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

by Martha Carr

  “That’s the worst part for you?” Amanda rolled her shoulders back and tried to draw a deep breath of the cool pre-dawn air that would only get hotter as the day progressed.

  “No, the worst part was that damn alarm and all the flashing lights.” Summer tossed a hand toward the girls’ dorm. “I swear, they’re using military torture tactics on us. Sleep-deprivation. I bet the waterboarding’s next. Did you know they could set that stupid thing off in our rooms?”

  “Nope. First time I’ve been caught blowing up school property, so…”

  “Oh, come on. I got you cleared of that in two seconds. You can’t use that anymore.”

  “Yeah, but I’m still here with you.”

  “Hey, I didn’t make you go all wolfy to run around in the swamp. That was all you. So was trying to stop me and take over what was supposed to be my private business.”

  “I tried to stop you from setting off a bomb.”

  Summer snorted and turned to look down at the shorter girl, her upper lip curling in irritation. “How’d you know I was there?”

  Amanda had to look away before she answered. “I caught your scent.”

  “Wow. You know, I had a feeling you were stalking me, but now you confirmed it.”

  “It doesn’t work like that, and you know it.”

  “Honestly, I have no idea how shifters work. Never seen one up close and personal before you.”

  Amanda rolled her eyes. “Stop talking about me like I’m some kinda circus freak.”

  “Well, maybe if you stopped sneaking around like some kinda circus freak, there wouldn’t be so much hype.”

  “Seriously.” She turned to glare up at the older girl. “This is—”

  The door to the combat building burst open and clanged against the outer wall.

  “Look alive, ladies,” Mr. Petrov barked as he lugged a cart outside after him. “This isn’t recess, and it sure as hell isn’t gossip time. I’m as happy to be up this early coddling the two of you as you are to be standing here in my arena. Although I’m pretty sure you won’t feel any better about it by the end of the weekend.”

  Summer groaned. “The whole weekend?”

  “Twelve hours each day, Miss Flannerty.” Petrov dropped the wagon’s handle and dusted off his hands. “If I were in charge, I’d have you two on repair duty for a week. This was the compromise with Principal Glasket. So this is what you get. Still plenty of a lesson to be learned this way.”

  “On repairs?” Amanda glanced at the buckets and the ends of long handles sticking out of the wagon.

  “No. I don’t care who you are or where you’ve been. There’s no amount of useful repair work to get done in only two days.” Petrov grabbed one of the wooden handles and yanked the tool out of the wagon to reveal a crusty-looking mop head. His beady eyes glinted as he grinned viciously at them. “You two get to clean the hell out of this place. Human-style. Better get to work.”

  The mop sailed through the air and landed in the grass at Amanda’s feet with a thud. She grimaced and cocked her head. “What are we cleaning?”

  “As much as you can in a twelve-hour shift. Outbuildings first. Don’t want you two running off to the dorms thinking you can sneak out from under my gaze. Start right here. Kitchen and refectory are next. I doubt you’ll get farther than that today.”

  Summer folded her arms. “We’re not allowed in the kitchen.”

  “I didn’t say in, did I?” Petrov pointed at the wall of the training building, and a bright shard of yellow light bloomed from his finger. When he slowly lowered it like a claw, the yellow light turned like a blade against the concrete and shaved off a thick layer of dirt that crumbled into the grass. What lay behind it was a lot brighter—almost white compared to the rest of the building. “I want these walls to look like that top to bottom. Don’t forget the gutters.”

  “We can’t clean the walls with a mop,” Amanda muttered.

  “You can clean them with your tongue for all I care, as long as you get the job done. I’d get hopping if I were you. You’ll get an extra weekend of detention like this for every square foot that isn’t crisp and clean by the end of your…shift.” Petrov waggled his eyebrows at them and turned toward the training building's open door, leaving it wide open. The scrape of metal chair legs across the concrete floor echoed after him, then he appeared in the doorway with the chair in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other. He sat, sipped his coffee, and widened his eyes at the two freshmen gaping back at him. “That wasn’t a joke.”

