Diamond in the Rough: Semester One: Jewel Academy Book One Read online

  Diamond in the Rough

  By

  Jami Klein

  Book One of the Jewel Academy Series

  Other Books by Jami Klein

  Jewel Academy Book Two: Pearl of Wisdom

  Jewel Academy Book Three: City of Emeralds

  Jewel Academy Book Four: Ocean of Sapphires

  Jewel Academy Book Five: Blood of the Ruby

  You got sent to the Jewel Academy when you were too magically dangerous to go to reform school and too young to go to prison.

  Lola Bragg didn’t belong there. She belonged at the Coven School for Girls. Except that she was born with a Tootsie roll pop in her mouth, instead of a silver spoon. Lola blew any chance of a scholarship when she convinced her mom’s pervy boss to keep his hands to himself—and while he was at it, buy them a new car and give her mom a raise.

  Stefan Harte belonged in prison. Rumor had it, he killed a boy for making fun of him. And the grapevine said he had terrorized his own family so badly, they made the Jewel Academy board him year-round. Stefan isn’t confirming or denying. He doesn’t speak. He communicates through his artwork or his fists. He would have been a talented painter, if he wasn’t a werelion that everyone expected to go crazy before his next birthday.

  If Lola is going to survive the cliques, the course work, and the dangers of Jewel Academy with the mind magic blocker the court put on her wrist, she’s going to need a bodyguard. If you’re going to rent a thug, you rent the biggest one you can find. Only Stefan doesn’t want money, doesn’t want anything except to be left alone. But when outside forces come to the Jewel Academy, there’s safety in numbers—even if you’re a half-grey witch and a half feral lion shifter

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  Chapter One

  I considered jumping out of the car at the stop light. A few things stopped me. One, I had anti-magic bracelets on my wrists, which prevented me from casting all but the most baby level spells. Two, I was locked in the back seat of a Federal Bureau of Magical Investigation car, and I was pretty sure the two agents in the front seat could outspell me, even if I wasn’t shackled magically. And three, my mother was sitting right next to me, alternating between worry and fear.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I said to her in a low voice, hoping not to draw the agents’ attention.

  Mom gave me a tight nod and wrapped her arms around herself. It seemed like she had aged twenty years in the three months since Dad had died. And now, she was going to lose me too. At least until Yule break.

  I was being escorted to the Jewel Academy for crimes I absolutely committed and would do again. Hence the anti-magic bracelets. I caught Agent Jackson looking at me in the rearview mirror. He was the good cop. His partner, Agent Fines, was the bad cop. She was currently driving exactly the speed limit and stopping a full three seconds at every stop sign.

  “I don’t suppose we could turn the car around, and I could do a few years of community service?” I asked, already knowing the answer, but having to try anyway.

  “Lola, you’re lucky you’re not doing a few years in prison,” Agent Fines said, without taking her eyes off the road. “And that you’re only sixteen. Two more years and you would have been neutered.”

  I frowned at her. “I’m not a feral cat.”

  “Is that right?” she drawled.

  I had to have misheard that because it sounded like perfect Agent Fines had stooped to sarcasm. I should know, I was fluent in sarcasm. Being magically neutered meant that they’d come for me and burn out the section in my brain that allowed me to do magic. I was supposed to feel grateful that they jammed these bangles from hell on my wrists instead. For the thousandths time, I tried to ease them over my hand, tucking my thumb to my palm to make it smaller. No luck. The stupid things automatically resized.

  The null magic gave me a headache if I touched the bracelet for too long. Or looked at it. Or thought about it.

  I sighed and considered running for it again. But we were literally in the middle of nowhere Connecticut. I was a city girl. Born and raised in New Haven. Pizza. Italian ices. Yale University. The Coven School.

  Civilization.

  The Jewel Academy was in the deep woods in the farthest corner of the state. Ticks. Snakes. Haunted caverns. No Wi-Fi!

  It wasn’t fair. “He deserved it,” I said, meeting Agent Jackson’s eyes in the mirror again. The sympathy in them made me want to cry. But I never cry. Not even when they told me my dad died in a plane crash. Not even when I researched the crash and found out there wasn’t a crash that day.

  My dad was still dead, though.

  I read the funeral director’s thoughts to make sure.

  There are things you can never unsee.

  Don’t ever read a mortician’s mind.

  But if he hadn’t died in a plane crash, how had he died? My mother refused to talk about it and everyone else just ignored my questions. The police said denial was a natural step in the grief process. And no minds I peeked into believed that there was a conspiracy. As far as anyone local had been concerned. It had been a tragic accident and if there wasn’t record of the crash, well that must have been a clerical error.

  It was no clerical error. That, I was sure of.

  I think it was something my dad had been working on. But what? He worked in an insurance company. He’d occasionally have to go to trade shows around the country and sometimes overseas. Who would want to kill a salesman? Unless they thought he was fiddling with their minds to buy more stock or insurance. But that wasn’t my Dad at all. He barely used his powers. He was paranoid about using his mind magic. Only his boss and a few others knew he was magically gifted. He had always told me to keep the full truth of what I could do hidden until I was eighteen. When I was legally an adult, the FBMI couldn’t take me away from Mom and Dad and put me in a government facility to be groomed to be a federal drone like Agent Fines.

