Hybrid Academy Box Set

by L. C. Mortimer

  “So, he turned them back, ran tests, and finally released them?”

  “Karen didn’t say anything about having tests run on her.”

  “Yeah,” Patricia nodded. “I know. There seems to be this overlap of when you take Casper’s potion and when your memory starts working again. For 24-48 hours, you don’t remember a single thing. You don’t remember when you were an animal, you don’t remember how you turned into one, and probably worst of all, you don’t remember what happened when you were turned back.”

  “So, what does this have to do with me?” I asked. “You said he was going to come after me.”

  “The vampires have lost your grandmother, Max. They’re going to come for you.”

  Chapter 13

  “Lost?” Erin’s ears perked up. “What do you mean, they lost her?”

  “They don’t know where she is,” Patricia said.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  Boo meowed loudly. We all turned and looked at him. I could see the pain in his eyes for just a moment. He shook his little head and the sadness disappeared, but I knew it was still there. He was close to Grandma. He didn’t like hearing this anymore than I did.

  “Yeah. They’re all pretty mad. Professor Elkridge keeps getting these weird magical messages from the vampires. They’re all super pissed. For a long time, they suspected Maddison knew more than she was letting on.”

  “You know her name is Maddison,” I said.

  Patricia nodded sadly, biting her lip again. She was nervous, and afraid, and she didn’t think we were going to believe her, but suddenly, I knew that it was true.

  It was all true.

  I never told people my grandmother’s name. I knew that she never revealed her name, either. A lot could go wrong if you told the wrong person your name. You could lose everything. You might not even realize just how much you had to lose until it was completely and entirely gone. People could rip your entire world from you if they knew your name. Grandmother guarded hers like gold.

  “Yeah, I know her name is Maddison, and I know they were trying to hold onto her for the vampire king, but she slipped away before he could question her.” Patricia held up her hands. “They are all very agitated about this.”

  Agitated?

  That seemed to be putting it lightly.

  If I had to venture a guess, the vampire king wasn’t very pleased about losing his prized captive.

  Agitated was probably how he felt on a day with a slightly chilly breeze.

  No, I would guess that the king was actually feeling irate at losing Grandmother.

  “Slipped away? Where did she go?” Erin started looking around, as though a clue would manifest itself in my dorm room. I saw her reach into her pocket.

  “Don’t bother throwing that stuff again,” Patricia said. “It kind of stings, you know. Besides, Maddison isn’t here. She’s nowhere. Nobody knows where she is.”

  “Somebody knows,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “And I’d dare to bet that someone is the professor.”

  “It’s time to get some answers,” Aunt Erin agreed. “Let’s go.”

  We left the room and headed downstairs. Kiera was hanging out in the lobby and when she saw us, she looked up from the book she was reading.

  “Hey, what’s going on? Oh, hey,” she noticed Patricia. “Long time, no see.”

  To my surprise, Patricia hurried over to Kiera, wrapped her arms around her, and pulled her into this really tight, awkward hug.

  “I’m sorry I was so mean last year. It won’t happen again, okay?”

  “Uh, okay,” Kiera said. She shot me a look like she couldn’t really believe what was happening, but I just shrugged. Apparently, being invisible had made a good and positive impact on Patricia. She wasn’t the mean girl she was last year. In fact, she was being totally helpful. Maybe it was a trick, but maybe it really was a positive change. If I believed in anything, it was letting people grow and adjust.

  “Listen,” I said. “We need to go talk to the professor.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Kiera said. She squatted down, scooped Boo into her arms, and got back up. “I’m in. Let’s go.”

  We headed out of the dorms in a little group and made our way to the main castle.

  “Should we get the headmistress first?” I asked, but Erin just pressed her lips together tightly and shook her head. I wasn’t sure why, but I had the feeling there was something she wasn’t telling me. That was okay. She could fill me in later once we were alone.

  We scurried down the halls, passing stray students here and there, but the castle was mostly empty and isolated. In some ways, this made it seem scarier than it usually was. Hybrid Academy was a dark place sometimes. The stone walls and dim lighting didn’t help. We turned a corner and went down a narrow staircase that led to a subfloor.

  “His office is down here?” Kiera asked.

  “Yeah,” Patricia said, nodding. “He’s near the labs and the infirmary.”

  “Makes sense,” Erin said. “He works with potions.”

  We kept going, but with each step, a sense of dread filled me. Something wasn’t right. I kept thinking back to the feeling I’d had when Kiera and I had seen the wolf in the snow. The creature had looked at us and we’d felt this deep sense of pain in its eyes. Before we’d seen it, though, I’d felt something deep within me.

  I’d felt something painful.

  That same emotion came over me as we approached Professor Elkridge’s office. We stepped through the doorway without knocking and filled the little room. Obviously, he wasn’t there, but he had been recently.

  “What is all this?” Kiera asked, looking around. A desk stood in the center of the room. There was a chair behind it and two in front, presumably for students to sit in. Bookshelves lined one wall and the opposite wall had a large table.

