Would he mutter Eden Musgrave?
I felt hot and cold at the same time. My palms sweated but a shiver ran down my spine. It was impossible to look innocent when I could imagine a giant sign flashing over my head and telling everybody what I really was.
Principal Dunlop gestured to someone to the left side of him. A Black Cloak from the council stepped out with a boy bound in front of him. He had to give him a push to get him to move.
The Black Cloak and the boy made it up to the platform for everyone to see. I knew the guy. He’d been in my history class a few days ago. I hadn’t had an opportunity to speak with him but he never looked any different from the rest of my class.
“This is the non-supernatural we detained this afternoon,” Principal Dunlop began. “I have asked the council representative to bring him here now to show you that non-supernaturals can easily blend in with the rest of us. You might have spoken with this boy, shared gossip, copied homework notes. We have to remain vigilant. We cannot rest until every one of them has been removed from our academy.”
My stomach was in a permanent state of unease. It churned and burned as my throat threatened to constrict. Perhaps choking on my own vomit was better than if the Black Cloaks got to me.
Students at the front of the great lawn started hurling abuse at the captured boy. He shrank back, hoping to avoid the stones and litter they began to throw at him. I had a sudden urge to yell at them all to stop. That we weren’t the enemy. That we wouldn’t tell anyone about the supernatural world. We would keep their secret.
I wanted to be brave enough to do it but it would mean a certain death for me too. It wouldn’t achieve anything. If I wanted to make real change happen, I needed to be smarter about it.
The principal introduced the Black Cloak who took the microphone. He was a mountain of a person, solid and unmoving. “I have a message from the Supernatural Council. They are encouraging all non-supernaturals—or roaches, as they are commonly known—to come forward. They will show leniency for any roach that voluntarily surrenders themselves. You have three days to turn yourself in. You can do it directly with the council or to your principal. I strongly suggest anyone that falls into this category to make yourselves known immediately.”
What kind of leniency was he talking about? Did that mean they would take the death sentence off the table? What if they were implementing some kind of watching program where we were allowed to exist but they were checking up on us?
It was too much to hope for. I had three days to decide what I was going to do. If it put an end to my need to hide, then perhaps it was worth it. At least then I’d know the outcome. I wouldn’t have to pretend I was something I wasn’t.
I was going to have to think long and hard about it. I knew I would be caught eventually so maybe turning myself in was going to be the better option. Three days didn’t seem like nearly enough time to make that kind of decision.
The Black Cloak roughly escorted the roach off stage and the principal told us to resume our normal evening but consider the ‘generous’ offer of the council. How many more did he think still remained here? At the beginning of the week, I thought I would be the only one. So far, there had been at least three more.
I wished there was some kind of secret handshake that we could do to identify ourselves without the supernaturals knowing. I would love to know who else was going through the same thing I was.
Liam insisted on walking me back to my dorm room after we were dismissed. My brain was all over the place, I was too wrapped up in my thoughts to think straight.
“You sure you don’t want to grab some dinner?” he asked as we reached dorm 396.
“I’m really tired.” I was using that excuse too much lately but it was still the truth. Sleeping on Cress’s floor wasn’t much better than the library.
“You still need to eat.”
“I will, I promise.”
He lingered there for a moment longer in silence. “Okay, goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
I was still a little disappointed that I didn’t get to kiss him. Perhaps that was for the best considering what was happening. Yes, my body might have reacted to him, but my mind was screaming to run in the opposite direction.
Plus, once he knew I was a roach, he wouldn’t want any part of me. It was far better to remain at a distance now than suffer the inevitable heartbreak later on.
At least that was what I told myself several hundred times.
Rosa wasn’t home so I had our room to myself. I collapsed onto the bed and thought about calling my mom. She would be good to discuss things with but then I would be causing her to worry more.
I was too wired to go to bed yet. The decision was lingering in my head and screaming at me to decide. I tried to listen to my gut instinct. Mom always relied on her gut when she had a problem.
Mine just churned.
Now was a great time for my stomach to remind me how much of a witch I wasn’t.
My cell phone rang and interrupted my silent panicking. It was one of my friends from high school. I let it go to voice mail. I couldn’t pretend to be a normal girl at college right now.
When the phone stopping ringing, I hit the button to call home impulsively. Just having a conversation with someone who loved me would calm me down somewhat.
Unfortunately, it was my father who answered. “Hello?”
“Hi, Dad.”
There was a very long silence. Very, very long.
“How are you, Dad?”
“Fine.”
“And Mom?”
“She’s out doing the grocery shopping. Apparently we needed milk.”
“That’s Mom for you, always thinking ahead,” I said. He wasn’t giving me much to work with. “Do you think she’ll be home soon?”
“I don’t know.”
“Things are okay there?”
My dad gave a long sigh which made my insides shrink in on themselves.
“Dad?” I prompted.
