Lock and Key (Nocturne Academy 1)

He smiled at me coolly.

“Well at least it’s good to see you claiming your own status. How did you manage to leave your handprint on that big oaf anyway? Shaming magic is extremely powerful and hard to do—or so I’m told.” He shrugged elaborately. “I wouldn’t know too much about it since I’m a Nocturne, not one of your kind.”

“I don’t know how I did it, okay?” I burst out. “Today in Elementary Casting I couldn’t even bend a spoon with my magic. So I have no idea how I tattooed my handprint on that big asshole’s cheek just by slapping him once!”

“Language, Megan.” He shook his head and made a tsking sound with his tongue. “And I suggest you try to figure out how you got your magic to work in case you need to make it work again—I can’t be with you in every class, you know.” He sighed. “Though I’m certainly going to have to escort you to each and every one in order to keep you safe in the future—I can see that.”

“Escort me to class?” I shook my head blankly. “What are you talking about?”

“I’ve marked you as mine,” he said, as though that answered everything. “Sanchez and his crew will think it’s strange if I don’t walk you to classes. They’ll also see it as an opportunity to do you harm—which I can’t allow. Seeing that you’re mine now.”

“But…but…” I shook my head helplessly. “I don’t understand. I thought you told me to stay away from you.”

“Yes…” He glided closer and leaned over me again, cupping my cheek in his cool palm. “But I never said that I could stay away from you, Megan.”

For the second time I was sure he was going to kiss me. Despite how aggravated I was with him, my heart was pounding in my chest and the black key was burning me—begging me to get closer—begging me to close the whisper of a distance between his lips and mine.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Darkheart?” Avery’s voice rang out in the darkness. “Get away from Megan now!”

31

Griffin drew away, a regretful look on his perfect face.

“I see you’re not out unprotected after all,” he murmured to me. “I guess I could have saved myself the trouble of marking you.”

“You what?” Avery demanded, charging up to us. He looked ready to do battle but Griffin wasn’t bristling with menace the way he had when Sanchez threatened me. He only gave Avery a cool, amused look and shook his head.

“You’re too late if you wanted to protect the little witch from big bad me, I’m afraid. I’ve already marked her as my own—purely for her own good, of course.”

“You’re lying!” Avery exclaimed. “Megan, let me look at you.”

He seized me by the shoulders and turned me this way and that, studying my forehead. Whatever he saw must have upset him a lot because he turned on Griffin angrily.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Darkheart? You can’t mark a different species of Other and you know it—it’s going against the Edict!”

Griffin shrugged, as though none of this mattered to him.

“Too late now. If I had known you were protecting her, I wouldn’t have bothered.”

“Avery isn’t protecting me and you don’t own me!” I exclaimed, glaring at both of them. “I don’t care if the rules of the magic world are different— I refuse to live by them if they’re this sexist and misogynistic.”

“I’m afraid you don’t get to choose the rules of magic, little witch,” Griffin drawled.

“At least she hasn’t broken them, like you did tonight!” Avery snapped back at him.

Griffin cocked an eyebrow at him.

“Oh? I think we both know that she has, though. My mark wouldn’t have taken if she didn’t want it to take. If she truly didn’t want to be mine, my blood would have had no effect on her at all.”

I opened my mouth to protest this—to say that I didn’t want to be his at all—but somehow the words wouldn’t come out. It wasn’t that the key was choking me again—I just couldn’t force myself to say something to him that wasn’t true.

What the hell was going on?

“Come on, Megan.” Avery had me by the arm and was dragging me back down the stone hallway. “We need to get back to the dorm.”

“Leaving so soon?” Griffin inquired in that same, infuriating drawl. “Well then, I’ll see you in the morning, Megan.” And with an insolent wink, he turned and sauntered away leaving me wondering what in the world had just happened between us and what it meant for the future.

32

“Damn it, Megan!” Avery looked really upset. He kept running his hands through his hair and shaking his head all the way back to the Norm Dorm. But it wasn’t until we were safely back in the common room where Emma and Kaitlyn were still sitting on the sofa that he rounded on me.