by Brea Viragh
I pressed against my roiling stomach. “You tell me this now? Exams are literally five minutes away.”
“Then get in there and kick a little butt, baby girl. You got this!” She sent me on my way with a playful swat on the rear and a smile. It did nothing to settle my nerves but I appreciated her enthusiasm.
Melia believed in me. I couldn’t let her down.
The oddity of the situation struck me as I took a seat, a quill popping out of the air in front of me along with a bottle of black ink. Months earlier I’d planned on finishing up school with the rest of my class, regular shifters like I’d pretended to be. With my friends Dawn and Jason, and together we’d make our plans for the future. College choices. Majors. Normal things.
Now look at me.
The rest of the auditorium went quiet and the silence had mass. It had depth and substance. At one point I remember looking out across the space and trying to find Mike’s familiar head. I wondered how he felt about the tests, and if he did poorly, would his parents force the school to keep him here or would he have to be cut like any other person?
But those thoughts wouldn’t help me pass. They didn’t help me in the least.
I didn’t remember anything about taking the test. The entire three-hour time limit passed in a blur and I wasn’t sure if I answered all the questions or passed out at my seat in a sure flunk.
A week later, the headmaster called an assembly to announce the students who had been cut. I didn’t have any nails left on my hands at this point. I’d chewed them all down to the quick while Melia laughed at me and questioned my eating habits, telling me I’d gotten too skinny from my special diet. Ha ha.
I didn’t remember the assembly, either. Not until it was over and I stood outside the door with the marks sheet in my hand.
I was in the top 25 for the whole class.
Top 25.
Me.
Me?
The next thing I knew, Melia had me by the shoulders yet again, drawing me into a dance of epic proportions that had the others around us grimacing and moving out of the way before we stepped on them.
“Didn’t I tell you? You had nothing to worry about!” she squealed.
“What’s going on?” I said in a daze.
“Girl, you did so well! All your worry for nothing. You only have to stay in the top 100 to be safe, and look at you! You’re in the top 25. You beat my first-year scores by a long mile.” Melia paused, pushing a crazy curl of hair away from her eyes. “What did I get? I think I was in the top 60 or something. Nothing to write home about, not like yours. I knew you were going to do great things.”
“I’m not sure how this happened,” I murmured, allowing her to move my limbs in a loose dance until my heart lodged in my throat.
“Let’s go get celebratory ice cream!” Melia insisted. “You deserve it.”
“Wait a minute. Ice cream? We’re not allowed off campus.”
“Have I taught you nothing so far? Those secret passages, Tavi! One of them leads directly into the kitchen where we can pillage the lunch lady’s personal stash of sweet treats. I do it all the time. They have no clue.”
Melia linked her arm through mine and led me away, the paper hanging limp in my hand.
Top 25…
It had to be some kind of trick.
No one went home for fall break as I had expected they would. I already had excuses prepared as to why I chose to stay in the dorm instead of visiting my family. There was no one I wanted to see, anyway. Except for Elfwaite. I would have loved to see the pixie and let her know what a crazy twist my life had taken because of her.
“My score was in the top ten,” Persephone gloated later that evening in the dorm. Blond hair fell in long waves down to the small of her back and she ran her brush along the length. “Number 7. Can you believe it?”
“You are beautiful and smart,” one of her friends said in a simpering tone.
I had a book open in my lap. I’d had to adjust to not using a mirror, and since coming to the school, I’d stopped wearing makeup. It did knock my confidence down a bit but not so much to have me worry what someone like Persephone thought of me.
“Good for you,” I whispered under my breath.
She didn’t hear me. She didn’t need to.
Persephone held her hand mirror aloft, staring at herself and watching each brush of her hair with her lips pursed in a perfect pout. “It was never a question of me making it through to next semester,” she continued. “I always knew I would do well. I just didn’t know I would do that well. But then again, my parents expect perfection from me.”
“You’re always so good with tests,” another of her friends gushed.
What a sorry pack of sycophants.
“It’s a question of intelligence. Intelligence and class, both of which I possess in abundance. Not to mention my good looks.” Persephone stared at herself in the mirror. In her reflection she caught sight of me, her eyes narrowing. “But I suppose not everyone can make those same claims.”
Yeah, dig at me again.
“I got top 25. It’s nothing to turn your nose up at,” I replied. And knew immediately. I shouldn’t have given in to her power games. She’d made the remark on purpose, of course, and I fell into her trap.
Something about Persephone’s voice just rubbed me the wrong way and made me want to fight back.
“You might have gotten through with your grades,” she began, brushing her hair until the strands gleamed, “but nothing is going to help you with your hairdo. I mean, look at you, Tavi. Do you always take such pride in looking like you crawled out of a gutter? Your hair is like a rat’s nest. Come on, look at yourself. Maybe you’ll see why we all laugh at you.”
She flashed the mirror in my direction. I glanced over, eyes locking on the glass because I hadn’t been thinking.
I felt my spell shatter.
The same cold washed over me like taking a dunk in a river in winter, my skin rippling and my stomach bending over backwards to make me sick. Oh, no!
