Called by Darkness

by Sean Fletcher

  “Mia!” I said. “Colson wants to talk to you!”

  I heard a small ‘eep!’ from behind the closed—probably locked—bathroom door. I rolled my eyes again. She and I were going to have a heart-to-heart later. Colson was a nice guy as far as I could tell—at least compared to my partner. She could have had it worse.

  “So did the stakeout produce any results?” Asher reemerged and went to the kitchen to rifle through the magically stocked fridge. He tossed a soda to Colson. He waggled another one at me, but I jerked my head no.

  “It…didn’t,” I admitted.

  I swore I saw the words ‘I told you so’ flicker across Asher’s lips before he shrugged. “They probably don’t know anything.” He kicked back in a kitchen chair, crossing his long legs. “But the Academy’s no stranger to attacks.”

  “Nothing like this, though. Whoever did this had a plan. They knew when we were going to be outside the grounds.”

  “And that manticore…” Colson said. His face turned anguished as he remembered. “It had been abused. Whoever released it must have trained it to hurt people.”

  “But the only threats and attacks we’ve had before were crazies and rogue Supes,” I said. “The Academy always deals with those easily enough. Who would do something like this?”

  We were all silent. Asher took a long sip from his drink. “Pretty much anyone who doesn’t like what the Academy stands for. Which is probably more people than we think.”

  “I know we’re not perfect, but what’s the point of attacking the Academy?” I said. “It’s here to help all Supes.”

  I gritted my teeth again as Asher gave me a look that said, ‘is that a serious question?’

  “Did you pay attention at all in Paranormal Politics? Plenty of Supes who liked the way things were hate us. All the different races used to be separate in their own boroughs, but when the Coalition formed they started allowing Academy entrance to any Supe who wanted to go.”

  “Not any,” Colson muttered.

  Asher nodded. “Yeah, but the Fae have always been a pain in the butt, so that doesn’t count.”

  I didn’t mention it, but I’d heard part of the reason the Fae weren’t at the Academy had something to do with my mom. I’d never asked her about it. One of many things I hadn’t asked. I hadn’t needed to. It hadn’t occurred to me until today that something in her past could become so real in the present.

  “Annnnyway.” Asher gave a long, cat-like stretch that pulled up the hem of his shirt just a bit. “Best we can do is keep studying and be ready in case they try anything else.” He glanced at me, the corner of his mouth curling up into another infuriating smirk. “Right, partner?”

  “Let’s get something clear.” I stepped closer to him, Asher lazily looking up at me as I jabbed my finger down at him. “You might be Lucien’s son, and popular, and charming—”

  His grin widened. “Charming? Did you hear that, Colson, I think she called me—”

  “—but don’t you dare ruin the next four years for me. I have to do well enough to graduate, and I’m not going to let my partner ruin that.”

  “Funny, last I checked I was ranked number one in the class.”

  My jaw hit the floor so hard I’m sure the people below heard the clunk.

  “Wait, you—you’re number—”

  Somebody knocked on our door.

  “I’ll get it,” Asher said cheerfully, standing up and brushing past me.

  I slowly recovered. “Is he really…number one?” I said to Colson.

  “Pretty sure, yeah,” Colson said. “I don’t keep up with that kind of stuff. And I wouldn’t worry about him holding you back. At least you have a partner.” He craned his neck to peer into our room. “I think mine must be part ghost.”

  Asher returned with a letter in his hand. Colson stopped Mia-searching long enough to eye it. “Another one? What’s that now, ten?”

  “This month, yep.”

  Asher tugged at the letter’s flap. There was a loud pop! I coughed as a wave of perfume filled the kitchen. When the cloud cleared, Asher was reading the letter, the front of his shirt covered in a thick layer of glitter. I burst out laughing as a small, pink streamer drooped from his hair. Asher simply continued reading.

  “Who is it?” Colson grunted.

  Asher gave a soft smile. “Sarah. She calls me ‘Dearest Asher’. And…” He let the bottom of the letter go and at least ten stapled pages unfolded from it, rolling out onto the floor. “…She’s quite, er, eloquent.”