  Everything went to Hades when he died.

  Everything.

  “You are not a judge," Agent Fines said. "You don’t get to mete out punishment as you see fit. That’s why we have a court system. Your mother could have pressed charges against her boss.”

  “Yeah.” I snorted. “It was her word against his. No one would have believed her. She would have gotten fired, and that creep would have done it to someone else. I bet he’ll think twice before he makes unwanted advances on the maid again.”

  “Lola, stop,” my mother said, putting a hand on my arm. Then she snatched it back, as if the contact burned her.

  I frowned at her reaction. “Look, no one got hurt. I’ll pay back the money. There’s no need to rip me out of my high school.”

  “Which one?” Agent Fines asked. “Hillhouse or Coven?”

  “Coven?” I said hopefully.

  “They rescinded your enrollment once they found out you stole the tuition money.”

  “I didn’t steal it. Mr. Hannigan paid for it.” Of course, Mr. Hannigan had been magically coerced by yours truly. As I said, he deserved it.

  “The same way he paid for a brand new Mustang convertible for you?”

  Goddess that had been a sweet ride. It was candy apple red, but they should have called the paint job, “pull me over” red instead. Because I hadn’t had that car a day before I got pinched in a speed trap. And that’s what started the whole line of awkward questions that led to my arrest.

  “He was a creep,” I muttered.

&n
bsp; “That’s not illegal,” Agent Fines said.

  “Well it should be.” I made him give my mother a raise and leave her alone. And that would have been the end of it. But then he decided to perv on me and that was all she wrote.

  “You’ll like it at Jewel Academy,” her mother said. “There are more people like you there.”

  “Yeah, and they lock them in so they can’t escape.”

  “It’s for everyone’s safety,” she murmured.

  “What about my safety?” I jiggled the bracelets. “I’ll be a sitting duck with these on. I won’t be able to defend myself.”

  “You shouldn’t have to defend yourself,” Agent Jackson said, half turning in his seat so he could face me. “I know the Headmistress. She’s tough, but fair.”

  That was usually a euphemism for witch on wheels.

  “This is a school, not a prison. Yes, there are extra precautions and there is a rough element, but you’re going to be fine.”

  “How do you know I’ll be fine?” I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him.

  “Because you’re used to being a big fish in a little pond. Now, you’re still going to be a big fish, but you’re going to be in an ocean. Don’t make waves.”

  I snorted disgustedly. “How long did it take you to come up with that?”

  “Lola, don’t be rude,” Mom said.

  If my father was still alive, this would have never happened. He would have continued home schooling me in my mind magic, while I went to a normal high school. My mother wouldn’t have had to get a second job cleaning hotel rooms to pay our property taxes. We never would have met Mr. Hannigan, and my mother wouldn’t be afraid of me.

  I could tell she was trying to hide it, but she was curled up against the door as far away from me as she could get. When I was a baby and my talent emerged that I could listen in on other people’s thoughts, my father was thrilled. He had mapped out my entire life. I was going to work in espionage like he had wanted to. But he hadn’t been powerful enough, so he poured all his energies into me fulfilling his lifelong dream.

  When I got older, I hated that I could see the lies that people told me. Not as much as they hated it. We had to move a few times because mundanes called me a freak and wanted me locked up. Hey, I wasn’t the one cheating on their wives or cooking the books.

  “No one likes a snitch,” my father said. “Keep the information to yourself until you need to use it.”

  He basically told me to hide my mind magic and only use it in an emergency. Which totally blew, because I was only mediocre at all the other disciplines. The first time I saw a mage turn a tornado away from a trailer park and into an empty field, I was so jealous. I wanted to be a weather witch, but my talent with the elements is almost null. I could run between the raindrops, but that was about it.

  Then, I saw a combat mage shoot lighting out his fingers and electrify a runaway car, short circuiting every power cell in it. The most elemental power I could muster was lighting a campfire with a snap.

  I couldn’t transform rock into mud, metal into liquid, or the ever-popular party trick, water into wine. I could however make your lemonade too tart or your burrito extra spicy. Neither of which didn’t impress anyone, but I was fun at parties.

  I could always hear thoughts if someone was thinking loudly enough or not shielding their mind. Of course, right now I couldn’t hear an elephant fart with these bracelets on—if the elephant farted in his mind.

  Dad had been worried that I was outgrowing his ability to teach. He was looking to get me transferred to the Coven School for Girls, but it was hella expensive. New powers had started to emerge this year, though, and I found I could convince people to change their minds. Before he went away on his business trip, my father had caught me gently guiding my mother into letting me stay out past curfew with my friends. That hadn’t gone over well. My father gave my mother a brooch of protection. It would only stop low level spells, but it would vibrate whenever anyone was actively casting.

  My mom didn’t have a lot of magic. She was good with gardening and plants, but nothing more than that.

