Magic University Book One: The Siren and the Sword (13 page)

“Don’t go over his head, Cait,” Nichols warned. “He’s just trying to get the single card interpretations down.”

“Bah, that’s no fun,” she said, but relented. “Keep going, Wadsworth. But you owe me a favor.”

They went all the way through the deck that way, with Kyle ultimately having to give in and ask for help on more than twenty cards.

“I still say the best way to learn them is not just to go through them over and over, but to give readings,” Caitlyn said. “Here, give me the cards. Let me do one for you, Nichols.”

Nichols looked up in surprise. “Okay.”

She shuffled the cards, then let Nichols cut them. Kyle watched in fascination as she turned up the cards one by one. “Here you are. Hmm, dear me, Nichols, this seems to say you need to be studying a bit harder. Are your grades slipping? No? Something’s eroding though in your present. Let’s see your future...oooh, you know what this means. You’re going to meet your true love! Let’s see if the cards will give us a clue when! What’s this? A four! Hmm, is that four months or four years, you think?”

And on she went. Kyle was dizzied by how she was able to turn every new card that came up into part of this story she wove around Nichols, each one seeming to corroborate the previous.

She collected them up and handed them back to Kyle. “A lot of interpretation isn’t about reading the cards,” she said. “It’s about reading the person. I get that you have to memorize the basics for your class, but...it’s like you’re learning to read the alphabet, but you already know how to speak.”

She stood up and stretched. “I’ll see you two later.” She strode away without looking back.

Kyle looked at Nichols. “Are you and she...?”

Nichols shrugged. “Friends with benefits, maybe. I dunno. She’s...got her own ideas.”

Kyle had a feeling maybe he knew how Nichols felt. “No one really has a lot of time for a relationship here, do they?” he asked, feeling around the issue and wondering if he would be validated.

“Not really,” Nichols allowed. “She’d expect to be courted if...”

Kyle could almost hear the unspoken,
if it meant anything to her.

Kyle wanted to ask if they had sex-sex or only the technical virginity-saving kind. He’d thought for a while that Jess was a rarity, but he was gradually finding out there were others, male and female, who were saving their virginity for magical—not moral—reasons. And maybe that was why there seemed to be a lot of couples who were only a step above friends? Or maybe it was like that in the non-magical world, too, and Kyle just didn’t know.
Maybe too many of my expectations have been shaped by bad television.

They each drifted off into their own thoughts for a while. When Kyle spoke again, he asked, “When’s carnival?”

“You mean Carnavale?” Nichols asked in return. “Always the last Tuesday before Lent. Mardi Gras. Same thing.”

“Oh, so like, February.” Kyle pondered. It would probably be near Valentine’s Day, too. He gathered up his things.
“Thanks for your help.”

“No problem,” Nichols said softly, his head tipping toward his lap as he did.

* * * *

“What do you mean, he’s not here?” Kyle realized it was a stupid question. Obviously Monica meant what she’d said, that Alex wasn’t around. But he supposed it was a human instinct to ask again, just in case the second time the answer might be different.

Monica was a short girl with black-and-red streaks in her hair. Kyle really couldn’t guess what the natural color was. She hefted her book bag. “I’ve got to get to the lab,” she said, clearly annoyed at him. “And I’m not Alex Kimble’s keeper. Jess ought to be back soon, if you two want to take advantage of the empty room. I won’t be back until around dawn.”

Kyle sat on the couch and dragged out his cards and books. He’d decided not to worry too much about his final paper for poetry analysis. He’d already written most of it, and it wasn’t due for another week anyway, and then they would have a final exam that he wasn’t worried about either. Either he’d have a flash of insight on the exam, or he wouldn’t. Even if he only barely passed the test, his final grade would be fine. And his poetry writing class was a piece of cake. There was no exam and no final paper. All each student had to do was write a poem a week. His poems lately had been horrible, he felt, but the teacher seemed to like them well enough, and he wasn’t being graded against Pulitzer Prize winners either.

Introduction to Alchemy wasn’t that difficult either, now that he’d started thinking of it like a science class. He found it a lot like chemistry, and most of the other students in the class had not had any experience at home with doing alchemical experiments or anything, so he felt he wasn’t as far behind them. The class was taught in this kind of interesting, folksy way where they recited the charts on the wall, which was interesting to Kyle because that made it almost like learning a strange, avant-garde poem.

But Soothsaying Practices of the Western World left him dizzy and wondering how he could even hope to have a grasp of—or even remember all of—the practices they’d covered. Tea leaves, coffee grounds, molten lead hardened in water, crystal balls, runes, Tarot, flame scrying, palmistry, psychometry, weathercasting—and to think they hadn’t even gone into astrology because that was a whole separate class he’d probably have to take later. Most of the class seemed to have grown up taking these things for granted. In particular, he wondered just how much of every day he went around oblivious to omens. He’d known that if you found a penny it was good luck, but he’d thought it was only the ones that were heads up. Apparently, it was all pennies, though. The bit about black cats and walking under ladders, false. But there were
other ones his classmates insisted were true and Kyle was finding it harder and harder to keep track of them.

He opened his textbook on omens and tried to read, but was too distracted by worrying to actually absorb what he was looking at.

Thankfully, Jess came in not long after that. “Hello, sweetness,” she said, planting a kiss on his lips. “What are you doing just hanging around?”

“Oh, I thought maybe I’d catch Alex to help me with some studying, but apparently he’s at the library.”

Jess pursed her lips. “I’m starting to think he might really be. At the library, I mean. I’ve never seen him actually study like this before.”

“You don’t think he’s actually in danger of failing?”

Jess shrugged. “He never talks about it. But it is his junior year. He has to do a pretty major project…maybe he’s behind schedule.”

Kyle sighed.

