth from the depression and brought it to my nose. The sulfur scent was real and strong.

  I straightened and looked around the forest. I patrolled these woods often enough to notice that it had been dry lately. Fire was more dangerous than usual right now. I didn’t like this one bit. I had the castle to protect.

  More importantly, I had a mate to protect.

  My thoughts went to her and my heart surged, adrenaline pumping through my body.

  I had to protect her.

  I would not lose her to the flames.

  I turned back toward the castle, breaking into a run before I’d taken more than a few steps.

  5

  Cori

  I tried my best to concentrate as Professor Sora spoke, pacing primly up and down the classroom as she did. The elderly professor was physically tiny, and her manner was demure, but rumor had it that she was incredibly powerful.

  Normally lecture classes were my favorite - the one place where I wouldn’t be asked to use my magic, so there wasn’t a chance for me to screw everything up.

  But today, my eyes were drawn to the trees outside. I wanted to be out there, drinking in the fresh air and the scent of the pine needles. Which was unusual, since I was typically a pretty indoorsy person.

  But the cagey feeling was starting to get familiar. It seemed like no matter where I was lately, I wanted to be somewhere else. Like there was a magnet inside me, pulling me away from whatever I tried to focus on.

  “Cori, dear, would you like to answer?” Professor Sora asked, viewing me expectantly over her glasses.

  I felt the blood rush to my face. I hadn’t been paying attention.

  “How about you, Nina?” Professor Sora asked instead, with a slight frown.

  Damn.

  This was the one class where I never got in trouble. I already had so much make-up work in my practical courses for the exercises I’d failed last week.

  It seemed like ever since I got to Primrose Academy, I had been waiting for them to finally break it to me that I didn’t belong. No amount of make-up work was going to turn me into a witch. Maybe it was better to stay an amateur, or just give it up altogether and try to live a normal life.

  Something deep inside my chest rumbled at the thought. My magic, I supposed. It didn’t want to be silenced, but it also didn’t want me trying to control it. I often wondered what the point of it was.

  Bella glanced over at me and raised an eyebrow, clearly wondering what was wrong.

  Was I that obvious? I guess I really did wear my feelings on my sleeve.

  I smiled at her to show her that I was okay, and then I forced myself to focus on Professor Sora.

  “So what are some ways to stop a spell?” she was asking.

  My hand shot up. I knew this one. Maybe I could make up some lost ground.

  “Cori,” she said with a warm smile.

  “You can interrupt a spell during its casting,” I said.

  “Very good, dear, yes,” she said, nodding. “Interrupting a spell is the best way to stop it. How else could we stop a spell if we can’t interrupt it? Lark?”

  “You could cast its opposite,” Lark said.

  “Yes, Lark, very nice,” Professor Sora said approvingly. “We can use a spell for its opposite, like summoning fire to counter a cold spell, or rain to put out that fire. Very good. Anyone else have another idea?”

  “What about a counter spell?” Nuria asked from the back row.

  “Ah, Nuria,” Professor Sora said with a smile. “Counter spells are much more complicated, and they are exactly what I wanted us to discuss today. Kudos to you, dear, for your answer.”

  Nuria grinned and threw her long black braid over her shoulder.

  “Now, the way a counter spell works, is that you primarily use the same components and follow the same procedure for performing the real spell, but with an important twist,” the professor went on. “The best way t
o explain it is to show it to you. May I have a volunteer?”

  My stomach sank. Were we really going to have to do demonstrations in a lecture class?

  Fortunately, Justine’s hand shot up and Professor Sora beckoned the jaunty girl with the pale complexion and the bright red pixie cut down to the front.

  “Now we’re each going to prepare a simple repairing spell,” Professor Sora said, grabbing a crystal vase from her window sill and wrapping it in a cloth.

  We all watched as she smashed it brutally against the desk.

  She opened the cloth, revealing the shards and dust, gleaming like diamonds.

  “Very good,” she said calmly to herself. “Now, dear, you’re going to cast the repair spell, but I’ll counter it.”

  I watched as they laid out the ingredients and began murmuring incantations.

  There were the usual components of a spell - a circle of material - in this case salt. There was a crystal to represent the glass and a piece of twine to represent joining.

  Justine tied the twine to the crystal and swung it in the outline of the circle as she murmured her words. The bits of glass on the cloth began to tremble and move together, like magnets, slowly reforming into the shape of the vase.

  Professor Sora waited until the bottom of the vessel was clearly coming together again before she began her own spell.

  She had the same circle of salt, the same crystal and twine.

  But instead of swinging it in a smooth circle, she swung it violently back and forth.

  The bottom of the vase trembled and then fell to pieces.

  No matter how hard both women murmured and swung, the glass lay still on the cloth.

  “Very good, Justine,” Professor Sora said at last. “You may repair it now.”

  Within minutes the vase was perfect again. Professor Sora watched proudly as Justine carried it back to the windowsill.

  “Very nice, dear,” she said fondly. “Now class, why did that work?”