  “Damnit.” Summer shot Amanda a scathing glance and stomped toward the wagon.

  Pressing her lips together, Amanda followed the other girl, distracted by the first chirps of the birds waking up as black sky gave way to the blue-gray right before dawn. I can’t believe this is happening.

  Summer rifled through the supplies in the wagon, then shouted, “I don’t see any gloves.”

  “No gloves. No smocks,” Petrov called from inside. “That’s the deal.”

  “Oh, great. If we don’t die from exhaustion or poison by chemical fumes, we’ll get our skin burned off.” Summer snatched up a wire-bristled scrub brush and a gallon jug of bleach. “What the hell are we supposed to use the Pine-Sol for?”

  “I don’t know.” Amanda picked up some kind of porous mitt with bristles on the palm and wrinkled her nose. “To make it smell good after?”

  The other girl snorted. “Have you ever actually smelled that stuff? It’s the exact opposite of fresh.”

  Amanda shrugged. “So what goes first?”

  “What, you’ve never cleaned a house before?” Summer was clearly joking, but when she looked up at the younger girl, a light of realization flickered behind her eyes before she glanced at the open door of the training building and lowered her voice. “Wait, seriously?”

  “I mean, I…used to clean my room.”

  “Oh, yeah. Real tough life, shifter girl.” Summer lugged the bleach and the wire brush toward the wall. “You have a maid do your laundry and dusting too?”

  Amanda sniffed and grabbed an unlabeled gallon jug. If it was in the bucket, it had to be some sort of cleaning solution. I’m not talking about my home life before it…disappeared.

  “Wow.” The bleach thumped onto the grass, and Summer turned to stare at the younger girl. “Your silence is pretty condemning; you know that?”

  “Can we get to the cleaning part so we can be done with this? I really don’t want to keep adding weekends because you were too busy asking personal questions.”

  “Relax. He wasn’t serious about that.”

  Petrov cleared his throat. “Wanna bet?”

  “Shit.” Summer unscrewed the lid of the bleach, tentatively sniffed from a foot above the opening, and jerked her head away. “Ugh. That’s way stronger than I remember. Don’t let it touch you.”

  Amanda had already sidled down the wall to put distance between herself and the acrid stench of bleach and something else that didn’t quite smell like bleach. “No problem.”

  She opened her jug, which didn’t smell nearly as strong, and poured a thin stream of it onto the wall. A thick river of grime washed away beneath the pour. “Wow. How much you wanna bet he stayed up all night throwing dirt on the walls so we’d have something to do?”

  “Nah. Half an hour tops.” Summer poured the bleach and started scrubbing, then nodded toward the open door blocking Mr. Petrov from view. “He gets to use magic all he wants. We don’t.”

  Amanda forced herself to breathe through her mouth only and started scrubbing. Not like I could use magic anyway. I can’t even envision a different-colored piece of paper.

  Half an hour later, at least thirty students who’d gotten up early on a Saturday to show up for Louper tryouts crowded the training arena. Apparently, Summer was the only kid here who had a clue what the game entailed, and her explanation had done nothing to inform the Academy’s upperclassmen all vying for a spot on the team.

  Amanda jumped when Mr. LeFor’s voic
e rang out from beside the obstacle course. “All right, listen up. You’re here to try out for the Louper team. If you don’t already know what it is, forget everything you think you know about high school sports.”

  “We get to tackle the other team, right?” one bulky senior shouted, snorting and guffawing with his buddies as they shoved each other around.

  “Sure.” LeFor looked them up and down. “Ancestors help the poor kids playing against you. It’s more than tackling though. You get to use your magic if you want. Or the abilities of any other race besides your own. Because while this is a physical and magical game, it’s also mental, emotional—”

  “Yeah, when we bash them into the ground so hard they start crying.”

  “—and virtual,” LeFor finished, giving the violence-oriented seniors a warning glance as they sniggered and pummeled each other again. Nobody seemed to notice.

