Strange Academy (Hot Paranormal Romance) Read online

  Strange Academy: The Magic Circle

  Teresa Wilde

  This book is dedicated to Sheryl Kaleo. It’s been a long time coming.

  Sheryl, I can’t express to you what a support you’ve been to me: awesome critiques, all-day IM sessions, arguments over Robert McKee, and weepy phone calls.

  You’re part of the reason that Strange Academy is getting out there.

  Thanks for everything. Don’t go away, okay?

  Teresa

  May 2012

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  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  About the Author

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  Prologue

  Dearest Sadie:

  Things went wrong with you and me, but now you’ve got a chance to set them right—I’ll help as much as I can, but I don’t really know how much, as I’ll be dead.

  When Dr. Cross calls, take his offer. At least this will solve your money problem, even if it delays your Ph.D. And causes a few other teensy issues...But you’ll take care of those. Even the poisoned apple.

  I won’t see you at the funeral (my eyes will be closed), but we’ll meet again soon after.

  Love always, Aunt Pippa

  P.S.: Is anyone courting you right now? I hope not. It’s best things don’t get too complicated.

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  She’s finally gone batty. Sadie Strange scowled at the medieval handwriting on her eccentric aunt’s letter and reached for her phone, intent on calling Pippa and finding out what the crap she was talking about. Mom had just been talking to Pippa and said she’d just gotten a perfect check-up from the doctor. Why would she think she’d be dead?

  And who was poisoning apples?

  Sadie reached for the secondhand rotary dial phone that still worked perfectly well, thank-you-very-much, but she missed, sending a stack of unpaid bills sliding to the yellowing linoleum floor of her student apartment.

  Before the papers stopped fluttering, the phone rang.

  She blinked at the phone, a little creeped out. The feeling faded, leaving embarrassment behind, and she laughed at herself. Even if it was this Dr. Cross calling, it didn’t mean her sweet but loopy aunt could foresee the future.

  She picked up the receiver and said hello to whoever it was.

  “Sadie. It’s your mother.” After twenty-eight years, of course she could recognize her own mother’s voice and felt like saying so, but the voice trembled, so she swallowed her sarcasm.

  “Something going on, Mom?”

  Her mom let out a deep breath. “It’s Pippa.”

  Sadie glanced at her aunt’s letter. “Yes?”

  “Sadie, Pippa’s dead.”

  Chapter One

  “...don’t care if her aunt was Pippa Strange...don’t care if you can’t get someone else this close to Christmas...”

  Coming to you live from Radio R.A.G.E., thought Sadie. Through the dark wood door of the principal’s office, she heard the angry father’s voice drift in and out like an FM station on the edge of transmission range. He broadcast his fury loud and clear as he ripped into Principal Cross for hiring the wrong English teacher.

  Her, specifically.

  She narrowed her eyes as she looked at the waiting room. No matter how hard the snobs tried, she wouldn’t let them intimidate her with their mahogany furniture and high ceilings and velvet curtains with silken tassels. They’d had gothic architecture and superiority complexes at the University of Toronto, too. Never stopped her before.

  Only sheer will kept her from leaping out of the waiting room chair, barging into the office, and taking a piece out of the interfering father. In the post-Fabian era, she no longer took this kind of crap from men. She’d worked too hard to build up her confidence to let a stuck-up elitist get to her. But she did have to make a good impression on her new boss, so she had to suck up these insults.

  “...not one of us...” Speakerphone. That would explain the hazy quality of the conversation. “...poking around...”

  Sadie tried to catch the eye of the middle-aged secretary, but only caught the blue reflection of the computer screen on her glasses. Must take dictation, type sixty words a minute, and be highly trained in ignoring uncomfortable situations. The only other occupant of the room was a Wednesday Addams clone swinging her legs over the edge of her chair and looking as miserable as Sadie felt.

  Sadie had expected politics here, but she’d also expected to have time to shower before having to defend herself. After sitting for the seven-hour drive from Toronto to a remote private school an hour north of Montréal, she wanted to jump up and pace the ivy-leaved carpet. She was grungy and exhausted and needed to massage blood back into her aching ankles. Why had it seemed like a good idea to drive in a thrift store suit and pinching heels?

  Her ears filled with pressure. Weird. The hill she’d driven up must be higher than she imagined.

  “...be themselves here...hide soon enough.”

  From an enormous oil painting, a pair of gold-tinged eyes scowled down from a wrinkly male face lacking all human feeling. Quinlan Strange, said the brass plaque. Our Illustrious Founder.

  Hide all the secrets you want, she thought. The mystery of Aunt Pippa’s death won’t stay a mystery. Still, his glassy eyes gave her the creeps.

  “...security of this establishment...be removed.”

  Security? Removed? Apprehension jolted through her. Did the Mafia send their kids to private boarding schools north of Montréal these days?

  A sudden bang sent her leaping from her chair, head swinging around, searching for the gun-wielding Mob hit man. But it was only the door to the principal's office, flung open so hard it shook on its ancient hinges. She flattened her palm against her polyester blouse to calm her pounding pulse.

