Good Witches Don't Cheat (Academy of Shadowed Magic Book 2)

by S. W. Clarke

  “What brings you to the village?” he asked.

  “A day trip,” Eva said. “We’re uni students from London. Know of any good sights nearby? My friend loves rivers.”

  “One’s two miles off, called River Roding,” the innkeep said, straightening. “Not much of a sight. There’s a historic estate not ten minutes’ walk from here…”

  “Oh, we’ve been,” Eva said. “Anything else?”

  Meanwhile, I leaned against the windowsill, ruminating over everything. All I wanted was for the man to leave us to talk.

  When he finally did, Loki crawled out from under the bed. “They do not sweep under there.”

  “He’s nice,” Eva said, gazing at the closed door. “And useful. There’s a river nearby, Clem.”

  I pressed away from the windowsill. “What do we do, Eva?”

  She rubbed her hands up and down the arms of the chair. “We get to the river and back to the academy as soon as we can.”

  “And Aidan?”

  “We can’t go back for him. Like I said before: trust me—he’s safer than we are.”

  “How is that possible?”

  She sighed, forking half a tomato from the plate next to her. She took a small bite. “It’s not my secret to tell.”

  “But you know his secret.”

  “Of course. We were friends before you and I met, you know.”

  I began to pace. “So we worry about ourselves. There’s no points of power around except the river.”

  “And the leyline we came by,” Eva said.

  “Which is currently being watched closer than a hawk’s prey.” Then, “Who were they?”

  Eva lowered the fork to the plate. “Formalist police. They work for the government.”

  “Which government? The United Kingdom?”

  “No, Clem.” Eva took a deep breath. “The magical world has its own government, separate from the regular world.”

  “Just one government?”

  She nodded. “When you can travel anywhere in the world simply by parting the veil, it’s not easy to maintain separate nation-states.”

  “Why me?” I said. “Why do they want me?”

  “Two reasons.” Eva glanced at Loki, who’d stopped trying to lick dust off himself as if in recognition of this moment. “One, you’re a witch. Your very freedom violates their laws.”

  I stopped pacing. “What law?”

  “The one that passed ten years ago, dictating that all witches must be imprisoned for the sake of the magical world.”

  I stared at her. Ten years. That was around the time when my mom and sister disappeared. “And in a year’s time, no one thought to tell me about this law? This government?” My eyes drifted to Loki. He must have known, too.

  “Umbra forbade us,” Eva said. “She didn’t want you to live in fear and uncertainty again. She knew about your life before…”

  “She told you about my time in the foster system?”

  “Only me and Aidan,” Eva said, standing. “She meant well. She wanted us to be sympathetic to your situation.”

  I crushed my eyes shut, fists clenching. “I don’t need anybody’s sympathy. God, Eva—the whole school must have been forbidden from telling me. That’s why everyone looks at me the way they do. I’m an outlaw.”

  Eva shook her head. “No, that’s not why. You have to understand, Clem…nobody attends the academy who supports the government. We’re all on the fringes. We don’t support their ways. The others are just naturally nervous around a fire witch because of all the propaganda. And the history.”

  I swallowed through a tight throat, didn’t open my eyes. “You said there are two reasons the government wants me.”

  “Yes,” Eva whispered. “The second reason is because you’re a fire witch.”

  “That’s the same as the first reason,” I snapped.

  “No, it’s not,” Loki said.

  I opened my eyes, looking down at him. “How isn’t it?”

  He hopped up on the bed beside me. “They want to use you to fight the Shade. You’re the most powerful weapon they’d ever have against her.”

  “Sounds like Loki told you,” Eva said.

  I slumped onto the bed, elbows on thighs. “Yeah, he told me.” My eyes lifted to Eva. “They’re going to come to the academy now, aren’t they?”

  Eva shook her head. “No. The academy is hidden from the world. Clementine, the headmistress isn’t just the leader of our academy—she’s a resister.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of the formalists. Of their autocracy. Of their iron fist.”

