Academy of the Forgotten

by Eva Chase

  Maybe that was another reason I wanted to take at least a few more steps away from the house I’d grown up in. No matter what I did, I was never going to be as special as they were. Most of the time, I was okay with the fact that I was just a Nary, which was what Mom and Dad called regular people—short for ordinary, or as Mom had said when we’d had The Talk about their talents, Nary a bit of magic. Sometimes, though, the yearning prickled so deep it made me queasy.

  I was ordinary, and eventually I was going to have to build a life with no magic in it at all. Might as well get it over with.

  “We’ll come back to this conversation when I can convert some of those cons into pros,” I told my parents, getting up. Maybe they hadn’t been able to teach me magic, but they’d definitely taught me stubbornness.

  I brought my coffee downstairs and through the laundry room. On the threshold of the basement apartment, I paused for a moment, taking a sip and contemplating the space.

  I really did appreciate having it, and I wished it’d done the trick. Even though the apartment was cramped and dim with storage boxes stacked against one wall, it wasn’t awful. I just couldn’t shake the growing sense that the longer I stayed this tied to my parents, the harder it was going to be to stand on my own when I really needed to. Until I’d started the college classes this fall, Mom and Dad had been the only people I’d regularly spent time with. I had a lot of catching up to do.

  My pet mouse, Squeak—not the most original name, but it was her first owner who picked it, not me—was scurrying around her cage, nuzzling at the bars. The sunlight coming in through the little window over her perch made her fur shine: pure white other than a splotch of black on her left flank. I popped open the door and let her scramble up my arm to my shoulder while I considered how I wanted to spend the rest of my morning.

  I could finish the last bit of the History of Modern Design essay that was due on Thursday… or I could get to work on that phoenix figurine idea that had come to me last night.

  I wavered for approximately two seconds before grabbing my bin of polymer clay and my sketchpad off my desk. Squeak’s whiskers tickled the back of my neck as she wriggled under the dark waves of my hair. Sometimes she liked to hang out back there like it was a nest or something, which, given how much trouble I often had getting those waves to behave, was kind of fitting. I started up one of my favorite playlists on my phone and sat down at the little kitchen table.

  The first stage for any figurine was working out the design with pen and paper. I had to see what I was going to sculpt before I could start working on the actual pieces. My fingers flew over the sketchpad, bringing to life a fiery bird soaring up from a burst of flame. A giddy shiver ran through me as I filled in the details. Perfect.

  It was going to be hard to part with this one, but now that I’d spent a few years building a name for myself online, I could make twice as much money selling just one of my little creature sculptures than I did with my three shifts a week at the art supply store downtown. I needed to pay for that Florence trip—and maybe to put down enough advance rent that some landlord would be willing to skip the whole guarantor thing.

  When I was satisfied with the sketch, I started warming up the orange clay that would form the base of the phoenix’s body. Its tangy waxy smell filled my nose. The feel of the clay softening under my fingers always took me into a sort of trance that felt almost magical. My art was the closest thing I had to a special power.

  I was shaping the lump of clay, humming faintly with the song that had just come on, when the ceiling shook.

  Bang. Bang. Two sharp thuds echoed from upstairs in quick succession, so violent my skin jumped. The clay slipped from my fingers.

  Voices barked loud enough for the hostility to travel through the ceiling, but the words were indistinct. I jabbed the music off, my heart thumping. What the hell was going on?

  One of the voices upstairs yelled again. Something made of glass or china smashed. I swallowed hard and grabbed my phone. As I slipped out of my apartment to the stairs at the other end of the laundry room, I dialed 9-1-1.

  “What is your emergency?” said a woman on the other end, who managed to sound both pert and deadly serious.

  “I don’t know,” I said, fighting and failing to keep my voice steady. “It sounds like someone broke into my parents’ house. I’m in the basement—I can hear a commotion upstairs. It doesn’t sound good.”

  “What is your address?”

  I rattled it off.

  “All right,” she said. “We’ll have the police there as soon as we can. You hang tight. Stay on the phone with me—and stay out of whatever’s going on.”

  That was easy for her to say. It wasn’t her parents going through God knew what up there. I kept the phone clutched by my ear, but I also slunk halfway up the stairs, placing my feet carefully so the steps wouldn’t creak.

  The voices got clearer. They must be in the kitchen—Mom and Dad often lingered there for a while reading or chatting after breakfast.

  “…is she?” a man was demanding. “Out with it, or this can get much worse.”

  There was no sound of impact, but Mom let out a pained gasp as if she’d been hit. Was this some kind of home invasion? Couldn’t she and Dad use their magic to turn the tables on these assholes?

