A bark of laughter escaped from me before I could stop it. "Anyone knows what the click was we heard right before the explosion?"
"The wards," one of the other girls said. "They fell with Holly's death."
I sat up straighter. "Wait. Seriously?"
"Yup," Charlotte said. "We heard her," she pointed at the blonde woman, "talking on her cell to someone. There's already been a mass exodus of students. The explosion woke everyone up and the magic surrounding the place fell. Half of the shifter dorm is already gone."
Holy crap. That was ... not good. I cringed. I still had no idea who the woman was with Mr. Raven. I called out for the blonde woman.
"I'm sorry. I don't know your name."
"Mrs. Valois," she said. "Now tell me what happened here today."
"Before I start," I said, "where is Mr. Raven?"
Her brow furrowed. "What does he have to do with anything?" she asked, surprise evident in her tone.
"He has everything to do with it," Charlotte said.
Mrs. Valois' lips thinned and went white. "We haven't seen him since the wards fell." Her tone was clipped. All of a sudden she sighed and sank down to the ground next to us. "What is going on in this place?"
"Holly and Mr. Raven were working together. There were four girls who died on these grounds."
Her head whipped to me. "Died?"
I nodded.
"No," she said. "Impossible." But she was wringing her fingers, and I wondered what had made her start to wonder about this place.
I still didn't know if I should tell her about the woman I saw with Mr. Raven. Just as I was about to, I saw Mr. Mago appear in the rubble. He took it all in with an impassive glance, as if this sort of destruction was a common occurrence.
When he saw Mrs. Valois, he waved her over.
"Say nothing about the girls," she hissed as she stood. "It will not serve you."
The girls and I exchanged worried glances. "I really hate this place," I said.
"Everyone with a lick of sense does," said Charlotte. "I'm a second year and I've been cold since I stepped into this place. I've never met a cardigan strong enough to fight this place." She shrugged. "But you get used to it, I guess. Or at least I have." A sad smile graced her lips. "The chill never goes away, but it's easier to forget about now."
A sigh escaped me and I laid my head down on top of my raised knees. "It's your chance to go if you want to take it. I can cover for you."
Charlotte shook her head, but the other two girls got up to make their exits. I watched them until they were several feet away. "I didn't say for them."
A laugh burbled from Charlotte. "They'll get caught as soon as they round the corner."
"What corner?" I said on a laugh.
We both stared up at the ceiling that no longer existed. I wasn't sure how we'd explain that, but I'd figure out something. It had to be quick, though. Mr. Mago was making his way over to us.
"Girls," he said with a quick incline of his head.
"Mr. Mago," we said in unison.
"This is quite the mess," he said. His tone was friendly, almost conciliatory. I suspected him immediately. There was something not quite right about him.
"We were lucky to get out alive." I poured all the innocence and guile I could into my voice.
"As I can see. Barely a scrape on you."
I looked down. The only damage I suffered was ripping my skirt. Not that I would miss it or these stupid undershorts they made us wear underneath it. "Lucky," I said again.
"Tell me one more time how it happened," he said.
I hadn't told him anything, so his phrasing was interesting. I shook my head. "We followed Holly down here. She said she wanted to show us something."
"Why here specifically?" he asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. "No idea. She seemed to be familiar with the area, though, so we didn't think much of it."
"You didn't think much of breaking the academy curfew?" he asked. There was something odd in his eyes. An emotion I couldn't place.
"We're teenagers," I said honestly. "Science says our cerebral cortex has yet to form so we make consistently poor decisions."
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Charlotte put her head down and press her lips together to keep from laughing.
But Mr. Mago was not amused. "I could see you in detention for the rest of the year."
Was detention really a threat when your whole life was juvie? I certainly didn't think so. I bowed my head like a contrite student and mumbled under my breath. "It was Holly. She stepped into a circle and I guess it somehow activated." I winced as I realized I sounded like I knew magic more than I should. "I dunno. That's what my aunt's books say. You should never step into an open circle if you aren't sure what the spell is or who cast it."
I looked up to see Mr. Mago studying me. "That's correct. Was this Holly's spell?"
I shook my head. "I don't know, sir."
Charlotte did the same thing.
"And what happened then?"
"She sort of got suspended in mid-air." I waved my hands around for good measure. "Then she started bleeding. Everywhere."
"Everywhere," Charlotte repeated.
"But what caused this?" He made a hand motion around the room.
"Umm. Well, once she stopped floating, she crashed to the ground and then boom."
"Boom," Charlotte said.
I stepped lightly on her toes to get her to shut up.
"Huh," he said. "An explosion like this could only be magical."
"The circle lit up once she stepped into it. Could that have done it?" I asked. I hoped I looked innocent enough.
"No," he said abruptly. The pentagram was still a little visible, though the ground had cracked and disrupted the magic. Blood was still evident, even coated in a thin layer of gray dust.
