by Martha Carr
“It’s not crap, okay? Come here.”
“No. Do you want to be here again next weekend because we didn’t get these walls clean in time? Because you’re over there screwing around? ’Cause I don’t—”
“Christ, Amanda. We have over four hours left to get this done, and I already got a head start.” Summer sighed and rolled her eyes. “That doesn’t matter. You really wanna see this.”
“Why?”
“You can’t—ugh. Because I think I figured out what a certain purple thing does, and I’d really rather not talk about it across an entire wall. Come on!”
Purple thing.
“The crystal?”
“Yeah, that one. Now shut up about it and get over here.”
Amanda took her cleaning supplies with her in case Mr. Petrov or anyone else was watching the first two students since the Academy’s founding to get detention. When she rounded the corner and joined Summer behind the kitchen building, her cleaning supplies thumped into the grass, and she stared at the humming, glowing purple crystal in the other girl’s palm. “Somebody’s gonna see that.”
“No shit. Act natural and try not to look suspicious.” Summer scrubbed absently at the dry, dirt-covered concrete wall with one hand and held the stone in the other by her hip. “It’s a battery. Can you believe it?”
“Not really, ’cause I have no idea what you’re talking about. Battery for what?”
“For magic. Come on, that’s kind of a no-brainer. This pretty little thing is the answer to all our problems.”
“Are you serious?” Amanda could hear the pixies moving around inside the kitchen and muttering in low voices as they worked on dinner, but fortunately, none of them heard the girls talking outside. Or if they did, they didn’t care. “How does it work?”
Summer grinned. “Easiest thing I’ve ever done. Apparently, you hold the thing and do magic. It’s perfect.”
Frowning at the other girl, Amanda slowly shook her head. “That doesn’t answer any of our problems. That’s casting spells with a rock in your hand—”
“No, it’s not. Look.” Summer tightened her hand around the crystal, then inhaled and pointed at the wall. A yellow light rose from her finger, and as she drew a downward line in the air, a flat blade of yellow light scraped along the wall, peeling off chunks of caked dirt and leaving a perfectly clean surface behind it.
With the swamp at their backs now, there wasn’t anyone around who could have caught the barest glimpse of them, but that didn’t stop Amanda from glancing all over to double-check. “Are you crazy? We can’t do magic to finish this.”
“Yeah, we can, shifter girl. With this.”
“Mr. Petrov said—”
“Screw what he said. Mr. Petrov thinks we’d follow those rules because we don’t know cleaning spells.”
“You obviously do.” Amanda stared at the clean strip on the wall.
“No, I don’t.” Summer’s grin only widened. “I’ve never used a cleaning spell in my life. Pretty pointless when I’m about to move on to the next place anyway. I don’t know that spell.”
“Then how—”
“I thought about what I wanted to do—and did it.”
That made Amanda pause, and she looked slowly down at the purple crystal. Standing so close to it made its tingling, buzzing energy wash over her that much more strongly. “There has to be a catch, though, right?”
“Not as far as I’ve seen. Seriously, we could use this thing for literally anything here. Finish the obstacle course. Cast whatever spells we want. Hey, I bet you could even use this on the Louper team. You’d be a hell of a player to go up against.”
“LeFor won’t let me try out.”
Summer snorted. “Well, whatever. Shit, I mean, if you had this thing in Illusions, you could re-color a stupid piece of paper like that.”
The girl snapped her fingers, and Amanda tried to shut the whole idea down in her mind.
This is cheating. Isn’t it? Or maybe it’s a little extra help to learn what I came here for so I can graduate. Like a tutor. Except it’s a rock.
“Okay, well, we have to practice with it in private so we know how it works before using it in class.”
“Duh.” Laughing, Summer pumped her fist at her side. “I knew you’d be into this.”
“Hey, only until I can figure out how to cast spells on my own.”
