Over Michael’s shoulder, I caught a glimpse of Professor Peabody. He was watching us. He had noticed Liam too and was now curious about what I could make happen.
If only he knew.
I conjured up a spell that should work for anyone that actually possessed magic. I’d heard my parents say it several times over the years. They had taught me so many things and I’d so diligently committed them to memory as I waited to attend this school and begin my supernatural life in earnest.
Little did I know it would all be for nothing.
I muttered the spell and pretended to focus really hard on the project instruction sheet on the desk in front of me.
It was now or never. May as well get my dismal failure over and done with. I wondered which of the four people around me would claim the ten thousand dollar bounty by turning me in?
A deep breath. Here goes nothing.
“Where there is truth, there is always a lie, take this paper, and make it fly,” I recited.
The paper flicked over on itself.
I knew for absolute certainty that I had not caused it to do that. So what did? I looked around at the faces surrounding me. Michael was still squinting, Scott managed to look bored, Penny was smiling encouragingly, and Liam…he winked at me.
Had Liam really flipped the paper over for me? And if he did, why? His gaze flicked to Professor Peabody as he moved on to oversee another group.
What the hell just happened? While I was relieved, it only created a bunch more questions that needed answering.
I had to keep the surprise off my face. I set my mouth in a line and refused to give away my emotions. Just one slip and any of these four people could turn me over to the Black Cloaks.
Now we had all proven ourselves, the group got down to business and started putting some words down on paper. They would eventually form the spell we needed to animate a book.
I tried to look interested but didn’t say very much. I knew a lot about spells but I was too worried to think straight. My whole mind was in a frenzy about what happened and what could have happened.
When the alarm sounded and our class ended, I was relieved to get going. I avoided everyone for the rest of the day. Even Cress didn’t find me as I chose to eat by myself on the edge of the forest.
I couldn’t stay out all night, though. When it started getting dark I returned to my dorm room. Perhaps a night of good sleep would help settle my thoughts back into a normal pattern.
Rosa was home. She was sitting on her bed when I walked in. I felt like walking straight back out again. I didn’t need whatever attitude she would have for me today.
I crumpled onto my bed in a heap. It took me a few moments to realize she was standing over me. “What do you want?” I asked.
“I know you’re not a witch.”
Those six words sent my blood cold. I really hoped I had misheard her. “What are you talking about?”
“You. I know you’re a roach.”
“No, I’m not. How can you even say that?”
“Cut the crap, loser. I know and you know I know. There is no point denying it. I heard you on the phone,” Rosa said with so much confidence there was little I could do to sway her.
Did I even want to waste my time by denying it further? If Rosa had been the one to overhear my conversation with my mother earlier in the week, she wouldn’t have even needed to think about it too hard. I was just surprised it had taken her this long to do anything about it.
Maybe negotiating with her was the better option. “So I guess you want to report me now and claim the ten grand for yourself?”
She laughed. “I don’t need more money. I have plenty of it and will get a huge check from my trust fund when I turn twenty-one next year.”
“Was it you who left the note in my locker?” I asked. I prayed it was. At least then I knew exactly who I was dealing with.
“What note?” She genuinely looked confused. She couldn’t act that well.
“The note in my locker. It threatened to expose me. You didn’t write it?”
She shook her head. “As if I would go to all that trouble when you are literally two feet away from my bed. The lockers are at least a five minute walk.”
I believed her. I guessed there was still an unknown out there who could expose me. Let the good times keep rolling.
“So you’re not going to tell anyone?” I didn’t let my hopes get up too high just yet. Girls like Rosa weren’t nice enough to do anyone any favors.
“I’ll keep your secret for now. But you have to do something for me.”
The catch. I knew it was coming. I hoped she didn’t need a kidney or something.
“What is it?” I asked. Better to know than to wonder for even a minute longer than I needed to.
“I hear you’re good at history and boring things like that.”
“Where’d you hear that?” I thought I had been doing a good job of being invisible. I definitely didn’t want people talking about me.
“It doesn’t matter. Do you know your stuff or not?”
“I guess.”
“Good.” She crossed her arms over her chest, ready to deliver whatever demand she could think of. “You are going to do all my boring theory-based homework.”
That sounded like a lot of work. “For how long?”
“Until I graduate.”
“Rosa, you’re a second year. I’m not even doing your classes yet. I might get everything wrong,” I pointed out. I could already feel the anxiety setting in for committing to too much. When would I have time for my homework and hers?
“I don’t have time for shit like history. It’s already happened, I don’t care. So you’ll just have to get things right or the deal is off.” She made it sound so easy. Yeah, I could just learn her coursework as well as my own. Should I have done it all while balancing a ball on the tip of my nose?
“And if I don’t?”
“My first stop will be Principal Dunlop’s office. Agreed?”
“Do I have any choice?” I asked, desperate.
“Not if you want to live, roach.”
