by Sarina Dorie
Just a few things.
Thatch strode though the door of my classroom moments after the bell rang. He dodged through the current of students, a magical feat in itself. “I need to speak with you.”
I put up my hand. “Talk to the hand cuz the face ain’t listening.” I would not listen to one more of his rants about Elric.
“I don’t know what that means. You’re speaking nonsensically again.” His eyes narrowed. “Is this a tongue-twister curse?”
“It means she’s dissing you, bro,” a student said as he dodged out the door.
Thatch scowled. “It’s urgent.”
“I have nothing to say to you,” I said.
“Be that as it may, I have something I need to say to you. It’s about Imani. Puck informed me he’s found a placement for her at Camp Giggles.” He lowered his voice. “She can’t be permitted to attend that despicable place.”
“I know. Imani and I talked about it today.”
“Oh,” he said. “You mean to say she came to you? She didn’t . . . tell me.”
I shrugged like I didn’t care. Secretly, I liked it that she had come to me, not him. “I’m going to see if she can stay here with me this summer.”
He snorted. “As beneficial as that would be for her, it’s unlikely you are going to be allowed to stay at Womby’s.”
“Not unless I do everything you say and give up my horrible Fae boyfriend. I know. That’s the price to help me.” I rolled my eyes. “Thanks a bunch, but no.”
He grimaced. “Why must you be like this?”
“Why must you be like this?” I asked in my best imitation of a British accent.
“I came to ask you if you thought your fairy godmother would allow Imani to stay at her house this summer?”
“It’s already on the checklist as a backup plan. Are we done here? I’ve got a lot of paperwork. Believe it or not, art teachers do have to grade papers.”
He crossed his arms. “No, that isn’t all. Maddy Jennings. She can’t go to Camp Giggles either. I suspect I don’t need to explain why.”
“Because she’s a pretty young lady who doesn’t know how to control her siren magic yet, and she might draw out the pervey lust of gnome slave drivers?”
He cleared his throat. “Indeed.”
“I’ll ask my mom if she can stay too.”
Thatch sighed. “Indeed. I was afraid you would say that.”
“Not grateful I would say that?”
“Imani and Maddy shouldn’t stay in the same place. Think about it. Imani will bring out Maddy’s magic.”
He was right, which rankled me even more. “Ask Miss Periwinkle if she’ll look after Maddy this summer. That’s what we did last year.”
“Gertrude won’t. I already asked her.”
“You ran out of that special lavender-scented paste she likes for gluing books back together? She isn’t doing favors for you anymore?”
“More like I’m not doing favors for her anymore.”
I wondered if he meant sexual favors. Probably.
I considered what we could do with Maddy. “One of them can stay with my mom . . . but not both.”
“Correct. It would be better to keep them separated. It’s imperative you convince Jeb to allow you to stay at the school this summer so you can watch one of them.”
“No pressure.”
“I’ve taken the liberty of speaking to Jeb on your behalf. He said if I convince you to stop dating Elric—”
I put up my hand. “Talk to the hand cuz the wrist is pissed.”
“That makes even less sense than the rest of the nonsense that came out of your mouth earlier.”
I ignored him and kept on walking.
I spotted Thatch on three separate occasions on Thursday in the hallway downstairs from my classroom. It could have been a coincidence considering we did share a stairwell. On the other hand, it wasn’t like him to venture out of his dungeon of doom without a good reason.
Thatch stood in the hallway talking to students. He smiled at me slyly as though he had a secret. Not good. I hoped it had nothing to do with Elric. Thatch and his devious plans were the last thing I needed.
I had to figure out how to get Jeb on my good side so he would let me stay at the school longer. I had to find a way to help Imani and Maddy. I needed a plan. Like I had time for that with all the grading I needed to do.
CHAPTER NINE
Old-Fashioned Courtship
On Friday afternoon when I was done grading, I was permitted to see Elric while chaperoned by Mrs. Keahi. Jeb wasn’t in, so Mrs. Keahi allowed us to visit in Jeb’s parlor. I sat down on the leather couch.
As Elric moved to sit beside me, Mrs. Keahi shook her head and pointed to a chair next to the couch. “Separate chairs. You need to keep at least the width of the History of Fae between you at all times.”
“Are we talking about volume one or all four of them put together?” Elric asked. “Or will the CliffsNotes version suffice?”
I didn’t know if I was more surprised he knew that much about the school’s textbooks or the Morty pop culture reference to CliffsNotes.
“Unabridged,” she said.
She brought in a tray of lemonade and cookies. I suspected the hospitality was her doing, not Jeb’s. She poured each of us a glass.
“Aren’t I a good boy?” Elric asked. “I made an appointment with Mrs. Keahi like I was supposed to, waited in that uncomfortable chair meant for students, and didn’t use any magic or electronics even though it was dull sitting here.”
Mrs. Keahi gave Elric a reproachful look.
“He’s kidding. Prince Elric of the Silver Court would never use electronics,” I said. I hoped. “Sorry you had to wait. Students had questions about grades.”
“Of course. This is a school. You have a job. Just as I hope you’d be patient if I had to take care of business on my land whipping my Witchkin tenants for not spinning straw into gold fast enough.”