  I suddenly felt so small. So vulnerable. So naive. “And what about the guardians?”

  “The guardians don’t serve the formalists,” Eva said. “The guardians—my parents—save people when they’re taken. The formalists believe that any mage who’s been abducted has to be killed.”

  My brow furrowed. “Why?”

  “Because they believe they’re already tainted. Once touched by the darkness, they’re bound to turn to it.”

  “Bullshit.” I had been abducted, and I wasn’t tainted.

  Or are you? the small voice inside me said.

  “You’re right,” Eva said. “Which is why the guardians exist.”

  So many secrets. So many lies. Why didn’t anyone trust me to be able to handle real truths?

  I was still mad at Eva, Aidan, and Umbra—furious, maybe—but as I glanced around the small room, I knew this wasn’t the time to inhabit that anger. “We can’t stay here tonight.”

  She nodded. “I know. I’d hoped we could lay low for a few hours until the formalist police leave.”

  “And if they come here, to the village?” I asked.

  Loki’s ears perked. “They’re already here.”

  “How do you—”

  I was cut off by the sound of the door opening downstairs. Bootsteps sounded beneath us. Voices. The sound of the innkeep talking.

  Eva and I stared at each other from across the room.

  The window, I mouthed, stepping toward it and unlocking the latch.

  Eva nodded. She picked up her backpack, opened the flap for Loki.

  “Oh, not again,” he whispered, but he hopped off the bed and climbed back in.

  Eva pulled her backpack on, came to my side. We stood together at the window, face to face. “Ready?” she said as the footsteps sounded across the floorboards. When they started creaking up the steps, I nodded.

  I set both hands on the sill and pushed it up. I lifted one foot, kicked out the screen.

  Nobody was taking me. I would never be anyone’s weapon.

  Chapter Nineteen

  We were a quarter-mile down the street when the formalists noticed.

  The inn’s front door opened, and that woman’s voice from earlier yelled out a sharp word—my name. “Clementine, stop!”

  I didn’t stop. Eva’s cloak had fallen away from my head, and my red hair announced to everyone with eyes exactly where I was. It couldn’t be helped; it could only be dealt with.

  Twenty seconds later, I heard them jogging out the door. I heard the ignition of the SUV they’d left parked out front of the inn. These things we’d expected. I didn’t stop running; Eva didn’t stop flying.

  We had to get to that river.

  What we didn’t expect was for a second SUV to come into view ahead of us, at the village’s edge. They’d parked it lengthwise to span the road’s width.

  The formalists had set a perimeter blocking our path to the river. They knew exactly where we were headed.

  They really wanted me.

  “Gods,” Eva said, keeping pace with me in the air on my left. “They must have sent a whole contingent.”

  As she said it, six of the police emerged around the sides of the SUV, nightsticks extended. They fanned out, creating a human line some twenty feet wide of the vehicle at either side.

  “Don’t stop,” I called to her, eyes flitting over the buildings around us. They were spaced
apart, which meant— “Hang a left here!”

  An alley between two buildings gave us an opening into the woods. We were still most of two miles from the river, but our chances were better under cover—and off the road—than on it.

  The road bisected the river, but we didn’t need the bridge. We could use the river’s power at any point on its path to part the veil.

  Eva veered toward the alley, but stopped hard when a bolt of lightning ricocheted down the street right in front of her. I nearly ran into the lightning before her outstretched arm caught me, throwing me back with more force than I’d expected.

  I staggered back, glancing left. It had come from the direction of the inn, where the SUV was barreling down on us. The back door was ajar, the lead formalist standing on the running board.

  Her nightstick was still extended, pointed at me.

  Somehow they channeled lightning through those things. Just like Umbra, but without a staff.

  Blue lightning crackled at the tip, and I knew she was preparing a second shot at me.

  I threw up a hand toward her, sending out the largest cone of flames I could conjure. It hit the air, expanded into a plume twice as big as me. Not fast, not precise, but I couldn’t see her on the other side of it, and I knew the formalist couldn’t see me.

