Across the lawn, we could still hear the chants and screams from the sports arena. It was the big game and we were missing it, but it was the only way no one would notice us taking over the main structure on campus. Everyone, including all the staff, would be otherwise engaged.
I wondered vaguely how it was going. This year’s theme was Space, and I was sad to be missing it. I heard there was supposed to be a real spaceship on the football field.
Standing beside me near the lip of the fountain, Rowan put a hand on my shoulder. His cold fingers trailed delicately along my skin, sending a shiver down my spine.
“Are you sure you want to do this? If the deans find out, they’ll punish us. They could expel you. And me, well, it would sure make a lot of people happy if they had a reason to kick me out.” Dark eyes searched my face, the concern hidden in them warming up my cold skin.
“That’s exactly why we need to do it,” I said, gently returning his touch. Even after a month dating him, I still marveled at the coldness of his perfect skin. How good it felt to touch him. “If we can reverse the transformation, not only will that shut them up, you’ll be back to normal.”
“I’ve never quite been normal.” His mouth quirked up, the first hint of humor I’d seen in a while. I fought the urge to drag his body to mine and press my lips to his.
Instead, I glanced down at the fountain’s bubbling water and tried to focus on the moment at hand. I gave my cuffs a twist, the worry doing its own twisting by turning my stomach into a pretzel.
What if I did it wrong and we all ended up in Siberia? What if I couldn't get us back? What if I mixed up our body parts so Disha’s head ended up with Rowan’s body and vice versa? Boy, talk about awkward makeout sessions.
Speaking of makeout sessions, there hadn’t been many of those. Between classes and research on the clue from the compass, there hadn’t been much time for “extracurricular activities.” Then, adding to Rowan’s preoccupations, a disciplinary note had been placed on his file because of his aggression towards Cruise Knightley along with the threat that one more step out of line would cause his immediate expulsion.
To add insult to injury, Cruise Knightley’s friends had been going out of their way to let Rowan know his presence was unwanted. They’d gone as far as trashing his room, filling it with garlic and writing, “Death to vamps!” in pig’s blood on the wall.
And if that wasn’t enough, another time, someone hexed him so that he looked like a comic book Dracula, cape, fangs and all. It took Disha and me a solid day to undo it.
So, yeah, he hadn’t been too inclined to break the rules, not even the “being in my room after hours” one. I didn’t blame him. Once we fixed this, we could focus on our relationship.
That’s what I told myself, anyway.
Still, he took my hand tenderly and led me into the fountain, a reassuring smile on his face. He was so achingly handsome in the moonlight. His new undead body filled out his clothes with round outlines of hard muscle. And I knew under that T-shirt washboard abs hid, just waiting for my touch. His smooth skin would feel so incredible on mine.
Get it together, Charlie.
I shook my head and focused, checking my pocket to make sure the compass was there and stepped into the fountain. Rowan glanced down at me and I gave him a reassuring smile. Now or never.
The water was indeed cold, but it helped clear my head. I could do this. The cuffs always made things work, even if I didn’t exactly know how.
Once we were in the water, the three of us joined hands. My cuffs pulsed as if waking up. Last time, it took prolonged exposure to the liquid to make the transportation happen and Disha had assured me that if I focused on where we were going, we’d end up in Turkey and not that creepy mausoleum.
I hoped to God she was right.
We dipped down into the water. Disha made a face but didn’t complain, sensing the solemnity of the moment. Together, we closed our eyes and did as we had rehearsed. We pictured the images we had seen of Doğaüstü Akademi.
The cuffs pulsed, then throbbed. Magic bubbled the water, lighting it up like a Jacuzzi. My eyes snapped from side to side, making sure no one was around to see the glowing light in the center of campus. We should’ve used a cloaking spell!
But I couldn’t focus on this long because a strange sensation took over my body. It felt as though parts of me were swirling away like I was made of sugar and the water was eroding me piece by piece, sucking me into a magical drain.
For a moment, I felt my friends’ hands in mine and then they were gone. And then I was gone, swirling down into darkness.
