Ritual of Magic (Academy of the Damned Book 2)

by Veronica Shade

  “That’s good to know,” I say. My phone beeps then, indicating the end of the class period. I don’t normally have a class right now, which is why Ms. Brewster used the time to give me a private lesson.

  “Well,” Ms. Brewster says, “I suppose that is all the time I can spare today. I hope you learned something.”

  “I did,” I say. “I’ll keep practicing.”

  “Good,” she says. “Actually, there is something else I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “What is that?” I pick my jacket and bag up from the grass, dusting some blades of grass off them.

  “You proved to be so adept at putting the potion together last semester,” she says, and I scoff.

  “I just stumbled on the last ingredient,” I say. “It was really a group effort. I couldn’t have done it without my friends.”

  “Still, they couldn’t have done it without you. You were the missing piece.”

  I press my lips together and nod. I can’t argue with that, but I’m not exactly comfortable with the praise either.

  “Anyway,” Ms. Brewster continues, “there is something I want you to try and find for me.”

  She flicks her wrist, and an envelope seems to appear out of midair. She hands the envelope to me. I open it and pull out an old piece of paper with a drawing of some sort of instrument on it.

  “The North Wind Flute,” she says. “It once belonged to Hecate herself. It is an instrument of great power.”

  I examine the paper. It’s yellowed, torn in places. It seems a bit brittle. There’s writing on it, but I can’t read it. It’s not the same runic writing that Giselle was working on. This seems familiar, like Russian or something.

  “You want me to find this item?” I ask her. “How?”

  “If I knew that, I would find it myself,” she says. “I’ve been looking for it for years with no success. I just thought that a second pair of eyes might see something I have missed.”

  “Wow,” I say. “I mean, I’m flattered that you think I can help, but I’ve never heard of this. I can’t read it. I really don’t think I can help.” I put the paper back in the envelope and offer it to her, but she doesn’t take it as she turns to walk toward the building.

  “When you first came here,” she says, “you didn’t even know that magic potions were real. Yet you were able to concoct one I had been trying to create for longer than I can remember.”

  “A fluke, surely,” I say. “I just happened to have the missing ingredient—”

  “There are no coincidences,” she says. “You were meant to win that contest. We might not know why. The Goddess moves in mysterious ways. But it was certainly no fluke, as you say.”

  We walk up the front steps to the porch.

  “I think you are reading way too much into that potion thing,” I mumble.

  “And I don’t think you are reading enough into it,” she says. “I would like you to at least try and find the flute. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on your search for the flute by the end of the week. I expect there to be some progress. Consider this part of the one-on-one training you earned when you created the potion for me.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say.

  “Good.” She disappears into the building, leaving me alone on the porch. I let out a sigh and go inside as well, then up to my room to start my research on this North Wind Flute.

  When I get there, I’m glad Zoey isn’t around. I need a few minutes to think and collect my thoughts. Zoey is really talkative and seems to need a lot of attention. I drop my bag and jacket on my bed and sit at my desk. I pull the paper out again and spread it on my desk. I look at it closely, examining each corner, each letter, the drawing of the flute.

  I don’t see anything that sticks out to me. It just looks like an old drawing with ancient writing. Something I might see at a museum. I guess I need to find out what the writing is first. If I can at least find out the flute’s origin, that will give me somewhere to start.

  I reach for my phone in my pocket to scan the letters, and it pings. I check my notifications and see there is a new video by a YouTube psychic I watch, LadyofStars. I used to watch her videos religiously because I found her to be really accurate. But after I came to La Voisin, I kind of forgot about her. And after I found out that witches don’t subscribe to a belief in psychic powers, I thought it best to not dabble in that anymore.

  Now, after what happened during my training session with Ms. Brewster and how I was able to read people’s thoughts, I can’t help but wonder if the teachings at La Voisin about psychics isn’t exactly true. It wouldn’t be the first time this establishment was wrong.

