The Wolf's Curse (Brunswick Academy for Gifted Girls Book 5) Read online

  The Wolf’s Curse

  Brunswick Academy for Gifted Girls

  Chloe Vincent

  Table Of Contents

  1. Lilith

  2. Jordan

  3. Lilith

  4. Jordan

  5. Lilith

  6. Jordan

  7. Lilith

  8. Jordan

  9. Lilith

  10. Jordan

  11. Lilith

  12. Jordan

  13. Lilith

  14. Lilith

  15. Jordan

  16. Lilith

  17. Lilith

  18. Lilith

  19. Jordan

  20. Lilith

  21. Jordan

  Epilogue

  More Paranormal Book Action!

  Hot, Quick Reads!

  About this series

  About the Author

  The Wolf’s Curse

  (Brunswick Academy for Gifted Girls)

  Copyright © 2020

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. For permission requests, email [email protected]

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events, businesses, companies, institutions, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  1

  Lilith

  Lilith Cotter was bored.

  Demons like herself (though she was really only about a quarter demon just as most walking terran demons were) were prone to boredom, in her opinion. It was an opinion borrowed from her mother who had pyrotechnic powers and used to get so bored and frustrated when she was between freelance casting jobs, she sometimes ended up setting their houseplants on fire just for the excuse of buying new ones. Lilith’s father thought this was an endearing trait and that was how Lilith knew what love was.

  Love was on the horizon too, along with finally graduating from the Brunswick Academy for Gifted Girls. She was the last of the five girls in her seventh-year graduating class left to be sent on a mission to save one of the five elemental totems that would bring the magical world back into balance...and with it, bring her a mate who she was supposed to fall in love with.

  If Lilith was honest, she was as curious about what her future mate would be like as she was about how the rest of her mission would go. The fates could be funny sometimes. Nobody knew that better than demons; they were mutations, really. The demons like her who walked the Earth were like watered-down versions of the creatures who walked the underworld. Most of them had no more ill intent to cause harm than humans or other magical folk, though there was still plenty of prejudice. Dark demons were another matter. Dark demons were born of dark magic from the underworld and, in general, you never wanted to come across one. But they had no more in common with Lilith than a human had with an amoeba. Not that it was always easy to explain to people who heard the word “demon” and reflexively balked.

  It was a Tuesday afternoon and summer was winding down at Brunswick. The summer sessions for the girls who attended classes through the long hot months were completed and they had all gone back home to finally relax for a few weeks before school started up again in the fall. Many staff members had also left for a week or two, having already prepared their curriculums for fall. There were some kitchen and cleaning staff and other than that, there was only Ms. Friar and Headmistress Cargenburg and Benjamin the Oracle left. The trio had been around all summer, waiting like the girls for information from the fates (sent via the Oracle) as to the missions the girls would go on. Four girls had been sent to retrieve four elemental totems and all had succeeded and found their true loves to boot.

  Only Lilith was left and she felt like the last few months had been the longest summer of her entire life.

  Now, the school was almost deserted. All her fellow seventh-year classmates were off somewhere with their mates, lost in the giddy haze of the honeymoon period. Her fae classmate Cara was with Prince Dayen, the future king of the fae realm. They were visiting the realm as they often did. Addy, the dragon shifter, was visiting family friends in Australia with her mate, Blaise. Freya, the witch, was in North Carolina at her griffin shifter mate’s mansion and kept insisting she would fly back whenever needed but Ms. Friar had said she deserved the rest as did all the other girls. Isla, the mermaid, was visiting her parents at their cottage on the Massachusetts shore with her merman mate, Kai.

  Everyone had someone and somewhere to be and all Lilith could do was...wait. With waiting came worrying. She was the last girl in line to rescue a totem and although she had always been a confident person, still she wondered; what if I fail? She had read all her books, watched a lot of bad movies, bought more books at the bookstore in town, and she was still left with too much time on her hands to do much else but worry.

  She worried and she paced the halls because she was too restless to read and she was tired of swimming in the lake, scrolling through Instagram until she went blind and watching TV shows that did not hold her interest. She found herself burning old demonic runes into dark corners of the school walls with the tips of her fingers (part of the power she’d inherited from her mother) while humming under her breath. She was about ready to climb the walls which she could also do in a pinch much like Spider-Man except that it made her fingertips pretty sore so she only pulled that trick out when she had to.

  Lilith had wandered all the way to the library on the other side of Brunswick from her dorm and was listlessly wandering the aisles she had wandered for the last seven years, when Ms. Friar appeared, her shadow looming at the end of the Fae Lore section. Ms. Friar was dressed quite casually, which was unusual for her. She was wearing jeans (Lilith was sure she’d never seen Friar in them before) and a flowered tunic blouse and her hair was in two long braids wrapped around her head. She was tall and she loomed over Lilith, smiling wanly at her.

