by Eva Brandt
“Don’t jinx us,” I hissed at him. “We already have enough on our plate without you accidentally drawing bad karma.”
“I didn’t know you were that superstitious, Ms. Michaelis,” Mephistopheles teased me.
“I made a contract with the devil, Sir. I’m going to be as careful as possible.”
“Somehow, I doubt that.” Mephistopheles snorted. “Sit down. We might as well start today. I’ll give you a tentative syllabus on what you’ll need to do and some extra rules you’ll have to follow. I expect you all to be supportive and not try to push Alyssa into anything.”
“We wouldn’t do that,” Stefan shot back, the words still coming out in a rumble because of the modification in his vocal cords. “We’ve already promised to respect her boundaries.”
“Yes, but Alyssa’s boundaries can be fluid when it comes to the people she cares about. I wouldn’t want anyone to take advantage of that.”
I cleared my throat, not wanting them to start arguing again. “I thought we were supposed to be focusing on my schooling, Sir. The other day, we were going over the history of the Original Sin. Please, tell me more.”
“Yes, that’s very important to understand, because it’s the main source of the hostility between angels and demons. But it’s a heavy topic. Let’s focus on more practical affairs for today. You’ve been having trouble controlling your magic. We’ll tackle that and see where your issue lies.”
That sounded like an excellent plan to me. Studying history and law was all well and good, but if I kept being unable to summon my magic properly whenever I wished, it was all pointless. Even if I didn’t leave the school in my third year as I’d told my parents, I still needed to learn this.
Callum, Mikael, and Stefan volunteered as my targets. I was not amused. Their enthusiasm seemed genuine, but the last thing they needed right now was to be exposed to my unrestrained magic.
Mephistopheles had more sense than that, although not by much. He ended up summoning the shadowy manifestations of his magic and siccing them on me. “Try to fight them off,” he said as the shadows emerged from the corners of the room. “If you don’t succeed, I’ll give them free pass at your pussy.”
Intellectually, I knew that wasn’t true, but that didn’t make me any less outraged or determined to beat the damn creatures into submission. “I think not!” I shouted at them, making all the shadowy beings recoil, then wriggle around weirdly. Was that… pelvic thrusting? Ew, no!
“Don’t even think about it!” I added, fuming. “I mean it! God, I’m supposed to be focusing on my schooling.”
“We are, pet,” Mephistopheles pointed out. “I just provided you with targets and incentive.”
“You’re such an utter asshole, you know that?” I asked him, unimpressed. “I’m not going to screw the strange extensions of your magic.”
Meanwhile, Shiro was eyeing the shadows suspiciously. “Your males have an odd way of showing their desire to court you, Lyssa. Can I bite them?”
He’d never shown such hostility toward Mephistopheles in the past, but maybe this whole incident had him on the edge too. In any case, I had no intention of getting him involved in this insanity. “Please, don’t. I might as well try my hand at this little exercise.”
Mephistopheles probably didn’t think I could do anything to his creatures and considering my history with them, I had my doubts too. But like in the case of my relationship with these humongous idiots, I couldn’t know until I tried.
“All right, Sir,” I said. “What am I supposed to do to my… targets?”
“Whatever you please,” Mephistopheles replied. “Be creative. Remember, magic is an extension of your will. Shadow magic echoes that best, but every other type is no different. Focus on that sole wish you have and on your magical core. Acknowledge what you desire and feel it burning inside you, as hot as the flames of hell. If you do that, you can cast anything.”
As hot as the flames of hell. Well, that didn’t help me much, since I’d never been in hell. But on the other hand, I’d felt heat intense enough that I’d thought I’d melt on the spot. It was usually when I was with one of them, when they were touching me, fucking me.
Maybe that was the kind of focus I needed to find. Could I channel the lust I felt for them and turn it into magic? Well, it was worth a shot. If that didn’t work, I could fall back onto irritation.
