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

by Martha Carr

  “So you will teach us how to make ourselves invisible,” Jasmine reiterated.

  Calsgrave blinked and cocked her head, her chestnut-colored hair hanging loosely over her shoulders. “First, we start with the basics. Manipulating light to change colors. Come up here and take a piece of paper. One each. Then we’ll start.”

  She gestured at the stack of construction paper piled neatly on the corner of her desk, each loose leaf a different color.

  “Oh, great. It’s a magical art class.”

  Amanda had no idea which boy said it, but most of the students laughed and looked at Calsgrave to see how she’d respond.

  She didn’t. Ms. Calsgrave simply gazed over the faces of her students and sat back in her chair. “We’re here for two and a half hours. If you feel like wasting all our time, be my guest. I was told before taking this job that I’d be teaching a bunch of rough-and-tumble kids who probably wouldn’t make it through the first week of class, let alone an entire four years. So either you can live up to the very low expectations set for you, or you can exceed them. Your choice.”

  Amanda frowned at the woman, who opened a drawer in her desk, pulled out the same black book with the golden pentagram on the cover, and started to read. I bet any other school would fire a teacher for talking to students like that.

  This wasn’t any other school, was it?

  Slowly, the freshmen stood from their desks and shuffled toward the front of the room to grab a piece of construction paper. Ms. Calsgrave didn’t look up once from her book, not even when Mark DeVolos paused with a sheet of blue paper in hand and muttered, “We get scissors and glue sticks too?”

  “Feel free to take it up with Principal Glasket, Mr. DeVolos.”

  “What?”

  “While you’re there, make sure she knows I sent you there with crystal-clear instructions to explain exactly how well-equipped your attitude is. Maybe a little chat with her can help you funnel some of your staggering wit into actual usefulness.”

  Mark stood there with a smirk, staring at the back of her book. “Aren’t you supposed to be—”

  “I said get out!” Ms. Calsgrave pointed at the piece of paper in his hand, and two dime-sized fireballs launched from her finger. The sheet burst into flames.

  “Ah! Are you crazy?” Mark leapt away. “You could have—”

  “I did exactly what I wanted, Mr. DeVolos. I teach illusions, but that doesn’t mean I’m useless in more destructive spells.”

  “You’re sending me to the principal’s office? I was joking—”

  “Principal Glasket is expecting you, and we’ll both know if you choose to screw around and do anything other than instructed. Out.” The whole time, Ms. Calsgrave’s eyes never left the pages of her book.

  “Jeeze.” Shaking out his hand that hadn’t been remotely burned, Mark turned and stormed back to his desk to grab his backpack. “This place is nuts.”

  “It’s better than where you were,” Calsgrave called after him. Then she finally looked up at the next student in line and glanced pointedly at the stack of construction paper. “Keep going. There’s enough for everyone.”

  Amanda watched Mark stomp out of the room, then met Grace’s gaze. The witch grimaced, her eyes wide, and shrugged before they moved up in line.

  If the juvenile delinquents act up, light their materials on fire. Perfect solution.

  At least their Illusions teacher didn’t make them run laps.

  “No, this isn’t art class.” When everyone sat with their construction paper, Ms. Calsgrave stood from her desk and pointed at a poster hanging on the wall behind her. “If you’re going to have a working understanding of how to manipulate light with your illusion charms and spells—and yes, sometimes even wards, like those around this school—you have to understand how colors work. Everything we see with the naked eye falls within the light spectrum. Colors. Find the color of your paper on the color wheel behind me. Whatever lies directly opposite that should match the new color of your paper by the time this class ends. Any questions?”

  “Yeah, aren’t you gonna tell us how to do that?” Corey muttered from his desk on the far side of the room.

