Cackles and Cauldrons Page 5

  I froze in the open doorway. There was Chuck Dean, our former dean of discipline. I hadn’t seen him since King Viridios had flung him against a wall and he’d broken his back. My gaze darted to Khaba. Surely they couldn’t be replacing him? I knew the Witchkin Council didn’t approve of our school employing a djinn. From the strained smile on his face, he didn’t look pleased.

  Mr. Dean continued talking. His carefree chuckle made my belly flip-flop. He was the reason King Viridios had gotten into the school in the first place. The front of my belly felt warm. Maybe something was happening to my affinity. I glanced around to see if the other staff noticed.

  Khaba pointed to me and then the floor. I looked down. I had sloshed my bowl of hot oatmeal down the front of my blouse and skirt. Apparently my affinity wasn’t having a reaction.

  A lumpy pile of brown had dropped onto the ground. Josie glanced over at me, grimacing as she stepped forward and came to my rescue. She scooped up my mess with a wad of paper towels and used a cleaning spell on my clothes. I followed her to the back wall where the teachers and staff who hadn’t gotten seats stood. I noticed Felix Thatch standing next to Gertrude Periwinkle, the librarian. He stooped to listen to something the sultry blonde siren whispered in his ear.

  A momentary pang of jealousy shot through me. I was not going to be jealous of Thatch’s gorgeous ex-girlfriend. They had broken up. He was in love with me.

  I forced myself to focus on the former—current?—dean of discipline. His hair was still closely cropped to his head, not much longer than the salt-and-pepper stubble covering his face. I had once thought he looked handsome for an older man, but the creases around his eyes and mouth were deeper.

  What I had failed to notice as I entered was the metal armor he wore that made him taller and bulkier than he had once been. At first I thought it was armor, anyway. As I watched, I noticed puffs of steam exit from valves along his joints. When he motioned to the chalkboard with teacher’s names and times listed, I noticed places where exposed gears clunked.

  “Pray tell us, Mr. Dean,” Thatch’s voice said, each word enunciated with slow, strategic sarcasm. “Did you excel in this task as brilliantly as you did as their dean of discipline? Are you as skilled at budgets as you are with . . . wards?”

  That got a chuckle out of the staff. Chuck Dean’s eyes narrowed. He laughed along with them, waiting until it quieted.

  “One of the disadvantages of being used to Celestor magic from the land down under, mates, is you have to account for how magic behaves differently in the other hemispheres.”

  Pro Ro crossed his arms. Vega snorted. It appeared he hadn’t convinced the Witchkin who used stars and celestial bodies as their main energy source.

  “I didn’t know you were a Celestor,” Thatch said coolly.

  Mr. Dean continued. “We need teachers to be good role models for students. While I am here as principal, I have a few new policies I plan to implement.”

  Oh craparoni! He was our new principal? That was worse than him being dean. At least Khaba would have been in charge and gotten to veto his bad ideas.

  Principal Dean smiled. “In addition to new rules, there are a few rules I believe the old dean has been lax on enforcing.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Khaba straightened at that.

  I didn’t know anyone more by the book than Khaba with all his Fae rules and sensibilities.

  “Not that I blame you. It must have been hard to do the duties of principal, dean, security, and accountant—especially after your budget had been cut. From what I gather, the school now has more than enough funds to hire two invisible security guards. This will help keep students and staff safe from intruders.”

  Vega crossed her arms. “Please say you didn’t rehire the same pervert who used to watch women in the shower?”

  A puff of steam escaped from under Principal Dean’s collar. “Crikey, did the former invisible man do that? This is worse than I realized. Our new security team of invisible men come with glowing recommendations.”

  “Invisible woman,” a female voice said.

  I glanced around, I didn’t see who said that.

  Mr. Dean waved a hand at the empty space next to him. “I beg your pardon, an invisible man and invisible woman.”

