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MillionNovel > The Aurelian Legacy > Grimlock School of Interdisciplinary Magicks

Grimlock School of Interdisciplinary Magicks

    The next two weeks do little to lift my mood. I’ve yet to manage so much as a spark of magic in my lessons with Horsewood, who I can tell is losing patience. Making matters worse, Mikhail seizes every opportunity to taunt me over my magical failures, often wondering aloud what the Council will do once they discover their mistake. Though part of me wants to hit him when he does this, another part knows that he’s voicing my very own fear.


    Outside of magic lessons, I spend my free time exploring James Manor. Now that Beast Control has cleared out the household monsters—despite what anyone says, pest is far too light a term—the house feels mildly safer. Though not so safe that I would dare walk the halls without my FireEye. I still hear occasional scurrying and thumping from dark corners and stairwells and have little doubt that the monsters in the house still outnumber the people.


    James Manor itself is a very unnatural house. There are stairwells that lead to nowhere. Hidden nooks behind paintings. Doors with nothing behind them. On the third floor, there’s a room that causes me to lose my train of thought every time I go inside. Another makes me so sleepy that it’s all I can do to leave before sinking to the floor for a nap. Motivated by my dislike of Alistair, I even brave the plant cellar again to reclaim my mother’s journal before he can find it.


    Odd incidents continue to crop up. Fires go out of their own accord. Furniture switches itself around when Alistair moves to sit somewhere. Windows fly open during torrential downpours. Rugs drag themselves out from beneath Mikhail’s feet. These events terrified me at first. But as time went on, I couldn’t help noticing that these small attacks happen only when my uncle and cousin are around.


    Indeed, there have been multiple instances in which random doors have inexplicably locked themselves when Alistair tries to open them—including his own bedroom door. Yet, when I try the same door soon after, it opens with ease. One morning, Alistair was late for a meeting with Atticus because he couldn’t leave the manor and had to find me for help.


    Mikhail hasn’t fared much better. On multiple occasions, I’ve witnessed him tripping over nothing in particular while walking around the manor. I initially attributed this to clumsiness, but after the same thing happened a third, then fourth time—when he was clearly watching where he was going—I knew something else was at play.


    Outside the manor, the welcome board continues to change its message at random, and while I regularly receive friendly greetings, my uncle and cousin are welcomed with a much different vocabulary.


    These events have all but confirmed my earlier theory: whatever is haunting the manor seems to have a vendetta against my uncle and cousin.


    But the small boost this knowledge gave my spirits is squashed flat when, after another futile lesson with Horsewood, Waldon informs me that I’m due to start school the following week. And the real shocker?


    School in Aurelia takes place at night.


    So, at sunset on Monday, I change into my new school uniform. A navy vest over a white collared shirt, a plaid skirt, and a purple gardy—a type of tie in the signature color of one’s order. Then I start downstairs for dinner, stomach so knotted that I can’t even bring myself to properly laugh when I pass a bathroom where an eager-to-help mirror is harassing Mikhail.


    “You missed a spot, dear… just there…”


    Through the crack in the door, I spot Mikhail shaving his face in the mirror.


    “Stop moving. You’re messing me up—”


    “I’m only trying to help—”


    “I—told—you—to—shut—up!”


    “Well now,” says the mirror, tutting. “If you would only work with me, rather than against, we might fix that hairy face of yours—”


    “Shut up!” roars Mikhail. But then his eyes catch mine in the mirror’s distorted reflection. Cheeks turning pink, he slams the bathroom door. The mirror scolds him on the other side.


    When I enter the dining room, Alistair is at the table scanning a newspaper. The front page shows a picture of a thin, pale man with hollow, sunken cheeks and a carpet of matted black hair. The headline above catches my attention: HODGE DAVIS APPROVED FOR FINAL APPEAL, TRIAL TO BEGIN IN NOVEMBER.


    My heart stumbles. For the first time in days, I forget all about school as anger makes a swift and salty return, flooding every pore in my body, consuming every sense.


    No… not anger. Rage.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    I glare hard at the picture, trying to burn a hole through it with my mere gaze, my brain screaming all manner of curses and insults at the man as though he might hear me.


    The door flies open so forcefully that it slams into the wall, and I start. A scowling Mikhail with a rather nasty cut on his cheek stomps into the room, Drax swooping in after him. Alistair sets the paper down and raises a brow at his son.


    “I hate this place,” complains Mikhail, plopping down in a chair next to his father, arms folded in a tight pretzel across his chest. His uniform is similar to mine: dark gray trousers with a white button-down shirt and a purple gardy beneath a navy vest.


    Drax rubs his reptilian head against Mikhail’s cheek as though to comfort him. Mikhail in turn trails a delicate finger down Drax’s long, narrow throat—the only one capable of drawing out any sort of affection from Mikhail.


    As Prunella enters with our plates, Alistair turns to his son. “Mikhail, I will need you to accompany your cousin to Grimlock. You can show her where to go.”


    Mikhail’s face falls. So does mine. The knot in my stomach tightens again, and the newspaper article is pushed from my thoughts.


