Chapter 18
Having never been in love before, Bryn had no idea if she was doing it right. What she did know was that this feeling brightened every part of every day. Like being in love was a layer of clouds and she walked on them everywhere.
When Amelia was there, when Amelia wasn’t there, when she was thinking about her, when she wasn’t thinking about her, her baseline buoyancy as she went through the world had increased to a level that made everything seem more vivid.
Not that she wasn’t capable of frustration or impatience or slightly wanting to throttle Luke because he was out of his seat for the fourth time in one period—but she was just happier.
Maybe like she was breathing a higher concentration of oxygen than usual and it was going straight into her system.
It made everything look sharper and brighter, more colorful.
In short, she’d never felt better. And a huge part of that was Amelia.
Obviously, they could not be seen in public being lovey-dovey, but in private all bets were off and somehow they managed to cobble together far more private time than she would have thought possible.
Part of it was that both of them enjoyed the challenge of their respective jobs.
It wasn’t uncommon for Amelia to come down to Bryn’s classroom after the end of the school day and do her own work in the study as Bryn graded papers.
Once Piper caught on to this, they started showing up too, after specifically asking if they were “interrupting anything”.
But Bryn had assured them they were not.
No sexy times in the castle, or at least not in the school rooms. She also hadn’t gone to Amelia’s bedroom for more than a brief look as Amelia gathered a change of clothes; aside from occasionally kissing, it just felt weird to be intimate in the castle.
And while Amelia didn’t feel bad walking in from the cottage in the morning, Bryn was pretty sure that leaving Amelia’s rooms in the castle would feel like an actual walk of shame, even if she wasn’t ashamed.
So things progressed. A young staff member, a somewhat mild, hard-to-read woman from a vampire background (not that she was a vampire, but she had been adopted into a vampire family), had also been hired by Amelia for the year.
Her role was to be house warden to the students who lived on campus, like Circe.
Her name was Andi and she spoke with a very slight Scandinavian accent, though Bryn didn’t know her well enough yet to ask where she was from.
Andi was also only twenty-three, but she had a reputation amongst the boarding students for being un-push-aroundable, though all of them seemed to like her a great deal and treated her like something of an older sister or young-ish aunt.
Bryn had noticed that Amelia’s hires had been universally young—a lot younger than the average age of the teachers at the school when she had been a student there.
Piper had been the one who brought Andi in, and while Bryn suspected there might be some sense of romantic attraction there, it was clearly in a fledgling stage, if it existed at all.
(And Amelia wasn’t ready to comment either way, though she agreed that there was some potential.)
Having Andi around was nice, because she was always happy to talk about the kids and strategize ideas to improve the school for everyone.
The four of them got together a couple of times a week to do their various work and have some interesting conversations.
Andi had a lot of thoughts about Circe, who, she reported, was an excellent resident of the dormitories: she always picked up after herself, worked with other students whenever there was a group cleanup, and offered emotional support, without words, to her friends and roommates.
“We still don’t know why she doesn’t speak?” Bryn asked. Everyone shook their heads.
“I’ve decided,” said Andi, “not to question it. If she had any physical or mental disability, I wouldn’t ask why.
I wouldn’t troubleshoot. I would just accept that’s who she is.
So I’m trying to do that with the speaking thing as well, though honestly it would be nice sometimes if she could tell me things.
But when she needs to, she writes a note.
So there’s no real reason for it to be an issue, and clearly it’s not. ”
“Do we know anything about her family?” Amelia asked. “Professor Herringbone did mention to me that they are pretty far away.”
“Alaska,” Andi confirmed.
Piper whistled. “Isn’t the witchy community up there supposed to be pretty insular?”
“Yes,” Amelia said. “Consistent with most geographically isolated witching communities.”
Bryn realized she’d never really considered the issues faced by isolated witches. Sure, she’d been the weird one in her family, but she’d always lived in a town with witchy stores, and a big witchy school on the hill.
“It’s just Circe and her parents and grandparents, I think, though they’re non-magical,” Andi explained.
“She does get letters from them, actual letters, in the mail. Circe is my only resident who gets paper mail consistently, and it seems to make her happy.” She smiled with genuine fondness.
“She keeps her letters in a folder hanging on her wall. It’s really quite sweet.
I think she could be a leader, or at least that’s how she functions in the dorms.”
“Interesting,” Amelia said. “You know, because she doesn’t speak, I hadn’t really thought about that, which I guess shows a flaw in my logic, but I’ll keep it in mind, Andi. Thank you.”
The after-school club also moved on. The kids had bewitched the spell items they’d bought at the magic shop in town, to various degrees of success, and they were mostly pleased.
Luke, still charmed by Bryn’s dolphin trick, had bewitched his little bunny rabbit toy to twitch an ear.
The first time he’d made it work, he’d gasped, and the rest of them had applauded.
Circe had picked out a glitter globe with a magically changing skyline (Tokyo, Moscow, Dubai), which she had diagrammed out at a fourth-year skill level, and then designed a spell so that the cityscape would change with a flick of her wand—a piece of magic that Bryn suspected even Circe didn’t know how sophisticated it was.
And Violet, ever practical, had debated for a long time before finally settling on a pair of magical gloves that were bewitched to get warm, and then they tried to add a spell layer that also bathed the wearer’s skin in aloe.
It hadn’t worked. It hadn’t worked at all.
They’d gotten the gloves to do something, though only Bryn could see that shimmer of magic at work.
To Violet’s extreme frustration, Bryn could not look at it and describe exactly what it was doing or how to force the magic to deliver the results they wanted.
