The unicorns were frolicking in the rain. Most animals avoided the cold and wet, but these magical creatures seemed to enjoy it. They pranced back and forth, tossing their heads to fling droplets from their horns. Their coats were slick with damp so they sparkled. None of them seemed to notice us, tucked back from their meadow under the trees, so maybe this was how they played when no people were around.
“Most of my hometown is like this,” I said, gesturing around us. “Just trees with no one else around for miles. It’s a small town in the middle of nowhere. Compared to home, Santa Cruz is a bustling metropolis.”
Gabriella lay back on the picnic blanket and looked up at the canopy of branches. “It’s weird. I can hear the rain above us, but we’re totally dry.”
I nodded. “Redwoods drink up all the moisture. Even when it’s not raining, they can draw water out of the fog and clouds. That’s why they like living near the coast.”
“So you don’t have them in your hometown?”
“No, not coastal redwoods. We have giant sequoia, which are even bigger. But they’re related.”
“It’s nothing like the kelp forest.”
I brushed her hair out of her face. “You still have to show me that.”
She smiled up at me. “I’m saving that for tomorrow. Today, I want you to show me all your favorite spots on the land.”
“Hm, I’ll have to think about that.” I already knew that I’d pick my favorite sushi spot downtown for dinner, then another cafe that had a large selection of vegan desserts. The bookshop was another place we could visit. But I didn’t want to go to the places that I usually went with my family because they were mostly my moms’ favorites. Magic shops, the photography store, other businesses that their friends owned. None of those really appealed to me, and it was safer if we avoided anywhere with large numbers of magikin who might recognize what Gabriella was.
I pulled my phone out of my bag to look for ideas when it started ringing. Mama Rosa’s work number flashed on the screen. Did she suspect something?
“Shh, hang on a second,” I warned Gabriella before I answered. I tried to make my voice sound stuffy and tired. “Hi, Mom.”
“Hi, my poor sick sweetie,” Rosa cooed over the line. “I can’t believe you got sick on your birthday!”
I coughed. “Yeah, it sucks.”
“You’ve been spending too much time swimming in the rain. And we were so looking forward to celebrating your seventeenth birthday as a family. Your last year until you’re all grown up! Are you sure you couldn’t make it home where we could take care of you?”
“I’m running a fever,” I said quickly. “I don’t think it’s safe for me to drive.”
“Then we’ll come down to you,” she said. “I can’t leave school until after three. Mama Ashleigh will go home first to pack some things and then she’ll pick me up. If we can beat traffic, we can at least bring you soup for dinner. Is there anything else you want?”
She was going to come here? That was the worst! They’d see that I wasn’t sick and start asking questions. “No, please don’t come all the way down here,” I protested. “I just want to sleep. I’d feel bad if you guys drove so far and I didn’t have the energy to spend time with you.”
“But taking care of you is our job, Bridget Rosemary. And it’s your birthday. We want to see you.”
Ugh, talking to her was giving me a headache for real. It was bad news if she started calling me by my middle name. “Let’s just postpone the birthday stuff until next week when I’m feeling better. I don’t need anything, just gonna take some cold meds and go back to bed.”
She sighed so loud that I had to hold the phone away from my ear. “Fine. But you promise me, if your fever doesn’t come down with the medication, you will go straight to the health center.”
“I promise, Mama.”
“Good. And happy not-your-birthday. Call and tell us when you get on the road next week so we know when to expect you.”
I reassured her a few more times before she finally let me hang up. I dropped the phone like a hot potato and covered my face with my hands.
Gabriella put her hand on my shoulder. “Sorry, I know what overprotective family can be like.”
I groaned. “She does it because she loves me, but I wish she could back off. She always says she doesn’t want to be super controlling like her mom was, but she still asks a million questions and tries to fix everything. It’s like, let me take care of myself for once.”
“As she pointed out, it’s her job.” She leaned closer. “I just have to ask, though. Is your name really Bridget Rosemary?”
“Don’t ever call me that,” I said, holding up a warning finger.
She snickered. “I wouldn’t want to. It sounds like someone’s grandmother.”
“My great-grandmother, actually. Rosemary was my mom’s mom’s mom.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, we all have ‘rose’ in our name for some family tradition? Rosemary, Rosmerta, Rosamunde, my mom’s sister’s middle name is Rosalind, and now I’m Rosemary again. Thankfully it’s not my first name.”
Gabriella laughed. “It must get very confusing.”
I nodded. “Oh, believe me, it is.” Hopefully, I hadn’t said too much about mentioning the tradition of Rose names. I’d still avoided telling her my last name. “Anyway, Brie is much easier to say and remember, which is why I picked it.”
She lay down again, resting her head in my lap. “I was wondering about that. Isn’t brie a kind of cheese? Weird to call you that when you’re a vegan.”
“It was easier for me to say when I was younger,” I explained. “Actually, the first few years, I couldn’t say the R very well so I was just Bee. But my family thought Brie was cuter, so stuck with that. That was before I decided to be vegan.”
“Hm.” She gazed up at me with curiosity. “Why did you decide to be vegan?”
