by Eva Chase
Academy of the Forgotten
Cursed Studies #1
Eva Chase
Academy of the Forgotten
Book 1 in the Cursed Studies trilogy
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
First Digital Edition, 2020
Copyright © 2020 Eva Chase
Cover design: Rebecca Frank, Bewitching Book Covers
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-989096-58-1
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-989096-59-8
Created with Vellum
Contents
Free Story!
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Next in the Cursed Studies trilogy
Cruel Magic excerpt
About the Author
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Chapter One
Trix
“I’m looking for my brother.”
I said the words under my breath as the gate closed behind me, as if I needed to rehearse them—as if the statement hadn’t been running through my mind for the entire two days it’d taken me to get here. The wrought-iron bars clanged shut with a finality that made my nerves jump. I glanced back, half expecting to see chains and padlocks had magically sprung up to seal my way out.
The gate still looked as ridiculously foreboding as before, tall and black with imperious twists rising along the arched top, but no unexpected barriers had sprung up. I studied it a moment longer anyway. Something strange was going on here at Roseborne College, or I wouldn’t have trekked all this way to begin with. But considering how stealthily the strangeness had crept into my life, I couldn’t count on concrete proof falling into my lap within thirty seconds of arriving.
The cab I’d gotten out of had already taken off, the growl of its engine fading beyond the thick stone wall. I’d spoken to six drivers before I’d found one willing to come out this far. The college sat at the approximate intersection of No Place Much and Nowhere. I hadn’t seen another building along the increasingly sketchy road in at least half an hour.
Gray clouds clotted in the sky overhead. Damp air and a sickly sweet rose scent closed around me. A massive rosebush scaled the wall on either side, the leaves and brambles so tightly intertwined that I could only make out the stones beneath right where they met the gate, but only a smattering of deep red blooms broke the swath of green.
Whatever gardeners they had looking after this place, they were doing a crappy job. A healthy plant would have boasted ten times that many flowers at least. I’d seen more bloom on the sickly little thing I’d nursed back to health in the Monroes’ backyard than showed along the entire stretch of wall around me.
Add that to the list of this school’s crimes. It’d swallowed up my foster brother, and it abused rosebushes. For a place with “rose” in its name, that should count as two crimes in itself.
I clutched the strap of my backpack, adjusting its weight on my shoulder, and then turned my attention to the building up ahead.
The sprawling Victorian mansion loomed over the vast lawn, three stories of faded red brick and protruding gables. A turret sprouted up haphazardly on one side. It was a far cry from the squat concrete buildings where Cade and I had spent most of our school years, that was for sure.
The image trickled up of watching him make this walk almost a year ago; of sitting rigid in the back of the Monroes’ junker Oldsmobile, willing down a cry of protest, while he stepped farther and farther away from me.
And then he’d turned for one last wave with that crooked grin of his, and I’d been socked with a twisted mix of relief and guilt, as hard as if he’d punched me. It wasn’t me he wanted to leave, the gesture said. All our plans were still in place.
But only because he had no idea what I’d done.
None of that mattered if I didn’t find out what had happened to him since then. I squared my shoulders and marched up the gravel path to complete my mission.
The rose scent chased after me on the cool spring breeze. When I was about halfway across the lawn, the mansion’s main door opened, and three figures stepped out onto the porch with a creak of its boards: a guy and two girls, all of them looking to be around twenty like Cade.
One of the girls glanced my way and let out an audible sigh, as if the mere sight of me offended her somehow. It probably did. She was wearing jeans and a scoop-neck top like me, but her jeans were form-fitting and her blouse had the gleam of silk. I was all baggy on the bottom and basic cotton on the top, with a fraying tear across one of my knees. Miss Blondie might also have taken issue with my hair in its current artificial orange brilliance.
Of course, what really made the look were the black combat boots I’d spent months saving up for a few years back as my sixteenth birthday present to myself. They made exactly the right statement: Mess with me and prepare to get stomped on. I was tempted to pull out my matching leather jacket just to see how much more I could horrify her. Or maybe tug up my left sleeve and see if she liked the vine tattoo that decorated my skin from mid-forearm to bicep.
The other two students with her wore posh clothes like hers, the guy in trim slacks and a collared shirt with a starry-sky print that should have looked cheesy but somehow became cool because of the confidence in his stance. The same confidence turned his quirky looks attractive rather than just interesting. His nose had a small bump to it as if it’d been broken and never set quite right, and his square chin should have been a little much for his otherwise soft jaw, but it was hard to imagine any combination of features working better than those did.
