Root Rot Academy: Term 1

by Rhea Watson

  He… He wasn’t here.

  No.

  He had to be here. I paid that djinn just about every cent to my name to find him, and if he wasn’t—

  “All right, everyone, all right…” A beautifully rich baritone charged through the din. “Formalities first, liquor second. Please take a seat.”

  Still reeling, I stumbled after Bjorn, relying on him to find us a spot together while I frantically checked face after face for Hammond. Still nothing. When the vampire pulled out one of the high-backed chairs for me, I collapsed into it, shaking, head snapping this way and that. A few of the chairs were empty by the time the herd descended, which meant not everyone was here. So, maybe—

  “As you can see, we’re still missing a few people.”

  With Bjorn sinking into the chair to my left, I swiveled right—straight to the source of that voice. So commanding. So powerful, masterful—yet also calm. Peaceful. Rich and full, deep and striking, it belonged to the man I could only assume was warlock Jack Clemonte, the youngest headmaster at any of the world’s academies. Here. In the flesh. My only experience with him thus far was reading his stiff signature at the bottom of my acceptance letter; anything else had to be plucked from the supernatural grapevine.

  Looking at him now as he watched his underlings settle from the head of the table, three stacks of parchment organized in front of him, he was…

  Gods, he was breathtaking.

  Tall as Bjorn but built far broader, he wore his black hair buzzed and his suit meticulously tailored. Heather-grey jacket and vest, beige dress shirt, dusty-rose tie with a gold clip. A man with impeccable taste and obvious style—so different from the old traditional warlock robes favored by most headmasters, but that was hardly a surprise. The Clemonte coven hailed from money, wealthy industrialists and wandmakers located in London who were well known on the global supernatural stage, and Jack looked like he fit right into that world. Warm black skin. Big hands resting on the tabletop, a thick gold ring on his left index finger. Imposing—his size, his frame, his stance. Dark eyes with the layered complexity of a black spinel gemstone jumped from person to person, and when they touched me, I felt… small.

  His presence oozed authority and control, effortless in the way he quieted the room with nothing but a look and the silent lift of his hand. I’d worked under several formidable headmasters in the last six years, and none of them made me feel like this.

  Safe, but somehow overpowered? Utterly under his spell, the urge to curl up at his feet with the hope that he might stroke my curls with just one of those strong hands struck out of nowhere like a fucking freight train.

  Weird.

  “How in the seven hells did Cedar worm his way out of this?” A male voice rose above the quieting hubbub, a few others chuckling at the comment. I froze at his name. Hearing it out loud, coming from someone else’s mouth, made it so real. Thank the gods I was already sitting, otherwise I would have dropped in front of everyone; not exactly a stellar start, reputation-wise.

  “He’s still in Ibiza,” the headmaster replied brusquely, sifting through his notes, head down and distracted. “He’ll be back tomorrow.”

  I closed my eyes tight and let out a long, shuddering breath. In that moment, every bit of tension and dread I had been carrying for months trickled out, leaving me weak and hollow and—

  Bjorn nudged me with his elbow, then tapped his finger on the table, hard and fast—my heartbeat. He didn’t look at me, eyes sweeping over our colleagues’ faces briskly, so unlike the lingering assessment he gave me when we first met.

  “Just nerves,” I whispered as I tried to take deep, settling breaths. Stupid racing heart. What a dead giveaway—a real chink in my armor that I had never considered. “It’s like this at every academy. I hate being new.”

  A lie that was also a truth. I really did hate being the new hire everyone stared at and whispered about and judged during the first few weeks. Professorships were highly sought after in the supernatural community; competition was always stiff, even downright ruthless at the more prestigious academies. Above-average pay, guaranteed accommodations, and the reputation of the school’s name at your back made people do crazy things.

  Like summon a djinn to manipulate the system on your behalf.

  But I’d been a professor for six years. I had the credentials—I’d just needed a position to fill.

  “Half the faces here are new,” Bjorn muttered as Jack Clemonte straightened at the helm of the table, hands clasped behind his back. The vampire tossed a teasing smirk my way, followed by a flicker of his icy-blond brow. “Hopefully you’re in good company.”

