Strange Academy (Hot Paranormal Romance)

by Wilde, Teresa

  “You don’t want to marry her.” His mother’s soft Haitian accent cut right through him; he was a little kid again. He wanted to tell her all his problems, but this wasn’t a skinned knee they were talking about.

  “Sure, I do.” He winced at his own lie.

  “No, that’s why you put this off. Your younger brother, he been married for a long time, but not you.”

  The comparison between him and his brother brought his stress knot back with a vengeance. “In case you’ve forgotten, Dom won’t be married much longer.”

  His mother sighed. “You’ll be married forever. Rules break for your brother, but not you. That’s why I want you to love April.”

  “It’ll be fine, Maman. I’m the responsible one, remember? I’ll take care of the Gray House and everything will be fine.”

  “Plenty of people to take care of the Gray House. But who takes care of you?”

  He remembered Sadie sitting naked on his back, pushing on his stress knot with all the strength of her slim fingers. “I don’t need anyone to take care of me.”

  “Sure,” his mother said.

  After he put the phone down, he showered off the dried sweat. When he was dressed, he checked his reflection. In a three-hundred-dollar gray shirt and handmade silver silk tie, he looked like a man in control.

  He packed his black alligator case with the spells he needed for his first classes of the New Year that would change his life. At the end of term, he’d go back to his job cleaning up other people’s messes. By the end of the year, he’d be a husband. And maybe even a potential father.

  It was all set. One question remained. Why hadn’t it been Sadie pulling him into the black depths?

  Since childhood, he’d studied the coded Hermetic imagery that ancients like Jabir and Robert Bacon used to record formulas. But this dream didn’t require interpretation.

  Everything would have been so much easier if it had been Sadie dragging him down. But it hadn’t been. It had been April.

  In a few months, he would marry his fiancée and be tied to her forever. And she was killing him.

  With his coat and game face on, he opened the door of his apartment and walked out.

  Right into a Greek goddess holding a severed head.

  *

  ***

  ******

  ****

  *

  “I thought you left me,” Sadie said to the person sitting on the end of her bed. “School’s been back in session for weeks.”

  “Maybe you left me.” Another ten years had melted off Dream Pippa’s face since Sadie had seen her over a month ago, just before Christmas. Her old woman softness had disappeared. She tucked the skirt of her yellow sundress over smooth legs, cocked her head to one side, and smiled a wide smile at Sadie. She seemed more solid, too. The late January moonlight streaming through the round window at Sadie’s back didn’t bounce right through her. In fact, she had a thin shadow.

  “But I wanted to talk to you.” Sadie’s voice came out too harsh, making her wish she could snatch back the accusation. “Even if you aren’t really Pippa.”

  Pippa kept smiling, but her brow knitted as she looked from Sadie into the night-dark room. Sadie breathed in the brewed-tea scent hovering around her aunt.

  “Did you? You weren’t so angry you couldn’t stand the sight of Metas, even me?”

  Her throat closed.

  “Belief is a powerful thing, little Sadie. Believing is seeing. Especially when you’re a Meta.”

  “But I’m not,” she pointed out.

  Pippa reached out, as if to stroke her hair—then, seeming to remember she couldn’t, put her hand down. “And you’ll never let yourself forget it, will you?”

  “Gray won’t let me forget it.” Her voice cracked. “He hasn’t even spoken to me since New Year’s. Three weeks. I see him in the hall all the time. I stand across from him at the weekly staff meeting. He looks right through me, like I’m—”

  “A ghost?” A little smile played at Pippa’s lips. “Do you want him to look at you?”

  The lump in her throat kept Sadie from answering.

  “Do you love him?”

  “No.” Sadie gazed into the shadows gathered in the corner of her room. “Why would you ask?”

  “All your life, you’ve been drawn to men with strong personalities—what’s the word you use?—alpha males. But it’s gone all widdershins because they were strong in the wrong way. I thought perhaps Gray was who you were looking for.”

