Chapter 8 Raven
Raven
Today was only my second day at Starfall Academy, but to my surprise, I was having fun. Sure, I missed Willow, but being surrounded by magicals and having access to some amazing resources made up for it.
This school was incredible. Why had Adam not sent me here sooner? If only he had, I might not be so far behind in my education.
“There’s a phone app that updates our timetable,” Glynda said in a low voice as she watched me peer at the crumpled piece of paper with my class list. “It also has directions to each class.”
Laughter and chatter washed over us. We sat at the edge of the large room, near the windows. Glynda had chosen a seat against the wall, so she could see if anyone approached us.
It upset me to see how wary Glynda was. School was supposed to be fun. At least that’s how it seemed from the human movies I’d watched.
“I don’t have a phone,” I admitted. Adam had banned modern technology, although he let us watch DVDs on a small screen occasionally. He said relying on technology made witches lazy.
“Oh.” Glynda frowned. “Maybe ask at the admin office? I think they have a few iPads available for students who lose or damage their phones.”
“Um, I wouldn’t know how to use one,” I admitted with a rueful grin. Every other student had grown up with technology. I guess that made me a dinosaur.
Someone laughed nearby. When I turned, Demelza sat sniggering at an adjacent table with a group of her friends. “Oh my stars,” she spluttered. “Are you some inbred from the islands or something?”
“Islands?” I knew little about the islands north of Canada, but I guessed she meant it as an insult.
“She seems dumb enough to be a half-breed,” a girl with blue curls agreed. “Some of the troll half-breeds are super dumb. Like so dumb, they don’t even know how to shield their thoughts.” The witches all laughed while staring at me.
Wow, Demelza is so ugly, and is that a huge zit on her chin?
The second the thought popped into my mind, Demelza’s hand flew to her chin in alarm. I laughed out loud, and even Glynda smirked. Hilarious. Then I slammed shut and locked the steel door in my head and resolved to put more effort into shielding my thoughts.
The mug of coffee to my left flew up in the air and tipped all over my head.
Demelza clapped her hands in delight as rivulets of coffee dripped down my face.
Wonderful. Yet another trick I needed to get the hang of.
Still, at least it had been tepid, not boiling hot, so I didn’t have to worry about first-degree burns.
“Nice work, Cassie,” she chortled while grinning at her blue-haired witch friend. “A coffee makeover suits the troll.”
Glynda sank down into her chair, her face pale. I sighed. The last thing my new friend needed was more negative attention, yet thanks to me, she’d ended up in the firing line.
“So clumsy, little witch,” a familiar voice scoffed from behind me. “You really need to stop making a mess in here.”
The tether in my chest yanked hard while magic sang in my veins. It took all my effort not to leap out of the chair and climb that hot mage like a tree. What was wrong with me?
“Just making new friends,” I said with a bright smile. “And it was an accident.” Yeah, it wasn’t, but no point in causing a scene. Not until I learned a few defensive magic skills anyway.
When I looked over my shoulder, the mage who’d dumped soup all over me stood there wearing an expression of amusement. His crisp white shirt hugged his torso beneath the academy-issued blazer.
The way his foot tapped incessantly on the tiled floor belied his relaxed posture.
“An accident.” He cocked his head to one side and smirked. “I guess accidents happen a lot around you.” Before I could reply, a glass of orange juice flew over from Demelza’s table and dumped itself all over my head.
Glynda gasped in shock while Demelza barked out a surprised laugh. I had no proof, but from the way Alaric’s smirk widened, this fresh prank was him being an asshole.
I tried not to react, but stars, it was hard. The stabbing pain in my chest made me want to curl into a ball, but I forced it down. Angry magic surged through my veins as more people started laughing.
Why was he being such an asshole? I’d done nothing to deserve it.
A ball of flame jumped from my fingers and hit his crotch. He yelped in surprise when a scorch mark appeared on his perfectly tailored pants.
“Oops,” I said with a smile. “An accident.”
Green eyes flared with rage, but his aura continued to swirl and dance around mine. And when he leaned in so close I could smell the ozone and smoke-tinged scent of his skin, my magic sparked with excitement.
“Be careful, little witch. I don’t play nice.”
Demelza scowled. “Ignore the half-breed troll abomination. She’s not worthy of your time, Alaric.”
“Half-breed?” Alaric looked between me and Demelza in confusion. “She’s a witch.”
Demelza scowled at being contradicted, but she brushed it off.
“Maybe, but a super dumb one who doesn’t know how to use a fucking phone.” She laughed scornfully. “Only the island trash are that dumb.”
Alaric rolled his eyes. “Whatever.” He threw one last smirk at my coffee and orange juice makeover and then sauntered off.
The pain in my chest eased, and I exhaled. The next job on my to-do list was to take a shower and find a laundry. At this rate, I’d have no clean clothes left.
With Alaric gone, Demelza and her crew soon lost interest in tormenting me. Once they’d stopped throwing insults, the other students in the vicinity carried on with their conversations.
Glynda picked at her shirt unhappily but didn’t abandon me, which I was grateful for.
“I’d better clean up,” I told Glynda, grabbing my cheese roll.
“Don’t worry, I’ll sort it,” Glynda said while chewing her lip.
“No, it’s my fault. I provoked her. I’ll go find a cloth or something.” There had to be cleaning stuff somewhere. Drink spillages happened all the time.
Glynda shook her head, and with a quick flick of her wrist, the mess vanished. “I’m sorry, I’d clean you too, but I haven’t learned that spell yet. The only reason I can do cleaning magic is that my mom used to work for a high-level mage and he was an OCD neat freak.”
