by Sarina Dorie
“Oh no!” I said.
“If they do find anything naughty, they might have to search you, so don’t try to hide any electronics in your pockets. Although . . . it would be hilarious if you electric-shocked the principal. He wouldn’t survive in that suit of his, would he? Then we’d have one less shitty administrator to worry about.” She tapped her red lacquered nails on her chin, thinking it over. “I’ll pay you ten dollars if you zap him.”
“No. You zap him. You have your own electrical magic now.”
“Yes, but Mr. Khaba won’t promote me to department head if I do. I would make an excellent department head. You saw how efficient and organized I was planning your wedding.”
I couldn’t disagree. She’d doled out duties like a boss. I suspected she was more organized than organized-crime syndicates.
I headed toward the door, but she snagged my arm. “Not so fast.”
“What else am I forgetting?”
She leaned in closer, lowering herself to my height so our faces were even. “You aren’t allowed to fuck this up.”
“As if I’m trying—”
“Shut up and listen. You are trying to make your life harder than it is. How do I know you’re sabotaging yourself?” Her eyes narrowed. “I think you want to get fired. You’re behaving irresponsibly so you can leave the school. If you leave the school, where would you possibly go? To the Raven Queen to rescue Abigail Lawrence.”
I swallowed, not liking where this was going. “You say it like I’ve been planning this. I wasn’t trying—”
“No, of course not. Stupidity comes so naturally you don’t have to try.”
Ending the school year a few days early was not going to convince Thatch to take me to the Raven Court—though it would give me more time to prepare. It actually wasn’t that bad an idea.
Vega smacked my arm. “Don’t you even think about it. Work smarter, not harder. Like me.”
“Like you.” That was impossible.
“Do you see me abandoning my students just because it’s convenient? Is that what you want to do?” she demanded.
I hung my head in shame. She was right. She’d been through a lot too.
She clucked her tongue at me. “If you’re fired, who is going to protect Imani, Hailey, Trevor, and Maddy? You know damned well it isn’t going to be the principal. And it isn’t going to be me.”
I loved my students and the school. I didn’t want to abandon them. I’d just been in a funk lately. It was hard to think about anything.
She lowered her voice. “Do you know how I know all this about you?”
“You’re developing powers of telepathy.”
Her smile grew more catlike. “I’ve studied the forbidden arts.” She spoke so low I had to lean in to hear her.
“I’ve read the Morty sciences. I’ve practiced . . . psychology. I’ve psychoanalyzed you with my Morty magic.”
That explained why she was so good at head games. She was a regular Hannibal Bloodmire.
“Have you ever read Silence of the Lambs?” I asked.
“No. It sounds like a book on butchering animals. What does that have to do with psychology?”
Considering Vega was vegan, and she seemed to have more respect for animals than people, I suspected she wouldn’t be big on any books with animal slaughter in it. Fortunately, that book was more about killing people.
Despite the grimness of the situation, a smile tugged at my lips. “I’ll get the book for you as a gift someday, and you’ll see.”
She grinned. “Do you know why I’m going to do a favor for you and sit in on this little meeting?”
“Because you take joy in my suffering and want to be there to witness it?”
“Besides that.”
“Because Elric will be mad if he hears you weren’t there for me.”
“As if I care what he thinks.” She rolled her eyes.
Now I was clueless.
“Because you haven’t thrown me a wedding shower yet. You’re my best friend. It’s going to be hard to do that if you don’t work here anymore.” She squeezed my shoulder, and her eyes softened.
“Oh.” That’s right. I had forgotten Vega didn’t consider me a frenemy. In her morbid version of friendship, she thought she was being nice to me.
And I was that jerk friend who always had to outdo her. I’d had my wedding before her and hadn’t thought about her. She’d thrown me a wedding shower, taken command of all the stressful details of my wedding as my unofficial maid of honor, and she hadn’t even rubbed it in. I’d been too wrapped up in my own problems to ask if she wanted a wedding shower—or even a baby shower when she’d been pregnant.
