by Sarina Dorie
I scooted my chair back. The logical conclusion would be that the blood was real and was dripping from somewhere above. The ceiling was clean and unmarred.
Maddy gasped in frantic pants, trying to gather in air. Hailey held a fireball in her hands, ready to throw it. Trevor chewed on a set of flash cards.
I reached out with my awareness but sensed nothing. No one was there but my students. I didn’t know whether I should evacuate them from my classroom or call for help. Perhaps I was the one doing this, just as I had with the origami cranes.
In silence, we waited for more blood. The tension in the room stretched with the speed of pulled taffy, the moment drawn into an unbearable ache like the rawness of a wound. I realized I was holding my breath and forced myself to breathe.
A loud bang jolted me out of my chair. Greenie screamed. Trevor ducked. Hailey threw the fireball.
At me.
Vega Bloodmire stood in my doorway, the door rebounding off the wall. With ease, she deflected Hailey’s fireball into the sink.
Vega pointed at Hailey as her heels clattered into the room. “Fifty points from Elementia and lunchtime detention for Hailey Achilles for a full week for trying to attack a teacher.” Fury rolled off of Vega in waves.
“I’m sure it was an accident,” I said. Hailey would never try to purposefully hurt me. She’d just been high-strung.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Vega said.
She grabbed me by the elbow and hauled me out of my room. I had a feeling my day had gone from bad to worse.
Vega’s classroom was on the floor below mine in the tower. She shoved me into her room, using kinetic energy to slam the door closed behind us.
I could only guess what might have caused Vega’s wrath.
“It was an accident,” I said. “I wasn’t trying to use magic.”
My magic still sometimes reacted of its own accord. I had no idea what kind of karmic side effects that vision and the blood might have had elsewhere. I didn’t know whether the blood was mine or my fairy godmother’s. Vega might be able to tell me, but from the rage contorting her face, I doubted she was going to do any favors for me.
“You can’t get out of this one, trying to blame someone else or your magic. This is all you.” Vega shoved a note into my hands.
I recognized Elric’s handwriting at once.
Dearest Vega,
Clarissa tells me that in order to best serve her sovereign, she would like to study a certain line of academic work that concerns all of us. Such a focus of investigation would help her fulfill her contract to me. I agree and think this is an idea worth pursuing. I’m disappointed to hear you have refused her request for assistance. I believe it is in my best interest for you to aid Clarissa in her pursuit of knowledge. As one of my loyal subjects, I am certain you will see the benefit of helping Clarissa.
I would hate to use my royal privilege and order you to do something you find so odious. Perhaps you will reconsider.
Your loving fiancé,
Prince Elric of the Silver Court
Soliciting Elric’s help had worked!
“Does that mean you have to help me make the potion?” I asked.
She grabbed me by the front of my shirt. “Don’t you ever try to go above my head again. If you do, I’ll make your life miserable. Do you understand me?”
“I wasn’t trying to go above—”
“Close your mouth before I close it for you.” Vega drew her wand.
I did as she instructed. She had glued my mouth closed before. If she did it again, I suspected it wasn’t going to be as easy to undo as washing my mouth with water.
Maybe asking for Elric’s assistance hadn’t been such a great idea after all.
“I’m not helping you do anything. Do you understand?” She shook me. “If you try to get Elric to make me do something, I will break your bones and bury you in my coffin. And now that I’m a Red affinity like you, your electrical magic won’t hurt me. It will only make me stronger. Do you understand?”
That wasn’t true.
Derrick had become a Red affinity when he’d drained me. After I’d regained my powers, I’d still been able to electrocute Derrick, and he had died. Of course, part of that had to do with the mechanics of his clockwork heart. The thought of what a monster I was haunted me, even if I tried to pretend it didn’t. I shivered.
Vega smiled, most likely thinking she caused that fear, not that I was afraid of myself.