Right now, I was more irritated than I was aroused anyway. But maybe it would serve them right to tease them a little bit too. I could teach them a lesson on making comments like that when I’d already said I wasn’t interested in taking things further today.
Feeling both playful and frustrated, I stuck my tongue out at my lovers, and then turned toward the manifestations of shadow. Hmm. What to do? It would be nice if they could be docile for a while. I could understand why Mephistopheles used them, but they could they irritating. Maybe I could make them listen to me.
As this thought swept through my mind, the creatures dropped to their knees and crawled on all fours, bowing and scraping at my feet. “Please, Mistress, allow us to serve you.”
I yelped in shock. What the fuck? Okay, that was not at all what I had intended. I’d just wanted them to be a little less hostile and less prone to tying people up. I had no desire to turn the shadows into my servants.
To my right, Mephistopheles made a noise of surprise and arousal. Right, the shadows were basically manifestations of his magic, so it stood to reason that he’d be affected too.
As Mephistopheles stumbled and tripped, Callum caught him, cursing. “Oh, shit.”
Mikael’s aura surged around him, and even if he’d lost his wings, he still had that same light I’d sensed inside him when he’d healed my Shiro. Meanwhile, Stefan made his way to my side and wrapped me in his furry arms. He didn’t kiss me, but his embrace was enough to distract me and make me focus on him alone.
The shadows around us faded, and the magic dissipated into a background buzz I could barely feel. By the time Stefan released me from his embrace, Mephistopheles’s creations had melted away, leaving us alone in the room.
“Uh, I think we should end the lesson here today,” Mephistopheles said. He was still leaning against Callum, looking uncharacteristically ruffled.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I don’t know what happened. I was just trying to obey your instructions. I didn’t intend for it to get so far. My magic keeps getting away from me.”
“Don’t worry about it, Alyssa,” Mephistopheles said. “It was my fault. I should’ve been more specific. You’re very powerful, so you can accomplish things easier than a less talented person could. But it’s a double-edged blade, as in your untrained state, you dump more magic into an action than you should. We will have to practice more and be more careful.”
“It’s been easy to forget about the most important issue while we’ve been focusing on everything else, but in the end, your well-being and stability will always take precedence,” Mikael offered. “But this is a temporary setback. Don’t worry. We’ll get you through it.”
Shortly after that, Mephistopheles dismissed us, but not before making another request. “One more thing before you go,” he said. “I think that, when we’re and private, you can go ahead and call me Meph. Mephistopheles is just such a mouthful, you know?”
“Meph,” I repeated. It shouldn’t have suited him, since he was so overwhelmingly authoritative and larger than life. I still liked it. It sounded a little like ‘meth’, which was appropriate, since he and the others had almost turned into a drug for me. “Okay. I’ll remember.”
In hindsight, maybe it should’ve occurred to me to ask why he wanted me to call him by that name. But at the time, I didn’t feel anything was wrong. Instead, I took it as a sign that despite my earlier blunder, we were all headed in the right direction.
I really should’ve known better than to have such hopes.
Demonic Status
Exams came and went in a whirlwind. I aced Law and Demo
nology. I’d done a lot of reading in that field because of my problems, so the finals were easy. I did very well in Necromancy too, although that was just because Professor Grim had yet to ask us to create a necromantic construct. We were currently coming to terms with our ‘inner death’—whatever that meant—and the snake bite had given me an advantage there.
People who’d had a brush with death were far more likely to become talented necromancers, since they understood it beyond the level of a general concept.
Lilith was thrilled to learn about the progress of my bond with Shiro and wanted to start me on an advanced curriculum of familiar magic. I wasn’t sure I was ready for that, since I still had so much work to do in every other field. I had to brush up on History and I lacked control in my practical magic.
As expected, there were no problems in Advanced Defense Arts, and not just because I was sleeping with the teacher. In Battle Magic, our exam involved something very similar to the test I’d taken at the beginning of the year. Morrigan wasn’t completely satisfied with my progress, but I passed anyway. Professor Jones fell ill shortly before the Herbalism exam, so we got away without having to do much for that one.
