Strange Academy (Hot Paranormal Romance) Read online

  The way they’d been cut off—well, she was grateful for it now, though it had rankled at the time. What a disaster it would have been, having sex with Gray.

  The kids fidgeted, as if sensing something was wrong. She’d been staring silently at Carmina’s empty seat since the period began twenty minutes ago. Maybe Gray had done Carmina a favor, sending her home. She didn’t fit in, either, but at least she could leave this awful place.

  Sadie just felt so...drained. Gray and the other Metas had the upper hand, no matter what she did. If they wanted her here, she came. If they wanted her to forget, she would.

  The one thing she couldn’t forget was a name. Eton English. The principal had said it in the middle of telling her about the whole memory spell thing. She’d only made the connection later, and it had made her skin fizz like someone had poured ginger ale on it. The librarian. The librarian who has disappeared after Pippa’s death. Had he been in the library while Pippa was dying? Had he seen something? Had he done something?

  Feeling like an idiot, she shook off the suspicion. She’d believed her aunt had been killed for too long. It had started to affect all her thinking. But a new idea had imprinted itself on her brain, one she couldn’t shake. The poisoned apple hadn’t been some kid's harmless prank. Neither had the desk fire.

  Nikkos put up his hand. Iffie hung by a single claw from the suspended fluorescent lights above Nikkos’s desk, eyes closed, snoring softly. Sadie nodded at him.

  “What are you doing?” Nikkos asked.

  She shrugged.

  “Did you really slap Regina?”

  “Yes,” she confirmed. Let them press charges or whatever. “And she got an F on her history paper.”

  “This is stupid,” Henry complained.

  She walked over to his desk. “What is?”

  “You’re supposed to be teaching us stuff.”

  “Really?” She mirrored his contemptuous attitude back to him. “Do you want me to?”

  Henry’s square jaw seemed so familiar, but she couldn’t place it. “Lorde Gray doesn’t need English. I don’t either. I just want an A.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “I don’t—” Confusion muddled Henry’s thick eyebrows.

  “You get an A. Happy?”

  “Uh...” Henry said.

  “Good.” All eyes were on her. “Anyone else want an A?”

  Dot inched her hand up, as if it might be a trick question but afraid not to take the chance it wasn’t. Marius’s hand followed. The rest grew bolder. Every hand in the class went up, except Sterling’s. He just scowled at her.

  “An A for everyone, then.” Sadie returned to her desk.

  The buzz of low conversation started.

  “As long as you’re quiet,” she added. The buzz stopped. The class traded confused glances.

  *

  ***

  ******

  ****

  *

  Gray was not checking up on Sadie. If he just happened to walk by her classroom, it didn’t mean he felt guilty she was trapped here. Well, she was trapped if she didn’t want her mind wiped. Just walking by on his free period didn’t mean he wanted to see her one last time before Christmas vacation. Or that their searing kiss on Mr. Photocopier had haunted his thoughts.

  Listening at her door, he heard a quiet classroom. The back of his neck prickled, warning danger. All the other teachers were doing loud Christmas activities. The muffled laughter leaked from classrooms into the locker-lined halls. But Sadie’s room gave off a worrying silence.

  He was above spying. Besides, he couldn’t see anything through the frosted glass of the door. He knocked on it.

  Sadie answered, standing framed in the doorway. Her black suit was tight. Her hair was pulled back tight. Her jaw was tight. There was a thick aura of don’t mess with me surrounding her, like a cobra with its hood up. No doubt she was still thinking he’d known about the spell that would erase her memory if she left Strange Academy.

  “Do you need to talk to Sterling?” she asked.

  He looked past her to the neat rows of students sitting silently at their desks. Stunned faces looked back at him. “Can I speak to you, Miss Strange?”

  She stepped into the hall, the thick heels of her shoes clicking on the tile.

  “Is something wrong, Sadie? Your fifth graders look like they’ve been hit by a Mack truck. What happened?”

  “I gave them all A's.”

