The Reluctant Witch: Year One (Santa Cruz Witch Academy Book 1)

by Kristen S. Walker

  An hour later, we sat back on a couch with a groan for our over-stuffed bellies. I’d loosened my tie, ditched the jacket and unbuttoned my vest in the name of comfort. All I wanted to do now was relax and digest the massive amount of carbs I’d just consumed. Would it be rude to take a nap in the middle of a party?

  Music with a fast beat blared from the next room. I lifted my head sleepily. “What’s going on?”

  Damian twisted around to look. “I think people are dancing.”

  “Ugh.” I settled back and closed my eyes. “Who could think of moving at a time like this?”

  He nudged my arm. “C’mon, we at least have to put in an appearance.”

  “Maybe later. I don’t wanna be the nerds who are the first ones on the dance floor.”

  “Oh, someone else is already the first. You’ll never guess who.”

  His mocking tone gave me a good idea of who he was talking about, but I refused to rise to the bait. “Dean Sparrowhawk,” I said in a wild guess.

  “No,” Damian said gleefully. “It’s the rich bitch you can’t stop staring at and her minions. They have a choreographed routine.”

  Oh, that I had to see. My eyes flew open. I sprang half out of my seat and turned my whole body around to look.

  They must have requested the song. It was a pop tune, one of those obnoxious tracks they called “the song of the summer” and played everywhere so you couldn’t escape it. They’d taken off their coats. Samantha, Diana, and Kelsey all had matching dresses—purple, light blue, and dark blue to complement their different skin tones, but the same cut. Those dresses definitely violated the dress code with spaghetti straps and very short hemlines. I would have been offended that no teacher had punished them except they all looked amazing.

  All three girls swung their hips back and forth to the beat, then spun so their hair flung out behind them. It wasn’t the dance from the music video but an original routine, and they performed it in perfect synchronization.

  “Definitely cheerleaders,” I muttered, but I was hypnotized by their movements. It wasn’t just mermaids that I had to watch out for.

  My eyes were glued to them until the song ended. They finished in a dramatic pose, the three of them standing back-to-back with their hands on their hips.

  Damian took my hand. “Should we go join them?”

  I grumbled as he pulled me to my feet, but I didn’t fight against him. Dancing would be fun and not just because there were hotties to watch. The only thing is I felt self-conscious about my messy appearance. Where had my shoes gone?

  The DJ spun up a new track and Damian squealed, “This is my jam!” His enthusiasm was infectious and I got caught up in the beat, even though it was more pop trash. Damian’s taste in music was as bad as my taste in girls.

  The dance floor filled up. Young students from the witch academy danced next to middle-aged teachers, century-old faeriekin nobles, and immortal Fae. The music was new, but everyone knew it. I passed Professor Helicon belting out the lyrics like a pro, and her raven croaked along with the music.

  Fortunately, the dance room had dim club lighting that pulsed with the music, so I could pretend it was dark enough to hide my awkward dance moves. Damian could pump and grind like an exotic dancer but I did a simple two-step, swaying back and forth. When the chorus picked up, he grabbed me and twirled me around. I lost track of time as one song blended into the next.

  The SCWA high school dorms normally had a curfew at ten, but the school had extended it for the holiday. We didn’t have to get back on the buses until midnight. The college and grad students could stay out even later if they were comfortable flying back on their own.

  By the time I stumbled up to my room, I was so exhausted that I could no longer feel my feet. But I made sure to set an alarm on my phone.

  The next morning, I only let myself snooze the alarm once before I forced myself out of bed. Everything hurt, but I had things to do.

  After a hot shower to wash off the makeup and hair product, I felt marginally better. My muscles still ached and my feet were covered in blisters. I’d have to remember that I didn’t have a magical cure for a night of partying the next time I got invited to a Fae function. The chilly air woke me up more as I left the dorm. Fog had drifted all the way up the mountain, blanketing the campus in a gray haze.

