Marked by Fate Page 2

  “Wow,” Emma said, and she sounded like she had a stuffy nose. I grinned; apparently, she was trying as hard not to breathe through her nose as I was.

  “Eau d’college elevator, where the stank of dirty laundry and nachos blends with that of desperation and raging hormones,” Devin said, grinning.

  “May we never find ourselves smelling worse than it,” I said. “And if I do, please just hose me down for the sake of others. Really, at that point, I don’t deserve any warning and will have fallen too far to care, anyway.”

  Emma laughed as the elevator bumped to a halt and the doors slid open, bringing a fresh breeze with it. “Pinky swear,” she replied. “Though if you ever end up smellin’ like that, it may just be time to bury you.”

  Devin muttered something that sounded oddly like, “You’d be surprised.”

  “I’m sorry, Devin. I didn’t catch that.” I stepped a little closer to her so I could hear her around the huge basket.

  She flashed me a quick smile as she stepped off the elevator. “Oh, I just said I could go for some fries. I’m starving.”

  “Yeah,” Emma said, her curious gaze meeting mine. Apparently, that hadn’t been what she’d heard, either, but she just shrugged it off. “Me too. Let’s drop off our stuff and order a pizza. By the time we have the cars unloaded, it should be here.”

  “What about our other roommate?” I asked. “Do you know her, Devin?”

  She paused for a second as we checked the room numbers. “That way,” she said, motioning to the right with her head. “And yeah, I know Breena. She’s okay, at least in small doses, especially in the morning. She’s an eternal optimist and has the energy levels of a squirrel on crack sometimes. I need a healthy shot of caffeine before I can deal with her, but that’s more my fault than hers.”

  Though I didn’t say anything out loud, I gave an internal groan. A morning person, I was not. Noelle and I had a tacit agreement—we didn’t do anything more than nod at each other before we were both at least halfway through our first cups of coffee. It had been the best way to make sure neither of us died an early, unnatural death at the hands of the other.

  Emma, on the other hand, would probably get along with Breena famously. She hit the floor running and did it with a smile. Maybe she and Breena would keep each other occupied until Devin and I had it in us to interact in a civil manner.

  Then I realized the only way Devin would likely know how Breena was in the morning was if she’d been roommates with her. “So you guys have bunked together before?”

  Devin nodded as she stopped in front of room 434 and set her basket down to fish her key out of her pocket. “Yeah, we were roommates last semester. I didn’t start ’til spring, and her other roommate, uh, transferred to another school.”

  She pushed the door open, then scooped her basket up and went inside, holding the door with her toe so it wouldn’t slam shut in our faces.

  “Oh,” Emma said, “then have you talked to her? Is she here yet?”

  Devin shook her head. “She’s around, but she had some other stuff to take care of. She won’t be here until later tonight.” She set her basket down by a bar that separated the kitchen and living room, then nodded to the door. “Make sure you keep that locked at all times.”

  I pulled my brows together. That sounded a little alarming. “Sure. Is the crime bad in this area or something?”

  She lifted a shoulder. “It’s just better to be safe than sorry.” She bit her lip and looked like she was about to say more, but just shook her head. “You never know what’s out there trying to get in.”

  [What, not [who. Not that she was wrong. As a witch, I [knew a little about things that went bump in the night, but she shouldn’t. Unless … I sent out a tendril of magic to see if maybe our new roomie was more than she appeared, but came back with nada. Still, my gut said something was up, and if I knew one thing for sure, it was that my intuition was rarely wrong.

  Our apartment was nice, but it had no sense of history or feeling of homeyness. Our farmhouse was almost two hundred years old, and the minute you walked into the front foyer, you knew you were in a place where people had lived, families had grown, and happiness had abounded. Not so, here. Aside from a few stains in the living room carpet and a nick or two in the furniture, the apartment looked brand new and felt … empty. I thought maybe it was just because it was a new space that I hadn’t made my own yet, so I wandered around, familiarizing myself and trying to wrap my head around the fact that this was my new home.

