The demons witch the com.., p.12
The Demon’s Witch: The Complete Series, page 12
The class became quiet. It was as if someone had just gagged all the students.
Though Felicity could only see the teacher out of the corner of her eye, that didn’t matter. He looked pissed. As he rolled his jaw from left to right, he stared at Jake again. “Perhaps you could disabuse our new student of that particular notion and point out why it’s so wrong.”
Jake chuckled. There was something about it that was so much like Damien. It had this light but knowing edge.
“It’s dark magic. You can’t use a soul charm for anything but defense. If you did, you’d be a bad witch.”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure she’s already a bad witch,” someone muttered.
Everyone laughed.
Felicity forced herself to stare at her feet.
Technically when Felicity accessed Lucifer’s seals, she practiced soul magic. Did that make her a bad witch? Yeah, it did, didn’t it?
The teacher faffed about, then finally brought his wand forward. He concentrated, sprouted some Latin gibberish, cast the wand to the side with a stupid flourish that instantly told Felicity where Belinda had got that from, and pulled something out of his pocket.
Judging by just how much magic discharged around the room, he had to put his all into the spell.
Pocket magic was not hard. Felicity had most of her real gear in a pocket just behind her left shoulder. It was completely hidden. Even if you brought a magical scanner right up to her nose and wafted it around her face, you wouldn’t be able to detect it. For other magicians, however, pocket magic was something you built up to over a lifetime.
Presumably none of the other students in here would be able to create one. But, just as presumably, their rich parents would have created one for them. It didn’t matter that it was illegal and you could only create your own pockets. There was already ample evidence to suggest, based on Belinda’s wand alone, that illegal was nothing more than a word to the elites and their children.
The teacher’s hand tightened around the soul charm. It was a massive, hefty thing. It was this large blue vial with a permanently crackling lid that made it look as if someone had grabbed one of the stars from the night sky and used it like a cork.
Felicity could feel the excess magic discharging off it from here. If she had ever created a charm that inefficient, Lucifer would’ve picked it up, chucked it over his shoulder, and told her to do it again until she got it right. In the magical world, when it came to charms, at least, efficiency was everything. It was kind of like storing and transferring electricity. The more efficient your system of transportation, the less power you lost.
Based on how the tip of Felicity’s tongue started to tickle, that charm would only be viable for a week or maybe less.
That rendered it utterly useless in the real world.
“Right. To access a soul charm, you need to be worthy enough to pull the lid off,” the teacher began.
Really, really? That’s what they were going with? Being worthy? To take the lid off, you needed to utilize more magic than the lid. That didn’t make you worthy. It made you strong. They were the same thing in this world, though, weren’t they?
Felicity, as stupid as it sounded, started tuning out. She began to imagine what she’d do tonight. First things first, she was going to do some much-needed recon on the girls’ dormitory.
She was also going to head to the graduate research area and start investigating Eleanor’s death.
She’d even head out into the grounds and see where the corpse had been strung up. Then? God, she was going straight back to Lucifer. She needed a stiff drink.
It was a crap idea to tune out completely. Abruptly, the teacher handed her over the potion.
Without even thinking about it, she uncorked it. She didn’t pause. She didn’t even have to gather magic in her fingertips. She just ripped the damn cork off. It was a surprise she didn’t use her teeth, considering that’s how she usually disengaged the seals on magical equipment. It drove Lucifer crazy. He kept warning that if she did that too much, she’d require extensive dental work. The kind that would have to pull her teeth back from the ether.
There was a general splutter of complete surprise. No one was more surprised than the teacher.
“What?” he stammered.
She tuned right back into the conversation. She looked down at the cork in her hand. It had a rudimentary locking spell on it. The teacher, the little shit, had obviously placed it there so that there would be no way for Felicity to open it.
She had anyway.
… Right. Time to think quickly.
She looked up at him.
She tried to make her eyes as wide and pathetic as she could. While she distracted him, she subtly closed her fingers around the cork.
Without having to chant some stupid Latin litany, she made it disintegrate. Not a huge amount, but she introduced some critical flaws into it.
“How did you get that off?” the teacher stammered.
Felicity didn’t go with her go-to comment which would’ve been that she guessed she was worthy after all. She frowned down at the cork and handed it over to him. “Looks like there’s a crack in it.”
The teacher blanched.
This had been an exercise to make her embarrassed, but now she’d turned the tables.
Several of the students laughed, and this time, it wasn’t directed at her.
A quick survey of the rest of the students showed her that not everybody had enjoyed the show. Belinda was staring daggers at Felicity. And Jake? He was just looking at her.
It made her back itch uncomfortably. She took a step away from the teacher and brought her hands up. “I don’t know much about magical containment corks, but the potion should still be good, right? What were you trying to demonstrate?”
“Get to your seat,” the teacher snapped, his voice not just acerbic, but perfectly destructive. It was the snide, snapped comment of someone who could and would go further if pushed.
