Chapter Three

There was one class I loved the most in Asphodel Academy. It was categorized as Maths but most of our learning involved practice rather than scribbling on a sheet of paper. We had it every year, and the teacher was always the same. Precision and Error—or, as we often called it, Mr. Hollister's PE. An inner joke, because there was no gym class in Asphodel. All our sports had its own classes already and every student was required to take at least one of them.

Anyway, back to PE. I loved it so much, mostly because it was the only class where we were taught to do magic without having to memorize spells and partly because I was so good at it. Basically, in PE we were taught how to direct raw magic correctly with the right approximation. How wide our force field should be, how we channel that raw magic—through spells, or object, or just a thought, even—and how high the intensity scale of our emitted magic, affected how strongly it was going to hit our target. Since our target were usually small inanimate objects rather than a huge dummy, it took a great deal of control to hit it with our magic square and center.

Did I say I was good at it? Scratch that. I was the best.

I tried to suppress a smug look coming onto my face and failed as Mr. Hollister came over to my table and said, "Well done, Miss Williams. Now why don't you show your friends how to do it right?"

Shrugging, I repeated what I'd done the first time. I focused my magic to the tip of finger and made it my channeling object, and then I directed the force straight to the kiwi, willing it to ripen until it was brown and blackish, a glop of goo on the table. As we were always taught, I then drew back my magic and tucked in my finger so that I wouldn't accidentally hit anyone.

"Well done—" Mr. Hollister began to say again, but one of the girls interrupted.

"That's cheating, sir!" the girl whose name I never learned exclaimed. I vaguely recognized her as one of the newer students. "She converted her force field from linear to radial instead of making the three-dimensional time bubble we're supposed to do!"

"It gets the job done, doesn't it?" I snapped back.

"Yeah, but you're using an old method instead of doing it like the module says."

"Well, if you want to see a real time bubble I can show you now if you get yourself a mirror."

Mr. Hollister stepped in then. "Kids," he said, the way he knew we always hated. "Calm down. Miss Dewitt, please go back to your table and show us how exactly you mean by doing it like the module says." Before my smugness consumed my face again, though, he turned to me with a pointed look. "You, too, Miss Williams. Miss Dewitt was right about you preferring to stick to two-dimensional force fields. There is no learning without getting out of your comfort zone."

"But—"

"Get back to work, everyone."

As everyone else scattered off, I saw the Dewitt girl shooting me a wide toothy smile. She point her finger at me and before I knew what she was going to do, I was suddenly blasted back against the bottles behind me and they fell to ground, shattering into pieces. Irate, I began to point my finger at her, but realized a spell was more practical in this case. Just like I did with Amy last night. I muttered the same spell with a little altercation and snapped my fingers.

The Dewitt girl's scream probably carried to the woods outside the academy.

Twenty minutes later, I landed in the principal's office.

"This has to stop, Riley Williams," Principal Edgerton stressed. "Detention for you, Friday night."

Me? "But she started it! Doesn't she get a punishment, too?"

"There's no proof that she 'blasted you to break the glasses' as you claimed. However, everyone in the class witnessed and he how you spelled her hair into white-gray. And given the history of you using that spell—on your own roommate, nevertheless—I'd say that I believe her more than you."

"She really did it! She was jealous me! She—"

The principal shushed me. "Your head is too big to be welcome in my office right now. Go to your next class, Miss Williams. If it helps, you can choose what you want to do in your detention: cleaning the backyard pond, or handwriting a fifty-thousand-word essay about your regrets in using magic carelessly and turn it in by Friday."

She shut the door in my face.

My Friday night was doomed. Clearly, I wouldn't write that essay. But the pond in the academy's backyard was specially designed to nullify any magic. Cleaning spell wouldn't work. And knowing just how murky the water was every time I passed by it, I couldn't imagine having to even come near it, especially at nighttime when all the frogs and grasshoppers came out. I hated frogs immensely. There was only one other choice: I had to find a spell for the essay, or I could convince Amy to write it for me.

At lunch, Amy almost burst out her watermelon juice when I asked her. "No way," she said, wiping her mouth. Her hair had turned back to its original shade of brown this morning, but she was still grouchy. "If you're too lazy to write, find a handwriting font and type it in the computer."

"You could always use the speech-to-text feature," Dee supplied.

"Honestly, Dee, I'd rather type fifty thousand words than read them."

"What else can you do? There's no spell that can write like that—or even to copy something right out of a book. Everyone would have used it to cheat a long time ago it such thing exists."

"It exists," I insisted. "It has to. I don't want to squeeze fifty thousand words out of my brain. I'm going to the library after this. You guys coming?"

"Sorry, Riley," Dee said. "My uncle made me promise to call him after lunch." One could only imagine how long that political discussion would go.

"I haven't studied for the quiz later at three," Amy said.

Well, then. After lunch, I headed to the library on my own. There were mage guards standing everywhere, and by how I seemed to see a familiar face more than once, I knew they were using the astral projection spell again to be everywhere. Even the library was guarded by two mages—I didn't get the point of guarding the library. No one ever really came here. I did it only because I had discovered an interesting section in the library a long time ago. It was where I had found the spell to turn hair colors. I called it the Prankster Section.

I went to that section again today, hoping to find a book or something along the title of 'How to Cheat in Your Essays'. Or maybe even handier: 'How to Write Fifty Thousand Words without Spending Any Energy in Thinking or Writing'.

