Reading, Writing and Necromancy Read online

  My hands were getting tired, but I dug into his muscles harder. I focused on what I wanted. “I wish I knew where Derrick was.”

  I considered thinking about kissing Derrick and seeing if I could enhance Khaba’s powers but decided that might not be the best after the way he’d reacted to that spark of electricity on Sunday night.

  “That’s enough,” Khaba said.

  I stepped aside.

  Khaba lifted his crystal ball. It started off the size of his palm but slowly decreased in size, resembling a marble. He waved a hand over his desk. The wood and paper trays wavered, sections of the desk changing to gray, other places turning green. As the desk transformed, it became clearer that we were looking down at the school from a bird’s-eye view. Leave it to Khaba to create a magical version of Google Earth.

  He set the marble-sized crystal in the crumbling section of the school where Derrick’s room was located. “Show me where Derrick is,” Khaba said.

  The ball spun in a circle, wiggling one direction and then another as if trying to make up its mind. It rolled away from the debris, along the path to Lachlan Falls. Khaba pinched his fingers together. The map’s details shrank in size, the school smaller and the map showing the forest. It rolled along the path. Khaba made the image smaller so that the village and the farms fit onto his desk.

  The marble rolled into the village, closer to the edge of his desk. It hesitated at the perimeter of farmland before springing away from the desk and toward the wall. Khaba shot out a hand to catch the crystal before it smashed into the file cabinet.

  The map faded.

  “He’s not on school grounds. I’d be able to see it if he was,” Khaba said. The crystal swelled to the size it had been previously.

  “Oh,” I said in disappointment.

  “We can try again later.”

  I nodded. I wanted to hope we’d have better results later, but I couldn’t. I wanted to do something to help Derrick, but I didn’t know what I could do.

  “He might not have been kidnapped by the Raven Court. He might be looking for those invisible pants.” He leaned toward me, the smile from his sweets gone. “Don’t go looking for him.”

  “I didn’t say I was going to.”

  He rubbed his bald head. “You didn’t have to. It was in your eyes.” He opened his file cabinet to the middle drawer of confiscated items and pulled out a bottle of alcohol. “I need more than sweets. Want a drink?”

  “What do you have?” I wasn’t big on alcohol. If it was something fruity I might not mind.

  He flashed a smile and turned the label so I could see it was Bombay Sapphire. “I dream of gin.”

  That sounded like the punny Khaba I knew and loved.

  Thatch probably could find Derrick, but his door was locked. The mirror was covered so I couldn’t see him from the mirror hallway to determine if he was alone. Plus, I wasn’t sure I trusted him with the truth. There was no way I trusted Vega. Pro Ro was supposed to be one of the best at divination. He was our soothsaying teacher. If I got his help, it didn’t mean I had to tell him all the details.

  I went up to his room and knocked on his door. I feared asking for his assistance was a lost cause, but I had to try.

  The moment Pro Ro opened the door, his smile turned to a grimace. “Women aren’t supposed to be in the men’s dormitories.”

  I did my best not to let his grumpy expression get me down. “I’m not in your dorm. I’m in the hallway.”

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  The strained smile on my face made my cheeks ache. “I wondered if I could ask you a small favor with—”

  “I’m done doing favors for you.”

  I spoke quickly before he could slam the door in my face. “I’m sorry about trying to forcibly remove your turban and accusing you of cursing me. I didn’t realize you were trying to protect me.”

  He crossed his arms and glowered at me.

  “I need some help divining. I know you’re really good and—”

  “Haven’t I already done enough for you? I covered your morning duties last semester so Thatch could give you lessons in the morning. You never even thanked me.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. No one told me you did that. Thank you.”

  He closed the door in my face.

  I wrote a note to Thatch to remind him to give me a copy of the spell and placed it in his mailbox. Since I didn’t know what else to do, I practiced my magical exercises and went to bed. I tossed and turned so much Vega shouted at me.

