Leigh Kelsey
Blurb
A Second Breath Academy paranormal romance story.
* * *
It’s exam season at SBA, and Kati will need a miracle if she’s going to pass. But when a dragon bursts out of her wand and rampages through the academy, she’ll have to put aside exam worries to catch the unruly creature.
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Takes place between How To Raise The Dead and How To Kill A Shadow.
1
This Is Supposed To Happen, Right...?
“At least we have magic theory this morning,” Kati had said over breakfast, trying to prise her eyes apart enough to see the golden-syrup-soaked waffle. “Nothing bad can happen there; Mr Worth’s got more bookwork planned.”
Rahmi had grinned, a suggestive tilt to her eyebrows. “Did he tell you that last night?” she whispered so only she, Kati, and Naia could hear.
Kati blushed, scowling. “Shut up.”
“That’s a yes then.” Rahmi had given her a smug, victorious look.
Nothing bad can happen there. Those words were coming back to haunt her now.
“I didn’t mean to cast it!” she hissed, panicking as magic spiralled from her wand in violet ribbons. She gave Naia and Rahmi a desperate look for help when the command to “Stop!” did nothing.
Mr Worth—or Iain as she called him in secret—rushed over, alarm in his brilliant blue eyes. “What happened?”
“I didn’t mean to,” she said, frantic as more power streamed from her wand. “I was just practising the movement, I didn’t even say the command!” But she was scarily good at death magic, and it had been getting worse. Or better, depending on your outlook. “Um,” Kati said, panicking as the power built, her wand vibrating in her hand. “How big a dragon is this supposed to produce again?”
Mr Worth scratched the back of his neck. “It should be the size of your hand.”
The violet dragon that erupted from the tip of her wand was a little bigger than her hand. Or fifty times bigger. The students around them gasped and oohed, and for a second Kati stared in awe at the massive, incredible creature. But then it turned in the air, opened its many-fanged maw and dove at them. Screaming, students scattered as lilac smoke plumed around them.
“Help!” Kati hissed at Iain, her startled eyes meeting his—calm, ocean blue, and a little crinkled with a smile at the corners. Souls, he was handsome, and the more time she spent with him, the more attractive she found him. Not to mention he was an amazing kisser, and could short circuit her brain with just a few minutes.
But now was a bad time to be thinking about kissing. The dragon swooped over them with a sharp cry, and Kati jumped out of her seat, crouching under the desk. Naia was already there, wand gripped tight in one hand, the other flicking through their textbook as if it held the answers. Maybe it did.
“A simple stop command should work,” Iain said, a crease between his eyebrows as the smoke grew thicker.
“Yeah, thanks, why didn’t I think to try that?” Kati snapped, adrenaline and anger at herself shaking through her. She’d only just stopped being the talk of the academy. When the academy groundskeeper had been found dead—or rather, when Kati found her corpse, surrounded by black magic sigils etched in blood—naturally, the whole school assumed Kati was the murderer.
Her brother, Theo, had been involved in a necromantic magic scandal where a guy had died and another had committed suicide, so it wasn’t a huge leap for everyone to assume Kati was a killer. But seven weeks ago she, Naia, and Rahmi—Kati’s new best friends—had found the real culprit—and she’d begun to get used to flying under the radar. But this—unleashing a dragon—would circulate the academy’s halls in hours, and no doubt everyone would go back to side-eyeing Kati and whispering behind her back, throwing nervous glances and narrow-eyed glares as she passed.
“It’s going for the windows!” Gull Llewellyn shouted, laughing like Kati’s fuck up was the best fun he’d had in years. Kati peered around the table leg as Iain flicked his wand in a complex pattern, aiming for the violet dragon speeding towards the wall of windows, but whatever spell he cast had no effect: the dragon slammed into the window, and as if it was made of something more substantial than ether and blood magic, the glass shattered. Kati watched in dismay as the dragon sailed off, blowing purple smoke like fire, into the night-dark sky outside.
Her shoulders up by her ears, Kati got to her feet, wincing at the blown-out window, the glass shards, and the distantly glowing shape of her dragon against the dark sky.
