I don’t slow down until I’m running at a slant up the tunnel that leads to the art cottage. Once I finally make it to the unlocked door, I shove it and practically trip over my feet in my haste to get inside.

The first thing I do is reach for the light switch just to the left of the door. The second thing I do is slam the door shut as hard as I can and flip the lock. I know Dr. MacCleary says she always keeps the door open in case one of her students is inspired, but as far as I know, she didn’t just narrowly escape being a human sacrifice. I figure that gives me at least a little bit of leeway.

Besides, if someone else is actually ridiculous enough to want in here tonight, they can knock. As long as I know for sure they aren’t trying to kill me, I’ll be happy to let them in.

Sure, maybe I’m being paranoid. But I wasn’t paranoid enough four months ago, and all that got me was a vacation I can’t remember and my very own set of horns.

That’s not a mistake I’m going to make a second time.

After spending a minute just catching my breath, I grab the paints I need and head into the classroom. I’ve already got a really clear idea of what I want the finished background to look like—and what I need to do to get it there.

With any luck, the monsters of Katmere Academy will hold off trying to kill me long enough for me to get something done. Then again, the night is young.

18

I Think I Had

Amnesia Once…

or Twice

“Come on, Grace, wake up. You’re going to miss breakfast if you don’t get up soon.”

“Sleepy,” I mumble as I roll onto my stomach and away from Macy’s annoyingly cheerful voice.

“I know you’re sleepy, but you have to get up. Class starts in forty minutes and you haven’t even had a shower yet.”

“No shower.” I grab my comforter and pull it over my head, making sure to keep my eyes closed so I won’t be blinded by the hot-pink fabric. Or give Macy the idea that I’m actually awake. Because I very definitely am not.

“Graaaaaace,” she whines, tugging on the comforter as hard as she can. But I’ve got a death grip on the thing, and I’m not about to let it go anytime soon. “You promised Jaxon we’d meet him in the dining hall in five minutes. You have to get up.”

It’s the mention of Jaxon that eventually breaks through my dazed stupor and allows Macy to pull my comforter down. Cold air rushes against my face, and I make a half-hearted grab for the covers, still without opening my eyes.

Macy laughs. “I feel like our roles are suddenly reversed here. I’m the one who’s supposed to be hard to get out of bed.”

I make another lunge for the comforter and this time end up grabbing onto a corner of it. “Give me,” I plead, so tired I can’t imagine actually getting out of bed. “Gimme, gimme, gimme.”

“No way. The History of Witchcraft waits for no woman. Now, move it.” She gives one more mighty yank, and the covers go flying off my bed completely.

I jackknife into a sitting position in response, prepared to beg if I have to. But before I can even get a sad-sounding pleeeeeeease out, Macy is grabbing on to my shoulders.

“Oh my God, Grace! Are you all right?” She sounds near tears as she frantically runs her hands over my shoulders and back and down my arms.

Her obvious panic clears the last of the fogginess from my brain. My eyes fly open, and I focus on her face, which looks even more terrified than she sounds.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, glancing down at myself to see what’s got her so worked up, then freeze the second I see the blood drenching the front of my purple hoodie. My heart is suddenly pounding in my throat as panic seizes my breath.

“Oh my God!” I jump out of bed. “Oh my God!”

“Stop moving! I need to see!” she tells me, grabbing on to the bottom of my hoodie and pulling it over my head in one fell swoop, leaving my tank underneath. “Where does it hurt?”

“I don’t know.” I pause, try to take stock of what’s going on in my body, but nothing hurts. At least nothing that should warrant this kind of blood loss.

Another quick glance down shows me that my tank is solid white—no blood. Which means… “It’s not mine.”

“It’s not yours,” Macy says at the exact same time.

“Then whose is it?” I whisper as we stare at each other in horror.

She blinks up at me. “Shouldn’t you know that?”

“I should,” I agree as I still pat my arms and stomach for soreness. “But I don’t.”

“You don’t know how you’re covered in blood?” she asks incredulously.

I swallow. Hard. “I have absolutely, positively no idea how it happened.”

I rack my brain, trying to remember walking back from the art cottage last night, but I just draw a blank. There’s not even a giant wall, like what happens with the rest of the memories I can’t access. It’s just…empty. There’s absolutely nothing there.

