by Sarina Dorie
Eventually the teacher would examine the book to see what had gone wrong. Ms. Suarez would recognize Vega’s penmanship. The potions teacher always seemed to know who had forgotten to write their names on papers, waving them under students’ noses accusingly.
“I don’t grade papers without names.” Ms. Suarez would say, turning that icy silver eye on the student in question. “Would you prefer I deduct ten points for a correction turned in late or a zero for no paper turned in at all?”
Vega had only made that mistake once. She didn’t repeat it. Something about the way Ms. Suarez turned that silver eye on her, that cold knowing burning into Vega, made her not want to be under her potions teacher’s scrutiny. Vega had a feeling that Ms. Suarez would recognize her handwriting—and demand an answer from Vega. As adept as she was at lying, there was no way Vega could outwit an old crone with powerful magic who could see inside her soul.
If Ms. Suarez found the notebook and recognized that Vega had written the last spell with the hex, she would ask if Vega had tried to harm Jessica—and she had. Only she hadn’t meant to kill her.
As Vega considered her argument with Jessica the day before, overheard by the custodian, the students in Latin tutoring, and Mr. Reade as well, that wasn’t going to look good for Vega. People had thought they heard Vega threaten Jessica. Weeks before, they’d argued in the cafeteria where there had been even more witnesses.
If the principal started asking questions like, “Who wanted Jessica dead?” people were going to point to Vega. People already disliked her; they wouldn’t mind casting the blame on her.
She understood what she needed to do then. Vega had to get Jessica’s notebook back and destroy the evidence.
* * *
Vega knew she would get in trouble if she left her dorm after student curfew, but there wasn’t a better way to confiscate the notebook before it was found. She had to ensure she wasn’t seen by students or teachers. She had been working on an invisibility spell for months, in the hope that it would help her escape to the forest at night on the occasions her food was contaminated with meat. It was better to be ill where she could be alone than to have an audience line up to see the freak show that she was as the flesh caused her to transform into a monster.
So far, the longest she could hold that invisibility was two minutes. Her glamour spell was better, but it was only effective if she stayed still. Her best camouflage was imitating the texture of the stone walls of the hallway. Vega would have practiced invisibility spells and glamour more during the day, but they drained her of the magic she needed to use on spells for classes.
The only time she was able to use either spell effectively without exhausting herself was at night when she could draw on the power of starlight to fuel her affinity.
Vega used the invisibility spell to slip out of her room and steal down the corridor. As she passed by a window, she noticed a lantern lit in the greenhouse. It was possible Mr. Murphey, the herbalism teacher, was out there prepping classes. He might be coming into his dormitory late, but Vega suspected she would be safe since she didn’t plan on going near his classroom or the teachers’ quarters.
She continued down the hallway, toward the potions room. The door was locked. Naturally she didn’t expect a teacher stingy about handing out mushrooms to keep her classroom open for anyone to come in and take supplies at night. Vega glanced over her shoulder, scanning the hallway with her eyes and then with her affinity to detect traces of magic. No one was there.
That was a relief. She had to drop her glamour in order to work the charm to unlock the door. Vega used a spell that was simple, efficient, and used the essence of moonlight. It was superior to what most students knew for unlocking their trunks when they lost the key. This charm left little trace if performed correctly and when used at night like it was now.
Once Vega made it past the door, she closed it softly behind her and examined the room. The air still vaguely smelled like burnt hair and roasted flesh. The stench should have curdled the food in Vega’s belly, but the scent of death never had that effect on her. Vega would have given anything not to feel pangs of hunger at the savory aroma of roasted meat—animal or human. Her belly grumbled.
Pale moonlight rained down from the windows onto the counter and the nearby tables, but it wasn’t enough luminescence to reach the shadowy depths of the classroom where she might find the journals. The only thing it illuminated well was the black ash burned onto the floor where Jessica had been standing earlier as her cauldron had exploded. Vega turned her gaze away from that sight, hating the reminder of what she had inadvertently done to Jessica.
Vega had always known she was a bad witch—as far as her scruples were concerned. What she hadn’t realized was that she also was an inept one. She couldn’t even put a pox on her enemy without it going wrong.
The classroom was too dark to help her find what she needed. Vega could have used a simple lantern spell from her wand, but she wanted her hands free for investigating the room. Vega lifted her palm, drew in a deep breath, and called to the moonlight outside, pulling it into the classroom to form a nimbus of light so she could see better. She waved the silver cloud around the room to illuminate the cauldrons stacked onto the counter at the back, along with the mortars and pestles. The cupboards under the counter were closed, but it was usually just supplies under there anyway. Vega pushed the cloud of light past the workbenches to the front. One stack of journals was heaped on the teacher’s desk. Another was on the supply table next to the desk with the label: graded.
The journal Vega had written Jessica’s homework in was black and leather, as was Vega’s. Teachers for potions, alchemy, and sometimes other classes required students to use leather journals to write their assignments in because those subjects worked with corrosive materials that could eat away paper.
Vega headed toward the desk. Most of the journals in the stack were also black. She dipped her hands into the cloud of moonlight, purifying her essence of other magical residue that might incriminate her before examining the unsorted leather journals. She was careful not to bump anything on the teacher’s desk, both out of respect and practicality.
