by Leigh Kelsey
Quickly, she urged Dolly, though her stubby little legs were already working fast in an effort to keep up, her breath starting to wheeze either with the stressful situation or with excitement. Knowing Dolly, probably the latter.
At the back door, Kati lifted her blackthorn wand and pricked her thumb with the thorn at its base. Smearing it with blood, she slashed it in a Z and said, “Shatter.” She very carefully focussed on the lock, so as not to demolish the whole door—that was the difficult bit—and panted, sweat pricking down her back. But then the door handle cracked and fell off with a loud thunk.
Now we’re in for it, Dolly said. Do you think your parents will put bars on your window to stop you from making a second escape attempt?
“Shut it,” Kati hissed, holding her breath to see if her mum and dad had heard. But Nan moaned dramatically. “My hip really doesn’t feel right.”
Kati sent a silent thank you to her nan, stepped over the broken handle, and pushed the door. It opened silently.
With a breath of relief, Kati rushed through the garden and down the road to Poppleton station, with Dolly trotting after her.
She’d made it out.
Newly Minted Fugitive
Two hours early for the rickety old bus to SBA and with nothing better to do, Kati wandered York city center, ambling from the Minster, along cobbled roads lined with charming little shops and cafes, down the wider roads that held large chain stores, and then along the river before finding a bench. Tired and frustrated and bored of killing time, Kati plopped onto it.
For a long while she just sat there, staring at the boats beginning to move along the river, the water filling the crisp air with a calming shushhhh sound.
Avoiding checking her phone, sure there were a million angry texts and missed calls from her mum, Kati took out the copy of the Skull and Cross Bones she’d picked up from a backstreet supernatural shop on her travels, distracting herself by reading the day’s news.
People were still clamouring for answers about where Frida Juneau, the minister for supernaturals who secretly collaborated with the human prime minister, had gone for eight days. She’d been reported missing by her husband, and then she’d waltzed back in eight days later, acting as if everything was fine, as if the country wasn’t in uproar, and as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. And she refused to tell anyone where she’d been, citing only that she’d been away on business.
Business her advisers hadn’t known about.
Theories ranged from clandestine cults abducting her, to Juneau going on a secret mission for the gentry, to rehab, to she’d just plain lost her mind. According to an anonymous source who refused to be named, she’d been acting odd ever since she came back, snapping at people and ordering them around when she’d been perfectly pleasant before.
It was a nice mystery to keep Kati’s attention while she waited for the time to pass. She didn’t dare turn on her phone even if she wanted to text Rahmi and Naia to see if they’d arrived in town yet.
I’m cold, Dolly whined, curled up on Kati’s lap with her nose buried in Kati’s thick coat.
You’re cold? Imagine having an actual nose that can get frostbitten, Kati replied irritably.
A growl rumbled in the back of Dolly’s throat. Souls know how you’ve got friends when you’re as rude as a chihuahua.
Kati smirked, turning the page. Chihuahuas are rude?
They’ve got as many manners as a crew of pirates at sea for months who’ve just found a scantily clad woman stowed away belowdecks, Dolly replied sourly.
That’s … oddly specific.
That’s chihuahuas for you.
At half past eight, Kati folded up the paper and put it in her bag, pushed off the bench, and made her way to the bus stop over the road from the train station where SBA’s crappy transport would pick her up.
She was relieved to find she wasn’t the only one at the bus stop, although she could have done without Alexandra Chen being there, even if she did want to talk to her about what her brother had seen that day in the woods.
“Kati!” Rahmi exclaimed bounding over and gathering Kati into a tight hug. “You made it!”
Kati smirked. “All thanks to my overdramatic nan. And your spell skills, Nai.”
Oh, don’t bother giving me any credit, Dolly drawled. I only provided backup and moral support at every turn.
Kati rolled her eyes and ignored her familiar.
Naia beamed at the compliment, her big brown eyes lighting up behind her turquoise glasses. She looked almost exactly as she had the day they’d met: tall, dark-skinned, in a smart coat and trousers, with her oval face set in an enthusiastic expression and her bushy hair in a thick french braid. And much like that day, she was hauling along a stack of books and a bag that looked enormously heavy.
