by Leigh Kelsey
“Now I know you’re grown ups, being eighteen-years-old,” he said, “but I know what you lot get like sometimes. And I won’t tolerate any sort of mischief. No egging the classrooms at night, no TP-ing Madame Hawkness’s office, and especially no magic vandalism. I don’t want to see a single spell or potion misused this year, or you’ll be cleaning the damn mess up yourselves.”
He gave them a big grin then, his wrinkled face creasing in a hundred places. Unlike any caretakers Kati might have pictured, he wore a bright purple coat and a Zayn Malik T-shirt and jeans in a very loud print, his grey hair cut in a modern faux-hawk. “Sorry to be all glum, but them’s the rules. And one last one for good measure: no bloody food fights. Takes me ages to get the stains out the curtains, and that’s even with a cyanide scourer.”
“You don’t think anyone would actually dare to have a food fight?” Naia whispered, her eyes wide in outrage behind her turquoise glasses and her voice coming out stuffy. “I mean—just imagine the mess.”
“You’d hope we’d all be civilised and well behaved,” Rahmi replied. “Like Mr Barron said, we’re eighteen, not twelve.”
“But…” Kati prompted, lifting an eyebrow as Mr Barron finally stepped aside, his hand held out for a high five from every passing student. A guy with bleached blonde hair and a Jackass T-shirt went streaking past, whooping as he slammed his palm into the caretaker’s. Mr Barron looked delighted.
“But people like him exist,” Rahmi finished with a little laugh. “Shall we go eat, ladies?” She led the way with a delighted smile, willingly high-fiving Mr Barron and telling him it was ‘a pleasure’ to meet him. Kati just met his outstretched, reddened palm with her own and said, “Nice coat.”
“Thanks.” The old man beamed, every wrinkle on his face making itself known. “Thirty quid from M&S on sale.”
Kati gave an appreciative ooh and followed Rahmi through the big wooden doors into the dining hall, Naia giggling as she high-fived the caretaker and trailed after them.
The smell of food hit her instantly—not cafeteria fare, the smell muddied and bland, but good home cooking. Kati’s stomach gurgled. The dining hall was the opposite of what she’d expected, too. Theo had told her all about the quirks and magic of the academy—or some at least; Kati suspected he’d left out some surprises on purpose—but he’d never mentioned the place where they ate meals.
Unlike a boring school cafeteria, this place looked more like a ballroom, with polished floors, large overbearing windows, and dozens upon dozens of circular tables bedecked in purple and green, Second Breath Academy’s colours. The crossed wand, athame, and scythe crest even appeared, carved into each chair back and hanging in coloured enamel glory over what had clearly once been a stage but now housed the buffet. And overhead, just to drive home the fact that this was not an ordinary academy, a renaissance painting of necromancers and reapers covered the whole ceiling in pastel, dreamy shades, some wielding wands, others with scythes or curved athame daggers. Magic twirled around them in spirals and delicate shapes.
“Souls,” Naia breathed, coming to a halt and inhaling a ragged breath. She looked like she’d spotted a unicorn, and considering the likelihood of that was higher than Kati would have thought this morning, she craned her neck to find one. But nope, just the opulent, extravagant dining hall slowly filling with chatter and students. “Is this…?” Naia asked, panting now. “It can’t be. They wouldn’t put the food hall here. They couldn’t!”
Rahmi and Kati exchanged a glance that was quickly becoming familiar.
“Care to elaborate?” Kati asked, nudging Naia, maybe a touch too hard as her tall frame wavered.
“Oh.” Naia went slightly red, her cheeks darker as she realised she’d drawn their attention. She lowered her voice as Miz Jardin waved them over to the buffet where students were already serving themselves and a fountain the size of a car loomed over everything, gushing smooth, bubbling cheese. “Just something I read. Did you know that in the 1700s, the academy was run by a blood-crazed megalomaniac called Ingrid the Terrible?” She dropped her voice as they joined the back of the queue for food. “She turned a ballroom into her throne room and slaughtered her enemies in the centre of it, in front of an audience of terrified students. It’s said she killed so many people that the floorboards turned from beech to cherry wood.”
Kati blinked, glancing at the floor beneath them. Cherry. “No, Naia. I didn’t know that.” Maybe if she had, she wouldn’t have been so enamoured with the academy when she was young. Maybe she’d have picked an academy with a normal, non-bloody history.
