Or, you know, an intruder.
I knew the school took safety pretty important, and part of the reason they valued having a uniform was that it let everyone know who was supposed to be – and allowed to be – on the campus.
“What’s your name?” The freckled girl asked.
“Oh, I’m Charlie,” I said. I held my hand out for them to shake, but both girls just stared at it like I had cooties. Great. Don’t be awkward, I urged myself. Being thrown into an entirely new world was a lot harder than people seemed to think, though.
Finally, the girl with freckles spoke.
“I’m Marissa.”
“And I’m Clarissa.”
“Sisters?”
“Twins, actually,” Marissa said. She flipped her red hair back over her shoulders and looked at me, as if waiting for me to ask another question.
“Uh, what kind of shifters are you?”
“We’re both foxes,” said Clarissa. “And we’re basically in charge of the dorms.”
“Uh, okay.”
I wasn’t really sure what to say. Talk about awkward stammering. I didn’t know anyone was “in charge” of the dorms. Were they supposed to be like, magical hall monitors or something? Or RA’s? I was officially 18, and I was much too old to have someone watch my comings and goings. I made a mental note to avoid Marissa and Clarissa in the future because something told me that these girls were going to be kind of pesky.
They both definitely gave off the busybody vibe.
“You know, wandering around is pretty strange,” Clarissa pointed out.
“Well, like I said, I’m new, and I’m trying to get a feel for my surroundings.” I put my hands on my hips, physically distancing myself from the girls just a little. I could do this. I’d stood up for myself plenty of times before. I had to remind myself that these girls weren’t so different from the people I’d known in high school.
So apparently, Shifter Falls Academy wasn’t going to be so different from a regular public high school, after all.
“I’m just saying that you need to watch what you’re doing,” Clarissa continued. “You might be new, Charlie, but people here don’t know you. Wandering around and lurking about? That’s kind of suspicious. I’d hate for anyone to think you were up to no good.”
“Yeah, I’d hate that, too,” I said.
The girls just stared at me, as though they were waiting for me to leave. It was some sort of weird, awkward shifter stare-down, but I had a feeling I was going to lose this one and that I needed to cut my losses.
“Well, it was nice to meet you both,” I lied. “If you’ll excuse me.”
They both stared at me with blank looks on their faces as I pushed past them and left the hallway. I made my way back upstairs to my bedroom, but the entire time I was walking, I felt as though I was being watched.
Maybe this year wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought.
Chapter 9
On my first day of classes, I managed to make my uniform look somewhat presentable. The outfit wasn’t exactly flattering, in my opinion, but Jade told me that it looked “good enough,” so I collected the books that had been delivered to my room, placed them in my new satchel, and took off to my first class.
Potions promised to be a class full of interesting things. I always enjoyed chemistry in school, so I was excited to see that my potions class was almost exactly like chemistry had been in high school. The teacher, Mr. Melon, was a short, round man with a big smile. He wore a nice suit, which made me feel like the situation was a lot more formal than a standard classroom. I mean, my chemistry teacher in high school used to wear goofy math joke t-shirts and ripped jeans to class.
This was definitely a step or five above that.
Mr. Melon helped us go through the process of creating a very simple, but tasty potion that was designed to give you a small amount of energy. Apparently, it was supposed to provide you with the same amount of energy as a cup of coffee.
I didn’t want to ask why we couldn’t just drink coffee. It felt like a kind of obvious, yet really stupid question. I mean, why do anything at all with magic and potions? Why not just buy stuff at the store?
Besides, I was old enough to know that the point of the exercise wasn’t the specific potion. It was to get us to feel comfortable working with different ingredients and following directions. In order to create our drink potion, we had to mix everything very precisely. More importantly, we had to cook each part of the recipe in a very specific way.
By the time we finished the class, most of us had only finished half of the potion’s recipe. I felt a little bad about that until I saw that even Jade, whom I thought was a pretty smart student, was struggling with hers, too.
“Leave your potions on the side table,” Mr. Melon called out when the birds started chirping for our next class. That’s right. Birds chirped at the top of each hour. They were magically enchanted wooden birds that reminded me of a sort of old-style cuckoo clock, except that there were different styles of birds in each classroom and they each had their own natural sound.
I kind of hoped one of the classrooms would have a parrot.
Wouldn’t that be something?
“Make sure you label the potion with your name,” he continued speaking as we moved to set our stuff in the correct space. “Each potion should include your name, the year of student you are, and the name of your potion.”
“Mr. Melon?” I asked, reluctantly raising my hand.
“Yes?”
“Um, you didn’t tell us the name of the potion we were working on today.”
“Ah,” he smiled. He tapped his wand against his forehead, as though he was thinking or coming up with a wonderful idea. “That’s the fun part. You can come up with your own names.”
“Really?”
