“High Mage.” The guards snapped to attention as I passed them to enter the interrogation room.
In the middle of the room, tied to a chair was my would-be assassin, now looking somewhat the worse for wear after several hours in the company of my guards.
“Good morning,” I said.
The man looked up, and I was impressed to see there was still defiance in his eyes.
“Anything?” I asked the guards.
They shrugged. “Not much. He told us who sent him.”
“Pagan,” I said, dismissively. I already knew who sent him. It was the only person who would have sent him. I faced the assassin with a smirk. “Why did you give that up so easily?”
The assassin gave an awkward shrug. “You already knew who sent me.”
I nodded. “Fair enough. You know what I want to know then?”
The man nodded painfully. “Where Pagan is and how I got into your room.”
“More specifically, who allowed you into my room,” I clarified. “Let us not pretend you managed it without help.”
The assassin smiled, which looked like it hurt. “As I’ve been trying to tell your men; I had help, but not from anyone here. At least not in the way you mean. You don’t have a traitor, Duine, just a lot of incompetent men. And Pagan has powerful magic on his side.”
That was not impossible, but it was also what you’d say if you were trying to protect someone. Infuriating really.
“Very well,” I took a little circuit around the man. “I’m going to offer you a generous deal; just answer one of my questions and no more torture for you.”
“I already answered one of them.”
“Not the one I want an answer to.”
“Then what is your question?”
I took the steps that separated us and got right into the man’s face. “Tell me where I can find Pagan.” I knelt down beside him, my face inches from his.
“I can’t do that.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Tell me where I can find him and perhaps I will let you live.”
The man met my gaze through blood-tinged eyes. “Do you know what I am, Duine?” I think it pleased him to call me that rather than ‘High Mage’; to call me the name others had given me rather than the title I had awarded myself.
“I know what you call yourself.”
“I am a warlock of the Templar. Death holds no fear for me. Death is but a door to another realm.”
I punched him in his gut and was pleased to see him gasp. “There are no warlocks. You are a mage and that makes you subject to me.”
“I am a warlo…” Another punch, this time to his face, cut him off.
“There are no warlocks,” I repeated. “And no witches either. Just the Mages of the King’s Alliance, trying to keep order in a disordered world. And threats to that order—threats such as you and your friend—will be terminated without prejudice.”
The man said nothing.
I sighed. “You say that you have no fear of death and I believe you. But I don’t actually want you dead. Why? Because dead men don’t talk. Except in a few very specific circumstances. We can keep you alive a long time and, to you, it will seem like a whole lot longer. But, in the end, you will talk. In the end, everyone talks.”
He was tough. But just for a split second, I saw a flicker of doubt. He knew I was right. Perhaps he’d even been on the other side of a conversation such as this one. Regardless, he knew as well as I did that in the end, everyone talked.
“Try looking at it this way,” I suggested, kindly. “How sure are you that I’m in the wrong?”
“What do you mean?”
I shrugged. “The Underworld is gone. Those old alliances are broken. The vampires and werewolves as well as the other lycanthropes, the Fae and witches, all those who lived in peace together under…” I paused. Who had they lived in peace under? The question brought a frustrating blank, but I moved on. “… who lived together in peace, have all gone their separate ways. I can’t bring that peace back and nor can your Templars. I’m just trying to make the best of a bad situation.” I took a breath. “The King’s Alliance is the closest we have to organization now, and only in organization can we regain any type of peace. If people fight against me then… well, you can’t make an omelet without breaking the eggs.” I shrugged. “Someone must rule or there will be chaos, and neither of us wants chaos. So the choice is yours; peace and rest, or chaos and pain.”
TWO
EMMA
My phone buzzed somewhere beneath the mess of sheets and unfolded laundry on my bed. I felt around for it, eyes closed. Crisp Salem air poured in through the open window.
“There you are,” I looped my fingers around the chipped black case.
I pulled the phone up and held it in front of my face. 6:57 AM.
