by S. W. Clarke
2. Mountains, especially volcanoes. The hotter, the better. This also included fault lines.
3. Any storm system. Lightning storms, hurricanes, blizzards. Again, the more powerful, the better.
4. Finally, leylines. They criss-crossed the world, and they weren’t evident to the average person—or an untrained mage. But educated mages knew where to find them.
After Milonakis had reached the end of the list, she paused. Her eyes lifted to us like she was preparing to ask a question.
But a second later, she just resumed reading in that same severe tone.
I had a question, and I’d found if I didn’t ask questions, they just smoldered inside me. So I raised my hand like I was back in high school. This certainly felt like a high school class.
She didn’t notice me right off. The fae next to me tried to push my hand down again, but I evaded his little fingers.
I had been told once there aren’t any dumb questions. And I’d lived by that.
Finally, when Professor Milquetoast—the nickname I’d immediately bequeathed her in my mind—still didn’t notice me, I cleared my throat. “Professor?”
She paused, and a stillness fell. She lowered the book slowly, her spectacles coming gradually into view. And those eyes…they bored right into mine.
“Yes, Clementine?”
“What happens if a mage tries to use a weak point of power? Are they transported anywhere at all?”
She regarded me the way you’d gaze at a mosquito who’s been living in your house for three days, but whom you haven’t been fast enough to flatten.
And then she kept reading.
Me and Red the fae left the classroom together, Loki trailing bleary-eyed behind. He’d fallen asleep under my desk during the hour-long class, whining when I wouldn’t carry him all the way down to the grounds.
“So what happened to you?” Red said, fearlessly walking beside me on the staircase as we descended. He did have wings, after all. He was probably just walking right now to humor me.
And on that note, I had watched jealously when the class emptied and all the fae in it had simply stepped out of the classroom and flown off the landing and off to wherever they were going, their lovely, dumb wings catching the shafts of late afternoon sunlight.
I glanced at him, then back down at the steps. The way I felt, I was a bit afraid of keeling over and tumbling down. “What do you mean, what happened to me?”
Red circled a hand over his face. “Your skin. It’s all charred. And your hair.”
I stopped hard, setting a hand on my cheek—then sliding it to my hair. It felt crispy, like it’d been burnt. When I made a face, Red chuckled. “You got the brunt of Liara’s magic, didn’t you?”
I was still touching my crisped hair. “Something like that.”
“Be glad it was only your eyebrows you lost.”
I blinked, ran one tentative finger over my left eyebrow—or the spot where my eyebrow used to be. Because it wasn’t there anymore. Neither was the right one.
I pressed my eyes shut with a groan, and Loki groaned behind me. “Could you please spare me the histrionics? I’ve had a very long day.”
“You?” I shot over my shoulder. “Look at me, Loki. You didn’t even tell me I looked like this.”
The cat blinked emerald eyes up at me. “I think it’s an improvement.”
I turned back toward Red, who was staring up at me with folded-arm mirth. “Also,” he said, “probably best not to interrupt Professor Milonakis again, unless you want her to give you a personal introduction to a volcanic point of power.”
“Sure.” I stalked down the stairs, trying to hide my embarrassment with anger. I was exceptionally good at slathering anger over every other emotion.
When I got back to my dorm, I was grateful to find it empty. Eva was off who knew where, which gave me the first moment of the day to be completely and brainlessly alone.
Well, except for Loki. But he knew when to let off, so he only silently followed me in, hopped up on my bed, and curled up.
I didn’t even have the energy to wash off my face and hair. I just fell into the bed with a thump. And to think, two days ago I’d thought I had adulthood figured out. I was nineteen, employed, a college student.
When had my life become a middle-schooler’s nightmare?
The moment you found out you were a witch, a small voice answered in my head.
That brought Aiden’s words back to me. Historically, he’d said, most witches turned to evil. That was why most people were wary around me. That was why Professor Fernwhirl had given me a closet broom. That was why Liara had blasted me with lightning.
And maybe they were right. Maybe they sensed something about me—about the Spitfire who resided deep in my veins—that they didn’t like.
Maybe they felt my anger.
I hadn’t even done anything wrong, but I already had to prove I wouldn’t.
How’s that any different from your old life, though? the voice asked.
Damn, my sleepy brain made good points.
I hadn’t realized I’d fallen asleep until the door opened. When it did, I shot up from the bed with a slurry of words dribbling out of my mouth. Excuses—apologies. Surely I was late for something.
I was always late for something.
When the door closed, Eva turned on her desk lamp. “What’s wrong, Clementine? You don’t have to apologize to me.”
I blinked hard, stared around me. I was in my dorm. I wasn’t late for anything. I had nothing to make excuses for.
Finally, my shoulders slumped. “It was an automatic reflex. You can probably guess which one of the two of us is always running ten minutes behind.”
Loki, who’d just barely lifted his head, blinked sleepily. “It’s her. It’s always her.”
Eva gave me a sad smile, crossed toward my desk, and set a covered plate of food atop it. “I didn’t see you at the dining hall for dinner. I brought you this.”
