Braving the Elements (Darkness #2)(19)

“Oh goodie,” Darla drawled, “the Boss’s pet has graced us with her presence instead of throwing a tantrum and running into the woods. Aren’t we so blessedly privileged?”

“Yikes, not pulling any punches, huh?” Charles muttered as he shuffled in beside me.

I took a seat next to a sneering guy a few years older than me. In fact, I appeared to be the youngest in the class. Which meant they were super old.

“Great, let’s start where we left off last time, shall we?” Darla turned toward a chair, waved her arms around, and started chanting in a completely foreign language. And not foreign like French, Spanish, or even Latin. No, these weren’t real words. It sounded like a bunch of consonants she spat out one by one.

My arms prickled and my chest got warm, the indicator she was working a spell. A similar feeling, though to a much larger degree, also happened when the Dulca monster things called to me.

The chair started to bubble, wisps of red gathering and pulling around it, until it kind of…vanished. If you looked right at it you could see bits of it, like right after staring at the sun and having a sun spot obscure it. But if you weren’t looking directly at it, you wouldn’t notice it there.

It was probably that spell—with a ton more power—that hid the house I lived in. Neat. I really wanted to learn it. Or did it take multiple people to produce?

Darla took her manicured hands out of the air and put them on her h*ps with a smug nod. “Now, you try.”

I stared.

All eight students stood obediently and faced their chairs. Charles followed shortly after.

“I don’t know that language,” I whispered through half my mouth.

“Did you have a question, pet?” Darla’s honeyed voice rang out.

I turned slowly, wanting to find a corner to hide in. “Um, I don’t know the chants. I’m not sure I’ll be able to do this lesson.”

Her red lips pulled back into a sickly smile. “Oh, poor baby. You push your master to get you in school, but you aren’t ready for it.” She shrugged, gathering her students’ attention like flies to poop, which was exactly how this whole thing smelled. “I guess you’ll have to learn on the fly.”

Master, huh?

Anger licked at my awareness, surging. I didn’t know what the heck she’d just done, but I roughly knew the elements she’d called, and roughly the shape the magic took. Gathering all the ingredients to me, I waved my hands like I thought I’d seen her do, and then gave the thick cloud of red a little push with my palms, nudging it forward gently.

The chair exploded.

Oops.

Wood splinters rocketed out and sprayed the class like bullets. Some students ducked, some crawled away, and one guy, apparently a ninja, did a spider jump, turned it into a flip, and landed on his feet five feet away with his dagger out.

“Care to explain what the hell you just did?” Darla screeched.

I faced her with hunched shoulders. “Blew up my chair?”

Her eyes burned into me as the rest of the students drifted out of their sheltered places. “Who taught you to do that?”

Ninja warrior had not tucked away his dagger.

I shrugged, digging my hands into my pockets. My gut twisted. “I thought I was doing what you did…”

“What incantation did you use?” she demanded.

I grimaced. “I didn’t. I tried to just download the right elements, swirl them around, and kinda…drape them over the chair…”

“Download the right elements? Swirl them around?” Her long red nails tapped her crossed arms.

“That’s how she thinks of it,” Charles helped.

Darla’s cool gaze fell on Charles. “Ah yes, the boy wonder. Youngest Watch Commander in a century. And here you are, playing bodyguard to the Boss’s pet. How far have we sunk?”

It was Charles’s turn to hunch his shoulders. Unlike with the elements or with the sword stuff, Charles wasn’t packing a whole lot of confidence in this class. At least we were in it together.

Her gaze speared me again before she turned with a whoosh, her silky black hair flying. “Pair up. Dog and dog walker, break apart. Let’s do some simple spells. How about containment spells? Go.”

“That’s easy?” Charles mumbled.

I looked around the circle, knowing no one would want to pair with me. I knew I would have to wait until the least liked kid in class had to come shuffling over to pair with the dropout. God, this sucked.

To my horror, Darla noticed the situation, and took matters into her own hands.

“Doggy, pair up with Adnan. Go.”

The ninja, fortified with a glare, stalked up to me. Straight, simple movements bespoke an ordinary guy. The fact that he’d just flipped through the air had me intensely nervous. Unlike Gabe, this would be the wrong guy to accidently blast.

“Hi,” I squeaked.

He frowned in response.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I warned.

“Then stand there and look pretty. You’re apparently great at that.”

Ouch. But also, thanks for the compliment.

He held his hands out, palms facing each other. In that strange language, he began chanting. Well, he could’ve been spitting and hissing for all I knew, but I felt the magic collect and pull, fanning that heat in my chest. Pale red formed between his hands—now green—now red again. He straddled the cusp of power, but I felt more available within him.