The Truth Spell (Werewolf High Book 1)

by Anita Oh

  Then he turned away, dismissing me.

  “And that’s Tennyson Wilde, of course,” said Hannah. “He’s the actual worst person on the planet. He makes Althea Wilde look like a cuddle bunny. He is like, if Hitler had a baby with Voldemort, that baby would be like, ‘Hold up there, buddy, keep me away from this guy. He is too evil for me.’ I am not even kidding. You want to stay away from Tennyson Wilde. He is not someone you want to mess with. I don’t even know if he’s human.”

  But I didn’t really hear most of what Hannah was saying, because as Tennyson Wilde turned, I caught a glimpse of the boy standing behind him.

  But it couldn’t be.

  It looked like him, with his floppy brown hair and puppy dog eyes, and a smile so bright it could melt ice caps. But it couldn’t be. It couldn’t be Sam Spencer, because he had died three years ago, on the night that had changed everything.

  But then, why was he standing right in front of me?

  Chapter 2

  My legs gave way and I collapsed into my seat. I couldn’t breathe. Blood rushed in my ears, blocking out all other sounds and making the rest of the world seem far away, as if an invisible wall had sprung up around me. That wall closed in, cutting off the air and squeezing my heart in a crushing grip. I watched everyone drift back to their seats, not really registering anything that was happening. I glanced back at the spot where he’d stood but he wasn’t there. Of course he wasn’t there. The other Golden students had disappeared into the gardens, but there was no way that Sam Spencer had ever been there.

  It couldn’t have been him. It was just the exhaustion from all the travel catching up with me and giving me hallucinations or something. In my mind, I could still see the scene that had greeted me that night, as clearly as if I was looking at it. There had been so much blood.

  “Are you okay?” Hannah asked.

  Everyone was still listening to Assistant Head Noel talk about truth and possibility or whatever, and whispering about the arrival of the Golden, but none of it seemed real to me the way that picture in my mind was.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” I said.

  She glanced around to make sure nobody was paying any attention to us, slid my bag out from under the seat and then guided me out of the courtyard and down past the fountain into the gardens, taking a path that led off to the right, toward the forest.

  “The other boy,” I said, “the other Golden. You didn’t say anything about him.”

  She gave me a strange look, which I took as confirmation that I was actually losing my grip on reality and he really hadn’t been there.

  “You’re so pale,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll be fine after some food and rest. I hope you haven’t caught some sort of travel sickness.”

  I wasn’t sure what sort of travel sickness could cause hallucinations of dead friends, but food definitely sounded good. As Hannah led me past the mini-village of outer buildings and deeper into the gardens, I tried to take my mind off Sam by thinking about all the fancy foods I could eat at rich person school. I didn’t even know anything about fancy foods — fancy for my family was having meat in our weekly stew instead of canned beans.

  Still, my thoughts kept going back to Sam. Why would my mind conjure him up now, in this place? I’d worked so hard to move on and it had taken me so long. I was exhausted, and my brain was short circuiting at all the extravagance — maybe it was just looking for something comforting, familiar. That was the most logical explanation, but I had to be sure. It had conjured Sam, after all, not marshmallows or puppy dogs or something else without the traumatic associations of Sam Spencer.

  “You definitely didn’t see anyone else?” I asked Hannah. “Only Nikolai Volkov and the Wildes?”

  She shrugged, taking me by the elbow to guide me as we left the main path and entered a Zen garden. My feet crunched on pebbles that were raked into formations, and I worried that I’d muck up all the perfect lines, but I made no impression at all. Amongst the pebbles were islands of moss and stone, some with tiny trees. To one side was a large square fountain – maybe a pond – and in the center of the pond was a statue of a very fat man with a walrus moustache in the pose of Buddha, though I was fairly sure he wasn’t Buddha but the founder of the school. The garden was beautiful, but I didn’t feel very Zen walking through it, thinking about my dead best friend.

