Enchanter Witch Academy

by Paige Stonebank

  “After,” he agreed, then held out a hand coated in flames.

  My flames instantly coated my own hand and I reached out, shaking his. Our magic mingled, dancing around our hands like old friends, finally reunited.

  “Also,” he said, shuddering when we released each other’s hands, “let go of that damned magic of yours. It gives me anxiety.”

  “What?”

  “You know,” he said, waving his hands in the air, “let it loose. It should be free, like waves. You have an ocean of power that you’re keeping in a fish bowl. Let it go.”

  “I don’t.” I stumbled over my words, glaring at the ballerina who nodded at me, agreeing with him. “I don’t know how.”

  “Don’t worry, Little Red.” He grinned, walking to the window. The phoenix’s beak moved, as if whispering something in his ear. He glared at the bird before turning back to me. “We’ll teach you how to let loose in no time.”

  “Oh, you’re going to train me, now?”

  He shrugged, throwing his legs over the windowsill. “I mean, sure, if that’s what you want to call it.”

  “What would you call it?”

  He grinned again, and it was the sort of grin that made my stomach turn. It was the kind of smile that won the hearts of every teenage girl in the world, a smile that broke hearts and inspired dreams. “I call it an adventure.”

  And just like that, he hopped out of the window.

  I gasped and ran toward it, expecting to see a misshapen body crumpled on the ground. I didn’t even give it a second thought how he’d gotten up there in the first place. But he was just waiting for me at the bottom, waving. It was too dark to see his face, but his phoenix lit up enough of him to see his smirk. Only his smirk.

  When I turned around, the ballerina had her arms crossed over her chest, a flaming eyebrow raised. “What?” I said defensively. “He’s cute.”

  “Hey, I’m not judging,” she said as she followed me to bed. “He’s better than”—she made a show of shuddering—“Damien. That boy gives me the creeps.”

  “You’re a magical entity,” I pointed out. “You’re not supposed to get the creeps.”

  “And you are a woman whose life is at risk. You’re not supposed to get feelings for a boy.”

  “I’m not!” I didn’t bother changing clothes as I got into bed. There were more important things to worry about.

  “Mmmhmm,” she said, nestling into my neck. “I’m just saying, the boy is cute.”

  I sighed. “He is also dangerous.”

  “Yes, but what woman in history has ever been able to resist danger?”

  Chapter 19: Long Leashes

  Dinner the next night was absolutely awful. It was truly the most disgusting thing this place had ever put on my plate. Zucchini and eggplant, the two demon-spawn vegetables, on one plate. A true horror.

  “This is the first time that I’ve ever seen you pick at your food like you’re Wendy,” Patrick noted, jabbing Wendy in the ribs with his elbow. She glared at him.

  “This is gross,” I complained, my stomach grumbling. “I’d honestly rather eat a week-old mac and cheese.”

  “To be honest,” Nina said, shrugging, “with all the crap they put in the mac and cheese, it would probably still taste exactly the same a week later.”

  Her joke didn’t make me feel any better about my situation. In fact, it only made me hungrier. I would have killed for a plate of mac and cheese right about then. The ballerina hopped on the table to take a sniff of the contents of my plate and made a dramatic gagging gesture. “Do they cook the eggplant in sweaty socks? How do you humans even eat these things?”

  “Well,” Damien said from beside me, “not everyone can… Wait, what do you live on?”

  My familiar rolled her eyes. “Roasted human flesh,” she answered sarcastically, using my arm to climb back on my shoulder. “Male flesh, preferably. They crunch the best.”

  “Okay,” said Patrick, pushing his plate away from his body. “That’s my appetite gone.”

  “Agreed,” said a voice from behind me—a voice that made my blood turn to ice and then slowly melt as my veins became fire. I turned to find Margot behind me, her face twisted in a cruel smile. “I also lose my appetite whenever I see this one.” She flicked my hair, and I could have sworn the room grew silent.

