by Jody Morse
“I don’t understand what you’re trying to say,” I replied. “If I’m the one who casted the spell and did the magic, then how did the magic belong to someone else? There was no one else in the room except for me and Professor Briggs, and I assume the magic didn’t belong to him. Who did the magic belong to?”
“Our analysis was unable to detect that, actually,” Headmaster Crane replied. “So, here’s what happened. Someone loaned you their magic. This is how you came in possession of this ability to cast dark magic spells. It’s not because you were born knowing how or even because you learned it or because it’s happening by accident. Someone actually gave you this ability. They essentially performed a spell on you that allows you to tap into their own dark magic. And in situations like this, we’re often able to trace who the magic belongs to, but whoever loaned you this magic is a very strong and very powerful dark magic user. They did a very good spell that doesn’t allow us to identify who they are, so this magic they’ve loaned them can’t be traced back to them.”
“Who would just loan their magic to me like that?” I found myself questioning.
“It’s hard to say. It could be anyone. We are going to continue investigating this in hopes of trying to figure out who might have done this,” Headmaster Crane replied. “But in the meantime, I ask you to be careful. If you’re afraid of using your dark magic at any point or if you’ve accidentally used it and caused something to happen the same way you did with the sea monster, then please talk to one of your professors or myself immediately. In the meantime, just try to safely enjoy your classes.” He shot me a weak smile. “I know this is all very complicated, but the one thing I have come to learn about you, Juliana, is that you are quite resilient. It’s another curveball that’s being thrown in your direction, but you will overcome this—the same way you have managed to get through not knowing what your paranormal races are. You may return to class now.”
“Thanks.” Once I was in the hallway, I tried to let everything I had just learned sink in. I swallowed hard. Everything about this situation just felt really… off. I could barely even begin to wrap my head around it all.
Somehow, I just knew that whoever had loaned me this dark magic was the same someone who had reported me for using it. The entire reason they had loaned me their dark magic was because they wanted to frame me. They wanted to get me into trouble.
Actually, I was pretty sure that was only part of their motive. Whoever had done this had known that it would be risky. They knew that I would be able to conjure sea monsters and zap fifty snakes at once without even trying. They knew I would be in possession of this extremely powerful magic that I didn’t even really know how to use. And that scared me.
I wasn’t sure how I was going to end up using their dark magic again or why. The only thing I did know was that, the next time I did, there was a good chance that my life—and the lives of everyone around me—would be put at risk. And I was pretty sure that was exactly what they wanted.
Chapter 14
On Saturday morning, I woke up to an email from Professor Hart asking if we could get together for coffee in the nearby town.
I took the bus, which ran on Saturdays for students to hang out in the town, and headed over to the coffee shop where she’d asked to meet me. It was a cute little witch-themed place, with a cauldron where the coffee was brewed and black cats roaming around the place.
I ordered a pumpkin spice latte, which the place sold all year long, regardless of season, and then met Professor Hart at the table she was sitting at.
“Hi, Juliana. I thought I would meet you here. It seemed like a safer place for us to talk—you know, off campus and away from Headmaster Crane,” she explained in a low voice. There was no one in the coffee shop aside from us and the witch working the counter, but I was pretty sure she was afraid of someone overhearing her.
“You don’t like Headmaster Crane?” I asked her.
“It’s not that I don’t like him, necessarily. It’s that I don’t trust him. He gives me weird vibes,” she replied.
“As he should.” I wouldn’t normally share this information with just anyone, but the fact that Professor Hart had been Avery’s stepsister made me feel like I should tell her everything I knew. I somehow felt like I owed it to Avery to keep her safe. “Headmaster Crane is a raven shifter. And not just any raven shifter, but the King of the Raven Shifters.”
“I’m not surprised in the least.” She shook her head disgustedly. “Avery never trusted him, either, you know. He always thought something was off about him.”
“I didn’t know that.” Not that it surprised me. Avery had been a smart guy. I was sure that he had been really good at reading people.
Thinking about what Avery and what he had been like when he was alive made me sad.
“Anyway, that was really the entire reason I wanted to meet you here today. To talk about Avery. And because I found something in his thing’s.” She grabbed her purse and pulled out an envelope. She handed it to me. “It’s a letter addressed to you. I guess he never got the chance to mail it before he died.”
I stared down at the envelope in front of me. My full name was scrawled across the front in his handwriting. There was a blank spot where the address was supposed to go; apparently, he had been waiting to fill that part in later.
All types of emotions began to flood through my veins. Happiness that there was still some piece of him here, a piece that I have yet to uncover yet. A piece of him that had been left behind just for me. But I also felt sadness, too—sadness that whatever this envelope contained, it would be the last piece of him. It was my final goodbye, in a sense, even though I had no idea what the contents of this envelope were or how they would read.
I felt something else, too: fear.
It sounded strange, but I was actually afraid to open it. I was afraid of my emotions taking over and not being able to handle what I was about to read. So, I tucked the envelope in my own bag, deciding that I would read it later—instead of right now, in front of Avery.
“Thank you,” I told Professor Hart. “You have no idea how much this means to me.”
