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 Copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary
gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by fines and
federal imprisonment.

Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not

participate in, or encourage, the electronic piracy of copyrighted
materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and

incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Urban Academy Semester 4

Copyright 2023 by Mazzy J. March
Digital ISBN: 978-1-68361-840-9
Print ISBN: 978-1-68361-841-6

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the

reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any
form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or
hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of
the publisher.

Published by Decadent Publishing LLC

Table of Contents

Stories by Mazzy J. March

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
A Peek at Urban Academy: Semester 5
An Excerpt from Delivered to My Pandas
About Mazzy J. March
Connect with Mazzy!
I made a deal with a coven for the life of my mate. In exchange, in
my haste, I allowed them to absorb my powers. Powers I’d only
come into for a short time. They stole them. I was an ignorant
human, desperate for my mate. They took advantage of it.
I will get it back, if it’s the last thing I do.

Storm was bitten by vampires. Bishop and Fox made it out alive.

I’ve got a gang of paranormal rogues out for my neck, or all of me. I
have three mates—at least, that’s what I think.

At least I gave up my powers for something real—someone who

means the world to me. I would’ve given my life if they had asked. It
kind of feels like I did.

I’ve made a deal with the devil, or at least the witches, and now I
have to find out how to undo it.
Figure out this whole harem business.
Find out who is the mastermind behind these attacks and why they
want me.
Just a typical day in this new city life.

Urban Academy Semester 4 is the fourth story in the Urban Academy

series by bestselling author Mazzy J. March. The first books follow
the story of Valentina’s new life in the city at The Academy where
she learns that the world is much broader and more varied than she
ever dreamed, and sometimes a human girl’s fate may twine with
that of another kind of being. Or three.
Stories by Mazzy J. March

The Lycan Academy

First Howling
Second Growl
Third Snarl
Jaded Love

Shifters of Consequence
Survivor
Legacy
Triumph
Dominion
Torn
Tether
Tremble
Tinsel

Academy of Fire and Ash

Betrayed by Dragons
Coveted by Dragons
Mated to Dragons

Sciathain Academy
Veiled Wings
Sullied Wings
Dawning Wings
Across the Veil
 Mated in Silence
Rejected by Fate
Rejected by Blood
Rejected by Birth

Reaper’s Claw Wolf Pack

Abandoned at Birth
Forsaken Life
Endangered Heart
Heir Alight

Ridgewood Rogue Wolves Saga

Mangled
Marred
Wounded
Restored
Absolute

Shifters of the Golden Flame

Dragon Sacrifice
Dragon’s Divulgence
Dragon’s Vindication

Stars Aligned Series

Procyon
Nebula
Zenith
 Academy of the Ravens
Darkened Wings
A Conspiracy
An Unkindness
A Murder

Urban Academy
Semester One
Semester Two
Semester Three
Semester Four
Semester Five

Mail-Order Matings
Delivered to My Mates
Delivered to My Pandas
Delivered to My Alphas

By Mazzy J. March and Jenna M. Jett

The Conjurer Academy

Enigma
Psionic
Urban Academy Semester 4

By
Mazzy J. March
 Chapter One
Valentina

Bishop and Fox had me wrapped up in their embrace. They held

me down, for my own good, that’s what they said. Probably because
I kept trying to get back downstairs where the witches were still
working with Storm.
“Is it time yet? I want to go to Storm.”
“Josephine said she would let us know. It’s bad, V. You don’t
want to see him like this.” Bishop was trying to be as gentle as he
could but he was pissing me off to no end.
“It’s bad. It’s bad!” My volume rose with each syllable. “I saw
him with bites on his body. Blood pouring out everywhere. On the
verge of death, and you’re telling me I can’t see him because it’s
bad?” I lowered my tone to try and mimic Bishop, but all he did was
cover his smile. “Vampires tried to kill us, and I shot fucking fire out
of my hands. Healing him is not bad. Healing is good.”
I sounded like a caveman, and Bishop was an asshole.
Gorgeous and trying his best to help me, but still an asshole.
“Baby, I feel your pain and your fear and helplessness, but going
down there isn’t going to help anything.”
Shifters, I swear.
“Fox?” I asked, begging for help. One of my mates had to be on
my side.
Fox breathed out long and hard. Storm was his friend way
before me and this harem thing. He was probably just as scared as I
was. Except my scared was coming out as anger. “Let’s bring her
down there, Bishop. She’s right. What else are we going to find
that’s worse than what we’ve already seen? I’m sure he can feel her
up here. We’re not that far away. It can’t be helping him.”
“Fine. I’ll let you go if you promise not to scratch me again. At
least, not in anger.”
“No more scratching,” I replied and deadpanned him for even
saying that. It was an empty promise. If he tried to keep me away
from Storm again, I would scratch his balls off. Eyeballs out.
Whatever I could reach first.
“I don’t believe a word of that, but I’m gonna let you go. Are
you gonna piss the witches off?”
I shook my head as I stood. “Not until they are finished healing
him.” I looked at Fox. “Do you…you don’t think he will turn into a
vamp, do you? I mean…all those bites.”
My mind had wandered to the most gruesome outcomes and
heartbreaking futures for Storm. Thinking positively didn’t come easy
when your mate was being healed by a coven who, just hours
before, had taken advantage of you and stolen your powers.
Fox placed his hand on my shoulder and then pulled me against
his side. He had been calm during this whole ordeal. His
levelheadedness calmed me as well. “That’s not gonna happen. His
shifter blood will push all of that venom out, especially with the
witches helping. Now, let’s get down there and see the truth before
our wild notions get ahead of us.”
Goddess, he was worried, too. You wouldn’t know from looking
at him, but that one statement said it all.
We walked from my apartment down to the Midnight. I went to
the room where the coven was and tamped my anger down. Storm
needed my strength and calm.
 Josephine slid in front of me as I reached to open the door.
“They haven’t told us they are finished.”
We had butted heads before, and usually I deferred to her in the
end because of her greater knowledge but, this time, I was winning.
This was my mate. Even she and her amulet giving powers couldn’t
stop me. “Jo, I love you, but you’re going to move and let me see
my mate. Now.”
We had a stare-off for a few minutes. I won. She rolled her eyes
and moved aside. “Suit yourself.”
I threw open the door with Bishop and Fox behind me. The
coven gasped and I saw Storm turn his head to look at me.
Those green eyes begged me for something as his leather and
cigars scent filled the room. He was back. My mate was back.
“Hey,” I said, walking over to him. The witches moved away,
putting their backs against the wall. “How are you feeling?”
My questions received a half smile. “I’m okay, mate. Are you
really here, or am I hallucinating again?” His voice was weak, his
body beaten. Black-and-blue marks clouded too much of his skin.
This man. Even on death’s door, he was swoon-worthy. “You
have me, and I’m going to take very good care of you. Can I take
him now?” I pointed my questions at the witches. “You do know the
word take, right? It’s what you did to my powers? Took advantage of
me. Took advantage of my state of mind. Took. Took. Fucking took!”
 Chapter Two
Valentina

