by Sarina Dorie
Thatch murmured quietly. Her response carried across the library. “You, stop! You know I’m too old for dancing.”
“One is never too old for dancing,” Thatch said.
A hot spike of jealousy flared through me. Had he just asked her to go dancing with him? Why couldn’t he look at me that way? This was torture.
I forced myself to turn my gaze to the book titles. The art section was small, one entire shelf against the wall. Among the volumes were a few art history books, but most of them were how-to-draw books. I glanced over my shoulder. Thatch’s voice was a quiet murmur from the far side of the library. I pulled out three books. The wall wasn’t brick or painted white like the rest of the library. It was blue.
I removed three more books and stacked them up carefully so I could return them in order afterward. A mural was painted across the wall. The art books hid a section of it. A giant tentacle monster reaching into the sky above the ocean snatched up an old-fashioned dirigible. It kind of looked more like Derrick’s old drawings of Cthulhu than the King of the Pacific. This imaginary creature didn’t have a turtle shell, but it did have two heads, and there was something crab-like about the tail. Part of the painting was obscured by the wooden shelves and the books on the shelf below.
I pulled out another row of books and another. I had to scoot all the books against the wall to make room and arrange them so I wouldn’t forget their order. Below the next set of wooden shelves was a scene of a woman with orange and pink hair with purple wings guarding a small group of mermaids behind her. Lightning shot out of her hand at the monster. She looked a lot like me. In the corner was the signature of Derrick Winslow. It was dated six years before, probably from when he’d attended the school.
I fell on my butt, staring in awe. This was the supposed message from the King of the Pacific? This was from Derrick. I had found more of his art. He’d depicted me as beautiful and powerful. Perhaps that was how he had seen me. He had taken such care in this rendering that love vibrated through each brushstroke. I remembered the last time we’d been together, and he had told me he loved me.
I smoothed my hand over the mural, wishing I could touch him through his painting. I couldn’t stop grinning. Wait until I told Maddy the art had nothing to do with her contract!
Only I couldn’t understand what it all meant. What was Derrick trying to tell me? I’d seen him in a vision, and now this. I had smelled his magic multiple times, and he’d left a note for me in Alouette Loraline’s journal. I still didn’t know if he was the one who had left it or if the Raven Court was behind that. When he’d come to me in my dreams at the beginning of the school year, he had told me he’d been cursed. It all had to be connected somehow.
“Ahem,” Thatch said. “Why are you here, making a mess of the library instead of watching the students I sent you? You shouldn’t leave them unattended.”
I shoved the first set of books back onto the shelf. “Maddy is safe. She was surrounded by three other girls.”
He watched me return the books, making no offer to help. “I wasn’t talking about Maddy. I was talking about Hailey and Balthasar stealing your art supplies. Or worse, setting the classroom on fire. That’s why I sent them to you, so they wouldn’t get themselves in trouble.”
“Speaking of which, didn’t you have some important errand to do? Or was that just a ruse to come to the library?”
He lifted his chin. “I went to New York to check on a magical occurrence. It was a quick in and out, and I had some free time afterward.”
“Right. You had enough time to whip up a batch of paste that smelled like lavender and roses. When are you going to make me some paste?”
He shook his head at me and stalked off.
“No, really. I could use some paste. You could at least give me a recipe.”
By the time I was done returning the books to the shelves, Thatch was gone from the library. Mrs. Periwinkle sat in her desk in her office. As I exited the library and rounded the corner, I almost walked into Felix Thatch. Now that the library was closed, and I had left, I assumed he was on his way back inside.
“Excuse me,” I said, stepping to the side. “Don’t let me get in the way of your flirting with the librarian.”
“I wasn’t flirting.” He stepped into my path. “Not that I need to explain myself to you, but I will have you know I’m simply trying to soften Miss Periwinkle to the idea of taking Maddy on as a pupil, to help her learn how to control siren magic.”