  On Wednesday morning I was tired and nowhere closer to finding out where Derrick had gone. The dungeon was locked up before school.

  I checked my box again, and there was the spell. Thatch had given it to me! On one hand, I didn’t actually need it to break Derrick’s curse. But I could ask someone if it was legit and try to figure out Thatch’s intentions with Derrick.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Bargaining with the Devil

  During lunch duty I showed the spell to Josie. “What do you think this spell does?” There was no label at the top with the words: “Invisibility Cure” or “Un-hexing Someone After the Raven Queen Has Her Way with Him.”

  A student threw a sandwich at another teenager. I ran off to remind students food was for eating, not throwing. Someone slipped on the sandwich, and I had to walk that student down to the nurse’s office. If the student who had slipped and hurt his arm hadn’t been Ben O’Sullivan, I might have felt bad about taking him to Nurse Hilda with her healing elixirs full of bat poop.

  When I made it back to the cafeteria, Josie handed me the paper. “I guess the spell looks okay. It’s pretty complex, not the sort of spell I’d want to try. I’m more concerned about those ingredients. They’re powerful, but near impossible to acquire. Did Thatch actually expect you to collect a dragon egg?”

  “No, he wanted Bart the unicorn to get it for me.”

  She lowered her voice. “And the unicorn semen as a substitute for a unicorn horn? Where were you supposed to get that?”

  “Um… .” I’d never told her I had collected that one. “Yes. Don’t ask.”

  “OMG. I just barfed in my mouth. Okay, so maybe some of these are actually feasible.” She tapped the parchment with her finger. “You know who I think would be a good resource to ask about this?”

  “Please don’t say Pro Ro.”

  “Vega.”

  Vega Bloodmire didn’t do any favors without asking for something in return. What I could offer her, I couldn’t guess. I was afraid I might have to give up something vital like my blood or all the space in my wardrobe.

  Derrick was worth it.

  My room was empty when I went up after school, save for the nightingales singing in their cage. They sang a beautiful song that filled the room with music. I considered letting the birds out to escape, but I figured that would piss Vega off, and I was trying to get on her good side.

  It was hard to focus on meditation exercises for my affinity, or to do any of the practice I was supposed to be doing as my magical homework. All I could think about was Derrick. I got out my sketchbook and tried to draw his face from memory. Twice in my life that I remembered, magic had come out as I’d been drawing. Once I had been touching Derrick while I drew. The other time I had been thinking about him. I hadn’t known what I’d been doing either time. I still didn’t, but I wondered if I could combine my art skills with my magic skills and divine something useful about Derrick.

  I started with the general proportions of a face, sketching the horizontal lines that showed the placement of the eyes, brows, nose, and mouth before I added a line of symmetry. While I did this, I focused on my question from earlier: Where is Derrick?

  I visualized pouring energy into the affinity dwelling in my core. I imagined that energy pushing up into my chest and down my arms into my hands. It was a lot to think about, which may have been why my first drawing of Derrick didn’t look anything like him. T
he second one resembled him, but his expression was pained. I pressed too hard with the pencil, digging the graphite into the paper so that even when I erased and redrew his features, Derrick’s eyes looked bruised and haunted from the previous lines showing through. I couldn’t tell if I was divining or just a bad artist.

  Vega stormed into the room during my third drawing. I closed the sketchbook, not wanting her to see. She marched over to the dressing screen and ducked behind it, throwing her flapper-chic business attire over the top edge.

  “Ugh, if I have to put up with that bag of fleas asking me one more question, I’m going to curse him,” she said from behind the screen.

  “Pinky?” I asked.

  “Who else?”

  Her wardrobe doors popped open. A black silk pajama top and pants flew across the room and dropped behind the screen.

  “That furbag is always asking insipid questions. ‘Where is the copy machine? How do I write up detentions? What’s the procedure for students who don’t show up to class?’ Ugh. New teachers. Don’t you hate them?”

  “Heh.” I was still a new teacher. “I imagine it’s hard starting at a school midyear.”