Persephone was giggling. “What’s the matter, Tavi? You can’t stand seeing your own reflection? Do you think it’s going to turn you to stone? Maybe we should start calling you Medusa!”
I heard her as through a wall of cement, clawing for the box of potions before anyone noticed something was really wrong with me. My skin itched, squirming, shifting as the spell dissipated to reveal my wolf.
A swell of anger ripped through me and the she-wolf part of me snapped her teeth from inside my head, my dual nature reacting to Persephone’s aggravating cackle. We could rip out her throat, if we want. She’d be nothing but a snack between our teeth. The wolf had been suppressed for too long and would love a chance to attack.
The lid flipped. Ugh, no. I’d only just drank my latest dose the night before. It was too soon, too soon. No choice.
My fingers scrambled over the empty spots, those empty spots for the vials I’d already drank and disposed of.
I chugged the potion with a cough.
I was down to the last of my bottles, all because I’d been careless.
17
I found myself struggling to catch up to the rest of the class, scrambling to stand on the ice because I knew if I slipped, I was out. Just when I thought I had the hang of things, the class load shifted entirely for the first half of the new semester.
Labs started as soon as fall break ended. Each class I had now dealt with a different type of magic, with hands-on work being the emphasis of this portion of the semester. Quite a difference from the study I’d grown accustomed to.
Thank God. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could have dealt with the book work. My eyes were practically bleeding.
That was probably the way the staff wanted things to work. Their watchful gazes were everywhere, constantly, waiting for us to mess up, waiting for an excuse to take our points away.
I tried to look at things a little differently after my last talk with Melia, shifting focus to remind myself ab
out how the professors didn’t want us to succeed. They wanted us to be strong. They wanted the best people to move on to the next level, and the next level, with a spot in Faerie being the ultimate goal.
Paranoid, I peeled an orange for breakfast, not trusting anything else the chef made, the garlic demon. I’d never used magic before. I knew nothing about magic. Could I even do this?
Barbara had told me I’d broken through her wards, something I didn’t remember doing. Was it magic?
Melia sat down next to me, her plate filled and a grin on her face. “Are you excited to start your practical studies?” she asked me.
I tried to nod and nearly choked on my orange. “Sure,” I said with a groan. “Hey Meli, does magic come naturally to everyone? What I mean to say is, I’ve never had much of a chance to practice it. Does every half-breed have a kind of natural proficiency when it comes to magic?”
“Well…” Melia trailed off, her gaze distant. “For some people I suppose it comes more naturally than to others. I’m not sure about the same level for every half-breed. I think sometimes it depends on your own talents, and for others it takes hard work. I’ve never seen anyone completely fail at this portion of their curriculum.” She paused, then gestured with her fork. “I take it back. My second year, I saw a first-year boy completely fail to produce any kind of magic. They got rid of him really quickly. But I think he was half-Fae, half-troll or something. Maybe his two parentages canceled each other out.”
“I wonder how it will work for me,” I muttered, popping another orange segment into my mouth.
“You’ve never used magic?”
“Not once.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much. You’ll get your chance to practice. And practice and practice and practice. You’ll end up using so much magic you’ll dream about it at night,” she told me.
In the afternoon I sat down at a long table for my first Divination class.
Things didn’t feel right at the academy today. Maybe it was my imagination but the air was filled with pressure despite the empty halls, so many students given the boot and sent home after the first culling. I’d gotten used to the low-lying energy of all those Fae singing in my veins as I navigated the strange world of academia, but I couldn’t shake the sense that there were things going on here I still didn’t understand.
An undercurrent I could not put my finger on.
“Attention, students! Please, eyes up here. Pay attention.” The professor snapped her fingers to get all eyes on her. She stood taller than most of the boys in the class, her back ramrod-straight and hair falling in a gleaming trail of slick fire down her back. She’d emphasized her almond eyes with black liner bringing out the curved shape, her pupils mere slits like a cat’s eye.
This wasn’t the flighty hippy I’d expected when I heard the word divination. I expected the classic wild-haired, gaudily dressed gypsy who spoke in a high whisper and communed with spirits.
Not hard-ass Professor Marsh with her porn-star stiletto heels.
“Students, take your places, sit your rears down on the cushions, and take out your tarot cards.” Marsh tapped the desk in front of her with her own deck. “These are brand new, gifted to you by me. Touched by no other hands than your own so they get a feel for your energy and yours alone. Make sure to keep it that way.”
I found a spot down the table from Mike and Roman, shooting them both a smile and thankful for the familiar faces. Seeing Mike soothed my heart. It was a reminder. There were still bright spots in the world, and my yearning to do well here, my yearning for freedom, did not have to push me over the edge of stress.
“Are you ready for this?” Mike asked me out of the corner of his mouth.
Had he saved a seat for me, knowing we’d have this class together? I liked to think so.
I sat down cross-legged on the red velvet cushion at his side, letting my bag drop with a clunk. “No,” I answered easily. “I don’t think I have any magic.”
