“When Nyquist died,” Lynssa continued, “Fedorov and I were freed from his prison, and we came straight here, ready to fight. But there was nothing else to do. You had saved us all.”
I shook my head. “No. Not me. Cruise, Cruise Knightley.”
Lynssa nodded. “Yes, Cruise Knightley,” she whispered the name with respect.
“What about Ponomarenko? We have to stop him,” I said, almost choking on the name. He was the one I should have killed. He was the real threat.
“I know. We’re looking for him. He… he took the Loopers with him. We have secured our portal once more, but he’s still dangerous. There are others he can exploit.”
God! Despite all we’d been through, we had still failed. Those poor souls under Ponomarenko’s control. How long would their nightmare last? This was why Disha had said “somehow.” They hadn’t really driven him away. He’d left to retrieve the Loopers and run with them.
“What will happen here?” I asked.
“I’ll set everything straight again. I’ve already started,” Lynssa said. “I promise you.”
“How?”
“Well, the council of magic had a chance to tour the school and… the dreamscape. They saw with their own eyes what Nyquist had done. They had no other alternative but to see the error of their ways. And since no one else wants the job of dean—seeing how dangerous it’s become—they offered it back to me. I took it.”
“You’re stuck with us.” Fedorov stepped into my line of sight with Nurse Taishi close behind. They smiled warmly at me as I blinked through my tears. They were all here.
“How long have I been out?” I asked.
“A few days,” Disha answered. “You were in a lot of pain. Nurse Taishi thought it was best.”
A few days. Yet, I’d missed so much.
“It’s good to have you back,” I finally said. “I was doing a pretty crappy job without you.”
Dean McIntosh shook her head. “On the contrary, you did a fine job. It was very dangerous and I hated to give it to someone so young.”
Nurse Taishi interjected. “I’m sorry about your hand, Charlie. I tried to reconnect it, but it was too damaged. However, we think we can grow you a new one. I’ve been researching.”
“We’ll get you patched up,” Dean McIntosh said warmly. “Don’t worry about that.”
I glanced down at my remaining hand. “What about my other cuff?”
She swallowed. “Ponomarenko has it.”
“We fear he will come for the remaining one,” Fedorov said in his accented English.
“We will protect you,” Disha added, squeezing my hand so hard I worried she might take that one off as well.
But something was still bothering me. “Can I… Can I still do magic?”
Dean McIntosh patted my leg. “I am sure you will. But for now, you need to rest. We have to get you back up to shape so you can return to your classes.”
“My cooking classes?” I asked.
She smirked. “My first duty as dean was to banish those ridiculous classes. Mrs. Bass and the others have been… reassigned indefinitely.”
“What about Cruise?” I asked.
Dean McIntosh stood, looking solemn. “There will be a funeral service in a few days. We will be giving him magic’s highest honor. Now, you rest. Ms. Khatri and Nurse Taishi will see to that.” She gave Disha a nod and then turned to go.
Dropping my head against the pillow, my thoughts swirled. So much had happened. So much had changed. Some for the better and some for the worse. How it all would shake out, I didn’t know.
What I did know was that I wasn’t whole anymore and it was unclear if I would ever practice magic again. That thought formed a lump in my throat, but then I thought of Cruise who would never experience anything again, and my self-pity seemed small and insignificant.
“Drew’s back,” Disha murmured.
I glanced over at her.
“His father was reinstated as Head Councilor after everything happened. Most of the men who supported Nyquist have fled and the ones who were left aligned themselves back with Drew’s father who is making a push to denounce speciesism. Drew doesn’t have to hide anymore. Most people are convinced that he was being controlled by Mystro Ponomarenko.” Disha blew out a breath. “So, at least there’s that.”
“At least that.” My words felt empty. I had little to say but was happy that Disha had her man back even if mine was still on the run. No matter what happened with the heads of the magical community, Rowan was still wanted for murder.
