Wolf Spell: Shifters Bewitched #1 Page 3

  The floors were polished wood. A curving staircase split at the landing, each half leading to one wing. At the back of the hall, I could just see light coming through an opening, but I wasn’t sure if it was a door, a window, or an optical illusion.

  “This way,” Eve said, leading me up the stairs.

  A huge, panoramic window exposed the rear grounds, illuminated by the almost day-bright moonlight. A stone courtyard led to a boxwood labyrinth, which ended just before the darkness of the forest.

  Eve took the west side of the staircase at the landing, and I followed.

  Yards of priceless hand knotted rug adorned the whole run of stairs. I wondered who had the task of cleaning this place.

  Hopefully not the students. Maybe that was how I would be expected to earn my free education. Had I come all this way just to be Cinderella-ed?

  Eve opened a wooden door and headed down a corridor that ended in an open circle of space that told me we must be in one of the turrets. The scent of fresh baked cookies filled the air.

  “This is the Bellwether House common area,” she told me. “You’ll spend free time here, conversing with other students in your house.”

  So I was a Bellwether? Just like that? She wasn’t even going to consult any form of predictive headwear first?

  I looked around appreciatively. The common area was at least three times the size of my apartment.

  A curved window seat spanned one whole side of the room. Big windows on the back wall overlooked a stone courtyard between the places where the east and west wings extended backward. The labyrinth and the trees were visible beyond the courtyard.

  The other side of the room was comprised of a nice little kitchen with cabinets built to the curve of the turret. A couple of round wooden tables with mismatched chairs stood at the center of the room.

  “Come on,” she said.

  There was another massive wooden door on the far side of the common area. She was already opening it by the time I crossed the room. We followed the corridor to the end, and she knocked on the last door on the left.

  “Come in,” a gentle voice called out.

  Eve opened the door to reveal a pretty room with wood floors, a pair of twin beds, two desks, two lamps and two big windows.

  A curvy girl with dark, curly hair sat on one of the beds with a paperback in her hands.

  “Good evening, Cori,” Eve said. “This is your new roommate, Bella. I expect you’ll show her the ropes?”

  “Yes, of course,” Cori said, scrambling out of bed. “Nice to meet you, Bella.”

  “I’ll leave you to it,” Eve said, before I could reply. “Good luck. Bella.”

  “Uh, thank you,” I said, wondering if I was allowed to called her by her first name now that we were on school grounds. But I was also pretty sure she hadn’t mentioned her last name.

  She was gone before I could formulate a question.

  “Hey,” I said to Cori, who was eyeing me like I was an exotic bird.

  “Is this your first year too?” I asked.

  “Second, but I got here in the middle of last year,” she said.

  “Was it hard getting used to everything?” I asked.

  I had been doing fine back in Pottsboro, but this seemed like a very different situation. I’ve never had a roommate before.

  “There are only ten or so girls in each year,” she said, her brown eyes twinkling. “It wasn’t too hard to make some friends and catch on. You’ll be just fine.”

  The door burst open behind me and I nearly jumped out of my shoes as two more young women strode in.

  “Coriander,” the first one shouted out joyfully. “Did you make those cookies?”

  “They smell amazing,” the other one added.

  The two women could not have been more different physically.

  The first was tall and athletic with blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail and bright blue eyes.

  The second was petite and slender with a cloud of long raven-colored hair hanging around her shoulders, and dark eyes so large they gave her a hungry look.

  “Who are you?” the big blonde asked, noticing that I didn’t belong.

  “Guys, this is Bella. She’s new,” Cori said. She looked pleased, like she had invented and built me herself. “Bella, this is Kendall, and this is Anya.”

  She pointed to the blonde first, and then the dark-haired girl.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said.

  “Legacy?” Kendall asked, her face blank.

  I blinked at her, at a total loss.

  “Did anyone else in your family ever attend this school?” dark-haired Anya asked me quietly.

  “Wh- oh, no,” I said. “Definitely not.”

  “Hm,” Kendall hummed dismissively, and turned back to Cori. “Cookies?”

  “They’re for after the ceremony,” Cori said with just a hint of a question mark at the end of the statement.

  “Ugh,” Anya sighed. “I almost forgot that was tonight.”

  “Once a month,” Cori shrugged.

  “I’m totally having one now,” Kendall decided, spotting the plate on Cori’s desk.

  We all watched as she took a cookie off the top of the pile and bit off a big bite.

  “See you out there,” she said over her shoulder with her mouth full as she headed out.

  “I don’t know how she wound up in our house,” Cori said thoughtfully.

  “The Bellwethers are pretty laid back,” Anya said. “You’ll like it.”

  I did like the sound of that.

  Cori sat down on the edge of her bed and Anya sat beside her.

  “What was all that about a ceremony tonight?” I asked, sitting on my bed, opposite them.

  “Oh, it’s just this dumb thing we do every full moon,” Cori said.

  “A witchy thing?” I asked, trying not to sound as curious as I felt.

  “Yeah, kind of,” she said. “How much do you know about this school?”