I scratched Bishop again. He had to take me out of the coven

room as I now called it and Fox had helped Storm get upstairs.
The witches weren’t scared of me. Why would they be? They
stole my powers and I was a feeble, pathetic human again. I mean,
that’s what I had been all of my life but when you get a little taste of
power, it’s hard to let go.
Especially when it’s stolen from you only hours after you realized
it.
We got back to the apartment and I made sure Storm ate and
got a shower. He was weak, weaker than anyone I’d ever seen
before. His breaths were labored but he insisted on holding my
hand. Fox said my touch made him stronger.
I didn’t feel strong. I felt pathetic and drained of the only thing
that would help me and my mates not to get attacked again. And if
we did, I wouldn’t have to stand there like a nitwit watching as they
risked their lives trying to protect me.
But Storm’s smile made me think it was all going to be okay.
“You need to get back to school, sweetheart. You’re already behind.”
I balked. “I’m always going to be behind at Urban Academy. I
was behind the day they let me in. Besides, think of all the real-
world lessons I’m learning.” My resolve cracked and there, where I
was trying so damned hard to be strong, I broke. “You don’t want
me to stay?”
Storm let out a long sigh. “Valentina, you know better. I want
you anywhere I am but life goes on. You have tests coming up and
while I can be excused and make them up later, you can’t. They’re
not going to cut you a break just because you are mated and have
fire powers and smell like a steak on the grill to every para in sight.
It would make me upset if the headmistress took some rash action
against you.”
I was hurt, honestly. Hurt and heartbroken. I’d worried myself
sick over Storm. Hurt Bishop in the process. Cried, screamed, and
given up my powers for him to be better. And I’d do it all over again
if I needed to.
And now he didn’t want me there.
“Guys, can you give us a minute?” Storm asked. Fox and Bishop
left the room but I knew they were right outside. “Valentina, come
here, mate.”
I scooted closer but he only chuckled. “What?”
“Let me hold you as best I can and explain.”
Pouting, I moved to lay across his chest, not putting my weight
on him but craving that contact. His heartbeat was strong. I could
hear it with my ear against his chest. My entire being calmed and I
exhaled. It felt like the first time I’d really breathed since he was
hurt. Gods, I loved this man.
“You can start the explaining now,” I said and rejoiced when he
laughed with me. There was a time when I thought I might never
hear him laugh again.
“I just don’t want you to be here, worrying and fussing over me.
I’m well now. I’m fine.”
I lifted my head slightly. “You’re fine?” He was pale, paler than
I’d ever seen him. While he had been healed, the coven had focused
on making sure he didn’t turn and the venom didn’t kill him. After
that, they had left every scar and bruise intact.
Scars he’d gotten trying to protect me.
“I’m not fine but I will be. I’ve got a lifetime with you that I’m
looking forward to.”
Oh, boy.
I didn’t know if Storm knew that the witches had taken my
powers. Now wasn’t the time to bring it up. He didn’t need to worry
about it. He needed to focus on healing and regaining his strength.
“You don’t want me to stay with you.” It was a statement, not a
question.
“The witches said it would be ugly, the healing process. I’m still
in a great deal of pain. I don’t…”
“What?” Now I was really upset. “You want me around for the
good days but I’m supposed to leave when things get rough? Fine.
I’ll go to school and listen to bullshit and pretend I didn’t almost lose
one of the most important people in my life.”
“Valentina…” he murmured but it was too late. I already had my
hand on the doorknob and was walking away.
“V, you can’t go by yourself.” Fox. His voice was always so
gentle.
“I can,” I said, whirling on him. “I don’t have powers, so I don’t
smell good anymore, right? No creepers. No followers. Isn’t that the
only reason you want to walk me back?”
Damn, I was going to rip everyone up tonight.
“No. I want to walk you back to school because you’re my
mate.”
 Fox always knew how to throw a blanket over my fire. Didn’t put
it out completely but stopped me before I burned myself alive.
“Okay,” I relented.
Bishop came over and kissed my lips. “I’ll stay with Storm.”
A lone tear made a river down my cheek. “Thank you.”
Gods, this was hard.
Fox and I talked on the way home. I dumped all of my mental
garbage on him and he simply listened. He was good like that.
“Do you want me to stay with you or go back to help Storm?” he
asked at the door of the academy.
“Please go stay with him. Bishop is a brute.”
Fox chuckled. “You know, it’s hard for us to be weak in front of
you. It’s archaic, I will admit, but this part of us isn’t mind over
matter. Our wolves are protective and alpha. They don’t want to be
weak in front of our mate. We want to be strong for you. I know
mating is new for you but it’s new for us, too.”
“You’re telling me that maybe I was too harsh?”
“I’m telling you that we all love you. That’s all. And you love all
of us. You have to answer that harsh thing for yourself. Now, get
your beautiful butt upstairs and get some rest so you can learn all
the shifter things tomorrow.”
He winked and began to walk away. “What? No kiss?” I stuck
out my bottom lip.
Laughing, he sprinted over and kissed me. This was no normal
kiss, either. He bent me back, held firmly in his arms. He explored
my mouth in ways that left me breathless, and it took a few seconds
before my knees worked again.
 “Now you expect me to go upstairs and sleep alone? You are…
mean.
“Hmmm...maybe I could come in for a few minutes.”
“An hour,” I countered, enjoying every minute.
Two hours later, he left. I was exhausted now and fell deep in
sleep.
The next morning, I tried. I really did. I went to class and sat up
straight, trying to focus. But halfway through a lecture about biology,
both human and shifter, my nerves got the better of me. I couldn’t
do this. If they kicked me out, then they kicked me out.
I could try again for an education.
But my mates came first. Just like I came first to them.
“Somewhere more important you have to be, Valentina?” I
stopped in my tracks at hearing the headmistress’ voice.
“Yes,” I said and turned to face her.
One of her eyebrows rose. “Would you like to explain?”
I blew out a breath. If there was one place where I could
explain all of this without worrying about anyone listening in, it was
here. “Well, I’ve been chased around by vampires and rogue shifters
for a while now. Something about my smell. And then a horde of
vampires attacked me and my mates. My shifter mates. I felt this…
something coming up inside me, and I shot fire out of my hands.
That was a surprise. One of the vamps got to Storm and he was
badly hurt, almost dead. So we took him to a coven to heal him in
the Midnight, and I accidentally used the word anything while I was
begging them to heal him and they took that as the right to take all
of my powers. Storm is still healing and I can’t really focus on
human digestion versus shifter digestion.” It all came out like one
run-on sentence.
The headmistress blinked once. I thought she was going to
come down on me for having shifter mates or one of those blaring
points. “You’re okay though? Why didn’t you come to me for help?”
“Help?” I scoffed at her notion. “We get practically branded with
the fact that humans and shifters shouldn’t mate and I have three
shifter mates. What was I supposed to do? Hey, Headmistress, I’ve
got a little shifter harem of my own and by the way, vamps and
supes of all kinds are kind of hunting me. Do a sister a solid and
help out?”
She smirked. “There are exceptions to every rule, Valentina. And
besides, if you have powers, or had powers, then you were never
really fully human. I knew that when I let you in but decided to let
you come upon that knowledge on your own.”
I cracked up. “Thanks?”
She put her hand on my arm. “Go to your mate. Please let me
know if you need help. We can let you make up the work you miss
or give you and your mates an incomplete for this semester. Take
care, Valentina.”
She left me there, stunned to my marrow.
Help came from the strangest places, sometimes.
 Chapter Three

I walked into my apartment, and all movement and talking

stopped.
“What? I can’t come back?”
Storm sat up, and my chest warmed at the change in his
appearance. His coloring was mostly back. Some redness in his
cheeks. My favorite set of green eyes were bright with gold specks.
They had faded when he was hurt, when the life was draining from
him. “I thought you were back at school.” He sat up with ease.
His breaths were steady.
“I thought your recuperation was going to be ugly and dirty or
something?”
All three of my mates laughed. Fox came over and kissed me.
“He just didn’t want you to see him weak, remember, love?”
I did. I thought it was ridiculous but I did.
“And school?” Bishop asked, his eyebrow cocked.
“I was sitting in biology, and they were talking about the
difference between shifter and human DNA or some shit, but all I
could think of was Storm and all the shit we’ve been through. It was
a little difficult to concentrate.”
Storm patted the bed. “Come sit. We can figure out how to tell
the headmistress. Maybe she can…”
“Give me an incomplete for the semester or have a do-over. Her
words.”
“You talked to her?” Fox asked, taking a seat in a chair. “You
went to her office?”
 I rolled my eyes. I wasn’t that brave, even with fire in my veins.
“She caught me leaving. I told her everything, and I mean
everything.”
“About us?” Storm said.
“Everything,” I said, shrugging. I still didn’t know if it was the
right thing to do or not, but the truth couldn’t be a bad thing,
especially if it meant she was on our side.
“Did she come unglued?” Bishop asked. His eyes were wide.
“Actually, she was cool about it. She told me that she never
thought I was fully human to begin with, and that’s why she let me
into the academy.”
Storm snorted. “You had us all sure you were. She must have a
nose like a bloodhound.”
I shrugged. “I guess so. But we are all clear with her, and she
knows what’s going on.”
Bishop got up a few minutes later and said he was going to get
us all some lunch. He kissed me on the mouth right in front of the
others. No shame in his game.
“I’m gonna run home and shower and change clothes. Don’t
cause any world disasters or anything while I’m gone, you two.”
When we were alone, Storm turned to me. “You mind helping
me with something, mate?”
“Of course not. Are you hungry? Does something hurt?”
He chuckled and moved his fingers through my hair. “Nothing
like that, but I kind of smell like vampires and blood and witch herb
stuff. Would you stay in the bathroom while I get a shower? I think I
will be fine but who knows.”
 “Are you trying to get me naked? This morning, you were
making me leave and now…”
He chuckled. “Not really. I just stink.”
I sniffed him. I didn’t have shifter senses, but, “Smells like Storm
to me.”
He walked into the bathroom and disrobed. There were no more
worries about modesty. Although I was trying to be strong for him,
the tears fell as I saw his leanness. The depletion of some of his
muscle. The bites, marks, scratches that were still healing.
“I didn’t want to make you cry. Come here, sweetheart. It’s
okay. I’m okay.”
I let the tears come and he did as well. “I thought I was going
to lose you.”
“And I thought I was going to lose you. Until you turned into
some badass firestorm or whatever that was.”
“It’s gone,” I whispered. “It’s gone, and now I can’t protect any
of you again.”
He took my face in his hands. “What do you mean, mate?”
Worry lines broke out along his forehead. “What does that mean?”
“The witches asked me if I wanted to save you. I was desperate.
Seeing you like that was ripping my soul out. They asked. They
asked if I would do anything.”
He sucked in a breath. “You said anything.”
I nodded as a fresh batch of tears stung my eyes. “I said
anything. Anything for you.”
“What did they do, Valentina?” The air around us crackled and
popped with tension.
“They took my power. They took it all.”
 “Why…” He stepped back from me, and his green eyes glinted
with danger. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Because of this. That look in your eyes. Don’t think for a second
I wouldn’t do it again because I would. I won’t live without you.” I
fought down a sob. “I just wish I had known I didn’t have to give
that much to get their help.”
He pulled me in, holding me against his warmth. “We’ll get them
back. I swear it.”
I kissed his stomach and then pulled away. “Please get in the
shower. You do stink after all.”
He chuckled but did as I asked. He scrubbed himself head to toe
and, when he emerged, he looked refreshed.
And damned sexy.
“Like what you see?”
“Yes and no,” I replied, handing him a towel.
“I’m offended. Do tell.”
“Clearly, I love your body, but the scars and all of that…”
He chuckled and pulled on some clothes Fox had brought for
him. “I thought chicks dug scars?”
I ran my finger along one of them, making him shudder. “Not
when she saw you get them.”
“We’re gonna get through this. Together, okay? As long as we’re
together, it’s going to be fine.”
I nodded and heard Bishop and Fox come in at the same time.
Jeez. What if Storm and I had been in the middle of something?
What if we had been buck naked on the table? They were all my
mates, but maybe we needed some ground rules.
 Still, that seemed like small potatoes compared to what we were
faced with. The most important was getting Storm back to full
strength and that meant food.
“Let’s go get you fed.”
 Chapter Four

