Ocean of Sapphires (Jewel Academy Book 4) Read online

  She shook her head. “You don’t know who you really are.”

  “So tell me,” I begged.

  “You are at a pivotable moment in your development. If your aunt and uncle get their hooks into you, I’m worried they’ll use you to further their own agenda.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “I would imagine by asking you to do things like you did to get you in the Jewel Academy.”

  “At this point, Mom, I think that they’re the only people who haven't lied to me. My aunt is a Cypher. She won’t ask me to do anything that will get me neutered, because she’ll be punished as well. My uncle is my father’s twin. Let me tell you about seeing him for the first time. I nearly sobbed my brains out.”

  “He’s nothing like Mark. Don’t let his looks fool you.”

  I kept to myself that at least, my uncle had been faithful to my aunt. I wasn’t angry at my mother anymore. I had just wanted everyone to stop lying to me. “My uncle highly respected in the magical community. I know what a Cypher is and that I'm going to need one if I ever want to work or even live without having been geased to one of the government agencies, like Agent Fines over here.”

  “You don’t have to worry about Cyphers for a few more years,” my mother said. “Please, just concentrate on learning everything Jewel Academy has to teach you. And stay out of trouble.”

  Yeah, easier said than done.

  “Aren't you the least bit curious as how the games went?” I asked when she paused to take a breath.

  “I saw how the game went, Lola. I watched them on TV. I was a frightened, furious and proud.”

  “Proud?” I grabbed onto that word. “I thought you hated it when I use my mindbender abilities.”

  “I hate it when you used it on me,” she said.

  I looked at Agent Fines. “Is that why she's with us?”

  “Yes, I want you to stay away from Andrei and Stefan,” my mother said. “Now, Grantaire seems like such a lovely young man, and I think the two of you have a lot in common.”

  “Please don't tell me you put Grantaire up to asking me out,” I said to Agent Fines.

  “Grantaire does what he wants.”

  That wasn’t a yes or no answer and mindbender to mindbender, I would've known if she was lying to me. So by not answering the question, that meant yes, she put Grantaire up to asking me out on a date.

  “Why?” I asked. This was not the heartbreak I thought it was going to be. But still, it would've been nice to know that Grantaire liked me, for me, instead of being a spy for the FBMI. But I suppose what else could I expect from an Enforcer? I liked him. I didn’t like him as much as I liked Stefan or Andrei, but we had some fun together. But to be honest, I liked getting out of Jewel Academy, going to movies a lot more than I liked him. It made my life seem a little more normal than it had been.

  “Tell me more about my aunt and uncle,” I said again.

  “You should forget that they even exist.”

  “Well, that's not going to happen. They know where I am, and I know where they are.”

  “I've instructed Headmistress Magee not to let them see you.”

  “Does that mean I’m not allowed to get any visitors? Because you're not visiting me. None of my friends are visiting me. So I’m going to be in exile until I graduate?”

  “After the stunt you just pulled,” Agent Fines said. “You're lucky that's all that's going to happen.”

  “We made a wish to the Emerald Magus that we wouldn’t be punished or have any retribution from anyone or any government agency for what we did.”

  Agent Fines cocked an eyebrow. “There are punishments and there are learning opportunities.”

  Something told me, I wasn’t going to like that.

  Chapter Two

  Ghouls, why did it have to be ghouls? I was knee deep in muck in a section of the Archives that was deep underground in the Jewel Academy’s library. There was a swampy section infested with undead magical creatures that had built their home in the deepest pit of the library. It was our punishment – wait not a punishment, because the Emerald Magus had cleared us so we didn’t take any consequences for breaking out of school and violating a Federal Bureau of Magical Investigations blockade— this was “remedial work” to catch us up on what we had missed while we were in Ireland competing in the Sigil games.

  At least Andrei and Stefan were here with me, otherwise I’d have been ripped apart and eaten alive an hour ago.