I sighed. “Fine. I’ll do it. You’ll have to give me your class notes and stuff.”
“I don’t take notes. You can borrow my textbooks.”
On the bright side, if I lasted until the following year, at least I would know all the course work. That sounded like a huge if.
“You also have to leave,” Rosa added.
“Leave the academy?”
She rolled her eyes. “Leave this room. I told you I didn’t do roommates and I meant it. I want this room back to myself.”
“I already tried to switch and was told it wasn’t possible. They wanted me to put in an incident report about you. Which I didn’t do, by the way. You’re welcome.”
Her haughty expression never changed. “It doesn’t need to be official. I don’t want you here. You need to find a place to live.”
“But how—”
She held up her hand to cut me off. “I don’t care. Do you get that? I. Don’t. Care. Just leave. I’ll keep my textbooks by the door. You can take them and return them again with my homework done. I never have to see your ugly face again.”
I wanted so badly to argue with her. I wanted to throw her textbooks in her face. Report her to administration. Scream from the rooftops how horrible she was.
But I couldn’t.
Doing anything to her now would seal my fate. She wasn’t like Cress, she didn’t feel any kind of empathy toward roaches. I was just a tool she could use to make her life better.
For now, I would have to bite my tongue and comply. It was my life at stake and I couldn’t take any chances with it. There were no spells to bring back a life once it was taken. I didn’t need to be a supernatural to know that.
I stood up and silently collected my things. It had only been five days since I’d unpacked them. I knew not to get too comfortable here but I didn’t realize I would be homeless in such a short period of time. I t
hought for sure the Black Cloaks would get me before Rosa did anything to me.
How wrong I was.
My life could fit into one suitcase so it didn’t take me long to pack. I opened the door under Rosa’s watchful gaze.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” she asked.
I checked my side of the room, it was all clear. “No.”
She nudged the textbooks with her foot. “You should get a start on my history homework. It’s due on Monday.”
Silently, I picked up her book and carried it under my arm. I closed the door behind me before she could say anything else.
Where the hell was I supposed to go? Everyone had arrived for the new school year already, there were no vacant rooms and no switching allowed. The librarian would probably notice if I moved into the library. A night here or there would be okay, but leaving all my belongings there too?
The dining hall was too public. Classrooms were off limits outside school hours. Would anyone notice if I moved into the stairwell? Probably. This place didn’t have any elevators.
Liam came to mind but I couldn’t go to him. I was still unsure about what happened in class today and I didn’t want anything getting back to his father. The only other person I knew was Cress.
I hobbled to her door on the first floor and knocked. I was putting her in a difficult position by asking another favor. It was the last thing I wanted to do but I really had no other option.
“Eden, what’s going on?” Cress asked as she eyed my suitcase. “Are you leaving?”
“Rosa kicked me out,” I stated bluntly. “She’s blackmailing me.”
Cress looked up and down the hallway before grabbing my bag and pulling me in. She closed the door behind me. Her roommate wasn’t there.
“She really knows, about everything?”
I nodded. My stomach was creeping up into my throat but I wasn’t going to cry. Rosa wasn’t worth it. “I don’t know where to go.”
“You can stay here.”
“But your roommate—”
“I’ll make up an excuse. She’ll understand.”
“Really?”
“I’ll make sure she does.” Cress pulled me into a hug and it was exactly what I needed. The rest of the world—my parents included—might hate me, but at least there was one decent person in the world.
When her roommate returned, Cress said I would be there for a while. Claire had just shrugged and crawled into her bed. She was snoring within minutes. I wished my roommate was as inoffensive.
I tried to sleep on Cress’s floor but my mind wouldn’t quiet down. There had to be more I could do about my situation and now I had Rosa’s homework to stress about too. It was still only nine o’clock so the night was still relatively young.
Cress was still up and reading a book by lamplight. I told her I was grabbing a snack and then crept off to the library. I needed to do Rosa’s homework and she wouldn’t let me get behind. It was better to get it over and done with so I could have some kind of peace until next week.
The library was almost devoid of people. Everyone else had exciting and fun things to do on a Friday night. Even if I didn’t have Rosa’s homework, I still wouldn’t have anything fun on my agenda.
I found a desk near my favorite armchair and cracked the spine of her textbook. I was certain she’d never opened it herself. I inhaled that new book smell.
Her history class was almost like an advanced version of mine. It went over the wars the supernaturals had gone through and all the great leaders the community had over the centuries.
Rosa’s homework centered around the Supernatural War of 1390. It was a time when humans actually knew about us and tried to kill all our kind. Every human was tasked with defending humankind and vise-versa. A lot more humans had died than supernaturals—for obvious reasons.
This war was particularly important because it showed the supernaturals that humans couldn’t handle knowing about us. They created the Supernatural Secrecies Act shortly afterwards. It made it illegal for any supernatural to allow a human to know of our existence. The penalty for doing so was death to both the teller of the secret and the human that heard it.
