Inwardly, I groaned. How could I have missed them before? It must have been because I was focused on the teacher while she was dressing me down for being tardy. But honestly, how bad could my luck get? First I had been put into the very last class I wanted and then it turned out to contain a girl who had for some reason decided I was her mortal enemy.
Now I had twice as many reasons to want to get out of Home Ec. I thought about raising my hand and asking to be excused so I could go straight back to the office and get the school secretary to change my schedule. But then I remembered I was already on the hook to clean the entire class’s mixing bowls and baking pans. And Mrs. Hornsby was definitely a hard-ass—there was no way she was going to let me go anywhere until I had completed my punishment.
With a sigh, I decided to keep my head down and hope I could just get through class without too much trouble. After all, I was seated at a table in the very back of the room and Nancy and her cohorts were at the very front. It shouldn’t be hard to avoid them and keep my nose clean until the end of class—right?
Wrong. Oh, so very, very wrong.
15
I had made chocolate chip cookies from scratch before—many times with my mom. In fact, one of the reasons I felt like I didn’t need Home Ec was the fact that she had helped me become a fairly decent cook—it was one of the things we did together—one of the things I missed about her so badly.
It had been several years now, since I had baked any cookies—doing it by myself reminded me of her too much and made me sad. But it should be like riding a bicycle, right? One of those things you never forget?
Wrong.
I measured the ingredients, whipped the butter and eggs and sugar and vanilla together, added the flour and the baking soda after carefully sifting them, and lastly, the chocolate chips. I won’t say I didn’t steal a few—after the day I’d been having, I needed a chocolate boost. I tasted the cookie dough too—strictly for quality control purposes, of course. It was just the way I remembered it being when I cooked with my mom—sweet and buttery and just a little bit salty which only added to the delicious flavor as a whole.
It was really good. Well, at least I hadn’t lost my touch. My mom would have been proud.
Just as I had my cookie dough all ready to go, one of Nancy’s Weird Sisters walked up to me. I didn’t know their names but I thought of them as Weird Sister One and Weird Sister Two.
This was WS One and she had long blonde hair and cat-green eyes which she cut at me as she walked right by my table.
Instinctively, I put a hand over the bowl of cookie dough and straightened up, ready for an attack. But WS One only muttered something under her breath and flipped her hair in my direction before sauntering back to Nancy and WS Two, who had curly brown hair and brown eyes to match.
I watched her go and saw the three of them giggling together, casting glances over their shoulders at me from time to time, making it clear I was the butt of their joke.
I straightened my shoulders and lifted my chin. Why should I care what they thought? After all, Nancy was the one who’d had to eat floor-food for lunch—not me. I refused to let her stupid giggling intimidate me.
Keeping my spine straight, I bent to my task of putting rounded tablespoons of cookie dough onto my baking sheet. I made certain they had enough room between them to spread when they baked and then chose an oven at random, making certain it was preheated to the right temperature, just like the recipe we were following specified.
Then I set my timer and waited…and waited and waited and waited.
The first time the timer went off, I went to check and found that my cookies were still almost raw, which made no sense. Thinking that the oven I had chosen must be broken, I slid my pan into another one, right beside it, and set the timer again.
Again, the cookies were undercooked—just barely getting done around the edges while the insides were still soupy and raw.
Okay. Taking my pan, I switched ovens again. This time I picked an oven that another girl was just pulling her pan of cookies out of. The cookies she had baked looked perfectly done—golden brown and delicious with a smell that would make even the most dedicated dieter decide to cheat.
Thinking this had to be the right oven for me, I slid my pan of underdone cookies in a third time, making certain to check the temperature the oven was set on. Everything was in order so I set my timer again—this time for only five minutes, since the baking process had at least begun and I didn’t want my cookies getting overdone. There is nothing worse than overdone chocolate chip cookies.
Except for burned ones.