“What the hell?”
I dropped the phone. It hit me squarely in the nose, and not gently. Yep, it was going to be one of those days.
I kicked my sheets to the floor, and the comforter. My uniform was in there somewhere... Dropping to my knees, I dug through the heap. I spotted a flash of grey amid the green and white and pulled my uniform pants out of the pile. The “crisp white shirt” the handbook mandated was balled up in the left leg. Shaking it down the length of the pants, I got it loose.
And promptly banged my knuckles into the two-drawer dresser by my bed.
Pros and cons of magic drawers: pro, they can hold a metric ton of stuff; con, they’re as hard as freaking diamonds. My knuckles were red and raw.
How many times am I going to hurt myself this morning? And I’m running late for my first class. Ugh.
I sat on the floor and slipped my pants on, one-handed. The shirt’s buttoned collar caught on my ear, but I managed to yank it over my head. Feeling the dry fizzle of static electricity, I looked in the mirror. Ten quintillion long blond lines poked out of me like quills. And the three-quarter-length sleeves were wrinkled to hell and back.
Okay, okay, sweater vest, sweater vest, where’s the sweater vest?
There, hanging from the top of my wardrobe. I pulled on it until it came down.
Something hit the floor with it and I heard the unmistakeable muted clink of breaking glass.
I pulled the sweater vest over my shirt and bent to examine the damage.
“Dammit,” I said as I realized what had broken. It was the only framed picture I kept in my dorm. One of my parents holding me when I was a baby. It had that hazy, polaroid quality to it, but mom’s eyes were blue as anything. Mine were supposedly the same color, but they’d gone kind of red with the flash.
Mom’s blond hair was pulled to one side, curling gracefully down past her shoulders. I imagined her eyes to be the bluest in the world. And her smile was definitely the sweetest.
She sat in a plush armchair in front of a sitting room fireplace, red brick with the mortar sticking out. Dad stood to her right side, looking every inch the handsome and dignified man he was. His smile was so broad—from ear to ear.
He looked so different in this picture—so carefree and so… happy. He hadn’t smiled like that in as long as I could remember.
I touched a shard of the broken glass, moving it out of mom’s face. I could almost remember her. A hand on my hair, maybe, or a laugh like bell chimes. A whisper of a song I’d long ago forgotten.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I remembered the time.
Shit.
I left the picture on the floor. I’d have to clean up the glass later. After class.
I pulled the door shut behind me and sprinted down the corridor, up the rotating spiral staircase outside the witches’ quarters—but there wasn’t time to try and run to class. If I wanted to be anything resembling “on time,” I’d need a shortcut.
I went up another staircase and sprinted down a hallway. I grabbed the carved bauble at the handrail’s edge, swinging myself around the corner and up a final staircase that led nowhere. As in, it literally led into a wall. The staircases became incre
asingly more confusing the tardier a student was and, in this case, they were pretty damn confusing.
There was a giant mahogany cuckoo clock that had been at the academy since Elmington manor was first built, something like four hundred years ago. Supposedly, it was built by the witches who had perished in Salem in the late 1600s—regardless, Elmington was protected by magic. Protected in as much as humans couldn’t see it.
The cuckoo clock changed locations at random—random to the students, at least. Today, it was perched on the wall above the staircase leading nowhere, covering six square feet of the floral wallpaper.
It struck seven.
Three loud, strident chimes. I walked up the stairs with my head turned down. Maybe Patricia wouldn’t recognize me.
A robin burst out of the clock’s cottage doors.
Dammit.
“Seven O’clock, b’caw!” Patricia squawked. “Seven O’clock! Emma Balfour should be in class by now! B’caw! Emma Balfour is late to class! B’caw! B’caw!”
“Oh, stick a worm in it, Patricia,” I said.
The stairs were carpeted emerald. Good for traction. I took them two, three at a time.
“B’caw! Gotta go faster than that! B’caw!”
