Party Ghoul

by Sarina Dorie

  Heat flushed to Vega’s face. “I bribed them with pizza, soda, and cake.”

  “Hmm.”

  Vega couldn’t tell if she didn’t believe her. “These are very responsible people.”

  “Of course they are.” Ms. Chamapiwa gave her a knowing look. “You’d best keep alcohol out of the building in case the principal unexpectedly returns tomorrow.” She held up a stern finger in warning. “And try to keep the noise to a minimum.”

  Vega nodded quickly. She could see Ms. Chamapiwa understood how true bribery worked.

  Ms. Chamapiwa wagged a stern finger at her. “If you’re going to use spells from Advanced Wards and Defensive Magic, I highly suggest practicing the preliminary exercises in chapter five with a small group before trying to patch holes.”

  Vega should have known Ms. Chamapiwa would remember every book she’d checked out to her.

  “Are you any good with wards?” Vega asked.

  The librarian’s smile was mischievous. “The only thing that will tempt me to stay up past my bedtime is a very beautiful . . . limited edition.”

  Vega laughed at that.

  “Speaking of which, I cleaned your books and removed all traces of arsenic. It wasn’t gnome urine on the book. Only coffee.”

  “Fabulous!” Vega reached for the books.

  The librarian slid them back. “Whose books are these?”

  “I found them in the purse. Either they were Janis Meadowcloud’s books or Penelope Angelopoulos’s. Why do you ask?”

  “One is an illuminated manuscript of spells from seventh-century France. The second is a personal grimoire, handwritten in Greek. Some of the spells use forbidden magic. The last is a limited edition from the fifteenth century.” Ms. Chamapiwa drew them closer to herself, almost protectively. “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d love to take a look at these for a few days. Just until you want them back or have to return them to the owner.” Ms. Chamapiwa bit her lip like a smitten schoolgirl.

  “If there’s a book in Greek, it probably belonged to Penelope Angelopoulos,” Vega said. “She had no next of kin.” Which meant family wouldn’t come looking for it anytime soon. Vega studied the librarian, wondering if this was the bribe that might ensure her good favor for the rest of eternity. “If no one comes looking for the books, it’s possible we might be able to make them a gift to the library.”

  Ms. Chamapiwa patted her snowy curls. “A gift to the library. . . . That would be generous.”

  Assuming that worked out and there were no hitches, Vega knew whom she was going to ask a letter of recommendation from before she applied for the vacancy at Lady of the Lake School for Girls.

  * * *

  After her first lesson of the day, Vega informed Mr. Dorn, the custodian, of her plans that evening so he wouldn’t be alarmed that visitors were there at night “tampering” with the wards.

  She called Amy to suggest she show up with her boyfriend, Paris, at eight p.m. so they could practice the wards with Vega before teaching them to the others to implement at nine. Amy wasn’t available. She probably had flying lessons to teach like Vega did during the day. Vega left a message with Amy’s magic mirror.

  That afternoon, Vega caught another fourteen gnomes with students, using Janis’s metal bracelets as lures. The grounds were so vast, and there were so many holes in the flowerbeds and grass, it was hard to tell where any gnomes might be hiding.

  Vega was certain there were more, but she didn’t think she’d be able to catch them all before she had to go to the Morty Realm for pizza. She had so much to do for tonight in order to make it a success.

  After a quick dinner, Vega found Amy had left a message on Vega’s mirror.

  “I was able to get ahold of some friends and asked Paris if he’d recruit some of his teammates on the air pelota team. I think we’ve got eleven people total, plus you. Do you think twelve will be enough? Is that still a coven?”

  Twelve was a satisfactory number, but Vega was never content with “satisfactory.” She had been an overachiever in high school and college. If she was going to organize a true coven of witches, she needed one more.

  Vega suspected she knew of one person she might be able to recruit, considering they had a common enemy.

  Vega hadn’t seen Orsolya all day. She flew her broom to the groundskeepers’ cottage on the other side of the greenhouses and knocked on the door. Orsolya wore a pair of spectacles, a book under her arm. For once she didn’t have dirt on her clothes.

