Chapter 1

BOOK ONE: NECROMANCER ACADEMY

I never thought I'd find myself with a dead man's hand in my pocket while on a boat that smelled like goats that was taking me one step closer to committing a murder. Life sure had thrown some unexpected twists at me lately, all of which had splintered and cracked my foundation, irreparably changing me from the inside out. Gone was the girl who started singing right after leaping out of bed in the morning, who clapped at random, often inappropriate times, and who was drunk on happiness.

That girl was dead. She'd died right along with her brother. 

I was a shell of that girl, a ghost, an empty husk whose heart had been crushed. Not just once, but over and over since it had happened. So I wrapped my heart tight with thorny rage, whispered a spell, and brought it back to life. Soon it would eat through my chest and devour my enemy.

But right now, I couldn't focus on much of anything because of the overwhelming smell of goat.

"Aura flare," I whispered into the brittle pages of the old book I held.

The slightest magical breeze ruffled over the tops of everyone's heads in the rows of seats in front of me. Not the sea air, though, since we sat in the lower level of the boat. A teenage boy near the front turned to give the person seated behind him the stink eye.

Really, I was doing him and everyone else a favor. Me too, since I was trying to clear my nose while practicing my dark magic.

"Sicut odor pluviam," I whispered.

Wispy blue coils that smelled like a storm rose up from below everyone's seats. Instantly, the boat smelled a thousand times better, but the coils kept winding up, up, wrapping around people's legs and climbing higher. Lacy fingers unfurled in front of their faces, stretched around their necks, and squeezed. 

Oh crap. That wasn't supposed to happen.

The passengers who'd been sleeping lurched awake. Everyone gasped and choked and clawed at their necks.

I turned the pages of my book, looking for a counter-spell before I killed everyone on board. My heartbeat galloped into my throat, almost too loud to concentrate. My eyes raced across spell after spell, but none of them undid the one I'd just done. Think. Think.

I glanced up to gauge how much time they had left and immediately wished I hadn't. Some passengers were turning a horrific shade of blue.

Panic shook through me so hard that the words in the giant Book of Black Shadows blurred together into a jumbled mess. I only wanted to murder those who deserved it, not people who smelled like goats. The rain scent thickened in the air, warmed it, until I felt drops on the top of my head. The wispy fingers turned dark as a thunderstorm as they squeezed people's necks harder, and devilish points grew from the tips of the fingers like claws.

I had to do something. Any kind of counter-spell or something to redirect the magic toward something else or an off button. Anything.

My gaze caught on one word: diluti. Like dilute? Good enough. "Diluti exponentia."

A torrent of water crashed down from the wooden ceiling of the boat's bottom level and soaked everyone. The wispy chokeholds drifted away like clouds and dissipated. The passengers sucked in air and coughed and sucked in more air.

I blew out a short, relieved breath and sagged down in my seat, so low I hoped no one could see me. The standing water I'd created sloshed almost to my knees. The brittle pages of the Book of Black Shadows were soaked through, so I was pretty much done with magic for now. I shoved it into my satchel and clutched it to my chest, my cheeks flaming. I'd done that spell before with no problems, both the white magic version and the black, two sides of the same coin that produced the exact same thing. Maybe I'd said my Latin wrong, and the result had been something entirely unexpected. I didn't think so, though.

The passengers were starting to question each other now, if they'd seen what had happened. The water at our feet took the goat smell and shoved it so deep up my nose I could taste it. My stomach churned at that, and then again when we hit several rough waves in a row. We must've been getting close to Eerie Island.

I twisted out the water from my hair, watching some of the coal I'd used to dye it black swirl into the lake at my feet. Gotta be honest, this was not going well so far. The trip to Necromancer Academy was supposed to be the easy part. After that came the murder part. Oh, I saw the problem with killing someone at a school like where I was headed, but my target would stay dead. Not only that, but they'd wish they had never set foot in my house. Of that, I would make certain.

The boat slowed, so we were probably nearing the dock. I was ready to be there and for everything that came after. I'd trained the entire summer, created plans within plans. I wouldn't fail. Leo deserved that much.

I stood with the other passengers, doing my best to blend in. Some of their eyes were bloodshot and some had bruising handprints around their throats. 

I tugged up my cloak collar and cast my eyes downward, muttering, "Bind thee in health, Protect mind and soul too, Boost vigor and happiness, Make it all renew." A healing spell that was nowhere near Latin. That seemed to perk them up a little, and hey look, it didn't appear to go haywire. Yet. But that spell was all white magic. Perhaps the universe was trying to tell me something about using spells from the Book of Black Shadows. Perhaps I'd learn to listen, but not today.