by Elle Adams
The elf looked up at me. “Human,” he growled. “Go away.”
“Sorry, I need to get down here. Were you at the party?” Was it him who Bramble and the others had been talking to?
When he didn’t respond, I carried on climbing down the path. In a sudden bound, he was on his feet. He made it two steps before slipping, and I caught his arm before he fell.
“Don’t touch me,” he growled. “Human filth.”
“If you want to fall to your death, be my guest.” I let go of his arm and edged past him. Guess he wasn’t at the party, then.
The path turned to a rocky slope leading down to the surging waterfall. Nobody could walk down here on unsteady feet, not without falling, but I doubted the elf would let me carry him to safer ground. I used my wings to jump down the last few metres until the ground flattened. On my left-hand side, the magnificent Fairy Falls flowed into a foaming river which joined the lake when it left the cave. Glittering spray drenched me as I walked closer—and a body lay face-down in the water, wearing the cloaked uniform of the academy.
Oh, no.
2
A head popped out of the river before the floating body, and a blue-haired merman looked up at me, his eyes huge and round. “He’s not breathing.”
“Help me get him out—hang on.” I grabbed my wand and levitated the body out of the water. I’d never tried the spell on a human before, but there was no way I could single-handedly carry the dead weight of that waterlogged cloak. It’d be hard to get him up the slope, too, and I had no first aid skills to speak of. Where was Alissa when I needed her?
I flicked my wand and the teenager’s body landed on the bank. His eyes were closed, and while the crash of the falls made it hard to tell if he was breathing or not, my paranormal-sensing power was oddly quiet. It almost always worked in the background, telling me the truth of every person I met. Unless… unless that person was dead.
“Hey!” I shouted up the hill. “Hey! Someone help!”
The merman leaned over the bank and flicked his tail anxiously. “I’m sorry, but I think he’s dead.”
“Did you find him here?” I asked. “Was he alone?”
“I did,” he said, his eyes downcast. “He was by the falls. I didn’t see anyone else around.”
“I’ll get him back to the others.”
Crossing my fingers that my magical skills didn’t fail, I flicked my wand and the student’s body floated uphill. Glad of my wings, I flew close behind him, trying to hold my wand hand steady—it would not help the situation if my levitation spell broke. To my relief, the drunken elf seemed to have disappeared into the woods.
Nathan appeared at the top of the slope to meet me. “Blair?”
“I need a hand,” I said, my wand hand trembling with the effort of holding it still.
“I’ve got him.” Nathan caught the wizard’s body in his arms. “He’s not breathing.”
“I know.” I hurried up the bank to join him. The students had gathered at the foot of the hill, drawn by the noise. “He was in the water by the falls—a merman found him.”
We climbed downhill to meet the students and Nathan laid the body down. The students gathered closer, all wearing shocked expressions. Wands flashed, voices shouted, and I squeezed through the crowd to Nathan’s side. “I’m guessing he drowned, but I’m no expert. Is there a healer around?”
“I’m a healer,” said a female teenage witch with dark skin and braided hair. Tears gleamed in her eyes. “He’s dead. I don’t understand why he went down to the falls alone.”
“Was he alone, though?” I asked, scanning the crowd. “Didn’t someone say they saw him arguing with another student?”
“I don’t know,” said the girl, tears spilling over. “None of us would have let him drown.”
“It wasn’t an accident,” said a tall teenage boy with dreadlocks. “See those sirens over there? Their magic can lure people into the water.”
“They’re miles off,” the girl protested. “He didn’t disappear that long ago.”
“When was the last time you saw him?” Nathan asked.
“Ten minutes,” one of the students said.
“Twenty.”
“I haven’t seen him for at least an hour.”
Their voices clashed—then a bang and a flash of light went off like a firecracker and everyone jumped. A tall blond witch approached the students: Helen, one of the teachers at the academy. The crowd parted to let her through, her long coal-black cloak swirling around her ankles and embossed with the academy’s insignia.
“How did this happen?” she asked.
More voices rose, drowning one another out as everyone tried to explain at the same time. Another flash ignited as Helen waved her wand over the body, and the voices faded to murmurs.
Helen tried several spells on the body before retreating, talking into her phone. Probably calling the police, if nobody had already done it.
I turned to Nathan. “I’m not sure there’s anything we can do here.”
“Blair?” Helen spotted me and made her way over. “They’re saying you found his body.”
“A merman found him under the falls,” I told her. “I think he must have fallen into the river there and drowned.”
She nodded, her mouth turning down at the corners. “Those falls are treacherous if you’re not careful. The police are on their way.”
And that’s my cue to leave. I was not the head of the police’s favourite person, let’s put it that way. Nathan was his equal, technically, but he was head of town security, not law enforcement. Nobody but Steve the grumpy gargoyle wanted that job.
Considering Steve’s usual approach to a crisis, he’d throw the blame at the wrong person if it turned out Terrence’s death wasn’t an accident. I’d had a recent stint in a cell and had no desire to repeat the experience.
“Did you see anyone else in the water?” asked Helen.
