Chapter 4

 

The very next night classes recommenced with the additional students. There were ten from each other Nocturnal Academy, seventy in total, and even though they tried to maintain cool, aloof exteriors, they couldn’t hide the fact they were still thoroughly gobsmacked by the Australian Academy and its carefree informality. They were allowed to talk in the corridors, didn’t need to line up outside their classrooms before they could go in, and could wear their sports uniforms all day if they wanted. Most had to admit the food was better here, and the mild autumn climate a definite improvement on most of the other schools, especially the year-round freezing temperatures in Siberia, and the sweltering heat of Kenya.

Alice’s first class on Tuesday night was Maths with the Maths Mistress Professor Subrette. It was the highest class for the smartest kids, and even though they were only in year ten, the fire elemental mistress thought they could handle rudimentary calculus. When Alice walked in she baulked at the sight of the white-board, already covered with horribly complicated calculations with far too many “X”es and “Y”es in them.

She knew she was supposed to copy them all down, and groaned.

Six students from the other schools had been placed in this class, three from the Chinese Academy, one from the Swiss, one from the North American one, and one from the Indian one, making for a very crowded room. Since the seat beside Harley was already occupied, Alice found a seat beside one of the Chinese kids, who was very studiously copying down the enormous sum. Alice produced her tablet and immediately set to work.

During a convenient break she looked up to check if Subrette had put down some more work. She hadn’t and appeared to waiting for everyone to finish. Her bright yellow hair danced like flames and her similarly-coloured eyes flicked, trying to keep an eye on the entire class. She twitched and shifted constantly, always on the move just like a fire. She made a lot of people nervous.

“Hello,” said the Chinese girl. She was small and skinny with thick black hair cut in a bob and a pair of thick spectacles perched on the end of her button nose.

Alice jumped and turned to look at the girl, surprised that someone from one of the other schools had actually talked to her. “Er, hi!” She smiled. “I’m Alice. What’s your name?”

“Wai Ling,” the girl answered and returned the smile. “I’ve been told by nearly everyone here that my name is very funny.” She pulled a face. “I wish someone would explain.” Her English was very good, but heavily accented.

Wailing, Alice thought and clapped a hand over her mouth before she could snort with laughter. “I’m so sorry, but in English your name means ‘crying’.”

The girl stared at Alice through confused dark eyes. Then she laughed. “Crying! So silly! But … how shall I put it? Prophetic too. I am a water spirit so I cry a lot. You are a vampire?”

“Yes.”

“Can you do bats and wolves yet?”

“Yes.”

Suddenly Professor Subrette stepped forward and wiped everything off the smart-board. “I certainly hope from all the chatter that everyone recorded that. Now I will write those problems out again the easy way.” She scrawled down the sums, and this time they only took up two lines each. “The rest of the information was the proof, which is not required. So long as you remember the full process, this is the method of derivation.”

Kids stared at her in confusion. Professor Subrette took a deep breath and proceeded to explain in excruciating detail how a derivation was performed. By the end even Alice was confused. What kind of torture was calculus? She wanted to go back in time so she could punch Isaac Newton in the face and tell him to stick to eating apples.

“Calculus is easy,” said the water elemental Wai Ling. She scribbled down a couple of sums on her own tablet, a thin, sleek very modern looking device – nothing like the clunky old machines Professor Abbacus preferred. “It only starts to get hard when you have work out more than one variable.”

Alice stared at Wai Ling. “And I thought polynomials were a pain in the butt!”

Wai Ling grinned. “So, are you involved in the Nightmare Games?”

“Yes … unfortunately! I’ve been having second thoughts about the whole thing for ages now.”

“Too late to back out now!” Wai Ling laughed, and her giggle was infectious. Alice laughed too and Subrette turned back around. Her eyes blazed red.

“I think some people don’t have enough work to do. Find the derivative of these ten equations.” She scrawled them down on her board to the sound of groans from all over the class. Someone bounced a stylus off the back of Alice’s head, and she shrank down into her collar in embarrassment.

