Chapter 9
My new digs had the same unlived-in feel that Liam’s cabin had, but that wasn’t what was on my mind as I set down my meager belongings.
“In fact, some allow it to destroy them . . .”
Thalienne’s words were not exactly comforting, and they haunted me like a pack of ghouls.
“Why the hell didn’t she just tell me what the stupid motto means?”
“You could have asked me,” Calypso purred from my pocket.
“What does it mean, then?” I perked up, reaching to take out the locket, when her snide response came back.
“My Latin is a little rusty . . . Something about ‘loins,’ I think. Wait . . . or, light, maybe?”
“You just told me to ask you! Why would you say that if you don’t fucking know?” I fought not to grind my teeth, tossed my backpack on the closest chair with a quick glance at the clock on the wall. If I wanted to get to my first class on time, I had to get moving.
By the time I’d taken a hot shower and changed clothes, I felt like slightly less hammered shit.
Still, I dreaded attending a class with a bunch of strangers.
It was giving ‘first time around feels’ and at Neverthorn, those days had been among the most hellacious of my life – both times.
The long walk was starting to feel like a march to my own death when a familiar voice called my name.
“Harl – I mean . . . Hannah!”
Whoops.
I turned to see an older teenager with honey-colored cornrows, jogging up to fall into step beside me.
If not for her voice, and the feel of her emotions brushing over mine, I might not have remembered it was Marina.
We trudged up the grassy hill. “I’m starting to think that outdoor classes might not be as cool as they sound. ”
Marina laughed, glancing down at the crumpled, theme park-style map of the school in my hand. “I guess we’ll find out, once we get there.”
“If we get there,” I groaned, forcing one foot in front of the other as heat flooded my cheeks.
Getting blasted into the loch had obviously left me sore, but it went beyond that.
A mild headache that wouldn’t fade, and an all-around low-level feel-like-shit.
Not a lot different than the morning after a night of binge drinking.
Suck it up, buttercup.
I exhaled, doing my best to focus on the beautiful scenery all around me rather than wallowing.
The grounds were larger than Neverthorn’s – two square miles was no small chunk of land even if it wasn’t all inside the walls – with classes being held pretty much any and everywhere, from little forest clearings to gardens of flowers, and quaint, wooden huts.
We passed a few classes of mostly younger kids from the looks of it. So many were smiling that I wondered if they were just doing it for our benefit, trying to make the new kids think it was okay here. That they liked training at Heathermoor.
Marina handed me the map, and I ran my finger over it.
I’d taken the large, central building that looked like a palace to be the school but while there were a handful of classes held there, it seemed to be more of an administrative building with community spaces, staff offices, and libraries, while a lot of the classes were held all around campus grounds as we’d seen so far.
Marina yelped, and I spun in time to see her jabbing her finger to the right. “That’s the potions building,” she said, slapping at the map. “See! We’re getting close.”
I glanced past the stone building, squinting to see through the trees lining the back of it. My heart thumped in my chest as I caught sight of a small cluster of students.
“We won’t be late if we hurry,” Marina said as she broke into a jog.
Groaning, I ignored the wave of nausea that washed over me as I stumbled into what could be called a jog in some places. Not only was she right, but as the sole member of House Phoenix, making a scene on my first day of class was the last thing I needed.
We slowed as we approached, and the gathered students barely looked over as we strode up to them. “Did we get the time wrong?” I whispered, glancing around. Not a teacher in sight.
Marina tapped the nearest student on the shoulder, a chubby-cheeked boy from House Felinita by his pendant, who couldn’t have been older than sixteen.
“This is basic transmutation, right?” Marina asked.
He shrugged, his round cheeks going bright pink. “I sure hope so.”
“Maybe she’s running a bit late?” Marina mused with a shrug, turning back to me.
Tarquinius would never have accepted as much in Neverthorn, but, for better or for worse, this school was different. Fewer rules, no curfew, and, hopefully, fewer teachers with sticks up their asses.
On the bright side, all this free-spirited hippie stuff was going to make it a hell of a lot easier to sneak around in search of Calypso’s coin.
I held back a laugh as I thought of her, screaming up a storm at the fact that I’d left her locket in my dresser while I went to class.
