by G. Bailey
“This is way too much. Like I shared a tiny bathroom a quarter of the size of this one with my parents and one cat,” I explain.
“Your cat uses the bathroom?” she asks with a smile. It’s the first time I’ve seen her smile, and it makes her prettier.
“Yep, she thinks litter trays are beneath her, and she happily uses the toilet,” I explain, suddenly realising how weird that must sound.
“How do you know she thinks that?” Sera asks.
“Just a guess,” I shrug, and she smiles at me like I’m strange. I really, really sound strange right now. We leave the bathroom and go to the room next door to mine. Sera opens the door—which doesn’t open all the way—and flicks on the light for the tiny closet of a bedroom. There is a single bed, plain bed sheets that have seen better days, and a cardboard box with copies of the green dresses Sera is wearing.
“This is your room?” I ask, walking out of it as I hear her say yes very quietly. I go to the last door on the row and open it up, flicking the light on and seeing a room that is a mimic to the one I have been given. I turn back to Sera, who looks down at the ground.
“This is your guest room, for anyone you wish to have sleep over,” she tells me.
“No, this is your room,” I demand.
“I can’t—” she starts to say.
“I won’t ever command you do anything except for this one time, Sera. Please sleep in this room,” I tell her, and she lifts her head, her cheeks a little redder than they were before.
“What if someone finds out?” she asks.
“Then I will tell them I wanted your room for my own, so I moved you out into here. What could they possibly say about that?” I say, and she smiles at me, a big happy smile, before she chuckles. I chuckle too, and it feels good to laugh after the crappy day I’ve had. “I’m going to have a shower and get into bed. See you tomorrow, Sera.”
“Thank you, Lexi,” she tells me, placing her hand on my arm for a second. The brief contact is something I really didn’t know I needed. “You are going to be okay here. They told me you lived a human life with no knowledge, but see that as a blessing and always know you can ask me anything you want.”
“I can’t see the fact my parents lied to me my entire life as a blessing. They might as well have thrown me in the middle of the sea without any knowledge of how to swim,” I reply. “I love them, but I never thought they would do anything that would leave me defenceless and clueless.”
“My father regularly told me he loved me...but then never looked back the day I was taken to come here,” she replies.
“And you still love him, right? You’d still jump in front of a bullet for him?” I ask with a humourless laugh. “I feel the same way. I guess we both need to figure out everything on our own. At least we have each other, huh?”
“We do, Lexi,” she says, and we both smile at each other before I turn and walk to the bathroom. I shut the door behind me and lock the door. I switch the shower on just seconds before I fall to my knees and sit back, bursting into tears.
Chapter 8
The teachers are crazy
“Thank you for showing me the way, Sera,” I say outside a door that says Mr. Morganach on the outside of it on a little metal sign. There are several dents in the door that make me think someone—most likely Mr. Morganach himself—has kicked it several times.
“Wait, are vampires real? Fairies? Dragons?” I ask Sera, suddenly wondering about the world I really have no clue about. The idea of training with an angel makes me rethink everything I’ve ever known. I’ve always loved reading young adult books about everything from vampires to talking dragons; now I wonder if any of them are actually real. The world I’ve been living in is actually nothing like I expected it to be.
“Dragons are apparently real in hell. Vampires are nearly extinct because they are the natural enemy of wolves, and my race has hunted them into hiding. Fairies are just stories, but in this world, who actually knows?” she muses. “There are many magical things hiding in this world, and no one knows where to look. That’s what makes it magic.”
“You’re pretty smart, Sera,” I reply with a grin, and she blushes.
“I will wait here with your change of clothes for you to come back,” she says as I lift my hand to knock. “Good luck.”
“Pray for me, more like,” I say as the door is pulled open, and my biggest fan opens the door, looking annoyed that I turned up at all.
“Don’t pray for her. Doesn’t she know an angel’s blessing is considered terribly unlucky?” Mr. Morganach says to Sera, who splutters a few times before she replies to him.
