They didn’t know just how brave Maddison really was.
She wasn’t the kind of woman who backed down just because something bad happened to her. That so wasn’t her style. Nah. She’d be just fine here. She cocked her head as the footsteps and the voices passed.
“First lead in months,” one of the vampires was saying.
“What about the woman?”
The two vampires stopped outside of her door. They thought she was practically deaf. She’d let them think that on purpose, so they’d speak louder around her, casually. The vampires didn’t know just how much she understood. Maddison didn’t have magic, so that was how she’d get her power. She’d get it from information: from clues. She’d get it by being a good listener even when nobody knew she was paying attention.
“Once he has the book, he won’t need her anymore,” one of the vampires was saying.
“I thought we needed her to interpret the book.”
“Not anymore. Tulip confirmed that the granddaughter can read the book. She’s got it in her possession.”
“At the school?”
“Yeah,” the other vampire said.
Maddison’s blood ran cold.
They were talking about Maxine.
They had to be.
They were going to go after her granddaughter. Somehow, they had found her. They’d discovered where she was hiding, and they knew she had the book. Were they right about Max? Could she read the book? If that was true, then it meant Maxine had come into her powers. It meant that Maxine was not only a witch, but a wolf-shifter as well, just like her father. Pride swelled up in Maddison’s heart, but she tried to tamp it down. The doorknob turned and she looked down at her needlework.
“Hey, are you hungry?” One of the vampires asked. Maddison didn’t look up.
“You have to speak louder,” the other vampire said. “She can’t hear so good.”
“Are you hungry?” The vampire asked again. This time, his words were crisp, clear, and loud. Maddison looked up and smiled.
“What was that, dear?” She asked.
She was almost out of time.
Chapter 1
"This isn’t what I ordered.”
I stared at the box I was holding in my hands and frowned. It was wrong: all wrong. I had ordered a lovely, deep blue case for my wand, but I had received something different, instead. It wasn’t a case at all. It was…
“A journal,” Aunt Erin said, coming up beside me. “For your thoughts.”
“A journal?” I scrunched up my nose. Perhaps that was a rude sort of response, but it was my natural one. I wasn’t exactly the journaling type.
Sports?
Yeah, okay.
Art?
Maybe. If the mood was right.
Journaling?
That just wasn’t my style.
“Every witch should have one,” she said. “You can write down your spells, your ideas, and your considerations.”
“I don’t want a journal,” I said honestly. Then I just stared at it more, as if waiting for it to do something. Anything. The journal didn’t move, and Aunt Erin shrugged, unbothered, and walked away.
“You’ll be glad you have it,” she called over her shoulder, and then she disappeared into the other room. I waited for a minute and just kept looking.
“I’m not much of a writer,” I sighed, lifting the journal out of the box. It really was beautiful. The deep blue cover was lined with purple flowers, and it was soft beneath my hands. The entire thing was lovely, really, even if I hadn’t been expecting it.
Who knew?
Maybe once I was back at school, I’d be glad to have a place to quietly express myself. Eventually, if I got good enough, I could turn it into a book of spells like the one my grandmother had before disappeared. Mémère had always loved writing things down. Maybe I could learn to love it, too.
I heard Aunt Erin bustling around in the kitchen and remembered my manners a few minutes too late. I hoped that I hadn’t messed up too badly this time. Apparently, normal personal behavior didn’t come easy for me. No matter how much magic I learned, I still struggled to remember how to function normally sometimes. It was an annoying characteristic I couldn’t quite shrug off.
“Thank you!” I called out, and she only laughed.
“Not a problem, my dear,” she said.
I knew she meant it.
I was thankful for the journal. If Erin said it was something that I’d find useful, then she was probably right. Erin usually was. She was smart, clever, and witty, I’d discovered, and she was so much funnier than anyone else I’d ever known.
It had been a good summer. We’d spent months reading my grandmother’s notes and we’d found out a ton of information about what she had been researching. Apparently, my grandmother hadn’t been entirely satisfied with the idea that my parents were dead. In fact, I kind of got the idea that she didn’t think Mom and Dad were dead at all. She never came out and said that, but she questioned things so much. She’d seem to have come to the conclusion that my parents’ disappearance wasn’t all it seemed to be.
She’d been trying to figure out what they were searching for.
And she’d figured it out.
A potion, her journal said. A potion designed to let the user shift into another creature. When ingested, the user would have an undetermined amount of time to spend in that animal form before reverting back to their usual human body. The potion consists of several different ingredients, most of which are found deep in the Dragonian Jungles.
My parents had been searching for a potion that would change the world.
And maybe not for the good.
Grandmother had been shocked, judging from her notes. She knew they’d been working on something big, but did she know just how big it was? I didn’t think so. Maybe my mom and dad didn’t even know how big it was.
There was a lot I didn’t understand about my witchy life or my magical family history. My parents’ activities were, to be honest, the least of my confusing experiences. Searching for something magical seemed like an incredible experience, but I remembered my parents so clearly that it just seemed like them. The rest of the magical world, though, I struggled to make sense of.
