Read Strange Academy (Hot Paranormal Romance) Online

Authors: Teresa Wilde

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Strange Academy (Hot Paranormal Romance) (9 page)

BOOK: Strange Academy (Hot Paranormal Romance)
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*

A knock on the door interrupted Gray’s pacing and planning. Failing to plan, really. He hadn’t come up with any new ideas for getting rid of Sadie. She’d practically accused the staff of discriminating against her, and they’d fallen for every word. Ha. If he’d used the love potion on her when he’d thought of it, he’d be rid of her now.

When the knock came, he was grateful. He could use a good emergency. Preferably the kind where he got to kill something.

It was a young girl.

“What’s the problem?” he said. “You should be in bed.”

“I should be in bed.” But the girl grabbed her head, like she was fighting something inside. Gray’s gut alarm went off. It had warned him of danger many times when he was on the hunt, and he knew better than to ignore it.

“It’s okay,” he reassured her. “You don’t have to go to bed. Tell me what you need.”

The girl’s body released its tension. “You have a visitor, Miss Strange.”

Had she just called him Miss Strange? “Miss Strange has a visitor?”

The girl nodded.

“A man?” he asked.

She nodded again, with even more enthusiasm.

“Good.” Getting laid would improve her mood. Pain shot from the knot in his back up into his shoulder. It would definitely improve his.

“N—No,” the girl said. “Carmina’s fa—”

“Burana is here?” Only the girl’s green eyes kept him from releasing the stream of swear words on the tip of his tongue. “Tell me she did
not
let him in
my
residence.”

“She did
not
let him in
my
residence.” Her voice mimicked his own.

He stared at the girl. Then it hit him. She was under a spell. Damn Burana.

“Do not go to bed,” he ordered. “Go to Jewel Jones. Tell her ‘I have talked to Count Burana. I need your help.’ Say it to her until she helps you. I’ll see you get extra credit for this.”

Gray heard the girl repeating his words to herself as she walked off.
Burana
. Gray didn’t buy his act for a minute. He might pretend to be harmless, but he hadn’t hesitated to put a Compel spell on a little kid, stealing her free will.

And he was alone with Sadie.

*

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******

****

*

Sadie flinched at the cracking noise as Count Burana’s head connected with the crook of the marble goddess in her doorway. He let out a string of guttural syllables that could have been the vilest swear words on the planet. Or romantic poetry. Slavic languages just sounded like that to her.

“Are you all right?” she asked, guiding him to the couch. “Please sit down.”

He rubbed his head. “I thank God I am not a bleeder.”

She felt his back stiffen as she knelt beside him on the swirl-patterned couch. But he relaxed and let her run her fingers through his silvering hair. Weird. The snowflakes on his skin hadn’t melted.

“You might have a bump,” she told him.

“Hmm?” he asked distractedly.

She looked down and saw Count Burana’s brows arched over eyes gone dark as they stared at her neck. Her mouth went dry as his red lips parted and came closer...

With a wham, the apartment door flew in. It was followed closely by Gray, his black eyes flashing murder. Two massive strides later, he wrapped his arm around her waist, lifted her from the couch, and slammed her back against his brick wall chest.

She looked up at his set jaw. Then she glanced at the square-jawed, gray-caped anti-hero on the cover of the comic book on her coffee table. Then she looked at the angry, flaring nostrils of Gray’s Roman nose. Then she glanced at the comic book. Then she looked at the silvery trench coat that had billowed behind him when he busted in. Then she glanced at the comic book.

Something in her chest started to hurt.

How big did a man’s feet have to be to kick in a wooden door and leave it dangling by one copper hinge? She grabbed the nearest thing for support.

“Take your hand off my ass,” Gray said.

Eeep. She snatched back her hand.

“Lorde Gray.” Count Burana inspected his fingernails. “A fine entrance. I give it a ‘10’ for artistic impression.”

“Burana.” Gray’s voice was grit. He shifted her against his chest so he was between her and the count. Her heart throbbed. Other places throbbed, too.

“You two know each other?” she asked.

“You let him in here?” Gray barely opened his teeth.

“Most interesting,” interjected the count. “She is your lover. Lorde Gray and a Non. Most interesting.”

That accent made him sound like a James Bond villain. Or...Sadie shook the weird thought from her head.

