Saving Year Three (Grim Reaper Academy 3)

“I want to…”

Our lips locked. Mine moved against his, and he soon responded, shy at first… And I would have liked to say he turned more daring later, but he didn’t. Shy at first, shy all the way through… Our tongues never even touched. It was the most boring kiss I’d ever shared with a man, but it meant everything to me. The more we kissed, the more pieces I’d lost on the way came back to me, reattached to my body, my aura, my mind. The more we kissed, the saner I grew.

Francis Saint-Germain saved me that night. The last night. And he didn’t even know it.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I slept for ten hours straight, only woke up to go to the bathroom, then I pulled my curtains closed, and slept for another five hours. I needed this. Sleep. Oblivion. When my body said I’d had enough and I needed breakfast (lunch, actually), I groaned, turned on my side, and forced myself to sleep some more. The truth was that I never wanted to wake up. I had one free weekend before the second semester started, and I wanted to sleep it all. Whatever this semester brought, it wasn’t going to be good. I could feel it in my solar plexus.

I was drifting on and off. My stomach rumbled, and I ignored it. No food. I don’t need food. I need to sleep. I hugged the pillow to my chest, and I briefly became aware of a breeze on my cheek. Corri. Her wings flapped hastily when I grabbed the pillow from under her. I wanted to say “sorry”, but I couldn’t move my lips. I drifted off again, and even though part of my awareness was still in the room, an even bigger part was far, far away.

I was in the dining hall. Everything looked like it once had. Four long tables, and two long wooden benches on both sides of each. I was at the VDC table, surrounded by my guys. My four guys.

GC. Pazuzu. Francis. Sariel.

Sariel was at the VDC table. Sure, that made sense. Just because he was MDC now didn’t mean he couldn’t hang out with us. But we were doing much more than hanging out…

I stepped closer to get a better look. My hair was as blue as ever, my uniform looked the same, but something was different about me. I was happy. I was sitting between Sariel and Paz, laughing, holding hands with the both of them. I must have said something silly, because Francis reached over Sariel and touched my cheek. I giggled, leaned in, and we kissed like there was no tomorrow. All the guys at the VDC table cheered. Francis broke the kiss, blushing slightly. As shy as ever… I grabbed him by the jaw and squeezed playfully until he meekly slapped my hand away. I laughed in pure, genuine mirth. Paz hugged me from behind and pulled me against his chest, desperate to get his fair share of attention. He planted wet, sloppy kisses down my neck, and I giggled and kicked my legs under the table when the tip of his tongue tickled me. GC rolled his eyes, then attacked Pazuzu from behind. The boys fake-fought for a few seconds, GC was victorious, and apparently, that meant he was entitled to a kiss. I leaned over Paz, grabbed GC by his blond, curly locks, and shoved my tongue down his throat.

What is this? What was the dream showing me? What was it trying to tell me?

The scene before me flowed like a movie, except… it wasn’t a movie. Movies were fiction. This was real. This was actually happening. That was me, Mila Morningstar, and those were my lovers. Four, not two.

Is this like… my subconscious screaming at me that I like Sariel and Francis? That I want them just as much as I want GC and Paz? Well, in that case, this was one hell of in-my-face dream.

But no. That wasn’t it. It still felt too real to be made of thoughts, feelings, and fantasies my subconscious had mixed together and was now throwing at me.

I stepped even closer.

“Graduation day,” I giggled. “I can’t wait. You guys, we’re going to be Grim Reapers!”

“Who would’ve thought year four would go by so fast?” Sariel mused.

What. The. Hell. Year four? There was no year four. Grim Reaper Academy was only three years. Three. It had always been that way, and if supernaturals were known to truly care about something, that was tradition.

“Four years with you guys,” I said, my voice trembling with emotion. “My friends, my lovers, my soul mates. Promise me we’ll never drift apart. Not even if we get super fucking busy reaping souls all over the world and the parallel universes.”

They all put their hands on me – Francis on my knee, Paz on my shoulder, GC on my arm, and Sariel over my heart. That was their promise.

The future. This must be the future. I was starting to hyperventilate. In my dream. I was waking up. Something – or someone – was sitting on my chest. I moaned, willed my arms to move and push the intruder away, but my body was trapped in sleep paralysis. I was suffocating. If I wanted to breathe again, then I had to wake up. I had to wake up.

Wake up! I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay longer, see more. Mila… No, I seemed to have such a great relationship with my four guys. I seemed to be so happy. Wake up!

I opened my eyes, but the sleep paralysis wasn’t yet gone. I counted to ten, then finally started to feel my physical body waking up. Now that I was coming to my senses, I realized that I wasn’t suffocating, and that the thing on my chest wasn’t actually that heavy. The thing was not a thing, it was a pixie. Corri.

“What the fuck, Corri? You couldn’t find another place to sleep?” I muttered.

“Comfy,” she sighed contently, and I couldn’t possibly be mad at her.

We stayed like that for a while, me staring at the ceiling, thinking about the dream I’d just had, and Corri sleeping peacefully on my chest. Eventually, the constant rumbling of my angry stomach woke her up. Grumpily, she flappity-flapped to the gothic windows and pulled the curtains open. The sun was setting.

“Great. Just in time for dinner.”

She yawned and stretched. “I never slept so much in my life!”

“You must have needed it…”

“Absolutely not. What do you think I did the entire winter vacation? Slept, helped Patty around the kitchen, then slept some more. I only slept now because you were sleeping, Mistress, and I had nothing better to do.”