Witches Gone Wicked Read online

  “No!” The flush in her cheeks drained. “I-I voluntarily left my old school because I wanted to work with at-risk youth, not because I was fired.”

  “That’s what they all say.” He glided out of the room, a smirk on his lips.

  Apparently, I wasn’t the only one he felt the need to pick on.

  Josie kicked the wall and growled. According to Josie, Witchkin might have been all about valuing spiders’ lives and being one with nature, but they didn’t have a problem being assholes to each other.

  The layout of the counseling office reminded me of every other one I’d been to, with a waiting area on one side of a counter and offices beyond. Josie led me past the front desk. I glanced into the first room. A man sat cross-legged in a Zen garden. Sunshine shone down from a skylight, bathing the man in golden light. Bright Post-it notes flew around his head in a tornado. Papers shuffled and unshuffled themselves on the ground.

  Josie pressed a finger to her lips and kept going. “Come on, Puck is busy with schedules.”

  Aisles of file cabinets that looked like they went on for miles filled the next room. “The student schedules of Christmas past,” she said.

  She waved me down to the next room. Past a conference table with archaic, anti-ergonomic chairs made of wood was a chalkboard. Each teacher’s name was written on a giant grid, with the subjects handwritten underneath. A magnet stuck an envelope with each teacher’s name on it to the board.

  My schedule consisted of three classes of beginning level art, and two intermediate art. It showed second semester would be three classes of beginning level, one intermediate and one advanced. Each day I had one prep. First-period homeroom was crossed off.

  “A paper schedule will be inside the envelope.” Josie opened hers.

  A handwritten version inside the envelope included a bell schedule. I would have odd periods on A days and even periods B days. A rotating block schedule wasn’t too different from my previous experience teaching ninety-minute periods. Maybe I wouldn’t hate ninety-minute classes if it was my own curriculum.

  At the bottom of the envelope was a chocolate bar wrapped in brown paper. Scrawled across it were the words: “Puck’s Chocolate Prophecy.”

  Josie opened hers and bit in. She leaned against the wall and moaned. “It’s so creamy and smooth and sweet. It isn’t anything like last year’s chocolate. Yesterday I had known things were going to be better as soon as Thatch told me I got my own dorm room. The chocolate just confirms it!”

  I set down my envelope on the table and peeled back the bar, examining it. “What do you mean? How does this work?”

  “Puck gifts us with chocolate at the beginning of the school year. It’s his way of divining what kind of semester we’re going to have. Last year mine was salty and sour. It got sweeter at the end of the bar, just like the semester did.”

  I peeled back the wrapping, examining the bar. It was thicker than her bar and coated in salt crystals.

  She nodded. “Salty because you’re going to cry a lot. Unless those are sugar crystals. If that’s the case, it means it’s going to be really sweet.” Her eyebrows rose expectantly. “Well?”

  I set down my envelope and papers. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know how my year was going to turn out. Still, if this was the tradition at the school, who was I to refuse it? Plus, chocolate was chocolate.

  I broke off a square and placed it on my tongue. Flavor exploded in my mouth. It was so salty and bitter, tears sprang to my eyes. I tasted misery. The chocolate was dark but had a high enough fat content it melted on my tongue. The outer chocolate wasn’t sweet at all. The caramel center was sweet, though. Too sweet. The sugary caramel mixed with the bitter chocolate and they balanced each other.

  “Dark chocolate and salted caramel,” I said. “I guess that means it will be a year of extremes.”

  Craptacular. It tasted like high school. Why couldn’t I have the creamy chocolate that represented fitting in with the other teachers and being liked by my students? What if Thatch was right and I turned out to be exactly like my mother?

  “Puck does this each semester,” Josie said. “Except last year, second semester, everyone’s chocolate got all mixed up because someone opened everyone’s envelope and switched them.” Her nose scrunched up in the same way it did when she was in Thatch’s presence. I had a feeling I knew who had played that trick.

  “What a jerk!” I said.