  He heard her words; he just couldn’t make them make sense in his mind. “You gave them all A's?”

  “I gave them—” She started to repeat herself, then stopped. “Did you want something?”

  “Why did you do that?”

  She shrugged. “It made them happy.”

  They hadn’t looked happy. “Damn. You’ve lost your mind. A crazy person is teaching my nephew.”

  “Well, at least he’ll get a good grade.” There was something unpleasant about her grimace of a smile. “And he’ll have a nice, sane Meta teacher next year. If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Gray, I have to supervise my students.”

  He caught her wrist as she touched the doorknob. “Sadie.”

  She looked into his eyes. The soft skin under his fingers contrasted with the stony look on her face. “Someone wants me out of here badly enough to try to kill me,” she said.

  His temper fired up, stoked to a roaring blaze. But no. He willed himself calm. He wasn’t going to raise his voice to her. For one, they were in a very public place. Anyone could walk by at any time. Her fifth grade class, with Sterling in it, was just on the other side of the door.

  More importantly, he had to admit, he sort of understood her perspective. His stress knot gave a sympathy burst every time he thought about the spell on her. The one that kept her here. The idea that she might think he had anything to do with that still bugged the shit out of him.

  “I don’t know what Carmina was thinking,” he said. “She wouldn’t be in alchemy anymore if it were up to me.”

  Sadie turned back to him, with a flounce of her dark braid. “Cross said he knew that Carmina didn’t do it.”

  “Cross also suspended Carmina,” he reminded her. “Listen, no one around here wanted you gone more than me.”

  Her slight pout sent his mind reeling back to their hot moment on the photocopier. “I note the use of the past tense in that last sentence,” she said.

  Wanted. Yeah, he’d said it. Probably that whole sympathy thing—but he wasn’t about to admit that to her. “You still don’t belong here, which is why you can't deal with these accidents.”

  “It’s not like they happen to other teachers.”

  “Yes, they do.” He carried on, despite her skeptical glare. “Last year, an incomplete magic circle in a kid’s senior project let a water demon loose to destroy the old pool building. Hell, yesterday, I had to contain a failed potion that would have expanded infinitely, turning everything in its path to stone. These kids don’t have control of their powers. That’s why it’s an honor to be invited to teach here. All the teachers deal with all this stuff all the time. You just don’t have any defenses.”

  It was a second before she had a response. “I’m not teaching magic, either. Who do you think set my desk on fire? It had to be someone in the room.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Not necessarily,” he said, in his driest tone. “Could have been an experiment gone wrong someplace else. Fireball spell mixes with an instantaneous transportation spell, and poof—Crispy Sadie.”

  “Damn,” she breathed, tapping a finger against her bottom lip. “Hadn’t thought of that. It could have been anyone.”

  He closed his eyes for a second to contain the irritation coursing through him. “You’ve lost it. I wasn’t serious.”

  She ignored that, and faced him with a piercing light in her eyes. “You said that when you were a student here, Nons weren’t even allowed on campus. Who around here hates Nons so badly they would try to kill to get rid of one?” She stiffened, as if coming to a s
udden realization. “No, to get rid of two. To scare me and get Carmina suspended. Maybe hoping we’d both leave? So who around here hates Nons so much?”

  A bitter taste filled his mouth. “All of us have dedicated our lives to protecting you people.” As he said each word, he stepped toward her. He couldn’t help himself. She stepped back as if trying to maintain their distance, until she had her back against the hallway wall. There, right in the middle of the corridor, where anyone who happened to walk by could see, he put one hand on either side of her head, trapping her in the space created by his arms. “This is how you think of us, with your comic books and your accusations? No wonder we can’t live in the open.”

  She lifted her pointed chin, ambushed and caught, but still defiant. “I just found out my brain will be erased like a hard drive with a virus if I drive less than ten kilometers in any direction; forgive me if I’m fresh out of sympathy for superheroes right now.”