  “I wasn’t really paying that much attention, to be honest.” She gave me an apologetic smile.

  I smiled back, but I wished she could’ve given me a definitive answer either way. She’d known everything else about them, but she couldn’t tell me what I really cared about. It wasn’t fair to put that on her, she had no clue about the tornado of thoughts and feelings going on inside of me, but it would’ve been great if she could’ve just said, “no, Lucy, you are seeing things, there were only three people.” Then I could just put it out of my mind and move on.

  “Down here is the Red Garden,” she said, leading me out of the Zen garden and along another path. “That’s where our house is, obviously.”

  “Our house?” I asked, pleased for the distraction from Sam.

  “Not like Gryffindor or whatever,” she said. “It’s just our dorm house, where we live. The Green House is much closer to the school, and bigger, better security and facilities… you get the idea.”

  I was definitely starting to.

  “The Golden House is usually empty,” she continued. “Because there are only a few Golden families. It’s unheard of for there to be three in one grade. That’s probably why people are so crazy for them.”

  “People are crazy for those guys? Normal people?”

  Sam definitely wasn’t one of them, then. Not my Sam. My gentle, goofy friend. Nobody would ever go crazy over that guy.

  “Yeah, strangely enough, people in this world love incredibly rich, incredibly attractive people. It’s shocking.”

  I snorted. “Fair point.”

  The Red Garden was beautiful in a different way from the Zen garden. Delicate red flowers bordered the path. Big leafy red trees met over our heads and blocked out the sky, I hadn’t even known there were so many types of red trees. Other clusters of red flowers blossomed across the gardens. The flowers and trees were all mismatched shades of red and seemed to be planted with no formal structure, just springing up naturally. As little as I knew about gardening, I much preferred this style to the carefully cultivated ones closer to the school.

  We turned a corner and as the trees cleared, our house came into view. It was a five-story red brick cottage, with some sort of vine growing across it and red geraniums in hanging boxes outside the shutter windows. After seeing the imposing school buildings, I hadn’t expected anything like this, and I was completely charmed. Night had fallen during our short walk, and warm lights glowed from inside the house, as if beckoning us in.

  “Do you have your student card?” Hannah asked.

  I patted down my pockets, then nodded.

  “Security is really tight, even in the Red House. The Green House has retina scan, I think, and I was hoping we would too because it is really annoying if you forget your card.”

  She pulled out her card and touched it to the sensor next to the door. The door slid open with a soft whoosh, then slid closed again as soon as she stepped through, as if it knew exactly where she was. I wondered what would’ve happened if I’d tried to sneak through beside her, if like laser beams would have cut me into a thousand pieces or something. I didn’t particularly want to find out. I copied what Hannah had done, scanning my card and entering the house.

  Inside had the same sort of homey, cottagey feeling as the outside. The floors were a light, polished wood, the same wood as the exposed rafters on the ceiling and the other trimmings that I could see. The walls were white-painted stone, which I worried would make it cold in winter, but I heard the climate control click on as we moved further into the house.

  “This side is the common room,” she said, leading me to a room to the right.


  It was a large square room with a long wooden table taking up most of one end, then comfortable-looking white sofas and the biggest TV I’d ever seen at the other.

  “Mostly, people study in there and fight over what they want to watch on TV,” Hannah said, leading me back out and toward the room on the other side of the foyer. “This is the house kitchen. It’s better to go to the dining hall up at the school for meals, but if you need study snacks or whatever, there’s usually something in here.”

  Although I still felt weird about seeing Sam, I couldn’t help but perk up at the promise of food. The house kitchen had several small tables, and a little kitchenette area. I ambled forward, my eyes on the prize. There was a large beverage fridge, which didn’t interest me; a coffee machine, a microwave, convection oven, sink, all that usual stuff. But there was also a large pantry cupboard and a fridge, both of which were filled with toothsome treats. Well, I assumed they were toothsome. A lot of the stuff I didn’t recognize, but I figured they were just like friends I hadn’t met yet. I didn’t even know where to start.