I shrugged. “Never was big on eating meat. In elementary school, I did a presentation about how animals are treated on farms, and then I never wanted to eat meat or dairy again. I don’t think it’s fair to make another living thing suffer just so I can eat.”
Her face darkened. “Does it bother you that I eat seafood? You know there aren’t a lot of vegetable gardens at the bottom of the ocean.”
“I don’t need everyone to do the same thing as me,” I said gently. “No one else in my family is vegan—I think Mama Rosa would freak out if she couldn’t eat cheese. It’s what I feel comfortable doing. So long as people don’t try to force me to change or trick me into eating something I don’t want, then I don’t do it to them.”
Gabriella smiled and pulled my face down closer to hers. “That’s sweet of you,” she said in a throaty voice. “You always think about everyone else’s feelings with such compassion.” She kissed me upside-down, sucking on my bottom lip.
I kissed her back, and then we snuggled up together and watched the unicorns. She was the best birthday present I could ever get.
17
The rest of the weekend passed in a haze of love. We did whatever we wanted. I took her to all my favorite restaurants and other places on the land, and she took me swimming in the sea. I finally got to experience her world the way she saw it, able to breathe underwater and see all the incredible diversity of life that dwelled in the bay. She had to slow down her swimming to my pace, but she never complained or made me feel awkward with my human legs. At night she had to leave and go back to the sea, but otherwise we spent every moment together.
I forgot all my problems while I was with her. Then on Tuesday, when she finally left, it all came crashing down again.
“Ms. Quinn-McAddams, please report to Assistant Dean Yamasato’s office,” the swim coach told me, catching me in the locker room before I could change.
The formal request made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Something was wrong.
When I got to Yamasato’s office, he was waiting anxiously. He glanced around the hallway and shut
the door behind me. Then he turned and folded his arms. We were totally alone—I didn’t even see his familiar.
I hadn’t realized it before, but he was barely taller than me. He looked much younger than Dean Sparrowhawk and most of the other senior professors. As he leaned toward me with a frown, I could sense that he was upset but also afraid, like he didn’t know how to handle the situation.
“Brie,” he said in a low tone. “We’ve had our problems in the past, but I think you’re a good kid. So I want to give you a second chance. If you come clean now, we can work something out without making a big deal about it.”
I swallowed and gripped my messenger bag. “Come clean about what?” I’d learned not to fall for the open-ended questions from my parents. There were several things I could be in trouble for, but I didn’t want to confess to all of it if he didn’t already know.
He took off his glasses and narrowed his eyes. “Did you… take something from my office?”
Again, I sensed the fear in him. Whatever was missing, it must be important. Fortunately, my conscience was clear, so I shook my head. “No, professor.”
“Come on, I already know you’re the one who broke in here.” Yamasato gestured at a corner of his ceiling. “The security camera was disabled, but I picked up traces of your magic in this office.”
I held up my hands. “Sorry, I have no idea what you’re talking about. We’re not supposed to practice magic outside of class.”
Yamasato raised his eyebrows at me. “So if I have your dorm room searched, we won’t find an unlocking charm? That’s a rather advanced spell for a junior, but I also detected your Fae patron’s magic, so I assume he helped you make it.”
Oh, no. How did he know about the unlocking charm? “Th-that’s for emergencies,” I stammered, my mind racing to come up with a good reason to have that kind of magic. “Um, sometimes I lose my keys, so I just have that as a backup. I swear, I never used it to break into your office or anyone else’s. It just stays in my room.”
There were magical ways of knowing if someone was telling the truth, so I had to be very careful about what I said. Samantha’s desk was in our room and it wasn’t an office, so that was true on both counts.
Yamasato’s frown deepened. He pulled a charm out of his pocket and examined it, but it stayed inert. “You appear to be telling the truth,” he said, disappointment and confusion flaring around him. “Yet your magic is unmistakably here. All magic leaves behind a unique signature from the user. Also, your teachers reported that you were out of class on Friday, and you stayed over the weekend when you had previously asked for permission to go home.”
“I wasn’t feeling well,” I said, careful not to get too specific.
“But you didn’t go to the health center.” The professor stared at the charm. “Describe your exact symptoms.”
“Feverish,” I said, thinking of the way I felt when I was close to Gabriella. “My head was swirling, so it was hard to focus. It was like nothing I’d experienced before.”
The charm in his hand still didn’t react. Yamasato glanced me up and down. “You don’t have a way to shield yourself from this, do you? Tell me a deliberate falsehood.”
“Wh-what?” I took a step back. This conversation kept getting weirder, and I knew I was on the brink of getting in major trouble.
“Lie to me,” he snapped.
“Um, I’ve never been kissed?” I blurted out, thinking of Damian’s taunt. My face grew hot as I said it, remembering Gabriella’s kisses.
The charm glowed with heat to match my blush. Yamasato sighed and tossed it onto his desk. “So it does work. And you don’t appear to be a good liar.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I kept my mouth shut.
He got up in my face, pointing his finger at me. “Don’t think this gets you off the hook. I still have proof of your magic in here. I will have your dorm room searched and any contraband, magical or otherwise, will be seized. You are suspended from all magic classes, and if I don’t get it back by the end of the week, I’m sending you home to your parents.”