Well, as non-bloody as a death magic school could get.
“I’m sure those are just rumours,” Rahmi said with a little laugh. “That can’t be real. And there’s no way they’d let us have dinner in the same ballroom.” Although she glanced around the room as they ascended the stairs to the stage area, as if searching for blood stains.
“It is a school that teaches us how to properly kill someone,” Kati said uneasily, shuffling along the queue and craning her neck to see what foods were on offer. The school meals were another thing Theo had neglected to tell her about, and she had no idea what to expect. It was almost a disappointment to see that, besides the fondue fountain, the food was standard fare: roast chicken, pork chops, and legs of lamb with endless side dishes; whole poached salmon and tuna steaks and neat little rolls of sushi; casseroles upon casseroles next to bowls of chilli and stew and stir fry; and mountains upon mountains of chips, from french fries to crinkle cut to curly fries and smiley faces. Kati piled her plate with stir fry and every available potato product, dumping a load of hot sauce on top from the assortment of condiments.
Kati caught Naia’s glance at her plate—Naia’s own plate was a reserved meal of roast chicken, boiled potatoes, and broccoli—and narrowed her eyes. “Something to say, Clarke?”
“No,” Naia answered quickly, glancing away. “That’s a perfectly acceptable amount of hot sauce.”
“If you want to sear your taste buds off,” Rahmi whispered conspiratorially.
Kati smirked. “Bunch o’ wimps.”
“Not trying the cheese fondue, ladies?” Miz Jardin asked, giving them a big smile and an unsubtle rolling hand gesture to hurry them along and let the next students attack the buffet.
Naia managed a polite smile but it wavered as Kati pointed out, “It’s orange.”
And it was. The cheese was the aggressively loud colour of traffic cones, clementines, and clay tennis courts. Not a natural colour for cheese, even when you took magic into consideration.
“What’s wrong with orange?” Miz Jardin asked, befuddled. “Perfectly good colour for cheese.”
Rahmi offered, “I’ll try some, I don’t mind.” She dunked a bit of crispy bread in the cheese, brought it to her mouth, and to Kati’s disgust, swallowed it. Licking her lips, she shrugged. “Just tastes like cheese to me.”
“It could give you nightmares,” Naia breathed, watching Rahmi for apparent side effects.
“First murder, now nightmares,” Kati said with a smirk. “You’re cheerful this evening.”
Miz Jardin watched them fondly as they took their trays of food down the stage to the dining hall/potentially bloody ballroom and picked a table at random. Setting her tray on the purple and green table, Kati winced as her chair squealed as she pulled it out. Not an ordinary squeak of wood—a human scream. Kati gave the chair an alarmed glance, doing the same when Naia and Rahmi got the same reaction from their chairs.
“Um,” Kati said. “I think my chair’s screaming at me.”
“You manhandled me!” a petulant voice shrieked. “What did you expect?”
Kati glanced at the crest carved into the wooden chair back, at the skull above it, and jolted back as the lower jaw of the skull unhinged when she spoke. It spoke? The freaking chair spoke?
“Don’t stare at me, you’re making me feel worse.” The chair teetered on the edge of tears—could a wooden skull cry?—so Kati qui
ckly took her seat, exchanging a wide-eyed stare with her dorm mates. It felt wrong to be sitting on something that could talk, and Kati’s movements were stiff, uncomfortable.
It had to be a spell, though why anyone would use death magic—blood, bones, pain, poison, reanimation, soul energy, and murder—to make a chair speak, she didn’t know.
Absentmindedly, Kati took a bite of mashed potatoes and screwed her face up as an unexpected taste burst across her tongue. “Um.” She shared a look with Naia and Rahmi, reaching for a drink. “Pretty sure this potato’s off.”
“Does it taste like parma violets?” Rahmi asked, her face caught between amusement and disgust.
Equally pucker-faced, Naia eyed her roast chicken as if it had betrayed her. “Mine tastes like pickled onion Monster Munch crisps.”
Now Kati felt betrayed. “Why couldn’t I get Monster Munch chicken? My mash tastes like banana. And I’m not talking regular, natural banana; I mean that disgusting banana-flavoured crap they put in milkshakes.”
