Rebel Academy: Crave

Chapter Three MAGENTA

The worst thing about being a ghost after my own mother had burned me at Hecate’s Tree was the eternal craving: for touch, taste, love, and a truly decent cup of tea.

The second worst thing apart from being unable to give Robin the satisfaction of telling me I told you so or freaking him out at a séance by levitating either the table or the medium…? Even Robin hadn’t warned me that you could be trapped with other ghosts.

Whether Henrietta’s sacrificial burning had been taken as a gift by the goddess or Hecate had finally decided to save me (far too late, if you asked me), she’d caught both my familiars and me between life and death within her branches. Yet Flair and Echo had broken free of her hold to fly across to watch over the Rebels and mimic their strange new way of talking and touching, until over the decades I might’ve become — just a little — crazy as well as wicked.

It’d taken more than a century, but now I might once have been the witch who’d cursed Rebel Academy to perpetual winter, yet I’d been long forgotten by the students. Echo swore that I was still legendary with the descendants of the House of Crows who ran the academy. I’d quite shivered with delight, when I’d heard that they burned black candles at the Enchanted Ball each year to ensure their protection and my banishment.

Ah, family.

I giggled, floating higher through the withered branches of the tree, which had died the same night as I had.

The glade had been turned to bones. It was a black ring in the white of the wood. I could hear no songbirds, only the fizzing of my magic, which had rooted after so long. The moon peeked through the shroud of clouds.

I peered over the snow veiled canopy towards the castle. Then a pink feathery bundle crashed into me in the darkness. I caught Echo, snuggling him as tightly as I once had Mr Tailsy. Echo’s magenta feathers were sensitive, and he pushed closer into my hand, rambling a series of clicks.

As a ghost, Echo had been reborn with my magic pulsing through him. I’d imagined that he’d be insulted to match my sparkles but I caught him preening more often than Byron had, and Robin had always called my father a peacock.

Byron had only smirked at that.

At least, I could touch Echo and Flair; ghosts were connected, even if we were divided from the living. Often, that was the best thing about being a ghost.

But then, there were other times…

“By my blood, the elf prince has a spine-tingling voice like ice melting in a spring valley.” Echo flapped around in my arms, until he rested both wings on my shoulders. “Why does he only sing in the shower? I reckon that he’s shy or has a dark angsty secret.”

“You’re bored again, aren’t you?”

“Maybe.”

I tapped Echo on the beak. “It wasn’t gentlemanly of you to peek into the Princes’ showers.”

Echo snickered. “I’m no gentleman; I’m Magenta’s familiar.” Then he sighed, dreamily. “The elf sounded sad. You’d have kissed him better.”

I shuddered at the imagined sensation. Echo was…mildly…obsessed with the uptight but ethereally beautiful elf prince who sang to himself when he thought that no one was listening.

I was…mildly…obsessed with the idea of showers. Water that magically attacked your body as if it was a waterfall, whilst you stood beneath it naked…? Why would I not be entranced by such a powerful spell?

I grinned. “I thought that I’d proved how far I’d go not to kiss princes.”

Echo wriggled out of my hold, hopping onto a branch, before clearing his throat. “He sang this strange song, “Would You Like to Build a Snowman?”. I told him, by my fangs, I’d love to play with you. But he didn’t hear me, of course.”

When Echo launched into the plaintive song at the top of his off-key voice, I grimaced.

Was that a strange elven song? I hadn’t known that they were so desperate to make snowmen.

“You’d do better to offer to suck him off.” Flair descended out of the cloudy sky, settling next to Echo. Then he pecked his twin on the wing, until he quietened with a grumbling rattle. “The stick’s so far up his arse that I can see it poking out of his pretty sky-blue hair.”

Echo nodded. “He does have pretty hair. Although, it’s not as pretty as our witch’s.”

Flair rolled his eyes. “Magenta is an absolutely perfect young ghost witch.”

I fluttered my lashes. “Why thank you, my sweet familiar.”

“Now let me tell you what I saw. Here’s a clue…” Flair dropped on his back and writhed like he was dying.

Sadly, I knew better.

“Unless Spells, Hexes, and Potions Class went hideously wrong today, I’m assuming that you’ve been adding to your Wank Count.” I raised my eyebrow.

