Light Up The Night: a Reverse Harem Urban Fantasy Romance (Lick of Fire Book 2) Read online

  Turn on the Night

  a Reverse Harem Urban Fantasy Romance

  Jacqueline Sweet

  Copyright © 2018 by Jacqueline Sweet

  Cover design by Jacqueline Sweet

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For Devon,

  Thank you for dreaming of Penrose with me and making it a living and breathing place. And for literally everything else.

  And For Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, Hogwarts, The University, Brakebills, East Quad, Narnia, Middle Earth and every other home away from home.

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. Breaking Up With Electricity

  2. Everyone Hates Thomas

  3. A Cold Snap

  4. The Recruiter

  5. She knew?

  6. Tell Me Everything

  7. The Guide to Not Getting Expelled

  8. The Runic Shield

  9. Boys

  10. Resting Witch Face

  11. Something Burning & Something Wet

  12. Roommates are Friends Forever

  13. The Nature of the Beast

  14. A Priest, an Opener, and a Know-It-All Walk into an Office

  15. I Can’t Get No Satisfaction

  16. The Dragon Hill Inn

  17. Revelations

  18. Damn It, Janet

  19. Witches Be Crazy

  20. Preparations for the Future

  21. Summoning the King in Shadow for Dummies

  22. Interlude: What Cash Does During a Full Moon

  23. Interlude: Cash to the Rescue

  24. Interlude: Rye to the Rescue

  25. Interlude: Gray to the Rescue

  26. Interlude: Body & Mind

  27. Aftermath

  28. Choose One

  29. Choose All

  30. The Golden Infinite Fullness

  31. Witch and Famous

  32. Rye’s Terrible No-Good Very Bad Secret

  33. Keep Calm and Carry a Wand

  34. The Night Belongs to Lovers

  But what happened to Tamsin?

  the Lick of Fire series

  About the Author

  Please enjoy these bonus stories from the Penrose University of Magic

  School of Ice & Whispers

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Epilogue

  Tutoring the Wolf

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Before she fought the King of Shadow . . .

  Before the demonic invasion of her university . . .

  Before her soul was ripped to shreds because of her own mistake . . .

  Before her three incredible lovers put her back together . . .

  Before she even knew that magic existed she was just plain old Tamsin Lee.

  And this is her story.

  All her life she was the smartest person in the room, every door was open to her.

  But then she came to Penrose University and learned magic was real and suddenly she was nothing.

  She couldn't compete with the kids who'd grown up with magic.

  They had experience and power and she didn't.

  In a moment of desperation, on the verge of failing, she performed a ritual to increase her power.

  It was cheating and she knew better, but she didn't care.

  She’d never failed at anything in her life and she wasn't about to fail her first year of school.

  That's how she opened a portal and brought a demon to her school.

  And that's how she met her three protectors:

  Gray, the sorcerer scoundrel;

  Cash, the werewolf who wanted to fight his past;

  and Rye, who had a heart big enough for everyone.

  She wanted to love them all.

  They just had to save the world first.

  1

  Breaking Up With Electricity

  Tamsin Lee was kissing her boyfriend for the last time when the world exploded.

  It was the middle of June and she was kissing the boy who was about to break her heart. They were sitting together at their favorite cafe in Seattle. It was the kind of place that filled up quick on rainy days because it was warm and softly lit and the owners give discounts to students. It occupied a street corner and had been there as long as Tamsin could remember. It was a place of good memories for her.

  Her mother used to take her there on those rare days when school was out. Tamsin would sit on one of the window ledges sipping thick hot cocoa, trying her hardest to make the whip cream last. Her mother would take the nearest table and work on spreadsheets and cost reporting forms and all of those business details that are once absolutely mysterious and utterly boring to a child.

  Tamsin was in that window seat now. The cushions were flatter and the wood was faded and scuffed, but little else had changed. She was kissing her boyfriend, Thomas Cutler, slowly and carefully, trying to make the moment last. Like whipped cream.

  The rain beat against the windows with an irregular rhythm, sharp as claws. Every table was full of students, even though it was summer. These were the kids Tamsin had gone to school with. The grinders. The achievers. They were the kind of kids who took a break from their Calculus homework and relaxed by doing some A.P. Bio. The Harrington Academy encouraged this sort of behavior.

  Thomas broke away from the slow, wet kiss. "Did you hear back yet?" he asked. He was thin and a bit shorter than her. The humble beginnings of a mustache darkened his upper lip, and the even more humble beginnings of a beard dotted his chin. His eyes were a watery blue, the color of the ocean during a storm.

  Tamsin bit her lip.

  She was terrible at lying.

