Dark Witch: A Paranormal Academy Romance (Academy of the Dark Arts Book 1)

by Analeigh Ford

  Puck keeps trying to catch my eye, and my wrist, from where he kneels to my right—but my mind is elsewhere. While Professor Young starts describing a chant that we’re to perform while he places candles in front of each of us, I’m getting an eerie sense of déjà vu. Something about this whole thing seems familiar. I swear I’ve seen it before.

  And then it dawns on me.

  “Miss Davies!” Professor Young snaps as I leap unsteadily to my feet, staggering back a few steps to get a better look at the summoning circle. A few heads turn my way, but it doesn’t stop me.

  “Sorry, Professor,” I say, still taking another couple steps back to take in the scene. “What kind of summoning did you say this was, again?”

  He clicks his tongue, but his eyes still flash nervously from me to the crumbling hole in the center of the circle. “It’s a ferox demon,” he says, “to bring us luck.”

  His eyes fall on the hole in the middle of the floor, and I know what he’s thinking. We’re going to need it.

  I’m still standing, looking on . . . because I know where I’ve seen this before. Not this exactly, but something close.

  It just doesn’t make any sense.

  When my eyes refocus, the entire class is looking expectantly up at me now.

  “So, which will it be?” Professor Young asks, and I can tell from his voice that I’ve missed something else he said.

  He motions to the empty spot of the ground, previously occupied by myself. “Will you be joining us here, or Headmistress Evanora in her office?”

  “Sorry,” I mutter again, quickly moving back to my spot and dropping down to my knees. I go through the motions alongside everyone else, but I’m still not really into it.

  Soon it isn’t just Puck nudging me. By the end of class, I’m fairly certain I have bruises on both my shins from Merlin poking me on one side to remind me to at least pretend to follow along, and Puck on the other, trying to get me to give him more details of the supposed orgy between Nicholas, Merlin, and me last night.

  As soon as Professor Young dismisses us from class, I drag all three of them out into a corner of the hall and wait for any potential eavesdroppers to move out of range. The inner hunter in me keeps an extra close eye on Veronica. All the herbal baths have left me craving garlic bread, and I want to make her get me some before alchemy class later. I’m fairly certain she’s never eaten a carb in her life, so it’s an added bonus to know she’ll have to smell it the whole way back from the kitchen. If that isn’t torture, I don’t know what is.

  Puck must misread the hungry look in my eye, because suddenly he’s leaning in with that mischievous smile of his. “Is this what I think it is, because you should know, I’m all about it.”

  I put a hand on either shoulder and shove him a good two steps back.

  “It’s about the summoning, back there,” I say, crossing my arms, “I think I’ve seen it before. Or, at least, something like it.”

  “It’s pretty common enough in Dark Witch—” Merlin starts, but I cut him off.

  “No, that’s the thing,” I say. “It wasn’t Dark Witches. It was at Highborne.”

  Now, I’m not the only one checking over their shoulders. Even Puck sobers and steps closer, his voice dropping conspiratorially.

  “I knew those bastards couldn’t be as high and mighty as they pretend.”

  “Honestly, I don’t see the big deal,” Nicholas says, surprising all of us. His confidence wanes as he looks back at all three of our faces. “I mean, we do it all the time . . . it’d be stupid not to.”

  “Yeah, but Highborne Witches don’t see it that way. We fought a war over it, unless you forgot,” Puck says. Nicholas shrinks sheepishly back.

  Merlin steps up into his place, his gaze intense. “Are you sure of what you saw?”

  With all three of them standing so close, three pairs of eyes—blue, green, and brown—boring into mine, and I’m suddenly not so sure anymore. “I—I mean, I’m pretty sure.”

  Merlin’s gaze doesn’t waver. “I know some people who would be very interested to hear about Highborne witches performing a demon summoning.” He glances once at Nicholas. “If you’re certain that’s what it was, this could be a really big deal.”

  I squirm for a second, then shove my way past the three of them and move into the middle of the hall. “Forget I said anything. For all I know it was a . . . a . . .” I lift my arms and let them fall un-dramatically back down to my sides. “I don’t know. I just, I probably remember wrong.”

