Chapter Three

A missing professor who might be dead. Dead, like my brother. Was there a connection? My mind flashed with Ramsey's murderous grin as he held a bloody knife over a faceless professor. If Ramsey could do it to Leo, he could easily do it again.

But I needed to remember where I was. This college welcomed those who were obsessed with black magic and had a certain darkness to their hearts. If what Seph had said were true and the missing professor really was dead, then it could be that I walked the halls with two murderers.

Needless to say, I didn't sleep that night.

I rose early—well, before anyone else in the entire hall, though I couldn't be sure what time it was. This lack of windows business was really going to confuse my inner clock. I had to pee, which naturally I didn't want to announce to Seph or Nebbles, so I slipped out the door to find a bathroom, my coal dye container for my hair clasped tightly in my hand. I found the bathroom at the end of the hallway, and once relief swept over me, another, sharper kind of need, the kind that would fill the hollow pit in my stomach, took over. Already, I could feel the effects of hunger sapping my strength and draining my alertness. No way I could get revenge feeling like this.

After touching up my hair with the dye, I tiptoed back to the room, my feet frozen from the cold floor. I could eat around the mold that had already started to flourish on my bread and cheese. I'd have to until I figured something else out.

"Dawn!" Seph burst out in the silence.

I jumped a mile and nearly died right there in the doorway of our room.

"Sorry." She slapped both hands across her mouth to contain a chuckle. "I'm so sorry. My family tells me I have two volumes—loud and louder. I was just going to say let's get down to breakfast before the rush."

She was already dressed in shiny red boots and her cloak, glowing with the torchlight and her signature excitement.

I frowned as my stomach cheered at the idea of breakfast. "You go ahead."

"Are you sure?” She tilted her head and gave me a knowing look. “My treat."

I could never ask her to do that for me, though I did appreciate the offer. Still, my eyes prickled at how hungry I was, and I turned away without a word, not trusting my voice to work without giving me away.

"Dawn," she said, touching my elbow gently. "Please. I saw you eating moldy bread last night. I wasn't spying, I promise. I just happened to wake up. Let me buy you breakfast, and you can tell me about it. Let me repay you for putting up with me for one whole night. I'm a lot. I know. I get reminded of this often."

I took a steadying breath as I looked down at my satchel lying on my desk. My stomach squirmed just thinking about what was inside. "You did almost kill me just now."

"See?" she said, laughing. "I would've necromanced you back though. Or tried to, but you probably would’ve come back with an extra leg or something.”

I tried to laugh, but to my horror, it turned into a sob, a great, wrenching one that nearly curled me to my knees. I didn't know what had come over me. I hadn't cried since that night last spring when I’d found Leo. I'd been too consumed with rage to let myself feel anything else. Maybe it was the combination of hunger, Seph's kindness, her reminder of the old me, seeing Ramsey and reliving Leo lying in a pool of blood all over again, but it was enough to buckle me under the weight of it all.

So, it was a good thing Seph was there to gather me into her arms and help me shoulder it. 

"It's okay," she whispered, rubbing circles into my back. "Just let it out."

I did, but only because I couldn't stop. Finally, when I'd reduced myself to nothing more than a sniveling, hiccupping mess, the tears dried up.

Seph pulled away, fished a polka-dotted scarf out of her cloak pocket, and handed it to me. "Do you feel a little better?"

I nodded, wiping at my face. "Sorry. I don't normally pour myself into a puddle like that."

"It's fine. I have a lot more scarves, so puddle away.” She smiled, and it nearly broke me down again with its warmth. “Get dressed and let's go eat, okay?"

I took a huge gulp of air to steady my nerves and then changed into a different black dress than yesterday's, my cloak which had finally dried, and my boots, which still squished with every step. Once ready, we waved goodbye to Nebbles who lay curled up on Seph’s pillow, and she hissed back.

What a charming cat Nebbles the Undertaker was. I was completely smitten.

We went downstairs to the Gathering Room, where it was slowly filling up with students. Before we made it there, sweet and salty smells twisted up through the air and summoned my stomach. It growled in response, and the enormous feast spread out along each of the five tables made my mouth water. 

Seph took one look at me and laughed as she hauled me forward into a seat at the freshmen table. "See? I knew you wouldn't want to miss this."

Eggs, bacon, sausage, fresh rolls, and an assortment of different butters and jellies and honeys were neatly laid out on silver and black platters and in cauldrons with a black silk runner underneath. Ornate candelabras flickered their light over the decadent food and made it look even more appetizing.

“And…” Seph rolled two coins onto the table where they immediately vanished. “Go!”

Like we were in a race, we piled everything on the plates in front of us, and I dove in headfirst. Or I started to, at least.

