Party Ghoul

by Sarina Dorie

  “Did you walk around with the sales agent to see the evidence he was documenting?” Mrs. Gordmayer demanded.

  “No, I was teaching class.” Vega spoke quickly in the hope she would get out more before she was cut off. “I met him in front of the school and pointed Orsolya out to him so he could talk to her.”

  “That salesperson completely overestimated the quote. You’re going to have to find a different company and make an appointment. Preferably you can get someone to come out tomorrow before the gnomes eat their way through the walls into the building. Make sure you walk around with this salesperson. Do not allow them to make a ridiculous high-ball offer. Do you understand me?”

  Vega nodded. Her stomach turned queasy thinking how badly this conversation was going to end.

  “Do not fail in this task.” The principal held the compact farther from her face. The view showed the wind ruffling her short hair. “Do you understand? I only agreed to go on this vacation because I thought things had been handled. Do I need to return in order to ensure matters are taken care of correctly?”

  Vega remembered what Mr. Gordmayer had told her about the eclipse and meteor shower aligning perfectly for the “special spell.” She didn’t want to be the reason the principal missed her chance at the fountain of youth—and hated Vega forever as a result.

  She shook her head quickly. “I’ll make some phone calls tomorrow morning. So . . . the actual reason I’m calling wasn’t because of the gnomes.” She cleared her throat.

  Behind the principal, Vega caught sight of sparkling blue water and a man wearing aviator goggles. She was temporarily distracted from her impending doom.

  “Is that Mr. Gordmayer? Is he wearing flying goggles on the beach?” Vega asked.

  Mrs. Gordmayer sighed. “He claims they’re more practical to keep the wind and sand out of his eyes. Apparently, someone gave him fashion advice, and now he thinks they’re stylish.”

  The way she glowered at Vega told her she must have thought Vega was at fault. Vega shook her head. “No, I didn’t suggest wearing them on—”

  “Do you know how ridiculous he looked on a Morty airline full of people? It isn’t as if those cabins are exposed to the elements.”

  Vega had never been on an airplane. She’d only seen pictures of aviators flying two-seater crafts. She shrank lower. “So anyway—”

  The principal continued on in her brisk way. “If that will be all, Ms. Bloodmire, I shall expect to hear back about a new estimate tomorrow.”

  “Actually—”

  The mirror went black, then rippled before displaying Vega’s reflection. She stared at her bewildered face. She hadn’t told the principal the most important news. All Mrs. Gordmayer had been concerned about was the gnomes—which certainly were becoming a problem.

  That meant Vega was going to have to call back. Her stomach churned.

  Maybe she could tell the principal about the death tomorrow.

  Vega tried calling Mr. Reade again. As soon as she made it through the rhymes, his face appeared before a mirror. His half sister and her sasquatch children were seated around a table full of food behind him. Goldie, his furry half sibling, waved.

  “Hello, Vega. We were just sitting down to dinner. Is everything all right?”

  She blurted out, “There was an accident in flyer-ed class. I don’t know what to do with the dead body.”

  “Oh dear!” he said. “A student died? Where’s the body?”

  “Between the greenhouses and the sports field, but closer to the stadium.”

  He nodded, his expression grave. “I’ll be right there.”

  * * *

  Vega flew by broom to the dead body. She had to shoo off garden gnomes who were licking the corpse’s face like depraved ghouls—not that she would be tempted to do such a thing unless the corpse grew decayed.

  Unless she was really hungry.

  Gnomes weren’t known as necrophages who preferred to eat the dead as their main source of sustenance. She suspected that must have meant Mrs. Angelopoulos had some kind of mineral in her makeup. Vega would need to guard her own cosmetics in the school as well.

  Vega checked the wards she’d put in place earlier to protect the body, but they had been disrupted, probably by the gnomes. She would have to ask Mr. Reade what kind of protective spell to use. Then again, if she was at fault, and the gnomes destroyed the evidence, maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.

