Sebastian wasn’t about to give up on me.
“Again!” He yelled. “With passion, Charlie! With passion!”
I screamed the spell that time. I yelled every single word as hard as I could, and that last time, something happened. Just as Brandy was about to swipe her bear claws across Sebastian’s throat, something happened.
She froze.
She was frozen.
So was the wolf.
In fact, they both seemed to be completely suspended with their last movements. It was like somebody paused time, and they were standing perfectly still and unmoving.
The professor wiggled out from beneath Brandy’s bear body, and he came over to me. Slowly, he shrunk back down into his kitty-cat form, and he looked over at me.
“Hey, you did it,” he said. “Nice job.”
“You seem a little surprised,” I looked up at him sharply.
“Well, I knew it was a 50/50 chance,” he laughed, shaking his head.
“That’s not much of a chance!” I yelled, suddenly shocked. He taught me a spell quickly and expected that it could quite possibly fail? Yet he’d still let me try? Damn. I wasn’t sure whether I should be thrilled that it worked or horrified that it might not have.
“I believed in you,” he said. “Charlie, you did it. You stopped them.”
Then it hit me.
Sebastian wasn’t frozen.
“Wait a minute,” I asked. “Why aren’t you stuck like they are?”
“It doesn’t work on cats,” he said, and he shrugged, as though that was the simplest thing he could think of.
Just then, we heard feet pounding on the marble flooring, and we turned to see Fiona, Jade, Kenneth, and several of the other professors running toward us. They looked from me and Sebastian to Brandy and the wolf, and then back again.
“Somebody give them robes,” Fiona said, taking charge. Kenneth brought me a robe and Jade gave Sebastian hers, and the two of us quickly shifted back into our human forms and slipped into the robes. “Now tell us what the hell is going on,” Fiona said. It seemed as though she had forgotten who the headmaster was, but he didn’t seem to mind.
“Randy Harper opened the enchanted book,” I said. “He made me help him.” I looked at Jade. “He had Abby. He was blackmailing her to help, too. He has her tied up in the attic.” Jade paled, and then looked at Fiona.
“Go,” she said. “Get her.”
Two of the teachers went with her.
“Bring back the book if you see it,” Sebastian called out, and the teachers waved their hands to let him know they’d heard.
“He brought out a monster,” I said. “Randy Harper wanted to release his sister from the book. Apparently, she’d been trapped there. She came out with her pet wolf thing,” I gestured toward the frozen beast, and Fiona nodded.
“Sounds about right for Miss Brandy. She always was a bitch.”
We all just stared at Fiona, who just shook her head and shrugged.
“Who cast the immobilization spell?” She asked.
I raised my hand slowly.
“Well done, Charlie,” she seemed surprised.
“How…how did you all know where to find us?” I asked. Everything had happened so quickly.
“Aside from the ruckus?” Fiona asked wryly.
“I woke up and realized you’d never come back,” Jade said. “I was worried, so I broke out of the dorms and into the boys’ dormitory. I found Kenneth and he hadn’t seen you either. We were both scared and thought something might have happened.”
“We went to the basement tunnels, but we found your backpack,” he said, joining in. “That was when we knew something was wrong.”
“And we found this,” Jade held up my wand. It was busted in half and looked like someone had stepped on it, but she had found it.
Carefully, I accepted the pieces back from her.
“Thank you,” I said.
“We’ll get you a new one,” Kenneth said. “It’ll be okay.”
He hugged me, pulling me into his arms, and I suddenly felt safe and secure. Instantly, I relaxed against him, but I had to fight back the tears that were welling up inside of me. This so wasn’t okay. None of this was okay.
“They key,” I suddenly said, pulling away. “I have to get the key.”
“I’ll get it,” Fiona said. “Where is it?”
I gave her directions and she left, leaving me with Sebastian, Kenneth, and the two monsters.
“Will the spell wear off?” I asked.
“Not for a long time,” Sebastian said. “We have more than enough time to transport them to the Darling Witches.”
“The who?” I asked.
“They’re kind of like the Magic FBI,” Kenneth explained. “They deal with any sort of paranormal threat that might destroy life as we know it. If you capture a bad guy, you send him to them. They’ll handle it.”
“Are they going to kill them?” I asked carefully. I wasn’t even sure if I was opposed to the idea. I just wanted to know so I could be aware. I had no doubt that Brandy deserved to die. She deserved to be killed just as she had killed her brother, but maybe that wasn’t the way things worked in the magical world.
“I have no idea,” Sebastian said. “But I have to take them back, along with the book.”
He looked at me carefully, watching me. I had the feeling he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t. Not at first.
“When I get back, I want to talk to you,” he said. “About tonight.”
About the fact that we could understand each other in cat forms.
“Okay,” I said, nodding slowly. “How long will you be gone for?”
“A long time,” he said. “I’ll have to travel to where the Darling Witches are, and I’ll need to help secure the enchanted book.”
“So like…a week?” I laughed nervously, but he shook his head.
“I should be back by next month,” he told me.