“I—”
“Never mind,” Mr. Morganach rudely interrupts her before she can say anything at all, and I glare at him.
“That was rude,” I tell him, and he crosses his arms, running his eyes from my legging-clad legs up to my tight purple top up to my hair pulled tightly into a high ponytail. He doesn’t seem to like what he sees. I don’t know why I care that he does.
“You are fifteen minutes early,” he tells me.
“Being early isn’t rude the last time I checked,” I reply, keeping my head up. His hand shoots out, and I back up a step, only to realise he wanted to inspect my bruised cheek and cut lip as his eyes are focused on it. Or I have a bug on my face, which I doubt.
“Who did that?” he angrily asks. I’m getting whiplash from this guy. One moment he is annoyed at my existence, the next he doesn’t want me hurt.
“It’s nothing,” I reply.
“It is, and you need to get them back before they believe you are nothing but a baby and they carry on that shit,” he warns me.
“You’re a teacher; aren’t you meant to tell me you’ll speak to them if I tell you who they are?” I ask. “Not suggest more violence?”
“I’m not your babysitter, and what can I say? I’m not a good fucking teacher,” he says, pulling the door shut behind him and storming off down the corridor.
“I think you better run after him,” Sera suggests, and I widen my eyes before turning around and running after Mr. Morganach as he heads outside. He walks straight down the steps before stopping and looking back at me as I walk down the dozens of steps, and I’m out of breath when I get to his side.
“That tires you out...seriously?” he sourly asks.
“Sorry, I missed step class as a kid,” I reply, which only seems to infuriate him more.
“We have a two-mile run, and if you don’t keep up, I won’t be impressed,” he warns me.
“Why do you hate me so fucking much?” I ask.
“Because you are going to die from your inexperience and naive nature. If I don’t kill you, you are bound to piss someone else off, and they will,” he remarks. “As for why I care, I really don’t know, and it is pissing me off just as much.”
“Then help me learn how not to be inexperienced and naive,” I reply.
“I am. I said I would help you, and I fucking will, but I’m not spending all morning chatting to you. First, we build up your lacking core strength and stamina, and then we work on ability.”
“I did self-defence—” I stop as he laughs, a full-bodied, deep and sexy as sin laugh. I shiver as he stops and starts jogging away.
“At least you’re funny, baby.” He is such an asshole. I jog to catch up with him, and I choose to stay just behind him as we run down a path to the fence and then start running alongside it, past the Hellers guarding the other side. Seems they aren’t worried about us escaping, but they are worried about something else getting in. We keep a good pace to the end of the fence near the cliff, and then he turns around and makes us run all the way back. We do this four times, and on the fifth time, I stop halfway, sucking in deep breaths as I wipe the sweat off my face and away from my eyes.
Can my eyes sweat? I’m pretty sure they are right now.
“Why did you stop?” Mr. Morganach asks me, storming right up to me and grabbing my shoulders. I look up at him as he breathes heavily, h
is green eyes once again taking up that stormy, fire-burning colour I really like.
Even if it scares me.
“I can’t run anymore. I need a break and a drink,” I say, and he narrows his eyes, shoving me away. I trip backward, slamming onto the ground. I lift my arm, feeling the tiny cuts from the gravel as Mr. Morganach stands over me.
“You’re pathetic. Don’t bother coming back tomorrow if you need a break.” For the first time, his words actually hurt as I sit up and watch him walk away.
“Here, that should do,” Sera says as she finishes bandaging my arm after helping me wash all the gravel from the cuts. I don’t meet her eyes as I take the clothes into the bathroom and get changed into the uniform of this place—a tight white top that does little to hide my boobs, and small blue and black thatched skirt that falls to my mid-thigh. I leave my hair down and stare at myself for a second.
My parents went to this school, they could have even had this room for all I know, and they didn’t tell me any of it.
Why?
