by Leigh Kelsey
Kati recoiled a step from the nearest shelf, her nose wrinkling. “That’s disgusting.”
“And barbaric,” Rahmi added, eyeing the stacks with distaste. “Why would someone do that?”
“Lots of someones did it,” Mr Worth said, looking eager to launch into the story. He loved it, she realised—knowledge, storytelling, teaching. “Back in the 1600s it was a common practise to use human skin in bookmaking. It was believed to enhance the magic of any spell written inside it if a book was bound in the skin of a reaper or necromancer. Most were family books, made with the skin of a recently—”
“Alright, alright,” Kati cut in, her stomach turning. “That’s enough of that gruesome story.”
“I’m gonna puke,” Rahmi whispered. She did look rather green. And sure, they’d enrolled in an academy to learn the best way to kill someone to either bring them back to immortal life or harvest their souls so they stayed dead but … human skin book covers was pushing it too far.
Mr Worth scratched the back of his neck. “Apologies, ladies. I got carried away.”
Kati snorted but then she just felt mean. She hadn’t meant to laugh but really, what twenty-odd year old said apologies, ladies? “You’ve given us nightmares,” Kati teased, then realised she was flirting and wiped the expression off her face. “We need to get our books and shit. Do you know where we can find Veela?”
“Veesa,” Naia corrected automatically, standing straighter at the reminder they were slightly disobeying the instructions they’d been given. “Kati’s right, we need to get our timetables and our quills and…” She trailed off as she spun on her heel and hurried down the aisle to join the group of students who’d clustered around what was probably the library desk.
Rahmi laughed through her nose but she looked uneasy and kept glancing at the shelves.
When the prospectus had said SBA had over three hundred years of history inside its walls, Kati had thought they meant it more metaphorically. But nope. Here was the history, looking Kati in her face. Ugh, she thought, at least they didn’t put eyes on the spines. She shuddered at the idea.
“Kati, Rahmi,” Naia hissed from deeper in the library. “Come on!”
Kati and Rahmi shared a smirk.
“I’ll see you both Tuesday evening,” Mr Worth said as they muttered awkward goodbyes.
Kati gave him a questioning look.
“Oh,” Rahmi said with a bright smile. “Are you our first class on Tuesdays?”
“And Fridays,” he confirmed, that soft smile lighting his eyes again. Damn him. Damn his eyes. Damn his too cute ink smudged little nose.
“Right,” Kati said, her voice coming out heavy with awkwardness. She felt stiff; it’d been more natural to flirt with him. “See you then, I guess.”
She turned, Rahmi offering a little wave before following, but Kati halted, unable to resist it. The troublemaker in her offered encouragement as she spun around and said, sweetly, far too flirty, “Oh, and Mr Worth?”
He glanced up, his brilliant eyes meeting hers with mild interest.
“You have ink on your nose, sir,” Kati told him with a slightly crooked smile. He blushed. He honest to gods blushed, a delicate pink that spread down his neck and made Kati both smug with satisfaction and melty with fondness. He scrubbed his nose with his shirt sleeve, leaving a dark splotch on the white fabric. “You’re welcome,” she added, and spun back around just in time to hide the blush that splashed her own face.
“You’re terrible,” Rahmi hissed, grinning at Naia and gesturing her over when they reached the line. Naia gestured back more demandingly and the two of them cut into the line ahead of seven students that all gave them filthy looks,
“What?” Naia whispered, seeing the looks on their faces.
“She just flirted with Cambridge Cutie,” Rahmi told her with delight, her voice barely a whisper.
Kati’s eyes went wide at Rahmi’s easy declaration of her minor infraction and then narrowed to slits.
“What?” Rahmi said defensively. “He totally looks like he went to Cambridge.”
“Mr Worth?” Naia whisper-hissed, scandalised. She clutched two books to her chest as if to ward herself against Kati’s rule breaking. Wait, when had she got the books? They’d all entered empty handed. “Kati, you can’t,” she scolded.