“There was nobody there.” Except for a drunken elf, that is. And Bramble and the others, but they were nowhere near the falls and would have no reason to push a human into the water. Right?
Nope. I definitely don’t want to get involved in this.
Nathan cleared his throat. “I’ll walk you home,” he said. “Before Steve gets here.”
“Won’t he want to talk to you?”
He shook his head. “I’m not on duty. If he finds out you found the body… you don’t want him to know that, right?”
“No, but I saw a few elves on the path by the falls. Right near where I found the body. They don’t normally come this close to the lake, do they?”
He frowned. “Not to my knowledge, no.”
“We can walk back through the woods,” I said. “Maybe one of them saw what happened.”
“You need an invitation to go to their territory,” he reminded me.
“Yeah, but I don’t plan on annoying the king again,” I said. “Still, it’s worth a look.”
The elf king and I were acquaintances, thanks to his brief meeting with my father, but I wouldn’t call us friends. If I asked what his people had been doing by the lake, he’d tell me it was none of my business. Who even knew why the elves did anything?
Nathan and I walked back through the woods, but no elves materialised. We spotted several gargoyles flying overhead when we emerged from the trees, their huge wings spread wide. Gargoyles formed the entirety of Fairy Falls’s law enforcement and a fair portion of the town’s security, too, though the force had recently expanded to include a larger security team led by Nathan himself. I had an inkling they’d end up calling him to patrol by the lake tonight.
“I hope it was an accident,” I muttered as we reached the end of my road. “As sad as it is, we don’t need any more drama. Are you sure your family aren’t bringing more hunters with them?”
“Positive,” he said. “They’re staying from tomorrow until the weekend. I hope that’s okay, Blair.”
“Sure,” I said. He wanted me to meet his family. I
f I put the hunter issue aside, that must mean a new step in our relationship, right? It wasn’t like I had a family for him to meet. Except for my foster parents, but they were off water-skiing in Australia and had no idea the paranormal world even existed. “I have a magic lesson tomorrow, but I should be free in the evening.”
“We’ll work something out.” He kissed me goodbye, and we parted ways.
This really is a new step. The idea of meeting Nathan’s family was possibly scarier than the idea of meeting more of the hunters. The hunters I’d met, with the exception of their terrifying leader Inquisitor Hare, had been bumbling idiots. Nathan had used the same descriptor for his siblings once before, and while I’d mentally prepared for them not to like me, I hadn’t expected to meet them in person so soon.
I entered the huge manor house which had become my new home and walked down the hallway, unlocking the door on the right that led to the ground-floor flat I shared with Alissa, Madame Grey’s granddaughter.
“Hey, Blair,” said Alissa, as I walked in. She lay on the sofa, stroking Roald, her familiar. “You look kinda frazzled.”
“Two reasons,” I said. “Firstly, one of the students from the academy drowned in the lake.”
Her face fell. “Really? Oh, no.”
I sat down in the armchair. “Yeah, he fell into the river by the falls. I had to leave before the police showed up, since I’m the one who found the body.”
“Oh, Blair.” She sighed. “As long as it was just an accident this time…”
“I hope so, because I’m meeting Nathan’s family in a day or two,” I said. “I don’t think they want to meet me from the other side of a prison cell door.”
Her eyes popped out. “His family—the hunters?”
“It’s just a family visit, that’s all.” I hope. “He said they’re coming tomorrow and staying all week.”
“Wow,” she said. “Have you even been to Nathan’s place yet?”
“No,” I said. “He’s been working all summer.” And with his family around all week, I suspected we wouldn’t get another date for a while.
Sky walked over to me and rubbed against my legs. I stroked him behind the ears. Sky wasn’t my familiar, more my adopted fairy cat partner. He was a little black cat with one white paw, one blue eye and one grey.
“Want to meet Nathan’s family?” I asked him. “He has three cats. Maybe you’ll get along.”
I didn’t know how much Sky could actually understand of what I said, but he purred. I was also less than certain that anyone with ties to the hunters had ‘meet a weird fairy cat’ on their bucket list, but you never knew.
After work the next day, I went straight to my magic lesson once I’d dropped off my work gear at home. Since there were a lot of summer school classes on, I had lessons whenever Rita could fit me in and often ended up supervising Rebecca, the town’s newest witch-in-training. Rebecca Dailey had developed her magical skills later than most, partly due to her scheming, manipulative mother, but her powerful ability to alter people’s personalities meant she’d been put in accelerated training. Like me. Except I was twenty-five, not eleven.
I had to admit I’d actually enjoyed helping Rebecca with magic. It was refreshing to meet someone with less experience than I did, if nothing else. But she wasn’t in the classroom when I got there. Instead, Rita waited for me, her curly red hair standing on end and a harassed expression on her face.
“I just had to supervise sixty tween witches and wizards learning to mount broomsticks for the first time,” she said in explanation. “Helen usually does that, but she’s been at the police office for most of the day.”
“Yikes.” I was glad that wasn’t on the curriculum for me. “Oh—she was giving a statement on Terrence’s death, right?”
“Yes. Why, you weren’t there, were you?”
“Nathan and I were by the lake yesterday,” I explained. “The student drowned.”