I came to with a giant splash. If I’d thought the fountain was cold, this water was pure ice.
Sputtering, I kicked down and felt something solid beneath my feet. Pushing up, I stood in hip-deep water and sucked in a deep breath.
Daylight greeted my eyes. Ahead of me, trees and shrubs climbed up a gently-rolling hillside covered in lush grass. On the other side of the stream, a goat blinked at me with wide yellow eyes. He gave a delayed, “Baa,” and took off, his white tail in the air.
Where in the holy hell had I taken us?
A splash revealed Disha and Rowan pushing up out of the stream beside me. Mucky water streamed from their hair and faces as they gulped air and looked around.
“Gah!” Disha exclaimed, pulling a stick out of her hair. “What is this torment?”
“A stream?” Rowan asked, casting his eyes around. “And is that a goat?”
The billy was watching us from a safe distance, chewing on a long piece of grass.
“Is this Turkey?” Disha asked, holding my shoulder to help her plod through the water to the shore. “Why is it so earthy?” She pronounced the last word like a curse. She was a city girl after all. “Is this the place?”
“I… don’t know,” I said.
Across the stream, several buildings waited, a leaning barn, a thatched shed and a fenced-in pasture where more goats, a horse, and a donkey regarded us suspiciously. The school did have a working farm attached to the campus for the students who worked with animals and plants, so maybe we were in the right place.
We stepped on shore, dripping like dirty mops and glancing around in confusion. As we took a few steps away from the stream, the gray and black donkey I’d noticed inside the pen grew agitated. He opened his mouth, showing off big yellow teeth. I expected a loud bray, but instead, a strange garbled voice called out, “Elspeth! Elspeth, davetsiz misafir!”
“Is it having a seizure?” Rowan asked.
Disha touched her ear and twisted her fingers, activating her translation spell. “It’s Turkish. He’s warning someone.”
“A talking donkey? What is this, Shrek?” Rowan asked.
But I was more worried about who the donkey was calling because, as it continued shouting, the door to the ancient, hand-hewn shed began to open.
Readying my cuffs, I forced a defensive spell to the tip of my tongue.
An older woman pushed out. Wearing a large, shapeless, brown coat, trousers, and mucky boots, she looked like some sort of caretaker. The donkey seemed to confirm it as he kept repeating, “Elspeth, Elspeth!” and bucking his legs.
“Calm down, Berat,” she said, waving a hand that seemed to subdue him. Then she turned to us.
My jaw nearly hit the ground. The woman standing in front of us looked exactly like Irmagard and Lynssa McIntosh.
There were three of them?
Chapter Eleven
FALL SEMESTER
LATE OCTOBER
“What…? Who…? Huh?” I stared at the woman in front of me as I stumbled over my words. Disha and Rowan seemed similarly stunned.
“You’re… her.” Disha held up a finger, cocking her head. “But how?”
The woman stared back, also confused. She looked exactly like Irmagard and Lynssa McIntosh but a little harder, sturdy with farm work, sun, and fresh air. Her hair was cropped short in a practical style and, while Lynssa dyed hers, Elspeth’s was ful
ly gray.
Her eyebrows rose up as if a light bulb had come on inside her head. “You came through the portal. You must know my sisters.”
We nodded. “The dean and counselor of the Supernatural Academy in the states.” I pointed at the stream as if that would make anything clearer.
“That explains the wet. Here, let me help.” She gripped a delicate gold bracelet on her wrist and suddenly a warm breeze surrounded us, drying our clothes and hair.
“Much better.” She smiled and appraised us. “Now, did my sisters send you? Is something wrong.”
“No!” I said too quickly, waving my hands. The last thing I wanted was for the dean and the counselor to be alerted we had used the portal. “Everything’s totally fine. No need to contact them.”
Because if you did, we’d be in deep trouble.
She scrutinized us, stopped at my cuffs, and raised her eyebrows in understanding. “Well then, what brings two young witches and a vampire to my doorstep?”
