Chapter Four
Why were croissants flying?
The foyer inside the castle stretched multiple stories high, and dustings of blue shimmered along the stone walls.
Like magic had been painted on every surface.
Beautiful paintings with golden frames hung on the walls.
Some art even escaped the paintings into reality.
A waterfall flowed out of one canvas and vanished once it hit the floor.
Incredible.
Later, I’d have to inspect them more closely.
I read about the castle on the plane ride. There were four hundred and sixty-two rooms, three hundred fireplaces, and ninety staircases in this fifteenth century French castle.
Thankfully, McKenzie Institute designed an app to help us find our way around. It had a navigation system set up for extra assistance.
From what I’d learned in the past couple of months, Rylan spent considerable money to find solutions to the magical uh-oh his construction crew uncovered.
After Nathuria convinced our world's governments that they weren't a threat to humanity, the two worlds came to an agreement to educate the newly magically gifted in a system of schools just like this one.
“This is wild, isn’t it?” someone said nearby, and while they weren’t talking to me, I nodded anyway.
Because, yeah, it was wild.
People walked around with their suitcases. Some hurried to the feast or their rooms while others stood in awe like me.
We were in a castle full of magic.
MAGIC.
“To send your luggage to your room. Place your bags on this platform and touch your room key on this green button,” a staff member said to my right while lifting luggage onto a five-foot-wide platform.
After they touched the room key to the luggage, it vanished.
Suddenly my duffle felt heavy. Why not let magic help?
I did as instructed and my luggage also disappeared. The staff promised it would arrive in my room. I was nervous but at least I didn’t have to lug it around anymore.
As I stepped away to let other’s drop off their luggage, faculty with wands and robes stood near people with purple lanyards, ready to assist any students who needed it.
My stomach fluttered, but this time it wasn’t anything mystical. It was only nerves.
Every soul in this castle was here to learn how to control their new powers. But more than that, for many of us, this was a new start.
I was sixteen when I got pregnant. And ever since then, my life became about Piper—taking her to dance, making lunches, braiding hair, sleepovers, heartbreaks, soccer, homework, rinse, wash, and repeat.
I loved being a mom, even as a single mom. All thanks to the high school heartthrob, Lucas, being a turd.
But it only took a week after Piper settled in at college for me to realize I had no life or identity beyond being her mom.
The empty nesters at the bank told me it would happen, but I ignored their warnings.
That was a month ago, and I still felt lost without the purpose of taking care of someone else.
I needed to rediscover myself and who I want to be now.
Every person in this foyer had a life before magic. Maybe some were like me; maybe people had glorious lives, or bad ones. Some, like Imogene and her crew, had lived an entire lifetime already. At McKenzie Institute, we got a second, or third, or fiftieth chance to be who we wanted.
My stomach growled loudly, a quick reminder that I needed food and rest.
This castle was my home for the next eight months. I’d have plenty of time to bask in its magnificence.
“Don’t worry, stomach, we’re almost ready.”
Nearby, a faculty member shot a white light into the air and told everyone interested in the feast to follow the light.
Like moths to a flame, we students followed the ball of light down the long hallway to two twelve-foot-tall, open wooden doors.
A woman with blue hair pushed all in her path out of the way, including me. “Thank the heavens. I thought we’d never get to eat,” she muttered over her shoulder.
The feast was grand and magical… like everything in this castle appeared to be.
The dining hall roared with life. Blue mist sparkled in the vaulted ceilings, giving the two crystal chandeliers an iridescent shimmer.
The floor to ceiling window at the end allowed dining students to see a lake in the near distance—a walk I already planned to make once I knew my way around.
“What a feast!” the blue haired woman said. Then, she thanked a staff member before racing to the nearest stretch of long tables with mountains of dining options.
Guess she was starving too.
“The food is replenishing. Please, have as much as you like,” the staff member said to the rest of us, and then walked back down the hall to the foyer to lead in more people.
“Heck, yeah. Look at those burgers.” A body rushed past me, and I chose to wait until most of our small group had left before moving. I never liked being in the middle of a crowd, everyone touching like a herd of cows in a corral.
A line formed at each of the six tables, and as soon as serving bowls and platters emptied, fresh food popped into existence. The thought immediately made me frown.
On my right, a man with a long gray beard whispered not so quietly to his other neighbor, “I hope they are using that magic to help starvation outside these walls, Sheamus, or we have to go full French on their asses.”
