by Sarina Dorie
A teen with red hair and freckles pointed in my direction. “Get her! Curse her!”
I ducked lower, trying to see where the others might be around the sheep legs.
“That’s a teacher!” Hailey said. “They’ll kick us out if we kill her.”
“So? Do you want to get caught?” Balthasar asked.
“It’s not like she has any magic or anything she can use against us.” The red-headed boy looked like Ben O’Sullivan, another one of my trouble-maker students.
I considered yelling at them again, but I wasn’t sure what I could say that would make them fear me enough to convince them to listen.
I don’t know the exact minute I went from being the adult in control to being the prey hunted by predatory little monsters. Probably the first day of school. In any case, I found myself crawling behind the sheep to get to the other side of the painting to escape. Another sheep exploded next to me.
I tried to use my stern teacher voice. “Stop it right now. If you don’t go back to your dorm willingly, I’m going to give you detention for a month. With Professor Thatch.”
I crawled the rest of the way through the flock and raced across the space between the sheep and the crumbling cottage at the edge of the painting. For a blink of an eye the world went dark, and I staggered. I found myself in a room with a skeleton reclined on a brocade settee. One arm was painted with muscle and sinew, but it looked incomplete. Pencil lines remained in some sections around the bones. I ran behind the macabre figure and kept running. Something exploded behind me. Only half the skeleton remained. The rest was scattered in a pile of blobs on the floor.
“No hexing teachers. A hundred points from Elementia and Amni Plandai,” I said.
The next setting I found myself in didn’t squish under my feet like the other ones had. It was dim and cluttered. I dodged behind a piece of furniture covered in a sheet. The disorder reminded me of the storage room on the bottom of Jeb’s tower, but we had a lot of rooms filled with forgotten junk at the school.
A single sconce on the wall cast the room in flickering light and shadows perfect for hiding from students. On the other side of a looming box someone muttered under his breath.
Light glowed above me. A chandelier lit with candles flickered to life. Not so great for hiding.
“I command you to stop at once!” an authoritative male voice said.
It was Julian. I didn’t see where he came from, but he was here.
“Fuck,” one of the students said.
Finally, I was safe. Or I would be soon.
I didn’t want to risk getting hexed in student-teacher the crossfire, so I ducked. My slippers left a trail of mucky colors in my wake. Not wanting to give myself away, I crouched down and hurriedly peeled my slippers and socks off. I squatted behind a table covered in crates and kept my head down. What I would have given for an invisibility hoodie about then. Two figures dressed in all black ran past. I tiptoed around an antique lamp. I could see the exit now. Hailey Achilles stood in front of it, yanking on the handle. It rattled but didn’t open. She whirled back and held her wand in a defensive posture.
I still didn’t see Julian. Maybe there was another way out, and I could run and get help. I sank down and edged behind a broken desk chair. I would have kept going, but my skin prickled like I was being watched. I turned.
A rectangular box that rivaled the size of refrigerator stood behind me. The looming shape was covered in a sheet. I pinched the corner between my fingers, trying to conceal myself under the sheet without leaving evidence that I had touched it. Underneath was an ornate mahogany wardrobe carved with intricate reliefs of fire, water, wind, and earth. It should have been dark underneath the thick cloth, but one of the doors was ajar. Light sparkled inside and danced like a prism.
Hushed voices approached.
I opened the door wider and stepped onto the wooden ledge. The floor glittered with stars. I stared down in wonder as I stepped into the cosmos. Or more literally, fell into the cosmos.
All right Narnia, here I come, I thought.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
This Isn’t Narnia
I’d always wanted to crawl into a wardrobe and be transported to another world. I’d stepped into Weirdville tonight with secret passages, monsters, and voyeuristic snapshots of staff I could have done without. You would think that maybe just once the universe might have said, “Hey, hasn’t this lady experienced enough? Maybe we should cut her some slack.”
That would imply the universe was fair and kind.