“I’m sorry.” A mixture of shame and gratitude filled my heart. “You’re a good friend.”
She gave me a shove toward the door. “Let’s get moving. We have work to do.”
I was surprised by her willingness to accompany me. The first thing I noticed in my classroom was that my sketchpad was gone. That probably meant the principal had already been through there. Next I examined my supply closet. The bloody knife was gone. That didn’t bode well.
At least the vial with Maddy’s blood was still there, wedged between two stacks of papers. Vega eyed it wordlessly.
“It’s for a spell,” I whispered.
“Whose blood is it?” she asked. “No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.” She pocketed it.
“Do you have any electronics or anything else in your desk?” she asked. “Anything that you confiscated from students and planned on turning in to Mr. Khaba?”
We examined the contents of my desk. I gave her a set of earbuds not connected to an electronic device, a baggie of herbs a student had assured me was tea but probably wasn’t, and some sweets I’d purchased from Lachlan Falls that put students in a happy mood and made them complacent. There were a couple of inappropriate drawings. One was a cartoon a student had made of Vega yelling at students. Another was covered in marijuana leaves and magic mushrooms. Last was a worksheet someone had left under a table covered in illustrations of penises, turds, and swastikas.
Vega lifted an eyebrow. “I can’t tell whether this word is supposed to be ‘bitch’ or ‘douche.’ This child needs to learn how to spell his profanities.”
Vega examined every piece of student art in my classroom, identifying the clay projects that were bongs that I had missed and drug-related art I might get in trouble for allowing students to make. She was better at spotting risqué self-expressions than I was.
Vega collected all the items and placed them in a box. “I’m bringing these to Khaba’s office and saying I confiscated them from students. If you find anything else while I’m gone, bring it down to my closet.” Her gaze flitted to the papers scattered all over my desk. “And it wouldn’t hurt you to tidy up while I’m away.”
The principal had complained about my messy desk in his first observation when he’d been hired on. She was probably right that it wouldn’t hurt to straighten things up. I had just over half an hour to try to improve my classroom.
I had almost finished cleaning my desk when Maddy rushed in. She dropped her backpack on the floor next to my desk.
“Ms. Lawrence, I need to tell you something.” She closed the door behind her.
Of course she did. I couldn’t have asked for worse timing.
“Can this wait until tomorrow?” I asked. “I’m going to have a meeting with the principal in ten minutes, and I need to get ready.”
She spoke quickly, excitedly. “This is important. It’s about the boy I’m going to have sex with. You said I should make sure he has a water affinity so my baby won’t die, but what if I purposefully make sure he isn’t a water affinity? What if I choose someone human or a boy who’s unlikely to pass on a water-related affinity at all? Wouldn’t that make the King of the Pacific not want my baby?”
“I don’t think it’s a guarantee.” I shook out a stack of papers, and an
array of items dropped onto my desk including pencils, paper clips, and an eraser. I scooped them into a drawer. “It’s possible if your baby can’t breathe underwater, he or she will drown when the King of the Pacific removes the baby from your care.”
“Hailey said I should give him a defective baby to spite him. In fairy tales, sometimes women switch their baby with someone else’s and give goblins an infant with something wrong with it.” She tugged at the hem of the skirt of her school uniform, anxiousness percolating out of her.
“So your plan is to steal someone’s baby?” I asked. “Even if the King of the Pacific doesn’t do some kind of test and decides to punish you for trying to cheat him, have you thought about the ethics of this?”
“It wasn’t very ethical for him to ask for my firstborn.” She huffed, looking put out that I didn’t agree with her reasoning.
“I agree, but that doesn’t mean you should start doing immoral things as well. Two wrongs don’t make a right.” I sorted through the artwork I hadn’t hung up yet and placed them in the wire basket labeled “Return.”
