* * *
We returned to the town house a little before midnight and ran into the sentinel on watch. The woman looked between the two of us and gave a little nod then disappeared again around the back.
“Do you think we’ll have a guard all year?” I asked as we lingered on the stoop.
“Probably. Or until Simon and Sebastian find out who tried to kill you.”
“Let’s hope that’s sooner than later. Anyway, did you want to come in for a bit?”
“Sure.”
We found Liadan with Ben and Pilar, their International Magical Policy books spread over their laps while the latter wrote notes by hand.
Moving aside for Gabriel to enter behind me, I shut the door behind us and played it natural. “Hey, guys. I figured everyone would be asleep.”
“We decided to get all our studying done now so we could enjoy the weekend. The weather is supposed to be great.” Ben looked up and grinned. “Hey, Gabriel.”
“We were just checking in on Sharon and thought we’d grab something to eat.” While my roommates knew about me and Gabriel, we’d kept Ben in the dark. As much as I liked him, the guy couldn’t keep much to himself, and his big-mouthed tendencies had only worsened when he became the new editor of our school’s boring newspaper and promised to breathe new life into it. The last thing I needed was to see our story ran in the gossip column.
No, Ben wouldn’t do that. Or would he? The entire secrecy thing meant too much, our relationship relying on no one in authority discovering it.
“There’s chicken and rice in the fridge.” Liadan’s voice cut through my thoughts.
Gabriel beelined to the kitchen. “Thanks!”
Trying not to take it all, hunger led me to scooping out two heaping servings for Gabriel and myself. We joined my friends on the couch and caught the tail end of Pilar shooting Liadan a dirty look. The dish had the hallmarks of Pilar’s cooking, and if my stomach wasn’t about to turn itself inside out to cannibalize my other internal organs, I’d have made us sandwiches instead to avoid demolishing her leftovers.
I’d have to make it up to her—make a pan of lasagna or something.
“So, who did you three get paired up with? I haven’t had a chance to look at all the assignments yet,” Gabriel said.
“I’m with Holden Augustine,” Pilar said.
“Bear shifter. Good form in his fighting class.” Gabriel gave an approving nod. “I don’t know him well, but he seems like a stand-up guy.”
“I got Anji,” Ben said. “She’s pretty cool, and it’s nice, because we’re all already friends. If it works out, we’ll probably keep it up after graduation.”
I swallowed down a scalding bite of chicken then grinned. “Anji? That’s great! We’ll be able to go out on weekends without much trouble.”
“You know, I have no problem chaperoning y’all around either,” Gabriel said. “Not that you need it if you go out in a group.”
School policies required fae and non-battlemage magicians to leave the premises in the company of a sentinel if they weren’t in groups of three or more.
“We know, but you have a job too, and your own friends,” Pilar said. “We wouldn’t want to impose.”
“Nah, it’s cool. Most of us don’t mind if we’re asked. It’s when people make demands that we take an issue with it. Rodrigo and Amalia don’t mind either. Honest. There’s actually a volunteer list of backup sentinels down at the student center.”
And since I never had time to explore the student center, that was the first I’d heard of it.
“What about you, Liadan?” I asked.
“Sai Varma.”
Gabriel’s brows slid together, forehead creasing beneath his wild, untrimmed hair. “He’s the vampire mage who transferred in this year from Shangri-La, but he’s in his third year, not second.”
Liadan dipped her head. “Yeah. He’s been assigned as Holly’s mentor, and my sentinel. We meet up Monday for our first introduction. Is he…?”
When she didn’t complete her sentence, Gabriel grinned at her. “An asshole?”
“Yes.”
“Nah, he’s cool. Real laid-back guy. Shangri-La’s a lot stricter, and he said we’ve got it easy here.”
“I wonder why he left. I mean, PNRU is great and all, but I hear Shangri-La is amazing,” Ben said. He pushed his glasses up his nose. “I mean, it’s basically a school in a magical realm all the time. Think of all the cool stuff they must see.”
