Cursed Academy (Year Two) Read online

  Maria had the same green lines on the arm that she'd used to pick up that letter. Only hers seemed to creep up her whole arm, because they lashed at her ear on the same side. Maria's arm and shoulder now sported bizarre green tattoos.

  "What are those marks?" I blurted.

  Maria pushed herself from the floor, turning her forearm over. She still had the outstretched green palm with the flame, of course, like we all did, but now she looked as if her mark had taken steroids.

  "We're super marked," Maria said, mouth falling open. "That envelope was freakin' cursed!" Slowly, she turned her gaze up at me, wide-eyed.

  This was meant for me.

  A trap.

  And now my friends had taken it for me.

  I was going to throw up. "I told you not to touch that envelope!"

  Maria rolled up her sleeve, revealing the horror. Well, the tattoos were actually pretty on her tan skin, but the meaning behind them was obvious. The lines of fire looked like a net, a cage. The damage to Mikey wasn't as bad. The magical fire had only gone up part of his pale arm, which he revealed when he rolled his sleeve up to his shoulder.

  Yeah. I was going to throw up.

  But I held back. I'd done that on Ronin once and this would not be a bunch of light.

  Mikey pushed himself up, too. "Well, this is interesting. We'll have to test and see what this all means."

  "It can't be anything good," I said. "Guys, this was meant for me. Prometheus won't let me get away with this. If you ask him, he'll remove these marks from you and--"

  Maria grabbed my arms. Then she screwed up her face, hurt. She'd made this sacrifice for me and now I'd belittled it.

  "I didn't mean that," I said. "Um, thanks. But you didn't have to--"

  "Do you want to be imprisoned here?" Maria asked, tightening her grasp. I half-expected orange and green flames to race from her arms to me, but nothing happened. Her sleeve feel back over her forearm, hiding all but the green lines on her neck. "Giselle. Whatever this is was meant to keep you under control. You need to stay away from this more than Mikey and I do." Maria swallowed. She was shaking. Trying to keep it together.

  Mikey, as if sensing the discomfort in the room, backed to the wall and stayed there. "Okay. We need to figure out what just happened. Other than having these lines I feel okay, but we have to test things. And now's the time to do it."

  "Test things?" Maria let go of me and faced him.

  I had no time for relief. "Yeah. Can you two, well, leave campus?" Pressure settled on my shoulders. If they were trapped here, it was my fault. This was my punishment for leaving over the summer. For hanging out with Ronin. Maria and Mikey weren't the intended targets, but that didn't matter.

  Maria pulled her robe up over as much of her neck as possible. "Giselle, I picked up that letter knowing something like this might happen. And I still have that pass, remember? You don't."

  "But Mikey--" I started.

  He waved my words away like this was no big deal. "Once Prometheus sees this accident, he'll fix us."

  "But he knows you're my friends. And once he knows the accident happened, he'll curse me for real." I hated the words as soon as they came out.

  "Come on," Maria said, grabbing my arm and yanking me to the door. The new aide was long gone. "We don't know anything about these marks until we know. Maybe the two of us can leave campus without our hair catching fire."

  "Maybe. But if this isn't meant to keep me here, Prometheus would have mailed a curse to me over the summer."

  Mikey appeared behind Maria and frowned. "She has a point."

  We left the room, and Jasmine, who I realized I wouldn't recognize unless she spoke, had left the upper floor of the girls' dorm. I locked the room back up and the three of us walked downstairs, Maria holding her robe over the marks on her neck. I blinked at them. "I think they're fading."

  "Really?" she asked, pulling her robe back down to reveal her shoulder. "You're right. They are."

  The green zigzags were less shiny and vibrant than they'd been, and Mikey rolled his sleeve up, too, to reveal the same. "You're right. I like suave, but this would have gone too far."

  "Doesn't mean there's still not a curse on us. At least Prometheus won't know it hit the wrong people for a while." She pinched my arm. "Looks like you're safe. Just pretend you got hit instead."

