Spellcaster Academy Box Set Page 6

  No matter how much potential he showed as a wizard, Aspen was already on the outside of their perfect little society. And even looking like he might be warming up to me obviously made them that much more uncomfortable.

  “Josy Barrows,” a lilting female voice called out from behind, and the hair on my arms instantly stood on end. Rosalee Loriss. I had two classes with her, The World of Herbs and Healing Basics. She was forever the first with every answer, which, unfortunately, was almost always correct. She was likely one of the smartest first years, if not the smartest.

  I glanced up to Aspen, and he rolled his eyes. The expression caught me off guard, and I forced myself to cough to hide the full-on cackle that wanted to escape my mouth.

  “You don’t want to be here for this,” I said to Aspen, giving him the out he probably wanted anyway.

  He nodded and went inside.

  I spun on my heels only to find Rosalee no more than two feet from me, her knowing eyes haughty and her arms tight across her chest.

  “I told you that you were supposed to report your cat’s presence here at the Academy to the administration.” As she said the words, her left eyebrow quirked higher.

  A stone dropped into my stomach. I’d totally forgotten that Rosalee and her cronies had seen Nine when we first arrived. “My cat?”

  “Yes, that rabid black thing that nearly scratched my face off when you so gracefully arrived.” Rosalee’s green eyes nearly flamed. “I’d almost forgotten about it—"

  I held back an eye-roll. How could she almost forget getting her face nearly scratched off?

  “—but Chancellor Sterling and I were having a check-in earlier, and I happened to ask him if you’d taken care of it.”

  Panic set into my chest and heat raked up my neck. “Where is he!”

  “Your cat?” She shrugged. “I think someone caught him prowling around—probably searching for another victim.” Rosalee’s eyes went innocently wide, and the sugar in her tone made me want to gag. “I sure hope this doesn’t get you expelled without ever getting to see if you possess any magic.”

  I clenched my teeth, and my fists followed suit, but I resisted the urge to punch this girl right in her snotty face.

  Rosalee peered up to the darkening sky, as if in thought. “Oh . . . yes. I might have heard that your hellcat is in Chancellor Sterling’s office. Maybe you should check there.”

  I twisted from her without so much as a word and darted down the path to the chancellor’s office. Tears burned at the corners of my eyes, and I didn’t do anything to stop them from falling. I didn’t really care if the other students thought worse of me than they already did.

  When I reached the red stone building that held Chancellor Sterling’s office, I quickly dried my eyes and threw open the entrance door. A short, plump woman with a dirty blond pixie cut stood at the ornately carved, dark wood check-in desk. She held a large, weighty-looking box in her arms. Her eyes widened for a second at the sight of me but returned to normal as she balanced the box to keep it from tumbling to the ground. “May I help you?” Her voice was squeaky.

  “Chancellor Sterling’s office?” I demanded.

  She gestured with a head tip down the hall behind her. “But he’s in a meeting right—”

  I didn’t even wait for her to finish and darted past her.

  “You can’t go back there right now!” the woman shouted in her high-pitched voice from behind me, but it was no use. I was tiny and fast, and she wasn’t. Plus, she had that huge box to worry about.

  Male and female voices wafted from a cracked door just ahead and on my left. Chancellor Sterling and Professor Magnolis.

  “We cannot allow her to stay and you know it, Hazel,” Chancellor Sterling growled.

  Magnolis sighed. “Her benefactor says we at least must give her the opportunity to succeed.”

  “Benefactor? We don’t even know who this person is.”

  “But the Directorate does, and the financial support they are offering to the school for having her here this semester is unmatchable. It will keep us from having to shut down.” Magnolis paused for a second. “You have no need to worry. If Josy Barrows doesn’t belong here, she will not remain. From what I’ve seen, she will not succeed.”

  Her words nearly flooded my eyes with tears again. Professor Magnolis thought I was doomed to fail, too? Was the kindness she’d shown only for show?