  Both Merlin and Puck look suspicious, but Nicholas shrugs his shoulders and tries to smile at me reassuringly. “Don’t worry, Wren. You’re the one who knows Highborne Witches. If you say they weren’t summoning a demon, then they probably weren’t.”

  “Right,” I say, avoiding looking at any one of them. I pretend to see Veronica down at the end of the hall and point stupidly in that direction. “Oh, I was just, I have to . . .”

  Not even Nicholas looks convinced, but I lope off awkwardly anyway. I don’t know what I was thinking.

  Practice of the dark arts is forbidden—everyone knows that. We fought a war over that. Highborne Witches wouldn’t be performing a summoning spell.

  There’s no way. I must have been mistaken.

  I don’t know what I saw, but it wasn’t that.

  It couldn’t be.

  Right?

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The closer it gets to the night of the winter solstice, the more antsy I become. I should feel closer to Puck, Merlin, and Nicholas than ever . . . but I find myself growing distant. I try to chalk it up to squeezing in last minute study sessions before midterms and trying to teach Veronica how to braid my bird’s nest of hair—just right—for the impending ceremony.

  I know it’s something more, though.

  I’ve been wanting to talk to my mother from the moment she disappeared. Now that the moment is nearly here . . . I find myself dreading it.

  I don’t know what I want her to say anymore. I feel like I don’t know anything.

  “Ouch!” I cry out, jerking my head out of Veronica’s grasp.

  It’s nearly midnight. The ceremony’s only two days away. We’ve already taken a couple of our midterms—and though I’m fairly certain I’ve passed so far, it’s only by the skin of my teeth. I’ve gotten so distracted lately.

  And not in the right way.

  I lift a finger up to my lips absentmindedly, remembering Merlin’s kiss . . . and then Nicholas’.

  Kissing them should have changed everything . . . but it didn’t.

  I’m still in the same boat. I’m still just waiting with bated breath to find out if I’m going to have to leave my life behind again. If my mother says I’m a Highborne Witch for sure, then isn’t it my duty to prove it? To find a way back to the life that’s meant for my kind?

  I was so afraid I’d turn out to be a Dark Witch . . . and now I’m kind of scared to learn that I’m not.

  Behind me, Veronica stamps her foot. She’s all but forgone heels entirely at this point. She looks as exhausted as I feel. If this task wasn’t actually necessary, and not total bullshit like most of the other busywork I’ve been making her do, I’d have told her to get the hell out of my room a long time ago.

  But, unfortunately, now that the ceremony’s a couple of days away—I actually have to do some things right. The whole bathing, lotion, and hair ritual is part of that.

  She’s muttering under her breath again. At this point, I don’t think either of us cares that I overhear it.

  “Good-for-nothing slut of a whore’s mother . . .”

  This time, when she reaches for my strand of hair to try to braid it once again, I reach up and grab her wrist. “Hey, Veronica?”

  “What?” she snaps, her hand shaking like it just wants to snake out and slice me open with those long-ass nails of hers.

  “Does it ever get easier? Being a Dark Witch?”

  Her eyebrow arches upwards in her reflection in the mir
ror. “You’re asking me for advice now?”

  “Forget it,” I say, clearing my throat and picking up another limp strand of hair for her to braid—or pull out. To be honest, it’s basically all the same at this point.

  She snatches the strand out of my hand and starts twisting it up. After another long moment of silence, she gives the now braided strand a good tug, and then climbs off the bed to look me over.

  “You look awful,” she says.

  I have to agree. “Well, you don’t exactly look like a goddess,” I say, squirming a little in the loose nightgown and the tight braids. I think the thing I’m going to look forward to the most after all this is said and done it getting to sleep in whatever way I goddamed please. If I had to wear these braids forever, I’m pretty sure I’d end up with a bad case of patchy alopecia.

  “At least I don’t look like the virgin,” she quips back.

  I have to shake my head. Why on earth I ever thought asking her for advice was a good idea . . .

