3. Cass
Cass
“Mr. Reed,” Dean Thornfield growled, his hands shaking as he gripped the edges of his desk. “What the fuck were you thinking?!”
Faculty swearing. Not a good sign.
I felt my jaw clench as I stood before his desk, still reeking of smoke and cheap alcohol.
The stench of ozone from my lightning magic probably wasn’t helping either.
Dean Thornfield’s face was a dangerous shade of purple, and I’d never seen him this angry before.
I’d seen him stern. I’d seen him disappointed.
But this? This was something else entirely.
“I...” I started, then stopped. What the fuck was I supposed to say? That I’d been drunk? That I’d been showing off? That I’d let the magic get away from me because I was too caught up in the rush of it all?
All of those things were true, and all of them made me sound like an absolute idiot.
“The greenhouse is destroyed,” he continued, his voice low and controlled in a way that was somehow worse than if he’d been yelling.
“Fifty years of research. Rare specimens that took decades to cultivate. And you—” He pointed a shaking finger at me.
“You burned it all to the ground because you wanted to impress your drunk friends.”
“Sir, I—”
“Don’t,” he held up a hand. “I don’t want to hear it. Do you have any idea what you’ve done? That building housed plants that were irreplaceable. Some of them were the last of their species. And now they’re ash.”
I stood there, my hands clenched into fists at my sides. The alcohol had worn off. It had been replaced by a sick, twisting sensation in my gut. I could still see it; the moment the lightning had hit. The way the roof had exploded. The way the flames had consumed everything inside.
“What happens now?” I asked quietly, already knowing the answer wasn’t going to be good.
Dean Thornfield leaned back in his chair, and I watched as he took a deep breath, trying to compose himself. His hands were no longer shaking, but his eyes… His eyes were cold.
“You have two options, Mr. Reed,” he said finally. “Expulsion. Effective immediately. Or you can work in the greenhouse, what’s left of it, for the remainder of this semester. No pay. No academic credit. Just labor. Hard, physical labor, helping to rebuild what you destroyed.”
I blinked. That was... not as bad as I’d expected, which somehow made it worse.
Expulsion meant going home, meant facing my parents and their endless quiet disappointment.
I couldn’t do that. Widdershins was my only way to get away from them.
I couldn’t give that up. But greenhouse work? That sounded boring as hell.
“If you choose the labor,” he continued, “you’ll report to the greenhouse keeper every morning at six AM.
You’ll work until your classes begin, and you’ll continue working after classes end until ten in the evening.
On weekends you’ll work all day with meal breaks.
You’ll help clean up the debris, repair the structure, and replant whatever can be salvaged.
And if you fuck up even once, if you miss a single shift or show up late or give anyone even a hint of trouble, you’re gone.
Expelled. No second chances. Do you understand me? ”
Six in the morning until ten at night. Every single day. Weekends included. For an entire semester.
“What about homework?” I asked.
“I guess you’ll just have to fucking figure it out, won’t you?” he growled. “That shouldn’t leave you any time for dicking around or getting drunk with your friends at the frat house anymore.”
“Yes, sir,” I heard myself say. If I didn’t want to go home to my detached parents, what other choice did I have?
“Good. You start tomorrow.” He turned away from me, pulling a file across his desk.
It was a clear dismissal. “Get out of my office, Mr. Reed. And if I see your face in here again, it better be because you’re winning an academic award, not because you’ve committed another act of incredible stupidity. ”
I nodded, even though he wasn’t looking at me anymore, and turned toward the door. My hand was on the knob when his voice stopped me.
“And Mr. Reed? Stay away from the weather magic for a while. That’s not a request.”
“Yes, sir,” I muttered again, even though he still wasn’t looking. I yanked the door open and stepped out into the hallway, letting it slam shut behind me harder than I probably should have.
The walk back to my dorm felt like it took hours. My brain was still processing what had just happened. Expulsion or labor. Those were my choices. And I’d picked labor like some kind of masochist. Six in the morning. Every. Single. Fucking. Day.
I wanted to punch something or someone.
Instead, I found myself wandering the campus in a daze, my feet carrying me through the snow past the main quad and toward the east side of campus where the greenhouse sat. Or what was left of it, anyway.
The building was still smoldering. The roof was completely gone, just blackened beams jutting up into the twilight like skeletal fingers.
The frame of the structure was intact, but everything inside was charred.
The glass walls that had somehow survived the initial blast were now covered in soot, making it impossible to see what lay beyond them.
I stood outside the fence that had been hastily erected around the perimeter, staring at the destruction. My destruction. The sick feeling in my gut twisted tighter.
“Quite a mess you’ve made.”
I jumped, spinning around to find an older woman standing behind me.
She had kind eyes and silver hair, and she was regarding me with an expression that was somewhere between disappointment and resignation.
I recognized her vaguely. She was one of the herbalism professors, I thought.
That wasn’t really my area of expertise.
“I know,” I said flatly. “Believe me, I know.”
“Do you?” she asked, stepping up beside me to gaze at the ruins. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like a kid who got drunk and didn’t think about the consequences.”
I wanted to argue, but she wasn’t wrong. So I just stood there, my jaw clenched, and said nothing.
“The Dean already sent me a message that you’ll be working for the department starting tomorrow,” she continued.
“One of my more talented students, the one whose senior project you incinerated, will be your boss for the rest of the semester. I don’t know how, but somehow you’ll need to figure out how to help him salvage his entire thesis. ”
My stomach dropped. “Wait, what? You mean—”
“Yes,” the professor said, turning to look at me with those disappointed eyes. “The student whose rare plants you just turned into charcoal. The one who spent months cultivating specimens for his senior thesis. That student will be supervising your labor.”