  My heart lurched. Was Derrick one of the invisible staff members? I looked to Thatch. He didn’t appear particularly concerned, only annoyed. I was so fixed on listening for Derrick’s name as the principal introduced the security guards that I missed their actual names.

  The staff started talking before the principal was done. “Welcome to the family, Cami!” Grandmother Bluehorse said.

  Jasper Jang whooped and cheered. “Glad to have you back.”

  The invisible woman laughed. Her voice sounded young. “I’m happy to be working here. Womby’s has always been home to me.”

  Mr. Dean cleared his throat, not looking amused by the outburst. “I want to make sure we continue to enforce our no electronics policy. Students and staff need to voluntarily hand over all electronic devices. Our security will be searching rooms this week to ensure that no one has smuggled in any contraband items that might harm our abilities to use magic.”

  I tried not to panic. I had a phone and an iPod in my room. I glanced at Josie, whose eyes had gone wide. I happened to know she hid a laptop and DVDs in the bottom of her wardrobe. Jasper Jang fidgeted nervously. Even Jackie Frost, whom I had always taken as a straight-laced, rule-follower, appeared to be sweating.

  I didn’t want to have to give up my electronics. They didn’t even affect my affinity.

  Mr. Dean continued. “I believe Mr. Khaba has been remiss in enforcing our dress code. All staff members who wish to remain in employment need to wear shoes, pants, and shirts.”

  Pinky’s brow furrowed, and he waved his hand. “The policy in the handbook says staff need to be completely covered, not what kinds of attire we need to wear.”

  “Topless staff members aren’t appropriate,” Dean said.

  Topless? Pinky was a sasquatch. He was covered in fur. Even the khaki kilt was excessive.

  Pinky raised his hand again. This time the principal ignored him.

  “Another new addition. . . .” Dean said. “I want all shirts buttoned up with no more than one button unfastened.”

  Khaba glowered.

  Vega snickered. She stopped when he went on.

  “I expect all teachers in their rooms at curfew. No sneaking out. No secret rendezvous. No seducing students. No seducing colleagues. No sex magic, siren magic, or feminine wiles.”

  That was so sexist! What about masculine wiles and seduction? Julian Thistledown had used green-man magic. Why wasn’t seducing women on his list?

  “And no dating. There will be no public displays of affection. There will be no private displays of affection. Male and female staff will be good examples to students by not standing close together whispering sweet nothings in each other’s ears. We are professionals.” He glowered at Gertrude as she whispered something to Thatch.

  She ceased speaking. Thatch straightened. Maybe Dean thought they were dating.

  I forced myself to keep staring forward, to not look at Thatch and give our relationship away.

  Evita Lupi drew back from her husband and stopped holding his hand.

  “Excuse me,” Silas Lupi said. “I am married. Are you going to tell me I can’t put my arm around my wife’s shoulder?”

  “You’re married. You are welcome to hold hands with each other behind closed doors or do whatever you want off campus.” Dean smiled cheerily, giving no indication that he knew he’d managed to include just about everyone in the room as being guilty for one of the many things he’d listed. “While on duty, teachers need to be professional. There are a number of insufferable behaviors that have been going on at this school—and for far too long. The school board is sick and tired of this school having the lowest test scores, the most discipline problems, and the hig
hest number of incidents that disrupt the learning of these students.”

  Grandmother Bluehorse stood, shaking her mossy staff at our new principal. “Has the school board taken into consideration this is a charity school for at-risk youth? Of course we’re going to have the highest number of detentions compared to other schools. Kids here have been kicked out of other schools.”

  “If we charged a higher tuition, we could reduce class size, and we’d have higher test scores,” Coach Kutchi said.

  Teachers started talking all at once.

  Josie leaned in closer to me. “Oh my god! Is this guy for real?”

  I’d thought Chuck Dean had been bad before. Now that he was principal, making the rules, he had turned into a tyrant. A little power definitely had gone to his head. I wondered if this was what had led my mother down the path of evil.