"Wait." Next to me, Seph stopped me from picking up my fork, her brown eyes narrowed at our plates. "Want me to teach you a quick spell to see if it's poisoned or been tampered with?"

I tore my gaze away from the vat of butter that sat in a black cauldron that I so wanted to swim in. "Why?"

"Back home in Old Haita, we do it all the time, because we have to.” The candlelight danced over her tattooed features, giving the swirl design more of a skull-like appearance. “As a family of necromancers, we're not exactly welcomed…anywhere."

I gasped. "People have poisoned you?"

"They've tried to.” She shrugged like it was no big deal. “This spell turns your food green if it's poisoned or will reveal any hurtful spell on it. Now, I know rule number three here says no bringing any physical or emotional harm to anyone, but poison makes it tricky to find the one to blame. A sprinkle there when your back is turned. A dash over your shoulder when you're turned to talk to me. If it's well-timed, no one could see who did it, and there's no proof except for a dead body. If necromancing the victim actually worked, it’d be their word against the accused. So…" She eyed my plate. “If I may Latin.”

Was she asking me for my permission for her to speak Latin? Why did she always use nouns as verbs? “Uh…sure.”

"Quarum sacra fero revelare."

I stared down at my plate. Everything still looked delectable. In a way, everything she'd just told me kind of sounded like a threat. Like maybe she'd poisoned my food without my noticing. But of course, she hadn't. Not after I'd broken down crying in her arms. Still, there was possibly another murderer at this school. Ramsey blended in relatively easy. Maybe Seph did too.

"Now you say it to mine. And don't worry." She winked. "If it's safe, I'll take a bite of mine to show you."

"Quarum…" I said, trying to remember her words. Latin was a little easier when I heard it spoken out loud. "Sacra…fero revelare."

We both stared at her plate, and when nothing happened, she crammed a giant forkful of eggs into her mouth. That was good enough for me. We ate in silence for a bit, and I watched students coming and going. The gorgeous redhead I’d already made an enemy of glared at me as soon as she walked in.

When Ramsey strolled in seconds later, I choked down a bite of roll. He was laughing at something one of his friends was saying, his black cloak fluttering around him and his thunderstorm eyes alert and sharp.

My stomach lurched at the sight of him, and I immediately regretted everything I'd eaten.

“You okay?" Seph asked, eying me closely. "You know that guy or something?"

"Or something," I said, unable to keep the edge from my tone.

"Ohh, there's a history there with you two." Seph placed her elbow on the table and watched me watching him stride toward the junior table. "A junior too. And from the way you’re looking at him, I’m surprised his liver isn’t already sliding out his nose."

I snatched up a glass of water and downed it, my whole body trembling with rage.

"Is he why you were upset this morning?" she asked gently.

I couldn't tell her. In fact, glaring at him from across a crowded room would only bring more attention to myself and spotlight me unfavorably when his life winked out. I needed to create distance and not wear every single emotion I was feeling so openly. In my head, after all these months of planning, this had been so much easier than it was turning out to be.

"No," I said, forcing my attention away from him.

"Okay…" Seph said, but she didn't sound convinced. "Let's get out of here. Ready?"

"Ready." I couldn't eat with him in the same room anyway. 

Our first class was straight through the entryway to a long hall three stories high and filled with classrooms. The ceiling arched into a beautifully crafted stained-glass dome that was the closest thing to a window I’d seen in the entire building. The sun sliced through the glass and painted the whole hallway in flecks of red and black light. The effect was spellbinding, especially since unlike the entryway, the angles of the hall were normal and didn’t fill me with a sense of dread.

On the third floor, green plants filled the entire area, their multi-shaped leaves so large that they dangled over the sides of the balcony. That must’ve been the Green Floor where Undead Botany class was held. Funny that those plants were alive while the ones outside weren’t.

We found Death, Dying, and Reliving: A History of Cautionary Tales on the second floor with a few freshmen already in their seats. It smelled like lemons and ink in here. At the front of the double rows of desks sat a shockingly young woman wearing a red dress with big buttons down the front and an even bigger smile. She was talking animatedly with some of the other students, her glossy chestnut waves bouncing around her shoulders.

"She's not what I expected," Seph muttered as we took our seats in the third row.

"Not at all." I was beginning to wonder why Headmistress Millington and this professor seemed so friendly, but then I remembered that Leo had interviewed here. There must've been something about this school that beckoned good, happy mages, which was odd. This place didn't scream good and happy, but based on the black, windowless structure itself, it did scream something. Of course, I hadn't met all the professors yet either.

After a bit, ours stepped forward. "All right, everyone. This is Death, Dying and Reliving: A History of Cautionary Tales, so hopefully you're in the right place. I'm Margo Woolery, your professor."