My feet met air, and I fell. I flailed my arms, scrabbling for anything I could grab onto. I knocked a wooden hanger from the rack which bumped me on the head. My hand struck something warm and relatively soft. I clasped onto a fistful of fabric with one hand and the rack where the hanger had hung with my other hand.
A vicelike grip closed around my bicep. An arm circled around my back. Someone—Julian?—hoisted me up. My kicking feet struck wood and then someone’s leg. He grunted, and I stopped kicking. My breath came in gasps, and my heart thudded in my ears. I struggled for footing, until I found purchase on what felt like a narrow wooden ledge.
“Hey, did you hear that?” Balthasar whispered from outside. “Over here. We need to get her and erase her memories before she tells everyone what we did.”
Those little brats! If untrained Witchkin—like them—tried erasing anyone’s memories and it went wrong, that person might end up a vegetable.
“What about the other teacher?” Ben asked.
The arms around me held me close. My heart hammered in my chest so hard I was certain Julian could feel it with the way he crushed me to him. I fought to control my breathing, to not give myself away. I buried my face against his chest, muffling my gasps for air. I clung to his jacket with as firm of a grip as I could despite the oil paint coating my hands.
“Julian?” I whispered. “What happened? How did we get separated in the hallway?”
He let go with one hand and pressed a finger to my lips.
I forced myself to breathe slowly, to calm myself. I tried to look up, but it was too dark to see. His fingers tangled through my hair and held my head against his chest. His jacket was rough against my cheek. I closed my eyes, listening to the soothing calm of his heartbeat. For the first time all night I felt safe.
The voices of the students faded away. The shimmer of stars below my feet changed. I tilted my head down slowly to look. I didn’t want to lose my balance.
Below, the scene was no longer the night’s sky, but an angle looking down on a landscape. It was the meadow of fluffy sheep. Well, most of them were fluffy. Some looked burnt.
The landscape flickered to the forest painting. After that came the hydra in the hallway, each serpent head dancing above the bucket as it guarded the door. The images were going backward in time to every place I had been that night.
I tried to look up again, but I couldn’t with the way Julian’s fingers laced through my hair. He didn’t smell like herbs as he usually did. He smelled like oil paint. On the other hand, that was probably me. It occurred to me Julian had never held me this tightly. He’d kissed me and placed an arm around me, but I couldn’t recall an embrace so cozy and natural. This was uncharacteristically platonic.
It crossed my mind this might not be Julian. But I’d heard his voice. And if it wasn’t Julian, who else could it be? I tried to shift my weight, but he held me firmly.
Footsteps neared the wardrobe. I held my breath. The sheet rustled.
His protective embrace disappeared. He shoved me away from himself. I fell for real this time. I screamed. The air rushed around me. My feet slammed into something soft, and my butt followed. I fell onto my back. The cushion underneath me collapsed a second later. The wind was knocked out of me.
A woman shouted, but my ears rang too loudly to make out her words. The golden glow of an oil lamp flickered to life. Vega sat up in her bed, staring at me open-mouthed
. I’d fallen into bed and broken it.
“What the fuck is your problem?” she asked. “And what is that you’ve gotten all over yourself? Mud?”
“If only.”
I insisted Vega accompany me to Jeb’s private quarters. She was her usual, crabby self about it and took forever wrapping a black silk kimono around her slender figure. By the time we’d found him, and I’d blurted out the situation, it became apparent he already knew. The librarian stood there in her nightgown, wisps of her silver hair escaping from an old-fashioned bonnet. Ludomil Sokoloff stood in a nightshirt.
Mrs. Keahi burst in a moment later. I soon found most of the staff was awake and running around the school in a state of emergency.
Jasper Jang ran into the room a moment later. “They’ve caught the little buggers!”
The herd of us traveled downstairs to the storage room. Julian had apprehended the three students with the help of Pro Ro, Professor Bluehorse, and Jackie Frost. Thatch showed up during the commotion and hauled the students off to the dungeon.