Kati’s own bag was heavy enough without containing a book collection big enough to easily function as a library; she dropped it at her feet and rubbed her shoulder where her muscles were aching at carrying it for hours. Her red hair was no doubt a mess after sitting by the river for a good hour, and she bet her pale face was flushed and blotchy from the walk to the bus stop. It wasn’t, all told, her greatest look.
“How bad is the fallout?” Rahmi asked with a wince. Like Naia, she was dressed in a smart, expensive-looking coat, a deep plum the same shade as her hijab and her lipstick, but all her things seemed to fit perfectly into a leather cross-body bag despite the fact she had to have at least three second term prep books, like Naia and Kati.
Sometimes, Kati thought Rahmi was a little bit more magic than the rest of them. Or maybe she just had everything figured out, the adult of their friend group. Although that was usually Naia, the voice of reason pleading with Kati and Rahmi to obey the rules.
Which they usually didn’t.
“I daren’t check my phone yet,” Kati replied.
“Where’s the fucking bus?” Alexandra Chen demanded of no one in particular. Her sharp voice grated against Kati’s nerves until she wanted to shut her up with a spell. “It’s five past nine.”
“It’s never on time,” a second-year shouted from the next bus stop down, where their bus was also due. “It’ll be a good few minutes yet.”
Alexandra let out a groan that was mostly swearwords.
“She’s been let back in for second term, then,” Kati said quietly to her friends, casting surreptitious glances at Chen. “I thought Madam Hawkness would expel her for sure.”
Rahmi drew nearer, her eyes alight. “No, she just got suspended. So did Hannah, her blonde friend. But Demetria Bould—”
“Right bitch,” Kati interjected, remembering the three of them shoving her into the Venom Chamber where all poisons and snakes were kept for the potions and poisons lessons. Demetria and Alexandra had been content to leave Kati for dead. How Chen had got back into the school, Kati didn’t know.
Dolly growled.
Even Naia nodded at Kati’s insult.
“—was kicked out instantly,” Rahmi went on. “I heard from someone, who heard from someone else, that Miz Jardin didn’t want her to return because she was a real psychopath, and she was scared Demetria would hurt someone else.”
“But why is she back?” Kati hissed quietly, glaring across the pavement at Alexandra Chen. Even if it played into her plans to question the woman … she’d have liked a bit more justice from SBA at what Chen’s buddies did to Kati. They’d meant to kill her. If it hadn’t been for Iain bursting into the room like a knight on a white charger, Kati might not have been here today.
Actually, maybe her parents had a point; maybe Second Breath Academy was a death trap. Maybe Kati would be lucky to survive her second term. She’d certainly only scraped through her first term, and not just because she’d come within one point of failing necromancy.
A chorus of “finally,” went up as the cronky little bus rounded the corner—but it went right past their bus stop and pulled up before the cluster of third-years. There were only seven of them, and
only twelve second-years, the numbers still thin after everything that had happened last term: a caretaker and a student dead, a poltergeist terrorising the school and possessing an innocent student, and Kati, Rahmi, and Naia nearly being killed as well. Things like that made the Venom Chamber look like a trip to Alton Towers.
It took another four minutes—Chen was timing out loud—for the first-years’ bus to turn up, and another for everyone to load onto it. A brief register was taken to check everyone was there, and they were off.
Kati was firmly on her way back to Second Breath Academy. Within the hour, she’d be enclosed in the wards and magic around the academy, and no one, not even her parents, could make her leave.
She leaned back in her seat and expelled a long breath of relief.
Now all she had to do was pass all her classes, somehow get better at necromancy with an incompetent teacher, keep her relationship with Iain a secret, and find out what her brother had really summoned that day in the woods.
“This is gonna be a good term,” Naia said excitedly. “I can just feel it.”