When my timer went off for the third time and I went back to check my cookies, I saw with horror, that tendrils of smoke were seeping out around the edges of the oven door.
Grabbing a silicone glove, I yanked open the oven door, only to be choked by billowing clouds of black smoke which promptly filled the classroom and caused a fire alarm to start blaring somewhere in the corner.
“Miss Latimer! What did you do?” Mrs. Hornsby was suddenly at my side, waving wildly at the clouds of smoke and coughing along with the rest of the class.
“I…I don’t know,” I exclaimed, horrified. “I followed the instructions—I don’t know how they could have burned so quickly!”
“This is a mess!” Mrs. Hornsby’s face was red with anger. “Miss Jacobs,” she called to one of the other students. “Run to the office and tell them to turn off the fire alarm and let them know there is no need to evacuate the entire castle. Run now—hurry!”
Miss Jacobs—a small blonde girl with wide eyes and a nervous way of twitching her nose like a rabbit—took off as fast as she could go, scampering out of the classroom and down the hall as though the devil himself was chasing her.
“Take that out! Take it out and put it in the sink!” Mrs. Hornsby was shouting at me over the sound of the still-blaring fire alarm and pointing to my tray of cookies, which looked like blackened lumps of charcoal.
Quickly, I did as she said, dousing the smoking cookies with cold water until they stopped smoking. Just as I was finished, the alarm finally cut off. Shortly after that, Miss Jacobs came back and ran up to Mrs. Hornsby.
“The alarm was cancelled, Mrs. Hornsby,” she said, unnecessarily since we could all hear that the blaring sound had stopped.
“Yes. Thank you.” The teacher nodded irritably. “You may go back to your seat.”
Meekly, Miss Jacobs withdrew as the other students started opening the windows and airing out the room on the side of the stone wall which showed the moat around the castle. I started to go back to my seat as well but Mrs. Hornsby stopped me with a look that would have frozen liquid magma.
“You can stay where you are, Miss Latimer,” she said darkly. “You’d better get started on those bowls and pans while I grade the other girls’ cookies.”
“Is the grade based on the cookies, then?” I asked, my heart sinking. I guess I’d been hoping she would at least give some points for participation but the Home Ec teacher only glared at me.
“It absolutely is,” she snapped. “And since you did your very best to turn yours into a burnt offering and I have no intention of eating charcoal, you will be getting an F for today.”
“What?” I exclaimed. “But Mrs. Hornsby, please! I honestly was watching my cookies. I followed all the directions—I don’t understand why they burned!”
“An F for today,” she repeated, giving me a look that said I’d better shut up. “And an F for tomorrow if you don’t watch your mouth, Miss Latimer. I do not like excuses—I only want to see results.”
Then she swept away and began tasting one cookie from each of the students, making comments and judgments on the different textures and flavors while I watched helplessly.
She was clearly very hard to please and I saw several students slump when she gave them a C or even a D, in the case of one undercooked and too-doughy cookie.
“Are you trying to give me salmonella, Miss Eversham?” she
exclaimed, not even putting the cookie in her mouth. “Next time follow the baking directions better!”
However, when she got to Nancy and her friends, who had been working together as a group, she seemed to be completely enchanted with their cookies.
“Perfect!” she declared rapturously, finishing one and reaching for a second and then a third. “Light and crispy on the outside with just enough chew in the center. And I love the way you added extra chocolate chips on top, girls. An A plus for all of you today—keep up the good work!”
I couldn’t help feeling envious—and suspicious—as I watched this play out in front of me. From where I was standing, Nancy’s cookies didn’t look any better or worse than anyone else’s. Yet Mrs. Hornsby acted like she was eating the nectar of the gods when she tasted them.
Was something going on?
If it was, I certainly couldn’t figure it out. The other students stacked their dirty pans and bowls and mixer paddles in a towering pile beside the sink as I scrubbed. At the end of class, I was still scrubbing. As everyone filed out, Nancy turned and blew me a kiss from her too-large lips.