“I get it, Patricia!”
I stopped at the top stair, dropping to one knee and slung my satchel to the ground. I rifled through it. A few pens rolled out and fell off the staircase’s edge. I abstractly hoped my supplies didn’t hit someone several floors below, but I wasn’t that concerned. Most students were already in class.
I pulled out a vial of something purple and bubbling. I forgot what Jupiter had called it, not that its name mattered. All that did matter was the magic inside. I sighed in relief and slung the bag back over my shoulder.
Jupiter was generous, sharing this with me. Magic, her magic, distilled in a little purple bottle. Witches trade and share magic all the time: necromancers trading pre-brewed spells with alchemists and weather mages. Like coders sharing programs.
Usually, though, magic isn’t a gift, it’s a trade. Except I didn’t have anything I could give her. Yeah, I’m not exactly… magically inclined. In fact, this quarter I’m pretty much just scraping by.
I clinked the test-tube of magic against an imaginary cup. “To the queen.” I uncorked the vial and took it like a shot.
It was cool and silky. It bubbled on my tongue, a buzzing that got steadily stronger—like carbonation on crack. There was a light lavender aftertaste. Jupiter was getting better at creating flavorings.
I corked the vial and put it away. The buzzing on my tongue became a tingling in the tips of my fingers. I waggled them experimentally in front of my face, feeling an undeniable shift in the energy around them.
The large mahogany door at the end of the floating staircase had an ornate golden handle. I gripped it firmly and stood back up to my full height of five-foot-six. My frizzy whitish-blond hair fell into my face and I realized I’d forgotten to brush it.
I took a deep breath.
One spell. Just one. Simple. Rudi-fucking-mentary.
You can do this.
“Here and there, one and the same, to where I go, from whence I came. Spirits above, spirits below, take me now where I need to go.”
I swung the door open. A strong wind pulled me through the doorway with the force of an industrial vacuum. For a moment, everything was pitch black.
Then the heavy door slammed shut behind me.
I blinked. When I opened my eyes, I found myself standing in a stuffy closet—not that there’s any other kind of closet, I guess. Chalk particles hung in the air and tickled my lungs. I spun around toward the tall, narrow door. It led to the hallway just outside my morning lecture.
Perfect.
I hurried down the hallway, reached my classroom and threw open the door. Then I sped into the back of the classroom without bothering to check if the coast was clear.
The lecture hall was huge. The linoleum floor was tiered, each tier with a row of desks. The room was shaped like a shallow, upside down cake. I spotted Jupiter and Kevin sitting against the back wall. I slid into the empty seat beside Jupiter. Quiet as a church mouse.
They hadn’t noticed me. Thank God.
Allegra, Ellenora, and Trixie sat in the next row down. When I bent down to get my books out of my bag, my chair squeaked slightly. Allegra flipped her hair, cherry red, out of her eyes and turned back to glare at me.
“Look who it is,” Ellenora whispered to Allegra. “I guess when your father’s on the school board, you get to make your own schedule. That’s just neat, isn’t it?”
Dammit. I guess they had noticed me. They being the three bitches of Elmington—Ellenora, Allegra and Trixie—all who were determined to make my life here miserable. Thank God for Jupiter and Kevin.
Allegra snickered. She wound her narrow finger in her stringy blond hair and nodded. Ellenora was brilliant, and nothing you could say would convince Allegra otherwise.
“Totally,” Allegra said.
Trixie leaned toward Ellenora and glanced back at me—tardy to the party and trying really hard to think of something awful and funny to say to me.
Kevin looked up. His immaculate auburn eyebrows lifted nearly to the top of his tall forehead. Jupiter swept her short, purple hair out of her pale face, her dark brows knitting in concern.
“Don’t you three hens have anything else to cluck about?” Jupiter asked, glaring at each of them in turn.
But they didn’t take their eyes off me.
“I wish my daddy could buy my way into school,” Trixie said. “I don’t feel like waking up at 6 a.m. anymore either.”
