They were?
I had no idea.
Apparently, I wasn’t quite as good of a girlfriend as I thought if I couldn’t even keep track of where my magical boyfriend was. Life at Enchanted Academy could get kind of weird sometimes, and it could definitely get pretty awkward. I needed to find a way to balance my understanding of the situation at hand with my dating life, but I was failing.
Miserably.
“Let’s go,” Wolf said. She didn’t seem to notice how awkward or uncomfortable I suddenly felt, but Hook did. As the group turned to head back to the female dorms, Hook hung back with me.
“You doing all right?” She asked me in a low voice.
I looked at her, surprised.
“What’s it to you?”
Now it was her turn to be offended.
“You don’t have to be like that. It was just an honest question, you know.”
Crap.
So, it was kind of rude and abrupt.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
“This isn’t easy for you, is it?” She asked me.
“What? Being the only human in a world full of magic users? Or trying to learn how to date a shapeshifting wizard?”
“All of it,” she said.
“No, it’s not that easy,” I admitted.
“It’s easy to feel lost when you’re new,” Hook pointed out.
“It sounds like you’re speaking from experience.”
“I am.”
“When did you feel new?” I asked her.
“When I came here,” she shrugged. “Everyone here grew up in magical families. They all seemed to know exactly what it was like to be part of Enchanted Academy. I mean, even Belle and Wolf both have these histories that make it seem like they’re totally comfortable with magic.” She shook her head, and I felt a little bad for Hook.
What had her childhood been like?
What had it been like for her to deal with coming to the school for the first time.
We walk out of the practice theater and down the hallway. The other girls are ahead of us, determined. They know exactly where they’re going, and I can’t help but feel like this is how my life tends to be.
“It’s definitely a hard adjustment,” I muttered.
“You aren’t from magic, are you?”
“Nope.”
“Did you know your parents?”
I look at her sideways, trying to figure out how much to say. I don’t really like to talk about where I came from. That’s just my own personal thing. I’m uncomfortable with people knowing too much about it. It makes me a little bit uneasy and tends to put me on edge. I prefer to be in control with as many aspects of my life as possible.
For me, being in charge of how much information people have about me is the ultimate form of control.
“Not really,” I told her. “They died when I was young. I lived with a family member and then...”
“Foster care?”
“Yeah.”
“Me too.”
“What?” I looked at her sharply. I had no idea. Was she for real? Hook had been a foster kid? But she was magical. How had that worked out?
“Don’t act so surprised, Jessica. You aren’t the only orphan at this school.”
“But you’re so...”
“Charming?” She asked, raising an eyebrow. “Brilliant?”
“Confident,” I whispered. Hook was the kind of girl who didn’t even have to fake believing in herself. She just exuded confidence on so many levels. There were things about her I’d never be able to understand and her complete control over everything in her life was one of them.
Her eyes darkened as we walked down the hallway. We passed some familiar classrooms and a few not-so-familiar ones.
“Well, it wasn’t always like this,” she said. “I didn’t lose my parents when I was a baby. I lost them three years ago. I was old enough to know what life was like with them, and I’m old enough to know what it means to be totally alone.”
Damn.
I look over her, trying not to be creepy, but I catch a glimpse of her face. Her brow furrows and her dark hair bounces as she walks.
“What happened?” I find myself blurting out the question without consideration, which is pretty horrible. It’s not a good idea to ask people, “Hey, how did your parents die?” I mean, unless you’re really close with someone, that sort of comment isn’t really necessary and it’s generally considered to be pretty rude, but I guess I’m not that polite because I can’t seem to hold back from blurting it out.
“I shouldn’t tell you.”
“Why shouldn’t you tell me?”
“Because talking about how my parents died isn’t exactly my idea of a fun time,” she snaps. Then she sighs. “Sorry, but you know, the wounds are still kind of fresh.”
“I don’t think they ever stop feeling that way.”
“You’ve been on your own a long time, huh?”
The other girls are so far ahead of us now that I can no longer see them. The only sounds around us are our footsteps. Hook stops and turns to me. Jillian Hook has very distinct features. She’s got a sort of button nose and a bright smile, but her eyes look pained.
I don’t answer her at first, but finally, I nod.
“Yeah. Too long.”
“Me too,” she says. “Well, at least it feels that way.”
“It seems like everyone at Enchanted Academy has a family,” I point out the obvious, frustrated.
“Yeah, and I don’t want to pick on anyone, but when people have families, they have these great support systems. You and me, Jess...we don’t have that.”
I let her words sink in a little. It sounded depressing when she put it like that, but she was also totally correct.
“I mean, look at this.” She stops in front of a big portrait. I’ve never noticed it before. It’s big. It takes up almost the entire height of the wall. “Look at how happy they look, Jess.”
She motions to the picture.
“Who are those students?” I look at it. The picture is a large painting of Enchanted Academy, but it looks like something from years past. The school looks different somehow. It looks brighter. There’s something unusual about the way it seems to practically glow in the picture.
“I don’t know, but check it out. They all have parents.”
She’s right.
