Paranormal Academy

by Limited Edition Box Set

  Although Alanza had provided dressing rooms for the presenting ceremony, Fiona and Darby had mostly gotten ready in their household rooms. Darby had opted for a simple hairdo, which cut down on time, and she wore one of her favorite gowns so she could stay comfortable. Her nerves had shot up as the presenting ceremony neared—it would be her first opportunity to show who she was as a leader and a ruler. She needed everything to be perfect, and the chaos of their arrival had thrown her off her game.

  Quinn and Brielle, on the other hand, had taken their time moving their wardrobes and makeup and jewelry collections downstairs so they could have the full experience of getting ready. Now, they were both running horrendously late, not helped by their continued squabbling.

  “Just wear that one,” Quinn said. “It’s perfect against your skin tone.”

  “It’s a diamond necklace,” Brielle said. “Diamonds go perfectly with anyone’s skin—”

  “—Where is Fiona?” Darby interrupted. She realized she hadn’t seen her third lady-in-waiting since they left their households.

  Quinn and Brielle looked up from their changing stations.

  “She was here awhile ago,” Quinn said. “I’m not—” she looked around, as if she had just noticed Fiona missing.

  “They’re going to call us soon,” she said. She had been watching the presenting ceremony of all the royal families’ children from the backstage wings with her uncle, Kerr Fitzgerald. They had already gone through all the other faerie clans—the mogwai and elves spirit clans, the devas and salamanders fire clans, the banshee and sylphs air clans, the nymphs and mermaids water clans—and now they were presenting the gnomes, their fellow earth clan.

  She was to be queen of one of the smallest clans, which was why she and her ladies were to be presented last.

  If only she could find the last of her ladies…

  “I’m sure she’ll turn up,” Quinn said sensibly.

  “This is important,” she said. “My uncle came all the way from New York City to oversee my performance tonight. Everything has to be perfect.”

  “Do you want us to look for her?” Brielle asked.

  She frowned. “No, I can’t have another of my ladies-in-waiting disappear on me. I’ll find Griffin.”

  She opened the door to their dressing room, before spinning back around again. “Brielle, give Quinn that necklace. It looks better with her dress. And hurry up! I need you both out there in the next three minutes.”

  Brielle pursed her lips, but said nothing as she handed the necklace to Quinn.

  Quinn opened the clasp and haphazardly threw it around her neck, latching it quickly. “We’ll be there,” she assured her, as she rushed to untangle some curlers from her hair.

  Darby shut the door on them, only to find Kerr waiting for her outside.

  “Fiona is missing,” Darby told him.

  “Griffin is on it already,” Kerr said. “You can walk without her if she doesn’t turn up. Darbs, there are more important things you need to know right now.”

  Darby looked up at her uncle—bright red hair, pale skin, and freckles just like her. He was her father’s brother and only sibling, who had only recently been brought back into the fold of their family.

  The brothers had a falling out long ago, when her father, who couldn’t have any more kids after his allotted two, wanted Kerr to continue the family line by fathering more siblings with her mother. Kerr refused and left for America, leaving the King to turn to a first cousin for Darby’s triplet sisters.

  Kerr had only recently come back into her father’s good graces by establishing a number of important political alliances in the United States. The King began to see him as a useful member of the family, and she had seen a lot more of her uncle through her teenage years.

  She trusted him with her life. They wanted the same thing, to grow the Fitzgerald family name and accumulate more power—enough to protect the family’s precarious position as the new leaders of the leprechauns.

  “What do I need to know?” she asked.

  “The three you must connect with—one is sitting in the far back, one in the front, and one to the farthest right side. I want you to nod to each of them as you are presented.”

  “They’re the ones I need to make eye contact with?”

  Kerr nodded.

  “And you won’t tell me why?” she asked.

  Kerr shrugged. “You know I’m not able to. With any luck, you’ll find out on your own.”

  Darby opened her mouth, but just as she was about to question him, Quinn and Brielle burst through the doors of their changing room.

  “Ready!” Brielle said brightly, in her full length lace, diamond-encrusted gown. Darby held up a hand, blinded by the light reflecting off of several of the stones.

  “I decided to change. I didn’t have the right jewelry to go with my other dress.”

  Quinn, bringing up Brielle’s rear, caught her eye and mouthed, “I know,” with a suggestive eyebrow twitch.

  Darby narrowed her eyes, considering whether Brielle had purposely upstaged her at the last minute to get back at her for the necklace. Probably. But neither of them had time to change now.

  “Great!” Kerr said obliviously. “They’re about to call your names. I told them that if they only see three girls, they can leave off the name ‘Fiona Torrey.’”

  The three of them rushed to the backstage of the auditorium, a large room with several balcony tiers worth of chairs. They stood in the wings, the last of the groups to be called.

  At last, it was their turn.

  “Her royal highness,” the announcer said, “Darby Fitzgerald, princess of the leprechauns, heir apparent to the throne.” Darby stepped forward into the spotlight, highly aware of all the eyes on her.