I knew far more about wanking than a Victorian witch burned for wicked pleasures ever should. Hold on, maybe I should have known about that…? Either way, the Wank Count was a game played between my familiars for the number of students that they caught indulging in self pleasure, and as this was an academy for the bad boys of the supernatural world, it now ran into the thousands.

“Fuck me, I always thought that the Dark Fae were kinky.” Flair stilled. “But the fae prince—”

“Don’t you dare mention fae,” I snarled.

Suddenly, I was shaking. My dress billowed out into mist like I was fading, even more ghostly than before.

“Prince Lysander’s not his uncle,” Echo said softly. “He’s not Titus.”

“He’s still a prick though,” Flair muttered.

I turned away from them, staring once again at the academy. I ached to return to it.

Last term, an Immortal had arrived: an incubus. His craving for pleasure had been as great as mine. It’d called to my magic, feeding and strengthening it, until at long last, I too had been able to break free of the tree but only to reach him in the Immortal’s West Wing, when he’d summoned me.

I craved him now.

“As the bones fall, I heard the Principal and her daughter talking of something…someone…important.” Echo hopped closer. “A new student has been sent here and he’s special.”

With an effort, I solidified. Hello, ankles, my old friends.

I blew out a breath, as my heart (or what passed for my ghostly memory of one), slowed. I’d had over a century to understand that I wasn’t dead, but also that I still felt alive. The effect was horrifying. Perhaps, I’d been the one cursed?

“Special?” I asked, welcoming the distraction.

Flair snapped his bill together with a single sharp snap of irritation. “Just because your witchy bitch of a mum transformed our fuckable Fallen backsides into familiars, doesn’t mean that we can’t read.”

I blinked. “Thank you, I’m sure that your skill will become invaluable when I ask for my next bedtime story. Oh wait, I’m trapped in a tree. Well, do continue to list skills that for some inexplicable reason you think I doubt.”

“The new student’s file was open on the study desk, and I peeked at the first page, boss. His name’s Fox, and he arrives tomorrow morning. By the way, you make me shiver with all that sexy sarcasm.” Flair chuckled darkly.

“Special means…different,” Echo muttered.

Why did he sound so worried? All students were sent to the academy because they’d committed a crime or were too different for their own worlds.

What had this new student, Fox, done that made him such a danger?

All of a sudden, my magic pulsed brighter, tugging on me, until I knew — soul deep — burning and desperate, why Fox was both special and different. He wasn’t a danger to the academy: he was in danger.

Hecate, no…

The new student was a mage.

Right now, Fox had crossed the wards and was walking alone down the long path through the Dead Woods, which swept through the estate to the castle’s gateway.

I knew because I could sense him.

He had no idea what awaited him.

Not safe, not safe, not…

I could feel his heartbeat in time with my own, taste the fear on his sweet breath, and in turn feed him my own fizzing magic like candyfloss.

I wouldn’t let him be alone.

It took me a moment to register Echo thwapping his wing against my face.

“On my blood, you faded.” Why did Echo sound like he was weeping? “Don’t leave us, please, don’t leave.”

My voice was far steadier, than my ragged breathing, “Candles and cauldrons, I shan’t ever abandon you. The new Rebel doesn’t arrive tomorrow but tonight. He’s born of a witch family and he has magic.”

“Well, shit.” Flair blinked.

He always had a way with words.

Fox would be the first mage since my lover to be allowed through the wards into the academy. It’d become a rule: Mages were banned.

Why had it been lifted now?

I clenched my jaw. It didn’t matter because this time around, I’d keep the mage safe. I didn’t know how but I wouldn’t allow him to die, alone and in the dark, like Robin. If it took my second death and fading away for good to protect him, then I’d throw myself on the flames this time, I wouldn’t need to be bound.

Rebel Academy was mine and so were the Rebels. I might be wicked, but I protected those whose pleasure I could feel beating through me: a mage, an incubus, and a third Immortal whose godly power was just as fierce.

Then I shuddered, as warm pleasure unfurled through me. I was being summoned to the Immortal’s West Wing.

Who was I deny such a sensual call?

The lurch, like my magic was being wound on a thread, rushed to my head. I closed my eyes, only to open them again and find myself stuck in the portrait that mother had created of me on the night of the Enchanted Ball. It chilled me to be staring out of painted eyes.

Please don’t let me be hung still in the portrait gallery where Robin was walled up…

When I noticed the torch emblem over the archway that proved I was in the West Wing, however, I calmed. The bedroom was plain with an oak wardrobe and three desks that groaned with books. Then my heart sped up again at the sprawl of naked incubus in the center of the vast bed beneath the portrait.

