6

Tonya followed Marta along a dark corridor that opened into a large underground cavern. Students gathered around Professor Kirkdene, a deeply tanned elder in a plaid shirt, undershirt, faded jeans, and a green cap. His powerful shoulders and relaxed stance brought to mind a local farmer pausing in his work to have a chat. He was nothing like Tonya had expected in a professor of magic, but she wasn’t disappointed. Above his head floated a glowing orb bright enough to illuminate the room in bluish light.

His lips moved, and he gestured lazily as he spoke to a deep ring of students. Unable to hear from the back, Tonya jostled forward ignoring the Mods’ dirty looks.

“We will conduct our experiments here.”

Experiments? Tonya always thought families handed down spells in grimoires.

A red-faced student in khakis and a pink polo shirt raised his hand.

“Yes, Jobson?”

“How are we going to be evaluated?”

“First survive, then work on getting an A.” Kirkdene’s icy blue eyes gleamed. Maybe he wasn’t kidding.

His nasty look triggered a memory. Moving through the huddle of students, she got a better view of his face. Unbelievable.

Professor Kirkdene had sicced his dog on her through a cornfield in October and helped the Ashtons capture her. That explained Marta’s glee. Tonya’s stomach fluttered. If the professor failed her, the City Council would never restore her powers.

The group followed him single file through a narrow passage, the musty smell of the rocks filling their nostrils. The corridor widened into a finished hallway with tiled flooring. Their footsteps echoed as they passed between marble niches and mausoleums. The inscriptions memorialized Loon Lakers from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and the funerary carvings ranged from stone angels to realistic portraits of terrifying hags. Everything from pumpkins and cats to owls and black bears graced the tombs. No ordinary symbols for Tonya’s ancestors! Fascinated by the carvings, she almost forgot what they represented.

Until they stopped in front of a pile of age-stained skulls.

When had the booming population of Loon Lake died so quickly that they needed to stack the skeletons? There was no record of bubonic plague in southern Ontario.

“This is your heritage,” Kirkdene announced. “The Old Families brought these bones from Europe.” He addressed Tonya directly. “That is how magic works for the Old Families. Power accumulates in crypts and cemeteries passed into the living like an inheritance. Did they explain that in your Pure family?”

“Uh, not exactly.”

The students tittered.

What Tonya had meant to say was she’d picked up this information at school. It wasn’t a secret among the Old Families, and she wasn’t ignorant. She chewed a fingernail, then stopped herself. He’d made her look foolish on her first day. So what? The professor was just another Mod, happy to see her punished.

This summer was going to be awful, but it was nothing compared to battling food zombies and surviving a near-coma state. She wasn’t the naïve and protected girl she’d been last September. For two months, she could withstand almost anything.

Marta and Kirkdene led the way and she followed behind, suddenly conscious that thousands of pounds of granite and limestone rested on the ceiling. With the words of a spell and a small sacrifice, any of these Mods could create a rockfall or collapse.

Abruptly, white-tiled floors and walls ushered in a modern addition to the catacombs. A prickling sensation stirred Tonya’s neck and shoulders. Despite herself, she glanced back, feeling like she was being watched. Jobson trailed behind her, peering in every direction. At least she wasn’t the only one creeped out by the hallways under City Hall.

Progressing at Kirkdene’s laid-back pace, they passed evenly spaced iron doors with barred windows. The anklet on Tonya’s left leg sparked against her skin. Something tugged on her powers, then the sensation vanished.

Weird. Sensing life force was passive for Tonya, and living things surrounded them. The dirt housed millions of insects and hundreds of little critters, each pulsing with a tiny green aura.

From the moment her parole officer slapped the magic-sensing anklet on her, she had contained her ability to drain and manipulate life energy. It had been a small but constant effort, but to get caught using her powers would be to lose them forever.

But here? Tonya shivered. It was as if all those tiny flames of life had guttered out. She sensed nothing.

Moments before, she had felt the life force in each student, but that ability had gone dark. The prison cells on either side must suppress magic. Why had Kirkdene taken students of magic to the one place their powers wouldn’t work?

At the surface lay City Hall, whose councilors controlled the Old Family Tribunal. They were about to pass beneath the council chamber where they had convicted her. A few steps ahead sat the cell where Tonya had spent a month awaiting trial. Could there be a more humiliating way to start class?

“We’re directly below City Hall.” Kirkdene stared at Tonya. “Any of you been here before?”

Everybody knew about her arrest. When no other student reacted, she raised her hand.

Circling behind Tonya, Marta snickered and whispered to the other students. Tonya turned and whispered back, “Really mature. What are you, still in high school?”

Kirkdene cleared his throat. “What makes these cells special?”

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Hunched, Jobson glanced back over his shoulder. “They’re full of ghosts.”

“We built Loon Lake on ghost power. Can any of you be more specific?”