  "Nothing good,” she said.

  Thomas pulled away from her. It was inches, but the divide was enormous. "Who this time?"

  "Can we not talk about this?" Tamsin asked. "Can we go back to that thing we were just doing with our mouths?" She smiled and tried to make it sound cute.

  It didn't sound cute.

  "This is serious, Tammy," Thomas said.

  She hated when he called her Tammy.

  "This is my future." His voice was too loud and his mouth hung open in outrage. People in the cafe were giving them looks.

  Tamsin sighed and reached into her backpack. She produced the stack of letters that had been waiting for her at home after school and handed them over to Thomas. The letters were very slim.

  "Stanford. USC. UCLA. The University of Washington." He tossed the rejection letters to the floor. "Is that every school heard from now?” His voice grew even louder and his face turned a menacing shade of purple.

  Tamsin nodded. "That's every school I applied to. Every single one. My dream school, my second tiers, and my safeties. No one wants me."

  "You were the valedictorian," Thomas said.

  "I know," Tamsin said. The di
sappointment in his voice was a punch to her gut. "This was why I wanted to stick to the kissing, at least for a little while longer.”

  "How could this happen?" Thomas's voice shook.

  Outside, the rain slammed harder into the window. The wood moulding groaned and squeaked. Something shook in the back of Tamsin’s mind, like a hand testing a doorknob.

  "It must be a mistake," Tamsin said. "I'm going to call the schools tomorrow and ask what's going on. On paper I should be a shoo-in at any of these." She ran her fingers over her two long braids. "It must be a computer glitch. Something wrong with their websites."

  "Or there's something wrong with you," Thomas said. His voice sounded nasty, like he'd only just now realized he'd been kissing a loser who couldn't even get accepted to U-Dub.

  Tamsin was speechless.

  The rain was a fist against the window, demanding to be let in.

  The rattle in the back of her mind grew louder.

  "We had a plan, Tammy. A plan," Thomas sneered. "Princeton or Stanford. Maybe Yale. Medical school for you. Law school for me. We were going to be a power couple. We were going to rule the world." She knew the plan. Hearing him repeat it—yet again—was an insult.

  "Were?" Tamsin asked. Her voice was small and hurt.

  The rattle grew louder.

  "Were. As in no longer. I can't be with someone who isn't on my level." Thomas tugged on his coat and stood up. He couldn't even look at her now. "Studies show that marriages work best when the man is more successful in his chosen career but when his partner is more intelligent than him. I thought I had that with you." He looked so cruel now.

  "It's just a mistake, Thomas. I can call and fix this. I'm the freaking Valedictorian. I have a perfect GPA. I've done so many extracurriculars that they had to invent a longer form for me." Tamsin was standing now, too. Her fists were balled at her sides. There was a strange sensation in her hair, like static electricity.

  He turned away from her. "What are you going to do? Move with me and work some dead end job and hope you get in next year? That's not my plan, Tammy. That’s not my future.”

  The static feeling in her hair deepened, like it was poking through her skin and racing down her body. "You said you loved me, Thomas."

  The rattle in her mind stopped and something clicked.

  A door inside her opened.

  The rain stopped.

  The cafe was quiet. Everyone was pointedly not looking at them.

  "I don't know you, Tammy. The girl I loved, she would have got in to Stanford with me." He turned away from her.

  That was when the window behind her exploded.

  Wind rushed in like a hurricane, knocking tables over.

  The rain was a giant fist and it punched Thomas in the back, hurling him against the wall.

  And the glass shards of the window sang through the room in a symphony of violence. They embedded themselves in tables, books, and backpacks. Somehow they missed Tamsin all together. In fact, every person in the room—with the exception of Thomas—was unharmed.

  Tamsin didn't wait to see if he was okay. She grabbed her things, licked the last of the whipped cream out of her mug, and left.

  She didn't notice that the feeling of electricity had vanished from her skin. And the door in her mind had closed, but not all the way.

  2

  Everyone Hates Thomas

  Tamsin walked the half mile back to her home with an odd sense of freedom bubbling within her. She'd been with Thomas for almost two years, which was eternity in high school time. Their whole life had been mapped out together, down to the year when she planned to have exactly one kid before resuming her career as a physician. But now it was gone and all that remained was a giant hole in her heart, an inferno of outrage, and complete freedom.

  She could do whatever she wanted.

  Unless what she wanted, of course, was to go to college.

  At home, her father was cooking dinner—tempura vegetables and a noodle dish he called Pad Try—and her brother was eating a pre-dinner snack of an entire jar of peanut butter. Jiro was her twin, but was nearly twice her size in every way. He'd already been accepted to the University of Washington and was spending the summer doing as little as possible.