Maddy smiled hopefully. “I’ve already thought this through. I wouldn’t be doing anything bad. I could steal a baby that is dying from a hospital. I would switch it with my own so the baby would be a changeling. My baby would grow up healthy and be raised by a loving couple. I would give the King of the Pacific the defective baby.”
“First of all, you would be caught and go to prison. If you try to use magic in the Morty Realm to get away with this, you’ll be caught by the Fae and killed. Second of all, you don’t get a say when the King of the Pacific comes to collect this baby. If that baby has a terminal illness and dies, he might just make you have another.”
Tears filled her eyes. “There’s only one boy here with any aquatic affinity, and I hate him. I don’t want to have sex with him. Don’t make me do it.”
“I’m not making you do anything. This was your decision. Like I said before, you have plenty of time.” I took her by the arm and steered her toward the door. “I’m sorry. I don’t have time to talk at the moment. I’m about to get raked over the coals for being a bad teacher. Tell me about this tomorrow.”
“But this is like, you know, the end of the world if I don’t become pregnant.” She trudged to the door. “Oh, yeah, I forgot.” She flung her backpack from her shoulder and reached inside. She pulled out a cluster of bottles. “I got all those ingredients. They’re all authentic. I even used a unicorn to confirm the virgin part.”
She held the bottles out to me.
“Put those away right now.” I pointed to her backpack. “I cannot have anything suspicious in my classroom. They’re going to be here any minute now, and they’ll probably search my classroom. Again.”
Maddy stared at the jars. “But it isn’t anything illegal. It’s just virgin blood. It isn’t like it’s—”
The door to my classroom swung open.
“—drugs or. . . .” Maddy’s eyes went wide.
The principal stomped in, the metal boots echoing on the floor. He was followed in by Khaba. The dean wore one of his standard hot-pink pairs of pants and satin shirt. The air shimmered around him with Fae magic. He ran a hand over his black goatee, locking eyes with me. He shook his head.
Maddy stuffed the bottles into her backpack, but it was too late.
They’d already seen—and probably heard enough to arouse suspicion. I was so screwed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Spelling Errors
Principal Dean stood just inside the doorway, his eyes flickering from Maddy to me. Khaba covered his eyes with his hand as if he couldn’t bear to watch. Probably he wished he could undo what he’d seen. It looked pretty bad. They must have thought I was a drug dealer.
Vega was only a step behind the two men, a memo pad tucked under her arm. She hadn’t caught sight of the bottles Maddy had brought me.
“What did I hear about ‘drugs?’” Principal Dean asked.
Maddy shook her head.
“Maddy was saying it wasn’t like she used drugs. That’s all,” I said. The lie was close enough to the truth that it was easy enough to make up.
“Was that a bottle of blood?” Principal Dean asked.
“No,” I said.
Maddy shook her head vehemently.
I tried to think of something else it could be. The only other red thing I could think of was wine. That wasn’t going to be much better.
“It was juice,” I said.
I ached to use the competency bracelet, but I had a feeling I might need it to defend my honor as a teacher later. Khaba ran a hand over his bald head, looking lost in the shitstorm I’d just created.
Vega shot me a look of disgust. Her heels hammered across the floor, closing the distance between us. She held her hand out to Maddy.
“I’m sorry,” Maddy mouthed to me.
Vega removed the backpack from Maddy’s possession.
Vega peered inside. She held up the jar. “It’s cranberry juice.”
I wasn’t sure if my eyes deceived me, but the red liquid inside was more translucent than the opaque crimson I thought I had seen a moment before.
Chuck Dean stomped across the floor with his metal-encased feet. Maddy shrank back.
He uncorked the jar and sniffed. When that didn’t satisfy him, he took a swig. Maddy made a face.
So did Chuck Dean. “Crikey! It’s unsweetened.” He shoved it at Khaba, who accepted it without comment. The principal dug through her backpack.
From Vega’s sly smile, I suspected the cranberry juice—and the lack of sugar—had been her doing.
Maddy scooted closer to the door. I made a shooing motion with my hands for her to leave.