  “What’s up, Vega? Need more gnome cages?” She leaned against the doorway, the wood creaking under her immense frame.

  “I came to see if you would like to be part of a coven of witches,” Vega said. “Tonight we will be repairing school wards that the gnomes destroyed.”

  Orsolya’s tone dripped with sarcasm. “Sounds fun. Just what I wanted to do, work on my day off.”

  Vega understood the sentiment. “I’m offering pizza, soda, and cake as the prizes at the end of our work.” From Orsolya’s unenthusiastic expression, she could see she hadn’t impressed her. Vega added, “I can play music from my record player too.”

  “Music, that’s great. But it isn’t fun to do any dancing unless you at least get some beer.”

  “I’ve already considered that, but my friend, Amy, thinks I might get fired if I bring alcohol into the school.” She shrugged, knowing Amy was probably right. “Ms. Chamapiwa told me to keep alcohol out of the school. Mrs. Gordmayer probably would smell it and disapprove.”

  Orsolya nodded. “Yeah, that’s true, but that doesn’t mean you have to keep the food and alcohol in the kitchen or cafeteria.”

  Vega’s original plan had actually been to use the staff room.

  “We should have the party down here in my groundskeepers’ cottage. Luis’s room is vacant because he’s off until August, so there’s plenty of room. It will totally rock!” Orsolya grinned.

  Vega could see she had made an ally of Orsolya. All it had taken was the incentive of alcohol.

  Now Vega had to conquer the most difficult task left before the party—shopping on a budget.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Pizza and Portals

  Vega had never needed to save money until becoming a college student. Prior to being disowned, she had always been given spending money for shopping—or for bribing people to do her bidding. Budgets were the bane of her existence.

  Now she had to shop on a budget and with a time crunch. It was always so much easier spending other people’s money than her own. She wouldn’t get her first paycheck from flyer education for another month. Which meant she needed to purchase party accoutrements with the earnings from her last paycheck from Encantado Charter Academy.

  If she allocated her time well, she would be able to fly back to school with plenty of time to spare. If she underestimated how much time shopping took, she would be forced to use portal magic to get back to school.

  Her stomach lurched at the thought. Flying was so much safer than casting a spell to create a temporary portal.

  The logical choice was going to the Morty town on the other side of the perfectly safe and permanent portal hidden outside West Wormwood. That was the closest location available for purchasing food. She had gone shopping and eaten at restaurants in the area many times as a teenager, so she knew the lay of the land well.

  However, it was a long walk to the portal and a longer walk from the portal in the woods to get into the town itself. Vega didn’t want to take two hours trudging there by foot. She used her broom to fly and cast a glamour to camouflage herself until she reached the edge of town.

  She only had to spend ten minutes walking to the restaurant. She ordered the pizza, then went to a dessert shop nearby to purchase two cakes. One was supposedly vegan, so if they hadn’t contaminated it, she could enjoy the cake. She spent the rest of her Morty currency on soda, beer, wine, and hard alcohol. If there were leftovers, she would give them to the school brùnaidhs. Th
e little hobs were always doing good deeds on behalf of students and staff. And they liked gifts of food for their efforts. Unlike gnomes, brùnaidhs could speak, use magic, and were shy toward outsiders. She was certain her friend Ruth from high school would have approved of Vega’s plans to leave presents for them.

  Vega was able to surreptitiously stuff dessert, paper plates, and beverages into the bottomless pit of her purse when Morties weren’t looking. Shopping took her far longer than she planned.

  By the time she returned to the pizzeria, her order still wasn’t ready. She had to wait for another half an hour for them to finish baking the pizzas. She glanced at the clock. Despite the air-conditioning working overtime, the building was hotter than it was outside.

  She had to get back soon so Amy wouldn’t be waiting for her. People might leave before they had a chance to perform favors if she was fashionably late to her own party.