I wanted to tell Jeb what I’d seen—specifically about Pro Ro casting a spell on me and students trying to hex me—but Khaba butted in, taking him aside. Pro Ro spoke to him next.
Jeb paced back and forth, ranting. “The dang answer keys are missin’. They took them for sure, and they ain’t tellin’ us where they are. What are we gonna to do?”
Khaba shrugged. “They obviously hid them somewhere. Thatch will get it out of them.”
Vega studied the nonexistent dirt under her nails. “I wonder who admin will be forced to fire first after the school gets fined?” She arched an eyebrow at me.
Not only had I failed to stop the students from trying to hex me, but I had been too busy running for my life to reason with them about how pointless stealing an answer key was. My job was the first on the chopping block. Defeat weighed heavy on my shoulders.
Josie came over and found me standing next to Vega. She looked me up and down. “What’s in your hair?”
I shook my head. I was too exhausted to tell her the full story.
Jeb snapped his fingers at Vega. “Miss Bloodmire, you and Khaba check the wards in my office, and see how they got the answer keys. Coach Kutchi, Jackie Frost, go to the dungeon and talk to students in your houses. You can assist Mr. Thatch with the questioning. Pro Ro, Sebastian Reade, get to the astronomy tower, and see if you can see the answers in the stars. Someone find the Lupis. They’re good trackers.”
I tried to wave Jeb down, but he continued barking out orders. He pointed to me. “Miss Lawrence, darlin’, go to my office and pour me a double shot of whiskey. I’m going to need it.”
All the staff were grouchy at breakfast from lack of sleep. I probably had managed to get in three hours after the commotion died down. It made for a bad day of teaching.
In the morning, I found three apology notes written in blood on my desk from Hailey Achilles, Balthasar Llewelyn and Ben O’Sullivan. Mostly Ben’s note consisted of complaining that Thatch chained them up in the dungeon, and they would be there again during lunch and after school for detention.
I didn’t feel bad for them.
There was a time and a place for everything. I waited a day before going to the principal about what I’d seen with Pro Ro. He wasn’t in, so I left a note. When he burst into my classroom while I was in the middle of teaching the next day, I thought he was there to see me.
He looked around with wild eyes. “Where is it?”
“Where’s what?” I asked.
He sprayed spittle out of his mouth. His eyes were bloodshot, and baggy skin sagged underneath. “The dang answer keys. Where are you hiding them?”
The students stared with wide eyes. Teenagers moved back from him. Jeb’s hat was askew, and his plaid shirt buttoned crookedly. He did look a bit unkempt.
“I don’t have the answer keys,” I said. “Why would you think I had them?”
Jeb whirled. Khaba rushed in after him. He whispered, “I asked you not to get excited and not to rush to conclusions. I didn’t say Miss Lawrence had stolen them. My magic indicated she would find them.”
I would find them?
He snared Jeb by the elbow and tugged him toward the door. He flashed an apologetic smile. “Sorry for the interruption. Please, don’t let this interfere with your teaching.”
I stepped out the door after them. “Did you read my note? I was wondering if you had time to talk about something important.”
“Is it about the answer keys?” Jeb asked.
“No, but—”
“The only thing you should be worrin’ about is the answer keys.” Jeb jabbed a finger at me. “Do you know how much that fine is going to be? If you want a job next quarter, you better start lookin’.”
I backed away, startled at his vehemence.
Khaba sighed in exasperation. “No pressure.”
Jeb continued down the stairs, shouting loud enough I could hear him as he descended. “Where’s Pro Ro? I need more divination.”
“Teaching class, I expect, since he’s a teacher,” Khaba said. “Perhaps we should wait until his prep period this time.”
“What’s the point in having a divination teacher if he ain’t gonna tell us where those answer keys are?”
“Just a little reminder, Pro Ro doesn’t specialize in dowsing or searching for lost objects.”
“Well, it’s not like you’ve been good for anything.”
To my disappointment, Jeb was too busy to meet with me the following morning or afternoon. When he wasn’t off-campus trying to drum up money for the school’s inevitable fine, he was meeting with committees regarding the answer key situation.