  We walked down the steps, and by the time we had woven around people, all gathered in loose groups and some socializing within open dorm doors, the marks on my friends had almost disappeared. I had to squint to see the green lines on Maria's neck. Nobody was staring, which meant that we could get away undetected.

  Outside, the sun was shining and more people, mostly first years in purple robes, milled around. Prometheus was right about the new building, too. Building C was shining. New and made of dark marble. It stood beside Building B, complete with dark pillars holding up the entrance. Statues of strong warriors stood at attention on either side of the doors, and tinted glass windows looked out on us. It was an odd combo, seeing them both on the same structure, but it looked cool, especially with the dark gray marble. A sign out front read Career Center.

  "So Cursed Academy gets something new," Maria said.

  "We still need to see if you're okay," I said.

  "If it's our hair getting set on fire," Mikey said, "there are probably ways to deal with that. And Prometheus doesn't like it when students get hurt. You saw him when you were about to fight Wendy. It was killing him."

  "And you probably convinced the gods to give him more money." Maria slapped my back.

  And I went falling forward, barely catching myself. "You're strong!"

  "Oops," she said. "Maybe my strength increased over the summer? Anyway, let's test this. We'll check out the career center later. We should cut through the combat arena and see if we can cross off campus."

  My heart raced as we took the dry gravel trail to the arena, where a couple of first years were standing and marveling at the huge space. They were both short guys who faced us as we walked in. Neither had golden-flecked eyes. Monster descendants, like Maria and Mikey. I wondered if they knew what they were yet and what they'd seen in the Sorting Temple.

  "Do we actually fight in here?" a guy asked.

  "Um, yes?" I said.

  "Cool!"

  "They haven't seen reality yet," Mikey muttered, eyeing the entrance to the Olympian side of the arena. Both schools shared this arena, which stood on the edge of both campuses. Once we reached the other side, we'd be off the Cursed campus.

  "Well, here comes the moment of truth." Maria stopped and stared at the archway and the gravel trail beyond. "Who steps forward first?"

  "The ladies?" Mikey asked, covering his head.

  "Thanks." Maria glared at him. "Well, I'm the one who picked up that letter so I should go first. It was my fault."

  "You didn't have to--" I started.

  But Maria held up her hand to my face. And I had to shut up. Her playful glare was the only thing keeping my racing heart at bay.

  She turned away.

  And stepped boldly through the archway to the Olympian side of the arena.

  Maria froze. She whirled on us an shrugged, forming a small smile. "We're good. Now we need to test going off the grounds of both campuses. If we walk to the Sorting Temple and back--"

  She slapped her hand to her forehead and screamed.

  "Maria!" I ran to her, pushing Mikey out of the way. I grabbed her arm and pulled her back across the threshold.

  Maria whimpered. "My head..." She splayed her fingers.

  Mikey let out a creative curse.

  The sight didn't register at first: a horizontal slit, slowly growing between Maria's eyebrows, and a bulge underneath slowly rising. Then the words exploded. An eye. A single eye. Choking, I pulled Maria farther away from the door as she wrenched out of my grasp.

  She whirled, catching her breath, and slowly lowered her hand from her forehead. The slit had gone, leaving smooth, flat skin, but tears
gathered and threatened to spill. Maria let her hand slap to her blue robe as her skin paled three shades.

  "Maria," I blurted. "Don't do that again."

  She ran her hand over her forehead again, rubbing it, making sure the horror had gone.

  "It's a curse," she rasped. "It's a curse that makes you mature if you go off campus. Mikey and I. If we leave, we become monsters. And then there's no helping us."

  Chapter Five

  I didn't know which thought horrified me the most.

  The fact that Prometheus wanted me to mature when I sneaked off campus or the fact that Maria and Mikey, to protect me, had to stay quiet and not go to the principal to have the curse removed. If they revealed that the curse had hit them instead of me, I was the next target.

  My rational brain told me I shouldn't feel bad, that Maria had grabbed that letter knowing she'd get screwed, but my emotional brain—nope. Guilt tormented me as if the Furies themselves were on my back, following me to Magical Meditation, the first class on Tuesday. Making things even worse was the fact that Maria and Mikey didn't share it with me, and neither did Tiffany, which left me to my thoughts.

