by Laura Wylde
Academy of Mages and Shifters II
Laura Wylde
Contents
1. Felicia
2. Trent
3. Felicia
4. Andrew
5. Felicia
6. Joshua
7. Felicia
8. Evan
9. Felicia
10. Andrew
11. Felicia
12. Joshua
13. Felicia
14. Evan
15. Felicia
16. Trent
17. Felicia
Afterword
Also by Laura Wylde
Chapter 1
Felicia
I brushed my fingers over my ‘I heart London’ tee shirt, smiling to myself at how ridiculous I looked. Of course, I had picked the color black, just like all of my other clothing. But, then again, an over the top show of being a tourist fun wasn’t me at all. Still, out here in the middle of the city, no one knew me. It wasn’t like I was at the United Kingdom’s Academy of Druids and Shapeshifting Mages, where I could be mocked at by my peers. Here I could just be me.
Although, there was one person whom I didn’t mind sharing myself with. My best friend from childhood who would get a serious kick out of me looking like this. So, I pulled out my cell phone and clicked a selfie of me pulling a silly face, making sure that I got the Big Ben in the background so that he would know my vacation in Greece was over. He had been texting me the whole time, telling me that he missed having me around. Of course, he did. Evan needed me to make his summers fun. His family was as much of a nightmare as my own. I felt sorry for him.
“Send to Evan.” I muttered to myself as I hit the send button. “Make his day a little bit brighter.”
When he didn’t reply immediately, I stuffed my phone away and refocused my attention on the towering clock above me instead. There was something majestic about the Big Ben, something that captivated me and kept me looking at it for a long time. My eyes just wanted to take every inch of it in.
“Oh my God!” The voice of a squealing girl beside me grabbed my attention, finally making me pull my eyes away. “I love your elf cosplay ears. They are so damn cute.” She leaned in closer to me, completely ignoring the boundaries of my personal space. “Okay, whatever”, I thought. I wasn’t in the mood to kick off. She seemed harmless enough. “Where did you get them? Because I was in Camden earlier, trying to find something similar for Comic Con next month. I wanted to go as the main female elf character of this new anime that I have just started watching…”
I didn’t want her to start going on about this because I had the feeling that she was the chatty kind who wouldn’t stop talking if I allowed her to. “There is a store right around the corner actually. But there was only a single pair left, and lots of people seem to be looking out for them because of Comic Con, so you’d better hurry…”
A panicked expression crossed her face before she took off at the speed of light, leaving me alone with my very real elf like ears and the Big Ben to keep me company. Thank God for cosplay or people might have started to wonder why I didn’t have a similar face as everyone else. Giving away the fact that I was not exactly human.
Or rather, not human at all. I was actually a powerful druidess, from a line of druid priestesses, who dated back to Merlin on my mother’s side. Merlin was one of the founders of the Academy.
The family vacation was supposed to have been a nice break, a get away from all the troubles in life, especially as I was about to enter my third and final year at the Academy. But, boy, was it anything but that. My parents decided to use our time under the sun and on the beaches to nag me about my lack of harem, my lack of mates to procreate with, as if those were the only things to care about in life. Sure, most druid found their clan in their first year at the Academy. But it hadn’t worked out for me like that. I was too ambitious, too focused on my studies. Yes, I wanted a family of my own, but I also wanted to be important and well regarded. I deserved that.
So, instead of heading straight back to Edinburgh, I decided to come here first, for some space and time to think about everything.
“You can’t finish the academy single,” she said to me about a million times. “A girl in the year below me did that, Lillian, , and now she works in the apothecary.” I tried to protest that there was nothing wrong with that, but she didn’t listen. “She looks sad. Every single time I see her, she looks sad.”
“I don’t need anyone,” I muttered to myself through gritted teeth. “Why can’t everyone see that?”
Just because our ‘paths were written’ and we were supposed to find a harem to ensure that magic didn’t die out in the world, because the planet needed it far more than the non-magical community would ever know, but that didn’t mean that we all needed to follow the same path. Perhaps there was something else in my destiny. I was top in all of my classes which made me feel that I could go on to do whatever I wanted.
All of a sudden, something caught my eye. A strange glowing sensation in one of the runes in the brick work of the Big Ben that others around me wouldn’t be able to see. I glanced left and right, checking that no one was watching me, before I took a step forward and leaned in to have a closer look. I didn’t want to be spotted by anyone because my behavior would definitely seem strange, but I needed to see what this was.
Ring, ring… Ring, ring…
“Shit!” I leapt backwards and gasped in shock as my cell phone rang, making me jump. Talk about trying to be discrete while sneaking a look! Now my heart was in my mouth. “He… hello? Evan, is that you?”
“Oh my God, Felicia, what the hell have I interrupted? He laughed loudly. “You sound like you have either been caught out after running a marathon, which I already know it isn’t, or you are behind the bike sheds with the cool jock guy, smoking your very first cigarette just to impress him. So, which is it?”