So that meant he wasn’t trying to put the moves on a grandmother. My earlier envy melted away.
“So, Mrs. Periwinkle really is a siren? I thought they were … beautiful.” And young. I supposed they had to age. Fairytale books never showed pictures of old sirens.
“Miss Periwinkle,” Thatch corrected. “She blames your mother for stealing her youth and beauty and draining her of most of her magic.”
Oh snap! No wonder she hated me.
I returned to my classroom, eager to tell Maddy about the art. As I climbed up the stairs, the aroma of burnt toast wafted down toward me. That in itself didn’t set off any alarms in my head, but the odor grew stronger. I was halfway up the stairs to my room when I heard something you don’t want to come back to a classroom and hear:
“No, don’t open up the window. That gives a fire more oxygen.”
Screaming followed that last bit. I ran up the stairs, found my desk on fire, Hailey standing in front of it. Black smoke billowed up to the ceiling. Greenie stood at the open window. Imani and Maddy smacked at the flames on my desk with their backpacks. Balthasar had grabbed the bucket of water from the broken sink. It might have been enough to douse the flames if he hadn’t tripped over someone else’s bag and splashed the water onto me instead.
I hated it when Thatch was right.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Pyromancers and the Teacher Who Loves Them
It was times like this when magic would have come in handy. I tried to use all the nonforbidden magic I knew, but that came out as a burst of lemony fragrance that didn’t do anything for the fire.
Maddy looked from the puddle on the floor to the fire. She lifted her hands, the puddles and droplets rising into the air, shifting and shimmering as they defied gravity. She pushed her palms downward and dropped the water onto my desk. By that point, the fire had reached the posters on the wall.
“Oh, not my Monet!” I said.
I looked around, desperate to find something to put out the fire. I took off my sweater, jumped on a chair and smacked the flames on the wall. Golden fire licked Water Lilies and Van Gogh’s Sunflowers.
“No!” I cried, choking on the smoke.
A spray of water hit me in the face. I fell off the chair, colliding with someone who broke my fall. I rolled off Greenie, blinked, and rubbed at my eyes.
“Sorry,” I said.
Greenie stared over my shoulder, her eyes growing wide. I flopped onto my butt and stared. Maddy stood at my broken sink, the movements of her arm somewhere in between swimming and tai chi. She pulled the water out of the pipes in a rope and propelled it across the room, droplets falling free and splattering the desks along the way. The rope of moisture struck the wall and doused the smoldering surface of my desk. I watched in awe. She moved gracefully, reminding me of a waterbender from Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Just for the record, the television show, not the movie.
The fire died, and the water faded to a trickle. All of us dripped and were covered in soot. Maddy was radiant in her beauty, her skin taking on a shimmery, pearlescent quality like when I’d first met her. The blue of her eyes sparkled like sapphires. She panted and looked tired, yet the fatigue didn’t take away from her allure.
All of what had just happened was in the realm of normal at a magical school. Terrible, but not completely unheard of, considering their talents and range of skills.
Now that the emergency was over, I noticed Imani on the floor at Maddy�
��s feet. She held Maddy by the ankles, just above her socks. For a moment I thought Maddy’s siren magic had drawn her in. Then I noticed the red glow emanating from Imani’s skin, painting the stones around her in crimson and vermillion hues. She pulled away, and it faded.
“What the fuck was that?” Balthasar asked.
“Nothing,” Imani said quickly.
I sank into a chair, too exhausted to correct his language.
Now that the fire was out, everyone stared at Imani.
Maddy looked at her, confused. “What did you do to me? I couldn’t have gotten that much water to come out on my own.”
Imani bit her lip, looking to me. “I don’t know. It just felt right.”
Water dripped from the ceiling. I knew Red affinities could draw out other people’s powers. I had unwittingly done it with Derrick’s wind affinity as a teenager and probably Julian’s green-man magic. Maybe this was what had happened at the All Hallows’ Eve celebration when the Celestor students’ star dance had gone haywire. Imani’s magic might have reacted with her dance partner because she’d been holding his hand.
