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“Who are you?” I asked.
“You may call me Eve,” she said. “I’m a witch, and I’m an instructor.”
“At Pottsboro Community?” I asked, shocked that there was a prof I hadn’t seen in passing. The school wasn’t that big, and she definitely made an impression.
“At Primrose Academy, a special school in the mountains,” she said carefully. “A school for women with magic, women like you.”
“Magic?” I echoed stupidly.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m a magical combat instructor.”
I thought back to the cemetery, the way she had stopped the thing that was after me with no more than a word.
“This can’t be real,” I murmured to myself.
I had been going too long on nothing but caffeine and the occasional grilled cheese sandwich.
Crap. I was saddened at the sudden realization that I must have dropped my dinner box back in the cemetery. It seemed like an odd time to be worrying about food, but I had big plans that included me, that sandwich, and a stack of Chem flashcards. And now I was probably going to have to settle for dry cereal, which was a very poor substitute for one of Daniel’s grilled cheeses.
“The vines and the weeping willow back there,” Eve went on, snapping my thoughts away from food. For now. “You did that, Bella.”
“No,” I said, even though I knew it was a lie.
“And this isn’t the first time,” she said quietly.
My mind snapped back like a rubber band to that night, falling out the window, my hair lifting up around my face, the pavement rocketing toward me, and then the sensation of a scratchy embrace as the leaves and branches of the little boxwood bush between the building and the sidewalk broke my fall.
I overheard one of the EMTs telling the other that it shouldn’t have been possible for that scraggly little shrub to stop me from becoming sidewalk pizza.
I glanced down at the scar on my forearm from where the surgeons put in the pin.
“It’s coming back to you.” Eve noted. “You’ll meet others like you at Primrose Academy. People who understand what it’s like to be special.”
“What would I even do there?” I asked, still too shocked to really take in all that she was saying.
“You would learn to control your magic, for starters,” she replied. “You would strengthen it, and find ways to use it for Good.”
“That all sounds nice, but I can’t afford a special school,” I said. “I can’t even really afford the school I’m going to now, and it might be the least special place I’ve ever seen.”
It wasn’t an exaggeration. The squat, brick buildings of Pottsboro Community College were so unremarkable that it was hard to picture them at all once they were out of your sight.
“It’s free,” Eve said.
“How?” I asked.
“It’s free foryou,” she corrected herself. “Don’t worry about how. Admissions are based on your gift, not your finances.”
Free.
The idea of not having to work so hard to make ends meet was almost too much to get my mind around. I didn’t know how to react.
“I- I have a job, a life,” I managed.
“I can see that,” she replied, giving my apartment a dubious scan.
“I have aplan,” I said.
And the plan was to help Jon, whatever it took.