  “I only found out it existed last night,” I admitted.

  Anya’s eyes widened, making her look almost Bambi-like.

  “Well, you’ll soon learn that we have a mission,” Cori said. “It’s a long Latin poem, but it basically adds up to protecting the library.”

  “Is the local library in some sort of trouble?” I asked, wondering how far away the library even was. This wooded mountaintop didn’t exactly seem like the ideal place for government services. In my experience, most library problems were solved with things like bake sales. Maybe that explained the cookies.

  “The library here at the school,” Anya said. “It’s full of magic texts and artifacts.”

  “It’s almost more of a museum,” Cori added. “Anyway, we gain the library’s knowledge and in turn we protect it.”

  I nodded, wondering how literal protect it was supposed to be. Eve had said she taught combat…

  “And the Lord Protectors protect the castle,” Anya said.

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  Cori and Anya exchanged a quick look.

  “Are you talking about the stupid ceremony?” Kendall asked, striding back into the room. “These are good, Cori, I’m having another one.”

  Cori watched, looking very frustrated, as Kendall took another cookie.

  Kendall closed her eyes and moaned over the bite she took, then sat down beside me on the bed.

  “Did they tell you what it actually is?” Kendall asked.

  I shook my head slowly. “Not yet.”

  “It’s a tribute,” Kendall said meaningfully.

  That didn’t help at all.

  “What do you mean?” I asked when I realized she wasn’t planning to explain any more.

  “I mean, every single girl at this school is offered up to the Lord Protector,” Kendall said. “If he comes, that is.”

  “He never comes,” Cori said dismissively. “And don’t you have somewhere to be, Kendall?”

  “Fuck, I guess I’ve got to get back to my room for prep,” Kendall
said, jumping up. “See you.”

  As soon as she was gone, Cori breathed a sigh of relief and got up to hide the cookies.

  “The ceremony is no big deal, Bella,” Anya said. “It’s more of a formality. But we’ll be standing around the courtyard in the howling wind for an hour, so it’s good to have a snack after. Maybe we’ll make hot chocolate.”

  I swallowed down my anxiety as best I could and nodded to her.

  I didn’t belong in this place. I had known that much from the first sight of the sprawling estate. Hell, the carpet on the stairs had more class than I did.

  But it didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try.

  6

  Bella

  I followed Cori and Anya to the bath, all of us clutching towels and some kind of gowns or robes made from flowing white cotton.

  “So, what is the deal here exactly?” I asked.

  “We have to purify,” Cori said. “Basically just a shower.”

  “But don’t try to put on deodorant or anything afterward,” Anya cautioned.

  “Oh yeah, no scents, no nothing,” Cori said.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “No freaking clue,” Cori said. “But don’t try to get around it, or they’ll make you do it all over again.”

  “Noted,” I said.

  We had reached the staircase and I spotted a dozen other girls heading downstairs from the opposite wing.

  The halls, that had been so quiet when I arrived, were now teeming with women around my age carrying armloads of white fabric.

  Thankfully, no one seemed to take notice of me. They were too busy chatting and laughing. It seemed like a friendly environment, and one I would enjoy being part of. I felt myself let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

  We took a turn to the left at the bottom of the stairs and followed a hallway past what must have been the back of the kitchens.

  After a long walk past many doors, there were two steps down and I could hear the echo of voices over tile and hear the hiss of steam.

  “Here we go,” Cori said.

  We headed into a huge bathroom with dozens of shower heads sticking out of the walls at regular intervals. The floor was tiled a Caribbean blue and sloped toward a drain in the center. Soft light came in through slit-like glass block windows.

  But I hardly noticed the decor for the women, short and tall, heavy and thin, and in every color - naked women, bathing and drying off, moving busily around the humid space like it was the most natural thing in the world.

  I could feel the blood rush to my face. I tried to look away but there was nowhere to look.

  “It gets easier after the first time,” Cori murmured, taking me by the elbow and steering me to a shelf where she placed her towel and robe in bins marked with numbers. “Remember your number.”

  I would have an easy time remembering my lucky number, seven. When I placed my things down, I noticed someone had scrawled a bit of graffiti inside with a purple sharpie. It looked like a crow’s head, with lines coming off the top like a halo or a crown. Probably something from a band I’d never heard of, or maybe it was some kind of witch thing.

  I looked up to ask Cori about it, but she was already stripping down.

  Shit.

  Well, I could either prolong the inevitable, or I could get naked before anyone had time to notice me.

  The idea that being clothed might actually draw more attention had me pulling my sweater and t-shirt over my head without delay.

  By the time I was bare, Cori and Anya were heading to the showers. I followed and let the hot water pound away at me.

  Now that this was happening, I was feeling more okay about it. The soap was unscented and harsh, but it felt good to clean up after the long day of travel. And no one seemed to notice me.

  “Wash up ladies, and keep moving,” a matronly voice barked out.

  I opened my eyes to see a fully dressed professor in an emerald gown marching through, making me realize my nakedness all over again.

  “That’s Head Mistress Hart,” Cori murmured.