“Part of being a good magic user is understanding the importance of a name. As you progress in your magical studies, you’ll need to learn how to use naming to make your potions stand out.”
I nodded, but didn’t say anything. The students for the next class were already starting to file in. Nobody else seemed to have any trouble at all naming their potions, but for some reason, nothing was coming to me. Finally, I wrote WAKE UP on my potion bottle. That would work, right? A “wake up” potion? That was essentially what I was working on.
As I filed out of the classroom with the other students, I hurried to find Jade. We had the same second class of the day, as well. At Shifter Falls Academy, as it turned out, students didn’t have elective classes. We all took the same classes as the other students, although the order in which we took them might be different.
Finally, I spotted Jade moving down the hallway, and I hurried to catch up with her. I wasn’t quite sure where the herbs classroom was or if it was even in this building, so I tried to push my way through the busy crowd to reach her.
I felt a hand on my shoulder, though, and I turned, startled.
It was the boy from the day before.
Kenneth.
“Funny seeing you here,” he called over the sounds of the students in the hallway. We were stopped in the middle of the traffic, and everyone else just started moving around us. Nobody really seemed to care that we were basically blocking their way.
“You too,” I said.
He was handsome. Too handsome. He was almost picture-perfect, and that made me just the slightest bit suspicious about him. Then again, maybe my suspicion had more to do with the fact that my former colleague and his evil friend had tried to kill me and sell my blood. It wasn’t exactly easy to start trusting people a couple of days after a horrifying experience like that.
In some ways, the incident felt like a million years ago.
“What class do you have next?” He asked.
“Herbs with Dana Smith,” I told him.
“She’s a great teacher. I have herbs, too, but it’s not until later today.”
“Cool,” I said nervously. Why was I acting like I’d never talked to a guy be
fore? I’d talked to guys. I’d talked to lots of guys, and I’d never let them bother me or get the best of me before.
But this was different.
This guy was a shifter and now I was, too.
I mean, I’d always been a shifter, but I didn’t know I was until very recently, and somehow, that made me feel nervous. Kenneth hadn’t done anything to make me feel uncomfortable. If anything, he’d been overly helpful, yet somehow, the idea of building a friendship or some sort of relationship made me feel uneasy.
He seemed to notice my nervousness.
“Cat got your tongue?” He joked.
“Something like that,” I managed to smile. “I should get going. Class, you know.”
“Of course,” he said. “See you around, Charlie.”
“See you.”
The hallway was starting to empty, and I knew that I needed to hurry to my class. Only, I hadn’t actually asked Kenneth where the herbs classroom was, and I had completely lost sight of Jade.
I started walking in the direction she’d gone, careful to hurry. If Shifter Falls was even sort of similar to public high schools, then I knew that there might be some sort of hall pass required to be walking around when I was supposed to be in class. Then again, we were all adults here. Maybe in the shifter world, that actually meant something.
It so often didn’t among the humans.
I went around a corner in time to see students hurrying into classrooms and slamming doors, but there was nothing there for me. There was no herbs classroom. There weren’t signs letting me know where I was supposed to go, either.
I wandered around for awhile, but I was growing more and more anxious and frustrated. How was I going to be able to make it in the shifter world if I couldn’t even make it to a silly class on time? How was I going to be able to make a difference with anything?
Daniel and Caleb had tried to kill me.
They’d hunted me, and they had chased me, and they’d made me feel like my entire world was going to end. The worst part was that it was on my birthday. At least, that definitely felt like the worst part. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe the worst part was something else. Maybe it was something I didn’t even know about.
Part of me still felt like this must be some sort of terrible dream. Part one was being chased by psychos and part two was getting lost in magic school.
Only, as I walked and git turned around over and over again, I eventually came to a familiar door.
The headmaster’s office.
I stood in front of it for a long time, wondering if I should ask for help. Asking for help wouldn’t be a bad thing. Would it? Would that be so terrible? I mean, he was there to help me, right? Only, I knew he’s busy, and I knew he had already gone out of his way to help me. This wasn’t the type of guy I should be bugging with stupid questions, but something told me that it was going to be okay.
Something made me feel like I could trust him, if only just a little.
Just as I made the decision to go ahead and knock, the door opened, and he was standing there. He seemed taller today, but no less kind.
“Charlotte?” He asked, looking down at me. Was he surprised to see me? He seemed a little caught off guard by the fact that I was right there, but that couldn’t be right. It was a magical school. Surely Headmaster Wild had immense knowledge of who was coming and who was going. Something told me that this guy was the type of person who could tell exactly what was happening at his school during any given moment.
“Hello.”
“What are you doing here?” His eyes narrowed, but not unkindly. “If I’m remembering correctly, you’re supposed to be in an herbs class right about now.”
“Actually, that’s why I’m here. I kind of got turned around.” I blushed a little. “I’m really sorry about this, Headmaster Wild.”
