by Jami Klein
“What?” Priscilla sneered. “No. I’m saying that ritualistic magic was done in this part of Connecticut for centuries, pre-dating the colonists.”
“I always thought those kinds of things happened more in places like Massachusetts or something.”
“The Witch Trials are only one example of the persecution of witches through history,” Priscilla said. I sensed this was a topic she knew a lot about.
“Of course, let’s not forget about the Spanish Inquisition.” I joked.
She blinked back at me. “Yeah,” she muttered dryly.
Okay. Not a metal fan and not a Monty Python fan. I was wondering if this roommate situation was doomed.
“My great grandmother was burned as French heretic – we can trace our lineage back hundreds of years.”
Ouch. I hit a nerve. “Sorry.”
“It was a long time ago,” she said dismissively, and started pulling out clothes from her closet.
Priscilla didn’t say anything else after that. After she got dressed, she went outside. I heard her out in the hallway talking. I opened the door and the three girls from last night immediately stopped and stared at me. I remembered Betty and Maya’s names, but I hadn’t been introduced to the other girl. Rocking back on my heels, I waited for them to say something. But they just stared at me until things got awkward.
“Um, how do I get to the library?”
After giving me the basic directions on how to get around, Priscilla and her friends took off, leaving no doubt that I wasn’t welcome in their giggling circle of witches.
Whatever.
The bracelets felt like they were rubbing my wrists raw, but my skin was unmarked. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn’t want to hang out in my room all day. At least Andrei wouldn’t be sneaking up on me. He was probably asleep in his coffin by now—if vampires even did that. I wondered if the vampire dorms had coffins instead of beds or if they lined them all up like a giant mausoleum. I shivered. Yeah, that was a little too creepy for me.
There were some people hanging out watching TV, but for the most part the witches section seemed empty. It should have been a regular Saturday. I normally would have slept until noon, maybe longer if my mom didn’t roust me out of bed before I “slept the day away.” Then, she would have nagged me until I ate lunch, getting really mad if I made a ginormous bowl of cereal instead before plunking down at the kitchen table and losing myself in my phone.
I missed her.
Staring out the window, I saw a few people wandering around outside. It was almost like a college campus. Maybe, I could just pretend I had gotten into a special college a few years early. Except, we never really discussed college and I’ve never spent more than a week away from home. Thank the goddess that I at least had gone to sleep away camp, otherwise I could probably have added insomnia to my list of things to experience at the Jewel Academy.
Should I call my Mom? Let her know how my first night went? I glanced at my phone, but just like last night there wasn’t a signal. I might as well leave it here for all the good it was doing me. But I needed some sense of normalcy and I slipped it in my pocket.
“I’m going to get breakfast,” I said, but no one looked up from the TV or even acknowledged I was there.
Great.
Steering clear of the werewolf and the vampire wings, I still couldn’t stop myself from looking back, up their staircases when I got to the main lobby area. I didn’t see any Enforcers guarding the entrances, but I suppose that didn’t mean they weren’t there. I felt like a ghost as I moved through clusters of people. It was like I was invisible. No one made eye contact with me. No one stopped to say hi. I didn’t feel comfortable enough to approach anyone. My stomach growled, snapping me out of my funk and I followed the smell of baking bread to the dining hall.
Like everything else inside the Jewel Academy, it was enormous and slightly overbearing in its own importance. On the walls were oil portraits of ancient wizards in ceremonial robes. Squinting at the brass name plates, I saw they were retired teachers. The room was filled with round tables and chairs. Their dark wood matched the walls and large crossbeams across the ceiling. At the far end of the room, there was a large kitchen and a huge buffet laid out in front of it.
No one noticed me as I walked through the tables where mingled witches and shifters sat. I was happy to see that the boys and girls were allowed to mingle here at least. I was still hoping to go to homecoming—if they even had one here. Maybe instead there was a big Halloween/Samhain bash.
Taking a tray and a plate, I slid them along the buffet line, scooping out some eggs and bacon as I went. Grabbing a chocolate milk, I saw two witches sitting alone, and headed over to their table.
“Have you ever tried a séance?” I heard one of the girls ask as I sat down. She had curly brown hair and brown eyes that were almost hidden by thick glasses with cat’s eye frames. She was busy scribbling notes into a leather-bound journal.
“Multiple times. She never responds. I think it’s because I don’t have enough witches in my coven. We desperately need a fourth person,” The other girl’s eyes flickered over my bracelets and she shifted away from me. She was a heavyset blond with freckles over her nose.
“Oh.” The curly-haired girl looked up at me, but the smile froze on her face when she noticed my bracelets.
“Hi, I’m Lola,” I said, with a mouthful of eggs.
“Kim,” the curly-haired girl said.
“Tracy,” the blond said.
I swallowed. “I … um … new.”
“Welcome to Jewel Academy,” Tracy said. “You must be Delia’s replacement.”
“Who’s Delia?” I asked.
“Priscilla Walton’s roommate.”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“Sorry to hear about that,” Kim said, rolling her eyes.
