Omnibus Two: Magical Arts Academy ~ Books 5-8

by Ashta, Lucia

  I studied his eyes, wondering what he wasn’t saying, now that I had proof that he’d thought things of me before and never shared them. But I didn’t have a chance to try to figure much out.

  Mordecai approached. The beads that capped the many braids in his beard tinkled, and the familiarity of the sound offered me a peculiar sense of comfort. “Child, you sure did give us a scare. Ooh-ey. There were moments there when I wasn’t entirely sure you were going to come back.”

  “Wha—” I croaked and stopped to clear my throat (I had been dead after all). “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that you took so long to come back, we’d nearly given up hope.”

  They had? Well that would explain why Nando hadn’t yet recovered. He must’ve assumed he’d really lost me forever. “I thought I’d come back relatively quickly, all things considered.” I was impressed with myself. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to speak my thoughts clearly, but I felt more alert than usual, definitely not like someone who’d been dead for the last two hours.

  “‘Relatively quickly’?” Nando whipped his head up from my chest and squeaked, his voice several octaves higher than it usually was. “‘Relatively quickly’? I gave you two hours. TWO HOURS! You took seven. SEVEN. Mordecai only said you had six at the very most before you wouldn’t be able to return to your body at all.”

  “Seven hours? Really?”

  Nando just glared at me, his eyes ablaze as if he were infected with a burning fever. His usually neat hair shot every which way, and even his shirt was half coming out of his pants. My absence had been hard on him.

  But seven hours? How could that be? I stared up at the sun and realized it wasn’t overhead, but beginning its dip toward the horizon. If it’d been winter, it might have already been dark.

  “How?” I asked, not knowing what else to say at first. “I tried to hurry, and it didn’t feel like seven hours. I realized I was pushing the two-hour mark, but I figured I was still making it before then.”

  “Well you figured wrong.” Nando’s voice was firm, almost as if he were angry with me.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

  “Oh I know.” He cut me off. “I know.” He sat on his heels and rubbed both hands over his face, looking bone weary. “You nearly scared me to death. I would have been right there with you if you hadn’t come back.”

  I tentatively reached for one of his hands, wondering if my movements would be awkward after being, you know, dead. But they weren’t. My movements were as sharp as my mind.

  It took him a second to notice I was trying to take his hand. Once he did, he squeezed mine with both of his, his face crumbling all over again. “Oh, Isa....” He apparently wanted to say more, but wasn’t sure what. I understood. I really did. Seeing him again was bittersweet. All that I might have lost rose up to smack me square in the chest.

  I nodded. “I’m here now. I’m all right, I promise. I’m not going anywhere.” I was at least eighty-percent certain I spoke the truth. I couldn’t be entirely sure; I’d never died and returned to life before.

  Nando stared at me, blinking rapidly as if unbelieving, and nodded.

  Poor Nando. It seemed he was going to take longer to recover from this than I was.

  I started to push to my elbows, and Nando and Walt both lunged forward to help me, their knees digging into my sides as they reached. “I’m fine, really, I am,” I said, trying to wave them away, but it didn’t work. They wanted to help me, maybe they even needed to help me. In the end I let them.

  The sun was now straight ahead, illuminating everyone that surrounded me in an otherworldly glow. On first impression, it seemed like absolutely every member of the Magical Arts Academy was gathered around my body. Witches, wizards, and magical creatures peered down at me curiously, concernedly. That was when I realized I was home. Somewhere along the line, the academy had become the place where I belonged.

  Arianne stepped forward, Gustave reaching out to hold her elbow as she moved. “I’m fine, mon cher. Really. You don’t need to keep fussing over me.”

  That’s right! When I died, Arianne had been knocked unconscious by the force of the dissolving dark spell. I looked beyond her approach to see if I could spot who the five cursed firedrakes had turned out to be, but I saw no unfamiliar faces. There were only Sylvia and Mathieu, and seventeen other firedrakes, including Elwin, who appeared to be standing guard behind me.

