by Sarina Dorie
I tried to memorize the incantation, but it was too long. The poster floated out of my hands and wobbled through the air to the wall.
Her magic smelled like lavender and baking bread. I tasted juniper. My senses suddenly got all confused. Purple spots danced in front of my eyes. Was this what magic was supposed to feel like?
In ten minutes Josie made my room look more like an art teacher’s classroom. She even removed the remnants of Guernica from the wall, no questions asked. By the time she was done, the perfume of flowers and cozy home smells masked the odor of smoke and Lysol.
Next on my list. “Where are the outlets for the overhead and computer and… .”
The mortified expression on her face stopped me.
“What?” I asked.
“There are no outlets. Electricity robs us of our powers.”
I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. “It’s off. Don’t worry. I know I’m not supposed to use it in the classroom. But I need someplace to recharge it.”
She snatched it out of my hand and shoved it back into my pocket. “Don’t let anyone see that. Do you know what they’ll do if they catch you?” She glanced over her shoulder as if someone might pop into my doorway at that exact second. “That’s like bringing a knife to school.”
“I just thought those rules were for the kids.” When I’d done my internship as a student teacher, I’d always been discreet about using a cell phone. My former school had advised teachers to be good role models by keeping electronics out of sight.
She shook her head at me. “It’ll majorly suck away your powers.”
Jeb had touched on this the day before, but I hadn’t realized how serious of a problem it was. This probably explained why I had always caused electronics to malfunction, whether it was an ATM having a power surge or my vibrator dying at the most inopportune moments.
Josie bit her lip. She leaned in closer. “I tell you what. Today, we’ll go into town and get some lunch instead of eating the cafeteria crap they serve here. I’ll show you where teachers charge phones and use computers.”
“Really? So, I might be able to print out my lesson plans?” My future brightened with hope.
She placed a finger to her lips. “I wasn’t the one who told you. Got it?”
Josie was my hero!
She turned toward the door on the far end of the room. “Did they give you a key for the door to the back stairwell? It leads to a supply closet.”
“No.”
“Of course they didn’t.” She clucked her tongue. “We’ll see if we can sweet-talk it out of the secretary. Ali Keahi is either your best friend or worst enemy, and it’s better to be on her good side.”
Right. I had a suspicion which side I’d already found myself on.
Josie took out her magic wand again and jabbed it into the keyhole of the door. She muttered under her breath, and it swung open. The air smelled fresh and clean, like springtime in the garden.
“You’re going to want to keep this door locked,” she said. “If you don’t, students will steal your supplies. Jorge—the previous teacher—he was always going on about that last year, not that there was much to steal. Of course, teachers will steal stuff too.”
This didn’t sound any different from my previous school.
We squeezed down a narrow set of stairs, Josie chatting away about her lack of textbooks. The purple glow of Josie’s wand lit the way. On a landing one floor below my classroom, we found another locked door. The stairs continued on into a gloom of uninviting shadows.
I pointed to the bounty of spiderwebs that would have made a giant spider from a J. R. R. Tolkien novel jealous. “What’s down there?” I asked.
Josie waved a hand toward the stairs that led to the abyss below. “Vega Bloodmire’s classroom is two floors below, and she has storage right below your closet. I think the stairwell keeps going down to the dungeon, but I don’t know for sure. One time Jorge convinced me to try the passage with him. We made it as far as Vega’s closet before she chased us off, accusing us of stealing her supplies.”
Note to self: never descend into the spiderwebs of doom. I had ninety-nine problems already. I didn’t need anyone with a name like Bloodmire accusing me of stealing her class supplies to be one of them.
Josie tapped the wooden door on the landing with her wand and it popped open. A filthy window let in hardly enough light to see. Shelves lined the stone walls of a walk-in closet. It was dusty, and I tore through cobwebs to get to the stacks of sketchbooks. An assortment of paintbrushes filled coffee cans. A single Tupperware tub contained a variety of broken pencils, color pencils, and nubs of crayons. All my lessons relied on having a classroom with scissors, glue, tempera paint, acrylics, watercolors, and other supplies. I felt overwhelmed by how much work I was going to have to do redesigning my curriculum. How was I going to study to be a proficient witch and be a rock star teacher at the same time?
Josie blew on a stack of dusty paper. There were about twenty pads of paper, not enough for each student. Unless I had very small classes.
“How many students are in each class?” I asked.
“It depends on the year. Usually about thirty. Sometimes less. You can pick up your schedule from Mr. Puck’s office today.”
Thirty was a dream come true! While student teaching, my classes at Hamlin Middle School had contained up to forty. Classes in Skinnersville School District ranged anywhere from thirty-five to forty-five. There hadn’t even been enough seats for all the high school students in classes I’d observed.
On one of the shelves across from the paper, looking very lonely, was a case of white chalk. Corpses of beetles littered the shelf below and dead flies lined the windowsill. My only magic weapon, Lysol, would be coming to this location soon.
I stood on tiptoe to view the desolate emptiness of the top shelves. “So that’s it?”