Rowan flinched. How could she know so soon?
As if possessing some of her sister’s intuition, she held a calming hand out to Rowan.
“Don’t worry, boy. No prejudice here. But I will warn you, I did have garlic soup for lunch.” She put a hand to her lips as if a bit embarrassed.
The initial encounter had unnerved me, but, like her sisters, this woman was special, and I was sure she would quickly grow on me. She ran an absent-minded hand down the donkey’s scruff, and he leaned into her touch as she waited for our response.
I started talking since it appeared the other two had been knocked mute by the whole encounter. “Ma’am, we came because we have a question. We thought we might find the answer at the library here. Do you know if it would be possible for us to visit it?”
“I believe so.” She regarded us with curiosity, then waved for us to follow her. She smiled. “But first… this way for a hot cup of tea and a biscuit. I don’t get many visitors. We can talk a bit after I get these boots off.”
We followed her up a well-worn path around a chicken coop with some of the strangest chickens I’d ever seen. One looked more lizard than bird and another was bright blue with gold eyes.
Another pen held a single creature with an appearance, unlike anything I’d ever seen. It was a shaggy brown color with fur like a bear, yet as tall and lanky as a man with impossibly long arms and fingers that trailed nearly to the ground. Its face had a long fleshy beak, ridges above its eyes, and ears that suggested it was also part bird. Hunched over, it watched us with milk-white eyes.
I shivered.
Elspeth waved a hand at it as we passed by. “That’s Shurala. Forest spirit. Never follow one into the trees. Those long fingers will tickle you to death. Helpful in letting you know when the weather will turn foul, though.”
She pulled out a wax paper packet from her pocket, unwrapped it, and tossed its contents to the creature. He snapped up the hunk of meat in one bite and gulped it down the long column of its throat. I flinched as its eyes continued to follow us down the path. Who would keep a thing like that as a pet just to help with the weather forecast?
Across the field, other pens held more unrecognizable creatures as if this was a sort of magical zoo. It was all very odd, to say the least.
“What exactly is this place?” Disha asked, looking similarly horrified as we skirted past Shurala.
Elspeth cast her eyes around the grounds. “This place? Why, it’s many things: a mythological animal sanctuary, a place to practice magical agriculture, and we make great cheese.” She showed her evenly-spaced, white teeth.
“How far is the library?” I asked.
She smiled but gave me no answer. Instead, she led us up the steps to what must be her home. In the distance a stately building rose, tall spires reaching up to the sky. That must be the Academy, and one of the many surrounding buildings must be the library.
Elspeth’s home was far less stately, falling more into the realm of small and ancient. A one-story building made of round fieldstone, the house seemed both welcoming and a bit unkempt. Multiple pairs of muddy boots rested beside the doormat. Patched farm clothes fluttered on a laundry line running from the porch railing to a pole in the yard. A beat-up truck hunkered in a carport off to one side.
Elspeth pushed open the door to reveal an interior in a similar state of disarray. It reminded me of Irmagard’s office with its piles of items stacked in tight corners. There was an odor of old food, something like bananas gone to rot, coming from the cluttered kitchen, but who was I to judge? I’d picked food out of a dumpster before.
Disha, on the other hand, was making a face. I elbowed her in the side and shook my head. At least Rowan had held it together. His face betrayed no emotion and, when Elspeth started clearing the table for us to sit, he assisted by levitating dishes into the sink for her.
“A vampire doing magic,” she said, collapsing into a chair. “I’ve seen a lot in my day, but that is a rare sight. How? Do you possess an ancient item that you are draining of its power as we speak?”
Rowan set the dishes down and smoothed a hand down his shirt self-consciously. “Charlie and I made a blood pact.” His dark eyes found me, the smallest hint of a smile on his lips.
“And you’re Charlie?” she asked, turning to me. “That’s very brave of you.”
The comment took me off guard so all I managed to respond was, “It was nothing.”