Just A Normal Bus Journey
It wasn’t easy to hold a conversation on a relic of a bus that sounded like a cross between an angry bear and a robot being violently murdered, but Kati and her friends managed.
Naia and Rahmi sat across the aisle, while Kati had taken a bench—yes, the bus was old enough to have bench seats, not individual ones—with Harley Albright, the woman who’d been possessed by the ghosts of the Stolen Tower last term, who’d been forced to murder two people and attack others, and who was getting more shit from the students at SBA than Kati. And that was really saying something.
Gull Llewellyn, their sandy-haired skater friend, sat backwards on the upholstered bench in front of them, a golden retriever at his side—his familiar, who’d come to him over Christmas break, surprising almost everyone. Only the most powerful necromancers and reapers possessed a familiar—and in very rare cases, extremely powerful death magicians could have multiple—and nobody, not even Gull himself, had expected him to have one. He excelled at sports and any magic that involved the physical more than the intellectual, but clearly he was a powerful necromancer.
Of course, no one was surprised to discover that he’d named the dog Tony after Tony Hawke. Despite the golden retriever being a female. She didn’t seem to mind though, and appeared to adore Gull; he was so outgoing and accepting of anyone and everyone, it was impossible not to. Kati secretly hoped that Naia would notice Gull this term, as he’d broken up with his boyfriend over Christmas and he clearly had a major crush on her.
The best thing about Gull, in Kati’s opinion, at least right now, was that he was loud enough to drown out the sharp, scathing comments of Alexandra Chen several benches behind them. She’d been reunited with her friend Hannah Willowsmith and was now as bitchy as ever, though Hannah didn’t seem to be engaging with her at all. Maybe she’d seen Alexandra’s true colours and decided she wasn’t a fan of the pitch black and murky green colour scheme.
Kati wasn’t a heartless bitch; she knew Chen was grieving her brother and that had her fucked up right now. But Kati would be feeling a bit more sympathetic if Alexandra hadn’t left her to get attacked by venomous snakes last term. And grief was no excuse for attempted murder.
“So, I was fifty feet in the air,” Gull was saying boisterously, “hanging upside down from a tree, my shitty levitation charm wearing off and my whole life flashing before my eyes—and the branch snapped.”
Rahmi gasped, leaning across the aisle, her amber eyes bright with interest. “Did you break anything?”
“Yeah, dude, my record!” Gull’s hands fluttered as he gestured with wild enthusiasm. “As I fell to my death, I saw the ball coming at me.” Dramatic pause. “I reached out and grabbed it, and hurled it with all my strength in the direction of the goal, and I totally nailed the conversion! And then I broke my leg, but that’s not the important part.”
“How did you get up a tree in the first place?” Kati asked, snorting.
“My brother’s mate got these cheap levitation charms from a guy down Kirkgate Market in Leeds.”
Naia groaned. “You bought illegal charms? Gull, those are dangerous. You never know who made them, and they’re definitely not regulated by the Congregation of Paranormals.”
“Yeah,” Gull replied with a lopsided grin, unfazed. “That’s why they’re a fiver instead of fifty quid. Anyway, I won’t need them again, they’re teaching us how to cast the spell ourselves this term.”
Naia looked mildly placated. “As long as you don’t buy another illegal charm.”
Gull glanced away quickly. “Yep. Never again. Definitely not got any stashed in my bag.”
Kati snorted.
Naia opened her mouth to berate him, but all the lights in the bus went off.
No … outside went dark, blackness rushing in around the shitty little bus like acrid smoke.
“What’s happening?” Kati breathed, fear gripping her chest. It had been bright outside one second, early morning sunshine bathing the country road, but now it was pitch black. It was as if night had fallen—but no stars shone in the inky blackness. No moonlight gave a hazy glow. Pure and total black hugged the bus.
“The fuck is this bollocks?” the driver growled, slamming on the brakes.
Kati lurched forward in her seat, hitting the bench in front and smacking into Gull’s meaty arm, but she couldn’t see shit.