  “Tell me about it. I walked in on him switching the bars around and gave him a piece of my mind. A lot of good it did me. He’d already eaten my chocolate, that bag of dicks.” She removed the papers from my envelope and compared it to the list on the board. “They messed up your schedule. This is always happening. It says you aren’t teaching a homeroom, but you are. Everyone has homeroom.”

  I pointed to one of the names on the whiteboard. “She isn’t.”

  “Grandmother Bluehorse is different. She’s a department head.” She pointed to all the names with stars next to them. “They only have to teach five classes because the other period is spent in meetings with teachers, parents, and students.”

  It looked like our department heads were Amadea Kutchi, Ethel Bluehorse, Jackie Frost and Felix Thatch. If the color coding meant anything, it looked like my department head was the P.E. teacher, Amadea Kutchi. Josie wasn’t so lucky.

  “Thatch is your department head?”

  She answered with a groan and a nod.

  I examined Thatch’s schedule. “I thought you said department heads don’t teach homerooms.”

  She walked the length of the board to study his schedule and then walked back to mine. “Huh. You don’t have homeroom. He does. That gives him six instead of five. No wonder he was in such a pissy mood when we met him in the hallway.”

  She grinned. “Isn’t that something? He got your homeroom! Jeb must like you.”

  “Yeah, great.”

  I wanted to be happy and count my blessings like I’d always been taught to do. Still, it was hard to do so knowing my new magic teacher had one more reason to hate me.

  It was a twenty-minute walk through a copse of trees to the village of Lachlan Falls where the internet café was located. I had a feeling I would be going into town every day to use the computer for printing out lessons and doing research. The school might not have had outlets, but at least I had someplace nearby.

  The air outside the school was hot, but not as humid and heavy as it was in the Olympic Peninsula this time of year. The canopy of trees shielded Josie and me from the direct sunlight, but it was still warm enough to be comfortable. We chatted amiably about the upcoming school year. Her mood brightened as we walked.

  She waved a hand at the woods around us. “Most of the forest is part of the school grounds, but students aren’t allowed in the woods after dark. They have curfew, and there are wards in place to keep them safe so they don’t fall into the hands of any Fae should they meet them in Lachlan Falls. Of course, every year students figure out how to sneak off campus, and someone gets snatched.”

  “But why would students risk it?” Everything always came back to the Fae. I’d only met a few in my life, but I could see I didn’t want to meet more.

  Something stirred in the bushes next to the dirt path. The shadows in the hollows of the trees suddenly looked more ominous. Were there Fae in the forest? A squirrel darted out from under a cluster of leaves and raced up a tree.

  Josie shrugged. “Students aren’t here at Womby’s because of their brilliant past decisions.” She went on to tell me about other school rules and what the staff did, trying to keep students safe.

  I didn’t know what I would have done without Josie to explain the way this world worked.

  The moment we parted from the shady sanctuary of the forest, the sun beat down on us. I wished I had a witch’s hat to provide an umbrella of shade. We stepped onto a dusty path through a meadow. A small village of cobblestone buildings was situated on the other side of
the tall sea of grass. A shadow blotted out the sun and cast the shape of a bird onto the ground. Josie looked up and gasped.

  Another shadow streaked past, the black wings glistening like an oil slick. The bird landed on the path to the village up ahead, the shape shifting and stretching into that of a woman. She was still far enough away for her features to be indistinct and hazy.

  My blood chilled in my veins. These were Fae.

  “Josie,” I said.

  “I know.” She swallowed. “We need to go back.”

  We turned. Waiting at the edge of the forest stood two women with black feathers for hair and clothes made from midnight down. Their eyes were pure black. I’d seen them before at the Oregon Country Fair.

  Emissaries of the Raven Court.

  Cold sweat trickled down my back. They were the ones who had tried to snatch me so the Raven Queen could claim me as her tithe. Or whatever it was she wanted with me.

