Chapter 9

9

The culling would cut our first-year numbers in half.

Possessing two innate powers was impossible for half-fae, half-human. I possessed two. Unless I managed to hide the second one, I’d be found out and exposed.

Hoarfrost wanted me expelled.

What next?

I still had tests and homework to worry about. Grades and points to maintain. A standing in the school to keep.

Hey, at least I still had my hair.

A few weeks later, I found myself alone in the library without company. Melia’s group project demanded more and more of her time, as she met with her own classmates to determine the focus of their final study.

Mike decided he needed extra tutoring with his time manipulation power and found another student to help him, someone who manifested the same kind of magic. I didn’t blame him; it was a good move. That’s what I should have been focusing on, too—learning more about my innate power and the stipulations required to master it.

Instead I was spending time, yet again, thinking about what Professor Hoarfrost had said to me despite my promise not to worry. How he would make personally sure I would not get into Faerie.

My fingers trailed on the table Mike and I had unofficially claimed for our own, my mind lost in thought and the book in front of me open to a random page.

Hoarfrost’s attitude toward me hadn’t improved and I knew without a doubt nothing I said or did would change his mind now. I’d gone too far. He never called on me, so I didn’t have to worry about not knowing something or giving a wrong answer. He wouldn’t even make eye contact with me anymore. Which was fine, as long as he didn’t deduct random points for no reason. I made sure to be on my best behavior as I sat through his lectures, taking copious notes and keeping to myself.

Would he really keep me from entering Faerie? I mean, barring I didn’t fail out of the academy or get kicked out for any other reason, did he have that kind of power?

It was an added complication I couldn’t deal with, and yet I couldn’t stop thinking about it either. Nightmares while I slept, and his voice playing on a loop while I was awake—I couldn’t win.

Around me, several other students worked on their own projects in silence. I didn’t know them. One of the groups was made up solely of exchange students and their chaperone, although I wondered why they gathered in the library. It wasn’t as if they had any actual work to do or projects to complete. They were simply biding time.

Maybe they had developed a taste for reading dry literature? The thought had me chuckling under my breath. Maybe they were getting extra study sessions in to prepare themselves for what would happen after they entered Faerie.

Who was I to say? And what did it matter? I rested my forehead in my palm. I probably wasn’t getting into Faerie anyway at this point.

They spoke in low voices and my ears pricked when I caught some of their words.

“…to the academy students,” the chaperone whispered. When I glanced in their direction, I saw the woman leaning close to them, pointing a finger in the air for emphasis.

“But why?” one of the students asked in a hiss.

I knew better than to eavesdrop, yet I couldn’t stop myself. Shifting a bit closer, I tilted my head to make it look like I had my attention focused on the book instead of their conversation, letting my hair hide my face.

“Because bad things happen when you get too close,” the chaperone was saying. My ears twitched. “I shouldn’t have to repeat myself. Stay away from them. They may seem like they want to be your friends but we must take certain precautionary measures while we are here. The best thing you can do is keep your distance.”

This conversation wasn’t suspicious at all.

“Some of them are very friendly,” a second student argued. “Will it not be better for us to maintain an air of civility with them?”

“Civility and distance go hand in hand.”

Okay, now they really had my curiosity piqued.

They noticed my glance in their direction and got up from their table in a hurry. I scrambled to look like I was actually engrossed in the text I was supposed to study. To no avail. They’d already made me.

Had I been too obvious?

I tapped my finger against the desk. Why were the Canadian chaperones warning their students not to get close to us? Didn’t that go against everything Headmaster Leaves said at the assembly? I had to wonder what Headmaster Cote would say about it if he knew. Probably nothing. He’d returned to their campus a few days after arriving.

I shook my head, eyes wide. It was weird. Sure, strange and tragic things had happened at the academy since I’d been here, but Roman’s betrayal only hurt a handful of people. If murder counted as “hurt.”

Yet the majority of academy students I’d met were great people. We had our terrors—cough, Persephone, cough—and those who would fight dirty to secure their place, but most of the students I’d met readily extended a helping hand.

So why were they warning the exchange students away from us?

It added to the low-lying thread of anger inside of me, growing it thicker piece by piece until I felt it like a solid thing.

I went back to my books, determined to drown everything out. Focus, Tavi. These passages aren’t going to memorize themselves.

Maybe I should try the sticky notes. Just for shits and giggles.

Eventually I was alone in the library, the small and wizened Librarian Mustardseed at the counter ready to close for the night as she checked books back in. I listened to her shuffling around, caught flashes of the butter-yellow hair she kept in a tight bun at the back of her head. She would come to kick me out before she left, as she had in the past.

So I had a few more minutes before she would tell me to leave.

“Focus,” I said out loud under my breath. “Focus on your homework.” No worrying about what other people were thinking or why they did what they did.

I should have been paying more attention to things. I should have used my better than average hearing not to eavesdrop but to keep myself safe. It would be much, much later before I recalled how the sounds around me had suddenly ceased, even though I was in a library which was normally quiet. How a bubble of silence had enveloped the table as if the rest of the world had been cut off.

“Jesus, girl, this is what you do for fun?” an old voice croaked next to my ear. “Shoot me now. I’d rather cut off a finger using dental floss.”

I didn’t scream, and I had to give myself credit for that. Everything inside of me froze, muscles straining, tensed, ready to leap from the table when a grey-haired woman popped into being in the chair opposite me. She wore a pair of faded jean overalls over a bright yellow-and-blue flannel shirt. Yellow to match her fingernails, stained from years of smoking.

I stared at Barbara and tried to get my heart to slow down. My breathing was out of hand, my head going dizzy and the rest of me struggling to keep up.