  “Hello, Lilith,” Friar said calmly.

  Any time Lilith saw one of The Trio these days, her heart started racing. But she’d had some false starts before and she hated to look foolish, thinking she was finally going to be sent on her mission only to find out The Trio just wanted to take her to lunch because they felt sorry for her being the last one left on her own. It was all a little mortifying.

  “Hello, Ms. Friar,” Lilith said.

  Ms. Friar looked very serious and for a moment, Lilith thought she might get in trouble for the runes-type vandalism she’d left on the walls...except that the etchings could easily be removed with a spell anyhow.

  “It’s time, dear,” Ms. Friar said, smiling beatifically which was also not like her. “Benjamin’s had a vision. You’re to go to Manhattan. Come. I’ll tell you the details.”

  She even held out her hand for Lilith to take and she did, feeling a little like a child.

  “Are you ready, dear?” Ms. Friar asked, smirking slightly.

  It had been an endless summer and although Lilith had been given more time than anyone else to fret over her mission and whether or not she could accomplish it, she felt a great sense of power now, the fire of her demon lighting in her eyes when she said, “Hell yeah, I’m ready.”

  2

  Jordan

  Jordan’s apartment, like everywhere else in the Park Underground had no win
dows, and sometimes Jordan wished it did. Buildings above ground seemed so precariously open and vulnerable with their doors that went right outside into the world and their glass windows and Jordan actually liked feeling a little closed in and cozy in the Underground place he shared with his roommate, Leif, but there was something about having a view to the world right there on the wall. Sometimes he found himself in one of those tall buildings in Manhattan with the big windows that looked out on the city and felt a little jealous. It might be nice to have a window at least in the front room and be able to see the rest of the Underground below the landing in front of his place; all the shifters, fae, witches, wizards, demons and otherwise bustling around in the sprawling metropolis that sat there right beneath the city without anyone knowing.

  Jordan was kicking back on his couch, his computer in his lap and distracting himself from his work wondering if he could put a window in himself. How hard could that be? All you have to do is knock a hole in the wall and then fix it to the size of a thick pane of glass...somehow. Maybe he’d think about that.

  On his laptop screen, half-written code glowed, as if mocking him. He sighed, cranked up the volume of his playlist, and started typing again.

  Strictly speaking, he didn’t need to do these coding jobs to earn human money. He could just stay here in the Underground in his place with Leif. None of that was paid for with U.S. dollars. It was paid for with his work as one of the Underground guardians who patrolled the city and the park for any threats and settled things between magical denizens of the Underground. Plenty of people never even went upside and so didn’t need any money to spend there (besides which, things were so expensive in Manhattan) but Jordan liked to have the option and sometimes Leif was actually able to drag him to some club or bar and he needed money for that. And as long as he had money for that, he also liked to spend his money at vintage clothing stores, and fancy coffee places, and various restaurants (he was partial to pho).

  Jordan had little to complain about. He didn’t even do much of this coding work and his guardian job wasn’t very taxing most of the time. It was just that he had been keeping to himself lately and when he did that he started to brood.

  Leif had told Jordan often that he was a world champion brooder. Jordan was almost proud of that at the time. But in reality, brooding was not as fun as it appeared. He was young. He had only just turned twenty-three and he was a wolf shifter in the prime of his life. I should not be wasting time with too much brooding.

  But sometimes there was so much to brood about. Thinking about it only made him feel more lonely, yet sometimes that darkness was inescapable.

  Jordan’s little apartment was small and dimly lit (except when Leif turned on all the lights against Jordan’s wishes) and his couch was a blue loveseat that never seemed big enough for him and Leif but they had a lot of pictures and band posters glued to the walls and there were underground friendly magic herbs like blood weed and goblin root in pots all around that gave it a warm and homey air. And besides, Leif’s presence was always kind of there even when he wasn’t around. Jordan wriggled under his gray blanket and took a deep breath and plunged back into the coding and tried to forget about that lonely feeling that never seemed to leave.

  He did about five more hours of easy coding work that would bring him a nice chunk of change for the next time he decided he needed a giant bowl of pho, but eventually he fell asleep there on the couch, his preferred jazz playlist still playing softly.

  “Hey! Get up! Get up!” Leif shook Jordan’s shoulder and Jordan growled softly under his breath. He was always a little grumpy when woken from his sleep but Leif was used to that.

  “Whaaaat?” Jordan grumbled and sat up, snarling at the kink in his neck. He was always falling asleep on the couch and it always put the same kink in his neck. He reached behind him to rub out the sore spot and thought that he should be going on a run upside in the park, wracking his brain as he tried to remember whether he was scheduled for a patrol with Leif.

