by D. D. Chance
No Grim, but that didn’t mean I was alone. I slowed down, suddenly aware I was out in the open without any real clue where I was, while some freak-show Victorian-reenactor mugger person roamed around the city. Possibly not my best move. Something shifted in the shadows of the alley right beside me, but they were small somethings, I knew immediately. Too small to be human. I had heard that kind of sound before, unfortunately, a slithery, chittering skitter that made my skin crawl and my breath catch in my throat.
“Freaking fantastic,” I muttered, bracing myself as I turned. Monkey rats.
With earsplitting, high-pitched screams, the creatures attacked all at once, easily a dozen of them. I’d always called them monkey rats because I’d never wanted to look too closely to figure out their specific taxonomy, and rats were gross enough. They were each the size of a loaf of bread, with long skinny legs, longer tails, and crazy monkey faces, all teeth and squat noses and beady eyes. They were vicious but stupid, and I had my knife out, business end slashing wide, before the first one got within two feet of me.
At the first touch of the blade, the rat bastards exploded, which was disgusting but quick. I kept hacking, marking time with the sound of each new bubbling pop, and sustained only a few stinging bites along my forearm before I staggered out of the alley, the rest of the creatures cowering back, then retreating into the shadows.
“Nice change to have something run away from you, I bet.”
The voice was flat, mocking, and irritatingly familiar. I whirled around, knife still out. Grim stood on the other side of the opening to the alley, his arms folded over his massive chest. Only then did I notice the telltale chill in the air.
“Were you going to help at all? Or were you just getting pointers?”
“Those aren’t the predators I’m worried about.” He shrugged. “You seemed to be doing pretty well by yourself.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve had a lot of experience.” I wiped my blade off on my jeans, not missing his comment about predators. Had he been worried about that Victorian-dressed mugger hitting Newbury Street? “What do you think about the guy on the news?”
His lip curled. “I think there are a lot of indulged children in this neck of the woods who don’t have the sense to know what’s right in front of them.”
“Uh-huh.” I rolled my eyes, back to being irritated. “Pithy and smug, yet strangely unhelpful.”
Without warning, Grim moved, surging forward until he was barely six inches away from me, staring down into my eyes. His nostrils flared as if he was scenting me, the movement so foreign and feral, it made me shiver.
“You don’t even know what you are,” he muttered tightly.
“Oh yeah?” I countered, defaulting to bravado to combat the sudden spike of fear deep in my belly. “I suppose you’re going to enlighten me?”
A cruel smile stretched across his lips.
“Better hope it never comes to that. It would go very badly for both of us.”
Then he stepped away from me and melted into the shadows, leaving me alone in the alleyway with the chittering monkey rats behind me. Apparently, they hadn’t decided to leave after all—rare behavior for monkey rats. Something was clearly stirring them up. Before they could screw tight their courage to come flying out at me a second time, I jerked myself into motion and headed back to the Crazy Cup. After a day like this, I needed more coffee.
11
The next morning dawned bright and cheerful, with only a hint of the sultry weather coming our way with the rains that were promised over the next several days. I got up early and drank leftover coffee from the Cup, wolfing down a muffin as my gaze lit on the dishes now thoroughly dried in the rack by the sink.
I hadn’t had the heart to put them away yet, like remnants of a long-dried bouquet that you kept on the table for months because you didn’t know when the bud vase might get filled up again. The dishes that had survived had only held eggs and bacon and toast, but they’d also scored a few chips in places where they’d clattered to the floor in the midst of Tyler’s and my kiss. Those chips would hold a special place in my memory for a long time.
And now, I needed to sack up and go back to Wellington Academy. I’d told Tyler I would, and I found myself actually wanting to keep that promise.
Fortunately, no monsters, monster hunters, or snappily dressed muggers greeted me when I poked my head out the front door of my apartment. I trotted down the steps, deliberately scanning the tree line of the pocket park with an air of defiance. Nope. Nothing lurked in the shadows today.