  A slight whiff of lemon rose from her skin, teasing his senses. She was in prickly librarian mode again, and the tension between them was enough to make him want to free her hair from that severe braid so he could run his fingers through it. She didn’t know how to behave, how to defer to him, like other Metas did. Instead, she pushed him and challenged him.

  It made him hot. Arguing with her felt like the preliminary to something. It made him wonder what her compact little body would look like naked. And it dared him to take steps to find out. Right here. In public.

  With his heart pulsing under his ribs, he pushed away from the wall. Putting space between them was good. It made things better. Less exciting, but better.

  He took a long breath to steady himself, his stress knot crackling in response to her last words. “I wanted to tell you something. I didn’t know about the spell— the one that keeps you here. I had nothing to do with it. You have to believe me.”

  “I know,” she said.

  His shock must have registered on his face, because after glancing his way, she shrugged and went on. “You took me to the megalith. If you’d known about the spell’s effect, you would have just pushed me out of the circle. Plus, you wouldn’t let Count Burana take me off school grounds, which would have gotten rid of me very effectively. No, I never thought that you knew about the spell.”

  “Right,” he said, an unseen burden lifting from him. It was stupid, really, how much it had bothered him to think that she’d lumped him in with the people who had done this to her. “So, yes. I just wanted you to know that. Okay.”

  “Okay. I have to get back to my class.” She turned away from him, and he supposed he should leave instead of watching her head into her classroom. But she looked at him over her shoulder as she twisted the doorknob. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Gray.”

  Chapter Twelve

  I should feel relieved, Sadie reminded herself, as she put the kettle on to boil. She reminded herself again as she got out Pippa’s Brown Betty teapot and dumped in a couple of Ginger Garden teabags.

  Pippa could have known she was going to die. She was a witch, an idea that still sent Sadie’s mind reeling. Pippa could have sent that letter with the full knowledge of the accident that would kill her.

  That made everything all right. It explained everything.

  So why were her back teeth gritting? Why did her gut scream that nothing was explained, that nothing was all right? And that the incidents Gray dismissed as accidents hadn’t been accidents at all?

  Besides the feeling, like a recurring itch, that she’d missed something about The Atlas of Ancient and Medieval Architecture, there were other things that just didn’t fit. Specifically, Pippa’s box o’ fun: the skull, the bust of Athena, the tiddlywinks, the earrings...

  Wait. She slumped back, pressing her hip into the edge of the cupboard. The little bit of pressure somehow helped her think. Count Burana had called the earrings special. After Gray had been surprised...at what? Something magical. And—yes, yes, her ears had popped that night, when Diana had acted so strange at the door. They’d popped again when Burana was trying to tell her what to do.

  Had the earrings protected her from something? If so, it explained them, but the other items were still bizarre.

  When else had her ears popped? Maybe if she could remember, she could figure out whether anyone had used magic to hide things from her.

  Her spine stiffened. The library. When she’d felt that she had to bust through some invisible shield to get in, she’d been right. There was a force field around the library.

  It seemed like no one else had felt it, but now she was sure it had been there. Had someone tried to keep her out? If so, what was in the library that she wasn’t meant to see?

  And then there was librarian Eton English’s sudden disappearance. His so-called “leave of absence.” But he couldn’t have had anything to do with her “accidents.”

  Then again, maybe his leaving wasn’t mysterious at all. She deflated a bit. If she’d found a dead body—maybe a friend’s body—she wasn’t sure she’d be excited to spend every day in the place where the death had happened.

  However, it was annoying that the one person whom she knew had a connection to Pippa’s death was out of her reach. Maybe that’s what was making her think of secrets and conspiracies all the time. If she could just talk to him, know that things had really happened the way everyone said they had...

  Of course, she did have one more clue. The letter. Hmm. Maybe there was something in there she’d missed.

  She pulled the letter out of the paperback copy of Jane Eyre that she’d worn to shreds, its spine held together by the last bits of yellowing glue. The book was sitting at her right hand, prepared for the hard-core reading session she’d intended to go with the tea. She’d taken to using the letter as a bookmark.