  The open kitchen had modern black appliances, tall cabinets with faux-oak doors, and a sleek tile floor designed to look like wood. The stainless steel sink was a double-basin with a garbage disposal—a novelty for me, since we didn’t have one at the farm, and the faucet had a button that gave me the option of using a regular old stream or a sprayer. Snazzy.

  “So how are we gonna decide who gets what room?” I asked, wandering into the living area. A blue overstuffed couch and matching arm chairs squatted around a slightly battered coffee table and faced a TV much smaller and less fancy than the 60-inch smart TV I had at home. Still, it was better than no TV, I supposed, but I was glad Noelle had bought me a little 32-inch to bring with me. I had a feeling I was gonna find myself seeking privacy in our room, at least until I got used to living with strangers.

  Devin shrugged and shoved a turquoise lock off her forehead, then motioned over her shoulder to the two bedrooms situated off the left side of the living area. “I’ve already put my stuff in that one over there, so I imagine Breena will want to bunk with me. You two can have that one.”

  That worked for me. Em followed me to our room, where we dropped the load we’d carried up. There was a twin bed on either side of the room and a single closet in the corner.

  “Good thing neither one of us are clotheshorses,” she said. “From the looks of that, it’s about big enough to hold three tee-shirts and a pair of socks each.”

  I opened it and was pleasantly surprised to find it was bigger that it looked from the outside. It was deep, and rather than have the bar across the back, it had bars running down either side, with shelves above and below so that we each had our own side. It still wasn’t half the size of my closet at home, but I hadn’t brought more than a dozen outfits. Emma’d brought way more than that, but even so, it would do just fine.

  “So what do you think so far?” I asked her as I plunked down on my bed and flopped onto my back.

  “So far, so good, I guess,” she replied, pulling her tablet from her backpack. “A little weird, but good. Devin seems okay. I hope Breena get here in time for us to meet her before we go to bed. I am glad, though, that we decided to come a few days early. I’m exhausted, and only having one night to adjust before classes would suck.”

  Nodding, I pulled out my phone. “Yeah, I’d like to take tomorrow to roam around campus and get familiar with the place so we don’t have to rush to find our classes.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “and it might be nice to cruise around town and get our bearings, too.”

  Sliding my phone to unlock it, I realized I’d missed a text from Cody.

  “Shoot,” I said, my heart speeding up a little. “Cody says he’ll be here in half an hour. I gotta get the rest of my stuff out of the car, because it’s on top of all of his.” I pushed to a sitting position, then stood up and offered a hand to Em. She took it and groaned when I hauled her to her feet.

  “Why can’t we just apparate down and back up? We could be done in ten minutes, and we wouldn’t have to lug it.”

  I raised a brow. “I think the more realistic question is why you opted to bring a full-length mirror, or two different sets of hair curlers, or eight different pairs of shoes when you knew magic wasn’t an option. It’s gonna take five trips to get everything up here the hard way.”

  She sighed. “Because I need a couple pairs of flip flops in case one of them breaks. And a black and brown pair of sandals. Running shoes and regular tennis shoes …”

  I held up my hand. “Stop right there. Did you just say you needed running shoes? The only time either of us ever run is if something’s chasing us or we’re trying to beat it to Tasty Cone before it closes.”

  Raising her brows, she replied, “It could happen. We’re in college, and isn’t the big thing in cities, like, being all about fitness and health, and all that? The brochures all stress the availability of running trails and access to gyms.”

  “You’re such a goob. You know good and well we’re not gonna take up running. Or yoga, or any of that other stuff. We run to the freezer to get ice cream, then eat it in our yoga pants.” Emma was what books would call willowy, like her mom. She was tall, and if you didn’t know better, you’d think she really was a runner. It was just good genes, though. Her mom was an old witch, and I say that without meaning it the way it sounds. She’s several hundred years old, but barely looks to be in her late thirties. Some witches have the gift of longevity, though I was sort of glad that didn’t run in our family. It would suck to watch all your friends get old and die. It just wasn’t the natural order of things.

