Party Ghoul Read online

  There was no way Vega would do that. Mortality included wrinkles.

  Vega held her chin high. “I am a Celestor. We’re adept at divination.” Vega’s affinity with stars and celestial bodies aligned her with higher forms of magic such as prophesy, astrology, wards and protective magic, and other difficult arts not all could master. “It’s possible my senses are attuned to danger.” And made her gravitate toward it like a moth to a flame.

  A sardonic smile flitted across the principal’s weathered lips. “I can only hope you won’t sense danger while you are here at my school. People dying will not be tolerated.”

  Vega considered what the dead might have to say about that.

  The principal stared at her in silence, looking down on her as if she were the same party girl she’d been in her junior year of high school. Vega attempted a smile, a facial expression she’d never been adept at forcing. The principal opened a folder on her desk. She tilted it toward herself so that Vega couldn’t see the contents.

  The silence stretched on. Vega recognized it as an intimidation tactic, one her mother often employed to unnerve someone. The best response was remaining unruffled and levelheaded. She kept her mouth shut.

  Mrs. Gordmayer flipped through the papers in the file. “Do you have a clean flying record?”

  To lie or not to lie?

  “Yes.” Vega fought the urge to wipe her clammy palms against her skirt.

  The principal skewered Vega with a silver eyebrow. “I understand you were recently meant to teach the flyer-education classes at Encantado Charter Academy. Why were you fired from that job?”

  Vega wondered whether Mr. Reade had mentioned this or the principal had used the crystal ball on her desk.

  “I wasn’t fired,” Vega said quickly. She couldn’t exactly discuss the details of her use of forbidden magic, or the mutual blackmail she had dug herself into with the principal at that school. She told as close to the truth as possible. “I lost the position when I received a reckless flying violation, and my license was revoked. Once I proved to the Department of Magical Violations that I wasn’t reckless and brùnaidh magic interfered with my broom and caused it to crash, they retracted my ticket.” She wondered if she should have used the more common American pronunciation brownie or broonie. She plowed on, deciding linguistics were the least important detail at the moment. “Unfortunately, the principal hired someone else during that time.”

  “Hmm,” Principal Gordmayer said. She made a note of something in her folder.

  Technically, all of that was true.

  Mrs. Gordmayer crossed her arms. “We both know you could be contentedly drinking mimosas right now and rubbing elbows with people equal to your station. Why are you actually here today?”

  Vega couldn’t very well confide that she was desperate for work. “I want to be a teacher.” She met the principal’s icy-blue gaze, a chill settling over her as she lost herself in the depths of that frigid color. She felt like Mrs. Gordmayer could see through her carefully prepared bullshit and know her lies for what they were.

  Vega’s voice came out uncharacteristically raw as she spoke the truth. “I don’t think I would have survived if it hadn’t been for the determination of my teachers.” It had been teachers like Mr. Reade and mentors like her grandma who had taught her there was a world other than the one her parents were part of.

  Yet if the principal knew that life was one Vega had given up to be here, she might not want her as a teacher. If she thought Vega’s parents’ connections and money wouldn’t be available to get her school more funds or increase enrollment, she might see no value in hiring her.

  “I see. That will be all.” The principal stood as if dismissing her.

  Vega rose, confused. Surely this meeting couldn’t already be over. Had she done so poorly?

  “I have one more interview to conduct this morning. If you’d be willing to check in with Mr. Gordmayer in an hour, he’ll let you know whether you’ve gotten the position.”

  Vega stared in shock, trying to mask her bewilderment.

  She hadn’t known the principal would be interviewing anyone else. Mr. Reade had said the position was a shoo-in. Since Mr. Reade had been appointed to teach the class when the previous teacher had retired, but he hadn’t wanted the job, the principal had told him he was off the hook if he could find someone else to teach flyer education. And Mr. Reade had—he’d asked Vega. It was a favor to her since she needed a summer job and a favor to him since he already had summer plans.

