Hannah Jayne - Under a Spell

I nodded dumbly and Will led me to Nigella, a thousand-year-old, half-rusted, half-funky maroon Porsche with Pepto-pink interior that he insisted was a classic.

“We’re a team, you know.”

“Hey, how come you get to be a professor and I’m just a substitute teacher?”

Will sunk the key into the ignition and Nigella coughed to life. “It’s the accent, love. Makes Americans think we’re brilliant. So, what’s on your lesson plan?”

“You have a lesson plan? Where’d you get a lesson plan?”

“I made it.” He paused. “Let me guess—you assumed I was just born your Guardian.”

“No.” Yes.

I was up to speed on Will’s involvement by the time we rolled into the Mercy High staff lot. Alex was up for the job, but having been out of organized education since slates trumped binder paper, both he and Sampson thought Will would be a smoother fit. According to Sampson, Will was there to investigate, to see what else he could turn up, but I couldn’t help but feel that his presence on campus was little more than a babysitter for an investigator that Sampson had no faith in.

All eyes were on me the second Nigella sputtered to a stop. The faculty lot and the student lot were separated only by an elbow-high cyclone fence, a sea of shiny, new-model haves on one side, a mottled bay of slightly dented have-nots on the other.

My heart slammed itself against my rib cage in what felt like a desperate attempt to escape as I snapped Nigella’s door shut, hitched my shoulder bag and my chin, and met Will on the sidewalk. I could already feel the heat pricking at my upper lip and my ears were already buzzing with the whispers I knew were coming: Special Sophie . . . the freak of Nineteenth Street. . . . Look at the freak. Look at the freak. Lookatthefreak.

I reminded myself that I had come a long way, that I was the teacher now, that I was helping to solve a murder and possibly take down a wily coven of supernatural evil. A crime fighter couldn’t be a freak.

I threw my shoulders back, and suddenly I didn’t feel like the blistering center of unwanted attention. There were no whispered hums, no more eyes. . .

Because they were all on Will.

At first Mercy students littered the grand lawn, making their leisurely way toward the main building. But just like that every girl stopped, sucked in a collected breath, and straightened, shoving out best assets—breasts, hips, taut teenage butts—and turning their heads toward Will.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I spat.

Will didn’t need to say a word. The grin he tossed over his shoulder at me was flattered, smug, and dancing on my last nerve.

“You just remember we’re here solving a crime, okay? We’re here to find a missing girl.”

Will interlaced his fingers, outstretched his hands, and cracked his knuckles, the universal sign (in my dictionary) for sleazy old man leering at young girls.

“Fine, man whore. If saving a poor little girl’s life doesn’t get you, just remember that statutory rape laws are strong in San Francisco.”

Will just shook his head as though I had uttered an interesting anecdote about higher education or Pippa Middleton.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

Our exchange—my admonishment, his rebuttal—was interrupted by a trio of schoolgirls in their knife-pleated Mercy skirts, their chests straining against their crisp white shirts and sweaters, the high, round breasts of padded bras and youth. I felt myself snake my arms across my chest and curl into my A-cup.

“Are you the new teacher?” the ringleader asked. She was dead center, smoked-sapphire blue eyes glued to Will, black hair Pantene perfect, heart-shaped face flawless.

“We both are,” I said, trying to break the girl’s Spock-like mind control.

“I’m Fallon,” the girl said. She grinned, blinding me with her blue-white teeth, a perfect line of Chiclets that would never dream of going buck or hanging on to a thread of spinach at a dinner party.

“This is Finleigh and Kayleigh.” Fallon acknowledged each girl with a miniscule shake of the head before squirreling her way in between Will and I and threading her arm through his. “I can show you where the admin building is.”

“That would be lovely, cheers.”

The other two—Finleigh and Kayleigh, equally as uninterested in me as Fallon was—slapped perfectly manicured hands over their mouths and giggled.

“OMG, cute!”

“English. Love!”

I rolled my eyes and followed Will and his entourage to the front doors of Mercy High School. They walked in as though they weren’t walking through the gates of teenage hell, as though the memories of being bullied and harassed just for existing weren’t still fresh enough to make my stomach fold over itself.

“Here goes nothing,” I said, stepping over the threshold.

Spires of hell fire didn’t shoot up through the ultra-waxed linoleum. Scary circus clowns didn’t circle me and point, and nobody stopped to give me a body check or a disdainful once over. Maybe things would be different.

I sniffed.

Maybe not.

It’s amazing how the smell of a high school hallway never changes. The janitors can try, they can swap out the district-issued lemony-fresh cleaning products for summer-rain-scented potpourri, but the underlying stench of scuffed linoleum, spiral notebooks, and teenage angst embeds itself in every loop of nondescript carpeting, in every inch of every number-two pencil, and in every rusted, dented corner of every locker of every high school in the world. Mercy was no different.

The girls deposited Will and me at the administration offices, where we were greeted by Heddy Gaines, school secretary—her little carved wood veneer nameplate placed prominently on her desk.

Heddy looked like every school secretary in every high school teen angst-slash-comedy ever made. She had a beige bouffant that was spun like cotton candy with perfectly rounded bangs that barely licked her forever-surprised red-brown brows. Her face was warm and matronly, as was the lacy Peter Pan collar on her dress, as she shoved a little cut-glass bowl of hard candies toward us. As I took a grape candy—and took her in—there was a tiny niggling at the back of my mind. Did I remember her? Her eyes flitted over mine, then went to Will. She offered us a practiced smile, her orange-red lips pressed tightly together.

“May I help you two?”

I stepped forward. “We’re the new teachers,” I hiss-whispered, and one of Heddy’s eyebrows went up even more than usual.

“Teachers?” she hissed back.

“Heddy, Heddy, I’ve got them.”

The gentleman speaking strode over to us, his tie flopping on his chest. He jutted out a hand. “Principal Lowe,” he said, shaking my hand so heartily I thought it’d snap off at the wrist.

For every inch that Heddy looked stereotypically secretarial, Principal Lowe looked atypically principal. He was tall, eye to eye with Will, with close-cropped salt and pepper hair and pale blue eyes that were kind, but rimmed with clear exhaustion. He was slender enough to make me suck in my gut, and his navy-blue suit—white button-down shirt, sans tie—gave him a cool but approachable edge. I vaguely wondered when Lowe had taken over, wondered if it was directly after the cranky old woman who had been the principal when I’d attended Mercy. Principal Stockman had lived up to her name as if it were an honor. She was built like a fireplug with a shock of fuzzy, blue-grey hair, turned-down eyes and a perma-scowl. Or, maybe the scowl was only for me. I shifted now in Principal Lowe’s visitors’ chairs, remembering the hundred or so times I had sat here, shrinking in Principal Stockman’s shadow as she told me that “girls will be girls” and that if I’d just ignore the mean girls’ comments, they would eventually forget about me and move on.