The Mods looked to Marta, awaiting her okay before replying, but she raised her chin, too cool to cooperate.

The silent pause stretched. “Ashton Security unearthed something special.” Kirkdene’s icy eyes glowed against his bronzed face. “Come.”

The hallway opened into a white tiled dome-shaped cavern, lit by Kirkdene’s glowing orb. In a niche set high into the farthest wall, a staff extended, mounted like a torch in a castle.

“The Staff of Storms. We thought it was just a legend until this spring when I unearthed it in a field north of town. After 200 plus years in the ground, the wood should be rotten, but power protects it.”

Half-expecting lightning and thunder, Tonya gazed up at six feet of polished hardwood topped by an enormous amethyst set in gold.

The legendary artifact set off a chain reaction of chatter.

“How much is the jewel worth?”

“I wanna touch it.”

“The style looks so 1970s.”

“When can we leave? Inhaling dead people dust makes my nose run.”

Ignoring their comments, Kirkdene prompted, “Who can tell me what the Staff of Storms does?”

The conversation hushed and the students avoided Kirkdene’s gaze.

Marta stood tall. “If no one else knows, I’ll say it. Ashton Security uses it to siphon away criminal powers, so freaks like Tonya and her mother don’t lose control and suck the life force out of everyone.”

Tonya swallowed and took a deep breath, but she had to put her hands in her pockets so they wouldn’t shake. The others smiled at Marta’s attack on her. One gave Marta a high five.

Tonya’s stomach did a little flip, but she kept her expression neutral. Never let them see you sweat. All she had to do was pass this wretched summer course. That was the deal. Earn the credit to satisfy her parole and get her powers back. Nothing Marta could do would make Tonya mess that up. All the Pure families, including her adoptive parents, had rejected her. But with powers, she could still have something.

However, there comes a time when deep breathing and all the meditation techniques she had practiced in prison couldn’t hold back the wave of rejection. Their hostile faces and Marta’s superior grin choked her up. Sometimes she would trade anything—powers, her school year, friends, even knowing Helen was her birth mother, to turn back the clock and live as she did before Halloween.

September had been the happiest month of her life. Priya was her new best friend, and Drake had just started flirting.

“Slowpoke, aren’t you coming?” Marta goaded from the front of the pack. Beside her, Arjun didn’t object.

After ambling throughout the class, Kirkdene suddenly sped up, long legs swinging. Tonya could never get past the mob of students ahead. The professor rushed on and on until the floor began slanting upward. As the air warmed, it carried the sweet scent of fresh cut grass and flowers. They emerged into a storage room filled with plants, sacks of fertilizer, and hoses. Through a door, they spilled into the huge greenhouse that dominated the City Hall Gardens.

Surrounded by students, Kirkdene lectured them about Loon Lake’s history and the founding Old Families. With a smile and wave to passing citizens visiting the greenhouse, he mentioned the private collection of Old Family documents in City Hall. Around her, Tonya felt the students shift from foot to foot or whisper to their neighbors, bored. Even Tonya knew about the concealed Old Family library and Loon Lake’s City Council, composed of Old Family counselors sworn to carry out Mundane and magical business. If only the Mundanes knew their city was run on two levels: the ordinary, which was visible to them, and the magical, with meetings in a second council chamber hidden behind a door they could not see.

When Tonya was growing up, her adopted mother, Barbara, was a dedicated Pure. Her father, Jim, grew up in a Mundane family with no knowledge of magic. Yet nothing Kirkdene said was news to Tonya. When would Kirkdene teach them something useful, like how to cast a spell?

He wound up his lecture with homework readings from a grimoire Tonya had never heard of.

“Excuse me, professor, but where can I buy a grimoire?”

A few students laughed.

“Every family has one.”

“Not mine.”

“If there is no tradition of magic in your family, start with an empty notebook and learn by observation.”

“Can’t I borrow one from the library?”

“Are you asking if the City Librarian will entrust you with a centuries-old record of our magical heritage?”

Marta stifled a laugh behind Kirkdene’s back.

It would have been nice if Arjun said something, but he just stood there, staring at Tonya as if seeing her for the first time.

Kirkdene marched the class across manicured lawns and between flowerbeds, stopping in front of a dented pickup truck. A bumpy load lay hidden under a tarp in the back. “I need a pair of volunteers.”

Jobson stepped forward followed by Arjun.

From behind, Tonya whispered to Arjun, “Don’t you want to know what it’s for?”

When Kirkdene glanced at his vehicle, the group shifted back, leaving her beside Arjun.

“Okay, Tonya, Arjun, pile in.” Kirkdene’s smile deepened his wrinkles.

Jobson’s face flushed. “What about me?”

A light breeze dispersed a nasty whiff from under the tarp. “Trust me, you’re not missing much.”

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