Shifter In The Swamp (Academy of Necessary Magic Book 1)

by Martha Carr

  Then he took off toward the squat, square building on the southeast edge of campus, practically marching the whole way.

  Amanda looked up at the back of Corey’s head three kids in front of her, then turned over her shoulder to whisper to Grace, “Isn’t he eighteen?”

  “I think so. Or almost, anyway.” The blonde witch shook her head. “As I said, we all got tested.”

  “Yeah, and Coulier got to skip a few grades too,” Jackson added, peering over Grace’s shoulder. “When was the last time you were in school?”

  “Beginning of this year.” Amanda faced forward again and followed the line of freshmen following Mr. Petrov. She’d finished seventh grade in New York in May, only three and a half months ago. Back when her life had been as normal as it could have been for a shifter girl and her shifter family. Back when she’d thought it would stay that way forever.

  Don’t get all sappy, Amanda. They’re gone, and nothing’s ever gonna change that. Time to be someone else now.

  She grabbed the straps of her mostly empty backpack and squeezed tightly, steeling herself to focus on classes and not the past she couldn’t change. Besides, things hadn’t turned out as badly as they could’ve—because of Johnny and Lisa, and now because she had the Academy.

  When the freshmen rounded the corner of the low building Mr. Petrov led them behind, they gazed up at a huge obstacle course constructed of wooden beams, ropes, steel panels, and a few gadgets bolted at various heights.

  “Sweet.” Jackson bobbed his head and gazed at the ropes and ladders and precarious-looking platforms. “We get a playground.”

  “Don’t get stupid with me, Mr. Pris,” Petrov barked. “All you hoodlums had your fun running around LA like it was your playground, but this isn’t baby school anymore. This is the Academy. Every one of you is gonna master this course by the time you finish your first year here.”

  A small, mousy girl standing at the front of the group timidly raised her hand.

  Petrov glanced at her. “What?”

  “What happens if we don’t?”

  “Christ, and we’re already asking the dumb questions.” Petrov rolled his eyes, and the girl dropped her hand immediately. “If you whiny little punks fail my class, you’re starting over. Anything else anybody wants to waste our time with, or can we get started?”

  “See?” Alex leaned toward Amanda with his eyebrow barely raised. “Lieutenant.”

  “Apparently.” Part of her had expected Mr. Petrov’s rough orders and semi-military mannerisms to fade a little once classes started, but that obviously wasn’t happening. Johnny did call them drill sergeants instead of teachers. Does the military even have magicals?

  “Great.” Mr. Petrov folded his arms and nodded toward the obstacle course. “Now that you’re all finally quiet, listen up. You’re gonna run this course over and over again until you—”

  He stopped when his gaze landed on the building behind the freshman class. When he just kept staring, some of the kids turned to look over their shoulders, Amanda included.

  Summer rounded the corner to join them, scowling like this was the last place she wanted to be. She glanced at Amanda, then stared straight ahead and folded her arms.

  “Who the hell are you?” Petrov barked.

  “Summer.”

  “Last name, kid. Don’t make me tell you to speak up.”

  “Flannerty.” Summer looked up at the teacher and shrugged.

  “Why the hell are you showing up late to class, Flannerty? You trying to ruin the first day for everyone?”

  “I’m not supposed to be here.”

  “Then why are you?” When the new girl didn’t answer, Mr. Petrov looked her over and rubbed his chin. “That’s right. You’re the new kid.” He snapped his fingers and waved her forward. “They gave you a schedule, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hand it over.”

  Summer glared at him. “I didn’t bring it.”

  “Look at you. Already off to a winning start.” The man folded his arms. “What’s your color?”

  “Green.”

  “Then you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be. Fall in with the rest of the class.”

  The girl’s fists clenched at her sides. “I’m not a freshman. I spent a whole year at—”

  “I don’t give a slime-toad’s fart where you’ve been or what you were doing before you came here, Flannerty. If your color’s green, you’re a freshman at this school. Fall in line.”

