Magic Bound (Shadow Academy Book 2)

by Jamie Campbell

  “Did you want something, Rosa? Or are you just here to watch?” I asked. I knew I still needed her on my side but it was so hard sometimes to hold back. This was one of those times.

  “I want to be able to open my door and not see a pathetic pair of first years dry humping on my doorstep.” She rolled her eyes. “But I guess that is asking too much. Get out of my way.”

  We stepped apart and Rosa walked between us. I was still catching my breath from the kiss and waiting for my heartbeat to slow down.

  “I should be going,” Liam said. “Have a good night, Eden Musgrave.”

  I smiled. I loved it when he said my name. I had no idea why, it just seemed so cute when he said it. “You too, Liam Dunlop.”

  He walked backwards a few steps before turning around to go down the stairs. I had to stand there for a few moments more, just to get a hold of myself.

  So far, my time at Shadow Academy was proving to be a rollercoaster ride not for the faint hearted. I never would have imagined finding someone like Liam here. He was a bonus I definitely wasn’t expecting.

  I grabbed some things from my room and took a cold shower. I still hadn’t stopped smiling when I tucked myself into bed.

  Magic thrummed around me. I could feel it even throughout the night. The spell Liam had protected me with was doing its job. I felt safer that night than any of the other previous ones mixed together.

  In the morning, I actually felt refreshed. I hadn’t tossed and turned all night. Nor had I experienced any nightmares. And all it took was a large dose of one very gorgeous guy.

  Rosa was still asleep when I got up. I tried to remember how much I needed her silence as I crept around the room, careful not to wake her. She was grumpy at the best of times, let alone being woken too early.

  As I grabbed my hairbrush and turned to the mirror, I saw a message scrawled across it in black marker:

  Good morning, beautiful. Have a blessed day. -Liam

  Liam must have spelled it there overnight. There was no way he could have crept in and written it without one of us waking up.

  It was very sweet and put an extra bounce in my step. None of my problems were actually solved, but I felt so much better anyway. Maybe the Nightshade witches wouldn’t win today.

  For once, I was hungry. I hurried to the dining hall and tried to work out what I was going to have. Pancakes ranked pretty high up on my list, followed by waffles. I would spread fresh fruit over the top so they weren’t completely lacking any nutritional value.

  When I stepped into the hall, my good mood instantly vanished. There was a large presence of professors standing around the room. Each one with a harried look on their face.

  I kept walking toward the food line, hoping that whatever was going on didn’t affect me. As I did, I heard snippets of conversations.

  From what I gathered, the teachers were trying to calm everyone down. I couldn’t work out why they were all so upset in the first place.

  The queue consisted of two people in front of me—much fewer than normal. We shuffled along until we had a full tray and then disbursed around the room. The servers behind the counter didn’t say a word.

  I found our usual table and sat down. Cress emerged from the crowds and joined me a few minutes later. Her cheeks were red.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  She took a few breaths. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

  “I came straight here from my dorm.”

  “We must have passed each other. Have you heard what’s going on?”

  “No.” And I was growing more concerned by the minute. If Cress had run herself ragged trying to find me, it couldn’t be good news she was bringing me. Nobody needed to calm down from good things happening.

  “The council is coming to campus. There are leaks to the human world.” She spoke so fast I could barely keep up with her. “We could all be exposed and they say someone here is responsible for it.”

  “How do they know the leak is coming from here? Anyone could be telling humans about supernaturals.” There were hundreds of thousands of us around the world, anyone could have been a little too chatty with the wrong people.

  “They have found the human who found out,” Cress explained. “They apparently forced them to expose their source and everything they knew.”

  The council’s use of force would not have been pleasant. They could have used anything from torture to a truth spell. The human involved was most likely dead now, or so traumatized they would never be all right again.

  “So they know the name of the source,” I said. Surely there shouldn’t be cause for so much panic now. All they had to do was haul away the one person with a big mouth and the leak would be dealt with.

  “They don’t know their name.”

  Something wasn’t entirely adding up. “If they compelled the human, why didn’t they get the name of the source?”

  “They didn’t know it.”

  I’m sure they tried every trick under the sun to find out too. What good would it do telling humans about our existence if you didn’t even know the person? There wouldn’t be a reason that I could think of.

  Maybe it was just an over eager student who was boasting about their new school. Or perhaps two students were overheard talking to one another in the human world.

  I still couldn’t see what all the panic was about. Gauging from the level of fear in the room, it felt like the world was about to end.

  What worried me the most was having council representatives on campus. I didn’t want to be anywhere near them, just in case someone could see my curse after they looked at me a little too long.

  Cress must have been thinking along the same lines. “You’re going to have to be really careful today. Maybe you should pretend to be sick and stay in your room?”

  “That might bring me more attention. I think I’ll just lay low and not give the council any reason to glance my way,” I replied. I sounded way more confident about my plan than I felt.