Before she’d even removed her hand, Loki had sailed onto the desk, landing silently beside it. He nudged aside the skein of cheesecloth. Eva laughed, watching as his pink nose darted underneath.
I half-smirked. “What’s under there, Nosy?”
Only the sounds of Loki eating floated back to our ears.
I met eyes with Eva, my invisible eyebrows rising. “It’s salmon, isn’t it?”
She grinned. “I have to make friends with my roommate’s familiar somehow.”
Eventually Loki let me join in, too. When I’d finished half the plate and my fugue state dissipated, I turned new eyes on Eva. “What time is it?”
“Late. After nine.” She paused. “Oh, and Aiden said to meet you at the library at six tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, right. It’s ‘late.’” I double-quoted in the air. Then the rest of her words sank in. “Six? Why?”
She shrugged. “Ask him tomorrow morning. That’s just what he told me.” She tilted her head. “What time do you normally go to sleep, anyway?”
I shrugged. “Two, three.”
“In the morning?”
I set the empty plate aside. “What’s wrong with that?”
“That’s very late, is all. Three is the witching hour.”
I laughed a little, expecting her to laugh with me. But she didn’t; she just busied herself with unloading her bag of books and pulling her hair from its bun.
I set the plate down on the desk. “The whole ‘witching hour’ thing…that’s just a joke, right?”
Eva didn’t turn around, none of the usual humor on her face. “No, it’s not. It’s very real.”
I glanced at Loki, who was no help at all. He’d hopped on the desk, following the plate, and was now studiously de-meating the salmon bones. “In what sense of the word?”
Eva’s voice grew small, guarded. “The veil between the underworld and this one thins at that hour. It’s when the forces of darkness are able to enter and exit our world.”
Once again, I waited for her
to laugh. She had to be joking.
But she didn’t laugh. Not even a little.
The witching hour was real.
Chapter Fourteen
I didn’t go out that night. Not after what Eva had told me about the veil thinning during the witching hour. It didn’t matter that the academy was protected by Umbra’s magic—after what I’d experienced, I knew how vulnerable I was.
How weak I was.
And if there was one thing I hated, it was being weak.
After my mother and sister disappeared, it was a resolution I made to myself. It happened on the day I entered the foster care system, and solidified as I began interviewing for a new family.
Interviewing was like applying for a job. What a strange reality of the foster care world.
It hadn’t taken me long to find that first family. I was twelve with long, curly red hair and a smattering of freckles. I made good first impressions, especially when I said less rather than more.
I learned quickly that if I wanted to find a family, I should keep my voice high and breathy. That would help me seem soft and innocent.
But that softness hadn’t helped me at all with my first family. They had six other foster kids—four boys—and it was long before the boys wanted to roughhouse with me. It wasn’t long before that roughhousing evolved into hurting me. Really hurting me.
And I never showed my pain. I never backed down. That was probably why the boys went so rough on me—rougher than my two foster sisters. They had a small, devious desire to see how far they could push me before I’d break.
They saw me as another boy. And I was all right with that. At least, until the day one of them grabbed Loki by the tail.
I’d spent a year with the family, and Loki had come with me. Actually, we were inseparable—he was always by my side, and the foster parents who’d taken me had sympathy. That was the one stipulation of my adoption: I got to keep Loki.
At first the boys mostly left Loki alone. Sometimes they meowed back at him when he wanted food, and sometimes they petted him a little too roughly, but Loki would let them know when they did wrong with a nip on the arm.
On the day it happened, I came home from school to the sound of the boys in the backyard. The oldest, who was fourteen and all skinny limbs that were still too long for him, was the meanest.
He was the one I found with Loki’s tail in his grip when I opened the screen door to the backyard. Loki, yowling as he was carried around the yard by his tail. Loki, looking at me with those same green eyes I’d taken comfort in when I’d lost my mother and sister.
That damn cat was my family. Not the boy holding him in one grubby hand.
I tackled him to the ground. I didn’t let him get back up.
He was the first person I’d truly beaten up. And though he’d deserved punishment, he hadn’t deserved the punishment I’d given him. I’d broken his nose, and he lost two teeth. I hadn’t stopped there.
The Spitfire had emerged, and she was relentless.
I hadn’t stopped until my foster father came into the yard and hauled me off him. By that point, the boy was unconscious. He’d been all right after a visit to the doctor, but that was the end of my time with that family.
I didn’t mind. The father had been the worst of them all; my brain wouldn’t even let me open that box of memories.
After that, none of my foster families had lasted for long. The Spitfire had always come out in one form or another, and nobody had patience with an angry Clementine.
But that boy—that boy who’d held my cat by the tail. My mind circled on him for years afterward, because though I hadn’t outwardly questioned it, I’d never understood how I had been able to beat him up so badly.
He was going through puberty. I was still a thirteen-year-old girl. Spitting mad, sure, but how had I been able to overpower him?
Now, lying in bed here at the academy at six in the morning, I understood. It wasn’t just my resolution never to be weak. It wasn’t just my anger over what that boy had done to Loki.