“See you tomorrow, Charity Case,” she sang sweetly and the two other Weird Sisters giggled loudly as they all passed me.
I gritted my teeth and kept scrubbing, wishing I could roll up the sleeves of my blouse to keep them from getting wet. But of course, I couldn’t risk anyone seeing the scars marching up the insides of my arms so I kept them buttoned at the wrists and tried (unsuccessfully) to stay dry.
At last only Mrs. Hornsby was left and since she seemed to have cooled down a little, I thought it might be a good time to talk to her.
“Mrs. Hornsby?” I ventured as she gathered her things and prepared to leave.
“Hmm?” She looked up at me, an unfriendly scowl on her face. Wow, she hated me now—I really had to get out of her class before it dragged down my entire GPA!
It was this thought that gave me the nerve to continue, despite her foreboding expression.
“Mrs. Hornsby,” I said again, as humbly as I could. “I was thinking that maybe this isn’t the right class for me. I mean after today, I’m sure you would agree I’m not cut out for Home Ec. I was thinking of maybe switching to something else—maybe History of Local Magic? Ms. Yasmeen recommended that to me especially and I thought—”
“Don’t you dare!” Mrs. Hornsby’s eyes were suddenly flashing.
“Um…what?” I said, uncertain why she was so angry.
“I forbid it!” she exclaimed. “You may not abandon my class. You will stay and see it through.”
“But…” I found myself tongue-tied by her vehemence. “But why?” I finally managed to get out.
She stabbed a finger at me.
“Because I have never seen anyone so desperately in need of the skills we teach in Home Economics in my life, Miss Latimer. Therefore, you will stay and I will teach you to cook if it kills me. Which it very well may,” she added, glaring.
“Honestly, I used to cook and bake with my mom all the time,” I protested. “I’m usually a very good cook. I think something must have been wrong with the oven. I—“
“Stop.” She cut me off, one hand raised imperiously. “What did I tell you about excuses in my classroom?”
“You said you don’t like them,” I dutifully repeated.
“Good. And what do I like instead?”
“Results,” I said flatly.
“That’s right. Show me some results, Miss Latimer, and we’ll get along just fine. But if you fail to follow the recipe again, there will be trouble. Now—finish washing those dishes, dry them, and put them neatly away on the racks before you go. If you hurry, you might be able to make the last part of dinner. I’ll see you tomorrow, hopefully with much better results.”
Then she swept out of the room like a ship in full sail, taking my hopes of switching to another last period class with her.
16
I missed dinner.
I don’t know if Nancy and the Weird Sisters had anything to do with it, but I swear, some of the pans I had to scrub would not come clean. I would think I had gotten all of the cookie residue off the metal and then I would look again and see that no, I hadn’t and in fact, it was dirty all over again!
After Mrs. Hornsby’s lecture, I didn’t dare leave a single pan anything less than sparkling so I was at the task hours before I finally got finished. After drying everything and putting it away, I trudged out of the Home Ec classroom and made my way down the halls, which were now strangely deserted.
Since my class schedule said dinner was at five o’clock and my watch said it was seven, I didn’t expect to get anything to eat. The fish and salad I’d had for lunch seemed a very long time ago and my stomach rumbled unhappily as I trudged along.
I realized, as I went, that I didn’t even know where my dorm—the Norm Dorm, as Emma and Kaitlyn had called it—was located. My class schedule simply listed my dormitory as “The Dungeon.” But where was the dungeon, exactly?
As I wandered around, looking for someone to ask in the deserted hallways (I figured all the groups of Others must have gone to their own dorms in the towers) I reviewed my day.
I had made a serious enemy in Nancy Rattcliff and possibly Sanchez as well, through no fault of my own. I had proven I was nothing but a Null who couldn’t even light a candle—an act of magic even girls years younger than me could manage easily. I had tried and failed to get myself into AP English and tried and failed twice to get myself out of classes I wasn’t suited for at all. Added to all that, my shoulders ached and throbbed from all the scrubbing I’d been forced to do and my stomach was painfully empty.