  “I’m not going to throw my heart again to a man who doesn’t deserve it. I’ve learned my lesson.” She pushed a wild strand of hair off her face. “Please help me, Pippa. Don’t just ask me questions.” She felt a little crazy asking her own subconscious for help, but she was desperate.

  “What if the questions are helping you?” Pippa asked.

  She gritted her teeth. “That was a question.”

  “You let Gray take control. Just like you’ve done before.”

  “It’s what he wants.”

  Pippa rested her chin on her hand. “Are you sure keeping your relationship a secret is what he wants?”

  Wasn’t it? Sadie tamped down on the slight hope opening in her heart. “He always does what he wants.”

  “Interesting perception. Do guys who do what they want usually have stress knots?”

  “I’m here to solve Gray’s stress knot problem? Why not hire a massage therapist?”

  “You’re here for many reasons. One: These kids need you.”

  Was Pippa joking? Misery choked her. “Carmina isn’t talking to me. She just sits there and frowns at me. The others use the time to catch up on their homework. But Carmina glares at me for the whole period like I’ve betrayed her.”

  “Gee, I wonder why.”

  Sadie drew her hands into the sleeves of her dumpy plaid pajamas. She wished these dreams of her dead aunt were a little less realistic. She could do without the nighttime chill. “It’s because I didn’t stop Gray from getting her suspended.”

  “Wrong,” Pippa accused. “And you know it.”

  Sadie exhaled. “It’s because I...”

  Pippa filled in the blank. “Gave up.”

  “I did. But I have nothing to teach.”

  “Why did you come here?”

  Sadie snorted a laugh. “To investigate your murder.”

  “I wasn’t murdered.” Pippa took a yellow ribbon from her straw sunhat between her fingers. “But you looked for clues.”

  “Yeah, I’m a real Nancy Drew. So far, all I know is that the book couldn’t have fallen on you by itself and that Mr. English didn’t do it. What were you doing that someone wanted to stop?”

  Since she’d figured out that the book couldn’t have fallen by itself, Sadie’d taken all the precautions she could, making sure not to go out after dark or to stay where there weren’t a lot of people around. She’d been through Pippa’s books and found nothing.

  The e-mail she’d sent to Chloë asking for her help getting back Pippa’s notes—removed by Christian—had gone unanswered.

  She’d thought about letting Jewel Jones in on her suspicions and had even gone as far as asking her for coffee to have the conversation. At the last minute, with the words on her lips, she’d asked Jewel for Pippa’s letter back instead. Jewel had danced around the subject awkwardly.

  And Sadie’s B.S. detector had made her keep bringing it up. Now Jewel was hiding something, too.

  “I wasn’t doing anything.” Pippa threw the ribbon over her shoulder. “Sadie, these children will deal with mysteries all their lives. Teach them your curiosity. They don’t want you to give up. They just want to make sure you’re someone worth listening to.”

  “Teach curiosity? I can’t even control my classroom. I just want to solve your murder, and I can’t trust anyone enough to ask them what you were doing that made you a target.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Pippa snapped. “Stop letting people beat you just because they’ve got superpo
wers.”

  Sadie rolled her eyes. “But they’ve got superpowers.”

  “If I might paraphrase Morpheus from The Matrix,” Pippa said, “‘Stop trying to control your classroom and just control your classroom.’”

  “Maybe it would help if I knew kung-fu.”

  Pippa ignored her. “As for Gray, you haven’t asked the right question. Don’t you wonder what his real name is?”

  *

  ***

  ******

  ****

  *

  Sadie ran her finger down the cracked red spine of Tales of Mystery and Imagination and laid it on her desk. With Pippa’s accusation of giving up playing on a repeating loop in her brain, she couldn’t escape into Poe’s creepiness. The slap of leather hitting wood made several of the fifth graders look up.

  She stared at the empty desk behind Sterling. Carmina’s behavior had gotten worse in the last week. Chewing gum. Passing notes. Yesterday, writing on the desk. Challenging her authority. Sadie had ignored it.

  And now, Carmina wasn’t even here.

  Acid rose in her stomach. Why was Carmina doing this?

