Enchanter Witch Academy

by Paige Stonebank

  “Mr. Henry had this idea that I could do it and what do you know? I could. Now I’m stuck having to figure out how exactly I am going to hide it.”

  “Hide it?” I couldn’t read Damien’s face now. It was unsettling. “Why would you hide it? It’s amazing! You’re the only witch alive that can actually summon familiars. Why don’t you want to show that off?”

  “Because I am already a bloody freak,” I pointed out, turning back to the pantry door. I was already fighting my own battles in my head about this topic. I didn’t need to fight with him, too.

  “What’s wrong with that? Being different isn’t a bad thing.”

  “It is when you are me and there’s an entire academy of witches out to get you,” I snapped. “You don’t know what it’s like.”

  “Lia,” he started, and I heard his footsteps get louder as he approached me. I turned to face him and found he was already directly behind me. “I do know what it’s like. I’m at the loner table for a reason, too, you know. Everyone’s afraid of me because with me within touching distance, they’re all powerless.”

  I swallowed. I’d never thought about it like that. In a way, everyone at our table was an outcast. Nina, because of her charming magic. People were afraid of her using her magic on them. They were afraid that if they liked her, it was her magic fooling around with their heads. Wendy was depressed and hated her own body. She could change anything around her, every inanimate object, every person’s appearance for a short amount of time, except her own. Her magic was useless on herself. What use was being able to change things if you couldn’t change the things about yourself that you hated the most? Kids steered clear of her because they didn’t know what she would turn them into. The further away they were, the safer they would be. And Patrick? He had the ability to speed up time for certain things. I was certain he could be powerful enough to use his magic on humans, too, but he preferred plants. There was no other person alive who could grow a plant quite as big and beautiful as Patrick. This didn’t make him weird, though. He was just a character. He didn’t care what anyone thought, and I supposed that was why he sat with us. He found us interesting, and he didn’t care who saw him with us.

  “Yes, but—” I started, not quite sure what exactly I wanted to say to him.

  “No buts,” he interjected, his eyes hovering on the familiar. “I expect to see you with her in class soon. I don’t think anyone would want to mess with you if they see her on your shoulder. Margot would shit herself.”

  I chuckled. “I don’t think even a familiar could knock her off her high horse.”

  “True, but we could do with the extra muscle. If we pushed together, we might just be able to knock her off.”

  We went silent then. I wasn’t sure what to say, and I was sure Damien took that as a win.

  We stood like that for a moment, and when I couldn’t take the deafening silence anymore, turned to the pantry once again. “Are you going to help me, or are you just going to stand there looking pretty?”

  “You think I’m pretty?” I could hear the grin in Damien’s voice and I pictured it in my mind’s eye without even having to look at him. I rolled my eyes.

  “Sometimes,” I confessed, opening the door to reveal shelves and shelves of food. The fridges were in the very back. “From certain angles.” I looked at him over my shoulder. “It also helps that the lighting is so bad.”

  “You little—”

  “Shh, we need to be quiet. Cook Magda usually gets up around one to get herself some leftovers and a loaf of bread.”

  “An entire loaf?” Damien’s eyes grew wide in horror.

  “You’re a boy,” I said, rolling my eyes again as I made my way through the shelves, grabbing ingredients as I went. “You’ve probably eaten more in one sitting.”

  “Cook Magda is the size of an imp. She hardly reaches my shoulder. How does she fit an entire loaf in that small body of hers?”

  I shrugged. “How should I know? I just look at chocolate and pick up three pounds.”

  “I think your body is perfect.”

  My stomach turned and I looked at him. Was Damien actually flirting with me? This was a game both of us could play. “Good, my booty is big just for your satisfaction.”

  Then he grinned, and despite everything I believed, everything I knew about relationships and how they ruined friendships, I didn’t pull back when Damien kissed me. Instead, I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him closer.

