Outclassed: Spellslingers Academy of Magic (Warden of the West Book 2)

  Outclassed: Warden of the West, Book 2

  Spellslingers Academy of Magic

  Annabel Chase

  Red Palm Press LLC

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Also By Annabel Chase

  1

  “Nobody told me there would be hellhounds!” I sprinted across the field, trying to focus more on not dying than my annoyance with my roommates. Surely, someone should have felt the need to mention that the hundred-yard dash involved three giant black dogs with burning red eyes and the stench of death. Not exactly the routine exercise I envisioned this morning.

  I heard their snarls behind me and pushed myself harder. Forget Jack Frost nipping at my nose. I had the fiery breath of hellhounds at my heels.

  “Use magic, Morrow,” the instructor yelled. Theo Armitage was an active Warden of the West, a branch of the Agency of Magical Forces. He doubled as an instructor for trainees at one of the organization’s feeder schools—Spellslingers Academy of Magic. Thanks to Chancellor Tilkin, I was fortunate enough to be offered a permanent place at the academy, although, at this very moment, I was questioning my choices.

  “She won’t make it,” Slick McWizard yelled. I couldn’t remember his name, only that he used too much product in his hair.

  The goal was to reach the glowing finish line by any means necessary before the hounds caught me. Allegedly, Armitage wanted to see how we’d get ourselves out of a tough situation, although I suspected he took secret joy in putting our feet to the fire—literally. I’d opted for good old-fashioned running. I tended to avoid using my magic and today would be no exception. I had a lifetime of experience stifling my power in the human world to avoid detection by my Lord Voldemort-style father. Now that I knew he was dead, I worried that using too much magic would turn me into him.

  “Bryn, look out!” Mia called.

  My roommate’s warning came too late.

  I felt a searing pain on my right heel, so intense that I fell to my knees.

  “Down, doggie,” I shouted, flipping onto my butt to face the trio head on. The hounds were bearing down on me. I had no choice.

  I yanked my wand from my waistband and took aim. Saliva splattered on my blue cloak, burning tiny holes in the fabric. Before I could act, a ring of fire appeared around me. The hellhounds howled in protest as they skidded to a halt in front of the flames. I glanced over at the responsible party—my roommate, Dani Degraff. The strawberry blond witch tried to look nonchalant, but everyone knew fire was her specialty.

  “It’s not your turn, Degraff,” Armitage said, his nostrils flaring in annoyance. “Douse the flames so Morrow can get to the finish line, assuming she’s capable of it.”

  Ugh. His obnoxious tone was the worst. Of course, I could make it to the finish line. I just wanted to achieve it without magic. It was impossible now. The hellhounds were pacing the area around me, waiting for their chance to pounce. I rose to my feet and Dani motioned with her wand, extinguishing the ring of fire.

  Water was my specialty, but there was no reasonable source to draw from. It was a dry day and we weren’t close enough to Mercer Lake. The closest body of water was the river that flowed through the forest half a mile away. Although I could do it if I really wanted to, I decided to rely on one of my lesser powers.

  I called to the air and felt the magic inside me swell in response. If I had to resort to magic, I was going to use the bare minimum—not so much that I’d risk letting the magic suck away my humanity. That had been my father’s downfall and I refused to let it be mine.

  I released the magic and a blast of air blew me backwards, toward the finish line. I could’ve used the wind against the hellhounds, of course, but I didn’t want to risk hurting them. It wasn’t their fault our instructor was a complete tool.

  I scrambled to my feet as the hounds raced toward me. The finish line was within reach. I dove through the force field just as the lead hound reached me. I barely missed suffering from a scorched bottom. That would’ve made sitting through my classes very painful.

  The hounds cried out when they realized I was safely behind the ward that Armitage had created. Mission accomplished.

  I jogged over to the rest of the class, relieved to be finished.

  “Your technique leaves a lot to be desired,” Armitage said with a scowl. He seemed to sense that I was holding back. I’d never admit it, though, because then I’d have to explain the reason why.

  “Sorry, Bryn,” Cerys said. “We should have warned you.” My third roommate appeared genuinely apologetic.

  “When I heard him say to release the hounds, I thought it was a joke,” I said, still panting.

  Armitage blew a whistle that none of us could hear, and the groundskeeper appeared from out of nowhere to wrangle the hellhounds back to their enclosure—wherever that was. My tour of the academy hadn’t included the hellhound stables. If it had, I might have opted to return to the human world when I was given the choice.

  “Thanks, William,” Armitage called, and the groundskeeper grunted in response.

  “At least we can have lunch now,” I said, and my stomach rumbled on cue.

  My roommates exchanged anxious glances.

  “Not quite yet,” Mia said. “There are usually two parts to clinic.”

  Fabulous. As though one near-death experience wasn’t enough.