  I spotted the receptionist running down the hall, but before she could reach me, I shoved open Sterling’s door.

  “Miss Barrows?” Professor Magnolis leaped from her seat on the opposite side of Chancellor Sterling’s massive desk.

  “I tried to stop her,” the plump receptionist panted from behind me.

  “Where’s my cat!” I demanded to hide any suspicion that I might have heard their conversation.

  Chancellor Sterling’s face hardened for a second and then relaxed. He held his hand in the air to the receptionist. “It’s fine, Doris.” He eyed me. “I was about to have someone fetch Miss Barrows anyway.”

  “Yes, Chancellor Sterling,” Doris said, still in the corridor.

  Professor Magnolis slowly lowered herself to her seat, and the chancellor waved me inside. “Shut the door behind you, Miss Barrows.”

  Closing the door, I glanced around the room. Dark wood bookshelves that matched the desk covered two of the walls. They were lined with old books, plants, and jars much like the ones in the Introduction to Spellcasting classroom. Ingredients for spells. Behind the chancellor was a large picture window overlooking the courtyard with several statues of great witches and wizards I’d never heard of before.

  “I’m assuming you recently learned that your cat is in custody.” The chancellor gestured to the seat next to Professor Magnolis.

  I gazed at her for a second and my chest tightened. I had no idea who I could trust around here. Even so, I took the seat.

  “Rosalee told me.” I fought the urge to allow even one tear to spill again.

  The chancellor chewed his lip and leaned into the back of his chair.

  “No one is allowed to have animal companions on campus,” Professor Magnolis said.

  But Nine is not just an ordinary cat.

  “There are too many risks, and other students could have allergies,” she continued. “So, we had no choice but to take him into custody when we caught him sneaking around outside your dorm room.”

  I wrung my hands together on my lap. “What’s going to happen to him?”

  “We’ll need some time to decide that,” Chancellor Sterling said. “But for now, we have him in a kennel in the next room. He’s watered and fed.”

  “And there’s no way I can keep him?”

  “Unfortunately, no.” The chancellor rubbed at his neatly trimmed salt and pepper beard, then wiped a small bead of sweat from his forehead. “But you should be grateful that we are not taking further action. This is an offense which could have had you expelled.”

  “You don’t want me here anyway,” I muttered. “Why don’t you just take the opportunity?”

  “Because no harm was done.” He pushed his chair backward. “Now, I was in the middle of a meeting when you interrupted. I’d like to get back to it.”

  I winced. “I can’t even see my cat?”

  Chancellor Sterling stood, removed his suit coat and glanced to the window behind him. Before answering, he unlatched the window and cracked it open. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid not.” As he rounded my way his expression was flat, and he gestured to the door.

  Out of habit, I glanced at Professor Magnolis for help, but she was none. “I’m sorry, my dear.”

  I sighed in frustration and stood. Not saying another word, I exited the office and sprinted out of the building.

  Nothing. I had nothing at this place.

  I squeezed my eyes shut to stop the tears burning. When I opened them, I nearly slammed directly into Emiko, who must have been waiting outside.

  “Are you okay?” Emiko’s voice w
as soft, nearly a whisper, but that wasn’t abnormal for her.

  I pushed her away, harder than I intended. “No, I am most certainly not okay, Emiko. And you can stop trying to be nice to me. I’ll just tell Professor Magnolis that you all did your best to help me, but it’s no use. You need to be focused on your own magical abilities, not my lack of them.”

  For whatever reason, Emiko didn’t back down. “I heard you had a cat in your room, and they are making you get rid of it.”

  “Yeah . . . I’m a screw up all around. A liar and a sneak. See, another reason you shouldn’t help me.”

  Emiko’s lips formed a shy smile. “No, you’re not.”

  “And how do you know?” I sobbed.

  “Because I’m an empath. I don’t make a big deal about it to many people because I’m not that good at it yet. That’s why I waited so long to trust you. But you are definitely not a liar or a sneak.” She shrugged. “Even though you did hide a cat in your room.” Emiko held up a to-go bag from the dining hall. “I got enough for two. Want to go back to the dorm and talk?”

