Fang and Claw: Nocturne Academy, Book 2

by Anderson, Evangeline

  “Headmistress Nightworthy!” she exclaimed when the tall Nocturne finally stopped talking. “You’re treating us like common servants. This is absolutely unfair!”

  “You’re correct, Miss Rattcliff,” the Headmistress said, causing all of us—including Nancy—to gape at her for a moment. “If I was being ‘fair’ when I dished out your punishment, I would go by the ancient Rule of Equals—what the humans call ‘an eye for an eye,’” she went on. “In which case, I will give you a choice. You can either help in the kitchens and clean the Dining Hall for a month, or you may each have a large bite of the chocolate cake which you be-spelled and be subject to your own three-squared cheer charm for the next month until Ms. Yasmeen can remove it at the next full moon.” She raised an eyebrow at Nancy and the other Weird Sisters. “The choice is yours.”

  Nancy scowled and the other two girls looked abashed. It was clear they didn’t want to be unable to stop laughing for the next month. But at the same time, they didn’t want to have to do “menial labor” as Nancy had put it, and eat the nasty Norm food for a month either. However, they had to pick one and Nancy could no longer say that her mother was the head of the Windermere Coven or claim that she paid enough in tuition to buy her way out of the situation.

  They were stuck and from the angry, sullen looks on their faces, none of them was very happy about it.

  “We’ll take the kitchen duty,” Nancy said at last, speaking for all three of them.

  “Along with cleaning and eating Norm food,” Megan reminded her sweetly.

  Nancy shot her a venomous glance but didn’t say anything—clearly she didn’t dare threaten either one of us in the presence of the Headmistress.

  “Very well, I’ll inform the cafeteria staff that you’re on your way,” Headmistress Nightworthy said briskly. “You’d better hurry if you’re going to make it in time to help serve dinner, girls. Go on now—go.” She clapped her hands sharply and with a last angry glance, Nancy and the Weird Sisters filed out of her office.

  14

  Kaitlyn

  “Well, that’s that.” The Headmistress nodded with finality. “Thank you for your help, Ms. Yasmeen,” she added, speaking to the Elementary Casting teacher who had been standing quietly and watching the whole thing.

  “Of course, Headmistress.” Ms. Yasmeen nodded and left the office.

  Megan and I started to do the same but, to my great distress, Headmistress Nightworthy called me back.

  “Miss Fellows,” she said to me. “Would you mind staying for a moment?”

  Megan shot me a worried glance and moved to take my hand in protective solidarity. The Headmistress saw her move and gave a swift shake of her head.

  “Miss Latimer, I appreciate the fact that you stand by your Coven-mate, but I must ask for a bit of privacy. I promise what I have to say to Miss Fellows is not bad—she is not in any kind of trouble.”

  “Well…all right.” Reluctantly, Megan let go of my hand. “I’ll wait for you right outside the office,” she promised.

  “Thanks.” I nodded uncertainly, my heart pounding. Despite the Headmistress saying I wasn’t in trouble, being asked to stay after and speak to her alone still made me incredibly uncomfortable.

  Headmistress Nightworthy didn’t waste any time. The minute the thick black door shut behind Megan, she turned to me, frowning.

  “Miss Fellows, I just want you to know that I was made aware of the…incident that happened in your Physical Education class earlier this semester,” she said to me. “It is the main reason why Mr. Sanchez was expelled from this school and sent back to the Sky Lands.”

  “Yes, Headmistress,” I said quietly, nodding my head. “I know—Megan told me.”

  She nodded. “I thought that she would. I just…wanted to see if you were doing all right. I understand what you went through was very traumatic and I want to extend my sincere, if belated apologies on behalf of Nocturne Academy.”

  “I’m all right.” I lifted my chin. “My friends, er, Coven-mates, have been very supportive.”

  She nodded and a smile touched the corners of her mouth.

  “I’m very happy to hear it. A supportive peer group is very important during the formative years. But…” She hesitated and her nostrils flared, almost as though she was smelling me.