  She ignored her gawking future peers sitting to the left and right of her, who were undoubtedly sizing her up. Instead, she curtsied three times, once in the direction of Kofi Simmer, a handsome, grinning, brown salamander faerie in the front row, a second time in the direction of Ragna Mikkelsen, a pale, blonde, fierce banshee faerie to the right, and finally, a third time to the back left, where the most important of the three, Wu Lei, a Chinese mogwai faerie, sat. Professor Wu looked unassuming and slight, but Kerr had warned her about him—he would be the hardest of the three to win over, and the most important of the three to impress.

  The announcer went on as the applause died down. “Princess Darby hails from Dublin, Ireland with her ladies-in-waiting, lady Quinn Shannon—” the announcer paused as Quinn stepped forward in a curtsy “—and lady Brielle Barrington.” Another pause as Brielle stepped forward, walking as if she were a model on a runway.

  They took their seats to stage right as those around them clapped, though Darby noted with surprise that they were not the last to take the stage. She saw three empty seats past her—one for Fiona, she was sure—but who did the other two belong to?

  The announcer continued. “And finally, we have two legacies of royal descent to present. His highness, Flynn Cormac, former prince of the leprechauns.”

  Darby stood up in shock. All nearby eyes of other royal children fell on her. The Cormac family had been overturned by her own, not long after she was born. The former King and Queen had died, she knew, and she had always assumed that they had no children or that the children had died as well.

  Her uncle, who looked pale and wide-eyed at this news, nonetheless gave her a sharp glare that she understood to mean, don’t cause a scene.

  The man who stepped forward, Flynn Cormac, had ash blond hair and blue, smoldering eyes that she would recognize from anywhere.

  The stranger in the club!

  Somewhere, she imagined Griffin giving her an “I told you so” look. Though as her eyes met Flynn’s, he looked just as astonished to see her as she felt to see him.

  She suddenly remembered, she had been decently disguised at the club. With the neon green lighting, perhaps he hadn’t recognized her?

  No, she thought. It was to
o much of a coincidence. He must have seeked her out, for whatever reason. And why was he in Dublin?

  She held his gaze, refusing to be intimidated by him.

  He bowed to the crowd, making eye contact with the same three professors that Kerr had marked for her. He extended a fourth bow toward the an Asian girl, an exceptionally beautiful mogwai royal, down at the other end of the stage. The mogwai clan had been among the first introduced, so she sat in roughly the position Darby held, just opposite.

  The mogwai royal nodded in response, then caught Darby’s eye from all the way down the line and smirked at her.

  So that was it, was it? Had this mogwai royal conspired with her family’s enemies to make a fool of her in front of the entire Alliance of Faeries?

  And those nods. She suddenly realized that her smoldering strang—that Flynn Cormac—had come to the school for the exact same reasons as her.

  To gain power, connections, and a secure position among the faeries.

  And why would he need that?

  To help his own family, or what was left of it, to rise up?

  To take her throne?

  To start a war between the leprechauns?

  To oust and murder her family, just as his was ousted and murdered years ago?

  Darby had barely noticed that her ladies-in-waiting had stood up next to her in solidarity. They were the only ones on stage, standing. She straightened up, making her best attempt to look regal.

  The announcer continued. “Her highness, Teagan Cormac, former princess of the leprechauns.” A slightly younger innocent-looking blonde girl stepped forward, curtsying to the same four as her older brother.

  As the applause died down, the brother and sister pair made their way toward her, to the last two chairs on the stage.

  “And that concludes our—”

  Darby tuned out. She held Flynn’s gaze as he passed her, sitting in the second to last chair. Teagan kept her eyes to the ground as she walked by, though she clearly felt the tension between them as her foot caught on the bottom of her gown, causing her a small trip right in front of Darby.

  When the other two were seated, Darby nodded to her ladies to take their seats, before finally taking her own. She considered her next move. Should she confront the two right away in private, demanding them to swear fealty to her? Should she network like crazy for damage control? And where exactly was Fiona? Had the Cormacs already gotten to her? How deep did their alliances go, and could she even trust her closest confidants: her ladies-in-waiting, her guards, her staff?

  She looked up, saw Kerr fixating on her with a grim expression, and knew. The only people she could trust at the moment were those with the Fitzgerald name.

  Those who could lose as much as her if they fell.

  3

  Immediately as the announcer dismissed them, Darby turned to her ladies-in-waiting. “Keep an eye on them,” she whispered. “I want to know every move they make tonight.”

  “What about Fiona?” Quinn asked.

  “Wait for Griffin’s word,” Darby said. “He’ll find her. Help him if he asks it of you.”

  “We’ve got this,” Brielle said quietly, looking back at Cormac and Teagan, who seemed to be in their own huddled conversation.

  Darby nodded. She stepped away and found her uncle in the crowd. He was talking casually to one of the other guests, but she approached him, tugged the sleeve of his jacket to get his attention, and pulled him to a quiet corner outside the auditorium, away from prying eyes.

