by R K Dreaming
The second bell rang, and Percy hurried off, saying over her shoulder, “Oh, and I need to speak to you about your lady friend.”
“What lady friend?”
“The one who turned up dead yesterday.”
The look on Lucifer’s face was one of mingled astonishment at what she had just said and desperation as the wildly squirming kitten tried to claw itself out of his arms and follow Percy out the door. Percy hurriedly closed it.
To her dismay, when she arrived at English Literature ten minutes later and out of breath, having made a mad dash up to Mrs Delancey’s classroom, the room was locked.
A peek through the glass showed that it was empty inside. A note in the window told her the lesson would be held in a different classroom all the way back where she had come from. Rather ominously, the note was signed by Headmistress Glory.
Muttering furiously under her breath, Percy made a mad dash back the way she had come, and flung open the classroom door, panting.
To her horror, standing at the head of the class was Headmistress Glory herself. She was a statuesque woman with skin that seemed to glow with an inner light, and carefully styled golden hair that looked as rigid as iron. Her dazzling aquamarine eyes had become flinty chips as she fixed Percy with her ruthless stare.
Percy could not remember what her fallen angel hell-mother had looked like in her previous life, but it couldn’t have been much more menacing than this.
Anyone else might have been reduced to a puddle of quivers, but not Percy.
Muttering a, “Sorry Headmistress,” Percy hurried to take the empty seat at the table that Nan and Shara Greyshale were sitting at.
“I was just saying,” said Headmistress Glory in a ringing and melodic, yet acid voice, “that any students upset by the news of Mrs Delancey’s tragic passing away are encouraged to visit the school counsellor who will make time to fit you all in for grief management sessions.”
She said this distantly, as if the business of dying was an inconvenience she could not relate to.
A girl at the back of the class let out a strangled sob, but stopped immediately when Headmistress Glory frowned at her.
“Do you need to leave the classroom to take a moment, girl?” she enquired coldly.
The girl gave a frightened squeak, and said, “No Headmistress.”
If the class had expected the headmistress to go easy on them after the tragic death of their previous teacher, they were very much mistaken.
“Very well,” said the headmistress with clipped precision. “Today you shall complete a practice examination paper, and endeavor to do well. The results will be used by your next teacher, whom I hope to have in post from tomorrow onwards, to assess what level you are at, and thus decide how to proceed with your curriculum henceforth.”
The class proceeded to do as instructed in a complete silence within which a pin could probably have been heard dropping if a pin had dared to drop.
All the while Headmistress Glory paced up and down the rows of tables, her heels clicking in a menacing rhythm, and seeming to stop all too often near the table that Percy was sitting at.
The exam was terrible. Percy, who had missed the first four weeks of term, was barely able to answer one question in three. Nan on the other hand scribbled away frantically, filling her answer sheets with dense handwriting.
When the lesson was over, Percy tried to follow Nan and Shara out of the door, but Headmistress Glory intercepted her, saying, “Miss Prince. A word, if you please.”
It was not a request. It was a command if she had ever heard one.
Shara shot Percy a horrified look, as if worried that the headmistress had found out that she had let Percy into Mrs Delancey’s classroom yesterday.
Percy shook her head a tiny amount at Shara, to let Shara know she would not mention this to the headmistress. Shara gave her a grateful nod before hurrying out.
“I’ve got Art next, headmistress,” said Percy. “I’m going to be late.”
“I will provide you with a note for your teacher.”
Both of them had kept their voices exceedingly polite, aware that the trailing students were staring curiously at Percy. Some were grinning, as if pleased at the possibility that mosshead Percy, the snitch witch, was about to get into trouble.
As soon as the last student had closed the door firmly behind them, Percy rounded on the headmistress and hissed furiously, “What do you want?”
“Now, now,” said Headmistress Glory. “Is that any way to speak to your headmistress, Miss Prince?”
“Oh please,” said Percy. “We both know you are not just my headmistress.”