  Because West Wormwood was a cute neighborhood that catered to upscale clientele, four pizzas cost her over a hundred dollars, including the all-vegetable-topping, no-cheese pizza that they hopefully hadn’t contaminated with meat.

  Vega considered paying with her fake checkbook, her backup plan when she had no money in the Morty Realm. She even knew the correct compulsion spells to convince Morties the checks were real on the occasions they suspected the checks were false.

  But she hated using it like an entitled witch who used her magic to improve her circumstances while stepping on working-class people who didn’t even have magic to better their situation in the world. It was the sort of thing her mother had once done. Nashira Bloodmire had discreetly used magic to hypnotize a Morty so she didn’t have to pay for a dress in Paris when she hadn’t brought the correct currency. She’d been perfectly capable of paying for the dress herself if only she’d planned ahead.

  Vega didn’t want to be anything like her mother or the rich, entitled class she belonged to. Especially now that Vega understood how hard it was to earn a living.

  She dug out a gold coin from the purse. She didn’t know which was worse, spending a dead woman’s money or cheating innocent Morties. Probably cheating people was worse. The dead were not going to miss their money. Especially if they didn’t have family. If anything, Vega was the closest thing Mrs. Angelopoulos had to kin. Not only had Vega put up with the old woman during flyer-ed class, giving her generous allowances with her tardiness and behavior, she was now busting her butt tracking down her killer.

  Surely Mrs. Angelopoulos’s ghost was thanking Vega for all the hard work she was doing. She probably wanted Vega to spend her money. It was an easy path for Vega to go down in order to justify the moment.

  Vega placed a coin on the counter. “This is gold.”

  The doughy-faced boy on the other side of the counter looked at the coin and back to her. “That isn’t real.”

  “It is. It says United States of America on it.” That was proof, wasn’t it?

  He picked it up and squinted at it in the romantic lighting of the pizzeria. “I think I have to ask my manager about this.”

  “No.” Vega readied a compulsion charm. “Just look into my eyes and you—”

  He turned away and left the counter. Vega had to wait for two entire minutes for him to return with his manager. She was a teenage girl young enough to be one of Vega’s high school students. Her eyes were dazed and distant under the influence of some kind of drug.

  The manager bent down and inspected the gold coin. “Yeah, that’s totally real.”

  “Are you sure?” the cashier asked.

  “Totally! My grandpa collects coins.”

  Vega nodded in approval. Finally she was getting somewhere. “That should be more than enough to cover my bill,” Vega said.

  “Look right here,” the girl said, pointing to the coin. “It says twenty dollars.”

  “Look at the year. It’s old. It’s worth far more than twenty dollars.” Vega glanced at the clock. It was seven thirty. She needed to be back at the school soon.

  “How much more is it worth?” the manager asked.

  “I don’t know.” Gold wasn’t Vega’s usual form of currency in the Morty Realm. “At least a couple hundred dollars.”

  The girl’s face crinkled up. “I don’t know. It only says twenty on there.”

  Vega sighed in exasperation. She handed over five more coins. “You can keep the change as your tip, even though you don’t deserve it.”

  * * *

  By the time Vega was done at the pizzeria, she had twenty minutes to get back to the school. She didn’t particularly want to stuff boxes with grease soaking through the cardboard into her purse. The smell of oil from cheese and meat would drive her crazy every time she opened her purse in the future. That, and she didn’t want all the cold items to get warm with the hot pizza next to it in the enclosed space.

  That meant she was going to need to cast a spell to create her own portal as a shortcut.

  Using magic in the Morty Realm was illegal. People did it all the time, so long as they warded themselves with protective magic to hide what they were doing first. And weren’t seen by Morties.

  Vega’s hands turned clammy as she thought about using a portal. She didn’t want to get chopped in half. Nor did the idea of falling through a portal that was only meant for inanimate objects particularly entice her.

  But she was a skilled Celestor. She had taught wards the previous year, which was far more difficult than a portal.