  “Did you know?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “How did this happen without our people figuring it out? I thought we had intelligence professionals working for us.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “How bad is it? Do I need to pack up my household?”

  “Not yet. I need to alert the King and Queen and do some investigation of my own.”

  “You’re leaving? You’re leaving me alone here?”

  “You have a duty, and it will only make us look weak if we leave now. Alanza is a safe place—one of the safest places you can be right now, in truth.”

  “Alanza has allowed our greatest enemies a place in this school,” Darby said through gritted teeth. “They’ve allowed my greatest rival to the throne to be presented to the entire Alliance of Faeries as an alternative to my reign. The Cormacs purposely timed their appearance to embarrass and shake me, and Alanza let—”

  “They had no choice,” Kerr said dully. “The Cormacs are of royal blood, same as you, and are legacies of this school.”

  “And why are they alive, exactly?” Darby asked. “What weakness did my father and mother have that didn’t extinguish the Cormac line?”

  Kerr glared sharply at her. “Trust me, if the King had known of these children escaping—which is the only explanation I can think of—they wouldn’t be attending this school and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Their lives, and our family’s legacy, now rest in my ability to convince the King not to send assassins after them.”

  Darby bit her lip. “It would look bad,” she agreed. “If we killed them now. It would look weak and threatened of us.”

  Kerr nodded. “Good girl. You’ll make a smart queen someday.”

  “What am I supposed to do in the meantime, then?” she begged. “Tell me.”

  “Follow the plan. Meet the three people I asked you to connect with. Impress them.”

  “And what do I do about the Cormacs?”

  Kerr looked over to where Flynn and Teagan stood across the room. Flynn had struck up a conversation with the Dean of the school and seemed to be thanking him for the ceremony.

  “Ignore them. Attempt to win them over if you think you can, but know that they’ll always hate you for what your family did to theirs. Whatever you do, don’t cause trouble with them. We need to know more about their position before we make any further moves.”

  Darby nodded.

  “I have to go now,” Kerr said. “Keep Griffin at your side, as he is your best protection right now. Trust no one else, not even your ladies. And be kinder to them, too. A ruler’s power comes from the power of their alliances. The Cormacs will try to chip away at your alliances and if possible, flip them to their side. Your job is to prevent that. Your survival, and that of our family’s, depends on it.”

  Darby felt enormous pressure from his words, while at the same time knowing that everything he said was true.

  “Be well, uncle,” she said. “Tell my family I love them, and I’ll see them at the week’s end.”

  He nodded, placing one hand on her cheek and kissing the top of her forehead. “You can do this.”

  He turned and transported, disappearing into the evening, leaving no trace.

  She longed for more words from him, for him to tell her that everything would be fine, but she knew why he didn’t provide her that. Kerr was not one for gentle truths.

  She took a deep breath and spun around, facing the entrance, peering through that door at the crowd of people she now needed to confront.

  Follow the plan, Kerr had said. Meet the three people.

  She started by approaching Kofi Simmer, who was regaling several other students with stories of his life growing up in Tel Aviv, Israel within a small community of faeries who had migrated there from Ethiopia just a generation or two back. His people held very little power in the region, so he spent his childhood learning how to tell big stories and create top-notch disguises that fooled even people in his own community, at times—until they figured out his game, at least. In adulthood, he moved to London, where he spent many years running in crime circles, stealing from earthlies and supernaturals alike, to make his fortune. He eventually got caught, served a short internment under the Alliance of Faeries, and eventually worked his way into becoming a professor at Alanza due to his incredible mastery of disguises.

  She listened to his wild stories and laughed in all the appropriate places, then oohed and ahhed with the rest of the students as he demo
nstrated various disguises he had used when he did this or that.

  Finally, the crowd thinned from his show and she was able to get in a word alone.

  “Professor Simmer, I wanted to ask how you were able to change your nose so entirely in that second-to-last disguise?”

  She had picked a question about the nose on purpose, as she had studied her own nose for many hours and had found herself very good at nose disguises already.

  He explained his method to her in detail, then watched as she tried it.

  “Not bad, not bad!” Professor Simmer said, clearly and enthusiastically impressed. “You are one of the first students to ever ask me that question, and one of the first to ever show so much natural talent for the art of disguises!”

  She smiled modestly. “I’m looking forward to taking your classes and learning more.”

  He beamed at her. “I look forward to seeing you in my classes, Darby Fitzgerald. I imagine you’ll be one of my top students if you come to class with even half the talent and effort you’ve shown here tonight.”

  She thanked him, and luckily another round of students gathered around them, providing a new audience for Professor Simmer’s act. As he launched into his story again, she quietly slipped away from the group, looking for her next target.

  Ragna Mikkelsen stood not far away, also surrounded by students, though she had far fewer admirers than Professor Simmer. This was probably because she seemed far more intimidating. While all the other women in the hall wore gowns, Professor Mikkelsen had on tight back pants, a black fitted crop top, and a long velvet blue jacket that looked almost like a cape.

  “Cool outfit,” Darby commented.

  “Made it myself. Easier to spar in.”