  I look over my shoulder and see that the door is still closed. Everyone who has a class right now should be busy.

  The video is titled “What message you need to hear right now!”

  I can’t help but be intrigued, so I click to open the video. It’s a pick a card reading, where she has several stacks of tarot cards laid out facedown on a table in front of her and I am supposed to pick one.

  I pick the second group of cards and skip to the timestamp in the description to see the message from the Universe I need to hear.

  LadyofStars seems quite young, probably in her early twenties, but according to the messages from fans under her videos, she seems to be really in tune with the spirit world. She is credited with being highly accurate and encouraging to a lot of viewers.

  For me personally, I have always enjoyed the general no-nonsense advice she gives, like to have more confidence in myself and my abilities and to avoid toxic people. I didn’t always listen to the advice—Mama was the most toxic person I knew, and I couldn’t get away from her for years and years—but the advice was still sound.

  LadyofStars’s table is decorated with crystals and candles, and there is a giant poster of the zodiac behind her. Her hair is long and swinging free around her. The setup might be a little campy, but I can’t help but feel that she really is surrounded by a strong spiritual energy.

  As soon as LadyofStars turns over the deck of cards I picked, she gets excited.

  “Wow! Okay, this is what I am seeing. Now, remember, this is a general reading for everyone who picked this deck, so it won’t apply to everyone, but it definitely will to a lot of you,” she says, giving her required disclaimer.

  “I’m seeing that you have a hard time seeing what your natural talents are,” she says, and I sit up at that. Ms. Brewster said a witch’s powers were natural, innate, and that we all have to learn to tap into them.

  “Everyone is born with their own unique strengths and talents because those things aid us in discovering our higher soul’s purpose.”

  I have to pause and think about that. I forgot that she always talks about following our higher purpose, doing our highest and greatest good. I used to petition the spirits to help me find my path and follow it, but after Beau…I forgot. I guess I couldn’t accept that his death was part of my journey. It seemed so senseless at the time.

  “You have a great ability to see the good in other people, but you are so hard on yourself, you can’t see what you are actually really good at.”

  My heart hitches in my chest, and I feel a wave of emotion come over me. She’s so right. I blame myself for Beau’s death even though everyone around me tells me it’s not my fault. And I look at all the other witches here around me and their amazing powers, and I just feel so inadequate compared to them. But I did find the missing ingredient to the potion. Ms. Brewster picked me to find the flute. She sees a strength in me I can’t see.

  “I’m seeing for some of you that the source of this lack of confidence in yourself and abilities is fear,” LadyofStars says. “You are scared to express yourself. Scared to be yourself. You hide your abilities and who you are, like, inside this shell or like a wallflower when what you want to do is break free.”

  That’s true too! I have spent my whole life hiding who I am. When I lived in Oklahoma, I had to hide that I was a witch. And when I c
ame here, I had to hide that my real reason for coming to the school was to learn to control my powers so I wouldn’t kill anyone else. Even now, I often hold back on what I can do. Ms. Brewster once said that my powers were so weak, they were inconsequential. So as my powers grew, I hid them. What would it mean if I was more powerful than I should be? What would Ms. Brewster think? I was scared of the answer.

  “What I am seeing with the Knight of Wands and Judgement cards is that now is the time to really start expressing yourself. Stop worrying about what other people think so much, and put yourself out there. You have these gifts in order to share them with the world. And by using your gifts, your path will manifest.”

  Dang, even if she isn’t talking about my witchcraft powers, she’s so right. I do need to be myself. I need to stop hiding. I need to embrace my powers and become who I’m meant to be and—

  “What are you doing?”

  I scream and jump from my chair, dropping my phone. “Zoey!” I say, seeing her standing there with her arms crossed. “You scared me. I didn’t hear you come in.”

  Her eyes narrow as she reaches down and picks up my phone. “Is this a psychic?”