She released me, smoothing out the wrinkles in my blouse, her tone cloyingly sweet. “Besides, it would be a shame if Thatch found out what you’re up to.” She arched an imperious eyebrow upward. “What do you think he would say if he found out you were involved in the Fae Fertility Paradox?”
She was using her trump card.
Her eyebrows lifted in mock concern. “Do you think he would want you to involve yourself?”
I glanced at the closed door of her classroom, afraid the new principal might burst in at any moment and catch us discussing forbidden topics. “You don’t understand. I need to find out if anyone can become fertile by being turned into a Red affinity.”
“Why?”
I sealed my lips into a line. It wasn’t my place to say what Maddy’s problem was. Thatch was the only other teacher who knew, but he wouldn’t want me to execute my plan.
“Very well,” Vega said. “Just don’t tattle on me again.”
I backed toward the door, not taking my eyes off her.
“Oh, and just one more thing,” Vega said. “Don’t cross me.”
At dinner, Thatch and I ate together on the teacher’s dais. I still felt on edge from the vision of something bad—and the idea of Vega who might do something bad to me if I pissed her off again.
Thatch was quiet as he ate.
Thatch didn’t like taking his meals in public. He preferred the solitude of his dungeon, but he had agreed to eat with me in the courtyard or in the cafeteria three times a week. Three days a week I had agreed to eat dinner in his office where we had privacy from students and staff. One day a week, we agreed we would eat dinner apart so he could have solitude and I could spend time with Josie, Khaba, or Pinky. In a way I was like Persephone trapped in the underworld for half the year, stuck in the dungeon away from springtime. I was lucky Thatch wasn’t like Hades; he was willing to compromise and come out into the fresh air once in a while.
Josie waved to me from across the cafeteria. I waved back.
“How was your day?” Thatch asked.
“Great. Fine. Great. Why do you ask?” I said quickly.
I hadn’t told him about the blood or my vision. If I did, he would use it as an excuse for not rescuing my fairy godmother. Then, of course, there was Vega’s threat. I didn’t want him forbidding me from trying to help Maddy get pregnant.
Thatch set his fork down. “The students told me you had a fight in class today. Was Balthasar Llewelyn that bad?”
Was that really what he thought was the worst part of my day? If so, I didn’t want to correct him. I hated to keep secrets, especially from him, but I also couldn’t risk him becoming self-righteous and overbearing.
I nodded and turned to my soup. “Um, yeah. Balthasar. He was the worst today.” He’d actually been about his normal level of defiant, nothing grandiose.
“You know what I think might help you relax after a long day?” Thatch waggled his eyebrows suggestively.
“A magic lesson?”
“A bath and a massage.”
He was the master of temptation. “And then a magic lesson?”
Josie sat down on my other side. “What’s up, buttercup?”
“Nothing. Just talking to my wife about all the naughty things we plan on doing tonight,” Thatch said in a bored monotone.
“Oh, barf!” Josie said. “Why did I decide to sit with you?”
I playfully punched Thatch in the shoulder, knowing he would like it. “We weren’t talk
ing about that. We were discussing bad students.”
“If you say so.” Thatch nudged me. “Though I suspect I know who my worst student is.”
Josie scrunched her face up in disgust. “Double barf. That’s like a newlywed double entendre, isn’t it?”
“No,” I said.
Thatch grinned maliciously. “Yes.”
“Tell me about your day,” I said to Josie, hoping to distract them both.
After dinner, I sat in my locked classroom, sketching my mom while Thatch ran an errand outside the school. I hadn’t ever been able to purposefully tap into an ability of clairvoyance while doing my art, but Elric had recognized early on that my watercolors captured the essence of someone. They spoke of someone’s heart and soul, illustrating more than met the eye.