  Sunshine warmed Pippa’s classroom. Sadie shoved back her chair—the new one rolled easily and didn’t even smell like arson—and looked out the windows. Snow frosted the staid buildings with birthday cake icing.

  Pretty. But she wasn’t fooled for a second.

  Outside these safe walls, it was minus thirty degrees Celsius. On the gray days when clouds filtered the sun, you huddled in your jacket and hustled from building to building. But on a day like today, you would turn your face to the sun, not realizing the wind was killing your flesh. During morning announcements, Christian’s incorporeal voice had warned these temperatures froze exposed skin in less than twenty minutes.

  She took quiet joy from the fact that even superheroes feared the weather. Like her, the students arrived at class pink-cheeked and huffing on their fingers. Mortal, after all. Except...was Carmina out in that cold? The relentless ticking of the clock weighed on Sadie like the beating of a heart hidden under the floorboards in a Poe story.

  The door to the classroom creaked behind her. She turned to see Carmina, standing in front of the blackboard, which was still a clean slate except for Pippa’s handwriting.

  A gasp came out of the fifth graders.

  She felt her jaw drop. It couldn’t be. She blinked, but the apparition wouldn’t go away.

  Carmina was wearing jeans and a pink turtleneck. Sadie’s throat closed. It wasn’t casual Friday. Every eye turned from Carmina to her. Suddenly, they weren’t students, but a sea of plaid skirts and school ties. The dress code was sacred. The dress code must be enforced.

  She willed her voice not to shake. “Miss Burana.” Other teachers used the students’ last names when they were serious. And Sadie was serious.

  Carmina lifted her chin and folded her arms in exaggerated belligerence, but the color drained from her cheeks.

  “Miss Burana, are you sick?” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw heads bend together over the aisles between desks.

  Carmina shook her head.

  “Do you have a hall pass from the principal?”

  Carmina shook her head.

  “Then why have you shown up for class ten minutes before it’s over?” She felt like an enormous bitch but forced the cutting tone anyway. “And where is your uniform?”

  “I don’t like it.” Carmina’s Eastern European accent made her sound like a diva supermodel.

  And Sadie understood. If you give up, Carmina was telling her, why shouldn’t I?

  She knew she was at a turning point. Carmina was giving her the chance to change. She knew what she had to do. Everyone in the room did. She had to discipline her favorite student in public. If she did, she’d be an authority figure. If she didn’t, the kids would never obey her.

  But why did it have to be Carmina? A long moment passed. A moment of opportunity. Sadie just let it go.

  She saw her failure reflected in Carmina’s face before the girl turned away.

  She took a deep breath. Her voice went soft. “You’ve broken the rules. I’m...”

  The air in the room grew dense. The students held their breaths, their backs stiffened.

  “I’m giving you a demerit.” When the words were out, her spirit lifted. Strength coursed through her. “And if you’re late or improperly dressed again, I’ll give you another one.”

  A groan went up from some of the students—the ones who lived in Strange Hall. Carmina had just cost them a point in the inter-house competition.

  “Yes, Miss Strange,” Carmina said, her lips twitching up.

  “Go to the principal’s office.”

  Carmina obeyed.

  Quit trying to control your classroom and just control your classroom, Pippa had told her. Sadie had done something teacherly, and it had worked out. She turned to the class, vibrating with energy. She was bored of sitting here with her books and making the kids be quiet. The students seemed smaller. Maybe, like Carmina, they had been waiting for her to do something.

  She couldn’t teach them anything, but maybe they could do something to fill the time. She had nothing to lose. She turned to the blackboard. Suddenly, the blank space offended her. She wrote a question on it. Her handwriting looked like scribbles compared to Pippa’s flawless calligraphy.

  She raised the chalk brush and, before she could change her mind, wiped it through Pippa’s words.

  She inhaled slowly, but it wasn’t the end of the world. No one would ever forget Pippa, after all.

  “What’s the name of the raven?” She recognized Henry’s British accent and turned to see him hanging off the side of his chair in an effort to read the question. “Is it homework?”