The other guys brought in some Thai takeout, and we all sat
around my tiny apartment eating roasted chicken, pad Thai, yellow
curry, and so many other dishes, I didn’t even manage to taste some
of them. Not that there were leftovers. My mates’ appetites and
sheer capacity for gobbling food never failed to awe me. But I did
justice to my share, and by the time they gathered the empty
containers and stuffed them back into the plastic bags, I was full
and sleepy.
We were all students with other responsibilities, and I shooed
Fox and Bishop back to school right after dinner, leaving me alone
with Storm. They fussed, but with the bouncers downstairs on duty,
I thought we’d be fine for the night.
While everyone was there, with lots of conversation and laughter
and eating, the atmosphere had been lively, but once the door
closed behind my other mates, a whole other mood settled in.
Storm had eaten his meal on the edge of the bed—there were
not many seats in this place, and someone or someones always
ended up there—but now he scooted back to sit against the
headboard. “Come sit with me, mate,” he urged. “I’m lonely.”
“How can you be lonely when we just had a virtual circus of
wolves here?” I stayed in the chair a few feet from him, afraid of
what might happen if I did join him. He’d just been very badly
injured, close to death.
“But I’m all by myself on this big bed.” He thrust out his lower lip
in an adorable pout.
 “Big bed?” It was not even wide enough for me to sprawl out on
alone. “Your feet are hanging over the end.”
He shot a glance toward the body parts in question, and a line
formed between his brows. “No they’re not.”
“Close enough.” His heels rode the very bottom edge.
“I guess we’ll have to be very careful not to fall off, then.” He
patted the bed next to him, all about six inches of it. “Come on,
mate. Keep me company.”
I started to point out that I could keep him company from here
just fine, but my heart wouldn’t have been in it. In truth, there was
nowhere I wanted to be more than in the arms of my mates, and
this one had nearly been lost to me. Lost defending me. If it offered
him comfort to cuddle a little, I’d be quite a bitch to say no.
“All right.” I stood up and moved to the bed. “But only cuddling.”
Surely he wasn’t up to more than that anyway.
One thing I hadn’t managed to remember about shifters.
Speedy. Healers. Once the healing process had begun, it moved fast,
and a glance at his lap showed me that my mate was well able to
take advantage of the situation. So to speak.
When his arms closed around me, it was hard to remember that
he’d ever been injured. His grip was so warm and strong and secure,
but when he cupped a breast, I tried to pull back.
“Storm, I don’t want to undo all the healing. Seriously, just
cuddling for tonight, okay?”
“If that’s what you want, V, then I won’t push myself on you.” He
did not, however, uncup my breast. He would if I asked again…
“Don’t say it like that.” I nuzzled his cheek. “I want you to make
love to me so much, but I value your health over my own pleasure.”
I was so proud of myself for saying this, for being so practical.
If my nipple wasn’t hardening to a sharp point under his stroking
thumb, it would probably have been better. “My health can only
benefit from making love to my mate.” He tipped my chin up and
nipped the end of my nose. “It’s how shifter anatomy works.”
“Really?” I’d never heard that, but I’d never even heard of
shifters until not too long ago. What I knew about their anatomy
could easily be inscribed on the head of a pin. Their physiques…that
was something different. “So if we make love, you’ll get better much
faster? Funny, none of the other guys mentioned that.”
“Yes,” he spoke firmly. “It will…probably.”
“As in, you figure having sex will make you feel good and that
will carry over into general health improvement?”
“Yes.”
“So it’s not some mysterious shifter thing like you were trying to
pass off.”
“No.”
“But you truly think it will make you feel better?”
He nodded.
I stood up and pulled my shirt over my head. When I could see
him again, I winked. “Then we’d better get to it. I’m all about the
healing.”
We were both naked in 2.5 seconds, remarkable in his case,
since he really wasn’t 100 percent yet. But before I let his grasping
fingers close on my hips, I held up a finger. “One caveat.”
“What?” Eagerness was replaced with worry on his face.
“You lie back and let me do all the work.”
His quick intake of breath shook his torso. “You’re going to…”
 “Do. Everything.” I gave him the sternest look I could muster.
“Deal?”
“Deal.” Storm sprawled on the bed and really was hanging over
the edges. “I’m all yours. Do your worst.”
“Let’s make it my best.” I straddled his thighs and looked up that
long and muscled body. “The best for the best.”
After that, the quips and back-and-forth ended because my
attention was focused on the man underneath me. I didn’t disagree
that making love would be uplifting because every time one of my
mates touched me, I felt a 1000 percent better. But tenderness
colored my passion, and I bent to take his lips with mine. The heat
burst into flame, and I stretched out, cradling his cock between my
legs while I nibbled on his earlobes and sucked the sensitive skin
underneath. I didn’t know everything about this man’s body yet, but
thank the gods I’d have time to study it. He was rock hard, and he
shifted his hips restlessly under me, but I continued my slow
exploration. We had all night. And I had the wheel.
Bit by bit, I kissed his skin awake, sliding down until my lips
were poised right over his cock. Then I took it in my mouth and did
my very best to take him right to the edge with lips and teeth and
tongue then backed off until his breathing slowed before doing it
again. On the third pass, he let out a low growl, dragged me up his
body, and plopped me right on top of his cock. “Either take me, or
I’m taking you,” he gritted out.
“You promised!”
“And you did not mention the plan to torture me into
submission.” With a shift of his hips, he brought the head right to my
opening. Another twitch, and he was buried deep inside. “Now,
either get moving, or I’m flipping you over and pounding you into
this bed.”
I didn’t mention our deal again, lacking the breath to mention
anything. But I did start to rise and fall, taking him deeper with each
descent until he was buried balls’ deep inside me. Then, I sped up.
My knees were not going to thank me tomorrow, but I didn’t
care. Couldn’t care when the exquisite pleasure of my mate joining
my body was the only point of cohesion in my universe. I lifted and
dropped, over and over, faster and faster, stretched wide by my
mate’s girth and length. “Mate, look.” I stuck my forefinger in my
mouth, licked it wet, and made a circle around one of his flat, male
nipples. “Oh, I think they like it.”
“Of course they like it,” he snarled. “We all do.”
Presuming “we all” referred to the many parts of his body
enjoying our play, I didn’t ask questions. If anything, I had even less
breath left at this point to speak with. And a charley horse
threatened to waylay my whole plan, so I moved faster, clenching
around him and in the process taking myself into a shuddering,
whimpering orgasm.
Which brought my mate right over the edge with me.
I wasn’t sure if sex had healing properties, but I did know that
when I lay spread out on his chest afterward, he wore a big smile.
 Chapter Five

