I kissed the urn as tears streamed down my face.
“Goodbye, Trey. May the afterlife have unlimited Pandora radio and the best angel salon in Heaven. Thanks for listening to all my craziness these past two years, and sorry you had to go far too soon. I love you.”
Then, promising myself and Trey to be better, I let him go.
Chapter Thirty-Two
SPRING SEMESTER
EARLY APRIL
I had a duffle bag stuffed with all I would need for the summer. It was all I owned, and my dorm room was left empty, ready for the next student. In the fall, I would be staying across the street in the Junior Dorm.
It was a quarter to three in the afternoon as I walked out of the Sophomore Dorm. It was hard to believe I was halfway through my time here, halfway to graduation.
Even though I had yet to take my finals for this semester, I wasn’t worried. I would have time to study over the summer, and, with the Dean to help me, how could I do anything but pass with flying colors?
I would make her proud and begin to repair any damage I had done to our relationship this past school year. She had stuck her neck out for me when no one else would, gave me a home, a life, and I had repaid her by making every aspect of her job and life difficult. That was all going to change.
No more trouble from me.
The afternoon was warm. It was not even May and the temperature was eighty degrees already. Hopefully, the Dean would be taking us to cooler climates. I’d had enough sweaty days already.
There were a few straggler students still packing their cars and heading home, but most people were gone, especially those who had attended the funeral this morning.
Disha would be heading to New York after the reception at the Underwoods, catching a plane out of Hartsfield-Jackson. Like last year, she’d invited me to go with her, but the Dean had already enlisted me to accompany her. She’d said she needed an assistant since Priscilla Fordyce was taking a long-overdue vacation.
Plus, I had a feeling she wanted to keep a very close eye on me, like always.
I hadn’t been able to refuse. It was a great opportunity—she’d promise that, in addition to studying for my exams, she would teach me a few tricks in her spare time, spells that promised to be better than how to make beets grow like I’d learned last summer.
Sure, she’d probably only made the offer to keep me in line, but it wasn’t as if I didn’t deserve her distrust. She’d blocked the portal to keep me from using it and, if I’d been smart, that should have been enough to save me from trouble.
If I had listened, Macgregor would still be alive. That thought was so heavy it threatened to bury me.
When I got to the Administration Building, I dropped my duffle bag on the steps and went in. Inside, it was twenty degrees cooler and fifty times more deserted than the rest of the campus.
As I crossed the grand foyer toward the Dean’s office, Irmagard came from the other direction, pulling a carry-on suitcase and wearing a woven messenger bag across her torso. Her ferret’s little head was sticking out of it, sniffing the air, looking delighted to be going somewhere.
Her gray hair flowed freely, and she wore striped pants and a billowy polka-dot blouse with long sleeves that widened at the cuffs. My eyes swirled at the sight of her. She was a clash of patterns and color and she didn’t give a damn. Irmagard walked in my direction as she noticed me.
“All packed, I see,” I said, smiling at her and Gerald as his wet nose twitched.
Irmagard patted his head fondly. “He’s as excited as I am to get back to the beet farm.”
“I bet,” I said, trying not to sound frightened by the prospect of her sunning herself topless.
“Gerald and I will miss you,” she said, gesturing to him as if expecting him to nod in agreement. “You were a great help last summer.”
“Maybe next time,” I said, thinking I’d rather go to Turkey to take care of goats with her other sister than go back to Idaho. At least, Elspeth had a magical library.
Irmagard smiled but quickly grew somber. “How was the funeral? I couldn’t bring myself to attend.”
“There were a lot of people there,” I said, feeling as if the dam of pain I’d been building was cracking open again.
“Macgregor was well-liked in many circles. The Supernatural community has suffered a great loss. He… did a lot to keep the Academy running smoothly, to keep Regulars from interfering with our business, and, lately, to allow non-wizards in.”