Like why, for example, did every witch seem to be a combination of pretentious and intelligent? Why did witches love their secrets so much? Perhaps most importantly, why didn’t witches see a problem with withholding information? Witches were constantly trying to educate the people around them.
Many times, that came across as being callous or uncaring.
I’d learned, however, after a summer around my aunt and her coven, that it was simply the way of the witch.
They wanted you to learn, so they’d do everything in their power to help you.
Sometimes that meant trying to teach you hard lessons you didn’t really want. Sometimes it meant seeming rude. It always, however, ended in growing as a person, so I couldn’t complain too much.
Erin popped her head into the room.
“We’ll take off in a few minutes, okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks again,” I held up the journal.”
“I know you think it’s probably useless, but you might be surprised at just how incredible having something special like that can really be.”
“Well, I was thinking that maybe I can start something like Mémère’s spell book. You know, maybe one day I’ll have a kid or a grandkid who wants to read my secrets, too.”
Erin laughed. “Dream big, honey. Dream big.”
She went back into the kitchen, and I stood up and stretched. Then I went upstairs to my bedroom and put the journal in my suitcase. In just a short while, I’d be heading back to Hybrid Academy for another year of witch and shifter training. My primary goal was to find my grandmother, of course, but I was still very weak when it came to my magical abilities. Erin believed that if I took more classes, practiced with my peers, and had life experiences, that I’d somehow be able to learn
stronger spells.
That would help me in every way, but I’d never stop looking.
Erin seemed to have come around to the idea that the vampires had my grandmother, too. She no longer believed that Grandma was dead. Maybe that was due to the fact that she’d had to listen to me saying it over and over and over. Maybe she just wanted me to believe that she was on my side. Either way, we’d spent months pouring over my grandmother’s notes, comments, and spells and trying to piece together what she had been working on.
What’d we discovered had shocked us to our cores.
For years, I’d thought that my parents’ disappearance was related to their book research. What kind of book? I had never asked. That had been my first mistake. Reading my grandmother’s notes had revealed that Mom and Dad weren’t just researchers. They’d been looking for a special potion. If you took it, it would enable you to become a shifter of your choice: bear, wolf, tiger. You didn’t even have to be a real shifter. You could just take it and shift.
That was it.
My grandmother had spent years trying to find out what Mom and Dad were working on, why it was dangerous, and what it would take to find out what had happened to them. Unbeknownst to me, she’d met with wizards who were hunting for my parents. She’d contacted people who had seen my parents in the days before their disappearance. She’d even spoken with specialists who dealt in magical herbs to find out what the consequences of such a true potion would be.
And it hadn’t looked good.
None of it had.
“Are you ready?” Aunt Erin knocked on the bedroom door. She peeked her head in. Smiled.
I just shrugged.
“Not really,” I said.
“Nervous?”
“No, but I’m going to miss you.” It was bold of me to say and Erin knew it. Her eyes widened a little at the unexpected tenderness. Coming from me, that was a lot. I wasn’t exactly known for my sweetness or my gentleness. I was kind of brave and honestly, I was pretty squirrely. Sweet, though? That had never really been my particular style.
“It was a nice summer,” my aunt finally said. Did she tear up a little? No. She did smile, though, and I’d take that for what it was worth. Erin’s life had been many things, but not easy. No, not so much. Losing her brother, my dad, at a young age had been hard for her. Then my grandmother took me away. Erin didn’t see me or hear from me for nearly ten years. Thanks to a ward my parents placed on me that had been woven by blood-magic, my aunt hadn’t been able to find me or talk to me until the ward wore off last year.
To say we’d spent the last few months making up for lost time would be an understatement. It had been lovely, though. Wonderful. Erin was like the big sister I never knew I wanted, but who I desperately needed. Now we were going to be separated once more. At least this time, I knew it wouldn’t be forever. At least I knew we’d be able to see each other. She’d come visit me and we’d keep searching for my grandmother.
I’d never stop hoping, searching, or trying.
No matter where Grandma was, I’d find her.
“Well, then,” Erin said, straightening up. She stood up a little taller, smoothed her witchy-skirts, and smiled at me. “Shall we go?”
“I suppose,” I said. I stood up and took one look around the tiny bedroom I’d called home all summer. It was a very girlish room, which was strange since Aunt Erin was so fierce. In some ways, she was very feminine: she wore skirts and loved makeup and her smile was always bright. In other ways, she was strong and masculine. Determined. Fierce.
“It suits you,” she said.
“The purple? Yeah, I’d say so.”
“I chose the color just for you. It reminds me of bravery.”
“You flatter me.”
“Well,” Erin crossed her arms over her chest. “Sometimes flattery is a good thing, love.”
“I’m going to miss this place,” I said. “Especially that.”
I pointed at the bright window seat. I’d spent hours upon hours reading, looking for clues to my grandmother’s whereabouts, and studying spells. I’d curled up there with Boo, my familiar, and searched for things. Even though I now knew that Boo was really a shapeshifting boy named Henry, he’d remained in cat form almost the entire summer. To my knowledge, Erin had no idea I’d had a boy hidden away in my room the entire time. If it were up to me, she’d never know.