  Across the dining hall, I spotted Rosa seated at another table. She was surrounded by people talking amongst themselves and all she was doing was staring at me. I could tell exactly what she was thinking.

  I shook my head and mouthed ‘wasn’t me’. She scowled a little more before someone else caught her attention. If Rosa was going to turn me in, today would be a great opportunity for her. She would be the hero of the school. The one who saved all supernaturals from future exposure.

  Supernaturals had lived alongside the human world for all of time. Aurodite superseded all human gods, myths, and legends. If we could stay undercover for all that time, surely it wasn’t going to come to an end today.

  It was difficult not getting caught up in the sheer panic. I could imagine supernaturals all around the world worrying themselves stupid today. I wondered if the council was able to contain the information so it didn’t get out into the world at large.

  When I was little, I remembered asking my mother why supernaturals had to stay hidden. We had amazing talents and magic that humans didn’t, what could humans possibly do to supernaturals to hurt them?

  She then sat me down and went through events in history where humans had found out about us. The Salem Witch Trials were just one example. Time and time again, humans proved that they couldn’t handle the information. They defaulted to hate instead of love and we couldn’t coexist peacefully.

  After every time, witches and warlocks wiped the memories of all humans so they removed themselves from their knowledge as soon as possible. Some events would remain, ones that would teach the humans a lesson so they wouldn’t do it again.

  The human race could then continue on as normal and so could the supernaturals. If they had done it in the past, surely they could do it again this time.

  The alarm sounded and was followed by a hushed silence that rolled through the dining hall. Nobody knew what to do. They couldn’t function in their hysteria.

  “Go to class, students,” Professor Pe
abody said loudly. His direction was echoed by the other teachers and was repeated until everyone started to move out.

  Cress and I walked out together and then parted for our separate classes. I was still a bundle of nerves but going to class and acting normal was going to be my best option. I kept telling myself that until I believed it just that little bit more.

  My first class of the day was Basics of Nature with Professor Cork. Even he seemed frazzled when we all filed in and sat down.

  His gray hair was sticking out in all directions as if he hadn’t brushed it that morning. “Sit down, everyone. I know there is a lot going on this morning but we must persevere. Good will triumph over evil and all that jazz. We must let the hands of justice work their magic.” He smiled at his own pun.

  I liked Professor Cork, he seemed to enjoy teaching more than the others at Shadow Academy. He also loved nature more than any warlock or witch I knew.

  “Now, everyone turn to—”

  Just as he was speaking, the door to the classroom burst open. A vampire in a white suit stepped in. His black hair was slicked back and very glossy.

  “I need Martha Yardley,” he said. His voice boomed around the room and echoed back again.

  Every turned to Martha—a slight girl with willowy legs and arms. She looked like she was about to walk the plank as she stood. “I…I’m Martha Yardley.”

  The vampire nodded briskly. “Come with me.”

  The girl didn’t seem like someone who would be boasting to humans about the supernatural population. She looked like she could probably be found reading quietly in a corner at any time of the day.

  I wondered if that was going to be the last time anyone of us ever saw Martha again.

  Half an hour later, we got our answer.

  Chapter 14

  All morning students were pulled from class by several different council representatives. Martha Yardley returned shaken, but in one piece.

  Everyone wore the same somber expression as they waited for their name to be called. When the door opened, everything would go quiet until we heard the name and someone left. More people left than came back.

  It was almost the end of class when a shapeshifter entered. She was tall and blond with the same figure as a supermodel. That body could not have come naturally.

  “Eden Musgrave.”

  All the churning in my stomach came to a peak as I gathered my things and left. I knew it would be better for me to act normal but I couldn’t get my hands to stop shaking. I tucked one underneath my backpack strap and pushed the other one into my pocket.

  It looked like the council reps had taken a few of the empty classrooms and were holding their interviews there. I was taken to a room that was normally used for our history classes.

  There were only two chairs in the room now. All the other furniture had been pushed up against one wall. The supermodel sat in one and gestured to the other one for me. I sat and placed my hands on my knees.

  “You are a witch, Eden Musgrave, are you not?” she asked. She had some kind of accent, maybe Swedish? I wondered if that was fake too. She could have looked or sounded like anyone in the world.

  “Yes, ma’am. I am a witch.”

  “Your mother is Joanna Musgrave and your father is Benjamin Musgrave. Correct?”

  “Yes.” I had no idea where these questions were leading.

  “When was the last time you left campus and entered a human-dwelling place?”

  I was about to say before I got to the academy but then I remembered the night at the club. “I went with a friend to a club last weekend. It was in a human-based town.”

  She wrote my answer down in a notebook. I guessed the council weren’t all that high tech. “And before that?”

  “I visited a friend of the family a few days earlier.”

  “And before that?”

  “I saw a relative.”

  “Before that?” How far was she going to make me go back?