“Every Fae has magic,” he insisted with a chuckle. “You just have to know how to harness the power.”
So he said. I wasn’t sure I believed him.
It became painfully evident in our first few weeks of Divination: I had no natural talent and couldn’t divine to save my life. Yet despite my shortcomings, I actually liked the class. I appreciated the way Marsh took her students in hand and didn’t tolerate any bullshit. She also didn’t play favorites.
Thank goodness. I’d had more than enough of Hoarfrost, even though I only saw him once a week. Still, she gave me a weird feeling whenever she stared at me. I couldn’t explain it, but she felt familiar to me, like a friend I’d fallen out of contact with.
Almost like…like pack.
Ridiculous, because shifters were not allowed at the school, much less allowed to teach.
She didn’t lecture me about the terrible way I read tea leaves, or how my tarot cards always flew out of my hands and onto the floor. She didn’t lecture when I spent more time staring at Mike than I did on my studies. More points in her favor.
Later, my footsteps echoed through the dorm room, painfully empty since a bunch of my fellow female half-humans had been sent home after the first test.
The first purge had not been good to my kind.
Somehow, I’d managed to make it through, and part of me still couldn’t believe it. Like my body refused to relax because it had become so used to living in a constant state of anxiety. My muscles were tense and my back ached from keeping it straight.
I’d no sooner drawn my covers over my head than a screech filled the room. I bolted upright, heart ready to leap out of my throat. A red light descended from the ceiling. A strange alarm.
“Fire!”
The call came from my left and though I didn’t smell smoke, I got the hell out of there. The rest of my dorm mates scrambled out of the room and I followed, keeping a blanket over my head as we walked outside. I didn’t need to risk breaking my spell. A full moon and no clouds meant a death sentence if I let even a single shaft of moonlight touch my skin.
Students milled on the back lawn staring up at one of the tower rooms and the trailing smoke curling from one of the windows.
“There you are! I’ve been looking for you.”
I moved toward Melia’s familiar voice in a daze. “What’s going on?”
“I’m not sure. Fire alarm, I think. I was having the best dream about a guy named John in my scroll-making class…” Melia clutched at her pajamas. “Look at you, with your blanket. Good idea! Scoot over and let me in.” She grabbed the corner of the blanket and tugged it open to step in beside me. “It’s a little chilly tonight, isn’t it?”
I barely had time to react. “Wait, what are you doing?”
“I’m chilly and you’re the smarty-pants with the blanket. See? There’s enough room for both of us. Good thinking, girl.”
We stood together under the blanket, the heat of her body seeping into me. I was too surprised to think about the implications of the movement. But I felt the moonlight on me when she tugged the blanket the wrong way. The same thing I’d tried desperately to avoid by using the blanket in the first place.
Dammit, Meli.
It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t know. But as the cold feeling of my spell breaking washed me with shards of ice, I gritted my teeth. Three bottles wasted. Wasted. For no good reason. I kept my head ducked down to avoid people staring at me, hoping they would be too concerned with the smoke to look around.
“Do you think someone pulled the alarm on purpose, after they set the fire? Or do you think it was an accident?” Melia asked, staring around at the rest of the students gathering on the lawn.
She stood close enough to notice how I tensed. But she said nothing. The shifter in me rose immediately in response to the full moon overhead. My eyesight sharpened, the nightscape coming to life in startling clarity. Nostrils flaring, I drew in her scent, a combination of cinnamon and honeysuckle belonging uniquely to Melia.
Then my f
ocus moved to the woods. What I wouldn’t give to let my wolf have her freedom, to feel the way my bones shifted and my muscles sang, running on all fours—
“Tavi? Are you listening to me?”
I tried to tune in and push the wave of feeling aside, still huddling under the blanket. “Who would be awake at this hour? Does this kind of thing happen often?”
Melia shook her head. “No, not really. The upperclassmen know better than to mess with those kinds of things. If they got caught, their points would be gonzo and it would mean automatic expulsion. No one is willing to risk it when they’re so close to graduation next semester. You know?”
Keep her talking, I told myself. Keep her distracted before she realized how my scent changed. How the small hairs on the back of my neck rose and my energy signature shifted into something other than human.
Would she be able to know if she looked at me?
It took another twenty minutes before the students were allowed to return to the building. A police car swung up the circular drive and parked in front of the Castle entrance. I didn’t pay it much mind, needing to get back inside. I kept the blanket over my head while I said goodnight to Melia, launching myself through the doors to my dorm and climbing the ladder like a spider monkey.
Another vial down, I thought with disgust. What was wrong with me? I needed to be more vigilant. I shouldn’t have put myself in this position.
I was smarter, wasn’t I?
Yeah, I’m not so sure.
My internal monologue sounded sassy and I didn’t appreciate the judgment.
“Oh my God, did you hear that the cops are here?”
The whispered statement echoed back to me and I shook my head, not wanting to eavesdrop.
“Wait a minute, someone called the cops?”
“It’s bad. I heard they found something.”
“What did they find?”