My mouth dropped. “Wow. There’s a cleaning spell?” Stars, if only I’d known that. It would have saved me so much time back at the compound.
“Yeah.” She moved closer and lowered her voice. “There are lots of fun time-saving spells, but the academy magic classes prioritize defensive and offensive magic. It’s all part of their agenda to make sure witches and mages are the most powerful of the various magical factions.”
“Why does that matter?”
“Not here,” Glynda murmured, looking around to make sure nobody could hear us. “Let’s head back to our building. I’ll explain there.”
Glynda sat on my desk chair while I towel dried my head. I’d invited her into my room without a second thought, despite the warning Moira gave me when I first arrived. Glynda had been nothing but kind and sweet so far, and honestly, I figured we both needed a friend here.
“With the vampires out of the picture, the mages and witches are fighting for dominance with the shifters. The Mage Council holds a lot of power, but they don’t have overall control.
Tiberius Vane, Alaric’s father, has been trying to wrest power away from the shifters.
The current leader of the Shifter Council, Maximus Lightfoot, only took over last year after the previous leader died in an accident.
” Glynda’s lips flattened into a line, and I paused in my attempt to comb out a tangle in my hair.
“Was it not an accident?” Accidents happened all the time, but admittedly, it was hard to kill a shifter. Their healing abilities were legendary. Or so I’d learned from the books I’d read.
“An accident where his head detached from his body? Hmm.”
“Oh.” Glynda made a good point. Beheading a shifter was one way to ensure they didn’t survive. Same with vampires. Which made me wonder… “What happened to the vampires?” I knew very little about them other than the entire species had mysteriously died out several decades previously.
“The bloodborne virus happened.”
“The what now?” I pulled on some socks to keep my feet warm and sat on my bed to braid my damp hair. “I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know what happened.”
“A virus hit the human population forty years ago. Hardly any humans got sick enough to need hospital treatment, so nobody really took much notice.”
My brow scrunched in confusion. “Not sure why that matters to vampires?”
“Who did vamps mostly feed on?”
“Um, anyone?”
Glynda laughed. “They mostly fed on humans because magicals are strong enough to fight off their compulsion.” Her smile faded.
“A side effect of the virus was that it changed human DNA. When a vamp fed on an infected human, they got very sick almost immediately. Nobody knew because vampires didn’t live in groups.
” She shook her head sadly. “By the time people realized, most vamps were dead.”
“Stars, that’s awful!”
Glynda sniffed and wiped her eyes. “Yeah. My mom had a vampire friend who died in the first wave. Mom only found out when she went to check on her and found her desiccated body. She was so upset. They’d been friends for decades.”
My eyes pricked with tears as I imagined the horror of such a mass-extinction event.
All those beings lost forever. Then I felt even worse for not knowing anything about the virus.
Why had no one told me? Surely this was important enough that all magicals needed to know.
What if the next human virus started killing off other magical species?
“Did all the vampires die?” I asked in a small voice, hoping she said no.
“Some believe a few vampires survived, but it’s impossible to be sure because, if they did, they almost certainly went into hiding.”
“But how would they have survived?”
“Those that had a magical blood partner might have been okay. There were a few immune humans too, so if a vampire had a human source with natural immunity, then they would have been safe. But who knows? The Vampire Council disappeared overnight, and vamp news dried up.”
Neither of us spoke for a good while.
“I feel like I should know all this.” Being shielded from the world had begun to feel like a curse.
Glynda sat forward. “Did your parents not talk about this stuff?”
“I don’t know who my parents are,” I admitted. Glynda immediately looked at the floor, her cheeks flushing in embarrassment at inadvertently touching on such an awkward topic.
“Oh, I’m sorry…”
“It’s fine.” I shrugged. “Can’t miss what you never had! Besides, I was raised by a bunch of lovely witches who kept me safe, so it’s not like I got thrown into the system.”
“That’s good, I guess.”
“My adopted family never talked about politics. We live on a farm in the middle of nowhere.” I didn’t bother mentioning how Adam kept me out of sight and never let me attend school.
Glynda seemed like she’d had a more conventional upbringing, and if I let slip about Adam’s weird rules, she’d think I was weird too.
“That sounds amazing,” Glynda said, looking envious. “My mom is super ambitious. She bragged for weeks when I got accepted to Starfall.”
“Wait…what? Was there an exam or something?”
“Yeah. Why? Didn’t you take it?”
“Um, no? I got picked up in a market after causing a, um, fire, and then wham, here I was! Some mage teleported me here.”
Glynda stared at me. “Seriously? A mage abducted you and sent you here?”
“Yup. Never even got the chance to say goodbye,” I replied glumly. Poor Willow. I hoped Adam hadn’t punished her when it was all my fault. Without me pestering her to death, she would never have agreed to take me to the market.
“That’s awful! I’ve never heard of that happening before.”
“Maybe I’m special,” I winked, deciding it was pointless moaning. I was here with no way to leave, so I may as well make the most of the opportunity.
Starfall wasn’t so bad, even if I had to deal with bullies like Demelza and Alaric.
They might think they had the upper hand – Okay, so they almost certainly did until I learned how to wield my magic better – but I wasn’t totally defenseless.
And besides, I’d made a friend. I bit into the cheese roll I’d brought with me from the food hall. Stars, the cheese here tasted good. Much nicer than the goat’s cheese I made back at the compound.
“I should probably go now,” Glynda said after a moment. “I expect you have stuff you want to do.”
“Nope! I have nothing, remember?” I waved around the room. “Not even a book to read.” Which honestly sucked.
Glynda’s face brightened. “Oh, that’s easily remedied! Let me give you a tour of the library!”