I could feel magic still floating around the air. Bad, dark magic. Whatever had been done here had sullied the area. Corrupted it almost. From the way Mr. Mago's lips thinned and went white, I suspected he knew it as well.
"What happens now?" I asked.
He blinked as if I had surprised him. "You two girls will visit the infirmary and report back to your dormitories. Come Monday morning, both of you will report to my office and undergo the Ceremony once again."
Crap. He didn't believe me.
"What for?" I asked, hoping I sounded more curious than accusing.
"Because ambient magic can affect one's growing powers," he said, almost absentmindedly. "Since yours went a little sideways the first time, I think we should test you again just to be sure." He smiled at me. "Is there an issue?"
I shook my head. There was a huge issue, but I wasn't going to be the one to bring it up. I eyeballed Holly's body and a horrible, yet ingenious idea formed inside my head.
I didn't use black magic, but to save my own skin maybe I would start.
Mrs. Valois stepped forward. "Come on, girls. Let's go see the nurse."
"What about Holly?" My lips quivered. "Can I say goodbye to her?"
The woman's brow furrowed. She looked to Mr. Mago for guidance. He gave a short, annoyed nod. I rushed over to her body, feeling queasy at what I was about to do. I leaned down and took both her hands. I sniffled a couple of times for good measure and said some inane words I didn't mean. Just when I was about to get I up, I whispered, "Secare."
I rose a few seconds later and untucked my shirt to hide the bulge in my pocket. But before I turned around, I whispered, "Celare."
Swallowing hard and trying to hide the real tears I was beginning to shed, I turned back to face Mrs. Valois. "Okay," I said, my voice quivering. "I'm ready." I looked around. "Did my bag make it?"
Mrs. Valois tiptoed through the rubble to grab my pack. It was covered in dust but had somehow made it through. I didn't think the snack I'd packed this morning survived, though.
I didn't look back at Holly on my way out of the destroyed room. If I had, I wouldn't have been able to handle the regret.
A Few Days Later
There was some good to come out of this whole Holly thing. Not enough to cover up the horrors, but I'd made a friend. And that was practically a miracle. Charlotte still didn't know exactly what I was and so far, she hadn't asked me again. After the debacle with the wards and my "trauma", I'd been allowed to skip the full moon in the woods event with the other shifters. Not that I escaped completely unscathed. They'd taken me to a cell lined with silver. I guess my reaction wasn't super appropriate because I was more of what the crap is this than the usual freak-out shifters had when confronted with silver. I hissed when I realized what I'd done and as I pretended to brush the bars as I walked in.
It seemed like they bought it, but it was hard to tell. I was going to have to start being a lot more careful if I wanted to keep myself out of trouble here.
Classes had yet to resume. From what I could tell, the wards were now in somewhat working order, though we could still get out if we wanted to. I had yet to see the other two cronies hanging around with Holly again. Part of me wondered if the ghosts had gotten hold of them, too. Not that they'd done much to Holly. Just shoving her over the edge of the circle was enough.
I hadn't seen them either. I wasn't content to think they'd dissolved in a shower of golden light and suddenly found themselves in Heaven. Life didn't work like that. Plus, we weren't human. Few of us believed in Heaven. Hell was a lot more real than we all liked to admit, though.
The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if Hell hadn’t somehow been involved in what had happened here. No one had seen Mr. Raven again. The whispers were that he was killed in the explosion.
No one knew the truth except for Mrs. Valois and she didn’t seem to be saying anything about it. Whether that was a good thing, I wasn’t sure yet.
As for me and my trip back to that creepy desk in Mr. Mago’s office … well…
Holly had come in handy for more than being a giant pain in the ass. I knew a lot of simple magics. One word spells that could make life a lot easier for me. Things like revealing magic or opening doors.
But there were two others I knew.
Cut. Conceal.
Holly’s fingers lay in a preservation spell in the top of my underwear drawer just in case Mr. Mago tried to get me to go through the ritual an additional time. I couldn’t let him know my powers operated outside of the moon cycles. I wasn’t sure why, but I knew it was a bad idea.
I’d been able to replicate Holly’s fingerprints and with careful magic and a little bit of super glue, I was able to affix them to the top of mine. This time I was careful to keep my distance from Mr. Mago. When he told me to touch the desk, I did so.
My heart pounded because I wasn’t sure it would work.
But nothing happened like the last time. I was able to remain upright for all of it, though my mind was now full of unnecessary lore.
I’d been placed firmly into the shifter house.
I had no idea what I was going to do the next full moon.
Right now I wasn’t too concerned about it. I’d found a home here. A terrible and musty one, yes, but it was still home. I’d made a friend. Some enemies, too, probably. Especially if Mr. Mago ever realized the truth of that day.
I could have escaped when the wards went down. But what would I have done? Where would I have gone?
Later on it had become apparent that most of the only students who escaped were shifters. They were capable of surviving on their own in the wild. People like the witches or the younger students crippled by their powers, well … we were stuck here.
For better or worse.
