Echo turned to us, her shoulders heaving, and huffed her hair off her face. “Yeah, I heard them, the bastards. They’re picking on everyone and tossing black salt around, but I’ve yet to see them gang up anyone like they did to you. You okay?”
Seph nodded and loosed a breath. “Yeah.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be in P.P.E.?” I blurted, because really, that was all that mattered, wasn’t it? Gods, I was a weirdo.
“Yeah, I was getting Morrissey another pair of boots,” she said. “One of those assholes stepped on the backs of the ones she was wearing until they fell apart while he flung black salt on her.”
Seph scratched the back of her bald head. “They sure are making the rounds.”
“Morrissey?” I asked.
“My roommate,” Echo said. “You know, teeth girl?”
Oh right. The one with a teeth scarf who’d been my sparring partner and who’d distracted Ramsey.
“You guys headed to P.P.E.?” she asked.
“Dawn is.” Seph brushed up against me, and underneath our long sleeves, she pressed two coins into my palm and squeezed my hand. “And she’s not going to worry about me, either.”
“Doubtful.” I squeezed back for longer than was probably necessary, so very grateful for her, yet at the same time, so sorry. She had too kind of a soul to be put through this.
When I was satisfied that she was settled, Echo and I went to P.P.E. The class went by with me reminding myself to breathe while I existed on another plane of worried existence. I didn't hear a word the librarian said, but part of me did notice how fluidly she moved as she showed us more defensive moves, all grace and power. I wished I could be like that instead of a fiery ball of rage bouncing from one kind of trouble to the next.
I just wanted to murder someone, not clash with a secret club whose details had been ripped out of library books. Was that too much to ask?
After class, I practically sprinted to lunch so I could take a plate up to Seph, but as soon as I walked into the Gathering Room, I realized it wouldn't be that simple. Several heads turned from the junior and senior tables, male and female, all slicing me up with their combined hatred. Especially Vickie, the redhead. She looked at me like I’d murdered her puppy.
I stood in the doorway and held their glares while I memorized their faces, who they sat next to, everything I could about them. It was similar to what I'd done with Ramsey over the summer, but now instead of one enemy, I had most of the junior and senior classes. And it was only the second day of school.
That took a special level of talent. A special level.
When I caught Ramsey’s eye, sitting at the far corner of the junior table and cutting me in half with the power of his glare, I grinned. A huge one I let bloom across my entire face and tried to make it as real and annoying as possible. I even threw in a little wave and then the subtlest of skips toward my table to really dig underneath his skin.
I wanted him to hate me. That would make this so much more fun.
I fed the table the two coins so it would feed me and then loaded up two plates with breads, more breads, butter, cheese, oh look more bread, and corkscrew pasta topped with steamed vegetables and tomato sauce for Seph. On my way out, I ignored everyone, too intent on my food, and then hustled to my room before anyone got any bright ideas and followed.
"You okay?" I asked, bursting into the room while juggling the plates.
"Never better, Mother. Thanks for asking." Grinning, she shut her book about dreams, scooted Nebbles off her lap, and rose from her bed. "Any trouble?"
I handed her one plate, napkin, and silverware. "Nothing I couldn't handle."
"Good. I'm starving." She set the plate on her desk and kicked her chair around so she could face me. "So now you'll tell me the story between you and Ramsey."
I still wasn't sure that was a good idea, but I didn't necessarily have to tell her everything, especially since other than coming here, I hadn't yet finished what I'd set out to do.
She dipped her chin to stare down her nose at me, a knowing gleam sparkling in her dark eyes. "You're deciding how much to tell me, aren't you?"
"Yes," I admitted. "The story's long and—"
"Complicated." She nodded. "Got it. Just tell me what you want to. Or don't. I have two ears, and you can consider them yours when you need them."
I smiled at the warmth her words ignited inside my stone heart. It used to be that I confided everything, whether he wanted to hear it or not, to Leo. Since he wasn't here, it had been so long since I'd spilled to anyone. Or trusted anyone to keep my secrets, even the small, innocent ones that didn't involve drinking my enemy's blood from his skull. I trusted her enough to tell her some things, at least.