  Mr. Reade arrived behind the school ten minutes later. Rather than flying on a broom, he sat comfortably on a wooden barstool, ankles crossed, looking unhurried. It was a peculiar choice of vehicle, but it was probably more comfortable than a broom. His suit pocket bulged. He removed a glass jar from within and handed it to Vega.

  “What’s this?” she asked, eyeing the green wafers within.

  “Seasoned kale chips. Goldie made them for dinner and wanted me to bring you some.” He frowned. “She’s always afraid you aren’t eating enough food with your dietary restrictions.”

  Vega’s throat tightened with emotion. “That was . . . kind of her. Please tell her I look forward to enjoying them.” Vega smiled despite the direness of the circumstances. She had only been to Mr. Reade’s home once, and his sister had been far more accommodating of her food sensitivities than most people.

  Vega opened her tiny purse and placed the jar inside for later.

  Mr. Reade hopped off his stool and left it near the bathtub, the student’s vehicle of choice. The sun had sunk below the tree line, long shadows stretching toward them, though they probably had another two hours before dark.

  Mr. Reade edged toward the body, his spine rigid. “This is the student? She was flying in a bathtub?” He adjusted his glasses as he examined her red eyes.

  Vega wondered if he was going to know what she had done just by looking at the corpse’s eyes.

  “Yes. She was going too fast. I was afraid she was going to crash into the statue of Lady of the Lake.” Vega swallowed.

  He jerked a thumb back toward the school. “The statue in the courtyard? Why is she over here?”

  Vega hated to admit her failings, but she could see she needed to in order to explain the full gravity of the situation.

  “She was headed straight at the statue at high speed. I created a portal to transport her someplace safe. I thought this would be a better area.”

  He raked a hand through his thinning brown hair. “That was a practical solution for avoiding injury.”

  Mostly Vega had been concerned about property damage and Mrs. Gordmayer’s wrath, but she decided not to mention it. “When I flew here to check on her, she was already like this. I tried to resuscitate her, but I was too late.” She swallowed the panic that threatened to overwhelm her again. “I think I used the wrong kind of portal to transport her. I’m afraid I used the spell for inanimate objects, not the one for people.”

  He squinted at her. “Why would you think that?”

  Vega waved a hand at Mrs. Angelopoulos’s eyes. “Look at her. That’s one of the side effects of incorrect interdimensional travel, isn’t it? I know that’s what happens to their eyes when they die that way.” She couldn’t stop seeing Vincent’s eyes.

  “It’s one sign.” Mr. Reade spoke slowly, hesitantly. “Who else have you seen that looked like this?”

  Tears filled her eyes, and she blinked them away. She wasn’t a child. There was no reason to let a death from years ago—or this one—affect her like this.

  “Is this what you saw when your friend died? Did you see his face at his funeral?” His brow crinkled in concern.

  Years ago, Mr. Reade had seen Vincent loitering outside his classroom, waiting for Vega to get out of detention. She should have known Mr. Reade would know about Vincent’s accident.

  Vega took a steadying breath. “It was a closed-casket funeral. I used divination to see his face.”

  Mr. Reade nodded. “I suspect you saw your friend when his face had been
washed after the accident. You wouldn’t have noticed the full extent of damage.”

  He crouched to poke at the corpse’s lips with his wand. Vega watched as he inspected the body for clues about the student’s death.

  Mr. Reade illuminated the tip of his wand and peered inside Mrs. Angelopoulos’s nose and ears. “She doesn’t have any other hemorrhaging. If you had made the wrong kind of portal, she would have bled from her nose and ears.” He wiped his wand off in the grass and pointed to the corpse’s skinny neck. “Her heart would have ruptured, and the jugular vein would be distended.”

  Vega shook her head in disbelief. “Why are her eyes like that? She didn’t look like that before I transported her.”

  He straightened. “Did you get a good look at her face beforehand? Could the speed prior to impact have done that to her?”

  “She was traveling too fast. I couldn’t see.” Vega hadn’t seen her at all. Mrs. Angelopoulos had been flying above Mr. Tybalt and her.