  Everyone was staring at the new girl with black hair and a bitter grimace drawing her lips tightly together. Amanda almost wanted to go to her and say it was okay, that Corey was eighteen and he’d still only tested in at this grade, that things were different at the Academy than anywhere else.

  That’s why she was running around with Candace this morning. They all assumed she’d be in the sophomore class. Did they put her with us because she blew up her old school?

  When Summer shuffled toward the rest of the freshman, her jaw visibly clenching and unclenching, Amanda decided to stay where she was. She had a feeling the new girl wouldn’t want an eager twelve-year-old freshman trying to make her feel better.

  She’d tell me to take my pity somewhere else. I need to focus on myself.

  Jackson gently nudged her in the back and muttered, “Did you know they’d lumped her with us?”

  Amanda shook her head.

  “If you newbies don’t quit making noise,” Petrov barked, “you’ll never pass this class. So listen up, ’cause I’m only gonna say this once. Whatever you did before coming to this school, forget about it. That has nothing to do with why you’re here. You’re here because every single one of you is magically talented in one way or another. That means some of you will find my class easy, and some of you will have to push yourselves to the edge of your physical limits and your sanity to get through.”

  He paced back and forth in front of the freshmen with his hands clasped behind his back, scrutinizing each face as he passed. “Since the traditional route every other kid on this damn planet takes obviously isn’t for you, you’re at the Academy of Necessary Magic. Where we get to teach you how to channel your talents in a way that will be more useful to you. Not to mention the rest of society.”

  “When do we get to start fighting?” Tommy jerked his chin up at the teacher with a smirk.

  “You don’t, Brunsen,” Petrov barked. “Not yet.”

  “It’s combat training—”

  “None of you are ready to get to the actual combat until you know the basics!” Spit flew from the teacher’s lips as he shouted, then he wiped his mouth with the back of a hand and straightened. “This isn’t about learning how to lose your shit and beat people up because you feel like it. It isn’t about how much damage you can inflict in a fight, whether or not you’re the one who starts it. It’s about physical control! Of your body. Then your mind. Then your magic. If any of you get that far, then we’ll work on the fighting part. That starts with defensive martial arts, but none of you little twerps are even remotely ready to start there. First, you need to warm up.”

  Petrov pointed at the obstacle course. “You’re gonna run this course ’til you can’t stand on your two feet. We’ll see who has the chops to make it through. If you can’t, you won’t be in Combat Training for the rest of the semester. You’ll be in Obstacle Course Running until you do make it. Understood?”

  No one said a word.

  Amanda stared up at the ropes and wooden platforms of the course and narrowed her eyes.

  Doesn’t look that hard.

  “Now, I’m only gonna do this once, so if you’re not paying attention, don’t expect me to repeat the demonstration. You’ll have to figure it out on your own.” Petrov glanced over the two dozen faces staring back at him, then flicked a hand in the air. A yellow light burst from his fingers then grew beside him, morphing into a square window of light in the air. Red numbers appeared in the window: 00:00:00.

  He turned and h
eaded toward the rope ladder at the start of the obstacle course. Then he snapped his fingers and took off at incredible speed toward the ladder.

  The magical timer floating in front of the freshman class started, counting up the seconds as Mr. Petrov hauled himself up the ladder and climbed.

  Jackson snorted. “Like we can’t figure out how to climb up onto a—”

  A loud pop sounded from one of the gadgets bolted to the top of the wooden pole on the other side of the rope ladder. The gadget’s head swiveled, then an orange orb launched from it and headed straight for Petrov. The wizard summoned a shield of white light in front of his face to deflect the attack, then scrambled up onto the platform and leapt up to grab the metal bars in front of him and swung across by his hands, bar after bar.

  Two more gadgets activated and launched different-colored attacks at him, and he avoided each with either a quick evasive maneuver or a defensive spell.

  “Yeah. A playground.” Grace shot Jackson a sidelong glance and raised her eyebrows. “When was the last time you got attacked by the monkey bars?”

