by Sarina Dorie
That was it? He wasn’t going to chain me to the dungeon wall or yell at me for invading his privacy? From the wicked way he smiled, I wondered if he’d told Khaba I had an electronic device in my possession for the pleasure of letting Khaba bust me.
I shoved the phone into my sweater pocket and ran all the way back to my dorm. I hid it under my pillow, then thought better of it and turned it on. It didn’t work. I popped the back of the phone open and found the battery was missing.
Ugh! That jerk! Where was I supposed to get one of those in the Unseen Realm?
Jeb had been at school for a brief amount of time, but he’d been too busy to see anyone before he’d left. Rumor had it he was looking in Lachlan Falls for the answer keys.
Right. I’m sure the students had time to stash them all the way across the forest and then get back to the school before they’d been apprehended. Still, I could understand he was following any leads that came in. A week remained before he had to come up with those answer keys. It was that or pay the fine.
Needless to say, Jeb didn’t have time to talk to little ol’ me. I suppose I should have been more understanding—I was the one who would be cut first at the school. But it was hard to think about my job when all I could focus on was whether Pro Ro had hexed me. Did Pro Ro know that I was a Red affinity? Why had he put some kind of curse on me?
To make matters worse, Pro Ro peeked in my classroom twice in the same day, which was majorly weird since he’d never done that before. I longed for Julian to wrap his arms around me and hug me, but he wasn’t in his classroom after school.
Because I was a glutton for punishment, I went back to the hall of mirrors. I specifically stayed away from Thatch’s room this time. Mostly. I glanced in on the way to Pro Ro’s mirror to see if he was done with his macabre painting. His room was dark and the painting was stashed in the corner. Whether he was in his bed, sleeping or elsewhere, I couldn’t tell. The curtains of his canopy bed were draped in shadows.
I continued to Pro Ro’s mirror. He sat on the floor again, chanting. This time he’d thrown down bones on the floor. I’d heard of that method of divination. The goblet of red fluid next to him didn’t look so promising. I wondered whose blood was he drinking. Was this also blood magic?
I sat down on the floor in front of his mirror, waiting for a puff of smoke or a vision to appear. Or for pain to stab into my belly. I took out my cell phone from my pocket. It wouldn’t be much good until I went back into the Morty world to get a new battery.
I could only imagine how that conversation with Khaba was going to go. Would you please chaperone me to get a new cell phone battery? Pretty please?
Maybe I could get one on the black market if there was a black market in the Unseen Realm. I could use Amazon at Happy Hal’s, but I would have to use the school’s P.O. box. If my purchase was “accidentally” placed in Thatch’s box, I would be out another battery. Maybe Julian would be my knight in shining armor and buy one for me. A guilty smile curled to my lips.
While Pro Ro meditated across from me, I lamented my lack of cell phone. I could have taken photos of Pro Ro for evidence if I’d been able to use it.
I stared at the phone, willing it to work. The plastic was warm in my hand. It pulsed as if it had its own heartbeat. Or perhaps that was just my own.
The battery was just energy. Thatch had told me pain was energy. I could turn magic into energy and energy into magic. I wondered if I could use magic to make a cell phone work. It probably was really hard to do or else Witchkin wouldn’t have such trouble with electronics.
I didn’t have anything better to do as I waited for Pro Ro to do something impressive. I tried the pain visualization Thatch had taught me, but instead of pain, I sent my energy into the cell phone. After half an hour of effort, the screen lit up!
The case heated up and the stench of burning plastic stung my nostrils. I dropped my phone onto my lap and quickly pushed it onto the floor. The screen went blank. I suspected I had given it too many volts. I tried again, focusing on regulating the energy into a lighter stream. I was able to open the old photos in my camera app. None of my photos had been tampered with.
Beat that, Thatch! I can do anything you can do better, I sang to myself. Not literally, but I was getting there.
Pro Ro was still at it with his meditation, giving me the opportunity for evidence. Not that he was doing anything sketchy at the moment other than the goblet of possible blood. Purple half-moons sagged under his eyes. He looked tired.
I raised the phone and snapped a photo. The flash went off. He blinked and glanced around. Oh, shoot! Had the flash passed through the mirror?
I hurried off to bed, afraid he might be powerful enough to suck my phone—or me—through the mirror like Thatch had. I would have to return for more photos another night when he didn’t suspect anyone was watching.
I sat alone at my desk before school the following morning. Students wouldn’t be coming in for another hour and a half since I didn’t have a homeroom. I held my palms a foot apart as I concentrated on making an arc of electricity crackle between them. Pink-and-purple energy shot from one hand to another, reminding me of a plasma ball. Only those were in glass, which might have made it safer.
My department head, Coach Kutchi rushed into my classroom. I hurriedly hid my hands, afraid I’d been caught. I wasn’t supposed to be using magic, but now that I had figured it out, I didn’t want to stop.
“I need you during homeroom and your prep period today,” she said.
“Um.” I tried to think of something a normal, not-guilty person would say.
“You’re covering for Professor Thatch for two periods. Miss Bloodmire and Mr. Lupi have got his other periods.”