The teacher hadn’t given Felicity a seat, but fortunately there was one that was empty at the back of the room. She walked over to it.
After the teacher had calmed down enough, he pointed at Jake. “We need a real magician to demonstrate this.”
Jake half bowed, stood, and strode to the front of the room. Though Felicity wasn’t paying attention, and she was cursing herself for having opened that cork so easily, she could feel his gaze on her.
It was sharp enough that she soon looked up at him.
She swore time condensed a little as they made eye contact. She looked away.
“Isn’t gonna happen,” someone whispered from beside her.
It was sharp, and it was right by her ear.
It was clearly designed to make Felicity jump. It was a remote voice spell.
All you had to do was whisper into your wand or use a recording, and you could technically send your voice anywhere. If you were a pro. If you weren’t, like Belinda, you clearly had to have programmed the room.
Felicity did not jump, suffice to say. But she did immediately half frown and stare at the room with a critical eye.
She saw the spell traps. She would’ve noticed them sooner had she not been distracted by the teacher.
The spell traps were rudimentary and so obvious that even a magical cleaner half worth their wage would be able to notice them. Said magical cleaner should also remove them from the room.
It was of utmost importance to ensure that the classroom that taught magical defense was always clean of old spells. Not only could they interact with each other, but if too much magic accrued, things could go bang. Judging by how decrepit the spells looked as they reminded her of clumps of dust forming in a cobweb, they hadn’t been cleaned in years.
That told Felicity two things. They’d been here for a while, and all of the people who shouldn’t have ignored them, had ignored them nonetheless.
“You’re gonna go through hell, and it’s gonna start now,” Belinda’s remote spell spat in her ear. It had a modulated voice. Perhaps it was to confuse Felicity so she wouldn’t know who was speaking to her.
You couldn’t modulate Belinda’s choice of words though, could you? Nor the exact sharp way she spoke. It was so obviously her that her attempt to hide her identity was laughable.
But don’t you frigging laugh, Felicity snapped at herself. Act like your old self, goddammit.
That thought… it wasn’t a particularly comfortable one. As Felicity tuned out, memories of her old life came back to her.
A teacher had once done that to her in class, embarrassing her in front of everyone. It had been her first day, too. He’d decided that she should come up to show everyone her skills, despite the fact she’d never taken magical defense. A lot of the smaller schools just didn’t teach it. They didn’t have the considerable resources that Broadstone had. That wasn’t the point. He’d singled her out. And that had been the start of everything.
She drummed her fingers on the desk in front of her.
She wanted this done. Yeah, so she’d only been back at Broadstone for several hours, but it was time to solve this crime and get back to her real life. She wanted a stiff drink and preferably someone to punch. In her current mood, they would only have to be half guilty of a crime.
Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Jake use the soul charm.
Once the teacher was happy that the room was prepped, Jake downed the charm in one go.
Magic leaped over his body.
It was powerful, she’d grant him that. He was in control of it, which was the most important fact. If Belinda had done that, magic would be discharging everywhere. The thing about consuming charms is that you have to have very good control of your body. Bodies don’t mind generating magic, but they hate having it thrust upon them. They are homeostatic, and when you introduce a heck of a lot of energy suddenly, your body tries to discharge it in the only way it can. In order for you to hold on to the charm and get as much out of it as possible, you had to override your body’s natural processes.
Sure, Jake was nowhere near perfect. A lot of energy still crackled over his legs and sunk into the ground, but credit where credit was due. He did a good job for just a student.
“This,” the teacher said, and he looked right at Felicity, “is how you use a soul charm. Now, perhaps somebody would like to attack Jake? How about you, Felicity?”
She couldn’t control herself. She rolled her eyes. The teacher saw it. So did a few of the students.
“Really? You just rolled your eyes? Is there something you want to say, Felicity?”
This entire thing is a farce, she thought, and if you little kids ever go out into the real world, you will be eaten alive in seconds.
She settled for wiping her eyes. “Sorry, I think something got in my eye. What kind of attack would you like me to do?”
“Any you can manage,” the teacher said snidely.
Any she could manage, really? She could send Jake skidding across the room with one hell of a remote punch. Or, you know, she could just open her demon seals, steal his soul, and send him to the underworld.
She settled for pressing her lips into an awkward smile and scratching her head. “What kind—”
“Just any you can manage,” the teacher snapped.
Asshole.
She looked right at Jake, and was it just her, or was there a knowing look in his eyes?
If she’d been paying attention, maybe she would’ve started to wonder if he’d cottoned onto the fact she was a lot more powerful than she was letting on.
She wasn’t paying attention. She was looking at Jake, and all she was doing was remembering Damien. After they’d got together, everything had changed in magical defense class. Nobody had picked on her – at least in front of him. Even the teachers had pretended to be kind.
He’d tried to teach her a few spells, too. In retrospect, he hadn’t done a very good job, despite his credentials, but that didn’t matter. What counted was that he’d tried when everyone else had written her off.
“Attack spell, now,” the teacher growled.
