by Lan Chan
“I know.”
“What are you planning to do with it?”
I tapped at the side of my thigh. It wasn’t in my nature to lie. Sometimes I bent the truth. Having lived with shifters all my life, it was impossible to conceal the truth anyway. They would smell the deceit on me in a second. I bit the inside of my cheek. Professor McKenna gave me a shrewd look.
“Still working on the Vitality Elixir? Oh Sophie. You know how difficult that potion is. There are some powerful high-magic mages who can’t even get it right. Please tell me you have a backup plan for your final exam?”
I wanted to tell her that. But it would be a lie. So I pinched my lips together and tried to look really benign. For a second, I thought she might say no. Then she heaved a heavy sigh and opened the glass. I was sweating through my shirt as she sliced the tiniest sliver of ambergris off and deposited it into a ball-bellied vial.
My eyes were the size of dinner plates as I went to reach for the prized ingredient. It made the ordinary whale ambergris I’d collected during summer break look like a cow turd. Unlike that brown mess, this ambergris was a beautiful pearl colour with threads of palest pastel running through it.
I couldn’t believe my luck.
My grip on the vial was like steel. That’s why I didn’t let go even when the elbow struck my back. Pain splintered down my spine as the shouts broke out. I stumbled as the Fae barrelled into me. I would have gone flying over the desk if Professor McKenna hadn’t reached out to steady me. I felt glass crack inside my palm and released my grip. My muscles tensed as I prepared for another blow.
My eyes watered. For a moment, I thought I was under attack. The professor let go of me and darted out from behind her desk.
“Boys!” the professor shouted. I whirled around to find the Fae and the dingo shifter going for it. I was just collateral damage. The dingo had strength on his side, but the Fae was a water elemental. Water gushed from the taps in the sinks lining the left side of the room. The water flowed out of the sink in long ropes that twisted in the air. They coursed over the gap where the students had rushed back to give the fighters space.
Claws scraped against the linoleum. Coarse hairs sprouted from the shifter’s back. They pierced through his grey T-shirt. He was going furry while his foe was going to try and drown him in class.
“I said stop it!” the professor snarled. “What’s gotten into you?” That healthy glow on her skin turned into a red blaze that swept over her neck. The dingo’s fist made contact with the Fae’s cheek. A crack that sounded like it was bone shattering made me wince. The Fae stumbled. His feet slipped on liquid. At first I thought it was water he’d lost control of. And then I saw the colour. Palest yellow dotted through with specks of mauve.
A choking sound escaped my throat as I dragged my gaze to my work station. My cauldron was on its side. The elixir that I’d worked on for two months was slowly leaking over the lip of the table. To my horror, the dingo shrieked in mid-shift. He kicked out at the Fae. Water splashed against his chest but he didn’t seem to care. The dingo’s normally brown eyes had a tinge of scarlet to them. Not another one!
He whirled on his now-padded feet. Slicing out at the water to stop some of its pressure, the dingo did the last thing in the world I expected. He dropped into a crouch and started to lap at my potion. A scream lodged in my throat.
“No!” I cried. In its current state, I didn’t have the slightest clue what the potion would do to him. It was still in the early stages and I hadn’t added any of the balancing ingredients to stop the potion from reacting badly. Case in point, the dingo began to convulse. Without thinking, I waded into the fray. I got about two feet in when someone grabbed me by the back of the shirt.
I scented salt and metal. My eyes closed and I groaned mentally. The Deputy Headmaster snapped his fangs in my ear. “What have you done this time?”
I struggled to get out of his hold. A tear trailed down my cheek. Through misty eyes, I saw Professor McKenna haul the dingo to his feet and throw him aside. The Fae was already lying on the ground not far away, clutching at his stomach.
“What the hell is going on in here?” the deputy headmaster roared.
One of the girls pointed to me. “She tried to poison Kieran!”
The deputy headmaster’s grip tightened on my arm. “Oh she did not,” Professor McKenna said. She righted my cauldron. It was too late. Most of the contents were on the floor. Waving her hand, gold light settled on the potion and the water slicked on the ground. It disappeared in a shimmer that had me blinking.
