by Leigh Kelsey
“Oi!” a Cockney voice roared. “What in hell d’you think yer doin’?”
Kati glanced around for the speaker but judging by the equally confused looks on all the students’ faces, they didn’t know either.
“Just an exploding cheese fountain, Vickers,” Miz Jardin said in her breezy voice, addressing … the ceiling. Well, okay then. Kati remembered her earlier meet the ceiling comment. Everyone in the ballroom craned their necks, heads tilting backwards.
One of the naked, chubby necromancers pointing wands at the painted sky had broken away from his buddies and stood with his hands crossed on his hips, a swoosh of white fabric gliding around his pudgy belly to protect his bits. Or more accurately to protect the poor students’ eyes from that traumatic sight. The cherub wore a well-used flat cap and had the look of a London cabbie, despite being a wand-wielding cherub. His flat cap was currently dripping violently orange cheese.
“Well,” Rahmi said, and Kati thought that about summed up her thoughts too.
“Bloody idiots,” Vickers grumbled, flicking his hat until most of the cheese had splattered onto the floor. Kati wondered for a split second how he could be standing upright and also be a two-dimensional painting, but of course the answer was magic. And because the only magic taught at SBA was death magic, chances were this guy had been a real, live human at one point. It was one hell of a resurrection, she mused, to be brought back as a cherubic painting. Especially for someone who looked like he’d be more at home in a dingy pub in east London than in a cloud-filled, heavenly pastoral. “This is just what we need, a brand-new crop of morons. We only just got rid of the last lot six weeks ago.”
“Rude,” Gull Llewellyn muttered.
“Rude?” Vicker’s face went red; he wafted his flat cap threateningly in Gull’s direction. “I’ll give you rude, you disrespectful, ingrate little—”
“Alright,” Miz Jardin interrupted. “If everyone has eaten, back to your rooms with you. Tomorrow will be the longest day of your lives so far, so you’d best get all the sleep you can. I’ll pick you up at five PM for your tour of the grounds. And remember—SBA runs on a nocturnal schedule, so I don’t want any of you running around causing trouble during the day when everyone’s sleeping.” She tried to impress a sternness on them but she was just too nice. Still, some people nodded as if she were as scary as Madam Hawkness, Naia included. “Wonderful!” She clapped her hands twice. “Let’s get going, shall we?”
There was a mass exodus as everyone headed for the door at once.
“And don’t bother comin’ back,” Vickers grumbled.
COFFEE OF THE GODS
My first night at Second Breath Academy, Kati thought, sat with her knees folded up on the window seat of her new dorm room, her head resting on her arms. I didn’t get lynched, so that’s a bonus.
Ignoring Alexandra Chen, it hadn’t been so bad. Kati hadn’t planned on making any friends, and chances were good it’d all go wrong and they’d ditch her, but at least she had backup for now. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, going through three whole years at the academy alone would be miserable. Rahmi and Naia were alright. A bit chatty and optimistic—as opposed to Kati’s doom and gloom outlook—but at least they weren’t backstabbing bitches. She could have done worse. Alexandra Chen and her cronies came to mind, as they did every few minutes, Kati’s teeth grinding together. She didn’t know what it was about the girl, but Kati wanted to grab her in a headlock and choke her until she passed out.
Lingering on that fantasy cheered her up immensely.
A blue glow flickered through her window, startling her out of the daydream. “Huh,” Kati murmured, squinting at the flank of the castle that she could see from her window. She could have sworn there’d been a blue gleam in the corner of her eye, but now it was dark except for faint yellow light from a few scattered windows. Nothing cerulean like she thought she’d seen.
Kati watched for another few minutes but the glow didn’t come back. She shrugged, returning to the mental image of the posh bitch’s face turning slightly purple. But the memory of what she’d said about Theo intruded and Kati flinched away before fantasy-Alexandra could pass out.
It wasn’t true, any of the shit people were saying—that he and a friend had led a student out into the woods and used him in a black magic ritual. Kati couldn’t believe her big brother would do anything like that; it didn’t make sense.