  “That’s it. I haven’t been anywhere else since I got here. My home was the last place I’d been before here. Our town is full of humans,” I replied, trying really hard not to give away anything in my tone of voice.

  “Did your magic appear on your eighteenth birthday?” Her voice was so monotone that she sounded bored. Was that a ploy?

  “Yes,” I lied. Did I say it too quickly? Too slowly? Did it sound like a complete lie like it did in my head? I tried desperately not to crack under the pressure.

  “Have you made many friends here?”

  “A couple.”

  “What faction are they from?” After every question, she would glance up from her notebook before I answered. It was unnerving.

  “One is a werewolf, the other is a warlock.”

  “You’ve only got two friends?”

  “Yes.” Did she want to just come out and call me a loser already? I didn’t mind, she could call me much worse.

  “Do you find it difficult making friends?”

  “I don’t feel the need for a large group of friends. Just a few good ones are fine by me. Quality over quantity.” I tried to joke but it just fell flat.

  “Do you have a problem with any of the other factions?”

  “Nope. All good here.”

  She wrote something down that was much longer than the four words I just said. Maybe I said the wrong thing. Should I have said something else?

  “You can go now,” she said.

  “That’s it?” It felt like a trap. It had to be a trap. Those questions were nothing. They weren’t going to find the snitch if that’s all they asked.

  “Yes, that’s it. Return to class and await further instructions from your professors.” She didn’t even look up that time.

  I scurried off before she could change her mind. My palms were wet and the back of my neck was sticky. As simple as the questions were, I still felt like I’d just been raked over the coals—literally.

  Basics of Nature had ended by the time I was released. I went to my next class—Understanding Supernatural Species. Cress was already there, giving me a wave to come sit by her when I stepped inside. She’d saved a seat for me. And that was why I didn’t need any other friends at Shadow Academy.

  She arched her eyebrow in question as I sat down. I just shrugged in response. I wondered if she had been in for her interview yet. Perhaps they would cross reference all our answers and see if they matched at the end of the day. That would be one way to see if we were telling the truth or not.

  Professor Hart clapped her hands together to get everyone’s attention. “We have a prime example of why we need to understand all the supernatural species on our campus today. If we can understand and relate to one another, we can keep everyone’s secret.”

  She continued on about the topic for another several minutes before we were assigned reading time. I allowed myself a quick glance around the room, spotting Liam in the front row.

  He turned around and saw me, giving me a cheeky wink. I wondered if he would be interviewed at all. The son of the academy’s principal would be pretty low risk for being the snitch, I would think.

  Or, based on his fractured relationship with his father, perhaps Principal Dunlop volunteered his son to go first with the interrogations. I imagined he would want his kin taken off the list of suspects pretty fast. Even if only to make himself look better.

  More and more students came and went. Even at lunchtime, they didn’t relent. One by one, the entire student body was interviewed.

  By the time the last class of the day came around, I was feeling relatively calm. I’d passed the interview and the council would find the real person with the big mouth soon. I was off the hook and they didn’t work out I was cursed.

  I was looking forward to the final alarm sounding so I could get some dinner and relax for the evening. I would take a night off researching in the library to stay out of sight. My dorm room was sounding more and more like a sanctuary as the day wore on.

  The clock seemed to have slo
wed while I was watching it. Ten more minutes and we would all be dismissed for the day. If I hurried fast enough, I might have even been able to beat the dinner rush in the dining hall. I would fly through the queue and be in my bed shortly.

  Nine minutes to go and why couldn’t Professor Dot just let us out early? We’d all had a long and messy day. A nine minute shorter class would have been appreciated by all. Especially me.

  Eight minutes. I started counting off the seconds. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

  The door to the classroom opened with so much force that it hit and dented the wall beside it. Two Black Cloaks stepped inside. They seemed to make the room contract in size.

  “Eden Musgrave,” they said in unison.

  All the blood in my body went cold. I’d already had my interview with the council. What on earth did the Black Cloaks want with me?

  I mustn’t have passed the test.

  Chapter 15

  I stood up and gathered my things. The Black Cloaks only took people away. They didn’t bring them back again. I wouldn’t be returning for my pencil case if I left it now.

  It was ridiculous to be thinking of such things when the toughest policing agency the supernatural council had was waiting for me. And not just one, but two of them. Like I might cause them trouble if they only sent one.

  Liam caught my eye as I walked down the aisle. His brow was furrowed. I could relate. Nobody said a word as I passed by the desks. Just the tap tap tap of my Mary-Jane shoes could be heard.

  My heart was hammering away much, much faster.

  As soon as I was close enough, the Black Cloaks each grabbed one of my arms. Their great big hands clamped around me and held me tightly between them.

  “I’m not going to try anything,” I said, quietly so hopefully only they could hear. “I promise I’ll come peacefully.”

  One of them grunted and neither of them let up their grip. Talking to them seemed as useful as talking to a wall. I gave up pretty quickly.