Two hard-faced men wearing black shirts and suits stood beside the door, silver bladed knives held ready. Neither of them spoke, they just stood there, exuding an aura of threat and aggression that was entirely out of place in the pink and purple themed colours of the room that Alexis shared with Beryl.

Alexis sat on her bed, all too aware of how little clothing she was wearing as Beryl sat upright in her bed, covers pulled up to her chin and eyes wide as she watched and listened. The old woman who had tended to the girl in the showers dabbed a soft cloth against Alexis’s left ear as the younger woman winced.

“No permanent damage,” Millicent Buttle said, her voice raised enough to be almost called a shout. “You were lucky.”

“Aye, I feel lucky,” Alexis muttered, avoiding the older woman’s eyes.

Millicent was the dorm mother, a position of some importance since not only did she supervise the entire dorm building, lending a friendly ear to a young girl far from home, or settling disputes before they became ugly; but she also ensured the magical wards around the building were maintained and that the girls in her charge were safe.

Which was a duty that had failed that very night and had left the older woman furious. Her wrinkled face was scrunched, lips pinched and eyes narrowed as she probed for answers. Like the two wardens at the door, there was an almost physical sense of danger emanating from the dorm mother.

“Tell me,” she said. “What happened.”

Alexis barely avoided rolling her eyes. She’d already repeated the tale twice but it seemed a third time was needed.

“I went to pee, heard a noise and found that girl in the shower, bleeding. There was a man there and-“

“Tell me about this man.”

“He was maybe twenty, short dark hair with eyes that were a deep brown.” Her cheeks flushed as she brought his image to mind and she glanced away from the older woman’s knowing gaze. “I don’t know what else to say.”

“What was he wearing?”

“A black shirt that was unbuttoned and black trousers,” Alexis said, her own eyes narrowing in concentration. “That’s it.”

“No shoes or socks?”

“Ah, no.”

Millicent held her hand up before Alexis, showing the numerous rings that she wore on every finger. “No rings or necklace? Any jewellery at all?”

“No.”

“What about tattoos?”

Her cheeks warmed even more as she tried to focus on the picture of him that she held. He had been undeniably attractive, with his easy smile and casual confidence. He had been in the room with the weird Crawler creature and not even flinched.

“None that I saw,” she said. “But I was kind of busy at the time.”

“Okay.” Millicent sucked on her teeth as she made a soft clucking sound. “Tell me what he said to you.”

“Why not just ask him?” Behind Millicent, the two wardens exchanged a quick look that contained volumes and Alexis blinked as realisation hit her. “You don’t know who he was!”

“These dorms are single-sex,” Millicent agreed. “For our girl’s safety, there are wards that would alert me if a male entered the building after hours.”

Which made sense in a puritan kind of way, Alexis thought glumly. In reality, she had experienced the dangers of being a young woman alone in the world. She had seen more than anyone had any right to, but she understood that not all men were predators and considered the precautions as overkill.

Millicent, as though reading her thoughts, smiled and patted her knee gently. “There are reasons and not those that you would expect,” she said. “Regardless of the why, my question is to how. Just how did this young man enter the dorms and why was he in the showers just as that vile creature attacked.”

“You think he had something to do with it?”

“We cannot discount that, but no, I do not believe that to be the case. Now, tell me what he said to you.”

Nose wrinkling, Alexis tried to remember the conversation which, brief as it was, had also been conducted at a time of considerable stress and she found it difficult to remember everything.

“Ah, he first said that he wasn’t the one that hurt her.”

“You believed him?”

“I did.” Another glance was shared by the two wardens who were, quite frankly, beginning to annoy Alexis with their silent commentary on her strange night. “I mean, he didn’t seem threatening.”

“He was also alone in a place he should not have been with a bleeding and incapacitated girl at his feet,” Millicent suggested primly. “Yet you believed him when he stated that he was not the cause of her injuries.”

Alexis lifted her shoulders in a shrug and answered as honestly as she could. “Yes.”

Millicent nodded to herself and waved a hand. “Continue.”

“Not much more to say. I asked him to help me move her and he said he couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”

“Definitely couldn’t.” Millicent gestured for her to continue again. “He seemed to know where it was and warned me before it jumped out at me. He told me what it was and that it could be killed but told me he couldn’t kill it when I asked him to.”

“Again, he couldn’t, not that he wouldn’t,” the older woman mused, scratching at her chin, eyes growing distant. “But then he showed you the spell?”

“Yes.”

“Which you cast, without questioning him about it?”

“Yes.”

Millicent sighed and settled back on her heels as she shook her head. “Young lady, you have a surprising lack of scepticism for a girl used to surviving alone on the streets of a major metropolitan city.”

“It was a bit of a tense situation,” Alexis said, hating how defensive she sounded. “I didn’t have much in the way of choices.”

“You could have run and raised the alarm.”

Which was something Alexis hadn’t even considered doing, so she just shrugged weakly, mouth drawing down as she sulked a little.