Rahmi patted Kati’s hand consolingly. “Try some roasties; maybe they won’t be as bad.”
Tentatively, Kati speared a roast potato and nibbled a corner. “Huh.”
Rahmi and Naia peered forward, Naia’s eyes wide behind her glasses.
“Well?” Rahmi asked, a charmed smile on her face like this was all a fun game and not all that stood between a full belly and them starving for the rest of the night. Or—a worse thought struck—for the rest of the term if the food was always like this.
Kati took her time, enjoying their attention, and swallowed the potato. “Horseradish.”
“Blech.” Naia made a gagging sound, deciding her chicken was alright after all.
“What?” Kati demanded, taking a more confident bite. “I like horseradish.”
“You weirdo,” Rahmi said fondly.
Kati rolled her eyes, suddenly aware that she’d been smiling and the Resting Bitch Face had malfunctioned again. Damn it. She brought up a scowl but there was little chance it would scare off these two women. And Rahmi had called Kati a weirdo in the same tone of voice her old friends had used to.
“Go back to your parma violet masala,” Kati huffed.
Rahmi did so with another smile, and Kati shrugged. If these two wanted to go around trusting people who could turn out to be a) evil or b) axe-wielding or c) madwomen, that was their problem. Free will, Kati reminded herself. Even if free will made these two total dumbasses given her family’s black reputation.
A table across, someone gagged loudly, and Kati slanted a glance to find the joker of their group—he of the bleached hair and Jackass T-shirt—spitting out a big gobful of stir-fried beef onto the floor. Kati made a mental note to avoid her own veg stir fry and stick to roast potatoes. If she had to survive off roasties for three months … she could think of worse things. And hey, if that failed, there was always Monster Munch roast chicken.
“That,” Jackass said, his voice carrying in an obnoxiously loud way, “is rank. What is that?”
Miz Jardin came bustling over, a big grin on her face. “Is there a problem, dearie?” Kati studied the woman; her carefully neutral expression, her crinkled eyes, and snorted quietly. She hadn’t realised there’d be freshers weeks and initiation pranks at SBA, and she certainly hadn’t thought the teachers would be responsible, but this fit the bill perfectly. And Mr Worth, the death magic theory teacher with floppy dark hair and sparkly blue eyes, sat a few tables away watching with rapt interest. Clearly he was in on the joke.
“Some shit’s going down,” Kati stage whispered to her tag-alongs. Naia and Rahmi followed her gaze to Jackass’s table.
“Yeah, there’s a problem,” Jackass said, gulping down a bottle of bright green energy drink to wash out whatever the stir fry tasted of. A second later, a bright green spray erupted from his mouth. “Why does everything in this school taste like ass?”
“How would you know what ass tastes like?” Kati drawled, unable to help herself. So much for flying under the radar. “Eaten it much, have you?”
Jackass’s table filled with laughter, as did some of the tables around them. Jackass’s gaze fixed on Kati with all the force of a thousand burning suns, but then he shrugged and gave her a chin-lift as if commending her on a quip well done. “Not often, no.”
“Now, now, children,” Miz Jardin calmed, a smile twitching the corner of her mouth. “This is all perfectly normal food, I don’t see what the problem is.”
“Alright then,” Jackass said affably. “Then you taste it.”
Rumbled, Miz Jardin went a fetching shade of pink, her mouth flickering with the beginnings of a smile. “Oh, I wouldn’t want to steal your food from you.”
Kati snorted under her breath.
“Is this … a fucking prank?” Jackass demanded, his muddy eyes wide.
“We know you’re not children, but we do ask that you mind your language at SBA,” Miz Jardin chided. “Also yes,” she added, sounding mighty pleased with herself. “Yes, it is a prank.”
Jackass just stared at her for a second, and everyone around him seemed to hold their breath until he exclaimed, “Wicked! How did you do it, will you show me?”
“Can you change it back?” one of his buddies asked, a girl with lank blonde hair and the look of all people who’ve hung around a skatepark at one point in their life; backwards baseball cap, baggy jeans, shirt in some shade of khaki, and a nose ring. “I don’t think I can take another bite of my lime-flavoured burger.”
Miz Jardin trilled a laugh and amiably slid her wand from her sleeve and swept it in a grand gesture around the dining hall. “Reverse,” she commanded. “There you go, dears. Did you enjoy it, though?”
