by Sarina Dorie
“There was this book I checked out from the library, and it told me some stuff.” Hailey chuckled and shook her head. “I bet you never thought I would be starting a sentence with that—me checking out a book in the library.”
I was too focused on her words to laugh. If she talked about what she’d heard in the school bathroom, she would break out in boils. If she talked about what she read—if she’d found a book about the Lost Red affinity, I didn’t know if that counted as breaking Wiseman’s Oath.
“I was reading this book on rare affinities,” Hailey said. “I guess there’s this one that’s hard to classify because the skills are different from most Witchkin.”
I shook my head at her, but she plowed on. “There’s this one that the affinity brings out the powers in others. Scholars think they’re like conduits or something. An O blood type for magic because they can blend in pretty well.”
“That’s enough,” I said.
“That’s cool. Is that a Celestor trait?” Greenie asked, still oblivious. “Imani does that, doesn’t she?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Hailey glanced at me and then away.
“Ahem. Getting back to that flashlight spell. . . .” I started. I didn’t want Greenie to figure out this wasn’t about Celestor magic.
“Miss Lawrence, you need to listen,” Hailey said. “This magic is dangerous because Fae can use their Celestor magic. They might use them to make their armies stronger and crap like that.” She bit her lip.
“What’s the name of that book? I’d like to read it sometime.” It was the kind of book I didn’t want my students getting into.
“Forbidden Magic.”
That sounded like one of the titles that had been locked up in Miss Periwinkle’s office. I had no evidence to suggest Hailey had stolen it, but a little wiggling nudge of intuition told me it was.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, trying for my best poker face. “Miss Periwinkle told me someone stole that book from the locked case in her office.”
Hailey shook her head, her fiery orange eyes getting wide. “No! I didn’t steal it. I was just borrowing it. That’s what you do with books from the library. I was going to bring it back.”
“Not okay, Hailey. Do you know the librarian accused me of stealing that book? Do you want me to get in trouble and lose my job?”
“No!”
“Why would the librarian think you stole it?” Greenie asked me. “I mean, you’re a teacher.”
Hailey bit her lip. She knew the answer.
I provided a plausible half-truth. “I wanted to check it out once and was told I couldn’t.”
“I’m sorry,” Hailey said.
“Then fix it.” I held out my hand. “Fork it over.”
I expected her to say she couldn’t because she lost it or make an excuse about leaving it in her room, but she opened her backpack and handed it to me.
I went to my desk and sat down. “You two keep practicing,” I said. I skimmed the pages.
“Aren’t you going to bring it back before the library closes so you don’t get in trouble?” Hailey asked.
“I’m already in trouble.” I raised an eyebrow at her, embracing my own inner Thatch. “Besides, I would go to the library, but I shouldn’t leave you alone in my classroom while practicing magic. Someone might accidentally light my new posters on fire.”
Hailey lifted her chin. “Maybe it won’t be accidentally.”
Greenie punched Hailey in the arm. “Is that supposed to impress us with your toughness? You sound like Ben and Balthasar, and they’re idiots. You’re smarter than that.”
“Whatever. It was a joke.” Hailey lowered her gaze. “Seriously, though, I haven’t had any accidents since then. It’s only when I sit next to Imani that it brings out my affinity, and she isn’t here, so I probably wouldn’t light anything on fire by accident.”
No, she wasn’t here. She was with Maddy downstairs.
I flipped through the book, skimming the table of contents for the Lost Red Court or the Red affinity. It wasn’t listed, but it was mentioned in five different sections of the index. The first page that described it listed it under rare affinities. Pretty much it was all the information Hailey had just told me. Apparently, her reading comprehension and summarizing were improving.
The next section explained:
All Witchkin can have their powers drained or be used by other Witchkin such as in rituals of blood magic and pain magic. Rarer is the ability of “magical multiplicity” or the ability to lend powers to others to cause it to multiply. This is a common trait of the Red affinity. Untrained or misdiagnosed, those with this affinity have no idea they are drawing out the powers of others.