They laughed. Really made a show of it, too. Building a wall between us with bricks made out of rolling eyes and fake giggles.
“Just ignore them,” Jupiter whispered.
“Assholes,” Kevin chimed. Never started his own conversations, Kevin; always with the chiming. “They’re just jealous you don’t have to wake up an hour early to look like a total goddess.”
“Thanks,” I said, face flat. But I hardly looked like a goddess. Unless said goddess was Medusa.
“No, seriously,” Jupiter said as she looked at my hair. “Your volume is literally giving me life right now.”
“Jupe, I’m fine. I cannot express to you how little I care what any of them thinks of me.” And that was mostly true. As a rule, I was a friendly person who liked getting along with people.
“Well, it’s not fun to hear that stuff.”
“Fucking up your hand on a dresser isn’t fun either, but that doesn’t mean I want to set my dresser on fire.”
“That’s very specific,” said Jupiter.
“Me and the dresser had a disagreement.”
“That did not involve fire?” Jupiter asked, eyebrow drawn. “Or did involve fire?”
“That did not involve fire.”
Jupiter grinned. “Is that where you were? Throwing hands with your dresser?”
I looked at Jupiter. She’d cut and dyed her hair over break, but her small, pretty face and giant brown doe eyes were the same snowy picture I remembered. Jupiter’s rainbow bob had transformed into a galactic purple pixie cut. Glitter for days, from her scalp to the choppy ends. She could’ve been carved out of the night sky.
“I texted you a few minutes ago,” she went on with a shrug. “I thought maybe you just decided not to come back.”
It’s not like I hadn’t considered pissing off into the wilderness before the quarter started. “Yeah, my dad would murder me,” I said. “I just missed my alarm and overslept. Had to use the vial you gave me to get here when I did.” My very slight English accent reared its ugly head toward the end. I sighed, too tired to actively repress it. I usually sounded decently American, but there was an undercurrent of Britishness from my childhood that I couldn’t seem to shake.
Jupiter stared at me. Her eyes just oozed pity.
“That was a good call.” Jupiter nodded. “Professor Crotchety is already
out for blood. He’d have been furious.”
“No kidding,” I said. “How was your break?”
“Oh, it was stupendous!” She’d stayed on campus for an internship with the Administrative Coven. Something with the Head Wistress, though she didn’t get the chance to tell me what before we left.
“If I stay on schedule, I could have a spot on the coven in... seven years, I think they said. Maybe less.”
Two weeks with Jupiter and they were already making her promises. It wasn’t impossible, just... pretty damn quick.
“That’s awesome, Jupe.” I smiled. The smile was critical.
“I think my parents kind of screwed me on that front. No decent witchcraft school is ever going to have a Grand Master Kevin,” Kev said and wrinkled his nose. “My name just doesn’t command respect, you know?”
“Why not change it?” Jupiter asked with a shrug. “I changed my hair, just change your name.”
“Name changes don’t come in cheap cardboard boxes.”
“Did you just call me cheap?”
“Thrifty?”
Jupiter looked at me, distraught. “Does my hair look cheap?”
“No,” I said, “it looks upsettingly expensive, actually.” We both looked at Kevin. I held my eyebrows up to the ceiling in a rendition of “just agree with me.”
He held up his hands. “You think I know anything about this? I’ve had the same haircut for six years.”
“Which is exactly why there will never be a Grand Master Kevin,” I said.
Jupiter laughed.
But honestly, that didn’t surprise me. Everything Kevin did was purposeful, meticulous. Auburn hair gelled to shiny perfection, uniform pressed free of wrinkles, no stains, no smudges, and a decorative ascot knotted around his shirt collar. Today, the ascot was red with a paisley pattern embroidered in gold thread. His notebook was open—blank pages, but he wrote in perfectly straight lines. Wedding-invitation-esque cursive.
“How was Branson?” I asked.
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