She rubbed her hands together as she spoke, seeming at ease and exactly where she was supposed to be. She reminded me so much of Leo that the rawness of his loss threatened to expose itself once again by cracking open my heart. He should be at Graystone right now with as big a smile, if not bigger, than Professor Woolery as he started his first year of doing what he loved professionally.

Behind my broken heart, I seethed. I wanted Ramsey to pay so badly that I shook with the need to pop out of my seat and find the prick to cut the life out of him like he had my brother.

But I needed to bide my time, be as careful and strategic as I had to get to this point. Still, I checked the dead man’s hand in my pocket. Closed, for now.

"So, we're going to jump right in today with a cautionary tale that's meant to protect you,” Professor Woolery said. “The tale helped out one of my friends when she found herself…in a bit of a pickle."

Some guy in the front row who was so thin he appeared to be made from sticks tipped his chin up at her in a gesture clearly meant to make him look more suave than he really was. It failed. "By friend, you mean you, right?"

"Wrong," Professor Woolery said with a patient smile. "I mean what I say, Jon, especially in a class as important as this one.”

He slunk back in his seat.

“Anyway, the tale starts with Mimi. Mimi summoned her dead lover from his grave, but when he started to rise, she began to have second thoughts. She’d heard the stories of necromancy gone wrong, that barely no one ever came back the same. But of course, it was too late. She could already hear him following her out of the cemetery making terrifying, inhuman sounds, and she feared he might kill her. She didn’t know the spell to make him go back, so to hide herself, Mimi went back to her house, wrote an invisibility spell all over her body, and sat perfectly still, waiting for her love to come."

Not the best use of time, Mimi. It would take forever to write a spell all over yourself, especially in a hurry. No, I had a better way. I patted the dead man’s hand in my pocket—still closed—and smiled. I'd learned the trick from one of several of Leo's black magic books when I was studying up on the best way to rid the world of Ramsey.

“Needless to say,” Professor Woolery said with a wicked grin, “he never found her and eventually returned to his grave.”

“That’s kinda mean of Mimi, honestly,” some girl near the back said.

The professor shrugged. “It’s hard to say what necromancy spells will do to someone since the spells never awaken the entire brain, never rekindles memories or feelings they once had since their spirits have already moved on through the spirit door. Which is why we here at Necromancer Academy try to teach you how irresponsible it is to do spells on humans and animals. It never works out the way you want.”

Ah, so that would explain why Undead Botany was a class, then. Plants could come back. Humans and animals, not so much. Or they could, but things could get scary.

The skinny guy—Jon—raised his hand. “Then why are we here if necromancy spells don’t actually work outside of plants?”

“They do work,” some other guy in the row next to me said. “Ask Ryze.”

Professor Woolery’s smile fell, her sparkle faded, and her face paled until she looked sickly. “Which is a topic for another day,” she said finally.

I caught Seph’s eye, the furrow of her brows matching mine. “Who’s Ryze?” I whispered.

She shrugged.

Professor Woolery clapped her hands, looking chipper once again, but I could still see the tightness in the corners of her eyes. “So, my friend used the same invisibility spell Mimi did here at this school when an accident in the gym caused an explosion of hairy pickles. I kid you not. Someone had cursed one of the rubber mats in there as a joke probably, and any time someone would get too close, the mat shot pickles at them. To defuse the situation, my friend turned herself invisible and hauled the offending mat outside. To this day, students and professors are still finding hairy pickles in the gym.”

She finished with an infectious burst of laughter, which most of the class echoed. Even me. It sounded so strange, but it felt nice not to be rotting from the inside out from hatred for a few seconds.

"What I'd like you to do now is to use the quill and ink pots on your tables and write the spell on yourself for the rest of class.” The professor waved her hand, and the spell appeared over all our heads in golden, sparkly letters. “See how long it takes you to turn yourself invisible. Get help from your classmates if you need to. To erase the spell, rub some lemon juice over yourself, which is in the bowls at the ends of your tables."

Seph glanced at me with a wide grin as she dipped her quill into her ink pot. "Yet another thing I wasn't expecting for my first class. Necromancer Academy is definitely keeping me on my toes."

Nodding, I took up my quill and rolled it between my fingers. "Just make sure you don't have any cuts on your skin before you apply lemon juice."

"Oh, good thinking."

We got to work then, gradually turning ourselves invisible. It was so strange seeing the table through my arm but at the same time feeling how solid my flesh and bones still were, and feeling my arms still attached to my body. This was definitely to be used only for a last resort or impressive party tricks, though. In reality, timing was everything, and this was taking too damn long to be useful to me.

Jon from the second row turned around, most of his arm already vanished. "Might I be of assistance, ladies?"

"No thanks," Seph sing-songed.

"Are you sure? I can…" His jaw dropped the longer he stared at Seph, and a dreamy haze shuttered his blue eyes. “I can help.”