  Even though it felt like an effort given the shitstorm brewing inside, I grinned back—because I liked the guy. Sure, he was physically my type—probably everyone’s type—but so far he had been friendly and open, accepting and helpful. Not stiff or formal. Playful. Kind. Hot. Definitely the sort of guy I would have pursued under different circumstances, but at Root Rot, I preferred a strong ally over a quick screw any day.

  “Ah, Gavriel,” Jack boomed suddenly, his words cracking like lightning over a dry field. “Thrilled you could join us.”

  “It’s quite the slog from the library,” the latecomer announced as the door clicked shut across the room. “Apologies for my tardiness.”

  Well, well, well, that was a voice. Masculine yet lyrical, soft as velvet yet colored with a smoker’s rasp. Unique. Contradictory. Gorgeous. Intrigued, I leaned forward just enough to peek around Bjorn, the vampire smirking and shaking his head at the new arrival, affection in his eyes—friends, then. He had made it seem like no one would give him the time of day in here, but maybe I’d just read too much into it. Either that or he found the guy’s antics amusing, and from the looks of him, this well-dressed librarian got away with antics regularly.

  Because.

  Hello, one-night-stand gold.

  Willowy and sure-footed, he crossed the room like he owned it, dressed in a deep mauve suit with gold buttons and a black dress shirt beneath his billowing jacket. Lean and angular, he rocked a shock of dark, ashy-brown hair that had a silvery quality to it under the chandelier lighting. That extended to the coarse scruff on his jaw, his face all sharp angles and full lips and eyes like a silver fox’s shadowy grey coat.

  Yum. While Bjorn possessed the physical and emotional qualities that I looked for in a man and Jack Clemonte had made me feel oddly secure in his effortless control of the room, this Gavriel exuded danger and seductive fae energy. I’d never met one of the fair folk personally, but the slight pointed ends of his ears gave him away—that and the way he carried himself. Effortless. Loose and nonchalant. He moved like he didn’t have a care in the world, but his eyes glittered with a fierce intelligence that I felt between my thighs.

  When he settled in an empty seat at the far end of the table, he offered the young nurse at the head healer’s side a cavalier wink, and I sank back into my chair with a sigh. Playboy, obviously.

  Kind of disappointing.

  Still. I’d hit that.

  “Now that we’re all here and accounted for,” Jack started, a small slip of parchment engulfed in his huge hand. Every head snapped toward him, the room silent save for the thunderous ticking of an ornate grandfather clock over the hearth. “Let’s begin.”

  This wasn’t the first start-of-year welcome speech I’d sat through in my time, and given how intensely Root Rot’s headmaster affected me, I had hoped it would be more exciting. Unfortunately, the only thing thrilling was his voice, the rest just the standard introductory crap that was the same everywhere.

  After a brief spiel about his background—former London wandmaker turned banker turned alchemy professor turned headmaster—Jack had us briefly introduce ourselves. Going around the table, Bjorn had hit the nail on the head: a little over half of the faces here were new, same as me, and their nerves were just as obvious. Fortunately, by the time the intros wrapped up, everyone from the teaching staff to the infirmary hires t
o the head den mother and the warlock in charge of academy security sharing something about themselves and their professional experience, the tension had lifted a little. We all smiled more freely, chuckled at Jack’s odd quip or pun, and seemed more open to making eye contact with each other.

  Already I had noted the handful I would click with, the possibility of friendship with my coworkers more readily available here than at any of my former academies—and that came down to the average age of those hired. In the past, I was almost always the youngest. Here, while we had true immortals like Bjorn and Gavriel, I was in the average percentile. The grey-haired warlocks were the minority.

  With a young headmaster to boot, Root Rot Academy was shaping up to be one of the most progressive schools I’d taught at—and that was a refreshing change.