I tried to draw my mom from memory, but I couldn’t. Every attempt looked like a generic woman. The ones that did resemble my fairy godmother were too exaggerated. None were right. I could have pulled up a photo of her on my cell phone, but electronics were contraband for all Witchkin in this realm. Khaba would be patrolling the school this time of day. If he or the principal walked in and caught me with an electronic device, they would confiscate it. I would have to wait until I went back to my room so I had privacy.
I touched my fingers to the bracelet and twisted it, keeping the thought in my mind to draw my fairy godmother, to tap into her essence and see where she was. My hand moved across the page without my thinking. Her face in my mind crystalized, and I was able to capture her with more accuracy. I pushed into the essence of my mom, but the feeling of Abigail Lawrence shifted from the substance of water to the sensation of mist the more I grasped.
I set the pencil down, took a calming breath, and stretched.
When I picked up the pencil again and began to draw, I didn’t reach for that feeling.
Just like the finger trap, it was time to do the opposite of what my reflexes told me to do.
I allowed the feeling to come to me. I opened my affinity as though I were opening my arms, allowing myself to become an antenna receiving a signal.
The pencil lines on the paper shifted of their own accord. I watched as the likeness of my fairy godmother moved. She sat in a garden, warily eyeing the plants. Relief flooded through me seeing her alive and surrounded by her affinity. Trees and herbs made her stronger.
It took me a moment to notice how she flinched away from a creeping vine of ivy. Plants usually obeyed her, but this one was poison ivy. Pale purple flowers of leadwort snuggled up her arms, and she twitched back. Stinging nettles grew at her blistered and bleeding feet.
Every plant in that wild garden around her was toxic. She still wore the same green dress she’d worn to my wedding, though it was now torn and dirty.
A shadowy figure was seated at a table across from her. I couldn’t see her face, but I knew who it was. I could feel her energy sucking in life like a black hole.
A voice slithered out from the page, as cold as a thousand icicles. “Do you truly think you can stop me? Why not simply tell me and put an end to your suffering?” The woman’s voice carried a hint of a French accent, refined and elevated.
I wondered what my mom knew that she wasn’t telling. The Raven Queen already suspected my affinity, if not outright knew it. She knew where I was and had crashed our wedding, so she must have gotten the memo that Thatch and I were married. She had long suspected I would be able to complete Alouette Loraline’s research on the Fae Fertility Paradox. The latter, my fairy godmother knew nothing about.
Abigail Lawrence’s gaze flickered to the tea tray and an elaborate arrangement of scones before her. She didn’t answer. Her eyes were dark and bruised. She looked thin and weary. Probably she would have to be using her magic to constantly fight off plants. My fairy godmother had never been educated at a magic school or been formally trained. No one had ever given her lessons on how to fight her weakness or how someone might use her affinity against her.
“Have you considered my offer?” the Raven Queen asked.
A tendril of roses curled around my mom’s ankle, thorns biting into her skin. Prickles of blood dotted her bare foot. I didn’t want to keep watching this. Dread settled into the pit of my stomach. Even so, my eyes remained glued to the page.
The Raven Queen turned so that I was able to take in the profile of her regal face. She was beautiful and alluring with her hair as black as night and skin as white as snow. Like Snow White, her lips were scarlet, though I didn’t doubt her lipstick was made of blood. She reminded me of a red apple on a tree, perfect on the outside, but one that had been left hanging for too long and was rotten everywhere just under the surface.
The Raven Queen stood, her gaze flickering this way and that as if searching for something. Her gown was made from bird feathers, the midnight plumes painted with an oil slick. A wicked smile curled her lips upward.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are.” Her presence stretched past the expanse of paper and came closer.
Her eyes locked on to mine, though she remained in the drawing.
I sucked in a breath. I had no doubt she was seeing me. Her eyes were all black and within her pupils I saw the swirling of the cosmos. Time felt as though it slowed. She reached out toward me, beseeching me to lean closer.
A new voice startled me, drawing me out of the vision, snapping me back into my body.
“How about that magic lesson?” Thatch asked from the door of my classroom.
