Academy of Magic Collection

by Angelique S Anderson et al.

  There were a million should-haves.

  But none of them could fix what had already happened. The only thing he could do was be there when she got home. He had to. Surely, his parents would understand if he missed supper.

  He would tell her about the raging Jekyll-Hyde beast, the subsequent invitation and scholarship to the Preparatory Academy for the Remarkable, and the Creature Caretaker Academy. He’d tell her everything she didn’t remember.

  Although she had been there with him when it happened, she had no memory of the beastie in the library. How could she? She’d been unconscious during the whole ordeal.

  All she remembered was nodding off while they studied for her placement exams. Blackfox said it was something with the psy-energy the Jekyll-Hyde threw off and then something about Jess’s inability to believe her own magic.

  That’s what she’d said.

  If she could summon her communication magic once more, Blackfox would let her attend the C.C.A. Blackfox had said as much. Maybe he could catch her at the bus stop.

  Rase jogged to his window and peered down the street. He could make out a handful of kids at the corner. Several shadows milled from one side to the other.

  He crammed his feet into a pair of house shoes. “I’m going out,” he yelled, his voice echoing down the hall and into the great room. If he could catch her, she might understand.

  His mom slammed cabinets doors. “What’s that?”

  “I’m going to the bus stop. Maybe I can catch her.”

  “Good luck.”

  Rase launched out of the front door and sprinted toward the corner at the end of the block. They’d met at that corner at least a thousand times. His feet ate away the sidewalk until his calves cramped, but he kept on.

  Jess and Rase lived three streets apart, but at least two zeroes separated their daily lifestyle. Rase had grown up barely middle-class while she’d been upper-class forever. Jess’s parents remained aloof toward him, tolerating their friendship, but Jess had welcomed him into her life with open arms. It had been easy to forget their distaste.

  He burst into the middle of the collecting kids. “Jess?” He circled them, peering into faces and then wove back through for a double-check. “Jess?”

  A young woman he recognized from last year’s English class gave him a look. “Dude, she’s not here. What’s the matter with you?”

  A trio of jocks crossed their arms and scowled at him. They resembled angry apes.

  Rase bit his bottom lip to keep a curse word from escaping. He turned away from the jocks and toward the young woman. “It’s nothing. Never mind.”

  Without another word, he trudged back into his house and checked his phone. Jess hadn’t responded, and she hadn’t been at the bus stop. She’d probably asked her parents to take her.

  His mother met him at the door. “No luck?”

  He shook his head.

  She drew him into a side-hug. “Come on. I made you coffee-flavored milk. Just the way you like it. Maybe you can come up with a new plan of attack.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” he mumbled, letting her lead him to the dining room table.

  After she handed him the mug, she put cereal and milk in front of him. Then she sat down across from him with a pad of paper.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  She scowled at the page. “Meal planning.” She wrote something down, scratched it off, and then wrote something else.

  In the silence, Rase frowned. He sipped from his mug and racked his brain, trying to solve the problem. He had to make her understand. If she knew what fantastical things had happened, she would understand why he’d been so busy. If he got Blackfox to invite her to attend the C.C.A., she might forgive him entirely.

  An awareness tickled in the back of Rase’s brain. An animal needed him. He set his coffee aside and strolled to the back door. Rase squinted. A dog flailed beneath the chain-link fence at the rear of their yard.

  It was the rear-neighbor’s hyper pet. The canine had gotten his collar stuck on the metal hooks at the bottom of the chain-link. From the looks of the ground around it, he’d been there a while. Could his ability work on regular creatures as well as it had worked on fantastical ones?

  “I’ll be right back,” Rase said over his shoulder.

  “Mmm,” his mother answered without looking up.

  Rase hurried out the back door. When he reached the dog, it peered up at him and whined. The fence kept it pinned to the ground.

  “Hey, boy,” he said. “Remember me?”

  The dog wagged his tail and seemed to grin.