  How would I remove the curse on my friends?

  Could I?

  And could that Underworld herb even help them now?

  Well, I knew one thing. Going to Wendy was my only option. Maria and Mikey would have to wait until the end of the school year to ask Prometheus to fix the mistake and even that would risk me.

  Magical Meditation was in a different meditation room than the one Natalia taught us in last year but at least I had Natalia again. She had been a fourth year at Olympian last year and the top student among Olympian's oracles. Now she'd graduated and stayed on as a teacher. Relief. Natalia flicked her dark ponytail out of the way and smiled at me. Her white toga uniform now had bluish-silver trim along the edges of her sleeves and the bottom, signifying that she was a full staff member.

  “Giselle!” And then she shocked me by running over to hug me.

  “Natalia. I'm not dark and evil. Promise,” I said as she pulled me through the doorway.

  “I can tell,” she said. “Ronin might be good at sensing magic, being a Hermes descendant and all that, but I still have Sight.”

  “Ronin's Zeus's son,” I reminded her. The two were friends. Well, most of the time. Natalia had given Ronin the silent treatment after our misunderstanding with my fake dagger, but judging from her tone, Natalia no longer wanted to egg his dorm.

  “His mother was also a Hermes descendant,” she said. “Shocking, since she was a model. You'd expect her to have come from Aphrodite instead. That's where he gets his ability to sense magic in others. Hermes was the messenger god, after all.”

  It made sense. My head spun as Natalia released me. “Why didn't he tell me that?”

  “I don't know. Maybe thinking about his mom is painful. Hey. Welcome to Magical Meditation. You're the first.” She nodded at the room as she let me go.

  Meditation Room D was big, bigger than even the main meditation room, and looked more like an indoor arena than anything else. That upped the gulp factor. “I'm nervous.” As I spoke, my voice echoed off the high ceiling. Yeah, we had a ceiling that looked like it belonged in a gym, if gyms had black carpet and white walls. Pillows lay stacked on one side of the room while wrestling mats waited on the other.

  Natalia lifted an eyebrow at me. “We have to be ready for anything. Giselle, you should really be in Olympian's Magical Meditation. They focus on light themes. I'll do everything I can to keep the darkness at bay. In you, at least, but I can't guarantee that the other students won't affect you. And I have a seating arrangement to keep you away from those certain people.”

  I sighed in relief. “Thanks.”

  Natalia put me at the side of the room, on my own mat, and it turned out the mats were for people to lie on. The other Magical Meditation students came into the room, which turned out to be Jamal and Sarah, two fellow second years I hadn't talked to much, and then Wendy, Percival, and Serena. I wondered how Wendy balanced being top of the class and looking like a cool slacker. That must be hard.

  Wendy glanced at me, sitting off to the side like a loser, before she turned her back and followed Serena and Percival to another mat on the other side of the room. I tried not to watch as Serena pulled on Wendy's blue sleeve and tugged her over to the other side of the room, away from me.

  I needed Wendy.

  And she was never away from those two remaining friends of hers. I hadn't talked to her since the fight at the dance. It was the start I needed.

  Because this was going to be a lot of work.

  Natalia started class. There were only eight of us here, which felt weird, and I tried to listen as she explained that we'd be tapping into magic over the course of the year, starting small, and working up to feeling our full potential. “...and once that happens, you will find that your magic comes far more naturally during combat, even without your birthright weapons. I'll be working with Ronin to coordinate everything with you so we do our best to avoid dangerous accidents.” Natalia glanced at me.

  Well, at least I had two instructors on my side.

  We didn't do anything, well, magical during that first class. Natalia even apologized when she gave us a rule sheet we had to read over and sign. No violence. No purposeful use of magic against another student in class. Report all accidental injuries to the instructor immediately. Sure, that was easy. And calming. I tucked the paper into my backpack as Natalia gathered her books and folders, ready to head to the next class. I didn't even get a chance to talk to her about what had happened to Mikey and Maria. And how Maria had come within a hair of terrifying maturity.

