Starlight & Shadows: A Limited Edition Academy Collection by Laura Greenwood, Arizona Tape, Juliana Haygert, Kat Parrish, Ashley McLeo, L.C. Mawson, Leigh Kelsey, Bre Lockhart, Zelda Knight

by Laura Greenwood

  My gaze went to the clock on the wall, as Professor de Spina droned on. Usually, I hung on to his every word, knowing it could be the difference between life and death. Today I hadn’t been able to concentrate. My guilt gnawed at me, creating holes in my ability to focus. Yet another reason I needed to clear the air.

  I counted down the minutes and when the clock clicked over and the owl hooted, I sprang out of my seat, desperate to stop Odette and talk to her. Even if her tears made me uncomfortable, I needed to man-up and apologize.

  “Mr. Wardwell!” Professor de Spina stopped me by standing right in front of me. “A word, please?”

  My heart dropped as once again the Dane legacy sped from the room, out of my sight. Barely refraining from sighing, I turned to my instructor. “Yes, Professor de Spina?”

  The rest of the day passed in much the same vein. I’d get up the guts to apologize but before I could, a peer, a professor, or the crush of bodies leaving our first-year classes would delay me as Odette rushed away. Never had the classes at Spellcasters felt overcrowded, but when I was chasing Odette they did.

  At dinner that night I entered the cafeteria looking for Odette. Once again, she wasn’t there.

  “Oh!” A body ran into me, and I turned to find Amethyst Rhines, her nose in a book as she approached the buffet. “I’m so sorry, Alex! I didn’t see you there.”

  I smiled at her. The expression felt foreign on my face. “No problem. Must be a good book.”

  “It is!” She brightened. She flipped it to show me the cover of a famed ghost walker’s biography. “Odette gave it to me. Sophia Renaldo is a family friend of the Danes! Can you believe it?! It’s signed.”

  My heart clenched. In the past, that Odette gave someone a signed copy of a book by a famous ghost walker would have annoyed me. I would have taken it as proof that she was skating by on connections, not talent or hard work. I didn’t think that anymore.

  “That’s awesome,” I said. “Well, sorry to have—” I paused as an idea hit. “Say, Amethyst, you wouldn’t know where Odette is, would you?”

  “I’m sorry, what?” Amethyst looked shocked by my question. I shuffled uncomfortably. My disdain for Odette was not a well-kept secret.

  Goddess, I am such a dick.

  “I’m looking for Odette.”

  Amethyst blinked. “Right. She’s with Eva.”

  “But the healers aren’t letting anyone inside the infirmary.” I’d tried to see Eva too, but her scars were proving impossible to heal. The academy’s healers were being extra careful with her.

  “They’re letting Odette. I think she begged, but her parents are also huge patrons of the academy,” Amethyst said with a shrug. “That can’t hurt.”

  No, it couldn’t, but I doubted that was the only reason they’d allowed Odette to see Eva. The fierce look on Odette’s face when she pushed past the professors during the Samhain Trial was seared into my brain. I needed to find a way into that infirmary to speak with her.

  “You’re right. Thanks, Amethyst. Have a good night.” I wandered over to the food line, the question of how I’d get into the infirmary bubbling within me.

  On autopilot, I grabbed a turkey sandwich and soup. Normally, I’d go for heartier fare, but for the last two days my appetite had been nonexistent. Guilt stole my hunger. I was about to sit down and mull over my issue when Headmistress Wake strode into the room. It was the first time I’d seen her since the night I fought the succubus. Rumor had it that she’d been at the Paranormal Intelligence Agency, discussing the bungled Samhain Trial.

  Her offer to do anything for me after the trial rang in my ears. My spine straightened as how I’d get into the infirmary became obvious. I approached the headmistress with my request and ten minutes later I stood in front of the door to the infirmary.

  “The head healer is not pleased,” Headmistress Wake said. “She already made an exception for Miss Dane, who has been here at all hours of the day and night.”

  Yes, that fit. I hadn’t even seen Odette in the cafeteria since the Samhain Trials. I glanced down at the food in my hand. Odette probably hadn’t eaten.

  Hopefully, she likes turkey sandwiches and soup.

  Headmistress Wake cracked the door for me. “Miss Proctor’s situation is precarious, so make it quick.”

  “I will. Thank you,” I entered the room. My gaze latched on to the single occupied bed—Eva’s. Sitting in a chair and slumped over the mattress in what had to be an uncomfortable position was Odette. Her dark brown hair spilled onto the covers and her face stuck to the pages of a book as she snored.

  My heart rate quickened at the sight of her. The reaction used to annoy the hell out of me, but no longer. There were worse things than being physically attracted to a witch who had taken advantage of the system. I could have been attracted to a cruel or evil person, a descriptor that did not fit the woman in front of me.

  Determined to make things right I clenched the soup and sandwich tighter and rolled my shoulders back. Maybe—if Odette accepted my apology—we could start a friendship. Whatever happened, it was time for me to man up. To lay it all out there and apologize for my past rudeness.

  It was time to make things right.