  Whether it was because of my acceptance, or the secret we now shared about the familiar and my midnight excursions to the kitchen, I didn’t know. All I knew was that I enjoyed it. I enjoyed being a normal girl, kissing a normal boy. For those few seconds, we weren’t sorcerers; we were humans. His touch deprived me of all flames, and I felt cold and empty. It felt good, mundane.

  When he pulled away, he was grinning. “Let’s get this snack up to your room,” he said, looking over his shoulder, his hand still lingering on my arm. “We couldn’t want Cook Magna to find us making out in the pantry, now would we?”

  “You call that making out?” I teased, opening the fridge door to examine its contents. “I don’t know, Dame, you’ll have to practice a little bit.”

  “I’d be more than happy to practice on you.”

  Chapter 10: A New Habit

  I tried not to make visiting the headmistress a habit. I didn’t enjoy the lingering stares of the passing students on their way to class. But this week, it seemed as though I just couldn’t stay away. I had to talk to her, I had to get advice from her. There was no one else that I could talk to—no one else I trusted, anyway. The headmistress raised me, after all. She was like a mother to me. Like a mother, yes. Because she was not my actual mother. That was a wound that I didn’t think I’d ever recover from.

  I slipped into her office without knocking, not wanting to stay in the hallway longer than was necessary. Especially not with the ballerina on my shoulder. It was still too early for the other students to be out and about. Usually, I wouldn’t have been up at this hour, either, but I hadn’t slept a wink the previous night. I’d just stared at the familiar, realization dawning on me. An actual familiar. I stared at her while she slept, certain that if I closed my eyes, she would disappear and I would wake up from a cruel nightmare.

  If I could summon a familiar, there was a chance that I could control my magic.

  It was exciting, but as dawn crept closer, the excitement turned into terror. Yes, I was terrified—terrified of letting the little ballerina out of my sight. I’d heard the stories about rogue familiars, plundering the surrounding villages and eating the livestock. The ballerina didn’t seem like the type of familiar to do such things, but she was fire, and there were a lot of flammable things in the academy. I was the only one with fire magic. If she did anything, I would be the only one to blame, and I didn’t need that on my plate, as well. I had enough to worry about just trying to control my own dreams; I couldn’t worry about the damned familiar, too. We still haven’t spoken a word. She seemed perfectly content with that, but it gnawed at me. It felt as though there was something I was supposed to say to her. Surely there was something that was said in these situations.

  And then there was Damien, who was the right boy at the wrong time. I liked him, I did, very, very much. But now was not the time to distract myself with cute boys. I had to focus on one problem at a time. I had to control my magic before I could even think about a relationship because if I couldn’t, my magic would be stripped, and I’d be a hollow shell. I knew that if I developed feelings for someone or something, that was going to be even harder to go through with. I was certain that I would fight, and it was not a fight that was going to end well. No—it was going to end, very, very badly.

  “Slow down, Cornelia,” the headmistress said, straightening her skirts as she emerged from the back room. This was not her living quarters… Had she expected me, and come here before I did?

  It wouldn’t have surprised me. I stopped as
king such things a long time ago. She was something that no one could figure out. No one could read her. She did things for reasons known only to her, and it was impossible to understand what those reasons were.

  “Your mind is all over the place; it’s like there’s a swarm of bees in my office.” She looked at me, tilted her head to one side as she noticed the familiar, then took a step back. “My, you’ve made a new friend.”

  The ballerina got to her feet on my shoulders, bowing low. The headmistress bowed her head, as well.

  “We need to talk,” I said, pointing to the familiar.

  “Why, yes, I believe it is a matter to discuss,” she agreed, not taking her eyes off the ballerina. I went to sit on those damned uncomfortable chairs again, but she shooed me toward the large couch by the window. I remembered seeing her on this very couch as a child. She had a perfect view of the sunrise from here, and she loved to watch it. “Not this early in the morning. Those chairs are for after the third cup of tea.”

  “Not there yet?” I asked, grinning. She was a real teapot. I was surprised that she wasn’t holding a cup in her hand that very moment.

