Reading, Writing and Necromancy Read online

  “Oh.” Maddy looked from Pierre to Balthasar seated next to her. Her cheeks flushed pink. “I’m sorry. You didn’t say you were coming and wanted me to save you a seat today.”

  “You snooze, you lose, loser.” Balthasar chuckled. “That’s what you get for being late.”

  Ugh. There would be no end to the teenage crushes and the hormonal conflicts that spilled over from classes into Art Club.

  Pierre’s words came out in a landslide of anger. “Shut up, penis breath!”

  Even with his accent, I had no trouble mistaking that.

  Balthasar whipped out his wand faster than you can say “abra-cadaver,” the tip fizzling with magic. Pierre rushed forward, raising a meaty fist that either was going to break one of my tables or Balthasar’s head.

  Maddy squealed, diving for Trevor and yanking him back. Imani and Greenie grabbed their drawings and backed away, eyes darting between the two boys. Hailey leapt to her feet, a fireball in her hand and her eyes glowing as brightly as orange lava. Panic shot through my veins like a jolt of caffeine, switching me from calm art mode to teacher ninja in two seconds.

  “Hey!” I shouted, wedging myself between the two boys, which, in hindsight, might not have been the safest move. “Stop, right there. This is Art Club. No fighting allowed, or I’ll kick both of you out.”

  “If that happens, then neither of you will get to sit next to Maddy,” Hailey said in her ever-so-helpful way.

  The wind whistled through the cracks in the shutters, whipping my pink hair into my face. It should have smelled like fall, but it smelled like spring.

  “Pierre, take a step back,” I said. “Balthasar, hand over the wand. We are going to put it on my desk until Art Club is over.” Grudgingly, they both followed directions. “Now, I want us to use words, not wands. Do you remember those I-statements and the active-listening exercises we’ve been practicing?”

  “Oh no! Not this again!” Balthasar wailed.

  The shutters burst open in a flurry of decaying leaves and biting droplets of ice. It was far too warm a day for ice, but we were at a magic school—nothing was impossible. Papers fluttered from my desk to the wall, where they pirouetted against the rough stone. One of the students squealed. I rushed to the window and fought against the wind to latch the shutters. The moment I succeeded, the shutters of another window popped open.

  “Get those!” I pointed to the students and the window on the other side of me.

  More shutters burst open.

  I shouted to be heard over the banshee howl of wind. Students ran in every direction. The air whistling through the cracks of the shutters I held closed whispered against my skin like a lover’s breath. The wind felt unseasonably cold for September, followed by a rush of warmth, carrying with it the perfume of spring flowers and exotic spices. I tasted faraway places and magic, reminding me of Derrick.

  Derrick, my former best friend and the love of my life.

  Derrick, whom I had loved and trusted above all others. Every time I recalled how I’d made his curse worse and turned him evil, a chasm of pain cracked open inside me and threatened to swallow me whole. Even after he’d tried to kill me, I couldn’t bring myself to hate him.

  My chest ached where the void of hope and love for him had once been. The memory of what had transpired six months before was still too raw to think about. I blinked the tears from my eyes.

  When the wind had stopped, all of us picked up the scattered papers and art supplies that had fallen to the floor. Rhett Jacob’s pallet of cool-colored paint had fallen onto his chair. I showed him where the rags were to clean up. Eventually we all returned to our seats to continue with our art. I found my sketchbook still open, but it was no longer turned to the angle of the school I intended to paint.

  Instead, I found myself staring at the portrait I’d drawn of Derrick the year before. The sketch was whimsical and light, rendered in pencil. I had reworked his eyes, and when the pencil hadn’t erased, the paper had become smudged with graphite. The haunted expression resembled Derrick as I’d last seen him more than the smiling, jovial man I’d grown to love.

  It couldn’t be a coincidence the wind had opened the shutters, smelling like Derrick’s affinity, and my sketchbook had turned to the page showing Derrick. Icicles skated through me. I wrapped my arms around myself.

  Derrick was haunting me from afar, reminding me of what he’d done, that he’d try to kill me again. For all I knew the Raven Queen might be torturing him at this very moment and forcing him to do evil.