  “It’s quite possible she could have been suffering from a stroke. That could have led to her crash. Did she seem especially confused or uncoordinated? Was her speech slurred or unintelligible?”

  “Well, yes. All of those, but that isn’t anything unusual for her. At least not from what I’ve seen in the two times I met her. She never made a whole lot of sense. She was paranoid and thought her enemy was going to kill her.” For all Vega knew, it might have been true.

  “I think she had a stroke,” Mr. Reade said.

  Vega let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding.

  Perhaps Orsolya had been correct. Could it be that simple? Was Vega truly innocent? Even while in a panic, she had cast a portal spell correctly, one of the most dangerous and finicky forms of magic.

  And why wouldn’t she? She was brilliant.

  Vega wanted to feel relieved, but she couldn’t shake her suspicion this wasn’t a natural death.

  “Tomorrow call the Department of Magical Violations when they open. You can find the correct department in the directory behind Mr. Gordmayer’s desk,” Mr. Reade advised. “Let them know about the accident, and they’ll decide whether they’re going to collect her remains or they wish the next of kin to do so.” He scanned the field full of gnome holes before scrutinizing her with his gaze. “I’m far more concerned about you being able to create a portal so easily and readily.”

  “What do you mean?” Vega asked. Portal magic wasn’t forbidden. It wasn’t like she’d used death magic.

  “I’ve forgotten. It’s been a while since you were a student here.” He offered a brief smile before continuing on in his patient-teacher voice. “Why are students allowed to use flying brooms as a method of transportation on campus but not portal magic—except under the supervision of a teacher?”

  Not that supervision had helped Ruth. Supposedly having a teacher present was enough to ensure accidents didn’t happen.

  Vega pushed those thoughts away and focused on Mr. Reade’s question. How embarrassing that he was talking to her as if she were fourteen!

  He waved a hand at the field. “Examine the school wards as they currently stand.”

  Vega allowed her gaze to soften. She channeled her stored starlight into her hand. Waving it before her face allowed her to wipe her vision of the physical world aside so she could examine the subtle energies hidden to those without magic skills. The dome of protective magic was woven in elaborate patterns over the school, resembling a rainbow tapestry. Done correctly, wards were artistic masterpieces.

  The view looking up was stable and intact. As Vega gazed out toward the forest, the lines blurred and bent in ways that felt jarring with the rest of the pattern. She was too far away to examine the details, but she could tell there were disruptions in the protective boundary. When she looked down toward the field, below her feet were frayed threads. The wards had been worn away—presumably by gnomes. The holes were small, but many yards back there was a larger rift; the lines of the wards looked as though an explosion had happened.

  It was a bathtub-sized explosion.

  Vega gasped. The vision faded. Below the place there had been a hole in one of the wards, there was evidence of burrowed mounds in the grass.

  She looked at Mr. Reade. “Portal magic disrupts the wards and makes the school susceptible for Fae being able to sneak in. When Fae come in, they cause damage to the wards.” Or they attacked students, as some had in Vega’s teenage years.

  “It’s a vicious cycle that never ends.” Mr. Reade nodded grimly. “Portal magic used to ferry people disrupts the wards, but wards also disrupt the portal magic. Special adaptations have to be made in the school’s wards when students are practicing in class so that the overall defense system isn’t compromised.”

  “But all those times in high school—” She’d ignored the rules despite what teachers had told her classes. Vega and other teenagers had created portals anyway. They had worked fine, or so she’d assumed.

  Of course, most of those portals she’d created had been before Ruth’s accident and then Vincent’s.

  Mr. Reade waited for her answer.

  Vega examined the gouges in the dirt from the bathtub feet, starting back where the portal had been made. “Did I break the school’s wards?”

  He waved her off. “No, it was the gnomes. They’ve made too many holes, which means it’s easier to bend and break the school’s defensive magic. That makes the grounds accessible for other pests to get in. The gnomes were probably able to get in because students ignore rules and create holes when they sneak off campus through portals or other means.”

