Hybrid Academy Box Set

by L. C. Mortimer

  “You two,” she said to Patricia and the vampire boy. “Come with me.”

  He motioned to himself as though Erin might be speaking to someone else, and she just rolled her eyes.

  “I’m not going to stake you,” she said. “Let’s go. We need to get the parents and students calmed down and let them know what’s going to happen next.”

  “What is going to happen next?” I asked. It was only the first day of school and a good majority of the teachers had been turned into vamps. None of them, as it turned out, seemed to want to stay and fight. Not once they learned their king and queen were gone.

  Erin shrugged and shook her head. I could tell that it was a lot for her to deal with all at once, so instead of answering me, she turned and went in the direction of the auditorium. After just a moment’s hesitation, Patricia and her friend followed Erin closely behind.

  Then we were alone.

  And I was with my mom.

  I looked at her, and I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing. It was hard to accept the fact that after all of this time, she was here. She was here and she was with me and I couldn’t believe it at all. I thought about pinching myself to see if it was all real, but I didn’t. Instead, I just looked at her, and my heart hurt from all of the different things I was feeling at that moment.

  Relief.

  Happiness.

  Anticipation.

  Sadness.

  “Mom?” I asked, and she looked at me. I knew. I knew without words what had happened to her, and I hated the way I started to cry when I saw her. I was happy to see her. I was so, so happy that she was okay, but I was also sad because she’d been alone for such a very long time, and she’d been lost.

  How long had her journey been to find me?

  How long had she been alone?

  Had she been able to find any other wolves to keep her company?

  Had she been a lone wolf for the last decade?

  “This is the wolf we saw last year,” Henry said, considering my mother. “She was watching over the school, wasn’t she?” Then he looked at her and asked. “Weren’t you?”

  My mother nodded without a sound, and I wrapped my arms around her for a few minutes and cried. She was a wolf. She was stuck, trapped because of a spell she hadn’t truly understood.

  “It’s your mom,” Henry said. Kiera made a noise as she shifted back into her human form all of a sudden. She grabbed for one of the robes my grandmother had found, and she wrapped herself in it. Then she came over.

  “This is her?” Kiera asked, looking from my mom to me and back again. “This is your mom?”

  “Yes,” my grandmother said suddenly, gently. “That’s her.”

  I looked over at my grandma. There were tears in her eyes as she looked at my mother. There was so much pain and relief and sadness there, and I knew what she was thinking because I was thinking it, too. She couldn’t believe that my mom was alive. She couldn’t believe that she was here.

  I had waited forever to see her. There were so many questions I had, and so many things I wanted to ask her. There were questions burning inside of me that just threatened to pour out.

  What had happened to her?

  How long had she been alone?

  And my dad…

  They had been the world’s most wonderful couple, I knew. They had been together forever, and they had shared everything. Life couldn’t have been easy for her without him around. They had been the best of friends.

  And now…now Mom was a wolf.

  Forever.

  There was no coming back from this. The spell had been permanent. Everything we’d read had confirmed that there was no way to shift back from it. Aside from the experimental potion that Professor Elkridge had created last year, there was nothing.

  It was just this.

  Forever.

  Henry knelt beside me and put his hand on my shoulder. Then he looked at my mother.

  “We have a potion that can change you back,” he said.

  “There’s a little bit left,” Kiera confirmed quickly. “It hasn’t all been destroyed.”

  “It’s here,” my grandmother added. “We have some. Oh, we have some.” There were tears flowing freely from her cheeks now, and Grandma made no move to wipe them away.

  My mother’s eyes widened, and she looked at me. She didn’t know about this either and I hated the choice I was about to give her because it was going to be brutal. She could stay as a wolf or she could shift, but neither one was going to make for an easy life. If she took the potion, there was no way for us to predict what the side effects would be. The students the Professor had experimented on had only been animals for a few hours when he began experimenting.

  Mother had been a wolf for years.

  Would it erase all of her memories completely?

  Would it erase just a few days?

  Would it bring her back to when she had first taken the potion?

  There was no way to predict what would happen.

  I stared at Mom, trying to read her face, but it felt impossible. There was no way for me to know exactly what was going to be best for her. I couldn’t tell what she wanted. Not like this, and I hated how hard it was going to be to communicate, but it was time to make a choice. It didn’t have to be today, but I’d give her the option now.

  “Get the potion,” I said to my friends. “And we’ll let her decide.”

  Chapter 14

  Cara stared at the potion in front of her.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Maxine said, squatting in front of her. Max pet her head and ran her hands down Cara’s shoulders. The sensation was soft and warm, and it made her feel like everything was going to be okay even though she knew it wouldn’t.

  “She’s right,” Henry said. He slung a hand over Maxine’s shoulder comfortably, and Cara realized that this boy was more than just Maxine’s familiar. This boy loved Maxine very dearly, and that made Cara happy. It made her heart glad to know that no matter what happened, Maxine was going to have someone to look after her. She was going to have someone who loved her.

