“Excellent job, Donna.” Professor Damone clapped her hands, sending gusts of air across the classroom.
Donna was a petite witch with dirty-blond hair, who’d reached the point of gathering air around herself and twirling it intoa mini tornado. She was halfway up one of the cylindrical glass tubes, storm energy surrounding her. Students always stayedbehind the glass because their control was shit.
“Nice work for you as well, Paisley,” the professor said kindly, as I managed to extinguish a candle with a swish of my hand.Donna and I, we were totally the same.
“You’re using the element at least,” Sara said, yawning widely. “You manage to touch most affinities in class. I don’t understandwhy nothing stands out a little stronger.”
“I have power.” I was finally sure of that. “It’s just locked away, and I haven’t figured out the freaking key.”
“You’ll get—” Her words were cut off by another huge yawn.
Waving the flame out again, I chuckled. “Late night?”
She all but slumped forward onto her arms. “You have no idea. My parents stayed until the midnight cutoff, and then I couldn’tfall asleep.”
I’d been expecting a more exciting story, but that one was kind of cute. “I’m glad you got to see them.”
Her smile was gentle, eyes glassy with what looked like happy memories. “Mom never wanted me to leave for college. She wasn’tready, but it was so nice to catch up with them. Being here, with all the drama and coursework, I forgot how it feels to bewith people who love me unconditionally. I needed this weekend with them.”
I nudged her. “Hey, I love you unconditionally.”
She managed to crack one of her eyelids to peer at me as she blew me a kiss. “Love you too, bestie. But you know what I mean.”
“Yep, I was on the phone with Mom this morning. The transition is harder than I expected.”
During our call, Mom had assured me she was okay.He’s always like that, honey. It’s nothing new. I’m just excited to get started on this new yarn pattern I found. And my seedsshould arrive this week.She’d sounded the same, her voice light and open, but I was under no illusion. She would put on an act to keep me from dealingwith her drama, and no matter what she said, yesterday had been difficult for her.
When Sara and I were finished with our elemental class, we hurried along to History of Necromancy.
I’d never expected to enjoy this class, but it was turning into one of my favorites. Professor Jones had this way of revealinghistory to us, almost as if it was a thriller novel and we had no idea what was coming next. It was cleverly done, keepingme hooked, and I enjoyed learning more about Weatherstone and its ties to necromancy.
A lot of my necromancy classes were becoming fast favorites. On Friday, when we’d been in Necromancy in the Wild and one of the students had accidentally unearthed bodiesfrom their graves, I’d found myself intrigued rather than disgusted. Professor Longhorn got it sorted in a few seconds, of course, and then proceeded to show us how tosample from the energy of the undead but don’t call them topside. An important lesson to learn.
When we raised the dead, they were nothing more than animated corpses. There was no magic to return them to who they’d beenbefore death. The worst part was if you lost control of them, you were in big trouble. Think zombies munching on people andall the bad stuff.
In History of Necromancy, Belle and Haley had saved us seats, so we settled in next to them and waited for Professor Jones.Logan strolled in late, the top two buttons of his shirt undone, and no tie, because he didn’t care much for their rules here.He also got away with it.
He never looked my way, but I felt his presence as if he’d sat by my side. My body recognized his energy now, and it was startingto become a problem. Just like my current hoodie obsession.
“Okay, where did we leave off last lesson?” Professor Jones said, a thankful distraction as he tapped the side of his face.“Oh, right. We’ve finished going back through their childhoods, the covens from that age, and now we will continue with Writworthand Ancot arriving in the Americas. They’d just battled the deadly seas, saving themselves with their magic many times. Withsalt in their hair, and determination in their hearts, they traveled our amazing country, searching for a beacon of powerto call their own.”
His eyes twinkled. “Does anyone know why this is the location they chose for Weatherstone?”
“Not yet,” a witch in the front row said. “We’re waiting for the big reveal.”
“Right, right.” He nodded, as students laughed. “They’dbeen traveling for months, trusting no one, as you know they’d been hunted from their country of birth. They were determined never to allow another to have that power over them again, so they searched for an area where the veil between the living and dead, the five planes of our existence, was thinner.”
A shiver traced my spine once more, but it was muted thanks to the blanket.
“They decided building an army was the key to success,” he continued. “When they stumbled onto this plot of land, it was sparse,almost barren outside of the surrounding forests. That piqued their curiosity, so they set foot on it only to feel the plethoraof death that had taken place. So much death that no vegetation had regrown in the blood-soaked fields.”
Goose bumps added to the shivers down my spine, but I was intensely hooked.
“Ten thousand perished here in the two-year conflict,” Professor Jones’s whisper still boomed somehow, “and as this soil absorbedthe bodies and blood of the fallen, it left behind an energy that called to the necromancers.”
No wonder it was the most prestigious college in America, if not the entire world. There was an energy of death here, andlife forces were the strongest energy of all.
“They called the dead first to be their army, to protect them and build the original buildings for the college. From the momentthey came up with their plan, they decided that for an army to be truly loyal, they needed to be the ones to train them. So,the college was born. They sent magical envoys across the worlds and invited all witches and warlocks, provided they had enoughpower, of course.”