“And no cars. No fast food. No movie theaters or televisions. No electricity.” Pilar checked each item off on her fingers. “I looked into it before deciding to come here to America. It’s dull.”
“Harry Potter without the fun and wacky adventures,” Gabriel confirmed. “My grandfather tried to send my father there, but he lucked out.”
Ben’s face fell. “Oh.”
“You know, there’s a student exchange program. The thing with Sai isn’t unusual or limited to Holly and Liadan. They have all the same courses, and you can spend a semester abroad.”
Ben jolted forward in his seat, eyes wide. “Really?”
“Yeah, for real. I did it my sophomore fall semester. You go over there and take the same classes then return here at the end.”
Pilar frowned. “But if he left, what would happen to his sentinel?”
Gabriel laughed. “It’s a complete exchange. Ben would go away to attend Shangri-La, while another mage would sleep in his dorm and work with Anji.”
“Maybe I’ll look into that,” Ben said. “Could be fun.”
We all hung out another hour before Ben excused himself to his dorm room. Pilar and Liadan didn’t stay up too much longer, which left me wide awake with Gabriel.
Pretending I hadn’t seen Pilar’s suggestive wink, I stretched out my tired legs, hamstrings protesting the movement. The longer I sat, the stiffer my body became during resting moments until I felt like a Tin Man in need of oil. “I didn’t know you did a semester away.”
“Yeah, well, I wanted to get away from Jada and Monica. Heading to the Himalayas seemed a for sure way to escape them both. By the time I told her, Riordan wasn’t accepting applications anymore, and Jada couldn’t come along to make my life hell.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. So, you see, I meant it when I said I’d already been thinking of ending things with Jada. The time away from her was freeing, and if I didn’t like America so much, I’d have probably transferred altogether on her. Kinda was thinking about it, to be honest. Until I met you.”
My heart did a little stutter in my chest.
When I thought he was going to lean in and kiss me again, he got up and plucked his plate off the coffee table. “I should get going. I promised Rodrigo I’d play a few Call of Duty matches with him.
After he was gone, I lingered on the porch long enough to locate the werewolf watching from beside the bushes. I shivered. It was a different sentinel from the one we’d encountered when we arrived.
Simon hadn’t assigned only one guard, and I wondered how many lives were put at risk now that I had my own mysterious enemy. While I wanted to hope the show of force would be enough to discourage future attacks, the tension surrounding my heart said otherwise.
* * *
Liadan shook me awake just after one the next day. I bolted upright, the remnants of my dream dissipating until I could barely recall what had been going through my sleeping mind.
“What? What’s wrong? Did someone break in again?”
“No, nothing like that. Provost Riordan is on the phone for you.”
“Huh?”
“The provost wants to talk to you.”
“On a Saturday? Shit.” What had I done? Had someone seen me smooching Gabriel? Was I failing my boot camp class? A million different scenarios passed through my thoughts as I stumbled out of bed for the phone in the living room. Pilar gave me a sympathetic glance and held out the receiver.
“Um, hello, Provost Riordan. Can I help you?”
“The circumstances?”
“You’re neither a battlemage nor a true faerie godmother-in-training. Under normal circumstances, the latter receives a rudimentary lesson in combative magic during their junior and senior years.”
“Um… okay? I mean, yeah, I figured that was the case.”
“Considering your placement in the sentinel program, and the recent attack, we have decided further instruction is warranted. Were you attending Shangri-La, you would have several elective courses related to honing your combative magics. You are a unique case to PNRU, and we don’t have such classes available.”
My mouth went dry and my palms dampened, the phone slick in my hand. “Oh… Does this mean… Are you sending me away?”
“Absolutely not. I enjoy having you here as part of our institution and…” She paused, genuine mirth and grandmotherly warmth spilling through the phone as if by magic, instantly chasing away the dread churning in my stomach. “It’s quite a brag among the other headmasters to have the student who defeated Carmilla among our population. While Shangri-La would love to have you—”
“I’m happy here,” I blurted out.