  Dean shouted above the teachers. “Go ahead, blame the problems on the budget or class size. But the school board believes it’s the teachers and staff who are at fault. They were appalled when they realized it had been ten years since any administrator has ever done a classroom observation or evaluated teachers based on performance.” When teachers didn’t stop talking, he took out his wand and cast a spell. The buzz of voices around me petered out.

  Dean kept shouting, his voice too loud in the now silent room. “Students and teachers have died at this school. Demons have burst out of your dungeon and damaged school property. The school board has heard rumors of multiple accounts of teacher misconduct including: hexual harassment charges, forbidden magic, manipulating students’ wills with jinxes to take away their ability to speak, and exposing them to Fae. You’ve had multiple failures to protect your school from rabid unicorns, golems, the Raven Court, and the Silver Court.”

  Good grief! Did he really expect us to forget he was the one at fault for that last one? Coach Kutchi took that moment to cough loudly.

  “Do you know how close the school board is to shutting this sorry excuse for a school down?” he asked.

  Womby’s wasn’t a sorry excuse for a school! Yes, we taught some difficult students, but I didn’t like to hear him putting my school down.

  “Every person is going to undergo an examination of his or her conduct. If the report I send to the school board shows negligence, inappropriate magical management, or other transgressions, some people might be out of jobs at the end of the school year. Some people might be out of jobs sooner.” His eyes rested on me.

  I didn’t know why he was looking at me that way. Sure, I might have been at fault for the unicorns and golem. The Raven Court had attacked the school because of me, and I had set a djinn free under the school. who then caused havoc, but I hadn’t killed anyone. Oh, wait, I had. Plus I used forbidden magic on a daily basis because the Red affinity I used technically was illegal.

  And I had a cell phone.

  I wasn’t going to survive this inquisition.

  I eyed the schedule written on the board that listed when each teacher would be meeting with the principal. My meeting with him was in two days.

  Chuck Dean flashed a smile that would make any dentist proud. “I know this is going to be a rough transition, but you’ll get through it. One thing you can look forward to while I’m principal is we’re going to include weekly team-building activities every Friday after school.”

  What? He was taking away our Friday evenings too? Was there no end to this man’s madness?

  This brought on a flurry of new complaints.

  Vega raised her hand. This might have been the first time I’d ever seen her follow the rules of social etiquette. “By ‘team building,’ I assume you mean alcohol will be provided. This will be an optional activity, but one you’ll make worth our time in some way if we attend?”

  “You’re quite the comedian.” He chuckled and shook his head. “No, we aren’t going to permit any alcohol on school property. I’ve already taken the liberty of throwing away all spirits from the former principal’s office.”

  Dean waved to a stack of books in the corner. They levitated into the air, the stack shuffling apart, and floating in front of each staff member. “I’ve added a few items to the staff handbook. Make sure you read the book before our meeting this Friday to make sure you’re in compliance with these new rules.”

  This guy was worse than Dolores Umbridge. I wondered how long I was going to survive.

  My meeting with Chuck Dean, Evil Principal Extraordinaire, was scheduled for a Wednesday at four thirty in the afternoon. I showed up five minutes early for my appointment with the new principal, not wanting to be late and start the meeting off on the wrong foot. Mrs. Keahi sat at her secretarial desk as she filled out some papers. The brim of her witch hat hid her face from view, only her puckered lips visible. “He’ll be with you in a minute, dear,” she said. “He’s just finishing up with someone.”

  Dean’s voice rose from inside. “It’s completely unsanitary in there. When is the last time you cleaned? This has got to change. I’m going to give you a week to turn things around. If I don’t see drastic improvements, we’re letting you go.”

  I wondered if he was talking to someone about the bathroom in the administration wing. It was more like an old-fashioned outhouse in there. I wasn’t sure why the brownies or Ludomil Sokoloff, our custodian, didn’t clean in that facility.