It was more likely that he’d been towed along by the other guy, his friend, and all the blame had fallen onto Theo when he committed suicide. If that wasn’t a sign of guilt, Kati didn’t know what was. She didn’t even know the guy’s name. She knew the victim’s—it was seared into her brain by furious family members screaming in her front garden, by the endless journalists camped out across the street to report on the first ritual death since Lady LaVoire had been vanquished nine years before.
His name was Colen Greensmith. Eighteen years old, promising reaper, and a member of the prominent Greensmith family. The family that contained Marceline Greensmith, head of the gentry—the elite team of magic warriors who enforced the law and kept supernatural society secret. Marceline was half the reason Theo had been persecuted so fiercely; she had power and sway over most of the supernatural community and was well respected for being part of the team that, led by Madam Hawkness, took down Lady LaVoire and the Black Brooms.
Kati could have understood it if Theo was dark and mysterious, secretive and broody, but he was Theo. He was a total nerd, he spent most of his time playing whatever Pokémon game had just come out, and he was terrified of insects. People like that didn’t suddenly commit ritual murder. There were signs—being cruel to pets, or amassing creepy shrines to attractive women they’d never spoken a word to in their life. People didn’t just become evil on a random Thursday for no apparent reason.
Theo had left Kati a cactus for her new dorm room. Did evil villains give their sisters housewarming cacti? No. So Theo couldn’t be evil. The cactus was proof. Kati nodded at it now; it sat on the desk across the room beside a list of books she’d need to check out of the library and the notebooks and stationery she’d been advised to bring in her welcome letter.
She hadn’t unpacked her suitcases yet; she kept waiting for someone to kick her out. It wasn’t like anyone thought she’d killed someone with non-consent magic, but most people seemed to think she was guilty by association.
And it wasn’t like there was a huge leap from the magic that was socially acceptable, which used blood and bones and pain, to black magic. The difference was in consent.
The death magic taught at SBA—and every other academy around the world—placed a huge importance on having the permission of the person donating their blood or bones or whatever other spell component the magician used. Most of the time it didn’t apply, since people typically used their own blood to fuel spells and ingredients always came from an approved and highly regulated source.
Black magic took without permission, draining blood from people while they were restrained, putting them through agony to add an extra kick to an enchantment, peeling their skin back to use bones from living humans, rather than deceased like the regulated companies did. All those things made black magic far more powerful than ordinary death magic, but the rules existed for a reason.
Back in the twelfth century, the supernatural world was almost empty, supernaturals killed daily for power until there were only a couple hundred necromancers and reapers around. When black magicians began to hunt humans for potion components, the supernatural world was nearly exposed. That was when the laws against black magic were written, and they were still enforced now, albeit by a different authority. If you were found guilty, or even suspected, of torturing someone for magic, the gentry would come and drag you off for trial and execution.
Exactly as they’d tried to do to Theo, except he’d done a runner. The other guy had been arrested, awaiting trial, but he’d taken his own life before he could reach it. Better he do it himself t
han the gentry carry out the public execution. Kati’s stomach knotted as she pictured her brother faced with soul swords and wands that had taken countless lives in the name of safety and justice.
No, it wouldn’t come to that. He hadn’t done anything wrong.
Kati pushed off the window seat and crawled into bed, the sheets frillier than she was used to and the gold curtains adding weird shadows, restricting her view of the room. It was strange, being in a completely unfamiliar room. It felt like a hotel room—not really hers—but she’d have to get used to it.
At least the sheets warmed up quickly, shutting out the bite in the September air. Kati pulled them over her head and pretended the last year hadn’t happened. Theo had never been involved in a black magic scandal. Their family had never been persecuted. She’d arrived at SBA under completely ordinary circumstances, nobody glancing at her from the corner of their eyes, no scathing comments from Alexandra Fucking Chen, no dread choking Kati as she waited to be turfed out on her arse. She’d arrived as yet another no-name student, flying under the radar, free to be awed and wowed by the architecture, the magic, and the history that radiated from every stone block that made up the castle. Free to hope and wish and dream.
