Shifter Falls Academy: Year Two

by L. C. Mortimer

  Now, I paused to read the description on the doors.

  It was a warning.

  It is past your bedtime. The doors will remain unlocked from the inside for emergency use only. Should you exit the dormitories now without prior authorization, you will be appropriately punished for this infraction.

  Well, okay.

  What the hell was that supposed to mean?

  How would they know if someone went out?

  I paused, looking around. Did they have some sort of camera system in place? Was there an enchantment on the doors? If I walked out, would it turn me into some other sort of animal or would it color me purple?

  I stared for much longer than I should have. It wasn’t really worth the risk. I didn’t have to go outside. What I did need was to get out of the dormitory, though, even if that was into another building.

  The secret hallway underground sprung to mind, and I started moving. I headed to the entrance and quietly left the girls’ dormitory. I sneaked down the staircase, out of the little exit the carefully guarded it, and into the downstairs hallway.

  Instantly, I breathed a sigh of relief.

  Being downstairs was creepy. Even with torches on the walls and being able to see ahead of me, the area felt uncomfortable and strange. It felt awkward and a little bit weird, but I didn’t mind because it was someplace different. I wondered if there would be a good place down here to shift.

  The abandoned classrooms came to mind, and I started walking toward them before I had a chance to talk myself out of it. When Jade and I had been down here, we’d overheard two people talking. I was almost certain that one of them was Mr. Harper. He’d been acting strange around campus, and besides, after talking with Fiona about the missing book, I knew that something was going on.

  And I wanted to know what.

  I needed to know what.

  I had never really considered myself to be much of a sleuth. Not at all. Still, my mind wouldn’t seem to stop. Question after question came at me, and it was all I could do to answer them one at a time.

  When I reached the classroom where Jade and I had overheard the people talking, I walked inside. I had a flashlight with me, and I switched it on. The darkfire torches that filled the halls were helpful, but they still flickered and cast shadows.

  Besides, there were no torches in the classroom, and I had some shifting to do.

  I walked inside and it looked like just an ordinary classroom. There was nothing here aside from a few desks and some dusty old bookshelves. The shelves were empty, save for a few random classroom items: pencils, erasers. None of it looked particularly suspicious to me.

  I looked around for a second. Was there anything here to indicate who had been here before? Why had someone come down here? Was this a commonly used secret meeting place?

  The thought came to me that I really, really didn’t want anyone to sneak up on me and scare me tonight, but I pushed it away.

  Right now, I didn’t need to worry or fret.

  All I needed to do was just relax and start shifting.

  And so I did.

  I spent the better part of an hour shifting back and forth, back and forth. By the time I was finished, I was completely worn out. That said, I’d been able to get my time to be a little faster. Feeling pretty good about myself, I pulled my clothes back on and started heading back toward the dorms.

  I was tired and my muscles were a little sore, but in a good way. I’d done it. I’d finally accomplished something, and that made me feel strong and powerful. I left the classroom and switched my flashlight off. The darkfire torches would be enough to let me find my way back to the dorms. In the end, I hadn’t even needed to go into the castle. Getting down into the hallways had been more than enough.

  As I walked back, I suddenly felt like someone was watching me. I looked over my shoulder quickly, but there was nothing there. Nobody. I shook my head and kept going. I couldn’t afford to let anything stop me or hurt me or scare me.

  Not now.

  Not when I was so close to finally grasping shifting and magic.

  I couldn’t let anything get in my way.

  But just as I reached the entrance to the dormitory, I felt a hand clasp over my mouth, and I realized that I should have been more careful.

  I shouldn’t have thought there was going to be an easy solution.

  Shaking my head, I pushed, but I felt my hair being pulled and the hand tightened around my mouth.

  “Not a sound,” a familiar voice said. “Don’t you make a damn sound.”

  Chapter 9

  When you’re kidnapped by your shifting professor, even when you already thought he was a freak, a lot of strange thoughts go through your head.

  Things like, “Why am I here?”

  Things like, “Why me?”

  When Randy Harper grabbed me in the basement, I thought for sure he was going to kill me, but he didn’t. Instead, he dragged me up to the castle and hauled me to a large painting by the hair. I was quiet, as commanded, but not because I wanted to obey. He whispered some sort of incantation as soon as he caught me, and this rendered me unable to speak.

  Useful spell, I realized. I’d have to make a mental note to learn that one myself later on. He looked around erratically, obviously wondering if we were being followed, which we weren’t. Shifter Falls was a busy place, but it was the middle of the night, and other people had better things to do than wonder if I was in trouble or if I was being hauled away in the darkness by a creepy teacher.

  He arrived at the painting. It was one I’d never really noticed before. Oh, I’d walked by it a million times, but it never really seemed that interesting or important to me, so I’d always just sort of ignored it.

  Not now.

  Now I suddenly realized it was a painting of a beautiful family: a mom, a grandmother, a child. Not all families looked the same, I knew, and this one was wonderful. Still, it was kind of like a huge slap in the face. I was getting kidnapped, and I was still being shown pictures of other people who managed to get the one thing I simply couldn’t: a family.