“Once the budget was used up, Jorge went to thrift shops and garage sales to find cheap supplies to buy with his own money. He told me he got this from an estate sale.” She waved a hand at the chalk, her fingers tangling in a cobweb. “He let the kids draw on the back wing of the school until they started drawing penises all over the place. Then he tried mud pie art. Jorge was really into art history and tried to use that to fill the majority of the time, but the kids hated it.” She made a face. “You can imagine how great it is to teach them Morty Studies when they already have a heavy load in their History of Magic classes.”
“That’s what you teach? Morty history?”
“Yeah, Mortal Studies to each grade, plus one elective and home room.” She swept a spiderweb off her hat.
I remembered what Thatch had said about Jorge’s accident. “Is it true Jorge was attacked by students? Thatch implied they murdered him.”
“Yeah, I don’t know about murder. I mean, they did hex Jorge to get out of class, but that isn’t abnormal. The thing is, Jorge was a grown adult. If nothing else, he could perform his wards. It would have taken powerful magic to cause him to explode. Dark magic.”
“Something a Merlin-class Celestor could do?” I asked, thinking of Thatch.
She tapped her wand against a shelf. Spurts of lavender and rose fragrance shot out with each tap. “If I recall correctly, Thatch was the one who found him. Or what remained of him.”
“Whoa! And no one suspected him?”
“That’s a pretty heavy accusation toward a teacher. Jeb interviewed everyone with our dean of discipline, Mr. Khaba—Thatch included—but they concluded it must have been a student spell gone wrong. Kids dabbling in dark arts and whatnot.”
I shivered. What had I gotten myself into? “So, what’s the deal with the kids here? Is this the equivalent of a Title One school? Or worse?”
She leaned closer. “Kids are at Womby’s for one of two reasons. The first is because they’re poor or orphaned and there’s no one to pay the school fee. We’re a charity school.”
“Why didn’t Jeb ju
st say that when I’d asked him about it the first time?” He’d been evasive at dinner. I’d let my imagination go wild. A charity school was noble.
A spider scuttled across the shelf, and I shifted back.
Josie shrugged. “The other kids are here because they flunked out of the nicer schools, either because of bad behavior or academics. Kids are safe—mostly—while they’re at school, but after they graduate and don’t live here, they’re no longer under a school’s magical protection.” She dragged the pale wood of her wand against the grimy window, removing a panel of dust with a yellow glow. The air tasted of lemon. Golden light filtered in, brightening the closet and stairwell.
“The children need our mark so the Fae will agree not to touch them until they’ve come of age. If they graduate from here, they still officially have our mark. Think of it like a diploma. That’s usually enough to keep them safe, but really it’s up to the kids to fend for themselves—if they’ve developed the powers to be able to do so. They still have to be able to get a job and figure out a way to survive in the Unseen Realm. Some of them have just enough magic to be enticing to goblins and dark creatures, but not enough to protect themselves—and not enough sense to resist the lure of black magic. Some of them know they’re dunces, so they choose to have their powers removed and go back to the Morty world.”
“I can’t imagine going back to normal life after this.” I waved my hand, to show I meant the school, and got tangled in spiderwebs.
“Yeah, magic has its perks.” She laughed, the sound high and sweet like Tinker Bell. “And drawbacks too.”
I was starting to understand enough of this world for it all to make sense. “So, the reason these kids are snatched up by the Raven Court is the same reason I might be? I don’t have a permanent mark of protection and because I can’t do magic yet?”
“That’s one way to think of it. You didn’t graduate from an accredited school that teaches you the magic you need to stop them. It’s their right to take the untrained and unclaimed. Well, I don’t know if I would say a right, but within the law. The Witchkin community lets them collect unregistered Witchkin in the Morty world as a tithe. If we didn’t let them collect any tithes, it would be all-out war.”
My fairy godmother had worked hard all my life to make sure my magic stayed hidden so I wouldn’t be collected as a tithe. Every time I’d unwittingly used magic in my teenage years, I could have called the Fae to me. If it hadn’t been for all the telephone poles and cell phones, they might have snatched me up. It had only been a matter of time before my accidental magic caught their attention.
Josie leaned against a shelf, continuing on about the school and past tithes of students. She spoke casually about it, as if this was a normal part of this world.
“Why do teachers just let the Fae snatch the graduates if they aren’t ready to face Fae?” I asked. These children were being stolen away and enslaved. Eaten? I thought about that creepy scene in The Matrix when the machines had fed on humans like organic batteries.
She shrugged. “You can only hold a kid back so many times. The graduation rate is abysmal. We can’t afford to keep them indefinitely.”
In some ways, this wasn’t any different from a regular high school, only if our students at Womby’s failed to meet the minimum graduation requirements, they didn’t get food stamps or live in their parents’ basements until they were thirty.
They died.
The whole system disgusted me. If this was the way the Witchkin community worked, I could see why my fairy godmother had rejected it. My mom—adoptive mom—had told me some of this, but it had been overwhelming to take it all in at the time. I was starting to feel like a sponge that couldn’t hold any more information.
Josie waved a wand over a dusty shelf, pushing the dirt into the corner. Earthy notes of fragrance, like flowers and fruit trees, tickled my nose.