I had a hard time even remembering the tall, lean figures I’d thought I’d seen among the trees. Maybe they’d also heard about the knife-wielding reenactor roaming the district and had decided to find safer haunts. Worked for me. It wasn’t the first time monsters had watched me from a comfortable distance. As far as I was concerned, if they stayed on their side of the street, nobody had to die.
It seemed to take me much longer than it should have to find the street where I knew the academy had to be. I finally broke down and entered the school’s name into Google, but nothing came up. It was like trying to find the Boston P.O. box Mom had written on her envelopes all over again, only this time, even more annoying.
Crisscrossing back and forth across Newbury and its leafy side streets, I’d almost given up when I saw the cobblestone road I’d noticed two nights before. Had it really been such a short time? Despite my run-in with Grim, nothing creepy had woken me in my apartment last night, and the tree people from the park hadn’t come any closer. Maybe the residual effects of Tyler’s visit were still protecting my personal space? I’d take it.
Once I was on the correct street, finding the opening to the academy was easy. I walked along a vine-covered wall and ducked beneath the archway, following the path onto the pristine campus. On this cheerful Boston morning, the campus seemed to sparkle like some sort of bizarre fairy tale kingdom, sunlight streaming through tree branches to create a dappled pattern on the cobblestone drive, the sidewalks alternately bathed in bright sunshine and gathering shadow.
I could see the large official university buildings in the distance, but even as I set out for them, they didn’t seem to get any closer. A trick of the eye, I was pretty sure, but what if…
I slowed. What if I wasn’t supposed to be here? What if Mom was right and I didn’t need formal instruction, that what would help me the most was what had helped me all this time, my instincts? Should I even attempt to be trained as a monster hunter, or would that throw off my mojo somehow? Was it possible to throw off your monster hunting mojo?
For only about the fifty-seven millionth time this month, I wondered what it would be like to be a normal girl, with normal questions and normal wants and needs. It seemed a little excessive that I should have to be worrying about monster hunting mojo when most students my age were worrying about junior year finals.
“Hey! Are you lost?”
I refocused sharply on the pretty, green-eyed redhead who had emerged from another sidewalk and now stood at the cobblestoned crossroads in front of me. She wore what I had to assume was Wellington’s traditional academy uniform, at least for the female students, a white button-down Oxford cloth shirt tucked into a plaid skirt, knee-high socks reaching all the way up to her lower thighs. She accessorized the look with tall gleaming black boots that somehow managed to look polished but not slutty. For that reason alone, I decided Wellington Academy must truly be a magical place.
“Oh. Ah…no. I’m not really lost. I met a student from here, and he suggested that I, um, maybe take a few classes.”
Even as I tried to explain myself, I realized how incredibly lame I sounded. Who shows up on a college campus just to take a few classes? The answer to that? Nobody. Because normal people weren’t freaks. And this was the kind of move only a freak would pull. Maybe it was time for me to leave Boston entirely and move somewhere I couldn’t embarrass myself. Like a desert island. Or Las Vegas.
The redhead merely brig
htened. “Oh! A late-term transfer. I was one of those too. I’m wrapping up my studies now, but I got here last spring, right about this same time. Are you from Twyst? I don’t remember you, but I kind of kept to myself when I went to school there.”
I shook my head, trying to appear well-informed. What was this Twyst place, and why did it seem to dump students like yesterday’s garbage?
“No, I—um, I’m not looking to enroll full-time. Is there an admin building? I don’t even know the process to audit classes. If they do that.” I bit my lip. “Do they do that?”
The redhead flapped her hand at me. “Oh sure, but you should totally enroll. Wellington has the best curriculum in functional magic. I’m taking classes in animal-familiar veterinary medicine, which is exactly like it sounds except way cooler, and I’ve never been happier in my life. I knew from the start that I wasn’t cut out to be some boring old witch or wizard. That’s so Harry Potter, you know? But the work that I’m doing now is meaningful. It’s going to help people and their familiars. It’s needful work. That’s kind of what they specialize in at Wellington, the practical work that needs to be done. You’ll see. You’ll really like it.”