Little burst of illumination broke out among the seats and Kati drew her own wand from its holster, pricked her thumb, and said, “Light.” A violet glow brightened the space around her, catching Gull’s fearful expression and Harley’s wide eyes as she too cast a light spell, transforming Kati’s glow to a pinkish plum.
“I love an adventure,” Gull said quietly, turning around in his seat and pulling Tony onto his lap, “but this is going a bit far.”
“Something’s out there,” Alexandra said a few seats back, all bravado and bitchiness stripped from her voice. “I saw something.”
Beside her, Hannah Willowswift whimpered.
Kati pointed her wand at the window, squinting into the blackness, but she couldn’t see anything. She twisted in her seat, trying to see out the other windows, and found most people doing the same: glancing around themselves in panic and paranoia, lit by sparse bursts of rainbow coloured magic.
“It has to be a nightfall charm,” Naia said, doing her best to stay calm. “It would have to be a very powerful death magician casting it but … it’s possible. You probably saw the magician, Alexandra.”
“Yeah,” Chen agreed weakly. “I’m sure that’s it. So … do we go out there and hex the shit out of whoever’s playing this practical joke on us?”
I saw a film exactly like this, Dolly said quietly. Everyone died.
I told you not to look, Kati replied, her snark habitual.
You’re not my mother, Dolly fired back, but weakly.
Near the back of the bus, Marigold Archer let out a blood-curdling scream and jumped out of her seat, scrambling down the central aisle. “There’s something back there, I saw it. It’s a monster.”
A shiver skated down Kati’s spine and she reached for Dolly, stroking her velvety head to calm her racing heart.
Rahmi got out of her seat to comfort Marigold, drawing the fair-haired woman into her arms and making soothing noises. “I’m sure it’s just one person, like Naia said.”
“Yeah?” Jacob Alders stood, his stuffy voice tight with anger and fear. “Then what the hell is that thing?” His buddy Conrad Graysun nodded, backing him up even in a nightmarish situation.
Kati’s head whipped around to the front of the bus as the driver swore, bringing the bus back to roaring, growling life. “Everyone get in the aisle, away from the windows.” When they hesitated, frozen in panic, he barked, “Now!”
Kati jumped to her feet and squashed into the aisle with everyone else, holding her wand up with one hand and finding Naia’s hand
with her other, holding on tight to her friend.
Dolly, stay close, Kati said urgently. Watch you don’t get stepped on.
I’d rather get squashed by a size nine Adidas trainer than whatever that thing is outside.
So would Kati. Fair point.
“Who’s the best at spells?” the driver shouted over the roar of the engine as he sped into the darkness. But driving without being able to see your surroundings didn’t seem any safer than staying near the thing in the shadows. What if they veered into a building? What if they crashed over the side of a hill into a valley?
Kati’s breath came shorter, her eyes fixed on the blackness outside the windows.
“Me and Wilson,” Alexandra Chen replied.
“One of you get up here near the front, the other stay at the back. Watch the windows. You see anything, you hex it. Anything tries to get in, give it your worst spell.”
“Just do what you did to me when you tried to murder me,” Kati fired at Alexandra, swinging her wand around so she could see the pinched expression on her face.
“She did what?” Conrad Graysun demanded, the monster outside momentarily forgotten. “Oh that’s rich, Alexandra. You spent the whole term trying to convince us Wilson here was evil, and you’re the one going around murdering people?”
“Attempted murder,” Alexandra spat, going to the back of the aisle as Kati headed to the front, scanning the endless darkness outside the windows. “And I wouldn’t have actually gone through with it, so get off your high horse, Conrad.”
Kati rolled her eyes. “Is the door locked?” she asked the driver, her heart thrumming in her chest.
“As locked as an old rust bucket like this ever gets. Wouldn’t take much to pry it open.”
“That’s comforting,” she breathed, swallowing. She fiercely wished Iain was here with her. She’d be pretty fucking happy to see Mrs Balham, their potions and poisons teacher and the guard of SBA. She was a badass leather-wearing woman with red in her short blonde hair and a take-no-shit attitude. It would be nice to think someone had everything under control right about now.