  Arianne squeezed past Marie, who stood behind Nando, and sank to the grass next to my brother. As if she were family, she placed a hand on my waist. “Darling, are you truly certain you’re all right? You don’t feel... strange or anything?”

  “Should I feel strange?”

  “I hope you don’t. But you were dead, and I’ve never known anyone who returned from death. I just want to make sure you’re truly well.”

  And if I wasn’t, then what? Would any of them know what to do to help me when they had no experience with someone coming back to life?

  Wait a minute. My gaze singled out Count Vabu and his sister Priscilla. They were vampires. Didn’t that mean they’d died and come back to life? Perhaps not like I had, but still….

  Neither one shied away from my stare. The brother and sister stood taller than everyone else, except for Wizard Meedles, and far more elegantly.

  Count Vabu seemed to understand why I was looking at them.

  “It’s not the same,” he said.

  That I already understood. “Clearly. Nevertheless, it seems you might have a better understanding of what it’s like to be dead and then suddenly alive again.”

  Count Vabu’s lips turned upward the slightest bit, forming a sad smile, and more emotion than he usually showed. “In theory, we aren’t alive.”

  “So... what does that make you exactly?” I mean, I realized they were vampires, but the problem was that no one had bothered to point out the differences between reality and folklore where they were concerned.

  “We’re undead,” Priscilla said, not a hint of gentleness in her dark eyes. I immediately recoiled, drawing my gaze away from her, then tried to pretend I hadn’t.

  “Back to you, darling,” Arianne said, as if it weren’t the least bit important for pupils of the academy to understand what it meant to be a vampire, especially when two of them roamed among us. “What happened? What took you so long?”

  Marcelo and Clara, along with Gertrude and Brave, drew closer. So did Madame Pimlish and Wizard Meedles, his hounds on his heels.

  Sir Lancelot, who’d been perched on Brave’s shoulder, flew toward me, and landed on the grass next to Walt. He trained his big, wide eyes on me, and waited.

  I laughed; I couldn’t help myself. Sir Lancelot, who never forgot a thing, and seemed to know everything about almost anything, didn’t want to miss a word of my recounted experience.

  “What are you laughing at?” Nando asked, a hint of recrimination in his question, as if I shouldn’t be laughing this soon after frightening him nearly to death.

  “Sorry, it’s just that....” What could I say? “I just thought Sir Lancelot looked... cute.”

  “Cute?” the pygmy owl said. “I’ll have you know that I am not ‘cute’, Lady Isadora. I’m not in the least bit ‘cute’, in fact.” He stood as tall as he could, and his line of sight only fully cleared the width of my body because he tilted his head upward.

  He was totally cute. “Forgive me, Sir Lancelot. I’m not thinking clearly after my ordeal. You are elegant, noble, and dignified, not cute.”

  The owl tried not to do his owl-smiley thing, but he was struggling to keep his face from expressing pleasure at my better choice of adjectives.

  “You’re also incredibly intelligent and special.”

  “Thank you, Lady Isadora,” he said, all offense at my cute accusation clearly forgiven. “Now don’t get distracted. You have a story to tell us.”

  Never would I have imagined that the loquacious owl, who could so easily be distracted when telling his own stories, would be the one
to keep me on task.

  One look at the many faces peering at me told me he wasn’t the only one waiting to learn what happened. Even Nando had overcome enough of his grief and shock to sit attentively so he wouldn’t miss a word.

  I sat all the way up, waving away Nando and Walt’s immediate offers to assist me, and scooted a few inches closer to Nando to reassure him I wasn’t going anywhere. And even though I had an abundance of questions of my own concerning what had happened when Arianne, and later I, broke the dark spell on the five firedrakes we’d rescued from the evil sorceress Miranda, I realized no one was going to be answering any of my questions. Not yet at least.

  I’d done what no one else had done. These magicians needed to know how. Even Mordecai, who’d lived nearly three-and-a-quarter centuries was looking at me with the eager expression of a novice student.