  “Maybe you should look at me more often, then,” I countered, balling my fists. My knuckles turned white. “You look like you could benefit from skipping a few meals.”

  “Are you calling me fat?”

  “No,” I shrugged, turning back around to face the table. “I just think that if you eat less, you’ll have less shit to escape from your mouth.”

  “Excuse me?”

  I turned to Wendy. “Don’t you find it funny that the mean bitches in school can say whatever they want to whoever they want, but as soon as someone says something back, they get offended? It really gets tiring, Margot. At least when you fling insults around, be prepared to get some back. Trust me, there’s a lot about you that people can insult.”

  “You can’t talk to me like that—”

  “See, there you go again.” I rolled my eyes. “When you start a war, be prepared to finish it the same way. Don’t play the victim when the enemy fights back to defend itself.”

  There was silence, some scraping of plates, and then…

  “Lia,” Wendy warned, but I was one step ahead.

  I grabbed Margot’s hand without thinking twice, sensing it above my head. She was holding a plate of food, ready to turn it over and drop it on me. I held her hand in place as I got to my feet and turned to face her. She was taller than me, but in that moment, I felt twice her size. The plate dropped to the floor, breaking on impact.

  You could hear a pin drop in the dining hall. No one intervened, and I was grateful for it. This gave me the chance to give her a piece of my mind, to scare her off. I let go of her wrist, looking at her, challenging her. Her nostrils flared.

  I didn’t think she would stoop so low as physical violence, but I was mistaken. Her hands were circled in sparks, zapping and cracking as she raised her fist. I caught her hand before it could reach my face, and the sparks disappeared when my hand turned to flame. It wasn’t hot enough to burn her, to do any permanent damage. I wasn’t an idiot. However, there was nothing wrong with scaring her a little. I let the flames eat my entire arm, and then the other. Fire rose like walls around us, trapping us inside. There was no way anyone could get through the flames. No one could get in, and no one could get out.

  “Why don’t you tell me how weak I am again, Margot?” I let go of her hand and she clutched it, unable to figure out how I was able to absorb her sparks. They weren’t nearly as painful as she wanted people to believe they were.

  “Let me out of here,” she said, her voice a little panicked.

  “Tell me, Margot, was that what Erica said when you locked her in that bathroom stall, hmm? Did she beg you to let her out?” She didn’t answer, so I stepped forward, raising my voice. “Answer me!”

  “Yes,” she stuttered.

  “And before you pushed Nate into the fountain, did he ask you not to?”

  “Yes—”

  “Did that stop you?”

  “No—”

  “Then what makes you think that it will stop me?” I felt powerful, more powerful than I had ever felt in my entire life. “The one person you went out of your way to torment?”

  “Help!” she yelled, too scared to touch the flames around her. The idiot. If she had touched it, she would have been perfectly fine. “Can anyone hear me?”

  “They can hear you,” I assured her, examining my nails. “They just choose not to come to your rescue. Do you know why?”

  “Because they’re afraid of you?”

  I laughed. “No, because they hate you. Everyone in this school hates you, and it’s your own fault. This just proves it. People will put their lives and reputation at risk for the people they like. My friends have defended
me against you since day one. You know why? Because I am not a complete jerk to everyone I meet.”

  She started tearing up and I rolled my eyes. “It’s a little late for tears, Margot. Any last words?”

  “Wait, what? You can’t kill me.”

  “I won’t,” I clarified. As if reading my mind, the ballerina turned into something else. Something misshapen and twice the size of a normal person. “But she might. See, familiars are very protective of their casters, and you, Margot, have been the single nastiest being in this place. What should stop her from killing you right now?”

  “Please, please, I don’t want to die.”

  I stepped closer to her; my mouth was next to her ear now. “Then tell me this… Did you start the fire in the greenhouse? And tell me the truth, Margot. I’ll know if you’re lying.”