  I grab my phone from her. “No,” I lie. “Just a, like, self-help channel I like. All about loving yourself and expressing who you really are.”

  Zoey raises an eyebrow. “Looks like a psychic to me,” she says. “You know that psychics aren’t real, right?”

  “Duh,” I say, shutting my phone off and shoving it into my pocket. “Which is why I totally was not watching one.”

  I sit in my chair and clear my throat as I look intently at the parchment Ms. Brewster gave me.

  Zoey sits on her bed but continues to stare at me. I try to ignore her, but it’s unnerving.

  “What?” I finally ask her.

  “Real witches can’t tell the future,” she says. “Only Hecate has the right and the power to see the past, the present, and the future.”

  “I know,” I say.

  “If that woman is right about anything, it is because she is invoking dark arts,” Zoey goes on. “Black magic.”

  “So…it’s not that the ability to tell the future doesn’t exist,” I say. “It’s that we are forbidden from accessing it.”

  Zoey gasps, and her hand goes to her mouth. “That is something a person practicing the dark arts would say!”

  She jumps up like she is going to run from the room and tattle on me.

  I grab her arm. “I’m just joking with you!” I say, pulling her back to sit on her bed again. “Wow, you are so easy to scare!”

  I laugh as if it’s all a big joke.

  “I don’t want to share a room with someone who could invite evil spirits in,” Zoey says. “It’s not safe.”

  “Zoey,” I say with an annoyed sigh, “I’m not invoking any dark arts.”

  “Promise?” she asks.

  “Promise,” I say.

  She gives a little sigh of acceptance and then kicks off her shoes before lying on the bed to read. I turn back to the parchment, but my mind is elsewhere.

  So much for expressing who I really am.

  Chapter 5

  For the next few days, I do a little research on the North Wind Flute. I’m able to scan the text with my phone and discern that the writing is ancient Greek. Which makes sense since Hecate’s origins are Greek.

  But apparently ancient Greek is really different from modern Greek. Like modern Greek people can’t even read it. So I contact a few university professors around the country who study ancient Greek, sending them snippets of the text. I don’t want to send anyone I don’t know the whole thing since I don’t know what I’m dealing with, but I am hoping just samples of the whole text will be intriguing enough to get someone’s attention who might be willing to help me.

  Then, I sit back and wait. I figure there isn’t much more I can do right now, and hopefully what I have found out will be enough to satisfy Ms. Brewster’s Friday report. So I’m able to focus on my regular classes and homework and not feel overwhelmed and bogged down for once.

  It’s early autumn in New England, usually a time when the mornings are already crisp and leaves are falling from the trees. But strangely, it’s hot. Like really hot. A few of us have gotten into the habit of taking an afternoon swim in La Voisin’s expansive pool.

  The pool is indoors, which means we can actually use it all year round. And the water witch students, like Ivy, do use it for their power-specific training. It’s housed inside an all-glass conservatory, which keeps the room toasty warm even in winter.

  I’m floating on my back, looking out the glass ceiling at the clear blue sky. The sunlight hits the edges of the glass, reflecting in an array of colors. If I let my eyes relax, it’s kind of like staring up through a kaleidoscope.

  “Cannonball!” Jaxon jumps into the pool, causing a huge wave and splashing everyone, ruining my contemplative moment.

  I cough and sputter, wiping the water from my face. “Nice move, jerk!” I yell.

  He laughs as he swims over to me. “Aww, did you get a little water on your face?”

  I splash some water at him, and he splashes me back. We are then in a full-on water fight, and I use my air powers to make a wave big enough to drench him.

  “No fair!” he says. “I can’t use my powers in a pool!”

  I dart to the edge of the pool where Krista is sitting, only her feet in the water.

  “What do you mean?” I ask him. “Can you use your powers in other kinds of water?”

  “Depends on if there is vegetation in the water,” he says. As an earth witch, he can mostly only control growing things and communicate with some animals. “Like seaweed or something. But other than that, nah, I can’t do much with water.”

