Page 77 of Magical Academy for Delinquents
“Sure.”
“Right now?” I bit my lip.
“Now, now?” Z asked.
I nodded.
He sighed. But then he strolled out the door with a jaunty, “Don’t do anything dirty without me.” He sped away so quickly that all that was left was a rush of wind.
When Zavier got back, I had everything ready for the projection spell. My computer was packed away and my flash drive was tucked into my pocket.
Zavier held up a glowing navy amulet with a little smirk on his face. “Definitely owe me a blow—is your dad still here?” he looked around the room.
My dad grabbed onto Grayson’s hand and lifted it to smack Z across the face.
“Hey!” Z protested.
At the same time, Grayson also yelled. “What the fuck?” He jerked his arm down.
“Yeah, Z, my dad’s still here. So cut the naughty jokes. Sorry he stole your arm, Grayson. He’s been working on possessions in case we run into trouble at the Pinnacle and he needs to help out.”
Grayson shook out his arm. “Feels weird. But don’t worry about it, nemesis. I’ve had worse.”
Malcolm grinned from his seat. “Possessions. That’s a new one. Never worked with a ghost before. This could be interesting.”
I tried not to crow over the fact that Malcolm had just sounded like he might opt in. I tried to keep my face nonchalant as I glanced over at him. But that was hard as fuck when he sent a zing of heat across my panties. I sucked in a breath.
Dad asked, “What’s wrong?”
I shook my head, face growing red as Malcolm hid a smile behind his hands. “Just thinking through my spell.” I blew out a breath. “Okay then. This is what I’d like to try. Amulets only work on living things—”
“Thank goodness because I’m not a huge fan of talking corpses,” Zavier stuck out his tongue and shivered, making a disgusted noise.
I glanced over at Evan, who had leaned over to whisper something to Malcolm. I cleared my throat. “Evan … is it okay if Dad possesses you again?”
He straightened. Then my handsome stalker nodded.
I tossed the amulet to him. “Great. Can you go sit by the wall where we had the projector showing?”
As Evan dragged his chair over with a screech, I grabbed my parchment and wand. I tapped my wand against my chin, splattering myself with ink. But I didn’t bother to wipe it off. Magic ink tasted a little like strawberry jam. There were weirdos on campus who were even addicted to it. I stared at the knots on the table and made sure I had the spell that Professor Wolfe had used to show his memories clear in my head. Then I wrote.
A floating mirror appeared above Evan’s head.
“Evan, can you think about that time you beat Matthew at Fortnite?” They had been vicious rivals over the video game.
Evan grinned and the memory of my freckled brother pouting appeared on the surface of the mirror. “Okay, keep thinking about that. I want to try something. Dad, can you possess Evan and then start thinking about the Pinnacle?”
All these years, I’d been basing my schematics off what dad said, having him look over my shoulder and double check everything. My stomach fizzed with excitement at the possibility that I might actually get to see things for myself.
Dad walked over to Evan and sat down on top of him, like he was trying to sit in Evan’s lap. But he sank through my stalker’s giant thighs and leaned back until he faded into completely into Evan’s body.
The image on the floating mirror flickered. Matthew’s face faded, replaced by a security guard at the Pinnacle. The man had huge bags under his eyes that gave him the appearance of a hound dog. He scratched at the chess rook and diamond logo on his shirt as he glanced over at a monitor. “Please proceed to the shifter sniffing station.”
We floated through the halls of the Pinnacle, to places the public couldn’t go. My dad’s memory of floating into the breakroom crossed the screen. He approached a stout man wearing a tan suit and a woman with purple hair whose face was turned away. I watched as a thin hand held out an orange amulet toward the fridge door—it must have been her hand. Immediately, my mind started doing calculations.
Malcolm must have read my mind because he said, “Honesty amulet. Crap. We’re gonna have to figure out how to get around that.” He raised his fingers to his lower lip and started plucking at it in thought.
We watched the worker’s thick hands reach right through the very realistic fridge shelves and grab onto something invisible just beyond them. Only once the man stepped forward and started descending could we see the rungs of the ladder. We heard a rushing sound, like water, and the view on the wall turned, looked down, and saw that two rungs down, the tube was engulfed in flame.