I shrank back until I bumped into the wall, staring up at him. The fear was fueling his anger, but I still didn’t understand what was happening. “Get what back? You never said what was missing.”
“The school charter!” He spun away from me. Yanking a painting off the wall, he exposed a hidden safe with a melted lock. “The dean entrusted it to me, since their office has been broken into before. No one but the dean and I even knew it was here. How did you even find it? Or did your sneaky Fae friend put you up to it?”
I clutched my hand to my mouth. My little unlocking charm shouldn’t be powerful enough to break into an industrial-grade safe. I didn’t know how to sense magical traces or whatever he did, but something must be wrong.
“I swear, I didn’t know it was there, and I didn’t have anything to do with it,” I babbled, stumbling back. “I’m sorry I skipped out on my classes, but I’ll make it up. Please, you have to believe me. I didn’t steal anything.”
Yamasato sank into his desk chair and shook his head. “I had my doubts about you from the start. Your mother assured me that you would be a good fit here, but I know that your grandmother still has an influence on you. Don’t be like her. You have one week, Brie.”
There was nothing I could say to convince him because I could sense that his mind was already made up about me. Was it even true that he’d found traces of my magic, or did he just say that to make me confess? I could just be an easy target to blame. Gran’s name coming back to bite me yet again.
I turned and ran out of the office, trying to hide the tears streaming down my cheeks.
I ran all the way back to my dorm, no longer caring about missing swim practice. I’d find the stupid charm before the assistant dean sent someone to search my stuff, then I’d prove that it couldn’t be used to open complex locks. Just clear my name before this got any worse. He hadn’t wanted to tell anyone what was missing yet, so I still had time to end this. Otherwise, once the rumor mill heard about the accusation, it would follow me like a dark cloud for the rest of my time at this school. Or any other school, if he actually kicked me out at the end of the week.
Samantha was still in our room, getting ready for class. She scowled at me when I burst in through the door, then deliberately turned her back and bent over her makeup mirror.
I dropped my bag and stuck my hand under my mattress. Best hiding place, especially if I made my bed every morning. Neither of my moms ever thought to check there. But as I felt around on the wooden frame, I found nothing.
Oh, no. Had Yamasato already had someone search in here? I climbed halfway up the ladder and lifted the whole mattress to get a better look. Still no sign of the charm.
Maybe I’d left it somewhere else the last time I’d used it. I jumped down and started rummaging through my dresser drawers. Sometimes I hid stuff in my socks—it was less obvious than underwear.
Samantha looked up with a heavy sigh. “Did you lose something?”
“No,” I said with a shake of my head. This was going nowhere. I took the sock drawer out of the dresser and dumped it onto the floor. “Sorry, I’ll clean up this mess later.”
“It certainly looks like you are searching for something. What is it? Maybe I saw it in one of your piles of junk when I had to step over it.”
The room was perfectly clean before I’d started searching. I’d straightened up after Gabriella left so Samantha didn’t suspect anything. “I don’t have time to fight with you right now,” I grumbled, emptying another drawer. “But did you see anyone else come in here? Like someone sent by the dean?”
“No one’s been in here.” Samantha lifted her phone. “But I’ve heard that you were called into the assistant dean’s office. Are you in trouble? Trying to hide something before the authorities come for you?”
I looked up long enough to shoot a glare at her. “I’m trying to find the proof that I’m innocent!”
Samantha rose from her desk, picking up her makeup bag. “Then I’ll give you some space. Much as I’d like to see you taken away, I don’t have the energy for your drama this morning.” She glided out and shut the door behind her with a firm click.
I groaned and sank to the floor. All my clothes were dumped out everywhere. I emptied my bag, rooted through my desk, and dug through the closet, but there was still no sign of the charm. When Yamasato or whoever came to collect the charm, they’d accuse me of getting rid of the evidence. This was only going to make me look more guilty.
There was a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t want to think about it, but sitting here, I was forced to face it.
Gabriella had been here all weekend. She had access to my stuff, and she knew more about magic than I did. I didn’t know what mermaids were capable of, but most magikin could take human-made spells and amplify them. Like taking a simple unlocking charm and melting open an industrial-grade safe.
It was an ugly thing just to think about. If I accused her, it would damage our relationship, maybe even end it. Things had been going so well. I hated to ruin it all.
But had it been going too well? She’d been afraid of people recognizing her on land, but she’d just showed up at the school without an invitation. All of her special plans to celebrate my birthday and Valentine’s Day could have been a distraction.
For what? Why was the school charter so important? That was the part I couldn’t figure out. Yamasato said they’d hidden it in his office because the dean’s office had been broken into before, which meant someone wanted it. But as far as I knew, it was just a dumb piece of paper that said the academy could teach student witches how to use their magic. Everyone knew that the academy was allowed to do it, so it’s not like they’d have to stop if they didn’t have that paper on hand. Dozens of schools had them all over the country and they were recorded in databases for the human and magical governments. Worst case, they could print out another copy of the form or whatever.
The Reluctant Witch: Year One (Santa Cruz Witch Academy Book 1) Page 15