by Lucia Ashta
Her gaze zeroed in on me and remained on me long enough for Leander, Ky, and Boone to lean forward in their seats to look down the length of the row at me.
“Since we can’t make it to the practice room like I’d planned, we’re going to practice combat in here today. Sadie, can I count on you to help me out?”
Sadie popped up in her seat behind me, where I was pretty sure she’d been napping. She smoothed the wrinkles out of her coral-colored t-shirt with the terrifying words “The Angel of Hidden Blessing” emblazoned across it. “Sure, MJ. I’m happy to help.” I was pretty sure Sadie actually meant it too. She was partial to the coyote shifter teacher with the gruff attitude similar to hers.
“What do you need from me?” Sadie asked, already rising from her seat and moving toward the aisle.
“I’m thinking you hurl attacks at them, they defend themselves with whatever they can figure out,” Marcy June said calmly, while the rest of the class, including advanced seveners like Leander, Ky, and Boone, and Stacy, Tracy, and Swan cast concerned glances around the room, bare of anything that could serve as a shield.
“Sounds good to me.”
Sadie sauntered down the aisle, her ever-present curved blades swinging along her hips.
A dozen different students shot their hands in the air, ready to ask questions before the impulsive women could start flinging magic at us while we were sitting ducks in our auditorium seats.
But before Marcy June could call on a single one of them, the sprinkler system in the room activated. Because the Magical Creatures Academy was no ordinary school, the room didn’t actually have sprinklers. Rather, it was up to the Academy Spell to put out any fires.
Of course, there were no fires within the room, but water showered on us from above anyway. The rainfall quickly increased until it was torrential, students—girls and boys alike—squealing as they ran from their seats, seeking shelter from the pelting rain in a room that offered no shelter beyond a large desk at the front.
Sadie drew both her blades while she squinted up at the ceiling as though it were an enemy she could conquer, and Marcy June paced some more, her edges blurring as if she were close to shifting into her coyote form. Probably the thought of being soaked as a coyote was the only thing keeping her human.
Leander reached my side first, and then Ky and Boone were there helping Jas and Wren to stand. Both could now stand on their own, but not for long, and certainly not when there was a risk of further injury. With the way the Cat Pack squealed and barked, I doubted they were mindful of their surroundings—and I suspected they weren’t the only ones.
I was in the middle of casting Ky and Boone grateful looks when someone pounded on the locked door to the room. I saw Dave and Adalia, wide-eyed and intent on helping, at the door, but I also noticed that the water was coming down fast enough that it was actually pooling on the floor. The water was already half a foot high at the bottom level of the auditorium, where we’d entered.
Dave pounded against the door some more, and he and Adalia shouted, several students behind them looking equally frantic, but I couldn’t make out a word.
“Can you tell what they’re saying?” I shouted at my friends to be heard above the downpour.
They shook their heads, Leander’s long hair flinging across the shoulders of his drenched shirt in slapping clumps.
“We need to find a way out of here,” Boone said.
“The water will eventually stop though, right?” Wren cast a concerned look at the bottom level of the auditorium, where the water level had already risen several more inches.
“I’m not sure we can count on that,” Boone said, while Sadie moved up the aisle to us.
“Come on,” she shouted. “We need to get you all out of here.” She pulled me from Leander’s grasp and ushered me into the aisle ahead of her, obviously taking her bodyguard duties seriously. But once she got me there, she stopped. There was nowhere for us to go.
Sadie sheathed her blades with a snarl and pressed me back into Leander’s hold. “Take care of her. I’m the only witch here. I need to find a way to blast us out of here or something.”
But as she clomped down the stairs in her boots and waded through the now shin-deep water at the base of the room, her words repeated through my head.
As it dawned on me, I turned to look up at Leander. He’d already figured out the same thing I had. “Go help her,” he said. “You might not have a good hold on your mage powers yet, but you’ll be able to do more to help us open that door than any of the shifters or creatures in here.”
I was already moving down the stairs. But when I came up behind Sadie, she held up a hand to stop me. “Give me space,” she said. “I’m going to be blasting this door, and I don’t need to worry about you getting hurt while I throw everything I’ve got at it.”
She didn’t have to tell me twice. I mimed at Dave and Adalia to back far away, and once I was sure they understood what was about to happen, I hurried to the side, where the water rose up my legs all too noticeably. Turning my attention to the ceiling, I tried to make out if there was any clear source of the rain, but I couldn’t fully open my eyes, no matter how much I shielded them from the pelting drops. The water was coming down in sheets, as if we were in the middle of some tropical storm instead of a classroom.
Sadie didn’t waste time. Right away she began hurling orange fireballs at the door, and though they were just like the ones she’d used when she fought Marcy June in their demonstration, they didn’t so much as ding the door.
“What the fuck?” Sadie growled, launching ball after orange ball of her magic at the door, at its lock, at its hinges, and … nothing. The large wooden door didn’t even squeak.
“That’s not natural,” Sadie said.
“No shit,” Jas said from right behind me, making me jump. I hadn’t sensed her approach while I watched Sadie do her best to destroy the door. All my friends were behind me, along with Leander and Ky.
