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“Sometimes the magic skips a generation,” Avery said. “Or sometimes when there are two sisters born close together, the magic chooses one of them and leaves the other as a Null—or close to a Null. That’s what happened to my mom. My Aunt Gertrude is as powerful as they come—she’s even a member of the Windermere Coven and they only take the very best.”
“So maybe your mother was the powerful one—the one with magic,” Emma suggested to me.
I shook my head. “No way—I never saw my mom do anything at all out of the ordinary. Also…” My throat wanted to lock up but I forced myself to say it. “Also, she died of lung cancer. If she had some kind of wonderful, super-witch powers, don’t you think she would have cured herself?”
“Maybe she couldn’t,” Avery said doubtfully. “Healing magic is considered to be the hardest magical discipline to master. It takes years and a really strong magical aptitude to even begin to be able to heal small things—let alone life-threatening injuries or illnesses.” He frowned. “I think your great-great grandmother Corinne was a Healer, actually.”
“Well she clearly didn’t pass any of that down to my mom,” I said bitterly. “You know she wasn’t even a smoker? She hadn’t ever touched a cigarette in her life. And still she…” I broke off, shaking my head. It was still too hard to talk about.
“We’re so sorry, Megan,” Emma said softly.
“Losing someone you love is the worst.” Kaitlyn’s voice was so low I could barely hear it.
“I’m sorry,” Avery said soberly. “I don’t have any answers about what happened to your mother, Megan. All I know is that magic—incredibly strong magic—runs in your family. Do you know when Corinne Latimer founded the Windermere Coven it was said they could even control the weather? I mean, in a big way—they once stopped a major hurricane in its tracks—caused it to dissipate on the spot. And that’s something down here in Florida!”
“I thought you said only Warlocks could do that kind of magic?” I said, frowning.
Avery lifted his eyebrows. “Making a hurricane dissipate and just…poof, go away?” He blew on his open palm as though to show the hurricane in question vanishing. “Not even the strongest warlock can manage that. You know a Category 5 hurricane can have the strength of twenty megaton bombs? And your Grandma Corinne and her coven got rid of one like that.” He snapped his fingers.
“What else could Megan’s great-great-grandmother do?” Emma sounded awed.
“Well, it was also said the Windermere coven at full strength could lay curses that would last for generations and make rules all the Others had to obey,” Avery said. “They’re the ones who cast the Edict, you know.”
“The what?” I asked, frowning.
“The Edict—the Law that Others of different species can’t mix,” Kaitlyn said. “It was in my History of Magic class,” she said, shrugging, when Emma and Avery gave her a surprised look.
“Are you allowed to take magic classes—er, Other Studies—if you’re a Norm?” I asked.
Emma nodded. “Oh sure, if you want to. Not the ones that require any kind of magical skill, of course—you’d just flunk out. But history courses and that kind of thing are okay for Norms to take.”
“But aren’t they—the administration of the Academy, I mean—afraid you’ll run out and tell everything you learned?” I asked, frowning.
Avery snorted. “Hardly. All the Norms who come here—teachers and students alike—have to agree to be bound by non-disclosure magic.”
“Which means you basically can’t tell anything you’ve seen or learned here—or even the location of the Academy itself,” Kaitlyn put in.
“Like anyone would believe you if you did,” Avery said dryly. “If you go running around shouting that there’s a magical Academy in the middle of an orange grove and it’s filled with witches and vampires and fairies and were-dragons, Norms are more likely to lock you up than listen to you.”
Well, that was true, I had to concede. But I had other questions.
“Why is Nocturne Academy located in the middle of an orange grove in Florida, anyway?” I asked curiously. “I would have thought a secret school for magical creatures would be someplace…I don’t know, more prestigious. More scenic. Like in upstate New York or in the mountains of Scotland—someplace like that.”
“Two reasons, actually,” Avery said, ticking them off on his fingers. “First, it’s way easier to hide a big-ass magic Academy from the Norms in the middle of Podunk Florida than it would be someplace more interesting and scenic where you’d get tons of sight-seers. Second, lots of Others are cold-blooded and they like it warm. Nocturnes, for instance, are always chilly—just touch one and you’ll see what I mean.”
“Um, okay,” I murmured, thinking of the coolness that seemed to radiate off Griffin’s lean, muscular frame when I got too near to him.
“And the dragons that live inside the Drakes need warm weather too,” Kaitlyn said. “Some of them breathe fire but most are cold-blooded—like lizards or dinosaurs.” She shivered, as though the thought made her uncomfortable.
