“Talk to me about your Aunt Bryn,” Clark said, clearly trying to put a smile on my face again.
And it worked. “She’s pretty intense, in general, but she’s a really great aunt and mom. She’s a really great person. Like the best warrior you’ve ever met. She’s fearless.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, she could kick the shit out of pretty much anyone.”
“Wow, remind me not to get on her bad side,” he said with a hefty chuckle.
We were right at the puddle now, and directly in the middle of its oblong form.
“We should probably go around…”
“No need.” Clark said the words so confidently, I didn’t even question it when he whipped his shirt off and tossed it in the puddle in front of me like they did in old movies. I couldn’t help but get distracted by his abs and pecs.
Ahem, really distracted.
But, no one’s perfect, right?
“Uh…”
“Just trust me,” he said, a playful smile tugging at the ends of his mouth. He held out a hand, muttered a brief, unfamiliar incantation. The wet wadded shirt straightened out on the puddle’s surface, perfectly level.
I didn’t know exactly what he was doing, but it felt like a bout of excessive Canadian politeness. “Clark, you really don’t have to…”
“Emma.” He took my hand, stepping out onto the jersey. To my astonishment, it supported his weight with ease. “Trust me.”
Heart thumping in my chest, I tightened my grip on Clark’s hand and stepped onto the jersey, standing squarely between his sneakers.
We struggled to find our balance for a second, but after a moment, we floated toward the center of the puddle. His arms were tight around me. Given the small surface we stood on, we had to stay close to stay upright. Still, it was strange... we were touching all down our lengths. His body was so warm...
My chin almost touched the hollow of his throat. I turned my head. We floated slowly along. The jersey snagged on a rock and I almost stumbled.
Clark pulled me up. We locked eyes.
“You always cross puddles like this?” I asked, a nervous warble in my voice.
He smiled and shook his head. “No, I don’t... thought I’d try something new today.” The smile deepened. All of a sudden, the water on all sides of us shot up, encircling us in a clear sphere of rain water.
“Whoa!” Water rushed out from under us. I clutched Clark’s shoulders to keep from falling as the water rose and arched around us. I found my balance and looked around. We were in our own little watery world.
Clark’s dark brown eyes shined in the water’s reflection. The sunlight beaming through the water ball was a golden blanket of gentle warmth. I wanted to reach out, run my fingers through the walls of the flowing orb.
There was an impossible collection of water lilies below us.
“What are water lilies doing in a puddle?” I asked.
“Not sure,” Clark said, but something in his voice told me otherwise. “Why don’t you look a little closer?”
I shifted my weight right, as he shifted left, and looked straight down into the water. The lilies were getting bigger. I squinted, thinking I was just imagining it. But the lilies continued to grow. The pink petals over green leafy pads swelled. After a moment, they popped onto the water’s surface. I started in surprise.
“What are they doing?
“Just watch,” he said, a smile in his voice.
Once out in the dome, the lilies set to work. They all seemed to have very clear destinations in mind, arranging, aligning and... spelling?
The lilies snaked into a pattern on the sphere’s inner wall, sliding up with the water ball’s rushing current. Before my eyes, the beautiful plants spelled out Emma, will you go to the dance with me?
I looked up at Clark, our faces barely two inches apart.
“What do you say?” he asked. That small chuckle made his smile even more handsome.
Words, Emma, I thought. Use your words!
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I’d love to go with you!”
He wrapped me in a tender hug. I returned it, hoping he couldn’t hear my heart hammering in my chest.
“I’m really glad you said yes,” he said. “I didn’t have a cool exit strategy for the water ball charm.”
I burst out in a fit of giggles, too giddy to care how ridiculous I sounded.
“Yeah,” I pulled back to face him, our arms still draped around each other. “I’m… I’m kind of amazed you… went to all this trouble,” I said.
He looked down at me, his eyebrows then reaching for the sky. “Why? Aren’t you worth it?”