While Storm had fallen into an instant, and hopefully restorative,

sleep, I stayed away. Thinking. Overthinking. Beating myself up.
I shouldn’t have said anything.
Anything.
Who knew one word could turn my entire world upside down.
I put my closed fist on the middle of my chest and rubbed a
circle. There was an absence. Perhaps it was all in my head, but I
missed having that part of me. How in the world could I miss
something I didn’t even know I possessed?
The thoughts dragged me into an abyss of frustration. I checked
the time. Josephine would be downstairs, doing whatever she did
during the day at the Midnight.
I needed a levelheaded person right now.
I disentangled myself from Storm’s hold and got dressed quickly.
He would be fine for a few minutes. He was getting better by the
hour, but coming back from the dead would take a while, even with
his rapid healing.
Downstairs, I let myself into the bar and headed for the back. I
clutched my amulet and went in. My eyes immediately drifted to the
door, that infamous door that sometimes encased a coven of thieves.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Josephine said from the little
table in the middle of the room. The table where she and I had
shared talks and she had warned me about Bishop. That tiny table
kind of felt like a safe house. “How’s your mate?”
“He’s getting better. Not as fast as he would like, but it’s
happening.”
 “That’s good.” Her eyes were on her computer. She had a stack
of receipts next to her, her reading glasses low on her nose. Little
chains with charms hung from both arms of them.
“Really good, considering the price.”
I sat down across from her. She took her glasses off and sat
back in the chair. “The price was too high?”
No. The price wasn’t too high. “The deal was…unfair. They used
my point of weakness to swindle me out of something that was
mine.”
“If you think they feel any remorse about that, trust me, they
don’t.”
“Can you help me? Is there some spell-reversal mumbo jumbo? I
mean, we have every drink in this bar one could imagine. Is there no
potion for that?”
She laughed a bit and shook her head. “If there were, I would
charge a million dollars for a shot.”
“I’d go into debt to get it.”
She reached across the table and patted my hand. “How badly
do you want it back?’
I scoffed and let out a laugh that had nothing to do with humor.
“Enough to let it consume me but not enough to say anything.”
“Point taken. I may know someone who could help you. But
they’re in the underground.”
“You mean, there’s more underground to this city? The vamps
and the shifters and the gods knows what aren’t the seedy part?”
“Not even close.”
Blowing out a long breath, I scrubbed my hands over my face.
“Where do I need to go? What do I do?”
 “Tell me something first, Valentina. Other than just wanting
them, what’s the big reason you need your powers back so badly?”
“Because I don’t want to live the rest of my life having to rely on
my mates to protect me. I want to protect myself and them. There
would be an imbalance if all I did was walk in their shadow without
contributing somehow.”
Her eyes dipped down to my amulet.
“There’s a wizard in the Vanquish.”
This shit was giving me a headache. Or maybe it was the lack of
sleep. “A what in the what? English, please, Jo. Talk to me like I’m
human.”
She cocked her head to one side. “But you’re not.”
“Apparently, everyone knew that but me. We’ll get to that later.
Simple terms.”
She got up and opened the door that separated the bar from the
back room. “It’s danger.”
“My whole fucking life is danger, lately, Jo. Come on.”
I could see the wheels turning in her head. She had taken care
of me since I got here, but now wasn’t the time to baby me.
“The Vanquish is hidden. Only supes and paras can get in or
even see it. It’s protected by a shield, formed by the wizard himself.
You know those old warehouses on the west side?”
Not really, but I would find out. “It’s not that big a city. I’m sure
I can find it.”
She sat back down. “Walk between them, and they will reveal
another realm of the city. One humans don’t even know exists. You’ll
find him there.”
“And he’s going to help me?”
 “I think he can.”
“Jo, do I get a name? What’s this dude’s name?”
“Eliphas. And, V?” she asked as I stood, already planning my
trip. “Be safe and careful. Those fae can be tricky bastards.”
 Chapter Six
Storm

The pain came in waves. I didn’t tell anyone, and I sure as hell
didn’t Valentina. She was worried enough as it was. No one had told
her, at least not Bishop or Fox or me, but the signs were there. Her
smile wasn’t the full one. Her laugh was quiet. Her eyes didn’t
sparkle when she looked at any of us.
Some of her light had depleted or vanished.
She needed to get it back, but breaking a deal with a witch or
getting them to give you something they’d procured, fairly or not,
was almost impossible.
Then again, my mate’s life wasn’t exactly predictable.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me V lost her powers?”
Bishop snorted as he took a huge bite of a Philly cheesesteak
sandwich. He had brought a big bag of them with him. “Because she
didn’t. She didn’t lose them. They were taken from her. She didn’t
know not to say ‘anything’ to the witches, and they took full
advantage.”
“Okay, well, why didn’t you stop her?”
Fox chuckled. “As if we can persuade her to do anything she
doesn’t want to do or vice versa. You’ve met Valentina, right?”
I groaned. Of course she would’ve done what she wanted to in
the end anyway, but someone should’ve helped her—told her the
dangers.
And I hated that I was the one who put her in that situation.
That’s why I had asked her to go to school. Not because I didn’t
want to be around her or have her be with me. The pain was
bearable, and the other aches were minimal.
What I couldn’t stand was to see my mate pulled down by the
weight of what she had to give up to save me.
It ate at me, and I knew it was eating at her as well.
“Hey,” the subject of all my thoughts said as she came in. She
wore a black shirt that hung off her shoulder and jeans that were
made for her. Gods, I was one lucky man and it had nothing to do
with her body. She had been strong and brave throughout all of this.
“Storm, how are you feeling?”
I hated to be that guy, but this was the hard part. Male shifters
were supposed to be strong and capable. We were supposed to take
care of her and not the other way around.
It was as though my brain had evolved but left my beast behind.
He was still in the Stone Age.
“Hey back,” I said. Valentina came to sit by me and leaned her
head on my shoulder. She was comforting me, even though she was
the one who had a part of her stolen. “Where’d you go?”
“To talk to Josephine.” Her shoulders slumped a bit.
“Did she say anything? I mean, I’m assuming you went to talk to
her about the bi…I mean witches,” Bishop put in. We were all
interested in our mate getting her powers back.
She squirmed, and Valentina wasn’t a squirmer. “She said there
might be someone who could help me. Someone who has leverage
with the witches.”
Fox sat up a bit straighter. “Who is it?” There was no excitement
in his voice, and his face gave away nothing but concern. If we had
learned anything from the past few days, it was that anyone that
was willing to help us didn’t do so for free. The world, moreover the
paranormal world, didn’t work like that.
Valentina was special. She might not have known how much
until fire came from her hands and she took out a whole coven of
vampires, but she had been all along.
“A wizard. A powerful one. By some warehouses.”
Gods above, she was being obtuse, but I read between the
lines.
“Are you being vague on purpose, or did Jo really not share all
the information?” Bishop asked. He had put away his lunch, half
eaten. Things were getting serious. Bishop’s second mate was food.
Our mate stiffened beside me. “You’re going to tell me not to go.
Then I’m going to go anyway, and I don’t want to fight with any of
you. Maybe it’s better to leave the details out.”
Fox’s chest rumbled. None of us were pleased when she said the
words, but he was clearly the most upset. “Why? So, if something
happens to you, we can’t find you? Good plan, Valentina.”
Damn.
Immediately, Fox’s face softened. “I apologize, mate. No matter
what is happening, you don’t deserve to be spoken to like that, but
we will get nowhere if we all aren’t completely honest with each
other, especially when your life may be in danger. It’s also not fair to
keep us in the dark. Mates aren’t just around to share the good
times. We are here for it all, Valentina. In order for us to support
you, you have to let us.”
Fox always had a way to say what all of us were thinking in a
way that didn’t sound like we were biting her head off. He should
teach a class.
 Valentina and Fox had some kind of short conversation without
words, simply staring at each other. It ended with her letting out a
long breath. “His name is Eliphas. He’s a wizard in the Vanquish. And
I’m going to see him. If there’s a chance in hell that I can get my
powers back, I need to find out.”
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 CHAPTER VII

