by Lucia Ashta
Chuckling, I walked onto the sidewalk and headed in the direction of Norland Hall.
A hand stopped me and spun me around. “Promise me,” Rina implored.
“Only if you can tell me you and Leo have never fooled around in your room when either Adalia or I were in our room.”
When Rina didn’t answer but flicked her gaze between Wren and me, I shook my head. “See? I’m not about to make promises I have no intention of keeping. Life is meant to be lived,” I called over my shoulder and started up the marble stairs in front of the building. One thing was for sure, the academy didn’t skimp on building materials. Everything on campus was the best and the finest.
“Let it be, for now,” I heard Wren advising Rina.
Good advice. Nothing was going to change, except that I was going to double down on my efforts to reel in Ky.
Swooping through the grand foyer, I slowed down long enough for Rina and Wren to catch up, then walked to the classroom. The moment I crossed the threshold, Professor Whittle’s face lit up.
“Hello there, Why,” he called to the cub, though he’d never greeted me with that much enthusiasm before. To his credit, I didn’t think it was me. He treated everyone—other than Why—with the same general lack of excitement. The ancient werewolf seemed to suffer from a bad case of the blahs. Class with him, and his monotone voice, was barely short of torture. The academy could make big bucks bottling up the drone of his voice and selling it to insomniacs.
“Why’s sleeping, Professor Whittle,” I said, better adjusting the pandacorn’s horn so it was sure to point forward and not at me.
Professor Whittle chuckled, sounding nothing like his usual self. “That pandacorn, all he does is sleep and eat.”
“Indeed.” I quirked my brows in curiosity at the teacher as he bunched a hand into a fist and brought it to his chest as if he were thinking, By golly, isn’t that just so cute? The werewolf peered at Why with moony eyes and an innocent look that belonged in the 1950s—not anywhere near me.
“Okay, Professor,” I said, edging away from him. “I’m going to take a seat for class now.”
“All you do is sleep in my class anyway,” he said, making me freeze in mid-step, and Wren bump into my back.
Professor Whittle didn’t sound upset. He knew I still learned all the material he taught, despite my dozing. I had a knack for absorbing every single word he said even while I slept. I hadn’t decided yet whether that was a blessing or a curse.
The professor had threatened a chat about my unique skill in his office, but last term had gotten well out of hand, what with all the kidnappings, and he seemed to have forgotten. I had hoped it would remain forgotten. I had no desire to explain myself to anyone. I didn’t know why I could remember everything I heard and saw. It’d just always been that way.
I sank gently into one of our usual seats, careful not to overly jostle Why. Wren and Rina dropped into seats next to me.
“He’s so cute,” Wren whispered, leaning over my shoulder to watch the cub, who somehow kept snoozing through it all.
“Yeah,” I said noncommittally. Why was starting to grow on me, and I wasn’t so sure that was a good thing.
The bell, which marked the start of class, chimed invisibly throughout the space, and Professor Whittle cleared his throat. His face was back to being impassive, and when he opened his mouth to announce the start of class and the topics he’d be covering, I slumped low in my seat, preparing for my usual mid-morning siesta. As much as I enjoyed my little rest time, I wished the professor could just be interesting and engaging. Wouldn’t that be so much more fun?
I closed my eyes until I felt the pendant lying against my chest growing heated.
Then my eyes snapped wide open.
16
Professor Whittle’s transformation was too drastic to be natural—or a coincidence.
I shot up in my seat to take in the teacher at the front of the room, and I wasn’t the only one. The entire class of fourers seemed to be staring at the instructor, mouths slack.
Professor Whittle was somewhat tall, somewhat lanky, and otherwise unremarkable with his brown disheveled hair and plain yet pleasant face. Ordinarily, Professor Whittle was the kind of man you walked right by without giving a second glance. His personality matched his looks.