The professor grabbed the Fae. “Stop the water, Kieran.”
I got the shock of my life when he snarled at her. The Fae were very careful to maintain their façade of serenity. When he opened his mouth, his teeth were pointed. The professor dropped him heavily onto the floor. She pointed at the spouts of water and half the class reacted by leaping over Kieran to manually turn the water off. “Clean up.”
Everybody scrambled to do as she commanded. Then she whirled on us. “Let go of her, Dmitri.”
“Just what exactly happened here?” the deputy headmaster asked.
Professor McKenna stalked over and extracted me from him. I wanted to cling to her but managed to hold on to my senses. “What happened is that these two idiots woke up on the wrong side of the bed. They knocked over Sophie’s assignment.”
I felt a warm nudge at my ankle and looked down to find Charming, my salamander. My teeth grit as I picked him up. It was only then that I noticed I was still clutching onto the ambergris. Sighing, I dropped it back on the professor’s desk. Charming was shaking. Fire blazed in my chest. They’d ruined my potion. When the deputy head glared at me, I glared back for the first time ever. Maybe I was imagining it, but he frowned.
The bell rang. Students rushed to grab their belongings. “You’re dismissed, Sophie,” Professor McKenna said. I moved like an old lady as I packed up too. By the time I left, the professor and the deputy head were still having a glaring contest. I barely noticed it amidst the side glances I was getting from my classmates. Great.
Now the rumours would start. Even though I’d been nowhere near either of them, by the time lunch rolled around, they were all telling the story of how Sophie Mwansa tried to poison two of her classmates. Story of my life.
8
No matter how lonely I felt, I had promised myself in grade six that I would never eat lunch in the toilet. I was close to breaking that promise today as the staring and whispering reached fever pitch. The dining hall was a no-go zone. Thankfully, Peter and Thalia had no problems with me using their tiny kitchen next to the kitchen garden to prepare my own lunch.
“That smells amazing,” Thalia said. She glanced over my shoulder as I fished the last of the deep-fried fritter balls out of the small saucepan.
I held up the bowl for her. She plucked one of the balls and popped it into her mouth. “Wow.” She chewed thoughtfully. “If this low-witch thing doesn’t work out, at least you know you could go into catering.” She realised as soon as she said it that it was the wrong way to phrase the compliment. “Oh Sophie, I didn’t mean it that way.”
I shook my head. “It’s okay.”
“No it’s not. Would you like me to say something to Jacqueline?”
I shrugged. “Not unless it gets me out of coming here. But I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.”
She gave me a mournful look as I packed up and took my lunch to the secluded patch of wilderness beside the kitchen garden. I sat down beneath the low branches of an oak tree. It was so peaceful here. Most of the students were in the dining hall or they preferred to spend their time in the Fae forest. This patch of meadow wasn’t as lush as those magicked woods. The grass was dry in some places. Here and there, poppies, heath and Sturt’s Desert Pea flowers grew.
I craned my head up to look at the dappled sunlight coming through the branches of the oak. It took me a while to notice that there were no birds chirping. Everything sto
od still as though the Earth was waiting with bated breath. Charming went cold in my lap. I hadn’t the heart to put him back into the enclosure after his shock. So he’d been tagging along with me all morning. Now he huddled against my thigh.
The hairs on my arms stood up. Boots crunched on the grass. Whoever was approaching was making no effort to mask their arrival. My back stiffened, thinking it was one of my classmates. Now they were actively seeking me out to give me grief. The same irritation that hit me in class blazed through my body. All of it dissipated as Max emerged from behind the copse of fig trees to my left. My breath stilled. I couldn’t take my eyes off his graceful stride as he ambled towards me. In his lion form, he’d been terrifying. He was no less so in his human form.
At nineteen, he was already well over six foot tall. His broad shoulders held the promise of contained violence. One day Max would be alpha of the lions. There was no doubt about it. My chest fluttered at the sight of him. I suddenly had trouble swallowing.
