The Rabbit In The Hole

  WITCH LESSONS BOOK 2

  PATTY JANSEN

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  About the Author

  More By This Author

  Chapter One

  “Students, be quiet!”

  Veronica Mayflower stood at the front of her classroom, a stack of exam papers in her hand, waiting for the students to stop talking.

  Class 5C was such a handful, a bunch of sixteen- and seventeen-year-old adolescents on the cusp of going out into the world to be themselves and becoming adults. They were loud, rambunctious and yet without a care for the problems of the world.

  It seemed only a short time ago that Veronica had been that age and been on the other side of the teacher’s desk in this very classroom.

  “Class!” she called over the din. “If you want to get your exam results, you will have to be quiet.”

  She looked over the heads of the students to the usual troublemakers.

  Percy Northgate, a lanky boy who over the past few months had grown taller than her—not that that was hard—was whispering to Marcus Appleby across the aisle.

  “Percy. Marcus.”

  They stopped.

  Not that either of those two had done well in the exam she was about to hand back to the students.

  The History of Magic subject tended to take students by surprise. They chose the subject because they thought it was easy until, very abruptly, they found out it was not, because you had to actually remember things and understand their context.

  And as she had said in this classroom many times, the subject was important—the backbone of understanding how their world of magic had shaped and evolved—and Veronica liked to establish a reputation for setting high standards.

  She walked through the aisles, handing out the marked papers. As the students received their marked exams, Veronica could tell by their facial expressions how they had done.

  Maeve Goodfields was happy. Lila Kensington disappointed, but she had passed. The same could not be said about Percy Northgate, who pulled a face when he got his result. Vince Falconer, however, was ecstatic. His eyes widened, and he shouted, “Really! Seriously!”

  Veronica smiled at him. “Yes, really. That shows you what you can achieve if you actually work for it.”

  Throughout the classroom, the students were all sharing their results with each other.

  When she reached Mabel Partridge, one of the last students in the class, Veronica hesitated for a moment.

  Mabel, sitting near the back of the room, took her paper with a self-satisfied smirk on her face. She had done well, much better than Veronica would have expected, based on the usual standard of her work.

  In response to curious looks, Mabel held up the paper so everyone could see the score of 83 written in red in the top right corner.

  Several students gasped.

  “Mabel got—what?” said Lila, who hadn’t been looking because she was still sore about her result.

  “Of course she did well,” sneered Agnes Thornewood. “The only way Mabel could pass that exam is if she cheated. And she cheats all the time. With everything and every subject.”

  Mabel slammed her paper down. “I do not cheat,” she said, enunciating each word with emphasis.

  She folded up her paper, and slid it into her satchel with a deliberate gesture.

  “Yes, you do,” Agnes said. “You’ve been cheating at everything in this exam period.”

  “Cheater, cheater,” said Percy.

  “Please, students, stop that. Mabel did well. Maybe if you work hard, you’ll do well next time, too.”

  “Huh. Mabel is a cow’s name anyway,” added Percy Northgate, earning a ripple of laughter from the others.

  Mabel flung down her satchel and flew from her seat quicker than anyone could say private lessons. She took a few steps to Percy’s desk.

  “Say that again if you dare.”

  Mabel was not a dainty girl. Her freckled arms were easily the width of Percy’s upper legs. Her shoulders were broad from working on her father’s farm. She was taller than Veronica. She loomed over Percy, who pushed his chair back.

  “Careful, Perce,” said Lila in a low voice.

  But it was already too late.

  Percy let out a yelp as two devil’s horns grew out of his head.

  The entire class burst into laughter. Percy raised his hand to his head.

  “Miss, hey, miss. Look at what she did!”

  “Using magic in class is not allowed, Mabel,” Veronica said, and it wasn’t. But the truth was, not many students could do tricks like Mabel. “Percy, sit down.” Percy looked so funny that she was struggling to keep a straight face.

  “But I have horns! I have to go to the de-hexing bay to get them taken off.”

  “No, Percy. The spell will wear off soon. They will disappear by themselves.”

  The students quieted down, although some still sniggered.

  Veronica sat down at the front of her class and noticed Cressida Locke Widdington in the front row. She sat with her head bowed over her exam. She looked stricken, her cheeks flushed, eyes glassy with tears.

  “Cressida?” Veronica asked, her voice low. Cressida looked up, her bottom lip trembling.

  Veronica tried to remember Cressida’s exam result, but it had not been special enough—good or bad—for her to remember.

  “I don’t understand,” Cressida whispered, her voice barely audible. “This can’t be right.”

  Veronica knelt beside her, lowering her voice. “Cressida, you did well, what is⁠—”

  “But not well enough!” Cressida interrupted, her voice rising. She pointed at the paper. “This question, here—about Dorothea Locke, my ancestor—you marked it wrong. But I know the truth. Dorothea Locke never supported those… those charlatans who wanted to ban different types of magic. She fought against them. It’s in the family archives.”