I thought about his words for a second or so. Then I nodded. “Yes, I’m worth it.”
He grinned broadly and pulled me into his broad chest, wrapping his arms around me more tightly. “That’s what I thought.”
We floated to the other side of the puddle. The bubble melted away, and the water lilies slunk back into the puddle.
Clark jumped off the jersey platform, then turned and grabbed me by the waist. He lifted me up like I weighed nothing, then swiped the jersey out of the water with his free hand.
“I have to say, that was the most amazing puddle-crossing of my life.”
“I’m glad.” He looked at me, really looked at me. “Hey, uh, would you maybe want to come watch practice tomorrow?” He sounded genuinely hopeful.
“Um,” I started, wondering what this meant. First he asks me to the dance, then to his practice? After just breaking up with Ellenora…
“It should be pretty interesting,” he continued. “We’re moving off the mats and onto the casting field tomorrow—no holds barred.”
I laughed. “So ‘interesting’ to you means ‘extra violent?’”
The casting team was basically a magical, school-sanctioned fight club with a few soft rules thrown in for posterity. It was an incredibly popular sport—matches with other school’s away teams were some of the most-watched events at Elmington—but casting matches tended to fall on the bloodier side.
We started walking the small distance to the girls’ dormitory. Our hands just brushed as we walked.
“When it comes to competitive casting?” He whistled loudly with a shake of his head and a pump of his dark eyebrows. “You bet. It’s all a matter of perspective, and the name of the game is to walk away with the most powerful casts under your belt and to take the least amount of damage. You say ‘extra violent.’ I say it’s an extra... challenge.” He took a breath. “So, what do you say?”
“I’d love to,” I answered. “See you after class tomorrow?”
“See you after class... tomorrow.”
Clark handed me the messenger back with Gilda inside it and we parted with a flirtatious wave. I turned back on my way to the door. He was still there, making sure I got in okay.
My stomach did a tiny, happy flip.
###
I floated up to my dorm on cloud nine: metaphorically speaking; I still had to walk up the stairs and past Patricia.
“Squawk! Date for the dance! Emma Balfour has a date for the dance!”
“Shut up, Patricia!” I snapped at the parrot, spinning around to glare at it.
“Emma Balfour has a date for the dance!” the stupid bird repeated.
“Keep your beak shut! I don’t want Ellenora to…”
“To what?” Ellenora’s voice, high and severe, sent a chill down my spine. Her high heeled shoes tapped down the stairs. I turned to face her.
Ellenora crossed her arms over her chest. She loomed over me from a single stair above—uncomfortably close. Her fiery red hair was tied back, revealing a pinched scowl on her bubble-gum glossed lips. Trixie and Allegra were behind her, one step higher, on either side of Ellenora. They glowered down at me.
“She doesn’t want you to find out she’s moving in on your man, Elle,” Allegra said, glaring at me.
“Yeah.” Trixie pursed her lips, hands on her hips. “Homewreckers d
on’t usually advertise their homewrecking.”
“Clark said you both broke up,” I managed, not in the mood for a cat fight.
They all glared at me, lips pinched. “That doesn’t make him any less mine,” Ellenora said.
“Doesn’t it, though?” I couldn’t help myself.
The fire in her eyes intensified.
“Watch yourself, Balfour.” She turned, flipping her fiery hair in my face. Allegra and Trixie followed her dutifully back up the stairs. I gave the trio a few minutes head start before walking the rest of the way to my room.
I didn’t rush up the stairs or down the hall. I was still wary of another Ellenora encounter. When I finally got to my room and saw my door, I wished I’d tried to beat her up the stairs.
The door to my dorm room had a sign, like all the others in the hall: Witch Quarters and then the number and hall of the room. I almost didn’t notice, but tonight, mine had been changed, ever so slightly.
My shoulders slumped. I sighed heavily as I read: Bitch Quarters: 103B.