“Non? Non what?” She cat-stretched her back into the muscle behind her.

“She’s not my lover.” Gray’s voice was rough as asphalt.

“Ah.” Count Burana steepled his fingers and looked over them. “Even more interesting. She is not yet your lover.”

“Uh, hello.” She waved a hand in an attempt to get even a tiny fraction of someone’s attention. “What’s a non?”

“You. I’ll deal with you later,” Gray said.

“Deal with me? For what?”

“For letting that—” Gray stuck a thumb at Count Burana “—into this house.”

The warm feeling in her chest turned hot. She pushed at the alumnus with all her strength, breaking his grip. “I will let in anyone I please. I live here, despite your lame performance this afternoon. Really, if you’re going to try to get me fired, at least put some effort into it. Oh, and I didn’t say anything earlier because I wouldn’t want to contradict you in public, but it wasn’t a graphic novel. It was a comic book. They aren’t the same.”

“Miss Strange, why does your eye twitch?” asked Count Burana. “Most interesting. And entertaining.”

“Burana.” Gray’s eyes shot daggers at him. And scimitars, claymores and katanas.

Count Burana stretched out on the brown-swirled couch. “Please, continue your foreplay. Do not mind me. I am not here.”

“Gray. Get out. I’m busy with Count Burana—please excuse me for not knowing the proper term of address for a count—”

“Your Excellency, ” said His Excellency.

Gray scoffed.

“But you may call me Orff, my dear, ” said Count Burana. “You remind me of my late, beloved Lavinia. Always, she would say to me, ‘Orff, bugger off, you great ass.’ I do miss her so.”

“Gray.” She jerked her thumb at the door. “Get lost.”

Count Burana raised an eyebrow. “‘Get lost,’ she says to Lorde Gray. You are certain you are not his lover?”

“I think I’d remember,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Damn straight.” Gray’s granite gaze locked with hers. She felt all her blood rush to certain parts of her body. Then he seemed to remember something. He clapped a hand to his forehead and made a strangled noise.

Weird.

“Your eye twitches, Miss Strange,” Count Burana said.

“Burana, she isn’t my lover and she’s not going to be my lover. And you’re leaving.”

“No, he’s not.” She gave Gray her best glare. “You are. Bugger off.”

Count Burana gave a Bela Lugosi chuckle.

“I mean ‘Go away,’” she corrected.

“He may remain, Miss Strange. Were you my woman, I would also attempt to ensure no man seduced you.”

Great. Now she had two men giving her orders.

“You were going to seduce her?” Gray's asked.

“It is my nature.” Bela Lugosi—er, Count Burana shrugged. “I may yet do so.”

Oh, so they were going to talk about her like she wasn't there. Annoying. But maybe that would become useful. Maybe they'd let something slip.

In the meantime, she refused to notice the waves of irritation pouring off Gray. And she would absolutely not notice the way his folded arms widened his chest. And God forbid she notice the way he kept shifting himself between her and her guest. Count Burana nodded or something. It was hard to tell because she was so busy not noticing Gray.

She composed herself while the two men eyed each other. “Count Burana, can I get you some tea?”

“I do not drink,” Count Burana said. “Tea.”

“It’s herbal,” she told him, “if you’re worried about caffeine.”

“I’ll have some,” Gray said.

“Screw off. And you owe me for a new door,” she threw at him, then softened her voice to address her guest. “Your Excellency, can I get you anything while I’m up?”

He rounded every vowel. “How kind of you to ask.”

“Okay. Now then,” Sadie said. “What the hell do you want?”

Both men chuckled. Then they noticed each other chuckling. They stopped chuckling to growl at each other.

Count Burana kept one eye on Gray. “I wish only a—how do you say it? Ah. Parent-teacher conference. Yes.”

“At—” Sadie glanced at her watch “—twelve thirty-four at night?”

“You serve myself and my daughter and you will do so at whatever time is convenient for me.”

Sadie bristled at his matter-of-fact tone but turned to join her guest on the couch. She felt herself lifted from behind and thrown into Aunt Pippa’s comfy chair. Gray, looking homicidal again, stretched out on the half of the couch not covered with European count.

Gray certainly put the “man” in “manhandling.”

“I wished to meet the woman of whom my daughter speaks so highly. Perhaps we could get to know each other a little. It sounds pleasant, does it not?” The count smiled, a little too widely, as if the gesture was unfamiliar and he had to practice it from time to time.

