by Cheree Alsop
“But?” I asked, feeling the word she didn’t say.
She patted her headscarf, checking to make sure her gray curls were still contained before she looked back at me. “But, there is something to be said for nature. Instinct. You are a werewolf, and apparently an Alpha at that. You won’t give in if there’s a fight. You defend what you care about and who.” She paused, then said, “And if what you set your heart on is threatened, you’ll give everything to protect it.”
That was exactly how I felt. I had only been at the school a few short days, but the thought of someone or something threatening it brought my wolf to the edge. It was unsettling.
“Am I dangerous?” I asked.
The Headmistress’ eyes crinkled at the corners as she watched me. “You’re the only one who can answer that,” she said. “But I feel as though your need to ask it says no. You’ve shown great restraint.”
I fought back a laugh of disbelief. “I have no restraint. The wolf takes over whenever it wants to. I can’t fight it.”
“But you do,” she replied. “I see it in your eyes, and,” she hesitated, then said, “And I saw it when you didn’t fight Vicken’s coven.”
I stared at her in shock. “How did you know about that?”
“You fought Vicken’s coven?” Alden asked, not bothering to hide his dismay.
The Headmistress looked guilty. “I had to know,” she said. “I had to protect my students.”
“By letting them beat me to death?” I asked. Anger filled me. “Vicken told them to kill me!”
“I sent Lyris to stop them,” she began.
“From delivering the final blow.” I shook my head, trying to remain calm. The wolf was clawing inside, fueled with my rage. My hands clenched into fists that shook with my effort to control myself. “What if I had killed them?” I asked in a voice that was just above a whisper.
“I trusted you,” she said.
“Just as they trusted Conrad?” I shot back.
She shook her head. “My husband was the Headmaster at that time, and he paid for his trust with his death.”
Her words felt like a punch to my gut. “I-I’m sorry,” I began.
She stood up. “Finn Briscoe, me letting you into the Academy was my own way of moving on, my new path. Surviving your stay here is yours. It’s not going to be easy; you’re going to come against a lot of flak and prejudice, but only you can change that.”
The second bell rang.
“We’ve got to change and get to class,” Alden reminded me. I could hear the sorrow in his voice that we had missed breakfast. “It’s going to be a long day.”
“Go to it,” the Headmistress said. “Mercer has prepared a statement about the demon flames for the students to ease their concerns.”
I had a hand on the door and paused to look back. “He’ll cover it up?”
“He’s a sweeper,” she replied. “That’s part of what he does here. He keeps us safe and protects the school from those who wish to bring us harm. And trust me,” she continued before I could ask, “There are plenty who wish us harm. We’re lucky to have him.” She nodded to indicate the passage. “Go now and please don’t use the passageway again.”
“We won’t,” Alden replied. He hesitated, then said, “Or we will.” He looked flustered when he said, “We will go now and we won’t use the passage again.”
“Very well,” Headmistress Wrengold said. She turned toward the fireplace. I followed her gaze to the picture of a man a few years younger. He wore the Academy’s colors and sat behind a mahogany desk.
As we watched, the Headmistress drew off her headscarf. She then whispered a word I didn’t understand. Before my eyes, faster than I had ever phased as a wolf, the Headmistress vanished and a great horned owl took her place. She flapped her massive wings once and the fire disappeared. One more push of her wings sent the Headmistress up the chimney.
Alden and I stared at the spot for a moment before a pained chuckle escaped me.
“What’s so funny?” Alden asked.
I gestured toward the chimney. “When I first met the Headmistress, Mrs. Hassleton mentioned that she was a night owl. I didn’t realize she meant it literally.”
Alden shook his head with a grin. “Who knew?”
Chapter Eleven
Alden and I were both surprised when we reached first period and found plates of eggs and bacon on our desks.
“Professor Mellon insisted,” Professor Seedly said. He appeared as weary as the rest of the staff. “I don’t approve of food in my classroom, but she asked me for a favor.” He cheeks took on a slight brush of red. “I couldn’t say no.” As if to change the subject, he gestured over his shoulder with one skinny arm. “Besides, Gerald thought it was a good idea.”
Small pockets of laugher erupted through the classroom.
I ate quickly, concerned that Gerald the talking bush might change its mind and have the food banished from the classroom. I wasn’t about to lose the chance at a full belly.
A glance at Alden showed the opposite thought. He was eating slowly, savoring every bite as if it was his last. He broke up bits of bacon and set a piece on each forkful of egg, then ate them together. The look of contentment on his face as he stared lazily around the plant-filled classroom made me happy. At least something was going right.
But when the bell rang, foreboding filled me.
“You don’t want to go in there?” Alden asked as we stood in front of classroom B6.
I shook my head. “I don’t know where I stand with Professor Briggs. He confuses me. Half the time he acts like we’re friends, and the other half like I’m some disgusting specimen he can’t wait to get rid of.”
“Your uncle’s the reason he lost so much,” Alden pointed out quietly while the other students rushed to get in the classroom before the bell rang.
“So why do I feel like it was me, instead?” I asked. At his loss for words, I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll see you in fourth period.”