He said something to the girls with half a smile and swiped his hand through his light cinnamon-brown hair when they twittered. As he ambled toward me, his eyes narrowed.
“Why don’t you turn around and head right back out while the getting’s good?” he said in a coolly nonchalant voice, motioning toward the gate. “You don’t really think anyone here is going to want you around, do you?”
Interestingly attractive and a total jerk. What else should I have expected at a school so exclusive no one I knew had ever heard of it before Cade’s scholarship offer had shown up in the mail?
I cocked my head and narrowed my eyes right back at him. “You don’t really think I give a shit what you want, do you?”
He shrugged, seemingly unfazed. “I’m just saying you’re wasting your time. Whatever you’re looking to get out of this place, it’s not here.”
“Somehow I’d rather not just take your word for that,” I informed him, and marched on by.
The girls murmured to each other as I passed them. I only caught the words “never learn” and nothing else. What did they even think I was here for
? Was their hostility simply because I didn’t fit the typical new student vibe and that pissed them off? As if I even wanted to be here at their gothic nightmare of a school.
I tramped up the porch steps and across the creaky boards to the front door. It swung open at my tug. With a clench of my jaw, I stepped into the dim space on the other side.
The massive foyer was lit by a large, circular chandelier gleaming overhead, but the dark wood paneling that covered every wall sucked up that light. A crimson-and-gold Persian rug sprawled several feet across the polished floor to a broad staircase. On either side of its base gleamed matching suits of medieval armor, massive shields braced in front of them. The stairs split at a landing halfway up and veered off in opposite directions toward separate wings of the building.
On the first floor, arched doorways led to first-floor hallways beyond the staircase; another doorway at my right opened into a sitting room with a cluster of Victorian sofas, although no one was sitting in there right now. At my left, a closed door held a brass sign etched with the words Main Office.
The rose smell had followed me inside. Here, it was cut by a hint of something stale, like old clothes that had been shut away in an attic for decades. My nose itched with it.
I turned and rapped on the office door, figuring that was my best starting place.
A tall, almost spindly man answered my knock. He peered down at me over his hooked nose with piercing blue-gray eyes, his silver hair slicked back from his forehead as solidly smooth as if it’d been sculpted onto his head. Even his pale skin had a silver sheen to it, as if his advancing age had started to leach all the color out of him from head to toe. His dark gray suit matched perfectly.
“How can I help you, Miss…?” he asked in a dry, gravelly voice.
“Beatrix Corbyn,” I said, figuring from experience that my full name would go over better with the school staff than my preferred nickname. I had to care what they thought at least a little if I was going to get answers. “I’m looking for my brother.”
The declaration had felt much more momentous when I’d pictured making it before. In reality, the words simply faded into the air, and the spindly man continued peering at me, a puzzled line forming in the middle of his forehead.
“He got a spot here on scholarship,” I went on. “Cade Harrison? He came at the end of August last year.”
The man shifted his weight, and I got the impression he’d have liked to close the door in my face. Instead, he nudged it a little wider and stepped back.
“Why don’t you come in and I’ll see what I can tell you? I’m Dean Wainhouse, and all student affairs at Roseborne College fall within my purview.”
I didn’t know what exactly I’d been expecting from the school office, but it definitely wasn’t the room I stepped into. It held a big oak desk surrounded by bookshelves at one end and a sitting area with a sofa and armchairs around a fireplace at the other. No secretaries, no filing cabinets, no computer stations—none of the typical features I’d become familiar with during my many trips to various offices across elementary, middle, and high school.
Apparently the dean handled his own paperwork and scheduling. If there was any paperwork. He positioned himself behind the desk, but he didn’t take anything out of the drawers or any books off the shelves. You’d have thought the guy believed any information he needed to know would absorb into him by osmosis just by standing there.
I stayed on my feet too, liking the feel of my boots’ thick soles supporting me, and waited to see what he’d say next.
His stare shifted to gaze off into the distance beyond me. “Last August, you said?”
“Yes. Our foster father drove him out here. I came along to see the place.” To see Cade off. I’d thought it was only going to be for a few months, until Christmas at the very most. Since we’d been thrown together three foster homes and twelve years ago, we’d never been apart even that long before.
“Very strange.” The dean frowned. “I don’t recall a student by the name of Cade Harrison. Are you sure it was Roseborne he came to and not one of the other private colleges in the state?”
“Yes,” I said. “Like I said, I was here. I saw the place.” And how could he be so sure whether Cade had been enrolled without looking at a single record?