  “Wah, wah, call the wambulance.” Vega emerged from behind the screen and dropped her clothes on the floor in front of the full-length mirror. “I know what will make me feel better.”

  I also knew what usually put her in a better mood. “How about some candy?” I asked, trying to be a good influence.

  “Not even close.” She strode over to the birdcage, her smile sinister.

  “Can’t you feed your plant grasshoppers or mice? Do you have to do this?”

  She ignored me. She snatched up one of the birds. The song became discordant and chaotic in the bird’s fright. I looked away, knowing what she was about to do next. The birdsong cut out. I peeked at the plus-sized Venus flytrap on her wardrobe. One of the jaws was closed, a large lump struggling within.

  All things being considered, I was lucky she hadn’t fed me to her plant.

  “So, um, I was wondering if you could help me with my homework,” I asked.

  “No. Get one of your friends to help you.”

  “It’s homework from Thatch. He said only highly skilled Celestors would be able to understand the spell.”

  “Flattery isn’t going to work.” She lifted her nose in the air. “I’m not a narcissistic siren.”

  Flattery had worked in the past.

  “Just look at the spell. It won’t take long.”

  She continued watching her plant devour the bird.

  “I’ll pay you,” I said.

  She snorted. “To do your homework?”

  “No, you wouldn’t be doing my homework for me. You would be helping me. Like a tutor. I want to know if this is a legitimate spell or if Thatch is punking me. I don’t know if—”

  She gathered up her bathroom bag and walked out as I was talking. Apparently, I was that insignificant. On the plus side, she hadn’t said no that time. Maybe she was thinking about it.

  When she came back, I held the spell out to show her. “Will you look? I’ll do something in exchange if you want. I can help clean your classroom or make posters for something you’re teaching or—”

  She made a face. “There’s nothing you could possibly offer me that would interest me. If you ask me again, I’ll hex you.”

  I was confident if I knew what Vega wanted, I would be able to spark her interest enough that she would hear me out. The problem was, I didn’t think I had anything worth bribing Vega. I couldn’t grade papers for her because I didn’t know the subject matter. She wouldn’t let me sub for her because she thought I was incompetent. And in reality, I was a beginner at magic, so she was right.

  She hadn’t seemed excited by the idea of me paying her.

  I went to bed anxious. It was no wonder I had bad dreams. I kept seeing the Raven Queen in the dungeon torturing Derrick.

  Before breakfast and then again after school on Thursday, I looked in Derrick’s room since it wasn’t locked. Everything was the same, including his note. I used the hall of mirrors to see—I wasn’t even sure what I might see that would be useful. I just knew I couldn’t sit by and do nothing.

  I swung by Thatch’s room three times. It was locked before school, an oddity for the morning person I knew Thatch to be. He sent me away when I stopped in during my prep period because he was teaching. After school the dungeon was locked again. Considering students were usually chained up in detention, this was usual behavior for Thatch.

  I found Khaba patrolling the halls after dinner. I hoped he had heard something about Derrick.

  He waved, but his expression was grim.

  I jogged up to him. “Any news?”

  “Sorry, hon. Not yet.”

  I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Can we go into town and see if there are any clues about where Derrick went?”

  “Tomorrow I have to go into Lachlan Falls on errands. If you come with me, we’ll make a few extra stops and see if anyone saw anything.”

  “While we’re in town, could I stop at—”

  “No Happy Hal’s Tavern and Internet Café. You are not to leave my sight.” His words came out harsh and sharp.

  “Okay,” I said.

  He patted my arm. “Too many students have been snatched. Trouble is brewing in the Faerie Realm. I can feel it.”

  I would have liked to call my fairy godmother and ask her advice via the café’s computer, but I would have to write her a letter instead. I went to the staff mailboxes to see if Thatch had written me a note to tell me when our next lesson would be. There was nothing in my box. I left him a note.

  A scuff of noise from farther down the hall attracted my attention. I walked past the conference room to the next office. Puck sat in his Zen garden, papers flying in a cyclone around him. I ducked back out, not wanting to break his concentration.