“Um,” she said, chewing her lip. “I’m not sure I can pay for the window.”
Iain sighed, no doubt wondering how he’d explain this to Madam Hawkness, their headteacher.
“Nice one, Wilson,” Gull exclaimed, clapping Kati on the back. “That’s the best lesson I’ve had all term! No offense, Mr Worth.”
Iain shook his head, surveying the damage. “None taken.”
Kati just groaned, and wondered how the hell she’d fix this.
2
This Is Fine
The downside of letting a magical dragon loose on an academy was that you then had to catch it, safely trap it, and remove all power from it. Or at least that was the sentence handed down to Kati from Madam Hawkness. Kati had no idea where to start.
A flurry of sightings had taken place right after it jumped out Mr Worth’s classroom window—poor Iain, Kati thought with a wince—but the trail ended there. The cheeky bugger had gone to ground, as if the dragon knew Kati would hunt it down and strip it of all power. If only there was a way to make it harmless and the size of an iphone, she might have kept it around, a dorm room pet for her, Naia, and Rahmi.
Dolly? Kati asked her familiar—a little black pug with a squashed-in face and a bitchy personality—using the link that bound them to speak telepathically. It had taken a bit of experimenting and practising these past few weeks, but she’d finally figured out how to project her thoughts into Dolly’s mind so they could communicate silently. Mostly, Dolly used IG to tease her about Iain, and Kati used it to promise to murder Dolly if she ever told anyone about their relationship. Any sign of it?
Nope, Dolly replied with an inordinate amount of glee. He’s still on the loose.
He?
Just the sense I get from him, Dolly replied. Now leave me alone, I’m busy.
Busy ransacking the kitchens for sausages, no doubt. Kati smirked and left her familiar to it, plopping onto the emerald green sofa in the living room of the dorm she shared with her friends. Moonlight filtered in through three long, thin windows, casting the cosy, circular room in ethereal silver, at least until Kati pricked her thumb on her wand and flicked it at the fireplace, lighting the logs in the grate. The spell was one she’d learned in magic theory and spells classes a month ago, and she’d already got plenty of use out of it. The counterspell, used for unlighting, came in handy for her secret rendezvous with Iain.
She’d darkened many a supply closet, storage room, and classroom to give them secrecy as they made out. Frustratingly, he’d allowed them no further than kissing, but he was such a good kisser that Kati couldn’t complain. Much.
Souls, she wanted him, but she’d wait. He was worth it. Surname pun intended.
“Madam Hawkness finally lifted the curfew!” Naia announced as she came through the door, softly closing it behind her and crossing the room to dump a stack of exercise books and dusty old tomes on the coffee table. A new stack, if Kati wasn’t mistaken. For the past week, Naia had been reading up on the Reaper Revolution of the early nineteen hundreds, but judging by the new pile, she’d switched her focus to dangerous charms, hexes, and jinxes. The one on top was called Curses For The Common Cad. Kati gave Naia a surprised look—as a firm rule follower, the book was off brand—but Naia wasn’t paying attention; she was stripping off her coat, brushing the dust from it, and hanging it up on the peg by the door.
“Did you hear what I said?” Naia asked. “The curfew’s been lifted.”
> “About time,” Kati muttered. The whole academy had been put on curfew after the string of murders at the start of term, but the people responsible had been dealt with for weeks.
She glanced up at Naia’s nervous tapping, her fingers drumming the sides of a book that appeared in her lap as she sank onto the couch. “Naia? You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Naia answered, too quickly. “Completely fine.”
“Yeah, I totally believe you.” Kati put her feet up on what little space remained of the coffee table, the rest of the surface hidden by books, empty potion vials, and coffee cups that should really have been washed up by now. “But hypothetically speaking, if you were stressing about something … what would that something be?”
Naia gave her a sudden, frantic look, and Kati realised her hair wasn’t in its signature french braid but loose and frizzy, a hectic mess of dark curls around Naia’s face, just adding to the unhinged expression on her face. “You do know what tomorrow is, right?”
“Don’t remind me,” Kati muttered.