She did live a boring life, but it was hard to feel sorry for her after she’d literally tried to drown me.
Something that is still totally on the table, if you don’t get your shit together and find her coin, I reminded myself.
With just three weeks left to find the locket, I didn’t exactly have a lot of time to settle in – any free time I had needed to go into finding the kraken coin.
I pushed down thoughts of searching the whole island, bringing my focus back to the matter at hand.
A class with no teacher.
“Any chance class got canceled without us hearing about it?” I glanced up at the blessedly rain-free sky as if I could tell time by the angle of the sun.
A nearby bush began to rustle before she could answer, and I turned just in time to see a pale-faced, blue-robed woman stepping through the foliage.
She held a large stack of papers and books in front of her.
Muddy feet stuck out of the bottom of her robe, with a few inches of her star-and-moon pajamas visible around her ankles.
Green-gold eyes darted all around for a moment, widening, then she let out a gasp. “Bloody hell, am I late?”
Her hand shot toward her pocket, and I winced as the precarious stack of supplies tipped sideways.
Fiery red hair flew in all directions as she scrambled to keep hold of everything in her arms, but it did more harm than good, and she let out a gasp as the books dropped to the dirt below, papers fluttering slower, but still falling.
She looked up with a frown. “Errr . . . And that’s why you need magic, kids,” she said, as if it’d been part of some kind of demonstration. She swiped a slender finger through the air with a flourish, forming an elaborate rune. “With a bit of advanced transmutation, I could’ve . . .”
I breathed out sharply, barely suppressing a laugh as the books doubled in size.
This was our teacher? I tried to picture the look on Tarquinius’s arrogant face if he’d seen such a display. It wasn’t pretty.
“I mean . . .” Her face went as red as a neon sign as she swiped her hand in the opposite direction, shrinking the books down until they were the size of a deck of cards.
Like my ‘nicking notions,’ only . . . different.
Not as small, but close. And there was something else I couldn’t put my finger on.
Was it how she cast, or the connection of the runes she used?
Her expression shifted, and she threw a finger into the air. “And voila! This is what transmutation can accomplish, if you take the time to master it.”
She paused, as if for applause, and I was halfway toward humoring her when she whipped off another rune.
Wind rustled from all around, as if responding to her call, and the shrunken papers and books floated gently into the air, the dirt and mud falling from them as they flew smoothly back to the crook of her arm, a fraction of the size they’d been, without a speck of dirt on them.
“Woah, now that’s cool,” Marina whispered, echoing my thoughts.
As much of a mess as she was, the woman had some serious power. She’d whipped off that wind rune like it was nothing. There were few doyens at Neverthorn who could’ve cast with such ease, with the exception of Doyenne Storm who was a weather Quirk.
Or Typhon.
A rush of heat rolled through me as I thought of him, and I clenched my hands at my sides, digging my fingernails into my palms. That man dominated far too much of my head space.
Focus, Harlow.
The doyenne looked at the nearest tree, her hand shooting toward it in a blur, then drawing it back.
A hollow groan rang through the small clearing, and the trunk of the tree jutted outward, turning into a broad desk, as cleanly made as if it had been crafted by a master carpenter. Now that was fucking cool.
“Hecate’s tits, she’s good,” I whispered. And for the first time since we got off the train, I felt like maybe coming here hadn’t been the worst decision ever. Maybe we could learn something here that we wouldn’t find anywhere else.
The doyenne tossed the books atop the desk, then brought her hands together in a light clap.
“Alright. My apologies for the delay, students, but let’s get into it.
I’m Doyenne McCabe, but you can just call me Bryony.
It’s so nice to meet you all. Now, first things first .
. .” she started, leafing through her papers before selecting one. “Attendance.”
I winced. I’d been hoping to avoid outing myself as the sole member of House Phoenix until later, but, apparently, the universe had other plans.
Her eyes fixed on mine for a moment, as if sensing my discomfort, then she shrugged, setting the paper back on the shelf. “Never mind. I’ll pass the sheet around at the end. We’ll need all the time we can get, now that I’ve wasted the first ten minutes of class with my silliness.”
She sucked in a deep breath, then looked out at us, her voice growing more serious as she went into a clearly well-rehearsed speech.