  Today was still the Fall Equinox, so everyone had the day off to rest and recover. I didn’t see anyone else around as I walked to the quad. It was kinda nice, like I had the whole school to myself. Nothing but the trees and buildings slowly appearing out of the fog.

  I hit the coffee shop for my morning brew, then stood in front of the bookstore door. My phone said it should have opened five minutes ago, but there was no sign of life inside. Now that I wasn’t moving, the cold seeped into my stiff muscles. I cupped both hands around my hot coffee and tried to let the steam from the opening warm my face.

  Fifteen minutes past the hour, a dwarf woman with her blonde hair in twin braids opened the door and peered up at me. “What are you doing out here so early? Isn’t it a holiday?”

  I jumped back in surprise. “I—I’m sorry,” I stammered, then wondered why I was apologizing. She was the one who was late. “The store was closed all weekend, and my mom told me to get here early to buy my books. She says you could sell out of the used books.”

  The bookseller laughed. “Sure, dear, but no one will bother buying anything until after class tomorrow. I’m just here to update my records.”

  My face fell. “Can’t I just pick up a few books right now? Since we’re both here?”

  “Fine.” She swung the door open and beckoned me inside. “Might as well give me your list so I can get started. I don’t work as fast the student helpers, but they won’t work until tomorrow. You’ll just have to wait for me.”

  “Okay. Thank you,” I said gratefully. I took the list from my pocket, unfolded the sheet, and handed it over.

  The bookstore was a large, two-story building with tall windows, but there was only the flicker of florescent bulbs to cast a pale glow on the shelves. Only half the space seemed to be for books, while the other half held gifts and merchandise with the school logo slapped on it. There were branded hoodies, hats, mugs, pins, even plastic broom keychains. Maybe I could get some of my holiday shopping done here. Both my moms would like the bumper sticker that said, “Proud parent of a student at the Santa Cruz Witch Academy!”

  The bookseller walked past all the books on the shelves. She opened a half-door through the sales counter and shuffled into a backroom where I could hear her moving around boxes and mumbling to herself.

  I peeked at the books she’d ignored and realized they weren’t textbooks. A handful were magical treatises written by the faculty. There were also guidebooks to Santa Cruz and its history, blank journals and notebooks, and even fiction and everything else mundane you’d expect in every other bookstore.

  Then I saw an end-cap display advertising a new book. “WITCHGATE: Twenty Years After the Greatest Tragedy in the Magical Community,” the title said in bold letters. The author was some idiot journalist.

  My stomach did a flip-flop. Were people really making a big deal out of the twentieth anniversary? I reached out with a shaking hand and turned over one of the glossy hardcovers. A photo of my Granny Rose stared back at me from across the decades. The picture was from the night she was arrested. Her eyes were all puffy like she’d been crying, but she scowled into the camera. The caption said, “Rosmerta McAddams, the criminal mastermind.”

  I stuffed the book back so fast, I almost knocked over the cardboard display. Ugh. The whole school could see this disgusting thing. How long until people started making the connection with my last name? My family’s past followed me everywhere.

  “Alright, this should be all of them,” the bookseller called across the room. She dropped a stack of books onto the counter with a thud.

  I rushed over. Most of the books had Used stickers on the spines, but the precalculus te
xt looked brand new. I checked the price tag and winced. Over a hundred dollars for a book of math? My public high school had always let us borrow those books for free. You only got charged if you didn’t return them at the end of the year.

  The bookseller had already started ringing me up. “Sorry about that,” she said, nodding her head at the algebra one. “There was a new edition this year, so we don’t have any used copies. Science and math are always the most expensive.”

  I glanced at the biology book, which was still seventy dollars even though it was used. I choked back my horror. “How much did they need to change for precalculus? It’s not like math is different every year,” I muttered. “Could I get by with an older edition, maybe?”