 

While Alice was struggling to understand rudimentary calculus, Toby was staring in bewilderment at a whiteboard full of compound interest equations and wondering what on Earth they had to do with learning to be a were. His teacher was Miss Pearl. Even though she was a drunk who sometimes showed up for class in full horse form and tried to teach by whinnying and tapping her hooves against the floorboards, she was still a lot smarter than her students and knew her stuff.

Today she was in human form … just. Her brown hair was mussed and her multicoloured cardigan had been buttoned up the wrong way, but she was determined to drum the basics of compound interest through her students’ brains. Toby was sitting beside the big blonde were boy he’d tried to scare and they were both totally baffled.

“It’s perfectly simple,” Miss Pearl insisted in her high, shrill voice. She scrawled down a few more equations.

“Why do I need to know this to eviscerate someone?” asked the blonde were boy.

Unable to help himself, Toby snorted. Partly at the comment, and partly at the boy’s Russian accent.

The boy turned to glare at him through his cold grey eyes. “Something funny?”

Toby stared back. “Of course! What you just said.” He smiled, hoping the kid wouldn’t shapeshift in the middle of the class and try to take his head off.

But to his surprise the boy roared with laughter and slapped him across the back, so hard he almost smashed his face into his table. Miss Pearl turned.

“That’s enough!” she shrilled, and rubbed her forehead where no doubt her hang-over was making itself painfully obvious.

Quickly the boys silenced. Miss Pearl turned back to the board and resumed her scrawling.

“What’s your name?” asked the Russian were-boy.

“Toby Thompson. You?”

“I am Nikolai Markov. I am from the Siberian Academy. I am werewolf. Is it true, what you said about the animals here?”

“I’m Toby Thompson and … well, yes, actually. Some of it at least. There are a heck of a lot of poisonous beasties here, and when we were running around on the Astral Plane we saw bunyips. Cranky looking critters.”

Nikolai looked a little green. “Poisonous to weres?”

Toby stared at him. He’d never tried to eat a snake. Not a lot of meat on them. “Er … actually, I don’t know!”

Suddenly Miss Pearl threw her whiteboard eraser at Toby’s head. Her aim was excellent and it bounced right off his forehead.

“Ouch!”

“What did I tell you about talking?” she shouted. “Just because a bunch of toffs have come from the old country doesn’t mean you immediately start a tea party!”

She was being deadly serious, but the kids couldn’t stop from laughing. Miss Pearl grabbed two bunches of her knotty, unwashed hair and pulled at them in exasperation. “Excuse me, I need to step outside for five minutes.” She stomped from the room and shut the door behind her. Immediately everyone darted from their seats and crammed at the little window set into the wood to look out.

Miss Pearl hadn’t wandered far down the corridor before stopping to take a nice, long swig from her hip flask. And it wasn’t even ten pm yet!

 

Later that day, in her specific elective, Were History, Carla found herself stuffed in beside a dark-skinned boy from the Indian Academy. While the teacher, a weregoat named Mr Daley, droned on like a broken hair-dryer, the boy was only too happy to tell Carla all about himself.

His name was Karinder Singh and he came from Bangalore. He was a weretiger. When Carla tentatively informed him that she too was a weretiger, his face broke into the whitest smile she had ever seen, and he declared that fate had brought them together from opposite ends of the globe.

“Hardly!” Carla retorted, determined to nip this particular brain-fart in the bud. “I make my own fate, bud!” To prove her point she sprouted ears, whiskers and fangs.

But Karinder sprouted the same features, baring his own teeth back at her.

Carla produced a tail that swished angrily back and forth.

Karinder extended his own tail.

Carla unsheathed her murderous claws.

So did Karinder.

By this stage all the kids in their immediate vicinity had shifted their tables and tried to move out of the fur fallout range. Mr Daley turned from his smart-board and glared at the supernaturals, both of whom were now in their half-human, half-were forms. He gave a frustrated growl and stomped across the room, sprouting a pair of long, pointy horns along the way. One large, gnarly hand clamped down on the scruff of Karinder’s neck, the other on Carla’s.

“Now what’s so important you have to start a fight in the middle of my class?” he baa-ed.

The two kids immediately shifted back into their human forms.

“Oh, we weren’t fighting,” Carla said quickly.

