Both years.
People always said, “Third time’s the charm,” right? Well, maybe year three was going to be the charm for me.
At least, that’s what I was hoping.
“This way,” Erin led the way to the auditorium for orientation. Hybrid Academy had a huge, beautiful campus, and the main building was a large, oversized castle. It was there that classes took place, along with meals, orientation, and any special events or festivals. The castle was so big that you could easily get lost in it. New students were sometimes given maps to help them navigate the huge campus. Those of us who came from human and non-magical backgrounds tended to have the hardest time. It always seemed like the kids who grew up in magical families did okay, though.
The most important part of the year was the orientation event. Usually, it was both boring and informative. This year, it was going to tell us everything we needed to know about finishing up our last year as students at the academy. Rumor had it that the third year at the academy was the hardest, but I wasn’t so sure about that.
My first year at the academy, I’d been completely lost. I’d dealt with mean-girl bullies, found out that my cat was secretly a shapeshifter, and even gotten mixed up with a no-good teacher.
My second year, I’d discovered that my grandmother was okay. She was alive. She hadn’t been murdered by vampires, but she’d been taken by them. She’d escaped and she’d come back to Hybrid Academy just as we discovered that my roommate had been trapped in an invisibility spell and that my favorite potions teacher was actually a terrible person.
So, this year probably wasn’t going to be easy.
Not if the past was any indicator.
Life at Hybrid Academy was always an adventure, but never simple, and that was something I’d managed to get used to, at least, I thought that I had. As we made our way toward the auditorium for orientation, I wondered what I was actually getting myself into.
Was this year going to be the same as years past?
Was it going to be horrible?
Or would this year manage to be seamless, simple, and easy?
“Who do you think you’ll have as a roommate this year?” Kiera asked. Our roommates would be automatically assigned by the school. As much as it would be nice to be able to choose our own roommates, Hybrid Academy seemed to enjoy mixing and matching students. Sometimes they’d put similar hybrids in a shared space, but most of the time, it seemed to be completely and entirely random as to who ended up together.
My first year, I hadn’t had a roommate.
Last year, I’d had an invisible roommate who was also a demon-witch hybrid.
Who knew?
Maybe this year I’d get a gargoyle or a fallen angel or even a fae.
Maybe it would be Kiera.
Damn, a girl could dream.
“You,” I said. “I want you as my roomie.”
“Me too,” she said. We’d both requested to be roommates, but we also knew the score. We weren’t the ones in power at the school, so it wasn’t up to us.
“Although, honestly, I wouldn’t mind having Patricia again,” I said.
“Yeah, once she stopped being the invisible girl, everything kind of worked out pretty well between you two.”
“For sure. What about you?”
“You,” she said. “Always. But, I mean, my previous roommates were fine, too.”
“You never know who you’ll end up with,” Aunt Erin said. “Just remember that the reason you’re assigned a roommate is to help you become more comfortable around different people who comes from various backgrounds.”
“Like non-magical backgrounds?” Kiera shot a pointed look at me. Thanks to the blood spell my parents had put on me before they disappeared, I’d been carefully warded from all magic until I was 19. It had taken ten years for the spell to wear off, and it had been far too long. Once my magical abilities began to manifest, things became a lot easier to deal with in my life.
Namely, shifting. It definitely had its perks.
If I was feeling stressed or anxious or overwhelmed, I could easily shift into my wolf form and just go. Somehow, when I was in my wolf form, everything seemed to make a little more sense. The world seemed to be much more manageable.
It seemed to be much more fantastic.
“Exactly,” Erin said. “Where else would you get a chance to spend as much time with someone who came from a totally different place than you?”
“Uh, work?” I asked.
They both stared at me like I was crazy. I knew exactly why. Both Kiera and Erin came from families with strong magical backgrounds. Generally, magical families worked in magical fields. The idea of a magical person, such as a witch, regularly interacting with a non-magical human was totally outrageous. Apparently, it was also kind of unheard of.
Oh well.
I looked away and tried to pretend that I wasn’t being utterly and completely awkward. There would be other days when I could try to be a normal magic user. I could pretend like I was the same as any other witch, but right now, we all knew the truth.
And to be honest, some days, I kind of felt like a fraud.
I was still taking things one day at a time. Even after all of this time at Hybrid Academy, I was still learning to find my way around. I was still figuring out where I fit into the magical world and where I belonged.
Luckily, I was saved from having to say anything because just then, Patricia burst out of a classroom and into the hallway. She let the door slam angrily behind her and she started marching off in the opposite direction without a backwards glance.
“Patricia!” I called out. My roommate from last year stopped dead in her tracks and turned around. Her face was pale, angry, and covered with tears. Her mascara was smeared, and her blush was kind of just…all over the place.
Damn.
What the hell happened?
Patricia was always totally and completely put together. As a former mean girl, she had to be. She was the kind of person who prided herself on always looking good. And as a demon, she was naturally beautiful. She was tall and lean with long, luscious hair. My own hair was reddish and wildly unmanageable. I needed to learn a spell for de-frizzing myself because I spent way too much money on hair products.