  “Okay,” she said, grinning and tossing a fuzzy, neon-pink pillow at me, “then maybe I just wanted to have them in case I meet a cute guy who’s into running.”

  “That’s sorry on so many levels,” I said, rolling my eyes. “If you meet a guy who likes to run, just tell him you’ll wait here for him and will gladly go grab a burger with him afterward.”

  She grinned. “That sounds more like what will really happen.”

  “Besides, what about Eli? You two are hitting it off, I thought.”

  “Yeah, but his family isn’t keen on him dating a witch.”

  “And besides, we’re in college and on two totally different career paths.

  ***

  It took us four trips to get everything, but we finally had the cars unloaded except for Cody’s stuff. Devin had been doing the same, so we chatted and got to know each other while we did it. There was nothing like moving and having a joint situation to complain about to foster a sense of sisterhood. It didn’t take us long to figure out that we had a lot in common. She was a little mysterious about her past, but I figured I couldn’t hold that against her; it wasn’t like I gave her the whole 411 on myself. We all had our ghosts. In my case, it was literal. My aunt and three of my favorite people ever were ghosts, so I hope she ended up being open-minded about such things.

  I paused, wondering what all that would be like outside of Keyhole Lake. There, at least to our core group, ghosts were just people who couldn’t do anything physical. Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite that simple, but it was close. I wasn’t sure how the rest of the world dealt with that, but I hoped our roommates, at least, were kosher with it so I wouldn’t have to hide the parts of my family who would no doubt be visiting regularly.

  “Do you care which side you have?” Emma asked, breaking me from my thoughts.

  “Nah,” I replied. “I’m sure I’ll make due with whichever side you don’t pick.”

  Once she’d picked up a pile of clothes she’d left on the hanger, I waited for her to get them almost hung, the decided to mess with her.I probably should have taken into consideration that she was about as graceful as I was; pregnant camels had nothing on us.

  “Wait,” I said right as she was lifting the load onto the bar on the right side. “I changed my mind. I want that side.”

  She whipped her head around to at me over her shoulder while she was twisting and took a step back. Her foot caught in the strap of a sandal, and she wobbled. She squealed and scrambled for the clothes bar to catch her balance. I moved forward to catch her, but she was already going ass-over-teakettle by the time I made it to her. She dropped the clothes and pushed her hands out in front of her and deeper into the closet, likely hoping to catch herself on the back wall. What happened next, though, shocked the crap out of me. Rather than stop her, Emma’s hands went through the paneling in the back of the closet.

  I yelled as she passed all the way through, and made one last, desperate grab at her as she disappeared from sight. The portal or whatever it was closed about her like water, and as soon as her grasping fingertips disappeared, so did her voice. The closet wall, which had taken on a shimmery glow while she was passing through it, solidified, and when I tried to reach through it, my hand hit solid paneling.

  “What’s going on in here?” Devin barked, skidding to a halt as soon as she crossed the threshold into our room. My heart was racing, and I was about three seconds from a full-on panic attack; there was no way I could explain my behavior—or lack of a roommate who was there ten seconds ago—to a non-magical person. I opened and closed my mouth, racking my rattled brain for a viable explanation. I got nothin’, so I just closed my mouth. I had to get rid of her so I could figure out how to save Emma from whatever had just grabbed her. I was no dummy though—I made a lot of mistakes, but I tried not to make the same ones over and over again. I needed somebody with more fire power and experience than I had. I needed to call her mom, Camille, who was a bigwig at the Witches Council, but first I had to get rid of Devin.

  “I, uh, Emma went back down to the car,” I stuttered, trying to get ahold of myself. “Would you mind going to check on her? She doesn’t have a key yet, and I think she’s locked out of the building.”