  As I passed the conference room, I stopped. The schedules were still posted, as were the duties. Being a new teacher, I had done breakfast duty for two months before I’d been switched to lunch duty three times a week. Students behaved better during breakfast. They were quiet and too sleepy to think of doing much. The downside was getting up earlier to be there for an hour and then rushing to class.

  Vega had breakfast duty in the cafeteria twice a week for the next month, lunch duty once a week, and dinner duty three times a week. She’d gotten off easy, but a duty was still a duty. No one liked duties.

  Maybe I did have something I could use to entice Vega.

  I sat at the desk, writing my mom a letter since I didn’t have Internet. The last nightingale sang a lonely song, expressing my own grief and fear with its sweet notes. I didn’t look forward to adding breakfast to my schedule, but there were worse things. Like never seeing Derrick again.

  I stood and stretched. Out the window, the school cast jagged shadows onto the gloomy trees toward Lachlan Falls. A lone figure strode across the school grounds past the topiary animals and toward the trees. In the dying light, it was difficult to see any details of the figure other than it was a woman in all black with a witch’s hat. Her blonde hair and long cloak wafted behind her. It might have been Miss Periwinkle. Possibly Evita Lupi, because she also was blonde, but she didn’t typically wear all black. Miss Keahi, Grandmother Bluehorse and Josie all wore witch hats, but none of them had fair hair.

  The woman hesitated at the edge of the forest, glancing over her shoulder in a way I recognized from countless students about to do something sneaky. She crept into the forest. Was Gertrude Periwinkle meeting her not-so-secret lover for a tryst in the woods? Or was she doing something more diabolical? A few seconds later, a bird rose from the trees into the air and flew off and away. It might have been a raven, or Priscilla, or another bird. I couldn’t tell.

  Vega strode in. She was earlier than usual. “Get out of my way. I need the desk.” She elbowed me to the side, searching through the drawers.

>   “What do you think Miss Periwinkle would be doing in the woods right as it’s growing dark?”

  “Probably having sex with one of her boyfriends. Not that I care.”

  “She only has one boyfriend.”

  “Gertrude might be a Celestor, but she’s young and beautiful again, and there’s no shortage of siren magic in her.” She found a box of paper clips in one of the drawers and retrieved it. “Do you know how annoying it was to take her dancing with me? She stole the attention of all the good dancers—and the good-looking dancers. I don’t know which of them she went home with.”

  It was hard to tell if this was true considering this information came from Vega’s twisted perspective on reality. Anything that didn’t revolve around her was inconsequential, and she was unlikely to have those facts right.

  “She has a boyfriend,” I said.

  “I think you mean she has several boyfriends.”

  “No way! Her and Thatch are dating.”

  Vega snorted. “No, they aren’t.”

  “Remember that day we saw him in the courtyard this week? He was acting all gushy, and you said it was gross. Who did you think he was in love with?”

  “I just thought someone had bewitched him with a temporary spell. What do I care?” She started toward the door.

  “Do you like dinner duty?”

  “No.” She kept walking.

  “If I cover your duty this week, will you do a favor for me? It won’t take long—only five minutes.”

  Her footsteps faltered. “I’m listening.”

  I held out the spell.

  Vega huffed in disgust. “Is this your homework?”

  “I just want you to tell me what it does.”

  She unfolded it and examined the list. “He expects you to do this kind of magic for your homework. Ha!”

  “No. I was supposed to collect the ingredients. I want to know if the spell is real or busywork.”

  “Thatch is playing a joke on you. There’s no way you could collect these ingredients. Those bleeding-heart liberals outlawed dragon eggs after some fucktard Witchkins hunted them to near extinction. Unicorn horns are also—oh, never mind. That’s a valid substitute.” She skimmed the list. “Virgin’s blood or tears. Well, you shouldn’t have any trouble with that considering how ugly you are. I can’t imagine a man ever touching you.”