“Oh, sure. Then you can hand it over to me, and I’ll be the only one using it. Man, the look on Glasket’s face when she sees me getting top grades in everything.” Summer pointed at the wall again and scraped off another swath of dirt and grime in one magical swipe.
“How about the look on Petrov’s face when he sees we finished all this before five-thirty?”
“Ha! That bald asshole won’t know what to do with himself. Priceless!”
Amanda flinched and scanned the area around them again. “Maybe keep it down, though, huh? No one ever sounds that happy in detention.”
“I like the way you think, shifter girl.”
Chapter Nineteen
Mr. Petrov was as confused as they thought he’d be when they returned the cleaning supplies twenty minutes before their time was up. He dismissed them gruffly, and the girls tried not to break out laughing as they headed toward the center field, looking back to see the teacher inspecting the pristinely clean walls in complete bewilderment.
That night, despite getting out of more detention by the skin of their teeth, Amanda and Summer met again after Lights Out and slipped through the hole in the dorm’s wards to practice with the purple crystal. They made sure to take it far away from the campus’ main buildings although they didn’t return to the uncovered ruins of whatever temple had housed the crystal for so long.
“Please tell me you didn’t bring anything else for blowing stuff up,” Amanda muttered as Summer unzipped her backpack.
“Not this time.” The new girl smirked as she withdrew the crystal. “If we get good enough at using this thing, I might have to change my specialty away from magical bombs.”
“To what?”
“Whatever the hell I want. Here.” Summer handed her the crystal. “I’ve been hogging it. You get the first practice run tonight.”
I can’t tell if she’s serious or screwing with me.
Amanda slowly took the purple crystal, and the buzz of its concentrated magic thrummed up her arm and into her chest. “Wow…”
“Go ahead. Any kinda spell.” Summer grinned and gestured at the broad swath of open land and the swamp around them. “Maybe start with something small.”
Out of all the things she could have chosen to focus on with this newfound power, the only spell that came to mind was the one she’d been struggling all week to nail down. With the crystal resting in her open palm, Amanda turned toward the cattail reeds and thought of changing their color. The crystal buzzed with a sharp sting that wasn’t exactly unpleasant, and the cattails shimmered. Then each dark brown, fuzzy capsule of fluff turned a bright neon green and glowed in the darkness.
“Wow.” Summer folded her arms. “Okay, impressive, I guess. I honestly expected you to do something a lot…cooler.”
“I did it,” Amanda whispered. “Holy shit, I did it! I cast an illusion! It worked!”
“Yeah, maybe keep it down, though, huh?” A surprised chuckle escaped the new girl as she looked around the empty, secluded area at the edge of the campus’ boundaries. “Someone might think you’re out here getting murdered.”
Amanda let out an excited squeal and spun to face the other girl. “I can do magic. Like real, actual magic that—”
“Um…shifter girl? You might wanna—”
“—works and does exactly what I want!”
As her voice rose again, the neon green cattail heads glowed brighter, and a low hum rose from the reeds before the cattails exploded in a burst of glittering green. Clumps of white fluff flew around the girls and fluttered to the ground, some of them dropping with a light plop into the swamp.
>
“Whoops.”
“Okay, now that you’re all high on magic…” Summer snatched the stone from her and turned away with a smirk. “We’ll trade off.”
“We can use that thing in class.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said. Not every class, though. We should figure out right now which one of us gets this thing when. Like, I get it in Alchemy.”
“What? No way.” Amanda tried to scowl at her friend, but her incredulous smile still broke through. “You already know how to blow things up. You’ll take all of us down with you if you do that in class. If Zimmer doesn’t kill you first.”
“That’s not how it works, shifter girl. You need this thing in Illusions. It’s only fair I get it in Alchemy.”
Amanda couldn’t help but stare at the glowing purple stone. “Why don’t we practice with this thing right now and worry about who gets it later? It’s not like we have all night.”
Summer grinned. “We might if I cast a time loop—”
“No! Don’t even—just no. You can’t mess with time like that when you have no idea what you’re doing.”