  “What about you, Krista?” I ask. “You never swim with us.”

  “Fire and water—at least in such a large quantity—don’t exactly mix,” she says. “If there is less water than my body mass, I can cause the water to evaporate. But anything more than that, and I get overwhelmed.”

  I nod and watch as Zoey swims laps, her bright orange goggles peeking out of the water whenever she comes up for air. There’s no lifeguard, so I keep an eye on her.

  “Where’s Ivy?” I ask Krista.

  “Somewhere down there,” she says with a shrug. “She can breathe underwater, so who knows when she will come up.”

  “It’s a pool,” I say. “It can’t be that interesting.”

  “Oh, but it’s naturally fed by a hot spring,” Krista says. “Like a Japanese onsen.”

  “Like a what-a-what?” I ask.

  “You are so uncultured,” she says as she leans back and soaks in the sun through the glass ceiling.

  “Japan is famous for its natural hot springs,” Jaxon says. “The Japanese built tunnels from natural hot springs into their homes and bathhouses so they can have indoor hot tubs all year round. Been doing it for hundreds of years.”

  “That’s cool,” I say. “But what does that have to do with Ivy?”

  “Oh, there’s a tunnel at the bottom of the pool that runs to a natural hot spring outside of school grounds,” Jaxon says. “The water witches will follow the tunnel to try and find the spring. It’s supposedly really hard to find and dangerous in the tunnel. They aren’t supposed to go through it, but the students always challenge each other to do it anyway. Ivy’s probably exploring the tunnel.”

  “She’s been gone a long time,” I say. “Aren’t you worried?”

  “I’m sure she knows what she is doing.” Jaxon leaps away and splashes Zoey, coaxing her into a water fight.

  Krista dons her sunglasses to absorb some rays.

  I don’t know why I feel worried about Ivy. I mean, if her closest friends aren’t worried, why am I? But I can’t help feeling anxious.

  I take a deep breath and sink into the pool. I look around as best I can, but I don’t see Ivy anywhere. I can see Jaxon and Zoey chasing each other, and a few students playing chicken i
n the shallow end, but that’s it.

  I see something dark and hazy in a far corner, but I can’t make it out clearly. I surface and form a protective air bubble around my head, kind of like a diving helmet. This time when I go back down, I can see much more clearly, and I can breathe, though still not for long. It won’t take more than a few minutes for me to exchange the oxygen in the bubble with carbon dioxide, so I’ll still have to be quick. It’s a little harder to swim with the air bubble around my head. It wants to float back to the surface, but I’m a strong swimmer, so I just have to fight it.

  I swim toward the dark area I saw earlier, and I can now see that it is indeed the entrance to a tunnel. There was a heavy metal grate over it, but the grate has been removed and is sitting on the floor of the pool. If the teachers really want the grate to deter water witches from exploring the tunnel, they need a lock on it.

  I hover outside the tunnel. It’s narrow, but I think most of the students here could fit through it, especially someone as lithe as Ivy.

  “Hello!” I call out.

  My voice bounces around in my air bubble. I know sound can travel through water, but I don’t know how well it will travel through my air bubble and then into the water. I haven’t done any training in water yet. That’s a more advanced area of study I haven’t considered, especially since I’m an air witch.

  I don’t hear or see anything. I mean, Ivy could be all the way through, exploring the hot spring for all I know. She can also breathe underwater. She’s much safer down here than I am.

  And yet, I can’t help sucking up my fears and propelling myself into the tunnel to look for her. It’s just too ominous. She shouldn’t be down here alone. I mean, it’s forbidden. The grate is there to warn students—even water witches—away.

  I swim hard, wanting to get through the tunnel as quickly as possible and get back out of here. It’s dark, but not so dark I can’t see. Moss and algae grow along the tunnel wall, and I can’t help but be grossed out every time something slimy touches my arm or leg.