Mage Shifter

by Lucia Ashta

  As if she’d read my thoughts, she caught my eye and smiled again, before holding up the whistle, now exhausted of its magic, to continue her explanation of magical objects.

  26

  The last day of classes had finally arrived. I’d officially survived my third term at the Magical Creatures Academy. We’d have three months off for summer vacation before it’d be time to return once more. The great sorcerers Albacus and Mordecai had apparently arrived to repair and strengthen the Academy Spell, but the student body hadn’t seen them, sequestered away with Sir Lancelot as they’d been, and so the wizards remained as elusive and legendary to us as before.

  The one thing certain is that they’d fixed whatever had ailed the Academy Spell, and they’d also dissolved all spells cast by the dark sorcerers Radley and Laredo, though I had no idea how they’d managed it. According to Professor Hapblomb, undoing unfamiliar spells was next to impossible without the assistance of a magical object. But everything Fianna and Nessa, who couldn’t seem to help but gush, had told us of the ancient wizards, was that they performed the impossible on a regular basis.

  The truth spell the potted messenger plants had cast over my friends and me no longer affected them. I’d dissolved the effects over myself when I’d made up my spell negating the hold any foreign spell held over me as I ran for my life, Radley on my tail.

  The truth spell hadn’t changed things for my friends and me as much as I’d imagined it would. It turned out that we’d grown pretty comfortable with each other over the year and half we’d known one another, and we didn’t hold back often. I supposed when you were thrown into one uncomfortable growth opportunity after another, it was natural to face the challenges fully as yourself.

  I, for one, felt more myself than ever. For the first time in my life I was excited to find out what other secrets I might still hold. When my magic was so uniquely my own, I had no doubt the future held more surprises. I could hardly wait to discover what they were.

  “You aren’t coming with us, are you?” I asked Sadie the moment she approached me on the quad in the middle of campus, where I stood milling and waiting for everyone to gather.

  “Sorry, girl, but I’m needed here.” Her signature high ponytail swung behind her as she reached me, wearing an obnoxious red-rock-dirt-dyed t-shirt announcing that she believed in the Angel of Hidden Blessing, AKA me.

  I blatantly rolled my eyes at her. “Why do you keep wearing those ridiculous shirts? You know none of it’s real.”

  “‘Real’ is nothing more than a matter of perspective,” she said in a Yoda voice, and I was left waiting for an explanation of her enigmatic comment as she continued on to her favorite topic of late. “Damon and I are going to stay here until Fury wakes up, but if he doesn’t wake the hell up soon, we’re going to transfer him to headquarters. Thane will be able to get him to wake up.” Her normally pleasant smile spread into something maniacal.

  I swallowed the lump that had suddenly built in my throat. “What’s going to happen to Fury?”

  Her eyes twinkled in delight. “Nothing more than he deserves.”

  “I get that what he did was terrible, and that he should have stood up to Rage more. Maybe he could’ve prevented all that Rage did to me, but—”

  “Stop right there.” Sadie brought both hands to her hips, framing the cartoonish drawing of a long-haired blond angel on her shirt. “Fury might be better than his asshole of a brother was, but that doesn’t mean you need to feel bad for him. Rage was more powerful than Fury, sure, but Fury had been in the game as long as his brother. He could have done something to dissuade him from his actions.”

  “But Rage was his alpha. Seconds aren’t allowed to question their alphas.”

  “Rage and Fury were more than a pack hierarchy. They were brothers. Fury could have found the way to talk some sense into the nutter asswipe before he hired dark sorcerers who were as much asswipes as he was to steal what wasn’t theirs. Don’t think of Fury as some weakling at the mercy of circumstance, Rina. That would be a mistake. He’s a big boy. He knew what he was doing—”

  I opened my mouth to protest and she powered on.

  “—and he damn well knew what Rage was doing. He had a choice, and he made it. Now he gets to live with it.”

  I sighed. “I know, I know, it’s just that I think he regretted his actions.”

  “Well, then, he can take that up with the Angel of Hidden Blessing or the Angel of Hope I’ve suddenly started believing in. He still has to face judgment.”