“She’s not so bad,” I said, feeling the need to defend my roomie.
“Wait until you get to know her.” Kim opened up a can of soda and took a large glug from it.
Tracy drummed her fingernails on the table and sized me up. “Has she asked you to join her coven?”
“No, but we just met.”
“When those come off,” Tracy gestured with her chin at my bracelets. “Look me up before you make a decision. It’s tough to live with someone who you’re also in a coven with.”
“It is?” This was all new to me. My father’s opinion over me joining a coven was “over his dead body.” I choked on my milk when his words came back to me.
Oh, Dad.
“Not to mention I don’t run my coven like a mean girls boot camp.” Tracy pushed back from the table. “Think about it.”
“Bye,” Kim said, swinging her legs over the bench and hurrying after her friend.
So much for a nice breakfast conversation.
I looked around to see if there was anyone else sitting alone. The only person I saw was the boy I’d seen the night before and who I couldn’t seem to get off my mind. I bussed my tray, but went back for a yogurt and a banana.
Even the other shifters were giving Stefan Harte a wide berth.
I sat across from him.
He went still and raised his eyes to stare at me over his bowl of oatmeal.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Lola.” I offered him my hand.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a group of girls staring at us. A quick look confirmed they were shifters, they were trying to tell me something. One of them jerked their head towards the door. But it wasn’t in a threatening manner. I think they were trying to warn me.
Stefan ignored my hand and went back to eating.
I opened up my yogurt cup and licked the lid. That drew his attention, but I hadn’t done it provocatively. I just did it out of habit. “I’m the new girl,” I said as I cut up the banana into my yogurt. “I’ve heard a lot of things about you already.”
And I lost his attention again.
“I saw you last night.”
T
here it was. He was staring at me again. It was a little unnerving. I did feel a prick of unease at the intensity in his gaze. And yet another part of me was thrilled. He saw me. I wasn’t invisible.
“You sure can jump. Where did you go?”
I stirred my yogurt while I waited for him to answer, but he didn’t. I could play this game as long as he liked. I was the queen of “whoever makes a noise first, loses.” My dad and I had played it a lot when I was younger. But apparently, I had met my match in Stefan Harte. He finished his breakfast and silently got up from the table. He left without a goodbye, without even acknowledging me. And just like that. I was invisible again.
After I finished my yogurt, I walked to the large building opposite the dorm rooms. The library was the size of my entire high school back home in New Haven. Except it was fancy, so much fancier than anything I’ve ever seen. Even in the Yale area of town. More gargoyle statues were perched on the roof of the library. There was an extensive garden in front of the building, with sculptured hedges and stone chairs artfully arranged around a large fountain with cherub statues.
If I hadn’t had these bracelets on me, I could be happy here. It wasn’t the Coven School by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a lot more interesting than my mundane high school. I walked through the front doors of the library and felt a shimmer of force go through me. Blinking, I looked around but I didn’t see any wards or forcefields up. At least that was one thing the bracelets didn’t care about. It had almost felt like a spell. But who would have cast at me? No one was even looking at me.
The first floor of the library was amazing. It was a huge room filled with shelves that ran at least twenty feet high, complete with the swivel sliding ladders and everything. I was going to take a ride on those, if it was the last thing I did.
It had the typical old book smell – but I welcomed it. It was a familiar scent and it made me miss my father even more. I wondered if he had spent hours here himself before the internet made research available twenty-four seven in the comforts of your own home. It made feel oddly connected to him somehow. He had been here. He had walked on this carpet and touched these shelves. I was excited about the possibility of investigating my father’s life. I walked toward the librarian who sat on a raised dais behind a large desk, like a judge. She stared down her glasses at me and I felt another shiver go through me.
“What can I do for you?” she asked.
“Could you direct me to the yearbook section? Or the term paper archives.”
“Are you looking to find your father’s papers?”
“Um, yes.” This was getting weird. “Did Headmistress Magee tell you I’d be by?”
“No. I recognized your aura. You’re Mark Bragg’s daughter.”
“My aura?”
She gave a serene nod and I got the feeling she wasn’t human. Goosebumps broke all over my arm. I wasn’t sure what she meant. Aura reading wasn’t supposed to be like a DNA test. There must have been something in my energy that linked me with my dad.
“I knew your father very well…once.”
What did that mean? Veronica looked to be about my dad’s age, fifty or so. Her head was shaved to a slight fuzz and that was colored purple. She wore pearl earrings and several ropes of pearls over a dowdy high neck, long sleeve dress.
She stood up and came down from the dais, via the side steps that circled down to the front. Her dress dragged on the floor and I saw heavy black combat boots under them. She had pearl rings on each of her fingers.
Stopping in front of me, she looked me up and down assessingly. I braced myself for another shiver from that weird magic, but none came. I must have passed inspection, because she nodded.
“I’m the head librarian here. Veronica Barnes, at your service. Follow me, dear.” Without looking to see if I was going to follow her, she strode through the stacks.
I hurried to keep up with her.