  While the rest of the Jewel Academy was having a leisurely breakfast, we had to clear the archives of these predator parasites that were feeding on library patrons as well as the occasional mouse or rat snake that got down this far.

  “On your left,” Stefan said. I swung a shovel with all my might. I clunked the ghoul in the head, staggering him back a few paces. The blow only dazed him, but it gave Stefan the opening to rip it in two.

  My mindbending talents were useless because you had to have a mind in order to be mind controlled, so these mindless ravenous packs of ghouls were immune to my awesomeness. They had gotten cocky because the last vampire that had been in charge down here had allowed them to stalk the library in return for getting rid of pesky bodies that he had drained of blood.

  His name had been Emile. My dead dad killed him.

  Too bad he wasn’t here now. He was guarding the Pearl of Wisdom and the only thing that was stopping me from going to talk to him was the lecture that was waiting for me about how I risked my life to go after the jerk who had killed him.

  “Move,” Andrei snarled, shoving me into the muck. I felt the breeze of a ghoul’s claws and heard the snap of its teeth as it barely missed me. “Pay attention.” Andrei was wielding a sword that his father had given him in Ireland. He looked like he knew what he was doing with it too.

  “Why don’t I get a weapon?” I complained, picking myself up from the muck.

  “Do you know how to use one?”

  “No,” I grumbled. “But if I had a shotgun, this would be much easier.”

  “This isn’t the wild west,” Stefan said, bouncing from once beheading to another. “You’re not going to be carrying a shotgun around school.”

  “Maybe I should. Watch out!” I called as a ghoul pack rushed him. Their bites were venomous. Their claws were disgusting. “Andrei help him,” I cried as Stefan was swarmed and went down.

  Andrei had his hands on his knees and was breathing heavily. “He can handle himself.”

  Since Stefan was a were-lion, he was probably immune to their venom and would heal any infection that the ghouls’ claws would give him. I was a raven shifter. A new one. I wasn’t so sure I could take that kind of punishment. I was pretty much useless in this battle.

  Andrei on the other hand was a vampire with a cool sword. He wouldn't dare bite these things, but when he wasn’t using his sword, he could rip them apart with his own claws. He could protect himself by shifting into mist or flying above them.

  But before I could insist that he helped Stefan, Stefan emerged from the ghoul pile claws first with a roar that shook the tunnels. He was covered in gore from the tip of his tail to the tip of his nose that was usually pink when he was in this form.

  “See?” Andrei said.

  “Why am I even down here with you two? All I do is swing a shovel when they get too close and scream for help.” To prove my point, I whaled on another ghoul and just made him mad. Backtracking, I dodged a swipe of its nasty looking claws and served him up for Andrei who coalesced behind the ghoul and snapped its neck viciously.

  “Because one day you might not have the two of us to save your bacon,” Andrei said.

  “Because you're being punished. The same way we are,” Stefan said.

  “This punishment blows,” I said and jammed my shovel at another ghoul before dancing away.

  The three of us had disobeyed pretty much every rule that the Jewel Academy offered. While we were under a lockdown by the Federal Bureau of Magical Investigations, we decided th
at we weren’t going to be lock downed, and we broke out of the Jewel Academy and bypassed the FBMI blockade to travel to the Sigil games in Ireland so that we could compete. At least, that was our cover story. But were really tracking down my father's murderer and attempting to gain three wishes. We came in third, which the prize for that was one wish by the Emerald Magus. But thanks to Andrei and his vampiric way of loop holing the rules, he turned one wish into two.

  One of those wishes was that we weren’t going to suffer any repercussions for disobeying all the rules. That apparently was too much for the Emerald Magus to grant—or perhaps the Magus was just nasty enough because we foiled his plans that he encouraged the Jewel Academy and our guardians how to word their punishments to give them a loophole of their own. Officially, we were down here in the archives doing work-study. We were studying the habits and practicing our combat. But that didn’t fool anyone. We were on the hit list.