“See you,” Alden replied.
I pushed the door open. The first face that caught my gaze was Torid’s. His yellow eyes widened as if he had just seen a ghost enter the classroom. I remembered the vampire’s fist slamming into my face and the feeling of his shoe against my ribs in the cafeteria. I straightened as though the still-healing injuries didn’t affect me and crossed to my desk. I heard him rise from his chair.
“Where are you going, Mr. Vaugn?” Professor Briggs asked from his desk at the back of the classroom.
“I, uh, I, need to, uh….” The sound of the vampire’s running feet was followed by the door slamming open; the running footsteps then continued down the hall.
“I think he had to use the bathroom,” the boy with the orange horns and orange eyes said from the seat next to mine.
“Badly,” I replied.
He laughed, showing his sharp yellow teeth. At my look, his smile fell and he held out a hand.
“No hard feelings about the pencil?” he asked.
I remembered Professor Briggs saying he had gotten off worse than I had from the Wolfsbane and held out my hand.
He shook it. “I’m Aerlis. You take a joke well.”
“Finn,” I replied. “I’ve never had that one played on me.”
“I should have thought it through better,” he said. “Dying from Wolfsbane would have been better than Mrs. Hassleton’s tonic, I think.”
I chuckled. “Sounds like it.”
“Copy down the section on the board and then read the applicable chapter in the book. We’ll have a quiz in a half hour,” Professor Briggs announced.
A groan went through the students. I pulled out the notebook I had grabbed from my belongings and started writing down the passage. My head felt heavy. It still ached where it had met the brick wall; I rested it on my arm as I flipped through the book.
“The bell rang.”
I opened my eyes to see the classroom empty and Professor Briggs standing in front of my desk
. Embarrassed to be caught sleeping, I straightened.
“I slept through the quiz,” I said sheepishly.
“I noticed,” Professor Briggs replied.
There was drool on the notebook page I had been writing on. I closed it quickly in the hopes that the professor wouldn’t see it. I stood up and pushed my chair back under the desk, hiding any pain the movements brought. “I need to get to third period.”
Professor Briggs gave me a closer look.
“Where did you get those bruises?”
Surprised that the Headmistress hadn’t told him about Vicken’s attack, I decided I could keep secrets as well.
“Diving through windows can be foolish,” I said. I picked up my notebook.
“You didn’t get those diving through the window,” he replied.
I couldn’t decide why I was so angry with him, but the way he had treated me in front of the other professors still rankled. I glared at him. “I’ve got class to get to.”
“Tell me what happened,” he commanded.
I shoved one of the desks out of the way and moved past him.
Professor Briggs grabbed my shoulder exactly where one of Vicken’s well-placed kicks had left a nearly black bruise. I winced and turned away from his touch.
“What happened?” he demanded.
“Nothing,” I said just under a shout. Tears burned in my eyes even though I couldn’t say why. I wanted to tear my notebook apart, to destroy the desks around me, or throw the professor into a wall. The rage was so intense it took all of my self-control to simply stand there.
As if he read my expression, Professor Brigg’s voice was quieter when he said, “Show me your shoulder.”
I shook my head.
He closed the space between us with a limping step. “Finn, show me.”
I shook my head again. I didn’t want him to see what Vicken had done. I was asking to be in Mercer’s team to defend the school, and yet a handful of vampire students had beat me so badly other students had been forced by the Headmistress to rescue me. It was humiliating.
“I’ve got class,” I said. I walked toward the door and was grateful when he didn’t try to keep me from leaving.
By lunchtime, I was starving again. Healing definitely took a lot of energy, especially without the moonlight. Alden and I were lucky to be first in line; I was immensely grateful for his food priorities. We found a place at the opposite end of the cafeteria from where the vampire coven usually sat. I tried my best to ignore the pointing and glaring from their end as the lunchroom filled up. Vicken caught my gaze once. The hatred in his eyes was enough to destroy my appetite. Fortunately, an elbow bumped mine, distracting me.
“Uh, hi,” I said when Lyris sat down next to me.
Brack sat down across from me. Dara, with her usual apparent frustration at even being in existence, sat on Alden’s other side.
“Hey,” Lyris said. She took a bite of her hamburger as though choosing to sit by us was normal.
I looked at Alden. His eyes were wide and the shrug of helplessness he gave back was almost comedic. As far as I could tell, the hulking warlock on his one side and the empath on the other were sitting closer than anyone else besides me ever had by choice.
“Good food,” Brack said. He took a single bite of his hamburger that devoured nearly half of it. One more bite and it was gone.
“D-do you want mine?” Alden asked.
I had never seen Alden offer to part with food and couldn’t help staring; apparently the gesture wasn’t lost on Brack.
“Yeah, I do,” the warlock said. He accepted the hamburger and devoured it in two seconds. “Thanks.” He patted his stomach. “I’m always hungry.”
A tentative smile crossed Alden’s face. “Me, too.”
Brack laughed. “Where do you put it?” he asked, his deep voice bouncing off the walls.