  The End

  Thank you for reading A Foretold Witch. If you want to read the rest of the Spellcasters Spy Academy Series, then why not check out book one in the completed series, A Legacy Witch!

  About Ashley McLeo

  Ashley lives in Portland, OR with her husband, Kurt, their dog, Flicka, and the house ghost that sometimes makes appearances in her charming, old home.

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  When she’s not writing urban fantasy and portal fantasy novels she enjoys traveling the world, reading, kicking butt at board games (she recommends Splendor and Dominion), and frequenting taquerias.

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  For all the latest releases and updates, subscribe to Ashley’s newsletter, The Coven, today!

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  As a Coven member you will receive a weekly update from Ashley and exclusive teasers, information about giveaways, and sneak peeks into her author life. You can also find her Facebook group, Ashley’s Reader Coven and join in on the fun there.

  Other Series by Ashley McLeo

  Spellcasters Spy Academy

  The Royal Quest

  Alice the Dagger

  Full Moon High

  Kat Parrish

  Blurb

  Laine Blackwood was just another California girl until her father shared a family secret with her; she’s a witch, heir to a supernatural tradition going back many generations and growing more powerful every year. What her father didn’t tell Laine was that buried deep in their family history are some very dark deeds that have put them at odds with four equally powerful families or that her arrival in his hometown of Stony Point, Washington will create an alliance that defies previous generations and paves the way for a community to heal. But first…she needs to pass her class in Alchemy 101.

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  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Truer words were never spoken.

  1

  Family Secrets

  It’s such a cliché to say you hate your parents when you’re a teenager. Most of the time you don’t really even mean it, you’re just venting, exaggerating for effect. What you really mean is that you wish your parents would quit giving you a hard time about what you wear, who you hang with, the amount of popular culture you consume, and generally leave you alone to live your life because you’re old enough to know what you’re doing.

  I’ve never had any real complaints about my parents. They’re good people and they love me. This means, as far as I can tell from talking to other people, I won big in the parent lottery.

  So, when my father abruptly moved us from Los Angeles to his small hometown of Stony Point, Washington (population 6,384), I didn’t go full-on drama queen. For one thing, it was a plot twist in his life and not something he’d been planning to spring on us without warning. For another
, I knew even with me and both my parents working, we’d been struggling in L.A. The two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment we rented cost almost three thousand dollars a month and in the hot months—and face it, they were all hot—the electric bill could hit four figures as well. And then there was car insurance and the phones and cable service and food and….

  It all added up to a monthly nut just slightly less than our combined family income. Any surplus money went into our emergency kitty, but even with a tiny cushion, we never quite caught up on our bills and we always carried a high credit card balance with the interest rate chewing up precious cash.

  When my uncle died and left my father his house the same month an opening appeared on the faculty of his old high school, my father considered it a sign from the universe. We packed up our California life and moved to the Pacific Northwest so fast it made my head spin.

  I got it, though. A job that paid more money and a free house? It was a no-brainer. And it’s not like I would be stuck in Stony Point forever. I was almost eighteen. After I reached that benchmark, I could leave any time I wanted.

  My father hadn’t been close to his brother, for reasons he’d never really explained, but my mother reacted to my father’s decision to move as if it was the worst thing that had happened to the family since a tree fell on the family car during an earthquake.

  “You got away once,” she said to my father when she thought I wasn’t listening. “If you go back, you’ll die there.”

  I thought she was being kind of melodramatic but she’s Russian-American and all my maternal relatives are divas.

  “It’ll be different this time,” he said. “With Ned out of the picture I’ll be head of the family.”

  “All these years,” she said, “living like fugitives because you didn’t want anyone to find you. All those years of scrimping and saving and just scraping by. For nothing?”

  Dad probably would have said more, but he saw me out of the corner of his eye and abruptly changed the subject.

  “Hey Lainie, can I interest you in a fro-yo run?”

  My dad knows I love frozen yogurt.

  Mom looked over at me, her face so blank it scared me.

  “Sure,” I said, wondering if the trip to Menchies was a pretext for my father to get me alone so he could explain some things.

  “Your usual?” he said to Mom and after a while she finally nodded.

  “With extra sprinkles,” she said grudgingly.

  “Goes without saying,” my dad said.

  “So, Dad,” I began as soon as we got into the car. “Why’s Mom so upset?”

  “Your mother’s a big city girl and Stony Point is a small town,” he said. Usually my father is pretty honest with me, but for some reason, he was lying now and he’s a terrible liar. I knew my mother’s complaint wasn’t just about “downsizing,” but something told me not to press him on the topic. I changed the subject.

  “Tell me about the new school,” I said. “Wixsted Academy. It sounds snooty.”

  “I still can’t get used to calling it that. Back when I went there, we called it Full Moon High.”

  “Why?”

  “It was a public school named after one of the town’s founders—Fenton Morehouse Harrison High. F. M. H. Full Moon High.”

  That sounded like a stretch to me, but whatever.

  “The school district sold the place to the Wixsted Family in 1980 and it’s been a private school ever since.”

  I’d heard my father mention the Wixsted family over the years and got the impression he didn’t like them very much. I guess he’d decided bygones were bygones if he’d accepted the teaching position at a school they owned.