Riordan chuckled again. “Great. Professor Tristal will contact you shortly to arrange a schedule for personal one-on-one instruction.”
Personal one-on-one instruction.
The daunting words echoed across the line, as thrilling as they were terrifying, because this was yet another difference dividing me from my half-fae peers.
“I… yes, of course. I’ll wait for it. Thank you.”
“Enjoy your weekend.”
“You too.” Elated, I ended the call.
“What was that about?” Pilar asked. “It must have been amazing news.”
“How did you know?”
“You’re floating.”
“Er.” I glanced down and noticed my feet were three inches from the ground. One of the spectral lights from my sylph wings curled around my left shoulder, bending, shifting pink and then orange, blue then violet. “They want—”
The phone rang. I raised it to my ear again. “Hello?”
“Miss Corazzi?”
“Yes. Hello, Professor Tristal.”
“I have looked at your schedule and determined that Tuesdays and Thursdays will best suit our hours. Training will begin in the gymnasium at eleven and last an hour.”
“That works just fine, Professor, thank you. Do I need anything specific?”
“Only yourself, for now.”
“Thank you.”
Both Liadan and Pilar watched me with expectant gazes as I hung up the phone and did a little hop in place. “I’m getting private lessons with Tristal,” I explained. “She’s going to teach me fae combative magic.”
Pilar’s brows wrinkled. “How would Tristal know that? She teaches basic fae charms.”
“I dunno.” My excitement dimmed for a brief moment. “But anything is better than nothing, right?”
* * *
The only thing that helped me through my Tuesday morning classes was the fact that I had a five-hour nap window between boot camp and my fae studies—longer if I skipped out on my early morning meal time. After slogging through politics and history, I headed for the gym full of giddy anxiety.
Of all the faerie professors on campus, Cordelia Tristal was the most solemn. She rarely smiled and always dressed for a funeral in black pantsuits. She wore her platinum blonde hair in the same ballerina bun every day. Like most middle-age fae, her appearance held a timeless quality that made estimating her age difficult. She could have been anywhere between her late thirties to middle sixties. She wasn’t gorgeous either like most fae. Very average. Very plain. She never wore makeup and didn’t paint her nails.
“The most versatile and useful spell any faerie has in their arsenal is Faerie Fire,” she began the moment I dropped my bag near the wall.
“I know Faerie Fire.”
Tristal nudged the center of her pink horn-rimmed glasses. “Show me.”
Raising my left hand, I turned my palm up and summoned a plume of orange and gold flames streaked with blue.
“Good. We can build upon that. While Faerie Fire is the most basic of glamours, it is also one of the most damaging to darklings and nosferatu. Burns inflicted by it will not heal under ordinary means. Unfortunately, many fae are incapable of creating more than you did moments ago, and never in a combative situation.”
“Why is that?”
“Fire has a will of its own. It takes focus to control it in a stressful situation. Consider it a destructive fluid that must be doused instead of dried. It spreads and seeps out, consuming all in its path but…” She raised her brows, waiting for me to finish the sentence.
“Plantlife.”
“Yes. Faerie Fire will never burn a living plant, even after a fae has become a darkling. Shifters, vampires, fellow fae, and even innocent mortals are another matter. All the more reason to master it.”
Tristal swept one hand in a carefree gesture toward the open space. A wall of Faerie Fire flashed across the floor in great waves of sizzling magic, twisting into every color of the rainbow with a solid, blue-violet heart that was almost black. Dazzled, I stumbled back from it and stared, mouth falling open.
She sliced the air with her hand. The flames died. “Nature magic.” The potted plants surged toward the gymnasium ceiling, burst from their vessels, and sprouted dozens of leafy vines, each one covered in more thorns than the last. Their root systems slithered over the polished floor and coiled like tentacles. Some of the thorns grew as large as sickles, and the blossoming flowers looked like alien life, or a creature from the prop department of Stranger Things. I shivered.
