Royals of Villain Academy 7: Grim Witchery
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As we walked out to the car, my phone chimed with an incoming text. I fished it out and had to catch myself before my legs locked up at the message on the screen. Instead, I nodded at it as if it’d been nothing unusual and dropped the phone back into my own purse as I sank into the Lexus’s passenger seat.
“What was that?” my mother asked in an offhand manner I didn’t believe at all.
“One of the scions confirming a meeting,” I lied, matching her tone. I let my arm rest gently on my purse, but inside my thoughts were whirling.
The message had been from a number I didn’t recognize. I know what you’ve done, it’d said. Soon I won’t be the only one.
Were they somehow aware of the invasion of my mother’s privacy I’d just made? Or were they talking about the way I’d arranged for my Nary friend and dormmate to get out of the school to a safer haven? Or one of the many other things I’d done that a whole lot of my fearmancer peers would have disagreed with?
I had no idea. I just knew there were no shortage of possible transgressions this unknown person could be planning to reveal. And Lord only knew what would happen to my precarious relationship with my mother when they did.
Chapter Two
Rory
An image of my mother loomed over me in the dim space, larger than life. Her fingers turned into claws as she reached for me. My heart stuttered, but I squared my shoulders, hit by gratitude for about the dozenth time that I had no witnesses other than Professor Razeden while I tackled the fears conjured up by the Desensitization chamber.
“You’re not real,” I told the figure in a steady voice. “You can’t hurt me. You will shrink and you will fade until you disappear.”
My will shifted the chamber’s illusions. After the unshakeable power my actual mother had given them when she’d trapped me in here days ago, disarming the regular version felt shockingly easy. My pulse evened out as the image of her dwindled. When she blinked out of being, the lights came on, illuminating the domed black room more starkly.
Razeden dipped his grizzled head where he was standing near the door. “Excellent work. I think that’s the fastest you’ve subdued the chamber’s effects yet.”
I gave him a crooked smile. “It doesn’t feel quite so intimidating when I know just how much worse it could be. Thanks for letting me have the chance to do a private session before I go back to the group ones.”
“I can recognize that your recent experience in here may have left some lingering trauma. The purpose of the group sessions is to give you practice coping with other people recognizing your regular vulnerabilities. Adding spectators to a more fraught situation might only hinder your progress.”
He walked over to join me, glancing around the room as he did. His voice dropped, even though no sound could carry through the walls around us. “I thought you might appreciate knowing, in case your mother uses this space for a similar purpose in the future… There is a failsafe word that will interrupt the chamber’s magic. I trust you not to use it during regular sessions, only if there’s a real need.”
“Of course,” I said with a rush of relief. I hadn’t gotten much support from the various authority figures who’d entered my life since I’d stumbled back into the fearmancer world. The fact that any of my professors were willing to stand up to the barons, even behind their backs, took a bit of the edge off my worries. “I won’t mention it to anyone.”
The corners of Razeden’s lips twitched upward. “It was chosen by the mages who put the finishing touches on the chamber’s spells with a mind to finding a phrase that no one was likely to utter for any other reason during a session. All you have to say is, ‘Bubblegum popsicle.’”
I couldn’t help laughing. “Yeah, that doesn’t seem likely to come up in most people’s lists of fears. Thank you. So far things are going… better, but I don’t know for sure it’ll stay that way.”
“Well, if you think there’s some way I can help, don’t hesitate to ask. My resources and influence are limited, but I’ll do what I can with them.”
“Thank you,” I said again, meaning it more than I knew how to express. A lump rose in my throat.
Razeden gave me a tentative pat on the back, as if he wanted to be reassuring but wasn’t totally comfortable dealing with the emotion his offer had stirred up. I gave him a quick smile to show I was okay and headed out.
I came onto the green between the campus’s three main buildings to find that a squad of blacksuits had arrived during my session. I might have frozen up at the sight of them if they hadn’t been clearly occupied with a bunch of students who weren’t me. A bunch of students who were… all Naries. The golden leaf pins that marked them as scholarship students glinted on every collar in the afternoon sun.
A dozen of them were gathered around the four blacksuits, one of whom was beckoning a few stragglers over. Two of the other officers were holding small cloth sacks. As I circled the group to try to figure out what was going on, a Nary student at the front of the gathering dropped something into an open sack with a metallic clacking.
“I don’t understand,” the girl next to him was saying. “We never had to give them up before.”
“It’s a new school rule,” the blacksuit she was talking to replied. “To limit distractions. The program here is very intensive.”
Why was a blacksuit enforcing the university rules? What were they taking? I eased closer, and caught a glimpse as one of the other Naries fished an object out of his pocket to hand over. It was the sleek silver shape of a cell phone.
A prickling ran over my skin. They were collecting the Naries’ primary means of communication with the outside world. I wasn’t sure there were even any landlines available to students on campus, at least not that could be reached without staff permission. Were they going to restrict their internet use too? With magic, maybe it wouldn’t be that hard to prevent any outgoing data.