  “And that judgment is Thane?”

  Sadie nodded. “Damn right it is. This isn’t on you, Rina, so let it go.”

  Orangesicle emerged from the dining hall then, ambling over to where the two of us stood apart from Leander, Ky, Jas, Wren, Dave, Adalia, and Boone. We were just waiting on my dad, who was wrapping up a meeting with Sir Lancelot.

  “Whatever my woman is saying,” Orangesicle called ahead, “listen to her on it. She’s as savvy as they come. She’s a sexy beast.”

  I nodded noncommittally. I definitely wasn’t going to touch any of that.

  “How many times do I have to tell you that I’m not your woman?” Sadie said to the troll, whose foot-and-a-half tall fro-hawk barely reached her waist. But Sadie was smiling, silently encouraging the pygmy troll, though I wasn’t sure she noticed she was doing it.

  “As many times as you wish,” Orangesicle said. “I don’t discourage easily. You’ll be my woman someday.”

  “No, I won’t,” Sadie rebutted.

  Orangesicle’s ugly little old man face spread into a feral grin, and he waggled his brow.

  “Um, I, uh, have something else to do,” I said, already walking backward to avoid the extra helping of weirdness going on between these two.

  “Wait!” Sadie said. “I won’t be here next term when you come back.”

  I halted my hasty retreat, my shoulders drooping. “Really? I won’t see you at all?”

  “I’m not sure. With the threat to you totally neutralized, I’m sure Damon and I will be assigned elsewhere. With the shortage of Enforcers, we’ve gotta go where we’re needed. I was already here much of this term when I wasn’t theoretically supposed to be.”

  “That’s my woman,” Orangesicle growled, patting the apron stretched across his plump belly. “She knows how to break the rules.”

  I worked hard to ignore the troll, whose extravagant flair begged for attention.

  “I’ll miss you, then,” I said to Sadie.

  “Aw, cheer up.” She punched me on the upper arm hard enough to make me wince. “I’m sure we’ll cross paths again. But for now”—she darted her head around me to look in either direction—“it looks like everyone’s waiting on you.”

  “Oh!” I whirled to find everyone assembled, even Dad, every eye on me and the odd pair of supernaturals facing me. “I’m coming, guys,” I said, but when I turned back around to say goodbye to Sadie, she was already walking away.

  “Sadie!” I called.

  Without turning around, she waved a hand of dismissal. “I’m not a goodbye kind of girl. We’ll see each other again.”

  When she brought her hand back down to her side, Orangesicle reached up to grab it. She slapped him away, and he reached for it again, muttering something about his feisty woman that I just had to tune out. With a shake of my head, I turned toward those I’d grown to consider family.

  Forcing a smile onto my face, I asked, “Ready?”

  “Only if you are,” my dad said, moving toward me, placing a hand on either shoulder and studying my eyes. “Do you feel ready?”

  I chortled nervously. “Do I feel ready to take on the prince heir of the fae, who’s trained as a warrior his entire life? What do you think?”

  “I think my daughter has done nothing but amaze me, as she’s turned into a remarkable young lady. I think you’re going to give the prince heir a run for his money.”

  “But do you think I can win?” I asked.

  “It does
n’t matter what I think. It only matters what you think. Do you think you can defeat him in this duel?”

  “No. Yes. Crap, I don’t know, Dad.”

  He chuckled, and I shot a quick look at Ky, whose eyes were wide. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen Dad laugh.

  “Well, in that case,” Dad said, “you don’t have to do this now. You can wait until you’re sure you’re ready. It seems like the boy Leander is important to you.”

  “He is important to me.” I met heated eyes with Leander, and I didn’t care that he’d heard me, or that our friends had too. It was blatantly obvious. “I don’t want to wait. I’ll just dread it for that much longer. Even if I were to train for years, there’d still be no guarantee I’d be able to beat him.” I shrugged, finally dragging my gaze back to my dad. “I just want to get this over with. Even if I don’t win, Leander and I will find another way.”