  Once we played the meet-and-greet game to its fullest, Jack told us we would have formal staff meetings every Sunday, and everything from lesson plans to academy functions to student incidents would be thoroughly discussed and managed. Strange to include your staff in that level of back-end detail, but based on past experience, I knew most of the really dramatic stuff would never leave the headmaster’s office.

  With that out of the way, Jack gave us a brief rundown on the rest of the week: student arrival tomorrow with orientation from the den mothers and the security team, followed by the start-of-term welcome feast that night, then first day of classes bright and early Monday morning. If we had any administrative questions, he asked us to direct them to Madame Prewett, who clearly hadn’t deigned this meeting worth her time and was mercifully absent.

  Tucked into that particular spiel was a reminder that the remaining staff members would also filter in throughout the next two days, which set off a sharp pang of anxiety that I felt all the way down to my marrow. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Bjorn tapping his finger again, not hard enough to make a sound but obvious enough to strike a beat.

  “Consider the rest of tonight an informal meet and greet, especially those of you who are new this year,” the headmaster insisted, stacking his notes and tucking the neat pile into his jacket. He then gestured to the far side of the space as a feast unfolded right before our eyes, the tables under the windows flourishing with food. Charcuterie boards and bowls of chips and trays of sandwiches and a prawn platter that had my mouth watering. I twisted around farther, scanning the smorgasbord. Wait. Was that sushi?

  Fuuuuuuuck yes, get in my mouth.

  Best of all, there was booze. A lot of it. I mean, why not? Nothing made introductions smoother or more binding than a night of drunken frivolity. No other academy had permitted it, but I’d made some lasting friendships during my post-grad years just by going out the first week and getting shit-faced at local bars with the witches in my residence.

  “Dig in, folks.” Jack offered us a toothy smile—one that didn’t quite meet his eyes, but I couldn’t scrutinize him as much as I would have liked, not when looking at him for more than a few seconds was like looking directly into the sun. “Here’s to a great night on Root Rot’s dime. I’m honored to have each and every one of you here, so please… enjoy.”

  While the rest of the staff cheered, a few even applauding, I just sat there, trapped in place as soon as his gaze tangled with mine. It seemed unintentional, but as soon as it happened, I was stuck, rooted to the chair and unable to look away—while also fighting this strange, unwelcome desire to tuck my chin demurely and drop my eyes to the floor. Heat flared in my cheeks, sharp and prickly the deeper I fell into his masterful stare, the connection lasting through the scrape of chair legs over hardwood and feet tromping toward the spread…

  Broken only by Bjorn’s snort, his elbow jabbing into my arm again.

  “Well, hardly a mystery now why that heart of yours is racing.” When I dragged myself away and pinned him with a glare, the vampire shrugged, a vision of innocence. “What? I can hardly blame you… He’s intimidating, right?”

  “I—”

  “Unless you like intimidating. Do you like intimidating, Alecto Clarke?”

  “Oh my gods—shut up.” I batted his finger away when he went in for another poke, and by then our boss had been swarmed by grey-haired professors, me and that moment probably the last thing on his mind.

  To him, I bet it wasn’t even a moment, just a bit of uncomfortable prolonged eye contact with a new hire, one of many, just another face in the crowd.

  And that bummed me out more than it should have.

  “Right. This has been a day,” I declared, planting my hands on the table and pushing up. “And I need a drink.” While Bjorn remained seated, finger tapping my heartbeat like he and it were in a private Morse code chat, I shoved my chair back and motioned to the crowd of ravenous academics demolishing the buffet. “You coming?”

  “I’m afraid they don’t carry my vintage outside of the kitchens,” he insisted with a mock-pout, “but somehow I’ll survive. Go on.” The vampire tipped his head toward the spread. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

  Oddly comforting, his reassurance. Never mind the stress of dealing with Benedict Hammond—starting a new job was like drowning in the middle of the ocean, fighting to stay above water, beyond exhausted and always on the hunt for a buoy.

  Maybe Bjorn was my Root Rot buoy.

  Time would tell.

  Even if his chivalry only lasted today, I wouldn’t forget it.

  Grinning, I patted him on the shoulder and shuffled out from between our chairs—then went straight for the vodka.