“Next month?” I gasped. That didn’t seem possible or fair or realistic to me, at all. I had questions for Sebastian. I had things I wanted to know. Why had we been able to work so well together? How had he shifted into a huge tiger creature? How had we understood each other in our animal forms?
“Next month,” he said.
Then, to my surprise, he stepped forward, and he pulled me into his arms, and he hugged me tightly.
It didn’t feel romantic or sweet. It didn’t feel like he liked me in any way. Instead, it felt like the long goodbye hug a father would offer his daughter, and that just broke my heart a little bit more.
Chapter 12
The next few weeks passed painfully slowly. I didn’t tell anyone about the fact that Sebastian and I had been able to understand each other. Not even Kenneth. I didn’t know why I didn’t want anyone to know except for the fact that somehow, I needed the time to process what had happened.
Abby had totally recovered from everything that happened, and she and Jade started officially dating. They spent almost all of their time together and I spent most of mine with Kenneth. Even though I really liked him, I still felt overwhelmed at the prospect of telling him about my past or about my future.
It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him.
It was just that somehow, I felt like saying things out loud would make them real.
Finally, the night before Sebastian was supposed to come back, I broke down. Jade, Abby, Kenneth, and I were all sitting in the lobby of the girl’s dorm. We were in one of the corners, curled up on cushions, when I finally decided to ask.
“I have a shifter question.”
They all stopped what they were doing and looked over at me. Three sets of eyes stared at me as though they were both excited and curious about what I was going to say. I decided it was best to just blurt it out.
“Can shifters talk to each other in their shifter forms?” I asked finally.
“Nope,” Jade shook her head first. Then she paused. “Well, unless you’re related.”
&nb
sp; “Yeah,” Kenneth said. “I talk to my sisters all the time.”
“And you can talk to your mate,” Abby said, looking sideways at Jade. “Only after you’re officially mated, though,” she added.
“So you can…”
My voice trailed off, and I wondered if that meant what I thought it did.
“Okay, just spit it out,” Jade finally said.
“What?”
“Charlie, we’ve all been worried about you,” Kenneth said carefully. “You haven’t been the same since everything happened.”
“You’ve been caught up in your own head,” Jade said. “We were hoping you’d come out of it on your own, but…Charlie, I think you need to talk about it.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I said slowly.
“Look,” Abby said. “This sounds like it’s going to be really personal, and I know you don’t know me that well, so I should probably go. I don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable.” She stood up and started to go, but I stopped her.
“Wait!”
She turned around, surprised.
“Please stay,” I said. “You’re part of our family, Abby.”
I thought Jade was going to burst into damn tears from that comment, but I meant every word. Abby just nodded and sat back down. She smiled at me gently, like she appreciated the fact that I was accepting her, and she cuddled up to Jade.
“The night that everything happened,” I said slowly. “I was practicing for our shifting on command tests.”
Jade rolled her eyes so hard I thought they were going to pop out of her head.
“That class was awful,” she said.
It was on indefinite hiatus now that the professor was dead and his sister was locked away with the Darling Witches. Now we all had an extra hour to study potions, which was fine. We all kind of appreciated having something a little different to work on.
“Well, you all know what happened that night.”
“Some more than others,” Abby piped up, and I smiled at her. She’d had a pretty good attitude about everything that happened, but I could tell that she was still having a hard time. After all, she’d been blackmailed and then kidnapped, just like me.
Those weren’t exactly easy things to deal with.
“Right, well…” I needed to just blurt it out. “That night, when Sebastian and I took down the wolf and Brandy, we were able to do it because he fought them while I said an incantation.”
“Incantations and spells work while you say them in your animal form,” Jade pointed out. “That’s not something to be worried about.”
“Yeah, but he taught me the spell that night right before it happened.”
“Okay?”
“While we were in our cat forms.”
They all stared at me, blinking.
“While we were both in our cat forms,” I added.
Again, stares.
Kenneth was the one who spoke first.
“Are you telling us that you’re related to Sebastian?” Kenneth asked me carefully.
“I’m saying more than that,” I whispered the words. “I’m saying that he’s my dad. Sebastian Wild is my dad, and I’ve been searching for him my entire life.”
Chapter 13
I wanted Kenneth with me when I went to meet Sebastian, and he was kind enough to agree to go. When we reached the door to the headmaster’s office, I started to panic. What if this wasn’t what I wanted it to be? What if things changed for me at Shifter Falls Academy?
Maybe having a dad as a headmaster wasn’t the best decision. Maybe he wouldn’t even like me. Hell, maybe Sebastian wasn’t even my dad and I was just totally reading into things I didn’t understand.
Kenneth seemed to sense all of this and he reached for my hand and squeezed it.
“You’re going to be fine,” he said.
“How can you be so sure?” I whispered.
“Because I’m here with you,” he said. “Even if it’s not fine, and even if it doesn’t end up being what you want it to be, I’ll be here with you. I’m going anywhere, okay?”