In this picture, there are several groups of students in front of the school. Each student has at least one or two adults behind them in the picture. The adults are standing with frowns on their faces. Their hands are gripping the shoulders of the children in front of them.
“Are those their parents? They seem angry.”
“Maybe they’re just worried they’re going to miss their kids.”
She steps forward and peers at the painting. It’s something I’ve never noticed before.
“Is this new?”
“Maybe,” she shrugs. “You know Helena Hex is always bringing in new and unusual artifacts.”
“Is she?”
“Yeah,” Hook says. “But I think we should go.”
“Why?”
“I can’t put my finger on it, but this painting is giving me the creeps.”
“Let’s go.”
Chapter 6
Tinkerbell hurried into the girls’ dormitory and ran to the cookie corner on the first floor. Red’s granny was there baking, along with Red and Beast. The boys looked up when they saw her. She must have seemed upset because Red set down his tools and stood up to look at her.
“What’s the problem?”
“Peter is missing,” she said in a rush, but she whispered it. Granny looked over and frowned, furrowing her brows. “Don’t tell anyone,” Tinkerbell told her. She was stupid for blurting the news about Peter. Who knew who had taken him? They couldn’t trust anyone. Not even Granny.
Granny looked from Tinkerbell to the boys and then back again. She stopped mixing the batter she was working on and turned around to set it in the fridge
. Then she came back and looked at them all thoughtfully.
“You know, I think it’s about time for my afternoon nap,” she said. She patted Tinkerbell gently on the shoulder. “You be careful,” she whispered, and then Granny walked by and headed toward her bedroom. She had moved into the dormitory only recently. After an incident that resulted in her being kidnapped by Wolf, Beauty, and Jessica’s old roommate, the headmistress had basically insisted that Granny move into the dorms for her own safety.
It had been nice having the woman around.
Tinkerbell, along with all of the other students, really did consider her to be a sort of makeshift grandmother for them.
“About what?” Tinkerbell asked her in a hushed tone. The boys were staring at each other, obviously confused, but neither one of them was listening to Grandma.
“Enchanted Academy can be a very strange place, my love. There are goblins, ghouls, and ghosts, but there are other monsters that are just as dangerous.”
“You mean like, like vampires?” She whispered.
“I mean like humans, and shifters, and even people we consider to be friends,” Grandma said. “I’m not one to get involved in student affairs, but there’s been a bad vibe in the air lately, little one. You best be watching your back.” She started walking away and as she did, she shook her head. “Pretty little fairy,” she muttered.
Pretty fairy indeed.
Tinkerbell frowned.
What had that cryptic message been about? Talk about totally unhelpful. She turned back to Red and Beast. Wolf and Belle hurried into the dorms just then. The two girls raced over. Hook and Jessica hadn’t caught up yet.
“Hey, you ran fast,” Belle said. She was a little out of breath.
“Yeah,” Wolf agreed. “In a hurry or something?”
“Something like that.”
“What happened?” Red asked. “Give it to me straight, okay? No beating around the bush.”
Beast was quiet, but his eyes narrowed as he, too, gave Tinkerbell his full attention. She felt uncomfortable with everyone staring at her. She’d never particularly been interested in being the center of attention. In fact, it was something that she actively disliked.
She took a deep breath and filled them in on what she’d done. She told them she’d spied on Peter and Hook’s rehearsal, that Peter had vanished, and that when confronted today, Hook hadn’t seemed to know what had happened.
“So Hook didn’t actually see this happen?” Beast asked.
“No.”
“So who was with Peter last night?” Red wanted to know.
“It could have been a ghost,” Wolf offered up. “We noticed that the ghost lamp that’s kept on stage to keep away spirits was gone.”
“That’s just an old fairy tale,” Red waved his hand in disbelief.
“Hey, old fairy tales hold a lot of truth,” Belle said. She’d somewhat recently been the victim of a powerful spell and she wasn’t too keen on letting people ignore the warning signs of a spell gone wrong.
“What could have taken him?” Red asked.
“More importantly: why?” Beast shook his head. “Peter Pan is a nobody.”
“Hey! That’s a jerkish thing to say!” Tinkerbell couldn’t hold back. She frowned and slammed her hands onto her hips. She was tiny, especially compared to the others. They all seemed to tower over her. As a fairy, she was naturally tiny, but until she’d come to Enchanted Academy, it had never bothered her too much.
Now she hated how tiny she felt compared to the other students. Their magic was stronger than hers, but they were physically larger, too.
It simply wasn’t fair.
Besides, this was her fight.
“Uh, okay,” Beast stared at her, confused. “I wasn’t saying that as an insult. I just mean he’s not a prince. He’s not a famous wizard. He’s just a little fairy.”
“If you’re going to be mean to someone, at least get the facts straight,” Tinkerbell said.
Beast had the audacity to actually snarl at her a little bit. He leaned forward, planting his hands on the counter where just minutes ago, Grandma had been making.
“Tell me, little Tinkerbell, which fact did I have wrong?”
