Good Witches Don't Cheat (Academy of Shadowed Magic Book 2)

by S. W. Clarke

  “Oh sure,” I groused as Loki and I started down the long set of stairs winding around the tree, “just rub my winglessness in.”

  When we reached the ground, she had waited for us anyway. Her arm hooked through mine, and we joined the trail of students headed down the path through the trees.

  “Aren’t feasts usually where the food is?” I gestured back toward the dining hall.

  “Food’s definitely that way,” Loki said, nose pointed in the direction we were headed.

  “On a night this beautiful? No dining hall for us.” As we came out from under the canopy and into the meadow, a blanket of stars and a fat silver moon greeted us. Beneath it, a path of lights had been set up all the way into the meadow’s center, where they had been strung up all the way around a series of long tables, each glowing with candlelight. “On a night like this, you follow the moon.”

  Aidan had once told me this place was nicknamed the Academy of Shadowed Magic. Full of secrets, of shadows in the corners. I had believed him then, but in moments like these I was reminded of what it felt like to be eight years old and still believe in the wonder of the world.

  This was the kind of magic you hoped existed.

  “Where did all this come from?” I stared up at the golden lights as we passed down the path, reaching out. They seemed to hover without strings, like lightning bugs.

  “The professors arrange it every year,” Eva said. “The lights are Umbra’s magic. The tables are from House Gaia. The ever-burning candles are House Spark.”

  “And what’s from Whisper?”

  Eva pointed at my hair as the wind picked it up. “The breeze. Otherwise it would be intolerably hot out here.”

  At the fringes of the open-air feast hall, tables of food and drink had been arranged by Chef Vickery, who was ladling out mead into goblets as the students arrived. It was rare I saw her, and as her chef’s hat bobbed with the exactness of her motions, I realized the food I’d been eating for almost a year reflected the pride she took in her work. I’d never found a stray bone in the fish. I’d never tasted a cold potato. I’d never bitten into a mushy apple.

  We passed by the drinks table as we came under a trellised awning, grown up with House Gaia vines and flowers. “A feast doesn’t start without a drink,” Vickery said, not to us so much as all the students entering. “Go on, take one. It’s your aperitif.”

  Eva picked up two goblets, handed one to me. “Do you see now why I get so excited?”

  I smirked over my drink, glancing down at Loki, who met my eyes with what I was sure was a sly expression. “Sure. It’s all about the twinkly lights. Nothing to do with an Icelandic combat instructor.”

  She narrowed her eyes, spinning away without spilling a drop. “Let’s see if we can’t find good seats.”

  I didn’t know what good seats were. Already much of the student body had arrived, and more than half the tables were full. Near one end the professors sat together, their house sashes over their shoulders. Milonakis, Goodbarrel, Farrow, Fernwhirl, Umbra, others from House Gaia and Whisper. Rathmore.

  “Here we go,” Eva said, squeezing my arm. We’d come to a half-full table of fae, none of whom I recognized. “We can get to know the first-years of Whisper.”

  They all stared at us. Well, at me.

  Eva cleared her throat. “I’m Evanora Whitewillow, a second-year of House Whisper. And this is Clementine Cole of House Spark,” she said, gesturing to a chair. “May we join you?”

  The fae met eyes. One nodded, but the moment we sat, they gathered up their goblets and spread elsewhere like silverfish.

  Which left Eva and me alone.

  Even Loki had disappeared, I realized. When I glanced back at the food table, I found him there, wound through Vickery’s legs and staring up at her like his goddess.

  “Well,” Eva said, flicking out her napkin almost violently, “they won’t be getting any tips about passing Fernwhirl’s class from me.”

  “It’s not you,” I said. “It’s me.”

  “I know.” Eva flattened her napkin in her lap with firm hands. “And you’re my friend.”

  That one caught me right in the chest; my sarcastic instinct kicked in. “Get used to me being your only friend.”

  “Pfft,” Eva began, just as a soprano voice sounded at my shoulder.

  “Is anyone sitting here?”

