Paranormal Academy

by Limited Edition Box Set

  “That’s my working hypothesis,” Jonna said. “Your uncle’s autopsy revealed that he had a hidden heart condition. He might have wanted to tell Efraim, but his heart exploded before he could.”

  I didn’t even want to think about how Jonna had gotten access to Ned’s autopsy report.

  “Hiding in plain sight,” I said. “Maybe it is, and we haven’t been looking in the obvious place.”

  “And that would be…?” Jonna said.

  “In Lewis Wixsted’s house,” I said. “Mariah’s still living there, right?”

  Jonna nodded slowly.

  “So, at some point, she probably invited Ned to stay for a sleepover. And he would have enjoyed that—sleeping with her right under her father’s disapproving nose.”

  “That would have made it more exciting,” Jonna agreed.

  Geo looked from her to me. “You guys are scaring me,” he said, but Jonna and I were in sync.

  “Lewis would probably never think to look in his own house,” Jonna said.

  “And Mariah’s so caught up in proving Ned was her baby daddy that she’s not even thinking about the grimoire,” I said.

  “You’re right,” she said. “We need Wix. I can’t disable the wards on Lewis’ house.”

  “You’ve tried?” I said.

  “Of course I’ve tried.”

  Of course she had.

  9

  Home is where the magic is

  I’d asked Wix to meet me after school at the Strawberry Street Deli. He hesitated when he saw that I was with Jonna and Geo but finally slid into the booth next to me.

  “Wasn’t expecting an ambush,” he said.

  “Gotta stay sharp,” Geo said.

  “Is anyone home at your house right now?” I asked, not wanting the meeting to get sidetracked.

  “No,” he said.

  I explained my theory to him about the location of the grimoire.

  “My mother and Mariah went to Seattle to see a ballet; they won’t be home until tomorrow. My father usually isn’t home until around seven.” He looked at his phone. “We’ve got about seventy-five minutes.

  “What if we’re still there when he gets home?” I asked.

  “We’re working on a group project for English,” he said. “My father doesn’t care bout any of the regular courses I take, only the magic ones.”

  “Let’s go,” Jonna said.

  “I’ll take you,” Wix said to me. Jonna didn’t look happy abut that, but nothing about Wix made her happy so I just shrugged and followed Wix to his car.

  “You trust those two?” he asked as he pulled out of the student parking lot.

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Jonna’s put together her little rainbow coalition of witchkind to steal the grimoire and it’s never even occurred to you that she might have an ulterior motive?”

  “She wants to destroy it.”

  “So she says,” Wix said.

  “I would hate to be you,” I said. “Living in your cynical world where everyone has an ulterior motive.”

  He glanced at me sideways.

  “And yet, you’re here in my car. You could have gone with Jonna and Geo.”

  I thought about that. He wasn’t wrong. Why was I in his car?

  “Geo and Jonna are together. I didn’t want to feel like a third wheel.”

  “Bullshit,” he said.

  And again, he wasn’t wrong. “You’re an asshole,” I said.

  “I am,” he said. Some girls like that.”

  “I don’t.”

  He glanced at me. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  He didn’t challenge that, and for the ret of the drive we sat in silence. The truth is, I really didn’t know how I felt about Wix. My initial lust for him had dissipated that first day back at school, but since then I’d seen different sides of him. In calculus class I’d seen him patiently explaining a problem to another student and seen how easily he’d solved problems on the board. That wasn’t witchly talent, that was pure smarts. And I’m a sucker for smart guys.

  I also had seen him through Remi’s eyes—the best big brother ever. He’d been broken-hearted when he thought Remi was dead, and I’d seen that vulnerability. I’d seen the chink in his armor. I kind of liked that Wix. But I’d seen enough of my friends come to grief dating bad boys they thought they could reform. I wasn’t interested in going down that road. Or so I told myself.