  “Miss Lawrence?” Imani asked, looking up from her art. “Are you all right?”

  She stared at me, her brown eyes warm and full of concern.

  “Fine. Thanks.” I closed the book. I picked up my pencil, but my hand was shaking. She kept staring.

  I crossed my arms to hide the tremble, noticing my sleeve was covered in a streak of blue paint. In the commotion of the wind, phthalo blue and cerulean paint had somehow collided with my pink-and-white polka-dot sweater. The advantage of acrylics was that it dried quickly and was water soluble. The disadvantage was that it was permanent and water resistant once it dried. I examined my sleeve, growing more disgusted as I realized some of the paint had smeared onto the side of the sweater too. Some of it was still wet.

  My friend Josie had taught me a handy cleaning spell. I didn’t know if it would work on paint as well as it did on dust. Felix Thatch, the equivalent of a Sith Lord of a magical mentor, had advised me not to use magic, claiming I needed to rest and recharge after resurrecting Derrick from the dead. Even so, I knew I still had magic. I had seen it at work in subtle ways.

  Thatch had said to wait. It had been six months. I could sneak in a small spell that used hardly any magic. Besides, it was important to keep up my reputation so students wouldn’t think I was powerless.

  I reached for my new wand where I had shoved it up my sleeve like all the cool teachers did, but it wasn’t there anymore. It wasn’t on the floor under my seat or by the window. I felt along the waistband of my skirt, but it hadn’t fallen there either. Those wands were more trouble than they were worth.

  “Can I borrow someone’s wand?” I asked.

  Imani, Greenie, and Maddy all raised theirs at once.

  “I can loan you mine,” Greenie said with an eager smile.

  Imani held hers in front of her best friend’s. “No! Use mine.”

  “I already have mine out,” Maddy said.

  They were all so eager to please, more like middle school students than most high school students I’d taught. I was happy I’d made such a good impression on this many teens. I accepted Imani’s wand because she was closest.

  I waved it over my sleeve and shirt, imagining power from my affinity swelling inside me. It shifted up my arm and into the wand. I didn’t have a lot of experience using wands, but this seemed like the best option because they were supposed to focus magic.

  As I waved the wand over myself, the paint unpeeled itself from my arm and midsection, hovering in the air in front of me. The air didn’t smell like lemons and flowers like when Josie used the spell. Instead it smelled like burned toast and rotten eggs.

  Globs of cerulean and phthalo drifted together, the colors marbleizing in a mesmerizing undulation. When Josie cast the spell, all the dirt usually fell to the floor. I pointed to the wooden boards at my feet, but the paint didn’t obey like a well-trained dog.

  The paint bubbled and smoked. I stepped back.

  “I don’t think the spell is supposed to do that,” Imani said.

  “No shit, dumbass,” Hailey said.

  I was too distracted by the potential danger to correct her language. Everyone backed away except for Trevor who held a tub of paste and was licking his fingers. I grabbed him by the collar and yanked him back toward the door.

  “Maddy,” I said, waving a hand at the bucket of water in the broken sink. I didn’t dare take my eyes off the smoldering paint.

&nbs
p; “Got it,” she said. After hanging out with a fire sprite like Hailey, she was getting to be quite the expert at putting out fires. She lifted her hands and motioned to the water in the bucket. A puddle of liquid rose and floated toward the blue gob.

  The blue paint condensed into a smoldering ball. The moment the floating puddle collided into it, the paint and water exploded outward. I turned away and shielded Trevor the best I could, though I was no Goliath in size. The students dropped to the floor and shrieked.

  The water was warm at least. When I straightened, I found all of us were covered in murky blue splatters.

  “Everyone all right?” I asked.

  Everyone’s gray-and-black school uniforms were stained blue. Hailey looked at her white shirt, now muddy from clay and blue from the paint. She glowered at me.

  I stepped toward the mop, wobbling as a wave of dizziness washed over me. A pang of lightning ripped through my core. Light danced before my eyes, and I fell to my knees. I gasped for breath.

