Page 26 of Illusory

Relief immediately flooded my body as Caleb Owens appeared at the doorway, his hair tousled like he’d ran his hands through it a few too many times on the way over here and his eyes glimmering with the usual mixture of mischief and preppy arrogance.

“Morning,Blackburns,” he announced cheerfully, seemingly oblivious to the carving knife in my sister’s hand or how close he’d come to being on the receiving end of it. His mouth curved into a toothy grin as he crossed the room and then dropped a huge stack of textbooks onto the kitchen island in front of me. “I’ve come bearing gifts.”

For a split second, I thought maybe he’d developed some miraculous mind-reading ability overnight and had come to bring us precisely the grimoires and Reaper codices we needed, as though our pile wasn’t monstrous enough. And then I recognized the textbooks.

What in the ever-loving fuck?

“You brought mehomework?”The way I said it, you’d think he just presented me with a severed goat’s head.

“Damn straight I did. Trace’s books are in there too,” he answered, looking mighty proud of himself.

I shot him an offended look. “You have a very twisted definition of what constitutes as a ‘gift’, you know that?”

“Maybe,” he shrugged and then flashed his signature cocky grin, “but we can’t have you missing graduation after everything you went through to get here, can we?”

Graduation. My brain seemed to stall around the word.

The truth was, I hadn’t had a whole lot of time to think about school as of late, let alone the immense milestone that was right around the corner. As much as I had wanted to make school a priority, it just always seemed to get pushed to the backburner when held up against much more pressing matters of life and death.

I mean, sure, I probably wasn’t going toneedmy diploma since college wasn’t exactly in my future, and on most days, I was okay with that. But it would still be nice to finish high school just the same. To actually graduate and get my diploma with the rest of my friends. Lord knew it was what my father would have wanted.

“Damn, Caleb.” My throat was suddenly thick with emotion. “That’s really thoughtful of you. Thank you.”

“Well, you know me. I’m a thoughtful guy,” he beamed as Tessa flipped through the pile of homework before pulling out a loose sheet of paper from the stack and reading it.

“Instructions for taking finals through distance learning? How did you pull that off?” She looked up at him and arched her brow like an accusation.

“Nothing that a little smooth talking and a falsified doctor’s note couldn’t handle.” He tweaked his own brows back at her and then gave me a pointed look. “In case anyone asks, you and Trace gave each othermono.”

“Mono?!”My cheeks immediately burned hot. “Seriously, Caleb? What the fuck?”

“Hey, I had to make it believable.” He shrugged.

“Sure you did,” I said and then shook my head at his answering chuckle.

“Well, now that you’re here, you might as well make yourself useful,” said Tessa as if he hadn’t just saved my entire senior year. “We need some fresh protection wards on the house. Ironclad ones. You think you can handle that?” she asked as she set the sheet of paper down and pushed the stack of homework out of the way.

“That happens to be my specialty,” he stated smugly and then crossed his arms, his letterman jacket tightening around his biceps. “Any Supe in particular or are we looking for a blanket ward?”

“It needs to cover everything with the exclusion of Gabriel, Trace, Dominic, and our mother,” answered Tessa.

“That sounds easy enough.”

“Andwe need a ward against certain Descendants as well,” she added, eyeing him warily.

“Descendants, huh?” Caleb whistled as he met each of our gazes, his own narrowing with suspicion. “What exactly are you three getting up to anyway?”

“Can you do it?” asked Tessa, ignoring his question.

“Can I do it?” he repeated as he passed his hand through his messy hair and then tugged at the roots. “I don’t know,man. That’s a tall order even for me. Who are we talking about here?”

“Basically, anyone who might be able to drop in on us uninvited.” Tessa grimaced, knowing what a huge ask that was.

“So, mostly Reapers then,” he surmised.

She crossed her arms. “For starters. Is that something you think you can do?”

Caleb took a deep breath and released it, his head moving in a circular motion as though he wasn’t sure whether to confirm or deny the request. “I’ll have to check the books on that one. I might be able to put up some roadblocks, but I don’t know if we can stop them from coming in completely. That would require some serious magical prowess—the kind of spells the Council usually likes to keep locked away in the vault.”

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