  I drew in a deep breath, relishing the sensation. Then I began. “You know the bit where the spell Lady Arianne was working to break knocked me out?”

  “Yes, yes, child. We know all that,” Mordecai said. “We’ve had plenty of time to learn what happened while we waited on you.”

  After deliberating for a few moments, I decided to speak my mind. Life was too short to be meek. I decided right then and there that I’d allow this whole dying experience to change me for the better. “Well, I didn’t get the chance to find out all that happened. It’s important to me that I understand. I need to learn.” Because I can obviously access real magic. It’s more vital than ever that I absorb all the academy can teach me. “I’ll tell all of you what happened to me. But then I’d like someone to reciprocate.”

  Arianne smiled, a genuine expression that lit up her face. Even though she seemed tired, she looked remarkably well considering she’d broken a curse that flung her to the ground and knocked her out. “I’ll tell you everything, darling.”

  She would, I could tell. “I guess I should start at the very beginning.”

  So I did.

  Chapter 2

  I told the story out of order. I didn’t do it intentionally at first, but once I realized what I was doing, I left the parts I had the most questions about for last. I figured I’d have more luck getting my questions answered if I’d already partially satiated their curiosity.

  “I’m so sorry you had to deal with that infuriating woman, darling,” Arianne was saying, not for the first time. Apparently all of the senior magicians had encountered the great Lady Gosselin at one point or another, and none of them thought she was as great as she liked to tell everyone she was. “She can be so... what’s the right word for her?”

  “Pompous,” Madame Pimlish supplied from behind Arianne. “Full of herself. A windbag. So self-absorbed that she doesn’t realize how her actions affect others, and if she does, she doesn’t care.”

  I exchanged a quick glance with Nando. That was fresh coming from Madame Pimlish, who was most definitely self-absorbed, and could go on and on without once realizing how others were reacting to her.

  I expected Nando to share a conspiratorial smile with me, but it seemed he was still too shocked to react the way he normally would. I inched closer to him, hoping my physical proximity would convince him the scare was in the past.

  “Yes, well,” I hedged, interrupting Madame Pimlish. She looked as if she had every intention of continuing, and her insults made me uncomfortable, I wasn’t sure why. I agreed with everything she said. Lady Gosselin had been insufferable. “The biggest problem was that when it was time for me to try to leave, she just wouldn’t stop talking—”

  “Of course she didn’t,” Madame Pimlish interjected. “That woman never did know her place.”

  I blinked at the flustered woman, round in her flower-printed dress, until I caught Marcelo and Clara sharing a look with each other. I caught Marcelo’s eye, and he smiled with his face turned away from Madame Pimlish. I kept myself from smiling back, even though I desperately wanted to. Marcelo didn’t smile often.

  But Madame Pimlish was staring straight at me, as if I were a representative of Lady Gosselin, and it was to me she should direct her outrage.

  “There’s no doubt that the woman is a church-bell,” Arianne said. I caught the mischievous look on her face, and widened my eyes for a quick second before schooling my features. Arianne was including Madame Pimlish in her comment, and the transformation teacher hadn’t even realized it. To the rest of us, it was obvious the statement applied to our teacher as much as the imperious ghost.

  Arianne patted my hand, a fully innocent look plastered on her face. Oh, she’s sharp, I thought. “How did you get back if Gosselin wouldn’t stop talking long enough for you to focus? From experience I know there’s no easy way to get her to stop once she’s started.”

  Again I suspected she was roping Madame Pimlish in with her comments.

  “Steven must have been there,” Gustave offered.

  “He was,” I said. “But Lady Gosselin’s husband wasn’t that much help. I have the feeling he didn’t want to have to deal with her irritation once I was gone.”

  “Then what did you do?” Mordecai asked. “What kind of magic did you use to get you out of the spirit world and back here?” The wizard’s voice was filled with awe and excitement. He looked at least a hundred years younger right then.

  “There was another witch among the ghosts who was willing to help me. Her name was Mariana.” I looked at the faces around the circle, but didn’t see recognition on any of them. “Anyway, she was very kind. She did some kind of spell, I guess it was, with the air element. The air blew so strongly that it overpowered Lady Gosselin.”

