by D. N. Hoxa
Shaking his head, Adams reached out a hand to help her. It was amazing she was still conscious, but she refused the help, and held onto the mirror instead. But her legs wouldn’t hold her, and once she was up, she fell against Adams’ shoulder to keep from falling to the floor.
The dragon was still there, around my bleeding hand. The pool of blood under it was bigger this time, and the blood didn’t stop for a long time afterward. Melinda kept cursing under her breath, wiping the sweat off her face with the back of her hands when she took her gloves off. Her word even made Adams blush.
“This is a waste of time,” he spit angrily, looking at the dragon with both fear and hatred.
“Trust me, it’s not. I’ll get that thing off her even if it’s the last thing I do,” Melinda said breathlessly. I didn’t know about Adams, but I believed every word she said. I believed she was going to skin my hand then cut it off if that didn’t work, both in the same day. And she wasn’t going to wait too long to do it.
The others woke up not long after Adams and Melinda left. This time, I didn’t shout at the top of my voice to wake them. I had no strength. I had no will. All I had was exhaustion, and nasty images in my head of my arm without the hand.
“They did it again,” Luca said when he saw my bleeding hand, because I had no intention of telling them.
“Bastards,” Fallon shouted.
“Scarlet, how are you feeling?” Ax asked, but I had no answer for him. How I was feeling wasn’t something I could put to words.
“Do you still have the Pretters?” Grover asked, and I nodded.
“Do it, Scarlet,” Fallon said, but I couldn’t.
Filling the spell stones with my magic was impossible. My magic was still there, alive and furious, but I couldn’t get it to cooperate. Whatever was stopping it from leaving my skin and going out into the world was strong—stronger than me. And the dragon? Before I learned how to access its magic, if such a thing was even possible, Melinda was going to come back and cut my hand off. If I let that happen, there was no going back. No amount of magic was going to grow me a new hand.
I still had one more card up my sleeve. I’d promised myself a long time ago that I’d never do it. I’d never call him to my aid again, no matter the situation. But my imagination could never have come up with the scenario I was living in. Locked inside the ECU, never to see the sunlight again, had definitely changed my perspective. It had never even been a question of if, only of when. And now, the time had come.
***
I was fifteen when my parents took me to the Academy for Troubled Witches in Washington. They paid the money, bought my ticket, and put me in the car with our driver, Sadat. Kissing me goodbye was not something I’d ever expect of either of them, but they could have at least seen me to the airport. At least. I was just a kid, one who had nowhere to turn to, who knew nothing but to hide. Hide and don’t attract any attention, has been my motto.
Sadat was a good witch with a funny accent I’d laughed at as a kid. He’d worked for my father since before I was born. He saw me crying all the way to the airport through the rearview mirror, and he never said a single word about it. When he dropped me off, he even smiled at me and wished me good luck. It was those words I saved close to my heart and repeated them on the plane.
By the time we landed in Washington, I was a completely new person. I couldn’t even understand why I hadn’t wanted to go to the academy in the first place. It was a new country full of new people, people who had no idea who I was or where I came from. It was an opportunity, a chance at a new life! I was so excited, I fell face first on the ground the second we stepped into school grounds.
From then on, people kind of fell into the habit of laughing at me. I didn’t make it hard for them, either. I was as clumsy as they come and made a fool of myself on more than one occasion by tripping over my own feet, spilling my drinks all the freaking time, and stuttering when the teachers asked me questions—questions I knew the answers to. It was the excitement, the need to prove myself, to tell the world that I wasn’t as unworthy as my father had made me think.
But I was quickly coming to realize that he’d been right. Until Elena.
She stood up for me once in a spell casting class. Told the kid who laughed at me for not being able to perform a simple spell to shove it up his ass in front of the teacher, and from then on, she had me. We became best friends within a day, and with Elena by my side, I no longer gave a shit about what the others said. Let them think what they wanted to think—that I was weak and pathetic. Elena accepted me that way, and I never even felt the need to tell her I was different.
For two years, we rocked the academy, getting in trouble mostly for stealing food and sneaking it into our dorms, and laughing so hard, we often cried. It was the best two years of my life. I didn’t miss anything, just like I knew that nothing missed me.
And then, Elena got expelled for getting caught having sex with a student in one of the classrooms. By the professor. On her defense, she was already eighteen when it happened, but the academy didn’t give a shit. Sexual relationships were strictly forbidden. A lot of sex went on in the dorms, but people never got caught. But dorms were too easy for Elena. She used to say she liked to live on the edge. After she was caught, they sent her home the next morning. We weren’t allowed phones or computers at the academy, so we had no way of staying in touch. All I knew was where she lived, and who her parents were. That was enough information to find her when I got out of there, but by the time that happened, things had already changed drastically.
I was five months away from finishing the academy when I had enough of it. During dinner, I was being targeted by the usual bullies, and so I left without eating, shouting curse words all the way up to the second floor of right wing, where my dorm room was. I just didn’t get it. Why wouldn’t they leave me alone? I tried to befriend others, tried to play nice, but nobody wanted to even come close to me. I got in trouble all the time. Broke things and stole things, talked back to teachers—the whole package, but they wouldn’t expel me. The only thing I hadn’t tried was getting caught having sex in a classroom, and I’d have done that a thousand times by now, if I could just find someone to have sex with me. Yes, yes, I was that pathetic.