  At that last part, Amanda turned from the two-foot section of wall she’d scrubbed halfway clean over the previous thirty minutes. Virtual? I thought Summer was making that up.

  LeFor slung the large duffle bag off his shoulder and unzipped it to pull out a pair of bulky goggles with a crisscrossing strap attached to both sides. Except the goggles didn’t have any lenses and the solid black plastic covered where they’d go. “Virtual headsets. With a few magical upgrades to sync them with the game rules and the viewing links. These are our prototypes, of course, but by the time we have our first match next month, the Academy’s Louper team will be playing with top-of-the-line, fully enhanced gear. I can promise you that.”

  “How the hell are we supposed to see in those things?” a junior shouted over the semi-impressed muttering.

  “That’s why you’re here. To learn how.” LeFor ran a hand through his spiky red hair and smirked, looking incredibly pleased with himself. “The best eight scores by the end of the weekend make the team. Six starters. Two backups, just in case.”

  “In case of what?”

  “Well, you never know. Especially at this school.”

  “Wait, there are, like…” A short, stalky sophomore Amanda didn’t know counted the heads of the students gathered for tryouts. “At least twenty of us out here. And only eight make the team?”

  “The best of the best.” Mr. LeFor grinned. “You’ll compete against the in-game avatar and each other during tryouts. Scores are partially based on teamwork and cooperation, so of course, that’s who we want on the team. So line up! I only have six headsets right now. We’ll have to rotate in sessions.”

  As the Augmented Technology teacher called out the first six students’ names to receive their gear, Amanda found herself paying more attention to the wizard’s explanation of the rules and how the players’ avatars worked than to scrubbing the wall of the training building.

  I still have the record for making it the farthest through the obstacle course. Bet I could blow those guys out of the water in that game.

  Almost as if he’d read her mind, Mr. LeFor looked up at her after handing out the headsets and raised his eyebrows.

  She returned to the wall with a heavy sigh and kept scrubbing, shooting Summer a sidelong glance.

  As soon as we clean these stupid walls after her stupid choices.

  Chapter Eighteen

  If they’d thought starting their days in Combat Training was exhausting, scrubbing magically dirt-caked walls for twelve hours on Saturday took it to a whole new level. Waking up at 5:00 a.m. on Sunday to do it all over again was worse.

  To top it off, Amanda and Summer had to suffer through listening to Mr. LeFor’s instructions about the Louper game while the students trying out for the team blundered their way around the training arena trying to get the hang of the headsets.

  Fred brought them lunch from the kitchen and winked as he handed Amanda her tray. “Halfway there, girl. And you can recover tomorrow. You know, make sure you don’t end up here again next weekend, right?”

  “Trust me. I’d rather be out there in that arena with a headset on.” She took the tray from him and nodded at the field.

  The large, burly pixie chuckled. “I bet you would. Hey, don’t forget to use a napkin.”

  With another wink, he left the freshman girls to their detention—and all fifteen minutes that Mr. Petrov gave them for lunch—and headed behind the training building toward the kitchen.

  Amanda wolfed down the plain sandwich and the sprig of grapes, then picked up her napkin and found a square of dark chocolate fudge beneath it. With a laugh, she popped the whole thing in her mouth right before Summer looked up at her from her lunch.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You got a secret pixie admirer or something?”

  “No.” A chunk of fudge popped out of her mouth, and she fumbled to catch it and shove it back in again.

  Summer snorted and rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Think you can finish this last section on your own? I’m gonna go start on the kitchen.”

  “Yeah, sure.” The fudge went down in a painful lump as Amanda swallowed and watched the other girl shuffle off with her wire brush and newly refilled jug of bleach. Then she returned her attention to the Louper tryouts, where the second rotation of kids had ended their practice match and pulled off their headsets to hand them to the next in line.

  I still have five minutes. Might as well make a move now.