  Rase smiled at the warmth that spread through his brain. “If you hold still, I’ll get you undone.” Rase filled his mind with the thought and pushed it toward the beast in front of him. “Do you understand?”

  Puffs of dust rose into the air as the dog’s tail thumped against the ground once more.

  When Rase crouched down, the dog didn’t move. The beastie must have understood him. Rase worked the leather collar out of the chain-link fence. With a jerk, it came free.

  The dog popped up and stared at Rase for a long moment.

  “You’re welcome,” Rase said.

  Then the beast bounded away as though he had never been trapped at all.

  As simply as that, Rase’s talents had helped a noble creature. That’s what it was all about. That’s why he had to join Colonel Blackfox and attend the C.C.A. disguised as P.A.R.

  Rase trudged back inside, returned to his seat, and sipped from his coffee-flavored milk. His mother still worked on her pad of paper. He had to figure out how to convince Jess that dragons and shapeshifters were real and that she had to talk to them. She had to risk going against her parents. Then she would understand why he had been so distracted and then she could attend the C.C.A.

  There was only one problem.

  He had nothing to prove his tale beside his word, and, so soon after his screwup, she wouldn’t be inclined to trust him, would she?

  How could he make Jess believe him?

  Chapter Three

  Detention

  New Haven High

  Mortal eyeballs make delicious jam.

  The notes from the margins of her great-grandmother’s journal were the only thing Jess could think of as she walked into New Haven High. Every Independent School District employee turned out for the first day, and they lined the sidewalk to stare at—cheer for—the incoming students. Applause made her eye twitch.

  Jess wrapped her arms around herself and hurried down the unfurled red carpet, paperwork clutched in her clenched hands. She despised first days. Principal Shelley must have been an extroverted pep squad-er in her youthful years. Not everybody enjoyed being the center of attention.

  Her parents wanted to remain hidden in the mortal world. As a result, extra attention was something Jess habitually avoided. If she’d known Rase wouldn’t be along to walk the red carpet of insanity, she could have faked a sickness easily enough.

  Pea soup made good vomit, a twist of magic flame did wonders for a faux fever, and Jess could act a little. Her mom had no idea how much magic she’d picked up from the diaries she’d discovered while hiding in the attic.

  She ducked inside New Haven High. Even Rase didn’t know she had been breaking her parents’ ban on magic. She kept it all hidden away now. Yet, the more she learned from her grandmother’s diaries, the more the ability popped up when she least expected it. Big tricks triggered a seizure, but little things didn’t.

  Jess consulted her paperwork and stopped at her assigned locker.

  A smooth-faced blonde girl shifted her backpack and waved, a grin plastered from cheek to cheek. “Hey, Jess, how was your summer? Are you excited to be a senior?” She came to a stop at the adjacent locker, peering down, her short hair falling over her forehead.

  The girl opened it, stuck her head inside, and then slammed it closed. She jerked her thumb toward it. “Bigger than I thought they’d be.”

  Jess didn’t know whether
to smile or frown at the tall girl. She didn’t recognize the young woman. “Yes? I am?” Her answer came out like a question. She searched the girl’s face, but no name came to mind. “I’m sorry. What’s your name again?”

  “Brienne,” she answered. “Brienne Tartec.”

  Jess stared, still not placing the young lady.

  Brienne’s face fell. “I live here in New Haven, but my aunt and your mom are in a book club together. My younger siblings and I stayed with you last year while my parents went away for the weekend.”

  Jess’s eyes widened, and she pressed a hand to her lips. “Oh, I’m sorry. You don’t look like… I mean, you’re different than…” Jess gestured toward her shoulder and then toward the air above her head. “You were shorter…” She clamped her mouth closed so hard it snapped.

  Brienne didn’t respond, offering only a blank stare.

  “You cut your hair. It looks nice,” Jess added lamely.

