Felicity was too distracted to act pathetically. She just grunted. “And I’ll shove your wand up your ass.”

  Belinda actually winced. It wasn’t that bad a threat, honestly. But if pushed, Felicity might actually do it. Still, it was just trash talk. From the way Belinda looked, it was as if no one had ever bothered speaking back to her before. She didn’t know how to handle it.

  “That will be enough of that,” Professor Brown said. “Belinda, I heard you. There will be disciplinary action. Miss South – that was not the appropriate way to respond.”

  Belinda really did look as if she’d been slapped now. “Excuse me?” she protested in a high-pitched voice that made it sound as if someone had perforated a steam pipe under pressure.

  “You’re now excused, Miss Hamilton. You do have a class to get to. Now get to it,” Professor Brown said dismissively.

  Felicity went to walk away, but all Professor Brown did was stare at her pointedly to make it clear that Felicity had not been dismissed yet.

  When the last student was out, Professor Brown wiped her lessons off the board, shook out her magical wand – which was something few magicians did but something that was ultimately recommended – then looked evenly at Felicity. “You’re the only one who got that question right. I’ve taught in approximately six academies across the country. Only two other students have gotten that question right before you.”

  Felicity thought quickly. “It was just a guess, and it was statistical. I went through everything the other students said, and I just got lucky, that’s all.”

  Brown looked at her steadily. You could’ve put a delicate china teacup on her gaze, and she would’ve carried it without a rattle. “I don’t appreciate it when students lie to me. And I’m ultimately very good at knowing when someone lies to me.” She had glasses, and she took the opportunity to push them up her nose. She took several seconds to shift them back and forth until she found the exact perfect place. Then she let her hand drop. “I hear that you’re a bursary student. Your grades weren’t stellar at your previous school, but you passed my test, and as I’ve said, I’ve only had three other students who’ve done that. They were exemplary. Are you in the same vein, Miss South?”

  Felicity forgot all about her act, and she just smiled automatically. “It really depends on how you define exemplary, Professor.” Way to go to take a leaf out of Lucifer’s book, she thought. Though it was a pretty good strategy. When you didn’t want to answer a question, you could just quibble about the definitions involved to buy yourself some time to think of a better response.

  “A mixture of natural instinct, determination, knowledge, and passion. How many of those do you possess?”

  Felicity shrugged. Then she remembered she should be acting a little more pathetically, and she awkwardly patted down her hair. “Honestly not that good.”

  “Is that why you managed to snatch Belinda’s wand out of her hand while she was casting a spell on you in your room last night?”

  Damn. Honestly, Felicity should have expected it sooner. She’d been riding the wave all day, wondering at the back of her head if Belinda had complained at all.

  The story was clearly out.

  Felicity pushed her lips against her teeth. She grated them back and forth. She looked down at her feet, then over at Professor Brown. This time, she wasn’t doing the meek and mild act. This time, she was trying to figure out what Brown would do next.

  “There’s no need to be worried about disciplinary action,” Brown said flatly. “Belinda was in your room, after all. In my estimation, it sounds like self-defense.”

  Felicity narrowed her gaze. Just what was going on here? In all her years at Broadstone, she had never come across a teacher like this.

  Felicity looked at her feet again. She wasn’t just trying to act pathetically. She was concentrating. She was too smart to cast a quick scanning spell on Brown. She’d made it perfectly clear during that lecture that she was a very accomplished witch. Until Felicity understood just how good she was, she couldn’t cast magic willy-nilly.

  “You clearly have a question. Ask it,” Professor Brown demanded.

  “Where is this going? I threw Miss Hamilton’s wand out of the window yesterday. Exactly what’s going to happen to me?”

  “That is up to you. You will not be directly disciplined. Belinda was in your room, after all.”

  Felicity narrowed her eyes. “But the incident isn’t going to be dropped, is it?”

  “That will be up to you,” Professor Brown said.

  Felicity hadn’t played this hardball since she’d come to Broadstone. Though she’d never been a particularly curious person before throwing her hat in with Lucifer, one of the things she actually enjoyed was confronting criminals and seeing how their psychology worked. It always reminded her of how far she’d come.

  But even considering her considerable experience with a swathe of magical criminals and delinquents, she had no clue what Professor Brown was thinking.

  Professor Brown turned around and started to get ready for the next class. Felicity just stood there.

  “How will this be up to me?” Felicity eventually asked, realizing it was on her shoulders to continue the conversation.

  “Broadstone is always on the lookout for talented students like yourself. Students who see the world differently enough to have promise.” Her voice reverberated on the word promise.

  “I see. And what exactly does Broadstone want to do with we students and our promise?” It was hard for Felicity to control herself. All she saw were images of the blood spell on the roof. It was by now clear that Broadstone treated its students like resources. If they were monstrous enough to use their blood, what exactly would they do with their ‘promise’?

  “We want you to excel. The magical world is carried on the shoulders of those who are creative enough to imagine new futures.” Though Professor Brown didn’t look like the kind to be overly lyrical, that statement didn’t come across as poetic, anyway. It was direct like a slap to the face.

