by Sarina Dorie
“I wasn’t.”
Vega selected two slices of bread, an apple, and eyed the other accoutrements. There was nothing else her strict diet would allow her to eat, not the chocolate cake or the heavy cream topping. If only they would occasionally serve soup made with fish stock, vegan pasta, or dairy-free pudding.
The hair prickled on the back of Vega’s neck the moment her nemesis walked into the cafeteria. Vega pretended not to see Malisha Bane walk into the room.
The blonde bombshell might have looked petite and harmless, but she had been a thorn in Vega’s side since she was fourteen. If Vega had known Malisha would apply for the same position as she had at the school, Vega wouldn’t have bothered. Then again, Vega had gotten the class to teach wards while Malisha was stuck teaching two remedial potions classes and three alchemy classes—all of which Vega could have taught better.
Vega snapped her fingers at Hazel, commanding her to answer. “Who has cafeteria duty today?” She was afraid she already knew.
“Malisha and I do.” Hazel smiled happily, as though she didn’t think cafeteria duty was the most horrible punishment in the world.
Vega tsked at Hazel’s insufferable cheerfulness. She wondered whether Malisha and Hazel had signed up to take a shift together. They were roommates and probably besties. They were most definitely beasties, one in appearance, the other in demeanor.
There was no way Hazel could possibly be as friendly and optimistic as she seemed. Probably it was an act so that she could team up with Malisha and try to drop potions in Vega’s food when she wasn’t looking.
Now that Vega knew Malisha had cafeteria duty, there was no way she intended to eat lunch in the same room. Not when she could have escaped to the staff room—or better yet—a peaceful graveyard. Ms. Suarez, the old crone of a potions teacher, leaned on her cane as she eased herself into a chair beside Hazel, looking more weary than usual. Her complexion was nearly as gray as her colorless dress.
She seriously needed a makeover of the Witchkin kind.
Mr. Feldspar Gordmayer, the secretary, rushed up to the staff table, out of breath, for some reason singling Vega out. “You’d better stay. The principal has an important announcement.”
The principal—his wife—always had something to say. It was rarely important. Usually it was intramural air pelota was canceled that day because of the rain. Vega glanced at the warm glow of sunlight shining through the windows and took a seat as far from other teachers as she could manage. Unfortunately, it wasn’t very far.
She supposed the principal might have something to say about the burnt corpse in the crypt, but Vega already knew about that. The only reason Vega could imagine the principal would think she wasn’t wasting Vega’s time would be if it was somehow her fault. On the other hand, Vega had left her classroom twice that day. It was possible the teenager who had died could have been her student. The hunger in her belly twisted into a knot of apprehension.
No, Vega’s students wouldn’t have dared use magic when she wasn’t present. She had instilled Machiavellian fear into them successfully, hadn’t she?
Vega used a spell to check her food for poisons, toxins, or ingredients that her body couldn’t tolerate, like bacon bits, before digging in. With Malisha in the room, she would have to check three more times to be certain she didn’t slip something into her salad.
Mr. Gordmayer was tan and athletic, looking like he was in his forties. He gazed at his wife with admiration in his eyes, even though she looked more like she was eighty. Witchkin aged at different rates depending on how much Fae blood they had in them—and how well they used antiaging magic. Vega hoped she had a husband that smiled at her that way when she looked eighty.
A little ping of regret played in Vega’s heart. She could hardly imagine keeping a secret like her heritage from her husband like her mother had. The closest she would get to her own Prince Charming was the frog on her desk. There was that Fae prince she’d met—he certainly was a prince of hotness—but she didn’t want to get mixed up with the Fae.
Principal Allegra Gordmayer strode toward the dais of the teachers’ table. Clad in an all-black business suit, topped with a conical hat, she looked like a modern witch. She leaned toward the potions teacher, who was wiping her eyes with a filthy handkerchief. Hazel patted Ms. Suarez’s back consolingly. More teachers assembled at the staff table. From their somber expressions, it should have been a giveaway to students someone had died. Yet students still shouted and teased each other, oblivious.