Ordinarily…
But there was absolutely nothing ordinary about the instructor now. He was a completely different person—or rather, persona. Teaching about the interrelations between different werewolf packs across the world, never had I seen him more animated. His eyebrows, eyes, and nose scrunched up and wiggled to emphasize whatever it was he was saying. Even I, who could follow his lectures while snoozing, wasn’t paying a lick of attention to a single thing coming out of his mouth. His lips were a constantly moving example of the vast variety of expressions possible, and his hands paved the path for every one of his words, waving around in the air as he gestured and punctuated and pointed.
He paced across the front of the auditorium, whirling on a dime to face us as he came to a conclusion, whatever it was. Then he wiggled his hands in the air, threw his head back and laughed, and resumed his pacing, talking all the while, until he bloody jumped right up onto the desk to mark whatever he’d been saying with a big, fucking exclamation point.
Dave and Adalia, who’d entered the classroom after us, and who’d taken seats on the other side of me, leaned forward to stare at the rest of us. Their eyes were as wide as Rina’s and Wren’s.
“What the hell is going on right now?” Dave asked. “Tell me I’m not the only one seeing Professor Whittle having some kind of seizure or mental lapse or…” He trailed off and we all turned back to stare at the instructor.
All around the auditorium, the other fourers leaned forward in their seats in unison, taking in his performance.
He could have been talking about the varieties of cardboard and we still would have hinged on every one of his movements.
“What the…?” Wren whispered next to me.
I stared at Professor Whittle some more. He’d jumped down from the desk with a hoot and a holler and launched into something about how one pack went about recruiting a werewolf from another pack for mating purposes.
Finally, when I couldn’t deny that something fishy was definitely going on, I plucked the neckline of my shirt open and peeked inside.
One by one, my friends followed my movement and leaned toward me. Dave tried to peek inside my shirt too before I swatted him away.
Instantly, he blushed, looking between Wren, whom he was dating, and me. “Sorry.” He grimaced. “I’m so confused by what’s going on that I wasn’t thinking.”
I was starting to believe I might have a very good idea what was happening, and I was still confused.
Dipping into my shirt, I grabbed my pendant, but didn’t want to remove it from where my shirt concealed it. I was all for sharing my mystery with my friends—the more of us trying to figure out this crazy-ass shit, the better—but I didn’t want to draw anyone else’s attention to my potential responsibility for Professor Whittle’s sudden acquisition of a personality.
I probably shouldn’t have worried. Most of the other students were incapable of tearing their attention from our normally bland instructor. Demonstrating a mating call, he snapped his head back and full-on howled, loud enough to wake Why from his nap. The pandacorn sat up in my lap with a snort.
Not even Why’s cuteness was enough to distract my friends from The Professor Wendell Whittle Show.
Concealing the pendant fully within the palm of my hand, I pulled it out of my shirt to really study it. It was hot enough to confirm it was the cause of our teacher’s sudden injection of personality, but not so hot that it burned. The jewelry also appeared to be slightly glowing.
“Is your pendant doing this?” Adalia whispered from the other side of Dave.
“I think so.”
“Can you stop it?” Wren asked.
“Do we want her to stop it
?” Dave followed up.
In unison, the five of us redirected our attention at the professor, who was currently on all fours, mimicking the mating act that occurred in wolf form so none of us could mistake what he meant when he discussed how male werewolves impregnated the females.
Once satisfied every young adult in his audience had a graphic idea of how sex went down with werewolves—doggy style—he jumped back up to his feet—literally—and began scrawling on the white board with furious, fast strokes. He was listing out the most important werewolf clans, drawing frenzied circles around the names of packs that others most desired to join through mating.
He circled the name of Boone’s pack—the Northwestern Werewolf Pack—three times, indicating it was one of the strongest and admission into it was highly desirable. When he began scribbling a list of qualities and requirements any wolf must meet to be a suitable candidate for a new pack, I finally blinked out of my shock.
“It’s like he’s hopped up on speed,” I whispered, and my friends all nodded, not shaking their awe any more than I was. “I like him way better like this.”