“Yeah, we were just showing each other how well we could control our changes,” Karinder explained.

Mr Daley’s bushy brown eyebrows crawled down his forehead, almost disappearing into his sunken eye-sockets. Now he had a long goat beard as well. “Well, you can stop doing it in my class, or I’ll put you both on detention!”

“Yes sir!”

“Of course sir!”

Butter couldn’t have melted in the two werecats’ mouths.

Mr Daley released them and retuned to his board, where he resumed scrawling down his terminally boring history.

“Thanks for that!” Karinder whispered to Carla.

She glared at him. “Don’t thank me just yet, tiger-boy. Daley’s version of detention is forcing students to help him edit his terminally boring were-history book that he’s trying to get published!”

Karinder pulled a face. “If it’s anything like what he’s teaching us now, it’ll be the biggest flop in history!”

“You’re telling me,” Carla agreed. “So keep your silly comments about fate to yourself!” Her green eyes flashed, and he shrank back.

“Yes ma’am!” He smiled. “But at least we can be friends, yes? At least until the games!”

“Of course!” Carla answered back, all smiles.

They shook hands.

 

After lunch in her English class, Millicent Jorgenson also found herself sitting next to a visiting student. Professor Luften was scribbling something down on the whiteboard, and everyone was expected to copy it down. Milly recorded the information diligently, and then turned to look at the kid beside her. She had grown in confidence and ability since her second visit to the Magick Earth, and had no qualms about introducing herself to the quiet girl with long, curly red hair with lots of leaves stuck in it.

“Hello, my name’s Milly. What’s yours?”

The girl jumped and looked up. “Oh, sorry! I was off in my own little world as per usual! My name’s Autumn. I’m a tree spirit.” She had a lovely, lilting Irish accent.

I gathered, Milly thought but kept her smart-alec comment to herself. “I’m a vampire.”

“Really?” Autumn’s big green eyes widened in surprise. “But you’re so pale! Don’t vampires have black hair?”

“Not all of us. My whole family are blonde. We’re from Sweden.”

“Then how come you’re not at the Swiss Academy? That’s where I go.”

Milly pulled a face. “I wasn’t allowed to go there. They didn’t think I was smart enough.”

Autumn’s face fell as she realised how tactless she’d been. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. I have a bad habit of putting my roots in my mouth!” She giggled at her appalling joke. “I guess they are a bit snotty at the Swiss Academy. But I’m a tree spirit and I’ve never worried about that sort of thing. All supernaturals are equal as far as we’re concerned.”

Milly smiled. “I’ve always believed that, too.”

“I mean we should all get along, because if we’re too busy fighting amongst ourselves, the demons will be able to sneak in right past us, won’t they?”

“For sure!”

“So, are you part of the Nightmare Games?”

“I sure am!” Milly said proudly. “I can do bats, wolves, mist, read minds and I’m pretty good at Tooth and Claw.”

“But that’s a were-art! Vampires don’t use that, do they?”

Milly shook her head. “There are a heap of vamps here who know Tooth and Claw. Check these out!” She popped out her long, curving talons.

Autumn shrank back. “Very nice! Just don’t sharpen them on me when I’m a tree! I make a very pretty beech when I’m in the ground, and I’d rather my bark didn’t get all scratched up!”

Milly giggled. She liked this silly tree spirit. “So what’s your speciality?”

“I was the youngest in my class to master the half-human, half-tree form. I can shift parts of my body into branches like that!” She snapped her fingers – and the next thing Milly knew her hand had turned into a five-fingered branch. “I may not be the biggest, but I’m the fastest in my class, which is important for a tree competing in the Nightmare Games. Normally we’re so slow.”

Professor Luften rapped his board. “I hope everyone has finished copying this poem down! I’m about to wipe it to put up the twelve questions you’ll need to answer!”

Everyone groaned, including Milly. She hated answering questions about poems, especially ones full of complicated imagery she didn’t understand!

 

Alice, Toby, Carla and Milly may have been able to make friends with four of the visiting students, but other kids weren’t so lucky. A weremoose from the North American Academy sat next to Grizzer during his English class and made some snide comment about the big werebear’s messy, childish handwriting. Before Mrs Bright, their celestial elemental teacher could react, it was on.

