Chapter 7
It turnedout that I didn’t need to try to talk to Professor Calderwood.
He practically pounced on me the instant I walked in through the door of his classroom. “Where is Ms. Forest?”
It took me a moment to remember Hazel’s last name. “I was hoping you might have some information on her whereabouts,” I said.
The professor groaned. “No!”
“Did she make it to her meeting with you the other day?” I asked.
“Yes, she was even early. Very eager to work with me.” The professor swept over to his table and started looking through his notes, grumbling under his breath.
“She seemed like herself, then?” I asked tentatively, following him.
“As much herself as she usually is.” He brushed half the papers onto the floor and rested his fists on the table, head bowed.
I studied him with a frown. His brown hair seemed more ratty than usual, and his clothes were covered with dirt. “Are you all right?”
“The plants aren’t growing the right way in the forest,” he said abruptly. He sighed and raised his head. “I need Ms. Forest... Hazel... to help me with my analysis. There’s too much to do. Too much to analyze. The dark forest has never done this before.”
I have to admit, I only really took Herbology because of Hazel. Most of what the professor was saying was going over my head. But... “There’s something wrong with the dark forest?” I asked anxiously. “Is there anything that we can do, as a class? Maybe we can run some of the tests for you?”
The professor blinked at me owlishly. “Yes! We can start right away!” He started around his table, ready to give the word to the other students.
“Unfortunately, you must have forgotten that today is a shortened period,” I said, just loud enough for him to hear me. “We won’t have time to actually do anything.”
The professor deflated, and I had the inexplicable urge to laugh. He was so dramatic.
“But you can give us the rundown on what you’ve discovered so far. Maybe set us a short essay on unusual growth based on what you’ve found?”
Professor Calderwood brightened considerably. “Yes, girl, that’s exactly what I’ll do! I don’t have the time required for research. Why not use the brains of the students I teach?”
I smiled at him and sat down, prepared to take notes.
The professor clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention. The greenhouse went silent almost immediately. “Welcome back. The dark forest has a big problem, and my teaching assistant is missing. We are going to focus on the problem of the trees. The magic is leaving the trees and plants at the edge of the forest. They are withering slowly. Here is the rate of decay,” he paused to draw a sketch on the blackboard, showing the border of the forest and where it met the castle grounds. Within the border, he wrote several numbers around the edge. “If you’ll notice, it’s not consistent across the border, but it is the same no matter what plant I test in the same area. I need you to do a research essay for me. One page, due next class, as time is of the essence. I will make my notes available to you at the library.”
Groans went up from my classmates. I wanted to smack them.
This is important!I thought fiercely.
Probably more important than anything else in your sad and pathetic lives!
I took a deep breath. Paige was getting to me and she wasn’t even here. I stood up and faced the rest of the class. “This isn’t busy work, people. The dark forest is at stake, and Professor Calderwood is asking for our help. We can, and more importantly, we should do this.”
Several students nodded their heads at my words, and I felt a bit better.
“My notes will be at the library after lessons today,” the professor said.
There were a few grumblings, but on our way out the door to the next class almost everyone reassured him that we would solve this mystery.
I only had one class left, Charms Potions, before I had to go and meet Professor Akhtar about my schedule. Mrs. Wainwright was waiting for us at the front of the room, her thick black-framed glasses perched precariously on the tip of her nose.
I always wanted to push them up, just to see what she’d do.
“I hope you’re prepared for an intense semester,” she said dreamily.
I wasn’t fooled by the distracted quality of her voice. Despite it, she was extremely exacting in her testing, and was probably one of the most difficult professors to please. Potions were her specialty, and if she came across even one clump in her assessment, she docked you marks.
“We’re going to leave behind the charms and potions that you would find in your spellbooks. The ones we will be studying are more theoretical than practical, and yet, you will force them to bend to your will and become reality.”