“Last time we spoke on this topic you assured me that your headmistress was the only thing I was,” said Headmistress Glory silkily. “You cannot have it both ways, Miss Prince.”
Percy scuffed her shoe more violently than she had intended against the leg of the teacher’s desk.
“What do you want?” she said mutinously.
“The same thing I wanted last time we spoke,” said Headmistress Glory. “For you to keep Lucifer Darkwing out of trouble.”
“What trouble?” said Percy. “I heard that Mrs Delancey’s death was nothing suspicious. Are you telling me it’s not true?”
“The Humble police have ruled it as self-inflicted. But we both know that Lucifer’s spirit feeds off mayhem. This unfortunate incident could give him a dangerous little edge, or draw him in and make him act in the terrible ways that he loves so very much. I want you to keep your eye on him and keep him out of trouble.”
“Isn’t that your job?” said Percy sourly. “Weren’t you banished from Hell along with him so that you could keep your eye on him?”
She did not know if this was in fact true, so watched the headmistress closely. Annoyingly, Glory’s impassive face gave nothing away.
“Consider it delegation,” she said. “If you care about him, you’ll keep him out of trouble, because we both know I don’t care for him much at all.”
She neatly signed a note for Percy’s Art teacher and sent Percy on her way.
Percy normally sat alone during Art, but this time she took the empty seat next to Shara Greyshale. Percy was used to people telling her that she could not sit with them, but the finfolk girl did not complain.
Shara explained that the teacher had tasked them to make a picture out of fragments that spoke on the theme of togetherness, whatever that meant.
Percy watched Shara use the tip of a cotton bud to dab tiny randomly placed dots of blue paint onto a piece of paper.
“What’s that supposed to be?” asked Percy, whose own piece of paper remained steadfastly blank.
“The sea,” said Shara, with a big sigh.
If Shara could make the sea with dots, then Percy could make some crap with crap.
Percy started ripping up pieces of newspaper into shreds, and then sticking them haphazardly onto her own canvas.
“What is yours?” asked Shara.
Percy shrugged. “I’ll decide later.”
In an undertone, she told Shara about Mrs Gooding’s findings and that the potion had been a fake after all.
“Maybe Mrs D was one of those new age types who made her own nature potions or whatever,” said Shara. “You know, the stuff that Humbles call magic.”
Percy snorted. “That stuff is absolute nonsense. You can’t make potions unless you have magic. I should know. And Mrs D might have been a bit scatty, but I never thought she seemed the type to dabble in fake magic. She was a sensible kind of scatty.”
Running out of things to say to each other, the two girls worked in silence. When the teacher came around to ask them to explain their compositions, Percy suddenly thought of Mr Bramble’s grey parrot, and claimed hers was the fuzzy feathers on a parrot’s wings.
“They come together so that, you know, the parrot can fly,” she said.
The teacher nodded thoughtfully, and told Percy that a bird’s feathers had a pattern to them, and perhaps Percy ought to consider
incorporating it.
“Not our parrot,” said Percy with a straight face. “Mr Buddy is fuzzy and free.”
The teacher moved on without comment, over to where Nilgun Shafak was bending over her own drawing board with great concentration.
Watching Nilgun and the teacher talk animatedly, Percy said, “You should have added specks of pollution to yours, and told him that we are all one with the water whether it’s full of purity or poison. I bet he would have loved that.”
This seemed to capture Shara’s imagination because by the end of the lesson, her piece was more grey than blue.
As soon as the lesson was over and it was time for morning break, Percy dashed to the library to find Lucifer.
She found that he had moved his office arm chair into the main chamber of the library, and was sitting slumped on it in a most exhausted manner. The kitten was nowhere to be seen.
“Where is she?” asked Percy sharply.
He looked darkly towards the closed door of his office. “In there,” he said. “If I had known what kittens were before today, I’d have filled Hell with them,” he snarled.