“The spell,” Millicent said, changing tack much to Alexis’s relief. “Was Boysen’s Bursting, a spell created almost two centuries ago by a young Danish witch who was far too pleased with its creation. It is not a spell that is taught to students because of how dangerous it can be, especially in confined spaces.”

She frowned at the sticky trail of blood that had run down from Alexi’s left ear and shook her head. “You are incredibly lucky that the blast only burst your eardrum and woke the entire dorm rather than tearing a hole in the side of the building.”

“Sorry.”

“You didn’t know any better, which is partly our fault for not finding you when you were young enough to be trained properly.” Millicent exhaled a soft sigh. “As it is, you may well hurt yourself or another before you properly learn the basics. You have quite a talent, young lady, and a dangerous talent it is.”

There was nothing Alexis could think to say to that so she just bowed her head, looking down at her hands where they rested in her lap. Her cheeks burned with the embarrassment of being scolded in front of the wardens and Beryl.

“In the morning,” Millicent said, sternly. “Which is not too far off as it is, you will come directly to my office before you attend any lessons. Is that understood?”

“Yes.”

She looked back over her shoulder at Beryl who gave a sharp squeak and tried to shrink back beneath her covers.

“You will ensure she knows where my office is, yes?”

“Yes, Miss Buttle.”

A sharp nod was the only reply the old woman gave before she pushed herself to her feet. She waved at the wardens, shooing them from the room and headed out herself. Once the door closed behind her, she turned to peer along the long hall which had emptied of curious onlookers as soon as she stepped out of the room.

“You believe her?” Euan, the taller of the two wardens asked.

Millicent didn’t immediately reply as she considered everything that she had seen and heard from the young woman. Her initial distrust had faded somewhat and she knew herself well enough to know that she had begun the questioning in bad faith.

Her disagreements with Peter were well known throughout the Academy faculty and staff, and she had an instant dislike, and distrust, of Alexis merely due to the manner in which she had arrived at the Academy.

However, after speaking with her, she had been forced to re-evaluate her initial impression and her stomach churned at the implications of what she had learned. She gazed steadily at Euan, before speaking as she chose her words with care, for no matter how loyal a warden he had been, he was still not a witch.

“I believe that she described things as she saw them, yes.”

Euan, an old hand at dealing with the faculty merely nodded and held back his own questions, opting instead to stick to things that he would be likely to get an answer for. “You have instructions?”

The old witch looked back at the door, eyes narrowing as though trying to peer through the age polished wood to see the young woman sitting on her bed within. She chewed absently on her lower lip before inclining her head the tiniest fraction, a movement so small that most wouldn’t have caught it.

“Send word to the Headmaster,” Millicent said, voice dropping low so that even the preternatural hearing of the werewolves could barely hear her. “I will need to see him, immediately.”

Euan’s eyebrows rose at that as he shared a look with his companion who shook his head in reply to the silent query. “Are you certain this warrants that?”

“Yes,” Millicent said, pressing her hands against her stomach as though attempting to stop the churning there. “I very much fear this does.”

Inside the room, Alexis lay back on her bed ignoring the slew of questions from her excited roommate. Her head hurt, a stabbing pain behind her right eye that was warning of an impending migraine.

In the space of two days, she had encountered a giant monster in the subways of London, helped a witch cast a spell and been attacked in the showers of her dorm. Not only that, she had cast a second spell, one that had left her with a headache and a feeling of nausea that didn’t seem to want to fade away.

She had more questions than she could possibly organise into a coherent form that would allow her to get answers, and she had met a guy who, despite telling her nothing about himself, had firmly entrenched himself in her head.

Alexis groaned and rolled over, pulling the pillow over her head. She was no stranger to dating and had had plenty of boyfriends, though few that were memorable enough to remember a week after splitting up with them.

They had been a useful means to an end. Comfort, companionship, an escape from boredom or her family. As much as she had enjoyed their company she had never really had feelings for any of them, especially not like those described by friends when they talked about their boyfriends.

Why then, she asked herself, did it feel like her stomach was packed full of butterflies and why could she not get those deep, dark, eyes of his out of her mind. Why was it that all she could think of was staring into them and seeing just how deep into the darkness she could fall?

Another groan as she pushed her face down against the mattress, resisting the urge to scream. It was insane behaviour. There was absolutely no reason for her to feel anything for the man but annoyance at his inability to help her.

Yet there it was, an urge to find him, to know more about him. There were questions she wanted answers to and not least of them was what the hell he had been doing in the dorm’s shower room. If anything, his being there should be setting off alarm bells in her head as every part of her being screamed to stay far away from him.

But those damned eyes of his, deep, wells of darkness that hid an entire person within. Eyes that she could stare into and see to the very core of his being. They were all that she could see when she closed her eyes.

She let out a sad sob of frustration at how she was behaving. It would be a long night of restless sleep and a full day to come of learning with people who were far ahead of her already. She had no reason to be even thinking of boys when she had so much already on her plate.

Still, though, she couldn’t stop thinking about those eyes.