Thankfully, the queasiness in my stomach triggered my brain to start working. All of the training I’d gotten in the shifter compound came slamming back. It cut through whatever heated haze had gotten a hold of me. If I were a subordinate, I shouldn’t look at him directly in the face. But I wasn’t a shifter, I wasn’t his lackey, and I sure as hell wasn’t in the mood to be intimidated right now.
Instead of lowering my gaze, I tipped my chin up to meet his. Max came to a stop a few feet away from where I sat. School uniforms were a human construct that Bloodline Academy didn’t require. He wore black jeans and a blue-and-red checked shirt that clung to his biceps when he moved.
The back of my neck hurt from craning so far. For a second, our eyes locked. His light grey ones were flecked with coppery gold. As I watched, the gold turned into a thin ring that encircled his irises. I’d seen that look before. It happened to the wolves when they were about to hunt down prey.
My right eye twitched. Without saying a word, he crouched down in front of me. He slid something across the grass. I didn’t take my eyes off his face. His totally gorgeous face. I had to sit on my hand to stop from reaching out and stroking his light stubble.
“You can drop your gaze,” he said. The other night, his voice had been raspy from pain. Now it was hard with leonine dominance.
“Not until you drop yours.”
He inched forward. I wanted to swallow but I knew he was watching for any sign of weakness. It was ridiculous. For sure he could hear my pulse thumping in my chest. It had been a long time since I’d had to establish myself in a shifter hierarchy. At home there were no expectations of me.
The way Max swept his eyes over me made me think he was just waiting for me to try something. The familiar resentment bubbled up in me. Everyone thought I was putting on an act. That I was waiting to lull them into complacency so I could do what my great-grandfather did. His head turned the barest inch to the left. I caught sight of the inch-long burn scar along the left of his chin. I’d hurt him badly enough that his healing hadn’t been able to fix it.
When his hand snaked out to snatch at something on my plate, I swatted him away. Max raised a brow. I continued to move my dips and salads behind me so he couldn’t reach them. Charming ducked behind me and disappeared into the grass. Reptiles were just as susceptible to vibes as the rest of us, and Max was exuding them in claustrophobic waves.
“You got a problem with sharing?” He moved to place a hand on the grass as leverage. Even in human form he reminded me of an overbearing lion about to pounce. Food was a pivotal part of shifter culture. It was a key indicator of status and or affection. I had neither. So he wasn’t getting his hands on any of my food.
“I live with shifters,” I said. “I know what it means.”
After a second of tense silence, he grinned. “You started it.”
He tapped on something plastic. My gaze flicked to the grass where he’d placed my soup container. “Funny thing is, I was pretty banged up yesterday. That potion burned like a bitch, by the way. Dunno why but my healing wasn’t kicking in. It was like I couldn’t sleep. Doctor Thorne was talking nonsense about pulling Kai back. Then I ate some of your soup. Now here I am. Coincidence?”
It was the most words he’d spoken to me since I’d been at Bloodline. Not that he’d had any need to interact with me before. I shrugged. “It must be. Why did you go rogue in the first place?”
He wasn’t the only one that could do some interrogating. Rather than fuel his rage, he turned contemplative. It was an unusual reaction for someone so high up the shifter food chain. “I can’t remember. It’s like something set off my instincts but I can’t remember what it was.”
Everything about what he’d said rang an alarm bell. But it was like the dream I kept having. As soon as the thought entered my head, it slipped out again. My brain was like a sieve. I shook my head clear and picked up the soup container. I stowed it behind me as well.
“You know the rules of possession don’t apply on Academy grounds, don’t you?” His nostrils twitched. A shrewd look of curiosity filled his eyes.
“You’re just saying that because you want food,” I said. “The dining hall is open all hours, you know.”
I thought that was a pretty good dismissal. He didn’t take the hint. Instead, he relaxed his posture and sat down. He glanced around at the set-up I had going on. “You eat by yourself every day?”