Testing Day. AKA the exams that decided whether she’d be allowed back into SBA next term, or if she’d been too busy chasing dreams and dealing with murder accusations to appropriately study. She’d spent the last month or so making up for all her previous lapses, memorising passages from books, putting in extra potions work, keeping up after-class lessons with Mrs Grant, the spells teacher who weirdly adored Kati. But had it been enough to get her passing grades?
If all went according to plan, Kati would pass her exams tomorrow and she’d be invited to take her second SBA term starting January.
If not … well, there went all her plans for the future.
Not to mention she had a magic-fuelled dragon to track down. Tomorrow was going to be rough.
3
This Might Not End Well
Someone’s face actually melted. Mrs Balham had warned them it could happen, all those months ago when Kati had first met the woman, but she hadn’t thought it would happen. And least of all in their potions and poisons exam. She’d watched in stunned horror as three teachers, Nurse Gardner, and the nurse’s assistant had carried out a student, his face featureless and … smushy.
That about summed up how exams went overall. In short: not great. But she might have scraped a pass. Maybe. Souls, please.
Kati’s feet dragged as she walked from the exam hall through the academy’s tall, gothic corridors, exhausted after a full half hour of stirring her potion. She could barely feel her arm, her muscles somewhere between marshmallow-feeling and lead. But that was it—done—the final exam. Thank fuck.
“It wasn’t meant to be splotchy, was it?” Harley asked, slouching alongside Kati and tugging on the ends of her baggy khaki shirt, the emblem of some skater brand emblazoned on it. “Naia, was your potion splotchy?”
Naia winced, combing her bushy hair into a neat plait with her fingers, her uniform unusually unkempt. “Um. No?”
Kati laughed, her fatalist mood lifting. “It can’t be as bad as mine. I don’t know where half my liquid went.”
“I bet you had the heat on too high,” Rahmi put in, still looking put-together and stunning, not haggard and exhausted like the rest of them: her hijab was pinned in place with a sparkly clip, the fabric a deep gold that matched her outfit, and her smile was as bright and sunny as ever. Kati didn’t know how Rahmi had the energy, but her smile was infectious.
“I just hope my sludge was enough to get me a pass,” she said, relieved as feeling returned to her arm.
“It’ll be fine,” Rahmi assured them. “I’m sure you’re worried about nothing. You’ve been coming along in your potions, Kati.”
Kati made a sound of agreement, her eyes catching on the figure vanishing through the library doors up ahead. She pressed a smile between her lips, a giddy thrill in her stomach. “I think I’ll go study up on that potion, make sure I don’t make the same mistake again.”
Rahmi snorted, the look she threw at Kati knowing. “Sure. That’s why.”
Kati rolled her eyes, but excitement kept a smile on her face. Not even the sight of the destroyed tower through the tall, arched windows could trash her good mood. “Shush, you.”
“Be careful,” Naia murmured, throwing a look around them as if someone would overhear their coded conversation and know they were talking about Kati’s relationship with Mr Worth. Kati squeezed Naia’s arm in reassurance, said her goodbyes, and ducked into the library.
Iain was easy enough to find. A couple weeks ago, the library had revealed to them a tiny backroom full of stacks of dusty tomes and boxes full of old newspapers, and they’d made good use of it—especially since no one else seemed to notice the door, or try to enter the room at all. The library really did know exactly what its inhabitants needed, like Veesa, the librarian, had once told Kati. It was both creepy as hell and incredibly helpful.
“Hey, you,” Kati said, closing the door to the magic-lit space behind herself, and feeling her heart go all mushy at the sight of Iain with his jacket thrown over a book stack, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows as he bent over one of the boxes with a frown of concentration. “Hang on, are you … are you organising the books?”
Iain shrugged, turning to her with a bashful grin on his face, his bright blue eyes crinkled and smiling. “I figured I might as well make myself useful while I waited for you. No one’s cared for these books in years.”
Kati dumped her bag on the floor, unable to cover her laugh at how adorable he was. “Only you,” she said, and crossed the small room to him, wrapping her arms around his waist. “Only you would look at this place and think to tidy it up a bit.”
Iain laughed, folding his arms around her, his chin resting on top of her head. Kati relaxed into him with a sigh, happiness filling her heart to bursting. “How did it go?”