T HE Journal was making money. It was February and the hopes based on
the election had already been fulfilled. Circulation had increased and
with it had come modest advertisers. Two extra rooms across the hall,
one boldly labelled Circulation Department and one Advertising, were in
charge of efficient looking young men, and the original editorial rooms
were crowded by desks for two new reporters. Bob Brotherton talked
boastingly of soon doing their own printing, and though The Journal was
still an undersized little sheet, comparing queerly in size with the other
dailies, its editorials were more often quoted in other cities than were those
of other local papers.
Langley was trying his skill as a writer to its utmost in those editorials.
There were no serious political issues in the city and he turned his comment
with a great pleasure to national affairs and the larger political and
industrial situation. What he said, being actuated by no partisanship, was
really the product of deep thought and experience and keen and true. Men
began to read his comments and finding good thinking and conclusive
evidence kept on reading them. At first they did it warily, expecting at any
moment to be plunged into Bolshevism, but though Langley refused to fear
that current bogie he recognized it in such a way that the potency and sting
went out of it. He began to reassure his public by the method of assuring
them that issues were not too terrible to be faced. There was a new note in
his writing which took him out of the rank of merely caviling radical and
put him with the constructionists.
Horatia thrilled at the new vigor in the paper. They regarded her as a
mascot in the office. With her luck had come, as Bob said, and the old
reporters and the new competed for chances to help her and to do things for
her. Unless Langley was with her, when they withdrew before her
absorption in him.
They had not announced an engagement, although the office force saw
that the chief was as devoted to Horatia as they were, and perhaps drew its
own conclusions. But Jim and Horatia gave them nothing definite to go
upon. That decision had been reached after Maud and Langley had met and
Maud with instinctive wisdom had pressed home to him Horatia’s youth
and inexperience and impetuosity.
“I’m sure that you might be very happy,” said Maud, trying to be tactful.
“But surely she can wait a little. Till she knows her own mind. It’s for life.”
Maud looked sweetly sentimental. “You tell her how unwise it is to rush
into such serious matters, Mr. Langley.”
Poor Langley saw through Maud perfectly, in spite of all her sweetness.
But he had to admit that Maud had a case. He smoked a perfunctory cigar
with Harvey and went home. Maud became much more sympathetic with
Horatia after that visit. Her own antagonism to Langley personally had
vanished or been metamorphosed into excitement at her daring in braving
such a very irregular, fine-looking and interesting person as Jim. She had
lost all animosity at the end of his call and Horatia, who had consented to
bring Langley there only after much begging from Maud, had great fun in
seeing her sister thaw and finally in watching Langley try to avoid Maud’s
persistent invitations. But she had even more amusement when her sister
heard that Mrs. Hubbell had reappeared in the city. She broke the news to
Horatia with a great air of imparting necessary scandal and was completely
filled with horror when Horatia confessed not only to previous knowledge
of Maud’s information but also to an acquaintanceship with Mrs. Hubbell.
She offered to take Maud to call but Maud was at the point where she
could bear no more shocking.
“It’s dreadful and dangerous,” she told Horatia. “I’m sure I don’t know
what you’re getting into. What does the creature look like?”
Horatia told her with some enthusiasm. She had somehow come to see a
good deal of Rose Hubbell. It was not that she particularly wanted to and
Langley had once or twice rather gravely protested. But there was a
timeliness, a psychological correctness about Mrs. Hubbell’s invitations that
made them very hard to refuse. She destroyed your alibis, too, before she
asked you to do something. And then it was good fun for Horatia and really
did provide varied amusement for her. Mrs. Hubbell’s settled occupation
was having a good time and being modern. Like so many other women she
had preëmpted the right to call her kind of living perfectly modern. Grace
did the same thing—Horatia did the same thing. And each of them was
using the phrase modernism to express satisfaction with the plan of her own
existence. Mrs. Hubbell so justified her deviations from the paths orderly
people travel, Grace for the same reason as well as to excuse her fashion of
intellectualizing all enthusiasms and apparently all emotions out of her life,
and Horatia to define the spirit of adventure and desire to explore the depths
of life which animated her. Each of them had a different mold which she
called modernism and each of them poured her actions into her own mold,
delighted to see that they hardened into the shape of the vessel.
Horatia was less conscious than the other two. She was trying their
ways, learning their precepts of life and ways of living. She liked things
about each of them—Grace’s absorption in her work and Mrs. Hubbell’s
more decorative social skill. Mrs. Hubbell knew how to arrange, start off
and keep up a dinner party, and she danced with amazing grace and beauty.
Horatia danced too, of course, vigorously, healthily, accurately—but the
dancing of Rose Hubbell was a gift. “She is not a partner but an
inspiration,” said one of the enthusiasts, and Horatia agreed. She guided a
bad partner and brought out the best in a mediocre one, but with Jim
Langley she moved as if they were strung to one rhythm. There were many
opportunities for Horatia to see them together. Mrs. Hubbell arranged
parties at country inns and hotels, at all kinds of public places which
Horatia had never dreamed of attending, and which she had always
regarded as somewhat dubious. But she found them, on the surface at least,
innocuous enough places where people spent an enormous amount for
eating and drinking, and committed many sins of gluttony and bad taste, but
no other serious ones. They danced unpleasantly sometimes and they might
be noisy, but on the whole they were passable people, as full of the lesser
virtues as were Maud’s friends. They had a fascination about them, too.
They were an unanchored lot, with no regularity even in their social
intercourse. Extremely well-dressed, often beautiful, the women gave no
impression of having antecedents or backgrounds. They emerged from
obscurity into the dazzling glare of a hotel ballroom. They were seemingly
respectable, extravagant, careless, picking at the surface of life and to some
extent they typified a phase of the era—its brilliant, shop-window phase.
Maud’s friends were residents and taxpayers. They had a proper scorn of
the transient and held aloof. Yet, to a certain extent, they dovetailed with the
other group. The men of Maud’s group were to be seen in hotels as well as
at private dinner parties, mostly without their wives in the hotels, if they
were married. And once Horatia saw Anthony Wentworth at the Orient.
 He was with a party of men and girls at the next table. The party had
come in late and Horatia had not seen Anthony until she was conscious of
his bow. Then she remembered who he was and as she smiled at him she
had a feeling of meeting someone of her own kind;—a sudden thought and
one she indignantly refused to harbor, as, blaming him as if he had
suggested it, she turned from her smile to him to plunge into conversation
with a thin little man who was at her right—a thin, awkward, rich little man.
The little man danced badly. It irritated Horatia to feel ashamed of him in
front of Wentworth, but she hoped that Anthony knew enough about
dancing to realize that it was not her fault that she looked absurd. Why did
the little man jump about so? She pressed her hand on his shoulder to
steady him and then jumped away in disgust as she felt her hand squeezed
in misunderstanding. They bumped into another couple and stopped. It was
Anthony. He smiled and stopped too.
The girl with whom he was dancing was of Horatia’s kind too.
“So you do play sometimes, Miss Grant?” asked Wentworth.
“Of course.”
His partner put her hand on Anthony’s arm, acknowledging a hurried
introduction to Horatia.
“Weird place, isn’t it?” she said. “Here, Anthony, we’re holding up
traffic. We’d all better be moving.”
He put a deft arm about the girl’s shoulders, glancing back at Horatia.
“May I have the next fox-trot?”
Horatia nodded and steered her little man away in a series of contortions
to that oasis of safety—their table.
“Tired—already?” he inquired fatuously.
She sat surveying the members of her group as they came back to the
table and was struck by the fact that the women looked very stupid. And the
men. The men were “out for a good time,” and that meant an individual
reason in each case.
Langley was drawing out Rose Hubbell’s chair. She was wearing a black
dinner-dress that fitted her suppleness like a glove and her long black
earrings set off that perfect paleness and blondness. Horatia felt that she
was the redeeming feature of the party. But she didn’t like Jim’s closeness
to Rose. She didn’t like the way he was arranging the scarf about her
shoulders. She reminded herself that Jim had begged her not to come
tonight but to spend the evening alone with him and that she herself had
insisted that they had no right to spoil Mrs. Hubbell’s party after they half
agreed to come. Perhaps, after all, this had allured her—this glare and noise
and excitement.
“You’re so solemn, Horatia dear.”
Mrs. Hubbell had slipped into the use of her Christian name, a slip that
once made it was impossible to correct.
“Am I?”
“You looked like a fifteenth century saint—a Renaissance saint frowning
on worldliness, but secretly indulging in it.”
Jim’s glance was on Horatia too. She turned the conversation a little
impatiently and Anthony Wentworth came to claim his dance and be
extravagantly greeted by those at the table who knew him, except Langley.
They swept into the dance and silences. It was not until the encore that
they spoke. He danced simply and easily and Horatia followed him well,
although it was her first dance with him.
“So this is what you do for amusement.”
“Sometimes,” she answered, “and sometimes it really is amusing. Not
tonight. Tonight the enchantment has vanished. I see only an overlighted
room with horrible garish decorations and a lot of noisy women, too many
of whom are fat.”
He chuckled.
“I did want to see you again. And I did my best to work it. But short of
making myself a public nuisance I couldn’t get a glimpse.”
“I didn’t know you were staying in the city.”
“I’m spending the winter with my sister. The family is gone—by family,
I mean mother and father—gone South—and I live partly at home in the
empty house and partly at my sister’s, playing with her children.”
The music stopped definitely, deaf to the entreaties of clapping hands.
“Can I take you for a ride one of these days? I suggest that because you
said you’d like it.”
“I can’t tell when I can get off.”
 “Let me telephone and re-telephone—this proves that you get off
sometimes.”
She liked his half-laughing persistence.
“I’d like to ride with you in that car of yours,” she told him.
He smiled down at her in healthy young friendliness and suddenly the
people to whom she was returning seemed very unreal and pretentious. He
did not ask any of the others for dances but went back to his table.
“You made a very handsome couple,” said Rose Hubbell, sweetly.
“Didn’t they, Jim?”
Langley looked tired. He said merely that it was Horatia’s dance with
him. As before, they danced without a word.
“You were a handsome couple,” he said at last.
“Please don’t be silly, Jim.”
“I’m such an old man and such an ass, my dear. He is a nice boy and you
must play with him a lot.”
“I’d sooner work with you.”
“Let’s not go back to the table. Let’s collect our coats and get out.”
He waltzed her to the door and they went home. Such petty informalities
“went” with the Hubbell crowd. It was considered bad form in that milieu to
be too conventional. Modern people went and came as they pleased. That
was the idea. But Horatia had a vague feeling that, none the less, Mrs.
Hubbell might not approve of their going.

