Hallow Graves

by Amanda A. Allen

  …maybe someone had tried to kill me. I didn't know the spell well enough to know what they'd been up to. I am sure, if I called my mother, she would have pointed out that this wouldn't have happened at Grace College. So...I didn't call her. Or Daddy. Or Hazel.

  Instead, I slid down the door to my dorm room, took deep, steadying breaths and tried to think. I closed my eyes and delved the building. Nothing. Nothing. Most people weren’t here yet. Most of the beds—for witches or not—were empty. It was early to be there, I’d come the first day I could. Something I regretted now. When I hit the fourth floor, I felt someone sleeping in the dorm mentor’s room and another person on the far side of my floor.

  Finally, when it seemed that the building was clear, I dropped the killing spell and created a ghost light. Only I would see anything with the light. For everyone else, if there was anyone else, the room was a dark cave. I focused on my magic and lifted my bed so that it was out of the way. Once it was, I drew a pentacle on the floor placing protection wards at each of the five points. In the center, I placed the emblems for peace and insight. After a second thought, I placed comfort and clarity wards underneath the primary runes.

  Was it excessive? Yes. If I didn’t do it after what had happened, would my sister beat me to death? No. Because my mother would have already taken care of it.

  What in the hells had even happened? I felt like I had imagined the last hour, but knew I hadn’t. When the protections snapped around my bunk, I inverted the sign of my work so that my spell couldn’t be seen and released the fold of space to return my bed to its place.

  Running at 2:00 a.m. was exhausting, but I’d have stayed awake wondering what the black fire was if I hadn’t burned through as much magic as I had. Even then, I didn’t know if I would be able to sleep or if I even should. But, the weight of those spells was rolling over me even as my mind tried to race ahead.

  Could that black flame have been something benign? No. No, I knew it hadn’t been benign. You don’t spell people without their permission. Especially in the middle of the night in the campus’s equivalent of the woods. Was I overreacting? I didn’t think so. I could call my Mother…but …how would that conversation go?

  Hey, mother…I went running in the dark by myself, and I think someone might have thrown a spell at me that could have hurt me. Or maybe I'm paranoid…so I was wondering what do you think? By the way, I responded with a killing spell. No. No. No. I closed my eyes. Was I leaving?

  I wasn’t sure. But if I was, where would I go? I couldn’t go back to Sage Island. Not and ever trust myself to leave again. I’d lost my chance at every other school—you couldn’t renege after declining exclusive witch schools.

  So…if I left St. Angelus…I’d lose my wish to graduate from a witch college. Probably forever. Certainly for a year. Maybe I could apprentice with another coven…but I was a little bit, as my sister said, too Hermione for that. I loved studying witchcraft, I didn’t want to go bohemian. That was my sister. That wasn’t me. I called her a second later.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “What happened?” she asked, knowing without explanation that something was wrong.

  I didn’t tell her, I only said, “If you had the chance to join Incantaneous, but you would be taking a big risk to do so, would you do it?”

  Incantaneous was an indie rock band that was made up of witches. Sometimes their songs were spells. Being in their band was my sister's wildest dream. I felt the flutter of her magic across my aura.

  “Your adrenaline is pretty spiked,” she said without answering.

  “What would you do?”

  “Are you asking me if I think you should leave school after whatever happened to you?”

  “Yes.” I said knowing she didn’t need an explanation. She was Bran.

  “Girl up,” she told me and hung up on me.

  “Girl up,” I told myself. She’d hung up, so she wasn’t any part of me leaving school. Which meant…

  …she thought I would. Oh no. No. No. I was staying. I had placement tests tomorrow. And I had to rock them if I was going to get into Dream Magic and Runes like I wanted. Which meant, I was going to girl up hard and not spend the night trying to stay awake and jumping at every sound. The wards I’d placed around my bed would keep me safe from about everything. I needed to trust myself and my magic. I started counting star formations in my head and relating the basic spells and potions that were best brewed when the star formations aligned in the most beneficial manner. I needed to sleep to rock those placements, and I was as safe as I was going to get. I fell asleep before I was through the first form. It worked every time.