When she opened the first page of the journal, she found this one belonged to Frida Lakshmi. Her handwriting slanted to the left and was nearly illegible. Vega didn’t even have to find the name to know it was Frida’s—she knew that handwriting from the numerous notes she passed in class. The next notebook was Eunice Littleton’s. They weren’t even in Vega’s class. She needed fifth-period potions, her own class.
Vega returned the books to the stack and went to the graded pile on the other table. She had no better success finding them. It would be just her luck if Ms. Suarez had decided to take fifth-period notebooks back to her room to grade them.
There had to be somewhere else Ms. Suarez might keep the journals. In her closet behind her desk? Inside her desk? Some teachers had magic drawers that could hold all sorts of things. Vega incanted a charm for detecting wards. Her gaze grew unfocused before sharpening and homing in on the magic. Both the desk and closet were heavily warded. Ms. Suarez’s wards were messy, the lines of glowing light tangled like her knotted clumps of hair, crisscrossing and running in different directions. Vega could probably reach around the wards to shift them so they didn’t cover the drawers, but it was risky. The teacher might have put an alarm in place.
The closet, where Ms. Suarez kept her hoard of potions supplies, was even more warded.
Before being willing to disable or tamper with either set of wards, Vega thought it might be more useful to use a divining spell so she could learn if it was even worth expending so much energy. Casting a locating spell was far easier when locating one’s own property than anyone else’s. In this case, if Vega found her own journal, she was likely to find Jessica’s as well.
Vega ran a hand through her long black hair several times before a few hairs came away in her fingers. She wrapped a hair in a circle around her
index finger and held it out. Even with other magics interfering, this simple spell nearly always worked because objects, inanimate as they were, liked returning home. Vega had found books—and clothes—other girls in her dorm had stolen more than once using this method.
“Witchkin sight, use your might. Show me what is mine by right,” Vega whispered, trying to keep her voice both quiet and musical. It was one of the few spells that worked when spoken in English, many of the more ancient spells losing their meaning and strength when translated.
Vega held her hand toward the closet door. Her hair remained black and dark around her finger. She waved her hand toward the desk. There was no change.
Probably her journal wasn’t in the room. She sighed. She was ready to give up, but she thought about what would happen if she were implicated in a crime.
She held her hand toward the cupboards at the back. The hair stayed the same shade of midnight. She spun in a slow circle, the hair on her finger finally glowing when she held it toward one of the cupboards under the windows. Vega strode over and opened the door. Stacked neatly in columns were leather notebooks. The lowest shelf was labeled “Fifth Period.” The shelf above it was labeled “Sixth Period.”
All Vega had to do was wave her hand over the stacks, and she found her journal. Of course, she wasn’t actually looking for her own journal. She was looking for Jessica’s. Vega pulled out the stack, sorting through the books. She knew she had come to Jessica’s when she found the one that was warped from heat, the leather cracked and scorched. The edges of the pages were uneven and charred black.
The object of her desire found, Vega returned the journals and closed the cabinet. She flipped to the inside of the front cover, Jessica’s name written inside. The nimbus of light she’d created earlier hovered just above Vega’s head, illuminating the text.
She turned to the last entry, skimming the spell. Her heart sped up as she gazed over the list of ingredients. The instructions said to shred the bat wings, not mince them. There were no diacritic marks over the words of the incantation, which was to be spoken in Spanish. Vega would have smacked herself in the face with that book for her own stupidity, but one other notable incongruity leapt out of the page at her.
The list of ingredients and the potion were not written with Vega’s neat penmanship. It was written in Jessica’s chicken-scratch handwriting, with illegible words and letters that looked like another language. Vega flipped to the front again. This was Jessica’s book. It had her name in it. Her writing looked more like she used the pencil to carve her name into the cover than write it.
Vega examined other pages. She didn’t know how Ms. Suarez had failed to notice five additional handwritings spread throughout the book. Perhaps Jessica hadn’t turned it in for a grade yet.
Vega turned to the last page again, the potion in Spanish. Jessica hadn’t used the spell Vega had written for her. That meant it wasn’t Vega’s fault she had died!
But why hadn’t she used the spell Vega had written? Had she found a “better one” or not trusted Vega—which she would have been correct not to do? Or had someone else “helped” her with this new spell, their intent malicious?
Vega flipped back to the other spells. Someone had translated the French potion that was supposed to improve study skills and aid in reading abilities three weeks before. From the slant to the left, it looked like Frida’s writing. She had done a horrible job translating the French spell—or maybe it had been intentional sabotage. Vega found Malisha Bane’s handwriting as well. She’d written out the spells perfectly.
She hadn’t tried to camouflage her handwriting either. Vega wondered what dirt Jessica had dug up on her.
The other two handwritings were familiar. Vega went back to the stack on the teacher’s desk. She found Charlotte Winters’ book. The right slant, overly large letters, and the way she dotted her i’s were a match. The last one Vega couldn’t recall where she had seen it, but she knew the elegant, looping cursive.