  Cara looked at the potion.

  She could take it, and everything would go back to the way it was.

  She would be a mother again.

  A woman.

  She would have a woman’s body and a woman’s hair and a woman’s face. She would be human. She would be herself. It wasn’t that being a wolf was horrible, but it wasn’t who she was in her heart. She had never been a shifter. She had never been part wolf. That had been Falcon, and he was gone now.

  Maddison, Maxine, and Henry, along with their friend, Kiera, were offering Cara something she never thought she’d have. They were offering her a future.

  They were giving her a chance.

  “It’s your decision,” her mother said, and Cara looked up. Maddison had aged since Cara had been gone. She had more wrinkles now, and she seemed a little more frail, but there was an incredible strength there, too. Maddison had always been strong and brave. Now she stood, looking at Cara, and the feeling was intense. Cara had missed her mother almost as much as she’d missed her own daughter, and now she had learned there might be a way to come back to both of them.

  “There are risks, Mom,” Maxine said. “We know this thing affects your memory, but we don’t know how deeply.” Maxine’s voice sounded pained, scared. Cara knew that her daughter must be worried about her, and for a good cause. This wasn’t a simple enchantment. This wasn’t the type of potion you could just take without truly thinking about the consequences.

  “You’ve been a wolf for a long time, from what we can gather,” Kiera said. “And if you take this, there’s a chance that it could do more than just erase the last few days.” She seemed a little worried, too. The fairy was glowing. Did she realize she was glowing? It was one of those very special things about fairies that Cara had always loved. When they felt strong emotions, they couldn’t control their own brightness. It was magical.

  “It could eras
e everything from your days as a wolf, Mom,” Maxine said. She bit her lip and shook her head. Cara knew what Maxine was worried about. If she took this and it erased everything, then Max would have to remind Cara what had happened. The problem was that no one had been there but Cara. So, there would be no one to tell her what had really happened to Falcon. There would be no one to answer the questions Cara would inevitably have about why she had gone on the trip, or why she had felt like it was okay to go after the ruby flowers.

  There would be no one.

  She would have huge gaps in her memory: nearly 13 years, in fact. There was a chance that the potion could be even more potent than they thought, though. It could erase everything. It could steal every part of Cara’s life. It could wreak havoc.

  Was that something she was willing to do?

  Cara thought about Falcon. She closed her eyes for a minute and pictured her sweet husband. He was always so brave. So strong. He had always been the one leading her, caring for her, protecting her. He had always encouraged her to be brave and to take risks even when she was scared. Most of the time, those risks paid off.

  Would they today?

  Cara could stay a wolf, but her secrets would still die with her. She could die a wolf, and no one would know what had happened to Falcon, or she could die a human, and still, no one would know. If she died a human, though, she would at least get some time to spend with her daughter. She could see her own mother and get to know her all over again. She could hang out with Erin, who had always been the coolest little sister-in-law around.

  Maddison, Maxine, Kiera, and Henry waited patiently, kneeling in front of Cara.

  “Take all the time you need,” Maxine said. “There’s no rush to decide, okay?”

  “And it doesn’t expire,” Henry shrugged. “So, it’s not like you have to take it right now.”

  Somehow, that made her feel a little better. There wasn’t going to be a rush for her to take the potion that could change her back. There wasn’t like, some sort of self-imposed time limit that she had to hurry up and meet.

  But she thought that she was ready. She thought that maybe, just maybe, she was up for taking the leap.

  She thought that maybe, she was ready to be brave.

  Cara had lived a long time as a wolf.

  Now, she was ready to be a woman.

  She nodded, and she took a step forward.

  Henry stood up and looked at them. Then he smiled at Cara.

  “I’ll give you a minute,” he said. Kiera followed suit. Together, they left, and although Cara liked the two very much, she was grateful to have some privacy with her mother and her daughter during this moment.

  “Oh, sweetie,” Maddison said, and she pet her daughter’s fur. Cara closed her eyes and focused on what she was about to do. She was scared. She was more scared than she’d ever been before because this was going to change everything.

  “Are you ready, Mom?” Maxine asked. She cocked her head and looked at Cara. For a brief moment, Cara thought of all the times she’d seen her daughter do just this. She’d made this face when she was a little girl and was trying to figure out where the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle should be placed. She did this when her father tried to teach her shifting skills when she was little. And she made this face now, waiting for Cara to make the biggest decision of her life.

  Cara looked up at Maxine, and then she leaned forward to taste the potion.

  It was time.

  She drank, and she felt her body begin to shift. She closed her eyes, and she realized that somehow, everything was going to be all right.

  Somehow, everything was going to be great.

  Epilogue

  One Month Later

  Life as a magical being isn’t what I thought it would be.