  My hands quivered, and I nodded. Maybe I had a friend here after all.

  Chapter 11

  Let the magic of life guide your journey.

  I sat at my desk in my pajamas and grazed my finger over Mom’s words written in the front of my old, tattered copy of The Hobbit.

  Why’d you and Dad have to die, Mom? And why didn’t Grandma tell me anything about The Side of Magic? This whole journey would have been a lot easier if someone had told me something.

  “Can’t sleep?” Merrygold’s soft voice came from behind me.

  I glanced at the clock above the desk. 2:14 a.m. “Emiko brought some more of that curry from the dining hall. Just the thought of it is giving my stomach fits again.” I closed the book and pushed it from me.

  “It’s not the curry. You’re worried about Nine.”

  I twisted to Merrygold. Her dark ringlets were forever perfect, and her uniform crisp. I guess that was one advantage to being a ghost. She always looked just so. “And a lot more. I don’t seem to belong anywhere—not on The Side of Magic, not on The Other Side—but at least I know this is where my parents were from. I should belong here.” I looked over at the photo of my parents on my nightstand and went to retrieve it.

  “You need to figure out what’s keeping your magic from surfacing.” Merrygold sat on the edge of her bed, not making an indentation on the bedspread.

  I raised my eyebrows at her. “You think if I knew how to do that I wouldn’t have already?”

  She ignored my sarcasm. “Maybe you’re afraid you are Morelli, and if you find your magic, you’ll use it for evil.”

  “I already know I’m at least half Morelli.”

  She sighed. “I mean the destroying-the-world kind of Morelli.”

  I turned my attention back to my parent’s photo. “But my mom wasn’t evil, so I know not all the Morelli are.” I put the photo back down and hugged myself. “I don’t feel evil. Emiko said I wasn’t.”

  Merrygold shrugged. “I don’t think you are evil, either.” She twisted her lips in thought. “What if you were enchanted and made to forget? Your grandmother could have been Morelli as well. Maybe that’s why she never told you about The Side of Magic.”

  “Enchanted? But I lived most of my life on The Other Side and magic doesn’t work there.”

  Merrygold shook her head. “Powerful magic doesn’t work there. But this type of enchantment could be more subtle, like hypnosis . . . a suggestion. The longer you lived on the other side, the more likely it would be that you both would forget.”

  “But what about Nine?”

  “He couldn’t talk, so what kind of clues could have he given you? Anyway, it’s possible that he could be partially enchanted so you could remain protected on The Other Side.”

  Without Nine here, I had no idea if any of this was more than a theory, but it made sense.

  “Can an enchantment be lifted?”

  Merrygold’s eyes brightened. “Yes, but we’d have to know the specific spell that was used to do it. And it likely wasn’t one in an Academy textbook.”

  I released an exasperated sigh. No internet here . . . no computers. I could search the library, but there had to be thousands of books there. Where was I even going to start? I shook my head, feeling stupid that such a thought would even pop into my mind. Before today I would have asked Professor Magnolis, but I didn’t even trust her anymore.

  Even so, I grabbed my sweatshirt and ripped jeans from the armoire behind Merrygold.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I have to break Nine out of Sterling’s office.”

  ✽✽✽

  I kept the hood of my gray sweatshirt pulled up over my head. In the light of the full moon, my white hair was sure to give me away if anyone else happened to be wandering the campus at 3 a.m. Doing my best to warm myself in the cold night air, I wrapped my arms around my torso and hustled around behind the library.

  I made it past two more buildings and ducked behind some shrubbery next to a row of trees. Ahead of me and down a set of stairs was the chancellor’s building. Gathering my courage and hoping there wasn’t any sort of magical alarm system, I took two steps toward the stairs, when out of nowhere five or six pure white doves flew into one of the trees about ten feet from me. I dropped to the ground and threw one hand to my mouth to stifle my scream.