I asked about their past many times and why we didn’t have any other family. They told me they were both foster kids and met in college. It was all bullshit because they must have met here. I don’t even know if they had any family I should be aware of. Why all the lies? I get even more confused when I remember seeing Dad in that cage, hurt and muttering about things I don’t understand rather than explaining all the lies.
I don’t know if I’m angrier at them or more scared for them. Why is this so hard?
“We need to get going, Lexi,” Sera says from the other side of the door. I look into my eyes one more time, knowing this isn’t the time to have a breakdown. I need to be stronger than this. Screw Mr. Morganach. Screw all the lies I’ve been told. This is my life, and I have to focus on surviving it until the trial. I walk to the door and pull it open, seeing Sera smiling sympathetically at me.
“We can do this, right?” I ask, and she nods. It’s not the confident answer I need, but it will do. “So what is the first class?”
“Learning to Hex and then you have no more classes for today. There is usually Necromancy 101, but the teacher is in hell for a few weeks,” she explains to me. “It’s all written on here, and I spent three weeks learning my way around the academy before you got here, so I can show you where to go. I’m not new like you, though, as I was attending a family wedding in hell. Weddings take months down there and they are so boring.”
“Thanks,” I say, walking with her to the door. I pull it open and head outside, and Sera closes it behind me. “I didn’t ask yesterday, but can you really shift into a wolf?”
“Yes, but only once a month on a full moon. It’s my only night off,” she explains to me. “That’s only because my mother was human and I’m only a half breed. A full-blooded wolf can shift whenever they like.”
“There is so much to learn. I feel so lost,” I mutter, and Sera nods, not knowing what to say as we pass the Lucifer statue and head down the right corridor I haven’t gone near before. We head straight into the crowd of students and wolves rushing around to get to their classes, and luckily I just blend in with the rest of the crowd, though a few people point and stare. They will get used to me being here, I guess. Sera directs me to the fifth door down the corridor, where three wolves in green dresses and green shirts to tell them apart stand in a line by the wall.
“I’m going to line up, and I will see you after. Good luck in your first class,” she whispers to me before heading to the line. I hate that she has to line up like she is nothing more than a slave. I hate that she can’t come inside the class with me. Flipping hell, I hate this academy, and I haven’t even had one class yet. I push the door open and walk in, locking eyes with the woman at the front of the classroom full of desks. She stands behind a desk which is bigger than all the others in the room and right in front of a large whiteboard that takes up the entire wall. There are four windows in the room on the one wall, and the room is painted the same orange colour that matches the headmaster’s office. The woman places her hands on her hips as I notice the seven other students in the room in the corner of my eye.
“Miss Cameron?” the woman asks, sounding a little Irish to me. It would explain her pale skin and curly orange hair. She wears a cloak with the red DA symbol on it, and under the cloak, I can see a straight A-line black dress. She also wears heels, which make my flat shoes look out of place. Thankfully Letitia and Maggie aren’t in this class, but then again, I don’t know anyone else in the crowd. They all stare at me like I’ve grown two heads, though. “Or do you not have a name? Or can you not talk?” The class starts laughing as I mentally pretend that this isn’t happening to me. In my old school, I was nothing more than the nobody that no one ever noticed. I didn’t wear clothes like this; I wore a blazer three times larger than needed and baggy black trousers because we couldn’t afford a new uniform, and all my clothes were borrowed.
“Sorry, yes that’s me,” I finally say, which only makes the laughter louder from the students.
“Brilliant; my name is Mrs. Herman. Welcome to Learning to Hex. This is for you.” She holds up a leather-bound book, and I walk over, sliding it into my hands. “Do not lose your spellbook. There won’t be a second, and then you will fail my class. That is punishable by death.”
“Understood,” I say, though I think it’s a tad bit extreme. I’m not telling her that.
“Go and find a seat, Miss Cameron,” she suggests, and I quickly walk past the three full rows of students until I find an empty row. I place my spellbook down and open the first page, seeing nothing but plain, aged yellow paper. Before I can ask Mrs. Herman about it, she starts talking.