  She gave me a face that told me not to go there, and I grinned even wider as I took my seat. “No, not quite yet. Now,” she said and took a seat next to me, turning to face me. It was a casual thing for her to do and it was odd seeing her like this. She was usually too proper, too ladylike to be this informal. “Tell me about her.”

  So, I did. I told her everything about my session with Mr. Henry and the volcano of liquid fire. I told her about the way I had molded the ballerina, the tingle I’d felt in my hands as I’d sculpted her face. The headmistress didn’t say a word the entire time. She listened intently, her eyes darting from me to the ballerina, who had now made herself comfortable on my lap and gone back to sleep.

  “Wait, so she can talk?” she asked, her chin pinched between her thumb and index finger. The sun was beginning to rise now, and it made her blonde hair seem as if it was pure gold. I nodded. “And what did she say?”

  “Not much,” I admitted, looking down at her. Her weight was already a comforting thing. “We haven’t spoken since I parted ways with Mr. Henry. She seems content just staying quiet and I don’t know what to say to her, to be honest.”

  “I can imagine that.” She nodded. “This is amazing, Cornelia. It is… it’s just—” She paused, contemplating which word was the best to use. I’d never seen her like this. She always knew exactly what to say and when to say it, but I could tell this had caught her off-guard.

  “I knew you were powerful, Cornelia, but this is on a completely different level,” she finally admitted. “I can sense it now that you’re here, your power. I think you unlocked something when you summoned her. There’s a well of power inside of you that we haven’t even begun to explore yet. Everything we thought we knew about you is just the tip of the iceberg.”

  “You mean, the power that everyone is so afraid of isn’t even the real power?” My heart sank. I couldn’t even control the power I thought I had, never mind the power that I didn’t know about.

  A sense of panic washed over me. I knew it would be hard to get a hang on the power I thought I had, but with Mr. Henry, I’d honestly thought I had a shot. I’d actually believed that there might have been a chance for me not to end up as a husk. But now, when even the headmistress seemed worried, I didn’t know if I even stood a chance anymore. The headmistress had once told me that my magic was enough to set the whole school on fire. But now, if it was much more powerful than she thought, was it enough to set a block of house on fire? Maybe two blocks? Was it enough to set an entire town on fire? This was dangerous, this was bad. This was really, really bad.

  The ballerina awoke, sensing my discomfort. She looked at me as if she could tell what was wrong. “You’re afraid of me,” she said, and the headmistress and I both stared at her. “I’ve known this since the moment you created me. I can sense it, you know; the fear? It makes me uneasy. It makes the magic stir deep within your belly.”

  “Extraordinary,” the headmistress breathed. All I could do was stare at the ballerina, and nod.

  “I’m not the one you should be afraid of. I am a part of you. I will never harm you; it is everyone else you should be afraid of. The ones that will want to take me away from you.”

  The headmistress nodded. “She has a point. If word gets out that you have a familiar, people will come for you.”

  “People? What people?” There were people that would look for me? And if they found me, what would they do? Kill me? Strip me of my magic? Somehow, I was almost certain that it was the former.

  “People who dabble in forces much darker than you or I can even imagine.”

  The ballerina floated up to the edge of the couch and perched herself on the highest part. She watched the sun through the window. I could have sworn her flames flickered.

  “So, Mr. Henry—” I started, but cut myself off, unsure of how to finish my question.

  Has he doomed me? Was his fascination with familiars blinding him to the fact that it would put my life in danger? Or did he simply not care? I was angry at him for unlocking this power. I was the one who had to sit with it now, not him. I was the one who had to control it, who had to live with the guilt if anything ever went wrong. He didn’t have this burden on his shoulders. I’d had a burden before the familiar, and now that burden was even greater.

  “Did only what he thought was best,” the headmistress finished, sighing. I could tell she was as annoyed as I was. “And, in a way, it was. This can either save your life or cost everyone else’s—it could go either way. But, rather us know the extent of your magic than none of us knowing and you losing control. I couldn’t bear losing another student to the flames.”