  The corners of Brienne’s mouth twitched, and her eyes twinkled. “I’m sorry. I can’t help it. I do that to anybody I haven’t seen since… before…”

  “Before…” Jess scowled. “Your haircut?”

  Brienne snorted. “No, before I caught a case of puberty.” She stuck out her arms and gave a slow spin. “Apparently, I caught a bad strain.”

  Jess laughed. “Apparently.”

  “I’m a freshman this year,” Brienne said. “I haven’t met anyone yet, and I was relieved to see a familiar face.”

  “I can understand that.”

  The five-minute warning chimed, echoing in the corridor. Almost immediately, students poured out of the halls into classrooms.

  Brienne jogged away. Over her shoulder, she called, “See you next break.”

  Jess waved at the retreating figure.

  Maybe her first day as a New Haven High senior wouldn’t be as bad as Jess expected.

  Three hours later, Jess’s optimism took a nosedive.

  She held her lunch tray so tightly that her knuckles turned white as she considered the cafeteria battlefield in front of her. One of the mean girl leaders sneered at Jess from the middle of their encampment at the largest table in the corner. A host of compatriots filled the seats that surrounded the square surface.

  To one side, Brienne peered longingly at them. The new freshmen had already succumbed to the wiles of popularity. Jess didn’t want to sit close to the black hole of the popularity games. It swallowed any teen that risked it.

  Jess took a step in the other direction. Instead of the open space she’d expected, she stepped into a mountain of a jock. The impact sent her lunch splattering all over the man-sized youth. The lunch ladies gaped, their spoons paused in mid-serve.

  “Watch it,” he bellowed.

  Jess gasped, stammered apologies tumbling out of her mouth. “I’m so sorry, Joel. I didn’t see you.”

  He growled. “My name is John not Joel.”

  Behind them, the mean girl tribe cackled, and a hush settled over the cafeteria.

  Her face heated. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I don’t know many people.”

  He punched at Jess’s lunch tray, striking it from her hands. “Well, watch where you’re going, you skank.”

  Her temper flared, and sweat beaded on her upper lip. “Don’t do that,” she snarled.

  He took a step toward her and then kicked the tray across the floor. “And why not?”

  Moisture flooded her vision, and fury pulsed in her veins. “It was an accident,” she whispered, glancing over her shoulder. “I didn’t mean to bump into you.”

  “But you did.”

  Jess studied the adults in the kitchen. John could drop her with one swing. They had to step in, didn’t they? She turned back toward John.

  “Where are the teachers?” one lunch lady whisper-yelled to another.

  “In a first-day meeting,” said another.

  “Call them!”

  Footsteps ran from one side of the kitchen to the other.

  “I’ll be more careful next time.”

  Red blotches bloomed across John’s cheeks. He crossed his arms. “What difference does that make? You ruined my clothes, you ugly bitch.”

  The corner of Jess’s right eye twitched a telltale rhythm. Colors that weren’t there danced through the air. She gritted her teeth, trying to hang on to consciousness and the magic that yearned to burst from her hands. Such a mess.

  She didn’t know which one would get her first.

  He stepped forward again. “Well? What are you going to do about it?”

  The whole room had grown deathly quiet. For the second time that day, hundreds of people stared at her.

  Mortal eyeballs make delicious jam.

  How she hated being the center of attention. She swallowed back the bile that threatened to spew. Where was Rase? He would have told a joke, sent the bully away. Tears dripped down her cheeks, but she clenched her fists. Black spots joined the colors.

  “Crying like a baby?” He paused. “What’s the matter, baby?”

  At that, flames burst from the back of her hand and danced up her arm to her backpack before she could snuff them out. She strained to keep the flare to a minimum. Panting, she dampened the flood of power, her mind already clearer than it had been all day.

  John’s eyes widened. Expletives leached from his mouth, and he scrambled backwards, tripping over his own feet as he tried to get away from her. He slammed against the floor, the back of his head banging against the hard surface with a sickening thud. As one, everyone in the cafeteria took a breath. Exhaling only after the bully groaned.