  Veronica sighed. She should have known this was coming. “Cressida, I understand your family holds Dorothea Locke in high regard, but historical records show otherwise. She didn’t openly oppose the bans, because it was a not a bad thing that magic arts like seance and necromancy were banned. Those are dark skills that have no place being taught at the Academy of Magic. But her silence on the matter encouraged those railing against the bans. She believed in… academic diversity, let’s say.”

  Cressida’s face grew red, and a tear rolled down her cheek. “That’s not true! She would never allow magic to be used for anything other than for people by people to the benefit of people. The books in our library say so. It’s a lie⁠—”

  “I’m sure your family’s books have a particular view on the matter,” Veronica said. “But history often shows us different sides to the same story. If we study history, like we’re doing in this class, we have to study all the texts about a historical event, not just the ones we want to believe.”

  While they were speaking, the rest of the class had descended into chaos. Magical paper planes zoomed through the air, dipping and swerving with a flapping of their paper wings, while one of the boys had blown up a fart balloon and released the air out of it with the predictable noise and accompanying smell. Percy and Marcus alternated between gagging and laughing so much that they couldn’t breathe.

  Veronica got up.

  “Enough!” she called out. “Be quiet, all of you.”

  The students fell quiet.

  At that moment, a shimmering light flashed above her desk, and a messenger fairy fluttered into view. The tiny creature, with diamond-sparkling wings and dressed in shimmering green, zipped towards Veronica, landing on the stack of papers in front of her.

  She dropped a rolled-up piece of paper on the desk and disappeared again, flying through the wall.

  Veronica unrolled the paper.

  The tiny note said, The principal requests your presence immediately.

  Oh crap. A summons from the principal in the middle of class was never a good sign.

  Immediately? What could be this important?

  Veronica turned back to her class, a feeling of dread growing inside her. She was going to have to leave them unsupervised, and she didn’t have much faith in their ability to keep the chaos under control. Mabel was smirking, Percy was still feeling his horns, and Cressida was wiping away silent tears.

  “I’m going to have to leave the discussion of the exam results for another day,” she said. “I need to go to the principal’s office. Please make your way to the library while you wait for your next lesson to start. If I hear of any further trouble while I’m gone, I promise there will be extra assignments for everyone.”

  Several students groaned.

  They all got up, gathered their books and pens, and filed out the door.

  Now to see what the principal wanted.

>
  Chapter Two

  Veronica hurried through the winding corridors of the ancient castle that housed the Oakhurst School of Magic. Ahead in the corridor flickered the occasional glimmer of the message fairy. Those pesky little things liked to hang around and wait for the subject of their messages to react before returning to their masters and trumpeting the arrival of the invited guest.

  They were everywhere, they could be nosey and were often annoying.

  She arrived at the principal’s office and its heavy wooden door bearing the brass plaque with “Principal Mrs. Everhart” engraved on it.

  She knocked.

  Mrs. Everhart’s voice sounded from within. “Come in, Miss Mayflower.” Of course, the fairies had already told her who was outside.

  Veronica entered the office, which was cluttered with stacks of parchment, magical textbooks, and enchanted quills that floated lazily through the air, taking notes of their own accord. Behind the desk sat Mrs. Everhart, her sharp eyes peering over her half-moon spectacles. Despite her short statue and grey-streaked hair, the principal had a presence that could fill the room. She was generally well-respected by students and staff alike.

  “Ah, Veronica. Thank you for coming,” Mrs. Everhart began. “Sit down.”

  She gestured at the velvet-covered chair on the side of the desk closest to the door.

  “You called for me?” Veronica said. She tried to keep the sense of trepidation she felt out of her voice.

  “Yes, I’ve called you here because we have a rather delicate situation on our hands. It involves Mrs. Marsh... and a rabbit.”

  “A rabbit?”

  Mrs. Marsh was a teacher of magical animal husbandry. She was in charge of the school’s animal house, which contained frogs and lizards and newts. Also crickets and snakes, pigeons, crows and, yes, rabbits. Not just one rabbit. Multiple rabbits. Lots of rabbits, in fact.

  Mrs. Marsh was also known for being old and increasingly absent-minded, and maybe that was the issue more than anything else.

  “Yes. One of her rabbits has gone missing.”

  “Is that an urgent problem?”

  “I’ll explain. Mrs. Marsh had the rabbit with her at the Oakhurst village fair last weekend. She’s rather old and forgetful, as you know, and this isn’t the first time she’s misplaced something. But the difference now is… the school is under scrutiny.”

  “What do you mean—scrutiny?”