  The bookseller shook her head. “We didn’t buy back any copies last year because we knew about the change.” She leaned across the counter and whispered, “I’m not supposed to tell you this, but a lot of these books are cheaper online. Takes a while to ship, but you could get through the first few classes by reading the library’s copy. They always have at least one, although you can’t check it out.”

  I smiled at her. “Thanks, that could really help.” I pushed back the new math book. “Take this one off the bill, please.”

  The magic books turned out to be the cheapest ones. Herbalism I had a thin manual with illustrations instead of photographs to help us identify local plants. Basic Grounding was a photocopied workbook with a spiral binding, designed by the teacher and printed by the school, so it only cost a few dollars. Maybe all the really important magic wasn’t written down at all, for safety reasons, and we’d have to memorize what our teachers told us. I hoped I’d at least be able to take notes. I’d bought a different notebook for every class I was in—including a fitness log to track my workouts and race times for swim team.

  Even without the math, the total came out to several hundred dollars. I winced as I watched most of my savings disappear. That was the last of my school fees, but there wasn’t much left to get me through the rest of the quarter. I’d just promised to pay for Damian’s clothes for the next dance, too. Maybe he would be willing to go hunting in thrift stores with me.

  Mama Ashleigh had told me to ask if I ran out of funds, but I didn’t want to go begging to my parents for money. I knew they’d already tightened their belts to make up the difference for my financial aid. SCWA was an expensive school.

  Armed with two heavy bags, I thanked the bookseller a final time and left the store. I had to make the climb back up the hill to Unicorn Dorm. The fog was thinning, and I saw a few students emerging from their sleep, most heading for the dining hall.

  The thought of food made me queasy after last night’s binge. But despite the expensive book purchase and the weight I was carrying, I felt lighter. I’d just taken a big step into preparing for the coming school year. The studious part of me was happy to get started.

  With the schoolwork out of the way, I could sit down and draw. I’d barely had time to open my sketchbook since I’d arrived on campus. I had a few hours until I had to report for my first day of community service at the school gardens. Maybe I could capture the beauty of the trees in the fog.

  8

  Weirdly, even though we were all moved in and stuck here, we only had two days of classes the first week, on Thursday and Friday. Most of my classes weren’t very tough in the first sessions, as the teachers basically read straight from the syllabus. The class groups were smaller, only twenty-five or thirty students depending on the class, so we met in smaller rooms. These looked like the classrooms I was used to with regular desks and a board for the teacher to write on.

  In the academic classes, our teachers were more diverse. Most were regular humans, but my math teacher was a kitsune. She stayed in hybrid form, which meant she could stand up like a human with the advantages of opposable thumbs, but she had fox ears and three tails. Since kitsune only grew a tail once a century, that meant she was at least two hundred years old.

  I started early in the morning with the swim team because the pool had to be open for the Water element classes in the afternoon. We stood on the deck, shivering in our bathing suits, while we waited for the swim coach—a Water witch—to pull back the pool cover. Back in Madrone, our school pool was indoors, but since it never snowed in Santa Cruz, their pool could stay open outside year-round.

  The workouts weren’t very tough, and I quickly found out I was one of the fastest swimmers, even compared to the seniors. SCWA wasn’t competitive in any sports, only hosting things like swim meets among the school’s students. That would hurt my chances to apply for an athletic scholarship in college, but that wasn’t an option for most art schools, anyway. At least I could get in the water for an hour every day and it satisfied my PE requirement, so I didn’t have to take some stupid gym class.

  After a shower and a quick breakfast in the dining hall, I had my six regular classes. Thanks to my high grades, I qualified for almost all AP and honors classes. Honors English, Precalc, AP Biology, Honors Constitutional Issues, and Spanish III just continued things I’d been studying the year before. The only classes I shared with Damian were Spanish and English, since he didn’t try hard enough to get into most of the advanced classes. The only difference was AP US Magical History, which started chronologically with the Native Americans. If the class mentioned the Witchgate incident, at least it would take months for us to catch up to recent events.

