Chapter One
Thea went into the closet of her dorm room and pulled the door shut behind her. She turned on the lamp, illuminating the small space and all the objects she had brought in there with her. Several containers held crushed herbs or other elements, like the dove feather she’d had to find. There were several test tubes of liquid and a candle to heat the mixture.
She looked at her book of potions, reading the instructions again. She poured oyster oil into an empty flask and added her own saliva. Then the dove feather. Next, she added the rose petals and lavender. She swirled the mixture while holding the tube over the candle’s flame, as the book instructed. She added the remaining ingredients, heating and cooling, stirring and sitting as the potion called for.
When it looked to be the correct color, Thea dipped in her finger and tasted the potion. She’d never made a love potion before, so she wasn’t sure what it should taste like. But there were always certain things to check for with potions, like whether it tasted burnt from the flame or rotten in any way. She also needed to know how strong the taste was and what might hide it the best.
This potion, though, unlike many others, was designed to be hidden. Most times, people didn’t knowingly drink a love potion. They had to be tricked into it. Tricked into loving the person who’d brewed it. When she tasted it, its taste was very faint. She could likely hide the potion in almost anything. Except maybe water. Or something too clear. It did have a pinkish hue to it that would show if whatever she put it in didn’t have a color or taste of its own.
With the potion ready, Thea turned the lamp off and opened the closet door. Her dorm room was empty. That made things much easier. She mixed potions and did spells in the closet sometimes to keep them hidden from her roommate, but always worried that one time she’d come out of the closet to find Marie standing there, staring at her like she was crazy. And she would surely look crazy, having hidden in the closet for who knows how long. What excuse would she give? Was she looking for something? Was she crying in private? Or praying? None of them really applied, but her roommate wasn’t here, so all was well.
She stood in front of the mirror, checking her outfit. She wanted to look cute, but not like she’d dressed up on purpose or anything.
Her denim shorts and t-shirt seemed perfect. The shorts hugged her voluptuous waist and the t-shirt showed off her ample chest. All of her curves looked good today. She smiled, tossed her dark hair over her shoulder, and slipped the tiny vial of love potion into her pocket.
Thea picked up her purse and left her dorm room, locking the door behind her. She walked out of the building and down the street three blocks, then over two blocks until she reached the gray house. It stood tall and eerie before her, its many dormer windows reaching into the sky.
Maybe it only seemed creepy to Thea because she knew what went on inside the huge house. It was full of college students, like most houses on campus, but this one was a bit different. Each of the six students who lived there was a dragon shifter. This was not public knowledge by any means, but since she herself was a witch, also bound by secrets and magic, Thea was in on it. Though she wasn’t allowed to live here. It was exclusively for shifters. The “nest”, as her best friend Elise called it.
She walked to the front door, where they had brazenly and ironically installed a dragonhead door knocker. Clearly they found humor in their secret keeping. Thea knocked and waited. Elise was expecting her, and just a few moments later, she opened the door and smiled at Thea.
“Morning!” Elise said, rubbing her eyes.
“Or afternoon, but whatever,” Thea said.
“Oh.” Elise yawned and looked at her watch, then shrugged. “We were up late.”
They hugged and Thea followed her into the house.
“So, what were you up late doing?” Thea asked.
They went to the living room, where all the windows were covered in thick curtains. Their purpose was to keep anyone from seeing in, so the shifters could shift whenever they wanted to, but it also made the whole house feel very dark and spooky. The curtains, a stiff burgundy fabric, glowed blood red in the afternoon sun, sending a red tint over everything.
“We were working on a spell.” Elise flopped down on the couch and Thea sat beside her. “Want some coffee or something?”
“Sure. What spell?”
They both did magic, like all dragon shifters and witches did, but the shifters could often do more powerful spells. Something in their blood connected them to the magic more strongly than it did for their purely-human counterparts. Thea was always slightly jealous of this, but also knew the hassle and dangers that came with being a shifter.
So many times she’d had to sit with Elise through the night when she couldn’t shift back for some reason. Either she’d gotten too emotional or drunk too much, and she couldn’t get her head in the right place to make the shift. Or there were the times when she accidentally shifted, the worse being in the middle of class in high school, when Thea had had to cast a memory spell on all the students to make it seem like nothing at all had happened in class that day. The moon affected her, as did certain foods and spices, and being out in nature was always dangerous. Anything that tied back to nature, which was the root of all magic, could affect dragon shifters if not handled correctly.
Most shifters, by the time they reached their twenties, had gotten a good handle on shifter life. They stuck together closely, helped each through it and relied on their witch allies to help as well. And the dragons often worked with witches to do more powerful spells. It was a big advantage for them both that they were best friends. Even if she didn’t have the increased magical ability that Elise did, Thea had to admit that many times she was glad she didn’t have to deal with the hassle of shifter life. Her world was much simpler.
