Smoke and Mist (The Academy Book 1)

by Kate Hall

  She’s distracted all throughout Literature class, deciding what she’s going to say to Alex. When the teacher asks her a question, she gets the answer wrong, and he looks at her sternly. As soon as class ends, she rushes straight to potions class, her anticipation of seeing Alex palpable. She’s here so early that the class is nearly empty when she arrives. Luckily, the opportunity to talk is clearly labeled on the desk in front of her. In advance, Mr. Thompson has laid out materials and cauldrons at every table, including a worksheet that explains what they’ll be doing today.

  A love potion. How appropriate. She scrubs her hands over her face in an attempt to banish the blush creeping up her cheeks.

  Alex glances at her when he enters, his dark eyes darting away when he sees that she’s looking at him, too. She has no reason to be embarrassed, but her face heats up anyway. He takes his seat beside her, tilting his head in a polite nod, but he doesn’t speak. She looks to his hands, his fingers woven together on his desk. His veins cross like rivers in a vast landscape, and, in this moment, she wants nothing more at this moment than to trace them up along his arm. Instead, she aggressively doodles a meaningless pattern on the margins of a sheet of notebook paper to keep her hands occupied.

  Mr. Thompson is almost late again, and, this time, when he enters, his tie is on backwards. He seems flustered, but he’s at the whiteboard at the front of the room in an instant. When Sarah glances at the door, she sees a frazzled librarian leaving his office across the hall, adjusting her shawl.

  “Today,” he says, his voice breathy, “we will be brewing up some love spells.” One of the boys on the other side of the classroom lets out a whistle, and Sarah rolls her eyes. At least some teen behaviors don’t change when moving to a private school. “Thank you, Mr. Gregory, for your evaluation. Yes, love potions are one of the more sought-after potions, and today, we will be brewing them.”

  It takes him twice as long to explain the process as it should, as he says everything twice, only slightly reworded. Sarah isn’t sure if it’s to engrain the information, or if it’s just how he talks, but she eventually spaces out and just reads the instructions on the page.

  When he tells the class to get started, she mumbles, “Great idea to hand love potions to a bunch of sixteen-year-olds.”

  Alex snorts at that, and her heart thrills with success. When he smiles, his eyes soften, and it isn’t until then that she realizes that they have a naturally stern set to them. He looks more approachable with a smile.

  They go over the instructions and take turns adding the ingredients. “Can you pass me the rose petals?” Alex asks,. Sarah drops in the mermaid scales one at a time, then he does the unicorn hair, and they mix in a bunch of liquids she can’t pronounce, although Alex’s tongue turns the words over easily.

  “So are you local?” she asks, her hand moving in circular motions as she stirs the mixture. It mostly smells terrible, but every few seconds, she catches a hint of the scent of hay, and it takes her back to living on her parents’ farm, feeding the animals twice a day.

  He shakes his head. “I’m from Kansas. I stay on campus during the semester.” There seems to be more information behind his words, but Sarah can’t discern the meaning. Maybe if she brushes her thumb against his lips, he’ll spill all his secrets. Her hand tightens on the spoon. Her mind is out of control, and she wishes she could take out that part of herself and give it a stern talking-to. She just might do that when she can escape to the bathroom before her next class.

  “I used to live in Sedalia, but I had to move in with my aunt and her husband when my great uncle got put in a home,” she explains. “Mr. Halacourt is my aunt’s husband,” she adds as an afterthought. She’s never been afraid to tell people that she’s an orphan, but that’s because she’s gotten used to the looks of concern or sympathy. She used to get angry at their gazes, but now, she lets them wash over her.

  Alex gives her neither, just nods. “The city is quite a change for you, too, then?” He takes the wooden spoon to stir for a bit, his fingers brushing against hers. At his touch, heat runs up her arm, and she feels like she’s burning from the inside out. She jerks her hand back at the touch, and his eyebrows scrunch together. A flash of longing surges through her, and she wants to rest her hand on his, just for a moment, to see if it happens again. “You alright?” he asks.

  She says, “Static electricity,” shaking her hand to prove the point. It’s a lie, but one that’s easier to explain than the truth.

