Page 22 of Magical Academy for Delinquents
“What kind of spell was that?” I asked, careful to keep my tone soft and the awe out of it. If I’d learned anything from running with the rougher crowds at my old academies it was never be too impressed. But as I glanced at Zavier’s face, I didn’t just see a hot guy with an overconfidence issue anymore. I saw potential.
But Zavier just smiled at me and said, “Trade secret.” Then he stood, letting my foot fall to the floor. He gathered up his clothes and left me alone in the girls’ locker room, wondering what the hell had just happened. I puzzled it over as I stripped down and walked into the stream of hot water.What Zavier did was unheard of. Even master spell writers can’t—
Banging on the locker door interrupted my thoughts.
“Dunemark, class is about to start!” Coach Lundy boomed. “You’re gonna be late!”
Fuck.
Chapter 10
When I walkedinto the Intersection of Magic and Science, it looked like a young Jackie Chan had hijacked a classroom. Professor Martin Ho was short and skinny but wore all black—at first glance, at another school, he might have been a target for student ridicule. But when I glanced around the room and saw no one was slouching or hiding a phone under their desk, not even the guy with the teardrop tattoos under his eye, I knew Ho was a hardass.
The professor had a vicious gleam in his eyes when I stepped inside late with wet hair. His eyebrows rose slightly, and I wondered if he’d expected me to show up in a guy’s uniform. My eyes narrowed as I thought back to the admissions director. She was the first administrator ever to ignore my skanky first day, bad impression uniform. Suspicious.
I’d have to ask Zavier if the uniform swapping had happened before. He hadn’t seemed too shocked. I wondered if the faculty didn’t have a low-key hazing system set up for shithead students. If they did, they’d just gained an ounce of my respect and resentment simultaneously.
Ho didn’t appreciate the moment I took to have this revelation in the doorway of his classroom. “Ms. Dunemark, we’re soprivilegedyou decided to grace us with your presence. Please, since you’ve interrupted my lecture, come to the front and tell the class all you know about Alchemiken.” He gestured wide, stepping to the side of his desk and leaving a wide, gaping space in front of his whiteboard for me.
Great. Unlike other academies, where teachers were intimidated or bribable, Metamorphose seemed to staff jaded sadists: coaches who liked to let girls run in boots and leather and now professors who wanted to make an example of me in my first three seconds. The snickers started up from my classmates and my stomach started to churn. I shoved the discomfort away. I let the energy buzzing under my skin build just a bit so I could ride the adrenaline.Fuck that Ho,I thought, internally high fiving my own punniness.
Ho didn’t know it, but any attempt to put me on the spot was just practice for later. What if I got caught in a restricted area in the Pinnacle? There was nothing else for me to do but pull this the fuck off with an arrogant, bored smirk on my face.
I walked down the aisle, stepping over a guy’s foot when he stuck it out and attempted to trip me at the last second.
I kept my eyes off the students, and on the projects that were clearly displayed on a table behind Ho’s desk. The first magically-assisted construction project in history—a bank or something in Hong Kong—had been recreated in foam board. It was shaped like a snowflake, or a lace doily set on its side. The windows were all black to create the illusion of holes. My father had taken me and Matthew to see that building when we were younger. Matthew had been in awe of it. I’d been sad that they didn’t have falling snow effects as you walked through the front door. My nine-year-old self had found it lacking. The foam board replica was decent, but someone had gotten lazy with the knife. On foam board, you had to replace your razor every few cuts. Otherwise it got jagged. My Pinnacle replica at Medeis had had the same issue. I stopped myself from clicking my tongue.
A couple mediocre, saggy cardboard messes were next. Finally, there was a very precise rendering of the Pinnacle building in black, which was interesting, because the Pinnacle building, in all its hubris and glory, was pure white marble and ridiculous fake gold paneling reminiscent of the ancient Greek Colosseum stacked thirty stories tall. The metaphor of god-like superiority was a little overstated in my opinion. Way too overstated, per the person who’d turned the gods and goddesses carved on the friezes above the arches into snakes and salamanders. Interesting. I’d have to be nosy one day and find out whose project that was.
I turned once I reached the teacher’s desk and hopped up on an empty corner. I crossed my legs, letting the loner uniform skirt (that was two sizes too big and rolled at my hips so it wouldn’t slide down) flare out. I tossed some wet chunks of hair back over my shoulder and grinned out at the class. Twenty faces, in various shades of smirking or bored disinterest, stared back. I scanned them quickly. Eighteen guys. Two girls. Fucking shit, that was a lotta guys. I’d seen the numbers before coming here. But the real-life vision made me momentarily question how many of these idiots broke out of here to get laid. I was betting a lot of them did.
My eyes stopped when they reached a guy in the back corner, partially hidden by shadow. I let my vision brighten a bit so I could see him better. It was Malcolm—the blond hair with the fifties side part, the blue eyes made grey by the burnt-out lightbulbs above him. The sense of confidence that radiated from him was palpable across the room. Even though he wore the same black collared shirt and red pants as the rest of the guys in the room, he was different. His vibe wasn’t tough guy or machismo. It was sexy, 1950s Rat-Pack, smooth operator confidence. Immediately, I felt like I knew who had made the Pinnacle replica. Malcolm stared back at me with bored disinterest. Of course, he didn’t have a file on me.
I, on the other hand, knew that he ate mac and cheese nearly every day, read philosophy but often cursed the writers as he read, and loved nothing better than a good debate. He’d been on MAD’s debate team before it was disbanded for devolving into a brawl during a tournament. I deliberately licked my lips, drawing his eyes to them. Then I turned away, to face the class.
“Alchemiken,” I said, adopting a nasal professory voice and steepling my fingers in front of my lips, “is a highly controversial topic.” The nasal thing got annoying, so I switched to my normal voice. “Named after alchemy, the age-old proposition of turning lead into gold, thisdelightfulterm is what magical and norm scientists around the world are searching for: a magical gene. In other words, a genetic key that would turn a norm into a magical.” I waggled my fingers like I was sprinkling fairy dust, exaggerating my tone and earning a snort from one of the guys in the front row, a dude with a fro.
“What have studies found so far?” Ho demanded.
“You mean our published studies or the ones in third world countries where they inject rats and chimps and babies in China with supposedmagical genes?”
I saw Malcolm’s eyes widen a bit and it was a struggle not to look directly at him. I’d gained his attention. Now I had to keep his interest. I knew I’d come across as a suck up and a nerd. But I didn’t care what Ho thought of me one way or another. I cared what Malcolm thought.
“Why don’t you tell me about any study you know?” the professor said.
“Well, the test tube babies were a bust,” I stated. “China’s tried at least three times to ‘breed’ magical children like livestock. One of the doctors initially claimed success but then it was discovered he was falsifying his records.”
“Animal studies?”
“There was a claim that some rats got Icefire. But here’s the thing. Your subject has to be intelligent enough to use the magic in order to prove it to me.”
“You’re citing the Vandillon studies. You don’t believe them?”
“I need more than a few frozen rats to believe they had power and weren’t chucked soaking wet into a freezer.”
“What about any local studies?” Ho asked.
A spitball hit me in the face.