  “… Are you inviting me into some kind of special program, Professor?”

  Brown stopped what she was doing, turned, and nodded once. There was a leading look in her eyes. The problem was, Felicity had no clue exactly where it led to.

  “You could say that. I’m gathering together the students with the best promise from each class. Together, we will learn true defense spells.”

  Maybe this was where Felicity was meant to look impressed. She wasn’t. “True defense spells?”

  Brown chuckled. It was the first friendly move she’d made, and even then, you couldn’t class the exact sharp tone of her laugh to be merry anyway. “You speak like a demon I once met. He always asked people to define things too.”

  Felicity controlled herself with all she was worth. “I guess you can call it a psychological defense mechanism I utilize when I have no clue what the hell is going on.”

  Maybe she shouldn’t have sworn, though hell was pretty pathetic when it came to the wild insults she’d learned while working with a demon. She wanted to push Brown and see just how much slack she was willing to give Felicity.

  “The group will be small, elite,” Brown added.

  Felicity tried to control her expression, but she couldn’t.

  Brown was proficient enough to pick it up. “The category elite will not be defined by how much money a person has. As I said, I’ll gather together the best magicians in the school.”

  Though the last thing Felicity wanted to do was join a class for elite magicians, what choice did she have? She’d clearly already come to the attention of Professor Brown, if not the rest of the school. If she turned the offer down, there was also Brown’s nonspecific threat. The threat that, undoubtedly, could become very specific and very problematic very quickly.

  Felicity shrugged. Maybe it wasn’t the best reaction. Maybe any sane student, upon getting such an offer, would praise their teacher and look like they’d just won a car.

  Felicity now had to be careful. Despite her best efforts, her plan to be meek and mild wasn’t working. It would be suspicious if she kept attempting it. So it was time to change tack. She gave the most disaffected shrug she could. “Fine, I’ll join.”

  “That’s the least enthusiastic response I’ve ever heard to an opportunity like this. But you seem that kind.”

  Felicity should have let that comment go. Another student would have. But she’d changed gears, and it was time to keep up with her new personality. “Seem like the kind, sir?”

  “You seem like the kind to not know how to react around your own skills.”

  Felicity frowned. “What does that mean?”

  “You’re uncomfortable with your power. So you do one of two things. You either try to hide it, or you pretend it’s not important. I think you’ll find that at Broadstone – and out in the real world,” her voice lowered, “power counts for everything.”

  4

  Felicity spent the rest of the day – even though she only had two more classes – thinking about what Professor Brown had said.

  Felicity’s first extracurricular elite magical class started tonight. It was right before dinner, so it wouldn’t impinge on Felicity’s usual nighttime activities. She had a plan for after midnight, and it would involve another bottle of wizard whiskey. Though it wasn’t as if she could technically get fully inebriated on magical alcohol, if she continued to go undercover at this school, she’d drink through Lucifer’s most expensive supplies, and he would not be happy.

  When classes were over, Felicity walked back to the magical defense classroom paying as much attention as she could. She wasn’t just keeping an eye on the students who walked along the corridors in case they were good enough to come to this class with her. Critically, she tuned in to the excess magical spells around her. As she’d already noted yesterday, too many of them were bloat spells. There were also surveillance spells. Was it just Felicity’s imagination, or were there more than yesterday?

  By the time she made it to class, this creeping, niggling worry had settled over her. It told her that despite the fact she’d heard nothing from the faculty about an incident on the roof yesterday, Broadstone clearly knew what had gone down. Though she’d been trying to pretend that maybe only a few senior teachers had known about the blood spell, for this many enchantments to have been cast on the school in such a short time, it had to be more, right? That, or Broadstone had such sophisticated magic in place that, with nothing more than the flick of a switch, you could change the environmental spells within the school and increase their power exponentially. That might not sound like much to someone who didn’t know about magic. If you were worth your education, it would send chills up your spine. Casting on your direct environment was easy. With certain spells, you could cast at a fair distance. The further away you got, the harder it was. But bulk casting on your environment was near impossible.

  It would require one heck of a skilled magician. Or a system that allowed it. Technically, with nothing more than the click of his fingers, Lucifer could cast on all of The Devil Man. But he was a demon, hello. He didn’t blink at using forbidden magic. The Devil Man was completely full of prep spells, kind of like the one that Professor Brown had cast in class. But unlike the one Professor Brown had cast, the stuff that filled The Devil Man was exceptionally powerful. It was everywhere, too. Felicity couldn’t downplay that statement. She literally meant everywhere. It was in every room, in every brick, in every door handle, and in every lick of paint. As she’d already mentioned, it meant that when Lucifer wanted to do something to the whole building, he could do it immediately and with an efficient amount of magic. Though the Magical Enforcement Unit was smart enough to leave him alone, they of course knew where his establishment was. Sometimes The Devil Man had to go into hiding. Lucifer could do it with nothing more than a mutter or a sharp look in his eyes.

  Clearly Broadstone had that same capability. But The Devil Man was smaller and a hell of a lot less old. Broadstone was ancient. With ancient magical roots, it became proportionally harder to cast mass spells like that. There would simply be too many bloat spells kicking around from hundreds upon hundreds of years of practice. Interact with the wrong bloat spell, and you’d quickly find your whole school going boom.

