“I’ve lost my fucking mind.”
She looked up and stared hard at her own arm before taking two fingers and squeezing the flesh on the inside of her elbow so hard it turned white. “Okay, so, not dreaming.”
The cat, Simon, lifted his head in annoyance at her outburst. Obviously, she was not being as quiet as he would have liked.
She rolled her eyes at him and slid from the edge of the bed to sit on the hardwood floor beside the envelope.
“You could ask a little more niccccccely,”
Eve slid a hand roughly over her face. “Okay. The envelope is talking to me.”
“No, we are talking to you.”
Eve glanced back down to the envelope and carefully flipped it over. There, the two snakes who earlier had formed the F and the U were now flicking their tongues with their beady, serpent like eyes directly on her.
Watching her.
“Now, let’sssssss sssssstart over.”
“Yessss,” the other agreed. “Ssssssstart from the beginning.”
Swallowing, Eve flipped it over one more time to make sure there wasn’t a seam she may have missed. She turned it back to look at the serpents.
“Please, will you open?”
“Muccccch better,” they hissed in time, and together they began to spin in a circle, hissing mouths latching on to slithering tails, their joined bodies rolling like a wheel, faster and faster until their efforts generated not heat, but light. Dull at first, the illumination at the center of the envelope quickly grew so bright that Eve had to drop it to shield her eyes.
Evangeline Revere.
Blinking, Eve took her hands away. She heard her name, but…
Evangeline Revere,
This letter is your official acceptance to Faust University, the most prestigious school focused on the magical arts and all practices arcane.
Now she knew she was dreaming. Clearing away the stars behind her eyes she looked back to the envelope. Where once was a gold envelope was now white parchment. Where once was a pair of talking snakes was now sparkling letters.
And where once was her sanity, was now a disembodied voice speaking directly into her brain.
The portal will open in five days’ time. Be prepared, as you will only have ten minutes to embark. Failure to comply will be automatic rejection of your acceptance without further ability to reapply.
“I never applied in the first place,” she murmured, trying her hardest to remember even seeing a pamphlet for any Faust University.
Speaking of this to anyone will result in automatic expulsion. Thank you for choosing Faust University.
There was no time for a witty comeback as the envelope’s light combusted and Eve had to turn towards her bed to keep from being blinded.
This time, the light was accompanied by a burst of heat, and when she decided it was safe to turn back around, only a small pile of golden dust remained on the floor before her.
“Shit,” she breathed out, which caused enough of a breeze to send the remaining ashes of the envelope scattering across her floor.
“You saw that, right?” she asked Simon, who only meowed and sauntered out of the bedroom.
Swallowing, she looked back to her now-empty floor.
Five days.
To attend a school she’d never heard of.
While she attempted to piece it all together, she casually tried to ignore the parts involving the words ‘magic’ and ‘arcane.’
Regardless, the envelope, or now rather the scattered golden glitter somewhere between the cracks of her floorboards, never gave any more information about what she was supposed to do.
Portals didn’t really exist. So it had to be some sort of a play on words or a riddle.
She stood up and pushed both hands back along the grain of her ash brown hair, pulling it up in a rather messy bun.
Pacing the floor, Eve tried to piece together a plan. She wasn’t used to not having a plan. She wasn’t used to being so completely thrown off that she couldn’t even conceive of how to put together a plan.
Eve was a studious girl, insistent since before she could fully form sentences on reading books beyond her level and injecting herself in otherwise more adult conversations. It only grew worse as she got older.
Her father, his father before him, and so many generations beyond that were renowned Harvard alumni and she was determined to be the first female Revere to attend.
There was something about the snakes, however, that called to Eve’s curiosity. A memory from growing up. A box of discarded items once found stowed away in the attic. Stationary with the same symbols. Books about subjects she’d never heard of. Pictures and memorabilia of a world previously lost.
But now.
She glared at the floor where the envelope once stood. How dare some stupid snakes and that stupid envelope upend everything she worked so hard for.
Did they know how hard it was to get accepted into Harvard? She was supposed to move into her dorm in two weeks. Two weeks. She’d already received her schedule. She’d already bought the books she would need for her classes.
But those damn snakes…
She rubbed at her eyes. She remembered the snakes. She remembered her mother once had a photo album with those snakes on it. She used to show Eve pictures of her old friends and schoolmates and someone named Baz. But it was all lost after she died—her father said it had grown mold and he needed to get rid of the box. She remembered the night he burned it.
Turning on her heel, she defiantly strode out of the room and down the stairs to the kitchen to find something for lunch.
She’d made up her mind long ago and nothing would change it. Harvard was the dream. Harvard was the reality.
Faust was just a weird, unexplainable mystery.
But something inside her tingled and jumped at the thought. Her mother knew something about this place. She must have. And that was enough for her to pull out her phone as she sat down to the farmhouse style table with her peanut butter and Fluff sandwich.