Angry tears were falling down my face, and I was telling the walls how much I hated them that night, when I walked into my room and saw the man sitting on my bed.
Frozen in shock, I just stared at him for a long second. I’d never seen him before. He was old, but not too old. His dark hair was cut shorter by the temples, and longer at the top. His green eyes were like two jungles from another world, full of exotic animals that sang songs to me. He was tall and well built, dressed in an impeccable navy suit. When he stood up and took a step forward, he reminded me of a cat.
“Who are you?” I asked when the spell he’d put on me faded.
“Hello, Scarlet,” he said, smiling sneakily. Two dimples pierced his cheeks when he did, adding to his charm. Until then, I had never seen anyone more beautiful than this man. “I’m a friend. I’m here to help you.”
“How do you know my name?” I asked, still holding on to the door.
“I know a lot of things,” he said, and slowly walked over to me.
Stepping back, I shook my head. “Well, I don’t know you. You better get out of my room, or I’ll scream so hard, the whole school will be here.”
“Don’t be silly, Scarlet. I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to help.” His voice was what magic would have sounded like it, if it could speak.
Maybe he was a teacher? A new teacher I hadn’t had the chance to meet yet?
“Look, I don’t want your help. Please, just go. I want to sleep,” I said, but I wasn’t afraid of him. Not for a second, which was stupid, now that I thought of it.
“I can help you get out of here, Scarlet. You can walk out of this place tonight, and return home,” he whispered. I hadn’t noticed him move at all, but in what felt like a blink of the eye, h
e was close enough to touch.
“No, I can’t,” I said reluctantly. “Trust me, I’ve tried.”
“Sure you can,” he said, smiling.
“I can’t. I break and steal regularly. My father pays them too much. They’re not going to let me go.” It was something I’d come to terms with, and now, I just crossed the days off. Five more months, and I’d be gone.
“They will. You’ll walk out of the gates, and nobody is going to stop you,” he said, so sure of himself that I almost believed him.
“Have you forgotten the guards? They’ll smell me as soon as I step outside. It’s just not possible.” The academy had twenty of them on the school grounds at all times. Didn’t this guy think I’d tried running away? I had—four times. They’d caught me every single time.
“But you haven’t tried with my help,” he said with a wink. “I promise you that by morning, you’ll be back home. You’ll be free of this place for good. Isn’t that what you want?”
“Of course I do.” It was what I wished for every night before going to bed, and every morning when I woke up. “It’s just not doable.”
“So try again. If it doesn’t work, you’ve got nothing to lose, do you?” the man asked, slowly leaning closer to me, his beauty taking my breath away. Every line on his face was perfect, which should have been a warning all by itself.
“What do you get out of it?” I asked, because logic said he was a new teacher. How else would he know my name, or know which room was mine? If he was a teacher, he could definitely get me out of there. Why not let him?
“What I want is simple,” he said, leaning his head to the side as he analyzed my face. “A kiss, and your life is yours again.”
“A kiss?” Like, on the lips?
“Yes, Scarlet. One kiss. What do you say?” To this day, I can’t figure out why that didn’t seem strange enough to make me run out of the room, and back to the dining hall, as it should have.
Instead, what I said was screw it. A kiss was nothing compared to my freedom. If he could help me, I’d kiss him three times, not once.
“And if it doesn’t work?” I asked, excitement colliding with fear in my chest. Just the thought of walking out of there, never to see those people again, never to be laughed at every single day…
“But it will,” he whispered, coming closer to me until our noses touched. Again, I was not afraid, and I didn’t even move away. I behaved like I was drunk, when I wasn’t.
I thought, what the heck. If it didn’t work, it was just a kiss. So I closed my eyes and waited, just like that.
When his lips touched mine, I felt nothing but their pressure and their soft texture. I thought he was going to make it last—hell, I wanted to taste him, see what he smelled like—but he didn’t. Our lips simply touched, and he moved away, leaving me wanting. I was a teenager, and he the most beautiful man I’d ever seen, who wanted to kiss me.
“That’s it?” I said when I realized he wasn’t going to come close to me again.
“That’s it,” he confirmed with a smile. “Thank you, Scarlet. That was lovely.” Lovely?
Shoot. Just when I thought I was going to make out with the hottest guy on the planet…“So what now? How are you going to get me out of here?” I was ready, as ready as I was the day Elena got sent home. I couldn’t wait to see her again. Looking for her was the first thing I was going to do as soon as I got back home.
“Now, you just walk out. Nobody is going to stop you,” he said, walking backwards to the door. “Think of me when you’re in need of help, Scarlet. I’ll be listening.”
“No, wait! I can’t just walk out! There are guards out there.” Werewolves who already knew my scent and would be after me as soon as I left the building!