  “Sarah…the girl two years below? Part harpy? Didn’t you go on, like, one date?”

  “Yep.” Asher folded up the letter and gently tucked it back in the envelope. “Well, in with the others it goes.”

  “You keep those?” I said as he vanished into his room again. Really? Did he stay up late reading them while simultaneously examining himself in the mirror? I knew Asher was no stranger to attention, but this seemed a little much, even for him.

  “I do,” Asher called. “Though I don’t feel the same, they obviously put a lot of heart and soul into writing them. I’m not going to throw that away.”

  And now I felt like a total jerk.

  Colson was giving me a funny smirk, like he’d known exactly what I was thinking. “He’s really not so bad,” he said. “You two used to be close, didn’t you?”

  “‘Used to be’ being the operative words.”

  Colson shrugged his immense shoulders, seeming to settle further into the couch. “Maybe you should talk to him about it.” He nodded once more to our room. “Is Mia planning on spending the entire semester in there?”

  “She takes a little time to get used to new people.”

  Colson grunted. “I’m not exactly new. I’ve seen her in combat class, and we had Fundamentals of Alchemy together last year. She was always getting top grades in there. I bet if she really tried, she could be number one.”

  I knew she could be, too. There was nothing stopping her but her desire to not show off. Instead, the number one spot went to…

  “Man, I need to find a bigger box.” Asher said. “What’s this?”

  There was another piece of paper on the kitchen floor I hadn’t noticed before. It must have been stuck to the letter.

  Asher reached down for it, right as I saw it give off a distinct shimmer—the tell-tale sign of magic.

  “Asher, wait—”

  Before I could think, I grabbed Asher’s arm and yanked, just as his fingertips brushed the paper.

  We were thrown into each other as a column of flame rocketed up from the surface. Heat chapped my arms as the fire circled our kitchen once before searing itself into the door of our fridge.

  I waited until the last of the blistering heat faded away before uncovering my eyes.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Peachy,” Asher said. “Though a bit uncomfortable.”

  I was suddenly aware of how close his grinning face was to mine, his arms entangled around me.

  “Wonderful.” I unceremoniously shoved him off and stood, face almost as hot as the fire.

  “What the devil…” I hadn’t seen Colson move, but he was now crouched by the fridge, fingers running across the still cooling burn marks.

  “Delay magic,” Asher said. “Not sure if it was charmed to trigger with me or any one of us.”

  “I think it was dark magic, too,” I added, stomach dropping.

  “The color of the shimmer was different?”

  “Yeah. Slightly purple.

  “I must have missed that. Good catch.”

  While I was still processing the compliment, Colson shifted aside and I finally got a good look at the message melted into our fridge door:

  CONGRATULATIONS ON SURVIVING THE MANTICORE

  WE’LL MEET EACH OTHER SOON

  Chapter Four

  Asher and I went to the mail room the second it opened the next morning. After maneuvering our way inside the hot, stuffy space, we’d found Spit-Tooth, the stubby
hobgoblin who ran the place.

  “No time to chat!” she grouched at us before tottering away. Asher and I followed, sliding around the piles of letters and packages precariously stacked to the ceiling. It was nearly impossible to hear anything over the drone of the mail-sorting machines magically siphoning each delivery off to where it belonged. I had to duck beneath a suspiciously coffin-shaped package. Asher bumped into a box and it shivered.

  “We just need to know if you sent anything that contained dark magic!” I yelled after Spit-Tooth. “It was on a small note? Really easy to miss?”

  “It…also might have been attached to a love letter,” Asher added.

  “Me? Dark magic? Hah!” Spit-Tooth said from somewhere behind us. “Nothing strong enough to kill you gets through, you can bet on that!”

  So…that’d been reassuring.

  “What if whoever released the manticore also sent us the message?” I said when we’d made our way out of the mail room and could actually hear ourselves think.

  Asher thought this over, brow furrowing. “Like they’re taunting us?”