  “Let’s make our way to the forest, everyone,” Armitage said, beckoning us forward. We trudged after him, and I could hear the disappointed groans of a few students. At least I wasn’t the only one who wanted this class to be over.

  “I’ll need to see if someone can mend my cloak,” I said. The holes were small, but plainly visible.

  “That’s easy,” Mia said. She touched each hole with her wand and I watched in awe as they were replaced by tiny bits of fabric.

  “Thanks,” I said. “You’ll have to teach me how to do that.”

  “My aunt insisted it was one of the more important skills to master for a young witch,” Mia said. “I didn’t understand why until I came here and started destroying clothing on a regular basis. Splashing potions, hellhound saliva, you name it. I thought she was being anti-feminist, but it turns out she was just being practical.”

  I heard the rush of the river before we arrived there. Armitage stood on the bank in an authoritative pose, waiting for the students to assemble. I had a feeling that he practiced that pose in front of the mirror at home.

  “The next exercise involves making your way across this raging river,” Armitage said. He sounded so gleeful about it that I half expected him to twirl the ends of an imaginary mustache. If he tied us to train tracks next time, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

  “But the river isn’t raging at all,” Cerys said.

  “Allow me to take care of that for you,” Armitage said. With the flick of his wand, the intensity of the rushing water increased tenfold. It wasn’t simply a matter of jumping across either. The width was easily eight feet.

  “The enemy is breathing down your neck,” Armitage said. “Your only chance of escape is to make it saf
ely across the river. How do you do it?” He fixed his gaze on me. “Morrow, you’re meant to be somewhat of a water wench. You first.”

  “You mean witch, not wench,” Dani said.

  “Technically, she’s a sorceress,” Armitage said. “She hasn’t had any basic magical training. Have you, Morrow?”

  “No,” I said curtly. There was no need to make an issue of my background. Everyone knew that I’d been raised in Terrene—the human world—by my human mother. No one except Chancellor Tilkin knew the identity of my father—the infamous Volans Moldark. Jenny Morrow had been a doctor when she met my evil father in the emergency room of a hospital, where he was recovering from one of his many battles. Their affair had been intense but brief. When my mother discovered his true nature, she left without a trace, never revealing that she was pregnant with me. We’d spent my entire life hiding from him, and I only discovered his death when I arrived here at the academy. It had been a horrible shock to learn that we’d been on the run for nothing. My father had died years before my mother, during an attempted coup. She died in a car accident during an ice storm, leaving me alone at sixteen years old.

  “Let me help you earn those witch stripes.” Armitage inclined his head toward the river. “What do you say, Morrow? Let’s see some of that water magic in action.”

  I straightened my shoulders. The tool wanted action; I’d give him action.

  I didn’t bother with my wand. I called the water to me and summoned my magic. The energy sparked inside me, awaiting instructions. Bending water to my will was as easy as breathing to me. I could’ve frozen the river and skated across. That was how Chancellor Tilkin had found me. I’d saved a family from certain death when their car had skidded off a bridge and plunged toward the Delaware River below. I’d turned the river to ice and their car had glided safely to land. That healthy dose of magic, however, had attracted the wrong kind of attention. My options at that point had been paranormal prison or the academy. No surprise which one I chose.

  I focused on the center of the river and willed it apart. The water began to separate and I heard the excited chatter of my fellow students.

  “She’s parting the water like it’s the Red Sea,” Milo said. The wizard sounded unusually impressed.

  I continued to concentrate, creating a gap big enough for me to walk through to the other side. Previously submerged rocks and plants began to appear. Finally, the water receded to the point where we could see the riverbed and I heard gasps behind me. At first, I thought the reaction was due to my talent—until I saw the naked body. A young man, bloated and blue, with a stake driven through his shoulder.

  I glanced over at Armitage, nausea threatening to overwhelm me. “Do you still want me to cross?”

  Unsurprisingly, the answer was no.

  2

  I went back to the residence hall after lunch, ahead of my roommates. They were going to watch the third years play some confusing magical game at the fields before our afternoon class. I’d had enough of fields for one day, thanks to the hellhounds. I wanted to lock myself away and regroup. The only topic of conversation during lunch had been the dead body, of course, and I needed a quiet break from the unsettling chatter.

  Without thinking, I crossed the room and unlocked my desk drawer, where I’d hidden my treasure. A single red healing stone glowed in the dark recesses of the drawer. It had belonged to my father, and I’d stolen it from a vampire named Anton Harrington. From the moment I’d set eyes on it, the stone had called to me, and I knew I had to have it. Part of me believed it was because the stone represented a piece of my history. The other part of me worried that the reason was more sinister than I believed.

  I gazed at the stone in the palm of my hand as it pulsed with power. Although Anton had referred to it as a healing stone, I had no clue what kind of power it really possessed.

  Have you fallen asleep down there? I heard you come in, and then silence.