“What do you mean? Where is Thatch?”
“Professor Thatch,” she emphasized. “He’s away on business in the Morty Realm. Someone reported an unidentified magical phenomenon at a school. Probably some Witchkin kid who slipped through the cracks. I’m just surprised this is the first one this year. Last year he was away a lot.”
Considering I had caused some of those incidents, that was no surprise.
It was actually a noble thing he did, performing this extra duty to help children avoid being captured by Fae. Had circumstances been different, and he hadn’t decided he hated me before he’d first laid eyes on me, I wondered if we might have become friends. We were both artists, and I admired his magical competence and classroom management skills. His hair was gorgeous and his British accent seductive. If he didn’t scowl at me with such loathing in his eyes—if just once he treated me nicely—I probably would have fallen in love with him on the spot.
I scooped up my papers and dragged myself down to the dungeon. Thatch’s homeroom was a group of sleepy students who mostly read. I supposed I should have made the napping students work, but they were quiet, and I didn’t care what they did so long as they weren’t disruptive. I was so sleepy myself I would have liked to nap.
Twenty minutes in, Khaba dragged Hailey Achilles through the door. Lucky me. Khaba nodded to me.
After gluing me to the ceiling and trying to hex me inside impressionist paintings, Hailey wasn’t exactly on my list of favorite students. The most recent apology letter written in blood that Thatch had made Hailey, Balthasar, and Ben write hadn’t quite cut it. Still, I had a job to do.
“Good morning,” I said to her in the cheeriest voice I could muster. “What homework did you bring to work on?”
She trudged to a seat in the back. “I got nothing.”
I walked over to her. “I understand you have a test in your Morty Studies class today. Did you bring your textbook to study?”
She stared at me, aghast. “How’d you know about the test?”
Because teachers talk to each other. Duh. I waggled my fingers at her. “Magic.”
That got half of a chuckle out of her, at least. “You going to magic me a book or something? Cuz I lost mine.”
> Bobby Travis, one of the students from my class, nodded to the back of the classroom. I went to the counter and opened the cupboards. Most were full of alchemy and potion textbooks. The last cupboard held an assortment of textbooks from various classes.
“Which volume of Morty History is it?” I asked.
“First year,” someone snickered. “Freshman level.”
“How many times has she taken that class?” someone whispered, none-too-quietly.
“Shut up!” Hailey stood up, drawing her wand.
I didn’t even know why they let her keep that thing.
“Put it away,” I said firmly.
Hailey tucked her wand away. I set the book on her desk with a thud of finality.
“Chapter six?” I asked, guessing.
“Seven and eight,” Hailey said, glumly.
I opened the book. There weren’t any pictures like in my high school textbooks. I skimmed the first couple lines. Their unit covered ancient China and Japan. “Here’s a little trick I learned a long time ago.” In fourth grade, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. “As you read, make a list of words you don’t know. After ten minutes or so, call me over, and we can go over the vocabulary together.”
As I seated myself at Thatch’s desk, I noted with surprise that Hailey actually followed directions. I managed to grade ten papers from my class and resisted the urge to open any of the drawers of Thatch’s desk before she called me over.
“What is this?” She pointed to the first word on her list.
Deciphering her handwriting was a challenge. “Government?”
“Oh, yeah, I know what that is.” She pointed to the next one.
“Establishment,” I said.
She pointed to more words. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t understand the meanings, she just couldn’t read the words. Together we went back into the text, and I helped her when we came to those words. I asked her a few questions to check her understanding of the material.
“When you have homeroom with Mr. Thatch, we could see if you could come to my classroom instead. I could help you read the next chapter in your history book,” I offered.
She leaned back in her chair and groaned. “This is worse than a detention with Thatch or Khaba.”
“It’s work, I know, but you’re doing great.”
We made it halfway through a chapter before the bell rang. Students leapt out of their seats for the door.
Hailey shoved the book back at me and grabbed her bag. I went to Thatch’s desk and stacked up my ungraded papers.
Hailey paused in the doorway. “Why are you doing this?”
“What do you mean?”
“Trying to help me.” She said it like it was a bad word.
I lifted my chin. “I’m your teacher. I want you to do well.”
“Yeah, but me and Balthasar, we tried to hex you. Ben tried to curse you. You must hate us.”
“I can only hope that someday you’ll feel true remorse for your behavior.”
She rolled her eyes. “I do feel bad. I have lunch and afterschool detention for a month. Plus, Coach won’t let me play on the pegasus polo team until I cough up the stupid answer keys.”
Not exactly the kind of remorse a teacher hoped for.
“Are you going to?” I asked.
“No, I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
She rolled her eyes and threw up her hands in exasperation in typical teenage fashion.
“Let me know if you change your mind,” I called after her. “You can always come to me if you want to talk.”
Not that I thought I was going to be able to convince her to tell me where the answer keys were hidden when Khaba and Thatch couldn’t, but I had tried. After all, I did want to be employed next semester.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Morty Magic
I was the first teacher to arrive in the cafeteria on Wednesday. I ladled soup into my bowl and selected two slices of French bread before sitting down with the students. I was lucky Jackie Frost arrived next because two boys I didn’t know broke out into a fight.