“Just go, Scarlet. Don’t look back,” the man said, and slipped out the door. Cursing under my breath, I ran out in the hallway. Whoever he was, I was not going to let him get away. He tricked me, made me kiss him for…
But when I got out in the hallway, I saw something that convinced me I’d imagined the whole thing. My eyes made no sense to me. Fear made cold sweat break on my skin. Running back to my room, I slammed the door shut and pressed my back against it.
You just made it up. It’s not possible, I said to myself, trying to calm my racing heart. It really wasn’t. I’d seen the man walk into the wall across my door. He just…walked into it. Which wasn’t possible. Not even a little bit. What I needed was sleep. I was so tired that my own brain had played a trick on me, but…when I took the first step toward the bed, the pain hit me.
It started in my left hand—or wrist, to be precise. It was like something stabbed me, and the knife was still there, cutting through my flesh and bone, though my hand was right in front of me, and there was nothing there. At first.
Then, I saw the light. It came from the inside of my wrist, buzzing with life right under my skin, giving me a feeling of a million bugs swimming through my veins, making their way down to my hand and to my fingers. I screamed with all I had as I watched my fingers turn to light a split second before that light jumped off me. It was a lightning strike, and it fell first on the curtains across the room, as fast as…well, lightning. It then crashed on the bed and then on the drawer to my side, breaking the wood into a thousand small pieces.
I’d hit the floor on my knees, unsure of whether to trust my eyes as I watched the fire spread extremely fast over my bed and the broken pieces of wood from my drawer. Then, I heard the screams. They pushed me up to my feet and I ran outside in the hallway again, only to see the smoke coming out from under the doors that lined the walls.
Panic made my legs shake. Had I done that?
If I did, how? That light that came out of my hand burned my room, not all of them. Right?
White smoke quickly filled the hallway, and the screams grew louder. Everybody was in the ground floor, in the dining hall, so that’s where I ran back to. I never could remember the exact details. I just know that when I stepped into the ground floor, I found the students, all three-hundred and twelve of them, running for the exit. That meant there was a fire in the dining room, and I had definitely not caused that.
The cold air of the night cleared my mind a bit. The teachers were telling everyone to move west to the left wing of the school where the classrooms were. The building in the middle was the smallest, full of practice halls for every subject—we even had biology—and that, too, looked to be engulfed in fire.
At first, I went with the crowd, until I realized that nobody seemed to…sort of notice me. Students ran by my side, some of them knocked me on my shoulders, but not one turned their head to look at me. I suspected it was the panic, but then, a teacher was right in front of me, telling the others to hurry. He didn’t look at me, not once. So I stopped running.
Stepping out into the grass was hard, especially when I saw the werewolf guards running to the school. They knew my scent perfectly, after having caught me trying to run away four times. I froze in place when they got closer, sure that they’d tell me to follow the crowd, but they didn’t. In fact, they acted like I wasn’t even there.
Just walk out, the man had said. Just walk out the gates, and nobody was going to stop me.
I didn’t think about it twice, and I didn’t walk. I ran.
The gates were a five minute’s run from the right wing. I knew the way by memory. By the time I was in front of the them, I was breathless, trying to decide if my eyes were deceiving me, yet again. The gates were well protected with countless spells and three thick chains around the lock. Chains that were now on the ground, and the left gate open. Slipping out of it and out of the school grounds was something I’d dreamed about so many times. I ran and ran down the hill, atop which was the academy, until my legs threatening to give, and I had to stop to take a breath. When I looked back to where I’d come from, I found the entire right wing swallowed in flames. They burned so brightly, it was like looking at a miniature sun. Guilt and regret cut a hole through my heart. Indecis
ion made me sick. I knew I needed to run back there, see if anyone was hurt, help in any way I could. After all, I’d done this. I’d caused the fire.
But there was something in my mind, a voice that whispered to me, told me to run while I still had the chance, because if I went back there, they were never going to let me go. I stayed there for a long time, until the flames began to shrink. Then, I turned around and ran, and I never looked back.
Nineteen
I still remembered how it had felt. I’d found a plane ticket to Boston in the inside pocket of my jacket, together with enough money to pay for a cab to the airport, and from the airport, home. For whatever reason, I hadn’t questioned it, not until I’d found myself in front of the house I grew up in. My family hadn’t been surprised to see me by the door the next morning. My father hadn’t even asked me why I was home five months before school ended. He behaved the same as always, never even looking at me for long enough to be able to see that I’d grown in the two years he hadn’t seen me. That I’d changed.
Over lunch, he’d told my mother about the fire in the academy, smiling, as if nothing at all was wrong with that sentence. My mother hadn’t done her fake I’m-so-shocked-by-this-news thing like she usually did over the smallest things. I’d asked him if someone was hurt. He said no, that everybody was okay, but the damage done to the school was going to cost a lot of money, and that he was looking to maybe invest in it. His eyes had shone with greed.
But that hadn’t eased my guilt at all. Even if I personally hadn’t caused all the fire in the school, I’d accepted help from that man without knowing what his version of help looked like. It was my fault that people almost got killed, just because I couldn’t stand to be in that place for five more months.