“Look, Eden.” He only used my name when I was in trouble. I dreaded what he was about to say next. “I think it’s best if you don’t call here anymore. You know how it’s going to end. It will be better for everyone if you just…disappear. The sooner, the better.”
It felt like my father had kicked me right in the heart. The same man who had swung me around by the arms when I was little and who made me giggle until I couldn’t breathe.
The same man who had searched under my bed every night for three months straight when I was five because I thought I heard a monster living under there.
The same man who had held my hand when I was eight and broke my arm by falling from a tree. He told me I would be okay hundreds of times while the doctor set my cast.
The same man who had refused to give me a hug when he dropped me off at the academy. Had looked at me like I was already dead to him when I was powerless on my eighteenth birthday.
“Okay, Dad,” I said. “I’ll stop calling.”
“Good. Bye.”
He hung up before I could say anything else. I crawled into my bed and pulled the covers up to my chin. I suddenly felt very cold.
I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want to just accept my fate and roll over like I was giving up. While I still had a beating heart in my chest, I would fight. Even if that meant doing it alone and without my parents.
My mother had raised me better than being a quitter. So had my father too, if I really wanted to admit it. They were both strong witches and maybe one day I would do something to make them proud. Not giving up now was the first step.
I needed a plan.
Step one would be to decide whether I should turn myself in or not. If I was just delaying the inevitable, perhaps I should take myself to Principal Dunlop’s office and declare myself a roach.
On the other hand, if I remained free, then perhaps I could try to change things from the outside. Maybe I could somehow work out a way for roaches to be accepted in our community. Maybe we could b
e useful to the supernatural society in some other way.
I was still weighing up my options an hour later when there was a knock on the door. I wasn’t up to visitors and only knew a grand total of two people here so it was probably going to be one of Rosa’s friends.
They knocked again. I pulled the door open to see Cress standing there.
“Can I come in?” she asked.
I stepped away from the door. “Of course you can.”
“Sorry it took so long for me to come after the assembly. When I didn’t see you in the dining hall, I thought you might be hungry.” She produced a plastic container full of more food than I could eat.
“That’s really sweet of you, thank you.”
I accepted the food and she closed the door behind herself. We both sat on the bed while I tried to eat some of the food. There were many options squished into the container. I chose the mac and cheese first—comfort food at its best.
“The assembly must have been tough,” she said.
“I felt really sorry for that guy. It would be bad enough being caught, let alone being paraded in front of the whole academy.”
“It was a scare tactic.”
“They did a good job,” I replied. I certainly was scared. “I’m thinking about turning myself in.”
She audibly gasped. “You can’t! You’ve got to see that it’s just a trap, right? They don’t want to do any of the work themselves so they’re trying to trick people into surrendering.”
The thought had crossed my mind. “Maybe it is but if it means I don’t have to stand in front of the entire student body one day, then perhaps it’s the better option.”
“It’s suicide. Eden, you don’t seem to be the giving up type of girl. It’s why I liked you from the beginning. You can’t make it easy for them.” She said it so sincerely that I didn’t doubt that she really cared.
“They promised leniency,” I pointed out. “And they said it publicly. They can’t go back on their word when there are a thousand witnesses.”
She gave me a disbelieving look. As if she couldn’t believe what just came out of my mouth. “Everybody is scared of non-supernaturals. All they have to do is say you threatened to go public and so they ‘dealt’ with you. Nobody will question it.”
Cress made a good point. I wish she didn’t put a voice to the little doubting thought in my head. In my gut I knew what the council would do with me under all circumstances. Still, that little spark of hope wouldn’t be extinguished.
An alternative came to mind. “Maybe you should turn me in, then. You can claim the ten thousand dollars reward. If they are going to kill me either way, you may as well take their money.”
“I would never do that. Not in a million years and another million years after that. You can’t be thinking this way, Eden.”
“I don’t want you to get in trouble.”
“Don’t worry about me. Promise me you won’t turn yourself in,” Cress said.
I hesitated. I didn’t make promises I couldn’t keep. If I promised her that, I would not be able to change my mind later.
“I promise,” I replied.
It was done. My decision was made. I would continue to hide and pray to all the goddesses that I wouldn’t be caught.
May the goddesses watch over me. They knew I needed all the help I could get.
Chapter 10
Spells and Incantation class wasn’t the ideal activity for me to participate in the next morning. I had thought I should pretend I was sick and skip but worried that would put me on the professor’s radar.
So I put on my big girl pants and hoped I could bluff my way through the class. After all, it was the first one of the semester, what could they possibly have us do in the first class?
As it turned out, there was a lot they could make us do in the first class. Professor Peabody—who kept reminding us that he was the leader of his coven—assigned a group project. We would be able to work on it throughout the semester.
He allocated people to groups based on where they were sitting. I was in the second row, two seats from the side. Everyone directly in front and behind me were in the same group.