"Food first though. Quarum sacra fero revelare." With my mouth watering, I picked up one of my rolls—only to discover it was moving.
Huge white bugs with way too many legs crawled all over my plate. One even skittered up over my thumb on the edge, and I dropped the whole thing with a loud yelp. The glass shattered, food sprayed everywhere, and the bugs quickly followed.
Seph had already jumped up on her chair and gathered her skirt around her ankles, horror etched on her face. Nebbles leaped, pounced on the nearest bug, and ripped its head off.
I hopped up on my bed, my heart racing in time with the bugs' scurrying legs. My stomach spun in a violent tumble as I watched them swarm my lunch.
"I'm just gonna..." Seph swallowed thickly. "I'm gonna take a stab in the dark and guess my food has been tainted too. Quarum sacra fero revelare."
The food on her plate came alive. The corkscrew noodles snaked in and out of each other, and her vegetables sprouted enormous wings and flapped them hard, which splatted tomato sauce all over Seph's face. Her jaw dropped in shock and then she gagged.
A vicious storm swirled up inside of me until I vibrated with it, filled with it, welcomed it. My body burned with the need to unleash it.
"I’ll kill them. I’ll kill them all," I spat and jumped down off my bed, only slightly satisfied with the loud squishing sound under my boots. I wanted to crush the Diabolicals. The juniors and seniors. But mostly I wanted to crush Ramsey. Heaven help anyone who got in my way.
I marched toward Seph's plate and picked it up, then crossed to the door.
"Wait, Dawn, you're just going to make it worse," she cried.
But I'd already gone into the hallway, too fueled by rage and disgust to stop now. I wished I'd ended Ramsey in the library. I wished I'd never dragged Seph into being a target too. She didn't deserve any of this, didn't deserve to have tomato sauce flung at her face, no matter what. This time, I was as much to blame as the Diabolicals, and I hated it.
On my way to the Gathering Room, I ignored the worms sliding over my hands and the enormous winged...things and their many staring eyes.
As soon as I walked in, the steady murmur stopped almost immediately. Heads turned. Some openly laughed when they saw my plate, and others jerked back. I rounded toward the junior table and Ramsey sitting near the head of it, every ounce of hatred I felt for him summoned into my glare. This was his fault, whether he was the one who'd done this or not. I threw the plate down in front of him with such force that it knocked against his plate and spilled his water glass all over the food on the next person's plate and into their lap.
That guy jerked to his feet. "What the hells?"
Bugs scurried across the table, and everyone close by surged to their feet and backed away.
Ramsey just gazed up at me, his face blank, calm, maddening. "I take it something's on your mind?"
I leaned in close so he'd be sure to take my next point precisely between the eyes. "Next time, I won't miss. Do you understand me?"
His expression didn't change. Not even a hint that he knew what I was talking about, but he did. I could give him that much credit, at the very least.
Behind us, a professor cleared his throat from their table. “Trouble here?”
“Call the Diabolicals of
f.” I backed away a few steps, my gaze never wavering from Ramsey. Then I strode past him back down the length of the table, scouring the plates for any uneaten rolls. There. I snatched it up and crammed half of it into my mouth before anyone could utter a spell, and with a sleight of my other hand, picked one up off the neighboring plate for Seph and stuffed it into my cloak pocket.
And wouldn't you know, it was Vickie's roll I’d stuffed in my mouth.
"You bitch," she said through clenched teeth.
Good to know I wasn't the only hard-core bread fan, even though my current bite tasted like sawdust and refused to go down because I thought I might vomit. I couldn't do that, though, couldn't show any sign of weakness.
“Toodle-oo,” I tried to say. I waved my fingers at her with a smile and then got out of there fast. Finally, I forced the bite down.
"Here," I said to Seph when I got to our room again and held out her roll.
She was wiping the sauce from her face and head, as well as a fair amount of tears, too, it looked like.
