by Rae Foxx
“I couldn’t wait to see if the rumors were true.” Selene smiled at me, her cherry red lips formed into a smirk as she crossed her arms, nails tapping against her expensive shirt. Of course, her nails matched her lipstick.
“Looks like they are. What dumpster did you find that behind?”
I could have sworn I saw Nicky’s lip twitch before she booted the girl out of her chair. God, if this was my first step into this world, this whole thing was going to be a shit show. Doesn’t mean I couldn’t have a bit of fun.
“Not a dumpster, honey,” I said before the girl could leave, tapping my chipped nails against my arm in the same way she was. “A trailer, single wide to be exact. Same trash. Different stench.”
“Clearly.”
“Well, I am sure you two would love to get to know each other, but for now, Ivy and I have some things to address,” Nicky said, shooing her niece away from the desk and ruffling files and books in search of something.
“Of course, Auntie,” Selene cooed, flipping her hair as she walked by me, so close that the long raven ends smacked across my cheek.
Fuck me. I had walked into preppy girl hell. We had never had to worry about that in the middle of nowhere Nevada. Everyone had nothing, so no one was anything.
That didn’t play here. I had a feeling that they were all going to be bitches.
“Sit, Ms. Potter.”
She settled herself in a high back chair, moving books, rustling papers, and slamming drawers so hard that plumes of dust flew into the air, surrounding me in a cloud. That, however, may have been from the ancient chair that I had sunk into. I was now coughing out a lung full of dust and shifting my weight to avoid the spring that was trying to push its way into my butt. No thanks chair, I didn’t like you that way.
“As I am sure you have already seen, your mother has signed over custody of you. This school, and so, I, will maintain guardianship over you until you have reached the age of maturity as recognized in our community. It’s only a few weeks. I know that many of your classmates at your previous school were preparing to graduate. At Bloodwood Academy, paranormal children like yourself are just beginning their training. This is good news for you, as you will not be behind. In the traditional sense.”
“What does that mean, in the traditional sense?” It sure as hell sounded ominous.
She gave me a simpering smile as she paused to glare my way. I was asking another stupid question. Thank God she answered it anyway.
“Our students have grown up with their abilities. While you will all be starting at the beginning of your training and education, many students will have matured with each other and mastered many of the skills that you have not yet completed. Such as shifting.”
“As in…”
“Changing into your true form, yes.” That damn smug grin seemed to be her trademark, I got one flash of it before she went back to her papers.
“At this Academy, we have one firm rule that stretches through our entire student body. Your pack will teach you of the others, the unspoken ones, but this you must never forget.” She sighed, stopped the endless rustling and sat back in her chair, fixing me with a stare that made me wish she would go back to her papers. “There is no interspecies mating.”
“Inter-species?” I was beginning to think that I wasn’t going to understand a damn thing that came out of her mouth.
“Yes, this means you as a shifter cannot date or mate with a… uh… vampire, for example.”
“There are vampires here?” I was standing, shrieking. She didn’t even flinch. Me, on the other hand, wanted to make a run for it. The flags on the towers made sense.
“Yes. We stick to our species not only to ensure bloodlines but to guarantee that no hybrids emerge. A child born to a vampire and a shifter, for example, would have to be put down to avoid many of the dangers that the abnormality presents.”
“Wait. You kill children?” I think I was about to be sick. What kind of place was this?
“It is for your safety, I assure you,” She snarled as she nodded for me to sit down again. Sitting down didn’t seem smart since vampires were waiting to bust down my door and kill the ‘unfortunate offspring’. I shuddered, wanting to high tail it out of here, but I didn’t seem to have a choice. I avoided the spring this time.
“Are we clear on this?”
“Uhh sure.” What else do you say after a day in which both vampires and werewolves… Ummm, shifters, are revealed to be real.
“Excellent. Here is a document stating that you have heard the rules and understand them as I have explained.” I searched the mess that was her desk for a pen while scooting forward to sign.
I was sure at that point that there was nothing on her desk besides papers.
“I need a pen--please.” See trailer girls have manners too.
She sighed and shuffled more papers. “I forget how little you know. Here.”
A flick of her fingernail later, she’d sliced my forefinger open and rivulets of blood dotted the paper in front of me. “Tissues are there.”
“What the fuck are you doing? The Vampire is going to smell that and come kill me!” I was jumping around and grabbing at tissues, trying to stop myself from entering certain death.
“Will you get a hold of yourself?” Nicky shrilled, stopping me from covering my bleeding finger and pressed the still dripping wound to the bottom of the paper. “For all official documents, your blood is your signature from now on, Ivy.
Yeah, because that was completely normal.
Vampires. Shifter. Signing your soul away in blood.
Are we one-hundred percent sure this wasn’t an insane asylum? Because I was losing it.
“Scarlet, you may come in now.”
The door swung open again and I tensed, ready for bitch number two to come in.
Bitch number two was as bad as bitch number one. She gave me some serious side-eye from behind silver eyes and eyebrows so perfectly trimmed they deserved their own social media account.
Damn.