  Devin’s gaze flickered from my face to the closet and back again. She scrubbed a hand over her face and pulled in a deep breath as a look of realization crossed her features. She flapped a hand, waving off my words. “I knew something stupid like this was gonna happen when you showed up with her and said she was gonna be your roommate. That wasn’t how it was supposed to work.” She frowned and studied the opening to the closet. She pressed her hand against the back wall, and though I’d half expected her hand to push through, it didn’t, just as mine hadn’t.

  “Still,” she said, frowning. “Someone screwed up. It shouldn’t have been possible for her to get through.”

  My heart was racing with panic and it felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room. Camille. I had to call Camille. And Noelle. They’d know what to do.

  “Shelby! Breathe before you pass out. You’re white as a ghost. She’s all right. I promise.”

  All I could thing of was the huge battle we’d fought several months before, and how the witches who’d attacked us had wanted us dead. They’d gotten into our heads and lured us into a trap, and now Em was gone. To hell with the rules—my friend had just disappeared through a seemingly solid closet wall, and I had no idea what caused it or what could have snatched her once she’d gotten to the other side. I couldn’t draw breath to even start to come up with a cover story.

  Devin came up to me and laid her hands on my shoulders. “Seriously. Chill out. This isn’t ideal, but I suppose it will save a lot of hassle down the road. C’mon. Sit down for a minute.”

  I let her lead me to the bed. Plopping down, I struggled to suck in enough breath, and when I’d finally managed it a few times, Devin was nodding. “Good, that’s better. Now I can talk and you’ll hear me. I can’t explain now, because I’m sure Emma’s freaking out as badly on that side as you are on this one, and Stu will seriously freak her out. Why don’t we go get her, and I’ll tell you both the story at the same time.”

  What she was saying didn’t make any sense, but the fact that she knew what was going on and wasn’t freaking out about it finally cut through the haze of terror that had clouded my mind. I turned my full attention to her, or at least as much of it as I could until the rest of the adrenaline wore off.

  I managed to nod, and she nudged me out of the way with her elbow. “Get in here and close the door,” she said, holding out her hand.

  Despite the sheer idiocy of it, I wasn’t thinking clearly enough to heed the alarms going off in my brain. Instead, I reached out and took it, and determined I’d blast her to hell and back if I needed to once she’d taken me to wherever Em had gotten to. I did as she said, and as soon as it was dark, she muttered a couple words and a light lavender light chased away the shadows in the tiny space.

  She reached up and gave the closet bar a twist, then pulled me through the pitch-black opening that had formed in the back of my new closet.

  There was no saying what was going on, but I did know one thing—I’d gotten Emma into yet another mess, and this time, there were no powerful witches or even guardian angels to help me out.

  Devin game my had a squeeze, and I closed my eyes as a feeling akin to disapparating washed over me and pulled me through the void.

  After the feeling of being sucked through space subsided, I gave myself a cursory once-over to make sure all the parts had landed in the right place. If you didn’t do it right, you could leave pieces behind, and I preferred to all of me in one place.

  Beside me, Devin laughed. “We didn’t apparate. We stepped through a portal. There’s a difference.”

  I scowled at her but didn’t respond, because to be truthful, I didn’t know what the difference was. First you’re in one place, then magically transported to another. Sounded like the difference between riding in a truck or walking to me, but where I came from, if you didn’t know your ass from your elbow in a situation, it was best just to keep your mouth shut. Not that the rule was universally applied, but I tried.

  We’d stepped into a cavernous candle-lit library, and the familiar scent of old paper combined with leather filled my nostrils. It’s familiarity was somehow comforting amid the chaos in my head. A behemoth antique cherry desk sat in the middle of the room, the candlelight gleaming off the wood. A settee and two antique wingback chairs upholstered in red leather sat at angles in front of it on either side of a cherry end table that matched the desk. The red carpet silenced our footsteps as I followed Devin further into the room.