“Shut up, you idiot,” I growled while clutching on to my chest, trying to calm my racing pulse. “What do you want? Haven’t you ever heard of sending a text like a normal person? God damn it…”
“I’ve been texting you all summer, while you’ve been in Greece listening to your mom bleat on about your lack of a love life. As if she doesn’t know that you’re the emo ice queen who doesn’t give anyone a chance.” I rolled my eyes and let that slide. It didn’t matter what I looked like on the outside, Evan knew that I wasn’t like that on the inside. “I wanted to talk to you, to hear your beautiful dulcet tones. Well, actually I wanted to see you, but well, you’re in London.”
“I will be back at the Academy before you know it. I just wanted to chill out for a while, that’s all. And anyway, you don’t need me there to be your wing woman at the moment anyway. You’re doing just fine.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” he asked in mock shock as if he didn’t know he was a ladies’ man. “I do need you. I always do. The Academy isn’t the same without you, Felicia Dae. We need you back.”
I couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across my face. Even if he was a bit of an idiot, he did always make me laugh and feel good about myself.
“I do have the Internet, you know. I do see all the pictures you put up. You’re doing just fine.”
He laughed loudly and I could practically picture him tossing his head back, showing his rows of perfectly white teeth, his shaggy blond hair tossing behind him and his light blue eyes sparkling. It made me miss him a lot, more than I thought I would. I didn’t think that I was looking forward to returning to the Academy, but if it meant hanging out with my best friend then nothing like it. Maybe I would head back earlier than planned…
“So, anyway, Felicia Dae…” Why did he keep in insisting on usin
g my full name? What an idiot. “Are you planning to don your very pretty new tee shirt at the Academy? Let the other students know that you do have some personality after all and you aren’t just the queen of darkness, huh? Maybe you can even make your mommy proud and find yourself a harem. Get a little shifter baby in your belly, the whole works. I know that I might be biased, but wolves are the best…”
I snorted with laughter, having heard this line a million times before. It didn’t matter how many races Evan knew about; he would always assume that his was the most important. Mind you, he was pretty cute in his pale furry wolf form. Not that I would ever tell him that, he didn’t need any encouragement from me.
“Of course, I’m not,” I snapped back instead. “I don’t want people to know that I’m secretly a friendly, nice person. That’s my biggest secret and I have managed to keep it for two whole years. I’m not letting it out now.”
“Shame. You have such a pretty smile that I’m sure the world would love to see it.”
Oh! Now that was a shock. Every so often, Evan would break out of teasing mode and say something super sweet like this which would always leave me speechless. The mocking I could handle, I knew how to deal with that, but the niceness was strange. I never quite knew what to say back at times like this.
“Anyway,” he continued; breezing past it with ease. “Trent and I are headed out to the city tonight for a few drinks before term begins. I don’t know if you’ll make it from London in time, but it would be cool if you could come with us. We have a lot to catch up on after your Greek adventure.”
“I will try,” I promised him. We both knew that these were empty words though because I didn’t stand a chance in hell of getting back on time. Plus, there were still the magical runes at the Big Ben that I wanted to look in to. Not that I was in a hurry to stop talking to Evan. “I might see you soon, okay?”
“Yeah… right.” There was something hesitant in Evan’s voice. He didn’t seem quite ready to end the call yet. I wanted to push him to find out what was going on, but I knew that Evan wouldn’t respond well to that, it would just make him shut down. “Well, if you could get back… well, there is so much I would like to say.”
“You can say it now, if you want” That wasn’t pushing, was it? Just a gentle nudge.
“Oh no.” It was still too much. Damn it, it was too much. “I’ll tell you later. Bye, Felicia.”
“Goodbye.” I held the phone against my face for a couple more moments, listening to the dial tone even after he had hung up. Now, I really wanted to get back right away, to see my friend. It had been hard without him.
But the runes…. Unfortunately, in the time that I had been speaking to Evan, more tourists had arrived and now I couldn’t get a proper look without drawing attention to myself, so I had to wait. I had to take a step back and stop myself from impatiently tapping my foot on the ground I was starting to be my usual weird self.
So, while I waited, I forced myself to head to the nearest coffee shop to get a latte. It wasn’t my favorite drink, I usually preferred hot chocolate, but I felt like I needed the caffeine to take the edge off. I mean, what if these runes were really something? What if the Big Ben meant something more than we could ever know? There had been a rumor at the end of last year that a demon had exploded from the Big Ben – or something like that anyway. By the time I got wind of the rumour the story seemed to have changed dramatically, which was why I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time – but that had happened only a couple of months ago, and if it was the truth then perhaps there was something here. Something that I needed to know about…
Eventually, once the dredges of the coffee had grown fully cold in my cardboard cup, I made my way back to the Big Ben and earched once more for the sliver of silvery lights which showed the presence of something magical, but for some reason, it seemed to have vanished. I circled around the tower a couple of times, but couldn’t find anything.