I had no idea what Dean Underwood’s job had entailed, but I’d always suspected he did more than take care of admissions and recruitment. He had been a powerful, influential warlock. And now he was gone.
And with him, Rowan and all hope of saving him from his self-destructive behavior.
I pressed a hand to my mouth to hold back an unexpected sob. I’d been fighting to be strong, but, every time someone reminded me of Rowan or his father, the underpinnings of my carefully-constructed facade fell away, leaving my grief exposed for everyone to see.
“Oh, dear,” Irmagard said, noticing my distress.
Smiling tenderly, she wiggled her fingers in my direction. My pain eased a bit and, as warmth spread through my chest, I recognized the effects of her happy spell. It was enough to dull the edge of my suffering, but nothing as strong as what she’d cast on me on other occasions. I was grateful for that. I didn’t want to start my summer on cloud nine, then come crashing down the next day. I had to heal on my own.
To my surprise, Irmagard suddenly took a step closer and seized my hands in hers. Her expression did a one-eighty, from calming to fierce and urgent.
“Stay away from Rowan,” she entreated me.
I was left speechless both by her intensity and the open way in which she approached a subject that I’d kept private.
“Don’t try to reach him and don’t let him near you if he dares come looking for you.” Her hands squeezed mine so hard that I winced.
“I… I don’t intend to,” I managed, swallowing the knot in my throat. “He’s not the same Rowan I first met. Actually, he wasn’t good for me even then.”
Irmagard’s gaze was sad as it traveled over my face, analyzing my features as if she meant to gauge the truth in them.
“Promise me,” she said adamantly.
I hesitated. The request was odd coming from her.
“Promise me.” She insisted.
I nodded. “I promise.”
“Good, good.” She let go of my hands and stepped back, her intense expression changing to her usual happy-go-lucky one. “Well, dear, have a great summer.”
“Uh… you, too.”
“And don’t forget to wear sunscreen.” She walked away, waving backward and dragging her carry-on suitcase behind her while Gerald squirmed in the bag, shifting positions to watch me as they went.
I waved at the ferret, trying to drown the uneasy feeling Irmagard had left in my gut. Wasn’t a counselor supposed to ease your worries? Talk about being off the mark.
Shaking myself off, I walked toward Dean McIntosh’s office.
As I passed in front of Macgregor’s own office, I didn’t even glance at the door and, instead, pressed forward with my head lowered.
The large door at the end of the hall was closed, the plaque with the name Dean Lynssa McIntosh shining as if it had just been polished.
I knocked. When no response came, knocked again.
I checked the wall clock and saw that it was three. Had she left to go pack her car?
Deciding to wait for her outside, I turned around to leave when a terrible, ear-splitting crash sounded behind her door.
My heart skipped a beat. The cuffs flashed in warning.
Without thinking, I threw open the door.
It swung backward to reveal the Dean’s office in complete disarray.
The chairs lay broken on the floor. The desk appeared as if it had been cleaved in two by a giant ax, the two halves fallen in on themselves with papers and picture frames pil
ed in a heap on the floor. The busts of previous deans that had adorned the room were broken, their pieces scattered everywhere. One of the shelves had fallen and rested to one side of the desk, its books littering the rug.
What in the world had happened?
“Dean McIntosh,” I said in a hesitant voice, my heart beginning to thunder.
The dean hadn’t been in here when this happened, I reassured myself. I’d knocked, and she hadn’t answered. Still, an apprehensive feeling made itself comfortable in the pit of my stomach.
“Dean McIntosh,” I repeated, taking a step forward.
Once past the door, I could see the window on the left was also broken. Shards of glass peppered the floor, looking like discarded diamonds, glinting in the light that managed to seep past the curtains and outside bushes.
I moved closer to the desk, afraid to peer behind it. My chest rose and fell in agitation. I tried to calm my breaths and failed.
When I finally made it there, I found that only a few books lay behind the desk, no body. I breathed a sigh of the relief. Whatever had transpired here, the Dean was safe.