Which isn’t terrifying at all.

“So what do we do now?” Macy asks in a voice smaller than I’ve ever heard from her.

I shake my head. “You mean you don’t know?”

She looks at me like my head just spun around three times and I’m one second away from spitting pea soup. “Why would I know?”

“I don’t know. I guess… I mean—” I bring my hands up to shove hair out of my face, then freeze as I realize they’re streaked with blood, too. And so are my forearms. I’m not going to panic. I’m not going to panic. “What do you normally do when things like this happen here?”

Now she’s looking at me like I actually did spit pea soup. “Um, I hate to break it to you, Grace, but things like this don’t happen here—at least not when you aren’t around.”

I narrow my eyes at her. “Fantastic. That makes me feel so much better, thanks.”

She lifts her hand in a “what do you want me to say?” gesture.

Before I can answer her, my phone dings with a long series of text messages. We both turn to stare at it as one.

“You should get that,” Macy whispers after a second.

“I know.” Yet I make no move toward my desk, where it’s currently charging.

“Do you want me to get it for you?” she asks when it dings three more times.

“I don’t know.”

Macy sighs, but she doesn’t argue with me. Probably because she is at least as afraid as I am to find out who’s texting me. And why.

But we can’t hide forever, and when a third string of messages comes in, I bite the bullet and say, “Fine, get it, please. I don’t want to…” This time I’m the one who holds my hands up—my bloody hands.

I want to wash off, am dying to wash off, but every police procedural I’ve ever seen is running through my head right now. If I do wash up, is that destroying evidence? Will it make me look more guilty?

I mean, it sounds awful, but I am currently covered in someone else’s blood and have no idea how it happened. Call me pessimistic, but it sounds like a road map to prison to me.

And I know I should be concerned about who I might have hurt but, well, sue me that I don’t feel bad if someone attacked me in the tunnels and I fought back. I have rights.

I groan. Why did that sound like I was practicing for my defense already?

“Oh no,” Macy says after swiping onto my messaging app. “They’re from Jaxon. Oh no…”

“What’s wrong?” I demand, forgetting about evidence as I all but leap across the room. “Did I hurt him? Is this his blood?”

“No, you didn’t hurt him.”

Relief whips through me so fast that I go a little light-headed. Still, it’s obvious from her face that Jaxon had something awful to tell me. “What?” I finally whisper when the silence between us gets to be too much to bear. “What happened?”

She doesn’t look at me, instead scrolling up and down as though she wants to be certain she read the messages correctly. “He texted to apologize for missing breakfast. He’s in my father’s office.”

“Why is he there?” I ask, dread pooling in my stomach even before Macy looks up from the phone with haunted eyes.

“Because Cole was attacked last night. It looks like he’ll be okay after a day or two in the infirmary, but…” She takes a deep breath. “Someone drained him of a whole lot of blood, Grace.”

19

Caught Red-Handed

“Cole?” I whisper, my hand going to my throat at the mention of the alpha werewolf.

Macy answers grimly, “Cole.”

“I couldn’t have.” I glance down at my blood-streaked hands with a new kind of horror. “I wouldn’t have.”

I think, until this very moment, I was holding out for this being some kind of horrible feeding accident with Jaxon. Like, maybe this actually was my blood because I’d gone to his room last night and he’d bitten into an artery or something and then sealed it up like he did last time, after the flying-glass incident.

I mean, of course, if I’m being reasonable, I know Jaxon would never be careless enough to bite into an artery of mine to begin with. He definitely wouldn’t leave me lying in bed, drenched in my own blood. And he sure as hell wouldn’t drop me into a sleep so deep that trying to get out of it felt like what I imagine surfacing from a coma would. But still, I think I would rather have all those things be true than to find out that this is another person’s blood I’m covered in. And that I might have been the one spilling it.

“I know you wouldn’t do anything to Cole,” Macy soothes, but the look in her eyes says otherwise.

Then again, the look in my eyes probably does, too. Because while I can’t imagine under what circumstances I would decide to attack an alpha werewolf—and then actually win the fight—I also can’t deny that it is a hell of a coincidence that I woke up covered in blood the morning after Cole lost a lot of blood in an attack. Oh, and since it happened my first night back, that only ups the coincidence factor.