Vega speared her salad, keeping an eye on Malisha, who seated herself on the other end of the table next to Hazel.
The principal cleared her throat. She used a charm to project her voice across the noisy cafeteria. “Some of you may have heard the rumors today. One of our students has had an unfortunate accident.”
It was the way that she said the word that made Vega freeze with her fork halfway to her mouth. Students immediately silenced. Without saying more, Vega’s intuition told her the incident hadn’t been an accident. Did the principal think someone had played a prank on the girl, and it had gone wrong? The secretary had singled her out and insisted she stay, but Vega didn’t know what that meant.
Could this have been one of her students? A cold lump of dread settled in her core.
The principal hadn’t even needed to use a compulsion charm. Within three seconds, students closed their mouths and listened.
“I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news. It’s always sad to learn about the death of a classmate.” Principal Gordmayer’s puckered lips turned downward. It was difficult to tell whether that was disdain or sorrow. The brim of her hat shaded her eyes.
A thrill shivered up Vega’s spine as the principal said the word out loud. Death. Vega tried to push the memory of the corpse out of her mind. It was hardly becoming for a schoolteacher to get so excited about the deceased. Besides, she most certainly did not eat dead bodies.
Even if they were beautiful and delicious.
No, they were not delicious, Vega told herself. They were yucky. No one liked the taste of dead bodies. No one normal, anyway.
Vega was so busy arguing with herself, she missed half of what the principal said. Only when the principal’s penetrating gaze fell on Vega did she realize she was smirking to herself about thoughts of death. The principal already said she was watching her. The last thing Vega needed after being caught in the crypt with a dead body was for the principal to think she was being disrespectful of the dead.
The cafeteria was silent as the principal left, her husband trailing behind her like a lost puppy. Quiet conversation started up among the students after the administration exited.
“It was so shocking,” Ms. Suarez said from her end of the table, her voice loud enough to wake the dead as she spoke to Hazel. “One minute, they were all making potions. The next moment—poof. Fire exploded. There wasn’t even anything in the classroom that could have interacted like that. We were working on healing tonics.”
More teachers gravitated toward Ms. Suarez. Their eyes were ravenous for juicy gossip.
Vega studied the potions teacher surrounded by her crowd of supporters. “This isn’t the first time a student has died in class.” Vega speared a tomato with her fork. “Magic is dangerous. Only the strongest and most skilled survive.” Like her.
Some of Vega’s earlier apprehension left her as she realized she wasn’t the teacher at fault for the girl’s death. No one had died in Vega’s classroom because she was an incompetent teacher—even when she wasn’t present.
“I bet our enrollment for next year has just gone down again.” Coach Screamo crossed his arms, appraising the music and art teachers who would be the first to go.
Mr. Sebastian Reade ran a hand over his thinning brown hair, looking no different than he had nine years ago as Vega’s Latin teacher. “It seems like it was only a few years ago we had a student at our school who died like this. Maybe we should have Feldspar examine t
he cauldrons to ensure one of them isn’t hexed. With his metal affinity, he’ll know if there are any impurities that could affect the spells.” His owlish eyes were amplified by his glasses, broadcasting the concern in his crow’s feet and furrowed brow. “Exploding cauldrons don’t happen every day.”
An exploding cauldron in potions class? A chill skated up Vega’s spine. A wave of déjà vu settled over her.
Ms. Suarez blew her nose. “I inspected the cauldrons this morning. They’re fine.”
“We must take precautions. It’s our duty to ensure student safety,” Mr. Reade said.
Malisha whispered something to Hazel. The sasquatch teacher nodded. “There was an earlier incident with a student in my class. You’re right. I did say the girl was a fire affinity.” She looked doubtful. “Probably the two events are unrelated.”