“And the element of your particular fae species—wind.”
This time when Tristal raised her hand, I prepared for the blast of wind, but I underestimated the power. The first gust blew me off balance. My arms pinwheeled as I staggered back and reached out blindly for anything to hold, but there was only Tristal and the cold fingers she wrapped around my wrist to anchor me in place beside her.
And the wind was only starting. It intensified from that moment on. The gymnasium doors banged open, slamming and shutting, pummeled by the force of a tornado.
“Find your inner self, Skylar. Don’t merely stand there as I shield you. Create your own.”
“I can’t resist against this!” I cried over the shrieking wind.
“You can. You are a sylph. This element is what you are made of. You will always command a greater power over the forces of wind than any other fae, than any mage who doesn’t specialize in the field of aeromancy. Wind is what you are.”
And then she released me.
It hit me like a brick, a blow to my entire body instead of just the face. I tumbled end over end, landing in a heap, clawing at the floor.
“Storms are your element, Skylar!” she called out to me.
And my element was kicking my ass. I scratched at the floor, too panicked and desperate to channel my wings—I had only managed to intentionally pull my sylph form out twice since Ascending. I leaned into it and raised both of my hands, but the ferocious gusts slid my sneakers over the smooth floor.
The wind howled once more, picked me up from the ground, and hurled me through the doors. I flew for quite a distance, not of my own volition, because my traitorous wings didn’t emerge even once, and I landed somewhere in the grass outside. A group of students nearby on a picnic stared at me while I groaned. A flowerbed of sweet alyssum and dianthus had cushioned the fall and saved me from busting my head open at least.
Tristal suddenly loomed over me, hands on her hips. “Every day, even if only for ten minutes, you must practice becoming acquainted with your element. Call up a breeze. Fly. Create a swirling gust in the leaves once they begin to fall.” When I groaned in re
sponse, she sniffed. “Return to the gym once you’ve recovered.”
She strode away without helping me up from the grass. The picnickers hadn’t stopped staring.
“Are you all right?” Julien’s familiar voice spoke up from somewhere behind me. He stepped into my line of view, a concerned look on his handsome face. Fortune blessed me, because for once, I didn’t feel anything in his presence, too disoriented by Tristal hurling me a couple dozen yards to fall prey to the selkie’s sexual aura. “Here, let me help you.”
Strong hands pulled me from the flowers and steadied me, holding me upright. He brushed dirt from my jeans and plucked grass blades from my hair, fingers lingering in my wind-disheveled curls. My hair was everywhere, like I’d practiced Ben Franklin’s kite experiment.
It took a moment to realize Julien was touching me.
“I’m good. Really.”
His brows raised. “You don’t seem all right. Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I, uh, better return to Professor Tristal before she comes back out here. Thanks, Julien.”
He smiled and tucked his hands into his pockets. “Any time. Maybe I can catch you after your lesson.”
“Sure.”
I hurried back inside, not sure which would be worse—falling sway to Julien’s charms or irritating Tristal. My strict fae instructor seemed scarier. She waited inside, arms crossed.
“What happened moments ago was a disgrace no sylph should suffer,” Tristal said, voice even and unamused. “I put minimal effort into the glamour—”
“Minimal?”
“Minimal,” she stressed. “Have you practiced transforming at all since your Ascension?”
“Well, I thought—”
Her brows raised. “Thought what?”
“School was over, so I thought—”
“Thought the end of the term meant it was time to loaf?”
“I changed a couple times.” Once to show my parents then again to show Mindi. My best friend back home had been even more excited than me about my wings. “Sometimes my wings come out without me realizing.”
“Skylar, you have great potential, but you must practice.”
The Scary Godmother: The Paranormal University Files: Skylar, Year 2 Page 4