Guilt twisted through me, sharp as any dagger ever could. When she didn't take the roll, I set it on her desk. "I'm sorry this happened."
"Me too."
There was a note of sorrow in her voice that made me feel even more terrible than I already did.
"I'll clean this up." I dropped to my knees and found the biggest shard of plate to scoop the rest of the yuck onto.
By the time I'd scrubbed the floor and walls while Seph nibbled her roll with a sad, faraway look in her eyes, it was time for Divination. Somehow we arrived in class without any male castrati—I mean catastrophes. Without any catastrophes. A shame, really, about the lack of male castrations, though.
Later, Undead Botany got a little more interesting.
"I hate whining," Professor Lipskin began in lieu of a simple hello or a "Good afternoon, class." "More than that, I hate whiners, and just looking at this freshmen class makes me think I'm going to hear an awful lot of it today. Save it for someone who cares. Not. Me."
Jon raised his hand from the front row, his other hand scribbling furiously with his quill and parchment.
"What?" Professor Lipskin snapped.
"Are your things you hate going to be on the semester exam?"
The professor folded his hands in front of him and stared at Jon with a dark, volatile look that could peel flesh from bone.
I bit back a grin.
At the professor's silence, Jon blinked up at him and then turned an intense shade of red as he surely felt his skin curl, about to slough away completely.
Professor Lipskin waved his hand as if to shoo Jon from existence, and rows of small potted plants appeared on all of our tables, making us jump in surprise. Especially since the plants were all dead, just crispy gray leaves and tired, droopy stems.
"From the looks of all of you, I doubt any of you will be able to bring these plants back to life,” he said. “You will be disappointed, frustrated, angry that I'll tell you to keep trying the entire class period, and let me tell you why that is so important. Because in necromancy, it doesn't matter how much magic you have or whether you say the words correctly. You have to mean it. You have to feel it down deep in your bones for the spell to be successful, and you won't, not until you feel your failure spark with a life all on its own."
"I feel my failure plenty, thanks," Seph muttered down at her lap.
I frowned with her in solidarity. Given that my magical well had pretty much dried up for the day, I'd likely be feeling her frustration.
"In my thirty odd years of teaching at Necromancer Academy, I've only seen one student bring their plant back to life on the first day this spell is taught." He pointed to the door as if we'd find this student right outside. "He comes from a long line of necromancers of the Sullivan name. Mr. Ramsey Sullivan, a junior."
Just barely, I managed not to snap my quill in half. Well. Good for him.
Seph and I shared a look, and she rolled her eyes to the ceiling.
"I might hate him more than you now," she whispered.
I shook my head. Not a chance.
Professor Lipskin continued, "Sometimes your magic will react to the spell strangely and go haywire, as it can to any spell. Individual magic mixed with certain types of necromancy spells can go very wrong, very fast as I'm sure you have learned or will learn in your Cautionary Tales class. That said, if it happens, don't panic. I hate panicking.”
Jon added that to his notes.
“Now then.” Professor Lipskin flicked his wrist, and shimmering, golden letters scrawled themselves in midair across the length of the classroom: Adhuc plantabis vixeritis.
"This is the necromancy spell for dead plants only,” he went on. “If you use it for other dead things, then you're an idiot and you deserve to suffer the vilest of consequences for your actions. Repeat after me: Adhuc plantabis vixeritis."
We repeated it back.
"Say it to your plants, not to me," he shouted, the white tuft of hair on his head bouncing across the bulging vein in his forehead. "I'm not dead yet despite the level of stupid in this room. Practice for the entire rest of class. Now."
Seph scooted her chair closer to her plant. "He's delightful."
I sighed. "Isn't he though?"
Several students had already started saying the spell to their plants...with mixed results. One caught on fire, another plumed rainbow sparks up to the ceiling, and another grew stem-like legs, leaped off the table, and simply walked out of the room with a student chasing after it.
When I turned back to her, Seph was massaging her temples with her elbows propped on the table, eyeing her plant closely. I could practically feel the pressure she was putting on herself, which I understood, but it was crushing all the same.