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  I am good at witchcraft. Super good to be perfectly honest. But that didn't mean I had a clue what that black flame was, and I didn't have a way to find out.

  I didn’t have a laptop yet. I couldn’t get to the websites I needed on my smartphone. I tapped my finger against my desk. My sister wasn’t going to answer the phone again until she was sure that I wasn’t leaving school. In fact, when I rubbed my mind along our bond--imagine a cat rubbing against your legs--she was disconnected and concentrated on something that sparked my interest without knowing what it was. I didn't know what she's up to, but it was nefarious given the feel of her mind.

  There was no way I could call my mother or my old coven leader. The library didn’t open for two more days, and the computer labs were going to be two more days beyond that. I stretched until my finger was tapping the underside of my bunk as I stared around the little room. It was tiny. Horrible tiny, closet tiny, prisoners probably had more space. Maybe. But regardless, my things were stacked as high as the ceiling in the corner. I needed to make some decisions. I needed to unpack and prep for my placement tests. Obviously, my thoughts were focused only on that black flame.

  What was its purpose? Why would someone try to spell me? Even a benign spell…it was creepy and totally against all the unspoken witchcraft rules to throw a spell at anyone. And I did not believe that what was happening was anything other than shady. Paranoid? Maybe.

  It was true that a few witches would spell others. All the time even. There were two witches back home who truth serumed people without warning. But it was still agreed by the witch community that that type of thing wasn’t okay.And in the night? Where anyone who did it would have no idea who I was. I would have been any random passerby. Probably the person could tell that I was female given my long black ponytail. Maybe this was some roofie thing?

  Except…except that black flame. That had been no roofie. And that would be bad enough on its own. But that spell…I was skin-crawlingly freaked out and experienced enough to know that it was important. But I was also not as worried as I probably should be. After all…my mother had spent my entire life making sure that I had an “arsenal” of witchcraft. So…I kind of…did. I took a deep breath, thrust my fingers into my hair, and told myself to girl up.

  *

  I was running through basic spell formations and doing the equivalent of magical flexing for my tests when the Dorm Mentor knocked on my door. He’d been there to let me in and give me my key and had disappeared while I’d lugged my things upstairs. I hadn’t seen him in the days that had passed. He was a witch by the feel of him against my aura and the spark I could sometimes catch at the corner of my eye. And he was a cliche with dreadlocks, a beard, and a general feel that he had not showered all summer long. When I peeked through the open door, he was frowning at me.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Veruca Jones.”

  “Felix I don’t know your last name.”

  “Curfew is 10 pm until the semester starts.”

  “Yes,” I said without inflection. Clearly he knew I had been running in the night. Did he know anything else? Was it him in the woods? Perhaps he was responsible for that black flame.

  “Don’t get caught out after that.”

  “Gotcha.”

  I wanted to thrust my magic into his a
ura and rip out whether he’d been the one who had spelled me. But…if he hadn’t, that wouldn’t be good. And if he had, and he was better than me…no one was here to know what happened next. He cocked his head, examining me. He could see, I was sure, that something was wrong with me.

  But all he said was, “Good. We’re done here.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  And then he pushed the door open and said, “Look I don’t care what you do. And if you need to run like a freak through the middle of the night, then I say do it. You’re an adult. I’m an adult. We’re paying through the nose to be here. Just don’t get caught.”

  “Kay.”

  He could have known I was running because of my clothes. It didn’t mean that he was the one who had followed me.

  “You’ve got a good poker face," he said.

  I had to admit, if he weren't the one spelling me, I could see being friends with him. That utter lack of care about how I'd broken the rules made me happy.

  “We should play poker,” I said. I missed Bran. I missed late night potion and chore poker. I missed her face, and I wanted to know what she was up to.

  “I cheat.”

  “So do I.”