Hailey watched me from where she sat. Craptacular. I had taught Hailey to read, and now forbidden knowledge had fallen into her hands. She knew exactly what Imani and I both were.
I paged through the other sections on the Red affinity, skimming what I found. My mother had used her magic to help Miss Periwinkle, multiplying it to the point the glamour spell had overpowered Miss Periwinkle. It had given her too much of what she’d asked for. Imani brought out Hailey’s pyro powers. Did I still do that to people? I had brought out my fairy godmother’s plant magic growing up.
Didn’t that also mean I might inadvertently be bringing out Maddy’s siren magic?
Imani and Maddy were taking a long time. I didn’t want to leave Hailey alone in my classroom, but I kept thinking about what she’d said, about what the book had said. About half of the Red Affinities out there brought out the magic of others. Maddy, a siren who already had trouble with her affinity, was alone with Imani. If they bumped into someone else in the dungeon like Ben or Balthasar—who were likely candidates for detentions—Imani’s magic would draw out Maddy’s affinity, and that boy wouldn’t stand a chance.
If they met up with anyone who had a fertility affinity, girl or boy, there would be trouble.
Hailey watched me silently. She might not have been the most academically gifted, but she wasn’t stupid. She’d figured it out—and figured out a way to tell me without breaking out in boils.
I stood up so fast I nearly knocked over my chair. “I need to—um—I need to take care of this book right now.”
I had to tell Thatch. Maybe he already knew, and he would wave me off. But if he didn’t, I would need his help. I ran toward my closet, hesitated, and changed course to the front door. I did not want to encounter ghosts or invisible men on the shortcut to the dungeon. I ran down the stairwell outside of my classroom, my inner worrywart screaming all the things that could have happened to them.
I passed the portrait of my mother just outside the last stairwell that led to the dungeon. She smiled slyly at me. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw her hand raise and point downward to the dungeon. When I looked up, the painting was still.
I descended into the dungeon. Thatch wasn’t in his classroom, so I rushed on through the dungeon and to his office. I nearly collided with Maddy in the doorway.
“Get out! Out of my office, and do not come back!” Thatch roared. “If you ever do that again, I’ll make you sorry you were ever born.”
Uh-oh.
Imani rushed out next, chasing after Maddy.
I ran past them and into his office “Am I too late?”
“You too! Out!” His face was red and blotchy. I’d never seen him livid like this. He leaned over his desk, hands crumpling papers as though he were in pain.
I backed out.
“Maddy? What just happened?” Imani asked. “Tell me I didn’t see what I thought I did.”
The girls ran up the stairs, their words lost in the thudding of their feet and the echo of Maddy’s sobs. I was already winded from running there, but I chased after them.
“Wait! Let me catch up,” I said.
They kept on running. I lost them on the main floor as they passed the great hall. I went to my classroom, hoping they might have gone there. No such luck.
As so
on as I made it through the doorway, Hailey smirked at me. “How’d it go returning the book you left on your desk?”
I ignored the snide remark.
“Girls, where could Imani and Maddy have gone? Something—well—something upsetting happened. Where would they go afterward?”
“Fuck,” Hailey said. “You went down to Thatch’s classroom, didn’t you?”
Greenie stared at her with wide eyes. “You said a bad word.”
How was it Hailey knew everything today?
“Yes,” I said.
“I bet you caught Maddy trying to seduce Mr. Thatch, didn’t you? I told her it was a stupid idea. He’s like, too moral, or something. Plus, I hate to be the one to tell you, Miss Lawrence, but I’m pretty sure he’s gay. You and Miss Kimura have a thing for hot guys who play for the other team.”
Greenie stared at Hailey openmouthed. It took me a second to recover from the shock of her words. He was not gay. He didn’t kiss like he was gay. And Maddy wanted to do what?
Holy hell.
“Do either of you know where they could be?” I asked again.
