Meredith had always known about magic. Her family was magic, one of the most powerful mage lines out there. Having lost her parents to all the fighting though, she stayed far away from it, focusing on school and lading a primarily normal life.
Unti...
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Rush found her outside the coffeehouse door and noticed it was closed. "You haven't been standing out here all day, have you?"
"No." Today she'd been slaving over her book of spells, and Darius's book of harnessing magic effectively. "I've been practicing."
Rush smiled lightly to her, noticing her chipper mood.
"Watch." Holding out a small pad of sticky notes to him, she closed her hand, and he leaned forward as she had expected. "It took me all day to get this one spell right!"
It was a basic change spell, making one thing into another of similar ingredients. Before, on the first day she'd met him, he'd changed a stone into a flower, earth to earth. She had tried all day making nothing but crumpled up messes for hours, so she hoped this worked.
She opened her hand, and Rush jumped back several feet as small paper snakes burst from her palm. From his rolled back lips and the growl that emanated from his throat, she froze. Letting out a slow exhale of breath, as he was accustomed to doing, Rush calmed.
"You spent all day learning to make paper snakes shoot from your palm. Meredith, are you insane?" Rush's smile calmed her and so did his hand that ran gently over her hair as he looked at her appraisingly.
"I skipped past the brain melting page, and a friend of mine said he used to enjoy springing these on people. I wanted to try..." Mer blushed as she had recalled Damien saying he used to love startling people with them. Maybe it should not have been used on a vampire though.
"You're an awful mage." Rush pulled her to him and then they were in his home. Not in his room as normal, she found herself back in the study, and she sat at the table, pulling out her books and putting them on the table.
"I know," Mer answered, and he sat on the other side of the table. His upbeat mood did not last as he looked seriously to her. "What's wrong?"
"While I'd hoped to give you more time to just do whatever, it appears things around here are going to get very dangerous. You may want to focus more on spells to protect yourself than just to play pranks."
"What happened?" There was danger now that hadn't been there this morning when he'd deposited her at the coffeehouse? Whatever it was, seemed to have Rush shaken enough that he'd ask her to learn magic to protect herself.
"The Arcs have made a move on the other vampire houses. While you slept, Vincent Arc had the entire Latvius line exterminated."
The Arcs had killed the entire Latvius family? Why? Weren't they enemies of the mages?
"Mark?" Mer asked, and Remus shook his head.
"His head was hanging above the front door to his abode. His father was in pieces. It's been hundreds of years since a vampire moved against another vampire. It's a hard thing for one of us to fight against our own kind. Imagine if you were to turn around and kill mages. It's not easy, even if they are vicious like the Arcs are."
