Strange Academy (Hot Paranormal Romance) by Teresa Wilde Page A

she had a poltergeist. Ha.
    Still, putting on the deadbolt at night would be a good idea. Or would they let her change the locks?
    Cool it, she advised herself. This place is making you twitchy.
    “At least I have a goddess for a guard dog,” she told the cardboard box as she carried it into the living room. Oddly, seeing the muse still standing outside her door when Gray had made his grand exit had made her feel less alone here.
    Sadie tugged open the string on the brown paper package. She couldn’t help holding her breath as she folded back the cardboard flaps.
    What the...

Chapter Five
     
    “How are you doing, dear?” The ghost of Aunt Pippa settled herself on the edge of the bed where Sadie slept, indenting Sadie’s scarlet duvet as if she had weight. She looked younger than Sadie had ever seen her. These crazy dreams had been the only thing keeping her sane these past weeks.
    “Not well.” Sadie sat up and hugged the blankets around her. Pippa wore the yellow sundress again. The chill in the evening air might not bother a ghost, but Sadie shivered. “The kids behave themselves but spend my class watching the clock. Not just the fifth graders, either. They’ve decided I’m not worth their time, thanks to Gray. Did you have this problem?”
    Pippa looked down and smoothed a wrinkle out of the quilt. “Uh, no.” Her voice was apologetic.
    “What should I do?”
    “Sadie...”
    “Right. This is a dream. Though you look like my aunt, you’re a manifestation of my subconscious. Since I don’t know, you don’t know.” She wrapped her arms around her knees. “I can’t shake the feeling something weird is going on.”
    Aunt Pippa rolled her eyes in an uncharacteristic fit of sarcasm. “No, it’s perfectly normal to spend your sleeping hours talking to a dead woman who thought she was a witch.”
    “They had a school assembly last Monday and I wasn’t invited.” The past few weeks had been filled with incidents that didn’t mean anything on their own but, when added up, seemed like something more. Maybe she was being paranoid, but she couldn’t shake the feeling everyone knew something she didn’t. “Sometimes I walk into rooms and conversations just stop. It’s bizarre.”
    “That is strange,” agreed Pippa, as if reassuring a child there wasn’t a monster under the bed.
    “And no one ever brings me house problems. All the kids go to Gray or Jewel Jones.”
    The other teachers were politely distant. Jewel seemed more open but sometimes said odd things—like when she’d said she was taking her class to scry a meteor shower. “Jewel’s a little scatterbrained. But nice. Is it a bad thing that no one’s moved the statue from my doorway?”
    “I think Thalia mistook your cookie for an offering. It’s never a bad thing to have a goddess on your side.”
    “Thalia?”
    “Muse of comedy.”
    “I didn’t know I knew that.” Funny the things your subconscious picked up. Dream Pippa seemed wiser than her real aunt had been. “I keep overhearing the word ‘meta.’ I asked Jewel what it meant once, but she changed the subject.”
    “You know,” Pippa said dreamily, “I like having these talks with you, dear.”
    Pippa was so—wait a minute! “You did it, too.” Sadie’s eyes went hot with irritation.
    “Sadie, you’re imagining me. So if I change the subject, whose fault is it?”
    A crack of moonlight slanted across the bed. Both she and Pippa watched the silvery dust motes dance in it for a moment.
    Sadie broke the silence. “I’m sorry we never talked this way when you were alive.”
    Pippa nodded and said, with genuine regret in her tone, “You didn’t want me to be a witch.”
    Sadie winced. At her sixteenth birthday party, Pippa had given her a ceremonial carved magic wand. Her friends had laughed and made fairy godmother jokes. She’d laughed too, trying to fit in with the clique. Despite Pippa’s pained expression, she’d spent the afternoon granting wishes.
    What a