Great. Fucking fantastic.
“Who is it?” I asked, though part of me didn’t want to know. Part of me wanted to just walk away and pretend this conversation wasn’t happening.
“You’ll meet him tomorrow at six AM,” the professor said.
She started to walk away, then paused. “I’d suggest you apologize, Mr. Reed.
Genuinely apologize. And then I’d suggest you actually put in the work to make this right.
Because if you don’t, you won’t just be expelled from the Academy.
You’ll be outcast from the entire paranormal community.
Word travels fast, and nobody respects someone who destroys irreplaceable research and then doesn’t bother to fix it.
That doesn’t bode well for your future should you choose that path. ”
She paused for a long moment, letting her words sink in.
“And you better hope that my student is far more forgiving than I am.” She shot me a glare. “Personally, I would’ve given you no choice but expulsion.”
With one last huff, she left me standing there in the snow, staring at the smoking ruins of the greenhouse.
My hands were shaking again, but not from anger this time.
It was something else. Fear, maybe. Or the crushing weight of knowing I’d really and truly fucked up this time.
And in a way that couldn’t be easily undone.
I turned away from the fence and started walking back toward the dorms, my mind already racing through the implications. An entire semester of work. Early mornings. Late nights. And worst of all, having to face the person whose project I’d destroyed day after day after day.
But I wasn’t going to just work myself to the bone either. No, no. I didn’t give up that easily. The situation sucked, but that didn’t mean it had to be more difficult than necessary. If magic got me into this mess, then magic could get me out.
Weather magic was my specialty, however, with the Dean’s threat still lingering in the back of my mind, I figured I should probably avoid that for now.
Besides, a storm couldn’t rebuild a greenhouse.
However, there was magic for forging metal and glass.
Or at least, I assumed there was. Up until now I’d been goofing off in most of my classes, scraping by with just enough to pass.
For almost two years I’d avoided the library completely.
But tonight… Well, tonight I was in dire straits.
So I headed for the library. Surely they would have some blue collar magic book lying around about fixing such things.
How hard could it be to learn? I was a gifted witch.
My family, though not particularly well-known amongst the other high-profile witch families, was still respectful and powerful.
There should be no reason why boring, mundane magic shouldn’t be as easy as tying my shoes.
The library was mostly empty at this hour, which suited me fine.
I didn’t need anyone seeing me frantically searching through spell books like some kind of desperate freshman.
I made my way past the circulation desk, nodding at the student worker who barely glanced up from her enchanted ledger, and headed straight for the section I vaguely remembered from my one mandatory library orientation tour back in first year.
Practical Magic. Elemental Workings. Advanced Transmutation.
The spines of the books blurred together as I scanned them, my fingers trailing along the leather bindings.
Most of them looked ancient, bound in materials I couldn’t identify and labeled in languages I couldn’t read.
This was going to be harder than I thought.
“You look lost.”
I spun around, my heart rate spiking. Standing behind me was a giant of a man, at least seven feet tall with green skin, short dark hair, and the most intense gold eyes I’d ever seen.
And he wasn’t just tall either. He was fucking thick.
The dude looked like he could tackle the entire football team by himself.
He was smiling. And not just like a polite smile, but a genuine just-happy-to-be-alive sort of smile. The moment I saw it, it irritated the piss out of me.
“I’m not lost,” I snapped, that corked up anger inside me bubbling dangerously.
The giant’s smile didn’t falter. If anything, it got wider. “Right. So you’re just standing in front of the Transmutation section looking like you want to set it on fire, which is totally normal behavior.”
I felt my eye twitch. Great. A smartass. Exactly what I needed right now.
“Look, I don’t need your help,” I said, turning back to the shelves. “I’m fine.”
“You’re definitely not fine,” he said. It wasn’t a retort, he was just stating a fact. “You’ve got soot in your hair, you smell like a campfire, and you seem like you’ve had a really bad day.”
I clenched my fists. “Did anyone ever teach you that some people don’t want to talk to big green strangers?”
“It’s okay,” he said, stepping up beside me and scanning the shelves with those unsettling gold eyes. “I’ve had a really bad day too. But I’m not really a stranger, am I? We’re both students at Widdershins. We’ve probably had at least one class together.”
I turned to face him fully, taking in his massive frame, his green skin, the way his muscles seemed to move under his shirt like they had a life of their own.
I had no idea what kind of creature he was.
Witches didn’t usually mix with the monsters too much.
And after the Purity Front attacks last semester, the division between the groups was even worse. Everyone was on edge.
So why wasn’t this guy?
“We haven’t had any classes together,” I said, not looking up at him. “Now will you just leave me alone?”
“Are you sure you don’t want some company—”
“Are you stupid or something?!” I barked. “Leave me the fuck alone!”
He shut his mouth immediately. There was a look of hurt on his face, but I didn’t care. I’d already had the worst fucking day of my life and I didn’t want some big green idiot bothering me. I had enough on my mind without some himbo getting in my way and making it worse.
“Okay,” he said at last. “I… I hope your day gets better.”
“Gee thanks,” I grumbled, turning back to the shelf.
Behind me I heard him lumber away, looking like a kicked puppy. But I just couldn’t drum up the energy to care. Not now. Not when I had an entire semester of forced labor staring me in the face.
I spent the better part of an hour flipping through books, trying to find just one that would help me.
In the end, I managed to find several passages on fixing household items or enchanting taps to make hot water, but nothing about making glass or molding metal.
Finally, with one final huff, I tossed the books into a pile on the floor and left them there. Useless fucking things anyway.
Storming out of the library, there was only one thought on my mind.
Tomorrow was going to be a fucking nightmare.