I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this. That lump grows thicker.
“Look, Edgar, I don’t have time to explain everything. I just need you to know I’m going to find a way out of this.” I glance back at Puck, feeling slightly guilty when I turn back to the crystal ball. “I’m not a Dark Witch, okay?”
He’s quiet on the other side. My foot starts tapping impatiently, my fingers matching its rhythm on the tabletop.
“Wren . . .”
I know that tone.
“No. I’m going to prove it. But Edgar, I need you to do something for me.” For a second, the image grows blurry again. His face turns away, looking at something near him. “Edgar, what is it? Is someone there?”
When he turns back to me, his face is more determined. “What is it, Wren?”
“I need you to find my mother. Tell her I’m here. Tell her to contact me.”
“And how am I supposed to do that?” he asks. “You do know she disappeared, right?”
“Of course I do,” I snap back. I close my eyes for a second, but then I get an idea. “Use the papers. The enchanted ones.”
“Wren . . .” he starts again, but I’m not having it.
“Really, Edgar. She might’ve taken them with her when she left.” It isn’t a very big chance, but it’s the best either of us has. He’s quiet inside the ball, and I know he’s still not convinced. I stamp my foot out of frustration. “Edgar, I know things are tough. This is . . . weird . . . to say the least. But if I ever meant anything to you, do this for me?”
For a second I think he’s going to say no.
Then he nods his head. “I’ll do it.”
Light floods his face, causing him to throw up a hand to shield his eyes. That’s my signal to sever the connection now, I know. On my side, there are more footsteps in the hall. We’ll be caught soon if we linger, but I don’t care. I could have all the time in the world, and it still wouldn’t be enough to explain everything.
“Edgar!” I whisper, loud enough to make Puck shush me from across the room, where he’s now standing guard by the door. “Edgar,” I say again, until I see him finally look at me. “I love you.”
I know he hears me. I see it in his eyes, in the way his heartbeat quickens in the locket.
But the crystal ball goes black. The connection’s lost.
I missed him before, but now that I’ve seen his face again . . . I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. Something about him looked different.
How can someone look so different after only five days?
“Ouch,” Puck says, grimacing from across the room.
I keep my eyes on the now empty glass in front of me. “The connection just broke too soon,” I say, but even I don’t believe it when I say it. I glance up at Puck, suddenly. “Do I look different to you?” I ask. I step forward slightly, then turn around once. “Different than when I got here?”
“Now may not be the time for that,” he says, but when I just keep staring him down, Puck leans his back up against the door to survey me better. A little line forms between his eyebrows and he tilts his head first to one side, and then the other. “Maybe a little. Here, turn around for me.”
I start turning slowly, but he doesn’t tell me to stop until I’m facing the window. I stand there awkwardly for a minute until Puck makes a satisfied sound in the back of his throat.
“Sorry but nope. Same ‘ol Wren, unless your ass got a little bit bigger.”
I whirl around, ready to snap at him . . . when the door into the great hall abruptly swings open.
For the first time, I’m glad to see my stalker behind a door where he shouldn’t be. Merlin steps inside and shoves a finger at Puck, and then at me.
“I knew you two were up to something,” he says, so smugly I regret not stabbing him with my wand when I had the chance. His gaze lands on the crystal ball sitting in the middle of the desk before I can step to the side to hide it. He narrows his eyes at us.
“Who are you contacting?”
“N—no one,” I say, but my nervous stammer gives me away. He steps further inside, his head cocked to the side and his gaze not leaving mine. It’s like a hunter on the prowl. I don’t like it. It makes me shift uncomfortably.
“I told you she wasn’t to be trusted,” Merlin says. Though he’s looking at me, I know he’s talking to Puck. “This is what you get when you let someone from the other side in.”
“Come on Merlin,” Puck says. I can tell he’s trying to sound casual, but his voice is strained. “Give it a rest. She’s just homesick.”
Merlin shoots him one of his surly looks. “You think Highborne wouldn’t stoop to this? You really think she’s as innocent as she looks? You know what’s at stake here.”
I shift a little closer to the crystal ball, hiding it further from view. “You guys keep talking about stakes, but you never actually get around to telling me what they are.”
“That’s because—”
Merlin cuts Puck off with a look so fierce, I’m worried he’s going to crack his teeth. “One word from you, and I’ll personally make sure you never step foot in this academy again,” he hisses through his clenched jaw.
I scoff, but Puck’s face goes white. Shit. Merlin can actually do that?
Suddenly, our tense conversation is cut short by a new sound. It’s like electricity crackling in the air.
Merlin grimaces. “Looks like that might not be up to me after all.”
Puck turns to me with wide eyes. I barely have time to basically throw the crystal ball back on the shelf and step away before there’s another crackle, a flash of blue light, and Headmistress Evanora appears behind her desk.
She doesn’t see us at first. Her clothes take a second to settle around her, the long sleeves of her jacket billowing down to rest on either side. She reaches forward to pull out her chair, then freezes.
Her eyes flicker up to see Puck, and then me. She sighs, closing her eyes for just a split second before she sits down.
“Well,” she says, quietly. “I suppose you might as well take a seat.”