  Vega found an alley behind one of the buildings, mustering up the courage to do this. Just like Mr. Reade had said, the only reason Vincent had been killed from the portal he’d created was because he hadn’t been able to infuse enough magic into it. He’d created a portal too close to the school.

  The portal she needed to make wasn’t going to place her near the school. She would arrive in the forest.

  Vega drew a ward of protection with one hand. She glanced over her shoulder. No Morties were coming. She drew a doorway in the air, infusing starlight into it. She focused on where she wanted to arrive at the edge of school property. The edges sparkled with the energy of celestial bodies as the door expanded to her height. On the other side was the shadowy forest just outside the school property line.

  Vega didn’t dive through her as she had often done in the past, afraid it would close on. She stepped across the threshold, her heart quickening. The portal remained open until she closed the aperture.

  She was still at least a twenty-minute walk to Orsolya’s cottage, and she had pizza and food to drop off before she met Amy in front of the school. She preferred to spend her time ensuring she looked classy and sassy for a coven party rather than getting sweaty by walking in the heat.

  She had made one portal without a problem. Now she was going to make another without any accidents.

  Mr. Reade had said it wasn’t good to create portals too close to the school. The school wards would weaken a portal, and a portal would weaken the wards. Vega didn’t intend to go close to the school. If she was damaging the wards, she was going to soon be fixing it.

  She constructed another portal. Holding her breath, she stepped through the second portal she’d created that night. It worked as efficiently as the first.

  She was that good.

  * * *

  Vega stored the pizzas in Orsolya’s cottage with the refreshments. She used a cooling spell on the drinks and a warming spell on the pizza. Amy and Paris showed up at the front of the school at eight. Vega introduced them to Orsolya, who had braided her hair into a crown around her head. She’d applied lip gloss and wore jeans and a blouse. It was the first time Vega noticed Orsolya had a curvy figure since she wasn’t wearing grubby work clothes.

  “You didn’t say anything about Paris Troilus showing up!” Orsolya nudged Vega with an elbow.

  Vega staggered to the side, not expecting Orsolya’s troll-like strength.

  “You’re an air pelota fan, I take it!” Paris sa
id.

  “You better believe it!” Orsolya said.

  Paris was handsome, with the dark features of a Greek god. He was almost as tall as she was.

  Amy hugged Vega five times. “It’s so nice to see you.”

  “I don’t know how you’re going to survive without me,” Vega said. It had only been a week.

  “I don’t know either!” Amy’s eyes welled up with tears.

  “Stop. I was only teasing.” Vega’s throat tightened with emotion.

  This was why Amy had been a difficult roommate. She was always crying over everything. She was like a little sister Vega had been forced to babysit and boss around. The bossing around part hadn’t been a problem. Vega couldn’t help liking Amy, even if she was a total wimp who needed Vega to crush her enemies for her.

  Five minutes later, Castor showed up. She should have known Amy and Paris would invite him.

  He flashed a panty-melting smile. “Hi, Vega.” He held up a bottle. “I hope it’s all right. I brought champagne.”

  Paris jerked a thumb at Castor. “Orsolya, meet my cousin. He’s the ugly duckling in the family.”

  Vega laughed. “Castor is far from ugly!” She winked at him.

  His green-bronze eyes were striking against his Greek features. He wasn’t a professional athlete like Paris, but he was athletic enough as a physical education teacher at Merlin’s Academy for Boys that he couldn’t hide his physique.

  Also, Castor was a better dancer than his cousin.

  Castor’s eyes met hers. The sparks that flew between them were almost tangible.

  Orsolya looked from Vega to Castor. “I agree! He’s a hottie!”

  He only had eyes for Vega. She supposed she didn’t completely mind.

  One of Paris’s buddies from the air pelota team showed up early. Josef was a beefy Elementia.

  Vega instructed the small group in creating wards. It involved braiding, preferably in pairs to provide more hands as well as multiple affinities. There would be additional steps involved after the entire group was together, but Vega was able to practice the preliminary exercises from the chapters that Ms. Chamapiwa recommended.