I still had a lot of questions about the Merlin Academy. None of them good or even productive. What I did know was if I wanted to survive this place, I had to find them out.
I had to investigate, spy, ingratiate, and befriend anyone I needed to in order to help me attain that goal. This place was killing people, and I wanted to know why.
I had to bring this place down from the inside.
*
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The Fiercest Flame
Midnight and Dawn: Elementals
Ashlee Nicole Bye
Seraphina Conley has a demon living inside her. One that shoots flames from her fingertips when she’s upset or angry.
At least, that’s what she’s always believed—until her prison transport is hijacked enroute to the appeal of her arson conviction and she winds up kidnapped by a guy wielding the same sort of powers she has.
It turns out Sera is half salamander—a Fire Elemental—a dangerous thing to be left untrained and unsupervised out in the human world. She needs to learn to control the unpredictable and deadly force inside her, and that means going back to school—sort of.
The intensive training salamander younglings go through before their final Testing is like nothing Sera’s ever experienced before. There’s no homeroom, no study hall, no SAT prep. It’s all gruelling physical training, exhausting flame work, and poring through ancient texts until you’re seeing double.
Making things even more challenging is the constant distraction in the form of three gorgeous Fire Princes—Aidan, Dante and Fenix. Sera knows nothing can really happen with them—she’s a halfling and they’re princes, not to mention the way salamanders feel about polygamous relationships—but that doesn’t mean she can’t have a little fun playing with fire.
Copyright © 2019 Ashlee Nicole Bye
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Characters, incidents, and dialogs are products of the author’s
imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events is strictly
coincidental.
1
I winced at the sound of metal scraping across concrete as I pulled my chair closer to the rickety table and leaned my elbows on the surface. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to the sight of the orange sleeves…why did they make us wear this hideous color, anyway? I guessed it was so we could be spotted from a mile away if we ever escaped—like that would have been possible from somewhere like here. ‘Here’ was Bedford Hills Correctional Facility; I shouldn’t have been here—I was only seventeen—but I’d just been convicted of my second offense, and this time I’d actually killed someone. It hadn’t taken much convincing to have me tried as an adult.
It wasn’t me who’d burned my foster family’s house down, but the demon living inside me; of course, I’d never said as much out loud—I knew it wouldn’t have made a difference. If anything, it probably would have made things worse.
I glanced up at the young woman sitting across from me—my new public defender. I was glad I’d have a different lawyer than the one who’d represented me at my trial—I’d never really liked him—but it was hard to get too optimistic about the change. For one thing, I wasn’t an idiot; I knew the chances of me getting out on appeal were basically slim to none. And for another, this woman looked like she was only a day or two out of law school—how much help could she really be? She looked professional enough, I supposed; her mousy brown hair was styled in a neat bob and her black pantsuit was clean and unwrinkled, telling me she took herself and her job seriously. Maybe her being young wasn’t such a bad thing. Maybe she was determined to prove herself and she’d be willing to fight for me, unlike the last guy.
“Miss Conley,” she said with a soft smile.
“Seraphina’s fine—or Sera.”
“Okay then, Sera—I’m Laura Collins. I’ll be taking over your case for the appeals process.” She shuffled the papers in front of her and set them back on the table, glancing back up at me with an intent look. “I’m not going to lie—the appeals process in this country is not built to favor the guilty part
y. Once you’re convicted of a crime, it’s incredibly difficult to have that conviction overturned, even if you’re innocent.”
But I’m not innocent, I wanted to say. Not completely. I may not have consciously decided to burn that house down, but my hands were responsible. I didn’t say that, however; Ms. Collins—Laura—was looking at me differently to the way the other lawyer had, like she thought I was a good person who needed help, and not a total monster. I’d only just met her, but for some reason I felt comfortable, safe, like she had my best interests at heart. I didn’t want that to change, so I said nothing.
“The good news in this case,” she continued, “is that we have strong grounds for appeal. For one thing, your juvenile record should have been sealed—your prior offense should never have been allowed into the record. Also, being that you weren’t even seventeen at the time of the supposed crime, there should have been no question as to trying you as a minor.”
My brows drew together in confusion at her wording. “Supposed?”
“That’s the other thing—they were never able to find any evidence of arson. The evidence against you was purely circumstantial. Considering there was never any proof that a crime was actually committed, you shouldn’t have been charged with one in the first place.” She shook her head in frustration, her lips pursed together. “All things we’ll put in our motion for ineffective assistance of council—your lawyer should have argued this for you in your trial.”
I was still utterly confused by her wording. “I still don’t understand—the house burned down…”
Laura’s lips pursed into a tight frown. “I’ve been over the fire inspector’s report and there’s no mention of any kind of accelerant. The report was labelled as ‘inconclusive’, because they were unable to determine exactly how the fire started.”
From the palms of my hands…I guessed not even the most experienced fire inspector would be able to wrap their head around the idea of a young girl shooting flames right out of her hands.
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