  “You can ignore it. You have an A,” she said.

  Henry bit his lip. In her peripheral vision, she saw him pretend not to write it down in his notebook. The other students did the same, looking at each other with unspoken questions.

  The shrill bell signaling the end of period sounded and the students cleared out in a frenzy of activity.

  “Sterling.” Sadie reached for him as he passed. “How are you?”

  She hadn’t spoken to him in any personal way since the holidays. Every time she seemed to get close, he flitted off like he was avoiding her. No wonder, since the incident where she’d traumatized him with the Amazon delivery of the atlas.

  Sterling’s gray eyes narrowed malevolently. “You shouldn’t be mean to Carmina.” He looked down at her hand on his shoulder with burning intensity. Sadie snatched it away as quickly as she could.

  *

  ***

  ******

  ****

  *

  Gray dumped his elbows on the stack of seventh grade history of alchemy papers and rubbed his temples. So help him, if he had to read one more word about Isaac Newton or Madame Curie...He seriously considered hitting his head on the solid wood of the desk that had belonged to a long line of teachers before him.

  Not even a killer migraine would get his mind off her.

  The sun streaming in the bank of windows warmed the room and worsened the sharp smell of the acids the tenth graders had wasted in their less-than-successful transmogrifications.

  He leaned back in the ancient swivel chair and propped his feet on the desk. Lately, he couldn’t leave his apartment without seeing her. Dining Hall. Staff meetings. The aquatic center. Hmm, was her swimsuit a one-piece or a little bikini...

  But he never saw her when people weren’t around. So he could never talk to her.

  She never worked in her classroom alone. She spent a lot of time in her apartment by herself. The whole campus knew about her plan to leave at the end of term—almost as if she’d spread the rumor herself. If she still believed she was in danger from her accidents, those were good precautions.

  He just wanted to talk. During the holidays, they’d spent most of their time together. Talking. Laughing. The raging hot sex was a clos
e second.

  Very close.

  A photo finish, almost.

  Although the two weren’t mutually exclusive, come to think of it. He, personally, could manage both at once quite easily.

  They’d almost had a conversation a week ago, when he’d turned a corner by the supply closet in the Lost Arts Building. She’d been walking toward him, wearing her little black suit and pressing a binder to her chest. No one else in sight.

  He’d come within two steps of colliding into her. His mind had been on something else. Her.

  She’d looked up at him with startled brown eyes, as if she’d been thinking about something else, too. When she saw him, she got a deer-in-the-headlights kind of look, like she wouldn’t check for oncoming traffic when she bolted away from him.

  But she didn’t bolt. She just stood there looking at him.

  Every one of the ten thousand things he wanted to tell her went out of his brain when he saw her standing in front of him.

  “Gray.” Her tentative voice had made his chest ache. “I want to ask you something. What’s your real na—”

  Odd-rhythmed footsteps had echoed down the hall. Step-thunk. Step-thunk. Parker Klark’s crutches. Gray’s instinct had taken over.

  He’d grabbed her by the arm, opened the door to the supply closet, shoved her in, closed the door, and walked away.

  Twenty years of training in crisis situations. Magical damn powers. And his response? He threw Sadie in a broom closet.

  He ended up dragging Klark to the fake Irish pub in Blanche Neige and drinking enough cheap beer to drown a colony of rats.

  A week later, leaning back in his chair in the alchemy lab, Gray still felt like hell. And not from the beer.

  The bell rang. He barely had time to get his feet off the desk before the kid they called Henry Nine burst into the classroom, talking to Nikkos and a girl. “It doesn’t have a name.” His ten-year-old voice boomed with authority.

  Iphigenia’s heads bobbed along, one on either side of Nikkos’s ears as the kids headed to the cupboards to retrieve the equipment for their experiments. “When the guy asks its name,” Nikkos said, “it says the same thing it always says.”

  Shakti piped up. “I don’t find this poem frightening.”

  Frightening? He opened his mouth to ask them what they were talking about, but the arrival of a gaggle of girls interrupted.