  “No doubt about it,” Leander chimed in, moving toward us, his wings out of sight. When he drew to my side, he added, “You don’t have to do this, now or ever. I’ll explain to my father, and he’ll understand.”

  “Will he?” I drew my eyebrows up my forehead, injecting the entirety of my disbelief into that one question.

  Leander sighed loudly. “Okay, no, he won’t understand. But we don’t have to care what he thinks, or what my mother thinks, or what my brother thinks. We don’t even have to care what the fae people think, and we especially don’t have to mind the elves with their lofty standards.”

  “The kind of standards that say two people of different races shouldn’t be together?”

  “Exactly those.” Leander took my hand while my dad stared at us both. “I love you. We will find another way.”

  Leander had said he loved me in front of everyone, when I hadn’t even said it to him in private. When I caught Ky staring at me, I reluctantly met his waiting gaze. His eyes were wide, his lips pressed into a tight line, but eventually he offered me a tight nod of approval.

  Though the physical gesture was infinitesimal, I understood that to Ky accepting my relationship with Leander was a huge effing deal. “Thank you,” I mouthed to him silently, and somehow, knowing Ky supported us, or at least was trying to, was the final piece I needed to get this show on the road.

  Taking in everyone else while I squeezed Leander’s hand in reassurance, I announced: “I’m ready to go kick some ass.” I grinned, and while the grin was totally forced, I was genuinely as ready as I was ever going to get.

  Jas whooped and hollered while Adalia wolf whistled and even Wren clapped along. Dave was the only one among us to look appropriately freaked out that I was about to portal on over to the fae’s Golden Forest to face Leander’s big brother in the Arena of Death and Defiance. And I got Dave’s hesitance. I really got it. Defying death once more was about the last thing I felt like doing.

  Before I could further examine all the ways in which I didn’t want to face off with Galen, I led the way toward the main gate, and only entrance, to the school. “Come on, everyone. Let’s head out! I’ve got this.” And by this I really only meant I had the next step in front of me, and the next after that, but no one else needed to know how much I was struggling not to quake inside. Galen was as strong and formidable as Leander.

  But Jas hooted another time, rallying our spirits. Of course, Jas was very easily the craziest of us all. Still, I latched on to her enthusiasm like it was a lifeline.

  Together, the hodgepodge lot of us made our way down the paved paths toward the exit to the school. Now that Albacus and Mordecai had fully fixed the Academy Spell, no one, neither friend nor foe, could portal anywhere within the grounds. Which meant we’d have to pass some scary rabbits, go through an enchanted mountain, and avoid some zealots with a good sense of marketing their beliefs, before we could step through Leander’s portal to the land of the fae.

  Halfway down the long path to the gate, the rest of the fae enrolled at the school joined us. Their traditional way of traveling to and from the Golden Forest at the beginning and end of terms was with Leander. Since most of us had left all personal items behind, as we never needed many at the school in the first place, and we’d already changed out of our school uniforms, we made quick progress, and by the time we reached the gate, we found a very pregnant Roberta standing with her arms crossed over her belly, watching us, her long, fire-engine red claws glinting in the late afternoon sunlight.

  Her beady black eyes zeroed in on me as Raider, Raker, and Rammer stepped up behind her. Though they towered over their mother, it was obvious they held a healthy sense of respect for the fiery matriarch, and I didn’t blame them. Even though I already knew that Roberta liked me more than she liked most students, I couldn’t help the flutter of nerves running through me; Leander squeezed my hand in reassurance. I supposed she was little threat compared to what I was traveling to. At least the rabbits didn’t want to beat me into a pulp—or at least I didn’t think they did. With the rabbits, you could never exactly tell.

  Raider flexed his muscles beneath the brown fur of his arms, but I barely noticed. “Hey, hon!” Roberta called out as we approached, and we all understood she meant me even before she continued: “I hear yer about to go kick some elfin arse!”

  I looked from her to Leander and back again. “Uh, yeah, I guess so.”

  “Well good. Give ‘em an extra boot or two to the behind for all of us, will ya? There’s an elf or two who put themselves exactly on my bad side.”