  Out of all the former students at the school, Vega suspected she was the one the principal hated the most. She probably had been doomed to fail before she’d even walked in the door.

  Vega nodded, attempting to keep the disappointment from her frame. “Of course.”

  The principal didn’t offer her hand or walk her to the door. Vega walked out, her heels clicking against the wood of the floor, sounding sluggish compared to her erratic heartbeat. She felt even more nervous now that the interview was over, and she needed to convince herself not to panic over her lack of job.

  Mr. Reade stood at Mr. Gordmayer’s desk, the two men smiling as the secretary sported a pair of giant sunglasses with white rims. He removed them and put on a pair of Lennon-style sunglasses.

  “Indeed. That pair is very you,” Mr. Reade said. “They’ll be perfect for your vacation.” He turned toward Vega, looking like he was about to say something when the principal shouted from behind Vega.

  She wanted to ask him whether he knew who the other candidate was. The job was supposed to be a done deal.

  “Send Mr. Reade in for a brief word before my next appointment,” Mrs. Gordmayer said.

  Vega stepped aside. Mr. Reade hastened forward, flashing a nervous smile as he entered the principal’s office. He closed the door softly behind himself. Vega stood there feeling lost now that her appointment was over.

  What if the other candidate came with a reputation free of all the baggage Vega carried with her? If she knew who the candidate was, she could sabotage her, hex her even. Though that would just prove Vega was everything Mrs. Gordmayer thought she was.

  “You might want to take a walk and come back,” the secretary said. “When my wife says she wants a ‘brief’ word with someone, that really means it’s going to take a while.” He chuckled.

  Vega didn’t know if there was a point in returning after how abysmally she’d done. Even so, this was one of her better job prospects, so waiting an hour wasn’t going to kill her.

  She left the administration wing, surveying the stone hallways where she had graduated from high school four years before. The architecture was elegant, full of Gothic arches and vaulted ceilings. Everything about this school was superior to Encantado Charter Academy where Vega had worked as an intern and taken over for her supervising teacher during the last school year.

  Nostalgia swept over Vega as she gazed at the hallways, and her heart felt heavy, thinking of those she had once grown close to who had died. Not everyone made it past high school. Portal magic was one of the many dangers that teenagers faced. Flying by broom was so much safer. If she were the flyer-education teacher, she would ensure students understood that.

  It was no surprise her feet took her to the library, one of her refuges during high school.

  A sign on the door stated that the library was closed. Clunking from inside signaled something was going on. She peeked in the window on the door, spotting a steam-powered brass machine cleaning the floor. She hoped that steam was funneled out the windows by magic so it wouldn’t damage any of the books.

  There were few crimes she considered greater than those inflicted upon ancient tomes of knowledge.

  With no other place in the school to go, Vega was forced to visit her second-favorite place at the school. The graveyard.

  On her way out of the school, she noticed the white roses she’d passed earlier. Something was now in the center of each one. At the bottom of t
he stone steps she realized what had been left there. A spiral resembling chocolate soft-serve ice cream rose out of the center of each rose. Only it wasn’t soft serve. Vega stared in utter shock.

  The roses hadn’t been defiled like this earlier. Who would do such a thing? It was a Saturday after the last day of school. No students should have been present.

  High-pitched giggles came from the rosebushes near the path, accompanied by the scamper of little feet. The garden gnomes were no longer poised where they had been standing earlier. Apparently they hadn’t been statues.

  Eww. Only filthy homes and derelict gardens were infested with feral garden gnomes.

  No one would be stopping to smell these roses any time soon.

  Vega hoped this craptastic omen wasn’t foreshadowing of a day full of excrement. She continued toward the graveyard.

  She strode on the path into the forest, admiring the mossy limbs of lush trees. Everything was green and verdant. She saw no sign of feculent garden gnomes, so at least that was promising.

  The night she’d visited the school to do research in the library the week before, she had taken a detour here on the way back. Since that time, a new addition had been added to the graveyard décor. Vega momentarily froze at the shock of it.