It would’ve been enough to put me in a good mood had everything else not been going like shit. I was slowly making progress in my relationship with my lovers, setting our differences aside and rebuilding something new. But because that was my rotten luck, the rest of the students still refused to accept Stefan’s inability to shift.
It was not unusual to hear them yelling slurs at him, just as ugly and violent as the ones against me had been, if not more so.
To make matters worse, Mikael wasn’t dealing with the loss of his wings very well. In the infirmary, he’d claimed he was adjusting, but I didn’t believe him. He tried to hide it, but sometimes, at night, I’d wake up and feel something was wrong. I’d leave my room and track him down. Whenever I found him, he was always looking at his back in the mirror, staring at the stumps where his wings had been.
I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to help them, but I felt lost. If only I could understand and control my power better, I wouldn’t have been so useless, but so far, I hadn’t made much progress.
Second term began, and we found ourselves thrust in a flurry of new classes. I had wanted to pick the Psyche Manipulation elective, but it turned out to be impossible, since it was incompatible with my current schedule. Mephistopheles promised he’d figure something out next year, but for the moment, I was stuck unable to explore these new possibilities further.
Maybe it was for the best, since as important as my schooling might have been, I couldn’t focus on that alone. Stefan, Callum, Mikael, and I had to stick together. I couldn’t help them if I got pulled into too many different directions.
When Stefan was with me, the other students didn’t get violent. Yes, they shouted insults, but they didn’t physically assault him, not like they had that day in the courtyard. The same went for Mikael. There seemed to be a consensus among most students, to not piss me off too much.
I wasn’t sure the extent of my skills warranted such caution, but I welcomed it and I intended to take advantage of it.
But I was also only a human, and I should’ve known better than to believe that wouldn’t have some nasty effects. When the consequences showed up, they struck suddenly, without warning.
In mid-January, we woke up to snow covering the ground outside in a thick blanket of fluffy white. Shiro was overjoyed. He’d always loved snow and he dragged me out of the dorms to play. I had just enough time to find something thicker to wear before I was swept up into his enthusiasm. The other students weren’t so happy about it. “What in Satan’s name is this nonsense?” I heard one of my housemates ask. “I don’t think it’s ever snowed on the island since the school was built.”
“I don’t like it. Something’s not right.”
This was the second weather anomaly that had hit the academy in the past couple of months and it was unnerving. I made a mental note to ask Meph about it properly. We’d never gotten the chance to really discuss it, and it might be important.
Shiro and I didn’t have a lot of time at our disposal for our game, since my classes were waiting for me. I had to trek down to the greenhouses to get to Herbalism, and I soon found that as beautiful as the snow might have been, it was exhausting to make my way through it.
By the time I reached Professor Jones’s domain, I already had a mild headache. Supposedly, he was going to start teaching us more about Elemental Magic today, but I didn’t think I would be very good at it.
Weirdly, Mikael, Callum, and Stefan had disappeared somewhere, which put me in a foul mood. I tried to ignore it, but by lunch that day, my migraine had worsened and I began to feel light-headed. I could barely grab a bite, and what I did eat, I threw up shortly after that. Two hours later, the headache was bad enough that I went to my room and took an extra dose of my potion. I knew it wasn’t a great idea, but I hoped it would help me anyway.
It didn’t, and ten minutes after that, I lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling, drained of strength. I’d yet to have a convulsive seizure, but it would happen.
Shiro whined and pawed at my clothes in obvious panic. “Lyssa. Lyssa. You need to see a doctor.”
“I don’t think I can move, Shiro,” I replied.
“That’s not a problem. We can get one of your males. Where did they go?”
“No idea…” Their departure had been strange, since they’d insisted that I always needed to have someone to watch my back while at the academy.
“I will find them and I will bite them for leaving you,” Shiro said. “Stay there. This won’t take long.”
