Through the one-way wall, Zoe could see her classroom already filling with students. Her three sat together with Wayne’s two and the Coggins twins. The seven seemed good friends, at least while they were in class. It might be a good idea to encourage it out of class. That might also encourage the others to get involved with the more sordid goings on.
Governor Anderson finding out about even the zombies could shut down the school. Zoe wasn’t sure how Wayne convinced the man to send his only son to Brakket and she didn’t want to jeopardize that.
Zoe took a quick look in the mirror in her office. She straightened out her hair and smoothed down her suit. It was the same suit as yesterday. Student’s at Brakket alternated classes, so she wouldn’t see many people from the day before. Even if she did, she doubted they would notice. Zoe had a lot of suits, after all. With a flick of her dagger, a bit of air magic freshened her up.
Confident in her appearance, Zoe turned to the door separating her from her classroom. She paused, watching through the one-way wall. One of her students, a Mr. Bradley, just set a sickly green sphere at the base of her lectern. He pulled out his wand and cast a spell on it. It shimmered and blended into the background.
The ball was easily recognizable as a joke item from Sorcerous Shenanigans by the double S logo on its side. She couldn’t be sure what this specific one did, but she didn’t intend to find out.
What interested her more was the spell. It wasn’t an invisibility enchantment, but chameleon was the next best thing and still a third year spell at best. Impressive, but always a shame when students put efforts into jokes rather than schoolwork. Still, more than one of her students had gone on to be very successful despite terrible school performance.
She waited until Mr. Bradley had returned to his seat before opening the door. With barely a motion of her dagger, she dropped the camouflaged ball between. In the same stride, Zoe twitched her wrist to cause it to reappear just under Mr. Bradley’s desk.
Zoe reached her lectern and glanced slowly over the entire class. She doubted a single one of them had noticed; most weren’t even looking at the lectern when the sphere was placed. Mr. Bradley, at the very least, had an eager grin on his face.
She met his grin with her usual mirthless face. One thing she learned and mastered as she got older was never to let on when you held all the cards.
Today’s class was bound to be a fun one.
— — —
“I’m just saying that Jason got what he deserved,” Max said. The three seats across the table were ruthlessly splattered with some kind of brown beef mush. Everyone quickly learned to leave them empty. The only danger came when he looked around.
Shalise frowned at the gross display of wasted food. Not to mention the gross display itself. She half thought that Max took twice as much food as everyone else solely because it ended up on the seats and table. Such a waste.
Restaurants threw away food by the truck load. Tons of good food tossed at the end of every day. They’d lock the dumpsters to keep vagrants out of it. Even Brakket Academy had to throw away tons of leftovers so she knew it was a petty thing to focus on. There was just something different when it happened right in front of her.
She sighed, tuning the conversation out.
Learning magic was supposed to be fun. Classes were fun. Hanging out with friends was fun. It was the bits that came after that put a damper on things.
All this necromancer and zombie business Juliana and Eva spent half their time talking about scared Shalise. Whatever little adventure they went on two weeks ago only made things worse. They came back talking about skeletons and a grimoire that needed to be destroyed.
Skeletons, Shalise could understand. She hadn’t bothered to ask what a grimoire was; the answer was probably worse than her imagination.
She imagined quite terrible things. From spells worse than raising zombies or skeletons to horrible creatures seemingly made of nothing but tentacles and mouthes. Shalise had no idea where that last thought came from, but it occupied her nightmares since hearing the word, grimoire.
Her nightmares were nothing compared to Juliana’s. Shalise was sure that her roommate hadn’t slept for three days straight. She tossed and turned all night until it was finally time to head to school. Until the third day, that is; they got home from school and Juliana flopped onto her bed. She didn’t move until Shalise woke her up the next morning.
Since then, Juliana had very restless sleep, but she slept.
Eva, on the other hand, slept like a baby. She worried about something, Shalise could tell, but it wasn’t whatever kept Juliana up at night. Eva wrapped up in her spider’s arms–or legs, rather–and slept until her alarm went off.
A poke in her side made Shalise half scream. She glared over at the culprit.
“You were off daydreaming,” a smiling Jordan said. “You better be careful. Shadow creatures lurk daydreams and eat intruders.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Irene said as she elbowed the smile off Jordan’s face. “Everyone knows shadow creatures lurk in the shadows, duh. Fae are the ones who invade daydreams.”
“I suppose you’d know more than I do,” Jordan said a bit sarcastically in Shalise’s opinion, if in good humor.
Shalise smiled at the byplay. Their little group knew nothing of what troubled dorm room three-thirteen. Shalise had a good amount of envy for them. They could joke and laugh without worrying about monsters in the shadows.
If she hadn’t known about the necromancers, Shalise might be joking and laughing with them. Instead she was discovering her potential as an air mage. Aerotheurge, she was told, was the proper name. Her lightning bolts might be better called sparks and her whirlwinds more of a breath of air, but she had thrown herself full into it.
Without that she might not have learned how to enhance her senses. It was just a slight thing. Professor Baxter assured her it would get better in time until she never wanted to turn the spell off. Shalise felt she was far past that point. Dark lightened, distances lessened, sounds became far more distinguishable, smells changed similarly to sounds, touch and taste also enhanced though less so. None of it literally, it was all perception.
She wasn’t sure why air changed her eyes, taste, or touch. Professor Baxter said it was just a nuance of the spell. Each of the four elements had their own versions of the same spell. Earth mages would increase their strength and toughness while water mages increased their flexibility and agility. Fire mages actually increased the speed of their thought. It sounded amazing, though Professor Baxter said it was the hardest to learn of all. For a master of pyrokinesis, a single minute could be ten minutes of thought.
“And she’s gone again,” Jordan said.
“Straight to lala land,” Irene agreed.
Much faster than Shalise could think, apparently.
“We better save her from those terrible fae.”
Irene grew a terrible grin. “If one poke failed, think two might work?”
“Worth a shot,” Jordan said.
Shalise clamped her hands over her hips. “Not this time,” she said.
Irene put on a fake pout before breaking into light chuckles.
“Now that I have all your attentions,” Jordan said with a glance at each of the three-thirteen girls. “There is going to be a party on Halloween. We were wondering if you three wanted to join us.”
Shalise did not miss the glance Eva and Juliana shared across the table. She hadn’t forgotten Eva’s theory about some mass ritual happening on Halloween. Didn’t they discard that theory? The book wasn’t some ritual component.
Either way, Shalise wasn’t going to let fear–theirs or her own–ruin her school life or keep her from having fun with Irene, Jordan, and the rest. “I’ll go,” she said.