They looked at each other and nodded. “The secret clubhouse.”
“I need you to take me there.”
“Do you promise not to tell anyone about our secret meeting place?” Hailey asked.
Already this was ringing alarms in my head. “Is this someplace dangerous?”
“We promised we wouldn’t tell any adults about it.”
“You are taking me. Now.”
I locked up my classroom, leaving a note on the door in case the girls came back. Greenie and Hailey led me downstairs to the main level. They took me through the seventies wing with peeling pumpkin-orange paint and into the one in disrepair. I had to dodge around sections of rubble that had fallen from the ceiling. Water leaked down a moldy wall. Greenie lit her wand.
Hailey used a fireball to light her path. I was too distraught to concentrate on magic. I stumbled behind them.
“Be careful. Part of the floor is missing here,” Greenie said.
Female voices echoed from up ahead. We climbed over a crumbled wall and into a room lit by a hundred candles. Every wall was painted with murals. Cthulhu wrapping his tentacles around a school bus extended across one wall. In another, a tornado tore a house apart. The white house resembled the one I’d grown up in. Lightning struck a red-haired girl in this panel. A teenage boy was trapped inside the maelstrom. Off to the side, a blonde witch with ruby-red slippers cackled. She twisted water from the river behind her into hammers about to smash down on the two other figures.
It was the story of my life—with some artistic reinterpretations. Missy hadn’t been about to kill us in that storm that I knew of. She’d tried to kill me earlier the same evening. I hadn’t been struck by lightning either. It had flashed hot and bright near me. I’d been afraid it had hit Derrick. Maybe when he’d gone to school at Womby’s, he had feared the lightning had struck me.
I stared around in wonder at the smaller paintings on partitions of wall that only remained half standing. So many of them were of me. Derrick had painted them all when he’d been here.
When I had heard he’d been brought to the school, I had hoped he had made friends, that he would at last feel as though he’d found others like himself. Yet as I gazed at these stories, I wondered if he had ever recovered from that night. Greenie’s light fell on another mural reminiscent of the isolation and aloneness captured in Vincent van Gogh’s “Irises,” only in Derrick’s, his use of color drew the eye to the boy with blue hair in a crowd of gray mechanical automatons.
“Come on,” Greenie said, tugging at my sleeve.
“Oh, fuck,” Hailey said from somewhere nearby.
Imani shrieked and Maddy grunted.
“And people think I’m a dumbass,” Hailey said.
The two girls rolled on the floor, pulling each other’s hair and punching each other.
“Stop it right now!” My voice echoed in the emptiness of the room.
Hailey and I broke up the fight. Greenie stared with wide eyes. She stood frozen, lighting the room with her wand.
“What happened?” I asked.
“She hit me!” Maddy sobbed.
Imani pointed at her. “You hit me.”
“You started it!”
“No, you started it by trying to seduce Mr. Thatch.”
“No. I didn’t seduce him. I just sat on his lap and sang to him and told him I wanted to have his baby.”
The sad thing was Maddy was being serious. Hailey chuckled, but abruptly stopped when Greenie elbowed her.
Imani launched herself toward Maddy again, but Hailey held her back.
“Do you want to kill him? Drain his powers like you did with that boy?” Imani asked.
“No,” Maddy said. “This would be different. I didn’t like that boy. I didn’t want him. My affinity rejected him. I couldn’t help it. I wouldn’t do that to Mr. Thatch.” She looked to me. “He’s strong, right? He’s perfect. His magic wouldn’t allow him to get hurt.”
“No one is perfect.” I dropped my head into my hands. I didn’t know how to deal with this, and Thatch wasn’t going to be any help with this one.
I took a slow, steady breath. “Okay. Here’s the deal. Sex is part of your affinity. Seducing and killing is probably normal out in the wild for a siren. Witchkin are the ones who keep trying to mask what you are. We keep telling you sex is bad. But the thing is, you have to figure out how to have sex without killing people. It’s the killing people that’s the bad part. And there’s this thing about free will and consent and. . . .” I struggled for the right words. I didn’t know how to have a conversation about something I still hadn’t figured out how to fix for myself.