Jess slipped onto the couch next to him. “Want me to help you with your studying instead?”

He put his arm around her and pulled her in for a kiss. “I can think of something I’d rather do. Monica said she’s gone to the lab all night.”

“Oh? On a Thursday? How funny.” Jess’s smile turned sly. “But convenient. Maybe you’re leading a charmed life, Kyle Wadsworth?”

“Oh, um...”

“I have to write five pages tonight, but come on.” She took him by the hand and pulled him into the room. “Maybe we can kill two birds with one stone.”

She closed the door behind him. “Take off your clothes and lie down on the bed.”

“All right.” He put his books down and began getting undressed. “You’re not going to?”

Jess put her hands on her hips. “Are you going to argue with me, or do as I say? Trust me, Kyle, you’ll like my idea.”

“Okay.” He stripped down to his socks and lay back on her bed. She leaned over him and tied a strip of soft cloth over his eyes.

The next thing he felt was her lips brushing over his, just enough sensation to make him gasp with surprise before she pulled away. Then her mouth returned, full and wet. He groaned against her tongue, feeling the blood rushing to his groin already.

“So what are you having trouble with?” she asked, settling next to him on the bed. As far as he could feel, she was
still fully clothed. She trailed her fingertips down his bare chest.

“Omens and the Tarot,” he answered. “Just can’t seem to get them fixed in my head.”

“All right, then.” He felt her breath warm in his ear and it sent more thrills down his skin. “What’s the meaning of...the Two of Swords?”

“Um, balance, but it’s a precarious balance usually? Like someone may have to choose between two things, but neither choice might be all that good.”

“Very good.” She pressed a kiss to his temple and he felt her fingertips graze his cock. “Let’s say you get five strokes for every one you get right.”

He sucked in a breath as her cool fingers took loose hold of his half-hard cock and tugged it gently five times. When she let go, he was nearly fully hard, and her fingers continuing to wander over his nipples and stomach were all it took to bring him to completely straining.

“How about The Moon?”

“Um, wildness. Someone’s animal side.”

“Rawr. Very good, tiger.” She rewarded him with five more soft strokes. “If you keep up like this, I’ll have to get the lube soon.”

Well, this was certainly a bit different from his previous review session. He tried to imagine doing this with Caitlyn and Nichols then, but found the image to be disturbingly arousing. His cock twitched.

“The Sun?”

“Joy and fulfillment.”

“Mm, maybe you get ten strokes for that one, though you’re far from fulfillment,” she teased. He heard the wet sound of her licking her hand, and had to struggle not to thrust into her strokes.

And so it went, the very gradual build-up of his arousal as she quizzed him on card after card. Eventually she used the lube from the little bottle by the side of her bed, which stayed slick no matter how slowly she went or how long a pause to think he had to take. Sometimes when she liked an answer he gave especially, she would swirl her thumb a few extra seconds around the head.

He was panting and damp from arousal and very close to coming, though not close enough to come on just five light strokes, when she began to quiz him on the omens. Once he’d named off the meanings of a half dozen, she closed her hand firmly around his shaft.

“Your turn to move,” she said. “As long as you are naming off omens and their meanings, I’ll keep a hold of you. If you falter or have to stop to think, I’ll let go.”

“Ah! You witch!” he cried, and they both giggled at that, Kyle a little breathlessly.

“I know. I’m a regular Jezebel, aren’t I?”

Something in the way she said that made him think he ought to ask her about it...but later. Right now she was loosening her grip. “Rainbows! Rainbow means good luck, and a rainbow over green trees means unconditional love. Acorns falling on you are good luck, too. A grasshopper in the house means...”

What did it mean? Something...

Jess lifted her hand and he made a whine of frustration. “You know it or you wouldn’t have said it,” she prompted.

“A grasshopper in the house means...a good friend will visit you.” She put her hand back, but now he had to keep talking. “Um, a...a cat sneezing is good luck for a bride.” He was so close now that as she held tight and he forced his cock up and down through the slick tunnel of her fingers, he was having trouble breathing and speaking at the same time. “Two crows at your window is good luck! Three means a wedding! A flat tire means an inheritance! Falling stars are...” But he cried out as he began to spill through her fingers. Her thumb milked the head as he came, intense colors swirling in the darkness of his vision behind the blindfold.

He was still panting when she kissed him as if eating the sweetness of his orgasm on his breath. “I...um...”

She giggled at his lack of coherence and pulled the blindfold free.

Her smile made him smile. “Hi,” he said, like he was seeing her for the first time that day.

“Hi,” she said back.

“I think I’m glad Alex was at the library,” he said. Jess kissed him and wiped his belly with the towel she kept by the bed just for such messes, carefully wiping her hand as well. He reached out with one hand to caress her cheek. “What about you?”

“Oh, I have all the things I need to work on my paper right here.”

“No, silly, I mean, it’s your turn.” He propped himself up on one elbow to look at her better.

She smiled, but it was her “you’re so cute” smile, which normally he liked since he’d usually done something silly to provoke it. But right now, when he earnestly wanted to reciprocate, it felt a little condescending. “How about you make me come an extra time this weekend?”

He sagged against her pillow.

She stood up. “You can stay if you want, if you don’t bug me while I’m working.”

“No, no, I’ll get out of your hair. Once I can move, that is. I think you turned my legs into jelly.”

She laughed. “I’ll get you a cola from the fridge.”

“Okay.”

By the time he was done drinking the can of soda, Jess was deep in her notes at her desk, typing away at her laptop. She got up to give him a kiss goodbye, then closed the door behind him.

He stood for a while in the suite, still basking in the afterglow of what had been one of the strongest orgasms of his life, but wondering why he felt so out of sorts about Jess. What was wrong with him? She’d just done something wonderful for him, not slammed the door on him.