But even as I spoke, a worm of doubt wriggled into my mind. When I’d gone searching for the scholarship documents to confirm the school’s address, I hadn’t been able to find a trace of them. The Monroes had stared at me in bewilderment when I’d asked them about the college.
Of course, they’d also looked totally befuddled when I’d mentioned the drive out here and the fact that Cade was missing at all. Our foster mother’s voice came back to me with a fresh chill. Cade? What are you talking about, Beatrix? You were alone when we took you in—and it hasn’t been hard to see why. We’ve never fostered any boys.
Like he’d never existed. But I knew I hadn’t made up twelve years of memories. I couldn’t have simply imagined the most important person in my entire life, the only person I’d ever been able to count on. Even if all the photos I’d had of us together had vanished from my phone and my computer. Even if none of the mutual friends I’d talked to had so much as recognized his name. Cade? Um, no, haven’t known anybody named that. Why do you look so serious about this, Trix? You sure you’re all right in the head?
All I’d gotten as I’d tried to understand what was going on was confusion, skepticism, and laughter. But I could still feel the ghost of Cade’s hand knuckling my shoulder when he teasingly gave me a hard time. The coppery scent of his skin when he pulled me close. There was no way I could have made all of that up… right?
I’d been here. I’d known the bramble-choked walls, the wrought-iron gate, and the looming mansion the moment I’d seen them. This was the last place I was sure my brother had been. Whatever had happened to him—and to everyone who’d known him other than me—the trail started here.
Unless he’d been completely erased from here too, with no trail left to follow.
Unless I was going crazy, and he really hadn’t existed at all.
“I really am sorry I can’t offer more,” Dean Wainhouse said. “It is a tight-knit school. I’m generally familiar with all our students.”
I dragged in a breath. I’d only just gotten here—I wasn’t going to roll over just like that.
“Can I stick around for a little while?” I asked. “Talk with some of the students, see if anyone remembers seeing him back then?” It was possible something had happened to him before he’d even started classes.
The dean’s expression gave me the same feeling as when I’d thought he was going to close the door on me, but after a moment he nodded. “All right. As long as you don’t interfere with their studies. Please don’t enter the classrooms or interrupt anyone who’s at work.”
“That’s fair. Thank you.”
I slipped out of the office, trying to ignore the sinking sensation in my stomach. What if no one here could tell me anything? What if all the other students were pricks just like the ones I’d encountered outside?
Where the hell are you, Cade?
The foyer was still empty. I wasn’t sure which halls led to classrooms and which to whatever leisure rooms the college offered. In the absence of a clear direction, I wandered toward the nearest doorway to the left of the grand staircase.
The wood-paneled wall there held seven painted portraits, all the same size and in the same gold-flecked frames. I stopped for a second, eyeing them. From the rectangle of faded varnish at the end of the row, there’d used to be eight. The strange thing, though, was none of the figures were elderly school patrons or former deans or what have you. All seven of the portraits appeared to be of older teens—three girls and four guys.
They all stared straight forward, wearing the same uniform of white dress shirt and burgundy jacket. The paintings had been done in totally different styles, though—some watercolor, some acrylic, some oil, and obviously by diff
erent artists. One was so detailed I’d have taken it for a photograph from a distance; one verged on abstract with its bold colors and blunt lines.
Other than the particularly detailed one, they were decent but amateurish enough that I couldn’t imagine they’d been professionally done. Maybe it’d been a self-portrait project from art class, and these seven had been held up as the best?
I was about to walk on when my gaze caught on a mark at the bottom right of one of the girl portraits—where you’d expect the artist’s signature to be. My breath caught in my throat. I stepped closer, my left hand rising to touch my right forearm.
It was a signature, just not in any way most people would have recognized: a little white starburst, slightly uneven with the top tines a little longer than the bottom ones. It was Cade’s secret signature, modeled after the pale starburst birthmark just below his left elbow. I had a nearly identical mark on my right arm, like a mirror image, where I’d carved it with one of our then-foster father’s hunting knives when I was eleven and Cade was twelve, as a promise that our lives were meant to be one and the same.
My hand trembled as I reached out to hover my fingers over the symbol on the painting, but my lips curved into a smile. Now that I’d noticed the symbol, I could sense Cade’s presence in the energetic strokes of the stark acrylic colors. He wasn’t an artistic prodigy, but he’d brought a vigor to the image that made up for its flaws.
It didn’t matter what the weirdo dean or the jackass students said to me. He’d been here, just as I remembered him. I had the proof hanging right in front of me.