CHAPTER 6
The dining hall was completely bizarre. After hearing that it was a converted ballroom, I’d expected something fancy: crystal chandeliers, shiny dark wood floors, a wall of mirrors . . . the full-on fairy-tale ballroom.
Instead, it had the same decayed feeling as the rest of the house. Oh sure, there were chandeliers, but they were covered with what looked to be big trash bags. And there was a wall of mirrors, but it was covered from floor to ceiling in big sheets of canvas.
The dining hall was a jumble of tables of all sizes and shapes shoved into the massive room. There was a huge oval oak table right next to a Formica and steel table that looked like it had been stolen from a diner. I even thought I spotted a picnic bench. Wasn’t this school run by witches? Was there not, like, a furniture-creating spell or something?
But then I caught sight of the long low table that held all the food: big heaping silver bowls of shrimp, steaming pans full of roasted chicken, vats of gooey macaroni and cheese.
I gaped at the towering chocolate cake, easily three feet tall, covered in dark creamy frosting and dotted with thick red strawberries.
“This is a first-night spread only,” Jenna warned.
Once I had piled my plate high, Jenna and I looked around for a place to sit. I saw Elodie, Chaston, and Anna sitting at a glass-top table near the end of the room, so I immediately started to look for a table far away from them. There were a couple of empty spots available at nearly every table, and I could hear my mom saying, “Now, Sophie, please make an effort to meet new people.”
But Mom wasn’t here, and I could see that Jenna wasn’t really in the mood to socialize either. Then I spotted a small white table near the doors, and pointed it out to Jenna.
It looked like it had once been used for some little girl’s tea party, but it was the only table for two, so, you know, beggars, choosers, and all that.
I sat in one of the little white chairs. My knees thwacked into the edge of the table, causing Jenna to snort with laughter.
While I devoured the delicious food on my plate, I asked Jenna questions about various people in the dining hall. I started with the huge ebony table that sat on a raised platform at one end of the room. It was clearly the teachers’ table, since not only was it the nicest, it was also the biggest. Besides Mrs. Casnoff picking at her salad at the head of the table, there were five other adults—two men and three women. The faerie teacher was easy to spot, what with the wings, and Jenna told me that the big man next to her was Mr. Ferguson, a shifter.
On his right was a young woman with bright, nearly purple hair and thick-framed glasses like Jenna’s. She was so fair-skinned I guessed she was the vampire Mrs. Casnoff had mentioned earlier, but Jenna said she was actually Ms. East, a white witch.
“The guy next to her, he’s the vamp,” Jenna said through a mouthful of pie. She pointed to a really good-looking guy in his thirties with black curly hair. “Lord Byron.”
I snorted. “Oh God, how angsty can you be, naming yourself after a dead poet?”
But Jenna just looked at me. “No, he’s the real Lord Byron.”
Now it was my turn to stare. “No freaking way! Like, ‘She Walks in Beauty’ and all that? He’s a vampire?”
“Yup,” Jenna confirmed. “One of them turned him while he was dying in Greece. The Council actually held him prisoner for a really long time since he’s kind of conspicuous. Kept wanting to go back to England and turn everybody into vampires. When they opened this place, they sentenced him to be a teacher here.”
“Wow,” I breathed softly, watching the guy I’d written a paper about last year boldly scowl at all of us. “How bad would that suck to be immortal and have to spend eternity here?”
Then I remembered who I was talking to. “Sorry,” I said, looking at my food.
“Don’t be,” Jenna said, shoving a forkful of pie into her mouth. “I don’t plan on spending the rest of my very long life at Hecate, trust me.”
I wanted to ask Jenna some more questions about what it was like to know you’d live forever. I mean, vamps are the only Prodigium that get to do that. Even faeries will blink out eventually, and witches and shifters don’t live any longer than regular people.
Instead I gestured to the tall woman with curly brown hair who was sitting across the table from Mrs. Casnoff.
“Who’s that?”
Jenna rolled her eyes and groaned. “Ugh. Ms. Vanderlyden. Or the Vandy as we all call her. Not to her face,” she quickly added. “Do that and you’ll never get out of detention. She’s a dark witch, or at least she was. The Council stripped her of her powers years ago. Now she’s kind of like our dorm mother or something, and she teaches P.E. or what passes for it at Hex. She’s in charge of making sure we follow the rules and stuff. She’s also totally evil.”