  “You guys ready?” Anya asked.

  “Sure,” I said, eager to be done with the whole process and back to the relative safety of my shared room.

  We headed over to collect our things.

  “I didn’t know it was summertime,” a familiar voice whispered.

  “Not funny, Kendall,” Cori said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked at the same time.

  “Anya’s got mosquito bites,” Kendall snickered and marched off.

  “Jesus,” Cori said.

  “It’s fine,” Anya shrugged. “No worse than what I heard in high school.”

  “We’re not in high school,” Cori fumed.

  “Kendall’s kind of an asshole,” I noted.

  “She can be okay,” Anya said, shrugging.

  “Move, ladies, move,” Headmistress Hart trumpeted on her way back through.

  Up close, I could see that she looked younger than her voice and posture suggested. She might have been in her late thirties or early forties, a trim Black woman, with short hair and high cheekbones.

  Cori led the way to the next room where we hurriedly threw our towels in a bin and pulled on the snowy white robes we’d been carrying.

  They looked surprisingly fantastic on every figure and skin tone, though we did all look a bit dramatic.

  “Wow, it looks like we’re all getting married,” I joked weakly.

  Cori and Anya exchanged a look.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Anya said. “It’s just that you can’t joke once we get out there. It’s all super serious.”

  “Juniper Krantz, are you putting on deodorant?” Headmistress Hart demanded of a startled looking girl who was holding a stick of the offending item.

  “Get back in there, scrub down quickly, and you’re on detention for a week,” the Headmistress told her. “No scents, no exceptions. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, Headmistress,” everyone chorused.

  She nodded and followed the chastened Juniper back to the showers, ostensibly to be sure she scrubbed off her deodorant.

  “Ready?” Cori asked.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “No,” Anya said, “But it doesn’t really matter, so let’s just get it over with.”

  Together, we headed through the last doorway and out into the stone courtyard. It was freezing out - October in the mountains of Pennsylvania had more teeth than it did in the city. And the bright moonlight reflecting off the stones somehow made it seem even colder.

  I expected the cold ground to be the worst part, but somehow, my bare feet were warmed by the stones.

  “There’s a hot spring below the courtyard,” Anya whispered, as if sensing my confusion. “Lucky, right?”

  Damned straight it was lucky. I wasn’t sure how long I would have lasted without it. My wet hair already felt like it was forming long, chestnut icicles in the breeze.

  We met up with a bunch of other girls, forming a semi-circle around the courtyard. More women joined us until the whole courtyard was encircled in white-robed students.

  There was a kind of hush over the group, as if we were in a church. The only sound was the breeze rustling our cotton robes, releasing the scent of crisp clean air and just the lightest hint of soap.

  At last, Headmistress Hart joined us. She stood outside the circle, watching over the assembled students.

  More women, who I assumed were teachers, lined up against the back wall of the castle to oversee the event. They watched silently as a few more students joined the circle.

  When the last of the stragglers had taken their place, the headmistress began to speak.

  “We gather together here in the sacred circle,” she said, her clear voice ringing out against the stones. “We perform a sacred duty.”

  “We perform a sacred duty,” the students chanted back.

  “The library shares her sacred knowledge with us,” the headmistr
ess went on. “We protect her.”

  “We protect her,” we all echoed.

  I was getting the hang of this.

  “The library shares sacred knowledge, the witches give their gifts to protect the library,” she went on. “The guardians protect the castle.”

  “The guardians protect the castle,” we repeated.

  “The guardians give their strength to protect the castle,” she went on. “We entrust our fates to the guardians.”

  “We entrust our fates to the guardians,” I repeated with the others, even though this part sounded a little more mysterious.

  Without warning, a shiver shot through me, as if I had touched a live wire.

  I was standing completely still, but my heart began to race like I was doing jumping jacks.

  Something is coming.

  The headmistress and the others were still calmly reciting their words. They didn’t seem to notice that anything was amiss.

  But deep inside me, in some primal part that was usually kept locked away, an awareness was rising.

  My pulse pounded like I was running for my life.

  The monster is almost here.

  He was coming for me. I was sure of it. He was coming to rip my heart out of my body and gorge himself on it. My chest already ached like it had been hollowed out.

  There was a rustle of motion in the boxwood maze, followed by the sound of footsteps, causing Headmistress Hart’s voice to break off mid-chant. As one, we held our collective breath. Even the breeze seemed to stop in anticipation.

  The guardian stepped out of the labyrinth, eyes blazing.

  He was taller than any man I had ever seen. His long, dark hair brushed his bare chest and skimmed along the enormous muscles of his upper arms.

  His bearing was that of a predator, confident and cagey. But it was the expression in those pale blue eyes that held me captive.

  I could barely breathe, and my heart drummed in quiet desperation.

  “Go on,” he growled.

  His deep voice seemed to reverberate in my bones, warming and softening me.

  Headmistress Hart hurriedly began the chant again, but her calls and the students’ responses sounded like they were coming from far away.

  All of my senses were entangled in the guardian, attuned to his every move.