  “You’re jumping ahead of me, Mr. Baker. If that’s the only question, we’ll move on.” Calsgrave raised her hand and closed her eyes. “It’s all about finding the energy inside yourself and blending it with your intention. At least, that’s how the simplest illusions start. See in your mind’s eye what’s in front of you, then bring into your awareness what you want that thing to look like. In this case, the different color. Don’t force it. Feel it.”

  “Feel it,” Grace whispered, glancing down at her paper. “How are we supposed to feel a color?”

  “You’re feeling for your inherent magic, Miss Porter,” Calsgrave replied, her eyes still closed. “No incantation or ingredients or reagents for this. Only your ability. I can’t imagine you haven’t used your magic for something in your life. Tap into that, and focus.”

  Amanda stared at the dark red paper centered on her desk and wrinkled her nose. What, she wants us to meditate our way into changing colors?

  “Feel free to close your eyes,” Ms. Calsgrave added. “If it helps you focus. Keep practicing on your own, and I’ll make my rounds to check on your progress.”

  “Is it supposed to be something everyone can see?” Brandon squinted at his paper. “Or only us?”

  “If you were the only one who could see it, Mr. Everly, it wouldn’t be an illusion. A delusion, maybe.”

  A few chuckles rose at that.

  “Now get busy. Anyone who feels like screwing around until that final alarm bell sounds can join Mr. DeVolos and Principal Glasket.” The Illusions teacher returned her full attention to her book and left the students to fend for themselves with their first attempt at manipulating light and color.

  No one said a word as they focused on figuring out how the heck to do the assignment.

  Amanda closed her eyes and tried to focus on visualizing her dark red paper into a bright blue. The heavy sighs, throat-clearing, and fidgeting from the other students around her made focus almost impossible.

  Feel my magic, huh? That would result in me shifting. Not something I wanna do in class. How the heck am I supposed to do this?

  “Purple, purple, purple,” Grace whispered.

  Amanda opened one eye and glanced at her friend. The witch’s eyes were closed, her chin lifted, and both hands hovered over her yellow sheet of paper.

  “Come on, magic.” That was Brandon muttering under his breath although she heard him as well as if he stood behind her and whispered in her ear. “Help me out. I’m more than an ingredient factory for alchemy bombs.”

  Someone let out a long, slow hiss behind her.

  A girl sitting in the front row of desks brushed her hair away from her face and sniffed.

  Can’t even concentrate when everyone’s so loud!

  Amanda opened her eyes, lowered her hands into her lap, clenched her fists, and glared at her paper.

  Just do it already.

  Chapter Nine

  An hour later, Ms. Calsgrave finally returned her book to the open drawer of her desk and stood to make her way around the classroom. With her arms folded, she paused beside each student's desk and didn’t even look at their construction paper. She was looking at their faces.

  “Don’t grit your teeth, Mr. Zendry. Relax.”

  “No, Miss Cameron. If you’re afraid of the paper, how are you supposed to make it do what you want? Sit up straight. Dive into it. Make it do what you say.”

  “Mr. Montoya, I did say pick the opposite shade on the color wheel. Not different shades of green—Whoever’s humming needs to stop right now.”

  A few students chuckled but immediately returned to focusing on their papers and the apparently impossible illusion-casting.

  As the teacher neared Grace’s and Amanda’s desks, Grace let out a long, heavy sigh, her head lowering until her chin practically touched her chest.
Then she sucked in a sharp breath and looked up. “Oh my God. I did it.”

  “What?” Amanda looked sharply up at her friend’s desk, which was now covered by a deep violet sheet instead of the previous canary yellow. “Whoa.”

  “I did it!” Grace sat up straight in her seat and started to raise her hand before she realized Ms. Calsgrave was literally right there. “I changed it! I did the illusion!”

  “Which everyone else is still attempting to do, Miss Porter, so please keep your voice down.” Calsgrave unfolded her arms as she stopped beside Grace’s desk. “Very good.” She tapped the paper with her index finger, and the purple switched immediately back to yellow.

  “Hey—”

  “Now do it again.”