Wentworth was as good as his word.

“He is parked below,” said Jim whimsically, two days later. “Better go
and get your ride or he’ll sit there and freeze to death.”
He closed the office door.
“But you might let me kiss you before you go out to be admired by
dashing young men,” he finished.
“I’d lots sooner stay and be kissed,” complained Horatia.
“You won’t, after you feel the wind in your face.”
He was right. Horatia had not done much motoring and the knowledge
she had of it was largely confined to being “picked up” and taken from one
place to another. Maud had an electric and Rose Hubbell travelled in a hired
sedan, and she had been with them often. But this was different. In this low,
open car she was unprotected except for a single fur rug over her knees.
Anthony drove along easily until they struck the city limits and then was off
in a burst of speed, cut-out throbbing. The state highways were almost clear
of snow and they sped along through the barren country with its skeletons
of trees sticking up through the snow and the little villages closed tight for
the winter. Already evening lights showed in their windows.
“They’re like Christmas postcards,” exclaimed Horatia.
“They look funny from the top when you are flying over them. You
don’t want to go back, do you?”
“Never less. I want to plunge into the country farther and farther.”
“Maybe we can find a road that is fair driving. There is one near here
which leads to a summer place of mine. And if we cut through from there to
the high-road, there’s a hotel where we can get supper. If you aren’t afraid
of country driving in the winter, let’s try it.”
“Of course, I’m not afraid. Plunge.”
They were soon on a road which twisted among tall pine trees, gravely
holding great burdens of snow. They lost all sound except the chug of the
motor—all sense of distance as the car broke its way and left deep furrows
of snow along the road. It slipped, skidded, growled forward—striking the
ground unevenly and lurching about. Then it chugged a slow disapproval
and stopped. Anthony put it unto first gear and started his motor. Again it
chugged, slipped, stopped; he turned to Horatia and laughed.
“I’ll get out and see what this hole is like.”
She clambered out, too, and watched him inspect the hollows into which
the car had run. Then he climbed in again and started with all his power on.
The back wheels spun around without traction. They could not grip the
smooth snow and each movement plowed their trap deeper. He shut off the
power again.
“You can’t get out,” said Horatia interestedly.
“Oh, yes, I can.”
Anthony stripped off his coat and went off into the woods. He came back
with a great bundle of fir boughs that he strewed under the wheels, making
a pathway forward and backward. Then from somewhere in the car he
produced a shovel and dug the snow away from the wheels.
 “Let me help,” begged Horatia.
“Climb into the car and keep warm.”
“I will not be a parasite.”
“Then push those branches under the wheels while I dig.”
They worked together quietly for a while. Again he started and again the
wheels were impotent.
“At it again,” cried Anthony.
He was exhilarated by the problem of getting out and this time he
succeeded. The car, roaring with power, pulled itself over the branches and
out of the hollow. Then, with all their power on, they shot ahead and drove
down the dusky road. It was growing quite dark.
“This is our cottage. Think I’ll stop and give the car a drink.”
They climbed out and over a drifted path into the veranda.
“Jolly place in summer,” said Wentworth, finding the right key on his
ring and pushing the door open. “You can get a little warmer in here if
you’re cold.”
There were electric lights and he switched them on quickly. The bright
chintzes of the living-room looked warm and Horatia’s sense of well-being
increased. What a nice place and how pleasant to be rich! He made her sit
down and put her feet for fear of chill on a cushioned hassock. Then he
brought her a glass of water.
“With apologies. Next time we’ll have food and a real party. If I’d
thought we would have had one tonight.”
“Is this your cottage?”
“Father gave it to me when I was twenty-one. We had lots of house
parties here while I was in college and he liked it. I suppose he thought it
kept us straight—a place like this. My sister uses it now every summer. It’s
a great place for kids. And now to fill the radiator and be off again to
civilization.”
Civilization was a small table in a hotel dining-room and a hot supper,
ordered for her by Anthony without a question. Horatia was very hungry,
hungry as she seldom was, healthy though she was. And it was a pleasant
hotel, like everything else in this excursion. A hotel with no music and no
place for dancing—with oldish waitresses instead of waiters in dinner-coats,
and with red wall-paper and gas-lights—and somewhere an inimitable chef
—no, a woman cook, who put onions frankly in her soup and let the
pudding confess to a cornstarch origin and made biscuits that were light as
air. They talked about many things over the soup. It warmed them into
immense friendliness. Horatia told how she had always loved weather—
loved all kinds of it, rains and storms and winds, how it excited her; and
how she loved all things that stimulated her energies and made her work—
and how she loved her work for the same reasons; because on a newspaper
one day was up and the next down so that you were always on the alert; and
how you lived in touch with the raw material of events before they’d been
softened or hardened or molded by public opinion. He listened and nodded
and the friendly old waitress had to push a platter of fried chicken before
them to hush them.
Then somehow they were talking of what they had done when they were
children, and little tales of West Park popped up in Horatia’s mind, tales
which she had almost forgotten—of the time when Uncle George had fled
before Aunt Caroline’s dictum that he should spank Maud and Horatia for
dancing on a broken spring on the leather sofa in the living-room. It was all
irrelevant and friendly. Anthony had his own tales. He had been a nice little
boy, Horatia decided, a little boy fond of dogs and swimming. She liked his
saying that the old veterinary surgeon had been his best friend when he was
a boy. He told her about his mother and his sister and the brother who had
looked like his father and who had died at sixteen, which saddened them
momentarily. Then over the bones of the fried chicken they talked of futures
—hers and his. Of the places on the earth which they would like to see. He
had much more background than Horatia, having been to Germany and
England before the war, and he had seen England and France again while he
was flying abroad. The Europe of before the war was what he liked to talk
about.
“For during the war it wasn’t real. It was like a house with all the rugs up
and chairs out, and arranged to accommodate a lot of strangers—that is, the
cities were like that. And the country where they were fighting was no
longer France or Belgium or Germany any more than the slaughter-houses
of Chicago are Chicago. I want to give it time to get back and then see it
again.”
Not only Europe. He wanted to see South America, China, and to get
acquainted with the East.
 “What is the use of living if you live in a little suburb all your life?”
“But aren’t you going to do any work?” asked Horatia.
“Yes—later I mean to go into business with father. I shall like exporting.
It makes me proud of my own country and keeps me in touch with the
others. But I need background. Then, when I ship my wheat, I’ll know
where I am shipping it.”
She regarded him gravely.
“There’s no loafer in you,” she admitted.
“No—I hope not. I want to work and to live in America, of course. First
of all that. I’ve small patience with these globe-trotters. And I want an
American wife and to help stabilize the country. All this discontent is the
result of trying to bring in a vicious element which we don’t know how to
handle because we’re ignorant of the nations from which these people
come.”
“Don’t you think we treat them badly?”
“We treat them altogether too well. We overpay them—we excite them
—we give them standards of living which make them discontented.”
“I think you need to see some of the budgets of laborers’ expenditures,”
said Horatia; “they don’t show any great extravagances. They must have
food and clothes and——”
He broke in impatiently.
“That’s beside the point. A working man and his family don’t starve or
freeze unless there’s something wrong with them. What we ought to do is to
pay wages which represent what a man earns, and not what he demands.
Otherwise it’s pauperization. We will have to stop all this catering to labor.
We ought to stop being afraid of it, and then it would come down to earth.”
“Suppose labor quits.”
“It won’t, and if it did, what about it? Face it down. Why should
employers all be cowards? Why are they temporizing, giving way inch by
inch? Mind, I wouldn’t care if——”
Horatia was fascinated. Strength of aristocracy shot from his eyes. He
was amazingly handsome and if his point of view was wrong, it was at least
vigorous, thought Horatia. Mistaken, anti-social, probably—but she
couldn’t think of a way to convince him. She didn’t want to seem theoretic
and sentimental——
 But he had calmed down. He was laughing.
“I don’t see why I should spoil our evening with all this stuff. But I feel
that the world’s on an awfully wrong track. All this dominance by strikes.
It’s highwayman stuff. It’s bullying. I know these social work fellows and
they are a white-livered lot. And the men they try to deal with respect and
understand only one thing—strength.”
“But labor doesn’t work through social workers. It’s a force by itself.”
There were a few points in his illogic that Horatia could not let pass.
“It’s becoming a very ugly force—you’re right. But these social workers
foment a lot of discontent. And the workers get surly and commence to
bully. No man worthy of the name is ever threatened successfully, but these
cowards keep making concessions and concessions——”
How she liked the sheer mannishness of it! And she wondered what
Langley would have answered and tried to interpret what he might have
said. But Anthony hardly listened. He wanted to drop the argument or the
tirade and to be personal now. He wanted to talk about her and how much
he would like to do things with her. Over their large cups of coffee and
cream their acquaintanceship ripened into friendship.
“I don’t approve of half the things you say,” laughed Horatia. “But I like
you anyhow.”
“Of course you must.”
“We’ll have to go,” she sighed. “It must be eight o’clock.”
“It’s half-past nine,” said Wentworth triumphantly. “Have you always an
hour at which you must fly away?”
“And no glass slippers. Isn’t it bad luck?”
He wrapped her closely in the fur robe, tucking it in with never a
sentimental gesture and then they were off, skimming through the white
night. At her door he said good-night.
“We must have lots of good times,” he said.
She wanted to tell him about Jim, but it seemed like assuming that his
interest was unduly sentimental. After all there hadn’t been a touch of that
in his manner. And Jim had insisted that it be a secret. Next time it might be
more natural to tell Anthony about her love.
She slept hard and dreamed of Anthony Wentworth attacking a laborer
who was throwing bombs at his head. She was all for Anthony in the
dream.
 CHAPTER VIII