  And then just as quickly as she insulted me, she straightens up and grows serious for a moment. “No,” she says, looking out the window. “It doesn’t get easier. Not for us.”

  Now it’s my turn to sit up straighter. “Why not? Why is everyone so . . .” I trail off. It’s hard asking a Dark Witch why everyone around her, including herself, seems so angry and well, suspicious all the time.

  “Maybe that’s a question for your kind, the Highborne Witches,” she says, her tongue circling the words like poison in her mouth. “They’re the ones who keep squeezing and squeezing and squeezing until we don’t have any other choice.”

  A few months ago, those would’ve been fighting words.

  Now, I just narrow my eyes and squint up at her. “What d’you mean?”

  She sighs, weighing the silver brush she got from Headmistress Evanora in one of her hands. Sometimes I wonder if she’s considering bashing me over the head with it. I only wonder because sometimes I think the same thing. Only, in my fantasy I’m the one doing the bashing—not getting bashed.

  “Your type is all the same,” she says. “Blind to what’s really going on. You think you’re all so high and mighty. But really,” and here, she leans in closer, the menace thick in her voice, “you’re the worst lot of all.”

  Outside the window, a sharp gust of wind slams against the window.

  We both jump a little and dart a look outside. The usual gray clouds have grown thick and heavy. So far, we’ve only gotten a dusting of snow—but from the looks of it, that’s going to change soon.

  And that isn’t going to be the only thing.

  As soon as Veronica leaves, I get up from the bed and start anxiously pacing.

  Outside the window, the tops of the trees wave in the winter wind. Beyond them, the roofs of the town glitter with a touch of frost. Down below the cloaks of Witches passing by are wrapped tight around their shoulders.

  Only two more days until I get answers. Aside from my one ill-fated night visiting Edgar, I haven’t so much as stepped foot outside this academy. I’m living in the middle of Dark Witch territory surrounded by Dark Witches . . . but I still have no idea what they’re really like.

  I mean, when they’re not wearing identical uniforms and going to neatly scheduled classes.

  I need to know what it really is to be a Dark Witch . . . and to do that, I have to see what awaits me beyond these walls.

  I stop pacing and step up to the glass. My breath fogs up the panes so I have to wipe it away. It’s been months now since I saw that characteristic red and white of a Crusader’s cape watching for me in the streets outside. It doesn’t mean they aren’t there, but it might mean they’re not looking so closely as they once were. Even the most diligent witches slack off eventually . . . and I plan to take advantage of that.

  But that doesn’t mean I get to step right out the front gate. I doubt Headmistress Evanora would allow it.

  I guess it’s a good thing I know someone who always seems to find other ways to get in and out.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Puck holds out his arm to stop me. “Keep to the shadows, you never know who’s watching.”

  “Actually, in this case I do,” I say under my breath. I’m supposed to spend this last evening before the solstice ceremony alone in “quiet reflection”, but Veronica’s been following me around all afternoon. I don’t think she actually means to, I think she’s just gotten so used to following me around that she doesn’t know what to do with herself anymore.

  From between the leaves, I can see her picking her way across the path.

  “Remind me not to get on your bad side,” Puck says. “You really know how to break a person.”

  Though he tries to say it seriously, that doesn’t stop his eyebrows from wiggling so much I nearly get us caught from giggling right as she finally passes by the gap in the hedges where we’re currently hiding.

  I cover my face to stifle the laugh—and to stop my own steaming breaths from giving us away. To my side, Puck stiffens, the arm that stopped me from stepping right out in front of her now holding me protectively. I’m not about to pull away. It’s damn cold outside, and Puck is like a sack of burning coals in a skin suit.

  A very taught, deceptively strong skin suit.

  His eyes stay trained on the retreating back of my red-haired rival as she finally heads back towards the main building. Meanwhile, I’m looking up at him and wondering how I never noticed the light dusting of freckles across the bridge of his nose.