  Well, shit.

  Randy Harper ignored the beauty on the canvas and pressed a hidden lever beside the painting. I couldn’t quite see what he pushed, but I thought it was a button concealed in the design on the wooden wall. The painting slid to the side just enough for us to squeeze through, and then we started going up. He pushed and pulled me to get me all the way upstairs, and then I realized we were in a hidden attic.

  Great.

  Just what I needed.

  “This is it,” he said, and he pushed me into a chair.

  I looked around and saw that yep, Randy was definitely the person looking for that weird enchanted book Fiona had told me about. He’d found it, too. The attic was a messy, busy-looking place with boxes and chalkboards and old desks that people no longer used.

  In the center of the room, though, there was a huge oak table that looked perfectly clean and tidy. It was completely dust-free. The only thing on the top of the table was a single book and a small key beside it.

  Randy snapped his fingers, and suddenly I could talk.

  “Don’t scream,” he warned me, but I didn’t even think of trying that.

  “What the hell do you want with me?” I asked.

  He hadn’t tied me up.

  He hadn’t killed me.

  Obviously, he needed me for something.

  Right?

  That was the only real explanation.

  “I need you for something,” he said.

  Great.

  That explained a lot…not.

  “What do you need me for? And why did you kidnap me? And why do you have that book? And why have you been sneaking around?”

  He stared at me like I was some sort of crazy person, and honestly, I kind of resented that. I was far from crazy. I might not be perfect or wonderful, but I was a decent student, and an okay friend, and I did my best to be a good girlfriend to Kenneth.

  Kenneth.
>
  Was he going to miss me if Randy murdered me?

  I didn’t get the impression, suddenly, that Randy actually wanted to kill me.

  I did, however, get the idea that he was about to do something really, really stupid in regards to that book.

  “I needed to find it.”

  “Why? Are you the one that stole it?”

  “Stole it?” He looked at me as though that was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. “Brandy’s the one who stole it.”

  “Brandy?”

  “My twin sister. We were at school together.”

  “You have a twin?”

  “Maybe. I did.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He stares at me once more like I’m a complete dolt. This is his chance to tell me what he’s been up to and what’s going on. He doesn’t have to, of course, but if he doesn’t, he’s going to be hard pressed to find anyone else who can help him with his insane quest on short notice.

  Everyone else is busy writing papers.

  “My sister always wanted to be a witch,” he says carefully. “But she wasn’t a shifter and she didn’t have magic.”

  “How is that possible? You’re a shifter.”

  “Not everyone gets the shifter gene,” he said. “And it’s most common in twins.”

  “So one twin is really powerful, but the other one is kind of left behind?”

  “Basically.”

  “But she came to school here?”

  “The professors thought they could at least teach her magic, but in the end, they couldn’t. She simply couldn’t do any of the spells that the other students were able to learn.”

  “Ouch.”

  Sucked to be Brandy.

  Living in a sibling’s shadow wasn’t easy on the best of days, but I was willing to bet that in the shifter world, things were even worse.

  “When we learned about the enchanted items, we were curious.”

  “So you stole them.”

  “Not me,” he snapped, losing patience. “I’ve never stolen anything in my life.”

  I wanted to say that he’d stolen me, but it didn’t seem like the right time to bring that up. I didn’t want to give him any reason to dislike me or to harass me further.

  So his sister stole the book.

  So what?

  Why try to get it back now?

  “Brandy took the book, and no one saw her after that.”

  That’s when I realize what he’s trying to say.

  “You think she’s inside of it,” I say carefully.

  “I left school and spent years searching for her and the book. I thought they’d run away together. I thought she’d gone off on an incredible adventure, or that she’d lost the book along the way. I didn’t know. It was only later when I was training at a magical library that I discovered the truth about the barrier enchantments at Shifter Falls Academy.”

  “The warding? Yeah. Apparently, it locks certain magical items within the barrier.”

  At least, that was how I’d understood it from Fiona and Sebastian when they’d casually been talking in her office.

  “When I realized that, I knew that the book must still be around. That just meant one thing.”

  “Your sister never left.”

  “She never left.”

  I fidget, looking around the attic. I could make a run for it, right? I glance casually at the stairs and then at the windows. We’re up pretty high, and as far as I can tell, there’s just the one exit. Surely, there must be more. This is a magical school, after all. Only, I don’t know if there’s actually a way for me to get away from Randy right now.

  He’s hell-bent on…something.

  I don’t know what.

  All I know is that no matter what happens next, everything’s going to change.

  “So what? You just wanted to find the book to unleash your sister?”

  “I need to save her. She’s been trapped in there for years.”

  “Maybe that’s a good thing. I heard the book is dangerous.”

  Fiona seemed to think that opening this kind of book could only lead to bad things. She seemed to believe that if the book was open, there would be hell to pay. I wasn’t interested in that! None of it.