“You said that girl tried to attack a teacher,” Malisha didn’t look at Vega as she spoke. Her gaze was locked on Hazel. “How do we know that fire affinity didn’t attack another student? It might have nothing to do with faulty cauldrons.”
Mr. Reade shook his head. “Let’s not start a witch hunt when this might have nothing to do with student interference. It might be an accident.” Mr. Reade turned to Vega. “Didn’t a girl in your grade die from an exploding cauldron?”
Vega shrugged and tried to keep a look of innocence on her face.
Mr. Reade turned to Malisha. “You remember the girl, don’t you? What was her name? Jennifer? Jacqueline? Jeanette?”
Vega didn’t know how he couldn’t remember Jessica. She was burned into Vega’s memory.
“I have no idea,” Malisha said a little too quickly and looked away.
It was a curious reaction. Vega knew why she herself didn’t want to talk about the last student burned to a crisp, namely that she didn’t want to be implicated in her death when people might recall the events leading up to the incident. She didn’t know why Malisha reacted that way. Unless she had played a larger part in that death than Vega had realized.
Mr. Reade continued speaking with Ms. Suarez. Vega couldn’t think about Jessica and not remember her own shame and guilt. Jessica was a reminder of the mistakes she had made and mysteries she had never solved.
Malisha smiled like a student who had just gotten away with something, locking eyes on Vega. Vega checked her salad again to see if someone—her enemy—had slipped something into it. The spell she used floated above her plate, acid green and emitting a rotten-egg smell. The magic concentrated around a bacon bit that hadn’t been there earlier. Vega picked it out and tossed it on the table.
She didn’t know whether her nemesis was grinning because she had snuck animal flesh into Vega’s food—without her noticing—or because she had gotten away with murder.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Past—Nine Years Earlier: Grave Mistakes
It had been a beautiful day to sit with the dead.
At the age of fifteen, the sanctuary of the graveyard was Vega Bloodmire’s favorite place to eat her lunch. Vega’s long dark hair was tied back with a green-and-blue ribbon that matched the colors on the pleated skirt of her school uniform. Her sweater with the crest of the academy marked her as a student at Lady of the Lake School for Girls, even if she chose the company of the dead over her peers.
The warmth of the sun hadn’t yet melted away the misty patches hovering above the ground. The lingering morning gloom that suffused the forest matched Vega’s macabre mood as she pondered the inevitability of the upcoming holiday vacation. She didn’t know what was worse: putting up with peers during the average school day or going home for vacation and spending it with her parents. If only her parents had said she could stay with her grandma.
Birds chirped a pleasantly melancholy tune somewhere in the distance. The air tasted of wet wood and ancient earth, rich with the nutrients of decomposing bodies.
Her belly grumbled at the thought of death and decay.
Vega nibbled her lettuce and tomato sandwich and gazed at ancient tombstones so weathered that the names carved into them were no longer visible. Roots of gnarled trees twisted among the graves, and unruly shrubs grew between derelict tombstones. One of the reasons why Vega liked this quiet refuge was because no other students from the magical boarding school that she attended ventured this far into the forest.
Probably that was because it was off-limits to students. It was supposedly dangerous. Yet stories of ghouls and vampires didn’t scare Vega. Not with her family’s odd afflictions.
In the quiet of the forest, Vega didn’t have to endure her classmates’ jeering or questions about her strict vegan diet. She could be herself here with the dead in a way that she couldn’t with the living. She slouched against a tree, relishing this moment of imperfect posture and solitude. There was no one here to chastise her or look down on her.
And yet, part of her knew she couldn’t completely be herself here either. Not when she might succumb to temptation and fall into bad habits that could have dire consequences. She could have just as easily eaten lunch in the forest rather than stubbornly putting herself in a setting that weakened her resolve.
Vega used a spell to repair a crumbling headstone, focusing Elementia stone magic into her wand. She had been working on this headstone slowly, a little at a time for weeks. Someday she would use a different spell for revealing the name and date so she could carve it back into the stone, but she wanted to practice it more first to ensure she didn’t cause more damage. She intended for this person to be remembered in death, just as she would have wanted to be.