Free to daydream about her own future instead of lingering on Theo’s past.
Kati fell asleep lying to herself, warm and comforted by clouds of gauzy fantasy, and woke up in the mood to murder something.
Whoever had enchanted this castle was an asshole. That fucking clock tower. Kati was going to scale it and rip out its damn tonsils. It had been quiet, muffled all night, but now it was as loud as a thunderclap.
She rolled over with a groan, burying her face in her pillow and startling as she realised no sunlight pressed against her eyelids. She thought for a split second that it was half six in the morning, but it quickly became apparent that it was half six in the evening.
“Oh right,” she muttered into the pillow. “Nocturnal schedule.”
She felt like shit, the kind of ironic exhaustion that only came from having slept too long. Her head was stuffed full of cotton wool, her eyes scratchy, and her joints ached from being cramped in one position for so long. She stretched out her limbs, wincing, and reached for her phone, checking it automatically for a text from her brother. Nothing, except three words from her mum:
All caps. Always bloody all caps.
Eyes slowly focussing as she rubbed the scratchiness and sleep from them, Kati matched her mum’s reticence. She texted back:
Thirty seconds later, her phone vibrated in her hand, the screensaver—her and Theo at age five locked in a ‘duel to the death’ in their back garden—flashing on. Her mum had drawn equal with:
Kati rolled her eyes, throwing her phone to the bottom of the mattress, and swung her legs out of bed, surprised when dizziness didn’t swirl the room into blurs. Small mercies, she thought, and stood, frowning at her creased jeans and the shirt she’d slept in. Chances were pretty high the seam in her pants had left imprints all down her legs. Sure enough, when she peeled them off, matching tramlines ran from hip to ankle, aching dully.
Kati threw her jeans into the corner of the room, just so they knew exactly how she felt about them, and snagged her wand from the bedside table, tapping one of the suitcases still standing, fully packed, and pricking her thumb with the wooden spike—the blood letting thorn—near the base, designed for such purposes.
Thank souls she’d come to the academy with a basic understanding of magic; some people, she knew, would be thrown in at the deep end, utterly clueless after attending mortal schools, but Kati had always been able to do magic. She was damn good at it. She’d been more advanced than Theo, even a year younger, and shamelessly smug about it for as long as she could remember. Death magic came naturally to her; she barely had to think about it.
“Open,” she ordered, her blood soaking into the blackthorn wand. The suitcase, previously sealed by magic, shuddered and fell open. So too did the second suitcase. Kati pursed her lips at it but shook her head. Like she’d said: she was damn good at magic. Unnaturally good sometimes.
“Kati?” Naia’s voice came through the door, breathy with excitement already. “Are you up?”
“No,” Kati replied, deadpan, rifling through the stack of clothes until she found a pair of ripped black jeans, a faded band shirt, and clean socks and underwear.
“I’m coming in!” Naia cheerfully announced and Kati smirked, hands on her hips as Naia flung the door open. She stopped instantly with a squeak at the sight of bare freckled thigh, her eyes as wide as saucers as Kati propped her leg in a position destined to flash a little underwear.
“See something you like, Clarke?”
Naia squealed and slammed the door shut. “No. No, no, I didn’t. I didn’t see anything.”
Kati snorted and gathered the clothes into a bundle, pressing down the door handle with her elbow and not entirely surprised to find that Naia had scarpered. “If anyone’s in the bathroom,” Kati said loudly, “be warned, I’m having a shower whether you’re still in there or not.”
The bathroom door opened so suddenly its hinges squealed, Naia appearing with her eyes fixed anywhere but on Kati.
“If I didn’t know better, Clarke, I’d say you’re trying to seduce me.”
Naia looked like a deer in headlights. “No. Not at all. You’re not even my type.”
“Female?” Kati asked, elbowing past and dumping her pile of clothes on the closed toilet lid.