“Petty assholes,” I muttered, grabbing the door knob a little too aggressively.
As much as I wanted to be angry—just angry, pure, unadulterated mad at the stupid, immature prank—I was also a little sad.
True, Ellenora hating me didn’t change anything between Clark and me. And, yeah, she hadn’t been my biggest fan to begin with, so I wouldn’t exactly say I was surprised.
But the fact remained, the sign said ‘bitch’ because Ellenora willed it, and it would stay that way for as long as she wanted it to: Ellenora had the power to make me suffer, to bring mice back to life without help, and to transport from one place to another. She had the power to change the sign on the door, and—without Jupiter’s magic—I didn’t have the power to change it back.
SEVEN
STONE
I put my mug in the coffee machine. It clanged into place with a chipping clink and then a crack ricocheted from top to bottom.
Eh, I mentally shrugged. It was a shitty mug anyway.
I listened to the whirring noises of coffee being dispensed, and looked up at the cupboard, hoping to find something stronger to give it a little kick—it was a long shot, hoping to find booze in the faculty lounge, but my desk ran out of Scotch that morning.
I grabbed the cabinet handle, but froze before I pulled.
There was a piece of green and gold parchment on the cabinet door, just above the thin metal handle. I hadn’t seen it a moment ago, but that could’ve been because it was too early for me to pay attention to anything besides coffee. In either case, the note stopped me opening the door. I squinted the tiredness from my eyes and read the inky black type:
Mandatory Faculty Meeting: 9:30 am—Tritonson Conference Room.
“Crap.”
I’d forgotten about the meeting.
Well, I thought despairingly. There goes my morning of drinking coffee on the top branch of an oak tree, breathing in the open sky, forgetting the tight bonds of academic professionalism, and pretending to be literally anywhere else in the world.
That’d have to be rescheduled for a later date.
This morning’s meeting had slipped my mind completely, which was probably why the flyer showed up: one of the many charming enchantments meant to increase productivity. It was like that strange phenomenon wherein someone realizes they’re being talked about. “Ears are burning,” was the phrase my mother called it. Well, this meeting’s ears had frozen, and the flyer was here to remind me they existed.
Never let anything sneak by.
Very convenient for the dedicated teachers of Elmington Academy.
A fucking nightmare for the one vampire who just wanted to forget for a moment that he was a professor at goddamn Elmington Academy.
Just one moment alone, I thought, desperate frustration in the toneless plea. One moment where it’s just me and nature, where nothing ties me down, where I can remember what it is to be a traveler, a vagabond, a real citizen of the world!
I sighed. The air pushed the flyer forward, flapping it in my face.
That one moment would have to be some time after 9:30.
The coffee machine beeped. I pulled out my mug and drank it straight away, worried the liquid would breach the cracked cup and I’d have to go through these motions all over again. But it didn’t crack. The scalding liquid burnt my tongue on impact, but I took a few more swallows before I put it down. If I had to go through the whole meeting sober, I certainly wasn’t going in uncaffeinated.
“We should probably get going,” a thin, reedy female voice said from the table behind me.
A man’s voice answered in much lower tones. “You’re right—I hope they have danishes. I love it when she brings in danishes.”
The scuttle of the pair disembarking the table broke the stuffy silence. I glanced back from the counter. Not fully recognizing either of them, I turned back to the coffee, only half-listening to the gurgling grind.
“You coming, Professor Draper?” David... something asked. We’d met by the water cooler on the first day of classes, but his last name escaped me. I’m surprised I remembered his first name. And then I wondered if it really was David? Maybe Stu? Robert? Shit…
He taught a course on contemporary prophets. That much I knew. And he was married to the long-necked brunette sitting across from him. Hopefully she’d taken her husband’s name—or vice versa—in either case, a shared last name meant I only had one more tedious detail to learn about this place.
