Page 2 of Fortune Academy: Year One
I turned my attention back to the topic of our discussion. The stranger hunched into himself, hiding his face in the shadow of his cowl. I frowned.
That either meant he was shy, or he was hiding something.
Someone who could resist a succubus’ charms wasn’t the shy type, so I stuffed my phone in the back of my jeans pocket and marched over to his table. I crossed my arms until he grunted at me.
“Oh, so you can talk?” I snapped. Irritation put me on edge. I was standing right in front of him and he wouldn’t look up at me. “What, you can stare at me all night when I’m halfway across the room but when I come to your table you’ve got nothing to say?”
He twisted the untouched beer that Jess had delivered to him an hour ago, leaving a ring of condensation on the table. “So, you don’t remember me.”His voice came out husky and low… and apparently he knew who I was.
My entire body froze and a cold sweat broke out on my face. I’d harbored the secret hope that someone might recognizeme in a popular bar, but I’d also feared the day someone who knew me might show up. I’d arrived at a monster’s orphanage... and I’d been soaked in more than icy rain that night I’d shown up at Cindy’s doorstep.
Yes I’d been covered in blood—but it was blood that wasn’t my own. By the time I got my clothes off that night and slipped into a borrowed set of pajamas, I discovered I didn’t have a single scratch on me.
I somehow managed to swallow the bitter fear that crawled up my throat. Letting out a nervous laugh, I flipped my hair over my shoulder. Guys always reacted better when they thought I was a dumb blonde. “Sorry. Maybe if you weren’t hiding behind your cowl I could actually see your face, you know? Hard to jostle the memory with just a broody voice.”
He hesitated and then shifted so that his cowl moved just enough for me to see the hard ridge of his chin. “I don’t brood,” he growled.
It was almost cute how he immediately retorted the insult. I was about to make it worse, but then he pulled back his hood all the way and hot damn, the guy was smoking.
And, well, his eyes glowed with a metallic orange magic that marked him as a supernatural bounty hunter, but yeah, details.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that a bounty hunter would attack me, but he still managed to take me off guard. While my mind was mush, my body reacted to the deadly flash of silver of his blade. The world around me stilled and I twisted to put as much distance as possible between me and the hunter. He followed my movements as if the world around us might have stopped spinning, but he could follow me, even here in the pocket of time and space. He struck with the blade that flashed its merciless silver etched across my vision and I knew it would be sharp enough to cut my head clean off my body, but I realized a half-second too late that he hadn’t been aiming for me.
Jess cried out and clutched at her stomach, crumpling to the floor as time unlocked from its slowed momentum.
“Jess!” I screamed and lurched to her aid, but the hunter had me by the arm with a vice grip.
“You’re welcome,” he growled and tugged me into his chest. “She was about to kill you.”
Flattened against his hard abs, I curled my fingers into the thick layers of his coat and peered up at him, taking in the full brutal force of his hard edges and glowing eyes. Everything about him screamed danger, but the way he held me was protective... almost gentle.
A clatter of metal hit the floor and broke a silence that I realize didn’t make any sense in a crowded bar. No one seemed to notice that Jess had been stabbed, or that a hunter with glowing eyes was holding me.
That was because time was frozen... but not Jess.
Jess... who now had a dagger plunged in her chest.
Even a succubus should have died from a mortal wound like that, but she snarled as if irritated by the blade and launched for me. The hunter reacted before I did and held out his hand to defend me, which would have been sweet, except the weapon struck clean through flesh and bone, severing his hand and sending it flopping to the floor like a lump of meat.
“Oh dear...” I murmured.
He cursed and wrapped the stumped remains of his hand in his cloak. When Jess cried out and collapsed to her knees, I realized that he hadn’t cursed under his breath, but rather cast a spell.
So, my bounty hunter had some magical mojo.
“You bastard!” Jess screamed. “She’s mine!”
My brain couldn’t process Jess screaming at the hunter, so my gaze wandered throughout the bar that was like a snapshot in time.
A group three tables down held up their beers in celebration and one sloshed his contents into the air, the foam and droplets making a perfect arc over his friend’s head.
Cars outside that should have been speeding down the dark alleyway were now stopped. The one closest to the window featured a woman with her hair fanned out behind her as if she was trapped in a photoshoot.
Then I spotted Cindy watching from the back with the door cracked open. Even she was trapped in the moment. Whatever had frozen time, only the hunter, Jess, and I were able to move. It bothered me more that Cindy was just back there... watching... as if waiting for something to happen. If she knew who the hunter was, why wouldn’t she have stopped me from talking to him?
The hunter shook me with his remaining hand. He should have been buckled over in pain, but I didn’t know much about bounty hunters. Maybe he could shut his pain off. “You need to stop daydreaming,” he snapped. “Look.” He pointed and my gaze obeyed even though my brain didn’t want to process what was going on.
A knife rested on the ground just inches from Jess’s hand, but not the one the hunter had stabbed her with. That one was still lodged in her chest and blood pooled around the wound and seeped into her clothing.