  “Nobody drives their tractor to school here,” he points out to steer the conversation away from her minor shock, and she laughs a little too loud at that. She ducks her head, her face flushing with heat when half the class turns to look at her, including Mr. Thompson.

  After a moment, she adds, “Fewer lifted trucks.”

  He nods. “No confederate flags.”

  They go on like this for awhile, and the ten minutes of stirring passes easily. She’s careful to not touch him again, lest she feel the heat from before. She doesn’t want to find a new way to explain it in case it happens again.

  Now, they just have to set the potion on a high heat and wait for it to set for another twenty minutes. They’ve grown closer and closer as time passed, and she parts her lips to ask about the vision from yesterday, but the sound of a textbook falling and slapping the ground breaks her out of her stupor. She scoots her chair a foot away, and he straightens up and pulls out his Calculus textbook. She notices that he hasn’t started the homework from yesterday, and, while they aren’t in the same class hour, they have the same assignment.

  She wants to offer to help, as math is one thing she’s actually good at, but their easy conversation is as far as the vast space now between them. She takes out her young adult novel and opens it, but she can’t focus on the words.

  Now that everyone’s potions are sitting, Mr. Thompson strolls around the room, commenting on what seems right and wrong with everyone’s.

  “Too much rose in yours. You see, too much rose can make your potion too thick,” he tells one group. “Not enough unicorn hair in this one. You should use more unicorn hair in the future,” he says to another.

  When he makes it to Alex and Sarah, he lifts his eyebrows, looking between them. She tenses up—she’s never been good at magic, so she expects that theirs is beyond saving. “Very good. You’ve done well,” he says before continuing on.

  When class ends, Mr. Thompson collects everyone’s love potions—“Some of these,” he says, “are more like death potions. They could kill you.” He isn’t serious, of course. Nothing in a love potion is similar to the ingredients needed for a death potion, but a few students still laugh nervously. She waves at Alex as she leaves, but he’s either not paying attention, or he doesn’t care.

  SHE MEANDERS TO SPIRITUAL MAGIC AFTER HAVING lunch under the clocktower in the courtyard with Gabby. She’s trying to get to class at the last possible minute. She drops her homework in the tray by the door, right over Alex’s. She tries to ignore the fact that he got the second question wrong.

  When she sits by him, the bell rings, and the teacher immediately begins speaking, drawing up a chart about different levels of Spiritual Magic on the board and walking them through it. Sarah takes notes as she goes, although she’s not sure how she’ll use the minute differences between telepaths, empaths, and psychics. It all seems pretty obvious, anyway. Her mind trails to the kiss she’d imagined, the feeling of Alex’s lips on hers.

  Her eyes dart to him, and she’s half scared that he’ll look back at her and know about her thoughts from yesterday. However, he’s staring at the board, his pencil hovering over his sheet of paper. His eyebrows are bunched together, and he’s squinting in confusion. She wants to laugh at his caricature of an expression, but she notices that one of his hands is shaking when the teacher finishes explaining the complicated genes that give a person Spiritual Magic over Physical Magic.

  “Does anyone need me to explain it again?” Ms. White asks. Alex’s hand
twitches like he’s going to raise it, but after glancing around to see that nobody else has a question, he keeps it down. Sarah looks away from him when his head turns toward her, but her eyes are back on his paper as soon as he looks away. She notes the point where he obviously got lost, and shoots her hand in the air.

  “Yes,” Ms. White looks at the seating chart on her very tangible clipboard, “Sarah? What part has you confused?”

  Sarah glances at Alex, who’s looking at her, his mouth parted slightly in surprise. He looks to her perfect notes, a question piqued somewhere along his eyebrows but remaining hidden behind his lips.

  “Sorry,” she starts, her voice slow with nerves. She never speaks up in class if she can avoid it. “But I honestly got totally lost around the part about Telepath versus Empath DNA. Can you go over that again? I meant to stop you, but I didn’t want to interrupt.”

  Ms. White smiles gently. “Of course.” She addresses the entire classroom. “And nobody should be afraid to interrupt. If I’m going too quickly for you, please let me know.”