  “What about the public schools?” I asked, trying to sound casual. I was wondering if there was any possibility he and mom would let me go to public school where I wouldn’t have to be the daughter of the history teacher and under constant scrutiny from both students and faculty.

  “There’s only one,” he said. “Chief Seattle High. You wouldn’t like it there. They don’t offer French classes and…” he gave me a conspiratorial grin, “the cafeteria food sucks.”

  When I didn’t smile back, he added, “Seriously Laine, the school’s not that highly rated in academics.”

  That was the kiss of death as far as my father was concerned, so there went my chance to experience normal high school life.

  I was so annoyed, I pumped extra caramel sauce on my bowl of vanilla yogurt when usually I just get a little squirt.

  Still, I was trying to keep an open mind. The Wixsted Academy uniforms weren’t completely awful, and I was used to wearing a uniform to school. I preferred it, in fact. I had friends who were going broke buying fast fashion to stay on-trend. I didn’t have that kind of discretionary income and anyway, I preferred thrifting and buying on Etsy to keep my carbon footprint low.

  When I announced I was moving, and would be leaving within a month, most of my friends at school acted like I was headed off to a developing country without getting my cholera shot. My friend Delia, who’d been born in Seattle, had driven through Stony Point once and had nothing good to say about it. Most of her criticism had to do with the weather. “It rains a lot there, Laine. Like a whole lot. Like rot your fingers off amounts of rain.”

  “I have an umbrella, Delia.”

  “It’s not cool to carry an umbrella,” she said. “You’ll look like a tourist. You’ll need to get a raincoat with a hood.”

  Mikayla, who’s a social media influencer and considers that a valid career choice, was even more vehement in her disapproval. “I give you a month before you start wearing lumberjack plaid shirts and puffer coats,” she predicted.

  “It’s August,” I said. “Probably a little too hot for plaid shirts, even up north.” I will never, ever, ever wear a puffer coat, I promised myself.

  My friends couldn’t believe I was genuinely excited by the prospect of living in a small town. They thought I was just putting on a good face for my parents’ benefit. But I wasn’t. L.A. was starting to close in on me. It was crowded and dirty and mean.

  My parents and I lived in Van Nuys, a city in the San Fernando Valley that was dominated by a whole street full of car dealerships. It’s not one of the hip parts of town, although it has its quotient of coffee shops and mega-grocery stores selling artisanal cheese and assorted imported olives. You know, the basics.

  The streets were congested, the air polluted, and there were so many people that no matter where you went or at what time, you always, always had to wait. There was a city bus stop right in front of our building, which was convenient, but the buses ran nearly all night and the hydraulic hiss of the brakes was the kind of sound that disturbs even a sound sleeper.

  The idea of living in a smaller place appealed to me for many reasons. I had never lived anywhere with a yard or had a bathroom to myself. My parents and I had always rented places so small we lived on top of each other, with precious little privacy thanks to the thin walls between rooms and between ours and the neighboring apartments.

  We’d never really had relationships with those neighbors—they were just people we nodded to in the hall as we came and went, picking up our mail, doing our laundry, taking out our trash.

  I was excited about living in a place that had seasons. I had never seen trees turn color in the fall. I’d never had a pet, and it got harder and harder to walk past the periodic animal adoption fairs set up outside supermarkets and not leave with a bundle of fluff.

  I was also more than ready to experience a semester of school where I wasn’t shoe-horning my classes into a week that also included thirty hours of teaching English to Chinese students online and handling the cooking and cleaning and laundry for the household because both my parents drove for Uber after work and on the weekends.

  I resented having to work while my friends headed to Jerry’s Deli for afterschool snacks or went home to a house that someone else had cleaned. Jerry’s Deli had closed during the pandemic, but the gang h
ad just shifted over to Art’s Deli where the girls could nibble on black and white cookies and the guys could get sandwiches with about a pound and a half of meat on them to keep them going until dinner.

  I told myself I was lucky. Most of the kids in my classes were already caffeine addicts who lived out of the backpacks they carried, as they shuttled back and forth between their moms and their dads. Most of them were in therapy. More than a few were self-medicating. A lot of them smoked, which is the most disgusting habit ever.

  So even though I had some misgivings, I had an attitude of gratitude about the move. Mom had eventually stopped objecting when she saw pictures of the house we’d be living in. So as far as Dad was concerned, it was all good. Deep down, though, I was worried about school. I was going to be a senior at Wixsted, and wasn’t looking forward to being the “new kid,” especially not at a private school where everybody already knew everybody.

  I’d only ever gone to one school. My father had taught history and world civilization at Macgregor Hall, a private school in Studio City attended by child actors and celebrity spawn. It was an excellent school that went all the way from pre-K to twelfth grade and was, as my father would say, “respected.” Educating me for free was part of my father’s compensation package and it was a hell of a perk. It cost three thousand dollars just to enroll at Macgregor, and tuition for the upper grades was forty-seven thousand dollars.

  A year.

  In Stony Point, you could buy a house for forty-seven thousand dollars and still have money left over to landscape the yard. I’d checked the Trulia listings.