Impossible Magic (5 page)

“Are we going down the mountain?”

She laughs harshly. “A couple of the guys have off-mountain privileges, but it’s not worth incurring the wrath of the Headmistress. We’re allowed off during our holiday breaks, obviously, but during the school year, only level fours and up can leave. Practically no one has their car here. My Chevy is back at my parents’, and it’s a long way down on foot.”

At the bottom, she taps a brick marked with a fluorescent cross, and the wall swings away, revealing the faces of a group of guys and girls, some of whom I recognize. Astrid stands meekly at the back, shrinking to make herself invisible.

We step outside into the frosty, foggy night, and they lead us away toward the woods that border the school. There is a faded path worn down in the dirt, and a few more blue orbs shoot up and light the way as we sneak away.

I hear a fox shriek from nearby and I wince, the sound catching me by surprise. The others ignore it as they trudge along down the path. I catch a blur of orange-red fur through the trees, accompanied by a pair of shiny, intelligent eyes, but then the animal is gone.

“Won’t they see us?” I ask, glancing back toward Juniper’s dark facade as we disappear into the shadowy trees. A slither of fear travels down my spine, but I remind myself there’s safety in numbers.

One of the older guys shakes his head. “Most of the wardens are asleep and we’ll be back before they do hall check. I’ll throw up a barrier, just in case.” He lobs his hand out behind us, and a clear wall flows up where we just were and spreads up and around us like a bubble, growing until it encases the trees.

The path emerges into a clearing with dilapidated gravestones laid out in rows. It’s gloomy and dark, but the others don’t seem to care, taking up seats on some of the taller stones. They drop their cloaks into a pile, and one of them starts a stout fire in the center. I jump when I think I see a skeletal hand sticking out of the ground, but when I look closer, I see it’s just a fallen, stripped pine branch.

One girl lifts a blanket off a basket she was carrying. Clustered inside are unopened bottles of vodka and rum and beer.

“Where did you get those?” I ask. The night is looking up.

Melody grins at me. “Travis over there is a level four, so he always keeps us stocked.”

Travis grabs one of the bottles of vodka, rips the seal off, and tosses it in my direction as I catch it. “Get started, pledge,” he says with an impish grin.

I smirk and take a swig, grimacing as the stinging liquid trickles down my throat.

As the party carries on and the others get loosened up, Melody takes off and makes out with one of the higher level guys up against a tree. Some of the guys are arm wrestling, and the girls attempt it, too. The vodka gets passed from person to person and finds its way back to me. Although I try to loosen up. Thoughts preoccupy me—of my life back home, of the magic that I feel slipping through my fingers.

Travis, the level four guy with the mischievous grin, leans down in front of me. “What are you doing here all by yourself?”

I shrug. “Just thinking. I’m a philosophical drunk.”

He reaches out his hand. “You’re supposed to be relaxing. Come on, dance with me.”

I can’t help my bubbling laughter. He’s cute and I like his brazen flirtatiousness. “There’s no music.”

He points his fingers in the direction of a nearby iPod sitting on a rock. Music starts to blare out and he shifts his slim hips to the beat, pulling me with him. I laugh and get caught up in dancing with him, feeling my tense muscles loosen. I can smell how drunk he is on his breath, but this is the most laid back I’ve seen anyone act since I got here. He spins me around and dips me, then tilts me back up and presses a kiss to my upper lip. I laugh again as the song ends and he steps back. Melody jogs up to us and taps me on the shoulder.

“Some of us were going to play magic darts. Wanna try it?”

A faint, anxious alarm sounds off in my cloudy brain. “I don’t know.”

She puts her arm around my shoulder and steers me away from Travis. “Come on, it’s fun. You said you think that magic is fun, right?”

“At one point, I thought so,” I mutter, resenting my earlier, naive words.

A dartboard is nailed to a large tree trunk and a group of people are standing by, waiting their turn. Each one shoots a dart-shaped light at the target. Melody goes ahead of me, snapping her fingers forward and shooting a purple light that hits the target on the outer ring. She finishes off the beer in her other hand.