  The doors burst open a moment later, Nurse Hilda rushing out in tears. She wore her all-white uniform, her hat and apron covered in splatters of rust red. I felt bad he’d yelled at the elderly witch and made her cry.

  At the same time, I didn’t think it was such a bad idea to put pressure on Nurse Hilda to clean the infirmary. Maybe he’d put an end to her bat-poop elixirs as well. Truly I didn’t know why our previous principal hadn’t enforced these things sooner.

  Hesitantly, I entered the office. Principal Dean folded his hands before him on the mahogany desk. Little puffs of steam escaped from between the metal casing covering his arms. Rainbows of light from the stained-glass window fell over his face and glistened off the metal.

  The spacious office still held the same furniture, the desk seeming even larger now that nothing was on it. The couches and comfortable chairs were on the other side of the room closer to the now-empty minibar. Many of the shelves along the wall no longer contained books, probably all the naughty forbidden books Dean didn’t want anyone to have access to. He’d kept the paintings of cowboys wrangling cattle-sized dragons, though the dragon skull was now gone from the wall.

  I sat in the hard wooden seat across from the new principal.

  “Good afternoon,” I said, trying to be friendly, though my insides were churning. I wondered what he was going to say to me. “It looks like you’ve recovered from your injuries with King Viridios.”

  His smile was tight across his lips. “If you can call this recovered.” He waved a hand at his metal body. “My back is still broken. I’m only able to function seminormally with the use of a dwarf-made suit.”

  “Wow, that’s great. I didn’t know we had this kind of technology.” He was like a cyborg. Robo-principal.

  His eyes hardened. “‘Technology?’ That is a word used to describe Morty-made devices using electricity. This body is a mechanical tool, nothing forbidden.”

  “Oh, right. Sorry. I was born in the Morty Realm, so sometimes I use the wrong—”

  “Shall we move on to business? I have a long list of infractions and problems in your classes I would like to discuss with you.”

  Oh boy. I hoped he was going to give me more than a week to change my wicked ways.

  Dean handed me a list of student names. “You have given forty-three detentions since the beginning of the year. One might consider that a bit excessive. Ten of your students are failing, and another thirty are what we call ‘red-zone’ kids—they’re at risk of dropping out or dipping into an F. Can you provide some kind of explanation? How does a student fail an easy class like art?” He slapped his thigh, t
he metal clanking as he guffawed.

  That’s probably all he thought my class was, the easy elective to put students in who couldn’t pass their other classes.

  “Yes, art is easy,” I said, mustering up the strength to be calm and civil. “So long as students show up and do the assignments. Students have to work to fail my class. I give them opportunities to make up quizzes, turn in late work, and plenty of opportunities to come in after school to complete assignments if they miss a deadline.” I pointed to the list of student names. “Five of the students who are failing never come to my class or come in halfway through, but from what I understand, that’s their standard in all their classes. They’re pretty much behind everywhere. I can’t control that. Many of those ‘red-zone kids’ haven’t been successful in their previous school experiences. They didn’t go to a public elementary school, so they’re behind in their reading and writing.”

  Dean jotted something down on a form. “And your excessive number of detentions. I noticed in the referral form you filled out there were five detentions for cell phones, but these violations were the same two students. Had you confiscated their phone in the first place, you wouldn’t have had repeat offenders. Would you mind clarifying your line of thinking?”

  “The kids who were raised in the Morty Realm are still getting used to the expectation to not use cell phones. All this magic stuff is new for them. They’re used to being able to use electronics at home or school, and their phones are the way they’re used to keeping in touch with families. If students want to use electronics on their own time outside of class, it isn’t any of my business.” Electronics were the only actual weapon against Fae. I couldn’t deny students keeping them—especially when I wanted to keep mine so badly as well.

  “So you’re saying you don’t agree with this school rule?”

  I lifted my chin. “No. I think that rule should be changed.”