  Standing beside me were two brown-eyed faces, their eyebrows high with the kind of worry you feel when you’ve just arrived at a new place. Identical twins, both of them with freshly-cut bobbed hair and school robes with not a single speck of dust on them.

  I gestured to the wide expanse of empty table. “Not unless you count the ghosts of the first-years I fire-witched to death.”

  Their eyes went wide at the same time.

  Eva set a hand on my shoulder, pushed me aside to lean toward them. “Please, we’d love to have you.”

  They sat across from us, almost more identical now that I could look at them straight on. Brown hair, brown eyes, cherubic faces.

  “What are your names?” Eva asked, leaning forward with all the gracious interest of a perfect hostess.

  “Nomi,” the first one said.

  “Imon,” the second one said.

  An anagram.

  I turned in my seat, scanning around us. Aidan had taken a seat with a few others from House Spark. I found Liara and most of House Whisper at another table. But none were who I was looking for.

  I didn’t spot him so much as hear his laugh. It emanated through the meadow, and Loki and I met eyes as soon as we heard him.

  I nodded at Loki, who unthreaded himself from Vickery’s legs and began trotting toward Torsten, who was double-fisting mead in the middle of a group of Gaia students.

  Tonight, a few of Eva’s dreams would come true.

  When Torsten arrived at our table, Loki had climbed to a perch on his shoulder and started up a constant meowing. That was his best method: meow enough that Torsten would bring him to me to make him stop.

  Well, he was a talker.

  Torsten, with Loki on his shoulder, cleared his throat beside me. “Clementine, I think your familiar has a message for me.”

  I glanced up. “Oh, hel-lo Torsten.” Then I swatted at Loki. “Would you stop bothering the tall, strong, handsome man?”

  Loki hopped off his shoulder and landed on the table, where the twins stared at him. Meanwhile, I patted the empty place beside me. “Would you like to join us?”

  Torsten set both goblets down on the table. The moment he did, Loki darted down the table toward Eva. I stood and stepped around her, trying to get him off the table, but he wouldn’t move from directly in front of her spot. “Sorry, Eva,” I said. “Loki’s particular about where he sits, and he’d really like us to sit here. Mind switching?”

  Eva, who’d sat dumb with enormous eyes through this whole exchange, said nothing. She simply stood, pinching her napkin between two fingers, and shifted to the chair next to Torsten. And then proceeded to stare at her empty plate.

  Mission completed, Loki hopped off the table and darted straight back to Vickery, his BFF.

  I sat, leaning past Eva to catch a glimpse of Torsten. Now both me and the twins were staring at the enormous third-year. “Hey, teach. How’s your summer been?”

  Torsten had been my combat instructor the previous year; thanks to him, I knew how to pin a fae and how to put a full-grown man in an armbar.

  “Oh, just a joy, you know,” he began, raising a goblet and gesturing with it. “Reykjavik in the summer has endless daylight. I got up with the sun early, went to bed late. The connection to the earth is strong there. So much fertile ground for practicing combat maneuvers.”

  “You don’t say.” I set a hand on Eva’s shoulder. “Torsten, I have to let you in on a little secret I know you’ll appreciate. Eva here actually has a skill that exceeds her otherworldly beauty—she absolutely demolishes me in combat. Every time.”

  She tensed under my fingers, and
I knew in that moment she hated me and loved me.

  Torsten lowered his goblet, setting new eyes on Eva. I knew she’d been too modest to tell him the truth about how good she was. “Is that so?”

  I could practically feel her flushing. “She’s exaggerating.”

  “I’d like to know more,” Torsten said.

  As Eva began a halting sentence, I slowly inched myself out of sight, leaving Eva the only one for him to fix his eyes on. As I disengaged, I realized the table around us had filled up. The twins were chatting individually with other first-years who had taken the spaces next to them.

  And on my left sat Maise, the girl I’d cheered on in her duel in the common room. “Hey,” she said. “You’re the witch.” The way she said it didn’t imply anything; it was just a statement.

  “And you’re the one who threw down in that duel.”

  She grinned. “That’s the only way to do it.” Then, “I saw Jericho. He’s doing all right, you know.”