  She was just about to remove it from the envelope when two things interrupted: the whistle of the kettle and a knock at the door.

  Not Gray’s knock. It was too light, too tentative, as if the knocker couldn’t decide whether they wanted to come in. Gray always knew that he wanted to come in.

  Dammit, she’d known the guy for a couple of weeks, and she knew his knock. Pathetic. Beyond pathetic.

  She took the kettle off the burner, still cursing herself, and headed toward the door.

  A woman-shaped cotton ball stood in front of Thalia, solid white from low-heeled suede boots to pom-pom-tufted beret. A rolling suitcase waited at her feet. White, of course. Only one person could pull off a snowy look like that: Jewel Jones.

  She tried hard to smile at the teacher but felt as if curving her lips might make her face shatter like an eggshell smacked with the back of a spoon. Jewel had come to deliver some magic thing that Sadie needed for a ceremony she had to perform over the vacation. It was a sad reminder that Sadie was stuck here for the next little while. At least being alone on campus meant she didn’t have to worry about any accidents for a while.

  “It’s an honor to be trusted with the winter solstice rituals,” Jewel Jones said, after they’d traded strained greetings.

  Her ears popped as she accepted the red velvet bag. Its contents shifted between her fingers like sand. It could have been magic pixie dust, for all Sadie knew, or the ice melter she’d mistaken it for earlier. She only knew it was her job to throw it on the creepy monoliths of the magic circle. Her only duty for the next two bleak, lonely weeks.

  “I just know they make the teacher with the least seniority stay over Christmas.” She sighed. She’d be staying anyway, so she might as well handle the task.

  Jewel shifted uncomfortably on the apartment threshold, her back to Thalia’s white marble butt. Sadie couldn’t tell whether she was nervous at being caught in the lie or just wanted to escape for the holidays. Jewel had seemed on edge lately.

  Outside Pippa’s frosted windows, asphalt paths criss-crossed the white Strange Academy campus like black ribbons. Last night’s snow would stay until spring. Winter was locked in now. Just like me, she thought, slightly bitter after spendin
g the day watching every student drive off with loving parents.

  She was embarrassed at the way she’d taken it out on the kids yesterday, but what did Cross and the others expect? They could have trusted her with their secret. Now, faced with the choice, she found she didn’t really want anyone messing with her brain.

  But she couldn’t stay here, either.

  “It’s an important duty,” Jewel repeated.

  “I’ll just hole up here for a couple of weeks. Pippa’s books are back.” She waved her hand at the collection of classics filling Pippa’s shelves. “So I’m among friends.”

  The senior rugby team had arrived yesterday, lugging heavy boxes full of Pippa’s books. It had been good timing. Sadie’s book supply had been running low and she’d been in serious danger of having to visit the library. One visit was enough for her, even if there was nothing mysterious about Pippa’s death.

  Her skin suddenly tingled with the awareness that standing right in front of her was someone who knew the man she most wanted to talk to.

  “Eton English.” Desperation made her words rush out. She swallowed, collecting an air of calm around her. “Tell me about him.”

  Jewel’s white eyebrows drew together in confusion. “Didn’t Pippa—” The witch cut off, snapping her lips shut as if trying to hold something in. Her left foot inched backward until it hit Thalia’s toe. “I should go.”

  A flare of panic launched inside Sadie’s chest. Without thinking, she grabbed Jewel’s sleeve, intent on making her stay. “Please,” she begged. “I’m so sick of secrets. Tell me.”

  Jewel swallowed visibly, nearly a gulp. “They were close.”

  Sadie’s grip on Jewel’s coat slackened. Her vision blurred and her mouth went dry. Pippa. Had a. Boyfriend. It explained Eton’s stress leave. Of course he’d be upset by finding the body of his girlfriend. And when women were killed, their partner was usually suspect number one. She had a sudden flashback to Fabian’s rage-red face right before she smacked him with the lamp.