“Keep your shirt on,” Felicity snapped.
Whoops.
“Excuse me?” the teacher practically swallowed his tongue in anger.
Yeah, crap.
She tried to smile. It was too late for that.
“You just talked back to me in front of the entire class?” he snapped.
“Give her a break. It’s her first day. She’s stressed. I guess she doesn’t know any good offensive spells. You put her on the spot,” Jake said.
By the blazing look in the teacher’s eyes, Felicity didn’t expect him to back down. If it were up to him, Felicity would be mincemeat.
He did. All it took was one well-placed look from Jake.
Yeah, okay, she got it, even in her time, Damien had had a lot of clout because of his family. But the teacher was still the one in charge.
That didn’t stop him from looking to the side, controlling his expression, and nodding at Felicity, albeit with daggers behind his eyes. “Jake has kindly decided to give you another chance. Now cast your spell.”
It was up to Jake to give her another chance? What the hell was going on here?
Though all Felicity wanted to do was continue to survey the scene, she realized she had to attack.
She went to bring a hand forward, but she stopped, cleared her throat, smoothed her hair, and shrugged. “I don’t have a wand.”
Jake shot her a specific look. She stiffened. He’d seen her move her hand purposefully, hadn’t he? Had he figured out what it meant?
“Someone please give the new girl a wand,” the teacher snapped.
The student next to Felicity handed her wand over. It was only when Felicity looked directly at them that she saw it was Jane.
She had a haunted look in her eyes. Though Jane had appeared strong and unaffected when they’d met, you could tell from the way her cheeks paled and her lips pressed together that she didn’t want to see this.
Because presumably, this would be Felicity being beaten to a pulp.
Felicity quickly tuned in to the wand. It didn’t matter that Lucifer didn’t use them. Using one was still ingrained in Felicity.
Though she didn’t ask her body to, it immediately checked for hidden enchantments. There weren’t any. This was just a plain wand. Based on the little Felicity still knew, it would cost approximately $1000 – a lot of money for someone who looked like they had Jane’s background. It would be nothing whatsoever for someone like Belinda. Her wand? It would probably have cost around $150,000. Yep. You read that right. She could have bought a luxury car instead of a highfalutin stick. And a car would’ve been way cooler and way more useful.
It didn’t take Felicity long to select a spell. It was a standard force spell that was something you would learn in most schools. It wasn’t technically an attack spell, but it could be utilized as such. All it did was gather the force of your magic and thrust it forward.
She pointed her wand, not like it was a baton and she was a cheerleader, but like it was a gun. Then she cast. She remembered to move her lips, though she didn’t actually mutter anything.
Suffice to say, she did not cast the full force of her magic. Do that, and Jake would be nothing more than a jittering ball of blood and guts on the floor. She controlled herself. And that right there was hard when you were casting a force spell. It instinctively accessed your magic, so controlling just how much it used was like putting a throttle on the exhaust of a space shuttle.
A blast of magic pulsed out, shot across the room in between the tables and chairs, and smashed into Jake.
It was rebuffed by his soul charm.
The soul charm glowed this deep green that reminded her of Damien’s eyes. Then there was a sharp crackle, and it started to absorb the magic of Felicity’s blow.
In a few seconds, there was no magic left whatsoever.
“A brilliant display,” the teacher said as he clapped and looked right at Jake. “You didn’t even move backward. Now.” He shifted and stared at Felicity.
“That was a pretty good spell,” Jake spoke right over the top of him. He looked right at Felicity.
Even if wild horses had been attached to her, she would not have been able to look away.
“What?” the teacher asked. He further solidified the fact that he was very much not the one who was taking this class, despite the fact he was the one who was being paid to do so.
Jake brushed nonexistent dust off his shoulder, nodded in a move that was mostly jaw and cheekbones, then looked right at Felicity. “That was a pretty good spell.”
“It was weak—” the teacher tried.
Jake lifted a finger and tapped an invisible force field around him. It would be what was left of the soul charm. It shuddered. With another tap, it looked like it could break.
Felicity tried not to pale. She’d barely used any force, dammit.
The teacher turned and stared at Felicity. She tried not to look mortified.
“Relax,” Jake said, still looking right at her. “I think this soul charm was broken to begin with. Still, you did good.”
Felicity sat back down. She still had Jane’s wand in her hand. It took Jane to lean over pointedly and gesture for Felicity to give back the wand with a muttered, “Thank you.”
“You dodged a bullet. Well done,” Jane said.
Though Felicity could have ignored her, she looked right into Jane’s eyes and nodded. “Thanks.”
Thankfully the rest of the class continued without that much drama.
She said that much. Belinda continued to assault her with that remote sound spell.
Any senior magician worth their money would be able to hear it. Though it was becoming questionable as to whether the teacher had any clue what he was doing, presumably he would know what was going on. Did he care? Did the Pope shit in the woods? Of course he didn’t care.
Hello, judging by the somewhat mutinous look he shot her, he was planning his own revenge.
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