I grabbed a few titles that sounded promising enough and sat on the floor while I browsed through them. The chairs in the library were wooden with no cushion and very uncomfortable. I'd always liked sitting on the floor anyway. Browsing for a single spell in such thick volumes weren't easy. Not for the first time, I wished the Council had set up an internet server or better yet, a searching engine for spells. But I guess some spells were just too dangerous to be publicized to all the witches and warlocks. Still, my days would be less dull if everyone actually knew how to change their own hair color on will constantly.

The particular volume I was reading now was about spells that could alter someone's emotions, particularly to induce attraction. Love spells. Disgusted, I put aside the book and went for another volume. This one was about how to make things appear out of thin air—or, in other words, making something that already existed teleport. It was a very complex spell that I wasn't sure I could ever do. It didn't stop me from wanting to try it. Probably next year, when I'd learned enough of the processes to screw up less. After accidentally suffocating myself last year when I tried to experiment with an underwater spell—and it was the only time I ever tried using a spell to cheat in a contest—I had sworn off cheating spells forever.

But fifty-thousand-word essay versus cleaning old dirty pond alone at Friday night? Now, that's a good reason to go back to the old ways. Maybe.

"Now let's see what you're up to now, Williams."

I looked up at the voice, even though I shouldn't have had to. Luke stared down at me and I imagined how I must look to him—disheveled red hair, messy uniform, sitting on the floor with a bunch of books around me. As I struggled to rein in my embarrassment, I said, "Stay out of my business, Isla."

Ignoring me, he bent down and picked up a book I had cast aside earlier. "Love spells?" he inquired with mocking brow arch. "Really? Are you that desperate to get my attention?"

There was no hiding my disgust when I stood and wrenched the book away from him. "Not everything is about you."

"Funny, that's a line I've always wanted to say to you."

Okay, there was no denying that I was a bit arrogant. A bit. I preferred the word confident. But so was he—only he got away with it because of his looks. Unfortunately, I found no smart comeback at the moment. My fingers itched to do another hair-color spell, but I reminded myself that I already got enough detention as it was. Besides, I would never do a hair spell to Lucas Island these days. Everyone in the school would hate me for that. Or they would probably dye their hairs the same color as his by the next day and call it a trend.

Before I decided what to do, though, suddenly Baby Face stepped forward between the shelves, looking badass and ready for a fight in his dark attire. "You can't run under my surveillance like that again," he told Luke as soon as he saw him. "Threats—" Baby Face turned and saw me for the first time. Immediately, his fighting stance relaxed. I couldn't help but feel offended—did that mean he didn't think I was much of a threat to someone like Lucas Island.

But wait. "You're guarding him?" I asked Baby Face. "Like, personally?"

While Baby Face didn't answer, Luke just looked pissed. "It's a temporary thing," he said, "to make sure I don't get into more trouble."

"You," I said, smirking, "getting into trouble?"

He clenched his jaw and walked away. Baby Face followed him.

I didn't believe Luke's words, of course. I told Amy about my speculation—that he was the 'someone' Principal Edgerton had said in the dinner hall, the one in danger who was going to put us all at risk. It made sense because no one else got a personal guard. Since he got the extra protection, it meant he was the one Principal Edgerton meant.

But Amy wasn't even listening to me. "I'm trying to study!" she protested.

"The quiz is just five percent, Amy."

"Yeah, but I failed the last test, so I need to ace this very much."

I peeked at her notebook. "Toxic plants? That's easy to remember. Pretty much everything with pretty names will kill you. It's the boring ones that's safe. You'll get at least an A minus with that. I did."

She drew her notebook away from my sight. "It's different with you. I don't have near photographic memory."

My memory wasn't anywhere near photographic, but Amy wasn't in the mood to talk, so I didn't press further. I couldn't stop thinking about Luke—not in the way 90% of the heterosexual girls in the school thought about him, but about his being under Baby Face's protection. What if he really was the one Principal Edgerton was talking about? What kind of colossal danger was he in that the whole school needed to be protected as well?

What if Baby Face slipped in his surveillance and Lucas Island died?

Strangely, the thought bothered me a lot. Probably it was because I never gave much thought of anyone dying before. Not even my parents, whom I barely remembered. I wasn't developing any romantic feelings for him. I'd known Luke for years—enemy, rival, or not, he was still someone I had grown up with, in some ways. Of course it would bother me if his life was in danger. Right? At least this proved I had a heart.

Right?

Luke, Luke Luke...I thought I was thinking about Luke so much that I began to hear his name everywhere, but then I realized that everyone had always talked about him anyway. In the bathroom, I overheard some girls talking about him punching someone. It was so unheard of that he showed that kind of violence, I couldn't help but listened in for more.

"...it was Jack Clyde. You know how Jack is, he's like the boy version of QB." QB was the short form for my title, Queen Bitch. I didn't know any Jack. "He said something mean and Luke just lost it, so he threw a punch straight to Jack's face and broke his nose. It was so manly!" Cue giggles. "And then he got sent to Edgerton's office and got detention."

"Hey, but what did Jack actually say to him? Luke never lost his temper before, even with QB."

"The only reason Luke never hit QB is because she's a girl. Anyway, Jack totally had it coming for him. I didn't hear all of it, but I heard QB's name—you know some guys think with their dicks instead of their heads and you know how slutty redheads are. I guess Jack said QB should have won the Underwater Challenge or something and he made a really rude comment about Luke's mother."

"Wow, Jack and QB should really reign hell."

"I know, right?"

They giggled again.

I didn't come out of the toilet until I heard the last of them leaving. They weren't worth more detention. At least, that's what I convinced myself.