She shook her head, her fair cheeks flushing with twin stripes of color. “Oh geez, I haven’t even told you my name. It’s Merry—spelled like Merry Christmas, I’m sad to say, but my brother’s name is Noel, so I feel like I got off easy. Merry Williams.”
I blinked at the familiar-sounding name.
“Are you related to Zach Williams? I met him the other day.”
She gave a short, quelling chuckle. Not a mean laugh, more like a rueful one. “Oh, I know Zachariah, but I’m not related to him. My God, what would that be like, right?” She looked at me knowingly, and I did the best I could.
“I…guess? I only met him briefly.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh, wow, you really are new. Well, he’s one of, you know, the campus nutballs. Those monster hunter guys, I mean, right?”
I must’ve looked sufficiently confused, because Merry bit her lip, clearly torn between spilling tea and offending me. I understood the power of gossip, and she didn’t seem like a typical mean girl, so I gave her an encouraging smile. “I’m afraid I don’t really know all that much about anything that goes on at Wellington. I’m a straight-up ignoramus.”
“Oh my God, not at all,” she assured me. “Let me take you to the admin building and fill you in, okay? I used to be a tour guide at Twyst. I love this stuff.”
“Ah, sure,” I said, falling into step with her. “You don’t do that here?”
“Nah—I really am close to graduating. I don’t have time. But I know enough to be dangerous.” She gave me a brilliant, enthusiastic smile, and I found myself liking her, despite her frenetic energy. “So it works like this. Wellington Academy is a magic school, but they focus on magic that’s actually useful, right?”
I nodded. “Like animal-familiar husbandry.” I was impressed I could say that with a straight face.
Merry beamed. “Exactly! So all the majors here at one point or another were, like, totally useful. However, over time, some majors sort of fell out of favor either because nobody used them or needed them anymore, or because, you know, they were inherently lame. Like succubus training. Anybody knows you can’t train a succubus, but that didn’t stop two hundred years of guys giving it a try. It was the dumbest thing ever.”
I couldn’t help it, I stared at her. “Succubi are a real thing?” I’d gone through every wiki page I could find on every monster ever dreamed of, so of course I knew what a succubus was mythologically speaking. But in all the time I’d been dealing with my own monster issues, I’d never once had to face something that tried to suck the life out of me through sex. I would have noticed that.
“Totally a real thing, and once they get their teeth into you, they never forget. Even if you are able to get them off you the first time, you can bet they’ll be back. So word to the wise, avoid the succubi. But that’s not the point.” She rushed on. We’d started walking at a slightly faster clip, and while I kept up with her easily, it was clear that Merry’s legs moved as fast as her mouth did. No wonder she was so slender.
“So, most of the—like, I don’t want to say useless, but sort of—useless majors sort of got phased out over time. But not monster hunting. Even though it got knocked down to a minor, that one will not let go. Partly because it was what the academy was first founded on, but mostly because there are a few students who take it every year, which is crazy, because monsters are totally no longer really a thing.”
I shot her a wary glance. “Because they don’t exist anymore?”
“Well, you know, they exist,” she hedged. “Sort of like succubi exist, right? But there are so few of them that you don’t need any more monster hunters. It’s sort of like being a vestigial-tail expert. Yes, there are probably fifty people in the world that are going to have an issue with vestigial tails, but do you seriously need to be turning out new vestigial-tail specialists every year to deal with them? No. You probably need one every ten years or every generation, you see what I mean?”
“I do see where you’re coming from,” I allowed. “But what you’re saying is, you guys still have the minor despite all that.”
“Totally, and it’s sort of a campus joke. Don’t get me wrong, Zachariah is one of the hottest guys on campus and the other monster hunter freaks are smoking hot as well, at least the juniors, anyway. Which, now that I think about it, it’s kind of interesting, right? Like, is there something about the fact they’re monster hunters that makes them sexy only because they’re weird? I mean, are they actually hot, or are they freak hot?”