  Josie’s spine went rigid. Her step faltered for a moment before she kept walking. She made a wide arc around the bird women, trampling the grass, but they stepped forward to meet us. I glanced around. More birds landed in the field behind us, transforming into the shape of women dressed in midnight feathers.

  “You are in violation of school rules,” Josie said in a firm teacher tone. “Uninvited Fae aren’t permitted to be within a hundred feet of school grounds.”

  One of the bird women held up a wooden yard stick. “We’re one hundred and one feet from school grounds. I measured.” Her smile was as ominous as the tips of her black talons.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A Can of Whoop Ass and a Side of Awesome Sauce

  Back at the Oregon Country Fair when the servants of the Raven Queen had tried to grab me, I hadn’t known what to do. I didn’t know how to use magic. I still didn’t. I regretted my decision not to spend my day studying the thick books Thatch had given me to read that morning. It wasn’t that I didn’t plan on reading them. I just figured I would organize my classroom and write lesson plans first.

  Magic rolled off the two women before us, tasting like winter nights and decaying leaves. The air turned frigid with an Arctic chill, all the heat of the day wicked away. My breath came out in quick puffs of vapor that gave away my trepidation.

  Josie’s hand slipped into her sleeve. She didn’t pull out her wand, but she looked like she was ready to do so.

  I didn’t have any weapons. Although, I did have my cell phone. From what Josie had said, electronics depleted magical powers. I pressed the power button to turn it on.

  “What do you want?” Josie asked.

  The emissary’s voice was deep and rich, like molasses. “Our queen would be disappointed to hear of such poor manners toward her loyal servants. We simply wish to talk.” She looked to me. “Come with us, and all will be forgiven.” The words were melodious.

  I wanted to close my eyes and sink into her words. She made me forget all danger. The music in her voice painted rainbow oil slicks behind my eyes. My head felt light and detached.

  “The queen seeks audience with you. No harm will come of you,” one of the emissaries said with a lullaby in her voice.

  The invitation tasted like heroin-flavored ice cream, so tempting my mouth salivated. Her words hooked under my ribs, and it was painful to stand there and not step forward. My feet marched toward her of their own volition. I smiled.

  “No,” Josie said firmly. She smacked me hard in the shoulder.

  The pain grounded me in the moment. They’d just tried to hypnotize me! Of all the sneaky, underhanded things to do. I would have fallen for it too, if it hadn’t been for Josie.

  “You aren’t allowed to collect lost souls until after dark,” I said. “Not that I’m a lost—”

  The two birdbrained women launched themselves at us. Josie whipped out her wand and said something I couldn’t understand in Japanese. She zapped the closest Fae to her. I threw my phone at the one on the left and hit her square in the face. She wailed and leapt back. The one Josie zapped had been knocked off her feet by the impact of her spell. Both of them scrambled back from the phone on the ground.

  “You foul, half-breed mutt! You’ll pay for that!” The one I’d hit now cupped her hand over her eye as she shrieked. Smoke slipped through her fingers.

  Had the phone burned her?

  The woman whirled and spiraled in a blur, her body shrinking. A black bird rose up from where she’d been and flew into the air. The other woman transformed and followed the first bird.

  Josie’s face was ashen, and she was out of breath. “We need to get back,” she said. “We have to report this to the principal.” She grabbed my arm. “Only, we’re going to omit the part about the phone.”

  “Why? It saved me. It’s proof I should be allowed to keep it with me at all times.”

  She shook her head. “Jeb is unlikely to see it that way. That cell phone is like a gun. Teachers aren’t allowed to keep guns with them in the Morty Realm, are they?”

  I’d heard about gun-slinging teachers in Texas, but that wasn’t the norm.

  Josie needed to rest several times as we walked back to school. “It’s the electronics,” she said. “I think it drained me too. It’s off now, right?”

  I held it up to show her. I felt fine, but I hadn’t used any Witchkin magic like she had.