“Now you try,” she says, stepping back to let me go. “It’s easy, you just point and snap your fingers like that. The hardest part is actually hitting the target.”

I realize my hands are shaking. I’m not usually a nervous person—what is happening to me? I take a deep breath into my stomach and let it out, then position myself like I saw the others doing.

I feel the magic swirling up to my fingertips, and a wave of irrationally strong relief washes over me. I can feel the pressure building, and I start to snap my fingers. An intoxicated boy smashes into me, knocking me over the second my fingers slide apart. His beer tips and pours all down the front of me. The magic dart shoots off into the tree tops, and the others burst out laughing at me. Melody is laughing the loudest, and I glare at her resentfully as I stumble to my feet.

I’m about to retaliate, but Astrid appears, grabs my hand, and leads me back over to the tombstones, where she sits down with me.

“Sorry about the others,” she tells me in her whisper-soft voice. She looks like being here was the last way she wanted to spend her night. “They’re always playing games to prove who’s the most powerful. I’ve found it’s best to keep to yourself.”

She tugs her left sleeve down over the stump of her wrist. She catches me staring before I can look way.

“That was my introduction to witchcraft,” she explains somberly. “I didn’t know what was going on, and I got mad, and I set my sleeve on fire. It was so badly burned, they had to amputate it.”

“I’m sorry, that must be hard.”

She shrugs, although I’m not entirely buying her nonchalance. “You get used to anything. Life is so different up here, I know you’ve gotten a taste, but it’s more than that. It’s like we’re in another world.”

We watch as the others make drunken fools of themselves, one guy jumping on another’s back as the one being ridden tries to buck him off. He swings his hand and conjures a spider out of shadows that drops on his friend’s face.

I glance back at Astrid. “I like your tattoos, where did you get them done?”

She points at her chest. “I did them. Whenever I’m bored I add more.”

I raise my eyebrows, impressed. “With magic?”

She nods. “Yeah, and a needle and ink that I had somebody smuggle me up from off-mountain. When I want to change them, I just clear my skin off and start over. There’s a whole underground if you need favors done or banned items like phones, as long as you don’t catch a warden’s suspicion. Especially Luke.”

His name stirs an unwelcome, gnawing curiosity in me that I can’t tamp down. “Was he a student here?”

Astrid nods. “Yeah, a young one. He came to the school at like, sixteen or something. He’s one of the most powerful necromancers in the country. He’s brought people back from the dead hours after they’ve died, which is almost unheard of.”

I can’t help but be impressed, even if he is a tremendous jerk. “So there’s a reason he’s got such an inflated head on his shoulders?”

Astrid smiles at me, then leans back against the cracked tombstone she’s sitting on. “Yep, and nothing’s going to deflate that. Luke has a good heart buried deep, deep down, though. I’ve seen it. He apparently saved the Headmistress’s life years back, and that’s why he’s her right hand man now. Word is he was supposed to transfer, but he’s been here ever since.”

“Where are the other witch schools? Are they hidden, like Juniper is?”

“Yeah, up in the mountains, in abandoned buildings, bomb shelters, old houses in the middle of nowhere. Rumor has it there’s even a school in a sub under water the Atlantic. The rules dictate keeping witches a secret, back from the time when accused witches were burned and persecuted. That’s why they keep us captive up here until we’re trained to be around the Normies again.”

“But we can leave for weeks at a time, right?”

“Sure, but they’re watching you the entire time. And you don’t realize how much the rest of the world has moved on until you attempt to visit and act normal.”

The others cluster together by the trees. “Time to go,” Astrid says as we rise and join them. I didn’t realize how tipsy I am until I stood up. I partner begrudgingly with Melody again and we retrace our steps, hoping to beat the clock before it chimes midnight.