It dawned on me that maybe it wasn’t a bad thing that I focused on my own strange questions, and not other people’s. But Merry was on a roll.
“Anyway, rumor has it they can’t shut down the minor because it’s got insane funding from some super-crazy old guy or a super-crazy old family, and so the university is not allowed to shut it down. But if Zach was the one who told you to come here, that’s still completely awesome because he’s totally right and Wellington Academy is the best.”
“Actually, it wasn’t Zach, it was one of his friends. A guy named Tyler?”
“Tyler Perkins,” Merry breathed. “He’s even hotter. And his family is one of the first families of Boston, right? Like, setting aside any magic stuff, they are the top of the heap socially. Please tell me you know that. Tyler has platinum-plated shoes to fill if he wants to make a mark in that family.”
“I’d heard they were wealthy,” I hedged, but she scoffed a laugh.
“Not wealthy. Bill Gates is wealthy. The Perkins are, like, tied-to-the-fabric-of-the-earth rich. Super important, super old, super connected. And oh my God, Tyler’s dad is mean as the day is long—don’t be fooled. If you ever have to meet him, you’ll have to be—oh, here we are!”
I nearly piled into her as she stopped triumphantly in front of a gray stone building with marble steps and an imposing entryway of thick columns and a heavy door flanked by wrought iron strips inset into the wall. The strips caught my eye immediately, of course. Clearly, this was my kind of place.
In fact, I shot a quick glance around the courtyard and noticed there was a preponderance of wrought iron everywhere, from decorative fencing to elaborate gates to stylized decorations that topped the walls and ran down the columns. The quad was an ironworker’s dream…and apparently, a monster hunter’s sanctuary. Maybe Wellington Academy had been the real deal once, however long ago.
There were other students milling around, too, all of them looking remarkably normal. Clusters of preppily dressed early twenty-somethings and earnest-eyed teens, the time-honored demarcation between lower and upper classmen apparently holding strong, even at a magic academy. It made me wistful to be back in school, I had to admit.
Could this be my school? Could I find a place here—a new home? I tried to chase the idea away as soon as it formed, but it wasn’t going easily.
Merry pointed to the austere front doors of the building in front of us. “So yeah, go in there, and tell them why you’re here. And absolutely tell them that Tyler Perkins referred you, because you’ll go to the front of the line, I’m telling you. If they do suggest that you enroll full-time, you have to let me know, because my roommate finished up early and moved out at the beginning of the semester, and you can totally sublet her space! My lease goes to the end of the summer because I’m taking some special classes, so it’s perfect, right? I mean, obviously, not if you don’t want to or anything. That’s completely cool.”
Desperately trying to keep up with her, I opened my mouth to speak as Merry’s gaze shot past me out into the courtyard.
“Annnd boom. It’s Tyler. Like, he must have gotten the heads-up you were here, since he told you to come to campus. He’s got groupies everywhere, despite his major. Minor. Whatever.” She swung her gaze back to me, her eyes wide and earnest. “Do not tell him what I said about monster hunters, okay? They’re really nice guys. They’re just, you know, freaks. So anyway, I’ve got to run. If you need anything, let me know, and if you want to be my roomie, totally let me know! You can always find me over in the vet school. I’m there, like, all the time—bye!”
And with that, she was off, her long legs carrying her away from Tyler like a gazelle springing away from a lion. He didn’t miss the urgency of her departure either as he trotted up the path. Today, he wore dark-washed blue jeans and a short-sleeved gray T-shirt and Teva sandals, his hair mussed and his grin wide, looking like any ordinary college guy and not the son of Daddy Warbucks. The butterflies were back in full force as he approached me, and I barely quelled a sigh. He really was way too cute for comfort. Looking at him now, I couldn’t even dredge up a wisp of anxiety over him and his buddies