  I guessed there wasn’t much joy in the room for them to draw on.

  I couldn’t help myself. Maybe some other girl would have stood by while thugs smacked around her parents, but not this one. I eased up another step so I could peek through the mudroom into the kitchen.

  Mom and Dad were hunched on the floor at opposite ends of the room, Dad farther away with his back against the fridge, Mom closer to me, braced against the oven. Five figures stood over them, three men and two women, all dressed in posh black shirts and slacks like they should have been out at some exclusive dinner party and not here threatening random innocent people.

  Except, what were they threatening them with? I didn’t see weapons in anyone’s hands. What the fuck was going on?

  Footsteps thumped down the stairs at the other end of the house. “Second floor is clear,” a guy hollered.

  Clear of what? What had they thought might be up there?

  “Check the basement,” said the man who’d been warning Mom earlier.

  Mom’s back stiffened. A strange look came over her face, frantic but fierce.

  “You don’t have to,” she said with a rasp. “I’ll tell you where she is.”

  Two suspicions clicked into place in my head: The assholes were looking for me. And Mom was only pretending to give in to get the satisfied smile that crossed the man’s face in that moment. A brief jolt of happiness was all she’d need to break out her powers.

  Heaving herself to her feet, she thrust her arms out with a swift murmur. The man and the woman next to him stumbled backward. My heart leapt with hope in the instant before the man caught himself. He slashed his hand and spat out a word that wasn’t from any language I recognized.

  Mom’s flesh tore open from the base of her chin all the way down her throat. Blood gushed out, streaming down the front of her pink cotton tunic. Her legs gave way beneath her as the color drained from her face. She sagged over in front of the oven.

  My mind went blank with horror. No, no, no. I dropped the phone and threw myself toward my mother.

  The man had already been swiveling toward Dad. “You deserve far worse for the crimes you’ve—”

  He cut himself off as I hurtled into the room. I managed to catch Mom’s head before it hit the tiled floor. Her blood washed hot over my forearms and flowed across the tiles. Her head lolled in my hands, her eyes glazed and lifeless.

  My stomach flipped. I pressed my palm against the raw gaping wound on her throat instinctively, as if any part of me really believed I could still save her. “Mom,” I choked out.

  “Rory, get out of here! Run to—”

  The woman closest to Dad said a word and twitched her fingers, and his mouth
snapped shut. Several hands grasped my arms to haul me away from Mom’s body.

  I tried to wrench away, to hit the people around me, to stop them somehow, but my feet tripped under me. One of the figures spun me around to face him. His fingers clamped on my shoulder, his bright hazel eyes catching my gaze from where he’d tipped his head close to mine.

  I registered through the roar of anguish in my head that he looked younger than the others, not much older than me, and that he was one of the most striking guys I’d ever seen. Even if I hadn’t been in the middle of the most horrifying scene in my life, with one glimpse that smooth face with its slicked-back black hair and those brilliant eyes would have been burned into my memory.

  “It’s okay,” he said in a low gentle tone. “We’ve got you now. You won’t be trapped here anymore. We’re going to take you home.”

  The words sounded like they should have been comforting, and he said them like he meant them. With a weird rush of warmth, my body stopped shaking. But at the same time my mind recoiled.

  I didn’t want these people to “get” me, and this was my home right here.

  “I feel we need to send a message,” said the man who’d murdered Mom from where he was walking toward Dad.

  My heart lurched with a fresh jolt of panic. I yanked myself away from the gentle guy just as the man sliced both hands through the air in an X.

  A matching X gouged through Dad’s plaid shirt right into his chest. A spasm jerked his body, and a cry seared up my throat. I lunged at his attacker.

  More hands caught me. The murderer muttered something under his breath that sounded like a curse.

  “Knock her out,” he said. “We’ve got to get going.”

  A few harsh syllables reached my ear with the swipe of a palm across my forehead, and my mind fell away into blackness.

  Want to read more of Rory’s story? It’s free with Kindle Unlimited! Grab Cruel Magic here.

  About the Author

  Eva Chase lives in Canada with her family. She loves stories both swoony and supernatural, and strong women and the men who appreciate them. Along with the Cursed Studies trilogy, she is the author of the Royals of Villain Academy series, the Moriarty’s Men series, the Looking Glass Curse trilogy, the Their Dark Valkyrie series, the Witch’s Consorts series, the Dragon Shifter’s Mates series, the Demons of Fame Romance series, the Legends Reborn trilogy, and the Alpha Project Psychic Romance series.

  Connect with Eva online:

  www.evachase.com

  eva@evachase.com