“You’ll get them back over your breaks and at the end of the school year,” another blacksuit informed the students in a flat tone that wasn’t at all comforting. Had the Naries realized that it was only scholarship students included in this “new rule”?
My mother had said the barons were going to give permission for the staff to open up the terrorizing of the Naries to all the fearmancers at the university. This measure had to be related to that decision.
A few of those other fearmancer students had ambled over to watch the collecting of the phones. From the smirks on their faces, I suspected they were enjoying the sight a lot more than I was. My persuasion instructor, Professor Crowford, emerged from Killbrook Hall and stepped off to the side to monitor the proceedings as well. He’d been one of the professors involved in the initial sessions to terrify the Naries—and I had reason to believe he’d supported the barons in other malicious plans in the past.
The blacksuit who appeared to be in charge consulted a tablet she was holding as the last few Naries handed over their phones. She tapped it, maybe checking off their names on a list. Then she motioned to her colleagues with a satisfied expression. “We’re finished here.”
When she turned toward Killbrook Hall, she nodded to Crowford with an authoritative air that set my skin crawling all over again.
The blacksuits disappeared into the building that held the staff quarters. Were they going to leave the phones with the headmistress, Ms. Grimsworth? Or possibly the barons were so concerned about security that they wanted a higher authority monitoring them.
What if this wasn’t the only way the blacksuits were going to start directing activities on campus?
I barely had time to shudder inwardly at that thought when Professor Crowford took a step forward and made a sweeping gesture with his arm toward the watching fearmancers. “Everything’s taken care of,” he said in his suave voice. “They’re all yours.”
All… Oh. Before I’d even processed the words, a couple of the smirking students called out casting words, their expressions shifting into pure delight.
Some
of the Naries had already wandered off the green, but several had lingered in conversation. Now the ground lurched beneath their feet. As a few of them let out startled yelps, an illusionary demonic creature swooped down on them from above. It gnashed knife-like teeth in its ghoulish face.
The yelps turned into shrieks. The Naries scattered, a girl near me babbling to herself: “Oh my God. Oh my God.” I could practically see the waves of fear they had to be giving off lighting up my fellow mages with a giddy glow.
My gut knotted. A protest rose up in my chest, but at the same moment my gaze slid back to Crowford—who was watching me.
When our eyes met, he made an encouraging gesture as if suggesting I join in. The thought made me want to vomit. But I couldn’t openly argue against this assault on the Naries either, not if I wanted to keep whatever good will I’d managed to build with my mother. Not if I wanted a real chance of heading off whatever other plans the barons had in the works. Crowford had already tattled on me to her once—the time that had gotten me locked in the Desensitization chamber.
“So they’ve already started,” said a solemn voice from behind me. Declan, the Ashgrave scion and soon-to-be baron, joined me, his slim frame tensed as he took in the scene before us.
Of the five baronies that ruled over fearmancer society, the Ashgraves were the only ones who’d generally shown much sympathy for the nonmagical people we lived alongside, a fact that had earned them the other barons’ disdain. He couldn’t speak up against this publicly either, not without his colleagues branding him a traitor.
“You knew this was going to happen?” I asked.
“Baron Stormhurst helpfully filled me in just a few minutes ago. Apparently the others decided they didn’t need to discuss the development with me ahead of time, since it was part of the strategy my aunt already approved of. Or at least, they know she’ll say it was if they ask her to.”
His voice held a dry edge without much humor. The barons had already tricked him once to ensure they could approve the new policy using his aunt, who’d acted as his regent when he was younger and still had a spot at the table of the pentacle until he graduated and could take on the full role of baron.
I drew farther back as the ground shook all the way to my feet. A few more fearmancer students had joined in, one of them tossing a Nary around with violent gusts of wind, another sending streaks of electricity crackling across the grass. Whenever one of the Naries tried to flee, one or another tossed a spell out to block them.
“Why take their phones?” I asked. “So there’s no way they can tell anyone what’s going on in the moment?”
Declan shook his head. “They’re taking into account the damaging effects the memory wipes appeared to be having on the students. Rather than closed sessions with memories erased after each one, it’s going to be a free-for-all as long as the Naries are on campus. The blacksuits will oversee their mental ‘adjustments’ before they go home or anywhere else. There are new wards around campus, too, to prevent them from running off without permission.”
“Less messing with their memories, a lot more messing with them in every other way.” I hugged myself. Not only were we torturing them now, but we were also denying them any kind of social support from their families or friends off campus. Not to mention… “How the hell are they going to learn anything when they’re going to be freaking out the entire time they’re at the school?”
“A good question,” Declan said. “And one I’m planning on bringing up with the barons when we have our next proper meeting. If we’re not turning out high-performing graduates from the scholarship programs, people will stop applying to them.”
