Cursed to the Bone

13. Curious Eyes

On Friday morning, I sat in on the sophomore Spirits class with Naomi, Rhett, and Nix. The professor, Garth Moore, was not as scary as Nix had heard. The only remotely frightening thing about the man was his personality, which carried from confident and loud to quizzical and timid with strange frequency. Otherwise, he was tall, gangly, and skinny as a board, with bags beneath his eyes that indicated he had dreams. Bad ones, I was sure. His afro was short and wild, and his eyes glowed from the amber lanterns strung throughout the room.

There were eighteen of us in total; seven freshmen, and eleven sophomores. I did count. We were in a room on the second floor filled with cushions and shelves without desks or chairs. It had a massive window that observed the lake, covered, at that moment, with shimmering gold curtains.

"I see some new faces this week," Garth said faintly, pacing at the room's center. It seemed he was in a quiet state of mind. "I will give a small account of what the Spiritual branch of magic covers."

Garth stopped and cleared his throat. "You will learn spiritual communication, several spells powered through intuition, the nine planes, and everything in-between. You may or may not be aware that our new headmaster has conducted groundbreaking research in this field. It is lucrative"—He cleared his throat again—"If you have the stomach for it."

I wondered if maybe that was the reason Garth Moore had dreams. Trauma from something he'd seen on another plane made sense, but there was no way to be sure without outright asking. That was frowned upon.

A hand flew into the air.

Garth gestured to the girl and offered a series of eager nods. "Yes?"

"Are there monsters in the nine? Or only outside of them?"

Garth broke into a smile and spoke loudly, "There are monsters everywhere! In the great beyond, the nine planes have many. The most commonly known is the Witchwood. As I'm sure many of you are aware, it's filled with feral witches. Stay away from it."

I shivered at that. Staying away from the Witchwood was one thing, but that didn't always work. Feral witches might not be able to enter our realm, but they could use other forces to drag unwitting children into theirs. That's what happened to me, anyway.

Garth scratched his neck and chuckled, which seemed ill-taste given the discussion. "Then there's The Gray. A world of Shades—usually servants bound to specific witches. They are dangerous. If you ever encounter a shade, run. The places in-between have many monsters, and we'll get to those at some point."

As it appeared there were no more questions or explanations, Garth approached the board and grabbed a piece of chalk. He scratched a list down in jerky motions that made the hairs on my arms stand on end. "For our freshmen, these are the spells to learn for this week and last. If you finish, grab one of the books on the shelves and read up on some of the planes to make full use of our time together. Sophomores, this week we learn Call Spirit—you mustn't abuse this ability."

The four of us sat each to a cushion facing one another as we set to work on the myriad of tasks assigned to us. Considering the simple nature of the spells, we moved on to studying in no time. I was almost of the mind that I could skip Spirits and double-up on Distortion. Or something. It wasn't difficult work. The four of us could easily learn Spiritual magic on our own, but I didn't mind learning about the other planes. I'd never even heard of The Gray before.

Time passed slowly as we read, fooling around in-between and being scolded like children. Once Noon finally rolled around, Garth caught me at the door. "Uh, Miss Tate. I am curious, too curious, about your eyes."

That was baffling. "You are?"

"I came to the conclusion that you must not be far along in your abilities."