Percy eased open the door cautiously, and the kitten immediately squirmed out through the narrow crack. It clawed its way up Percy’s tights, making her gasp.
Percy grabbed it by the scruff of its neck, and dangling it in front of her, inspected it. It looked much livelier than it had done this morning, and the cloud of doom was a tad fainter.
She tickled it under its chin. “Who’s been a naughty girl then?” she crooned. “Who’s been a naughty girl for Daddy Lucifer?”
“Daddy Lucifer?” said Lucifer in a strangled voice. “I’m done with looking after that horrific beast! Take it with you!”
“I can’t,” said Percy. “Not until the end of the day. You’ll have to keep her. Have you fed her every hour?”
“Does she look starved to you?”
But Percy was distracted. She had spotted an eye peering at the two of them. A boy was standing almost concealed behind a tall shelf. He had removed a single book to create a gap he could look through, and was using it to spy on Percy and Lucifer.
The boy was standing extremely still, clearly desperate not to be noticed. Percy looked away from him casually, as if she had not seen him.
Placing the kitten carefully on Lucifer’s lap and admonishing it to stay there, she declared, “I need to find a book on cat care. Which shelf is it on?”
“How am I supposed to know?” said Lucifer.
Percy shrugged, and strolled away in the opposite direction to the spying boy. At the soonest opportunity, she circled back around, navigating her way through the many tall wooden bookcases of the old library until she was able to creep up behind the boy.
She snarled menacingly in his ear, “What in Hell do you think you are doing?”
The boy yelped loudly, and jumped about a foot up into the air. He whirled around and stared at Percy with an expression of abject shame on his face, as if being caught out was the worst thing that could have possibly ever happened to him.
It was an odd face, the skin lumpy and craggy in a way that it had no right to be. Startled by it, Percy took a quick step back, but then felt guilty for doing so because this had made the boy look even more miserable.
She suddenly realized she had seen this boy many times before, always skulking around the library. Always hanging around the vicinity of Lucifer’s office. Always trying to talk to Lucifer. Her sense of pity vanished immediately.
“Well?” she demanded. “Explain yourself! Didn’t your mother teach you that it’s rude to spy on people’s private conversations?”
“S-sorry!” the boy muttered. “I d-didn’t mean to!”
“Didn’t mean to eavesdrop?” said Percy. “Didn’t mean to stand behind this shelf and pull this book out and create a hole that you could look through? Did the book slip into your hand by accident? Did your eye align itself to the gap by a quirk of fate?”
The boy turned bright red and looked like he wanted to run away. And yet he seemed pinned in place by her gaze.
“I didn’t… I wasn’t... I never…” he stammered.
“Don’t you dare do it again,” Percy warned him.
The confrontation had caught the attention of a group of students sitting at a nearby table. All four were staring at Percy and the boy.
Percy recognized a couple of them. One was named Arthur. He been a host at the School Beauty Pageant a couple of weeks ago. He was a black haired, blue eyed, handsome Humble boy a few years older than Percy.
And right now he was sneering at the lumpy faced boy. “Frankenstein’s lost his tongue!” he jeered.
“Stay out of it,” said Percy.
But Arthur and his friends were upper-schoolers and clearly considered Percy to be beneath them. They ignored her.
“That might be an improvement,” said the second boy. “Frankenstein’s tongue is probably as lumpy as the rest of him. Must be painful.”
The two girls sitting with them burst into cruel laughter.
One of the girls was in Percy’s year. Her name was Delphine, and she was a very pretty succubus, and was Arthur’s girlfriend.
“I bet his… I bet his…” Delphine was laughing so hard she couldn’t get her words out. “I bet his knob is lumpy!” She finally managed to yelp.
The lumpy faced boy looked horrified. In fact, Percy had the awful feeling that he was about to cry. She felt sorry for him. She was about to lead him into Lucifer’s office for a cup of tea to calm him down, but he shrugged her hand off his arm as if her touch had burned him.