“Welcome, everyone, to Learning to Hex. For the students who are hexing, please go to the back of the classroom and choose a test subject in the cage room. For the students that are not at the right level to hex, and the new girl, stay in your seats,” Mrs. Herman says, and I’m assuming they use rats or frogs to test on. Who actually knows though? This place is crazy. All the students except for one guy get out of their seats and go to the doors at the back of the classroom and soon disappear into them.
“George, how many lessons have we had now?” Mrs. Herman asks, walking over to his desk and sitting on the edge right in front of him. I can’t see anything but the back of his head and his blond hair, but man, I think he is scared from the way he shakes a little bit. Mrs. Herman reminds me of a snake right at this moment.
“T-t-twenty,” he stutters, coughing on his nerves.
“Then I’m afraid if you cannot hex by now, you will never learn it,” she says and places her hand on his shoulder as she leans into him. It all looks innocent until I smell the blood in the air. His body suddenly tenses, and he coughs, spitting blood all over the front of her cloak. I rapidly climb out my seat and run over, stopping at the end of his desk as Mrs. Herman pulls her hand out of his chest, dripping with blood. “Your death is the beginning. Your king welcomes you to hell, blessed child. All praise Lucifer.” His body slumps onto the floor, and I’m so in shock that I can do nothing but stare at Mrs. Herman, hearing my heart beating in my ear and feeling bile rise in my throat.
“I have a body to get rid of, but you can go and watch your fellow classmates for the rest of the lesson. Think of it as hands-on experience. We can learn some hex spells next week,” she says, leaning over the table and grabbing George’s ankle. With crazy strength that she shouldn’t have, she pulls his body over the table, and onto the other side before walking off, dragging him behind her. “If you are going to puke, do it in the sink,” she suggests as she leaves the room. I run to the sink just seconds before I throw up the cereal and toast I had today, gasping as I slide down onto the floor.
My teacher just killed a student like it was nothing more than killing a fly. Holy hell. I wipe my mouth and stand up, my legs feeling more than a little shaky as I walk to the doors at the back. I push them open and freeze as I take in the rows of cages, each with a person insi
de. The people don’t even look my way as I take in their dirty clothes and the god-awful smell in here.
“Let me guess, George is dead?” a girl asks, walking over to me with a human trailing behind her like he is tied to an invisible rope. I just nod, lost for words, and she sighs. “That’s a shame, though he really wasn’t good at anything. What about you, new girl? Are you going to run away or stay to watch?”
“What’s your name?” I find myself able to say, not answering her though.
“Lela; and you are Alexandria. Everyone has bets on you passing out a few times this week; I made a bet you wouldn’t. So come on, what are you going to do?” she asks.
“This is wrong,” I mutter.
“So wrong...but a little part of you likes the pain they are in. That part of you is your demon, and that’s the reason you haven’t run away yet,” she tells me. “A few students have run away, and all of them are dead. Don’t do that.”
“I-I,” I stutter, shaking my head and looking back at the cages. Lela walks around me, the middle-aged human following after her.
“If it makes you feel any better, we get all our prisoners from prisons, and they all are serving a death or life penalty. They aren’t the good guys,” she tells me, but it doesn’t make it better to see all these people in cages. No matter what they did. I hate that Lela is right...a sick part of me wants to stay here and watch.
“Are we good?” I whisper mostly to myself, but Lela answers.
“Hell no. Being the good guy means you constantly get screwed over and never get what you want. I’m happy being a demon...aren’t you?” she asks. “Or do you want to play human, pretending that it is okay that no one likes you because they can sense you are different.” I don’t answer her again, mostly because she is dead right, instead moving my eyes to the guy she has.
“Do you know what he did?” I ask.
“No, but I know every single one of them is a monster. Just like us. Now shut it and watch if you aren’t running or passing out,” she demands, but there is a little smirk on her lips.