  By the time Felicity made it to class, she’d scanned everything around her.

  She was so concentrated on her task that when she walked into the magical classroom, she didn’t pay attention.

  As soon as she looked up, she had to control her expression. It was a different room. Same door, different place. That shouldn’t surprise her. Not in a school for witches and magicians. But she hadn’t felt a portal spell. Which meant something kind of insane. Someone had wasted the magic to completely change the room. Sure enough, as she paid sharper attention, she could feel the magic dissipating.

  Okay, she got it, Broadstone was powerful. And if you had enough money, you could technically buy anything, including magic. But damn, who wasted that much magic on simply changing a room? It was simpler and a heck of a lot more efficient to have two rooms or a portal spell.

  To do it like this was ostentatious. That, or it was deliberate to show just how much magic Broadstone could waste.

  Professor Brown wasn’t here. The other students were.

  She recognized no students from her own year, but she thought she’d seen some of the other kids. There were representatives from each year group.

  She turned as Professor Brown walked in.

  She shouldn’t have been surprised, but Professor Brown didn’t walk in alone. Right beside her was none other than Jake.

  Felicity couldn’t hide her confusion. She frowned at him.

  Brown apparently never missed a beat. She noticed, even though she strode through the room to the board and had her back to Felicity. “Yes, you have noticed that, despite the fact I have chosen a single student from each grade, that I doubled up just once. Because there are two exceptional students from your year, Miss South.”

  Felicity wasn’t entirely sure if she should comment. She settled for grunting, for what it was worth. While she tried not to look directly at Jake and frown, obviously he didn’t have that particular compunction. He stared at her. Right at her. There were several students walking in between, but that didn’t matter. His gaze didn’t deviate once.

  There was an intensity about it that reminded her of something. Maybe it was Damien… maybe it went back to the smiles she’d seen earlier. The ones that reminded her of a coldhearted criminal.

  It was enough that she had to hide a tight, cold shiver that raced up her back.

  Professor Brown walked over to the blackboard on the far side of the room. She stood several meters in front of it, whipped her wand out of her pocket, and wrote several lessons onto it. All the while, the various students eyed each other off.

  There was everybody from first years up to final year graduate researchers.

  Though some of them were elite, a lot of them weren’t. There was one reliable indicator to tell how much money a person had – and that was their wand. Yeah, Jake’s wand looked like it had been the equivalent cost of a small apartment, but a lot of the other kids just had hand-me-downs.

  Except for Felicity. She still didn’t have a wand at all. Something she would have to remedy. Though technically she had the kind of magic required to use her sword and morph it down into a wand, that would be a little dangerous. Before she’d met Professor Brown, she wouldn’t have admitted that there was anyone at Broadstone who could see through her magic. But Professor Brown… had an edge to her. A strong one.

  That was proven as Brown turned around, her black buckle shoes twisting on the polished stone floor, a few errant crackles of magic racing around them. She whipped her wand out and cast at Felicity.

  Felicity didn’t have to think. She moved. She didn’t immediately and instinctively draw up a magical barrier – fortunately. She just got the hell out of there. That was the good thing about being taught how to use your body. Her move was snapped, tight, and just enough to get her out of the way of Brown’s ferocious spell.

  The blast of sparks and magical smoke smashed into the opposite wall. Rather than burrow through the stone, the spell was rebuffed.

  As Felicity warily got to her feet, she cast her gaze over to the wall quickly to note that it had a magical buffering spell in place.

  Then she turned her full attention back to Brown.

  Brown smiled. It was all teeth and no lip. “You’re good on your feet. I expected you would be. Now,” without finishing her statement, she whipped her wand to the side, and did the same, randomly attacking another student.

  This guy wasn’t so lucky. He tried to bring his wand up, but he didn’t have the time. The spell smashed into his wand and sent it careening across the room.

  The wand scattered over the floor and then struck the wall. It didn’t just sit there, though – the wall seemed to grab it up with invisible hands. Then it kind of melted through until it was half stuck in.

  “What the hell?” the guy spluttered.

  Professor Brown’s wand was still out, and the tip glowed ominously. “This is your first test. You might be the best students I could find, but that does not mean that you are worthy of this tutelage. To become so, you must learn how to truly defend against magic. If anyone can’t dodge my blow, their wand will be taken.” To further prove that fact, she sliced her wand over her shoulder and sent a spell careening toward one of the graduate students. The girl looked a little bit more on the ball, but again she tried to use her wand. She managed to get off half an incantation before Professor Brown’s spell smashed into her. Just as had happened before, the wand went careening out of control, struck the ground, rolled to the wall, then was half absorbed by it.

  Professor Brown didn’t pause. She started attacking every student in turn.

  Some tried to get off preventative spells of their own, but they simply struck Brown and were absorbed.

  Despite the fact Felicity was paying attention and was pressed up on the balls of her feet lest she had to dodge again, she was still with it enough to notice what Brown was doing.

 

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