Elspeth poured tea into mismatched mugs as we gathered around her table. “So, what sort of question brought you all the way to Turkey? Must be important.”
Disha seemed to finally find her tongue. “Well, my father attended here many years ago. Maybe you know him. His name is Nikhil Khatri.”
“Ah, yes. Nikhil. I had him as a student. How is he?” She sipped her tea while keeping her eyes on Disha.
“He is well, thank you. He was asking about an item he found in a memento box. One of his old Academy friends gave it to him. It had an inscription that read, ‘The tempest awaits behind the winds of change.’ He couldn’t remember what it meant and desperately wanted to know, considering the friend who gave it to him has since passed away.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Elspeth said, seeming to buy all the lies Disha was selling.
“Anyway, I wanted to help my father figure out the riddle,” Disha said with a winning smile.
“Hmm,” Elspeth considered, “doesn’t sound familiar. But you’ve surely come to the right place. We have the largest magical library on this side of the world.”
“Where is the library?” Rowan asked, blowing on his tea, but not actually drinking it.
At this, Elspeth’s eyebrows went up as if she’d been waiting for us to ask this all along. “I’ll show you. Follow me.”
“There was some mention of biscuits,” Disha complained, but I grabbed her arm. We could eat later. We needed answers now.
Heading through the house, we traveled a long, dark hallway that ended in a turquoise door with an ancient handle. Elspeth ran a hand down it, igniting some unlocking spell, and the door swung open.
Onto another world.
The first thing I noticed was a giant white dome in the room’s center, glowing with light. Around it, in terraced rings, shelves of books extended as far as the eye could see, also glowing with incandescent light. It was so clean and bright it seemed like a movie depiction of the library of the future.
The library was attached to Elspeth’s house? No, it had to be a trick. We’d likely been transported to one of the buildings we’d seen from a distance. The place was so immaculate and sterile, probably designed and maintained by someone other than Elspeth, if her house was any indication of her tidying habits.
“Wow,” Disha said, grabbing my arm. “This is amazing.”
Elspeth nodded, beaming as if showing off her prized possession. “Designed in the fifteenth century by Library Director Eymen Aksoy. It’s had considerable upgrades since then. Notably this one.” She clapped her hands three times, touched
her fingers to her throat and spoke in a bold voice. “Okay, Arama. Book Search. Passage. ‘The tempest awaits behind the winds of change.’ Find.”
Suddenly, there was movement along the shelves. Books rippled, pages quietly fluttering. Then, like falcons being called by their master, several books rose from their shelves and flew toward us, landing in a neat stack on a clean sterling silver table a few feet away.
“That was epic,” Disha said.
Hands in his pockets, Rowan’s face was equally awed. “That makes library searches so much easier. How can we get that at the Academy?”
Elspeth smiled. “One of a kind, I’m afraid. I designed it myself.”
“How can we get one of you at the Academy?” Rowan joked.
“But dear, you already have two of me.” Elspeth gave Rowan a cheeky wink.
“Now, let’s see,” Elspeth raised her arms again and the four books rose with her. Keeping them all hovering in the air, the woman opened them all and began swiping through pages using two fingers. “No, that’s Shakespeare.” She flung that book back to the table. “This one’s a literary study of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.” That one sailed back.
The third made her pause and then she drew it closer, pulling reading glasses out of her jacket pocket and setting them on her nose. “Now, here. This one is interesting.”
We all gathered around the ancient, leather-bound book and its smell of age and wisdom.
“It talks about the word tempest, which most people take to mean a violent storm, but if you study early Latin, it can also mean time. The Tempest, a powerful magical item, has been rumored to be a device that, when properly powered, can turn back time.”
“Turn back time?” Rowan whispered.
My mind ran a mile a minute on those implications. If we could turn back time, we could stop Henderson much sooner. We could save people’s lives and keep Rowan from becoming a vampire. Hell, we could stop Rowan’s curse before it afflicted him.
I froze, my eyes flaring wide. I could save Trey.
Supernatural Academy: Sophomore Witch Page 8