After she finished eating, she knew she should go back to school and study. She wasn’t going to become the greatest witch of all time by lazing around. But the wind rushed toward her, bringing with it the aroma of temptation. Calcium-rich soil spiced with the flavor of corpses made her belly cramp with hunger despite having just finished her sandwich. Vega rose, knowing she should leave before she was unable to stop herself from clawing at the earth and disturbing someone’s grave. There was an irony that the one refuge she could go to where people wouldn’t try to put flesh in her food meant she was surrounded by dead bodies.
Maybe not surrounded. Most of them were at least six feet out of reach. Below her.
Vega gathered up her book bag and tray of food, making sure she didn’t leave anything behind that would signal she had been there. As she scanned mossy roots and patches of clover, she saw a white slender root poking out of the earth toward her. She stared at that shape, noticing its similarity to a finger. She leaned down.
It was a finger. Or what was left of one after the flesh had been eaten away by time. As opposed to being eaten away by her.
She set her tray aside. Glancing over her shoulder to make sure no one was watching, she wiggled the slender bone from the earth. It came away easily. She wiped the dirt off on her plaid skirt and used a minor cleaning spell she had learned in her Home Economics for Witches class to remove the rest. Even with all the meat gone, the heady aroma of bone tempted her.
If there wasn’t flesh on the bone when she gnawed on it, probably she wouldn’t get sick later. She knew she was completely lying to herself as she placed the delectable tidbit on her tongue. She rolled it around in her mouth, saliva moistening the bone. It was simultaneously salty and sweet, better than candy or pastries. It was definitely far better than a vegan lunch. She sandwiched the bone between her teeth and sucked on it.
Vega’s grandmother had told her one of her uncles could bite through bones with his teeth, but Vega’s mother had told her to never try because she might not be able to, and she would chip a tooth that way. On the other hand, her mother also didn’t want her to try because the consequences of ingesting bones might reveal their family’s dirty secret. There was no way Vega could keep herself from transforming if she ate flesh—or bone.
Vega closed her eyes and pressed her teeth down against the section of finger bone.
“What are you doing?” as
ked someone from behind her.
Vega spun.
She had been so preoccupied by the flavor of her forbidden delight that she had failed to hear the approach of another student from her school.
Jessica Argyle stood with her arms crossed, her expression smug. The other girl had rolled her plaid skirt up at the waistband to turn it into a more fashionable miniskirt. The first two buttons of her collar were unfastened and her striped tie missing, clear violations of the school’s strict dress code. Judging from the electric-blue eyeliner and fishnet gloves, she didn’t look like the sort who cared about school rules, though. The purple hair might have been natural. It did match her eyebrows, so she could have gotten away with it by claiming she’d been born that way as some Witchkin were with inhuman features.
Jessica was in her Latin class, but she hardly ever showed up. She was supposed to be in Vega’s potions class as well, but she was never there when the teacher called roll. Rumor had it she’d been kicked out of four schools before coming to Lady of the Lake. From her lack of attendance, Vega had assumed that Jessica had dropped out by now.
Vega tucked the bit of bone against her cheek. “I wasn’t doing anything.” Vega asked. “What are you doing?”
The girl’s eyes narrowed. “What are you eating?”
Vega nodded to her tray. “My lunch. From the school.”
“No you weren’t.” Jessica scrunched up her nose in disgust. “You’re eating something you found on the ground. I saw you.”
Jessica was known for her ruthlessness and skills in black magic. Vega knew she wasn’t about to get out of this mess easily.
“So? One of my carrot sticks fell on the ground.” Vega was careful to keep the bone tucked against her gums where it would remain hidden—aside from the lump sticking out from her cheek. “I wiped it off. It was fine.”
“That wasn’t a carrot. I saw it. It was white.” Accusation filled Jessica’s tone. “Was that a bone? You really are a freak, aren’t you?”