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“I accidentally left them at home, Professor,” I said quietly.
If I whined about Vivian’s trick, I looked like a victim and a tattletale. I’d find a way to get her back without sacrificing my pride, thank you very much.
Professor Hecate’s lip curled. “How absentminded of you. Come to class unprepared tomorrow, and I will send you packing. Understood?”
I stared at the wall behind her as the desire to cry intensified. I wasn’t sure where I’d find the money for books before tomorrow morning. I’d come with fifty dollars in my bag, just in case I needed it. But I was more than sure fifty dollars wouldn’t even cover one textbook, let alone the eight books and sundry supplies I’d need for the term. I could always call Wanda and ask for more, but then I’d have to confess the whole humiliating thing, and it would start a fight between Wanda and the headmistress and I didn’t want things to get worse for me than they already were.
I nodded fervently, sinking lower in my seat.
Then Professor Hecate turned with a flick of her skirts, striding to her place behind the lectern. “Now, Miss Grimsbane, can you recite the first three runes in the Germanic Script?”
I tuned Vivian out. If I heard satisfaction in her voice, I’d scream. Instead, I focused on Oleander’s open book, looking at it so intently that the runes seemed to waver and change shape the longer I looked.
“Don’t go cross-eyed,” Oleander teased. “It’s not going to go anywhere.”
In answer, I plunged a hand into my purse and pulled out a small bag. Poppy had slipped it to me before I’d left as an apology for not being able to see me off in person. It contained a few candy bars, essential potions, crystals, and a tiny talisman. She’d worked with Wanda to create it, but the crystal at its center was all Poppy’s doing. I pressed it into Oleander’s hand.
He glanced down at it with a frown. “What’s this?”
“A charm to ward off harm,” I whispered back. “You’re going to need it after what you said to Vivian.”
“You need it as much as I do,” he pointed out, shaking his head as he frowned at me. “She’s really got it in for you.”
I stared daggers at the back of Vivian’s perfectly coiffed head. “I can handle her.”
Oleander made a soft sound of disbelief but tucked the talisman into his pocket, anyway. It made me feel a little better to know he’d avoid the hexes that were sure to follow. He’d said all those things to get Vivian’s attention away from me. And that meant he was definitely a friend—only a friend would stick his neck out for me, even though we barely knew each other. So, I figured I could repay the favor by making his life a little safer.
“Thank you,” he said at last, voice pitched so low that only I could hear.
“No, thank you for standing up for me.”
His smile was soft and boyish when he shrugged and said, “Hey, what are friends for?”
Chapter Six
Runecraft had been the appetizer to an eight-course meal of misery.
Every class was worse than the last, with almost every teacher having something scathing to say about my lack of textbooks and supplies. The only exception to the rule was Professor Lavant, who’d chided me, but ultimately let the matter drop with a warning, just like Professor Hecate.
The others made my first two teachers look positively cuddly. I’d gotten a lecture from the history professor, a tall, forbidding Winter faerie named Verglas, that lasted five whole minutes and had left me shaking. At least I could chalk it up to cold to anyone who asked. The temperature had dipped beneath freezing as he dressed me down. Patches of ice remained on the floor for the rest of the lesson. I’d slipped on one as I filed out, and the chorus of snide laughter that followed had told me it wasn’t going to be easy to make friends at this awful place.
In fact, pretty much every wretched moment I experienced was courtesy of Vivian and her cronies. By the end of the day, I was regretting handing my defensive charm to Oleander, because I’d been hit with at least six different hexes of varying intensity and unpleasantness. They weren’t overt enough to draw the attention of any of our teachers or to send me to the nurse’s office, but they were unpleasant, all the same.
One of the hexes made me itch in all the wrong places and I had to white-knuckle the edge of my desk to keep from scratching in front of the whole class. The second hex had made me feel like I had to go to the bathroom almost constantly, so I sat with my legs crossed, unable to think much past the desire to sprint out of the classroom and to the nearest toilet. The third made me tongue-tied, which meant that I answered questions slowly or not at all. The fourth kept fouling up my feet, and the fifth gave me the absurd impulse to curse, which would have been disastrous in Verglas’ classroom.
The sixth was the most insidious of all. Fatigue. It was so subtle that I didn’t notice it at first. I was already tired, unused to getting up so early and working so hard before sitting down to a series of grueling lectures. But when a dose of caffeine didn’t do much to keep my eyes open, I knew the fatigue had to be something else. It got worse and worse as the day wore on, until I was only catching every fifth word the potions professor was saying. Which really, really sucked, because I liked potions. It was my best subject at home and I’d been beyond excited to get to studying practical applications. Especially because doing something might keep me awake. But no dice.
“Are you going to be okay?” Oleander asked as we left class.
I was staggering, using the wall for support. I didn’t trust my two left feet to carry me all the way back to the kitchen without help. The klutziness and the sleep hex were a bad combo. If I wasn’t careful, I’d fall down a staircase and break my neck. The last hex had been the most powerful, which meant it was probably Vivian’s. Damn her.
“I will be,” I said weakly. “Just... go ahead without me. I’m going to duck into an empty classroom and try to undo the hexes from Vivian and her hive.”
“Hive?” he asked.
“Because she’s the queen bee.”
“Okay, so… hexes? That sounds kind of serious.”