  The entire bunny mafia behind her grimaced, and I had no doubt being on her bad side was an unlucky place to be.

  I stopped right in front of her, mostly because she was blocking the exit, with the wall of her sons right behind her. We weren’t leaving unless we went through them.

  I smiled at her, ignoring how nervous I felt in the close proximity of the killer rabbits. “You’re having more babies.” Then my smile fell as it occurred to me all of a sudden that it wasn’t a smart move to assume a killer rabbit was pregnant. What if it turned out she’d merely grown fat over the duration of the semester since I’d last seen her? It was unlikely, but it was enough of a possibility that I cringed inside while I waited.

  At first she just stared at me, and since she had no pupils, and her expression seemed locked into a don’t-mess-with-me-or-else scowl—probably because she already had three-hundred-and-twenty children—I was in the middle of subtly backing away from her when she finally laughed so heartily that her long ears shook, and her sons eventually joined in. When she slapped her hand against her tight, spandex maternity pants, I relaxed a little, only to half jump out of my skin when she yelled, “Hoo-yah! I really had ya, didn’t I?”

  Damn rabbits about killed me from fright every time I encountered them.

  “You’d already gone an’ worried I’d just gotten lazy and fat, hadn’t ya?”

  “Uh-unh, not really, or not entirely,” I admitted, thankful the truth spell wasn’t still lingering to force me to be more precise with my answer.

  “Hon,” she started, like we were besties, “there’s no fat an’ lazy when you’ve got as many children as I have.” Without turning, she threw a random punch behind her, connecting with Raider, who grunted with a quiet oomph as he doubled over and took a step back from his mother. “Ya’ve gotta keep on the kids. If not, they’re always misbehavin’.”

  I genuinely had no idea what else to say to her, and couldn’t have been more relieved when Leander and Dad stepped forward, intercepting the woman intent on bringing a whole race of murderous rabbits into the supernatural world. Still, I somehow couldn’t help but like her … as long as I could admire her gumption and go-get-’em attitude from afar—from very far.

  “I’ve got this,” Dad said to Leander, stepping between him and Roberta. He inclined his head to the matriarch. “I take it you’re the famous Roberta Raindown?”

  “That I am,” Roberta said with a touch of hesitancy, eyeing my dad warily until he straightened and extended his hand to her. “I’m M
acon Mont. I’ve heard much about you, and I’m quite pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “Macon Mont, you say?” Roberta placed a paw on the palm of Dad’s hand, more or less shaking it. “I’ve heard about ya too.”

  Dad released her hand. “You and your sons have done a great deal for the school and for the supernatural community at large. Thanks very much for all your dedication.”

  “I s’pose the same could be said about you.”

  “Perhaps.” Dad’s smile was shy. “Anyway, while I’d love to remain and chat, my daughter has a challenge to fight. As it seems you already are aware, she and the second prince of the fae are fighting to be together.”

  Roberta’s dark, beady eyes widened, the errant whiskers above her eyes moving animatedly. “So you’re telling me that I’m now a part of an epic-like love story?”

  “It would seem like it,” Dad said, gesturing at Leander and me, who stood right behind him.

  “Well then, carry on!” she announced a little too loudly. “Never let it be said that Roberta Raindown stood in the way a love. I’m all for love. Never turn down love.” She patted her swollen belly. “That’s why I got so many kids, ya know?”

  I sure did know, and I was extra keen to pass through that gate before Roberta might have the chance to tell us how she found herself pregnant so often.

  “Thanks so much, Roberta,” I said in a rush, “for letting us pass, that is. Not for telling us all about your love life.” I gulped. “Though I would never be rude and ignore anything you wanted to tell me. That’s not to say you should tell me everything.” I looked to Leander, purposefully widening my eyes, begging for him to intervene before I could shove my foot any deeper in my mouth.

  But he was grinning at me and looking at me with soft eyes, as if this particular quirk of mine were cute. So I flashed a desperate look at Jas, who never had a problem opening her mouth.