Maybe I had imagined it. It had only been for a split second… but something in my gut told me that I had seen something real and it meant something. But what?
I had the urge to call someone, to discuss what I saw, but who? I didn’t want to speak to my mother at the moment because she would find a way to bring it around to my lack of a love life again, and the only other person was Evan. He knew a lot about my gut feelings, he called them my ‘butterfly thoughts’ because they were like a fluttery feeling in the pit of my stomach, and he never gave it much stock. It was another joke between us. I didn’t want this to be a joke.
I need to wait, I told myself seriously. Just for a little while. See if something happens.
It would mean missing out on my night with Trent and Evan, and ultimately learning whatever the hell my best friend wanted to tell me, but it wasn’t going to happen anyway, so why the hell not just stay in London for a little while longer? See if anything else happened to confirm my theory. Because there was something here… something weird. Something potentially evil. And no, I wasn’t getting myself all wrapped up in the rumors from last year, convincing myself that there was something here when there wasn’t, because I did see something. I did.
London was different in the dark, it didn’t have the same feeling of friendliness to it. The darker the clouds above me became, the more I felt the evil surrounding me, crowing over me, covering me in a weird cold sensation. Plus, there was a group of guys loitering on the street corner, looking at me like I was weird for hanging around the Big Ben by myself. I wasn’t scared of them, I could take them down in a heart beat with my magic. But I wasn’t keen on drawing attention to myself.
As time slipped by, I was starting to regret staying here, when I could have been hanging out with my friends.
What the…? Just as I was about to give up entirely, I spotted it again. The small slither of magic light, settled in the brick work of the Big Ben. I almost wanted to fist pump with excitement because I had been right. I wasn’t imagining things! It was there. Only this time as I looked closer, I noticed strange graffiti type markings around it that I hadn’t seen before. Markings which I didn’t recognize at all. Curiosity got the better of me, and I snapped a picture with my cell phone, the butterflies in my stomach flapping like crazy. I had to be on to something here, didn’t I?
Without even thinking about it, I sent the image to Evan to see what he thought about it all. I completely forgot that he was out and probably pretty intoxicated by this time.
Bleep, bleep.
I stared at the screen in shock, surprised to see Evan’s name there. Even while he was in the midst of a night club somewhere, he still managed to reply to me.
“That is weird”, he wrote back. “I can see it too. The magic and the graffiti. It could be something. You’re right. When you get back here, we will take it to the teaching staff.
Hmm, if he wasn’t mocking my butterfly thoughts then maybe I was on to something. I needed to get back to Scotland as soon as possible to get some answers.
Chapter 2
Trent
“How’s your head?” I demanded, the moment I spotted Evan leaning over the canteen table next to a giant mug of coffee as if it held all of the answers to his hang over problems. “You went a bit nuts last night, didn’t you?”
He didn’t give me anything other than a groan back, not that I was expecting much. He looked like if he would throw up if he even parted his lips. It was a shame, but I could completely understand how he managed to drink himself in to oblivion.
After a summer without his next door neighbor, best friend - turned love of his life, he was desperate to see Felicia again, to spend some time with her and he even intended to finally, after years of saying nothing for fear of losing his friendship with the girl, going to declare his love for her at last. Only, she didn’t show. Not because she didn’t want to, but because she was in London. I did try to warn him that it probably wouldn’t happen, but he wouldn’t listen.
He had been over excited and drank too much early
on, sending himself in to a bit of a stupor. While everyone else danced around and had fun, he was in the corner of the night club, practically sleeping. I was almost about to take him home when something seemed to snap in him. He seemed to have gotten some sort of message on his phone which made him mad. He went completely berserk, drinking far too much, and sloppily making out with whichever girl came his way. That didn’t mean anything though to him, he only wanted Felicia.
There were already pictures of him online, with various girls, because people got a real kick out of him acting like a fool, but this didn’t seem like the time or place to warn him about it. He would find out soon enough anyway.
“Why aren’t you hung over?” Evan finally groaned, managing to get some words out. I prepared myself for vomit but thankfully, it didn’t come. “You drank as much as me, didn’t you? So, you should be ill as well.”
“Fox shifters aren’t as weak as wolves,” I teased him playfully. “Plus, no, I definitely did not. You drank the whole damn bar. You were on a mad one. I had to put you to bed in the end. That was fun.”
“Sorry, Trent, I didn’t mean to put you in that position. I won’t let it happen again.”
He would, the next time that things got complicated with Felicia, but I didn’t mind. Of course, I would always be there for him. He was my friend. My best friend. He had always been there for me and I liked him a lot.
“Well, you do know that you arranged to meet Felicia at the airport?” I reminded him regretfully. “You told me to make sure that you went, so here I am, making sure that you definitely get there…”