The witch who’d first helped me with my potion…was here. A cigarette dangled from her lips, those yellowed fingernails scratching light grooves on the tabletop as if in time with a song only she heard.

If she was here, it could only mean one thing. And it wasn’t good.

She’d come to collect her price, the damned unnamed price I’d agreed to in order to get my first set of garbage-fire disgusting potions.

I watched her lean back in the chair, her gaze raking over the bookshelves. “Nice little hole you carved out for yourself here. I always wanted to live in a castle.” She laughed, the sound ending on a choke. “Got my own palace right there in the woods. Stocked, locked, and loaded.”

“How…did you get in here?”

She regarded me in the same way as the used-car salesman who’d sold me my first junker. Like I was an easy pushover. I almost expected her to wink.

“A witch has her ways,” she told me slyly in her smoker’s croak. Two packs of cigarettes a day tended to ruin a person’s vocal cords. She didn’t let her throat and lungs stop her from wreaking havoc on other people’s lives. “Don’t ask questions when you aren’t prepared to know the answers.”

She had to have some serious power to make it through the castle’s wards. It was protected from regular humans to keep them from wandering onto our grounds.

Then again, Barbara wasn’t a normal human. She was a witch. The same witch my pixie friend, Elfwaite, sent me to when I needed a way to get into the academy.

A memory popped up randomly and I heard the pixie’s high-pitched voice in my head.

I…have a friend who can help, if you decide to go through with it, though her help will come at a price. You must be willing to pay.

Of course I’d said yes. I would have agreed to anything right then.

Be sure. You never know what you may be required to give up. I’d hate to see you give up something you love in order to get what you want.

God, I hoped Barbara wasn’t here to collect on my life. Or my soul. I wasn’t prepared to die today. “What do you want from me, Barbara?”

“Does a person have to want something to check up on the young? A young heart and mind I like to think I can help shape and mold?” Barbara asked instead. She tapped her cigarette with a finger and ash scattered across the tabletop.

“Yes, and your circular questioning isn’t going to confuse me.” Okay, the breathing was under control now, although the chill settling in my bones at her appearance didn’t want to go away. Probably wouldn’t until long after she left.

I wrapped my blazer tighter around my torso as the two of us stared at each other from opposite sides of the table. The last time I’d seen her, she’d pulled a cauldron of smoking potion out of thin air and made me sign a contract stating she was well within her rights to come and collect an unspecified favor at the time of her choosing.

Wow, I’d been stupid.

Barbara’s expression hardened and she leaned in close to me, reeking of stale smoke. “It’s time to call in that favor, little girl. I’ve used this time carefully to think about what I want from you. It just so happens the thing I want the most has fallen practically into your lap. All the better for me.”

I remembered how I’d felt like I was signing my life away without a guarantee and my stomach clenched. Maybe she’d go easy on me? Somehow I doubted it.

“I have no idea what you are talking about, so I’ll ask again,” I said. “What do you want from me?”

Her fingers continued to click on the table, her wrinkled mouth quirking in a wry smile. The first time I’d met her, she had greeted me at the door with a shotgun pointed directly at my face. She didn’t have the gun now. But I still didn’t feel any safer. Dread curled inside of me.

She leaned back to study me. “There’s your backbone. It’s going to serve you well in life, Tavi Alderidge, let me tell you.” The cigarette dangled as she laughed.

Barbara paused as though waiting for me to send another snappy remark her way. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from responding. I didn’t have time for games. Not tonight. Not with her.

Finally, she sighed, leaning even farther back in the chair until it threatened to tip over. “Those exchange students, the ones from Canada? They have something I want. They brought it with them right across the damn border. What I can’t figure out is how they carried an artifact like that hidden in plain sight.”

I could feel my brow furrowing. “What is it?” I asked. Knowing I would hate the answer no matter what she said.

She pierced me with a sharp look. “The Augundae Imperium.” Barbara rolled the name around in her mouth, going for crisp pronunciation though the syllables blurred together. “They intend to present the artifact to the king and queen upon entering Faerie. Some sort of gift or offering to help them stand out from the rest of the kids using the portal? I have no frickin’ clue why, really. Maybe the king just really wants to get his grubby paws on it and his old friend Cote simply had the Imperium stashed away.”

“And you just happened to find out who had it and its final destination,” I supplied.

“Yes. I have my ways.” Barbara flicked the stub of her spent cigarette across the library and magically materialized a second one although she didn’t light it. “I’m ready for you to return your favor. I’m sure you can guess by now what I want.”

I didn’t need her to fill in the blanks for me or lead me to the correct answer like a horse with a rope. “You want me to get this artifact for you.”

She stared at me with a bored expression. “I thought it was clear,” she drawled. “You never struck me as the dumb sort.”

“What does the artifact do?” I had to know what kind of danger I’d be putting myself in to retrieve it for her.

Barbara rolled her eyes. “You’re asking an awful lot of questions for someone who doesn’t need to know. Your job is to get me what I want and pay your debt. End of story. Don’t worry about what it does or why I want it. Those aren’t the terms of our contract.”

Why did I feel like she’d backed me into a corner?

“And if I don’t get the Augundae Imperium?”

The dread inside of me mounted into the stratosphere at her viperous grin.

“Aw, little girl. You think you can outsmart me?”

“No, it’s simply another question.”

“You seem to be full of questions. What are you trying to do, Tavi Alderidge? Figure me out? Figure out a way to get out of the favor you owe me?”

I shook my head. “No. I’m trying to understand what’s going on. All things considered, don’t I deserve to know what kind of situation I’m heading into? If there is anything dangerous for me?”

“Honey, consider this, then. I want the Augundae Imperium. And if you don’t get it for me, then I’ll tell the school what you really are. There’s your danger.”