My eyebrows rose at the hard, steel-like tone in her voice at the end of her speech, and I glanced at the students to either side of me to see if they felt the same way. Most of them were whispering amongst themselves, so I knew I wasn’t alone in my surprise.
“We will start with the simplest, moving on to the most complex and dangerous just before the holidays.” Her eyes shone with excitement before regaining their dreamy state. “But first, we will start with practicing our protective shielding. Please repeat after me...” Professor Wainwright incanted the standard safety spell that would protect us from any backlash from a charm or potion gone awry.
The class repeated it, the words feeling like slipping into a comfortable pair of pajamas. It was an easy charm; one of the first ones any of us had ever been taught.
“Very good,” the professor said. She pointed her finger at a student to my left and said something I didn’t quite catch.
The boy’s nose started dripping blood.
“Strong, but not enough,” the professor said. “Heal yourself. I am going to teach you the next level shielding charm. By the end of this semester, you should be able to cast and hold each of the five levels of shielding for a minimum of an hour.” She said the second level shield spell and we repeated it.
It was a spell I was familiar with, but I was glad for the chance to practice.
“At the end of the class, I will randomly test the strength of one of your shields,” Professor Wainwright said. “Keep them strong.”
Power shields weren’t all that different from the invisibility shields that Aiden and I used, so I wasn’t too concerned. I wished I could tether it to an object, though. Then I could spare my entire concentration for the rest of the lesson.
When we walked out of class, several more people had nosebleeds and we had the professor’s warning echoing in our ears to practice.
I nearly bumped into Aiden in the middle of the second floor foyer.
“Have you seen Geoffrey?” he asked. “He wasn’t in my class just now.”
I frowned. “I talked to him at lunch. Bruce was going to ask him about his missing roommate, Justin.”
“All right, let’s go find Bruce.”
He wasn’t too difficult to locate, once we found the class for camouflage that he was in. He was talking to the teacher.
We waited outside the door impatiently until he joined us. “Hey, I thought we were meeting for dinner to discuss the mystery?” he said. “Geoffrey hadn’t seen Justin after breakfast yesterday.”
“He’s missing,” I blurted out.
Bruce’s eyebrow rose. “Yes, I know Justin is missing. That’s why we’re asking about him,” he said as if I were a toddler.
I laughed. “Not him. Geoffrey.”
“Wait, you’re telling me that Geoffrey is missing now, too?” Bruce’s eyes widened almost comically. “I left him in the cafeteria. Are you sure he didn’t just go to his room or something?”
Aiden twisted his lips into a grimace. “He might also have met with a teacher or counselor regarding the death of his roommate. I may have jumped the gun on this one, Siobhan. Sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. My mind leapt to the same conclusion as yours.” I tapped my chin as I thought quickly. “I have to meet Professor Akhtar now. Bruce, you go see if Geoffrey is in his room. Aiden, you go to the office and talk to the staff there. They would have seen him if he went to talk to a counselor. We’ll meet for dinner.”
“Break!” Bruce said with a chuckle. “Good plan.”
We split up and I went to find my professor in his office. I hadn’t been in the room before, and I was excited to see it.
“Come in,” he said when I knocked on the door.
At first, I didn’t see Professor Akhtar, I was so distracted by the three-dimensional model of Earth that took up the entirety of the center of the room. “What...” I trailed off, my jaw hanging open when I noticed that it rotated slowly.
“It doesn’t bite,” the professor said with a chuckle in his voice. “You can enter the image. What do you think it is?”
I took a couple steps further into the room, my gaze jumping from one point to another. “It’s the ley lines,” I whispered. “They’re beautiful.”
“Yes, quite. Anything else?”
I blinked a couple times, trying to refocus my brain, and stepped into the center of the image. Now that I was expecting it, my mind started to make sense of what I was seeing. “There are more nexus points than what we see on the surface,” I marveled. “I knew there were underwater ones, obviously. Look at all the points in the southern hemisphere. But there are more points underground where the continents are. And they don’t match up with the aboveground ones.” I spun to face him. “Why not?”