  Alex isn’t the only one to let out a relieved sigh when Ms. White starts over.

  Chapter Six

  Sarah

  SARAH HAS FOUND HERSELF, INEXPLICABLY, AT the zoo.

  After classes let out, she went to Mark’s office, and Elizabeth had been lounging elegantly across his office loveseat, a creature of whimsy despite her khaki uniform. Her raven hair is spilling over her shoulder in beachy waves, her green eyes patiently studying Mark’s movements as he grades papers. Sarah briefly wonders if her aunt might be descended from mermaids, but it would probably be rude to ask. Besides, how could Uncle John have possibly enticed someone who was even part mermaid?

  Elizabeth had stood up upon realizing that Sarah was there and dragged her excitedly to the car, driving the few miles across Forest Park to the St. Louis Zoo where she works.

  “I mainly do training,” she explains, “but I’m writing my dissertation on Forest Dragon familial bonds.” Forest Dragons. Too close to the secret in Sarah’s fireplace. Thankfully, she continues on, “This is where we do most of our research and rehabilitation. Many of the dragons we receive are sick or injured, and others are transferred here from other facilities. You see, St. Louis has the most sophisticated dragon program in the Western Hemisphere, and we pride ourselves on our care-taking.”

  This would be the perfect opportunity to bring up the egg. Sarah opens her mouth to speak up, but before she gets the words out, they’ve already reached the aviary. It’s a tall half-sphere, white-painted steel woven through foggy glass that renders everything inside completely invisible.

  “Have you ever been?” Elizabeth asks, but she must know that Sarah hasn’t. She’d said so her first week living in St. Louis.

  “I’ve always wanted to,” Sarah offers.

  The moment they walk into the little brick building attached to the aviary, a balding man in a business suit says, “Miss Halacourt, I wasn’t aware you were working late.”

  “Oh, I have the afternoon off. I thought I would bring my niece in to meet Hawthorne.” It isn’t until she mentions Sarah that the man’s eyes slide over her in appraisal. “Sarah, this is Victor Phillips. He leads the dragon program here.”

  Sarah wanders through the exhibit for a few minutes while they chat about work. The small building is a miniature museum with interactive areas: Can YOU Identify Different Dragon Calls? Dragon Scales—Tougher than STEEL! Fire, Acid, and Ice, OH MY—the Different Dragon Classifications.

  She meanders through, all the while itching to walk through the aviary. The informational area is dim and crowded, and Sarah has never seen captive dragons before.

  Finally, after escaping her boss, Elizabeth leads Sarah to the dome’s entrance. There are three separate gates to get through, and each one has to be latched before they’re allowed through another. The final gate is guarded by a zookeeper, a girl matching Elizabeth in a khaki zoo uniform. She can’t be much older than Sarah.

  “Elizabeth, always here, even when you’re off,” she jokes.

  “I’m here on an educational trip,” Elizabeth replies, clapping a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “I thought my niece could learn something from meeting Hawthorne.”

  Elizabeth clearly knows everyone who works here, closer than a lot of coworker relationships Sarah has seen in the past. While she’s conversing, Sarah wanders down the path, which is blocked on either side by ropes. She reaches out, but her hand is barred from going any further by a rubbery barrier spell. Before she has much time to consider the logistics of the spell, she hears a whooshing noise, and the light is blocked, a sudden frigidity taking the air around her. She jerks her head up, and a silver and blue creature is hovering above her, its head craned down and tilted to the side with curiosity. Its wings, which cover the sky, push gusts of icy air toward her, and she welcomes the coolness after the heat of the August day.

  “Hello,” she croons. “Nice to meet you.”

  The dragon huffs, and a sprinkling of snow melts as it falls through the barrier. The water droplets land on Sarah’s face, still cold.

  “This is Keida,” Elizabeth says, her voice gentle behind Sarah. “She was rescued in Alaska after a hunter mistakenly killed her mother. I was lucky enough to raise her from an egg. She’s turning seven this year.”

  “Hi, Keida,” Sarah says, reaching a hand up as if to touch her, although she knows the barrier will keep that from happening.