  “Oh…” Grace’s smile faded when she realized the teacher was serious. “Great.”

  Amanda quickly shut her eyes and tried to at least pretend intense focus as Ms. Calsgrave slowly stepped toward her desk next.

  “Which part’s giving you the most trouble, Miss Coulier?”

  Crap. Now I get called out too?

  “Um…all of it?” she muttered, forcing herself not to look up and search the other freshmen’s faces. Not like she was the only one who couldn’t do this, but that didn’t make her feel any better.

  “That’s as good a place to start as any,” Calsgrave replied gently. “So focus on feeling your magic. Remember, it’s about manipulating light first and foremost.”

  “Yeah, I heard that part.” Amanda’s fists clenched even tighter in her lap, and she cleared her throat. “I guess it’s harder than I thought.”

  “No, it’s not. Close your eyes. I didn’t say clench them shut, Miss Coulier. Gently closed. Doing what seems impossible at first will be impossible if you stay all clamped up like that. Take a deep breath. Think of a time when you used your magic for something you’re truly proud of.”

  “I don’t—”

  “You don’t want to tell me you hadn’t done anything useful before you came to this school. That’s not true. You have a memory in mind. Use it.”

  The only thing flashing through Amanda’s mind was the memory of shifting in the back of a white van—leaping out of her clothes and the handcuffs binding her, clamping her jaws down around the throat of the guy who was supposed to be holding her at gunpoint in the back seat and ripping out his jugular before darting into the front to tear off the hand of the asshole in the passenger seat.

  Sure, that helped me then. Not helping now.

  “Feel your way through it, Miss Coulier,” Calsgrave continued. “Use that sensation to visualize—”

  The overhead lights flickered once.

  The teacher looked up and frowned. “Hmm. What are you thinking about?”

  Like I’m gonna tell her in front of everyone. Yeah, right.

  “It’s private,” Amanda muttered.

  “Well, there’s another hurdle to get over. If you’ve stuffed the feeling of your magic so far down inside that you can’t access it now, no wonder this is so hard for you.”

  “I didn’t stuff anything down.”

  “Then go ahead. Tell me what you’re thinking about.”

  Nobody wants to hear about that. I’m not only the girl who got kidnapped… Focus on the stupid color!

  “Miss Coulier?”

  Amanda’s cheeks flushed hot, and the overhead lights brightened with a growing buzz before two of them popped and shattered, raining glass down all over her desk and those immediately around her.

  “What the—”

  “Hey!”

  “Ow! Why is there glass everywhere?”

  The class stared at the broken lightbulbs, then looked at Amanda.

  “Sorry,” she muttered.

  Ms. Calsgrave brushed a pile of glass off the shoulder of her gray cardigan. “Well, that was…something.”

  “Hey, talk about manipulating light, right?” Tommy barked out a laugh. “Amanda took it to a whole new level—”

  She slammed her fists down on the desk and lurched from her chair toward where the half-wizard sat. “I’m trying!”

  Her voice came out as a growling snarl that didn’t quite sound like her, and the tingle of her magic at the start of a shift raced through her body and into her limbs. She cut it off before it could go any farther.

  Tommy shrank away from her, tightly gripping the sides of his desk to keep him from falling sideways out of his chair. “Dude. Your eyes.”

  I gotta get out of here.

  He looked up at the teacher, then at all the students staring at her. “Did you see her eyes? That was the freakiest thing I’ve ever—”

  Amanda stood the rest of the way, her thighs knocking against the desk and almost shoving her back into the connected seat as the legs screeched noisily across the floor. “I can’t do this.”

  “Miss Coulier, that’s not—”

  “I need some air.” She snatched up her backpack and rushed behind her desk to get out of the row.

  Grace reached out for her but was too slow. “Hey, what happened?”

  Amanda ignored her friend and caught sight of Summer at the end of the last row of desks. The new girl widened her eyes and grinned as Amanda stormed past her. “That was cool.”