Coffee in hand, I turned around. Professor David Something and Mrs. Professor David Something stood in front of me. They had perfect posture, like they were a pair of Mormons gearing up for a presentation. The tubby middle-aged man’s arm looped into the crook of the older female’s arm. They looked like the sort of couple that would run a bed & breakfast in the middle of a valley somewhere. From our few interactions, they seemed like the subdued sort: both settled into the cozy comfort of companionship. It was nice. But it did make me a bit claustrophobic.
“Professor Swanson and I were just…”
Swanson! I thought victoriously. David Swanson—that’s right! Or was it Stu Swanson? Robert Swanson? Shit.
“… headed to the conference room for the meeting. Care to join?”
“There might be danishes!” David added, excitement evident in his plump, rosy cheeks.
I’d planned to keep to myself at Elmington—to the best of my considerable ability—but refusing their company felt pointlessly rude. I was hardly “in my element” as they say, but that was no reason to become a charmless vagrant while on Sinclair’s assignment. Manners were manners, after all.
“Absolutely,” I said. “You’re kind to offer; I haven’t quite found my way around the place just yet.”
“I wouldn’t worry; it’s only your first semester!” Mrs. Professor Swanson said. “We’ll show you the ropes. Smart guy like you, you’ll get the hang of it in no time.”
David/ Stu/ Robert held the door open for Mrs. Professor Swanson and me. He had to jog a moment to properly realign himself with us. He managed to speedily shuffle-run around to his wife’s other side until we were moving in a long-ways line down the hall.
“How are you liking the school so far?” he asked, an affable smile on his wide face.
“Well enough,” I answered with a shrug. “Still getting used to it, of course.”
“I still remember my first semester at Elmington.” He sighed thoughtfully, nostalgia oozing from his pores.
“As a teacher or a student?” I’d meant it as a throwaway joke, but he answered with a chipper “Student!”
“Really?” I asked. “You went here?”
“James and I both went here,” Mrs. Swanson announced.
James? Wow, I was waaayyy off.
“And we never left!” James said proudly. “We’ve taken trips and such around and about, but we always make it back to Elmington. Don’t we, sweetheart?”
“We do, indeed!”
&
nbsp; “That’s... nice.” And just a little bit pathetic, I thought, all the while trying to hide my horror at the idea of an entire life lived in one place. This one.
“Isn’t it, just!” Mrs. Professor Swanson squeaked.
If someone doesn’t say this lady’s first name soon, I’m going to have to come up with a shorter version of Mrs. Professor Swanson... Mrs. Pro-Swan? James’s Lady? Hey you, with the long neck and pointy glasses!
Eh, I’d think of something.
“We met at freshman orientation in ‘72,” Mrs. Pro-Swan said. James asked me to the Spring Formal, and the rest is history!”
She and Tubby Hubby giggled like lovestruck tweens, clearly caught up in the memory.
“Charlene looked so beautiful that night,” James said. Ah, Charlene. I had no memory of ever learning her name.
Regardless, Charlene rubbed his shoulder fondly.
“Conference room is just up ahead on the left,” she said. “You know, the Spring Formal’s coming up. I wonder who’s gonna ask me?”
“Could be anyone!” James said. “Belle of the ball that you are! But I must say, I would be very honored if you would be my date.” He placed a hand on his heart as we walked. I felt very much the third wheel.
“You have to ask me right, James,” she said in a flirty and nausea-inducing way.
“Charlene Swanson, would you do me the honor of being my co-chaperone?”
“Oh, James! I’d love to!”
They both giggled in violent bursts, overwhelmed by their own hilarity.
“Wait… did you say chaperone?” I asked.
“Yes,” James answered, pulling himself back to the moment. “The faculty always chaperones the dance.”
“I didn’t realize…”
James guffawed, smile still affable as ever. “Did you think we just let the students run amok without any adults to supervise?” He blew raspberries, kind of overkill for the point he’d already made. “Things must’ve been very different at your old school.”
Circle of the Moon Page 7