  “Go now!” I yelled as the fire rippled.

  Eva surged forward toward the alley. I was right behind her.

  Lightning hit the corner of the building just as I reached cover, and I smelled ozone. Why did it have to be lightning? After a year spent in combat class with Liara Youngblood, I knew one bolt was enough to knock me out. Maybe kill me.

  Which was why I ran down the alley faster than I knew I was capable of. Within seconds, we’d reached the wooden fence at the far end. Eva sailed over it, and I threw myself against it at a run, landing a few feet up and managing to grab the top. With a groan, I pulled myself up.

  Just like hauling myself onto an eighteen-hand horse.

  I dropped onto the ground on the other side, kept going.

  Eva flew backward, ensuring I was with her. “We’re not far, Clem. A mile through these trees, maybe.”

  A mile. I had to run a mile without them catching us.

  That might be easy for Eva, but for me?

  If only I had Noir.

  As I ran, I tried to focus on the distance between us and the trees. I tried to focus on the river I knew was out there. I tried not to acknowledge the small pit of hopelessness that had entered my gut.

  Their boots sounded in the alley. And then, the most unexpected thing of all: a man’s voice in the air.

  “Clementine Cole,” he called out. “Stop now, or you’ll be subdued.”

  I looked up. There, some thirty feet above me, three fae in formalist uniforms hovered with nightsticks.

  There were fae formalists, too?

  Of course there were.

  “Oh come on!” I yelled as a hasty one flicked his nightstick, shooting a bolt of lightning down at me. I had to dive, hitting the grass. When I found my feet again, Eva was already conjuring a vortex, her hands swimming in circles.

  When the cone had reached the ground, she thrust it toward them. But they, being fae, swept around the air magic and kept coming.

  I knew in an instant I wasn’t going to outrun them. Not through the trees, either. You couldn’t outrun fae in a forest.

  I threw up my hands, palms out, widening my stance as they came at me. If I was going to be captured, I’d at least leave them singed.

  But I didn’t get that chance.

  The world practically split with a deep-throated roar. It poured over all the buildings in the villages, reverberating through me until my bones shook.

  The fae stopped hard, spinning in the direction it had come from. Back in the direction of the estate, and nearing. Yells sounded in the village, lightning sizzled, metal shrieked as it was bent.

  Who was bending metal?

  A second later, I received my answer.

  With a crack, the fence I’d scaled exploded into shards, blue flames ripping through it. On the other side, a humanlike creature wreathed in the same blue fire hovered some four feet above the ground. The limbs were in constant, fluid motion, striking out at anything it saw. Everywhere the flames touched burst into roaring flame.

  On the ground, the shards of fence burned and burned.

  Behind the creature, I caught a glimpse of an upturned, burning SUV.

  “Clem,” Eva yelled in the same moment her hand grasped my wrist. “Come on. Run!”

  She pulled me along, and I staggered as the creature engaged the fae, blue flames rushing into the sky. It roared again, until my hearing was reduced to an awful ringing and I clutched at my head as Eva pulled me along.

  We ran. We ran without stopping, without looking back.

  “Eva,” I said as my hearing slowly returned, my own voice still distant and muffled, “that’s… That’s...”

  Her eyes flashed on me, wide with fear. “It’s Aidan, Clem. It’s Aidan.”

  We didn’t stop. We didn’t speak after that.

  As we ran through the trees, the sounds of Aidan and the formalists’ battle came to me in surround sound, echoing through the forest.

  A high shriek, a barrage of flames.

  The terrified screams of the fae.

  The thunder of something enormous slamming into the ground.

  An outcropping of leaves slapped my face, raking along my cheek. Focus, Clementine. Focus on this one thing.

  I’d always had trouble focusing on one thing. My mind was always circling the possibilities around me, what they meant for the past and the future. I spent more time thinking about the past than I ever ought to.

  But right now, I was thinking of the future.

  Aidan wasn’t a regular mage. That creature was Aidan.