Seph just smiled and shook her head, completely oblivious to casting her spell over him.

And what a spell it was because the guy was a goner after that, turning to look at Seph like she’d plucked his heart right out of his chest. It was pretty darn cute to witness.

Before the end of class, Professor Woolery instructed us to make ourselves reappear with the lemon juice. Smelling especially citrusy, we wandered into the Symbology room on the first floor, which took my breath away. It was enormous, about twice the size of our previous classroom with small rustic brown stones making up the entirety of the floor, walls, and ceiling. A whole array of symbols was carved into the stones, some fairly simplistic and others with incredible detail. It was beautiful in here.

"No professor in this class?" Seph asked as we took our seats at a middle table.

"That or they ran out of lemon juice," I said.

After all the freshmen had wandered in and taken their seats, an old man in a brown cloak shuffled toward the front of the room. His back hunched over, and his head stuck out from the rest of his body like a turtle. A single tuft of white hair fluttered over the top of his bald head as he moved…so, so slowly. We'd all be dead by the time he got to the front of the room.

"Parchment, quill, and ink," he rasped, his voice like air squeezing between two rough stones. 

A stack of parchment appeared on everyone's tables, as well as quills and brimming pots of ink. I jerked in my seat, not expecting the suddenness from someone who moved at his speed.

He kept shuffling, only an eighth of the way into the room, and lifted a gnarled finger toward the left wall. "Those are protection symbols you can draw anywhere. On you. On your door. On your lover. On your homework so your dog doesn't eat it. You can draw them with ink or using your finger."

The class leaned toward him, like we were all struggling to catch what he was saying with his raspy voice.

"Pick twenty of those, draw them freehand exactly, with ink, twice each, and turn one copy in on my desk before you leave. The other you keep. Do not, I repeat, do not, try to do a rubbing with your parchment on the symbol. Instant F and I will have. Your. Head."

Behind him the door closed with a thunderous boom. All of us leaped into the air. This professor hadn't even told us his name yet, but I already decided I liked him. He had a certain dramatic flair despite his quiet appearance that made me want to pay attention.

Even though there were about thirty of us in here, it never felt like we were climbing over each other to find wall space. None of us pressed our parchment to the symbols, but we spread out on the floor and looked back and forth between our chosen symbols and our drawings while we worked. I picked twenty that were all completely different, some with circles within circles or letter-like symbols I'd never seen before. As I drew, I briefly wondered what the symbols on the other walls were, but I was sure we'd get to that. Eventually. Just like Professor Turtle to his desk. When I went to turn in his copies of my twenty drawings, he sat behind it snoring loudly.

At the end of class, even though he was still sleeping, the door of the room squeaked open, and all of us took that as our sign that we were free to go.

On our way to P.P.E. in the gym, Seph fell back a little, her ebony face paling behind all of her swirly tattoos.

"Seph? Are you all right?"

"Yeah, just…” She swallowed thickly. “I feel strange."

"Strange how?"

"Strange…"

Well, that didn't really clear anything up for me, but I stayed close to her side to keep an eye on her.

And then I felt strange, too, but only because something had clicked loudly in my head. We'd just learned how to turn ourselves invisible and draw symbols of protection. All defensive things. What was it about the darkest academy in all of Amaria that had the freshmen learning nothing but defense from day one? Did it have anything to do with the missing professor? Or was it because we were freshmen, ripe for the slaughter by upperclassmen, namely Ramsey? Possibly a combination of both.

"Dawn." Seph blew out a slow breath as we stopped in front of the gym. "I can't go in there."

I blinked at the doorway across the wide hall from us and then at her. "Why? Are you allergic to the hairy pickles we might find in there?"

"Something…" She clutched at her chest, her knuckles going white. Her shoulders rose faster as she breathed harder, and she shook her head. "Something's not right in there. I can feel it…just on the other side of that wall."

I dragged my gaze away from her distraught face to the room behind me again. Black mats lay out on the floor, and in the far corner hung various equipment I didn't know the names of plus a few swords. Nothing that looked particularly out of the ordinary for a gym, I guessed, but I took a step closer to peer farther inside. Voices carried from within, a few students talking about their day so far.

"Dawn, please don't go in there," Seph pleaded, and the tremor in her voice slithered up my back.

I turned toward her again, my muscles clenched because I had no idea what was going on here. She pushed her lips together and stood frozen to the spot, shaking violently. Terrified. 

I had to know. I had to know what was going on. Sweat broke out along my forehead as I turned and stepped closer to the gym, and my heartbeat ricocheted in a steady hum between my ears. I gasped. 

Something's not right in there…just on the other side of that wall, she’d said.

It was Ramsey. Standing behind the teacher's desk.

"Dawn…"

I turned back to Seph in time to see her drop in a dead faint.