  4

  Alecto

  I decided to call it at 3:00 a.m.

  Not because I wanted to, but because I had to. While still pleasantly buzzed, I had sobered up just the right amount to decide that I’d embarrassed myself enough in front of my new boss and colleagues for one night. But given how much I had laughed in the last six hours, from the dancing on the table to karaoke and beer pong and sushi and bonding with coworkers like I’d never done before… Totally worth it.

  I mean, color me surprised, but Root Rot staff could party.

  Even the grey-haired coots who I had initially written off came together at one point for a rousing game of flip cup, their tongues sharper and hands faster than I’d expected, the lot of them drinking me and my team under the table in just shy of a minute. Embarrassing, really. Bad form all around.

  “You sure you can get back okay?”

  I whirled around, blinking the ongoing party in and out of focus, not a clue in the world who had asked. A man. Maybe one of the boys from security, warlocks and shifters who were responsible for patrolling the grounds during the day and the castle at night. Testosterone heavy, they were solely responsible for obliterating every charcuterie board before the rest of us had a chance to try so much as an olive.

  “No, s’fine,” I insisted with a wave, the sea of bodies blending together, music whumping from a lone speaker over a window, lights dimmed. Standing at the door, one hand on the knob, the tangling scents of sweat and spirits hit me harder than it had all night. “I’m totally fine!”

  Better than I was an hour ago when I had started peeling the bread off sandwiches and shoving the slices in my mouth to soak up the alcohol and make the room stop spinning, anyway. Still, nice of someone to ask after me. So far, Root Rot had a better crew than any academy I’d worked at before, and an affectionate grin touched my lips as I gave the room one last sweep, gaze snagging on a lone figure in the far corner.

  Separated from the rest, Headmaster Jack Clemonte slumped in one of the big armchairs near the fireplace, purple flames dancing low beside him. He had angled himself toward the crowd, firmly in Dad-mode for the entire night. I had maybe seen him nursing a scotch at one point, but beyond that, the warlock had to be the most coherent present.

  Which…

  Yikes.

  Super cringe, all things considered. New boss. Hot hunk of man—not a dude, a guy, or a boy, but a real man, all muscle and control and power and oh, shit, was I drooling?


  I swiped the back of my hand over my mouth, pleased that that wasn’t the case, then scampered out before he caught me staring.

  Gawking, more like.

  As soon as the door clicked shut behind me, the wood muffled the ongoing party inside, which left me standing there alone on the landing, ears ringing. Surrounded by grey stone and a thick, oppressive quiet, I blinked up at the shadows, then—

  “Bjorn?” His name had just fallen out, brain off, tongue uninhibited. Not a great combination when you were undercover, but Hammond wasn’t even here, so… Whatever. Giggling, I tiptoed to the top of the stairwell and peered down. Of course my vampire roommate was nowhere to be found; he and a few others had left around midnight. While I hadn’t wanted him to go at the time, shit-faced and loving life for the first time in months, I understood now why he had bailed.

  Never fun to be stone-cold sober surrounded by drunken idiots who thought everything was just so hilarious.

  He had had the right idea—bed.

  That was where I belonged, too, even if I wasn’t tired, all hopped up on adrenaline and alcohol and lingering nerves. Should bed, Alecto.

  Yes, thank you, brain.

  Should bed.

  Lilting into the outer wall of the stairwell, I slunk down the winding steps. Sober, the place was claustrophobic and dizzying. Tipsy, it was like a carnival ride, spinning, spinning, spinning, flying down, down, down the faster I went.

  A ride I saw through to the end, zipping past each floor like I was in one of those plastic kiddy slides at the park, stumbling out the end in a fit of giggles—and straight into a door.

  A door behind a portrait.

  “Fuck.”

  I’d missed my flat by four floors. Damn it.

  Head spinning, I just didn’t have it in me to climb all the way back up right now, so I pushed out into the main castle. At this hour, the few students here during the break ought to be in bed, and any security I stumbled into would understand the need for air…