  Keida lets out a gentle chirp and startles back, apparently offended at Sarah’s audacity. She chirps again and flies away—from here, Sarah the ceiling of the dome is obscured. It’s been enchanted to look like the sky, and the room must have been expanded on the interior, because it seems that there are miles of sky for the dragons to frolic through.

  If she squints, Sarah can see the forms of a few species in the distance—a red Mountain Dragon that glistens like a shiny new car under the artificial sunlight, a violet African Drake with leathery wings and soft fur.

  They keep walking, occasionally coming across smaller species, such as brown feathered prairie dragons no bigger than a small dog, and fairy dragons that look like hummingbirds at first glance as they flit from flower to flower, their long tongues lolling out to sip lazily at the dew inside.

  Elizabeth’s eyebrows squish together as they draw closer to the exit. She pauses and then turns to look around, searching for something while they stand in a copse of trees.

  “What’s wrong?” Sarah asks, trying to find whatever it is she’s looking for.

  Elizabeth purses her lips. “I was hoping to meet Hawthorne, our forest dragon. He was brought in recently when a hunter found him with an injured wing.”

  While Elizabeth squints at the sky, Sarah bores her eyes into the forest surrounding them. After a few moments of intense focus, something prods at her mind. The air cools, not like Kaida’s icy glade, but like the woods at dawn.

  A familiar presence slips into her mind, so subtle that she almost misses it. It isn’t quite the same as the dragon that she met in the forest earlier in the week, but it feels like a kindred voice. Her breath is drawn out of her, and her heart races with excitement, which may or may not be her own. She’d felt the female’s emotions before, and the emotions had been difficult to discern as separate.

  Sarah snaps her head around to a set of trees, and a slight movement makes the forest dragon visible. His dark green feathers are dotted with pale green and yellow, disguising him in the sunspots of the woods so that she doesn’t find him until he moves toward her. Interest piques in her mind, and she tilts her head with curiosity at the same moment as the dragon.

  Elizabeth doesn’t notice him until he steps closer to the path, pulling his wings close to keep them from scraping against the foliage. His motions are so quiet that a gentle breeze would mask his movements.

  “Hello, Hawthorne,” Elizabeth whispers, her hand coming to rest on Sarah’s shoulder. “He’s healing up extremely well. We expect that he�
�ll be flying in just a couple more weeks.”

  Sarah steps closer, reaching her hand up to touch the barrier. Hawthorne takes only a moment to evaluate Elizabeth before looking back to Sarah.

  He tilts his head down, his green-feathered forehead resting against where Sarah’s hand is pressed on the barrier. His metallic gold horns spiral a few feet up, and she wishes she could go through the barrier and touch them to find out if they’re as soft as they look. She rests her face against his, and she imagines that she can feel his feathers brushing against her cheek, but it’s just the gentle thrum of magical energy.

  A desperate need to protect something courses through her veins, her skin practically aflame. The image of an egg just like hers flashes across the back of her eyelids. He can smell it on her, the scent roiling off her in waves. Keep it safe, keep it safe, keep it safe. Her fingers twitch as she suddenly feels the urge to take her egg into her arms and hide it from the world. It’s hard to figure out what is her and what is Hawthorne.

  “I’ll keep it safe,” she promises, her voice the barest of whispers.

  With that, he pulls away and dives back into the forest, the rush from his movement enough to stir a few leaves from the trees.

  When Sarah turns around, Elizabeth isn’t the only one staring at her.

  Chapter Seven

  Alex

  FRIDAY NIGHT, ALEX TAKES ADVANTAGE OF ST. MERLIN’S lifting the curfew for the weekend. St. Merlin’s prides itself on being the best of the best, and what would that be without—they claim—the best students? Someone invited Alex to a party earlier, or they told him about a party they were invited to. These things aren’t always the same, but sometimes they aren’t very different, either. He considers attending—he has no other plans for the weekend. He makes it so far as to put on his favorite jeans, a dark pair that David jokes make his ass look amazing, as well as a plain black t-shirt, and a flannel button-up with the sleeves rolled up.