  “What if we get seriously hurt?” I asked, trying to do a little bit more damage with my shovel. The ghoul grabbed the shovel out of my hand and swung it back at me. I leapt backwards and landed on my butt in a pile of disgusting mud. At least, I hoped it was mud and not other stuff.

  Stefan leapt over me and ripped out the ghoul’s throat.

  “Maybe should try a something a little bit more effective than a shovel.”

  “What am I supposed to use?” I said, getting up no longer caring about how I dirty was. I couldn’t get any dirtier. “You won’t let me use a shot gun.”

  “At this point, if you can find a shot gun, you can use it.”

  “Please don’t tell her things like that,” Andrei said.

  “And I can't use a sword.”

  “Everybody can use a sword,” Andrei said.

  “Swing it like a shovel,” Stefan said.

  “What if I get the sword taken away from me? I’m pretty sure I can dodge a shovel. I can’t dodge a sword, especially if that person knows how to use it.”

  “We’ll practice,” Andrei said.

  “Maybe Magee was right,” Stefan said. “You do need more combat training.”

  “I'm not a combat witch. I'm a mentalist. I stand in the corner and I command people to fight for me.”

  “How’s that working out for you?” Andrei said, squaring off as the ghouls started another attack.

  “I don't usually get in the nitty-gritty,” I groused.

  “Yet, here you are,” Andrei said.

  “I hate school.”

  “It could be worse.”

  “How Andrei? How could it be worse? We’re covered in Hades knows what, bleeding from a thousand infected cuts, and the ghouls just keep on coming. I'm tired. I'm hungry. I need a shower, and I'm about to collapse to a whiny mess.”

  “About to? Seems like you’re already there.”

  “Shut up, Andrei,” Stefan said.

  “It could be worse. We could be fighting things that aren't as easy as ghouls.”

  “You think this is easy?”

  “Compared to some of the challenges we faced in the City of Emeralds? Yes.”

  I hated it when Andrei had a point.

  Chapter Three

  About an hour later, the ghouls had retreated farther into the depths of the library. Andrei's mother, Mrs. Barnes, still wasn't a hundred percent happy with us, at least didn’t yell her head off when we made a hasty retreat back to the elevator from ghoul hell. She snapped her fingers and the three of us were instantly cleaned. I looked down at myself.

  “Hey, you didn't need any bodily fluids to do that.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Mrs. Barnes said.

  Andrei groaned and put his hand over his face.

  “When I was taught that spell, I needed to use blood or spit to activate it.”

  “My dear, I do not need spell components to cast spells.”

  “Oh,” I said, which led me to the ever-burning question: what exactly was Andrei’s mother, aside from the head librarian at the Jewel Academy? She wasn't a vampire. Although she been married to one and she gave birth to one. She walked around during the day and wore several holy symbols of various religions. I would not want to meet her in a dark alley or even when she was spitting mad like she was right now. I wondered if she would ever forgive us for breaking out of the Jewel Academy.

  “Students get to class,” she said.

  We entered the demon elevator, which roared gleefully, shaking us left and right, until spinning us out of the main floor of the library. After battling for two hours before breakfast, we had to go to our classes for a full day of learning and were still expected to keep good grades. I was starving. Luckily, I had a packed lunch from my dinner leftovers and stuffed them in my locker before the Enforcers escorted me back to my room that I shared with Priscilla, the leader of the coven I was trying to get in.

  My first class was English and my mundane school that I went to a lifetime ago before coming here, but it had really only been a few months, had covered most of this core curriculum standard already.

  Since it was December and Yule time, they were reading a Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Even if I hadn't read the book, I'd seen all of the adaptations on TV and in movies. I did not care about the three ghosts coming to visit Scrooge. I was more worried about my own impending mealtime holiday.

  During a pause in the discussion Priscilla shot her hand up in the air.