  “Oh my God! What’s happening?” Greenie shrieked.

  “Miss Lawrence, are you all right?” Imani grabbed my elbow.

  Hailey pointed an accusing finger at Imani. “It’s all because she used your stupid wand.”

  “No! There isn’t anything wrong with my wand.”

  “Should we do that Heimlich maneuver thing?” someone asked. “That Morty magic Miss Lawrence did last year?”

  I tried to speak and say no, but I could barely catch my breath.

  Cool hands grabbed my arms. My affinity fizzled inside me, the red ball of energy sparked out of control. Another lance of pain tore through me. Someone shrieked. Hands released my arms, and I pitched forward. The descent to the floor felt as though I were drifting through molasses, the fall slowed by a distortion in gravity. Time slowed. Not enough that I didn’t feel my cheek slam into the unforgiving solidity of the floor.

  I didn’t understand what was happening. My brain floated above my body, not completely anchored. First the wind, then the sketch of Derrick, now the haywire magic. Was this all Derrick? Had he cursed me now too?

  “What should we do? Get Nurse Hilda?” Balthasar asked.

  “Get Thatch,” I said before another crippling spasm of pain gripped me.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Professor Grumpsalot

  I don’t know how long I lay on the floor, experiencing white-hot lightning dancing in my core. Pain shot through my limbs in surges. The pain faded between each interval, and I hoped it would be the last. I tried focusing on calming my affinity and diminishing it, but every attempt I made to reach out to the magic inside me only made it worse.

  Felix Thatch’s crisp British accent sliced through the ringing in my ears. “Everyone out,” he said.

  Feet thudded away, vibrating through my skull resting on the paint-splattered floor.

  He crouched down before me. His midnight hair was tousled back rakishly. He kneeled in a blue puddle, staining his gray tweed pants. Already, blue had gotten on the sleeve of his old-fashioned suit. My gaze fell on his silver-and-black ascot, patterned with the school colors. Dizziness washed over me, though I hadn’t tried to get up.

  “Merlin’s balls,” he said. He would have been handsome if he hadn’t been scowling. “What is wrong with you? I told you not to use magic.”

  I was in too much pain to answer. The school’s most talented Merlin-class Celestor, who happened to be the most gifted healer—or at least better than Nurse Hilda—happened to have the bedside manner of a porcupine.

  “Darling,” said a woman. “You don’t know she used magic.”

  “Indeed, I do.”

  From the melodious music in the woman’s voice, she had to be Gertrude Periwinkle, though I couldn’t see her. I tried to lift my head to determine whether she was casting a spell on me and about to kill me, but this brought on a new wave of pain. The spasm passed, leaving me panting.

  “Derrick,” I tried to say between gasps. It came out as “Daarreew.”

  Thatch rolled me over. “She definitely tried to use magic.” He sat me up.

  Gertrude Periwinkle held me around the shoulder while Thatch placed one hand on my belly and the other on the small on my back. Just as the white light flared behind my eyes, it ebbed away. Thatch inhaled sharply. The pain wicked out of me and into him. In its place, a numbing coolness washed over me. His cheeks flushed a healthy shade of pink, so different from his usual pale complexion.

  My muscles relaxed. It grew easier to breath. I leaned against Gertrude Periwinkle, momentarily stiffening when she smoothed a hand against my shoulder. She wasn’t going to do anything to me in front of her boyfriend, I reasoned. She would be on her best behavior after his previous plea for us to get along and be friends.

  “Are you feeling better, dear?” Gertrude Periwinkle’s cerulean eyes were infused with a façade of concern that almost made me believe she cared. Then again, with her singsong voice, she was able to make anyone believe anything.

  I nodded. It hurt my head to do so. I touched a hand to my cheek, flinching at the tenderness of the puffy skin.

  “That, I intend to leave.” Thatch lifted his chin. “Let the bruise serve as a reminder of the consequences of using magic after I advised you against it.” He imperiously stared down his long nose at me.

  My temper flared. “You said I should probably wait a few months before I tried to use magic. It’s not like you forbade me.”