I looked over at the classroom door she had burst out of, but there was no window into the magical room and without even trying, I could tell that the door was definitely locked now. If there was anyone in there, they’d probably want to avoid being seen, anyway. What had happened in that room? Why was Patricia so upset? It took a lot to upset a demon, and I always thought that my old roomie was particularly strong. It took a lot to get under her skin.
Something bad must have happened.
Patricia came over to our little group. There were other students walking down the hallway, making their way to the orientation. No one seemed to bat an eye when they saw us, though. Nobody even looked twice.
“What happened?” I asked her, pulling her in for a hug. She wasn’t really the hugging type, but Patricia hugged me anyway. Then she pulled back, looked at me, and shook her head.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Try me.” I looked over at the classroom door. “What happened in there?”
“Professor Brax happened,” she said.
“Our teacher?” Kiera asked. The professor was smart and intelligent. He was clever, witty, and usually pretty fun. “What about him?”
“He thinks I’m not going to be able to graduate,” she said.
“Why the hell not?” Erin butted into the conversation. Patricia looked up, as though she was noticing Erin for the first time, and she blushed.
“Uh, well, my grades were pretty horrible last year. You know, on account of me being invisible and all.”
“She missed part of the first semester,” I filled my aunt in on everything that had happened. Patricia had made her ex-boyfriend upset, he’d cast an invisibility spell, and then he’d abandoned Patricia to fend for herself. Pa
tricia had caused a ruckus about the incident, but Jeremiah had denied any wrongdoing and there hadn’t been enough evidence to convict him of anything at all.
Luckily, he wasn’t coming back to Hybrid Academy, so we wouldn’t have to deal with him at all.
At least if we were lucky.
There was always the chance that he’d find a way to worm his way back into the school, and I didn’t think he was above getting a job on campus just to cause trouble, but that was something to worry about another day. Today we just had to deal with orientation.
Well, and Professor Brax being crazy, apparently.
“That doesn’t mean you can’t graduate,” Erin said.
Patricia shrugged and wiped her eyes. Her makeup was smeared, and Erin shook her head.
“Come here,” she motioned to Patricia, who stepped closer hesitantly. Erin waved her hand in front of Patricia’s face, whispered something I couldn’t hear, and snapped her fingers. Instantly, Patricia’s hair and makeup were perfect once more. Erin smiled at her handiwork.
“Lovely,” she said, looking at my friend.
“What did you do?” Patricia asked, touching her cheeks.
“Fixing what your teacher broke,” she said. “I’m going to go talk to Alicia about this before orientation starts. It’s totally unacceptable for a teacher to be making a third-year student cry. It’s horrible,” Erin said. She turned to me and Kiera. “Will you take your friend to orientation while I stop by the headmistress’ office?
“Of course,” we said.
And then we were off.
Chapter 3
It had been awhile since Erin had stepped foot in Alicia Gregory’s office. It had been nearly a year, in fact. The last time she’d been there was when she petitioned for Maxine to be allowed to take a magical shifting class dealing with potions and shifters. Alicia hadn’t been too keen on the idea, but Erin could be convincing, at least when she wanted to be. With a little bit of gentle prodding, Alicia had come around to Erin’s way of thinking. No, Alicia didn’t know the details of Maxine becoming an orphan, and she didn’t need to. All she’d known was that Erin wanted Maxine in the class, and eventually, she’d decided to let Erin have her own way.
Now, as Erin hurried down the hallway, she couldn’t help but feel uneasy. There was something strange about Hybrid Academy these days. Erin hadn’t exactly been able to pinpoint what the problem was. She’d spent the summer conducting research and trying to determine exactly what had gone wrong with her brother and sister-in-law’s disappearance all of those years ago, and she’d discovered quite a few inconsistencies.
For starters, she’d been able to discover the exact element her brother and sister-in-law had been after: ruby flowers. She knew this because Rita, one of the witches in her coven, had managed to dig up an old vampire legend that listed it as part of a shifting spell called Wolaftiam. It was a spell that forced you to turn into a shifter. The spell had an assortment of different ingredients, most of which were difficult, if not impossible, to obtain. Once ingested or applied topically, the spell was permanent.
Unless you were a shifter already.
Then it simply killed you.
The potion caused you to shift into an animal, but if you were already half-animal, the genetic makeup of the two beasts would battle and there would be no winners. It wasn’t possible to survive. It simply wasn’t something that could happen.
No matter what you did or how well you prepared, if you were a shifter and you took the potion, you would die.
Devastation had wrapped itself around Erin when she’d read the spell with Maddison and Rita. It explained so many things she had never been able to understand. For years, she’d simply thought that Cara and Falcon were researching flowers and plants for a book they wanted to write, but now she knew the truth. The reality was so much worse than what she’d ever imagined.
Erin was certain that something had gone wrong on the expedition for the ruby flowers and that her brother had ingested the Wolaftiam somehow.
It was the only thing that made sense.