  The wizard ruffled his hair and grimaced. “Crap.”

  Chapter Five

  Mr. Petrov completed the course with a leap and a forward flip in the air. When he landed steadily with both feet planted firmly in the grass, the last blast from the magically-rigged weapons on the obstacle course crashed into the ground two inches behind his black boots. Then he stood, snapped his fingers, and rolled his shoulders back. The magical timer stopped at 02:31:28.

  The training field was utterly silent.

  “That,” he barked, pointing at the timer, “is the record you have to beat before you can move on to anything else. If you fall off, you start at the beginning. If you get hit by any of those fun little training cannons, you start at the beginning. If you freeze and think you can’t finish the course, you’ll either fall off or get hit, and you start at the beginning. Anyone refuses to jump in with both feet, and you’ll run laps around this course for the rest of the class. That’s two and a half hours, just so we’re clear. When you finish this course, you won’t want to start again, but trust me. Every single one of you will. It’s up to you how long you’re willing to keep screwing around before you get it right.”

  He stopped in front of the wide-eyed freshmen and raised his eyebrows. “What are you waiting for? Form a line!”

  The kids scrambled to do as told, most of them trying to find a spot toward the end of the line or at least the middle.

  “What—hey!” Tommy spun and grabbed Evan Hutchinson’s shoulders as they struggled with each other to push the other one to the front of the line. “Dude, you can’t—”

  “I’m not going first,” Evan hissed. “And you owe me after last week.”

  “Last week had nothing to do with—”

  “You’re up, Brunsen!” Mr. Petrov barked and snapped his fingers. The magical timer blinked, and the numbers reset to zero.

  Tommy froze at the front of the line, his back rigid, and stared at the obstacle course with a grimace.

  “You wanna get down to the fighting? Go ahead and prove you’re ready.” Petrov snapped his fingers again. “Clock’s ticking, Brunsen. Go!”

  With a groan, Tommy raced off toward the rope ladder and started to climb.

  In the line of anxiously waiting students, Grace turned to look at Amanda with wide eyes. “This is not what I expected.”

  “Yeah, me neither.” Amanda shrugged. “You think you can do it?”

  “I have no clue.” The witch glanced at Mr. Petrov, then shook her head. “It’s better than running laps for two and a half hours.”

  Tommy shouted in surprise when a blue orb crashed into him on the top of the first platform. The spell whisked him up off the obstacle course, flung him to the side, then turned him upside down and dropped him onto the grass. He landed with a thump and a groan.

  “Back of the line, Brunsen,” Petrov shouted. “Hutchinson, you’re up!”

  Behind Amanda, Jackson cleared his throat. “Better than running laps? Speak for yourself.”

  None of the freshman class made it through the obstacle course before the blaring alarm cut across campus to signal the fifteen-minute break before Block Two. Even Corey, who was bigger and stronger and older, got tossed off two-thirds of the way through. Most of the kids barely got past the monkey bars. Jackson had opted for running laps although Petrov had failed to tell them beforehand that if they chose that, they’d be chased around by another levitating gadget that spewed painful low-level shocks if they slowed or stopped to catch their breath.

  Amanda had finished almost three-quarters of the obstacle course before finally hitting the grass. That was because she’d lost her footing on the teetering seesaw of a platform to avoid one of the magical blasts.

  She could have shifted right then and there to regain her balance, but she didn’t. So she’d landed awkwardly on her backside and now tried hard not to rub it in front of everyone as the alarm blared and the freshmen class let out a collective sigh of relief.

  “All right!” Mr. Petrov shouted. “That was an impressively pitiful display for the first day. If any of you start seeing double or can’t feel your extremities, wait ’til the end of Block Two before you run to the med ward. Most of the effects wear off in an hour. I expect a hell of a better attempt from all of you on Wednesday. Now get out.”

  Rubbing their sore bodies, groaning, and covered in sweat, the freshmen headed around the training building toward the central field, where all the grades would essentially trade places and follow the other teachers to their next class.