“Me too,” Rina said right away, to the murmured assent of the others.
“What do we do?” I asked. “Do I try to stop whatever the pendant’s done?”
“You probably should,” Wren said. “It’s not right to affect his personality against his will like this.”
“Maybe he’s always wanted to be fun and interesting, but he never knew how,” Dave offered.
“Hell yeah. No one would want to be a walking, talking sleep aid if they could help it,” I said.
“Even so,” Wren said, “you should fix him.”
“I think he is fixed.” But when Wren pinned me in those forest green eyes that suggested I wasn’t doing the right thing, I sighed. “Fine. I’ll ‘fix’ him.” I did air quotes and everything, and Why tried to grab my hands, thinking I was playing.
But as the hour-and-forty-five-minute class ticked on, and the students continued to gawk at our highly enthusiastic professor, following every one of his exaggerated moves, I finally had to admit to myself that I had no freaking idea how to fix him. Or how I’d changed him to begin with.
Then again, maybe it had nothing to do with me, only the pendant. Was it possible for the pendant to act without my cooperation? I was merely wearing it. I wasn’t actually performing magic with it.
I clasped on to the damn thing and tried to figure shit out with all my focus. And when the end of class was nearing, Wren leaned over to whisper, “Why haven’t you fixed him yet?”
“I don’t know how,” I whispered back.
“Makes sense.” Wren leaned back in her seat to watch what remained of the show, unperturbed by my lack of comprehension.
I hadn’t understood a damn thing that had happened since Thunder Mountain wouldn’t allow me to pass through it. After what Rina had gone through the previous three terms, and now me, the lot of us hadn’t understood much of anything since we’d first arrived at the academy.
Even so, Wren’s zen-ness surprised me. But the willow tree shifter was taking this latest oddity in stride. Go, Wren.
The tension that had built in my shoulders eased by a fraction as I watched my friends, all enjoying the new and improved Professor Whittle. When he did what looked like the Chicken Dance to punctuate his points about werewolf salutations and tail wagging, my friends laughed.
The whole class did, and so did the instructor.
Finally, I laughed too. I hadn’t done a single thing to cause his transformation that I could tell. I wasn’t responsible for whatever the crazy pendant was doing. I didn’t have to carry the weight of its actions.
When Professor Whittle threw his head back and howled again, sounding convincingly as if he were in his wolf form, I laughed as hard as anyone. Why giggled when we all laughed.
Life with the pendant wasn’t all bad. In fact, maybe it could be great.
Once the bell rang, Professor Whittle was prompt in his dismissal. He slapped the guys on the back as they passed, and grinned at us girls when we made eye contact.
“Maybe he can just stay this way,” Dave said as we wove our way through the foyer of Norland Hall.
“I wouldn’t mind one bit,” Rina said. “Do you suppose he will?”
“I don’t know how it works,” I said. “Does he realize he’s changed? He sure looks like he’s having more fun. He was such a stick in the mud before.”
Wren and Adalia nodded their assent beside us as we exited onto the steps outside. The springtime sunshine warmed my face, and I smiled at the memories of Professor Whittle’s antics while we took a left onto the sidewalk toward Irele Hall and our Intermediate Defensive Creature Magic class.
Many of the same students from Professor Whittle’s class were in Marcy June’s class, and when the chatter didn’t die down after the bell rang, marking the start of class, she asked us what was going on. Adalia raised her hand to answer.
She explained in succinct, general terms, but the other students who’d been there soon jumped in with details. Ky, Leo, and Boone, who hadn’t been in Professor Whittle’s class with us, and who now occupied the row ahead of us, turned in their seats and pinned their stares directly on me. Not even Why was enough of a distraction this time around.
And they weren’t the only ones staring at us.
Stacy of the Bitchy Bunch raised her hand, and before Marcy June even called on her, she swiveled in her seat and pointed at Rina. “Her,” she accused. “She’s responsible. She made me bark last term. On purpose.”
