2. WITCHES, BITCHES, STITCHES, GLITCHES… AND OAKLEY RIDDLE
WITCHES, BITCHES, STITCHES, GLITCHES… AND OAKLEY RIDDLE
NO MORE COMMUNICATIONS FROM HEADMASTER MARTINELLI were dropped upon Embry via Merlin’s very sharp talons in the next few hours. Therefore she was all but sure Oakley Riddle had survived her first taste of boarding school life.
Still, it was a relief to see the girl’s impish face as she stumbled into the outdoor lunch seating, her pale features going from pinched and anxious to open and sure upon spotting Embry in the middle of the mealtime chaos.
“There you are. How do you feel about panzanella? Ames is grabbing three trays for us.” Then she realized she needed to explain who the Goddess she was talking about. “Ames is my bestie, and she’s extremely excited to meet you, Oakley.”
This was true. Ames took to new blood like a shark.
Nothing was more interesting to Amethyst Oberon than anyone or anything that broke up the monotony of her very comfortable existence.
Embry had a hunch this was part of the reason Ames and her perfectly matched boyfriend sparred (and made up) so often—it was exciting.
“Cool,” Oakley said yet again. They’d really have to work on her vocabulary.
“Come on, let’s get you settled. Lunch will be ready when we get back.”
Valentina, the dorm manager, met them on the steps and walked Oakley through the building’s wards while Embry retrieved the girl’s things. Then Embry bid them adieu and returned to lunch. She was here to help Oakley get acclimated, not attach herself at the hip.
“Where’s the new girl?” Ames asked as Embry dropped into the seat beside her. “Please tell me someone hasn’t literally eaten her already?”
“No, no. Oakley’s alive and well, just checking into her room.”
“Did you find out what kind of magical person she is? Please tell me she’s not a Bitch. That’d be so disappointing.”
Embry waved her off. “We know the Bitches can’t stop talking about being Bitches.
She would’ve told me right off the bat.” This was true.
Cultural relevance was a highly traded currency at Raven’s Head, second only to rarity as far as the hierarchies within the school went.
And thanks to a recent pop culture resurgence, the shifters, particularly werewolves, made up for their lack of rarity by bragging very loudly.
Embry glanced around. “Hey, where are the boys?”
“Café line.”
Embry relished in the idea of imminent caffeine. She was accustomed to midday java—it just wasn’t worth jostling with grumpy Stitches first thing in the morning on campus and, unlike Rye, she didn’t mooch on Daddy’s espresso. “Knights in shining armor.”
“When they want to be,” Ames agreed. Then, her vision snagged on something, her silverware hovering over her plate. “Oh, that’s got to be her, yes?”
Embry shifted in her seat. She tried to ignore the fact that everyone else seemed to be turning, too, while accepting the phenomenon’s confirmation that, yes, Oakley Riddle, newly minted senior, was walking across the dining courtyard.
“Correct,” Embry answered, stretching an arm high to guide her in.
Oakley waved back… and tripped over her own feet in the process.
A collective gasp went up and Embry shot from her seat, reaching out a hand to help the poor girl, who’d crumpled into the grass in front of the entire senior class.
“Oh, so embarrassing,” she muttered as Embry half carried her to standing.
“Or memorable,” Embry coached. “Come on, my best friend can’t wait to meet you.”
Ames well and truly could not wait because she was already right there.
“Hey, Oakley, I’m Amethyst.” Ames went by her full name with anyone not wholly integrated within the Witch crew. And no matter how excited she was to meet this new girl, she’d be Amethyst until she deemed a person worthy of using her nickname.
“Nice to meet you, Amethyst—like the crystal?”
Ames laughed. “Yep. And Oakley like… the tree?”
“Um, well, yes, but actually like Annie Oakley? My parents adored her.”
Embry winced but decided it was best to keep to herself the fact that Oakley wasn’t the famed sharpshooter’s actual last name. (The correct answer was Mosey or Moses but never Oakley.)
“Oh, she was a witch.” Ames narrowed her eyes. “But something tells me you aren’t?”
Oakley gulped, clamped her mouth shut, and shook her head.
Ames sized the girl up. “Not a Witch, so…” She ticked off the cliques on her well-manicured fingers. “Bitch, Stitch, or Glitch?”
Oakley’s bloodless lips dropped into a little O. “I’m sorry, what?”
Embry smiled while Ames laughed at herself.
“Oh right, homeschool. None of the usual cliques, I’d imagine? Let me show you.” Ames grinned and hooked an arm around Embry’s shoulders. “First and most exclusively, you have the Witches. We’re the best, obviously.”