  “That’s why we need to rescue her.”

  “I can’t help you.”

  My magic wasn’t very good. Even if I wanted to help him, which I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to because the most incredible thing I could do was turn myself into a cat. I wasn’t exactly super talented when it came to other things.

  “Incorrect.”

  Then I realized something.

  “Didn’t you have someone else helping you?”

  “With the searching? Of course. Abby was instrumental in finding the book.”

  Abby?

  As in, Jade’s Abby?

  “What did you do to Abby?” I whisper.

  “What makes you think she didn’t help me all on her own?” He sneers.

  “She’s not like that. She wouldn’t.”

  “Oh, I just told her I’d hex her girlfriend if he didn’t help me.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  “Oh, Charlotte,” he said, tsking at me. “I may be old, but I’m not blind. Your roommate and Abby have had eyes for each other all semester. I just used that to my advantage.”

  “Where was it?” I asked, looking at the book that was about to change my entire world.

  “The silliest place,” he told me. “Right in the middle of the library.”

  Chapter 10

  When I found out I was a shifter, a lot of things changed for me. Suddenly, the world didn’t seem so black and white anymore. While I once thought that I had a pretty good hold on things in my life, I was quickly shown that I, in fact, did not.

  Now, being trapped with my professor in an attic with a book, I realized that I had been very, very wrong.

  “Why did you take me?” I ask.

  “I need an assistant, and you’re so busy being a nosy brat that you’re the perfect choice.”

  “What about Abby?” I ask.

  There’s a part of me that doesn’t really want to know. If I’m here and she’s not, then it can’t mean anything good, and something tells me that Jade is going to freak out when she discovers exactly what’s going on.

  “Oh, I don’t think you need to worry about her anymore,” he looked toward a corner of the room and I saw a bed there. It was old and dusty, but strangely put together. Abby was on top, and she was bound and gagged.

  “What did you do to her?” I asked. From the distance, I couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or shut, but she was lying perfectly still.

  “Nothing she didn’t deserve,” he hissed.

  “She’s just a student! You’re supposed to be protecting us!”

  I hated what he was doing.

  Hated it.

  It wasn’t fair or right or okay that a teacher who was supposed to spend their life saving students and helping them was actually trying to destroy them.

  Then again, that had always been a problem I had. I had often felt like the world was unfair and unbalanced. I felt that when I discovered I was a late bloomer shifter and I’d felt it again when I’d realized I was never going to find out who my real parents were.

  There was still a part of me that hoped it really was the headmaster. He’d lost his kid and his wife. What if I was the kid? What if this was going to be one of those movie-style dramatic moments where Harper tried to kill me, but Sebastian came in at the last moment and saved the day?

  Only, when I looked at Harper, I realized that nobody was coming to save me.

  There was no chance.

  Nobody knew where I was, and besides, Jade was probably long passed out. She’d been working so hard with her homework and studies. She probably was busy dreaming sweet dreams.

  Good.

  It was better for her to be asleep than worried about me.

  Harper was strangely silent as he stared at me. He did
n’t seem to mind my outburst. If anything, it seemed like he kind of expected it.

  “I’m not going to help you.”

  I said it as fiercely as I could, but he obviously didn’t care. He was a bear shifter, after all, and he knew exactly what I was: a damn kitten who couldn’t even fight fiercely if I wanted to. I was still too new to shifting and too new to magic to be able to do anything.

  “You are going to help me,” he said calmly. “Or I’ll kill Abby. How would you explain that to little Jade?” He raised an eyebrow, and I knew he had me.

  Maybe it was a bluff, but was that really something I could take a chance on?

  What if he was being serious?

  What if he really was going to kill her if I refused?

  Jade would be absolutely heartbroken. She’s never forgive me if I let Abby die, but then again, this wasn’t my first day as a person. It wasn’t my first day around bad guys. I knew that there was no way Harper was letting either one of us leave this attic.

  If he did, he’d have witnesses to all of his crimes, and that was something he simply couldn’t have.

  So what were my options?

  I could stay and pretend to help him while looking for a way to escape.

  I could refuse and let him kill Abby, and then pretend to help him.

  I could refuse and let him kill us both.

  Somehow, it didn’t really seem like I had too many options. Another quick glance around the attic and I realized that unless there was a secret passage, I was really trapped here with him.

  Harper knew it, too.

  He raised an eyebrow, and finally, I nodded.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Ah, I knew you’d see reason,” he said. He gestured to the table with the book and the key. “Now come here so you can see.”

  I moved awkwardly and unhappily toward the table. The book really was strange. It looked very ordinary and very plain. It wasn’t as beautiful as I thought it should be, but maybe that was part of the magic. The worn leather cover looked like it could just as easily have been a journal or a diary, rather than something enchanted.

  The real kicker was the key.

  The key was lovely. If I had to guess, I’d say it was made from gold, and it was probably enchanted somehow. How else would it unlock the book? Was it forged by elves? Had it been made by a dragon? I had no idea, but it was beautiful.