“Scarlet,” Nicky said with a nod to the girl. “This is Ivy Potter, your new roommate. Please show her to your room and give her a tour of the place. Also, stop by the library and check these tomes out. If they say something about Ms. Ivy not having a school ID yet, tell them to call me. She will have one by Monday.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Scarlet mumbled, giving me one more look before she turned and walked away. I guess that was as good of a welcome as I was going to get. Headmistress what’s-her-butt was already lost in her desk, and Scarlet was gone.
“Shit,” I snarled, Nickolininini or whatever glancing up to glare at me. “I mean, umm thank you.” From now on, I’m gonna call her Nicky, for short.
I was off, chasing after the aptly named Scarlet’s mane of red hair.
These people were weird as fuck.
“Where did they find you?” Scarlet asked with another side-eye as I finally caught up with her.
“Bottom of the trash pile.” No reason to lie.
“Clearly.” more side-eye. “Well, I’m Scarlet. You may be a little rough around the edges, but you seem saner than anyone else around here. Most everyone is either a snob or a vampire and those aren’t too far apart.”
I so didn’t expect that.
“Wait. So, you’re not a bitch?”
She shrugged. “Not that I know of. Just a shifter. What kind of shifter are you?”
She got me there.
“I’ve never changed before. They just showed up and told me I was a werewolf… I mean… uhh… shifter. But that’s what you asked. Wolf! Yeah, wolf.”
Hey, I got there eventually.
“Wolf, then. But you’ve never shifted.” I shook my head; the conversation fell into silence as we walked back through the courtyard. The trees looked sad with only the twists of bark and yellowed leaves on their arms, the fallen blossoms already twisting in decay. Wind whipped through them, sending them around my ankles and chilling me even though the weather was balm
y.
I spun on the spot. No one else was there. Nothing but one tiny yellow rosebud that was starting to bloom on the branch of the tree of all places.
My favorite flower. Yellow and pink and soft and perfect. Something that didn’t grow in the Nevada desert. I wanted to touch the petals, smell the aroma, steal the rose and keep it somewhere safe.
“What are you looking at?” Scarlet said before I could take one step and I jumped. She stared at me like I had lost it. I wanted to tell her the jury was still out on that one.
“Just trying to get the lay of the land… or school.”
“I understand. It’s easy once you get used to it. Let’s get the library. Knowing Headmaster Ampste, you’ve got a full weekend of reading ahead of you. She used to be a professor here. I’ve heard she was the strictest and no one could pass her classes.”
I didn’t even have to imagine it. I could see it painted on her snobby face.
The library oozed of money and history, it even had gargoyles lining the roof. We entered through another monster of a door but instead of moaning and complaining, this one opened with ease. The large doors swinging wide to reveal a large desk manned by two older-looking women, both with identical glasses and coiffed hair. A matching set. They fit the joint so perfectly it was unnatural, Xerox printed out of a stereotype.
“What in the world?” I nearly froze in place, but Scarlet dragged me forward, hissing in my ear.
“She’s a Duplicate. It’s a type of mage.” She added when my jaw dropped. “They can look like anything and duplicate themselves as many times as they want. Dangerous. But Wilma has been here forever.”
“Can I help you, ladies?” The woman nearest to the door whisper shouted as we approached.
“Yes, this is Ivy Potter. She’s new here. Headmaster gave me this list of books to borrow for her. Her ID hasn’t been made yet, but she said to call her if you need to verify.”
The older, lean woman cut her eyes at me and I gasped. Her eyes had been an emerald green as she looked at Scarlet, but I swore I saw a glimpse of red and then gold as she gave me the once over.
“Yes, I have been informed of her arrival. Let me grab the items. You may sit at one of the tables while you wait. Remember, no noise.” She snared the last two words like some kind of wild animal, her eyes flashing in a green shade that sent me back a step. I had no plans to double-cross her in the future or move too close.
Waiting on the other side of the musty library suited me fine.
My ass had barely touched the hard seats when the librarian returned, or a different librarian returned, I couldn’t tell. All I could see was her frightening eyes as they peered at me over a stack of books that reached her nose in height. They slammed onto the table and I jumped, eyeing the pile like it was my worst enemy.
“Have fun,” the old crone cackled before wandering off, leaving me and Scarlet to escort our personal library back to our dorm.
Our dorm room was not even close to a dorm room in my head. I was sure this was the bedchamber for some snooty girl in the fifteenth century. It even had four-poster beds. I slipped out of my flip-flops and reveled in the coolness of the marble floors against my worn feet as I walked to the bed that didn’t look like someone had slept in it.
The bedspread was the same red as the draperies that hung around the bed and over the windows, it even matched the ancient burning lamps on both the nightstand and the matching desks that Scarlet was depositing the book onto.
None of the furniture was painted or missing a leg. None of the drawers were hanging down or without a handle.
“This is the nicest place I have ever stepped foot in,” I mumbled under my breath, knowing that second to this was probably Denny’s right after they reopened from the fire.
“Your closet is the one on the left. We share the bathroom here...” Scarlet waved me into a bathroom that made my trailer look like the abandoned gas station out on Highway Seven. The haunted one that Tommy had tried to get me to go to.