  Nothing to say to that, either.

  “Miss Coulier, you haven’t been dismissed from this class.”

  “Then I’ll go see Glasket. I get it.”

  “That’s not what I said. You were on the verge of something. Miss Coulier. Amanda.”

  With her face burning hot, Amanda tore open the classroom door and slipped into the hall. Feel my magic? Yeah right. I’ll end up breaking more crap. Probably sliced somebody open with shattered lightbulbs. What’s wrong with me?

  Her feet propelled her quickly down the empty hallways until she reached the double doors and shoved them both open. The muggy heat of late August washed over her like a thick, cloying blanket after the air-conditioned building, but she welcomed it. It felt way more normal than the frigid air inside, and in under a minute, she couldn’t even feel the flush in her cheeks anymore compared to the rest of her body.

  She’ll probably still send me to Principal Glasket anyway. I ran out of there like a little kid.

  Her anger and frustration died as she hurried across the empty central field and the outdoor cafeteria, heading for her favorite spot beneath the mangrove branches at the edge of the swamp. Her backpack hit the grass with a thump, then she sank into the grass and pulled her knees up to her chin.

  That class is stupid anyway. I don’t need an illusion. I’ll keep walking around looking like a human until I lose it and everyone sees what I am.

  Tommy had mentioned her eyes. Probably because they flashed silver in any shifter right before they transformed, and Amanda wasn’t an exception to that rule. She’d thought she could be the exception here at the Academy, that she could fit in like everyone else. But there wasn’t another shifter here, and now the entire freshman class knew she couldn’t cast spells and that something freaky happened with her eyes when she got frustrated.

  Breathe, Amanda. Come on.

  She closed her eyes and rested her chin on her knees.

  If the teachers thought you couldn’t handle this, you wouldn’t be here. They didn’t let you in because Johnny told them to. You want to be here.

  A large bird took flight from somewhere ahead of her in the swamp, rustling the branches with its fluttering wingspan and leaving a wide ring of thick ripples moving across the water toward her. Amanda stared at the water lapping at the bank, swirling with bits of mud and broken reeds floating on the surface.

  Ms. Calsgrave knows what I am. She shouldn’t have pushed me.

  Then Johnny’s words came back to her again with a whole new meaning: “It might not always be cool, kid. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah, I know,” she muttered and looked out over the swamp.

  I still have to try. It won’t be a heart-to-heart chat, but I should at least tell her what happene
d. Later. When I’m not so pissed off.

  Chapter Ten

  Amanda stayed beneath the mangroves for at least the next forty-five minutes until the alarm bell shrieked across campus to signal the end of the last class for the day. It was a little weird that half their days during the week at the Academy ran until 4:30 p.m., but the whole school was a bit odd. At least tomorrow, they only had two classes in the morning and the rest of the day to do whatever they wanted.

  I could stay here until everyone goes to bed. Then I won’t have to deal with all the questions.

  The sound of over a hundred students filtering out of their last class for the day raced toward her across the campus. It was quickly followed by the growing scent of some kind of pasta and meat sauce wafting toward her from the kitchens, and her stomach rumbled fiercely in response.

  No. She had to eat dinner at the very least. She couldn’t run away and hide and ignore everyone for the rest of her four years here. It was only the first day.

  Puffing out a sigh through loose lips, she pushed herself to her feet and grabbed her backpack.

  I have to make sure I don’t lose it again trying to cast illusions. If I even can…

  Amanda made her way back across to the outdoor cafeteria, her mouth watering as the smells reached her already overactive sense of smell. She glanced at the open window on the side of the building and saw Fred standing at the sink. The large, burly, severely hairy pixie in a black apron and hairnet looked up from washing his hands and caught sight of her. With a knowing smile, he shot her a thumbs-up—what she’d come to know as his sign for, “You’re going to love what we’re whipping up next.”