  They had played three rounds before he said, “You’re a witch too.”

  “Yup,” she said.

  On Sage Island, people knew about witchcraft. She suspected that this little town was the same and probably most of the college. But she hoped it was like on Sage Island, where people weren’t in your face about being able to throw a love potion down.

  She and Felix were pretty neck and neck in the game. He was good at cheating. I had to hand it to him. But I wasn’t losing that twenty bucks.

  “You got a scholarship, so I assume that means you’re pretty good at magic since you aren’t a Hallow.”

  “I don't even know what you said means. But yes, I am pretty good at witchcraft.”

  I wasn’t humble. Autumn Jones’s daughter didn’t do humble. Even this one. Her sister, Bran, would have said, damn straight.

  “This room is terrible,” I told him.

  “Scholarship kids get the crap rooms,” he agreed. “Other people pay extra for better rooms. You fill the holes.”

  “Lovely,” I replied, putting down three aces and taking my twenty back.

  Obviously, the room was small. I kind of thought I’d resigned myself to small until I looked into this glorified closet and then remembered my room back home. This room had two loft beds each with a tiny desk and shelf underneath. We were playing on the floor between the two beds. Our knees were almost touching. I sat in the comfort of my wards—the protection spells I’d laid—while he was more towards the missing roommate’s side.

  At the end of each bed was a rickety dresser and a closet so small they might as well call it a locker. There were two small windows that didn’t seem to know they were supposed to be letting in light. In between each loft bed, there wasn’t room for two people to stand shoulder to shoulder.

  “This room isn’t crap. It’s horrible and disgusting.” I said casually.

  I had already taken the less terrible side of the room, and I didn’t even care that my roommate, whoever she was, was getting the massive shaft. It was possible that my mother had been right that I hadn’t looked further into St. Angelus than the scholarship. She wasn’t of course. I’d looked at the pictures of the campus on my phone and decided based on the Oak Grove.

  Felix shrugged and flipped his dreads over his shoulder. Was he kidding me right now?

  “This room also,” I told him casually, “Doesn’t have enough space for all that nasty hair.”

  He snorted and dealt a new hand with too much flair. I was going to lose my twenty if I wasn’t very careful through this hand. His aura had spiked just a bit.

  “When is my roommate coming?”

  “Miss Chrysanthemum Porter-Hallow, whose name is worse than yours, is scheduled to arrive in 5 days. When the normal people come.”

  My eyes narrowed, and I considered hexing him. But I had seen the anti-hex ring on his pinky. I could get past it, of course, but he’d know it was me, since apparently, only I was obsessive enough to come to school so many days before required. Which was seven days before classes started. Meaning I was here super, super early.

  “You can rent a study room. Each floor has five. They go quick. But they’re $150 a month.”

  I had it. Barely. Maybe I could get a job. I needed a job. It was part of the reason I’d come early.

  “$150.”

  “They sure are poor girl.”

  “You’re not a DM because you are rolling in cash,” I said as I palmed a card and slid it under my thigh.

  “You are a cold-hearted witch,” he said. He might have noticed. But he didn’t seem to have.

  “I want a study room,” I said. I wanted a second location for sleeping. I wanted someplace where I could figure out what that black fire was without anyone noticing. I wanted to be able to make some things that no student should be carrying around. And I didn’t need anyone to know that I was going to be doing that.

  Besides, I knew myself well enough to know that I would go crazy if I couldn’t go somewhere and put my head between my knees and breathe. There wasn’t room for someone to bend over in this room without invading the other side. Plus my stuff wasn’t going to fit. I hadn’t been able to leave anything I wanted behind. Not with my mother, her anger, and that ambiguous sense of right and wrong that she possessed.

  Not to mention my sister. She’d have gone through every single thing I left behind to be sure she didn’t want it. It was why I’d seeded my leftovers with a couple of nasty spells and things of hers I’d taken forever ago. So, I decided to pay it. I picked the smallest study room after I scored my $20 back and an additional $17 from Felix.