Vega closed the book. Someone must have given Jessica a faulty spell—one of the other people being coerced. Could it be that someone Jessica had been blackmailing hated her more than Vega did? Enough to want her dead?
Vega was about to return the book to the cupboard when she heard a rattle at the door.
Ms. Suarez! Vega extinguished her moonlight spell and leapt away from the cabinets. She had to hide, but there was nowhere to go. With no other choice, she ducked under the worktables and crawled away from the cupboards.
Keys jangled, and the door creaked open. Vega didn’t know what might draw a teacher’s attention more, using a glamour to hide herself more thoroughly in the shadows or no spell at all. She hadn’t warded herself to hide any magic she used. An experienced Witchkin would know when someone started a glamour spell. Vega could have kicked herself. Why hadn’t she thought of this earlier?
Vega’s heart hammered in her chest so loudly it muffled the tap of footsteps making their way closer. Her breath came in pants that would threaten to give her location away if she didn’t control herself. She forced herself to breathe slowly and shallowly.
Right away Vega noticed this wasn’t Ms. Suarez. Vega didn’t hear a shuffling gait or the tap of her cane on the floor. As the figure passed by the table where Vega crouched, she noticed the person’s pants. Ms. Suarez always wore gray or moss-hued dresses. These shoes belonged to a man.
It was too dark to see who it was, and as he approached the cupboards by the window, moonlight spilled across his black slacks. Vega could shift to see his face, but if she did, she was afraid she would give herself away. The man grunted as he leaned over and opened the cabinet where she had crouched only a moment before.
Vega hugged Jessica’s notebook to her chest.
The man withdrew a wand, illuminating the stacks. He removed five journals from fifth period. He wiggled one out from the bottom. She couldn’t be certain, but she suspected it was hers. Was someone at the school really stealing her potions homework? How was she supposed to get a grade if someone—obviously another teacher—took her work? Did this teacher want her to fail?
There were only six male teachers at the school: Mr. Sebastian Reade, Tevall Murphey, Ibn Shanjul, Uriel Ottoman, Coach Screamo (as the students called him), and Gregory Christis. And there was staff who weren’t the teachers: a custodian, the dean of discipline, the principal’s secretary, a security guard, and there might have been others whom Vega had never met because they didn’t interact with students.
As the man crouched, Vega caught a glimpse of short hair that might have been silver, though it was hard to tell in the light of his wand. Short hair eliminated Mr. Murphey, Mr. Ottoman, and Gregory Christis. This man’s fair skin crossed Mr. Ibn Shanjul off the list. And of course, Mr. Reade wasn’t going to be going through another teacher’s classroom, stealing books. Vega caught a glimpse of a watch with a leather band on the man’s right hand before he closed the cupboard, stood, and left.
Vega waited as his footsteps echoed down the hall. Her heart slowed, and she calmed. The man had taken about five books. There had been about five other students’ writing in Jessica’s notebook. Did that mean there were five suspects for her murder?
Vega was most assuredly one of them.
But how did he know there were five of them? He didn’t have the journal. She did.
If Vega had had a piece of his hair or an article of his clothing, she could have traced that back to its source and found out who he was. Without that, it would take longer, and she didn’t want to hang around and risk being caught by anyone else.
She waited another minute before using her invisibility spell and returning to her room. When she peeled back the covers to her bed, she felt a piece of paper on her pillow. Vega lit her wand and illuminated the paper.
On it, in what she assumed was Jessica’s chicken-scratch handwriting from what she had gazed at before, was one sentence written in ink:
I know what you did.
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nine Years Later: Time Keeps On Slipping into the Future
After hearing about the death of one of the students at the school where she taught, Vega didn’t know what disturbed her more: that the past had repeated itself from her days as a student or that Malisha Bane was behaving like the guilty culprit in the cafeteria during lunch. If Vega’s suspicions were correct, her enemy might have gotten away with murder—not once but twice: first as a student and next as a teacher.
If that was the case, Vega would relish the opportunity to prove it. So long as she didn’t incriminate herself in the process.
Vega left the cafeteria early. There was hardly enough time to go to the graveyard and back, but she had to know if her secret was still there. Vega used a detection spell to check whether anyone else was in the forest as she headed along the path toward the ancient cemetery just outside Lady of the Lake School for Girls. She sensed no one.
In order to ensure she wasn’t followed, she glamoured herself so that she would blend in with her surroundings. It wasn’t a perfect concealment, but it took less energy than a true invisibility spell. She didn’t want to risk using too much magic and depleting herself—especially when she never knew when delinquent students might attack her in class.
Vega avoided stepping on broken tombstones as she wove through trees that had sprouted up between graves, their roots causing uneven footing. The tree where Vega had hidden Jessica’s book nine years before—the notebook with the incriminating evidence—was just on the other side of the graveyard. Vega quickly made her way there and crouched down. She reached into the hollow, pulling away moss and a plastic shopping bag.
There was no book. She swore.
Someone had found it despite her attempt to conceal it. Vega cast a spell that would detect whether anyone had been there recently. If they had left a trace of hair, dead skin, or magic that hadn’t been blown away by wind, the spell would show Vega.