  I picked up my goblet, took an overlarge drink. Then I forced my eyes onto her. “Is he here?”

  She nodded toward a far table. “He’s over there.”

  I couldn’t bear to look. “Is he…?”

  “He looks exactly like he did before the duel.”

  I sighed, staring into my drink like I could jump into it.

  “Hey,” Maise said, “you didn’t mean it. Right?”

  I forced my eyes onto hers. “To burn him?”

  She nodded.

  “No,” I said at once, the answer coming before any real contemplation. I didn’t want to think about my witchiness or my anger or the Spitfire. I wanted to think about the fact that Torsten and Eva were chatting because of me. I wanted to think about the first-year twins we’d invited to sit with us.

  Before Maise said anything else, the golden lights around us dimmed. A hush spread through the meadow, and after a few beats, Maeve Umbra’s voice sounded from a clearing near the center.

  “Welcome, students,” she said, low and warm, “to the End-Summer Feast.” When the lights rose again, she stood in a wreath of white hair, her staff set into the ground next to her. She wore the same long gray robes as the first time I’d met her, but this time her eyes traveled across the sea of students.

  “We hold this feast each year to commemorate the start of classes at Shadow’s End Academy. This is a moment for all students and professors to gather as one, to meet and re-meet, to learn and recall the names of those who will sit beside you and stand before you each day.

  “We have forty new students this year, the largest class in decades. Welcome, all of you young mages. Soon you will be sorted into your houses, and an induction ceremony will be held to properly acknowledge your place in the academy.”

  Her eyes fell on the professors. “And we have one new member of our faculty, who joins us from Scotland. Please, Professor Rathmore, stand with me for a moment.”

  As Callum Rathmore stood, the red sash dropping to length as he rose to his full height, the hush deepened to the breeze itself, which dropped away to nothing. The world seemed to narrow as every face followed his stride to Umbra’s side.

  He dwarfed her, his black hair an acute contrast to the whiteness of hers. His eyes remained fixed on an indeterminate point as he barely masked a frown.

  And Umbra looked finer-boned than ever, almost frail as she gazed up at him. “Professor Rathmore is the youngest teacher the academy has had in five hundred years. But make no mistake: his is one of the most most brilliant minds to grace these grounds in just as long. For those of you in House Spark, he offers a rare opportunity to master the art of the flame…”

  I stopped listening there. As I forced myself to watch Callum Rathmore listen to her enumerate his good qualities, I realized he and I had at least one thing in common.

  We both hated attention.

  Chapter Eleven

  The feast itself was meant for school bonding. Meanwhile, I bonded with the food on my plate while Maise and I cracked jokes about the professors.

  Milonakis and her birdlike way of picking at her plate. Quartermistress Farrow leaning away from Professor Goodbarrel as he talked far too close, clearly inebriated.The look on Rathmore’s face when he’d been forced to stand up in front of everyone.

  “Finally,” I said to Maise, “someone who’s not in love with Callum Rathmore.”

  “No doubt he’s got his charm”—she rolled her drink around—“but he’s definitely chapped some asses in his life.”

  “Yes!” I turned toward her. “And because of Jericho, I wasn’t even placed in a class. He’s teaching me personally.”

  Maise’s eyebrows went up as she turned to me; we had effectively shut out everyone else. “Really?”

  “Like I’m a loose cannon.”

  Her head tilted. “Absurd.” Though there wasn’t quite the same conviction in her voice as before.

  I sat back, arms folded as, across the tables, Professor Goodbarrel’s infectious laugh broke out. “I’d rather have Goodbarrel teaching me fire magic. Maybe he’s no ‘brilliant mind,’ but you know what they say about brilliance?”

  Maise gestured at me, her palm cutting knifelike across her throat over and over.

  “Oh, don’t stop on my account,” a voice said from above me.

  Behind me stood the last—the very last—person whose long-haired head I wanted blocking the moon. A curdling embarrassment rose in me, and a second later, I’d owned it. Tamped it down. Replaced it.

  So be it. Best to opt for barebones honesty, if I was going to face Rathmore.

  “Hello, Professor,” Maise said, her voice rising an octave.