  “Alright,” he whispers, finally dropping his arm and slowly guiding us out along the shadowed edge of the path. We move so close to the hedges that they grab at the cloak I borrowed from Nicholas after our last exam this afternoon. I’m in the middle of feeling guilty for not telling him why I really needed it when Puck suddenly pulls me off the path and around the back side of the greenhouse.

  It’s so cold out that the sides are all frosted with humidity on the inside—making them as white and opaque as walls made of glass can be.

  As soon as we turn the corner, Puck checks once over each shoulder before dropping down to the ground to run his hands through the dead grass. “There’s something I have to tell you,” he says, pausing only once he’s found a tiny rusted metal ring sticking out of the earth.

  I don’t have time to ask him what it is before he’s yanked up a secret door, sending dirt and grass tumbling onto two crouched figures in the dark below.

  The moment the dull light illuminates their faces, I know any guilt I felt earlier was wasted.

  “Sorry,” Puck says, scratching the back of his neck as he too glances down at Merlin and Nicholas waiting below. “But I’d rather face your wrath than theirs.”

  There are no stairs, just a six-foot drop down into a narrow, earthen tunnel. I feel a pressure on my lower back from Puck’s hand and know I can’t hesitate any longer.

  Merlin straightens up in the darkness, brushing dirt off the lapels of his coat before reaching up and offering me a hand—a moment too late. I plunge down, fully prepared to feel the jarring impact of the ground beneath my feet. But it doesn’t come. Nicholas tries to catch me and somehow ends up with my legs around his neck while Merlin tries to help ease me onto the floor of the tunnel without turning me completely upside down.

  None of us is successful, but I do eventually return to solid ground just as Puck leaps effortlessly down and pulls the trap door shut overhead. A line of bioluminescent mushrooms growing from the walls, floor, and ceiling leads a glowing blue path away from the academy.

  I’m the only one of the three of us who can stand up straight. Nicholas keeps tilting his neck awkwardly, and though Merlin’s trying valiantly to hide it, he looks about as comfortable as a cat in a bathtub.

  “Go ahead,” I say, sighing and putting my hands on my hips. “Tell me what a bad idea this is.”

  “Just so you can insist it changes nothing?” Merlin asks. “No, thank you. Better to have all three of us out with you than ju
st this punk.” He nods at Puck, and adds in a mutter, “More likely to get you into trouble than out of it.”

  Nicholas rubs his hands together anxiously. “Come on, let’s get out of here.” He glances up at the ceiling right over his ducked head. “I’m not a big fan of small spaces.”

  I have to take a deep breath myself. The air feels heavy here, somehow. I’m not particularly claustrophobic, but enough time down in this tunnel could change that pretty quick.

  “Yeah, well, better hold tight then,” Puck says, pushing ahead to the front of the line. He heads on up ahead without even checking to make sure we follow. Not that there’s anywhere else to go.

  The tunnel heads straight for a while, but then it starts winding in erratic, often narrow turns. In several spaces the boys have to twist themselves sideways just to pass through, and we have to stop once to give Nicholas a moment to compose himself. Twice the tunnel doubles back on itself, and once it just abruptly ends—only for there to be another trap door leading into another tunnel even further underground.

  Puck says it’s because the protection spells don’t penetrate that far down, but I think it’s just because whoever built this tunnel was a sadist.

  Just when I’m starting to think that these tunnels are leading us straight back to the academy, we turn another corner and this time, the dead-end leads up to a manhole cover some fifteen feet up. I’ve never seen Nicholas so eager to see anything.

  He pushes past the rest of us with feverish intensity and starts hauling ass up the ladder several rungs at a time. They’re rusted and flimsy, but that doesn’t stop him from reaching the top and shoving the cover off in record time. He doesn’t even pause to celebrate with the rest of us before he’s disappeared up above.

  Puck stops me and Merlin at the base of the ladder. “Wait. He should’ve checked to make sure it was safe first,” he says, quietly.” He cranes his neck upward, trying to get a glimpse up above. After another moment of silence, he calls up, quietly, “Nicholas? You’re not the only one anxious to get out of this cave-in waiting to happen.”