The incubus had pushed back the sheets, but had nested in the satin pillows like a ruby eyed, alabaster skinned emperor. His silky black hair haloed his face, as if he wasn’t every sin that the witches had warned me about.

But what was the point of temptation if you couldn’t give in to it? I hungered to devour him.

I’d never seen Bask — or Crave as he’d been rechristened when he’d entered Rebel Academy — stripped bare before. Although, he still wore long pink gloves as was the law for all incubi. With one touch, they could read your deepest and darkest desires to both feed on your pleasure and to control you. A fed incubus was a dangerous creature, and yet, without your pleasure, they’d starve.

Did he desire touch as much as I did?

For a moment, I was distracted by the music that was playing. A woman sang hauntingly about craving, as a man rapped (Echo had explained to me that nowadays talking counted as music; I called it lazy). Echo was entranced by this popular music. It certainly had less dreary warbling than opera, and more the erotic sense that the singers were making love to you, as stripped naked as Bask was right now.

I bit my lip. Echo was right: this twenty-first century was electrifying.

Bask lay on his back, staring up at my portrait with an adoring intensity, which made me shiver. Then he trailed one gloved hand down his chest, circling his nipple, before tugging on it more roughly. He bit his plush lip to hold back his moan.

I breathed in deeply; he smelled delicious. If I leaned forward, could I take his lip between mine and swipe a taste of his coco and almond sweetness? Just one…?

Bask arched his back, teasing his hand still lower. He skirted his prick, however, which was straining hard against him, instead touching between his thighs. With a sigh, he opened his legs.

His eyes became half-lidded.

Wait, was I about to gain the first point in the Wank Count…?

Then Bask’s heel nudged against a huge crocodile plushie. Witching heavens, the prehistoric-looking toy was ugly. Blushing, Bask kicked it by the snout under the pillows.

“Nile, did you have to ruin the mood?” Bask’s voice was gentle and Irish.

His crimson eyes were framed with longer lashes than I’d ever seen and gleamed with something so broken that I struggled to escape the portrait.

Inch by fizzing inch, my fingers broke free, glowing magenta.

Let me reach him…

“I don’t want to be alone,” Bask whispered like a confession. Then he stared up at me, as if he knew that I was there or was desperate for me…needed me. “It’s already the weekend before the start of term. What if I can’t protect Slippy from the Princes, the professors, or himself?” He sighed. “But then, Slippy thinks that I’m crazy.” He darted a glance up at me. “Here’s the thing of it, I know that you’re there.” His voice shook with longing. My temples throbbed, but I forced myself further out of the painting. Bask was in danger, if he gave his love so easily. It shook me to the bones to see the way that he watched me with such veneration. Who’d protect him from the predators who’d take advantage of such capacity for love? “I crave you. Let me please and love you.”

Bask ran both his hands up his thighs, letting his thighs splay wide open. His prick throbbed. His chest rose and fell rapidly, as one gloved hand cupped his balls, and the other clasped the base of his prick, before slowly running up its length.

My skin felt too tight, and I flushed. I’d never witnessed a man engaged in pleasuring himself before. Especially when I knew that he was imagining that it was I touching him in such intimate places. At each throb of his prick, my magic throbbed more powerfully like it was being fed. Yet even more so was the emotion: Bask never dropped his gaze from mine in the portrait like every moan, as he twisted his hand over his prick or slid his thumb lightly over the slit in its head, was in worship of me.

His pleasure was his sacrifice.

In an academy where the delinquents never knew whether it’d be their last day alive, it transformed the Rebels into reckless, passionate thrill seekers.

Could I harness the energy of all that high emotion and sexual need and desire?

I watched with darkening gaze, as Bask’s breathing deepened.

He threw back his head, revealing the snow-white line of his throat. “Pet me,” he pleaded.

My magic exploded around my hands that flamed like they were being burned once again. I burst from the portrait, hovering over Bask: his spirit lover. Then I pressed my fizzing lips to his. I couldn’t touch him, yet my magic still sparked into him. He groaned, jolting like I was magnifying his pleasure and forcing it back into him, until he was sweating and panting.

His eyes flew wide open. His hands grasped the sheets, and his knuckles whitened. Then a pearly stream erupted from his prick, marking his stomach, as he shuddered.