“If we don’t get this door down,” Sadie said, “we’re in deep, stinking doodoo. This water is rising too fast, and we can’t get a message to Sir Lancelot. All our messaging systems are down.”
“I’m going to try it again!” Marcy June called through the downpour, running her hands along the side of the wall next to the large whiteboard at the head of the room. I thought she must be looking for a Brick Bam.
When she slapped a wet palm against the surface of a brick, I knew for sure that’s what she’d been looking for, and apparently found, though the Brick Bam didn’t do what it was supposed to. It didn’t flare into a light show that promised her message would be delivered. All it did was echo the sound of the storm as it pelted the wall, the floor, the students, everything.
“Move out of the way, Sadie,” I said.
She growled, but did as I asked. “It won’t help. I gave it all I had and it didn’t budge at all.”
I shrugged. “I’ve got to try.” Not even she would argue against that point. A few students a year ahead of us had wrenched one of the auditorium seats free of its bracing and thrown it against the large glass panes that lined one wall. The seat had bounced off the glass and landed on top of a guy, a werewolf I thought. The windows must have been protected against breakage by the Academy Spell, ordinarily a good thing—when the spell wasn’t out to kill us.
“What do you think is causing this?” Boone was asking the others while I faced off with the big, bad door. “Is the Academy Spell just malfunctioning all on its own? Or is someone or something trying to control it?”
“The first thing the magicians from the MAA did when they got here was examine the spell. It’s super complex, so it took them ages, but they all agreed the spell is fine. Something else is messing with it.”
Which meant that the rain might actually be attempting to drown us.
Dave and Adalia peeked through the opening in the door once before I waved them away again. Once certain I wouldn’t hurt anyone—you know, just in case my magic actually w
orked the way I wanted it to for once—I stared at the door so intently that its outlines blurred. The detailed panel work of the wood faded into a dull brown, making it appear like nothing more than energy. Just like the air and water around us, I could move the wood. I could move anything and everything.
Though I didn’t think I’d ever realized it before, it was suddenly a certainty. My mage magic was energy, as was the wood of the door. As was everything in the world.
I could do this.
No longer consciously aware of the rising water level or the continuous din of panicked shouts of those behind me, I reached for my magic. Unlike how I’d done when searching for my lion to see if any of her still remained, I didn’t search for my magic in any one place. I didn’t close my eyes to go inward to search for anything. Simply, I called for my mage magic and had to work to control my shock when it rose on my command.
A vibrant gold burgeoned to life in the palm of each of my hands. And though it reminded me of the flames of a fire, the magic didn’t burn. If anything, it tingled across my palms like a cold breeze.
When I lifted my hands to fling my magic at the door as Sadie had done, instinct directed me to do otherwise. I allowed the flames of my magic to lick my hands, coating my bare arms before racing up my shirt, while I reached forward and pictured myself manipulating the wood of the door.
My mind’s eye trailed along the floor in front of me until it reached the wood, and when it did, I sensed the difference in energy between the door and its surroundings. However, it wasn’t really all that different—confirming what my intuition told me. Even what appeared solid to the eye was not. Everything was energy, which meant all I had to do was mix my energy with the essence of the door and simply … redirect it.
Had I been observing my thoughts as I usually would have, I’d probably have stopped right there and declared myself totally nutso. But since I felt almost like an observer of my own actions, I didn’t judge or question, I simply acted.
A couple of feet from the door, I waded through the vibrating infinitesimal fragments of energy, spreading them apart. As if I were doing the breaststroke in a swimming pool, I dispersed the particles that made up the door, until a gap emerged in the wood wide enough for a person to walk through.
I was still connected to the essence of the wood, to the essence of everything that surrounded me really—including whatever magic was interfering with the functioning of the Academy Spell—when the first palms clapped my back and shoulders in congratulations, jarring me from the place I’d gone to in order to perform my mage magic.
My eyes snapped open. Water was bursting from the room. Adalia jumped back and out of the way in time, but the gushing water slammed into Dave’s legs. He fell to the slippery marble floor and was swept from my sight, feet in the air while he struggled to right himself. Adalia yelped and ran off after him, sloshing through the water.
We now had an escape from the Illumination Room.
But I was linked to a force that didn’t want me connected to it any more than I wanted to be merged with it.
16
The days passed and little changed beyond new malfunctions to the Academy Spell popping up around the school. The mages on loan from the Magical Arts Academy grew increasingly harried and panicked. Whenever I came across them on campus, they were often muttering to themselves with a manic gleam to their gazes. If whatever was happening with the spell had them all this stymied, it didn’t bode well for the rest of us.
Even though my mage magic now simmered in a constant hum within me, I wasn’t deluded into thinking I had any chance of helping resolve the school’s problems. All the mages working on the issue possessed decades more experience than I, and besides, my magic was highly unstable. I could feel it out of balance within me and had no idea what to do about it. The last thing I wanted was to bring more problems to Sir Lancelot when the poor owl already seemed to be wearing himself ragged trying to fix his academy.
“Rina,” Ky said from across our usual table in the dining hall, startling me out of my daze.