Disha rubbed my arm. “We’ll set things right, Charlie. They’ll grow your hand back and everything will go back to normal.”
Her words were comforting, but I wasn’t sure how true they were. The phantom pains of my missing appendage reminded me that things may never be the same, but at least, for now, we’d stopped the bad guys.
Disha glanced over at my bandaged stump. “Maybe they can grow you a hand with a permanent manicure. It would save you so much money in the salon.”
I snorted. “Or they could grow me one with six fingers.”
She nodded. “Piano player extraordinaire.”
“I’d be really good at Cat’s Cradle.”
Disha leaned her head against mine. “The best. You could play the lute or knit with one hand.”
“I could cast spells like a badass witch,” I offered.
Disha smiled at me. “Special hand or no, you’ll always be a badass witch to me.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
FALL SEMESTER
MID NOVEMBER
Classes. I was attending classes.
It seemed impossible and pointless. I couldn’t do magic—not with one-handed finger gestures, not with words, not with my thoughts. I was useless, utterly useless.
“Close your eyes, Charlie,” Irmagard said. She was sitting across from me atop a turquoise cushion, her legs crossed.
I held the same position, pretending to meditate. We were in her office. It was oddly clean, void of the tall stacks of junk that were her specialty. Nyquist had reclaimed the space during his short reign and had thrown everything away. Disha said Irmagard had wept the first day she walked into the empty space. There was no telling what she’d lost. It was probably mostly useless crap, but I bet there had been some important things hidden in the piles.
We could understand. We’d all lost a lot.
She was wearing a pair of blue-jean coveralls, the kind I’d seen her wear on the beet farm. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a messy bun and red feather earrings dipped in glitter hung on each side of her face.
“Take a deep breath,” she said.
I did, but when I exhaled, I just felt emptier than before. I dropped my arms from where they’d been resting on my knees. This was as pointless as going to class. I’d been coming here every day since I left the infirmary. It was supposed to help make me feel better about myself. It didn’t.
“Wanna try the tea?” she asked, noticing my despondence. She pointed toward the steaming teapot sitting on top of her desk.
I shook my head. She’d offered me a cup of her numbing concoction almost every day since she returned two weeks ago. I’d refused every single time. She had respected my wishes and hadn’t even tried to zap me with a happiness spell when I was distracted. Still, she kept offering.
Sometimes you had to experience your pain to get through it. Sometimes you had to feel it because you had nothing else to feel.
She sighed, her frustration showing for the first time. “You have to at least try, Charlie.”
“I’m trying,” I said, avoiding eye contact and staring at Gerald, the ferret. He was looking forlorn, lying on a plain wooden chair. He seemed to miss the piles of stuff, which had provided perfect and cozy hiding spaces for him.
Irmagard didn’t contradict me. We both knew I was not trying. I was too depressed to meditate or do much else.
My hand was still missing, leaving me with a stump I couldn’t stop r
ubbing. Taishi swore he was working hard on a spell to grow it back and said he was very close to figuring it out. He’d called all his healer colleagues for ideas on tissue regrowth. Someone had managed to grow a thumb before. This was no different. He reassured me every time I saw him, but I had stopped believing and hoping. It hurt less not to hope, not to expect anything.
I’d lost my ability to do magic. Rowan was gone. Cruise was dead. What reason did I have to keep trying?
“You’re depressed,” Irmagard said, getting to her feet and padding back to her desk.
Way to state the obvious, Counselor McIntosh.
I pulled on the elastic protector that covered the stump of my wrist, the poor replacement for my cuff and hand. It snapped against my skin when I let it go.
“I know it feels hopeless,” Irmagard said, using her keen perceptive skills yet again, “but time will heal you.”
Maybe it was true, but I couldn’t see past my pain. All I could see was the now. All I felt was the absence… of my limb, of magic, of Rowan. Couldn’t they understand that? Couldn’t they stop expecting me to get over all I’d lost?