M AUD heard about that ride with much satisfaction. Her respect for her
sister was going up by leaps and bounds. To be clever enough to land
a man with a past that was frightening as well as a young and wealthy
hero was a genuine achievement worthy of record. Secretly Maud dreamed
of a life to be a continual flirtation, and to hint at these romantic things
deftly as part of Horatia’s doings made a very interesting topic. She sighed
and said:
“It’s all very easy to decide what you ought to do in abstract cases, but
when one’s own young sister is involved!”
How Horatia would have writhed if she had heard those conversations!
If she had guessed how Maud made her a girl whose allure was irresistible
—whose danger to men was terrific, and yet who was so innocent and
unsophisticated herself that the very streetcars held danger. But she did not
guess. Nor did she dream that it was Maud who took pains to inform
Anthony Wentworth about Langley. Maud wanted to be connected with the
Wentworths and she did not intend to have the Langley affair scare Anthony
off. So, meeting him at a dance, she rallied him gaily.
“What did you do to my young sister?”
Anthony asked her for a dance, paying off his dinner debt and also
thinking he would like to know the reason for her remark. They sat it out.
“What did I do to your sister? You tell me. I didn’t think she knew I was
alive.”
“Oh, yes, she very much knows it. She doesn’t say much—Horatia never
does—but she certainly did enjoy that ride with you.” Horatia had not
mentioned it to Maud, but Maud was sinning for the greater cause.
“And I’m glad she has a wholesome man friend. I don’t know if you
know——”
Anthony expressed total ignorance.
“Well—you know Jim Langley.”
“Oh, yes.”
“He’s a fascinating sort of person, you know. And Horatia has seen far
too much of him. She went to work on that paper just out of devilment.”
 That didn’t tally with what Horatia had told Anthony about her work.
“Well—she thinks she’s in love with him and he—is certainly in love
with her. Of course, she’s young and beautiful—any man would. But Jim
Langley isn’t the sort of person one would pick out for a husband for one’s
sister, of course. There are things we’ve all heard——”
“I like Jim very much, myself,” said Anthony, surprisingly.
Maud drew in her horns.
“Why, we all do—he’s wonderfully fascinating. But he’s so much older
than Horatia, and then I myself never would be sure of the stability of such
a man’s affection. And Horatia is so wonderful. I’m sure I don’t know why
I’ve told you all this.” Which both of them knew was another falsehood.
Anthony went away leaving Maud with a feeling that he understood her
better than was comfortable to know. She might have guessed that he had
not been a sought-after young man for years without growing pretty astute.
At his club he met an old acquaintance and after a few moments’
conversation asked him,
“What about Jim Langley? How’s he coming on?”
“Oh, he’s a queer fish. Doing rather better lately. They tied the can to
him socially when he got involved in that Hubbell scandal.
“Mrs. Hubbell’s back, isn’t she?”
The man nodded. “And charming as ever in her mourning clothes. She
says, I believe, that her great sorrow is not that her husband died but that he
died insane—because otherwise she can not explain his suing for divorce
and his suicide. She says, ‘Poor Jack. He must have been quite insane!’
very touchingly. She gets away with it.
“Langley still in her train?”
“Trust her. I suppose so. But Langley’s all right. He’s been doing
damned good writing lately. Now if he could get a job on a newspaper
somewhere else, I believe he’d go far. Here, of course, he got off with the
wrong foot.”
“Must be thirty-five or six—1904, wasn’t he at the University?”
“Yes—about that. Well, that’s not too late for a man to begin to make
real headway. If he married the right woman. It’s marriage these queer
ducks need, you know.”
Wentworth agreed.
 “Still, he’s hardly the right man for a young girl and——”
“No—not a match for youth and innocence—not Jim Langley. However,
that’s the kind they usually pick.”
Wentworth snapped the conversation off there. Perhaps he had heard
enough. He went home—not to his sister’s house but to the half-closed
house of his father, and sat in his own room before his fire, musing. The fire
made his fine profile unusually handsome. He looked about the room
appreciatively. These were the deep chairs that had welcomed him on
vacations and furloughs—the Remington that his father had given him—his
few books, his pipes and the big windows that almost made up one wall.
“Why should I leave it?” he murmured, and fell to smoking luxuriously.