“What?” I asked.
Both Mrs. Keahi and I looked at him sharply for that one.
“Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.” He laughed. “That is what Witchkin think Fae do to entertain ourselves, isn’t it?”
Seriously, he was going to ruin any chances I would ever have of seeing him again.
Mrs. Keahi held up a stern finger in warning. “I will have no funny business from you.”
Elric’s eyes went wide. “From me?”
She unrolled a length of parchment. “You need to sit in separate chairs and keep conversation appropriate. Here’s the list of things you aren’t allowed to do while courting. No kissing, no hugging, no fondling, no fornicating, no dirty talk, no magic, no potions, and no loud noises that would disrupt the peace of the school. Understand?”
“Yes,” I said before Elric could get in a word.
He nodded.
“I have paperwork for graduation to work on. I’ll be in the other room.” She left the doors to Jeb’s office wide open as she sat at her desk in the adjoining room.
Elric leaned forward and whispered, “She didn’t say no orgasms.”
“I heard that!” she called from the other room. “Remember what I said about appropriate conversation.”
“That’s right. Check yourself before you wreck yourself.” I gave him my most disapproving teacher look, which was hard to do when I was trying not to laugh. “I’m thinking the ‘no magic’ and ‘no touching’ parts would rule that out anyway.”
Elric sipped his lemonade and choked. “What is this swill? Is this a Witchkin beverage?”
“It’s lemonade. It’s my favorite.” I sipped mine and coughed at the unexpectedly tart surprise.
No sugar had been added to the lemonade. Maybe it was from the principal after all. I couldn’t figure out why Jeb suddenly hated Elric. Or was it me he hated? What had changed? It couldn’t all be related to curfew. There had to be something more. A spell? A hex?
; Could Thatch have hexed Jeb into hating Elric? That would have been illegal.
Elric crossed the room and opened Jeb’s liquor cabinet. I shook my head at him. “You’re going to get me in trouble.”
“Alcohol wasn’t on the list of no-nos.” He grabbed a bottle of whiskey and brought it over.
I waited for Mrs. Keahi to object. When she didn’t, he poured some in one of the empty glasses, one-part whiskey and one-part lemonade. He grabbed my glass, which he didn’t doctor, and took both out to Mrs. Keahi.
The leather of my seat creaked as I turned to try to see him past the door. His back was turned to me as he leaned across Mrs. Keahi’s desk. I couldn’t see much other than his pants hugging his shapely behind.
“Would you tell me which of these is more palatable?” Elric asked. “Miss Lawrence prefers the one on the right. I prefer the one on the left.”
I sank down onto the couch. This was probably why Jeb wanted to fire me, for associating with a trickster Fae.
Mrs. Keahi coughed. “The one you prefer makes it almost tolerable.”
He came back a moment later, both glasses gone, but not empty-handed. He held out three organic sugar packets to me. Huh, maybe Mrs. Keahi did have a heart.
Elric sat in the chair closest to the couch, and we sugared up new glasses of lemonade. He nudged my foot with his, a smile on his face. “Tell me about your week so far?”
I told him about most of my week, excluding Thatch.
“Why do you think the principal is really mad at me?” I asked. “I get that curfew is important, but this just seems . . . drastic. Petty. Miss Bloodmire says she’s missed curfew lots of times. And us spending time together isn’t anything new, right?”
Elric cleared his throat. “I’m afraid Mr. Thatch has poisoned him against me. I don’t mind a headmaster hating me—I’m used to it after my son’s experience working here. Only, I wish people didn’t take out their dislike of me on you.”
He held his hand out, and I took it. As he leaned down to kiss my knuckles, he hesitated and patted my hand instead. “I don’t want to do anything to get you in more trouble.”
I appreciated his thoughtfulness. I thanked him with a smile before drawing my hand back to my lap.
“Jeb said he might allow me to stay here during the summer, but he’d have to think about it.”
Elric leaned back in his chair. “I think what he means is he wants to see how much I’m willing to bribe him.”
Jeb had said that he resented being bought by Fae, yet now that’s all he would do. He was contradictory and hypocritical. Or perhaps just senile.
“I need this job,” I said. But it was more than that. I wanted magic. “I need Womby’s. I don’t want to be fired.”
“You can get a job elsewhere. I’ll help you get an interview at the Lady of the Lake School for Girls. My son was friends with one of the teachers there. She’s very old, but she’s the headmistress now, and she’ll remember him.”
I hated that silent debt between us, that he was willing to do all this for me. In this world of Fae rules, I didn’t doubt that favor would eventually come with a price. I wanted to be able to get a job without anyone’s help. I wanted to work at Womby’s without him paying for it.
“Even if they are hiring an art teacher, this is where I belong. I can feel it,” I said.
He frowned. “This doesn’t have anything to do with Felix Thatch, does it?”
“No,” I said quickly. Although, he was my mentor. He was teaching me how to handle my affinity, and there was a reason he knew how to do that. Red affinities were a rare breed, and I needed his wisdom. “This is where my mother taught. I need to be here.”
Elric nodded. “I was afraid you would say that.”