“This is not like you,” Irmagard said. “You’re a fighter, Charlie.”
“Maybe I’m tired of it,” I said. “Tired of all the fighting just to lose everything anyway.”
“Dear girl, everything will be alright. I promise you.”
“Are we done?” I asked from my cushion on the floor.
“For today,” Irmagard said, sitting behind her desk with a sigh.
I stood and picked up my backpack from the corner where I had dropped it. Gerald perked up and stood on his hind legs, sniffing the air. I walked past without petting him. He lay back down, appearing disappointed. But what did he know about people who didn’t have a hand to spare?
I left the Administration Building and started toward my next class. It was Spells, and Fedorov was trying to cram in as much proper senior material as possible to make up for the lost time. It made no difference to me—not when all I could do was watch and wish Taishi would hurry up with my hand-growing spell.
Outside, it was unusually cold for November. I threw my hoodie over my head and stuffed my hands—hand and stump, I mentally corrected myself—into the front pocket.
I imagined myself sitting in class while the other students threw pitying glances in my direction. In a way, it reminded me of my first week at the Academy, when my clothes had been old and ragged, when my wardrobe hadn’t consisted of trendy hand-me-downs from Disha. My classmates felt sorry for me, but also a bit uncomfortable as if my misfortune were catching.
As I walked in between the dorm buildings toward the Spells Cave, my steps suddenly veered right. I really didn’t feel like going to class and putting myself through all of that. Burrowing myself under the covers and shutting the world away sounded much better than the torture of being in a class in which I couldn’t participate.
I ran up the steps of the Senior Dorm, head down, eyes on my shoes. Dean McIntosh has set things right as far as our sleeping quarters went, and the women had abandoned Witch Cove the day after she was reinstated. For good measure, she’d had the old building razed to the ground and gave a strong feminist speech in its front lawn, pledging to always fight for women and witches’ rights alike. The female students had cheered and welcomed private rooms with open arms.
Once in my room, I dropped my backpack on the floor, kicked off my shoes, and crawled under my covers. My blinds were drawn, and I had draped a heavy blanket over them. It was perfectly dark.
I fell asleep in seconds.
In my dream, my mind filled with fog. Through the cloud, I couldn’t see past my extended hand. I walked tentatively. I knew I had to find them. Rowan, Disha, and Bridget were in here somewhere. Ponomarenko had taken them. Or was it Nyquist?
No. Nyquist was dead. He couldn’t hurt anyone else anymore. I had killed him.
Suddenly, I was killing him. I didn’t want to, but my cuffs charged and I blasted him into dust. Then there was nothing.
I fell to my knees, tears hot on my face. I stared at my murdering hands. One of them, the right one, started shriveling away like a flower left in the heat. My fingers fell off one by one like petals, then drifted toward the fog. I grasped for them, but they weren’t there. I caught only air. They disappeared in the fog and were gone.
I knelt on the ground staring at my shriveled stump until the tears dried on my face.
After a long time, mechanical whirring and clanking echoed in the distance.
Oh, God, they’re back!
I jumped to my feet, turned left and right in the fog, trying to pinpoint the direction of the sounds. They grew louder. My heart hammered faster, thumping in my ears at the rhythm of the clanking steps.
My head filled with the incessant sound. It pounded and pounded. The fog around me started to spin, first slowly, then speeding up. It became a tornado with me at its center. Strands of hair whipped around my face.
My hands moved in protective spells, but nothing happened. I looked down at them but found only one. The other was gone. I searched for it on the ground, but all I saw was fog. It spun and spun, traveling downward and disappearing into the ground like water in a drain.
Suddenly, the fog was gone.
I glanced up and screamed.
Mystro Ponomarenko was standing in front of me. He was smiling, his teeth twinkling in the swirling light that surrounded him. He was holding something.
A severed hand.
“Give it back,” I said, reaching for it with the stump of my left hand. No! It was my right hand that was gone. Not my left.