  Wix’s home was huge but surprisingly warm, all polished wood floors and rich colors. Vivid impressionistic paintings hung everywhere—“My mother is an artist,” Wix said—and well-chewed dog toys were scattered on the floor.

  “Where’s your dog?” I asked.

  “We keep her crated when we’re not here,” Wix said and led me to a kitchen about twice the size of ours A large crate sat in a corner. Inside the crate was a small, insanely fluffy dog. When she saw Wix, her tale started wagging so fast I thought she was going to go airborne.

  He unlatched the crate and the dog leapt into his arms, wriggling and squirming and trying to lick his face.

  “Did you miss me? Did you miss me?” With the happy dog cradled under one arm like a football, Wix opened the door to the fenced backyard. “You want to go out?” he asked her. “Of course you do.” He put the dog down gently and she raced out into the yard.

  Okay, I liked this version of Wix a whole lot. I wondered where his room was and what it looked like.

  Jonna and Geo knocked at the front door and then joined us in the kitchen. “My sister doesn’t spend much time in here,” he said. “She might accidentally have to cook something.” Geo snorted and Jonna gave him a dirty look. She was all business.

  “Maybe we should search her bedroom first,” I suggested, feeling queasy at the thought of what a violation it was to be rummaging through Mariah’s stuff.

  “I’ll start in here,” Geo volunteered, “and then move into the living room.”

  Wix nodded, and then lead the way to the second floor. One closed door led off into a short hallway where Mariah’s bed and bathroom were located. The rooms had the personality of a hotel suite. Unlike the downstairs floor, which was alive with art and plants and stuff, her rooms were strictly functional. A built-in bookshelf bracketed the largest window in the room but there were no books on it, just an artful collection of family photographs framed in silver interspersed with a collection of trinket boxes. Nothing book shaped.

  “Well, if it was obvious, anyone could have found it already,” Jonna said, and opened a drawer in a side table next to the bed.

  “Don’t worry too much about messing things up,” Wix said. “The housekeeper will be coming in the morning.”

  Of course, they had a housekeeper.

  I bent over the twin to the nightstand Jonna was searching and pulled it open. Inside was a small collection of sex toys.

  I closed it with a bang that causes Jonna and Wix to look at me. “Sorry,” I said.

  “You’d be a lousy burglar,” Wix said. I moved over to the bed. Bent down to look underneath it. Nothing. I felt along the edge of the box spring.

  Wix, meanwhile, was searching the en suite bathroom. I heard him remove the toilet tank lid and a small splash. As I straightened up, my eyes caught the photos in the frames. There was an ambient buzzing of magic in the room, but as I approached the shelves, it suddenly seemed more intense. The feeling seemed concentrated on a small silver box that balanced on four legs. I opened the top and recoiled. Inside was a collection of tiny animal bones.

  I hope those are animal bones. I closed the top hastily. Sitting next to the box was a large framed wedding picture. I recognized Alicia as the bride—she looked pretty much the way she did now. I wondered if that was magic. Her gown was simple and elegant, her veil falling from a lace Juliet cap that framed her heart-shaped face.

  Lewis looked a lot like Wix. The same dark hair and blue eyes, the same cocksure attitude, obvious even in a photograph. They were a handsome couple. A powe
r couple. I found myself wondering what Emily had looked like.

  I picked up the framed photograph. It was heavier than it looked. And that’s when I knew. I looked at the frame again. It was roughly seven by nine inches. The same dimensions as a large hardback book.

  As soon as I had that thought, the illusion melted away and I was holding the Book of Wix in my hands.

  I opened the covers. The pages were filled with unfamiliar words written in brown ink. I flipped through the pages, noted the grotesque illustrations, skimmed over lists of arcane ingredients.

  I closed the cover with a shudder.

  “Jonna,” I said. “I’ve found it.”

  10

  You can’t judge a book by its cover

  “Wix,” Jonna said quietly.