And so the winter slipped into spring, with Horatia revelling in the work
of the office and in the thrills which shot through her at the mere presence
of Langley; enjoying, too, the friendliness of Anthony Wentworth and the
pleasant things he devised for them to do; enjoying everything all the more
because of the flashes of wonder and fear and depression with which she
was touched sometimes; with Langley working and watching Horatia; with
Maud making plans and buying spring clothes with morbid carefulness;
with Mrs. Hubbell buying clothes too and planning little entertainments and
pressing people to attend them; with the chains which bound them all
together being drawn tighter and tighter, and the web of their drama being
spun on the vast frame of life. Each of them undoubtedly dreamed that the
pattern was different from what it was and each of them must have had a
pattern clearly in mind; while Nature, the scene-painter, began to change
her set and shaking the white burdens from the trees, helped them to bud
again.
With the spring, too, Aunt Caroline and Uncle George came back from
the South, Aunt Caroline laden with little bronze alligators and pictures of
herself picking oranges and Uncle George frankly rejoicing in getting back
and with a tendency to disparage everything Southern. They took Langley
and the news of the engagement, which Horatia felt they should know,
rather more quietly than either of the nieces had expected, but as they
thought about it they realized that these two West Parkians were, after all,
too far out of the world to understand all its ways and meanings. Perhaps if
Aunt Caroline had discussed it at the Ladies’ Guild she might have heard
disturbing things, but since it was a secret and couldn’t be discussed she
formed her opinions on the impression Langley made on her, which was
pleasant enough. He knew how to listen interminably and defer properly
and that was enough for Aunt Caroline. For those hours of listening to her
over a heavy Sunday dinner, Langley was paid by Sunday afternoons with
Horatia, long walks out by the lake through the mists or the winds when
everything evil and unhappy seemed to drop away from him and the world
was all life and energy and Horatia. The tediums of Aunt Caroline were a
very little thing to bear.
Horatia kept her apartment in the city, pleading an unbreakable lease to
her aunt, but she liked to get back to West Park once in a while, just for the
“clean, fresh dullness” of it, she said. She had not yet learned what she was
to learn, that dullness is one of the most beautiful things in the world for an
harassed spirit to come back to, and that dullness is not always stupidity, but
sometimes safety. So she patronized West Park mentally and laughed at
herself for looking forward to Sundays there. It was natural enough that she
should look forward to them as a respite from the existence about her. She
was seeing a great deal of very concentrated life. When a woman shoots a
man, a newspaper office has the real facts of the case very quickly. When a
man suddenly retires from politics and his wife leaves town for a few
months and a fatherless child is reported in the “Birth” columns, the public
may not connect the three events. But often enough the newspaper knows
that there is a link. It knows, too, how so many fortunes are made and it
connects them with queer obscurities. They did not reveal ugliness to
Horatia willingly in that little office, but she saw and heard it because she
was there and could not always be well shielded. Some of the worst of it
never reached her but she saw enough. She began to know that the things
that happened in the world were not based on justice and she saw that pain
can not always be healed and that the wages of sin were sometimes
opulence and public respect. She, who had crusaded out into the world,
loving its beauty and its freshness and yearning for all it had to offer, began
to see that it offered a selection of things which had to be looked over very
carefully.
None of this saddened her, because it had not touched her yet, but it
aroused her pity and her wonder and her scorn. With the assurance of her
age, it never frightened her to see and hear of trouble. These tragedies might
happen to others, but not to her—not to her who had work and love. If she
ever thought of her future she admitted that she would have “her share of
trouble,” but that trouble was so delightfully in the distance as to be merely
a romantic ingredient of life—a spice—and not a thing to be afraid of. But
there began to be a complexity of thoughts back of her clear eyes, where
once there had been only curiosity and eagerness. Day by day it deepened
and day by day she loved her work more. It brought many a chance to do
interesting things—to render little services to all kinds of people. There was
beginning to be an increasing number of women in politics and many of
these came to make use of the “woman on The Journal.” If they came
merely to make use of her they usually departed without accomplishing
anything. Horatia understood them very easily and disconcertingly. It was
very obvious to her who had no axe of her own to grind, that some of these
women had. If they came to ask her advocacy of something decent and
necessary, it was easy to explain and easy to get support. But if they came
to barter or exchange favors, as so many of them did, they went away
empty-handed, simply because they had nothing to give Horatia and
because she desired no favors—or offices—or social advancement.
She made enemies. When Mrs. Perry Hill, president of the City
Symphony Society, came down to The Journal office one day, she came
with an air of concession and as one descended from a pedestal. She
explained her purpose lengthily to Horatia. The City Symphony wanted to
raise a hundred thousand dollars to put up a musical studio building as a
memorial for soldiers and sailors who had been killed during the war. She
told enthusiastically of the struggle of the Symphony to raise itself from a
little club into a great organization which brought the artists of America to
the city to play and to sing. She outlined the tremendous need for a studio
building and told of the music-students and teachers who would bless the
city and the City Symphony for a place to study and teach. She touched
upon the needs of a commercial age and the general low level of musical
appreciation. And she ended by telling of the other great lack—the lack of a
suitable Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial. “Nothing could be a more fitting
tribute to those noble lads.”
Horatia frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
She stopped Mrs. Hill, who was just about to repeat her entire speech. “I
understand, of course, that the Symphony is a worthy organization—of
course—and it has given its members much pleasure—but why should a
studio building be a tribute to soldiers and sailors? What good will it do
them, living or dead?”
“Only by upholding the highest ideals can we be worthy of those noble
boys,” answered Mrs. Hill sententiously.
Horatia persevered.
“But how would it touch them?”
“In the proposed auditorium we would have many fine concerts for
everyone.”
“Free?”
“My dear young lady, it costs a thousand dollars to bring great artists
here.”
“I see.” Horatia’s tone was not encouraging. “Have you seen many
soldiers and sailors, Mrs. Hill?”
“My own son was an aviator.”
“I mean common soldiers. The kind that like ‘Ja-da’ and ‘Come On,
Papa’ and would go to sleep at a concert, most of them. They need—oh,
tremendously, to be educated in just the things you speak of. But you can’t
do it by building recherché auditoriums. They need lots of things more than
that—and lots of things before that. Mrs. Hill, I haven’t an objection in the
world to a studio building for the Symphony—I’d be glad to contribute if
you’ll bring Galli-Curci and Kreisler—but to go about asking funds from
people on the plea that you are doing something in the name of those
unfortunate boys who were killed or of those commoners who once were
soldiers is to me an absurdity.”
It was not the sort of reception to which Mrs. Hill was accustomed when
she went to society editors.
“May I see Mr. Langley?”
Horatia opened the door to his office and ushered in Mrs. Hill, who went
into some detail as to her worthy project and Horatia’s inadequate
appreciation. Horatia chuckled at her desk outside, wondering how Langley
would deal with her, and was fully satisfied when Mrs. Hill swept out with
a last overheard comment—“Of course, there are many reasons why you
are taking this attitude, sir, and none of them does you credit.”
She was ruined, however. Horatia ran a column on the new auditorium
studio building and memorial, touching gently on the fact that the question
of its erection was in dispute, and then she telephoned some of her friends
and some of the real women thinkers of the city for opinions. Also she
telephoned some architects. The article was not condemnatory. It was gently
questioning, but many a business man read it and agreed heartily with the
questions in it, having them ready as an excuse for not contributing. The
project failed and Mrs. Hill knew why it had failed. She took to saying
“there was opposition from the sort of places from which you might expect
it,” which was cryptic, hinted at scandal and saved her face. But even with
her face saved she detested Horatia.
It was only an incident, but there were other incidents which, added
together, made the “woman on The Journal” a subject of much speculation.
There was the woman who wanted to be made city commissioner in order
to enhance her husband’s chances of getting city contracts and who failed to
get Journal support. There was the case of the teacher who resigned from
the schools in order to run for the School Board and work for raises in
teachers’ salaries. She and Horatia had many a consultation in The Journal
office and many a plan hatched there finally put across the woman’s
successful election. It was undoubtedly true that Horatia had a straight eye,
Bob Brotherton said—and not only did she have a straight eye but she used
it. She came to be in demand for many things—as a member of committees
projecting new schemes, as a member of boards of directors. The men liked
to have her because she had a sense of humor and of brevity in discussion
and the women liked to have her because the meetings were usually a
success when she came and because she never wanted to be chairman.
Horatia enjoyed all these things too, but most of all she liked to get back to
the office, to her own papers and her own companions and to the welcome
of its familiarity and to Langley’s smile, which had all the love of the world
in it. The love of the work and the love of Langley ran so intermingled in
her that they sometimes blended. They seemed already married in the things
they were doing. The other marriage could only complete this one. So she
told herself, but the “other marriage” sounded in her soul sometimes with a
solemn note which frightened her a little. Her inexperience frightened her.
Women on the street, with shapeless figures and worn faces, commanded
respect from her for these women had been married. They knew what living
with a man meant. Perhaps they had not played the game very well, but
they had played it and they knew the rules.
 CHAPTER IX

“I F you look at me like that,” said Anthony, “I will kiss you and ask you
to marry me. I don’t know which I’ll do first, but I’ve put both things
off long enough.”
This on the springiest of spring days with Horatia clambering back into
the car which Anthony had stopped by the roadside until she found some
cowslips; she was smiling her perfect happiness at Anthony. Her smile
disappeared.
“Don’t do that——”
“Which?”
“Either. I should have told you long ago, Anthony. But it assumed that
you cared if I told you this—and I couldn’t assume such awful conceit. You
don’t. It’s just the day and the fun we’ve been having.”
“But you were going to tell me——”
“That I love Jim Langley and I’m going to marry him.” She held her
head high and her blush was triumphant.
“When?” asked Anthony.
“I don’t know—not for a year, perhaps, but sooner or later I’m—we’re—
going to.”
Anthony twisted the wheel idly without starting his motor.
“Well—there’s nothing I can do about it except to wish you joy.
Langley’s all right—and if you are sure you love him, it’s all right. But
don’t let the work deceive you. That’ll stop after you are married and the
glamour——”
“No, indeed, I shall work right along—right along—that’s our whole
idea.”
Anthony did not look impressed. He started the car and drove on silently.
Then——
“Look here, Horatia, I know you’ll damn me for a reactionary, but I want
to say a few things. I ought to go away and leave you alone but I don’t want
to. I can’t exactly admit Langley as a rival on the strength of what you say.
You see what I want to give you is something very different. I want you to
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