Kati scowled, crossing her arms over her chest. Twice now she’d been told she couldn’t fancy Mr Worth. Well, she was trying to fucking stop, but she couldn’t help that she was attracted to him. And she wouldn’t say no to acting on the attraction; souls knew she needed something good right now. “It’s not my fault, okay?” she groaned. “I can’t fucking help it.”
BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO NOT DYING A HORRIBLE, MAGICAL DEATH
(UNLESS, OF COURSE, THAT’S THE INTENTION)
“Welcome to health and safety,” Miz Jardin said early Monday evening, breezing over to the chalkboard where her name was written in cursive. Her large body shouldn’t have been able to breeze, but breeze it did, the pile of pastel pink hair on her head wobbling as she moved. “Or as I like to call it, How Not To Kill Yourself, Your Client, And Everyone Around You In One Fell Swoop.”
She tittered and an awkward laugh went around the classroom in response. Kati would put money on Miz Jardin telling the same joke at the start of every year. But at least she was a friendly face and a known quantity. The worst thing Kati could imagine was someone severe and no-nonsense like Mrs Balham first thing on a Monday evening.
“Permanently, at least,” Miz Jardin added with a wry smile, “in the case of your client.”
Another round of awkward, muttered laughter.
Like Miz Jardin said, killing people was the whole point of necromancy. As Kati’s dad had described it for as long as she could remember, both professions dealt with souls and the dead, but Necromancy was sending someone to dip a toe in the waters of the underworld and bringing them back, and Reaping was harvesting their soul before throwing the body into the ocean to drown. Necromancy left the door open, while reaping slammed it shut and locked it behind them.
There were exceptions of course—there always were when dealing with the dead and spirits. In theory, sending someone to the underworld and reaping their soul erased any chance of them coming back to cause trouble in the land of the living. But it did happen from time to time. It had happened a lot during Lady LaVoire’s reign.
Her army had been as much made up of the living—necromancers and reapers both—as it was made up of the dead. Spirits that escaped back into the living world after being cached in the soul bank run by the Congregation of Paranormals were known as soulwraiths, and could be easily compelled by someone with the right magic, as long as they had a soulhost—a living body—to put them into. They were parasites.
Spirits who hadn’t been cached were just ghosts, like the ones who roamed SBA’s halls, and like the man who taught them supernatural history. Deemed harmless, they were allowed to reintegrate into society, but it was exceptionally rare for a spirit to be allowed to return to the living world.
The dead—full dead, who’d met their final death and not been brought back to life in time by a Necromancer—who escaped the portals were demons. Unlike soulwraiths who retained some small parts of their humanity and personalities, demons were pure impulse and basic needs: food, shelter, survival, and procreation. And demons, if left to run wild, procreated a lot.
Kati expected most of their supernatural history classes to be dedicated to the many, many instances of demon infestation. They’d only just gotten over the last one, from Lady LaVoire’s reign a decade ago, but Kati knew there were still some demons out in the world, hiding and being smart. Unlike the brutes who rampaged through city centers and caused no end of trouble for supernatural secrecy.
“Right then!” Miz Jardin said, clapping her hands together. “Are you ready to learn about proper spell casting techniques, how not to hold a scythe, and the best way to wield a necromancer’s athame so you don’t get blinded by arteria
l spray?”
“Hell yeah!” Gull Llewellyn shouted, more to hear the sound of his voice, Kati suspected, than true enthusiasm for what was surely a lengthy lecture and lots of bookwork for the next two and a half hours.
“Perfect!” Miz Jardin beamed, her face creasing in genuine happiness. “Thank you, Gull.”
Kati pillowed her head on her arms and prayed the next few hours passed quickly. What a first lesson.
DISORDERLY AND PROUD
The lunch hour passed too damn quickly for Kati’s liking. Her head needed a break from Miz Jardin’s cautionary tales and mind-numbing spell procedure. At least she knew how to hold her wand if she ever wanted to blow her eye out; you never knew when you might need something like that. Next Monday evening probably, just to relieve the sheer boredom.
“Wasn’t it awesome?” Naia was gushing, as she’d done all lunch. “Miz Jardin is so knowledgeable, I never would have known to angle my athame like that.”