  It was a mess. Books were strewn all over the room. There were half-finished potions on different surfaces. The desk had an open book and several pads of paper with crazy writing on them. There were open drinks, magical items, and herbs everywhere.

  It was chaos.

  Patricia stepped closer to me and lowered her voice.

  “Max,” she said. “They only figured out who you were recently. They’d been trying to identify which student you were because without your grandmother, they need you to read her book to you.”

  “I don’t even have her book, though,” I whispered.

  “That’s no problem at all,” said a deep voice from the doorway behind us. “I’m certain that Erin-the-witch would be happy to fetch it for us, wouldn’t she?” We whirled around to see Casper standing in the doorway. He wasn’t alone, though. He was holding his wand directly to someone’s neck. It was a woman, judging by the shape of the body, but her head was cast down.

  “Excuse me?” Aunt Erin said. “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, let’s not play games, dear,” he stepped inside, dragging the woman with him. “I think we all know what the score is now. Don’t we, Grandma?”

  At that, he jabbed the woman with him, and she looked up, eyes wide. The woman’s eyes were hollow and tired, worn and weary. She was thinner than she had been the last time I saw her, but it was her. It was definitely and totally her. And she was alive.

  I gasped and started to run forward, but Erin grabbed my arm and yanked me back.

  Grandmother.

  It was my grandmother.

  He had gotten her somehow.

  She’d managed to go through hell and back again and she’d fought off vampires and monsters and trekked across the mountains. She’d fought her way back to me only to be captured by the man I didn’t even realize was a threat. I hadn’t even known that out of all of the bad guys in the world, perhaps one of the very worst was my very own teacher.

  How stupid was that?

  “What do you want from her?” Erin asked. “She’s just an old woman.”

  “Ah, we both know that isn’t true.”

  “What are you talkin
g about?” Patricia said, playing along. “She looks pretty frail to me. What do you need her for, anyway?”

  Casper squinted, looking at Patricia for a moment.

  “Do I know you?” He said. “You smell…familiar.”

  Patricia only glared at him.

  “Either way, it’s no bother,” he said. “But I believe you have something I want.” He looked at Erin as though she would simply produce my grandmother’s spell book out of thin air. Obviously, he didn’t know who he was dealing with. I’d learned a lot about Erin over the last year. One of the most important things about her?

  Erin hated bullies.

  She had no time and no energy for people who liked to spend their time hurting others. It simply didn’t interest her in the slightest. So when Professor Elkridge looked at her and asked – no, demanded – that she give him the book, I wasn’t at all surprised to hear her response.

  “No.”

  Professor Elkridge looked surprised for just a moment, as though he couldn’t quite believe it, and then he raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m sorry, I believe I misheard you. It sounded like you said no.”

  “You heard me just fine,” Erin put her hands on her hips. “I’m giving you nothing, Elkridge.”

  He narrowed his eyes and pressed his wand harder against my grandmother’s body. She gasped at the sensation, and I closed my eyes. I didn’t think I could do this. I didn’t think I could watch him hurt her.

  Not like this.

  There had to be a way to fight him. There was always a way to fight. There had to be a way that I could get him to back off, to go away. I didn’t really want to kill him. I’d never killed anyone or anything before in my life.

  But Elkridge was dangerous, and he had to go.

  Surely, there was a way to remove him from the situation. There had to be a way to win this battle, this fight. There had to be something I could do.

  I just had to figure out what it was.

  One thing was for certain: we knew the score now.

  It was us versus the vampires.

  Patricia said Elkridge knew that I was the granddaughter. He knew I could read the book. He didn’t need both me and my grandmother. One of us would suffice, which meant he was definitely going to kill one of us. Why keep more than one person around? Two prisoners meant twice the chance that someone would escape. No, Casper was a tricky one. He was conniving.

  He was mean.

  But he wasn’t going to get out of this one.

  Not without a fight.

  Then it hit me.

  “You know,” I said, stepping forward. All eyes were on me. “I was thinking about what you said the other day, Professor Elkridge.” His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t look away from me. He kept his wand tightly pressed against my grandmother, but I tried not to think about that. Grandma could take care of herself. She’d proven that. I needed to distract him a little bit, though, in order to make my move.

  “About what?”

  “About rose potion and how it can be used as a healing product.”

  “Rose potion?”

  He seemed confused, but he let me continue.

  “What’s the point of this?” Patricia hissed, but I ignored her and kept talking.

  “I was wondering if you had anything that could make the impacts of a rose potion last forever.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the effects of the potion wear off. Sometimes in as little as four hours, I’d say.” Patricia’s eyes widened when I said that, but she discreetly nodded, letting me know she knew what I was getting at.

  “That’s true,” he sighed, but didn’t loosen his grip on my grandmother. “But this really isn’t the time to be discussing your homework, Maxine. You really should have read the chapter. I mean, I don’t want to point fingers right now, but I kind of think you would remember this if you would have studied harder for my class.”