“Obviously,” Embry echoed with a laugh.
Ames waved an arm across the dining courtyard, moving from left to right.
“Over there you have the Bitches—shifters like werewolves, kelpies, selkies, et cetera, basically all the big animal energy. And there are the Stitches, aka zombies and Frankenstein’s monsters, and ghosts when we have them, but you know how that goes—ghosts are always busy trying to fulfill their final tasks and usually that task is way bigger than high school.
” Ames laughed. “The Glitches are basically a catch-all group for everyone else.”
Oakley mouthed all the names of the groups again. Witches. Bitches. Stitches. Glitches. “So in the Witches is it just the two of you or…?”
“Oh no. There are at least a dozen of us,” Embry assured her.
This was part of the reason the Witches were an elite group at Raven’s Head—they held major pop culture cachet and their numbers were low enough to be considered exclusive.
“Fairfax and Alistair and all the baby witches from the coven, too.”
As if on cue, the boys appeared a few steps away, balancing lattes and lunch trays.
“Alistair is technically a Glitch because he’s a diviner but he’s hot, so it works,” Ames amended in a whisper.
And when she caught Embry’s smirk, she added in a rush, “Look, just because I have a boyfriend doesn’t make me oblivious to how fine that transatlantic piece of magic is.
And, honestly, Fairfax is probably admiring him right along with me. ”
The boys sat down; introductions were passed around.
Tall, dark, and totally suave, Fairfax Mirza was Ames’s longtime boyfriend with the unfortunate ability to make any interaction seem like flirtation.
He was the type of witch who didn’t need to spell anyone to like him; he had charm in spades, and exactly no interest in turning off that charm ever.
Which was a problem if you were the one dating him.
Embry was half-certain Fairfax had a spell that gave his Desi James Bond vibe an invisible boost. Especially because he was actually from Texas.
Meanwhile, Alistair Elton-Bentley was exactly as his name implied at face value.
Old money, well-groomed, exquisitely mannered, and, as Ames had said, totally hot.
Soft hazel eyes, aristocratic features, and a body built by hours of laps in the pool, which Embry could appreciate even though they were just friends.
His out-of-school activities included gallivanting about Europe, blowing the oodles of cash his moms sat upon, using their skills as diviners to place bets on everything from the newest technology to racehorse stock, because why not?
“So, are you two a thing?” Oakley wiggled a finger between Embry and Alistair.
“Oh, us? No!” Embry waved her hands so dramatically she almost knocked over her iced cardamom latte. “That’s a common mistake because we’re together all the time.”
“And we look extremely good together, too, of course,” Alistair told Oakley with a wink for her, and a shoulder nudge for Embry.
“Embry isn’t interested in dating high school boys,” Ames clarified, unfolding her napkin. “It’s a nonstarter and everyone knows it.”
Alistair smirked. “As unobtainable as possible, our Raven’s Head queen bee.”
“That’s me,” Embry agreed with a self-effacing shrug.
She’d spent three years here already and had never once been tempted.
No mess of gossip was worth that—and for as high as she sat on the pecking order at Raven’s Head, the whispers alone would be deafening.
Most especially as a senior, it made no logical sense.
Setting people up, however? That was another matter entirely.
Embry thrived on giving couples a shove in the right direction.
Successful matchmaking was its own magic.
Ames grinned expectantly at Oakley over her cold brew. “Sooo, not to be rude, but…”
“But what am I?” Oakley asked, brow raised. “Well, I’m a vampire.”
“A vampire? Seriously?!” Ames squealed, maybe a little too hard. People were suddenly staring again. “That’s so cool! Why didn’t you just say so?”
It was cool. Very cool. As far as Embry knew, Oakley might be the first vampire ever to attend Raven’s Head.
They were a very small, very secretive magical sect.
The only one Embry had ever heard of was the old guy who represented them on the Table—and he’d been in that seat for two hundred years at least, without a single vampiric apprentice or aide.
Now the homeschooling totally made sense, even if the sudden attendance at boarding school didn’t.
When Oakley began to blush, Ames cuffed the vampire’s wrist and leaned in, suddenly horrified.
“I know you have to be secretive out there—we all do—but the school’s protective wards are top-notch, and everyone here takes magical secrecy very seriously.
We would never out you and not just because of the oath of silence. ”
“Oh, no, I mean, I know. The headmaster made me take the oath, too. And even if she didn’t, this school is the best and most discreet on the East Coast. It’s just…”
“It’s what?” Ames prodded.
“It’s just that whenever I tell people what I am they make a face.”
“This face?” Ames asked, pointing to her own concerned expression.