  “It was easier to drown out the wind than Gosselin?” Gustave said, chuckling. “That makes sense.”

  “I wish I’d met this great Lady Gosselin,” Sir Lancelot said. “She left such a lasting impression on all of you, I can’t help but think I missed out.”

  “Oh, you didn’t miss out, Sir Lancelot, darling,” Arianne said.

  “Trust her on that,” Gustave said.

  “Besides,” Arianne continued. “There are women much like her in this world. If you’ve met one, you’ve met them all.”

  “I see,” Sir Lancelot said, but I wasn’t sure he did. Or maybe it was I who was looking for the double entendre in Arianne’s words where it didn’t exist.

  “This witch, Mariana?” Mordecai prompted, impatient.

  “Oh yes. She not only helped me with the... air distraction or whatever it was, she also helped me, um, well, believe in myself.” I instantly felt embarrassed at the words, but the more experienced magicians around me just nodded.

  Bolstered, I said, “She told me not to focus on fear, but to just believe I could do it.” I shrugged. “So I did.”

  “So you did?” Mordecai asked. “Just like that?”

  “More or less, I guess. It wasn’t like I knew what I was doing. So I just did the best I could, and believed I could do it.”

  “What spell did you use?”

  I squirmed under everyone’s scrutiny. “Uh, none?”

  “None?”

  “Um... yes?”

  Mordecai looked slightly shocked, but Arianne just patted my waist and said, “There’s no right or wrong way to do magic—as long as you’re not doing dark magic, of course. That’s an antiquated notion the magical world adheres to. But just because the Magical Council believes that to be the case, and therefore most practicing magicians do as well, doesn’t mean it’s true.” She cast a pointed look over her shoulder at Mordecai. “All that matters is that you made it work for you, chérie.”

  “If you didn’t use spells, then how did you do it?”

  “I don’t know any spells,” I said pointedly, looking up at the wizard. “I haven’t had the opportunity to learn any basic magic, really.” I felt a bit bad because my words sounded like an accusation. But they were true, and everyone there knew it.

  I figured Mordecai would look regretful. He didn’t. He seemed even more eager than before. “Then how? What did
you do exactly? Tell me, child, before I grow a day older just waiting on you.”

  I went to react to his words, but realized he was just excited. I shrugged again and tilted my head toward my hands while I answered. There were too many eyes on me. “I just... well, I don’t know exactly what I did, to be honest. I just, ah, imagined myself back at my body. No, that’s not right. I pictured myself back in my body, with my lifeline already attached and everything. That’s it. I wasn’t certain it would work.”

  But I had known it would work, hadn’t I? I was pretty sure that was the only reason it did. I owed Mariana a great debt. If it hadn’t been for her guidance, I might truly be dead.

  “You merely imagined.” Mordecai’s eyes sparkled. “You pictured yourself back in your body, and there you were.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Just like that? You thought it, and voilà?” Arianne asked with her usual flare, her hand leaving my side to gesture in the air.

  “Yes,” I said timidly.

  “I guess you were right,” Mordecai said.

  “Oh?” Arianne asked innocently. “About what in particular? You’ll have to be more specific, darling. I’m right about a great many things.” Her eyes twinkled, and I liked the grandmother even more.

  “She’s much like Clara, as you said.”

  I looked to Clara, who was ready to meet my curious gaze. She smiled too, and the resemblance to her grandmother was striking: the same red hair and amber eyes, and especially the same lively expression.

  Clara took half a step in front of her husband so I could see her more clearly while she spoke. “I don’t think it’s quite the same, actually. She does magic by imagining the end result. I do it by connecting to the elements and feeling myself part of them. Really, it’s pretty different.”

  Arianne, Mordecai, Gustave, and Marcelo were watching her with a knowing look on their faces.

  “But,” she said. “I do agree that the way she goes about it is very similar. If we say that my magic is intuitive, then hers seems to be as well.”