“She’s wearing a scrunchie,” I said. I had rocked some scrunchies in my day, but that had been when I was, like, seven. The thought of wearing one as a grown woman was just tragic.
“I know.” Jenna shook her head. “We have this theory that it’s her Portable Portal to hell. You know, she just stretches it out and steps through whenever she needs to recharge her evilness.”
I laughed, even as I wondered if Jenna was actually being serious.
“There’s also a groundskeeper,” Jenna added. “Callahan, but we all call him Cal. I don’t see him tonight.”
We moved on to the students. I noticed that Archer was sitting at a table with a bunch of other guys. They were laughing at something Archer was saying. I really hoped it wasn’t the “Bad Dog” story. “What about that guy?” I asked with forced casualness.
“Archer Cross, resident bad boy and total heartthrob. Warlock. Every girl here is at least, like, half in love with him. Crushing on Archer Cross might as well be a class.”
“What about you?” I asked. “You have a crush on him?”
Jenna studied me for a moment before saying, “He’s not really my type.”
“What, you don’t do tall, dark, and handsome?”
“No,” she said lightly. “I don’t do guys.”
“Oh,” was all I could say to that. I’d never had a gay friend. Then again, I’d never really had a lot of friends.
Still looking at Archer, I said, “Yeah, well, I attempted to kill him earlier.”
After Jenna recovered from the sweet tea that nearly shot out of her nose, I filled her in on the actual story.
“Mrs. Casnoff didn’t seem very impressed with him,” I said.
“She wouldn’t be. Archer was always in trouble last year. Then he left in the middle of the school year for almost a month, and there were all these rumors about him. People thought he went to London.”
“Why? So he could ride one of those double-decker buses?”
Jenna gave me a funny look. “No, London is where Council headquarters is. Everybody thought he’d gone through the Removal.”
I’d read something about that in one of Mom’s books. It was this really intense ritual that took away magical powers. But something like one in a hundred Prodigium survive it. I’d never heard of anyone going through it voluntarily.
“Why would he do that?” I asked.
She pushed her food around on her plate. “He and Holly were . . . really close, and he was in a bad place after she died. A couple of people said they heard him telling Casnoff that he hated what he was, wanted to be normal, stuff like that.”
“Huh,” I said. “So he and Holly were a couple?”
“You could say that.”
I clearly wasn’t going to get any more out of Jenna about that, so I said, “Well, apparently he didn’t go through the Removal. He’s still got powers.”
“Yeah, powers over your pants,” Jenna said with a giggle.
I threw a roll at her, but before she could retaliate, Mrs. Casnoff rose from her seat. She raised her hands over her head and the room fell quiet so quickly, you would have thought she’d just cast a silencing spell.
“Students,” she drawled. “Dinner is now concluded. If this is not your first night at Hecate, please exit the dining hall. The rest of you are to remain seated.”
Jenna gave me a sympathetic look and cleared our empty plates. “Sorry in advance for what you’re about to see.”
“What?” I asked as the dining hall began to empty. “What’s going to happen?”
Jenna shook her head. “Let’s just say you may regret that second piece of cake.”
Oh my God. Regret cake? Whatever was about to happen must be truly evil.
Everyone was filing out when Mrs. Casnoff’s voice rang out. “Mr. Cross? Where are you going?”
Archer was only a few feet from me and about to head out the door. I also noticed that he was holding hands with Elodie. Interesting. Of course it made total sense that the two people who already seemed to dislike me the most would be dating.
Archer stared down the length of the ballroom at Mrs. Casnoff. “This isn’t my first year,” he said. The line out the door had frozen, everyone’s curious faces turned toward Archer. Elodie placed her other hand—the one that wasn’t clutching Archer’s like he was a prize she’d won at a carnival—on his shoulder.
“I’ve seen all this crap before,” he insisted.
The shifter teacher, Mr. Ferguson, rose to his feet. “Language!” he bellowed.
But Archer’s eyes were on Mrs. Casnoff, who looked calm and cool.
“And yet I don’t believe it has sunk in,” she told Archer. She gestured to the Jenna’s now-empty chair. “Kindly have a seat.”
I’m pretty sure he muttered an even worse string of words as he grabbed the chair across from me. “Hey there, Sophie.”
I gritted my teeth. “Hi. So what is this?”
Archer settled into his seat, a grim look on his face. “Oh, you’ll see.”
And then everything went black.