It was the Spitfire. Somehow, I sensed, that small part of me was entwined with my power. It was what allowed me to take care of myself when I’d gotten in trouble.
But here, even the humans had magic. Everyone was more powerful than me.
And I couldn’t rely on the Spitfire’s surge of anger to pull me through what was to come—future fights with Liara, or maybe another nemesis whose family had also been killed by a witch. The qualifiers. And, ultimately, going back out into the world.
Finding Mom and my sister, Tamzin.
I had to get good. And, as was almost always the case, I was impatient. There was no future—only the present. The desire sparked and crackled through my chest, and I knew it wouldn’t leave me until I got what I wanted.
And I knew where I could get it.
I emerged from my dorm with lidded eyes and slumped shoulders. Morning hit like an anvil, but I had to be at the library on time.
So I was vertical, at least. Not by choice—by requirement.
Who goes to the library at six?
Well, I’d find out.
I’d left Loki behind, but when he’d cracked an eye open as I got ready, he gave me the “Who are you and what have you done with my human?” look.
And I’d given him my best “Whatever” look. Fresh starts and all, right?
I made my way down to the grounds in the early dawn light. I didn’t appear so wild as yesterday; I’d managed to wash myself off and use Eva’s eyebrow pencil to draw on new brows and trim off my dead locks of hair in the bathroom, so now I just looked odd, rather than alarming.
As I crossed the grounds, slowly waking, I was struck by the relative silence. Most students weren’t up this early, and I was able to hear the sounds of the forest around me.
Birdsong echoed through the trees. It was refreshing.
As I came to the center of the clearing, I stopped and raised my eyes. Above me, the leaves were still wet with dew. Soft morning light issued through the cracks in the trees, warming my face.
Standing here, I could hardly believe true evil existed in the world. But then, once you’ve been carried out of your bed and down the street by it, you don’t ever really disbelieve again.
From behind me, a sharp noise sounded. It was high-pitched and insistent, like an animal. Like a…horse?
When I turned and followed it, winding around the wide tree where my combat class was held, I found myself staring at a low building I hadn’t noticed before. It was hidden, and the first one I’d seen not built into a tree, though it was crafted from wood.
It was wide, clearly manmade, with hard angles and a half-door with a black latch I could pull to open.
A barn.
I came closer, set one hand to the thick, unbending vines that had grown up to create a sort of roof over the frame. From the roof hung flowers and all sorts of flora, which must have grown over countless years to create this effect.
I walked over to the half-door, peered inside. Eight stalls lined each side, though I didn’t see any horses. Or people. But the place did look well-kept, freshly swept, the walls and floor bright with care.
“Hello?” I called.
No answer.
Well, except for the horse’s head that emerged over one stall door. An enormous black horse, his dark eyes regarding me beneath the longest eyelashes I’d ever seen.
Before I could greet him, he raised his head and whinnied. It was such a loud, shrill sound—especially as it echoed off the inside of the barn—that I clapped my hands to my ears, which were already ringing.
As he whinnied, he shook his neck, black mane flying and all the gleaming muscles in his neck shining in the morning light.
I had never been in the presence of a horse, but I already knew this one was something special.
I lowered my hands when he had settled down. “Hello, Beauty. You’re a troublemaker, aren’t you?”
His face turned toward me, nostrils widening. Somehow
I knew this horse was male—and a spitfire, like me.
I unlatched the door and let myself in. When encountering a horse for the first time in your life, you have to indulge a little.
I at least had the good sense to close the door behind me. I’d read stories of horses escaping through open barn doors, and I wasn’t about to get kicked out of the academy because I’d left a door ajar.
As I came down the central walkway, I glanced in the other stalls. Each was occupied by horse rumps of varying colors—tan, reddish, brown, dappled. Their heads turned as I walked by, some sticking their faces into the walkway to greet me.
Why did the academy keep horses and not, say, cars? We were living in the 21st century, after all. But then, I hadn’t seen a real road into the academy—just a worn path.
So maybe roads didn’t go this far. Maybe horseback really was the way to travel.
My mind circled back to the horsewoman from the story, the flames kicking off his hooves. The Shade.
The tan horse closest to me nickered, swinging his head. He probably wanted treats. Sadly, I had none.
I reached out to the other horses who had stuck their heads out, but they only sniffed me and turned away. They were definitely expecting treats.
Beauty, on the other hand, remained where he was, watching me with intense curiosity. His ears had perked forward.
As I came up to him, he gazed down at me—and when I say down, I mean way down. He made me feel positively childlike.
And I had a perfect view straight up into the dark caverns of his nostrils. I raised my palm up toward him, angling to touch the velvety nose.
He remained still as I came near, and as I set my fingers on his nose. It really was like velvet. I smiled, a small thrill running through me as his nose twitched under my fingertips.
Then he separated his lips, revealing enormous teeth, and snapped at my fingers.
I yanked my fingers away just in time, cradling my hand. Yes, it was still intact. Barely. “Holy hell, man. What’s that about?”