“Yeah!” Jackass effused. “It was awesome. You’re officially my favourite teacher.” He paused. “Never thought I’d say that to anyone.”
Miz Jardin preened, immensely pleased. “Well, then. What was your name, again?”
“Gull Llewellyn,” he answered, and Kati filed the name away. Not for any particular reason, but she’d been pleasantly surprised when he hadn’t declared a grudge war after she’d mildly insulted his hetero manliness.
“Hmm.” Miz Jardin tapped her bottom lip with the crystal tip of her wand. “Gull, is it? Not Gulliver?”
Gull, formerly named Jackass, groaned. “Only my mum calls me that, and she only does it to piss me off.”
Miz Jardin shook her head. “I can see the language warning has gone right over your head.”
Gull’s lank-haired friend snorted loudly. Kati tried to remember her name from the register, sure it was something like Harper or Hazard. Harley—that was it! Harley Albright, the first name Mrs Balham had called out. “That’s a lost cause, Miss,” she said politely. “He swears like a sailor’s prostitute.”
Miz Jardin flushed bright fuschia and found a reason to be elsewhere; the conversation had apparently deteriorated too much for her. “Oh, Mr Worth, how are you enjoying your first SBA meal? Minus my hilarious charm, of course.”
Kati strained her ears to overhear his response, and told herself if was for research on what sort of teacher-slash-person he was—strict, friendly, easy going, enthusiastic, bored—and not because his bright blue eyes made him unreasonably attractive for someone on the faculty.
“I could have lived without chocolate that tasted like fried egg,” he said with a chuckle. “But other than that, I have no complaints. I rather liked the cherry pie flavoured stew.”
Kati rolled her eyes—at him, at herself, at Miz Jardin for her elaborate stunt—and distracted herself with roast potato that actually tasted like roast potato. A damn miracle.
Rahmi gave her a sly look. “You fancy that teacher, don’t you?”
Kati, long used to being confrontational as a form of defense, gave a sharp shrug and demanded, “So?”
“But he’s a teacher!” Naia hissed, looking scandalised. She dropped her forkful of chicken to her plate and gave Kati a reproachful stare. “Kati, you can’t.�
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“Naia, I can,” Kati replied. “I’m eighteen. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with window shopping. It doesn’t mean I’m gonna jump him in class.”
“I suppose it is different since we’re all adults,” Rahmi offered, backing Kati with a sly smile. “He’s kind of cute.”
Kati grunted in agreement, spearing stir-fried broccoli and shoving it in her mouth, beginning to get embarrassed by the whole situation.
“I think Gull’s kinda cute,” Naia whispered, her head ducked to hide her face.
“He’s gay,” Rahmi said, patting Naia’s arm. “Or he could be bi, I guess.”
“How do you know?” Kati frowned at Rahmi, then at Gull on the table across from them. “He looks like a douchebag frat boy.”
“He’s also playing footsie with the guy sat across from him,” Rahmi replied with a wry smile, her eyes twinkling as both Naia and Kati confirmed that for themselves. “I’m observant,” she added when they looked at her askance. “I notice things.”
Naia looked suddenly nervous and Kati raised an eyebrow. “Got something to hide, Clarke?”
“No,” Naia said too quickly.
Kati grinned, a cat with a bird caught under its paw, but she was distracted from pressing her new friend for details when the fondue fountain exploded on the stage behind them. The sound was loud enough to wake the dead.
“Oh dear!” Miz Jardin cried, bumbling out of her seat and rushing over to the ten-foot high fountain that continued to spurt bright orange grenades of cheese. One came dangerously close, splashing Kati’s chair, and she lurched to her feet, Naia and Rahmi leaping out of their seats and following Kati a safe distance away. The chair screamed at the injustice, the jaw of the wooden skull unhinged from the top and her petulant squeal adding to the cacophony.
“Watch it, Wilson,” Alexandra Chen spat when Kati backed a little too close to her designer handbag. For spite, Kati ‘knocked’ it over with the toe of her boot.
“Watch yourself, Chen,” Kati spat back at her, but the exploding fondue stole both their attention as a plume of cheese arced from the top, almost graceful as it soared and curved before splattering the stage roof and part of the frescoed ballroom ceiling.