Then I caught the sight of something on her leather chair, and my relief turned to dread.
“What happened here?” someone demanded from the door.
I startled, nearly jumping out of my own skin.
It was Fedorov, and he was standing with his hands ready, his cufflinks shining with magic.
I shook my head, unable to form any words in my panic.
“Where is Dean McIntosh?!” he demanded.
“I… I don’t know. I came looking for her, and there was a crash and I came in and… and…” I pointed toward the floor.
“There’s blood. Something happened to the dean.”
TO BE CONTINUED IN BOOK 3, JUNIOR WITCH AVAILABLE NOW IN PRE-ORDER.
SNEAK PEEK OF JUNIOR WITCH
CHAPTER 1
FALL SEMESTER
EARLY SEPTEMBER
The gnomes were a problem. That was the only thing I knew for certain when I stepped inside Counselor Macintosh’s office on the first day of my junior year.
Irmagard’s office always looked like an episode of Hoarders even on a good day. From my place in the doorway, I clocked an antique tandem bicycle, a six-foot tall stack of old 1950s style radios, and a paper mache goose so large that it could house a human. It was wearing sunglasses.
All this was normal, or at least the normal I'd come to expect from kooky Irmagard. After my freshman year summer on her beet farm, I’d gotten to know her many idiosyncrasies. For example, how she seemed to like her ferret, Gerald, better than almost any human; how she seemed to favor clothing found mainly in any dead aunt’s attic storage; and how she had no reserves when it came to public nudity.
I’d still never completely gotten those images out of my head.
But now, as I fully crossed the doorway, I could see that a new element had been added to her office: gnomes.
Currently two naked small and squat creatures were trying on a variety of hats Irmagard kept beneath a cluttered credenza. As I watched, they took turns pressing a baseball cap between two large batwing ears, then switching it for a bonnet and a beekeeper’s mask. Giggling, they chucked each piece into a pile of discarded headwear behind them.
Two more were hanging from an antique brass chandelier, the crystals clinking loudly as they swung from side to side. Plaster cracked around the fixture’s base, threatening to send the gnomes and their trapeze to the floor. They didn’t seem to care, either about their imminent plunge to the trash-laden floor, or the fact that their naughty bits were flailing in the breeze for all to see.
What in the hell was happening?
“Counselor McIntosh?” I called, stepping in carefully.
With the tall piles in the way, it was impossible to see the counselor’s desk upon first entry. So, avoiding the gnomes, I walked around an old copier with a kayak stacked on top of it, then slipped between two manikins with their arms upraised as if to create a tunnel for me. Both were wearing very old Supernatural Academy spirit gear and jaunty, albeit, dead-eyed smiles.
Finally, her desk came into view. “Counselor McIntosh?”
She blinked up at me from where she was seated at her desk. A moment before my entrance, it appeared she and Gerald had been sharing a fish sandwich. He was perched beside her on a stack of scattered files with bits of battered cod in his paws. His little black eyes blinked up at me from behind the dark gray markings around them.
Irmagard stopped chewing in mid-bite and stood. “Charlie, you’re early.” Her eyes darted around the room as if I’d just caught her doing something illegal.
“Yeah... the flight was on time for once and I got a car right away. Go figure. Thanks for paying for all that, by the way.”
I blushed the bright red of a poor college student who had to accept charity at every turn. It was one thing to get my entire tuition paid for, but, since my mother was dead and my dad had “buggered off” as the British say, I literally didn’t have a penny to my name. Anything, literally anything, I had needed, Dean McIntosh had provided, with a few items from Disha. Now with the Dean gone, the task fell to Irmagard. Nearly all tasks had, as I’d been told.
I’d offered to get a summer job, but it had been decreed, once again, that I needed supervision. Not only did I possess one of the world’s most powerful magical items in the cuffs I always wore, but I’d also made enemies with the group of subversives working to overthrow both the Academy and the entire magical government.