It was turning out to be a really crappy first day at my new school.
Not that there weren’t bright spots, I thought, as I found myself abruptly in a small hallway that dead-ended into a single door. Emma and Kaitlyn and Avery were all great and I liked them a lot. But were the three of them enough to keep me here, at a place I so obviously didn’t belong?
Don’t forget about Griffin, whispered a small voice in the back of my head.
At the very thought of the tall Nocturne, the key around my neck began to throb.
“Stop it,” I muttered to the damn thing, putting up a hand to still it. It was strange—when the key had first refused to come off, I’d been frightened of it and angry with it—wanting to get it off any way I could. But here in the strange new world of Nocturne Academy, the key had become—if not a friend—at least a kind of confidant. A fellow inmate in the bizarre old castle which housed supernatural beings and taught magic right alongside more banal classes like English Lit and Phys Ed.
But the key hadn’t been throbbing just at the thought of Griffin. As I turned to leave the strange, short hallway I found myself in—which really shouldn’t have been there, given the layout of the castle—I found myself face to face with the boy I had been thinking of.
Griffin stood there, looming over me like a specter in the gloom. In the dark hallway, his pale lightning and pitch eyes seemed to glow with a silver luminescence.
“Well, well—and what are you doing here, little witch?” His voice was mild but his eyes were angry, black brows pulled down low over his vivid eyes.
“I…I was…” I tried to talk but found that I couldn’t say a word. The key between my breasts was throbbing and burning like a live coal. Though I knew from looking earlier that it wasn’t really scorching my skin, it felt like it was burning a hole straight through me—as though it was trying to make a path to my heart.
This wasn’t the cool, handsome, sarcastic boy who had escorted me to English today, I thought. This was a different Griffin than I had seen before. Somehow the night had changed him …turned him into his true self. And his true self was a Nocturne.
Otherwise known as a vampire, whispered a panicked little voice in my head. As in, he drinks blood.
I suddenly remembered his flat, drawling voice when he’d been talking about our assignment to read Dr
acula that morning.
“He’s not after Lucy to offer her his eternal, undying love and devotion,” he had said. “He wants her for her blood. He wants to drink her dry—an ocean of blood wouldn’t have satisfied his thirst.”
Was he thirsty now? I just didn’t know.
For a long breathless moment, Griffin just stared at me. He didn’t touch me but he was so close I could feel him—feel his physical presence against my skin like a field of static electricity. It made all the short, fine hairs on my arms stand up and I felt as though my entire body had suddenly been charged, like a battery hooked up to a power source.
Then he stepped deliberately around me and headed for the door at the end of the hall, moving as silently as a shadow. He pushed it open noiselessly and I saw that it led to the outside.
A warm breath of humid Florida night air breathed through the hallway like the exhalation from a giant mouth. On it, I caught the scent of orange trees mixed with the flat, wet scent of the lake that surrounded the castle.
And running through it all was Griffin’s own scent—a cold, clean, somehow completely masculine aroma that flooded my senses and made the key throb even harder.
Stop him! it seemed to be crying—I swore I could almost hear its voice in my mind. Stop him—he’s getting away!
Maybe that was what made me speak—what made me call out to him, though every instinct I had told me I should stay silent and let him pass. Griffin was a predator—seeing him in the darkness like this, I knew it to my bones. He was a killer and his kind preyed on mine. I had the feeling of a rabbit calling back a hawk that had wheeled by overhead or an antelope calling out to a lion.
But still I spoke.
“You’re wrong, you know,” I called to his back, when he was already halfway out the door.
Griffin turned, his eyes gleaming silver in the dim moonlight spilling in through the half open door. He seemed to deliberate for a moment—almost to struggle with himself—and then he let the door close and came striding back to stand in front of me, even closer than before.
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