“Of course. I know that if it was me, I would have wanted to have it, too.” She paused. “Juliana, I know I’ve mentioned this before, but Avery was really very fond of you.”
“I know,” I replied with a nod.
“No. I don’t think you know just how fond of you he really was.” She took a sip of her coffee. “Avery’s mom was killed when she was very young. She was killed by a very dangerous warlock. His father kept her wedding ring for him. It was a ruby, infused with blood from a very rare fire-breathing dragon that was supposed to bless their marriage,” she explained. “Avery always vowed that once he found his soulmate, he was going to propose to her with that engagement ring.” Her brown eyes met mine. “He was planning to propose to you as soon as you graduated from Paranormal Academy—the moment it would be acceptable for the two of you to be together. He really believed you were his soulmate, Juliana.”
“Wow.” A lump formed in my throat as the tears stabbed at my eyes. I tried to blink them away, but at least a couple managed to escape. “I felt the same way about him.”
She nodded. “I know. And this might seem bad for me to say. His death was tragic—incredibly tragic. But knowing that he got to see you one last time, that you were with him in his final moments… Well, it makes me feel so much better.”
I knew she was right. I hated that he was gone, that the raven shifter had gotten to him. But if Avery had to die, then at least we had gotten to see each other again. At least we got to have that final kiss.
But if I had known then that it would be our last kiss, I would have kissed him so much harder.
***
When I got back to my dorm room, I placed the letter from Avery underneath my pillow. I was going to read it later on.
Ambur came out of the bathroom then, her hair up in rollers. “What are you doing this afternoon?” she asked
me.
“I have to go to a Vixen meeting soon, and then later on, I have a meeting with my clan.”
“Your clan? You’re in a clan now?” Ambur asked with a raised eyebrow.
“What type of clan?” Draia asked from her bed where she was working on a homework assignment.
“My dragon clan,” I explained. “After Professor Vanderbilt’s lecture the other day about how shifters need to find others who are their own kind, I went looking for other dragon shifters. I met this guy Jacob, and he’s in this clan with this brother and sister named Noah and Nellie. So, I get to meet them today, and Jacob’s pretty sure I’m supposed to belong to their clan.”
“Great. She’s got dragon friends now,” Draia said with a sigh. “She doesn’t need us anymore.”
“Seriously, it’s almost like you’re trying to replace us,” Ambur agreed with a nod.
“Of course I’m not trying to replace you guys,” I insisted.
“We’re kidding, Juliana. We know you’re not trying to replace us.”
“Good. Because I love you guys, but it would be nice to hang out with others like me and learn more about all of this, since I know virtually nothing about dragon shifters. They barely even mention them in Shifter Studies class.”
“That would be because dragon shifters aren’t even half as cool as us,” Ambur said with a shrug. “Magic users are so much more fun to hang out with. You’re really missing out.”
I rolled my eyes. Even though I knew she was joking, I was pretty sure she probably did feel like I was neglecting them. I supposed that, in a way, I was. I had been spending so much time with Kaden lately and trying to navigate my way through all of the crazy curveballs that had been thrown at me this year that I’d barely had time for either of them.
“Let’s plan a girl’s night soon, okay? This weekend is all booked up for me, but maybe we can go into town and go to the bar next weekend?”
“Sounds like a plan,” Draia agreed with a nod.
“Yeah, I’m down,” Ambur nodded.
“Good.” I glanced down at the time on my phone and realized that it was time for my Vixen meeting. “I’ll see you guys later.”
***
Everly, Gina, Alyssa, Kadence, and I all met at the fountain, which was where we held all of our Vixen meetings on campus, unless we were going to be practicing any sort of magic—in which case we ended up going to the Enchanted Forest with a veiling spell. Not that I was sure it even mattered anymore. Now that I knew Headmaster Crane had been able to see right through Kaden’s veiling spell, I knew that it probably wasn’t an effective strategy for staying hidden.
Then again, I wasn’t sure if this was a rule that Headmaster Crane really enforced. After all, he didn’t seem to care about allowing warlocks into classes with non-warlocks. But since the Enchanted Forest led to the portal that took us to his castle, I was pretty sure that this probably was a rule that he didn’t want anyone breaking.
“With so many ears around, I really think we need to use code words,” Everly began the meeting. “I’m going to refer to our plan”—She glanced around at us pointedly, obviously referring to plan to attack the Dark Coven— “as Operation Flamingo.”
We all nodded our agreement.
“Have you all begun to recruit your friends?” Everly continued.
“My sister, brother, and both of my roommates are in,” Gina said with a nod.
“All three of my brothers, one of my roommates, and the guy I’ve been seeing are willing to join us,” Alyssa added.
“Two of my roommates and three of my friends have said yes,” Kadence chimed in.
“Okay, great. So that brings our total number up to sixteen. And I’ve gotten Brett to agree to join, as well as both of my roommates, bringing our total up to nineteen,” Everly counted off. She glanced over at me. “What about you? Who’s joining us?”
“So, um, this whole thing sort of slipped my mind,” I admitted quietly.
“How does something as important as this just ‘slip your mind’?” Everly questioned.
“I’ve been going through a lot this semester,” I explained. “It just got put on the back burner.”