“Relax, shifter girl. I’m only messing with you.” Laughing, Summer turned toward the swamp and scanned the thick tree trunks bending sideways, their branches hanging low over the water. “I’ll stick with what I know. For now.”
Amanda bit her lip and watched the other girl cast another spell with magic that wasn’t her own. What she knows could be anything. Still, this will be a hell of a way for me to learn more.
Over the next five weeks, they traded the stone back and forth, sneaking out less and less at night to practice with it because they had plenty of time to use it in class. Eventually, they settled into a rhythm of passing the crystal off between classes when it came time for either girl to use it. Summer had it during Alchemy and Combat Training—although even with the crystal in her pocket, she couldn’t get farther along on the obstacle course than Amanda—and Amanda took the crystal during Illusions and Augmented Technology. Neither of them cared about who had it during History of Oriceran, which didn’t require any skill, magical or physical. The only ability needed to make it through Ms. Ralthorn’s droning lectures was a mastery of not pulling their hair out in boredom or falling asleep, and the purple crystal didn’t help with either of those.
Amanda still hung out mostly with Grace, Jackson, and Alex during her free time after long days of class and all the physical activity Mr. Petrov could squeeze out of them first thing in the morning. None of her friends seemed to notice a difference in her after all the secret time she spent with Summer. They did see her sudden improvement in spells, particularly in Illusions.
Ms. Calsgrave asked her to stay back after one such class and stared at Amanda for a good twenty seconds before saying anything. “You’ve improved quite a bit in the last few weeks, Miss Coulier.”
“Just hard work, I guess.” She shrugged. “I really wanna be here.”
“Clearly. If you’re still interested in private tutoring, my offer still stands.”
“I’m good, thanks. Probably needed to get used to envisioning stuff, you know?” Amanda booked it out of the classroom without waiting for the teacher to say anything else and found her friends waiting for her in the hall.
“What was that about?” Grace asked with a confused smile.
“Guess she wanted me to know that she knows I’m getting better at spells.”
“Yeah, you’re good, all right.” Jackson leaned toward her, narrowing his eyes in a mocking attempt to look suspicious. “A little too good. How the hell did you make that rock look like an apple on your first try? I had to work on it the whole class.”
“You couldn’t even get it to look round,” Alex muttered.
“Shut up.”
Amanda shrugged again and headed down the hall. “Takes practice, I guess. Hey, we should go hang out at the kitchens ’til dinner. I’m starving.”
“As long as you let me copy off your homework assignment for Ms. Ralthorn.”
Grace shot Jackson a disapproving frown. “Are you serious?”
“I mean, yeah. Don’t tell me you remember anything she says during the most boring class ever invented.”
“Of course not.” The witch smirked. “I take notes.”
“Oh, well, then I’m copying off you.”
She and Summer had an unspoken agreement that they wouldn’t start hanging out after class or during free time, mostly to keep everyone else from getting too suspicious. No one would believe that a skinny twelve-year-old girl no one knew was a shifter and the fifteen-year-old freshmen who’d been kicked out of one magic school already had become friends. Plus, they didn’t want to draw any extra attention from the teachers, who’d all been keeping a particularly close eye on them since their first infraction and detention sentence—especially Principal Glasket.
Amanda still slipped out of the dorms twice a week to shift and run around on her own or to visit the kitchen pixies when her almost insatiable hunger wouldn’t let her sleep. Fortunately, no one had discovered the hole in the dorm’s wards—or if they had, no one had bothered to seal it back up. She was still the only shifter at the school, after all. She was also determined not to get into any more trouble when she snuck out to do what shifters did.
Sometimes, Summer would show up at some of Amanda’s favorite spots to sit and stare up at the moon or listen to the swamp in the middle of the night. Now that they had enough practice with the stone under their belts, they didn’t need to use it nearly as much outside of class. Most of the time when the new girl came to find her like this, they only sat together. Neither one of them had much to say because they’d already run out of things that didn’t include talking about their past or where they’d been before coming to the Academy.