  “Yes, Ms. Walton?” Miss Carrier said, turning around from the blackboard.

  “What’s going on with the field trip?”

  Field trip? I glanced up from doodling on my notebook.

  “The Junior class will be leaving for Long Island Sound on Monday morning. Each of you will pack an adventurer’s bag with things that you think you’ll need during the two-night stay.”

  “What field trip?” I called out, earning a dark glare from Miss Carrier. She didn’t like me under normal circumstances because she and my father had dated during high school and he had dumped her for Mrs. Barnes.

  My dad had gotten around.

  “The Junior class will be taking a boat trip out to Faulkner's Island and will be doing various activities such as researching the migratory habits of seabirds.”

  I was torn between rolling my eyes because I thought that would be utterly boring and brightening up at another chance to get out from the gated walls.

  But then Miss Carrier smiled cruelly. “Of course, you're not going, Lola. You and your two friends are not welcome on this field trip.”

  “That's not fair,” I said.

  “You just came back from Ireland,” Priscilla said, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “The rest of us obeyed lockdown and was forced to stay here.”

  “Stefan and Andrei and I deserve to go.”

  “Take it up with Headmistress Magee,” Miss Carrier said and then went back to her lecture, ignoring me.

  As I fumed, a small note fluttered onto my desk. Palming it, I put it in my lap and unfolded the piece of paper. It was from Janine, my raven pack Alpha, the Unkindness. That was an oxymoron, the ravens had been the most kind to me out of everyone here. “It’s just two days looking at bird droppings on an island in Connecticut in the middle of December.” When she put it that way, it didn't sound as appealing as a competing in the Sigil games. But on the other hand, I didn’t like being left behind either.

  In between classes. I went to Headmistress Magee's office and knocked on the door.

  "Come in, Lola."

  "How did you know it was me?"

  “It was only a matter of time before you found out about the fieldtrip and decided to come in here and negotiate that you and your friends wanted to go."

  So much for small talk and beating around the bush. I shut the door behind me and took a seat across the desk from her.

  "I think it's a good learning opportunity, that the I shouldn't be allowed to skip. Especially since I'm not supposed to be punished for what I did.”

  Magee snorted. "You’re not being punished. Yo
u exceeded the amount of time a student can be away from Jewel Academy during the school year."

  "What you mean?"

  “Jewel Academy isn't just a boarding school. It's also a detention center. Even though the FBMI declined to charge you for abusing your mind control abilities, you were sent here as a punishment. Part of that punishment is you don't get to come and go as you please."

  That grated against my nerves, but I understood I was paying for my mistake. "This is a school sanctioned event."

  "So is finishing cleaning out the ghouls from the Archives.”

  Thinking fast, I said, “If we finish before Monday, can we go?”

  “No. Mrs. Barnes will have other projects to keep you three occupied with until the Juniors come back from the field trip.”

  “What if we fall behind in our classwork if we miss out on what everyone else is learning on the field trip?”

  “I can certainly have Mrs. Barnes, provide the review with extra reading material and study guides so that you don't feel like you've missed anything."

  "Thanks," I said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of my voice, because she was a vampire after all. I felt bad for Stefan and Andrei who got dragged into this mess with me, but on the other hand, I was happy that I didn't have to do this alone. Misery loves company, I guess.

  “It’s time for you to get to class. You don’t want to be late.”

  I knew a dismissal when I heard one. I wasn't surprised to see a few members of the Unkindness waiting for me. They were hanging outside Headmistress Magee’s office ostentatiously doing anything else, but listening at the door to provide me backup support, should I need it.

  "Hey, Janine," I said. “I guess you heard that Magee is firm that I'm not going on the field trip with you guys."

  "We were hoping that she would allow you to go, since you are raven shifter and learning about your bird brethren would be very helpful."

  "I guess in going to have to learn it the old-fashioned way, books."

  "We'll take good notes for you and pictures."