I found all the answers Rosa needed for her homework and completed it as quickly as I could. Hopefully she would get a good grade and I could live for a bit longer.
When I was putting her textbook away, it slipped from my grasp and ended up on the floor. It opened to a section on the Supernatural Civil War of 1985. Now I’d seen the topic, I was curious to see what else they had to say about it that my textbook didn’t cover.
I curled up on the armchair and started reading. It quickly gave a recap of what I’d already learned in class. The war was started by a vampire and a witch falling in love. The factions were outraged and then fighting began.
The textbook elaborated on the details that my book had skimmed over. It gave the full name of the vampire and witch responsible for the entire war.
The vampire was named Drake Isagold. The witch was Samara Oakford.
I’d seen that name before and it wasn’t in any textbook. It belonged to my grandmother.
Chapter 12
Samara Oakford. I kept reading the name over and over again, trying to understand what I was seeing.
Maybe there were more than one Samara Oakford? It was possible. There had to be thousands of people in the world with the same name. There could even have been another Eden Musgrave walking around somewhere.
Right?
I shouldn’t jump to any conclusions. Not when it could all be a big coincidence. It was moments like these that I wished I actually knew my grandmother. I could call her up and asked if she happened to be the one that caused a civil war thirty-four years ago.
My first instinct was to call my mother and ask her. Surely she’d know if her mother was the same one that made history. After the last conversation with my father, though, that wasn’t possible either. I’d promised to stop calling them.
To think I wasn’t even allowed to call my parents now made me feel more alone than I had ever been before. It was truly me against the world now and I would have to find my own way.
But I couldn’t just let this go either. I needed to know if Samara Oakford was my grandmother. There was something about it that I couldn’t just brush off and continue on.
I hurried over to the academy’s computers and used my student ID to log on. I typed the name into the search engine and waited for the results.
There were plenty. Pictures of the vampire and witch come up in the images. I stared at the photo of the witch and tried to draw on memories from very long ago.
If I looked at the photograph really hard, I could see my mother’s features in the woman. The shape of their mouths, the color of their eyes, the way their cheeks shared the same dimple on one side only.
It was very possible that woman was my grandmother. I had seen her so few times that I could barely use my own memories to recognize her. I think I was only five the last time she was allowed to visit the house.
My grandmother had caused the Supernatural Civil War of 1985. It sounded ridiculous to even think about it. History was stuff that happened centuries ago, in another era. It was absurd to think this war was so recent and involved a genetically close relative.
Maybe I was going insane and seeing things that weren’t really there. The image of the witch and the way she bore some similarities to my mother could just be a coincidence. It all could just be one amazingly huge coincidence.
How many times would I have to tell myself that before I believed it?
I had to find out more and there was no way it could wait. Urgency and a thirst for information was at the forefront of my mind. I had to know and I had to know now.
I had to speak with my history professor. What were the chances he would still be up? He was a vampire and they didn’t really need much sleep. The odds might have been pretty good, I had to try.
There were no classes held at night but perhaps the
teachers were still around on campus. They lived there too, after all. The Professors’ dorms were strictly off limits to students but they had to travel out to the common areas too.
I checked the dining hall and the small room that was set aside for staff members so they didn’t have to sit with the students. I did a slow walk by the room a few times before I was satisfied Professor White wasn’t in there.
Next I tried the outside courtyards and still didn’t find him. I checked the administration buildings and nada. My last resort was trying the classroom. It was off limits but I had to know the answer.
Professor White was sitting quietly in his classroom, typing on his laptop. Relief instantly flushed through me. Thank goddess for vampires.
“Um, excuse me, Professor,” I said, trying not to startle him.
He immediately looked up. “Miss Musgrave? What are doing here so late?”
“I’m so sorry to disturb you.” I took a few steps in the classroom, silently telling him I couldn’t leave without speaking with him. “I have a history-related question and I’m sure you’ll know the answer.”
He sighed and then pointed to the nearest desk in front of him. “Take a seat and ask away.”
I hurried over and sat down. “I’ve been reading about the Civil War and the two people that started it by falling in love.”
“Yes, the witch and the vampire. What about them?”
“What do you know about the witch, Samara Oakford?” I held my breath as I waited for the answer.
“She was the witch, she came from a very powerful coven, and had advanced skills that left many in awe. If she had been weaker, the war would have ended much sooner.”
“Did she have any children?”
“Yes, I believe she had one child. A daughter, if my memory serves.”
My mother.
“Was her name Joanna?”
He pondered it for a moment, even going as far to stroke his chin as he wracked his memory. “I can’t remember what it was. Why do you ask?”
I couldn’t stand out in this academy. If I voiced my suspicions, then I would definitely stand out to Professor White at least.
I shook my head and smiled. “No reason. I was just doing some research in the library for a paper and thought I might have known the daughter. I’m probably mistaken.”
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