  “Yes, Headmistress?” I asked uneasily, wondering what was wrong.

  Headmistress Nightworthy had a concerned, half-confused look on her face, as though she wasn’t quite certain what the problem was herself.

  “I just…wanted to ask if you are feeling well,” she said at last, frowning. “You seem…not quite yourself, if you don’t mind me saying so, Miss Fellows.”

  “Oh, um…I think I might be coming down with a cold,” I offered. Indeed, now that the adrenaline high of Mrs. Hornsby’s laughing fit and Nancy’s punishment was fading, I had begun to feel even weaker and more tired than I had before.

  “I see.” The concern on the Headmistress’s face smoothed a bit, as though I had answered her unspoken question—whatever it was. “All right then, be sure to go to the Healer if you need any medication,” she told me. “And if you need some time off from your classes, I can ask your teachers to send your assignments to your dormitory.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll be okay,” I said, lifting my chin. I was tired of being treated like a fragile china doll by everyone—even the unfailingly strict Headmistress. As tired and worn out as I felt, I was determined to keep going to class.

  “Very well then.” She nodded at me. “You may go. And if you have any more trouble with Miss Rattcliff or anyone else, please come to me and let me know.”

  I frowned. “I can fight my own battles, Headmistress Nightworthy.”

  “Of course you can,” she said quickly. “But please know that I will not tolerate a repeat occurrence of what happened to you with Mr. Sanchez. If someone is bullying you, I want to know about it, Miss Fellows.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her about Ari Reyes and how it seemed like he and Nancy had cooked up some kind of plot to humiliate me but then I remembered that I wasn’t going to be “fragile little Kaitlyn” anymore.

  “Thank you,” I said, nodding. “I’ll certainly let you know if I feel threatened, Headmistress.”

  She nodded. “Very good. And now you may go. I imagine your Coven-mate is waiting anxiously for you outside my office.”

  “Thank you,” I said again and walked past her to the black door. But as I went, I couldn’t help seeing her nostrils flare again as a worried, uncertain look came back to her ageless face.

  Clearly whatever question she’d had about me, it hadn’t been answered—at least, not to her exact satisfaction. I wondered what was wrong and then decided to put it out of my mind.

  I’d had enough trouble for one day, I told myself. I was tired—so tired I couldn’t ever imagine having energy again. I wasn’t even going to eat dinner—I just wanted to go back to the Norm Dorm and rest.

  If only I could sleep, maybe I could start to heal from this awful cold.

  15

  Ari

  I was hoping to catch her after dinner and try to explain what had happened, but my little human was nowhere to be seen in the Dining Hall during the last meal of the day.

  I searched for her anxiously, scanning the small table in the back of the Dining Hall where she usually sat with her friends but she wasn’t there.

  Mierda! My Drake growled in irritation and worry and I could almost feel him pacing inside my skull.

  He informed me that we shouldn’t have let her get away earlier. That we should have run after her and made her understand that what Nancy Rattcliff said was a lie—a ruse just to make her feel bad. What did it matter that I would have been late to class? What did anything matter when one’s fated-mate was at stake?

  “I didn’t see her anywhere or I would have said something—would have explained,” I tried to tell him. “And anyway, I’m sure she’ll be at breakfast tomorrow—I can talk to he
r then.”

  This didn’t appease him, however. He sent mental images of me going to the entrance of the Norm Dorm—which was in the corner of the Dining Hall, not fifty yards away—and going down to speak to her there.

  I explained—as I had often before—that it wasn’t allowed to go into a dormitory that wasn’t your own. That in some cases it could be considered an expulsion offense.

  “I can’t go charging down there without permission,” I told him, feeling exasperated. “Do you want to get us kicked out of Nocturne Academy and sent back to the Sky Lands like Sanchez was?”

  I got a feeling of reluctant negation and he settled, still somewhat uneasily, inside me. I tried to get back to my meal, but the food tasted flavorless. It occurred to me that I hadn’t realized how much I looked forward to seeing my little human—how often I glanced her way during any given meal period. Not having her near—or rather, knowing that she was probably close by in her dormitory but not being able to see her—pretty much ruined my evening.