My team consisted of two boys, one girl, and Liam. I didn’t know much about the others but I’d seen them in my other classes. I wasn’t convinced teaming up with Liam and spending more time with him was a good thing. I still had no idea why he’d asked me to go for a walk with him and why he had shown me the spectacular view from the rooftop.
Plus, there had been that almost-kiss. I still kept having flashbacks to it. There was no way I could let myself start anything with him. And yet…that moment we shared was permanently etched in my memory.
After an explanation about our project and what we had to produce by the end of term, we were allowed to move into our groups and get started on the work.
The guy sitting directly behind me had a permanent squint. I wasn’t sure if it was a tic or whether the artificial lights were hurting his eyes. His name was Michael. Those two things were all I knew about him.
The other guy was one I’d already identified that I should stay away from. He was loud and always offering up his opinion in class. I’d also seen him challenge a professor before so he was arrogant too. I thought his name was Scott.
The girl was a quiet one. I’d seen her blending into the surroundings like I was. I had wondered more than once in the past week that she could possibly be a roach too. She didn’t stand out to anyone, which made her stand out to me. I didn’t know what her name was.
And Liam was still Liam. He had those beautiful eyes and brooding demeanor. Whatever chip he had on his shoulder was evident. I tried not to make eye contact with him. After yesterday’s assembly and the roach parade, I couldn’t let myself be distracted.
If that boy was anything, he was a huge distraction.
“Okay,” started Michael, “so we have to write a new spell to bring an inanimate object to life. It has to stay that way for sixty seconds and then return to normal. We can’t use any existing known spells. How should we approach this?”
Scott was the first to speak. “We just make it up. Use the elements that we know and then voile, it’s done. I don’t know what we’ll do with the rest of the term.”
Liam stared at him but didn’t say anything.
The girl surprisingly spoke up. “I don’t think it will be that simple. We have to combine several different concepts for it to work. They each have to meld together effortlessly or it won’t work.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said,” Scott replied.
Liam still remained silent.
I decided to chime in before the discussion got off track. “Why don’t we decide on which object we’ll use and then start to piece things together?”
Scott eyed me, up and down, before finding my face. “How about a pen? Is that easy enough for everyone?”
Michael said, “A pen would actually be quite difficult. It would have to write correctly for our project to gain top marks. Ideally, we should choose something that has a vague action. Like a broom. It only has to sweep and it can do that in any direction with any movement.”
“That could work,” I said.
“Isn’t it a bit cliché?” the girl asked. “I mean, witches and a broom? We don’t want to perpetuate stereotypes. We want to be a bit original, don’t we?”
I was starting to think she wasn’t a roach after all. Perhaps she was just quiet in larger groups. She didn’t seem to want to hide anything with us.
“A book,” Liam said.
Everyone looked at him as if they’d forgotten he was there.
He continued while he had their attention. “A book has to only open and turn pages. It requires skill but not too much. We can incorporate the element of air to help turn the pages. Peabody will appreciate us invoking the natural elements with the animation.”
“Is that what your daddy told you?” Scott said. If he was looking for laughter, he’d chosen the wrong audience.
&
nbsp; I thought he also chose the wrong target for his joke. Liam fired right back. “No, my father told me that you can shove it up your—”
“Let’s just get on with it,” Michael said as he cut Liam off. “Otherwise we’ll be here all day. Let’s vote. All in favor of choosing to animate a book?”
Four hands shot up. No points for guessing who chose to vote against it.
“Majority wins,” the girl said. “Has anyone done an animation spell before?”
“Yeah, let’s see what you’ve all got,” Scott said. He eyeballed every one of us in turn. I tried to look invisible but he still challenged me too.
Michael took control. “Why don’t we all show the group a simple spell that we could incorporate into the mix? We can then start with what could work and what might not.”
His suggestion sounded reasonable enough for the others to agree. I, on the other hand, was firmly having a heart attack. It didn’t matter what spell I tried to do, it wasn’t going to work.
Heat started to rush through me as panic began taking over. I could easily recite a spell but it would be plain as day for everyone else to see that I had no magic. This was it. This was going to be the moment when my big secret was revealed.
I was so totally and utterly screwed.
Chapter 11
I watched as Michael, Scott, the girl, and Liam all showed off their kills. I insisted on going last to buy myself some extra time but it was only delaying the inevitable.
Michael had created a breeze that blew his hair back. Scott made his eraser flip over a few times. The girl—who I finally saw was named Penny from the cover of her notebook—made her jacket zipper go up and down.
All Liam had to do to get his pen to stand on end was flick his wrist. I didn’t see his mouth move to mutter a spell. It only confirmed it for me that he was a very powerful warlock.
All eyes turned expectantly on me next. Four sets of eyes which made me feel two feet tall. They all expected to see something from me. Something that would never happen.
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