CHAPTER 8

I can barely see straight as we maneuver back, and I nearly trip over a rock in the path as I execute an awkward hop over it. The stifled giggles of the others remind me I’m not the only one who’s wasted. My drunk brain has obliterated my sense of balance as we arrive at the ivy-coated exterior of the house.

We split up from the others and Melody and I enter the same secret passageway we came down in. She almost trips herself and has to reach out to me to stop from tumbling. Her floating light has dimmed, but she makes no attempt to brighten it. It seems to take forever as we crawl through the passage.

“I think this is it,” she slurs, pawing at a brick jutting out from the others. A doorway opens up, and we shamble through. The walls are red, though, and I immediately assess that we’re in the men’s dorm.

“This is the wrong place, Melody, we need to go,” I say, tugging on her arm. We both freeze as we hear nearby footsteps coming down the hall. The passage door swings shut before I can catch it, and I can’t figure out how to open it on the painting of a pit-bull that hangs there.

“Shit, they’re going to catch us,” I whisper, suddenly feeling a shot of sobriety as I wildly search around for an exit.

She glances at me with wide eyes. “Not
both
of us,” she says, and suddenly she disappears as she makes herself invisible.

“Melody!” I whisper incredulously, but I feel a rush of air and hear her footsteps scamper away down the hall.

I rush in the same direction, but I have no time to hide as Luke rounds the corner. Of course it’s him.

“We meet again,” I mutter, looking down at the floor and letting my hair fall over my face. “Do you ever sleep?” Maybe he won’t notice I’m drunk. Maybe pigs can fly around here.

The alcohol has numbed my mind, but my body is on high alert. As he stalks toward me with cat-like grace, still in his uniform, lust ripples through my body, igniting my nerves.

“You don’t have much respect for authority, do you?” he questions coldly.

“I don’t have much respect for you,” I mumble.

He reaches me, dipping his head to catch my eye. The sizzling electricity between us urges me closer. My imagination takes over for a moment, and I see him pulling me toward him, sliding his hot mouth against mine, our tongues dueling…

“You’re drunk,” he says as his eyes perform a careful search of my face. Part of me wants to seize him by the waistband of his pants. I wipe my hands against my outer thighs instead. It’s not fair that he’s so attractive.

“So what?” I tilt up my chin, trying to project defiance.

He ignores my question, glancing at my feet. “And you have snow on your shoes. You sneaked outside the school, didn’t you? What are you doing in the men’s ward, paying some guy a midnight visit?”

“Are you jealous?” I whisper.

His eyes narrow at me. I swallow, feeling the small, sober part of my brain flicker into control. I wonder how bad of an infraction I’ve committed.

“This is the last straw,” he snaps, his nostrils flaring.

“What are you talking about?” I ask as he grasps hold of my upper arm firmly and starts leading me forward.

“Come with me. You don’t get to break the rules like this and get away with it.” We turn down corridors and head up a set of stairs, to what’s marked as the Headmistress’s wing. I glance over at him as he maintains his stony silence.

“Why can’t you let it go? Just this one time?” I plead. “Why do you have this grudge against me?”

He stops and spins around, and I almost knock into him. “Because it isn’t just this first time. Rules are essential for us, because without rules, we would have anarchy. You break the rules, you get punished.”

“You seem to take great pleasure in the idea of me being punished.”

He smirks, that hint of a dimple standing out again. “That’s an understatement.”

I glare up at him. I don’t know whether I want to punch him in his smug, arrogant, gorgeous face or rip his clothes off to see his toned body in the flesh. Maybe both, just to get a release from this insane, over-reactive chemistry. He knocks three times rapidly on Paige’s door. I can’t reconcile this person with the knight in black armor Astrid was describing.

I’m buzzed enough to loosen my tongue. “You’re not fooling me, Luke. I see how much you watch me.”

Using his name seems to throw him off. His eyes widen, and I see a hint of vulnerability in their depths. But then he replaces his mask-like expression. He steps closer, tilting his face down to mine, his gaze darting to my lips. I stare up at him, letting my hair cascade down my back. I run my tongue gently across my front teeth.