  I dropped the stone in the drawer and quietly closed it. “Huh? No, sorry. I didn’t realize you were home.” I climbed up the ladder to the top bunk to see Icarus, my snowy owl familiar. “What are you doing up here?” He was perched on the headboard with his eyes closed.

  Napping, he replied. At least, I was until now.

  I stretched out on the bed. “Sorry about that. I just had lunch, and now I’m ready for a nap.”

  Fat chance of that, he replied.

  He wasn’t wrong. I almost never napped. I tended to suffer from insomnia, although my sleep issues had improved ever since I discovered that my father was dead. Part of the reason for insomnia was fear of being hunted by him. I suspected it would take time for me to fully adjust to the new reality.

  “I found a dead body today during class,” I told him.

  I nearly produced three dead bodies in this very room, he shot back.

  I heaved a sigh. “Are you still having trouble with the other familiars?” Just like I had to learn to share a room with three other girls, Icarus had to learn to share a room with three other familiars. It had been just the two of us for the past four years, though, so I knew it would be a tough adjustment for him. I welcomed the change, whereas Icarus had seemed content with our life as a dynamic duo.

  It would be fine if they weren’t so…feline, he said.

  “They’re cats,” I replied. “Naturally, they’re feline.”

  And therein lies the problem.

  “Please do me a favor and make an effort,” I said. “We finally have somewhere to call home for more than six months at a pop. Let’s not ruin it.”

  Easy for you to say, he replied. You’ve only had to make friends with your own kind.

  I fluffed the pillow under my head. “That’s not true. I made friends with a vampire, remember?” Of course, I wouldn’t mind being more than friends with Graydon Alastair Mappleworth III. With his penetrating gaze and rugged jawline, he was, by far, the sexiest man I’d ever met in my life. With a body like that, did it really matter that he was undead?

  You can’t trust a vampire, Icarus said.

  “Gray is a former warden for the AMF,” I reminded him.

  May I draw your attention to the word ‘former’ in that sentence?

  “I explained this to you already,” I said. “He wasn’t kicked out. He chose to leave.” Gray felt responsible for the death of his partner, Riya, during a mission in the underworld.

  And I explained to you that the reason doesn’t matter, Icarus said. He’s been lurking in the shadows ever since then, engaging in questionable assignments.

  “There’s nothing questionable about what he does,” I said. “He gathers information. He’s basically a spy.”

  Information that he sells to the highest bidder.

  Argh. “Can’t you be dumb and pretty for once?”

  How would you feel if I said that to you?

  I fell silent, just as the door cracked open.

  “Bryn, are you in here?”

  I recognized the hesitant voice of our prefect, Robin Chambers. “Up here, Boy Wonder.”

  “I do wish you would stop calling me that.” He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. As usual, he was dressed in a tweed jacket and bow tie.

  “Would you prefer Magic Robbie?”

  He pressed his lips together. “You promised never to speak of it again.”

  When we first met, I recognized him as Magic Robbie, a popular child magician that had graced my television screen when I was younger. My mother and I had been huge fans of Magic Robbie. Unfortunately, Robin’s mother had broken several paranormal rules by ferrying him back and forth to the human world, and Robin’s father had put a stop to it. Now Robin worried that his past could jeopardize his future career as a justice.

  “You’re right. Sorry.” I sat up and leaned against the wall. “I guess you’ve heard about the grim discovery in the river.”

  Robin came to stand beside the bunk beds. “Why do you think I’m here?”

  “My charming personali
ty?”

  “I’m still waiting to experience that firsthand. Did he really have a stake through his shoulder?”

  I nodded. “I’m waiting to find out if he was a vampire.”

  Robin peered at me. “Definitely not a vampire.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because he’d still be alive,” Robin replied. “Vampires can’t drown, and the stake was through his shoulder, not his heart.”

  Oh. “I could use a primer on that kind of stuff,” I said. “Maybe you could point me to one in the library.” The library was like a second home to the studious prefect.

  “Why don’t you ask your boyfriend? He’s an expert, being a vampire and all.”

  I jumped to the floor and landed flat on my feet. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “But you wouldn’t mind if he were.”

  I hesitated. “He’s been very helpful to me.” Gray’s help had started as a favor he owed to Robin, but it had quickly morphed into something more. He’d come to see me at the academy once after we’d thwarted a maniacal dwarf’s plan, to make sure I hadn’t gotten into trouble with the chancellor, but I hadn’t heard from him since then. I tried to bury myself in classwork so as not to feel too disappointed.

  “I doubt he’ll stick his neck out like that again,” Robin said. “It’s not his way.”

  “No, I guess not.” I didn’t want to talk about Gray anymore, not unless it was to say he was here to see me.

  “I heard you were responsible for parting the river,” Robin said.

  My brow lifted. “Who told you that?”

  “I overheard Theo Armitage talking to Chancellor Tilkin in front of the library. He sounded both annoyed and impressed.”