  One time after he died and she wasn’t paying attention, I swiped the brooch right around the time my principal was calling her to tell her I had been caught skipping school. I was at the Milford mall with my friends. It wasn’t like I was planning to knock over a jewelry store. The classes were boring, and I couldn’t breathe inside the school anymore. How could people just go on with their lives like nothing happened when there was a gigantic hole in my life where my father used to be?

  I eavesdropped on their conversation and my punishment was going to be that I would have to skip the homecoming dance. There was no way I was going to miss out on that. So after she hung up on the principal, I had her forget about all about my delinquency and the conversation.

  It had been so easy.

  The look in her eyes after I did it scared the pants off me. They were vacant. It was like she wasn’t my mom anymore. She just stood there like a soldier awaiting more orders. I wanted her to wake up, to just blink and be normal. But she just stood there. I had been terrified to try any more magic on her. I had been convinced I was going to lose her to.

  Sick in the heart and in my twisting guts, I ran to the bathroom and threw up. My head hurt and I was so afraid. When she came looking for me a few hours later, I slipped the brooch back into her pocket.

  She never suspected a thing.

  Until the FBMI scanned her mind after the Hannigan incident, and it showed that I had tampered with her memories. She never let go of the brooch from then on. In fact, she was still clutching it in her palm.

  I confessed what I did. Agent Fines is like me. Only she’s geased to kingdom come not to abuse her powers by the FBMI. If she tried, she’d be neutered. They called mages like her mindbenders. She knew I was telling the truth. It was her job to tell who was lying or not.

  My mom wasn’t sure what to believe. All this powerful magic was too much for her.

  “I can’t handle you without your father,” she had cried as she signed the papers to send me to Jewel Academy. “They’ll teach you discipline and right from wrong. Something we should have done.”

  They had taught me that. I just made a mistake. Like I said, if my father had been alive, none of this would have ever happened. I had never done anything like that before. But no one seemed to care that I was a first offender. Not my mother and certainly not the FBMI.

  After what seemed like hours and hours in the car, we pulled into a narrow turn off, that wasn’t even marked. The path was barely paved, and Agent Fines bottomed out the car more than once. The tree cover hid the sky and even though it was getting late, it shouldn’t be this dark outside.

  Eventually, the path ended at an enormous iron gate attached to a fence that trailed off into both directions as far as I could see. After a moment of waiting, the gates didn’t open.

  “I guess they don’t want me either. Let’s try the Coven school.”

  “It’s not time yet,” Agent Fines said.

  “Time for what?”

  “Just wait.”

  I hate waiting. Patience wasn’t my strong point. I fiddled with my bracelets again, tried to make eye contact with my mother, and when that failed, stared out at the Jewel Academy through the car’s windshield. I could barely make out the large mansion in the distance, just the spires at the top of circular towers. There were a lot of bushes and shrubs in the way, but I could see that there was a path leading up to the mansion. Why didn’t we just honk the horn or get out and see if the gates were locked?

  I couldn’t take it any longer.

  “What are we waiting for?”

  “Dusk,” Agent Fines said.

  My mother drew in a quick breath, but still wouldn’t meet my eye.

  As the sun set, a fog rolled in from the mansion. It got thicker as it blew towards us. My mother was white knuckled around the brooch and she was mouthing the twenty-third Psalm.

 
; “Mom? Are you all right?”

  The fog passed over the car and coalesced into the figure of a woman. Then the fog was gone. I flinched back at the creature. She had long red hair cascading to her waist. She wore a white billowy pirate shirt with a leather vest and matching leather pants.

  “Who is that?”

  “Vampire,” my mother whispered.

  The woman smiled as if she heard, and I could see her pointed canines. I pressed back into the seat. I hadn’t seen a vampire before, not this close anyway.

  “That’s Headmistress Magee,” Agent Jackson said. “You’re in good hands with her.”

  “Get out,” Agent Fines said, her voice a tad high with fear.

  “Wait, I thought we were going to drive up to the school. My mom would help me unpack and maybe help me get settled in.”

  Headmistress Magee tapped her knuckle on the window. Agent Fines reluctantly rolled it down an inch.

  “I find that extended goodbyes are never helpful for our new students. Please exit the vehicle.”

  “What about my luggage?” I babbled. “I can’t carry all my suitcases by myself.”

  The lid of the trunk sprang open and I saw my bags sail out, and then over the gates of the Jewel Academy.

  “Hey, that’s my stuff.” I scrambled out of the car and ran up to the gates, but they didn’t budge.

  The car door slammed, and Agent Fines kicked up a lot of dust throwing it into reverse and making a quick turn that left ruts in the ground when she drove off.

  “Mom,” I said, holding out my hand.

  She didn’t even look back.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  In that moment, if I could take it all back I would.

  “Welcome to Jewel Academy, Lola Bragg. I’m Headmistress Magee.”

  I whirled around. How could I have forgotten I had a vampire at my back?

  “I think there’s been a mistake. I should be at the Coven school.”