Her heart clenched in pain as she hurried down the narrow hallways of Hybrid Academy. She didn’t have a lot of time to get to the headmistress’ office. She wanted to hurry and speak with Alicia before the orientation started. Afterwards, the headmistress would likely be busy with new parents and questions and helping students who were lost, but she wanted to make sure that Alicia knew exactly how Mr. Brax had been behaving. Who did he think he was, anyway? Making anyone cry was cruel, but belittling a student who had struggled the year before was simply ridiculous. As a teacher, Brax should be encouraging his students: not putting them down.
Erin had met the man briefly the year prior, and while he’d been a bit off, he hadn’t seemed mean or cruel. At least, he hadn’t at the time. He’d been quite normal, actually, and she’d even found him to be a little bit handsome.
So why was he acting so differently now?
Sure, there was always the chance that Patricia was lying about what had happened inside the classroom with Brax, but somehow, Erin didn’t think so.
Somehow, she thought that Patricia wouldn’t make this up.
Patricia was a demon, which meant she had a mean streak; however, she seemed to keep it carefully under control these days. Her first year at Hybrid, she’d been a true terror. She’d gone around causing trouble, bullying the other students, and generally being mean and unkind.
Last year had changed all of that, though.
Apparently, it had changed Brax, too.
Erin glanced at her pocket watch. She had less than half an hour until orientation began. Alicia wouldn’t be in her office for long. Walking down the hallways simply wasn’t going to work. Erin needed a faster way to get to the office.
She wasn’t the type of witch who could teleport herself. As far as she knew, there weren’t any living witches at all who could do that, but Erin had something better.
Erin had a secret.
She had once been a student at Hybrid Academy, and not a well-behaved student. In fact, she’d been quite mischievous in her day, which was how she knew that Hybrid Academy existed inside a castle that had once been occupied by a dragon queen.
Legend had it that the queen was decidedly untrusting and had filled the castle with all sorts of secret lairs, rooms, and passageways. Most of these were still accessible today, but only if you knew how.
Luckily, Erin knew how.
She wandered down one side hall and then another. Once she was out of sight and didn’t have to worry about any parents or teachers or students seeing her sneaking about, she approached a strange-looking statue she was actually quite familiar with. It was one she’d loved looking at when she was young. Yes, that had been about ten years ago, but time had been kind to Erin, and she was still just as sprightly and youthful as she had once been.
The statue in front of her was old and worn. She ran her hands along the cracking stone of the wolf’s head before petting its back. Yes, this wolf had been quite remarkable, in her opinion. She remembered when it had first been brought to Hybrid Academy. A family of wolf-shifters had donated it to the school. The headmaster at the time had disliked the statue immensely, so he’d shoved it back here in a place where nobody ever went.
Well, nobody but Erin.
And Alicia.
Together, the girls had wandered around the castle. They’d been able to explore all of the nooks and crannies of the castle without detection. No one had looked twice at the little witches as they’d tried to figure out the myths and legends that surrounded the castle. They’d searched for answers, trying to figure out which places held secrets.
Then they’d discovered the wolf.
It had been Erin who saw it first. She’d motioned to Alicia, who had been close beside her. Together, they’d touched and pried until they’d found the secret entrance behind the wolf.
It had opened an entire new world for them.
Now, Erin looked to the wall
behind the wolf. It was just as she remembered. The wood paneling here was old and worn, but still polished and cared for. Erin was glad that Alicia hadn’t been neglecting the appearance of the castle. Nobody wanted to be the person who let a beautiful school fall into ruin. Erin felt along the edges of the wall and tried to find the notch that concealed a small button. After just a few seconds of fiddling, she found it.
She pressed the button, and the panel slid open.
Erin looked at the narrow opening. It was smaller than she remembered, or perhaps she was just bigger. She hadn’t been so timid or scared when she’d been young. She held back a laugh at just how brave she’d been. Too brave. “Scared” wasn’t a word that Erin had understood when she was young. Now, she wondered just how many times she’d managed to narrowly escape from something horrible. She looked around, but there was no one here.
She was isolated.
Alone.
Secluded.
Anything could happen now, but this wasn’t the time for nostalgia. This was the time to find answers. She knelt down and crawled into the dark space. Then she pressed an interior button to close the door. The panel slid back into place and that was it. Erin was alone in the dark.
Not for long.
She pulled out her wand and cast a spell that gave her a light. The glow of her wand filled the tiny space, and she saw that it was big enough that she could stand. Good. She didn’t want to be crawling around in these passageways, anyhow. Erin stood up, stretched, and started walking.
The tunnel seemed to have been untouched by time. It looked exactly the same, right down to the cobwebs along the ceiling and the dust piled on the floor.
She and Alicia had used these tunnels to get to classes on time, eavesdrop on conversations, and hang out alone together when they didn’t want to be bothered with boys or friends. They had made these passageways their own, at least until their friendship had faded away into nothingness.
It hurt, sometimes, when she thought about their old friendship. The reality was that she missed Alicia more often than not. She thought about her all of the time, and sometimes Erin wondered if she should reach out and invite her friend to have coffee with the coven.
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