  She took a huge drink from her water bottle—at least Glasket hadn’t prohibited them from hydrating while they spent all day in the sun and the muggy heat—then hurried across the training arena. “Mr. LeFor?”

  The red-haired wizard looked at her with a small, tight smile. “Just a second, Miss Coulier. Garber! If I see you put that headset on upside down one more time, I don’t care how fast you are. You’re out. Get it right and line up. I’ll reset the field in a minute.”

  Amanda rubbed her palms on her jean shorts and stared at the six upperclassmen putting on their gear, all of them much taller and bulkier than the other kids trying out.

  LeFor smiled at her again although he was too distracted not to glance back at the new tryout team every ten seconds. “What can I help you with, Miss Coulier?”

  “I want to try out for the Louper team.”

  The teacher snorted out a laugh, then cleared his throat when he realized she was serious. “Oh. I, uh… I’m not sure that’s an option for you.”

  “Why?” She folded her arms and glanced at the kids in the training arena, ready to finally say what she’d been wondering for the last day and a half. “Because I’m a girl? Or because of what I am?”

  Mr. LeFor swallowed, and his smile disappeared. “Why would you think that?”

  “Because there aren’t any girls trying out. Or…” She lowered her voice and gestured toward herself. “You know.”

  “I’ll give you points for your creative assumption, Miss Coulier, but the real reason is that you still have detention to finish.”

  Amanda’s mouth popped open at that. Then she quickly looked away. “Oh. Well, what about next weekend?”

  “Sorry. Tryouts are this weekend only. We start practicing and training next weekend, and I need to keep the team on the same page if we want any chance at all of competing with the other schools. It’s not an option right now.”

  “What about tonight?” She stepped toward him. “I only have five hours left of this, and I don’t mind trying out on my own. You can score me against everyone else and pick the team tomorrow.”

  “Not enough in-game avatars to make it a fair challenge for you without other teammates, Miss Coulier. We’re on a tight schedule with this, so—”

  “Time’s up, Coulier!” Mr. Petrov barked from his chair inside the training building’s open door. “Get back to scrubbing.”

  “Please, Mr. LeFor.”

  “Don’t ask me again.” The Augmented Technology teacher gave her a sympathetic frown and lowered his voice. “Maybe next year you won’t be so eager to break the rules during the first week of schoo
l. We’ll have tryouts again next fall.”

  “But—”

  “All right, guys!” LeFor clapped his hands and walked away from her. “If you aren’t ready in three seconds, that’s a mark against your overall score.”

  “Coulier!”

  Amanda whirled around to see Mr. Petrov standing in the open doorway now, pointing firmly at her supplies. “Yeah, I get it. Lunch break’s over.”

  She stomped back toward her bristled glove and cleaning solution.

  They have no idea what they’re missing out on. I could be the best player on the team if they gave me a chance.

  Half an hour later, she was only too happy to pick up her supplies and sling them with her across the grass toward the kitchen building where Summer had already gotten to work. Sure, Mr. Petrov could still keep an eye on them through one of the back windows of the training building, but the guy had seemed a lot more interested in watching the Louper tryouts in his training arena. Even if he seemed more amused by the other kids’ cluelessness than impressed by whatever they could do on the field.

  Amanda set down her cleaning supplies and wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand.

  I could sit in a quiet room and daydream all day, no problem. No wonder they think manual labor is better detention. I’m never doing this again.

  “Psst!”

  She straightened and turned around, scanning the lawn and the pavilion in the outdoor cafeteria.

  The sounds of other students shouting and running around in the central field and in and out of the dorms’ common rooms mixed with the encouraging shouts from the Louper tryouts, but whoever was trying to get Amanda’s attention was much closer than anyone else.

  “Hey!”

  She spun and saw Summer poking her head out from around the corner of the kitchen building.

  The new girl’s eyes were wide, and she glanced toward the training building before waving Amanda forward. “Come here, shifter girl. You gotta see this.”

  “Oh, no. No way.” Amanda picked up the scrubbing glove. “I’m not falling for your crap again.”