Kati lifted her eyebrows but finished off her sticky toffee pudding without comment. How someone could be so enthusiastic about something so dull, Kati had no idea. Spells, definitely, and she could even understand death magic theory—that was where they learned what wand gesture went with each spell, how to pronounce certain words and what commands to use—but health and safety? Naia was batshit.
“Looking forward to necromancing?” Rahmi asked, licking strawberry coulis from her fingertips and reaching for her glass of honey lemonade. “I can’t wait to start reaping. Not that we’ll actually be reaping souls in our first lesson, but it’s the first step.”
Kati lifted her head off her hand and nodded with actual enthusiasm. “I know a bit from what my mum and dad and Theo have told me, but it’s not much. I wonder what our first lesson will be?”
There was always a moment of awkwardness whenever Kati mentioned her brother but she ignored it; the more she said his name, the more desensitised they’d get. That’s what she told herself anyway.
Right on cue to darken Kati’s mood further, the clocktower thundered above them, signalling the start of the next class. Kati got to her feet, planning to bolt, but Naia’s arm somehow became entwined with her own to slow her down.
“Wow,” Naia laughed, “You’re more eager to get to class than I am.”
Kati didn’t bother with a scathing reply. She remembered how excited she’d been all these years for this class, for the academy itself, and couldn’t help the bitterness that bubbled up in her at how twisted her enthusiasm had become. Thanks, Theo.
The sudden, violent desire to kill the cactus struck, but one, it wasn’t the cactus’s fault, and two, the dorms were nowhere near the Necromancy classroom. The last thing Kati needed was to walk into a class halfway into the lesson with no excuse or permission slip.
“Form an orderly queue,” a nasally female voice ordered when they arrived at the classroom to find three students had beaten them here. How? Had they skipped lunch to queue outside the damn room? Kati snickered under her breath. Punctual losers.
“That, Miss Wilson,” the teacher remarked, “is not orderly.”
Kati blinked but stood a bit straighter, tempted to tell her to fuck off—Naia was every bit as disorderly as Kati and she was Naia—but not wanting to suffer repercussions.
“Hmmph,” the woman said, walking off. She had a frazzled look about her, red hair in a mess of curls and her face blotchy, but her eyes were nothing but mean. And for whatever reason she hated Kati.
“Form an orderly queue,” she barked as more people joined them, her mouth pinched but her eyes not flashing with the hatred that’d shone at Kati.
“What’s her problem?” Kati whispered to Naia.
Naia just shrugged, twisting the hem of her uniform jumper into a knot. Her eyes were wide and alarmed. “I don’t know, but she really doesn’t seem to like you, Kates.”
Kati scowled, forcing all her wrath into the look. “Call me that again, I dare you.”
Naia glanced quickly away, nervousness in her jittery gestures as she flattened her jumper, then straightened her glasses. But she smiled, a tiny thing, and said, “I won’t ever call you that again, Kates.”
Kati’s eyes thinned to slits, but she wasn’t properly angry. It felt good to be play-angry at someone though, like the camaraderie of joking about with Rahmi in the clocktower. Of course, that was before they’d found the dead body.
“Quiet!” the teacher said suddenly, silencing the murmured conversations. “Much better. You will proceed in an orderly manner—”
“Really into order, this woman,” Kati said under her breath, Naia’s lips thinning to stifle a smile.
“You will find your names on each desk. Seat yourselves quickly and in an efficient manner.”
“Not orderly?” Kati faux-gasped.
Naia gasped a laugh, turning it into a cough as she looked at Kati in betrayal.
“Don’t dawdle!” the teacher barked when they just stood there. “In! In!”
Jesus fucking christ, Kati thought to herself. This was going to be a riot.
“And Katriona?” the woman said as Kati almost—just barely—crossed the threshold. “Though I understand you are experienced in all things murder and well acquainted with corpses, you’ll find you have no advantage in this class.”
Kati blinked, so stunned and offended that a teacher would say something like that to her face that for a second she didn’t say something. And then in a perfectly even tone that took all her effort, she asked, “May I enter the classroom now? I was trying to proceed in an orderly manner to my seat.”