  Through the office door stepped the hottest man she’d ever seen. Under her hand, her pulse seemed to stop.

  He turned and his gaze latched onto her. A carnivorous, smile spread across his face, making her toes curl. He was a world tour. Island sun skin. Imperial Roman nose. Intense granite eyes.

  Thick and black desert sheikh hair. She reminded herself she didn’t like long hair on men. But damn, those dark waves leaking over his collar looked good. They would look even better with her fingers in them. She resisted the urge to fan herself, Scarlett O’Hara style.

  Fabian had given her the vapors, too, before The Incident. Her back stiffened. Her perceptions told her His Hotness was pure gorgeousness. Therefore, he must be pure evil.

 
“Gray, Pippa was very specific. She predic—” Some other guy walked out of the principal’s office talking, but froze when he saw her. It must be Principal Cross. To her surprise, the blond man wasn’t the seventy-year-old she’d imagined from his voice on the phone. He wasn’t more than thirty and was probably very attractive. Hard to tell with His Hotness so close.

  She couldn’t stand around gaping at the male scenery; this wasn’t grad school. She was damn well going to fit in here. Long enough to get the truth about Pippa’s death, anyway.

  “Principal Cross?” she asked.

  Dr. Cross looked her up and down, blinking in confusion. His Hotness had a good long look, too, but with pure male appreciation that she felt bubbling up her spine.

  “You have to be Miss Strange,” said Dr. Cross. “You look like your aunt in her younger days. I feel I know you already.”

  “Was she your teacher?” she asked.

  “My teacher?” Dr. Cross looked confused.

  “When you went to school,” she explained. “Otherwise, I don’t know how you could have known her in her younger days. Did you go to school with my sister Chloë?”

  “Of course.” His words slipped out too quickly, like they’d been greased. “Welcome to the Quinlan Strange Academy for Exceptional Children. I’m Dr. Cross. Christian, when the students aren’t around.”

  She shook his offered hand. Everything he said made sense. So why did Dr. Cross set off her B.S. detector? The internal Geiger counter she’d developed as Dr. Timothy’s assistant, to warn her when undergrad “research” bordered on fiction, screamed that Christian was lying.

  His Hotness smiled at her and she could have sworn something warm stroked the back of her neck.

  “Introduce me, Cross,” said His Hotness.

  Her blood crusted with ice, like a river in January. Not a speakerphone. This voice had just demanded Dr. Cross fire her. As if The Fabian Incident wasn’t enough, here was proof her perceptions had lied again. Not beautiful. Bad.

  “Lord Gray—” the principal began.

  “Lorde, with an ‘e’ on the end,” Lorde Gray interrupted. When he spoke, the imaginary caress of her nape intensified. The rhythmic stroking made her pleasantly drowsy.

  What a strange name. Though, of course, she couldn’t point fingers. Her own name was strange on a couple of levels.

  “Sadie is Pippa Strange’s niece, here to fill her position in the English Department.” Dr. Cross went on exactly as if Lorde Gray hadn’t just tried to get her fired.

  She swallowed and she extended her hand, regretting it in advance and anticipating the worst.

  Of course, the worst happened as bare skin met bare skin. Every nerve in her body went live. The electricity generated could have lit a small city. Two of his fingers circled small caresses on the pulse point in her wrist, activating the charge. Gray smiled again, right up to his incisors, and something got all warm and liquid in her insides. He smelled like cinnamon. A man who smelled like cinnamon couldn’t be bad. She felt herself starting to smile back...

  She snatched her hand away. The jerk smiled to her face and stabbed her in the back. She slapped the imaginary hand from her neck and frowned when chill air replaced the warmth.

  “Lorde Gray is our alchem—uh, chemistry—teacher.”

  Kill me now. She had to work with him. Eye, don’t twitch, she willed. Don’t twitch, eye.

  “I’m also an alumni. Why is your eye twitching?” asked Lorde Gray.

  Dammit. Her hand flew up to cover her left eye. “It’s, er—” Her stress tic. “Nothing. Just something in my eye.”

  Gray’s eyes lit from within. Nice eyes. Really nice eyes. No. No, she reminded herself, shaking the last of the hypnosis from her brain. Horrible eyes. Scheming, devious eyes.

  “Why is the sign on the gate wrong?” she blurted. Anything to stop the two men from trying to stare through the hand covering her tic.

  “Is it?” Gray asked.

  “Considering it predates Columbus’s discovery of the New World, I doubt the Academy was founded in 1318,” she pointed out.

  “Oh, that. 1818. Been meaning to fix it.” Dr. Cross smiled disarmingly.

  She stayed armed. “For a hundred and eighty-seven years?”

  Dr. Cross shrugged and the needle on Sadie’s B.S. detector inched upwards. “No money.”

  “Funny.” She didn’t laugh. “There’s some construction on campus—”

  “Aquatic center,” Dr. Cross interrupted. “Have you coached? The swim team will need a coach. When we get a swim team.”