  We were both out of breath by the time we made it to the school grounds and found ourselves in Jeb’s tower. Mrs. Keahi sat at her secretarial desk outside his door. She was every bit schoolmarm with her long silver hair and conservative attire. The only difference between her and Mrs. Picklebee, my third-grade teacher, was the black pointed hat.

  “We need to speak to the principal,” I said.

  She crossed her arms and scowled when she saw me. “The principal is in a meeting right now. You’ll need to come back another time.”

  “It’s an emergency,” Josie said. “The Raven Court tried to apprehend us outside of school on the way to Lachlan Falls.”

  Mrs. Keahi stepped in front of Josie, blocking her from the principal’s door. “I’ll leave him a message to let him know you stopped by.”

  Next to Mrs. Keahi’s desk, the door to a wooden cabinet full of keys was ajar. If she wasn’t going to help us with one problem, I figured I might as well be practical and tackle the next one on my list.

  I pointed to the keys. “While we’re here, could I get a key for my closet?”

  Mrs. Keahi’s scowl deepened. That was me, making enemies at every turn.

  As I lay in bed that night, reading by the light of a candle, I felt like a character in a Gothic novel. At least the lack of lamp and electricity was romantic, even if it was impractical.

  I selected the first book on my to-do list and cracked it open. Lucid Dreams and Subconscious Messages didn’t sound very witchy, but I suspected it was the most relevant to read after the pornado dream with Thatch. I skimmed the introduction and anecdotes intended to convince the reader why it was important to control the mind. I already understood why I needed to keep Thatch out of my head.

  One passage leapt out at me: Developing the skill to know when one is dreaming versus awake is one of the foundational components of lucid dreaming. Those who master their dream state also find the techniques flow naturally into their waking life, strengthening their intuition.

  This book was what I needed! Not just for controlling dreams, but my magic. I’d been told I ignored my intuition when it nudged me. I needed to let it guide me. My brain overthought everything, and I second-guessed myself. Practicing these exercises would help me with my powers.

  Most of the exercises, like keeping a dream journal and observing details in a dream meant I would actually have to go to sleep. I placed a pencil and one of my journals on the nightstand so it would be ready for me in the morning.

  My next exercise involved meditating on what I wanted to dream about. I wasn’t supposed to think about the things I didn’t want to
see, or else those might pop up too. I sat cross-legged on my bed, trying to think of calming, peaceful thoughts. A breeze from the unshuttered window whispered across my face. The wooden floorboards creaked. I peeked at the room, making sure no one was in there. Having a door hanging off the hinges that was leaned against the wall meant I had less privacy than I would have liked. Thank you, Felix Thatch.

  No, I would not think about him. I did not want to dream about him again. I imagined rainbow unicorns and little fairies flitting through a misty forest filled with anything but evil raven shifters.

  Darn it, there I was again, thinking about what I didn’t want. I cleared my mind. The floorboards popped. I resisted the urge to open my eyes. I visualized deer prancing between trees and red-capped toadstools. Although, weren’t those the poisonous ones? I didn’t want to dream about that.

  The breeze brought with it the odor of musty laundry. Something scraped against the floor near the wall. I couldn’t ignore the feeling of someone else being in the room any longer.

  I leapt to my feet. “Who’s there?”

  I snatched the candleholder from the nightstand and waved it around, splattering hot wax onto my fingers. The shock of heat jolted through me.

  Golden flames illuminated the room. Movement caught my eye. My reflection in the large freestanding mirror stared at me with wide, terrified eyes, the colors in the glass bluer than the gold of the flames. My mirror self wavered like water, but only for a second. I smoothed my fingers against the solid surface, reassured it had been my imagination.

  No one was there in the room besides me.

  There was no way this exercise was going to help me have happy dreams now. It might be easier to start my meditations in the morning when every shadow didn’t resemble Thatch’s spindly fingers stretching out to drain me of my magic.

  The next morning my day started with a rude awakening. At first I thought I was dreaming and my before-bed meditations had gone astray. Then I realized, this was my new waking life.