We had until the end of the quarter to come up with the answer keys. The end of the quarter was a week and a half away. If we didn’t locate it, the test administrators would have to make another test. Making a test cost time and money. That money had to come from somewhere, hence the fine from the Fae run school board.
Considering what I knew of this world, I suspected the Fae wanted us to fail.
My future as a teacher/magical pupil at the school looked pretty abysmal. If only I’d had magic, I could have stopped the students and saved the day. As it was, I didn’t even know if I could protect myself from that curse.
I checked out a copy of Wards and Protective Charms for Advanced Magecraft in the library and found a protective rune used to divert magic from one’s enemies. The spell said to write the rune somewhere on my body with ground up coal and virgin’s blood. I followed the directions and chanted the magic words as I drew on my arm with a stick of charcoal, but I still felt stabbing pains when I saw Pro Ro in the hallway. Possibly this was because the charcoal had smudged onto the inside of my sleeve and rubbed away. I used a Sharpie next, but that only lasted a day. Next I tried pricking my finger because I was still a virgin. That didn’t work either.
There had to be a better way to protect myself. I just didn’t know how yet.
After shopping for special granola for the brownies, Josie and I sat in Happy Hal’s on a Saturday. My mood was glum as I poured my heart out over a glass of cheap wine I didn’t even like. Khaba was off on an “errand.” I had a feeling his errand was in the form of his latest kilt complex.
“How am I ever going to master my magic if I leave here?” I asked.
Josie patted my shoulder. “They might keep you on as an unpaid intern. It would give you a lot of spare time to study.”
“Have they ever done that before?”
“Well, no. Not that I know of anyway.”
My spirits sank lower.
Some guy with a long, wart-covered nose edged past the table. I scooted my chair in so he could get by.
“Excuse me,” he said. His hand brushed against my shoulder. My belly cramped worse than a major case of PMS. I shrank away from him, curling over myself protectively until the spasm passed.
Josie’s gaze flickered to my arm w
here she’d drawn the rune the day before, trying to do the spell for me to see if she could get it to work. “No luck with that protective ward yet?”
“No.” I lifted up my sleeve. At least this one hadn’t rubbed off.
“I hate to say it, but maybe you should ask Vega for help.” Josie leaned closer. “She teaches wards and protective spells. She’ll probably ask for your firstborn child or something, but it might be worth it, you know?”
“How is it possible I can be cursed? Khaba couldn’t detect it. Do you think the hydra was just messing with me?”
“I don’t know. Khaba’s powerful, but his magic has limitations.”
I longed to speak with Jeb, but he hadn’t answered any of the notes I’d left him. Mrs. Keahi said he was away on business again. I didn’t know if she gave him my messages. She rolled her eyes when I told her it was a matter of life or death.
I’d also made sure to stay away from Pro Ro as much as possible. Since I hadn’t been able to speak with Jeb about what I’d seen, Khaba had said he would discuss the matter with him as soon as Jeb returned. A lot of good that did. I had been waiting days for the principal to do something.
“You know what we need?” Josie said. “We should have a girl’s day out.”
I shrugged, unable to get my mind off my uncertain future.
Josie nudged me. “We could go to a spa and get massages and facials. It will be relaxing and help reduce our stress.”
All things being considered, I didn’t want anyone to touch me. Not after Thatch had proven his point about how susceptible I was to pleasant sensations. I suspected it wouldn’t take much for magic to explode out of me with a massage. If anything, I needed the exact opposite of sensual touch. Pain would help ground me, like when Thatch had squeezed my arm in his office.
“Or if you don’t want to go to a spa, how about a movie in the Morty Realm? Something away from all this.” She nodded to the café of goblinesque patrons.
The movies, at least, wouldn’t bring out my magic. If only there was something I could do that was the exact opposite of feeling nice—like going to the dentist and having cavities drilled without anesthesia, or falling down and spraining an ankle, or getting a tattoo.