  I shook my head. Goddess of Evening Shadows, I had it bad for her. It was hard to know how to cope with such strong feelings, which I had never had before for any other female. Of course, I’d had what the humans called “crushes” before, but this was different—much more intense. When a male’s Drake gets involved, all emotions are compounded exponentially. And my Drake had claimed Kaitlyn as ours—she just didn’t know it yet.

  I hung around a little while after the meal, hoping against hope that she might come to join her friends, but as the other students dispersed from the Dining Hall, I had to admit it wasn’t likely to happen. Still, I lingered in the shadows of one corner of the vast room, waiting just a little while longer, unwilling to go until everyone else was actually gone.

  That was when I saw a very surprising sight.

  After everyone else had left—and Kaitlyn’s friends had all gone down into the trap door that led to their dormitory in the corner of the Dining Hall, Nancy Rattcliff and the two girls who always followed her came out of the kitchens. They had handfuls of cleaning supplies and began to wash down the tables and sweep the floors.

  This was normally the task of the janitorial staff—humans who had signed a magical non-disclosure agreement to be able to work at Nocturne Academy—so the fact that Nancy and her friends were doing it caught my attention.

  I frowned. Come to think of it, hadn’t they also been helping to serve the food at the dinner line? What in the world were they doing? I knew Nancy Rattcliff well enough to understand that she wasn’t the type to offer to help anyone or do any domestic task out of the goodness of her heart. So then why was she doing this? Was it some kind of punishment?

  As I watched, the three girls began talking—clearly oblivious of my presence since I was hidden in the shadows. Curiosity pricked me. Carefully, I drifted closer, making certain to stay at the edges of the room where the shadows were thickest.

  “That old bitch! Headmistress Nightworthy’s full of shit and everyone knows it!” Nancy was saying angrily, as she swiped at a tabletop, sweeping crumbs onto the floor, heedless of the fact that her friend had only just swept in that exact spot.

  “Nancy!” one of her friends gasped, her face turning pale. She had blonde hair and I thought her name might be Missy or Misty. “Stop it—what if she hears you somehow?” she exclaimed.

  “So what if she does?” Nancy swiped viciously at some more crumbs, scattering them everywhere. “I don’t give a flying fuck! I’m not afraid of her and I don’t care if she kicks me out of this third-rate school either!”

  “But if she did, where would you go?” her other friend protested. She had curly brown hair and might or might not have been called Jasmine. “You heard what the Headmistress said—you’re a scholarship student now. What other school would offer you a scholarship if you got kicked out of Nocturne Academy?”

  “Shut up, Jazzy!” the blonde-haired girl exclaimed. “Don’t remind Nancy of all that!” She cut her eyes anxiously at Nancy—clearly both of them feared her wrath.

  But Nancy appeared unconcerned.

  “I don’t care what old Nightworthy does,” she said, still swiping crumbs from the tabletop and scattering them all over the flagstone floor. “She won’t kick me out—you heard her, she promised my mother she wouldn’t.”

  “Yeah, but she’s got you and all of us doing menial labor!” the blond Missy moaned. “And we can’t even do any black magic to pay that little Latimer bitch back for getting us into trouble!”

  “No—not since she neutered our magical abilities,” Jasmine agreed glumly.

  Nancy smirked. “Oh, I think we proved you don’t have to do black magic in order to make a spell harmful.”

  “Yes, and look where it landed us,” Missy said dolefully, sweeping her broom in vague, distracted strokes that didn’t do a thing to get up the crumbs Nancy was showering on the floor. “Cleaning the Dining Hall and eating that horrible Norm food for dinner!”

  “It’s disgusting,” Jasmine agreed. “But I don’t see what we can do about it. Headmistress Nightworthy said she’s going to be keeping an eye on us and that awful Megan Latimer is too strong to mess with anymore.”