  Jackson panted as he swiped at the sweat pouring down his forehead and flicked it aside when Grace and Amanda caught up to him. “Totally not fair…”

  “Why? ’Cause you tried to take the easy way out?” Grace flexed her hand over and over. An orange orb had hit her and cramped the muscle until she’d had to let go of the monkey bars.

  “Let me tell you something.” He pointed at her. “That was not the easy way out.”

  “Obviously.” Alex swept his long brown hair back into a new ponytail and quickly retied it. “You gonna try the course next time?”

  Jackson glared at him. “I…have no idea. Surprised you didn’t get some kinda prize, though, Coulier.”

  “What?” Amanda laughed weakly and peeled her sticky, sweaty tank top away from her skin. “I didn’t finish, either.”

  “Yeah, but you made it farther than anyone else.” Grace shot her an encouraging smile despite her deeply flushed cheeks. “That was pretty cool.”

  “No idea how you managed to do that.” Jackson puffed out an exhausted sigh and shook his head. “You some kinda crazy acrobat or something?”

  “No.” Amanda stared straight ahead and saw Summer marching furiously away from them toward the central field. “I…run a lot, and I’ve done a lot of hunting—”

  “Hunting!” Jackson barked out a laugh. “How does that help?”

  “You know, chasing down an animal, kind of…predicting where it’s gonna go next. Stuff like that, I guess.” She wrinkled her nose and shrugged. Sure. Chalk it up to hunting with Johnny and two coonhounds. Not to the fact that I’m a shifter.

  “Where did you go hunting?” Alex muttered.

  “Here. In the swamp.”

  All three of her friends burst out laughing. Jackson stopped abruptly and bent over to prop his hands on his thighs and catch his breath.

  “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?” Grace playfully shoulder-checked the younger girl.

  Amanda let out an uneasy chuckle. “Yeah. I guess.”

  “Hey,” Jackson called after them, still winded. “Wait up.”

  “How about you hurry up?” Alex said without turning around.

  “You know what—” The wizard jogged to catch up with them and wiped more sweat off his forehead. “You know what I don’t get?”

  “Everything?”

  Jackson punched Alex in the shoulder, but
it was a weak attempt. “Why the heck do they have us in Combat Training first thing in the morning? ’Cause now all I want is to jam a whole pizza in my face and take a nap.”

  Grace snorted. “So your bacon can’t touch your eggs, but a pizza’s okay?”

  “Hey, everything’s supposed to touch on a pizza—” A yawn interrupted him, and he shook his head. “The rest of the day’s gonna suck.”

  “I think that’s the point.” Amanda finally let herself rub her still-sore backside for a moment before readjusting the straps of her backpack. “I think you’re right, though. What’s our next class?”

  “Um…Alchemy, I think.” Grace pulled her neatly folded schedule out of her pocket and glanced at it. “Yep.”

  “Mrs. Zimmer is shooting up green sparks now.” Jackson pointed with a limp finger toward the tall brunette woman with her hair braided down her back. “I seriously hope she doesn’t make us run another obstacle course.”

  “With alchemy?” Grace shoved the schedule back into her pocket and shot him a curious frown. “I’d love to know what that’s supposed to look like.”

  “How should I know? I’m saying what I don’t want.”

  Alex cleared his throat. “She’s still married, right?”

  Amanda and the other two turned to look at the half-Wood Elf, who stared straight ahead at the teacher for their next class.

  “Dude, are you still on that?”

  Alex shrugged. “Just checking.”

  “She brought her husband out here with her.” Grace lowered her voice as they passed the students from other grades milling across the central field to get to their next teachers. “I’m pretty sure that means they’re still married and in this together.”

  “Yeah, but he doesn’t do anything.” The half-Wood Elf peeled strands of long hair away from his sweaty neck. “You never know. Teaching a bunch of kids some crazy magical stuff could put a strain on anybody.”

  “You’re unbelievable.”

  Amanda shot him a small, knowing smile. “You have a crush on Mrs. Zimmer?”