“Voyeur Ghost,” he screamed in equal submission and ownership.

Excuse me…what? I blinked.

I’d just given him the best orgasm of his incubus life and he didn’t even know my name…? I had to admit that Voyeur Ghost had a brutal truth to it.

Cherished Ghost? Desired Ghost? Bouncy Bosoms Ghost (that was one of Flair’s favorites)? Any of those would’ve been preferable.

Bask grinned sleepily, stretching. Then he glanced at me almost like he could see me. He pushed himself to his knees, before starting to pull off one of his gloves.

I paled. He intended to touch my portrait…? Would he be able to read my desires?

Then Bask howled, falling backwards, as freezing water dowsed him in a waterfall stream. He curled into himself, shivering.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped.

I shot back into the portrait. What in the witching heavens was going on?

At last, the icy water magically shut off, leaving Bask in a puddle on the soaked bed. His skin was blue, and his breathing too rapid.

I’d heard Henrietta talk of Ice Water Punishments, but I hadn’t realized how cruel they were until now. What would they feel like to an incubus whose sense of touch was so many times more intense than a humans’, especially after the throes of pleasure?

“I take it that would be sorry for your attempt to go skin to skin without permission?” The educated American voice wound from the shadows of the archway; it was sultry and promised chaos and darkness.

I pouted. Why couldn’t I sound like that? Believe you and me, I’d attempted to sound more wicked witch and less like the sugar force-feeding nanny who couldn’t even afford a broomstick and instead, had to fly by umbrella. Echo was always singing about her: oh yes, Mary bloody Poppins.

“A-as you w-wish, Professor B-bacchus,” Bask chattered, forcing his shaking hand back into his glove.

“Oh, you didn’t try anything so dumb, darling, or I’d have to report you, and that would entail far too many dull consequences. Let’s say your punishment was for making predictably wasteful use of your free time.” The professor stepped further into the room and waved her hand.

Instantly, Bask and the bed was dry again as if they’d never been dowsed in water. Bask scrambled to cover himself with the sheet, and I’d have shielded him apart from the awfully frustrating fact that I was invisible.

List of Reasons that I Hated Being a Ghost: 92

Bacchus arched her brow with a smirk. “Why, so modest.”

When Bask flushed, I wished that I could touch but this time so I could slap the smirk off the witch’s face. All right, her beautiful face. Disgruntled, I couldn’t help staring at her.

Flair had told me that Professor Bacchus, the Immortal’s Tutor in the West Wing, was the most daring and brilliant witch currently in America, who’d been persuaded to travel to Oxford to teach, but that she was more than a witch: she was an immortal.

Bacchus glowed with a fervor that sang wild dances even to me but with such a predatory danger in her purple floor length toga, which was pinned at the shoulder with a moth brooch, that my skin prickled. Her amber necklace glinted in the light from the fire, which flared in warning and her midnight black hair tumbled to her waist. Her eyes were large, hazel, and cat-like. In fact, they matched those of the actual black cat who she hugged to her chest.

I snickered. The most daring American witch was also into witchy role play it appeared, complete with black cat familiar. The cat’s fur was so sleek that it gleamed. A pentacle collar clinked around the cat’s neck, as it turned its head to study me with narrowed eyes. Sometimes, life called for the unladylike. I gave a shrill whistle, and the cat leaped back, puffing up its fur and sinking its claws into the professor’s chest.

I grinned, as Bacchus winced.

Familiars could sometimes sense ghosts, as if the trauma of their death and resurrection from Fallen angel into familiar had granted them the skill. I didn’t imagine that it was much compensation for becoming a witch’s slave.

With remarkable restraint, Bacchus stroked her familiar, until he retracted his claws. “Calm your furry ass, Pet 9, and stop acting like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I paled. Perhaps, this witch was called brilliant with good reason. Yet I hated the way that she only called her familiar by a number. It was witch tradition to remove a Fallen’s name once they were caught and transformed into a familiar, but I shuddered at the thought of stealing Echo or Flair’s name.

“Why’d you force Pocus into cat form again?” Bask asked with far more steel than I’d been expecting. He knelt up on the bed, clutching the sheet to him like it was a shield. So, her familiar could be transformed back into a Fallen? Had that change occurred for all familiars in the time that I’d been trapped in my tree? “He hates it.”