For her mother, she started researching Faust University.
Almost as if it was taunting her, nothing came up in the numerous searches except for a former president of Harvard and an old play with a similarly spelled title from Christopher Marlowe.
With a mouth full of sticky peanut butter she cursed under her breath. Why was she even looking at this?
The sound of the front door opening made her nearly jump out of her seat. She strolled into the front room to investigate, but it was just her dad coming home from work.
Was it really afternoon already? The lack of a schedule since graduation had really thrown off her perception of time.
“Hey Dad,” she said, flopping down into the armchair across from where he’d settled in with his laptop on the couch. He may have been home, but that never meant his work was done.
“How was your day, Eve? Your sweatpants give the impression you didn’t manage to leave the house. Again.”
She rolled her eyes. Despite earning valedictorian status in her high school, scoring unnaturally high scores on the SAT, and getting into Harvard, her father still seemed to think off days weren’t allowed.
“It was-” she paused mid-sentence to think of a single word that could convey the craziness she experienced- “strange.” A letter from nowhere, snakes that talked, a school that didn’t exist. Strange didn’t quite cover it.
Her father looked up, his curiosity piqued. “What happened?”
How could she possibly explain?
She pulled one leg underneath her in the chair and leaned forward. “Have you ever heard of Faust University?”
His eyes squinted as he took off his reading glasses and closed his laptop. “Are you having second thoughts about Harvard?”
Eve scoffed. “Of course not. Harvard’s the dream, right, Dad?”
He took a moment before answering and scratched thoughtfully at his goatee. “I wouldn’t call it a dream, but it’s done me a world of good.” His
eyes drifted to the row of framed degrees hanging proudly on the opposite wall below the stairs.
Following his gaze, her stomach tied in knots.
“If you aren’t reconsidering, why even look at other schools?”
She nervously adjusted the messy bun in her hair. “It’s just that I got an acceptance letter from Faust today, but I don’t remember ever applying.”
“Well, that is strange. But I’m sure it’s just an oversight.” He picked the laptop up and put his glasses back on, a clear sign the conversation was over.
Eve sat uncomfortably for a moment, trying to decide whether he would believe a word of the rest of the story. Deciding it wasn’t worth trying, she stood up and started back upstairs, her sandwich long forgotten in the midst of thoughts of the impossible.
“Oh, Eve,” her father called as her foot landed on the first stair. “There was another letter for you stuck under the front door. Please tell your friends our mail slot works just fine.”
Her eyes widened and her heart pounded against her rib cage. “Where is it now?”
“I put it on the table in the foyer.”
Without moving, she cautiously slid her eyes toward the table. Of course, another golden envelope.
She rushed over, grabbed it, and stowed it away to her room as if it was stolen goods.
As soon as she closed and locked the door, she pulled the envelope out and stared at the snakes.
“Nicccce to sssee you again.”
“Oh no. We’re not doing this again,” she said as she sat down at the desk and propped the envelope against the monitor of her computer. “Please open.”
“No fffffun,” the snake with the higher pitched voice said.
“That wasn’t even an S sound. Now quit playing.”
With a rhythmic bob of their heads side to side, which Eve could only assume was how snakes showed attitude, they swirled together, and the envelope turned into a white piece of parchment.
Thank you for your decision to attend Faust University.
“I didn’t decide shit,” she said to herself, shaking her head.
The words disappeared, followed by more golden scrawling cursive.
Yes, you did.
Eve gaped at the paper. She couldn’t deny the excitement, the almost irresistible pull, she had at the thought of the mystery and intrigue.
The words soon faded, replaced quickly by an address in Savannah, Georgia.
She scribbled the address on one of her many Post-It notes as she was aware of how this interaction would end.
Sure enough the paper was soon little more than a pile of golden ashes.
Googling the address did no good. The closest thing was an old gentleman’s club founded back in the Civil War.
But while she was already searching the internet, she thought she might as well look at flights to see how much they were. It wasn’t like she was going to actually book one.
There was only one airline available during the timeframe she typed in called Serpentine Air. As she went to click on the link for more information, a pop-up ad covered the majority of the screen, informing her the first flight booked would be free. “That’s literally impossible,” she said rubbing her eyes. Refreshing the page did no good. The offer for the free flight still remained, the pop-up refusing to close.
“Dad,” she called out. “Have you ever heard of Serpentine Airlines?”
“Sure, Evie,” he muttered from the other room, though the tone indicated he was barely paying attention to her. “Very reputable.”
Eve groaned as she looked back to the screen. The fine print seemed fine enough, especially the part that stated it was the official airline of Faust University.
Of course, it was.
It would have been remiss of her not to try to book it and see if it was really free.
So she did. And it was.
She went through the entire process. Not a single request for a credit card and an immediate issuing of her boarding pass.
Before she knew it, she was packing a bag to leave the next day.