  Eva had said he would be fine. She’d told me to trust her. But even if he was this...thing, it still felt wrong leaving him to fight alone.

  Of course, it didn’t sound like he was losing the fight. Far from it.

  What did this mean for the boy with the birthmark whom I’d come to think of as my friend? He couldn’t control it, and I knew better than anyone what being out of control meant.

  Problems. Lots of problems.

  “I see it,” Eva called. On her back, Loki’s head pushed past the backpack’s flap. His eyes fixed on me as she flew ahead and above, darting past trees with inhuman grace and reflexes. “Get ready, Clem.”

  I heard it before I saw it. And then, all at once, I saw it. A good-sized river, ripe with power.

  She arrived at the river’s bank ahead of me, her hands already moving through the air. She sliced from chest-height to the ground, the veil parting at once for her skillful fingers.

  Eva turned, reaching out for me.

  Ten seconds later, I met her hand. Together, we ducked through, emerging into the forest outside the academy.

  As soon as we were on the other side, Eva resealed the veil, zippering it back up.

  “What about Aidan?” I breathed, doubling over with my lungs near exploding.

  “We can’t risk the formalists coming through,” Eva said, still fixated on her task. “We can’t have them knowing where we are.”

  “But Aidan,” I insisted.

  When she’d closed the seam, Eva stood, staring into nothing and breathing fast, her shoulders moving with the adrenaline I knew we both felt. “He’ll make it.”

  “How do you know?”

  She glanced at me over her shoulder. “He has the everflame. They can’t beat the everflame.”

  Loki jumped out of her backpack. “Well, that was bracing.”

  The most powerful student…and he had this everflame. Under the weight of it all, I dropped to a seat on the ground, but Eva pulled me up. “No. We have to be inside the grounds. It’s the only safe place.”

  “Sure,” I said, too exhausted to argue. “Fine.”

  We were walking back to the gro
unds when a voice sounded far behind us. Aidan’s voice.

  We turned and found him swaying on his feet, the veil slowly sealing closed behind him.

  He had blood down the side of his face. And he was completely naked.

  We rushed back, each of us catching one of his arms. He sank his weight into us; I noticed, even at this angle, his birthmark was still smoking.

  Together, we walked him back onto the grounds, Loki trotting in front of us as though to herald our arrival. When we finally caught sight of the amphitheater and the clearing, the students outdoors all stopped to stare.

  To everyone else, Loki let out a loud meow. But what he’d said was, “Make way!”

  We got Aidan to the infirmary, where Nurse Neverwink was predictably shocked to see us. I couldn’t tell if it was the blood or the nakedness that sent her flying from her seat.

  Probably both.

  She brought Aidan straight to a bed, while Eva and I slumped into chairs in the waiting room. That was all our energy expended, and neither of us moved until Nurse Neverwink brought us each cups of peppermint tea and biscuits to help us rally.

  Loki hopped into my lap, curled up there.

  I drank with eyes lidded from the receding adrenaline, took a bite of biscuit. I swear, there was some healing property in this food; almost right away, I felt better. “Is he all right?” I asked the nurse.

  “He’s bloodied, but none of it’s his,” she said, racing around the infirmary to gather supplies. “Why’s he naked?”

  Eva and I exchanged a glance. Clearly Nurse Neverwink didn’t know about Aidan’s secret. This was all on Eva.

  “It’s a long story,” she said.

  Nurse Neverwink eyed me. “Bloodied and naked. Sounds like witchcraft of old to me.”

  I didn’t even have the energy to snark back. I just raised my biscuit in a salute.

  “This had nothing to do with Clementine,” Eva said, her voice sharp.

  The nurse raised both hands for peace as she disappeared into the main room where Aidan lay.

  I leaned my head against the chair’s back and rolled my face toward Eva. “So…”

  She looked at me with wide, sorrowful eyes. “I know—we should have told you about the formalists. I’m so sorry, Clementine. I don’t know how you can forgive me for lying to you.”