Bacchus’ eyes sparked. “It wouldn’t be much of a punishment if he loved it.” Yet I didn’t miss the way that she slid her hand in comfort down her familiar’s back, or how he pressed into her touch. “With my power, Crave, I can transform him…or you…into anything I want.” She cocked her head. “You’d be a true cutie pie as a Pomeranian. The new student could carry you around in his satchel.”

Bask leaped off the bed like he’d forgotten that he was naked. He wasn’t trembling now. He stalked to the professor with such danger in each step that I was amazed she didn’t back up. Instead, she smiled almost like she was proud of him.

“What new student?” He demanded.

“You pretend to be a tame cub when honestly you’re all wild panther.” She grinned, stroking Pocus. “I’m the kind of witch who only plays with wild panthers. Well, I’ll make an exception for your new whipping boy. I imagine that he’ll be an entertaining addition to the fun and games.”

Bask’s ruby eyes blazed. “Play me with me as you wish, but I won’t hurt a whipping boy.”

Bacchus paused in her stroking of Pocus, instead leaning to cup Bask’s cheek as if she meant to pet him.

Hexes and curses, why did that make me want to transform her into something slimy? Possibly a slug with a terrible cold and an existential crisis.

Bask flinched, but held himself stiff, as his professor rubbed her thumb along his sharp cheekbone.

“Don’t displease me.” At Bacchus’ softly worded order, Bask grimaced as if even the suggestion of her displeasure had punched him in the gut. To an incubus, giving pleasure fed them but it also hurt them physically and emotionally to displease. The succubi had established as clever a mechanism to control the men within their harems as us witches ever had with our husbands. “I mean, you were sent here because you couldn’t satisfy your bonded Duchess. Do you think she abandoned you without reason?” When Bask whimpered, my magic burned, matching his distress. Just for a moment, Bacchus lifted her head like she could sense it, but then she fixed her gaze once again on Bask. She studied him like she hungered to tear him apart and see how he worked. “You’re a rare find: an incubus who’s so flawed that they demand pleasure, as well as giving it. Do you believe that you deserve love?”

Bask bit his lip, refusing to answer.

But he was loved. I shook, yearning with the desperation to show him. Did he think that he was alone? Unloved and abandoned?

My magic built, swirling around me. I could sense Bask’s need, driving me higher, until I swooped out of the portrait, howling in my joy.

I was free…

At least, I’d escaped into the Rebel Academy, and I celebrated like any lady would. I did a rude gesture at Bacchus, which Flair had taught me. He was right: flicking someone off was satisfying.

I circled Bask, wrapping my arms around him. His eyes widened, and he melted into my touch. He wouldn’t ever need to be alone again. He wasn’t unloved.

Now, Bask’s smile at Bacchus was sly and knowing. He knew that I was there. He shivered, teasing his fingers down his sides.

Bacchus dropped her hand away from his cheek, unsettled. When she stumbled into the archway, Pocus hissed. “Just go to the courtyard bailey to meet the new arrival. Wait in the shadows and watch, until the principal needs you. Don’t screw it up. Our Principal, darling Damelza, has been in a darker mood than the darkness within the Dead Wood, ever since the decision was made about the latest admission.” I was darkness…? Now that was impolite. “We don’t need the pressure this term, when we already have the Rebel Cup. The Princes and their tutor are dangerously competitive over it, especially since the prize this year is freedom for one student.”

Bask’s breath hitched. “Freedom? I don’t believe you. It’s a trick.”

Bacchus arched her brow. “I adore tricks. But I promise you, Crave, this isn’t one of mine.” Then she tossed her hair. In the instant, she became the ancient immortal that she truly was. “Here in the West Wing, you’re mine. I’ll help your asses survive, but you have as much chance of dying as being freed. Now collect this whipping boy, even though I kind of don’t think he’ll be with us long. After all, he’s a mage, and they’re hated, feared, and die young.”

At Bask’s shocked gasp, I tightened my hold around his waist. I’d follow him into the bailey to welcome the mage and protect him. His arrival was my worst nightmare because it felt like Robin’s death repeating itself.

Yet was it truly selfish of me that I tingled with joy and pleasure to be free in the academy at last, adored and strengthened by a lover, and seeing a mage once more?

My magic had cursed the academy. There must be a way for me to use it to bless it.

I felt the desperation (rooted all the way through the warded grounds and into Hecate’s Tree), not to allow another mage to suffer. But I was only a ghost. How could I save Fox or was Fate already woven that he’d die?