  "How's it going, Potato?" her father asked without looking. Potato was short for Sweet Potato which had evolved from Sweetie. The name was grudgingly accepted.

  "Fine," Tamsin said. But her raw and shaking voice gave her away.

  Her father's head snapped round and he dropped what he was doing to come scoop her up in his arms. "Oh my, oh my. Tell me what happened."

  "It's Thomas." Tamsin's voice was half choke and half sob.

  "Is he dead?" Jiro asked, scraping the bottom of the peanut butter jar with his fingers.

  "He dumped me. I have been dumped. I am now a girl who has been dumped."

  "Oh, Potato" her father cooed. He squeezed her tighter and for a moment all her worries vanished as the scent of his cooking and the feel of his flannel shirt on her face overwhelmed her.

  A dark voice inside her said, One day your father will be dead and he won't be able to comfort you any more.

  "Tamsin, I have to tell you something.” Her father squeezed her even tighter.

  "What's that?"

  "We all hated Thomas." He broke out into a huge grin.

  "What?"

  Jiro chimed in, "It's true. Especially Mom."

  "He was awful," her father said. "Just the worst."

  Tamsin blinked and stepped away from her father's embrace. "But you never said anything."

  He shrugged and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with two fingers. "You know how driven you are. If I told you he was a little prick, you would have fought me and dug your heels in."

  "He was a little prick," Jiro added.

  "I was going to marry him, Dad." But even as she said it, she could feel how hollow the words were. It was a plan, sure. But it had been Thomas’s plan. It had always been Thomas's plan and she had gone along with it. Why? Because it had made things simple. It was easier to focus on the things that truly mattered if she had that whole boyfriend thing locked down.

  "You weren't, Honey. You just weren't. You're a complex and ferociously intelligent young woman and you're going to have a hard time finding the one man who is right for you. I'm sorry, but it's true. You're going to scare a lot of them away with your mind and your opinions, but the ones who run will never have been worth it. You need to find someone who appreciates who you are, not just who you can be for them."

  Tamsin nodded and thanked her dad while he sat her down with a truly enormous bowl of noodles and told her about all of the news of the day and the silly things he'd seen online. By the time dinner was finished the pain of losing Thomas had lessened, at least a little bit. Her mother was working late that week, doing crunch time at the software company. But Tamsin knew it would hurt all over again when she told her what had happened.

  After dinner, Jiro gave her a look and a nod. It was his traditional way of telling her he needed to say something. Or to borrow money.

  "What is it?" she asked. He was giving her a funny look. Funnier than usual.

  Jiro walked out the back door onto their deck. It was small by anyone's standards, but it had always been their special place.

  “Someone called for you."

  "Called for me?" Tamsin said.

  Her heart leapt in her chest maybe it was Princeton or Yale or Stanford calling to correct the clear error they had made. And maybe that meant she and Thomas could be unbroken up.

  But did she want that? Really? Was Thomas the one? Somehow, she thought, the one would have much better facial hair.

  Maybe the call was from one of her dad's doctors. She knew it was inappropriate to talk to them directly, but Tamsin couldn’t resist. She called them. She called them all to discuss treatments and therapies. They never called her back, but maybe this time was different? Maybe there was a treatment or course of therapy they’d i
gnored or overlooked.

  Doctors were busy after all and they couldn't keep up on the bleeding edge science. Not that Tamsin could either, of course, but she had to try something. Even if she had to discover the cure herself.

  Even the most ambitious estimate of her education put med school and a M.D. at least ten years away.

  Her father didn’t have ten years.

  But Jiro did.

  The illness had a name as long as her arm. It was an excruciatingly rare genetic disorder. So rare that study of it was nearly nonexistant.

  Her family didn't talk about it. Or they just called it the illness.

  Tests suggested Jiro had the genes for it but it might never manifest. Or it could kill him swiftly.

  She never told Thomas about the illness. It was private. It wasn't his business. And he never questioned why she wanted to go to medical school. In Thomas’s family you were either a doctor or a lawyer, or maybe an engineer. There were no other choices.

  Jiro spoke and broke her anxious train of thought.

  "You ever hear of a school called Penrose?"

  "No," Tamsin said. But wait. The name did sound familiar. Had there been an email or a letter? Tamsin went to her room and opened the file cabinet full of college applications and mailings. There, filed under P, was a mailing from Penrose University. It was an oversized postcard with a strange gold trim on it and a sheen to the paper that looked like oil on water. It was as generic a postcard as she had ever seen. It simply said the school's name and had a picture of a large Gothic building. On the back it said Penrose, a place to learn.