  “I thought you felt sick,” Hannah said, sounding amused.

  “Not too sick to eat,” I told her. “I’m not dead.”

  Most of my new little friends were in fancy wrappings with foreign writing, so I picked a few things at random and then followed Hannah back out.

  “We’re on the top floor,” Hannah told me, leading me toward the back of the foyer and swiping her card again.

  Something made a “ping” noise, and part of the wall slid open to reveal an elevator. I sighed in relief that I didn’t have to climb the stairs to the fifth floor, and that the elevator let me enter without swiping as well, because my hands were full of snacks.

  We got out on the top floor and I followed Hannah down a corridor to the left with rooms on both sides. Our room was at the very end, with our names embossed on shiny brass plates by the door. I had to swipe again to enter, so Hannah went in first and then held my food for me so I could find my card.

  “I hope you don’t mind, I took the right side,” she said, nodding in that direction as she sat my food down on the bench in the corner.

  “I don’t mind,” I said, looking around our room in awe.

  It was more like an apartment than a room. A fancy apartment. It was designed to match the rest of the house – light wood, white sofa, giant TV – but we also had beds that looked so comfortable they could’ve been made from clouds, and a little study nook each with a big screen desktop computer. When I peeked in our bathroom, I noticed we had one of those rainforest showers and so much toilet paper it would last for a year and we wouldn’t even need to ration it. I couldn’t believe this was the basic package. What did you get with the fancy package? Foot massages? Cabana boys feeding you grapes?

  I didn’t want to eat on the white sofa, because I just knew I’d make a mess, so I sat down on the floor beside the coffee table and started digging into some sort of crunchy chocolatey orange thing.

  “Omigod,” I said after one mouthful. “What even is this? Can I send this home to my family? It’s like magically amazing.”

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket. I needed to message my brothers about this. I still had no cell signal, though.

  “You need to connect to the school Wi-Fi,” said Hannah, wandering over to her part of the room and starting to unpack. “There’s no phone signal anywhere on the island so we can’t be traced, so we have to use their Wi-Fi for everything.”

  That seemed potentially creepy and invasive, but at least it was free. My phone was too old and cheap to take photos, so I couldn’t send a picture of my food, and I’d been nervous about leaving everyone on their own anyway, so I decided to Skype them. I took my selection of tasty snacks and wandered over to the computer in my study nook. I didn’t know what the time difference would be, but I knew they’d be expecting to hear from me as well, so someone would be around and waiting to hear from me.

  Because we had a corner room, it looked out both over the school grounds and the forest. As I waited for the computer to start up, I could see the lights on up at the main school, and the quarter moon rising over the forest. It all looked so tranquil. I could’ve even sworn I heard a wolf howl in the distance.

  “Everyone’s heading back after the welcome ceremony,” Hannah said. “I’m going to go catch up with some people, do you want to come?”

  I knew I probably should, be sociable and all that, but all I wanted to do was eat and check in with my family, then sleep.

  I shook my head. “No, but thanks, and thanks for showing me around and everything.”

  She grinned at me. “This is going to be a great year. We’ll have so much fun together!” She gave me a little wave as she left.

  As soon as I logged in to Skype, a call came through from my family.

  “You were going to call as soon as you got there!” yelled Fletcher, my second oldest brother. “We were worried sick!”

  I laughed as I watched my three brothers pushing each other to get the best spot in front of the camera.

  “When are you coming home?” asked Hamish, my youngest brother. He was only five and missing his front teeth. “I hate Liam, he’s a bully and wouldn’t sing me any songs when I was in the bath last night.”

  Liam was my oldest brother, only two years younger than me. He rolled his eyes at Hamish.

  “Well, did you wash your ears?” I asked.

  Hamish screwed up his little face. “They didn’t even need washing.”

  “Dirty ears, no songs. You know the rules.”