“I need to figure out some way to make Jeb like me again. He used to be so nice to me.”
“Do you like teaching, though? Even after the students played all those pranks on you at the beginning of the year? What was it you said they glued you to? The wall?”
“No, Miss Bloodmire is the one who does that. One of the students glued me to the ceiling. But they haven’t done anything like that since last year.”
“What about the one who set your classroom on fire?”
“Same student.”
“The one who blackmailed you?”
“Um, also . . . same student.”
“By Nimue! We can only hope that one is graduating, and you won’t have to deal with her again.”
Was Hailey graduating? She was a senior, but she wasn’t a proficient reader yet. She wasn’t ready for anything out there in the real world. I didn’t know what kind of bad things would happen to her if she graduated.
“I had a hard time understanding what my son saw in teaching. It’s a thankless job. Children play pranks and whine about homework. The parents complain their child doesn’t deserve the dunce cap. Is this really what you want to do?”
“I know I’m not very good at it yet. I have a lot to learn.” I considered his words. “I want to be a better teacher.” Like my mother. And not like my mother—I didn’t want my legacy to be a murder.
I wanted to help students like Imani who needed to study their affinity in secret. I could teach the mundane but practical skills in study hall that the other teachers seemed to forget—like basic math and reading comprehension. There were students like Maddy who no one else understood, but I had provided the nurturing she’d needed to feel comfortable around people again. This was my calling. I couldn’t leave these students.
Elric leaned closer. “I could set you up with your own little cottage where you could have your own studio and sell your art in galleries. You wouldn’t have to deal with school politics or principals who treat your subject like it’s unimportant. You wouldn’t have to deal with any of these people who don’t appreciate you.”
It was a tempting offer. Art and an easy life. Or magic and Womby’s.
“That’s sweet, but . . . I don’t know.” Elric was like the devil tempting me. I’d often fantasized what it would be like to be an artist. I’d had a taste of selling my own art when Elric had set me up with my own gallery show. I didn’t know which was a greater high—creating the art—or selling it and earning money.
“If you had your own little cottage, someplace on my property, you could visit me anytime you liked. I could visit you . . . without interference.” He shifted my hair over my shoulder and adjusted the chain of the amulet over my collar. “It would be safe. The Raven Court wouldn’t dare trespass. No one would ever chastise you for missing curfew. Mr. Thatch wouldn’t meddle in our affairs.”
“Can we not talk about Thatch for five minutes?” I gazed at the stain-glass window, trying not to give in to Elric’s offer.
“I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to vex you. Think instead about how wonderful life would be to live as an artist. I would be your muse.”
Just talking about art made me want to create it instead of getting ready for graduation. I tried to shake the longing away.
“It wouldn’t work anyway. I want to live somewhere safe for Witchkin. I don’t want to accidently sell my soul to a hobgoblin for thanking him after he holds a door open for me—”
“You wouldn’t have to worry about that. They never hold doors open for anyone.”
“—Or risk eating Fae food and be imprisoned forever.”
“I would import food from Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods and that other market you like. Before you say no, at least think upon it.”
As much as I wanted to consider it, I couldn’t. I needed someplace safe to stay for Imani and Maddy. That wasn’t in the Faerie Realm. It was either at my mom’s house in the Morty Realm or here at the school. And I needed two locations, one for each of those girls. I had to figure out how to help both of them. I needed for Jeb to allow me to stay during the summer, and I had a feeling no amount of bribing from Elric was going to solve that.
I had a few days to solve
everything. Lucky me.
CHAPTER TEN
Miss Congeniality
I had helped set up for graduation the year before, so I mostly knew what to expect. My main duty on Saturday morning was to oversee decorations in the main hall, turning it into an artistic masterpiece with magic—which I lacked.
Although I did start to feel magic dwelling inside me when I meditated throughout the week, I knew I wasn’t supposed to use it until I was stronger. Fortunately, the students at my command used Amni Plandai affinities to create floral arrangements, Elementia used their powers to hang streamers made of ice crystals along the walls—not too close to the fire tapestries we would use for extra lighting—and Celestors worked on spotlights for the ceremony. I would have loved to be painting portraits with watercolors, but instead I had to oversee the hanging of student decorations.
Freshmen who hadn’t mastered control of their natural talents helped arrange the tables and chairs. I wished I could have used magic to create beauty like they did. Instead, I only critiqued the students as they worked and gave them positive feedback on what they did well.
“It’s too hard. Can you show me how?” Maya Briggs asked me when I told her to lift her flower garlands higher.
I tried to think up a reasonable explanation before a rumor started that I couldn’t use magic. “You need to use your magic or else you won’t improve.”
She groaned. “That’s what Ms. Bloodmire tells me too.”
The ceremony started at three p.m. Forty minutes before the start of the ceremony, I stood at the perimeter beside Josie, helping monitor the masses of students and families. The seniors of each team started off the event with a quick performance. The Elementia showed off Morris dancing using staffs of fire and ice, students with animal and plant magic put on a skit, and those with Celestor affinities performed a cosmic light show that reminded me of a meteor shower. I prayed none of the students would have accidents—particularly Imani.