  “What? No? That wasn’t me, I swear. I would never go that far.”

  I couldn’t decide if it was the answer I wanted or not. She was telling the truth, which meant there was a teacher out to get me… Perhaps the very one that accused me in the first place. She seemed like the sort of person who would join the Dark Brotherhood. Yes, she would be the most obvious answer.

  I shrugged. “I suppose there’s nothing left to do now.”

  Margot screamed when the creature’s maw opened.

  She was still screaming when the walls were taken down and the ballerina and I were already back in my seat. Her screaming only stopped when she heard a chorus of laughter.

  “Leave me alone from now on, Margot,” I said simply, and took a bite of the zucchini.

  Gods, I hated zucchini.

  Chapter 20: Advice from an Old Fool

  “I don’t have the words to tell you how disappointed I am in you.” The headmistress paced my room, her heels clickety-clacking with every step she took. It was mind numbing, having to listen to that. I was certain that there was nothing worse than a disappointed parent, but that sound… that was the sound of trouble.

  I sat on my bed, watching her as she chewed on a perfectly manicured nail. That was probably a habit I had picked up from her, then. Children adapt to their surroundings very easily. They take on characteristics of the people around them, too. It would have been an interesting observation, had I not been the person on the receiving end of that glare.

  As a child, that glare had been what nightmares were made of. There was no way I dared disobeyed her, because I couldn’t stand the glare. It spoke louder than anything she could have said or did. I never understood how she managed to do that. It was truly remarkable. I supposed she did have many, many years to practice it on the kids at the academy before I came along. She had a lot of time to master the art of the glare.

  I looked over to the ballerina, who was sitting in the window, pretending like she hadn’t even been remotely involved in the evening’s happenings.

  “I don’t have to tell you that she was the one who started it,” I said, crossing my arms. “She’s been tormenting me for years. She’s been tormenting all of us for years, but no one has done a single thing about it. Not until now, anyway.”

  “That doesn’t give you a reason to bully her,” the headmistress snapped, freezing mid-step to turn to me.

  “I wasn’t bullying her,” I defended myself. “She wanted to empty a plate of food on my head and I stopped her. After that, I asked her a private question, which she answered, and I took down the walls directly after.”

  Yes, perhaps I was sugarcoating things a little, but I was not afraid to bend the truth slightly. Not where Margot was concerned. I wanted her to suffer the way everyone else in the school has suffered for years. I wasn’t going to “do the right thing.” Screw the right thing. She had to get a taste of her own medicine for once.

  “She said that you summoned a monster to eat her.”

  I nearly burst out laughing, but I knew that would have gotten me into even more trouble with the headmistress. I found it funny that Margot had gone running to the headmistress as soon as she’d realized everyone was laughing at her, while she called everyone else a snitch whenever they told on her. She was an immature brat. I hated her. I hated people like her so much. It made me wonder what kind of parent would raise a girl like her and let her get away with everything.

  I raised an eyebrow at the headmistress, not amused. “I can’t stand her, but would I really have her eaten?”

  “You wouldn’t have her eaten,” she agreed in that monotone voice of hers. “But you would scare her.”

  “Exactly. So why am I in trouble and not her?”

  “Because I raised you better than this,” she said, her voice rising now. “What must everyone think of you, when you go on acting like a child?”

  Right, so it wasn’t about Margot at all. It was about her image being ruined.

  “So, because you raised me,” I started, shaking my head. I was so sick of thinking carefully about every word I said, so sick of keeping everything inside. “Because you’re worried about what people might think of you, Margot gets to do whatever the hell she wants? I should just take it?”

  “I am the headmistress of this school! Her parents are on the committee. They can have me voted out of the academy entirely.”

  “You’re afraid for your job, so Margot can go around terrorizing everyone? And no one can do anything because her parents are on the committee?”

  “That’s not what I said,” she said softly now, sighing.