  Jess started toward the felled giant, her hands outstretched. “I can help.” She knew healing. It had been most of what her great-grandmother wrote about.

  John shimmied away, his face filled with the pallor of fear. “Stay away from me,” he said. “Don’t touch me.”

  Jess trembled from head to toe, but she didn’t move any closer to John.

  The single, free-roaming, uniformed security officer appeared and dashed to the bully’s side. His name tag glinted in the light, exposing the engraved letters: B-O-B. Carefully, he helped John to his feet.

  Bob glanced from the jock to Jess and back again. “Everything okay here?”

  Ashen, John stammered, “Did you see what she did? Did you see it?”

  Mentally, Jess screamed at the security guard. Where were you? You could have kept the jerk from knocking my tray. How could he have been somewhere else when all the students were in the cafeteria for lunch? Nobody did anything to intervene.

  Officer Bob situated the bully on the nearest bench and turned back toward Jess, evaluating her in the way he had, no doubt, been trained. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” Jess grumbled.

  “You sure?” he asked, his hand on something at his side… a taser maybe.

  “Yeah,” Jess nodded, dashing at the remaining droplets that clung to her face.

  Tendrils of smoke curled from her sleeve, dissipating in the air. She dropped her smoldering backpack to the ground beside her feet, trying to hide it with her legs.

  Bob scowled. “Did you set your bag on fire, miss?”

  They all know. Every one of them. Yet she couldn’t admit it, could she? Jess gulped back a sob. “No, sir.”

  A murmur filtered through the crowd. The rumors would spread faster than she could stop them. She’d blown her cover. She couldn’t come back to the school. Her parents would kill her.

  A group of teachers appeared at the entrance, pausing to take in the scene.

  Principal Shelley rushed forward. “Jess Roberts, you come with me.”

  Another teacher rushed toward the bully. “Let’s fill out the report,” she said, patting John’s shoulder.

  A fresh flood obscured Jess’s vision as she followed Principal Shelley out of the cafeteria. She’d never felt so alone in a world of mortals.

  Twenty minutes later, seated across from each other in Principal Shelley’s office, the older woma
n settled a pair of glasses on her nose and shuffled papers from one side of her desk to the other.

  The silence weighed two thousand pounds. Jess wilted in her seat as the quiet dragged on.

  Finally, Principal Shelley met Jess’s gaze. “We called your mother to discuss your pyrotechnics.”

  Jess nodded. Of course they did. They had to.

  Principal Shelley continued, “We will have that meeting at ten o’ clock tomorrow morning. You’ll also be excused from classes for the remainder of the day. Additionally, since your mother cannot leave work at this time, she agreed that you would spend the remainder of today in detention.”

  Jess sighed but nodded. “I understand.”

  Principal Shelley opened a manila file folder, read over the front page, and closed it again. “You’re a good kid with a great deal of potential, Miss Roberts. I’m certain the investigation will allow for both of you to return to your classes by the end of the week.”

  Jess’s shoulders drooped even farther. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Principal Shelley scooped a pen from the surface of the desk, clicking the end repetitively. She made a note on a planner beside her desk calendar. “My secretary, Hazel, has a special task for you. You’ll spend the afternoon organizing the storage room.”

  “Right now? Not after classes?” It might be Jess’s first detention, but it didn’t seem to be going the way it was supposed to.

  Principal Shelley hmmm-ed and stared into the distance, distracted by something Jess couldn’t see. “Yes,” she said, “we thought it best.”

  “We?”

  “My secretary and I.”

  Jess frowned. “So… the storage room. Where’s that?”

  “My secretary will show you. I’m sure there’s plenty to do down there.”

  “Down there?”

  “Yes.”

  Jess got the impression that Principal Shelley didn’t care what she did as long she wasn’t the source of anymore first-day interruptions. “Will I be working with anyone else?”