  Mrs. Everhart sighed, leaning back in her chair. “The accreditation board from the Academy of Magic will be visiting soon. As you know, we’re trying to get accredited as an institute of Pure Magic—something that could raise the prestige of Oakhurst considerably. But if word gets out that we’ve lost control of a magical creature, we’ll be seen as careless. Incompetent even.”

  “Just for a single rabbit?” Veronica said.

  “They are very strict.”

  “But…” She spread her hands. “They can see hundreds of rabbits in the fields. How is anyone going to tell the difference between Mrs. Marsh’s rabbit and all the other rabbits? What’s so special about this rabbit?”

  “You will know that she has some interesting creatures.”

  “That’s true.”

  Some of Mrs. Marsh’s rabbits had some unpredictable abilities. Last year, one of the animals had accidentally multiplied during a Potions class, leaving dozens of rabbits hopping through the halls of the school for days. And there were rumours that she also had a rabbit that could hop through time, though Mrs. Marsh always dismissed those as exaggerations.

  “It’s one of the more… interesting individuals that is missing,” Mrs. Everhart said. “And I would very much like it to be returned to its cage before the committee arrives. We don’t want the committee to witness the wanton multiplication of rabbits through the dimension of time.”

  “Do you know anything about where the rabbit might have gone?” Veronica asked. “I mean, if it’s the time-travelling one, we don’t have much chance of chasing it.” Also, if it was that one, she couldn’t see it creating an issue for the visiting committee, unless, of course, it chose to re-appear in a meeting dressed as an Egyptian mummy.

  Yeah.

  Maybe it was an issue.

  “We don’t,” Mrs. Everhart replied, her tone grim. “That’s the problem. She says she took it back to the school, but doesn’t remember for sure. The last time anyone saw it was at the fair. It’s been days, and no one has seen it since. We need to recover it before the accreditation board arrives. We can’t afford even the slightest sign that we are not in control of our magic here.”

  Veronica thought back to the fair. It had been a pleasant day, sunny and warm. She had visited with her parents.

  The Oakhurst village fair had been packed with people, both magical and non-magical, from all over. If the rabbit had wandered off, it could be anywhere by now—loose in the village, or somewhere out in the nearby woods. Or if someone had stolen it, then who knew?

  Mrs. Everhart steepled her fingers and looked directly at Veronica. “This is where I’m asking for your help. You were quite successful in solving the last mystery we faced—the missing spellbook from the spellcraft tower. You have a knack for getting to the bottom of things and people, especially our students, trust you.”

  “I’m flattered, but I’m not sure if it’s going to be so simple this time,” Veronica said.

  Her solving the previous issue had been much more about coincidence than skill, and she still shuddered at the embarrassing episode of forcing teachers to drink a truth potion.

  “We need someone who can think critically, keep a level head, and most importantly, keep this quiet. The last thing we need is gossip among the students or the village. I would like you to attend the school board meeting this evening. We’re organising a small team to help with the search. Your insights will be invaluable. Also, I understand that this may take you away from some of your teaching duties. The school will cover any lessons you can’t give.”

  That swayed her, because her students were more important to her than immediate threats to the school’s reputation, but then again, without reputation, there would be no students. “All right, I’ll help. But I’ll need details—what kind of magic can this rabbit actually do? And where should I start?”

  Mrs. Everhart gave her a relieved smile, though the tension didn’t leave her eyes. “I’ll give you everything we know. Mrs. Marsh will be available for questions. You can ask her about what has happened and about the rabbit’s specific details.”

  Veronica nodded, rising from her chair. As she turned to leave, Mrs. Everhart’s voice stopped her at the door.

  “Thank you, Miss Mayflower. The reputation of the school depends on this.”

  Veronica gave a brief nod and left the office. The school’s reputation depended on the whereabouts of a single rabbit? That seemed a bit steep. There had to be something else that she wasn’t aware of.

  Anyway, since she had already dismissed her class, she might as well have a look in the animal house to see what was going on there.

  Chapter Three

  Veronica found Mrs. Marsh in the dim, cluttered animal house on the edge of the school grounds, a building full of cages and enclosures with a wide range of creatures.

  There were crows teasing an owl in an adjacent cage. Big black bats hung from a wire frame in a large cage. Two geese stuck their necks out of a cage and honked loudly.

  Mrs. Marsh was sitting on a wooden stool, petting a sluggish salamander that was basking under a weak heat charm. Mrs. Marsh’s silver hair hung in loose waves around her lined face, and her robes were smudged with traces of dirt and animal feed.

  “Mrs. Marsh?” Veronica called, stepping inside. The air smelled of damp hay and the faint hint of magic—old, comforting magic that lingered around the creatures housed here.

  Mrs. Marsh turned and gave a slow smile, her eyes twinkling with a warmth that made her forgetfulness almost endearing. “Ah, Veronica, dear. Come to see the menagerie, have you?”

 

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