I wouldn’t be eating at all today if he didn’t make himself scarce. “Yep. I eat. By myself.”
Why I thought I could outclass a shifter was beyond me. While I was attempting to stay one step ahead of him mentally, Max whipped his arm out as though he was going to grab me. I flinched. Out of pure instinct, the magic circle flared around my hand. Having distracted me, Max leaned over and snatched the plates from behind me.
“Hey!” I shouted. The word wasn’t even out of my mouth yet before he was chomping on a dough ball.
“Mmmm. This is good.” He deigned to glance briefly at the circle I’d manifested but all it did was make him smirk. Like I was the most unthreatening thing in the dimension.
“Please give that back.”
He dipped the ball into the dish of mango and parsley desi. It was a green chutney paste that I loved. The spicy, sweet and sour chutney cut through the rich, oily texture of the dough. In the blink of an eye, he’d eaten half the portion. I swore steam was coming out of my ears when he offered me the plate. Shifters were well known for playing with their prey. It hit me then that we’d gone head to head and I’d effectively won. I’d challenged an alpha. The whole school knew about it. His reputation was on the line. If I knew anything about predatory shifters, he would make me pay. His pride wouldn’t allow anything else.
Sighing inwardly, I doused the circle and brushed grass off my lap. When I tried to get up, his arm shot out and gripped my wrist. I glanced down at where his long, calloused fingers heated up my skin. My eyes were suddenly stinging.
“Can’t you just leave me alone?” I said. “One hour of peace. That’s all I’m asking for.”
His head cocked to the right. Those light grey eyes stormed over. “What do you do all by yourself all the time?”
I could see exactly where his line of thinking was going. For some reason, I couldn’t hold my tongue. “I’m conjuring up a spell that I’m going to use to poison the food in the dining hall. It’ll liquefy the internal organs of anyone who ingests it. Much more efficient than bloodletting, don’t you think?”
I snatched my hand away. Surprisingly, he let me go. I was halfway back to the main building of the Academy before it hit me that I’d just played chicken with Max Thompson. And now he’d probably make my life hell.
9
By the time I’d finished up my classes for the day and helped out Peter and Thalia in the kitchen garden, I was a nervous wreck. I was jumpy from constantly looking out for lion-shaped shadows that were about to pounce on me.
It struck me as odd that Max hadn’t tried to follow me. They
were notorious for stalking their prey. Whatever he was cooking up, I wasn’t going to like it. In hindsight, I should have kept my big mouth shut and just played subordinate. But even now the thought of backing down to Max Thompson had my hackles rising. Something in the way he stared at me had me feeling rudderless.
When I arrived at the dining hall for my kitchen hand interview, my nerves were shot. It didn’t help that when I approached the double swinging doors, I could hear the head chef, Bruno, screaming at somebody inside. Bruno looked after the meals on both campuses. He was a familiar brooding presence in the kitchen.
Steeling my spine, I thought of an endless supply of wigs and hair magic. I pushed open the doors to come face to face with a bomb site. Pots and pans had been overturned. The doors to the big glass cabinet had been thrown open. The pantry was empty except for a few stray potatoes. There was glass on the floor. Sugar and flour bags had been cut open, their contents spilling out their guts all around them. It was impossible to pick my jaw up off the ground. Aside from the fact that Bruno was a known grump, he was also a high-magic mage. When Bruno caught whoever did this, there would literally be hell to pay.
Bruno was in the opposite corner of the long, white tiled room. His kitchen staff were presented in front of him in what I could only describe as a firing line. “Which one of you was supposed to be watching the storeroom?” Bruno barked.
Five sets of eyes darted away. “We were here the whole time, boss,” Tony, the sous chef ventured. He was a goblin who specialised in making meals for the para-human species in the Academy. They ate a varied diet of supernatural and mortal foods. Tony made a great witchetty-grub pizza apparently. His chef’s whites set off his moss-green skin. “Turned around and stuff was all over the place!”
Bruno grunted in a perfect imitation of a raging rhino. “You saying a poltergeist did it?”