“What are you hoping to find?” Veronica asked in a low voice.
“I wanted to see what he was like. What his interests were.”
“Are you sure that’s all you want to know?”
We reached the end of the room and an old elevator was on the wall. She touched one of the pearls to the call button and it lit up with a spark of neon green. The elevator groaned to life as it creaked up towards us.
I thought about lying, but I think she would have known and that would have been bad for me. “I think there are a lot of questions that need to be answered. Most of all what happened on the day he died.”
The elevator doors yawned open like a dragon ready to roar. I stared at it skeptically. Inside was dark and smelled of something that resembled mold.
“You won’t find those answers here,” she said simply.
“This will be a start, though.”
Veronica thought about it, twisting a strand of pearls around her finger. “It will indeed.” She stepped into the elevator and against my best judgement, I followed her in.
“It will indeed,” she said again.
The elevator dropped like it was in free fall and I frantically grabbed at the hand rail. I opened my mouth to scream, but the car jolted to a stop and the doors opened with a roaring sound, like a dragon had been set free.
Veronica walked through the doors as if nothing special had just happened. I staggered out, flinching as the doors slammed shut on my heels.
“Let’s see, your father was with us from 1982 to 1988.” She pulled a few slim plastic bound books off one shelf, then turned around and pulled five hard bound books off another. Handing them to me, she said, “Here are the yearbooks from that time.”
Juggling them, I clasped them to my chest. “Thank you. I can’t wait to look through these.”
“They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but I think you’ll get more out of some of his better research papers. This way.”
She turned down another aisle. The stacks down here were metal shelving units and the lights turned on as we approached and turned off as we left.
“How far underground are we?” I asked nervously.
“Far enough,” she answered.
I scurried to keep after her, not wanting to be alone in the dark. “How well did you know my father?”
“Very well. We graduated in the same class.”
“He never talked about here. He never mentioned you.”
“No.” She gave me a small regretful smile. “I don’t suppose he did.”
My mind whirled with the possibilities. “What did he do to get sent here?” And so young. By my mental calculations, he would have been sent here for sixth grade. What would a twelve-year-old boy do to get him put in a place like this?
“Mind control is a very serious charge when you are an adult, Lola, But it’s not a picnic when you’re a child either.” She turned down an aisle and pulled a leather-bound book from the shelf. “You’ll find a few of his A plus papers in here. It wouldn’t hurt you to read the entire book, though.” Veronica put it on the top of my pile. My arms were getting tired.
“What’s this?”
“Every year we put out a volume of our students’ best works. Everyone is encouraged to submit something. I hope to see a few papers of yours in these volumes while you’re here at the Jewel Academy.”
“Do you have a paper in in this book?”
“You’ll have to read the books to find out. Unfortunately, these aren’t allowed to circulate. You’ll have to read them here.” She walked to the center of the room and a part of it lit up. There was a table and several comfortable looking chairs. I dumped the books as gently as I could on the table and rubbed my arms.
“Just leave them here when you’re done.” She touched the table. “One of our work study students will reshelf them.”
“Wait,” I said as she turned to go. “You’re not leaving me here all alone are you?”
“You’re not alone.”
That didn’t make me feel any better.
“The elevator will be w
aiting to take you back upstairs when you’re ready.”
I wasn’t even sure I remembered where that was.
“A word of advice though, don’t get too caught up in the volumes, it’s easy to get lost.”
“What if I do get lost?” What if they forgot about me?
“Just call out for help. There are work study students on this level shelving books. They can guide you back.”
Great.
“Thanks,” I said, trying to keep the fear out of my voice. As I listened to the thump of her books as she walked away, I peered down at the leather clad book. A thin layer of dust had fallen atop the formerly gold embossing but as I rubbed it away it clearly read: Jewel Academy Gems Nineteen Eighty-Six Edition.
He would have been sixteen, the same age I was now when he wrote his paper. I put the book aside and started with the yearbook. 1982, he would have been in sixth grade.
I wouldn’t have recognized him by the small black and white picture, but his name was centered under the picture. The boy scowled at me. His hair was messy and he had a cut on his cheek. Had he been fighting? Flipping through it, scanning the other pictures I only found one more picture of him. He was standing in the background, glaring at two boys playing chess. Squinting further, I saw that he was wearing bracelets that looked a lot like mine.
Chilled, I grabbed the next yearbook. A year hadn’t changed my father’s attitude much. This time in his school picture, he was sporting a shiner. But he was smiling in the chess club’s group picture and he wasn’t wearing the anti-magic bracelets.
That had to be a good thing. Maybe this time next year, I’d be free. If I survived that long.
My father got more involved in sports and other clubs as the yearbooks went on. He stopped having bruises in his pictures by eight grade, and I recognized the man that would become my father in the high school yearbooks. In addition to the legendary Halloween/Samhain parties, the Jewel Academy did have a Junior and Senior prom. As luck would have it, I found him in a group picture of the prom. He was wearing a tux and looked so happy and handsome. He had his arm slung around a much younger version of Veronica Barnes.