“Hey, just forget about it, all right?” Eva said. “I told you, people who attend this school are just a little . . . different. Most are from East Coast power families, and they’re competitive. I mean, to be a spy youhaveto be. But I’m sure they’ll warm up. No one wants to spend three years with no friends.”
I nodded but said nothing. The thing was, people hadn’t seemed standoffish the entire time. Many of them talked to each other. Only I had seemed like a social pariah, which supported Diana’s theory. It was a fact that I didn’t want to bring up to Eva, for fear that she’d ditch me too.
“Here we are.” Eva brushed my arm so that I stopped walking, and gestured to a dark, wood door.
Unlike normal colleges, where the room number would be on the door, at Spellcasters, gold plaques declared which subject was taught in each room. This one proclaimed that we were about to enter“Basics of Demonology”.
“How do I look?” Eva and I asked at the same time, and we giggled.
“You look great. Like a hot scholar,” I assured her.
Dressed in a short blue skirt, a gray tank, and a jacket with elbow patches, Eva looked smart and smoking hot at the same time.
“You too. Very cute dress. The color is fabulous on you,” Eva said, her eyes roving over my green maxi dress that hugged my torso, plunged at the neckline, and then flared out.
“Thanks,” I replied. “Mom always said emerald was my color. It goes well with tanned skin.”
“She was so right.” Eva gestured to the door. “Shall we?”
We pushed the door open and stopped in our tracks.
The room was already full, and our classmates quiet, waiting. A tall, dark, surprisingly young, and attractive professor stood at the front, staring at his watch. I glanced at the clock on the wall, and my eyebrows knitted together. We weren’t late. There were still two minutes until class started.
This must be part of what Eva meant by our peers are competitive. What a bunch of suck-ups.
“You two must be Odette Dane and Evanora Proctor,” the professor stated. “Welcome to the Basics of Demonology, or D1 as we at Spellcasters like to call it. We have much to cover this year, so take a seat, and we’ll get started.” He spoke in a clipped tone which tolerated no dilly-dallying, just like his perfectly styled black hair and gunmetal gray eyes.
Eva and I rushed to the back of the room, where two desks sat side-by-side with books bound in burgundy velvet atop their scratched wooden surfaces.
“I’m Professor de Spina. In D1, you’ll learn what you need to know to defeat various races of demons.” Professor de Spina flung his arms behind him, exposing a well-muscled chest as a spray of shimmering gray magic burst from his hands to mold into a life-sized hideous beast with wrinkled skin, an oversized mouth, webbed fingers, and worst of all, glowing red eyes.
I wrinkled my nose.Sick.
“This,” the professor gestured to the creature he’d just conjured, “is a representation of a lesser demon called a wraith. Is anyone familiar with wraiths?”
At the front, Amethyst raised her hand. I noticed that her purple hair seemed even more vibrant than just the night before. I wondered if she’d used magic or regular dye to color it, and made a mental note to ask her.
Professor de Spina nodded, his eyes boring through her. “Please introduce yourself.”
“Amethyst Rhines, Professor. I believe wraiths are a class of demons skilled in possession?”
In response, de Spina twirled his hand so that the wraith’s mouth cracked open wide. Someone in the group let out a lone “ewww”, and even from my spot in the back, I could see why. The inside of the demon’s mouth was filled with rows upon rows of teeth, like a shark’s, and most of them were rotting.
“Very good, Amethyst. As you can all see, wraiths have many teeth.” De Spina approached the wraith, and ran his finger over the first three rows of teeth.
I shuddered at the motion—the wraith looked too real and disgusting. There was no way in hell I’d stick my hand into that thing’s mouth.
“Wraiths constantly lose their decayed teeth and regrow new ones,” de Spina continued. “This makes it easy for them to possess people. In fact, I’d dare say they’re the species of lesser demon that higher demons send on possession missions most often.”
Wait, a hot minute! Demons possess people by using their teeth?My hand shot up.
De Spina lifted an eyebrow. “Yes, Miss Dane?”
I cleared my throat. “I’m wondering how having so many teeth would make it easy for a wraith to possess people?”
The professor’s full lips flattened, and a few people at the front, Diana among them, turned to stare at me with amusement.
“Are we sure she’s not human?” a girl—Tabitha Goode, I recalled from the mixer—teased, and while her tone was light, the narrowing of her eyes let me know that she meant the jab.