She had to fight an odd impulse to recoil, yet at the same time, she felt exactly the opposite, eager to open up to him. It was like staring at a caged tiger and wondering what it might be like to pet it. “Your daughter. I’d guess Carmina?”

“Indeed.” Count Burana nodded, seemingly impressed. As if it was a leap of logic to connect the two people she knew with matching accents. “It is always ‘Miss Strange’ this and ‘Miss Strange’ that. She hardly speaks of anything else. I felt I should meet you. And perhaps take you out for, oh—” he waved an elegant hand in a motion that made her think of a bird of prey in flight “—the beverage of your choice.”

She couldn’t move for the space of a breath. It seemed almost like the European nobleman was inviting her on a date. In front of Gray.

Erp, but why would the idea of a man asking her out with Gray in the room make the tops of her ears go hot with embarrassment? She cleared her tight throat and told herself it was nothing. Which it was. Nothing.

She gave him a little smile, trying hard to tinge it with regret. “I think there’s probably a school rule against teachers seeing parents socially.”

“Socially? I said nothing like this.” The count raised his eyebrows in exaggerated shock. “Miss Strange, are you asking me on a date? Very well, I accept.”

“No.” Gray’s single growling word hung in the air like a physical thing. “You are not taking her off school grounds.”

The count’s eyes darted toward Gray in irritation, then back to shine warmly at her. “If he is not your lover, can you not send him away? Then we may speak in private.”

A blank pause filled the room. Count Burana looked over the round frames of his sunglasses—which he was wearing indoors in the middle of the night—at her. For a second, she imagined his pupils weren’t black at all, but the same deep oxblood as his coat. She sensed Gray stiffen with edgy tension when she looked Count Burana in the eye.

“I’m afraid Gray does what he wants to, Your Excellency,” she said, though she had no clue why she was letting Gray stay. For some reason, she was just more comfortable with him in the room. For now.

Count Burana glared at her. Her ears ached from a build-up of sudden pressure squeezing painfully deep inside the canal. Geez, why did that keep happening? Maybe she had an infection. An appointment with the school nurse wouldn’t be a bad idea.

The ear thing distracted her from the complicated circle Gray was drawing on the table. What was he doing? The low-level mumbling coming from him didn’t even sound like English.

She rubbed her ear and hit metal. The earrings from Aunt Pippa’s package? When had she put those on? Her ears popped clear.

“I insist.” Count Burana’s tone turned harsh, scratching like steel wool. He rose from the couch and raised a hand to her. “Come with me.”

“Your Excellency.” Sadie tried not to let her irritation tint her voice. “I think it’s best if we stay here.”

Gray blinked at her. “Sadie, how did you do that?”

“Do what?” she asked.

“You will trust me.” Her guest’s eyes seemed red again. A trick of the light?

Sadie swallowed her anger at the order. “Strange Academy is a non-bullying zone.”

“I compel you.” The count said each syllable like he was trying to take a bite out of the air.

“Burana.” Gray stood, violence glinting in his eyes again.

Her heart lurched at his overprotectiveness. Ignore it, she told herself. It’s just millions of years of female evolution telling you to mate with the strongest male.

Mate? Shit.

The count stared at her. Did his eyes turn redder?

“It is those earrings, Gray. They are special.” He stressed the final word.

She felt a raspberry blush rise to her cheeks as both men developed an interest in her earlobes. She shot her visitor what she hoped was a disarming smile. “Count Burana, I appreciate that you want to take an active role in Carmina’s education. But if I can be honest, I can’t help thinking that you’re taking a little too much of an interest in me. Coming all the way from...Where did you say you were from?”

“It is a small country on the Black Sea. I am sure you have not heard of it.”

She didn’t press him for more. “That’s a long way to come, especially when my telephone works perfectly well. So what’s really up? Did you hear about the non-teacher and decide to check her out?”

With one long finger, Count Burana scratched a spot in front of his ear. Clearly, she’d got it on the first guess.

Gray made a sort of scoffing huff and leaned back against the couch, enjoying the count’s discomfort. He stretched long legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles like he’d relaxed in this room a million times, which irritated her like a mosquito bite that demanded scratching.

BOOK: Strange Academy (Hot Paranormal Romance)
2.91Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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