  I turned around, swiping up my goblet as I did. When I lifted my eyes to Callum Rathmore, I took a long sip of mead. Finishing, I lowered my glass to the table in the elapsing silence.

  Let there be silence. Let it be awkward.

  I was the queen of this.

  “Do you know what they say about brilliance and madness, Professor?” I said up to his severe face. I knew I was pushing it, but just the sight of him above me brought back earlier. He’d called me dangerous.

  “There is no great genius without a mixture of madness,” he murmured. “Genius, not madness, Cole.”

  “Semantics.” I paused. “Anyway, Maise and I were just joking around.”

  Rathmore grunted. “Wonderful. Perhaps you can level your best joke at the forces of darkness.”

  I had to admit: he had some zingers in him.

  “Save your humor in my class,” Rathmore said, one hand coming out from behind his back. He held a sheet of paper out to me. “I just need a competent fire witch.”

  When I took it, I found my class schedule written down. I had forgotten to pick it up after the debacle in the common room. As he turned away, I crumpled the paper into a ball.

  “Hey, don’t waste a tree.” Maise plucked the paper from my hand, smoothed it out.

  “It’s not even one percent of a tree,” I murmured.

  “Oh,” she said, holding the paper up, “you’re in Tangible Manipulations with Goodbarrel. That’s interesting.”

  My eyes were still tracking Rathmore as he strode away. I contemplated the flash in his eyes when he’d talked about madness. “Why’s that?”

  “That’s more of an elective you pick later on, when you’re advanced. It requires an acute understanding of the veil.”

  I finally focused on Maise. “So why am I in it?”

  She met eyes with me. “I suppose you ought to ask Umbra.”

  Maeve Umbra. At the professors’ table, she was in deep conversation with Goodbarrel himself, whose permanent smile had faded to a half-smile at whatever topic they were discussing.

  When he discovered me looking at him, he raised his goblet.

  I did the same with mine, took a long sip to drain it.

  At that moment, Loki appeared from the crowd of students, wandering up to me. “I think I…” He paused, and a familiar, repetitive noise began in his
throat.

  I set my drink down. “Oh, not here. Come on, cat.”

  I’d just stood when Loki puked the contents of his stomach all over the grass. He sat down and stared at his deed in shame.

  I swept him up. When I turned back to Maise, she handed me my crinkled schedule, then waved me off. “I’ll magick it away.”

  Meanwhile, Eva hadn’t even noticed; she was too involved with Torsten. Better for her, then. I decided to leave her and the demi-god be.

  “See you around,” I said to Maise, winking at the twins across the table as I carried Loki down the path and away from Summer-End Feast.

  Actually, I’d wanted this. I knew it as soon as I’d picked Loki up. As the sounds faded away and all that returned were my footsteps through the grass, the rustling leaves above us, I knew I’d hit my peopling limit for the day.

  “That Vickery is going to be the death of me,” Loki moaned.

  “Like you don’t have a choice.” I was carrying him like a baby, belly-up. “I saw you begging her.”

  He flicked one paw up. “Her dishes leave no choice but hedonism.”

  We came into the empty clearing, passing the amphitheater. “You did a good job with Torsten.”

  “Oh, the dense one. I actually had to climb nearly to his head before he got a hint.”

  “He’s not dense.”

  “He teaches you how to use your knuckles to hit things. What evidence do you have to dispute me?”

  “Not everyone is a grand master of sarcasm and judgment. There are different kinds of intelligence.” We came up the stairs and into my dorm, where I set Loki down by his water bowl. “Drink.”

  He lapped up water like he’d just found his way out of a desert.

  I pulled off my robes, finding my schedule in the pocket. I had three classes: Tangible Manipulations, Intermediate Combat, and Fire Magic.

  “Tangible Manipulations,” I said. “Loki, why would Umbra put me in that class?”

  Loki turned, pawing water droplets from his whiskers. “Why wouldn’t she?”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “Explain.”

  “You manipulate spaces in that class, right?” He flicked his tail toward my bag, which Eva’s mother had manipulated to hold far more than it ought to. “So why would you need that kind of skill?”