Everly glared at me. “This is a huge deal, Juliana. I know you might not really think it is, but it is.”
“I know what a big deal it is,” I insisted.
The dagger eyes I was getting from the other girls in the group told me that Everly wasn’t the only one who was annoyed at me currently. They all were.
“Well, you’re certainly not acting like it. I wish I could tell you that you didn’t have to be a part of this group, but the truth is that we actually do need you. We won’t be strong or powerful without you. But you really need to start prioritizing us. I don’t know what’s going on in your life, but the entire paranormal world—and the human world, for that matter—is at risk of being in danger without us. That’s got to be bigger than whatever it is that you’re dealing with on a personal level. This is bigger than you or me or any of us. This affects the entire world as we know it.”
“I know,” I said.
“By our next meeting, you’d better have found, at least, one friend or family member who’s going to fight with us,” Everly said.
“I will. I promise.” But the thing was, that was a huge promise—one that I wasn’t even entirely sure that I would even be able to keep.
The truth was that I really didn’t want to drag anyone else into this. I knew that doing so would be a risk, and the absolute last thing I wanted was to put any of my friends’ lives at risk.
Chapter 15
That night, I waited in the Enchanted Forest for the dragons.
By the time 9:10 rolled around, I wondered if they had ended up rescheduling their meeting and just hadn’t told me. It wasn’t like Jacob and I had exchanged phone numbers, so they really couldn’t have told me, even if they had wanted to.
I was just about to leave when I saw the three of them heading in my direction. Jacob stood to the left. He was a lot shorter than Noah, who had to have been close to 6’5”. He had short blonde hair and deeply tanned skin.
Nellie was in the center of the two of them. Underneath the moonlight, I could see her long blonde hair, which fell over her shoulders in long, loose waves. Like her brother, she also had deeply tanned skin. As she got closer to me, I could see that she had pouty lips and endless legs. She could have been a model.
Jacob really hadn’t been kidding, though. Even from a distance, I could see that both of them had the same exact eye color as Jacob and I did. I’d always considered my eyes to be cat green, but they were somewhere between an olive green and a cat green. Their eyes, which seemed to catch every glimmer of moonlight, were identical.
“Hey, Juliana,” Jacob said as he approached me.
“Hey,” I replied with a smile.
“Meet Noah and Nellie.”
“Hey.” Noah nodded at me.
“Hey. I’m Nellie. My real name is Berlynne Penelope. Nellie is short for Penelope,” she explained. “And I’m pretty sure you and I are going to be, like, best friends. Do you know how hard it is to find other girl dragon shifters? Fun fact: Male dragon shifters outnumber us ten to one.”
“Wow, I had no idea. I really know nothing about dragon shifters, so I’m really excited to find you guys.”
“I’m excited, too. I get really sick of these two sometimes.” She pointed her chin at Jacob and Noah. “And I don’t get along with many other shifter races. I mean, I don’t hate them or anything, but I don’t really vibe with them, you know? Other shifters are so different from us.”
“Different how?” I asked. Not that I knew many shifters. In fact, the only shifters I knew were Brett, who was a werewolf, and Marcus, who was a cat shifter.
“Well, a few ways. For starters, they tend to be a lot less wild than us,” Nellie explained. “They shift with the moon or whenever they feel like it, once they’ve matured enough, but it’s not like they can fly like us. Or blow fire
on their enemies.”
My eyes went really wide. “You guys just blow fire on your enemies?”
Noah laughed. “Do we look like we blow fire on our enemies?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Looks can always be deceiving.”
“I’ve never blown fire on anyone, personally,” Jacob shrugged.
“Me, either,” Noah agreed.
“Neither have I, but the important thing is that I know I can if I want to,” Nellie replied with a shrug.
Once I finally had a hold on this whole dragon shifting thing, that was going to come in handy. Not that I wanted to ever have to blow fire on anyone, but at least I knew it was a way I could protect myself if I ever ended up in a predicament. And it seemed likely that I probably would end up in a predicament. I had only been in this world for a year, and it already seemed like I was somehow landing myself into predicament after predicament.
“Okay, so dragon shifters can blow fire and we’re wild. How else are we different from the other shifters?” I asked.
“Other shifters get hopelessly devoted to one specific significant other,” Nellie explained. “Like, oh my god, you should hear the way the werewolf girls and the cat shifter girls obsess over their mates. They become all about them. It makes me sick.”
“And we don’t do that?” I asked with raised eyebrows.
“Nope. Dragon shifters aren’t meant to be with one significant number—not female ones, anyway,” she explained. “Since male dragon shifters do outnumber us ten to one, we’re meant to be with multiple guys. It’s really common for dragon shifter girls to have—no lie—up to ten boyfriends.”
“Oh, wow.”
“So, you might never feel that extra devotion and loyalty other shifters—and probably most paranormal races, in general—tend to experience. I know I don’t. I don’t want to settle down with any guy. Even if I’m in the room with one guy who I really like, I’m still usually looking at every other guy in the room.” She shrugged.
Was that part of the reason I had fallen for so many guys when I’d arrived at Paranormal Academy?