Chapter Two
Eve rarely flew, so when she was the first one on the airplane she had no basis for comparison. In fact, she was the only on the airplane. That could be normal, right?
She remembered the smell of baking bread, though she didn’t see any flight attendants nearby who could have possibly been responsible for baking. And when she fell asleep before the plane even took off, she assumed she was just tired from the stress of her impending travel, and thought nothing of it as she relaxed into a seamless slumber as that lingering smell infiltrated her senses.
When she awoke to find herself the last one off the plane, the sky outside the window was dark, and she had to wonder why no one would bother themselves with letting her know they had landed.
Only when she walked through the airport that seemed devoid of life and found a waiting car with a nondescript driver holding a sign that read Ms. Revere- only then did she consider that there might have been something odd about her trip. If not for the same serpentine symbol on the paper the driver held, she would have turned around and attempted to re-board the plane she had just departed.
“Are you from Faust University?” she asked the driver holding the paper, her voice no louder than a whisper, though there was no one around from whom to keep the secret. Perhaps because it seemed as though it was the middle of the night—how long had that flight been, anyway?
The driver only nodded before opening the door to the back seat of the Lincoln town car.
“Alright,” she murmured as she struggled with her bag. She glared at the driver and his lack of assistance, watching as he merely stood there, waiting for her limbs to clear the doorway.
“Thanks,” she murmured once the door was shut and he moved to the front seat. Moving to buckle herself in, there were no seatbelts to be found “So, can you tell me exactly where we’re going? Is it far from here?”
She received nothing but silence as the driver maneuvered the car through what appeared to be a desolate area. “The address I have didn’t give me any information,” she attempted, but again was met with frustrating silence.
“Fine,” she muttered as she sat back in her seat. The windows were so darkly tinted she couldn’t see anything beyond her own reflection. She didn’t know where they were going, and time seemed to slip away as the car drove throughout the Savannah streets.
At least she hoped they were still in Savannah.
The car stopped abruptly and with no warning from the driver, and Eve was knocked into the back of the driver’s seat..
“What kind of a death trap is this?” she called out to the driver through the partition. The answer was an opening of the car’s back door.
If the stiflingly humid air was any indication, they were definitely somewhere close to an ocean, and the sticky warmth told her she’d certainly left Boston behind. Climbing out with her suitcase in tow, she looked around and saw the car had stopped directly in front of the same Civil War-era gentlemen's club she had read about.
“What the hell--” but all she heard was the sound of the car’s engine revving and it was gone by the time she turned around.
“So much for your tip,” she said as she looked back to the building.
Despite the atmosphere, the club appeared almost welcoming, and by the lack of foot traffic, perhaps it wasn’t as popular as she expected a gentlemen’s club to be. In fact, there was no one anywhere near the building, or on the streets surrounding it. Maybe it was later than she thought, and the club had closed for the night, not that she was interested in venturing into a gentlemen’s club during business hours.
“This is some serious Midnight in The Garden of Good and Evil shit, right here,” Eve muttered as she slowly made her way towards the building.
The non-descript brick building gave away no indication of the kinds of activities held within its walls. It could have been any other building in any other town. In fact, the only distinguishi
ng mark was a black and gold engraved plaque beside the door that read, The Oglethorpe Club. Founded 1876.
Eve glanced around at the surrounding area. Low hanging moss-covered trees lined the sidewalk and a large plantation style mansion sat across the street. All of its lights appeared to be on, making it glow like a lighthouse in the dark dingy night, however, no one seemed to be inside. The mansion sat still, as if frozen in time. Directly ahead of her was some sort of park. She could hear what sounded like a fountain, and somewhere in the distance dogs were barking.
She turned back to the building. The facade seemed up-to-date and none of the windows she could see were shattered, so at least it looked as though the club was taken care of and still in use. A historic marker hidden half below the bushes noted its significance in the Civil War, and she normally would have taken the time to investigate it. But the door glowed as if it was beckoning her and she began, almost on instinct, to climb the stairs leading up to the front door. Maybe she’d come back in the morning, when the sun was up, and there was someone around to actually answer her questions--
“Nicccce to see you again, Evangeline.”
She knew that sound, remembered that voice. Slowly, she turned towards the closed door of the club, and two sconces erupted in flame as she climbed the last stair.
On the door were the exact same snakes she had found on her letters. She knew they weren’t there before when she was on the street. There was no way she could have missed them.
“Not again”
“Yessssssss again,” the metallic snakes hissed in unison, their bodies twisting and weaving around each other. “Have you learned your manners this time?”
She swallowed. Either she remained there on the stoop of the club until the sun rose, or she would have to swallow her pride. “Please, will you open?”
“Of courssssse”
With a flash of blinding light she should have expected, the metal snakes disappeared as the door opened inward without any discernible assistance.
“Hello?” she called out as she carefully walked through the door. “Anyone home?”
Academy of Magic Collection Page 27