    We eat in silence. Since my appetite has abandoned me, I sit there twirling my spoon in a circular motion through my soup, anxiety pressing higher with each tick of the clock.


    I’m going to be the only student at a magic school who can’t do magic. Even Horsewood seemed to pity me at our last lesson.


    A loud splatter rips me from my thoughts. Alistair’s glass of red wine has toppled over, drenching his plate and pouring liquid into his lap.


    “Flipping fangs—” says Alistair, swiping angrily at his luxury suit with a napkin.


    Perhaps it’s down to the hysteria I feel welling up inside but… I can’t help it. A bubble of laughter escapes my throat. I try to pass it off as a cough, but when I look up, Alistair’s glaring hotly down the table at me.


    “Prunella,” he calls, gaze never leaving me. The woman emerges at once from behind the door to the scullery. “I need a refill,” he says, holding his glass over his shoulder.


    The fact that I never seem to be the target of these mysterious episodes has not escaped Alistair. Still, he’s stopped trying to blame me, thanks to my magical ineptitude. Even he can no longer deny that the manor is indeed haunted—and, more important, that the ghost doesn’t like him.


    ***


    “So tell me,” says Mikhail as we leave the manor, stepping out into the hazy night. “What do you think the other students will say when they find out you can’t do magic?”


    Heat flares at my ears. This very question has been plaguing me all weekend.


    “After all,” Mikhail continues, “even if the other orders didn’t have their own inferior magic, at least they wouldn’t be completely useless, what with wolfing out or sprouting wings and all. But a witch who can’t do magic? Now that’s just pathetic.” He shrugs. “But then again, maybe it’s not your fault. Maybe you’re not a witch, after all. Eventually the Council will have to consider that possibility, don’t you think?”


    I stare straight ahead, trying to ignore him.


    “I mean, you haven’t even attracted a familiar,” Mikhail goes on, when I don’t say anything. “I wonder if they can sense your incompetence—ow!”


    I look down; a lumpy gray rat with bulbous green eyes has scurried across the path and sunk its sharp teeth into Mikhail’s ankle. I jump away, then look closer…


    There’s something familiar about those green eyes.


    “Wretched thing!” says Mikhail through gritted teeth, kicking it off.


    We continue walking in silence. Mikhail limps along, grimacing in pain, which seems to have shut him up, much to my relief. But it’s short-lived when, midway down the wooded path, it begins to rain.


    “Oh no,” says Mikhail in mock concern, looking up at the night sky, its stars shrouded behind a thick cover of clouds. “Do you mind conjuring an umbrella for us?”


    My lip curls.


    Mikhail drags a hand down his face. “Oh, that’s right. You can’t. Not to worry.” He makes a show of skillfully waving his hand in a circular motion. “Evoco umbra.” In a blaze of brilliant purple, a large umbrella fans out over our heads and follows us as we walk, as though some puppeteer were guiding it with invisible strings. “Good thing I’m here,” says Mikhail, looking smug.


    We make our way onto Whispering Pine Road, where people huddle beneath umbrellas much like our own.


    “You know, you’re awfully quiet tonight.” Mikhail sniffs the air. “Nervous over your first day at Grimlock?”


    “Enough,” I snarl.


    “It’s okay, I would be too,” he says, as we weave our way down the busy street. “It’s a wonder the Council is sending you to Grimlock at all. A school on Phantom Island seems much more appropriate.”


    A few minutes later, we arrive at the telehub.


    “Teleport to Grimlock,” says Mikhail, stepping into his own portal. “I’ll meet you there.”


    Somehow, I don’t think he will.


    Though I still don’t find teleporting in any way enjoyable, it’s becoming a bit less harrowing with each trip. I’m not sure whether this is due to my panic lessening or if I’m becoming accustomed to being temporarily dead twice a day.


    When I arrive at the Grimlock telehub, students are emerging from a circle of coffin-shaped portals. I’m unsurprised to find that Mikhail has indeed left without me. I follow the herd to the exit, trying to stay calm. I’ll need to figure out where to go on my own—which, if personal experience has taught me anything, seems to be a dangerous endeavor in Aurelia.


    As I step outside, I find myself in the middle of an extremely foggy forest. Gnarled trees and branches loom overhead like long boneless arms, throwing shadows in the yellow glow of the oil lanterns lighting the path. Having expected a normal building—at least, normal by Aurelian standards—I think this a very odd location for a school.


    At the end of the path, I come to a stranger sight still. Carved within the mammoth trunk of a giant sequoia is the sallow, veiny face of a haggard-looking witch—the kind of witch I’m accustomed to seeing in movies, with a long hooked nose, narrowed searching eyes, and a wide lipless mouth that stretches ten feet high by way of an entrance. Above the hideous face, scratched into a block of wood, are the words Grimlock School of Interdisciplinary Magicks.


    “Riley?” says a familiar voice.


    I turn. Patrick Goodwin is there, gawking at me in much the same way I was at the school entrance.
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