Rina rolled her eyes so hard I wondered when she’d gotten so good at it. “For the thousandth time, I did not make you act like a dog on purpose. And I of course have nothing to do with Professor Whittle’s strange behavior. How could I?”
“I’m sure you and your nosy friends would find a way,” Stacy snapped, and then she, Tracy, and Swan glared at Rina and me, leaving Wren and Adalia out of their bitchiness—probably because the two of them were nice to everyone.
“Maybe it’s Jasmine,” Tracy said with a sneer, not waiting for Marcy June to call on her. “She’s the one who brought Why here without permission. She never follows rules, and she’s a skunk shifter.”
“Whoa!” Marcy June hollered, putting her hands up in the air. “That’s uncalled for,” the teacher was saying when I heard Tracy mutter under her breath:
“Jasmine’s a stupid cow.”
There was no way to interpret that comment any other way.
I seethed at Tracy, who wanted nothing but to get her grubby, manicured hands on Ky. And Stacy and Swan were no better.
Even though Rina and Leo were obviously together, Stacy still tried to drape herself across the elven prince whenever she could, and Swan was handsy with Boone at every opportunity. It didn’t matter that the werewolf didn’t return her affection, she rubbed all over him like a cat in heat.
When Stacy and Swan chuckled at Tracy’s sotto voce comment, tossing their manes of perfectly fluffed hair and bouncing their big boobs on purpose, I wished they could receive a taste of their own medicine—for real.
I lost track of what Marcy June was saying, but I one-hundred-percent heard Tracy.
“Moo,” she whispered, staring right at me across the aisle.
“Go fuck yourself,” I snarled, not bothering to lower my volume.
Then I noticed the pendant at my chest was hot—really freaking hot. I leaned forward, hunching my back to dislodge the pendant from my chest without drawing attention to what I was doing.
When the Bitchy Bunch yelped, I snapped my gaze back in their direction.
My jaw dropped wide open as the remaining students sputtered and erupted into startled gasps.
17
“What are you three doing?” Marcy June stammered from the front of the room.
It was a valid question. I was in the process of trying to figure out the exact same thing.
Stacy, Tracy, and Swan were squirming and thrashing
in their seats, sitting on their hands like their lives depended on keeping them there. Their perfectly coiffed hair flew in every direction and they bit their lips to combat … whatever was happening.
When their faces flushed and a quite … sexual … moan escaped Swan, my eyes popped so big that my vision blurred for a second.
“No. Way,” I said under my breath.
“What? What’d you do?” Dave asked immediately in an urgent whisper only we heard.
Smart cookie.
“I…” I trailed off again, unable to properly form words from my shock.
Tracy was watching her hand as if it didn’t belong to her. Her brows were raised, and her eyes were wide and horrified.
Her right hand squeezed out from under her thigh and her fingers walked across her leg like we were in The Adams Family and her hand had a mind of its own.
When her fingers teased at the hem of her skirt, her entire arm shook from the effort of keeping it back.
In the end, she lost the fight; her fingers slipped beneath her skirt just as Stacy moaned, causing Swan to really let loose, groaning like she was behind closed doors and not in the middle of a class full of students—who were highly interested in the happenings.
Marcy June’s breath hitched noticeably, and she ran up the aisle to the Bitchy Bunch. Standing over them, she ordered, “Stop this right now.”
Swan shook her brunette head miserably and too watched as her own hand made a getaway and slunk under her skirt. She gasped, yanking her other hand out from under her to clasp it around the naughty hand’s wrist, only for the second hand to betray her and twist to join the first in disappearing beneath her skirt.
She squealed, and Stacy moaned some more.
Tracy’s hand was so far under her skirt that I couldn’t see it anymore.
“Stop this right now,” Marcy June barked, but I think even she realized it was pointless.
Stacy alone shook her head furiously, long red hair bouncing everywhere. The other two were beyond the ability to communicate at all.