“Sorry,” Hailey said, her voice loud in the silence of the room. “I was just trying to see the rest of the message. I don’t know how my spell went out of control like that.”
I glanced at Imani. I had a feeling I did. It was Imani’s magic. She hadn’t just influenced Maddy’s water affinity, but she’d also affected Hailey’s fire affinity.
Hailey toed a soggy black scrap of paper. “Do you want me to use a heat spell or something to dry out the room?”
“No!” everyone shouted at once.
My lesson plans were cinders, as were examples of projects for the students, my gradebook, and a stack of student art I’d intended to hang. Five posters on the wall had been burned beyond repair. Maddy’s glamour to make her look less attractive had to be remade by Vega and Thatch, who were none too pleased. My life was a big soggy pile of poo.
Most of all I was worried about Imani’s identity being compromised. Hailey wasn’t trustworthy. She had already overheard too much. She knew Imani and I shared an affinity and we were different. Now she’d seen too much. All she had to do was tell someone who would tell the Raven Queen, and Imani and I would both be snatched to pop out babies for her Raven Court army.
After the students left for their dorms, I headed straight for the dungeon to confide what had happened to Thatch. He remained calm and collected, which infuriated me even more.
He tapped his chin with one long finger. “Why would you think Hailey, of all students, would have figured out what Imani is?”
I didn’t know how much I could say before I broke out into boils. If I couldn’t tell him how Hailey had discovered our secret because of Wiseman’s Oath, I hoped it was the same for Hailey being unable to speak of the secret. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t reveal it in some other way.
I tried to think of another reason. “There’s the school prophecy.” When Josie had explained it, she’d said the Madam Cleo of the Dark Ages foresaw someone at Womby’s not being sorted into one of the teams, or being a misfit of the affinity fire, or something like that. “There was the beginning of the school year with the affinity fire. People whispered that Imani is the chosen one who would bring back the lost Red arts.”
Thatch scratched his chin. “Most Witchkin don’t know Reds can amplify the magic of others. It’s unlikely Hailey has reason to suspect Imani as one.”
“You know Hailey eavesdropped on Imani and me in the bathroom,” I said. That was about all I could give away about Hailey’s blackmail session.
He raised an eyebrow. “I’m aware.”
“So I think she put two and two together and figured it out.”
“Hailey is about as likely to do that as she is to study trigonometry.”
His reassurance didn’t ease my worries.
Apparently, the patron saint of school teachers decided my life wasn’t difficult enough because my evening was filled with a new problem.
After cleaning up my classroom and scrubbing the walls with the magic of Lysol, I made it back to my dormitory room by nine thirty. I hadn’t yet changed into my pajamas and brushing my teeth in the shared teacher bathroom when I heard the screams from the girls’ dormitory downstairs.
I ran into the hallway. “Vega!” I called.
“Fucking A,” she said from our room.
She had such a potty mouth for a teacher.
I ran down the hall and down a flight of stairs, realizing on my way there I still had my toothbrush in my hand. It was supposed to be dark in the girls’ dormitory, but candles were lit, and girls rushed around screaming. I shouted for them to be quiet and calm down, but no one heard me.
I grabbed someone by the arm. It was Jenny Peterson. “What’s going on?”
She pointed to the far end. “There’s a boy!”
I ran toward Maddy’s bed. On the floor two figures wrestled, twisted in blankets. Some of the girls tried to intervene to pull them apart, but quickly backed off, squealing as punches were thrown their way. It took a moment to realize Hailey was one of the figures on the floor. She beat her fists at someone’s face. A boy with a mop of black hair raised his arms to cover himself.
“Hailey, stop!” I shouted.
I circled my arms around her and tried to lift her off, but she was too heavy. She elbowed me off her, and I landed on my butt. The boy getting pummeled was her friend, Balthasar. Light flooded the room, a nebulous glow on the ceiling, illuminating the students.
