changed into my gym clothes. Thankfully, I switched those out on a regular basis, so they were still freshly laundered.
There wasn’t much I could do with my hair, which was still damp and prone to falling down into my eyes, but I scrubbed some towels through it anyway.
It took a minute for me to do the math and figure out where I was supposed to be. Last period would have started about ten minutes ago. Which meant that the rest of my family was in our new Magic for Morons class. It still got under my skin how much they couldn’t see. Buying in to the magic classes was just the Congress’s way of shutting us up. They were still manipulating us, they probably always would be.
There were a couple of people in the halls, not unusual for the end of the day. Study halls around this time were always lax with letting students roam around the halls. If someone skipped their last period of the day, would it really make a difference? No one seemed to think so.
I could go sit in the car and wait for the others to get out of school, but I decided against it. Someone was certainly going to start complaining that I skipped magic class, so I decided not to. I just wouldn’t go to the one they expected me to.
The class that Kevin and Maddy had was separate from the rest of us. A month ago, Justin had been segregated in with them, along with Luca. But now Luca was gone, and the rest of us had been pooled together, like we were somehow easier to manage that way. I think Kelly would have disagreed on that one.
I headed down the side hall to Kevin’s class, still in the same room it had been all year. When I pulled open the door, three sets of eyes peered up at me, but only the teacher was unfamiliar. He was young, Witcher-aged, probably one of the new recruits brought along with Illana.
“Room for one more?” I asked, but I closed the door behind me and headed for a seat before permission could be given.
“What are you doing here?” Kevin asked, shifting around in his seat.
I shrugged.
“Just get out of the shower?” Maddy’s pinched face eased a bit, though her eyes were speculative on mine. Whatever falling out had happened between her and Justin, at least she wasn’t taking it out on me.
“This isn’t really appropriate,” the teacher began. Like Kelly, he didn’t seem like he’d been out of college for very long. But there was none of the shrewd awareness or perception in his eyes I’d come to expect from the Witchers. “But I don’t see what it could hurt.”
I took a closer look at him. Dark haired, just a little too long, and a strong jaw line didn’t match with the thin, reedy voice. Nor did the blasé attitude about letting a Moonset kid sit in on his lesson.
“We’re doing a history lesson,” Maddy said, almost like she could read my mind. “No trade secrets.”
I actually don’t mind history. I mean, I don’t enjoy learning about the secret truths behind modern mysteries, but history is full of lessons where power and magic have caused some sort of crisis. Learning more about covens in the old days armed me with more information. And my arguments against using magic became stronger.
But the class itself wasn’t dealing with something helpful: like times in history when trusting the authorities had led to chaos. No, instead the teacher lectured on old threats. Monsters and creatures who lurked in the shadows of history. Creatures that many people believed magic was created expressly to fight.
I’d had a run in with one of those creatures already. The Abyssal Princes, creatures that had been bound into Hell for maybe the whole of recorded history. Some of them had tried to escape—and use Moonset’s offspring as their hosts for a grave new world.
This wasn’t my class, so there were no expectations. I liked that; it made the class almost enjoyable. Or at least as enjoyable as it was to discuss what happened when a wraith caught your soul between its finger bones, or how the old Aos Si
There wasn’t much I could do with my hair, which was still damp and prone to falling down into my eyes, but I scrubbed some towels through it anyway.
It took a minute for me to do the math and figure out where I was supposed to be. Last period would have started about ten minutes ago. Which meant that the rest of my family was in our new Magic for Morons class. It still got under my skin how much they couldn’t see. Buying in to the magic classes was just the Congress’s way of shutting us up. They were still manipulating us, they probably always would be.
There were a couple of people in the halls, not unusual for the end of the day. Study halls around this time were always lax with letting students roam around the halls. If someone skipped their last period of the day, would it really make a difference? No one seemed to think so.
I could go sit in the car and wait for the others to get out of school, but I decided against it. Someone was certainly going to start complaining that I skipped magic class, so I decided not to. I just wouldn’t go to the one they expected me to.
The class that Kevin and Maddy had was separate from the rest of us. A month ago, Justin had been segregated in with them, along with Luca. But now Luca was gone, and the rest of us had been pooled together, like we were somehow easier to manage that way. I think Kelly would have disagreed on that one.
I headed down the side hall to Kevin’s class, still in the same room it had been all year. When I pulled open the door, three sets of eyes peered up at me, but only the teacher was unfamiliar. He was young, Witcher-aged, probably one of the new recruits brought along with Illana.
“Room for one more?” I asked, but I closed the door behind me and headed for a seat before permission could be given.
“What are you doing here?” Kevin asked, shifting around in his seat.
I shrugged.
“Just get out of the shower?” Maddy’s pinched face eased a bit, though her eyes were speculative on mine. Whatever falling out had happened between her and Justin, at least she wasn’t taking it out on me.
“This isn’t really appropriate,” the teacher began. Like Kelly, he didn’t seem like he’d been out of college for very long. But there was none of the shrewd awareness or perception in his eyes I’d come to expect from the Witchers. “But I don’t see what it could hurt.”
I took a closer look at him. Dark haired, just a little too long, and a strong jaw line didn’t match with the thin, reedy voice. Nor did the blasé attitude about letting a Moonset kid sit in on his lesson.
“We’re doing a history lesson,” Maddy said, almost like she could read my mind. “No trade secrets.”
I actually don’t mind history. I mean, I don’t enjoy learning about the secret truths behind modern mysteries, but history is full of lessons where power and magic have caused some sort of crisis. Learning more about covens in the old days armed me with more information. And my arguments against using magic became stronger.
But the class itself wasn’t dealing with something helpful: like times in history when trusting the authorities had led to chaos. No, instead the teacher lectured on old threats. Monsters and creatures who lurked in the shadows of history. Creatures that many people believed magic was created expressly to fight.
I’d had a run in with one of those creatures already. The Abyssal Princes, creatures that had been bound into Hell for maybe the whole of recorded history. Some of them had tried to escape—and use Moonset’s offspring as their hosts for a grave new world.
This wasn’t my class, so there were no expectations. I liked that; it made the class almost enjoyable. Or at least as enjoyable as it was to discuss what happened when a wraith caught your soul between its finger bones, or how the old Aos Si
Similar Books