  A vandal, probably a student, had spray-painted some of the tombstones crimson. It made her blood boil to see the disrespect teenagers had for the dead.

  Of all the malicious pranks teenagers could do, Vega didn’t understand why they needed to torment the dead. These quiet residents hadn’t done anything to anyone—and if they had, it would have been long ago, when they were still alive.

  Vega called on the powers of nature, which happened to be the source of energy most abundant in the forest. She drew it into herself and powered Patricia Lupi’s Scouring Charm. It usually was used on dishes, but she had employed it successfully when students had written graffiti on their desks a few months before.

  With loving care she reserved only for the deceased, she brushed away the paint. One of the graves was marked with the words “Morties suk.” The illiterate vandals had also written, “Gordmyer is bich.” Vega almost left that one sprawled across the grave, but she didn’t think Esmeralda Oro’s ghost deserved to stare at that on her tombstone for the rest of eternity. The last bit of graffiti might have been profanities or an attempt at a spell. The handwriting was so illegible, Vega couldn’t tell.

  All she could make out was “ghul.” That was the correct spelling for the word “ghoul,” though it was the masculine form of the word. Technically Vega was a “ghula,” not that she looked like a gray-skinned, corpse-eating monster like some of her ancestors had been. Vega took care to keep that side of her heritage secret.

  Witchkin didn’t approve of creatures related to death, whether it was necrophages like ghouls who ate the dead, or undead creatures like vampires and zombies who ate the living. Séances, necromancy, and death magic were as taboo as other forbidden magics, like pain and sex magic. It was too bad since Vega had dabbled in at least a few of those in the past. Not getting caught was one of her favorite pastimes.

  Yet now Vega worried someone had observed her in the graveyard a week before. When she’d visited, she’d secretly exhumed one of the graves to appropriate a tasty snack—not because she’d wanted to, of course. She’d needed to do so in order to activate her ghoul powers and borrow the identity of someone dead.

  These messages had been left after Vega had come to the cemetery. Could someone have witnessed her reaching into Ruth’s grave? Someone might have suspected what Vega was. A chill stole down Vega’s spine despite the warmth of the June air.

  She’d been careful. She’d used glamours and illusions to conceal herself. In order to ensure no one saw her transform—or consume rotting corpse flesh—she’d stored adipocere from the grave in a canning jar to take with her as a snack for later.

  The fruity aroma of cheesecake topped with cherries wafted in her direction at the memory. She was fairly certain grave wax didn’t smell as enticing to other people. Her belly grumbled. Had she left traces outside the grave?

  Vega approached Ruth’s tombstone near the back. She was still the newest resident of the cemetery, her grave just under six years old. Vega inhaled the scent of wet wood and green forest, that trace of delicious death now gone. Perhaps it had been her imagination. The earth around the grave looked almost untouched. Vega only noticed the outline of the excavation because she knew where to look.

  She needed to be more careful and do a better job covering her tracks. Vega regrew clusters of moss on the ground and inspected the terrain for other signs she had disturbed it. As an apology to Ruth, Vega removed mildew from the headstone before sitting on her favorite nurse log.

  Ruth hadn’t been the only person to die from a portal accident when she’d been in high school, but she was one of the few people Vega had allowed herself to get close to. Like Vega’s sister and so many others, she hadn’t survived in this cruel world.

  “That’s what I get for making friends,” Vega said out loud. Friendship was fleeting and heart wrenching, bringing pain for years to come. It was hardly worth the effort.

  Wind rustled through the leaves. Vega imagined that was Ruth’s response.

  Vega sighed despondently. “I had an interview today for a flyer-education position. I can tell I didn’t get the job.” Her misery at her failure pressed against her like a weight. “You would have liked learning to fly on a broom.”

  It was the class they should have started Ruth off with before advanced magic like portal spells. Vega didn’t know why they taught portal magic at all to high school students. Ruth hadn’t been the only victim Vega’s junior year.