Alden gave an answering laugh, his expression uncertain. Brack joined in the laughter.
“Well, that’s just cute,” Dara muttered.
Lyris smiled. “It really is.”
“It’s disgusting,” Dara spat.
I met Dara’s glare. “For an empath, you’re pretty cold.”
Everyone at our end of the table stared at me. Dara looked as though she didn’t know whether throttling me or shoving my hamburger in my face would be more rewarding. To my surprise, she cracked a smile instead and even gave a tiny chuckle.
“Huh, yeah, I am.”
Lyris gave me a wide-eyed look as though I had just survived a brush with death.
Dara picked up her bottle of soda and tried to open it. When she couldn’t, she shot Brack a glare. I realized the warlock was staring with full focus at the bottle.
“Knock it off,” Dara said.
Brack blinked and she opened the bottle.
“Is that your power?” I asked.
Everyone looked at me again as though I had a spider on my face.
“Finn, it’s not polite to talk about it like that,” Alden said quietly.
I set down my fork. “I’m sorry,” I told Brack. “I didn’t know.”
“It’s alright,” he replied. “I can close things, little things. But it’s not a power. It’s called a warlock affinity. It’s what makes me special.”
They were more words than I had ever heard the huge warlock speak. Apparently the same went for the others, because they looked at him as if he was now the one with the spider.
“I don’t know,” I replied, trying to lighten things up. “I think your ability to eat a hamburger in two bites makes you special.”
Brack laughed so loud the students at the other tables looked at us. I could feel Vicken’s glare from across the room; I chose to ignore it.
“So you close things,” I said, interested. “Like doors?”
“Sometimes,” he said. “It takes a lot more concentration to close a door or a window. Something like that can make me exhausted because of the energy it takes.” He winked. “But watch that.”
I followed his gaze to where Aerlis, the boy with the orange horns, was trying to open a ketchup bottle. He shook it, tried to bite it with his sharp teeth, and was banging the bottle on the table when I heard Brack breathe out. The lid popped off and ketchup squirted all over Aerlis and his friends.
Brack chuckled, then silenced when they looked in our direction. I pretended to be interested in my French fries. When I looked back, they were busy cleaning the ketchup up with napkins.
“That wasn’t nice,” Lyris said.
“It was awesome,” Dara told him.
“I don’t know,” Brack replied. “Sometimes I think all my affinity is good for is….”
I glanced up when his voice died away. My eyes fell on Amryn. The vampire stood near Lyris. She held her cup of blood with a hopeful expression.
“It’s good to see you feeling better,” she told me.
“I appreciate what you did,” I replied.
“Which was nothing,” Dara muttered.
I had seen some of the pecking order of the cafeteria and knew it might make waves, but apparently that was what my presence did anyway.
I scooted over and said, “Would you like to sit with us?”
“With her blood?” Lyris asked in shock.
“With her lunch,” I replied calmly.
I was happy when Amryn took my offer. She slid onto the seat with a grace that would have made a cat look bumbling.
“Thanks,” she said quietly.
Silence filled the table. I took a bite of my hamburger, swallowed it, and said, “I fell asleep in History of Witches and Warlocks today. Professor Briggs wasn’t amused.”
Lyris shook her head. “You don’t want to get on his bad side.”
“I think I started on his bad side,” I replied.
Dara shrugged. “At least you know where you stand.”
I wanted to tell her the problem was that I had no idea where I stood with him, but the lunchroom wasn’t a place to get into that discussion.
>
Amryn lifted a shoulder and said, “I guess you know you can’t absorb his lessons through hypnopedia.”
“What’s that?” Alden asked.
“Learning information while sleeping,” she replied. “That would be helpful for Professor Tripe’s class.”
Alden nodded emphatically. “I’d be a genius by now!”
Everyone laughed.
Amryn gave a small smile before drinking her cup. I noticed she took care that none of the blood showed on her lips when she lowered it back down. The heavy coppery odor of the liquid clung to my nose. I ignored it for her sake.
“Isn’t there a student who learns like that?” Lyris asked.
“Trinis,” Dara said with a wistful hint to her tone. “She’s in my terminology class. Sleeps right through it. I’ve never felt anyone so peaceful.”
“It must be hard,” Amryn said.
Everyone looked at the vampire.
Dara glared at her. “What’s hard?” she asked, her tone replaced by annoyance.
Amryn set her cup down on the table and placed her pale hands in front of her. She gave Dara a beseeching look. “I mean no offense. I’ve just thought that feeling what other people feel all the time must be hard. Maybe you don’t want to always know how they feel.”
All attention turned to Dara. She let out a breath through her nose and rose from the table. “I feel sick of this conversation,” she said. She grabbed her tray and stormed toward the exit. Her ash-colored hair swayed with each step.
After a moment, Amryn said, “I didn’t mean to offend her.”
“She’s always like that,” Lyris said.
Brack nodded. “But she’s our friend.”
Amryn gave them a smile. “You’re good friends.”
Alden and I exchanged a glance. We were both still unsure why they had chosen to sit with us, but it felt nice to not be just by ourselves.