I stood up with a start, clutching at my chest. The Raven Queen had seen me. She knew I was spying on her. It had felt as though she could have sucked me through the vision and pulled me into the Faerie Realm. I wouldn’t put anything past her.
Thatch strode closer. “I have something special in mind for tonight.”
I’d locked my door so no one would come in. Not that he couldn’t use magic—or a key—to remedy that.
My adrenaline gave way to irritation. “Don’t you ever knock?”
“Indeed.” The teasing in his expression faded. His eyes narrowed. “Don’t you ever answer when someone knocks? I feared something might be the matter.”
“I didn’t hear you knock.” I didn’t know whether I’d been too immersed in my vision or he was fibbing.
“Pray, who were you talking to?” he asked.
“No one.”
His gaze flickered to the drawing of my fairy godmother. “I heard voices.”
It wasn’t just Abigail Lawrence in the drawing now, but a shadowy figure looming in the front corner, almost completely obscuring the garden from view.
I considered lying. If I needed to, I could blame the voices on the forbidden vice of electronics. Thatch waited in silence. He already knew I was thinking about lying. From the drawing, he had to know I’d been scrying. He’d tell me I had been doing something dangerous and ask me not to do it. I could already see the warning in the grim set of his mouth.
The competency spell still worked within me, neurons in my brain firing in rapid succession, making me quicker, more clever, and hyperalert. I looked back to the drawing I’d made in the hope of seeing my mom, which had worked for once. Yet I also saw something else, the answer I hadn’t seen earlier.
And it had been inspired by my students.
“I think I know how to get my fairy godmother back without the Raven Queen realizing it,” I said.
CHAPTER FIVE
Seeing Double
Thatch sighed in exasperation. “I have a feeling I’d better sit for this.” He pulled up one of the student chairs next to my desk.
I paced the room excitedly. “What if I could travel to the Raven Queen’s castle and get in before she even realizes I’m there? I think I might have discovered a way to create a doorway to another place. If I can, I could trick her into thinking a doppelgänger is me and one is my mom to distract her while I escape.”
Thatch steepled his fingers in front of him. “I am skeptical, but I shall endea
vor to listen to your proposal.”
“Sometimes I can draw things that are more than they appear. I think I can see the present—and maybe the future. Years ago I did it with Derrick. At the time, I had thought it was his magic, not mine.” I remembered how I had assumed the image of a Legolas-like elvish man had been based on my Tolkien obsession. I now suspected it was Elric, though I hadn’t known him when I’d drawn it. I’d tapped into the same power within myself to see Derrick in visions.
“Then there was this one time at the Eugene Saturday Market back home when Daisy Rainbow had been using tarot cards to see my future, but it turned into an animated sketch.”
Thatch arched an imperious eyebrow upward. “Daisy Rainbow?”
“I used to live in Eugene, Oregon, remember? It’s the hippie capital of the United States. Daisy was the market psychic, and she decorated her booth with rainbows.”
He shook his head in disgust as if there weren’t anything worse than rainbows and hippies.
I recounted the details. “Daisy was trying to see my future regarding a certain tall, dark, and handsome stranger—you. Only days before, I’d run into you at a school when you had been following me around and that kraken attacked. Daisy’s tarot cards changed when she did the reading. They looked like my drawings—and the vision showed you. I thought it was all Daisy, and maybe I was amplifying her powers, but there was more to it, something of myself in that vision. I’ve had this happen several times since then—always when I’m drawing.”
Thatch waved a hand at my sketch. “And you saw your fairy godmother, I take it.”
“Yes, and she’s alive. The Raven Queen wants her to join the dark side or something, but Mom is trying to resist.”
His expression remained grim.
“I’ve never been able to control this power until now. I wanted to test my ability to determine if I could have a vision of my mom. I did. Only it was more intense this time, and I think the Raven Queen saw me. I had the feeling she could reach through my drawing and snatch me.”