  “I did not say ‘probably.’ Nor has it even been six months. What were you thinking? This is far too soon to even try magic.” His monotone was clipped, an edge of anger threatening to break free from his crabby calm.

  “Nurse Hilda said—” I tried to interject the advice the school nurse had given me.

  “Nurse Hilda is a senile old bat. If you want one of her tonics with werewolf excrement in it, then be my guest. No? Then I advise you to listen to my instructions.”

  “I just thought it was a suggestion when you said not to use magic. You didn’t tell me anything could blow up or lightning might shoot out of me.”

  “That’s curious,” Gertrude Periwinkle said. “She shouldn’t have been able to do either.” She tilted her head, studying me. Her witch hat, already heavy with roses and small animal skulls on one side, tilted as though it might fall off her corn-silk hair.

  She was too preoccupied with me to see Thatch shake his head at me. I noticed though. I’d already assumed she knew all my secrets, but maybe I shouldn’t have spoken so openly.

  “There wasn’t enough magic to shoot anything resembling lightning out of you.” Thatch’s eyes narrowed in warning. “It stayed contained inside you. And if anything did escape, it most certainly wasn’t lightning. More likely you interpreted the pain as feeling that way. Had you bothered to follow my advice—”

  “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t think it was a big deal. I get it now. I won’t do it again.” I drew in a shaky breath, my nerves bundling together into knots again at the thought of what else I needed to tell him. “Before the spell went all haywire and exploded, there was something else. . . . Derrick’s magic.”

  Thatch’s dark brows lifted. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Apparently, I’d taken him by surprise.

  I told them about the wind smelling like Derrick and the drawing in my notebook. Thatch’s scowl returned.

  “He used magic on me, right? A hex?” I asked.

  “You would try to pin this on Derrick rather than take responsibility for your own mistakes.” He shook his head at me in disgust. “There was no hex. Simply your dormant affinity reacting to his. No wonder your magic combusted.

  “As far as we know, Derrick believes you’re dead and has no reason to think otherwise. If you sense him again, you are to come directly to me, do you understand? I will not have him on campus, nor anywhere near the students. He is not to come anywhere near you.”

  “Why do you say it like that?” I tried to scoot back,
but Gertrude Periwinkle held on to me too tightly. “Do you think I want him near me after what he did?”

  “Considering your history of poor decisions, yes.”

  A smile curved Periwinkle’s lips upward. “Do you two always fight like this?” She gave my shoulder an affectionate squeeze. Maybe she wouldn’t try to kill me later if she wasn’t jealous of Thatch yelling at me.

  Sure, Thatch was handsome in that emo Professor Snape sort of way, but she should have realized by now how he irritated me like no one else in this realm.

  “Promise me you won’t use magic until you’re healed and recharged. You won’t even try,” Thatch said.

  “How long will that be?”

  “Until I say so. It’s dangerous for others, and it’s dangerous for you. You’re lucky you didn’t kill yourself just now.”

  “I don’t understand. How could I have killed myself?” I didn’t even understand why I couldn’t use my magic. Like with all things, Thatch simply ordered me to do his bidding, expecting complete obedience without explaining how this world worked.

  Gertrude frowned, eyeing him incredulously.

  “Your affinity is depleted like that of a battery,” Thatch said. “I told you to wait, and you will wait to recharge it.”

  “Just spit it out and get it over with.” Gertrude Periwinkle clucked her tongue at him. “Tell her.”

  “There’s nothing more to tell.” Thatch shook his head at her, trying to give her the same warning look he often gave me.

  “Tell me what?” I asked.

  Periwinkle said with mock kindness. “Your former boyfriend drained you.”

  The words hit me like a stampeding unicorn. Was she truly saying what I thought she was? Maybe she meant he used my magic, not drained me of magic.

  “You aren’t being helpful, kitten,” Thatch said between clenched teeth.

  Kitten? Gross. They were the sappiest, most barf-worthy couple I’d ever met. Periwinkle batted her eyelashes.

  I shook my head but stopped when it made my cheek throb. “You said my spell used up most of my magic, but I would recover.”