  “Fiona?”

  The headmistress nodded.

  “What happened to her?” I inquired, knowing what her answer was going to be.

  “It is not my story to tell.” Well, it was worth a shot.

  “So, now what?” I asked, tired of the silence that fell between us.

  The headmistress looked at me, and the look in her eyes frightened me more than any dark forces that might come my way. “I don’t know, Cornelia. I thought I had everything figured out, but clearly, I do not. I will talk to Mr. Henry and get his opinion on the matter. Until then, I would suggest you keep a low profile. I’ll excuse you from classes until I have figured something out.”

  “What is it that you aren’t telling me?”

  She averted her eyes. “There’s an organization that is using every recourse they have to bring darkness on the world. They haven’t yet found the tool to delve even deeper into their plans, but now… now, I think they might come after you. You might be the one thing they need to dominate the world.”

  “I won’t help them,” I said, instantly on the offensive. “I’d rather they kill me.”

  “I’m afraid they won’t give you that choice, sweet girl. If they catch you, they will make you do their bidding, whether you want to or not. They have ways, dark and devious ways. This is not a matter of want and don’t want.” She paused and looked out the window. “We have to be smart about this. We have to stay one step ahead of them. No one knows about the familiar yet, which means that word probably hasn’t gotten out yet.”

  “Actually,” I confessed, cringing, “Damien saw her last night. He knows.”

  “Well then, I suggest finding him as soon as possible and making sure he won’t tell anyone.”

  “What about her?” I asked, pointing at the ballerina.

  “I don’t need a permanent babysitter,” she said, crossing her arms.

  “You can leave her with me for now. Find Mr. Jensen and make sure he won’t talk. Then, you get her after everyone has gone to bed and you stay in your room until further notice. I’ll have someone bring food up to your room and tell them to leave it outside your door. Just pretend to be sick and hide her when you open the door to accept it. Otherwise, that door sta
ys shut.”

  “What am I supposed to do in the meantime?” I asked, my voice whinier than I intended it to be.

  “Hope and pray that no one finds out about you.”

  Chapter 10: Secrets

  It felt weird not having the familiar close to me. It had only been a few hours that she’d been around me, but already it felt as if there was a part of me that was missing now that I was away from her. There was a sort of emptiness in my stomach. It made me feel sick.

  I didn’t like this. I didn’t like this at all. But I couldn’t take her with me when I went searching for Damien. The risk was too big. Second period would end soon, and the hallway would be crowded and tearing at the seams. Too many eyes, too many possibilities, too many questions. No, I had to endure the emptiness until I could get back to her tonight. And then I had to figure out how to wean myself off of her. But how? How would I even do that? Was it even possible? Perhaps it wasn’t even worth trying. There were bigger things to worry about and, when I did need to control my magic, having her around would be greatly beneficial. Still, this damned empty feeling… it was going to drive me insane.

  I didn’t know whether or not I should have been happy that I summoned her or to be afraid of it. I had been afraid of my magic for such a long time that I didn’t even know how to be afraid of anything else. As a child, there were no monsters under my bed to haunt me. There were no monsters in my closet, either. No, my fear has always been of the monster inside of me—the one made of flame. It was the monster that no caretaker could get rid of, or convince me that it didn’t exist. It was as real as I was.

  When I’d told the headmistress about it, crying and running to her, getting into her bed with her so she could comfort me, she’d told me that it was going to be okay. She’d never told me that it wasn’t going to hurt me, that it was only in my head. It’s always been a shadow that loomed over me, knowing that it was a monster that I could never get away from. It was a monster that would chase me anywhere I went, and it would break down any door I closed to get away from it. It was a serial killer that never gave up, no matter how much I begged it to. But now—now, there was something else. Something that the monster that I was so afraid of couldn’t stand a chance against, no matter how much it grew, no matter how big it got inside of me. If the headmistress was correct, which she always was, my magic would not be strong enough to resist their power. I would be a slave to them, a weapon. My monster would not stand a chance against their power.