He nodded. “Good observation. Keep looking. You might see the answer.”
I felt like he was testing me. I stepped out of the image and looked for more unknown nexus points. “These ones here, and here, and that one... They’re all in the air? There aren’t mountains in the middle of the United States, are there?”
“No. The Appalachians are to the east, Rockies to the west. You’d find hills in the center, but nothing as high as those points. Why do you think they are there, then?”
“Well,” I started slowly, puzzling through the question. “Gravity might affect the ley lines?”
“Good start,” Professor Akhtar said, nodding approvingly. “Keep going.”
My confidence grew. “Okay, so if gravity affects the ley lines, the ones closer to the center of the earth would be closer together, and the ones in the air would be further apart. Why aren’t the ones under water affected the same way as the underground ones?”
“Compare the depths.”
I entered the dimensional map halfway, and used my fingers to measure the distance in the water compared to the underground ones. “That doesn’t really seem to matter.”
“Doesn’t it?”
I felt my competitive spirit rise to the challenge.
What was the difference?
Then a thought occurred to me. “What depth is the mantle?”
“There you go,” the professor said. “It doesn’t matter what distance the nexus point is from the absolute center of the Earth, only the distance from the mantle. We call the underwater ones ‘surface’ nexus points because they’re above the Earth’s crust.”
“Fascinating. What causes the ley lines?”
He raised an eyebrow. “That sounds like a thesis question to me.”
“Nobody’s discovered that before?” I asked, surprised.
“Some may have tried, but that would be the first thing you should look for. You have access to our library, and once you’ve exhausted your search there, you may have my access key to use the libraries at other schools.”
“Wow! Thank you!”
Professor Akhtar snapped his fingers and the dimensional image collapsed into a small solid globe on the ceiling. “Excellent. You have somewhere to begin researching for your thesis. Now we should discuss your duties as my teaching assistant.”
“I’m ready.” I sat in a chair and pulled out a notebook, flipping to a blank page.
* * *
I metup with Aiden outside the cafeteria. My heart did a little flip when I saw him as I walked down the stairs. He was leaning against a wall, his dark hair drooping over his forehead while his entire attention was focused on the book in his hand. It was one of his textbooks, I recognized immediately as I sidled up to him.
“It’s such a turn-on to watch a guy reading,” I murmured, one hand rubbing his forearm. “Wanna go get it on in a closet?”
Aiden had jumped when I first touched him, telling me how engrossed he had been in his book. Now he was smiling at me, a touch of fire in his eyes. “You aren’t going to want a dinky little closet, my Siobhan. You’re going to want to be comfortable while I feast on you.” His nostrils flared and his eyes darkened. “You weren’t lying about being turned on.”
“I don’t lie,” I said with a pout.
“You didn’t exaggerate either.” He bent over me, his nose burying itself in my neck as he inhaled. “You smell incredible. I’m not sure I can stomach food now.”
I laughed. “Come on, I want to hear about what Bruce found out.”
“Then why did you suggest closet sex?” Aiden growled. “One of these days, I’m going to take you up on one of your propositions and then you’re going to miss class because I’m going to be buried knot-deep inside your tight little pussy.”
I gasped, instantly getting wetter at his words, and clutched at his arm.
He chuckled darkly. “Not so cocky now, are you? Let’s go meet with Bruce. I’ve got some bad news, I’m afraid.”
“No Geoffrey in the staff area?” I asked, sighing heavily as we got into line for food.
“I thought we were supposed to wait until we could tell Bruce, too,” Aiden teased.
“A yes or no answer would suffice,” I replied, sticking my tongue out at him.
“No.”
“Was that a ‘no, Geoffrey wasn’t in the staff area’, or a ‘no, I’m not going to tell you’,” I asked.
