Page 17 of Magical Academy for Delinquents
All I could do was smile weakly, because there was no chance in hell of that.
I turned to leave, but Claude stopped me. His back was to my mother as he turned to face me, so she couldn’t see the expression of pure evil on his face. “Don’t you want to give your dad a hug goodbye?”
If my mother hadn’t been there, I might have hit him with a bolt of UV light and tried to undo all that fucking youth magic he’d used on himself. And then I’d fucking burn his face until it was a roasted lobster. Maybe do the same to his dick if my beams could penetrate. But I couldn’t do any of that. Because then I wouldn’t get to walk out the front door, which was already open, beckoning me. So, I just glared at him and turned without a word.
Then, all too quickly, I was outside and in the private car, watching as the driver pulled away from mom. The separation hit me hard when I couldn’t see her anymore. Next time I saw my mother, I might have my brother back, I might be a criminal, or I might be dead. I put up the divider. The thoughts running through my head were too much, the emotions too big and bulky to hide with sleight of face. I couldn’t do it.
I hunched over and breathed through my nose, shoving everything else from my mind. I tried to focus on inhaling and exhaling and nothing else.
It worked—kind of. I held off on the tears during the car ride, but after I’d strapped myself in on the jet, I let loose. It felt like I’d just taken an irreversible step. And that scared me more than I thought it would. But by the time the plane touched back down, my mask was back. I was one hundred percent sass.
I changed in the airport restroom. When I came outside and found a town car waiting with a hot guy holding my name on a white board, I signaled. As he grabbed my bag, my driver wolf whistled.
I grinned and winked at him. He was kinda cute, if you were into the whole bulked up and bald thing.
"Jailbait," I responded. "For three more months. Wait. Shit. Two.” I laughed. “I forgot it’s February first.”
"Well, sugar, you can hold onto my number ‘til you’re legal. And then I'll give you anything you want.” He winked, but in a good-natured (aka not creeper) way that let me know he was half-joking.
I laughed. “Good to know." He couldn’t have hit thirty yet, so I wasn’t totally creeped out. In fact, I might have briefly even considered his offer if I’d been some other girl. But by the time I was eighteen, I fully expected to either be in prison or in the Bahamas, depending on how shit went down.
He shut me in the backseat, and I adjusted the black leather halter top that I'd put on instead of the normal, collared uniform shirt that MAD required. The halter had a silver zipper down the middle, and I unzipped it halfway as the driver climbed into his seat and watched in the rearview mirror. His eyes glittered as he caught a glimpse of my black bra. I rolled the plaid skirt once to make it a little shorter. The drivers’ fingers tightened on the steering wheel.
"Damn, girl. You better not do anymore or you’re gonna make me have a wreck,” he said as he started the car.
I said, “It’s important to make a good first impression." I tossed on a leather bracelet. Then I re-tied one of my chunky high-heeled boots.
My driver groaned. “You’re breaking my heart, girl. This get-up is all for some guy, isn’t it?”
“Yup.”
“He’s not worth it if you gotta change up everything for him.”
I laughed. “Thanks for the life advice.” And then I stared out the window. Because my driver had no idea what he was talking about. The guys I was heading toward were worth whatever it took. Because all my hopes hinged on them.
When we pulled up to Academie Metamorphose an hour later, it felt like pulling up to a magical mafia compound. The walls were made of brick stacked high above. The wrought iron gates were flanked by two guard towers with armed men inside them. It gave me the warm and fuzzies, staring up at them.
I swallowed down any nerves, though. This is what I’d wanted. What I needed. My leg jangled up and down despite my efforts to keep still.
The driver stopped at the gate as a guard inspected both our IDs and the trunk of the car before we were buzzed in. The car rolled slowly forward as a furious wind whipped past, just inside the gate, hurling dead leaf fragments north. But as soon as the gate was open wide, the wind died down to nothing. I unbuckled and turned in my seat, glancing up at a guard tower. One of the guards had his hand extended.
Interesting. They protected the gate with Force powers.
That wasn’t in the brochure,I snarked internally as my driver navigated down the curved road. I rolled down my window and stuck my hand outside to feel the band of thick air pressure that hovered just beyond the edges of the car, waiting to be released so it could bat at the leaves again. As soon as we were twenty feet from the gate, the wind whistled and rushed back across the road, an invisible wall of cold, whipping fury that blocked the gate. I watched it carefully. It extended about five feet on either side of the wrought iron, and then died off at the towers so that the guards had a clear line of sight in every direction.
I might need to split my time between recruiting and ensuring I can slip in and out of here at will,I thought, settling back into my seat as we drove for ten minutes through a forest. In the distance, I saw a group of students running. Their shirts were slick with sweat, even in the cold. I stuck out my tongue.Gross.I didn’t approve of that part of this damned school at all. But physical education seemed to be a big part of MAD’s ‘keep the fuckers in line’ strategy.
We rounded another curve and the forest opened to a sprawling lawn. I blinked when I first saw the stone lion. Of course, I’d swiped the letters from mother’s desk and hacked the emails on her computer, so I knew the school had two enchanted stone lions prowling the grounds for students’ “safety,” which was a shit cover for their real purpose—keeping us inside the walls. But I hadn’t been expecting the lions to be so massive. One tromped toward the trees, its feet making divots in the dirt. The fucker had to be ten feet tall, at least. And its eyes glowed an eerie red.
Damn.
I nodded my head in respect. This place was gonna be a bit more of a challenge than I’d thought. Going off campus would be good practice for the Pinnacle.
The car pulled into a circle drive made of grey pavers with a marble fountain in the middle of the turnaround. The fountain wasn't running because it was February, but it was still an impressive piece of classical sculpture: a nymph turning into a butterfly.They take their bullshit transformation logo far too seriously,I thought, rolling my eyes. Thank the Lord we did not have to wear little butterfly patches on our uniform shirts. I might have puked.
The administration building was at the very front. I studied it after I exited the car. It was a flat-faced stone building with a pitched roof that made me think of the school for girls in one of my favorite childhood books,The Little Princess;the building looked proper and grim at the same time.
A woman with a tight white bun and a crisp black suit came down the steps to greet me, reinforcing thatLittle Princessgoverness theme. Her heels clopped along the stones like a horse and her smile was wide and toothy as she said, "Hayley, welcome. I'm Josephine Nazer, Director of Admissions.” She didn’t shake my hand, though her smile widened a bit at my outfit, in a way that made me cringe and want to zip my shirt back up to cover my bra. I couldn’t tell if she was planning evil things or checking me out, but I didn’t like either option.
