Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 90672 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 453(@200wpm)___ 363(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90672 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 453(@200wpm)___ 363(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
“What?” Seth reaches the bottom of the steps and sets his backpack on the floor.
“Wait, what did Seth do yesterday?” Cody asks, pushing to his feet.
“Don’t make this a huge thing,” Seth says. “Sometimes they feel like something was a bit off, or like something happened in the conversation they can’t remember. That’s not weird. It’s happened before. You both know this.”
“He said he thought you might have hypnotized him.”
“The fuck?” Cody says. “Seth, you used your fucking powers on him? You didn’t tell me that.” He sounds hurt, and I’m not surprised since they tell each other pretty much everything.
“I didn’t want to worry you while you were still recovering,” Seth tells him, referring to the spell we performed last weekend here in the church cellar, during which Cody received a name: Luke Waters. The one the Guides warned us about.
Seth goes on, “And Mr. Bright Idea over here was about to get into a fistfight with the guy.”
“I was getting the ball rolling,” I say, “to make his stay here hell enough for him to want to leave.”
After discovering Luke was the one we needed to get rid of, we agreed we would fuck with him enough to get him to drop out. I would start being an ass to him, and Seth and Cody would use their powers gradually to make his stay as unpleasant as possible.
I’m quickly realizing it won’t be that simple.
“It was a little over-the-top,” Seth says, “and you nearly provoked him into a fight that might’ve gotten you both expelled.”
“Maybe that would have been for the best,” I say.
“You don’t mean that, Brad,” Cody says. “We want to save him, not ruin his chances of getting an education. He needs to leave here on good terms so he can enroll somewhere else. And just because he’s gone doesn’t mean we’re in the clear. We need your powers here at St. Lawrence.”
“No, I didn’t really want that,” I say. “I just…”
I hesitate. It’s difficult to get into this next part.
How fixated I was on him on the field. Studying him as he flicked his nearly black bangs off his forehead. The pink in his cheeks when he really got going.
Then…what it felt like being near him. What touching him did to me.
Luke brought out something in me, and in a moment, all I wanted to do was keep him safe from harm. In a way I’ve never experienced before.
“Yesterday was the limit with my power,” Seth says. “If you had gotten into a fight, I wouldn’t have been able to get you out of it. I had to push on him twice. It didn’t take like it normally does. I wonder how I fucked it up.”
Which brings me to the shit that’s been on my mind. “I don’t think you did anything wrong. There’s something messed up about this guy.”
Cody studies me. “Something else happened, didn’t it?”
Heat surges to my cheeks. “Are you reading me right now?”
“When did I get this inexhaustible power all of a sudden? I’m still fucking zapped from last weekend.”
“Stop changing the subject,” Seth snaps at me. “What happened with Luke?”
“I—I—just know there’s something wrong.”
“Say it,” Cody presses. “You were fucking him, and something weird happened. It’s not like we need to guess what it could be with you.”
Seth grimaces. “When the hell did you have time to fuck him?”
I roll my eyes. I get why this is their assumption, and it’s related, but damn, I wish my power wasn’t seduction—though really, only right now. I definitely enjoy it most of the time.
“We didn’t fuck. I already felt something on the field with him. I think it’s what made me lose control. And after, when we were in the showers, I was giving him shit, he pushed me, and I felt this jolt move through me. It was intense. I had to use my amulet to keep myself from having a raging hard-on, but even that didn’t get me down all the way.”
“I did see that,” Seth says.
“And this morning, I bumped into him in the kitchen, and fuck, I was like a stone as soon as I saw him. I was playing it off fine, but it wasn’t just that. I wanted to fuck him like a goddamn animal—like wild, obsessive thoughts, the kind you get when you’re thirteen. And then he started to take his shirt off—”
“In the kitchen?” Cody asks.
“He got ketchup on it.”
Cody and Seth exchange a confused glance.
“This isn’t the part of the story that matters. Anyway, him taking his shirt off was too much for me, and out of desperation, I grabbed his wrist to stop him, and holy fucking hell—I haven’t done any hard drugs, but if that’s what it feels like, I don’t understand how anybody’s ever able to get clean. I thought I was about to cream right through my pants.”