  “But it’s what you meant. I’ve stood by for years, watching her torment the entire school.” I got to my feet. “Not a single kid came to help her—not one. Why? Because she’s a bitch, and she deserves every nasty thing that comes her way. I hope the next kid gets their chance at her tomorrow, and then the next, and the next. I hope everyone she has ever harmed gets their chance at revenge. I don’t care who her parents are. I have more important things on my plate, like people actually trying to kill me. I don’t have time to deal with her childish behavior. Her ego is bruised, and that’s why she went to you. I didn’t summon any monsters, and I definitely didn’t send anything to eat her. I told her to stay away from me and I asked her if she was the one behind the fire. That’s it.”

  “I can sense something different in your magic,” she said, studying me. “It’s wild. I don’t like it.”

  “Of course you don’t like it,” I huffed, crossing my arms. “You don’t like anything that’s not fully under control. I was looking for control this entire time, and that was my problem. I’ve followed your advice and it’s nearly cost me my life, multiple times. The burnout was because I was trying to control it. Flames aren’t meant to be controlled. They’re merely meant to be lit in the right places.”

  “Does that Abernathy boy have anything to do with this?”

  How did I tell her that, yes, Sebastian had everything to do with it? How did I tell her that he was the one who’d made me realize that keeping such a tight hold on the leash on my magic was a bad idea? How did I tell her that everything she had taught me over the years was wrong, that my magic wasn’t supposed to be controlled?

  Mr. Henry understood. It seemed like he was the only one who did.

  How did I tell her that I went against what she told me and decided to trust Sebastian, instead of spying on him like she’d asked? There were things that I just couldn’t tell her, not without disappointing and upsetting her. There were few things as bad as disappointing the headmistress, and even though I was in deep crap with her because of Margot, everything concerning Sebastian would have just been the cherry on the cake.

  “None of this has anything to do with him,” I lied. “He hasn’t even been around again.”

  She saw straight through my lie. “This isn’t a game, Cornelia. This isn’t some sort of fairy tale. This is your life that you’re playing with.”

  “I am not playing with anything,” I argued. “It seems like I’m the only one doing anything about the organization that is after my life. It seems like I am the only one doing anything
to defend me. The Dark Brotherhood, Margot… Your way hasn’t gotten us anywhere. We are still no smarter than we were before we knew about the Dark Brotherhood. There’s still no sign of progress. At least I was taking action. If that boy betrays me, I could fight him, and I am pretty sure that I would win. If he betrays me, I wouldn’t be angry that I trusted him. I’d rather regret trusting someone than regret not trusting them.”

  “I can’t stop that spitfire heart of yours from making decisions,” she said as she walked toward the door. Her face was void of any emotion. That was how I could tell that she was furious. “But heed my warning, Cornelia. It’s either going to be your magic or that boy that will kill you, before the Brotherhood even comes close.”

  “I disagree,” I said, looking her straight in the eyes. “I believe that those two things are the only things that will be keeping me alive.”

  Chapter 21: Midnight Visit

  There was a different sort of fright that came with being half asleep and being rudely woken up.

  When a person was awake, the recovery time was fast, and your brain had the ability to quickly assess the situation. Once your brain had given the all-clear, your body relaxed and that was the end of it.

  But when you were half asleep, one foot in your dream and the other half aware of the real world, it took your body much longer to recover. Especially if it was in the dead of night and there was a bounty on your head.

  “Wake up,” he whispered, shaking me awake. “Hey,” he said a little louder.

  I startled awake, my heart hammering in my chest. The ballerina rolled off the pillow and crashed to the floor with a soft thump. I looked around the room, scanning it for intruders. I found only one on the bed next to me, a feline grin on his face.

  “God, Sebastian,” I said, holding a hand over my heart. I could feel it beating and didn’t think it had ever beaten so fast. I glared at him, nostrils flaring. “I should set you on fire right here where you sit. You can’t just come in here like this! People want me dead, you know.”