  “You suck too,” Hamish said, climbing off the sofa, clearly done with me. “I hate you both.”

  “How is it?” asked Fletcher. “Is everything made out of gold and candy?”

  “Practically,” I said, holding up my snacks to show them.

  Hamish crept back into view as they made me try each different snack and describe it to them in vivid detail, enough for them to almost be able to taste it. As we chatted, my heart ached with homesickness but I began to feel a bit more normal. I wasn’t fooling Liam though. When Fletcher and Hamish got bored and went off to do their stuff, Liam narrowed his eyes at me.

  “What’s up with you, anyway?” he asked.

  I shrugged. There was no way I was getting into all that. Sam had been my best friend and our families had been close, more than just neighbours. His family had been like our own. Our mom had always been too sick to do much, and when our dad walked out, Sam’s parents had looked after us, kept us together. Losing the Spencers had hit us all hard, and for it to happen so horribly. There was no point bringing it all up again.

  “Just tired,” I told him. “How are things there, really?”

  It was more than just a handy change in subject; I was really worried about leaving everyone. I hated putting all that responsibility on Liam. When I’d first been offered the spot at Amaris, I’d thrown the letter away. I didn’t need to go off to some fancy school, I needed to stay home and work and look after my family. But Liam had found the letter in the trash and convinced me it was for the best.

  “Things here are fine,” he said, glancing off to the side, toward our mother’s room. He hunched in closer to the screen and spoke quietly. “She’s been really unsettled since you left. I told her I’d call the doctor if she’s so distressed.”

  I nodded. “She’s probably just testing to see how far she can push you but call the doctor if you need to. If it’s too much, I’ll come home.”

  He scowled at me. “You were younger than me when Dad left.”

  “That doesn’t make it okay.”

  “You just stay at your fancy school and eat your fancy snack foods. It’s one less mouth to feed and you know it’s better for everyone in the long run.” He looked over to the side and nodded at something off-screen. “I have to go, but we can cope just fine without you, you’re not really that great, you know.”

  I poked my tongue out at him and hung up. As soon as he was gone, every
thing felt cold and empty. I curled up on my new bed and gave in to the thoughts that kept crowding my mind.

  After Sam had died, I’d seen him everywhere for a while. It had been all I’d thought about, to the point where I was sure I’d go mad. I’d replayed that night over and over in my mind. But then I’d had to stop. I’d had to pull myself together. I couldn’t rely on anyone else, so I’d had to learn how to live without him. I still missed him, but I couldn’t think about him if I wanted to function. It was like a bruise on my heart, and sometimes I couldn’t help but press it to see if it still hurt. But it always did. It always would. That bruise would never heal.

  Chapter 3

  When I woke from my unintentional nap, my glasses were crooked on my face, the room was filled with moonlight, and I could hear Hannah softly breathing in the other bed.

  I’d been dreaming of Sam. I couldn’t really remember the details, only the sense of him, the comfort of knowing he was there. And something about narwhals.

  I curled up into a tight little ball. I had to forget that feeling of him, of being safe, protected. Once you lose that sense of being secure in the world, of standing on solid ground, you can never get it back. Not completely. Because once it’s gone you know that it was only ever an illusion, a dream. I wanted to hold onto that safe feeling, to wrap it around me like a blanket, but I had to push it away. It was a weakness and there was no point to it. You could wrap yourself up in dreams all you liked, but at the end of the day things were what they were. Nobody was looking out for me; nobody was protecting me. I had to look after myself.

  Still, my dumb brain hadn’t got the message. I could tell it a thousand times that Sam was dead, but obviously it didn’t accept that. No matter what I did, it kept coming back to him.

  I’d tried to block the memory of that night for so long, knowing it would only lead to a spiral of dark thoughts about Sam and his family suffering, scared and hurt and dying. Still, even now I could recall it perfectly. I’d replayed it in my head every night for months after it had happened. Years.