  A scream like that of a little girl came anyway—but it wasn’t from me.

  “It’s not the Morelli, you stupid fool. It’s a bunch of white birds.”

  I held my breath and kept my mouth covered as Rosalee and a group of four students came into view.

  “Well, they’re white like the Morelli.” Rowan Hedge’s voice quivered, and he stared with wide eyes at the birds perching in the tree.

  All I wanted to do was bury myself in the ground, rather than be caught out here by Rosalee. But I stayed still in hopes that I was hidden well enough.

  “I don’t know why we invited you to come along, Rowan.” One of Rosalee’s cronies shoved him in the arm.

  “Because this is a group project, that’s why, and Professor Bell said the only way we could be out past curfew to study the moon bats was if we all went together.” Rowan stuffed his hands in his pockets, apparently forgetting all about the birds that had just scared him.

  Roselee planted herself directly in front of Rowan and snapped her fingers. A small flame burst from them and then went out. “Let’s just get this over with. I have a test in the morning and need to get to bed.”

  She waved the group on, and I stayed put until they were out of sight.

  My heart thudded. This was a stupid idea. The chancellor’s building was sure to be locked. How was I going to get inside? I had no lock-picking skills and no magic to open the door. But I still needed to try. I double-checked to ensure that Rosalee and the other students were gone and raced down the stairs. Maybe there was a back way into the building; the front door was most certainly a no-go.

  Around the rear, I tried three doors, and as expected, each of them was locked. The tall marble statues in the courtyard seemed to taunt me. One of them was of a skinny, bearded man with a long nose, raising his hand eternally to the sky. He wore a long, flowing robe that went all the way to his feet. In his arms was a cat. He was pretty much the clichéd image I’d expect of a wizard. A gold plaque at the base of the figure read Archer Borealis, founder of the Borealis Academy of Magical Arts. Knowledge is Truth.

  “You seem to like cats more than Chancellor Sterling, Mister Borealis,” I muttered. “How about you give me a hint about how to get into this building?”

  Being at a magical school, I could almost hope that the statue might actually come alive and say something profound. But like most of the students here, it ignored me.

  Disappointment sank into my stomach, and I turned to give the building a final once-over. And that was when I saw it. The third window from the left side was crac
ked open ever so slightly. My mind flashed back to the meeting in Sterling’s office earlier today. When he asked me to leave, he opened his window and must have forgotten to close it.

  I scanned the area again for Rosalee’s group or anyone else, but other than lifeless statues I was alone. Before I could change my mind and head back to the safety of my bed, I shot across the courtyard to the open window.

  When I got there, it was positioned farther over my head than I’d like, but I could still reach it. I wedged my hand into the crack and shoved. The window slid open easily.

  I took a determined breath and jumped while reaching for the sill. My hands clasped on, and with my feet, I used the large, irregular brick surfaces to push my body upward. With one good pull, I heaved myself into the opening and fell to the floor in a heap. Not the most graceful entrance, but it got the job done.

  Panting, I stood, slid the window mostly shut and wiped my dirty hands off on my pants.

  Took you long enough!

  My eyes darted around the room, and I spotted a pair of topaz eyes in the shadows near the doorway.

  Chapter 12

  “Nine!” I whispered. “How’d you get out of the kennel?”

  The same way I got out of the carrier you had me in. Those things aren’t that difficult if you know what you’re doing.

  I swiveled my neck to check that no one else was around. “Then why didn’t you come back to the dorm?”

  Too busy looking around here. Nine jumped up on Chancellor Sterling’s desk and pawed at a stack of papers. The Academy is in trouble . . . set to shut down after this semester if they don’t get their finances in order.

  I nodded. “Before I barged in here, Professor Magnolis and Chancellor Sterling were talking about it. The Academy is apparently receiving a large sum of money for having me here.”

  Nine pawed a sheet of paper from the stack and studied it. So that’s what this is about. It mentions an unnamed student and grant money.