But Bryn had pointed out that even though it hadn’t worked, it had been powerful, very powerful for a second-year student.
Which, at last, had seemed to reassure Violet.
The club meetings had gone from being something they did because the headmistress forced them to, to something they tolerated without having to be forced into, to (Bryn thought) something they actually enjoyed.
The three kids got along and had formed their own sort of found family in the last couple of months.
Violet continued to be at times overconfident, but always confident; Circe continued to support her friends however she could; and Luke continued to bounce off walls and provide an awful lot of oddly insightful redirection when the moment called for it.
As it did after Violet had heard some disappointing news from back home.
Apparently, their two closest friends had gotten in what they called a “cataclysmic fight” and now weren’t speaking.
It sounded like the kind of thing that happened with teenagers all the time and would eventually pass, but clearly Violet didn’t think so.
Luke tried some of his normal antics to distract her, and when that didn’t work, he sat down next to her and said, “So what does that look like for you when you go home over the summer?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Usually we spend all of our time together, and now if they’re not talking to each other …” She slumped in uncharacteristic defeat. “I know no one’s died, but it actually kind of makes me want to cry all the time thinking about it.”
“So don’t think about it,” Luke suggested.
“That’s not going to change how I feel.”
After a moment he nodded. “Okay, why don’t we roleplay? You be your friends and I’ll be you, since you would only react like you would, but I would definitely not react like you would.”
After a little bit of cajoling, Violet went along with the idea.
And Bryn had to admit it was both funny and actually pretty interesting.
Sometimes Luke went for laughs, because he was Luke and he loved going for laughs, but other times he said things like, “How did you feel when she said that?” or “What did you think when that happened?” Bryn was genuinely impressed with both of them.
Violet even hugged him once they were done with their roleplay and said, “That was super silly, but anyway, thanks, Luke.”
It shouldn’t really have made her cry, but Bryn found she had to turn away to hide the tears in her eyes. It wasn’t sad; it was lovely.
Her master plan for group work in her classrooms was met with a great deal of resistance.
The younger kids went along with it because first-years went along with a lot of things.
It was so overwhelming just being in witchy school, Bryn remembered this quite well, that for them, being told what to do was a relief.
Everyone else … Well, maybe it wasn’t that strange that Grimoire Academy—a traditional sort of place founded on traditionalist principles and upheld by a traditionalist board of governors—had in its very marrow resistance to change.
At the end of the first week, she was frustrated, tired, and a little bit hopeless.
“I don’t know,” she said to Amelia that afternoon.
They’d stopped at Amelia’s office for her to pick up a few things before retiring to the cottage until dinner.
“It’s just, I don’t know how to get them engaged, keep them interested.
It’s such fascinating material. How are spells formed?
Why do we teach the basics the way we do?
What even makes them qualify as basics? Who made these decisions?
Who is trying to interrupt these decisions?
What should we be thinking about going forward?
What would they want to teach the next generation that is different from what they’ve been taught?
” She sighed. “How do they find this stuff boring?”
Amelia smiled, drew her closer, and kissed her. “I really love your passion. It’s super hot.”
“Ew, I’m talking about the kids.” But the protest was only playful; Bryn wasn’t exactly going to argue with anything Amelia loved about her.
“No,” Amelia said, “you’re talking about teaching, which is one of my passions. So I’m allowed to find it hot.”
Bryn let herself be towed in. “Okay, I will accept this argument.”
“Good. But it’s Friday night, Bryn. You need some time off.”
It was too early to think about time off. They had six weeks before the exams. She was too overwhelmed to take time off. “Yeah, but what if it doesn’t work? What if they all fail their MSEs? You need them to pass.”
“It would be nice if they passed,” Amelia acknowledged wryly. “But if they don’t pass, the world will continue on. The sun will rise.”
It was bravely said, but it didn’t fool Bryn for a second. “Amelia, you love this place. I want you to be able to stay here.”
Amelia leaned in and rested her head on Bryn’s shoulder. “I do love this place. I would be devastated if I had to leave it. But nothing will be helped by you collapsing in exhaustion from trying to save the world. That is, by the way, totally a teacher trait, FYI.”
“I’m no one’s teacher,” Bryn protested.
“I beg to differ,” Amelia said. “Anyway, I had a different idea.”
“Did you now?”
“I did.” Amelia lowered her voice. “It’s a secret.”
The hint of play at the end of a hard week won an anticipatory wriggle from Bryn, who said, “Oh, a secret idea. That’s even more exciting.”
Amelia, with a twinkle in her eye, said, “You have no idea what’s in store for you.” She leaned in closer and added, “It’s going to be super sexy, just so you know what to expect.”
Bryn felt heat surge through her, starting somewhere below the belt and moving outward from there. “You’re quite cocky tonight,” she said, grinning.
“Oh, I am,” Amelia said. “But it’s time for you to go home and do your Pilates and whatever else needs to be done. And then I’ll let you know when I’m ready for you.”
“Ready for me? What do you mean?” Were they going out somewhere? Bryn was so tired, she feared she’d fall asleep the second they got in the car, but she could hardly say so if Amelia had planned something special.
Amelia pressed a finger to her lips. “Just let me do this for you. Let me surprise you. This one time. Go along with it.”
Bryn found herself a little bit choked up.
Amelia was amazing. She was so smart, she felt things so deeply.
She was so good at teaching, at being headmistress, at talking to the students and the staff.
Gods, Bryn wanted to rip her clothes off and take her right there in her office. But no, tonight was Amelia’s.
She shivered pleasantly and wondered what that meant.