Shiro left the room. I sort of wanted to tell him to come back, but I could acknowledge that I needed more help than he could provide.
Thankfully, he kept his promise and returned to my side in only a few minutes, with Stefan and Mikael following in his wake. If Shiro had bitten them like he’d said, they didn’t seem upset about it. Stefan took one look at me and panicked. “What the hell is going on?” Stefan growled. “Why is she ill?”
“I don’t think Shiro can answer that question, Stefan,” Mikael said. “We need to take her to the infirmary, so that she can receive real care.”
“Do you think they’ll help me there?” I croaked out. I wanted to reassure them, at least a little, but my tongue felt like lead in my mouth and my head was spinning.
“They will,” Stefan replied. “If they refuse, I will force them.”
I wasn’t sure that was in his power, but I was too tired and weak to protest. When Mikael took me in his arms, I curled against his chest, reveling in his familiar presence. Mikael bundled me up in thick blankets and carried me out of the room. All the while, Stefan emanated an aura of heat that protected me from the chilly temperature. “Am sorry,” I mumbled as we made our way through the dorm.
“What are you sorry for, my darkling?” Mikael asked, pressing his cool lips to my forehead. Why were they cold? He’d always been so very warm, in every way.
Was it because of the ritual? I whimpered. “I didn’t want you to suffer, to have to amputate your wings. And Stefan too… I didn’t want him to lose so much.”
“We know, Lyssa,” Stefan replied. “Don’t worry about us. Worry about yourself.”
“I can… I can do both.”
“You really can’t,” Mikael replied, and his voice was shaking. “But you know what? You don’t have to. That’s why we’re here. To worry about you, to fix everything.”
I might’ve tried to argue with him, but as we left the dorm, the cold wind hit me like a ton of bricks. I cried out, and the heat around Stefan increased. “Hang in there,” he said. “We’re not very far now.”
“I don’t feel well,” I croaked out. “I can’t… Can’t breathe.”
It had gone beyond the migraine now. I felt like I was suffocating, and yet, I was so cold. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. My heart was beating too fast.
I was afraid and my whole body was screaming.
Thankfully, Stefan and Mikael kept their promise and it didn’t take them long to get to the infirmary. Mikael placed me on the bed, already trying to find medical assistance for me. “Someone! Anyone! Help us!”
Professor Faust emerged from a side room. For the first time since I’d arrived at the school, he was dressed like a doctor. That didn’t fill me with too much confidence. “What seems to be the problem, Mr. Lost?” he asked.
“It’s Alyssa,” Mikael replied. “She was fine this morning. According to her familiar, she started feeling sick a little while after.”
Faust approached me and I was filled with the almost unstoppable urge to smack him. Normally, I might have put some effort into staying respectful, but right now, I didn’t feel very inclined to be nice. “I don’t like you,” I told him in a voice that was much too weak for my liking. “Y-You’re mean. Shouldn’t have said such horrible things about Mikael.”
“Horrible words are the least of your problems when you’re living at The Academy of the Devil, Ms. Michaelis.” He pressed his hand to my temple and hummed thoughtfully. “How much time did she spend outside this morning? Was she exposed to the snow before she went to classes?”
“Yes,” Shiro replied. “We played a game before she had Herbalism.”
TB hissed, conveying this information to Mikael. Mikael repeated it to the doctor. “I see,” Faust replied. “That’s most unfortunate. I’m not sure I’ll be able to help Ms. Michaelis, but in this instance, I promise I’ll do my very best.”
“Will you really?” Stefan growled. “You weren’t so eager in the past.”
“We all make our choices based on what seems to be the best approach. I won’t explain my train of thought to you. I think I know better than…”
The voice trailed off into nothing, and I could no longer hear or feel Professor Faust. Suddenly terrified, I tried to cling to Mikael and Stefan, to their presence and their familiar magic. It didn’t work, and the last thing I heard before the world went black was the sound of Mikael’s voice calling out my name.