“So, those kids who are orphaned… . Where are they during the summer?” I asked.
“There are a couple summer camps. Well, I think they’re work camps from what the kids say. The Amni Plandai don’t seem to mind the farm camps, but the ones run by the dwarves and gnomes are the worst because they make the teenagers work in mines.”
“That’s horrible!”
“Tell me about it. But what can we do, right? We’re just teachers.” She grimaced. “As a kid, I never understood why so many teachers got burnout and stopped caring. But now, well, I get it.”
An arachnid with a body the size of a quarter and the hairiest legs I’d ever seen crawled over Josie’s shoulder, standing out against the pale purple fabric.
“Spider!” I said with an undignified shriek and knocked it from her shoulder.
She jumped back and looked around. “Where is he?”
I hopped up and down, pointing to where it clung to the wall. “There!”
I snatched up one of the dusty pads of paper and threw it, but the spider scuttled away. It was the kind of giant, nasty spider that journalists photographed in the Amazon right before it bit them and they died. There was an ominous red mark on the abdomen. I suspected it was a black widow.
I lifted another drawing pad.
“No!” Josie screamed, placing herself between me and the spider. “What was that for? You could have killed him.”
“That’s what I was going for.”
She scooped up the spider and brought it to the windowsill. Her fearlessness of a poisonous spider was impressive. She struggled with the latch before using her wand to open it and set the spider outside.
She turned back to me.
“That was a spider,” she said through clenched teeth. Her cute, perky voice was replaced by something dark and demonic. “We are Witchkin. We value all life. We don’t kill spiders. Black widow lives matter.”
A nervous giggle escaped my lips. Did she have any idea how offensive that joke was to minorities? Her eyes narrowed. Oh, she was being serious.
I stood there feeling awkward and uncomfortable. The ridiculousness of her anger made me want to laugh even harder. Really? All lives mattered? Except orphaned Witchkin who couldn’t use magic. I didn’t say it out loud, though. I didn’t need one more enemy.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m still learning about being a witch.”
So far, Josie had been nicer to me than anyone else. I wondered if I’d ruined my chances of being friends with her. I could have kicked myself at how impulsive and stupid I was. Of course witches would like spiders. Duh. It was as if I’d never seen any Halloween decorations before.
Josie cleared her throat, sounding more like herself. “Yeah, well, don’t let it happen again.”
The warning in her voice told me there would be hell to pay if I freaked over a spider again in her presence. I hoped I hadn’t trampled the germinating seedling of our friendship.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Unexpected Visitors
Josie was polite as she showed me around the school, but the friendliness that had been there was gone. I kept trying to think of some way to regain the camaraderie we’d had only minutes before, but I was failing.
She took me downstairs to the main hall, and we walked to the West Tower. This was the Art Deco section of the school where Jeb’s office was located. The closet outside the counseling rooms contained office supplies.
“Do we have a magical copy machine?” I asked.
“It’s on the tour.” Her tone was sharp.
She escorted me to the storage room in the basement where I could find tables and chairs if I needed them. The furniture graveyard was piled with broken chairs and desks stacked up against walls. The mess made Jeb’s office look organized in comparison.
Upstairs, she showed me a dingy staff room painted in avocado green, a copy room, and a custodial office and closet. She demonstrated how to work the copy machine, a giant contraption closer to a steam-powered printing press than a modern-day device.
“You aren’t Elementia—an eleme
ntal—so you’re going to have to wait for the water to heat up underneath. And you’re going to have to hand-crank it,” she said with a frown.
A spider scuttled across the machine as she showed me how to use the handle.
I pointed. “There’s an itsy-bitsy spider about to get crushed.”
That turned her frown upside down. “Well, aren’t you a cute little fella?” She picked it up and set it on the floor. She cooed at it like it was a puppy.
“I didn’t try to kill it this time,” I said.
Her smile was weak. “True. Maybe there’s hope for you.”
Yes! I had said something that hadn’t made someone hate me.
“What’s next on the agenda? Do they have schedules printed out yet?” I asked.
Josie showed me the way back to counseling.
Thatch blocked the doorway of the office. “Ladies,” he said in a lackluster monotone. He stepped aside and bowed, waving his hand at the door for us to enter.
Josie rolled her eyes.
“Teaching karate again this year, Miss Kimura?” Thatch asked.
Her face turned red. “Just because I’m Japanese doesn’t mean I know every martial art on Earth. God!”
“Jeb thought so last year. Maybe he’ll have you teach kung pao instead this year.”
My eyes went wide. I could not believe him.
“Shut up!” she said. “That’s a food, not a martial art!”
“You kon zahui,” he said with a bow.
She clenched her fists. “That’s Chinese, not Japanese. I don’t speak Mandarin.”
A small smile tugged at his lips. “It’s all the same. Zai lianxi.”
From the way her eyes widened and narrowed at his Chinese, I suspected she knew exactly what he was saying—even if she wasn’t willing to admit it. Josie reached into her sleeve and flourished her wand. Purple glittered in the air.
“Really? You’re going to hex me on school grounds?” He tossed back his long hair. “And with so little provocation, no less. Is that how you lost your position at your last school?”