Vega’s high heels clicked down the aisle, unhurried. She clapped her hands. “Into bed, all of you.”
Hailey wrenched herself free of Balthasar. They were both bleeding. Hailey already had a black eye.
Balthasar panted. “I thought you were my friend. What did you attack me for?”
“Duh. I was saving your life. I can’t believe you’d be this stupid,” Hailey said. “You fell for a siren. They kill men.”
“You almost killed me!” He felt along the red blisters at his throat.
Hailey rolled her eyes. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.”
I crouched beside Balthasar to check his injuries. The worst were his burns.
“What the hell is going on here?” Vega demanded.
“Miss Bloodmire,” a girl shrieked. She pointed to a bed.
Someone sat curled up, covers drawn to her chin. Vega tore off the covers. It was Maddy, crying. Her hands were burned. Apparently, Hailey hadn’t just burned Balthasar.
Vega grabbed one of Balthasar’s pointy ears and hauled him to his feet.
I sat down beside Maddy. “What happened?”
Vega shoved Balthasar at me. “Take this one to a male staff member to deal with. I’ll deal with the girls.” She pointed at Balthasar. “And if you try anything funny, whether you cast a spell on Miss Lawrence or you look at her wrong, I will skin you alive.”
For once, I didn’t hate Vega. Her threat had been kind of sweet in her wicked way.
Balthasar followed me out, dragging his feet. I’d only been to the rooms of one male staff member. I knew where Thatch slept, his quarters past his office in the dungeon, but his classroom and office would be locked, so I wasn’t going to be able to get there easily. I went to the wing where the boy’s dorms were located and up the stairs where the male staff members slept. Only an occasional sconce lit the way. I wasn’t focused enough to use my flame spell from Jackie Frost’s class. The journey was dark without a cell phone or candle to light the way, and the two of us continually stubbed our toes on the stairs.
“So, what were you doing in the girls’ room?” I asked Balthasar. As if I didn’t know.
“I wasn’t going to hurt Maddy. I just wanted to see if she wanted to, you know, take a walk or something.”
“Is ‘taking a walk’ a euphemism?”
“What’s a euphemism?”
“Never mind. So why would you thin
k Maddy would want to take a walk with you?”
“She smiled at me. That means she likes me.”
“Just because a girl smiles at you doesn’t mean she wants to kiss you. And certainly not at night when you sneak into her bed and scare her to death.”
His ears turned red. “Yeah, I kind of figured that out when she screamed and tried to strangle me. If it hadn’t been for Hailey, I think she would have killed me.”
And here I thought Hailey had been the one about to kill him.
I hadn’t noticed it before with the burn being my primary concern, but his neck was red from fingernail scratches. I didn’t know if Maddy had overreacted or she’d truly felt threatened. Maybe it was her siren nature—she called boys to her without trying and when they closed in for a kiss, her reaction was to kill them.
As stupid as Balthasar was, it was hard to imagine him trying to get away with kissing Maddy while Hailey slept in the same bed. On the other hand, magic could make people do anything. I knew that from personal experience.
The hallway closer to the boy’s dorm was more modern than the girls’ dorms, the window on the end containing double panes of glass, and the hall was less drafty.
I pointed to the first door we came to in the teacher’s hallway. “Who sleeps here?”
Light shone from under the door, so whoever was inside was awake at least. Balthasar shrugged. I knocked on the door. Pro Ro answered. Of course it would be the teacher who hated me most.
As I explained what had happened, Pro Ro glared at me as if I had wanted to disrupt his evening. I left Balthasar in his care and went back to my room. It took me even longer to find my way back without Balthasar leading me.
I found Vega sitting on my bed beside Maddy. Vega wrapped up Maddy’s hands in gauze. One of the pretty glass perfume bottles from her dresser was uncorked and empty on the nightstand. Maybe the vessel had contained medicine, not her stinky perfume.