  She smoothed her fingers over her friend’s grave. “I would have taught you how to fly.”

  Ruth had been a good listener when she’d been alive. She was still a good listener, despite being deceased.

  “I can’t blame the principal for hating me.” She remembered being called into the principal’s office during her junior year right after Ruth’s death. Vega had gone off the deep end at Ruth’s funeral.

  Vega sat with her favorite people, confiding her problems in the dead. They were the only ones she could trust to keep her secrets. The living were far more likely to betray her. The dead were predictable and safe.

  “I need a new plan. If I’m going to save up for the exam to get a Merlin-class Celestor status, I need access to a library in the Unseen Realm to study.” She couldn’t do that from Baba’s cottage in the Faerie Realm. More importantly, time was unpredictable in the Faerie Realm, and she wasn’t going to be able to apply for jobs—and show up on time—if she stayed with Baba. “That means I have two choices: grovel for a job at the broom factory or go home for the summer and study.” If her mother permitted her to do so between appointments with eligible centenarian bachelors. It was one of many reasons Vega didn’t want to go home. Being locked in her room like Rapunzel was the other reason.

  She did have a third choice, but she didn’t want to resort to it. Castor Troilus, hottie extraordinaire, had offered to let her stay in his parents’ cabin with him this summer, but she didn’t want to ruin what they had. He was a fun dance partner, and she didn’t mind a fling, but she didn’t want to sell her soul for the shackles of a relationship. She would be just as much beholden to his whims as she would be her parents’ tyranny if she went home.

  That left the broom factory.

  Thirty minutes later, Vega left the graveyard. As the path opened up to the garden courtyard, little bearded figures, two feet tall, streaked past, giggling maniacally. They all wore red conical hats. One of the little men appeared to be pulling up his trousers as he attempted to run.

  Vega couldn’t believe how many there were, at least a dozen. She had never seen actual gnomes outside of books until today—no respectable estate like her parents’ would stand for such vermin. Besides being invasive pests, they could be destruct
ive for property. Gnomes were known in history books for carrying plagues and curses into the Unseen Realm from the Faerie Realm. They were like rats with magic.

  “I didn’t grow these roses to become your toilets!” a deep female voice bellowed. “I’ll exterminate you for that!”

  Vega stepped out of the shade of trees onto the school lawn. A tall figure carrying a large shovel nearly barreled into her. Vega leapt back just in time to avoid being trampled by a young woman in overalls. The female groundskeeper threw her shovel at the gnomes like a javelin, missing the running figures by several feet. One of the gnomes turned back to stick his tongue out at her.

  At six foot one, Vega rarely encountered anyone her height, but the groundskeeper had a few inches on her. The woman was built like a troll, compact muscle giving her a sturdy build. Her bushy brown hair was gathered into two long braids that gave her youthful face an even more girlish look. Vega had seen this woman gardening and tending to the school grounds a few times her junior and senior year of high school. Apparently she was still employed at Lady of the Lake.

  The groundskeeper kicked at a clump of dirt and turned away from the gnomes, muttering about poisoning them. An overturned wheelbarrow of dirt lay beside the path toward the school.

  Vega could see the rose defacement was irritating, but not worthy of murder. The vandalism of tombstones, on the other hand—she might resort to murder had she known the culprits.

  “I believe gnomes are considered a protected species.” Vega held her chin high as she admonished the groundskeeper. “They are pure-blooded Fae. Therefore they have to be relocated, not exterminated.”

  “Yeah, and don’t they know it!” The groundskeeper started toward the wheelbarrow. “We’ve got a scourge of gnomes this year. I’ve been trying to get rid of them for weeks.”

  Vega walked along the path, eyeing it for land mines in the form of gnome excrement. It was illegal to kill Fae, even when it wasn’t the high Fae lords. She found it disgusting that annoying pests about as sentient than squirrels had more rights than half-Fae Witchkin, but that was the law.