  He was trying to distract her. Her curiosity piqued. “And the copper roof on the library must have just been replaced. It hasn’t turned green yet.”

  “Did you know they pour horse urine on it to speed the oxidization process? What’s the chemical reaction there, Gray?”

  “I don’t know,” said His Hotness. Dr. Cross jabbed a elbow into Gray's flat stomach. “I mean, it’s really complicated.”

  “Yet you claim the place has no money.” She realized she sounded like a character in an Agatha Christie novel. At least Miss Marple always got her man.

  Dr. Cross looked at Gray, who shook his head. “Um. The sign has—” Dr. Cross snapped his fingers. “It’s been declared a heritage site by the Alumni Association.” Dr. Cross shook his head. “Can’t fix the sign. They’re going to put up a plaque.”

  “A plaque for the sign?” Sadie asked.

  “A plaque for the sign.” Dr. Cross confirmed.

  “A plaque for the sign?” Gray scoffed.

  “Don’t you have a class to be at?” Dr. Cross asked Gray.

  “On Sunday?” Gray’s gaze held hers as if sharing a joke. Warmth grew at the base of her spine.

  “Prep work,” Dr. Cross growled.

  She had to do something before the testosterone in the room reached toxic levels, so she cleared her throat and nodded toward the little girl, who stared at them all with eyes so round they belonged in a Japanese cartoon.

  Gray frowned at the girl and then revealed those perfect white teeth in a smile that would have melted the Titanic iceberg. “Miss Strange. The kids loved your aunt. I’m sure you’ll do fine here.” His gaze sparked, holding hers for a long moment. She wasn’t falling for it, but damn, he faked sincerity well. “If you need anything, please let me know.”

  She nodded. It had been fast, but Gray had frowned. He didn’t like the little girl any more than he liked her. One may smile and smile—and be a villain. You tell ’em, Hamlet.

  “Sadie, let me say a quick hello to our newest student.” Dr. Cross nodded at Wednesday Addams. “Then we’ll tour campus.” Dr. Cross’s words wha-wha-ed in her ears like the adults in Peanuts. She was busy watching Gray lope off, treating herself to a fantastic view of his butt.

  When had she slipped into an alternate dimension where men who hated her flirted with her?

  After he’d gone, her head cleared. Without all His Hotness distracting her, her B.S. detector went into the red zone. Poking around. Hide soon enough. Removed. Lorde Gray, haughty hottie, was hiding something.

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  “And this is the library.”

  Sadie balked on the step, staring at the modern glass doors set into the ancient gray stone of the round building. Grief squeezed the air out of her chest. Christian said it so casually. This is the library.

  This is where your aunt was murdered. This is where she died, sprawled on the floor between the stacks, a copy of The Atlas of Ancient and Medieval Architecture lying by her head.

  Christian’s face, as he held the door for her, went blurry.

  “Sadie. Oh sh—” She barely felt his hand on her shoulder through the oversized wool coat her mother had given her as a going-away present. “I’m sorry. Let’s get you out of here.” He tried to steer her back down the tree-lined path.

  “No, I’m going in.” Wiping away a tear, she studied the door. H
er ears pressurized and her throat closed. “I need to see where it happened.”

  Christian nodded. The voices of children rode the warm air escaping the open door.

  “My feet aren’t moving, are they, Christian?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “I’m trying to make them move.” She glanced at the uncooperative limbs. “There’s a force field blocking me.”

  To his credit, he didn’t laugh. “The mind works in mysterious ways. Maybe yours is saying you’re not ready to go in there yet, Sadie.”

  Sadie shook her head. “No, I’m pretty sure about the force field.”

  “Why don’t we go to Strange Hall now?” Christian’s tone was sympathetic.

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  Gray’s pants tingled. As he strode down one of the black paths crisscrossing the campus, toward the parking lot behind Rose Hall, he reached under his woolen winter coat and plucked his vibrating cell out of the leather sheath on his belt. He knew the number on the backlit call display like his own.

  He sighed. Only two people in the world told him what to do. And one of them was planning April’s wedding.

  His mother, the voodoo priestess, didn’t really want his opinion on the invitations or the flower arrangements or the blessing spells. He should just change his voice mail message to “Yes, Maman. Yes, Maman. Yes, Maman.”

  He’d been taller than his mother since he was twelve and she could still make him jump through hoops. He grinned. It would bother him if he didn’t love her so much.

  The tower bell rang 6:15, just like it had every day for centuries. A couple of teen boys raced past him—and everyone else on the path—in their hurry to get to the dining hall.

  He put his finger on “Talk” and got ready to say “Yes, Maman,” but a serpentine head popped out of the backpack of the kid walking in front of him and blinked red eyes. Another joined it and yawned, showing sharp lizard teeth.

  “You.” He squeezed the boy’s shoulder through his thick down coat, while sheathing the still-vibrating phone. “Kid.”

  The boy halted instantly, the tails of his red scarf waving in the biting wind. At least someone still listens to me, he thought, even if Cross—and everyone else—has selective amnesia about their debt to the Old Houses when it comes to Sadie Strange.