“How could you put Mr. Thatch in that position?” Imani demanded. “After all he’s done for you.”
“How could I? Because he’s nice to me. He’s smart and clever, and he’s never once come on to me. He’s never asked for anything.”
Hailey laughed. “You want him because he doesn’t want you.” She gave me a knowing look as if to say, Just like Miss Lawrence. At least she had the sense not to say that.
Even if I suspected she was right.
Maddy’s voice wavered and tears filled her eyes again. “If I’m going to have to get pregnant because of my bargain with the Crab King, I don’t want it to be with some stupid boy I hate. I want it to be with someone I choose.”
I hugged her around the shoulder. “And you will. Someday you will. You’ll meet a boy you like who you can tell about your bargain, and he’ll help you so you’ll be done with it.” I suddenly thought better about sitting so close to her. I might inadvertently share some of my affinity with her.
I waved Greenie to come closer and patted the floor next to Maddy. I rose, pacing back and forth. I tried to think of something wise and teacherly to say.
I looked to Maddy. “Do you understand why what you did was wrong?”
She twisted the skirt of her school uniform in her lap. She didn’t answer.
I continued, “You don’t like it when you don’t have a choice. Other people don’t like it either. It’s wrong to try to take someone’s free will away.”
“How will I ever know if someone loves me and I love them if it’s always my magic that draws them in when we’re in the same room?”
“You won’t,” Imani said.
I pointed to her. “Not helping.”
I remembered Thatch’s story about Miss Periwinkle. He had asked the same question of her. He hadn’t known whether she loved him or it was her magic.
“You could send him a text and ask,” Hailey suggested.
“Phones aren’t allowed,” Greenie whispered.
“So write him a note. Duh.”
I ignored the side conversation. “You say you have respect for Mr. Thatch. You like him, but you did something cruel to him by trying to take away his free will. It wouldn’t be very nice to do something like that to someone yo
u don’t like, but this is someone you do like. Do you get it yet?”
Hailey made a face. “It’s like putting a love potion in his drink, dumbass. That’s why sex magic is illegal.”
Maddy nodded, head ducked down in shame.
“Do you feel any remorse for using siren magic on him?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Then you need to apologize to him.”
She shook her head. “I can’t. He saw what I was doing and rejected me. It’s humiliating. He hates me.”
“Imagine how humiliating that was for him. If you don’t want him to hate you forever, you need to apologize. I’ll go with you.”
She curled into a ball. “No! I’ll die if you make me.”
“It doesn’t have to be tonight. We can give Mr. Thatch a day to cool off.”
Maddy hugged herself. Greenie patted her arm, looking about as awkward as I felt. Maddy didn’t answer.
“After we get that apology out of the way, we are going to need to make some changes.” The first of which was going to be to explain to Imani she couldn’t touch people like she often did. The next big change involved me. I wasn’t going to be able to hug Maddy to console her.
“But you don’t get it,” Maddy said. “I can’t go this long without sex. It’s driving me crazy. I don’t want to be like this, but my affinity wants it.”
“You can fight it.” I didn’t know if that was actually true, but it sounded like the right thing to say.
“I’m not like you! I don’t have your willpower,” she shouted.
“I believe in you. You’re stronger than you think.” I didn’t want to share Miss Periwinkle’s story and out her, but I wanted her to understand there was hope. “I’ve heard about other sirens at our school in the past and how they handled their affinity. I think I can get another staff member’s help.” Okay, so I had no idea how I would get Miss Periwinkle’s help.
Hailey and Imani whispered something to each other.
Maddy’s whimper drew my attention. “It wasn’t like this before my stepfather.” Her blonde hair fell into her face, hiding her expression. “I didn’t even understand what sex was before I was ten. After I lost my virginity, it was all I could think about. I hated him, but I wanted it.”