The teacher’s already thin mouth disappeared as she frowned. “I’m watching you, Wilson.”
Kati turned away from her narrow-eyed, blotchy-faced scowl and entered the room. You and everyone else, she thought, not daring to spit the words at the necromancy teacher. You and everyone fucking else.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN I’M GOOD AT SOMETHING?
Necromancy class turned out to be just as nightmarish as Kati expected. The teacher—Mrs Hale—continued to single Kati out, dropping insinuations that she wasn’t just a troublemaker but a murderer and—wait for it—the next dark sorceress. The darkest Kati got was planning the woman’s death and then never actually committing it. So dark.
The rest of the day passed quickly after those tortuous two and a half hours, during which Mrs Hale went through the very basics of necromancy—or as she loved to call it, temporary death—and at the end of class handed out their athames. These knives weren’t their permanent athames, but they’d be with them for the three years of their training. When they graduated, the idea was that friends and family would buy them each an athame to celebrate, as reaper families gifted their graduates scythes.
Wealthy families, Kati knew, made it a competition to buy the flashiest, gaudiest tools going. What did it matter how many rubies or rare spinels were encrusted in the damn things as long as they got the job done?
No doubt Alexandra Chen—of the legendary Chen reaper family, as Kati had overheard at lunch earlier—would get a diamond encrusted one.
Tuesday came, and with an inappropriate bright spot: their first class that evening was taught by the sweet, floppy-haired, turquoise-eyed Mr Worth. Even if the lesson turned out to be as dull as dishwater, at least she had something to look at.
“Now, I know what you’re thinking,” Mr Worth said with a wry smile, leaning on his desk at the front of the classroom with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his tie askew. “You’re thinking I’m going to start with the most basic, boring spell in the history of supernatural kind.” His bright smile was momentarily dazzling; Kati heard someone to her left sigh dreamily and ground her teeth together. She’d seen him first, dammit.
“But,” he went on, looking around and making eye contact with everyone, “I managed to convince Mrs Grant to let you start with a more exciting one. Mrs Grant’s your spells teacher—our classes work in tandem; in here, you’ll learn all about the word origins of incanta
tions, the history of each spell, and most importantly what purposes it can be used for, and then when you have spells this afternoon, Mrs Grant will teach you how to cast it.”
“What are we working on, then?” Gull Llewellyn asked in an impatient tone. Gull, Kati had figured out, had absolutely no concept of his standing here at the academy. He didn’t seem to realise the teachers ranked above him, or if he did, he simply didn’t give a shit.
Mr Worth pointed at him with a grin. “Glad you asked, but I could do with a little more respect in your tone.”
Gull shrugged, not looking bothered by the reprimand. “Respect’s earned. Sir,” he tacked on.
“That it is,” Mr Worth agreed, turning his focus to the rest of the classroom. “But back to your lesson, tonight we’re going to be starting with a classic. Water into wine. Or in our case, water into a belladonna infusion. Do not—” His voice became suddenly serious, his eyes on them intent, and Kati’s pulse jumped as those stern eyes met hers. “And I mean do not, drink anything in this class or in Mrs Grant’s. You’ll learn common poison antidotes in your potions and poisons class, but since none of you have had your first lesson yet, we’ll leave the poisoning for those who have, shall we?”
Kati was rapt, watching the different facets of Mr Worth come and go—deadly serious to friendly to scholarly to kind.
“Wow,” Rahmi breathed, staring at the death magic theory teacher. “He’s pretty scary when he’s serious.”
“Yes,” Kati agreed, a thrill in her belly. A man who was adorably sweet, caring, and intelligent, with a little bit of scariness to him … if Kati was a cat, Mr Worth was catnip.
But her school year was already shitty enough—Mrs Hale had driven that home during her necromancy class yesternight—and an illicit hook up would only make things worse. Kati propped her chin on her hand, scowling. She really wanted to hook up with him though. Assuming he wasn’t too much of a goody two shoes to take her up on the offer.