  Guilt churned in Vega’s core. She had once been one of those students. “That time in high school when I accidentally summoned a Fae and had to escape with a portal—”

  “That was an emergency and can be overlooked. The dean took care of those holes years ago.” His eyes were distant as he scanned the terrain, probably using magic to examine the wards as she had been doing moments before. “Back when you were a student, you wouldn’t have been able to create the portal in the first place if the Fae hadn’t dismantled some of the wards.”

  “And that time Vincent used portal magic—” Vega choked on the words. She hated how weak she was, that what had happened still affected her the way it did.

  Mr. Reade turned away from the grounds and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Your friend shouldn’t have been using portal magic so close to the school. It’s easier for students when they use transportation spells near the edge of the school boundaries. It takes more energy to power spells like that right next to the school.”

  “That’s why he died. Not because he was too upset?” she asked.

  All these years she’d blamed herself.

  His eyes were kind, sympathetic. “Emotion can certainly make a difference, but he knew better than to use a spell like that so close to the building, and he did so anyway. He couldn’t control his portal magic and didn’t infuse enough magic into it.”

  Vega supposed she had known how dangerous it was to use portal magic near the school as well, but she had overlooked it in her speed to blame herself.

  The revelation lifted a burden from her shoulders. She hadn’t caused Vincent’s death. She still regretted her harsh last words to him, but it put a new perspective on the cause of his death itself.

  “I understand you wanted to teach flying because it’s a skill where you excel, but if you were willing to use portal magic more for transportation, you would realize how safe it is when it’s used correctly.” He gave her a knowing look. “I’m certain you would be just as adept as you are with everything else if you put your mind to it.”

  Vega crossed her arms. “It happens I like flying.”

  “So do I, but it isn’t made for long-distance travel. There are times a portal is what you are going to need. If you still want to apply to be a Merlin-class Celestor—”

  “I know.” She waved him off. “I’ll have to master every k
ind of magic.” She was perfectly capable of using portals. She just didn’t like them.

  There wasn’t anywhere she couldn’t go by broom. Except another dimension. Or through a storm. Or across an ocean to Hawaii.

  Or to the DMV. So maybe there were a few places. She was certain Hawaii was overrated.

  “I happen to know you’re perfectly capable of making portals. Every time you open one for storage you show how well-versed you are.”

  She frowned. “That’s different.” Those weren’t for people.

  “Is it?” He gave her a knowing look. “You could just as easily chop off a hand through those. There’s no need to be afraid of using portals for transportation.”

  “I’m not afraid!”

  He shrugged. She could tell he didn’t believe her.

  “Anyway, the DMV will get this sorted out for you,” he said. “Do you want me to call them tomorrow for you?”

  The idea of handing this problem off to someone else filled her with momentary relief. But she wanted to show Mr. Reade she was capable and responsible, not a spoiled rich girl who needed to rely on others to do everything for her.

  “I can do it,” she said.

  He nodded encouragingly. “You’re one of the most capable magic wielders out there. Your construction of wards is even better than mine. I have complete faith in you.”

  She doubted her wards surpassed his, but it was flattering to hear him say so. The wards were hardly her real problem anyway.

  She kicked at a clump of dirt in the grass. “But what about the principal? What will she say?” Mrs. Gordmayer’s reaction was her true fear. Vega cleared her throat, feeling ridiculous to repeat the principal’s impossible mandate. “She said no one was allowed to die.”

  He waved her off. “Death is inevitable. She was only concerned about forbidden magic.”

  Vega’s eyes went wide. Of course Mrs. Gordmayer would think that about Vega. With good reason—though this time death had still followed Vega—and she hadn’t done anything forbidden to initiate it.

  “Leave Mrs. Gordmayer a note. Let her know an elderly woman died of a stroke while flying. She’ll get over it.” He waved a hand toward the body. “The DMV will help you with the rest.” He started toward his stool.