He was now shaking violently. He fled, but somehow tripped over his own feet. He got up in a rush and banged his elbow into a bookshelf so hard that he gave a great cry of pain. Clutching it, he yanked open the library door with such force that it smashed into his head. Finally he ran out.
Percy watched him go in utter disbelief. That had been worse than clumsy.
The table of four students were laughing uproariously, and Arthur had filmed the scene on his phone.
“Oh shut up!” snarled Percy.
Snatching Arthur’s phone, she deleted the video he had taken.
Arthur snatched his phone back so hard that he scratched Percy’s hand.
“Don’t touch my stuff, snitch witch!” he snarled venomously.
He saw she had deleted his video and gave a cry of outrage.
“Deal with it,” she said.
“Snitch bitch,” he hissed into her face with such force that several drops of spit landed on her. Percy wiped them away in disgust while his friends giggled.
Lucifer Darkwing marched up behind them and snapped, “Detention!”
The smiles promptly vanished off all of their faces.
Then Lucifer’s eyes landed on a little steel flask that had spilled out of Delphine’s fashionable purse onto the table.
“Is that what I think it is?” he said to her. “Detention all week for you!”
Delphine wailed, but Lucifer took the flask away from her and tucked it into his own pocket.
Lucifer took down their names and chased the grumbling students out of the library.
“Teacher’s pet,” Delphine hissed venomously as she went. Percy ignored it.
She followed Lucifer into his office. When she had shut the door behind her, she complained, “There was no need for you to do that. The last thing I need is to give them a reason to hate me even more.”
“But you know I love punishing people, darling,” said Lucifer, looking very pleased. “I shall have to think of something interesting to make them do. What do you think?”
Percy raised her eyebrows. “I don’t think you’re allowed to make them do anything too interesting.”
“Rules, shmules,” he said. “If I won’t break them, who will?”
He took Delphine’s flask out of his pocket, unscrewed the cap, and took a sip. He gave a shudder of pleasure. “Ooh, strong!”
“You shouldn’t be
drinking stuff unless you know where it came from,” Percy snapped, snatching the flask from him and tipping the contents down the office sink.
“I was enjoying that!” Lucifer protested.
“Who was that boy who was spying on you?” Percy demanded. “Have you seen him around before? I don’t trust him. You’re really going to have to keep an eye on people. I’m going to find out what he was up to.”
“Oh don’t worry about him,” said Lucifer airily. “That’s Frank Something-Something.”
“Something-Something?” she said. “That’s really helpful, that is.”
“Double-barreled,” he said. “Frightfully posh. You wouldn’t think it to look at him. They call him Frankenstein. Sensible chap though. Clearly recognizes a master when he sees one. The poor boy’s been pestering me to give him lessons on how to be charming.”
Lucifer’s chest visibly puffed up at this last bit.
Percy rolled her eyes. She should have guessed.
“Hero worship,” she said with disgust. “Did he ask for tips on chatting up all the ladies too?”
“More about how to talk to people without fainting,” said Lucifer with a chuckle. “But yes, he did ask about the ladies once or twice.” He sounded very pleased about it too.
“And did you tell them how to chat them up so enticingly that they jump out of the window afterwards?” said Percy sweetly.
Lucifer looked miffed. Dropping the kitten carelessly on the floor, he went over to put the kettle on.
“I heard about that. Flinging herself out of a window at school of all places. But it had nothing to do with me! Sadly,” he added.
“Sadly?”
“Well imagine the fun,” he said, “if she had done it because her poor little heart was broken over me. Wouldn’t it be so melodramatic, darling? Such a lovely story.”
“It would not!”
“Where is your sense of romance?”
“I must have lost it,” Percy said. “Did you ask her to come and see you during break yesterday?”
“Not that I can remember. I hope not!”
“Hmmm,” said Percy thoughtfully. “I wonder if she put some of that love potion of hers in the macaroons?”
“What love potion?” he demanded.