  “Patrol time!” Leif crowed.

  Well, that answered that question.

  “Alright, alright…” Jordan closed his laptop and threw his blanket aside before staggering off to his room to change into jeans and a sweater. He had been wearing sweats. Leif always wanted to go into the city after a patrol. His room was tiny; a bed and a closet and artwork and his charcoal sketches of New York and the magical folk of the Underground papering every bit of empty wall. Jordan changed clothes and glanced in the mirror hanging on his wall, futzing with his hair until it looked stylish.

  Jordan had an unusual look that girls tended to gravitate toward. He had a strong, straight nose and huge brown eyes that some described as “soulful”. His thick, deep chestnut hair looked nearly black when it wasn’t in direct sunlight, and fell past his ears if he didn’t push it back into a lazy pompadour. He was tall and pale from spending so much time in the Underground.

  Leif told him he looked more like a vampire than a wolf shifter and Jordan generally responded to that with a kidney punch.

  “Did you work today?” Leif asked as Jordan followed him out into the crowded landing that looked out on the cramped city below; wizards and witches and demons and shifters of all sorts bustling along the narrow streets between small stone buildings. The Underground was pretty much a regular town like any other...except that it was hidden beneath Central Park.

  “Yeah, I did a bunch of coding.” Jordan brushed past a line of young witches, each of whom looked him and Leif up and down and a couple of whom winked. He was used to that and it never led anywhere. He smiled tightly even as Leif winked back at them and they made their way past other apartments like theirs and up the flight of stairs built into the cave walls that led to a narrow tunnel letting out in a hidden spot of the Ramble Cave, a secluded part of the park.

  It was evening and there were some humans around The Ramble but because of the strong wards keeping the Underground’s location hidden from the view of humans, nobody noticed when they appeared to walk right out of the stone steps of Ramble Cave. They only smiled blankly and went about their business.

  Jordan and Leif, who was also a wolf shifter, chatted about their day and gossiped about the denizens of the Underground and walked their usual route on foot in human form; the first part of their scheduled patrol. There were couples out picnicking on the grass, canoodling and making out, and Jordan watched them with jealousy like a hotly-glowing ember in his chest.

  He couldn’t have what they had. Not ever. He should have been used to it by now but it only ever seemed to get harder.

  “We should go out tomorrow night!” Leif said. The park was near closing. Soon they would shift and make their real patrol, keeping to the shadows and keeping their sensitive wolves’ ears and noses open for any potential threats (there was always some penny ante dark wizard around trying to start something). “Take on the town! Maybe go somewhere with dancing, ya’ know?”

  “What’s the point?” Jordan mumbled.

  “Oh, I see,” Leif said, rolling his eyes. “You’re brooding today. Good to know. I got broody Jordan tonight. Well, the point would be to have fun.”

  Jordan ignored the little jabs about brooding. He was used to it and anyway, he couldn’t completely blame Leif for teasing him. Besides, they were best friends. They teased each other all the time about everything and it was practically a form of affection between them. “All that’s going to happen is, I’ll meet some cute girl who will seem super into me and then I’ll...ya’ know, I’ll see that look in her eyes like she’s just smelled something bad and she’ll take off and think she wasted her time. That’s how it happens. It’s a curse, Leif. Can’t get around it.”

  “You could still get laid?” Leif said hopefully.

  “Honestly, I’m tired of sleeping with people who are either totally indifferent to me or actually dislike me,” Jordan said, sighing. “Which is apparently the only way to get around the curse even if it’s just for sex.”

  “I
t sucks, man,” Leif said as they walked along a cobblestone path on their way to the more deserted and wooded part of the park as it started to close. “I’m sorry.”

  Jordan had always been impressed that Leif was able to somehow always be genuinely sympathetic when Jordan whined about the same problem he’d possessed since birth.

  The curse was simple or at least it appeared simple on its face: Nobody could ever fall in love with him.

  That was all there was to it. Yet there were subtleties that didn’t occur to even experienced magical folk when he opened up about how it affected him. Like that women could be attracted and even find themselves interested but very quickly they were slammed with a sudden and visceral dislike of him. Fortunately, that did not mean that all women hated him. He had women friends who merely thought of him as a brotherly type. He was only grateful for that. But beyond friendship, he had absolutely zero chance of romantic companionship and was only ever able to get sex with women who weren’t remotely interested and maybe barely attracted. That appeared to be a narrow crack in the curse. At least it was something. He was not a virgin. But pursing sex and nothing else was less and less fulfilling with every year that passed.

  To Jordan’s mind, the most frustrating part of the whole curse thing was that nothing about it was his fault. He had committed no crime that he had to reflect on when he would otherwise be romancing a girl. The curse was his father’s fault. But he hated thinking about the whole thing. It only brought him down.