The Demon Queen Trials Trilogy

I tried not to stare at the frat boy I’d punched last night, but three things were making this hard. One—the bruise around Jack’s eye was a deep, shiny purple that caught the glare of the classroom’s fluorescent lights. Two—he didn’t even belong in this class. And three—he was sitting in the back making a grotesque gesture that involved waggling his tongue through V-shaped fingers.

Suffice to say, my presentation was not going well.

Jack Corwin had been harassing me since high school. I would have expected that by senior year of college, he’d have grown past finger-in-the-hole gestures and fake orgasm faces, but Jack liked to buck convention. Why give up that level of obnoxiousness when it was his defining trait?

I’d prepared so well for today, putting in hours of memorizing the names of the relevant psychological studies. I’d selected a knee-length black dress with a white collar—cute but professional, and only slightly goth. I’d copied down my notes and pulled my bright red curls into something like a neat ponytail. And yet, my preparation didn’t matter when confronted by that waggling tongue.

Focus, Rowan. Forget him.