“Yeah? What?” I blinked at him, and Boone and Jas cracked a smile on either side of him.
My brother was shaking his head at me, suggesting I’d probably been distracted for longer than I’d realized. “I asked you if you’ve heard from Dad recently.”
“Oh. No, I haven’t. Why?” I picked up my abandoned fork and cut off another piece of lasagna, dripping in cheese and marinara sauce.
“Because Sir Lancelot invited him to the school to see if he has any ideas about what’s going on here.”
“What?” I dropped my fork. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Ky rolled his copper eyes, so much like my own. “I’m trying to tell you now. Besides, you’ve been super distracted lately. It’s hard to talk to you about anything.”
I frowned. “That’s not true.” But when I felt the gazes of every one of my friends at that table trailing over me, I couldn’t help but wonder if he might be right.
Dave chuckled around a bite of pizza with the works. “You’ve totally been distracted. You’re staring off into space half the time lately.”
I opened my mouth for a quick denial before clamping it shut.
Leander clasped my thigh under the table and gave it a gentle, encouraging squeeze. “It’s understandable. You’ve been going through a lot.”
Yeah, I sure had, and not even he knew the extent of it. Though we spent as much time together as possible, making the most of the small chunks of time we could claim for ourselves, I hadn’t told him what I’d been feeling lately. It seemed unfair to burden him with a mess of magic and emotions I had no idea what to do with.
“I … yeah, I guess I have,” I said, and was about to say something else when a steady, rhythmic clonking stole my attention.
“What the hell is that?” Jas asked, rising onto her good leg to look over us. “Uh, I don’t think that’s good, is it?”
As one, the rest of us rose or swiveled in our seats. The messenger flowers that usually lined one side of the entrance to the dining hall, and whose pots were usually entirely stationary even if the flowers weren’t when they had messages to deliver, were hopping along the slate tile flooring of the dining hall. Clonk, clonk, clonk.
Adalia, Jas, Ky, and Boone sat across from us; their eyes widened as one.
“No, that definitely isn’t good,” Adalia said. I’d never heard the fairy say anything wasn’t good before; the brunette was remarkably skilled at finding the best in any situation. But her face scrunched in concentration as if she were trying to figure out how bad the situation really was.
Sadie chose that moment to slide her tray, piled high with steaming hot food, onto the table next to Boone, but she spotted the potted messenger flowers before she sat. “What the ever living hell is going on at this school?”
Seven messenger pots, in a straight line from the entryway to our table, hopped in perfect synchronicity. Their movements appeared choreographed, and that fact was nearly more disturbing than any other.
Hop, and the flower pot closest to us jumped to within ten feet of us, its bright fuchsia flowers wobbling precariously. Hop, and the whole line drew another half a foot closer.
Sadie rounded the table and positioned herself directly in their path. The pots kept right on hopping. Their aim appeared to be our table, unless we were merely unlucky enough to be in the middle of their trajectory. Since my arrival at the academy, I’d definitely been unlucky, but it was difficult to discount the purposeful quality of their march.
When the front pot hopped just short of Sadie’s boot, she drew both curved blades from their sheaths, the ones that were a permanent feature to her outfit—she even slept with one blade under her pillow, and the other clutched in her hand. But despite the lethal blades aimed at it, the pot in the lead just hopped on by.
When Sadie made a move to swing at it, Adalia jumped from her seat. “Sadie, stop,” she said. “You can’t hurt them just because they’re doin
g something strange. It wouldn’t be their fault. Obviously something is influencing them to do this.”
“Yeah,” Sadie growled, “that’s what worries me. Someone must be doing this.”
I exchanged a quick glance with Ky across the table. He looked as worried as I was. Every strange thing that had happened at the school since my arrival seemed to have been connected to one or both of us.
Sadie shadowed the pots clonking their way toward us, her menacing blades hanging over them. The plants moved as if they didn’t notice the hovering threat that could shatter their terracotta pots to pieces in seconds.
When the front pot gave a heave and leapt up to the bench seat, Sadie growled again and brought her blade to the lip of its pot, holding it in place. But it stilled only for a moment before a fuchsia glow encircled the flower and its pot, sweeping across Sadie’s blade up to the hilt.
Sadie gave a startled cry as the fuchsia light stung her hand, but instead of drawing back, she brought the blade down onto the pot, aiming to slice right through it.
The shiny metal of her blade bounced and deflected, forcing Sadie to react quickly to avoid cutting anyone at the table. While she recovered, the pot heaved again and jumped onto the table, landing amid our food trays, sending Adalia’s plate with a big, fat cinnamon bun coated in icing flying, and Wren’s pink lemonade spilling all over the table. Though both Wren and Jas had continued to make important progress over the last few weeks, they were slow to rise to get out of the way. And since Wren couldn’t move quickly enough, I remained at her side, Leander’s hand protectively at the small of my back.
The pot with the fuchsia flowers ceased its hopping entirely when it was positioned in the center of the table. A trail of pots stopped too, a pot with shockingly bright coral flowers next behind it, and a third with indigo flowers waiting atop the bench seat next to Wren. My best friend peered at the pot worriedly.