“Is--is there hot water?” I asked, knowing full well there was a chance I’d get made fun of but not giving any fucks if I did.
“Yeah, the hot water at my old house was touch and go. This place is a dream.”
‘Touch and Go’ I didn’t want to know what that meant, but I also didn’t care.
I stepped into the bathroom and reached out to touch the brushed nickel faucet handles and turned the right handle off and on and off and on again because I could.
“I’m taking a shower, like now.”
Scarlet giggled and shut the door behind me. They might have to drag me out.
Chapter 6
This must be what heaven was like. Peppermint scented body wash, washcloths that didn’t smell like rot, and tubs so deep you could go swimming in them. I would have to try a bath next but thank goodness I didn’t first.
The water that ran off me and my hair was the shade of ten-day-old bananas and smelled as bad. Who cared if my fingertips were raisins, I stayed in that fucker until the hot water ran out.
It might have been days later. Weeks even. I didn’t care, it was worth it.
One step out of the tub and onto the fluffy white bath mat and I realized I made a terrible mistake. In my haste, I’d forgotten a towel and I’d used half of my roommate’s body wash.
“Scarlet?” I called, hoping she hadn’t left the room.
“Here!” She giggled with a sound like wind chimes being attacked by a squirrel and stuck her hand through the door, towel clutched in her fist. “I grabbed this from the laundry down the hall, they deliver clean ones every day, but I bet they didn’t know you were coming.”
“Clean towels every day?” I said under my breath, what the hell kind of place was this? Hot water and clean towels. That’s it, I was living in a hotel now.
“Thanks,” I dried myself off and walked back to my new room, towel wrapped around me like some kind of toga.
Scarlet was sitting cross-legged on her desk, occupied with a book that looked like one of the ones in my pile.
Maybe if I bribed her, she’d give me cliffs notes.
“While you were in there the headmaster stopped by. She left an envelope for you. I put it on your desk.” She didn’t look up from her book, just nodded to the envelope that sat alone of the desktop like some kind of time bomb.
Maybe it was. I sure as shit didn’t want to go near the thing.
“Oh, Nicky, you’re on my ass already.”
Scarlet’s red hair bounced as she looked up from the book and cackled. “I’ve never heard anyone call her Nicky before. That’s priceless.”
Heat crawled up the back of my neck.
“Don’t tell her I called her that, she’d probably split open at the seams. And those are some tight fucking seams.” Scarlet nodded in agreement.
After the world's best shower, I felt kind of gross putting on my sweat-stained bra from under my towel. The once white thing looked like a yellow stain against my skin. At least my boy short underwear was newer, I had lifted them from the ShopKo last week and they were shit stain free.
Not that I had that problem.
Underwear clad, I pulled a brush through my hair and approached the anthrax-lined letter, eyeing the damned thing like it was going to burst into flames.
I had seen movies about magic. I knew that was a thing.
Can’t turn back now. It was beginning to become my motto.
I ran my fingers over the thick folds and then opened it.
It wasn’t anthrax.
It was cash.
More cash than a drug dealer sees in a month lay in that envelope, all wrapped up in a note.
Ivy, this is your stipend for the month to buy new clothes and shoes appropriate for classes. Scarlet can assist you and advise you on the rules of dress. Happy studying.
Nicky signed the damned thing and I was genuinely surprised her signature wasn’t in blood.
‘Monthly stipend?’ ‘Rules of Dress?’ Was this woman shitting
me?
If my mom got even half of this, it was no wonder that she had sold me to this fancy place.
“Anything good?” Scarlet asked, looking over the top of her book and quirking an eyebrow.
I nodded my head. Money was good, but I wasn’t about to share that with her. I didn’t know her. I had no way of knowing if she was the type of bitch to steal things from the less fortunate. Yes, I was counting myself in that group.
“Just my schedule.” I waved the other paper toward her after taking a quick glance at it.
“Oooh! I wonder what classes we have together.” The book was thrown aside and she was to me so quick she might have teleported there.
Either that or I was still trying to reconnect my brain after being gobsmacked by this schedule.
Magic History
Shifter Lore
Clan/Pack/Coven
Lunch
Shifting and Fighting
They were all followed by complicated professor names and room numbers, well all but Lunch. Which was possibly the only one I understood, because food. You can’t mess up food.
Unless they were serving bloody steaks, boiled eyeballs, and sandwiches made of cow ears. Which I realized might be a possibility.
“Hey, we have half our classes together, that ain’t bad,” Scarlet beamed like I was supposed to understand anything of what I read. “Just watch out for Monsieur Vermillion, he’s an ancient vampire and seems to think that should qualify him as a god. Sit in the back and you’ll be fine.”
She was still smiling at me; I was still stuck on the fact that I had a class with a Vampire.
I was starting to feel like I was in over my head.
“You get all that?”
“You lost me at Vampire,” I was monotone and realized a second too late what I had said. Thankfully she only laughed.
“Stay at the back, the less he smells of you the better off you’ll be.”
“You really aren’t instilling confidence in me,” I grumbled, stepping away and shoving both schedule and wad of drug money into the drawer of the dresser. The thing had a lock, but no key.