Elise padded into the kitchen to make coffee. “We’re working on levitating objects.”
“Whoa.” Thea followed her, leaning on the counter to watch as Elise yawned again, then poured coffee grounds into the filter. “Did you get very far?”
“We didn’t do too badly. Little things are easy now, but bigger things are still difficult. We did manage to move the furniture around.”
“That’ll make moving much easier.”
Elise chuckled. “Sure will. People are next. Lifting living objects is pretty hard, though.”
Thea groaned. “Not as hard as my calculus homework.”
Elise gave her a look. “It is way too early in the morning—err, afternoon—to be thinking about math. I need at least two cups before I pull out any books.”
“I have a test Monday. Guess I’ll be studying all weekend.”
Elise leaned back against the counter while the coffee brewed. “I’ll help.”
“Elise!”
Thea recognized Logan’s voice, coming from the basement. Her heart jumped at the sound. So he was home, after all. Not that she didn’t love just hanging out with Elise, but having her older brother around made things extra special.
Elise walked to the top of the basement stairs and called down, “Yeah?”
“Can you come down here a minute?”
Elise gestured for Thea to follow her and they walked down the creaky basement stairs into a dim room. This was often where they shifted and did spells. The floor was cement, and dirty with bits of plants and herbs. There was no outside light at all and, where there had been small windows high on the walls, they were now covered with cardboard and lots of black duct tape. The walls were lined with long, narrow tables full of miscellaneous bottles and containers. Potions, plants, magical elements. Many candles as well. In one corner there was a sofa with a large tear on one side, probably from a claw or spike from someone getting too close while in dragon form.
Logan stood in the middle of the room, watching them walk down. Thea smiled at him and tried to act cool. But every time she saw him or was near him, her body went into overdrive. Her pulse sped, palms sweat, the whole bit. She’d known him for years, of course, and it seemed like every year he got hotter and hotter. And he was the coolest guy she knew, too. She’d had a crush for a long time, but then their friendship had grown when they had gone off to college. Many times it had been just her and Logan having a deep conversation late into the night, while Elise and the other dragon shifters were asleep upstairs. She wanted something to happen with him so badly. But she thought his primary hesitation was Elise.
“Oh, hey, Thea. I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “Would you be up for helping me out for a minute?”
“Always,” she said.
“Are you still levitating?” Elise asked.
“Yeah.”
Thea looked him over while he talked to Elise. His dark hair was in short spikes today, glistening with some sort of product. He wore a close-fitting t-shirt that showed off his arms nicely and his jeans hung just right on his hips. His bare feet stuck out the bottom and he looked chill and relaxed like he always did.
“So, Thea,” he said.
She snapped her attention from his body to his words.
“Yes.”
“After Elise casts her spell on me, would you be willing to be my object?”
She raised an eyebrow at him.
“I want to try levitating a person.”
“Okay, sure.”
“Thanks.” He smiled at her and she thought he could have asked her just about anything and she would have agreed to it. “I’m going to shift now.”
She stepped back to watch him. First, he cast a spell over himself, raising his arms and speaking the magical words. This, Thea knew from what Elise had told her, took care of the tangible physicals, as Elise called them. In other words, it made sure that anything he was wearing at the moment of transformation would be there when he changed back to human form. Shredding your clothes wasn’t necessary when you had magic to take care of that for you.
He stood tall and then grew taller as the change started. His skin darkened and broke out into diamond-shaped scales as his limbs morphed into dragon shape. He landed on all fours on the floor, his hands and feet now clawed paws. His arms and legs were covered in red-orange scales that led up to his thick chest and body. His neck stretched and his nose and mouth reached forward into a snout. His back rounded, the spikes of his spines popping free and running down to his back and beyond, along with the tail growing out from behind him.
When the change was complete, he shook like a dog does when getting water from its fur. Even in dragon form, Thea thought he was hot. He was now powerful and strong, and something about his animal side was just as sexy as his human side. She wished she could run her hands along his smooth scales and feel just how sharp his spikes were.
Elise began her spell, a ball of green energy forming in her hands. She shouted the final word of the spell and threw the ball at Logan. It broke over his chest and was absorbed into his body.
Logan took a paw and spread herbs from a pile into a small circle in front of him. He tipped over a small bottle of liquid, mixing it with the herbs. Then he bowed his head slightly and the mixture began to smoke, releasing a faint yellow wisp.
He stood and turned to her.
“Move more to the middle,” Elise said. “In case you fall.”
She gulped but took a step forward. She really hoped she didn’t fall. Not that the ceiling was so high in the room that she’d fall far, but it would surely be embarrassing.
Logan faced her, and after a moment the yellow wisp came and swirled around her feet. She felt the ground slip away. She almost toppled over as she rose into the air a few inches. With nothing to stand on, she was rather unsteady. But her body rose higher and she was floating now, a few feet above the ground. She reached up and touched the ceiling.