  “Yeah, gloating.”

  And to us specifically. We hadn’t told anyone about the note, and we also hadn’t heard of anybody else running around screaming that they’d received a threatening letter that’d set their hair on fire.

  “I mean, who else could it be?” I went on.

  “Someone else who knows what happened.”

  “Someone else who was there,” I said. “Maybe…”

  “Another student,” Asher finished. He shook his head. “Like a prank? That’s pretty sick, especially for a joke.”

  But he looked just as uncomfortable as I felt. The Academy was our safe place, our home. I didn’t want to believe anyone who went here, anyone I knew, could threaten us. Why would they? It was so much easier to pretend there was someone from the outside plotting our downfall, but if that was true, then the fact they’d been able to reach us at all almost made the whole situation worse.

  After a little more speculating, we split to go to class. Asher had suggested we tell his dad, but there wasn’t anything to tell other than we needed a new fridge and—oh yeah—crazy manticore people were still out there. I was pretty sure they already knew that last one.

  “Find anything?” Mia whispered as I slid in next to her in Spellslinging 350. Master Hipsput—a shrewd, older woman with steel-gray hair and slender beak-like nose, gave me a disapproving glance, before turning back to lecturing. I let out a breath, sure I’d been about to get chewed out. All the staff must have been letting a few things slide after yesterday’s craziness.

  “Nothing,” I whispered back. “Spit-Tooth says she didn’t see anything, and we haven’t heard about anyone else having a message sent to them.”

  “Did you ask your mom?”

  “She’s gone already.” Half of me had expected her to swing by last night before she left, but honestly, I was glad she hadn’t. I hated the long goodbyes before she went away. Plus, part of me hadn’t wanted to tell her what’d happened. We didn’t know anything for sure, and it was one more thing she’d have to worry about while she was gone.

  Hipsput’s sharp voice projected across the students, carrying all the way to the top of the auditorium-style room. The advanced courses had really cut down the number of my classmates more than any previous years. Mia pushed her sparkly notebook a little closer to me so she could lean in. “I asked Demarcus and Penny if they’d gotten anything, but they hadn’t.”

  “You didn’t say what it was did you?”

  Mia shook her head. “Not explicitly. But…Skylar…what if it is from the same people as yesterday? That could be really, really dangerous!”

  Her large, blue eyes were round with concern. Though she was trying to hide it, I could tell the letter and the manticore had scared her more than she was letting on. Whoever had sent them had scared Mia, who didn’t have a mean bone in her body. The thought made my blood boil, and I swore I would never let whoever had done this hurt her.

  “No worries.” I smiled. “You’ve got me.”

  Her face relaxed, her frown turning slightly mischievous. “Is that supposed to be reassuring?”

  “Hey!”

  “Miss Rivest!”

  I tensed as Master Hipsput’s voice whip-cracked up to me, her frown clear even from up here. “Off to a good start this year, I see. Care to regale us with the differences between direct and indirect magic?”

  Ha! That was first year stuff. Basic. So basic…I’d forgotten it.

  “Direct magic…” I drew out, stalling for time while frantically racking my memory. “Is direct…”

  Master Hipsput’s eyes narrowed further. “Oh, bravo. Any other fascinating details?”

  Words were scrawling their way across my notebook, as though written by an invisible hand. Mia’s eyes never stopped facing forward, but her wrist flicked back and forth beneath the desk.

  “Direct magic is…magic that is tied directly into a Supes’ natural abilities. Like a Vamp’s increased speed and a shifter’s, er, shifting. And indirect magic are spells and charms and stuff druids and spellslingers can use. Usually a direct magic user can’t use indirect magic, and vice-versa.”

  Master Hipsput stared at me for a long moment. “Passable.”

  I let out a breath.

  “And thank you, Miss Marquee, for actually providing the answer.”

  Mia went rigid as a totem pole while the rest of the class chuckled.

  “I haven’t seen you this embarrassed since every single time you’ve ever laid eyes on Colson,” I whispered.

