If looks could kill, she’d be minced meat at this point—like, unidentifiable mush level of minced meat. Finally, he spat out two more words, “Prove it.”
She raised a brow. “I’m not injuring myself again just to prove a point to you.”
Kaylee caught the pertinent word there. “Again?”
Jade mentally cursed. That had slipped out. Giving up, she shrugged. “I got the ability, wanted to try it, and needed an injury to heal. How do you think I got covered in blood in the first place?”
Now they were ogling her like she was stupid. Jessica pointed out the obvious, sadly. “Wouldn’t a bruise have been fine? Did you need to cut yourself up?”
She sighed. Nope, she was never going to live down these rumors. “I hit myself a little harder than I anticipated, okay? But look, no scar!” She held her arm out for inspection.
“I want to see you do it.” Raphael was like a dog gnawing on this bone of contention.
“Oh, you want to see it, do you? Stab yourself and I’ll do the voodoo.” So she was maybe feeling a little vindictive at the moment.
“What’s voodoo?” she vaguely heard Kaylee ask in the background, but her whole attention was on Raphael, who had pulled a wicked looking knife out of seemingly nowhere. She winced as he made a clean cut on his bicep, though she did note he didn’t do it very deeply. Smart. Though she figured if she really had been a fraud, he could go to Mike’s. He wasn’t all that far away.
“Well?” He was staring at her challengingly, seemingly totally nonchalant that blood was now running down his arm in little rivulets.
“You’re a crazy person. You know that?”
“Just heal it,” he muttered gruffly as she walked forward, putting her finger on his arm. Randomly, she noted no new notification popped up, so siphoning him again wasn’t currently an option. In her mind’s eye, she saw the wound pop up. It was a super clean cut, and she was reasonably impressed.
“Easy peasy, lemon squeezy,” she muttered softly, pushing the warmth of her power into his arm. When she was sure it had closed completely, she let go, contemplating her hand. She was fine with her own blood; it had been drawn enough times. Other people’s blood? She was learning she wasn’t so good with that. Feeling a little woozy, she stumbled back to sit at the table, staring at her hand. “You uh…got something I can put the blood in?”
“Put the blood in?” His comment came too late; she’d already concentrated on rolling the blood together and had it in a little ball on top of her palm before she looked up at him like a deer caught in the headlights. All three of them were now giving her the ‘she’s a witch!’ look. Like a little kid trying to hide candy, she put her hand behind her back. “Give me that.” Raphael had come forward and with supernal ease, pulled her arm back in front of her. Despite the fact that she’d been resisting as hard as she could, she was forced to bring it out or hurt herself trying to stop him...unsuccessfully.
He was now staring at the little orb of blood rolling on her palm innocently. She was actually getting a little queasy looking at it and the blood on his arm. With a sigh and figuring the cat was already out of the bag, she made a grabby motion at his arm and pulled all the little rivulets of blood into her ball, making it about five times larger. She took the now tangerine-sized ball and grabbed his hand, opening it, and dumped it there.
“Your blood, your problem. Get it out of my sight before I sick up.”
She turned away and flopped onto the bench as he let off a low guffaw at her discomfort. He walked away, and she could hear him grabbing a mug or something before he stuck the ball of blood inside it. He walked back over to her, squatting so they were eye to eye as he stared at her.
“You’re a blood mage too?”
She sighed and shrugged. “I dunno. I just wanted to clean the blood out of my hair. It moved for me, and then I had blood magic in my skills.”
He looked like he was trying to read her soul. She glanced away, made uncomfortable by his piercing attention. Finally, he spoke again, “I’ll take you to register for the academy tomorrow. The room is yours.”
She glanced back at him, surprised. He laughed and shook his head. “You were right. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. You just…don’t look like the normal academy type, or the normal traveler, for that matter.”
She shrugged and sighed. “I’m abnormal, okay? And I’m still growing. Where I came from…” she drew circles on her leg with her fingers, “things were different. I was different. This is all new to me.”
Jessica, whose existence she had honestly completely forgotten about during her intense healing session and the following conversation with Raphael, piped in, “You’ll get the hang of things in no time. Don’t worry. We’ll help you.”
Unless I wake up and this was all a dream, she mused sarcastically to herself. She still thought she was going to wake up trapped in a reality that seemed like it was black-and-white dull compared to the day she’d just had. Although…was her imagination really this good, to be able to create a whole new world with magic and stuff? She didn’t think so.
Either way, she felt utterly drained. Using her magic had taken more out of her than she anticipated. She picked up her mostly forgotten bread and started to nibble on it again, nodding almost robotically in response to Jessica as she babbled on.
This seemed to jolt the whole mothering gene of Kaylee as she gasped, “Wait, what have you eaten today? You didn’t have any money, did you?”
“Uhm…Elisa gave me some soup, and I healed the little girl like you heard. Her mom gave me a bit, so I bought some bread.”
Kaylee tsked disapprovingly. “You poor thing. Why don’t you go up to your room and rest for a bit, and I’ll bring you some dinner. You must be exhausted.”
“That’d be nice, thanks.” Raphael was tacitly not saying anything, so she figured he was now an official, albeit unwilling, member of Team Jade, since he’d figured out she was a dual mage. She smiled wanly at the three of them, then got up and wobbled to the stairs, climbing them wearily.
She unlocked her door after it took what seemed like an age to get the key into the hole. Stumbling in, she left it unlocked behind her as she crashed onto the bed, lying there face down.
It was time to go through her notifications.
Chapter Nine – Protein
Day Two
Flat on her face, she started scrolling through the notifications, just counting them as she looked at the skills and ignored everything else. She had no idea which person was which, or what their stats might be like. All she could do was make guesses based on the skills shown to her. When she got to the twenty-eighth notification, she heaved a sigh of relief that she’d seen them all. It seemed the ones from this morning hadn’t disappeared either.
There was a knock at the door and Jessica entered quietly, coming in and putting a plate of food on her desk. She walked over and pulled Jade up, which she reluctantly allowed. “Come on, you need to eat.”
Jade nodded tiredly, still trying to deal with the blue boxes obstructing her vision. She let Jessica lead her to the desk, where she flopped down. Mentally minimizing the boxes when her stomach growled in anticipation, she smiled gratefully at Jessica and then started digging in.
She cleared the plate less than a minute later, sitting back with satisfaction. Jessica appeared a little startled, but she collected the plate and said quietly, “You should change and get some rest. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
“Thanks, Jessica. Have a good night.” She saw her out, locking the door behind her. Walking over to her closet, she chose one of the softest tunics and stripped out of everything else before going back to lay on her bed. Picturing her choices in her mind’s eye, she mass clicked. She vaguely saw the content of the blue boxes changing, a small whimper escaping as a terrible burning pain streaked through her body and she welcomed the black oblivion once again.