  For starters, it was a lot more complicated than life as an ordinary human.

  When I started at Hybrid Academy, I had so many spells and potions and herbs to memorize and remember that sometimes, my brain felt like it was going to explode. I spent more time studying than I ever thought possible, but I also spent a lot of time around people who loved me and who understood exactly what I was going through.

  Dealing with magic was a little overwhelming at first, but it was so incredible. When I first found myself stranded at my new school, I didn’t know anyone. I thought I was lost and alone in the world, but I quickly discovered that I wasn’t. Not only did I find an incredible friend in Kiera, but I learned that sometimes, friendships started in the most unexpected of places.

  Like with your pet familiar, for example.

  Or with your biggest enemy.

  My journey at Hybrid Academy had been an incredible one so far. The world was different now than it was weeks ago, but that was okay. Some of the changes had been painful and challenging. Other changes had been wonderful and fantastical. I didn’t think, when I left for school this year, that things would change as drastically as they did.

  But they did.

  And my world changed.

  Alicia Gregory was no more. She and Alexander, along with the rest of the vampires, had either been killed, captured, or gone into hiding. They weren’t going to be terrorizing anyone anymore. I’d like to think that this meant Hybrid Academy would be safe from paranormal threats, but I didn’t think that was the reality we lived in.

  In fact, I thought that as long as there were hybrids, there were going to be supernatural problems that we’d face.

  People were just too predictable and prone to violence for us to expect anything less.

  But although Alicia and most of the staff members were gone from the school, there was still a school.

  And there were still students.

  And the remaining teachers voted unanimously to bring Erin on as the new headmistress of the school.

  Even my mom agreed that Erin would be the perfect choice, so with a little bit of prodding and pushing, Erin decided to step away from her coven leader duties and instead lead the next generation of hybrid students at the academy.

  And oh, I couldn’t be happier.

  I was standing with her in front of the school on her first day of her first year as the headmistress when she looked over at me and grinned. She had taken a month to arrange new teachers who were definitely not vampires. It was hard to believe that only a month had passed since everything in our worlds had changed.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  “Nervous.”

  “Excited?”

  “Mostly nervous.”

  But she looked so happy. I’d never seen her so happy, in fact. Erin was the type of person who always held her emotions tightly to her heart. She kept herself closed down and locked away from the world as much as possible. She didn’t like to do what most people consider to be “over-sharing.”

  She was much too private for that.

  Today, though, nothing could stop her from oversharing. Her excitement was all over her face. I was surprised that she managed to stay in her human form, actually, because if I was even half as excited as she looked that day, I would have been instantly in my wolf form.

  “You’re going to be great,” I told her.

  “Thanks, kid.”

  “I mean it.”

  “I’ve got a tough year ahead of me,” she said.

  “You do. Alicia messed up a lot.”

  “She did more than damage the school,” Erin said. “She impacted relationships between us and the other local paranormal academies.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, there are other schools around that have paranormal students and magical creatures who are studying and learning. We used to be allies who defended magic together.”

  “And now?”

  “Now, I don’t know if any of those schools are even going to look twice at Hybrid Academy.”

  Erin shook her head, and I thought about what she said, but she was wrong about something.

  Hybrid Academy wasn’t over.

  And those schools
weren’t going to squeeze her out of their group.

  “Hey,” I said. “You know what?”

  “What?”

  “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  “I’m sure,” Erin said, but she didn’t believe me.

  “No, I mean it. Look at just how far you’ve managed to come in a month. It was only a few weeks ago when Hybrid Academy was basically handed to you completely gift-wrapped. Now you have the chance to do something incredible with it. You have the chance to make the school into a safe haven for anyone who wants to practice magic.”

  “I like that: a haven.”

  “When I came here,” I told her. “I felt lost.”

  “I probably should have prepared you better, huh?” Erin shook her head. “I’m sorry that I kind of just dumped this place on you. It was a lot to deal with, especially for someone who had never really used magic before.”

  “No, it was okay,” I told her honestly. “Because it gave me a chance to make a difference in the world, and it gave me a chance to fend for myself. If you’ve prepared me adequately, I probably wouldn’t have been as courageous as I was when it came to doing things like making friends.”

  “You did a great job with that,” my aunt said. “Kiera and Patricia are wonderful.”

  “And Henry.”

  “Well,” Aunt Erin smiled. “I think Henry is a little more than a friend, now, don’t you?” She motioned behind me where he was standing, leaning against a lamppost. He was wearing a suit and his hair was combed. He looked very un-Henry-like.

  I turned back to my aunt and raised an eyebrow.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Go talk to him,” she said, kissing me gently on the cheek. “And let me know how it goes.”

  Erin turned and left, heading into the school. She walked with pride and determination. She walked with purpose. When Erin moved, nobody got in her way. She was definitely the best witch for the job. She was going to make Hybrid Academy into everything it should have been long ago.