  “Hush!” she squeaked.

  Grinning, I leaned back in my chair and actually tried to listen to what Hipsput was teaching, something about verbal and nonverbal spells. With fewer students, I’d be hard pressed to get away with anything in class without her catching on.

  My eyes drifted to the second row, to the seat beside the bubble-gum pink hair of my friend Sylvia. That was the seat Asher used to sit in when we had classes together in here. I hadn’t actually compared my schedule with his like some of the other partners had, and I wasn’t about to anytime soon. In fact, if I had my way, we’d be splitting up ASAP. Number one. He’d said he was number one in our class. How had I not known that?

  Maybe if you’d paid more attention? A small voice said.

  Yeah, right. He’d probably gotten it by default thanks to his dad. What did he have to prove? Everybody loved Asher Dunadine, and boy he knew it. I was the one who still needed to show them something. That was probably what he thought, that I was the one holding him back.

  “Skylar!”

  Mia’s hiss made me look down, to where I’d nearly snapped my pen in half. I quickly relaxed my hand. Thankfully nobody else had noticed.

  Mia gave me a worried look, but I merely smiled at her and started writing. I pushed the rest of my doubts, and the ominous message from last night, to the back of my mind.

  The rest of the day didn’t get any better.

  The Masters hadn’t been lying when they’d told us the advanced classes would ratchet up the intensity. After Hipsput assigned us more reading than I was pretty sure was physically possible, it was on to Magical Defense. We crossed the Academy with our friends, bypassing the twenty-foot high golem the Conjurings class had been working on for ages, and ascended to the second floor. Magical Defense was the same as all the others. Tough. Like, really tough. Like, you-thought-you-were-ready-but-you-definitely-weren’t-you-poor-sucker kind of tough.

  I was putting my mind to it as much as I could, honest. Hard classes I could take. But as the day went on, I became more aware of the Masters’ heavy gazes on me. At first, I thought I was imagining it. They were scrutinizing us a lot more now that we were advanced students. But as the day went on I began to notice my classmates didn’t get the same attention. The Masters’ focus continued straying to me. Watching, waiting for…I didn’t know what. Something to impress them? Something to go above and beyon
d?

  By the end of Paranormal Literature, I was tense and agitated. All I could think of was how I felt like a puzzle barely held together by scotch tape, while Asher—who’d been in two of the same classes as me—still appeared cool and collected. Couldn’t he feel them looking at him, expecting him to perform as well as his dad? Didn’t he care? But no matter how much I watched, he acted like nothing affected him.

  It grated on me.

  The broad, well-lit Remembrance Hall where most students took lunch didn’t lift my mood much. The center of it was dominated by a massively misshapen oak tree, its canopy spreading out across the entire ceiling. Rumor had it the tree was charmed, a remnant from when an evil entity had attacked the Academy. It was vaguely misshapen, some of the branches like a monster’s arm reaching out to grab you. It had supposedly been an important battle. One my mom helped win.

  We finished our lunches among the dozens of students lounging on the indoor lawn beneath the oak and, since our Astrology classroom wouldn’t appear until the next lunar cycle, headed through the portal to Jones Park and Beastology.

  Master Scalius wasn’t there yet, but my classmates were lined on the shore, staring out into the ocean. The water frothed just beyond the surf.

  “Kelpies, finally!” Sylvia said happily, popping her gum. “Something interesting.”

  “Were kappas and imps not exciting enough for you?” Demarcus grinned at her between the gap of his ever-present scarf and mop of curly hair. Sylvia winced. She’d gotten a bite from a rather nasty imp. Heck, we all had.

  “I’m just saying, it’s time we stepped up and learned about actually useful creatures.”

  “Like manticores?” Jen offered.

  The rest of the class went silent. Which meant yes, like manticores.

  “Did you learn anything else about them?” I asked her.

  Jen thought about that. She was part water spirit, her skin tinted slightly blue like she was constantly hypothermic. And when she thought, her pupils dilated so much it was like looking into a glassy pool.