“He’s not a fairy,” she balled her hands into fists, angry that Beast would accuse Peter of being a fairy just because he was tiny. It was true that he was smaller than the other boys, but that had never really seemed to bother Peter very much. He wasn’t tall and lanky. He wasn’t big and burly. He was just himself, and that was more than enough.
It had always been enough, at least to Tinkerbell.
“He’s just short. There’s nothing wrong with being short, Beast! You take that back! You take it back.”
She was getting pissed: out of control, really. That was what Beast did to her. How dare he call Peter a fairy? Not that there was anything wrong with being a fairy. There wasn’t, but Tinkerbell wasn’t ignorant. There were almost no male fairies left in the world. That was why most fairies fell in love with humans or wizards or even shifters.
Nobody expected two fairies to fall in love.
Beast stared at her, blinking.
“Yeah, what’s with the insults?” Wolf finally said. She seemed a little surprised at Beast’s behavior, too. Good.
“Do you really not know, or are you just messing with me?” Beast finally said.
“Know what?”
“Amy Tinkerbell, he is a fairy,” Beast said. “Peter Pan is literally 100% fairy.”
“He’s a wizard.”
“You can’t scent your own kind?” Beast cocked his head. “I mean, I’m a shifter and I know he’s a fairy, but you...you’re actually a fairy. Why can’t you detect his abilities?”
He looked at her like she was broken, like there was something wrong with her, and maybe there was.
Were Beast’s words true?
“How can that even be true?” She whispered. Suddenly, she wondered if there was a chance that Beast was telling the truth.
How could she have missed it, though?
Fairies were supposed to be able to find one another. That was the beauty of being a fairy. You were supposed to be able to locate one another. Wasn’t that the entire point of having special abilities? What good were having special skills if there was no one to see you use them?
“He didn’t tell you,” Wolf said. She looked at Tinkerbell with sympathy. It felt more like pity, and Tinkerbell hated that.
“How did you realize he was a fairy?” Belle asked diplomatically. She kept her voice even and cool. She didn’t sound angry the way Tinkerbell knew she would if she had said something.
“I could smell him,” Beast said simply.
“What do you mean?”
Beast pointed to his nose.
“Yeah, I know how you smell,” Tinkerbell was irritated, exasperated. “But what do you mean you smelled a fairy? Do fairies smell differently?”
“A little,” he shrugged. “Not in a bad way,” he added quickly.
“Gee, thanks.”
“It was on the first day,” Beast said. “He was doing something and he got excited. He almost had this glow about himself. He seemed to notice it and he calmed himself down really fast, but that made me curious, and I scented him.”
“And what did you smell?”
Beast looked at the other kids. Was he embarrassed he’d been caught smelling a fairy? Was he going to be a jerk to save face?
“He smelled like a lady fairy,” Beast said. “But with a more masculine slant to it. I’m not really sure how to describe it. It’s just very distinct. Fairies always smell like the earth.”
“Yes!” Wolf said. The other kids looked at her, and she seemed to realize what she was doing. She lowered her voice. “Yes,” she whispered. “I’m just excited that now I know what fairies smell like. Watch out, world. I’m ready to start smelling people.”
“Don’t be weird,” Red said, but he smiled at his girlfriend, and Tinkerbell felt a little pang of loneliness.<
br />
What if they couldn’t find Peter?
What if he died or got lost or never came back to school?
And what if he never found out what Tinkerbell really thought of him?
That was perhaps the scariest thing she could think of. What would she really do if he had gone and gotten himself killed? Or worse?
The others seemed to notice her discomfort because Belle reached for Tinkerbell’s shoulder and placed her hand on it.
“Hey, don’t worry. We’re going to find him.”
“How?”
“Let’s back up,” Beast said thoughtfully. “Has anything weird happened lately?”
“You mean besides Tinkerbell seeing Hook and Peter only to discover that it was someone impersonating Hook?” Wolf asked.
“Like that,” Beast said.
“We were wondering if you knew of any legends surrounding the school,” Wolf said. “Are there any ghosts that haunt the campus?”
Beast shrugged and looked around the lobby. It was basically empty. Pretty much everyone was getting ready for tests the next week, so the entire school had taken to wild study sessions in libraries and bedrooms. Nobody was hanging out. Everyone had their nose in a book or their hands in a cauldron, so the area was quiet, and they were alone.
“I don’t know much about haunting around the school,” he said carefully. “But even if there were ghosts, there’s a ghost lamp on every theater stage.”
Tinkerbell’s heart sank.
So it could have been a ghost.
Something could have impersonated Hook and then, what? Eaten Peter? How did it make him vanish? What had it done?
She wrapped her arms around herself and shook her head.
This just wasn’t fair.
Chapter 7
Hook and I managed to get out of the main castle and over to the dorms just before the rain started to fall.
“It’s going to be a nasty storm,” she said.
“I hope Peter’s not stuck in it.”
“Why do you care so much?” Hook looked at me. “I mean, no offense, but you two aren’t exactly friends.”
“So?” I asked. “You don’t have to be friends with someone to hope they’ll be okay, Hook. Besides, are you and Peter friends?”
Enchanted Academy Box Set Page 23