I nudged her gently in the side. "On the count of three?"
She nodded and sat back with a heavy sigh. "One..."
A girl in the next aisle gasped when her plant sprouted to life and then instantly melted into bubbling goo.
"Two..." I said.
The guy behind Seph let out a hysterical laugh as his plant emitted a white puffy cloud directly into his face that made even me light-headed.
"Three," Seph said through gritted teeth.
We said the spell together. We waited. We waited some more.
"Adhuc plantabis vixeritis," we said again.
"Well.” I tapped a stem of my dead plant as if that could wake it up. “At least we're consistent."
But Seph looked crestfallen. Then the muscles in her neck must've gone out because her head drooped, and she snort-laughed. I laughed, too, and soon felt like I was floating in the sky along lazily drifting clouds that kept coming, and kept coming, from the guy's plant behind Seph.
Everyone laughed. My head felt like it was drifting separate from the rest of me, but this was fine. Everything was great. How are things with you?
"Time to panic!" Professor Lipskin barked as he strode toward the door. "Everyone up and out."
I followed, somehow able to keep all my body parts with me. I really felt funny now. Seph drifted along after me, her arm hooked into the crook of my elbow, even though I didn’t remember doing that. What if we were the same person?
Oh, crap. Where did my back teeth go?
Crisp fall air slammed into me, and I breathed it in with great big lungfuls. We stood outside the school on the steps, the entire freshmen class looking dazed.
"Stay here," Professor Lipskin ordered from the doorway. "No one even think about moving."
"Whoa." Seph rested her forehead on my shoulder. "Just...whoa."
Hopefully the funny clouds and the laughter had taken the edge off some of her pressure. And mine, too, but I knew it wouldn’t last.
"Yep," I sighed and settled us both down on the steps. "One thing I've noticed about this school is to expect the unexpected. Never thought I'd get high in class though."
On trips with my parents, I'd seen firsthand people inhaling all sorts of strange things to
feel a buzz similar to too much mead, but as healers, there was only so much we could do. We could attempt to fill the hole they were trying to fill themselves, but it was ultimately up to them to seal it permanently. Those were the hardest situations, the ones that often kept me awake at night. It was after meeting one such person that I'd wandered the house instead of sleeping, and it was then that I found Leo sleepwalking. A week later, he was dead, and I often wondered what I would’ve done if I hadn’t found him dead, hadn’t seen Ramsey standing over him. Where would I be? Who would I be?
Seph sucked in a cleansing breath and then exhaled slowly. "What are we going to do about food?"
"Well,” I sighed, “if I ever get my appetite back, we'll probably have to ask someone to get our food for us on the sly."
She nodded. "Someone we can trust. Maybe even a couple people for the different meals so no one takes notice?"
I scanned the freshmen class, all sprawled out on the steps. Everyone squinted in the natural light, half blinded out here because of the lack of windows in the school, even though not a sliver of sun poked through the thick gray clouds hovering over our heads. Eventually my gaze landed on Echo. The Diabolicals hadn’t been able to get away from her fast enough in our hallway. Plus, she wasn’t the type to take any shit. Maybe she would help us.
"Echo," I called.
She looked up from the bottom of the steps, blowing her blonde hair out of her face, and tipped up her chin. "Little busy trying not to throw up at the moment."
I nodded. "When you're up to it, I have a question."
She gave a half shrug, and then I shifted my gaze to her left, at my sparring partner who stared up at me with curious black eyes. Morrissey. Today she had her black hair free from a scarf, and the long ends of it played across her teeth bracelets and teeth rings on her fingers. Maybe she could help us too.
I curled my finger at her, and she rose to her feet. Echo, seeing her head toward us, popped up, too, and raced upon her heels, seemingly all better now.
"What's up?" Echo asked, stopping a few steps down from us.
"We need a favor," I said, keeping my voice low. "It seems we've pissed off some of the upperclassmen, and they turned our lunch into bugs. We're sure it will happen again, so we wondered if you two could help us."
Necromancer Academy: Book 1 Page 9