I thought about how Henderson had wanted me dead and then Mink after him. Both of those men were in their graves, but a new group had arisen in their place. I was playing “Bad Guy Whack-a-mole” pretty constantly once I became a witch.
The new breed of villains who wanted my powers was Ava Marie, AKA Tempest, AKA Ana, who tricked us into a terrible trap that caused Macgregor Underwood’s death. The worst part was that, as far as I knew, Rowan was now working with her.
That fact alone drove a stake right through my heart. He chose to align himself with murders and thieves because Tempest had offered him what he wanted, a promise that he could have magic again. How he could fall for such blatant lies from the woman who helped orchestrate his father’s death was beyond me.
I scolded myself as my thoughts floated away. I had spent all summer trying to forget Rowan Underwood. I’d researched spells to forget him and ways to cut our unbreakable bond, which proved mostly fruitless. The former were unpredictable and could cause brain damage so I’d opted not to try one. I’d need to woman up and force myself through mental will power to get over him. Rowan would not be my focus this year.
I was going to kick ass and take names, starting with what I’d come here to tell the counselor. I straightened my shoulders and cleared my throat, drawing her attention back to me.
“Counselor McIntosh, I’m here to tell you that I had all summer to learn as much as I could from your sister, Elspeth. Turkey and the library there proved invaluable. I’ve mastered unmasking spells and made myself impervious to vampire enthralling. I’ve also nearly managed to uncover how to break the bonding spell between… the one I was bonded to. I know that, with your other sister missing, things have become difficult. Elspeth has kept me in the loop. I want you to know I’m here and I’m ready to help.”
With my speech done—I’d been rehearsing it for weeks—I nodded as if to put an exclamation point on it. This was my new role, my way to help undo what had been done. With Dean Underwood dead and Dean McIntosh missing, the Academy was in its most precarious spot yet. Elspeth had let it slip that the board of trustees wanted to replace Irmagard with someone not so “Lesser friendly”. Then they’d start systematically removing all non-human entities from the school.
Rowan and Ava Marie had given them a great gift by their horrible actions last spring. People were pissed and wanted action taken right now.
And, with the two most vocal advocates for the inclusion of all dead or gon
e, what was to stop them?
Well, one little by-law apparently.
The board wasn’t able to take action on anything because, without Dean McIntosh, they did not have a quorum—which was some fancy term I didn’t quite understand, but I guess meant there weren’t enough members to take an official vote on things. If Dean McIntosh turned up dead, something I could not think about too hard without bursting into ugly tears, they could replace her and take the vote. But as it stood, with her simply gone, everything was at a standstill with Irmagard still at the wheel.
And yet, staring at her office and the naked gnome that was currently digging through her file drawer, it seemed the ship was careening out of control.
I was here to help put it to rights.
But, after my speech, she didn’t seem thrilled. She glanced at me and then stared up at the ceiling where more plaster was cascading down as the gnomes really got the chandelier swinging. Cracks angled away from the fixture, creating an awful spider web that would break apart at any moment.
“Our new guests seem to have made themselves at home, don’t you think?” she asked.
Frowning, I followed her gaze to the little creatures who finally broke the chandelier loose. It went crashing into a pile, a series of thuds echoing after.
“Why are the gnomes here?” I asked quietly, waving a hand in front of my face to dissipate the plaster dust wafting through the air.
“They are here to help,” she said without irony, standing up and brushing off her teal corduroy overalls. Behind them, she wore a t-shirt covered in sunflowers. “Gnomes are really amazing creatures, Charlie. Did you know they are the only non-wizards that can wield magic? They can draw from the source unlike vampires and werewolves and zombies and… well, you know the list.” She waved a hand dismissively.
I shook my head. I had no experience with gnomes. We’d covered them briefly in Magical Creatures 102, but I’d not really tuned in on their abilities since that was right around the time Answorth tried to drain all my blood on the forest floor.
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