  “Nobody is safe from being messed with—no matter how powerful they are,” Nancy snapped. Her black eyes narrowed. “You know what really bothers her? When her little friends are in trouble. She’s always so worried about that nasty little scarred freak that hangs around with her. She’s the one we ought to be targeting.”

  “She is? But how?” Jasmine asked doubtfully. “She’s always with Latimer or one of her other friends. Emma Plunket is just a Norm but Avery Connor is a pretty powerful witch.”

  “You just leave that to me.” Nancy got a crafty look on her face. “We might have to get a little help, but we’ll manage. And the very first one to go after is Kaitlyn Fellows. That little scarred bitch won’t know what hit her!”

  At this, my Drake roared inside me. I felt my hands clenching into fists and my breathing growing harsh. How dare they call Kaitlyn names and threaten her? How…fucking…dare they?

  Before I could stop myself, I rushed out of the shadows and confronted Nancy directly, looming over her as I glared down into her shocked face.

  “You will leave Kaitlyn Fellows alone,” I growled at her, my voice deep with my Drake’s anger. I could feel my eyes getting hot and knew they must be glowing gold with his light.

  The witch’s own eyes widened and she took a sudden, involuntary step back, clearly startled by my sudden appearance.

  “You…what…?” she sputtered, clearly unable to finish the question.

  “I heard what you were saying—the three of you,” I growled. “And I am here to tell you that if you lay a single finger on Kaitlyn, you will be very, very sorry.”

  Her black eyes narrowed.

  “You really do have a thing for that little freak, don’t you?” she demanded. “You know, I did a little asking around after this morning and I found out what you said was true—that Drakes really don’t allow cross-species dating. And I further know that you hate females who are scarred or disfigured—so how you can have feelings for that disgusting little—”

  “Be careful what you call her!” I snarled menacingly. “She’s worth ten of you, vrota!” Which was a name in the language of my people for a devious or twisted person—one who only wanted to cause harm to others. If there was a better example of a vrota than Nancy Rattcliff, I didn’t know what it was.

  Her face darkened and she glared at me.

  “So what are you going to do if I decide to mess with your little scarred human, anyway?” she demanded. “Don’t you High Drakes—the really upper class ones—have some kind of code against hurting females? So it’s not like you’re going to actually do me physical harm.” She looked thoughtful. “Although, I guess you could run tell the Headmistress on me. But if you do that, it might get back to your daddy the King Drake that you have a thing for a human—a scarred, deformed human!” she spat and t
hen tilted her head to one side and looked at me with wide eyes. “Why, I wonder what he’ll think about that?”

  I felt like gnashing my teeth with rage. She had me there and I knew it. It wasn’t like I could offer her actual physical harm, the way I could if another male was threatening my little human. The Drake code of honor, which I had been raised by, stated that a male must never harm a female. It was considered shameful and low, which was one reason I had been so shocked and angry when Sanchez had hit Kaitlyn in the face with a football and then laughed about it.

  I wouldn’t have been so surprised if one of his hangers-on—the common green Drakes who followed him had done such a thing. They had no honor. But to have a nobleman of our kind act so to a female was both repugnant and shocking.

  Also, it was true that I didn’t want the news of my choice of Kaitlyn as my future bonded mate to be revealed to my father and mother just yet. If he found out what was going on, my father would doubtless call me back to the Sky Lands and betroth me to what he and my mother considered a “suitable” female at once.

  But while I was trying to think how to answer Nancy’s threat, I felt a surge inside me and my Drake suddenly came forward, pushing me aside as he assumed control of my body.

  “It will not only be Ari you must deal with if you harm the little human,” he growled in a low, guttural voice much deeper than my own. I could feel my eyes glowing fiercely as they filled with his golden fire. “It is me you must deal with if you hurt her,” he went on. “She is MINE and I will not allow anyone—male or female—to raise a hand against her! Do you understand?”

  For the first time since I had come charging out of the shadows, Nancy looked truly frightened. Her eyes widened and her lips trembled as she took a stumbling step back from me and my Drake.

  “Y-yes,” she whispered at last. “I understand.”