I screamed again, a raw cry that rose from my gut and tore through my throat like erupting lava from a volcano.
Both my hands were gone. Ponomarenko had come back and taken the other one.
The pain of my loss ripped my chest open, stealing my will to live. I howled.
Suddenly, a voice echoed in the distance.
My eyes sprang open. Awake, I stared into the darkness of my room.
Disha was sitting at my bedside, holding my left hand. it was still there. Ponomarenko hadn’t taken it, after all. I still had one hand left.
As she stared at my cuff, Disha started weaving her hands in a spell. “Rock-a-bye, baby in the treetop. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.”
Her voice rang sweetly in my ears, enticing me to sleep. My eyelids grew heavy. It was okay if I went back to sleep. Disha was with me. I was safe and her sweet song would keep the bad dreams away.
“When the bough breaks, The cradle will fall. And down will come baby, cradle and all.”
My eyes closed.
Pain cut through my wrist.
“Wake up, Charlie!”
I sprang out of bed and landed on my feet. My chest was working up and down. Sweat ran down my forehead.
Disha was standing on the other side of the bed, her eyes wide and her mouth half-open.
She licked her lips and took a step back.
In a panic, I examined my remaining hand. It was there, intact and undamaged, my lone cuff glowing slightly.
“Are… are you alright?” Disha asked.
I shook my head, though more in confusion than in answer to her question.
“Maybe you want to…” she moved her hands in a pacifying gesture.
Slowly, I lowered my hand, though my heart went on knocking against my chest, and suspicion rushed into every corner of my body.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
Disha glanced around the room, avoiding my gaze. “Uh, you weren’t in class, so I was… checking on you.”
“You could have knocked,” I said.
Her dark eyes snapped to mine. “I did. Several times.” She sounded defensive. “You don’t look alright, Charlie. Maybe you should go see Nurse Taishi.”
“I don’t need to see anyone.”
The door behind Disha opened and Bridget poked her head in. Her expression was grim, and she seemed
paler than usual.
“Did you tell her?” Bridget asked.
Disha slightly shook her head as if hoping I wouldn’t notice.
“Tell me what?” I asked.
Bridget stepped into the room and shut the door. She stood next to Disha. They both stared at the floor, tight-lipped.
“Tell me what?” I repeated, raising my voice.
“Uh, it’s… Ponomarenko,” Disha said, her words cautious as if she feared the mention of that name might break me in two.
“What about him?” I asked, trying to sound brave as I pushed the words through my tightening throat.
“He attacked the fae realm this morning. It’s all been destroyed.”
I blinked at her, not quite understanding what she was saying. “What?”
“Didn’t you hear me?” she said. “Every single fae home is gone. He’s started the war.”
SNEAK PEEK OF SENIOR WITCH, SPRING SEMESTER
BOOK 5 SNEAK PREVIEW
THE EPIC CONCLUSION TO THE SERIES
CHAPTER 1
Chaos reigned under the clear, blue sky.
As I stood outside the Academy’s infirmary, wails of pain cut right through me. Some ran around desperate, not knowing what to do. Others cried silently, standing off to the side, watching as the chaos unfolded and grew bigger and bigger by the second.
I was one of them, frozen in the middle of it all, a hand to my forehead as my eyes roved around trying to understand what was happening.
People—fae to be specific—were strewn around the grass like fallen leaves, some crumpled and still, others twisting in pain. Some bled, but most were covered in a black tar-like substance, like birds caught in an oil spill.
Fedorov and the dean were transporting them here from the fae realm. They were using the portal at the Enlightment Fountain to travel back and forth between realms, so the number of injured fae kept growing and growing.
My mind reeled, trying to understand what Ponomarenko had done. He had attacked the fae realm, had destroyed it. That’s what Disha and Bridget had said, what everyone was saying. And the proof was here right in front of me.
Senior Witch, Fall Semester Page 23