  “You are stupid good at cheating,” Felix said when he was showing me the study rooms. I took the one in the corner. It was the smallest, but it had the best access to the light, and the sky and potions brewed better under the real light of the moon instead of the simulated light of illusions.

  I loved brewing. So much. I was good at it too. Damn good. Professional good. Hazel had told me that I could challenge every potion class and pass. My coven leader was rarely wrong, so I believed her. But I wanted to take the potion classes anyway. They’d either be easy A’s, or they’d teach me to look at potions through a different light.

  “What you got in there,” Felix asked as I dropped my witch messenger bag on the ground.

  “Stuff. I have to leave for a while. I have my placement tests today.” I spun and examined the room. There was an open space that had clearly been intended for pentacles. And those pentacles had been drawn here time and again. I opened my messenger bag and pulled out a box that was full of herbs. And then from a pocket, I pulled out a spool of twine.

  He watched as I hung herbs at each entry.

  “That you know to do that is interesting.”

  “I assume you thought I was some sort of idiot Freshman.”

  “You are an idiot Freshman,” he said without pause. “Maybe slightly less idiotic than the rest.”

  He lifted a roll of leather from my messenger bag and untied the strap holding it closed without asking. There was nothing to hide, but it irritated me that he dug through my things. Of course. It was why he was doing it. He unrolled the leather and found vial after vial in carefully arranged and padded slots. They were numbered, or they were color coded. On purpose. I was careful enough and devious enough that people didn’t need to know that I had seven vials of truth potion, a few love potions, and so many energy potions that even I could admit I had a problem.

  “Are these love potions?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You lonely?”

  “You combine a quarter dose of a love potion, half a dose of a clarity potion and three drops of the right energy potion, and you get an interesting result.”

  “Interesting?”

  “Interesting,”
I said. And it was all I was going to say.

  His head cocked again, and a true light of interest came into his eyes. I was certain then, he’d been bored, but I’d passed some sort of a test. “I might end up liking you, after all, Vee.”

  “It’s Rue,” I replied, deciding instantly to shed my horrible moniker—Veruca—for the nickname my sister had long since given me.

  “Even better. You’re a controlling freak, I can see. With a little too much bookworm in you.” His eyes were on my trunk of books.

  I made a face.

  But he carried on, “Listen well, whelp. This is college. It’s magic college even. You’re here to take your life over and make it yours. That means turning off your inner Velma and having some fun.”

  Was the shadow of my over-controlling mother lurking behind me?

  “What are you saying?”

  “Don’t forget to have fun. And don’t get in trouble. You get in trouble, I get in trouble. I’m not getting into trouble. Capiche?”

  I’d spent my entire life in trouble and been perfectly behaved. Without my mother trying to live my life, I expected that I’d probably be boring beyond belief. You know…when I wasn’t trying to kill people.

  “Capiche?” He repeated.

  “Gotcha,” I replied.

  “That doesn’t mean, of course, not to cause trouble. Just don’t get caught.”

  After he was gone, I pulled my bag forward. I had to leave soon, I’d scoped out the place I was supposed to go for my testing yesterday, but I had enough time to put emblems for a cleansing on the doorway and window of my room. On each wall and each floor, and then I opened the window to let the room air out. That wasn’t magic. That was good, old-fashioned common sense.

  *

  I didn’t expect a room full of computers for my witch testing. Let alone a program that had me identifying runes, ancient languages, and writing essays in Proto-Romanian and Latin. There were the typical math and writing tests. French, Health, Sciences.

  What happened at the end of things was what I expected. But I thought, perhaps, not everyone got to the point of performing spells. I did, though, and I had enough pride in my spellwork and abilities that I’d have been surprised not to reach that point. They brought me to a room where a woman with a bun at the base of her neck and a man with a too-pointed beard asked me to draw a pentacle. Martin Hallow and Loretta Longfellow were my testers, and if you’d imagined up in your head what a witch would look like, it would be those two.