She never told Summer to leave her alone, even if that was what she wanted. Still, whenever Amanda picked up Summer’s scent around campus during her runs, she made it a point to avoid the other girl. Just in case.
By the time the end of September rolled around, the entire school was gearing up with an excitement Amanda didn’t understand. She had no idea what homecoming was, even after Glasket’s announcement, until Brandon Everly caught up to her after class the Thursday before and practically cornered her in the hallway.
“Amanda.” The half-Crystal shuffled from foot to foot and scratched vigorously at his hair. The flecks of ice falling to his shoulders and tinkling across the floor were apparently some part of a nervous tick.
She tried not to make it too obvious when she glanced down the hall and saw Grace staring at them. What is Brandon doing? She hoped her gaze sent the message across, but Grace only shrugged.
“Um…I was…uh…”
“You okay?” Amanda wrinkled her nose at the nervous kid looming at least a foot over her.
Brandon cleared his throat. “Yeah. Totally. Do you, uh…wanna maybe…”
“Call someone to take you to the med ward?”
At the same time, he blurted, “…go to Homecoming with me?”
“What?”
“What?”
They stared at each other, and thin streams of mist rose from Brandon’s cheeks.
Like the fog that pours off dry ice.
She wrinkled her nose. “I’m…not sure what you’re getting at.”
“Like, as my date.” Brandon swallowed thickly. “You know, to the dance.”
“Oh. Um…” Another glance at Grace didn’t help her at all. I don’t want a date. I’m twelve. “I mean, I wasn’t planning on going for the dance. More like for the food, so…I guess I’ll think about it?”
“Yeah, okay.” Brandon turned away from her, his nervous half-Crystal mist fading despite the deepening blush. “No pressure or anything. I figured I’d ask.”
“Cool. Thanks.” She snuck away from him, seizing her opening to slip away from the wall and hurry toward Grace with wide eyes.
“Wow.” The blonde witch snorted and looked over her shoulder to shoot
Brandon a gleaming grin. The minute he saw her, he spun and booked it through the sea of students heading out to the central field, pushing through them to move aimlessly in the opposite direction. “He asked you to Homecoming, didn’t he?”
Amanda grimaced. “I think so…”
“What did you say?”
“That I’d think about it.”
“Oh, man.” Grace slapped a palm against her forehead. “No wonder he looked like he was ready to crawl into a hole and die.”
“What?”
They pushed open the front doors of the main building and headed out toward the main field. “Amanda, if a guy asks you out to a dance, the worst thing you can do is not give him an answer.”
“Why?”
“Because they can’t handle it.” Grace snorted. “Look, Homecoming’s in two days, right? Now he’s gonna spend the next two days wondering what your answer will be. But he’s not gonna come back and ask you again. He’ll be waiting for you to come to him and tell him because he doesn’t wanna seem desperate.”
“Well, then I’ll tell him tomorrow.”
“No. You can’t do that either. That’s even worse.”
Amanda stopped on the grass and frowned. “I don’t get it.”
“If you talk to him again before Homecoming, he’ll get all excited and think you’re gonna say yes. Are you?”
“Be his date to a dance?” Amanda scrunched up her face. “No.”
“That’s why it’s worse.” Grace grabbed her arm and led her across the field toward the outdoor cafeteria. “’Cause he’ll be all excited again, then you say no, and you basically end up crushing his soul twice. I don’t know if he can handle it.”
“Sure he can. It’s only a dance.”
“Not when he asked you to it.”
Amanda rolled her eyes. “Come on. It’s so much worse to be waiting around and wondering when I’m gonna tell him no. I can tell him in class tomorrow—”
“No, you can’t. Now you have to avoid him like the plague until Saturday. Then when everyone shows up at the dance, and you haven’t said anything, he’ll get the hint.”