He kissed me then, short and sweet, and he looked at me like he cared about me more than anyone else in the world. That feeling was something I wanted to latch onto. I didn’t want to forget it.
“Okay,” I whispered.
Then he kissed me again, and this time, he didn’t stop. He kissed me over and over, until I forgot everything about the past few weeks. He kissed me until I stopped worrying about what was going to happen. He kissed me until the only thing I could think of was him.
And then we heard someone cough.
Loudly.
We turned, lips still attached, to see Sebastian standing in the doorway to his office. He raised an eyebrow, and I instantly pushed Kenneth away.
“It’s not what it looks like,” I blurted out.
“Charlie, you’re allowed to date,” Sebastian laughed. “Besides, it hasn’t been so long since I was young. Come on in. Kenneth, good to see you,” he held out his hand to Kenneth, who shook it, and then the three of us went into his office and sat down together.
Sebastian looked at us carefully, and then he said.
“So, I’m guessing you have some questions about that night.”
“Are they dead?” I asked. He knew what I was talking about. I didn’t have to elaborate, and he was polite enough not to play coy.
“They aren’t dead,” he said. “But they are locked away. They can’t hurt anyone anymore, and the book is safe.”
“What about the key?”
“The book is with the headmistress of Enchanted Academy and the key is with the headmistress of Hybrid Academy. Trust me: nobody is getting through those women to open the book ever again.”
Somehow, that was a huge relief. I didn’t know anything about these women, but if Sebastian trusted them, then that was enough for me.
Now it was time for the hard part, though.
This was the part where I got my answers.
“Are you my dad?” I blurted out.
It was utter silence in the room for a few long minutes, but then slowly, Sebastian nodded.
“Shifters can only understand one another in their shifter forms if they’re related by blood or if they’re mated to one another.”
“So what does this mean?” I ask, whispering.
“Charlie, for years I thought my child was dead,” he said quietly. “You have no idea what happened to my heart when we were able to understand each other that night.”
“It happened to mine, too,” I whispered.
I’d grown up thinking I had been abandoned, or an orphan, but here I was, 19-years-old and learning that I actually had a dad who had not only loved me, but who had missed me.
“What happened?” I whispered. I had to know.
“My wife was killed in a car accident,” he said. “I was told that my child was dead, too. I looked, Charlie. I walked the road where it happened, and I went in the woods, but I couldn’t find you,” he shook his head.
“I’d been found by someone,” I told him. “Nobody ever linked me being found to a car accident, so I was put in foster care.”
“I’m sorry you had to grow up without me,” he said.
“I’m sorry you didn’t get to see me grow up,” I whispered.
“Well, you get to know each other now,” Kenneth offered. “And that’s pretty beautiful, you know?”
“He’s right,” Sebastian said.
“I know.”
Then I thought of something else that I needed to ask.
“Fiona,” I said. “She knew, didn’t she?”
“I think she had her suspicions,” he said.
“That was why she brought me here,” I realized. “She knew what I was.”
“Maybe so,” he said, laughing. “Late bloomer shifters like you and I are rare, Charlie. It’s possible that she put it all together.”
“And your other form? The big one? Is that something I’m going to learn how to do?” I asked
.
I wanted to know if I was going to be able to turn into a giant shifting cat monster like he had.
“Oh yes,” he laughed. “I’ll teach you all of my tricks, Charlie. You and I have a lot of catching up to do.”
Epilogue
Leaving school at the end of the year wasn’t going to be any easier than it had been the year before, so I made the executive decision not to leave at all. Kenneth had to go home to his family – his sisters and parents missed him horribly – and Jade had a wonderful family to go home to.
Last year, I hadn’t had anyone to go home to, either. Jade’s family had graciously opened their home to me, but things were different this year.
This year, I knew that I had someone who was my true relative. I had someone who shared the same blood as me pulsing through their veins.
And this year, I knew that no matter what happened, I was going to have to fight for them, and believe in them, and trust them.
This year, I was going to do whatever it took to the best form of myself so that I could build a new relationship with someone I cared deeply about.
My dad.
When I looked at Mr. Wild, it didn’t seem possible. It didn’t seem like it could possibly be true, and yet it was. It was written on his face when he looked at me. It was clear when he shifted and our forms matched. It was just plain as day, and I wondered how I hadn’t seen it last year.
This summer, Mr. Wild and I were going to stay on campus. Most of the teachers were, too, so I wouldn’t exactly have run of the castle, but it would be pretty close. I got the feeling that most of them would be busy planning for the next adventures they were going to have. Most of the teachers would be working on their curriculum plans and guides for the upcoming year.
They wouldn’t be worried about a loner wandering around the castle, and they shouldn’t.
After all, I wasn’t a threat. I wasn’t anyone crazy. I wasn’t anything special.
I was just me.
But finally, for the first time in what seemed like forever, I was okay with me.
I was okay with being who I was, and more importantly, I believed in myself and in my future. I believed that no matter what happened next, I was going to find a way to be happy.
Shifter Falls Academy: Year Two Page 9