Merlin turns to go, but the doors slam in his face before he can step back out into the hall. The smug smile is gone when he turns back.
“And that means you too, Merlin.”
Chapter Sixteen
Two weeks of detention. That, and many reminders of how lucky we are that we aren’t all immediately expelled, is the price we pay for our little break-in.
I see it as pretty lucky given the circumstances, but Merlin . . . it’s like his entire world has crumbled in one case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The one thing that surprises me, however, is no matter how much he protested his innocence, never once did he mention what he caught us doing with the crystal ball. And for that I give him credit.
Maybe he isn’t as much of an ass as I thought. Or, maybe he is an ass . . . he’s just not a snitch.
But that doesn’t stop him from shooting me angry looks across the alchemy lab later.
“Did you shit in Merlin’s breakfast or something?” Nicholas asks, leaning dangerously close to my caldron so I have to steady it with my spoon to keep it from tipping over. He nods over at Merlin, who’s making one of his famous stick-up-his-butt expressions.
“Might as well have,” I sigh, carefully centering my cauldron back over the flame. After several repeated incidents over the course of the week—mostly involving Nicholas or myself accidentally killing something we’re supposed to be tending—Professor Heathers thought it was a good idea to start with some more basic alchemy lessons for our first lab.
Mostly, this means that before we get to even start thinking about making potions, we have to prove we’re not going to end up killing any witches too. Right now that means showing we can maintain an even temperature over an open flame.
It’s a lot harder than it looks . . . especially when the boy standing to my left keeps bumping into my cauldron and the one on my right keeps tryin
g to make me drink what can only be assumed is a home-made love potion.
“Come on Wren, I know you’ll like it . . . it’s cherry-flavored!”
Puck holds the uncorked bottle up under my nose, almost shoving it between my lips in the process. The smell is overwhelmingly like the fake candy-flavored cough syrups they used to sell in the human pharmacies. Or, well, they probably still do . . . but I guess I wouldn’t know.
For all I know the whole outside world has disintegrated into ruin in the weeks since I left.
“No thank you,” I say, “I’m more of a grape-flavored girl.”
I shove Puck’s hand away decisively while watching Nicholas out of the corner of my eye. He keeps shifting his cauldron around, trying to get the bottom to heat evenly, but he’s getting closer and closer to mine each time.
“Grape, got it.” Puck re-corks the bottle and pretends to write a note in his notebook. When he thinks I’m not looking, he actually does write it down.
Finally satisfied with the positioning of his cauldron, Nicholas wipes his hands together and takes a step back, looking pleased with himself. Across from us, Veronica is standing so close to Merlin that he keeps having to scoot his things away. The more he moves away from her, the more aggressively she starts to flip her hair over her shoulder.
It’s painful to watch.
“Looks like Veronica’s on the hunt,” Puck says out of the corner of his mouth.
“Well, it looks to me like she’s after the wrong prey,” I say back. I try to keep from looking over at her too often. She doesn’t look like the type who’s used to getting rejected, and I’d rather not be in her line of sight when she finally realizes what’s going on.
“So, you two really aren’t going to tell me what happened?” Nicholas says.
I glance up at Puck, then quickly look away.
The only reason I trusted him in the first place is because he guessed what I was up to. That, and he knew where I could get ahold of a scrying instrument. Nicholas seems harmless enough, but what I did earlier was more than just expulsion-worthy. I broke Witch Law by contacting Edgar . . . and I’m planning to do it again.
But this time, I’m going to break it even more.
Something was wrong with Edgar. He acted . . . off. Even the heartbeat in my locket seems fainter since we spoke this morning. I have to see him, even if it means breaking every other Witch Law in the process.
That part, I haven’t even told Puck.
I must take too long to answer because Nicholas just lets out a long, exaggerated sigh. “Look, you don’t have to tell me what it is. I just thought maybe, you know . . .” here he trails off a bit, suddenly looking shy, “maybe I could help.”
“Doubt it,” Puck mutters, and thankfully, I don’t think Nicholas hears.
“Look,” I say, dropping my voice as the professor passes by, peering into each one of our cauldrons in turn, “it’s complicated. I’m just trying to get some answers.” I wait a second for Professor Heathers to poke his nose into my cauldron. He tells Nicholas to stop moving his around so much, and then continues on. I lean in closer to Nicholas. “I thought we might find some in the headmistress’ office.”
“And did you?”
I shake my head. “Not really. But it’s a start.”
Nicholas raises his eyebrows and goes back to shifting his pot around so it keeps bumping up against mine. “Well, at least when you get expelled you can go work in one of those human factories. I’ve always wondered what that’d be like.”
I blanch a little. “I mean, that wouldn’t happen, would it?” I ask, looking between the boys at either of my side.
“Only if they take away your wand,” Puck says. “But that only happens if you get expelled for something really bad.”
“Like breaking basic Witch Law, bad?” I ask, trying and failing to sound nonchalant.
Puck bares his teeth. “That’d probably do it.”
I look down at the caldron in front of me. I never wanted to learn the dark arts, but at least it’s magic still. Never before have I focused so intently on boiling water.