Hopefully that would be a clear enough practical problem to sway the barons. I turned away, unable to stomach the torture any longer. Declan must have given the rest of the scions a heads up, because the other three guys had just emerged from Ashgrave Hall, which held the senior dorms. We went over to meet them.
“It’s a lovely day in the neighborhood,” Jude intoned with a playful lilt, but his eyes widened a little as he swept his floppy dark copper hair back from his forehead, taking in the chaos on the green. The supposed Killbrook scion could turn just about any situation into a joke, but I knew he felt things deeply under that carefree exterior.
“They didn’t waste any time, did they?” Malcolm’s expression turned dark as his deep brown gaze followed the same path. As the heir of Nightwood, his father’s status had made him king of the campus, but lately they hadn’t been seeing eye-to-eye on most matters.
Connar shifted his stance with an uncomfortable twist of his mouth, his brawny arms folding over his chest. “They can’t keep this up for weeks on end, can they?” he asked, but his deep voice didn’t hold much hope. Like Malcolm, the Stormhurst scion had plenty of direct experience with how brutal fearmancers could be, much of it courtesy of his own parents. “They’ll get bored of harassing the Naries.”
“Maybe, but even if they do, the Naries will still be pretty messed up after what they’ve seen and not knowing what might be thrown at them next,” I said. “They were shaken enough without remembering the horrible things the mage students did to them.”
We drew closer to the building, Declan shooting a glance around to confirm no students or staff were near us. “There have to be other families who don’t feel comfortable with this approach,” he said. “Whether because they see the Naries as human beings with actual rights or because they’re worried about the implications for our society in the long run.”
My stomach knotted. “There’s not much any of us can say to encourage those attitudes without bringing the barons’ wrath down on us, though.”
Malcolm’s divinely handsome face had gone unusually solemn with thought. “Not in a big public way. But I’ve got a sense of who’s most likely to have a problem with the new policy.” A flicker of a smile crossed his lips. “Going by which families my dad complains about the most is an easy starting point. I can work the room, put out some feelers, connect people who’ll be more inclined to protest if they have someone standing with them.”
Jude shrugged. “None of the barons expect much from me at this point. I can get a lot of mileage out of mocking the people who do think this is a reasonable use of their time.” He rubbed his hands together with a sly glint in his dark green eyes.
“I can disrupt some of the spells without anyone knowing it’s me,” Connar put in. “Make them feel less confident in their abilities, and maybe spare the Naries a little.”
His broad brow knit beneath his chestnut crewcut. He knew as well as I did that none of those measures would get the Nary students completely out of this awful scenario any time soon.
I let out a rough breath. “I keep trying to get more information out of my mother so I’ll know where we might have some leverage… She still isn’t trusting me with many details on the political side.”
Declan turned his bright hazel gaze on me. “You’re doing the best you can, Rory. I know how hard it’s been for you as things are.” He turned toward Killbrook Hall. “We might be able to at least moderate the torment for the time being. I’ll go talk to Ms. Grimsworth, point out how disruptive this… free-for-all is for not just the Naries but the fearmancer students too. As long as I’m just asking for a more disciplined approach rather than to cancel it outright, the other barons can’t really see that as defying them.”
I hoped not. “Be careful,” I said as he moved to set off.
“You know, my dad still thinks I’m on his side,” Malcolm said, cocking his head. “Maybe I can make some progress right at the source. Complain to him that all they’re doing is encouraging people to run around campus like a bunch of idiots. It won’t be enough for them to call off the scheme, but it’ll give him more reason to listen if Ms. Grimsworth tells him she’s laying down some new rules of conduct.”
He gave me a flash of a smile as if reading the concerns already resounding in my head. “Don’t worry, Glinda. I’ll be careful too.”
“None of this feels like enough,” I couldn’t help saying. “What good am I as a scion if I can’t stop something this awful from happening?”
“Hey.” Connar caught my arm with a gentle squeeze. “Declan’s right. You’re trying everything you can. And when Declan’s officially baron, he’ll have more clout to go against the others.”
“In three months,” I said. Three months of torment for the Naries—if he could even get the policy reversed right away, which was doubtful.
“I’m sure between our five brilliant minds, we can come up with a solution sooner than that.” Jude looked me over. The mischievous gleam came back into his eyes. “I think all the time you’re spending with your mother is wearing you down. Let’s get out of here, clear our heads, and remind ourselves just how ready we are to fight.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “What did you have in mind?”
His lips curled with a grin. “I have an outing I’ve been keeping in my back pocket. I’m thinking now is the perfect time to use it. Come on, both of you.”
Chapter Three
Rory
Jude let Connar drive. He interjected directions from the back seat in between mysteriously hushed phone calls. An autumn evening was settling in when we reached a huge, pale peach cube of a building on the outskirts of a town about an hour and a half away from the university. Most of the place’s windows on both floors were painted over in the same shade. The sign over the darkened front door said…