“My homework for Mr. Thatch’s class is in there,” she whispered. “It’s due tomorrow.”
“Go,” I mouthed. I didn’t want her to get into any more trouble. Homework was the least of her problems.
The principal held up a bottle of shriveled fungus. “Mr. Khaba, test these for us and make sure they aren’t psychedelic mushrooms.” He eyed the bottle that contained devil’s snare and seer’s sage. In addition to magical properties, these herbs also had hallucinogenic side effects.
Maddy snuck out the door.
“Uh huh. Salvia divinorum.” Chuck Dean held up another. He might have been a dunce at wards, but he knew his herbs. “Datura stramonium. Two hallucinogenic plants.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “I hope we didn’t just witness an exchange between a teacher and a student paying for drugs.”
“Those aren’t uncommon plants used in medicinal remedies,” Vega said. “We even use them in my wards classes.”
I wasn’t sure whether that was true or not, nor did I know if Chuck Dean knew enough about wards to know the difference.
“True, but not usually in such lethal quantities,” the principal said.
“Are you going to confiscate those herbs?” From the cool indifference in Vega’s gaze, it was difficult to decipher whether she understood what spell used all these ingredients. “Because if you deem them too dangerous for students to have in their possession, I’ll gladly use them in my class. In small quantities, of course. It would be one less supply I’d have to pay for with my budget.”
As if she was in shortage of anything now that Elric donated school supplies to her class!
The principal handed the bottles to her by way of answer. She smiled slyly.
Chuck Dean looked through Maddy’s books next, unfolding a piece of paper that he scanned. There were two different handwritings on the paper. Probably it was a note that had been passed back and forth.
The principal handed it to Khaba. “Obviously that young lady is engaging in unhealthy sexual habits with other minors. Isn’t she a siren? Look into the matter and ensure she isn’t seducing the boys.”
Khaba gave a curt nod. I had never heard of him giving a detention to students for having a sex life in the past, minor or not.
>
“Can we get on with this inquisition?” Vega asked. “I’m swamped with papers to grade.”
I was surprised the principal didn’t tell her to take a hike. Instead, he gestured at a table on the end of the horseshoe arrangement of tables and seated himself. I noticed it wasn’t the table he’d punched earlier and cracked.
Khaba situated himself at the same table two chairs down from the principal. He was unusually silent. I wondered if he was angry with me.
I seated myself at the table across from them. Vega sat beside me.
Chuck Dean smiled pleasantly, as though nothing were amiss. “I expect you’re wondering why Miss Bloodmire is here.”
Not really. I was the one who had asked her. I opened my mouth.
Vega crossed her legs, kicking me. I closed my mouth.
“Mr. Khaba informed me it’s customary during formal investigations and reprimands that someone be present to take notes. Mrs. Keahi was unavailable, and it would be best for Mr. Khaba and me to be free of distractions as we ask questions. Furthermore, when the administrative staff are both the opposite gender of the teacher, it’s considered best practice for another individual of the same gender to be present.”
“Oh. How . . . egalitarian of you.” I glanced at Khaba.
Khaba offered me a small smile. I could see he was trying to help me in his way.
“The employee handbook says you can choose anyone you want to witness your demise,” Vega said. “And who wouldn’t want me? Plus, I’m a fabulous notetaker.”
Khaba looked like he was trying to keep a straight face at that.
Vega waved her pen at Khaba. “And I’m certain Mr. Khaba will see how helpful I am in case he ever needs a new department head. I’m all about being a team player.”
So she was playing this angle. She would allow the principal to see what a great kiss-up she was and ingratiate herself, allowing him to think she had offered for her own reasons, while in fact she had offered because she cared about me.
At least, that was why I thought she really had offered to be there.
The meeting had already gotten off to a rocky start with Maddy’s backpack. I waited for the principal to bring up my sketchbook. Probably the magic I’d used for remote viewing contained traces of my affinity, which would be considered forbidden magic, and thus condemn me. Either he would bring it out first, or it would be his finale.