“So it seems,” she said. “Helen was dealing with Steve, which left me to deal with her pupils. When I agreed to it, I didn’t know she’d offered to teach the entire upcoming class of academy students basic broomstick lessons.”
“Oh, dear.” I couldn’t picture Rita on a broomstick. The red-haired witch with all her bangles and accessories had always struck me as the sort of person who wanted both feet planted firmly on the ground.
“Now, for your progress,” she said. “Madame Grey thinks you’re ready to take the Grade Three theory exam at the end of the month. You’re skipping a grade, but we’ve covered enough material that there shouldn’t be any surprises. It’s best to fit in your exams before the academy students go back to school. Is that okay?”
“Sounds good,” I said. “And the practical exam? There’s one of those, right?”
“There is,” she said. “Grade Two requires a basic potions exam and another to test your use of spells. However, if you want to advance to Grade Three, you’ll also need to pass at least one ‘other’ skill. I suggested to Helen that you might like to take one of her beginner’s broomstick lessons.”
Ack. Looks like I spoke too soon. “But I have wings,” I said. “And Seven Millimetre Boots. Isn’t that enough?”
“Blair, you never know when you’re going to need a particular skill,” she said sternly. “If you want to advance to Grade Three, you’ll need to know how to mount and dismount a broom at a minimum. It’s that or sign up to a different extracurricular class with the other students at your level.”
I grimaced. If I struggled to keep up with a curriculum designed for six-year-olds, I’d be seriously questioning whether I belonged among witches. Even if I was only half of one.
“I’ll speak to Helen. I didn’t know she was in charge of that department.” I knew she worked at the academy, but she volunteered with all kinds of extracurriculars, too. “You know I can barely stay upright with two feet on the ground, though.”
“Blair, I’m not asking you to join the High Fliers. You’ll do fine.”
I hope. So much for dodging Helen’s rigorous attempts to sign me up to help out at the academy’s Sky Hopper contest. My only experience with brooms so far had involved me trying to wrestle Alissa off the end of one after a personality-altering spell had caused her to re-join the High Fliers. I’d nearly drowned both of us in the lake in the process. Not my finest hour. Putting me in charge of supervising small children on brooms was like asking my cat to behave at a dinner party.
“Good,” said Rita. “You’re to meet Helen after your lesson. Now, turn to Chapter Four.”
Once my theory lesson was over, I left the classroom and went looking for Helen. It wasn’t hard to find her, sitting in an empty room surrounded by books. When she wasn’t running extracurriculars, she was engaging in night classes of her own. Helen made the word ‘overachiever’ look like an understatement.
The blond witch looked up from her stack of textbooks. “Blair! It’s so good to see you.”
“Ah, Rita sent me to find you,” I said, before she tried to rope me into playing classroom assistant to a bunch of wand-wielding teenagers. “She said you’d be able to fit me into a beginner’s broomstick lesson.”
“Oh!” Her whole face lit up. “You want to learn? I can definitely do that for you. There aren’t any beginner’s classes starting this week, but if it’s just the basics, I can teach you myself.”
“Oh, really?” I asked. “I don’t want to give you too much trouble.”
“It’s no trouble,” she said. “I enjoy helping new fliers. Judging and supervising games is fun, but there’s something special about seeing someone take to the skies for the first time. You’ll be able to fly… that opens a lot of doors for you.”
“Not many doors in the sky,” I said. “Uh, anyway, I guess it won’t hurt to know how to mount a broom if I ever need to.” I couldn’t imagine I would, but if it took humiliating myself on a broom to become a full-fledged witch, I’d do it.
“Yes, you’ll be able to play referee at our games!
” she said. “We’re always looking for volunteers.”
“Uh… best see if I can actually mount a broomstick first,” I said quickly. “If I can’t get off the ground, I won’t be much use as a referee.”
She laughed. “I’m sure you’ll be a natural. Want to start now? I have a free hour before dinner. Unless you have a date with Nathan?”
“Ah, no, I don’t,” I said. “He’s busy. I guess we should get it over with… er, I mean, no time like the present, right?”
Despite my reservations, there wouldn’t be anyone else in classes at this time. No witnesses to see me make a fool of myself. Perfect.
“Good. The broomsticks are in the storeroom. I have a spare key. Can’t have students stealing those brooms and zipping around town, can we?”
Since Alissa had stolen one while under the influence of Rebecca’s personality-altering spell, locking the brooms up was probably the best idea. Granted, it hadn’t stopped the academy students’ drunken stunts at the lake yesterday.
Helen left the classroom and we made our way to the storeroom. I envied her energy. After a long day at work and an advanced theory class, I was more in the mood for a nap than a broomstick lesson. On the other hand, I’d come to enjoy flitting around using my fairy wings. A broom couldn’t be that different, right?
“The back garden will be perfect,” she said, passing me a broom. “There’s plenty of space.”
We carried the broomsticks out through the back doors of the witches’ headquarters. A spacious lawn filled the garden, which should hopefully make for a soft landing if I fell off. I checked my wand was within easy reach before taking my position beside the broomstick.