  He appeared in the doorway between the bedroom and the bathroom, took in the situation at a glance. “Let’s go,” he said. I stuffed the book in my backpack and was halfway out the front door before the others followed. We gathered in front of Jonna and Wix’s cars.

  “Now what,” I asked.

  Jonna was already texting. “We gather.”

  “Where?” Wix asked.

  “Three Birches,” she said, and slipped into her car.

  “Three Birches?” I said.

  “I now where it is,” Wix said. He opened the passenger door for me. I hesitated. “Too late to bac out now,” he said.

  That was true. I slid into the seat and buckled up. Wix pulled out his phone, unlocked it and handed it to me. “Text Remi and tell him to meet us at Three Birches.”

  “Okay,” I said and did as he asked.

  Remi texted back a string of emojis. He was way too excited about whatever was about to happen.

  *

  Three Birches turned out to be a tiny little park behind Wixsted Academy. The trees formed a natural triangle around a clearing that had been covered in concrete. The little space was already crowded when got there. Geo and Jonna were talking to Renata Izquierdo; Tessa was scowling into her phone.

  Remi arrived last, riding up on his bike. Ms. Izquierdo smiled at him. “If we’re all here?” She did a silent head count. “Jonna?”

  I guess it was Jonna’s show. She glanced over at the school. We could see the spires or the towers, which meant we could be seen. I shuddered and opened my backpack. I reached for the book and hesitated.

  I found I was reluctant to hand it over, like Frodo and the ring—I’d only been carrying it for a few minutes, but it had its hooks into me.

  “Problem?” Tessa asked.

  “Give me a minute,” I said.

  “Did you look inside it?” Jonna asked.

  “Of course, I did,” I said. “But I couldn’t decipher the words. I’ve only been taking Language Arts for two months.”

  Jonna and Geo looked at each other and I could read their intention before they moved.

  I stepped back as they lunged for me, pulling the book out of the bag and holding it up high.

  I could feel the demon shard burning in me. It wanted me to hold onto the book.

  It took every ounce of will in me to hand it off to Jonna.

  She took it from me but quickly dropped it onto the concrete slab enclosed by the trees.

  “How could you stand to touch it?” she asked.

  “What did you feel?”

  “Everything,” she said. She kicked at the book. “You can’t feel it?”

  I shook my head.

  Wix said, “I can smell the blood.”

  “There’s grave dirt in the binding and the cover is human skin,” Jonna said.

  I thought I was going to be sick.

  Jonna turned to Geo. The skin belonged to one of the People of the Sand. It was the skin of a warrior flayed alive.”

  Geo’s eyes turned flat. “I know the story.”

  Jonna turned to Wix. “The ink was made from the blood of a Wixsted witch. I can’t tell which one. The thread stitching the pages together came from the head of a West African woman named Akosua who was a slave in the household of Joshua Harrison, braided together with the hair of a Chinese woman who was his concubine.” I saw Tessa nodding her head at this.

  Jonna fell silent then but Renata took up the narrative.

  “The words were inscribed by a monk named Joaquin Espina—the thorn—a man who could never reconcile his religious calling with his witchblood powers. He killed himself soon after completing the work and his blood splashed the cover.” She was silent for a moment. “His sister received the book in a parcel of his belongings. Her husband, Esteban Riquelme, sold the book to Benjamin Blackwood to finance the family’s move west.”

  I cringed hearing my family name. “So where does Efraim Wixsted fit in?”

  “He was the one who commissioned the book,” Tessa said.

  “And he’s here,” Remi said, looking at a spot near one of the trees.

  I turned. Efraim’s revenant stood just a few feet away from the birch tree. Waiting, his black eyes watching us.

  “This ends here,” Jonna said. “One way or another.”

  There was a threat couched beneath her words and that “or another” hung in the air between us.

  I looked at the book on the grass. I couldn’t smell the blood it was steeped in or feel the creeping horror it radiated, but it still scared the hell out of me.

  “I don’t’ suppose we could just douse it in lighter fluid and drop a match?” I said.