“It’s the perfect space to read,” Erin agreed. “And I think Mr. Boo liked it, too.”
Henry had left a few times during the summer to go visit his family. They were used to his comings and goings. After years of living with me, it had become second nature, I suppose. They never seemed anxious or stressed about it. To them, it was just part of who Henry was. He was there sometimes. Other times, he was gone. He was a wanderer, through and through, but it didn’t bother me.
In fact, having Henry close by, even in his cat form, had been quite wonderful this summer. It was nice to know that my best friend was always with me no matter what.
I grabbed my backpack and slung it over one shoulder. Then Boo hopped into my arms.
“Yeah,” I looked down at him and pet his soft black-and-white fur. “I think it’s safe to say he liked all the cuddles he got this summer.”
Erin smiled at me and my familiar and motioned to the door.
“Come on, then,” she said. Erin snapped her fingers and my luggage lifted up from the floor and followed us as we went downstairs. I tried not to feel sadness at the fact that summer was over or that I was returning to Hybrid Academy. It wasn’t a bad thing, after all. I was going to have a chance to study with my friends and to learn more magical spells. I’d be able to practice unlocking my magical abilities that had been tucked away for so long.
Aunt Erin’s bright pink truck was waiting in the driveway. I put my luggage in the back and climbed in the front seat to sit beside her.
“This is it,” I said. “Goodbye, house.”
Erin placed her hand on mine.
“It was a good summer, Max.”
“The best.”
“You’re going to have a good year at school, too.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
I watched in the rearview mirror as her house grew smaller and smaller. Eventually, it faded away from view and I turned back toward the road.
Going back to Hybrid Academy was a good thing.
So why did I feel so sad?
Chapter 2
Hybrid Academy was nestled close to the Dragon Mountains. As we approached the school on the narrow road that led to the campus, I peered up at them. They were menacing and big, looming over what was supposed to be a beautiful, magical, and maybe even sweet campus.
“Why are they called that, anyway?”
“What’s that?” Erin asked, looking over at the mountains.
“The Dragon Mountains. Why are they called that?”
She shrugged.
“There are a lot of legends surrounding those mountains.”
“Like what?” I’d missed out on hearing so many magical legends simply because I had grown up locked away. My grandmother did her best, but there was only so much one person could teach you. I hadn’t met other magical beings until recently, so I still had so much to learn.
“Well,” Erin smiled. “Some students think that actual dragons live there.”
“Dragons-dragons or shapeshifter-dragons?”
“Both. Either. I don’t know.”
“What do other people say?”
“That the mountains hold mysteries and magic.”
“Have you ever been up there?” I asked. The mountains were covered with trees almost all the way to the top. They were lovely. Part of me wanted to go wander around and see what happened. Surely there must be an adventure out there waiting to happen.
“Oh, yes,” Erin said. “I used to sneak up there with my friends,” she chuckled.
“Did you ever find a dragon?”
“Nope. Never.”
“Do you think they really exist?”
Erin considered her answer for a long moment. That made me feel like she was taking me seriously and not just blurting out the first thing she thought of. I appreciated that.
“The world is a big place, Max. We can’t possibly know everything that exists.”
“Dragons are pretty big news, though.”
“So are shapeshifters, love.”
“I guess that’s true.”
She parked in front of the school in a little parking lot and climbed out of the vehicle. I expected that Erin would just drop me off outside of the giant castle, but she didn’t.
“Coming inside?” I asked.
“You bet. First things first: luggage.”
She snapped her fingers and my luggage followed us over to the girl’s dormitory. It was already swimming with students who were dropping off their bags and suitcases and trunks before orientation started. I scanned the room, but didn’t see my best friend, Kiera, anywhere. Maybe she’d arrive later.
“All right,” Erin said. “There will be time to lollygag later. Let’s go to the auditorium. We still have a few minutes.”
We scurried down a little path that led to the main castle. Once we were inside, we hurried to the auditorium and found a couple of empty seats. Despite being a huge auditorium, there weren’t many places left to sit. Not today, anyway. Today was a huge deal.
The large room held the year’s orientation, which was led by the headmistress, Alicia Gregory. She wasn’t the type of woman who took no for an answer, and she certainly wasn’t the type of woman who tolerated anyone being late to anything – least of all an orientation that was planned far in advance.
Alicia Gregory was an interesting woman who had obviously been through a lot in her time. She was very good at spells and very good at dealing with people. Both of these skills served her well when it came to facing problems. The reality was that Hybrid Academy was a pretty big school with pretty complicated students. There were definitely a lot of things that needed to be handled and Headmistress Gregory was just the woman to do that. She was strong, and I liked that. Brave? Yeah, she had some bravery there. It was nice to have a female role model I could look up to. Not that my male teachers weren’t cool, too, but there was something about Alicia that just screamed fantastic.
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