The volume in the cafeteria grew to a roar as students excitedly yelled helpful things like, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
Jackie rushed toward them. An amorphous ball of murky liquid grew above their heads and then slid between them, spraying out and forcing them apart.
Vega, usually the picture of unhurried grace, came running in from the hallway. What wasn’t soaking into the kids’ clothes was now a giant puddle on the ground in the middle of the cafeteria. I grabbed a stack of napkins from the staff table and mopped up the puddle, trying to be helpful. Jackie hauled off one kid, and Vega grabbed the other. I was alone in the cafeteria with the students.
The chaos still hadn’t settled down, and it wasn’t even full of students yet. More teenagers rushed in to see what had happened.
I sat at a table where I could keep my eye on the room. The air was dry, and I kept blinking to moisten my eyes. My goblet of water was now empty. One of the kids complained the soup no longer had any broth. I could guess where Jackie’s liquid had come from, and why it had looked so murky.
A student seated next to me bit into a slice of garlic bread, spraying breadcrumbs onto my plate. Too late I realized I had seated myself next to Ben O’Sullivan. There was no way I was going to eat my lunch now that his germcrumbs were on it.
He threw the slice down on the table. “This is stale.”
“So what?” another kid said. “We get way worse at the gnome camps.”
About half the kids were trying to gnaw through the bread. A few of the older students at other tables closed their eyes and tapped their wands against the mounds of sliced bread on the table. Maybe there was a rehydration spell.
“This sucks balls!” Hailey said.
“Watch your language.” I pointed to the other table where the other teenagers were casting spells. “You could do what they’re doing.”
“Dude, that is such a good idea! We can use magic! You’re a genius, Miss Lawrence,” one of the kids said in excitement.
Ben crunched into another slice of bread, spraying the food I wasn’t going to eat with more crumbs. Someone across from him waved a wand over the bread on the table and set it on fire. Students leapt back off their benches. The high-pitched shrill of teenage girls screaming almost deafened me.
I could see it was going to be one of those days that everything went wrong. I grabbed my plate of food, overturned it on the flames, and smacked the fire into submission. Ben was the only student who still sat on the bench. His face was red, and he was coughing. Even the teenagers across the table had vacated.
“Miss Lawrence!” a teenager shrieked. She pointed at Ben.
Ben’s hands were wrapped around his throat, the universal sign of choking. He was still coughing, trying to clear the food from his throat, but failing. His freckled face was nearly as red as his hair.
Fan-freakin’-tastic.
“Can you breathe?” I asked.
He didn’t respond.
“Does anyone have water?” I asked. “Give him a drink of water.”
“There isn’t any. Miss Frost used it for her spell.”
I waved my hand at the kitchen. “Someone, get him water from the kitchen.”
“We aren’t allowed in the kitchen.”
“For the freakin’ love of God! It’s an emergency. Just go in.” I pointed to a girl standing there with wide eyes. She ran off.
I shook one kid by his shirt. “Go get a teacher.”
“You are a teacher!”
A teacher who could actually use magic, I meant.
I waved to Josie and called her name. She stood on the other side of the cafeteria, but she didn’t see me over the commotion of students on her side of the room still riled up by the fight.
Balthasar raised his wand, pointing it at his friend.
“No more spells!” I shouted
. “Do you want him to go up in flames too?”
One of the older kids rushed over with a spell book. “This book has a great charm for wind.”
I tore the book out of his hands and threw it on the floor. “Don’t use magic unless you know how to use it.” Those could have been wise words intended for myself as well.
“Get a wind Elementia!” someone said.
Someone whacked Ben hard on the back.
That was the moment the magic of this world became second to the teacher training I’d received. When I’d taken First Aid while student teaching, the nurse had said everyone always wants to hit a choking person on the back. Sometimes that worked, sometimes it lodged food lower down the windpipe.
I grabbed the kid’s arm. “No, don’t do that. You’ll only make it wor—”
Ben stopped coughing.
The young man who had smacked Ben made a snotty face at me. “See. He isn’t choking anymore.”
Ben’s face had gone from red to purple. The food had been lodged lower. He swayed on the bench. I pushed him upright.
“Help me hold him up.” When no one moved, I pointed to two students. Each grabbed one of his arms. I circled my arms around his waist and felt for his navel. I grabbed onto my wrist and moved my fist higher, where I guessed the bottom of his diaphragm was. I dug my fist in.
I performed the Heimlich maneuver, yanking him off the bench as I did so. He nearly toppled onto me, and I pushed him back onto the bench.
“Hold him still,” I told the two hanging onto his arms.
“Oh no! What’s she doing! It’s sex magic,” one of the kids said.
Hailey punched the other girl in the arm. “No, it isn’t, you moron. It’s CPR.”
Not exactly, but this wasn’t the moment to correct her.
“I did it! I have water!” a girl cried, trying to shove a pitcher at me.
“Can’t you see? She’s busy,” someone said. “Ugh, why are you such a reject?”
I was too focused to respond to the girl or the kid with the attitude.