  Only the math class assigned any homework for the weekend. I’d have to go to the library to copy down the questions from the textbook. I was still waiting for my online purchase to arrive in the mail.

  In the afternoon, when normal high school hours were ending, we had our community service and magical classes. Everyone in an element had the same two classes. One was theoretical, teaching us how to understand our new powers, while the second was a practical application.

  As an Earth student, I had Basic Grounding and Herbalism I. Grounding was just the first step to using Earth magic and I hoped I could figure out how to apply it to my secret Water abilities. But herbalism sounded like a repeat of the stuff I’d picked up from Mama Rosa. I already knew that many witches preferred to grow their own magical plants, and they worked better if you treated them with respect. The rest would just be a boring list of every plant and its potential uses.

  Friday night, Damian and I stayed in his room to watch a movie, an action flick that we mostly ignored as we talked about everything that happened during the week. But Saturday morning, I was finally free. I was ready to go back to the beach and track down those mermaids for Loki.

  I just hoped that I wouldn’t lose my head.

  Instead of going back to the Lighthouse, I looked for another beach closer to Soquel, hoping it would be less busy. I ended up at New Brighton State Beach, which advertised that it was dog-friendly and had campgrounds. It would have cost a few bucks to get in, but I already had a California State Parks membership sticker on my windshield. The ranger waved me into a dirt parking lot, leaving me to find my own way with the signs. It turned out to be another hike down to the shore, with a choice of steep stairs or a longer fire road with a gentler slope. I passed the campgrounds on my way down, which were tucked up away from the beach in a wooded area.

  Finally, I reached the strip of sand and shielded my eyes against the sun for a better look. This beach was a lot rockier than the one in Santa Cruz, with higher cliffs. I saw one man far down the beach, walking his dog, but otherwise there was no one here. Perfect.

  I paddled out on my board and waited in the water. How do you contact a mermaid? Without a magic book from my school to help me, I’d tried to search for information online, with mixed results. Some people only posted dire warnings to stay away from any areas with alleged mermaid sightings. Others listed methods ranging from playing music to offering a gift, usually something shiny, like jewelry. It was hard to tell which ones were legitimate.

  I unclasped a silver bracelet from my wrist and held it over the surface. Th
en I took a deep breath and recited the spell I’d found on a message board for fans of magical creatures. “Queen of the ocean, listen to my plea. I wish to see what I was destined to meet.”

  Laughter echoed over the sound of the waves.

  I spun around and looked for the source, but I didn’t see anyone. “Hey, is someone there? I’m just trying to talk to you.”

  A dark hand rose from the water directly in front of me, making the peace sign I’d used the week before.

  I sighed with relief and flashed the peace sign back.

  Her head popped up, revealing her face. She was even more beautiful than I’d remembered. My chest tightened.

  Trying to keep my calm, I held out the bracelet. “I brought you a present.”

  She swam over, lifted herself with one arm on my board, and reached her other hand up to the bracelet. There was a flash of a bright green bikini top covering her chest. I leaned back a little to keep us both from tipping and let the bracelet fall into her hand.

  She smiled, turning it over in her hand to admire the delicate sea-shell-shaped charms. “It’s cute. This came from the Boardwalk, right?” Her voice was deep, and she had a faint accent that reminded me of Spanish. Something about the way she said her Rs.

  I gulped, surprised that she’d recognized it. “Yeah, I got it on a trip here over the summer. But how’d you know that?”

  She laughed again, her voice tinkling like music. “I’ve been in all their souvenir shops.” She flicked her tail up behind her. “I can change this into legs when I feel like walking on land.”

  “Oh, right.” Stupid. Of course I knew that mermaids had limited shifting abilities. They could blend in with ordinary humans, although I thought I’d know she was a mermaid no matter where I saw her. “I know it’s just a cheap trinket. Sorry I don’t have anything better, but I didn’t know what you’d like.”