“Scary,” Naia corrected, and then gulped as Kati raised an eyebrow. “Not that scary is bad, I’m sure you’re someone’s type. Somewhere. Someone equally fearsome.”
Kati kept her eyebrow lofty but a smirk of amusement curled her mouth upward. She was moderately flattered. “You done?”
Naia laughed, scratching the back of her neck, her hair already in an immaculate french plait despite the early—or late, depending on your perspective—hour. “Yep, I think I’m done digging this hole. Formally hanging up my shovel. Climbing out now.” She mimed the whole thing, and Kati snorted. “I think I’ll just … go make some coffee.”
“Good choice,” Kati agreed, and shut the door. She could have slammed it but she was more amused than irritated despite the foul mood she’d woken up in. Huh.
The shower, as she’d expected, was heavenly. Rigged with a number of enchantments, the plumbing a deep copper colour to hide the bloody fingerprints that had gone into forging the delicious, even heat, perfect spray, and divine water pressure. Whatever aches Kati had gone in with were baptised away when she stepped out and dressed.
“Here!” Rahmi cornered Kati the second she emerged, a big mug in hand. It was a mystic purple colour and had clearly not been provided by the academy because the brush-script slogan read LIFE’S A BITCH, THEN YOU DIE (UNLESS YOU HIRED A NECROMANCER.) Kati laughed as she read it, nodding in appreciation.
“You like it?” Rahmi asked, preening. Unlike Naia, she wasn’t flawlessly made up at this time of morning—evening—whatever. No, that sort of perfection required hours of work. Or magic. “I knew you’d love it,” she said, a big grin creasing her brown face.
“You made this?” Kati asked, accepting the mug and inhaling the rich coffee aroma. The handle of the mug, she noted with a grin, was a curved athame—the tool of the trade for necromancers. Conjuring had never been Kati’s strongpoint despite her magic talent; she could appreciate the flawless work in the mug, though.
“I did! Not the coffee, Naia brewed that, but I added a shot of good vibes.”
Kati gave her a dubious look but took a sip and groaned. “Nectar of the fucking gods. Thanks, Rahmi.”
Rahmi looked immensely pleased to have been thanked, her amber eyes sparkling. She was still smiling when she plopped down on one of the sofas, an emerald squishy thing that seemed to swallow her. Kati paid little attention as Rahmi flicked the TV on with her wand, instead crossing the living area to where Naia stood by the three thin windows that looked out onto the acad
emy grounds, a book in her hand and her glasses about to fall off the end of her nose.
“Thanks for making coffee,” Kati said, feeling like a huge bitch when Naia glanced up in shock. Okay, so she could afford to be nicer to these ladies. She could try at least. “When are we due for that tour thing?”
“An hour. We should go for breakfast soon.”
“Hopefully nothing tastes like banana protein powder tonight.”
Naia ducked her head, laughing. “Or Monster Munch.”
Kati made a hmm noise. “I’d probably eat that for breakfast though.”
“So cultured and sophisticated,” Naia joked, darting a glance Kati’s way before focussing on her book.
Kati snorted, sipping her coffee. It honestly tasted like ambrosia. “Not bad, Clarke, not bad. We’ll make a sarcastic bitch out of you yet.”
Naia just shook her head, smiling.
Kati glanced out the window, watching the world go by as she drank her blessed caffeine. Her eyes fixed on the tall, hunched figure strolling down one of the pale gravel paths. His head was ducked, floppy brown hair falling into his eyes as he scrawled something in a notebook, barely paying attention to his surroundings. Mr Worth, the only teacher Kati had bothered remembering the name of. He looked so dull and boring from here, like any other teacher in his white shirt and blue tie.
Kati shook herself, tearing her eyes away. So what if he had Caribbean ocean eyes? So what if her heart had taken a nosedive when he’d made eye contact that one time in the assembly hall? He was a teacher, and that meant he was completely off limits. Fly under the radar, she reminded herself. No drama. Definitely no illicit hook-ups between a student and her teacher. Even if they were both consenting adults and there weren’t technically written rules against relationships. No, those rules were more unspoken.