Finally content with our ability to turn water into steam, the professor instructs us to move on to our next task—how to properly measure ingredients. It’s a surprisingly tricky business, with every measurement needing to be precise down to the last milligram. It makes me wish I hadn’t found some excuse literally every time my mom asked me to help out in the kitchen.
In order to judge our precision, we’re tasked with making a basic, but also very finicky, potion.
“Alertness potions are something that might come in handy during your time here,” Professor Heathers says, finally taking his place in the center of the classroom where the largest cauldron of all sits. All the tables in the lab are placed in a circle around it, so no matter where you’re seated you can see what he’s doing. It’s a dark room, located belowground underneath the greenhouse so that fresh plants can be easily harvested from up above.
He instructs each of us to collect our ingredients from a cart beside him, and once we’ve all gathered up fistfuls of roots, herbs, and died animal bits, he instructs us all to begin with one last friendly word of advice.
“Too strong, and you’ll be jittery for hours. Now,” here, he holds up a finger in warning, “don’t even get me started on what will happen if you forget the beetle dung. All I’ll say is—you won’t be happy.”
The potion itself consists of just a handful of ingredients:
3 chips spirits-distilled holly bark
¼ spleen of a Yule Goat
16 drops rattlesnake stomach acid
And, of course . . .
2oz dung beetle excretion
One glance at the list, and I think, personally, sometimes we witches take things a bit too far. Why settle for something as simple as coffee or tea when we can throw a bunch of animal parts in a cauldron and drink those instead?
The Minor Potion of Alertness should be simple to make, but somehow, I screw something up. At least I’m not the only one.
Puck adds too much holly bark and starts bouncing on the balls of his feet after a tiny sip. After restarting three times because he keeps burning the rattlesnake acid, Nicholas does exactly as the professor warned not to and forgets to add the dung. He has to be carried out to take a nap in the infirmary when his potion puts him into an immediate slumber.
He looks so peaceful, I’m almost jealous.
Especially when a taste of my own potion doesn’t make me either sleepy or wired—but rather, immediately empty the entire contents of my stomach. I don’t have the time to run to a wastebasket. I just immediately bend over and spew vomit straight back into the cauldron.
Then, when it steams and starts to boil with the rest of the remaining ingredients, I vomit again.
Professor Heathers has to clear out the room before a chain reaction takes over the rest of the gagging class. He shakes his head and sends me to the infirmary with a comment about how he’s no idea how I managed that in the first place.
I have my suspicions that Veronica had something to do with it, but I’ll never prove it.
She only passed by my cauldron once, when I left the table to go fetch another goat spleen when Nicholas accidentally squished mine under a wayward elbow—but I wouldn’t put it past her. It’d be easy enough to add a little something when no one was paying attention. I might not have anything to do with the way Merlin keeps avoiding her, but I doubt she sees it that way.
A quick once-over at the infirmary confirms my suspicions. The nurse swabs the insides of my cheeks and finds traces of a vomit-inducing syrup usually taken by witches who’re trying to lose weight, but one look at me and she doesn’t even ask if I took it on purpose. I’d be offended if I wasn’t too nauseated.
The worst part is that she just has me brush my teeth, gives me a ginger candy to suck on, and sends me on my way. Now that it’s fully evacuated my system, I’m healthy enough to make the second half of dinner before dete
ntion.
Lucky me.
Just like Veronica not to even have the decency to get me sick enough to miss detention.
I make a quick stop in one of the downstairs lavatories on the way to splash some water on my face. My skin is pale in the reflection of the mirror, green-tinged even. Whatever Veronica added to my potion did the trick. I look well on the way to becoming a zombie myself.
I wish I knew some sort of curse or spell for washing out the taste of potion vomit from my mouth, but as it is, all I can do is wash my mouth out again with tap water in the sink.
I’m half bent over, my face dripping with water as I basically water board myself, when I hear the handle to the bathroom start to turn. I don’t know what compels me to do it, but I dash into the end stall and stand up on the toilet as fast as possible—leaving the sink running.
Two pairs of footsteps follow behind me. From the distinctive tap of heels on stone, I know exactly who one pair belongs to.
I don’t know why I hid in the first place. I just made this so much worse than it had to be. I should just flush the toilet a couple times and claim I was taking a massive dump or something to get the hell out of here.
“—the way she looked? I don’t care who she is. She doesn’t belong here.”
Oh hello there, she’s talking about me. Now there’s no way I’m gonna leave.
The second voice grunts in approval. “I know, babe.” It sounds familiar, but to be honest . . . it could be any one of the dozen or so boys she’s constantly cycling through at her side.
Their footsteps stop as the door shuts behind them, making Veronica’s nasally voice echo even more in the space. “Ugh, who left this on?”
I see her shadow move across the wall, then silence falls as she switches off the water. I have to cover my mouth with my hand to keep them from hearing me breathe.
From between the cracks in the stall, I can see Veronica leaning in to inspect her makeup in the mirror. “You know how their type is. Thinks they’re so much better than us. Well look who’s so high and mighty now.”
Dark Witch: A Paranormal Academy Romance (Academy of the Dark Arts Book 1) Page 14