  The second years united again for Divine History 2, which turned out to be Mrs. Allenson once again drilling us about how great the Olympian gods were. There was no orientation. We were to get out our divine family trees from last year and start filling in the demigods the deities had sired during the ancient days.

  “Hercules,” she explained, “is perhaps the most famous demigod of them all. As a son of Zeus, rather than just a distant descendant, his powers were amplified beyond those of normal Zeus descendants. Hercules had incredible strength he could tap into when needed. Later this year we'll be discussing his Twelve Trials, so have your notebooks ready.”

  If Ronin were here, he'd lean back in his chair and puff out his chest for sure. Yeah, he was a demigod by Mrs. Allenson's definition. Maria slapped her hand to her mouth, hiding her grin. We were thinking the same thing.

  At least Maria had cheered up. And kept two eyes instead of one.

  “Wendy and company are not going to be easy to get to,” Mikey said as we left Mrs. Allenson's class.

  I gulped. The three walked way in front of us. “Yeah. Now they're too good for anyone. Or maybe they're ashamed since one of their own joined the Lower Order.”

  “I think that's part of it,” Maria said. “Look. Serena's been pulling Wendy around since they got here, keeping her from everyone else. Talk about jealous.”

  Serena turned the corner, and it was obvious that she was guiding the way, steering with her motions and herding Wendy and Percival. She took big steps, leaving the two no options. I'd noticed this during Magical Meditation, too.

  “But Wendy's the leader,” I said.

  “Well, peer pressure is strong in that group,” Mikey said. “She can't resist it even when it's stupid. Come meet the Lower Order, Wendy. Roll in poison ivy, Wendy.”

  “She only did one of those things,” Maria said. “Who the heck would roll in poison ivy?”

  “Some girls I went to school with in the third grade thought it would be fun,” Mikey said, thudding his hand to his chest.

  I could tell Maria and Mikey were doing their best to keep their spirits up at lunch, joking around with Tiffany and me. Wendy of course kept to her friends, who were practically smothering her. Yeah. It was clear Serena had a jealousy thing going on. Percival, I couldn't tell. But he had a
mean look in his golden-flecked eyes, and crossing a descendant of Thanatos just didn't seem like a good idea.

  In the back of my mind, I hatched a plan.

  I had to trail Wendy and find out if she was ever alone. Because that was my only chance at getting help, and even that was remote.

  With it being Tuesday, Ronin was waiting for us in Combat Training, which we now had in the afternoon. He flexed his biceps as we entered, and then leaned over and flexed them at another angle. Then he beat on his chest. Ronin, still being a student, wore his white toga uniform with the golden trim today. I'd forgotten how hot he looked in that.

  “Hey, Hercules,” I joked.

  Ronin furrowed his brow at me. “Oh. So you're learning about that jerk. I'm way cooler than him.”

  “And technically a demigod.” I ran my finger up his breastbone, stopping under his chin. Hey, no one else but Maria and Mikey were in the arena yet.

  “Yeah. Don't remind me,” he whispered.

  I drew back in shock. When could I stop hitting Ronin's buttons by mistake?

  But he changed the subject, turning his stare at the weapons rack. “I brought your birthright weapon today. Second years start using those all the time in class. And you get to work on moving targets now. And finals? They divide you up depending on whether you take Strategy or Magical Meditation. Beyond that, I'm not sure."

  I followed his gaze to the weapons rack. Our weapons hung there, shiny and ready for use after a summer of sitting in the locked shed. My fake Chaos Dagger hung there. I knew Ronin was still hiding the real one somewhere. So far, we'd fooled Prometheus on that front.

  “Gulp,” I said, checking the arena to make sure no one was listening. Maria just rolled her eyes at me. “Ronin. Prometheus meant to curse me today but he accidentally got Maria and Mikey instead.” I sensed them standing just behind me, waiting for me to spill the horror. Someone shuffled back, away from the Olympian entrance. Maria, probably. Then I explained the new curse and that my friends couldn't leave campus without turning into monsters. As I spoke, the mood in the arena dropped and a cloud drifted over the sun, putting us in shadow. Fitting.