“I thought it was a ‘simple yes or no answer’,” Aiden said, playfully tapping my nose.
“I hate you.”
“No, you really don’t.”
We made our way to our usual table to find Bruce sitting with another boy.
“Hello,” I said, sitting down with Aiden beside me. I introduced myself. “And you are?”
“I’m Justin,” the new boy said. “Bruce said you might have some questions for me? I’m afraid I don’t really have answers, though.”
My eyes widened. “Justin, as in the roommate of Geoffrey and Richard? Justin who went missing?”
He nodded to both questions.
“Where were you? Did you see Hazel?” I asked, leaning forward in my eagerness to hear his answer.
Justin shook his head again. “I have no idea. As far as I’m concerned, classes are supposed to start this morning, except now it’s dinnertime and I have no idea where I was all day. The teachers have already questioned me, even using the strongest truth serum they could make, and I couldn’t give them anything other than that.”
“Wow.” I sat back. “That was not at all what I expected.” I frowned. “That’s so strange that you’re back so soon after being missing. Why isn’t Hazel back yet, then? This makes no sense.”
Aiden bumped my shoulder with his. “This is actually along the same lines as what I was going to tell you. Geoffrey wasn’t in the staff rooms, but they were questioning Brian, Una’s stitch witch classmate. He was also one of the missing students this morning. There were a couple others waiting their turn, but I didn’t recognize them. They were from lower years.”
“What about... Oh, what were their names?” I searched my memory.
“Lincoln,” Bruce supplied. “The healer trainee.”
“Right.” I snapped my fingers. “And Paul, the investigator. Rhiannon told us about him. He’s not back either?”
Aiden shook his head. “They weren’t in the staff room. That doesn’t mean they weren’t finished already. I didn’t see Justin, for example.”
I turned to Justin. “Did you see them when you were getting tested?”
“No. I was alone.”
“That’s so weird.”
“Where do we go from here?” Bruce asked.
“I have absolutely no idea. There are suddenly dozens more questions and none of them seem related.” My shoulders sank. “And Geoffrey is missing, as far as we know. This is so frustrating!”
Una, Rhiannon, Lilia, and Brom joined us, their trays full of food.
“What’s new?” Una asked, sliding into her spot. “Justin! Where have you been?”
Justin blushed under her attention and we filled the new people in on the events we’d uncovered.
“This is so weird,” Rhiannon said quietly.
“That’s what I said!” I exclaimed.
“You poor thing,” Una cooed, cuddling up to Justin and putting her hand on his leg. “I’m available for whatever comfort you can think of.” She batted her eyelashes at him and he flushed a darker red.
I smirked to myself. Trust Una to turn a traumatic situation into sex.
“When did you arrive at school?” I asked Justin, distracting him from Una’s low-cut top. “Did you get here on Sunday?”
He shook his head. “No, I arrived Monday morning. Why?”
I sighed. “I was hoping the common link between the disappearances was an early arrival. So you didn’t see Richard at all, then?”
Justin sobered. “No, I didn’t. I’m horrified to learn of his death. Not to speak ill of the dead, but good riddance.”
“Did he bully you, too?” I asked.
“No, but I ran a lot of interference between him and Geoffrey. I don’t understand why he had such a grudge against him.” Justin clenched a fist on the table.
“You’re such a good person,” Una said, putting her hand over his. “I’m sorry you had to deal with that.”
“I wouldn’t say I’m all that good,” Justin replied, entirely focused on her again.
“But I would,” Una said flirtatiously. “I can show you just how much I appreciate you standing up to bullies, if you like?”
Justin visibly swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Yeah, okay.”
“Come with me,” Una said, climbing to her feet, not letting go of his hand.
Justin towered over the petite blonde as they left the cafeteria.
“Well, that’s one way to be welcomed back to school,” Bruce said, returning his attention to his food.
Lilia chuckled. “One of my favorites.”
Brom blushed.