  “Oh, right, right, evil villain stuff happening now. I got it,” I said, putting my hands on my hips. I waved a hand in the air as though I was just thinking random thoughts. Hopefully, he wouldn’t catch on that I was very serious about everything I was saying in this moment. “But what would someone take if they wanted to make the effects last forever?”

  “For a healing potion?”

  “Yes,” I said. “So, if I got hurt seriously, and I needed to take a potion to heal myself, but four hours just wasn’t enough, what could I add to rose to make the effects last permanently?”

  That got him thinking.

  “I don’t know that it would make rose potion in particular last eternally,” Professor Elkridge said. “But I’d go for Turniptuoale oil,” he said. “Or even hexieo potion. Either of those would drastically enhance the effects of the rose potion’s power.”

  “Do you have those here?”

  “Maxine,” he said.

  “Please,” I said in a sing-song voice.

  “Yeah,” he pointed with his wand, but didn’t loosen his grip on my grandmother. “Over there.”

  “Where?”

  “Top shelf.”

  I moved swiftly to the shelf as the whole group watched me, and I grabbed the potion. It was a strange greenish color and I guessed that when I uncorked it, it would smell bad.

  “Can I use this in my other classes?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “You know, like my love potions class?” I asked. “Would this make a love spell last forever?”

  “I suppose it wouldn’t make it last forever,” he said slowly. The wand was once more pointed at my grandmother. “But it could make it last a significant amount of time.”

  “Do I need to make my lover ingest it?” I asked.

  “No,” he sighed again. “Maxine.”

  “Please,” I said. “Just bear with me, Professor. I promise, I can totally help you get the book. Erin doesn’t have it. I have it, and I’ll go get it, okay? But you know, I’m really having a hard time in Mr. Brax’s classes this year and I think having this could really help me.”

  “Just apply it topically,” he finally said.

  “Oh, okay.”

  My grandmother caught my eye and I nodded ever-so-slightly to let her know that it was time for her to duck. I uncorked the potion and threw it at Mr. Elkridge as my grandmother went limp, sliding out of his arms, and dropped to the floor. He cried out loudly and covered his eyes.

  “What have you done?” He asked, but it was the last thing he would ever say because Patricia had her wand out and was whispering her special, secret spell that could turn anyone in the world into a tiny, lovable rodent.

  Even someone as evil as a vampire’s assistant.

  The spell hit Mr. Elkridge and instantly, he started to shrink. He fell to the floor as his body morphed from that of a man to that of a little, tiny hamster. Boo meowed at the hamster and struggled to break free, but Kiera held onto him tightly. When Henry was in his cat form, resisting the urge to prey on small animals wasn’t easy.

  Immediately, Patricia rushed forward, scooped him into her hands, and held him tightly. Then she looked around.

  “We did it,” she said. “We got him.”

  I felt sick to my stomach because of everything that had just happened, but somehow in the midst of both Kiera and my aunt simultaneously hugging and yelling at me for being stupid, I managed to keep myself together.

  Then I looked over across the room at her.

  She was here.

  She’d come.

  I didn’t know how she’d done it.

  I didn’t know whether she’d let herself get captured or if it had been an accident.

  She was here, though.

  My grandmother was alive, and she was free from the vampires and she had come for me. I closed my eyes for just a second before opening them again. They were full of tears, but it was okay. These were happy tears. She was okay.

  She was alive.

  She was here.

  Chapter 14

  “It�
�s you,” I said.

  A million thoughts ran through my head. I had just managed to escape from a terribly evil villain that I didn’t even know was a threat. I had somehow managed to outwit him for long enough to escape with everyone that I loved. My roommate was alive and well and clearly visible. All of my closest friends were here.

  And she was here.

  Grandmother.

  Mémère.

  I rushed to the little woman who had done so much for me and I just looked at her because I couldn’t quite believe it was really her. She was okay. She was alive.

  And she was here.

  She had come for me.

  Through thick and thin, she had crossed mountains to come find me.

  She had fought vampires.

  She had changed everything.

  “And it’s you,” Grandmother teared up as she wrapped her arms around me. She pulled me close and I was overwhelmed as I thought about how much had changed since I’d last seen her. It had been more than a year, but it felt like a lifetime. It felt like it had been a hundred years, or a thousand, or a million.

  It had been forever.

  “Don’t cry,” I said as she sniffled. I was afraid she was going to make me cry, too.

  “Now, listen up, young lady,” she said. “You may be a proper grownup now, but I’ll cry if I want to. I think I’ve earned that right.”

  “Okay,” I whispered. “Okay, Mémère.”

  I held her close, breathing in everything about her: her softness, her scent, her gentleness. She looked small and she looked tired, but she was so brave. She was so strong. She had practically moved mountains just to come find me.

  To save me.

  And she’d made it.

  “I wanted to come save you, Grandma,” I said. “I wanted to look for you. I didn’t even know where to start.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “In this story, the Grandma can save herself.”

  Erin chuckled at that comment, and Grandma seemed to notice her for the first time. She pulled away and looked at my aunt.

  “Erin,” Grandma said.

  “Maddison.”

  “It’s been awhile.”