  “I wish,” Jonna said.

  “Maybe I could turn it into something else,” Remi offered.

  “That’s an interesting idea,” Ms. Izquierdo said. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. A rock or something?”

  “That’s not going to work Remi,” Wix said. “Somebody could always change it back. It needs to be destroyed.”

  “I agree,” I said and gathering the destructive force of the demon shard, I slung a bolt of pure blue flame towards the book.

  Which would have been impressive if it hadn’t bounced off.

  Wix grabbed my hand, adding his strength to mine, and threw his own bolt of flame. This one also bounced off.

  “We need to do it together,” Renata urged. “All of us.”

  “On three,” Geo said as we linked hands and counted down.

  “Now,” Jonna said softly. All of us poured everything we had and as the streams of magic converged, I had a wild urge to laugh thinking of Ghostbusters and the dangers of crossing the beams.

  For a minute, it looked like nothing was happening and then I saw it, a wisp of foul-smelling black smoke curling up from a corner.

  A minute later, all that was left of the Book of Wix was a smoke stain on the grass and minutes later, that was gone as well. Nor was there any sign of Efraim.

  I felt like I’d just run a marathon My legs were weak and my arms shaky. And my blood sugar was way low. Dizzy, I collapsed on the grass. Wix sat down beside me and passed me a roll of Lifesavers. Butter Rum, my favorite. “You always carry Lifesavers?” I asked.

  “My mom’s diabetic,” he said. “I also have an epi pen in case of nut allergies.”

  “What about a snake bite kit?” I asked, because really, who’s that prepared?

  He shrugged. “I’m an Eagle Scout,” he said.

  “You’re full of surprises Wix,” I said, and popped three candies in my mouth at once.

  “You okay?” Jonna asked, as if hoping the answer would be “no.”

  “I’m not Benjamin,” I said.

  “We’ll see,” Renata said, and with that she vanished. Geo was right. T was an impressive trick. Everybody wandered away after that, Remi pedaling off on his bike. It felt wildly anticlimactic. There hadn’t even been a group hug.

  *

  Wix drove me home. His hand touched my shoulder as I pulled up on the door handle. “Laine,” he began, “I need to tell you something.”

  I settled back in my seat, not at all sure that I wanted to hear what he wanted to say.

  “I summoned
the demon that attacked you the day we met.”

  I was not expecting that. Probably most people would have asked, “Why?” but after two months of attending magic classes and practicing transformations, what I asked was, “You can summon demons?”

  “It’s my talent.”

  “Don’t do it again,” I said. “I still have a piece of it in me.”

  “I know,” he said. “That’s how you were able to resurrect Remi. Necromancing’s a dark art. The demon gave you the darkness.”

  “I guess you could call that a silver lining,” I said lightly, although inside I shuddered. There would be time enough to discuss the whys and wherefores of what he’d done with Wix, but now was not that time. I was exhausted, and Wix had to be as well. “Thanks for the ride,” I said.

  I knew he was going to kiss me before he did, so I could have avoided it if I’d wanted to. But I didn’t. What we’d just shared was intense and something that would bind us together forever. Short of both of us getting a commemorative tattoo, a kiss seemed like the best way to celebrate.

  And it was a good kiss with a hug thrown in for good measure. I pulled back before I really wanted to, but if I’d done what I really wanted to, we wouldn’t have gotten out of the car for some time.

  “I’m not always an asshole,” he said.

  “I know,” I said. “Your dog loves you.”

  “She’s a dog, she loves everybody.”

  “It’s a start,” I said. “Work on it.”

  I slipped out of the car, smiling.

  I lost the smile when my father threw open the front door. Staring down at me like I was an unwelcome stranger, he said, “You have no idea what you’ve done.”

  *

  To be continued in Full Moon High #2: The Transfer.

  Find Kat Parrish’s other books on Amazon at: https://www.amazon.com/Kat-Parrish/e/B0133WSZHG/

  Trials of Magic