My lips tightened, as did my stomach. When Piper was five, I’d gotten fired from my job as a hotel concierge, and Lucas stopped paying child support. I dropped fifteen pounds because I had to make sure Piper had enough food. Times were tough until I scored a job at the bank.
I was lucky, and everything worked out. Many in my town, in the world, weren’t so lucky.
A red-haired man, who must be Sheamus, with a similar length beard leaned closer to him. “I heard Mr. McKenzie partnered with witches from Nathuria to take care of our world’s problems like hunger, water, and shelter.”
Even though the lines had opened up for plates, my curiosity got the best of me. I stayed to listen to Sheamus and his friend’s interesting conversation.
“I read on a blog that there’s a duplication spell they can use, but the trick is making sure they don’t overdo it. Eventually everything will circle back to waste, we need structures and systems that can handle it all.”
Sheamus whistled. “I guess it’s a good start. We should be able to work together to help our realm’s issues. Let’s go eat.”
They walked away, leaving me standing alone and pondering their words.
From my point of view, Rylan McKenzie was going over and beyond to make up for the worldwide catastrophe. Sadly, not everyone would have.
“Keep following the light!” I heard the same guiding castle staff say from the end of the hall.
A croissant floated past my head as I made it to the nearest table.
“They’ve got good croissants.” A man walked by me, his arm thrust into the air with a pastry in his hand.
My heart rate skyrocketed as another croissant shot into the air, coasted over the chandelier, then landed on a person’s head.
Why were croissants flying? That doesn’t seem sanitary.
While those vaulted ceilings I admired earlier were beautiful, they did nothing for the sound. Between all the chattering, forks scratching against ceramic plates, and magic popping all around, my brain was overstimulated.
A rush of breath blew out of me, and my magic crackled on my tongue like popping candy. I needed to get out of here before I lashed out when someone invaded my personal space.
I grabbed a to-go box and shoved the closest food inside.
Staff with crisp black shirts and purple ties walked in front of me, checking food and chatting with students grabbing plates.
As I turned to rush out the door, Imogene and her friend stopped on the other side of me, blocking the carrot cake. I’d saved space in my second box specifically for a slice. Just as I opened my mouth to say, “excuse me,” a fight erupted between them.
“Imogene, you’re hogging all the shrimp kabobs.”
Imogene proceeded to call her friend a largemouth bass.
Her friend gasped, then everyone else gasped as her face transformed into a mixture of a bass and a human.
“You old crone. Now look what you did!” she yelled as a staff member ran up to her with a spray bottle and spritzed her gaping fish face.
Pink mist soaked into her scaled skin, and in seconds, she morphed back to her normal appearance.
The two women shouted at each other until a staff member spoke softly to them and pointed toward a chocolate fountain surrounded by various tarts.
Turns out, the flowing chocolate resolved their bickering as they rushed to grab their sweet treats together.
Feeling the weight of the day crash into me, I left the grand hall in search of my room.
I arrived at the staircase and eyed the three people holding food boxes, standing on the first landing above, their chests heaving.
“Where is an elevator when you need one?” someone huffed as I made it up to the first group.
“We got this,” I muttered to us all before taking on the rest of the steps, focusing on one at a time. My thighs burned, but I pushed through with thoughts of finally sitting down to eat those two slices of pepperoni in my box.
“These stairs are going to kill my knees,” a woman with streaks of gray hair blew out between deep breaths, gripping her luggage handle tighter before going up the next set. I paused on the third landing with the others and flashed them a grin of solidarity.
I wasn’t in terrible shape, but I was tired, and these steps would probably be the end of me.
“We could probably just live here. I mean, we already have our stuff,” a man with glasses and a handkerchief sticking out of his brown coat pocket said as he chuckled.
Then, the sound of a loud cranking noise caught our attention.
Good ol’ Imogene sat on a little seat attached to the railing of the stairs while it pulled her up like a little rollercoaster.
“Perks of being in your seventies.” She winked at me as the lift helped her up and around the landing to the next floor.
The starving woman with blue hair from the dining hall panted as she reached the landing. “I never thought I’d be excited to be in my seventies, but I am now.”
“Here’s to seventy.” I raised my to-go box and pushed myself through fatigue and made the rest of stairs my bitch.