“Professor Wild is fine,” he said. “Or just Wild,” he muttered under his breath. Then he seemed to remember that he was in the presence of a student, and he shook his head. “Apologies. Sometimes being in charge of a school is a lot more work than I ever expected. Of course, I’ll help you find your class. Come along.”
He closed the door behind him and waved his wand over the knob.
“Why did you do that?” I asked, jerking my head toward the doorknob. “Was that some sort of magical locking mechanism?”
“That’s exactly what it was,” he told me.
“Are there a lot of break-ins at your school?”
“No,” he said, and then he started walking. Professor Wild didn’t say anything. He didn’t tell me to come along and he didn’t move slowly. Instead, he took long strides and moved with determination. I scurried to keep up with him. I wasn’t going to miss out on my chance to learn more about Shifter Falls or find out what my future looked like.
“So why lock the door?” I asked.
“I believe you’ll find that although most of the students at the school are quite trustworthy, even the best students may sometimes succumb to...temptation.”
“So, you think sometimes people can’t resist being a little bit sneaky?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Are all the classrooms locked when they’re not in use?”
“Careful, Charlie. You’re going to make me think you’re up to no good.”
I blushed.
Shit.
That definitely wasn’t my intention.
“I don’t want to steal anything,” I said hastily, but it felt like such a stupid thing to say. Was I really going to hang out defending myself like this? Besides, isn’t that what any thief would say? No one was going to admit to considering thieving when approached by their professors. Not if they were actually planning on doing it.
“I know.”
We walked silently for a few minutes and then Professor Wild started speaking.
“When I was a student here long ago, the headmistress at the time we quite particular about keeping doors locked. No one really thought twice about it until one day, a student forgot to enchant a door after they left. Someone broke in and stole many valuable items.”
“Ouch.”
“Exactly,” Professor Wild smiled just a little. “Ouch,” he repeated.
“What did they get?”
“That was part of the problem,” he said. “They stole items from an enchanted classroom, but most of them weren’t exactly logged. There was no list keeping track of the items that had been stored in that room, so it became nearly impossible to tell what had been taken or what role it would play in the world.”
“Did the school recover the items?” I asked, curious. “And was the thief caught?”
“Some of the items have been found over the years, but the thief was never caught. No one ever found out exactly who took the enchanted items or why. Unfortunately, this led to stricter protocols being implemented. Now teachers must use their wands to lock their rooms at the end of each day in order to properly protect the items we keep inside.”
“It’s pathetic, you know: someone stealing from a magical school.”
“That’s an interesting word choice.”
“Well, it describes what I think and how I’m feeling. Nobody has the right to take things from other people, especially not when it comes to something like this.”
I felt lucky, in some ways, to be at Shifter Falls. I wasn’t under the impression that my time at the school was going to be easy. It might not even be particularly fun, but I knew I was going to learn a lot. I just had to believe in myself and keep going. I had to be willing to try.
Professor Wild was going out of his way to help me, and I had a feeling that he was the type of guy who didn’t often open up to students.
“I agree with you,” Professor Wild finally said. “Keeping a magical shifter school under the radar isn’t easy.”
“How do you do it?”
“Careful planning, mostly. I’m sure you remember the journey to get here.”
“I hope so. It was yesterday.”
“You want people to stay away,” I pointed out.
“I want the wrong kind of people to stay away. There are people out there who would do anything they had to in order to hurt shifters, especially if there was money involved.”
I thought about Daniel and Caleb. Had Fiona told Professor Wild about everything that happened? Would it be safe for him to know? I looked over at him, sneaking a glance, but I couldn’t really get a read on him. There was something familiar about Professor Wild, almost like I knew him from somewhere, but I couldn’t figure out where that would be. Surely he wasn’t actually a wolf shifter.
Surely, he wasn’t from my town.
“So who invented the secret and hidden away school?”
We turned down a side hallway and kept moving. We were almost to the heart of the classroom. Was that where the herbs classroom was? I knew that I was going to be late, at this point, but I hoped I wouldn’t be so late that the teacher would be upset or punish me for it.
I was still insanely new, and I had no idea what a typical punishment for misbehavior would look like at a school like Shifter Falls.
“The school was created long ago as a haven for shifters,” he told me. “It was the first of its kind.”
“There are other shifter schools?”
“There are many other magical schools,” he confirmed. “Including shifter schools. Each school has its own perks, though, and is designed for a different type of student.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, take Hybrid Academy, for example. That’s another shifter school, but every student has a secondary ability, usually involving magic. More importantly, not every student is a shifter. Some of the students are half-demons or even half-angels. There are fairies and pixies and just about anything you could imagine.”
“Vampires?”
“Not vampires.”
His voice changed a little when I asked that, and I realized with a start that this meant vampires really did exist.
Shifter Falls Academy- Year One Page 7