“Well, I didn’t blow anything up or burn anything down,” she replied, inhaling his scent deep into her lungs. “So I think it went well, all things considered.”
He huffed. “You’ll do fine, I know you will.”
At the very least, her potion hadn’t been splotchy. That was something positive.
“How are you feeling? she asked, peering up into Iain’s face. Today was the anniversary of when Lady LaVoire, former dark lady and Iain’s aunt, took control of the necromancer and reaper community of Britain. A bad day to mark, and one that brought up memories he’d much rather forget.
“I’m getting through the day,” he replied, trying to hold his smile on his face. “That’s all I can ask.”
Kati rolled onto her toes and brushed a kiss to his cheek, wrapping her arms tighter around him. “Is there anything I can do to—”
A loud, screeching roar swallowed the rest of her sentence, and yelps of surprise sounded from outside the door, deep within the library. Kati’s eyes snapped up to Iain’s, and he laughed, his hands tightening around her waist before he let go. “I think we just found the dragon,” he remarked, taking his wand from his back pocket and turning out the lights. “You’d better go out first. I’ll follow in a minute.”
In the dark, Kati braced her hands on his chest and kissed him, first finding his chin, and then his lips. “We’ll talk later, okay?”
“Okay,” he agreed, and turned her towards the door with hands that seared her waist, making her ache with want. She huffed a laugh at his bossiness, but retrieved her bag and fumbled for the door handle. Iain closed it behind her, and she took a moment to reorient herself.
She was lucky it was dim this far back in the library, or she might have been blinded going from darkness to light, but the faintly burning torches allowed her eyes to adjust quickly. She couldn’t see the dragon—yet—but she could definitely hear it. It was screeching up a racket, the full thud following it seeming to suggest books tumbling off shelves. Kati winced, and really hoped she didn’t have to pay for the damage.
Grabbing her wand and pricking her thumb with the thorn, she moved through the stacks, following the dragon’
s roar. She’d let the thing loose; surely she could put it back where it came from.
“Here, draggy, draggy, dragon,” she murmured, running through her mental inventory of spells before settling on one meant to cancel out magic. If it worked for extinguishing a fire, hopefully it could take the spark out of an unruly dragon.
The yelps and yells had quietened down, presumably because people had fled the library and hopefully not because the dragon had moved on.
“Veesa,” Kati said in relief, spotting the curvy librarian, her bright hair a cloud around her tanned face. She crouched behind a bookshelf, peering around it. “Have you seen a dragon around here?”
Veesa laughed, her eyes crinkling as she looked at Kati. “It’s hard to miss. Why—you’re not planning any heroics are you?”
“No,” Kati replied, making a face. “I sort of … created it. So I’m meant to uncreate it.”
Veesa blinked, and then smiled that soft, amused smile of hers. “You’re very powerful, to have brought that dragon to life.”
“Yeah,” Kati replied, not entirely sure it was a good thing. “Anyway, where did you last see—oop, nevermind, there he is.”
A streak of purple magic wove through the room just below the vaulted ceiling, its tail brushing over the tops of dark bookcases and scattering smoke. Where her magic touched books, they too sprang to life, folding inside out, creasing like origami until they were miniature representations of their contents, complete with basic motion.
Her mouth hanging open, Kati spotted a miniature paper warrior, a pirate ship, a dough-faced headmistress she couldn’t remember the name of, and—a group of Black Brooms in their intimidating cowls, darkness or magic obscuring their faces as they marched as one, throwing spells. Kati heard the door at the back of the library creak, Iain sneaking out, and she cut her wand through the air, casting the magic reversal spell at the paper Black Brooms. The first streak of her power did nothing, but Kati fed her wand more blood, hissing at the sting on her thumb, and the little paper bastards collapsed, twisting and unravelling until they were an ordinary book again.
Starlight & Shadows: A Limited Edition Academy Collection by Laura Greenwood, Arizona Tape, Juliana Haygert, Kat Parrish, Ashley McLeo, L.C. Mawson, Leigh Kelsey, Bre Lockhart, Zelda Knight Page 24
