Page 33 of Phoenix Academy: Madness

Forcing my lips to close before more words come pouring out of me unbidden, I wait for Xavier to say something like,uh-huh, wow,or maybeyou sure do talk a lot.Instead, to my shock, he reaches across the table and gently puts his hand over mine.

"It's a hard transition, being away from your family. You've been through so much. Give it a few weeks before you decide how you feel about this place."

I blink at him, heat rising to my cheeks, and wonder inanely what my blushing face looks like underneath my crazy blue hair. "No one's tried to murder me," I concede, "so it hasn't been that bad."

"Yet," David mutters.

"What?"

"No one's tried to murder youyet." He grabs a green bean off his plate and tears it in half like it's a strip of bacon, eyes narrowed mirthlessly in my direction. "Give it time. Someone's always trying to murder the students around here. Especially the weird new ones."

How charming.

If I die—again—and come back to life—again—I know the first person I'll finger as my murderer.

Chapter 16

The restof my classes after lunch are a series of physical torture and complete confusion. I didn't realize that I was studying to become some kind of self-defense specialist who can kill a man with her pinky finger, but apparently that's what they teach around here.

Yohan Cheng, my teacher for Phoenix Fire Casting 101, has a serious, no-nonsense attitude, which makes sense considering the fact that he's trying to get a bunch of eighteen and nineteen-year-old idiots to learn how to control fire. Our classroom is built out of brick and fire-resistant materials, with a metal desk bolted to the floor, proof of the disasters that have come before me.

No wonder one of the buildings on campus burned down. A student probably did it.

There are three other students in my class, all newborn phoenix from long lines of phoenix blood, all of whom were inducted in some ceremony to see if they'd be reborn the moment they died. One of them has been a phoenix for long enough that she knows how to control her fire, but the other two see pretty clueless, despite being rich boys from phoenix families.

Yohan is, apparently, the king of mental torture. He forces me to concentrate on each breath, to empty my mind, and to think through where I might cast my magic. His lessons help me figure out one other thing: how I'm going to keep my emotions in check well enough to avoid turning the entire campus into violent feral beasts.

So yeah. Yohan is the master of torture, but I can admit that there's a need for his class.

Thankfully, I've been a witch long enough that I know how to center my awareness and channel my thoughts and intentions into magical action. I come out of my first fire class unscathed, both physically and mentally, and breathe a sigh of relief.

Group Combat and Weapons Combat are different.

Jared Fisk, the Group Combat teacher, seems to get something out of torturing students. He put us into two groups and had us essentially pummel each other to the point of exhaustion, then sent us to our next class with a smile on his face.

On the other hand Kade, the Weapons Combat teacher, at least seems to want us to have fun—eventually. Our first class covers basic handheld knives of the three to five inch variety, and we mostly learn all the ways in which we can be disarmed and stabbed to death if we don't know what we're doing.

I find myself glancing over towards the guns in the safe more than once, especially the long-barreled hunting rifles. There are targets on one end of the classroom, perfectly primed for a few headshots. But apparently gunfire is left to the more advanced classes, and until then we'll be playing with rubber weapons. According to Kade, our intro class is mostly devoted to teaching us hownotto fuck things up completely.

By the time classes are over, I almost look forward to my research project with Xavier up in the library. For one thing, I'll hopefully get to sit down and nurse my many new bruises. And for another, I'll get to spend some time with the nicest of the three shifters I've somehow bonded myself to—one with a face that isverynice to look at and a physique I wouldloveto run my hands over.

So, yeah. I may have fucked up and accidentally turned three predatory shifters into my witch familiars. But at least I picked some nice eye candy to look at as we untangle my huge mistake.

His student ID practically burns a hole in the center of my palm as I run it through the door scanner and hear the lock click open. There are books on the other side of the doors I push through, more books than I thought even existed about supernatural creatures and magic. Shelves extend from the floor to the ceiling and go far back into the belly of the library, which curves around to hug both sides of the Great House. Rows and rows of books greet my eyes, so many that I almost drop Xavier's ID in my excitement.

Ifthisis the library inside Phoenix Academy, the libraries at the mage schools must be the size of a city block each. All that knowledge, all that power—hoarded forever, away from the eyes of those who might use it to protect ourselves.

To think, for centuries witches have been hunted out of existence so thoroughly that we've lost more knowledge than we even know. How many spells, I wonder bitterly, will never be spoken aloud again? All because we have no schools like this one, built with wealth and power, kept secret and safe by the hands of mages.

Shaking off my bitterness, I run through Xavier's instructions in my head. There was a back corner where he wanted to meet, one he was sure would have the information we need, if it's even here. Apparently his class before this is a free study lab, so he was already here—sans his ID, I guess—and may have even found the information we're looking for.

Selfishly, I find myself hoping that he'll never find out what we need to know in order to undo the instinctual spell that made them my familiars. I don't want to be alone here, and I don't want to say goodbye—at least, not to Xavier, and maybe Reggie.

David can fuck off forever, big dick and all.

If I hadn't seen what he's got to work with, I wouldn't even be thinking of him at all. Except when he annoys me. Or glowers in my direction. Or turns into a wolf and leaps out of nowhere to protect me.

Shaking off my thoughts, I turn around the tall bookshelves in the library and face the corner where I'm supposed to meet Xavier—only to find myself looking at not one, buttwoshifter boys.

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