Grizzer shifted into full bear-form in a fraction of a second and grabbed the big Canadian boy in a hug. But the youth shifted in his grasp and suddenly there were two massive, hairy monsters scuffling in the middle of the room, sending tables flying. Other kids scrambled for cover, a few actually diving out of the windows. Amala and Delilah shifted into bats and fluttered up into the fans to hide. Ali Malouk became a massive rock-creature and actually tried to grab the kids before they could start laying into each other.

But they were both masters at their various arts and blindingly fast. The moose charged Grizzer, trying to impale him with his massive antlers.

“Oh for the love of God!” cried Mrs Bright, and she unfurled her glowing white wings, rising into the air. “That’s enough!” She clapped her hands, sending a massive pulse of thunder stunning everyone in the room. All the other kids groaned and covered their ears. The two vampire girls fell from the fans.

But the frenzied creatures continued to lunge at each other. Several tables were trampled to match-wood beneath massive bear paws and hooves the size of dinner plates.

Mrs Bright realised her Clap of Stunning didn’t work. She would have to Command. She didn’t like issuing Commands. But if those brutes weren’t stopped soon, they could trash the entire room and seriously injure someone. So she opened her mouth and shouted:

“Bear! Moose! Cease and Desist NOW!”

Her resonant voice trembled the walls. The children she hadn’t been Commanding heard only an incoherent roar. But Grizzer and the Canadian boy immediately stepped apart.

“Return to your human forms!” Mrs Bright continued.

They did. Both were pale and sweating, wondering why on Earth they were obeying. But the teacher’s voice seemed to have stolen their will to resist away.

Confident they were now under her control, Mrs Bright stepped forward, grabbed each boy by the collar of his shirt, and marched them from the room. While the other kids picked themselves up and crawled out from their various hiding places, Mrs Bright took the two surly boys up to Madam Nocturna’s office.

“The Nightmare Games may be short two competitors,” she told the head mistress after she had provided a description of what had happened. “I had to Command them to stop!”

Madam Nocturna folded her arms and glared at the youths. Now the fight had gone out of them they looked very chagrined. “No, I won’t exclude you from the Games at this late stage. But you two will join the staff for scullery duty every day until the start of the games! And if I hear about you fighting again, you will be excluded.”

“Yes ma’am,” they answered meekly.

 

Other students weren’t so lucky with the visitors either. Jamie Bell, being a wererat, was immediately ostracised by snooty weres who considered rats nothing more than smelly scavengers. Riley, the stocky vampire boy who used to suffer from dyslexia, was bullied by a group of tall, aristocratic Goths from the Swiss Academy, and Lucinda lost her tempter, shifted just her head and closed her enormous shark mouth around another kid’s head and held him. She didn’t let him go until she was ordered to.

She also joined Grizzer and the Canadian boy, whose name was Eric, on detention in the kitchens after dinner.

 

But it was poor Nancy Gordon who suffered the most.

That morning she’d spent almost an hour sprucing herself up for the foreign vampire boys. She covered her ocean of freckles beneath a thick coat of make-up, put in contacts and dyed and straightened her thick, frizzy brown hair. Although she couldn’t do much about her short, stocky build, she did manage to look quite pale and aristocratic as she stepped out of the Vampire House dorm. She had even put on the formal school uniform that Baron Falkenstein had designed.

But by lunch time her make-up was wearing off, the contacts were making her eyes water, and her fast vampire regeneration had ensured her hair was already starting to curl. The bored, vaguely interested stares she had been receiving turned to snorts and snickers. Once or twice she overheard herself called ‘Fuzzball’.

Then, in between the two last periods after lunch, one of her contacts fell out and she had to remove the other and put her thick spectacles on so she could see past the end of her nose.

The snorts and snickers turned to howls of laughter. One of the boys called her “Specks and Frecks”.

Nancy couldn’t take any more. She had always hated her appearance, and alternated between pretending it didn’t matter and trying to hide it. But nothing worked. She couldn’t accept herself, nor could she become someone else. In despair she burst into tears and ran back up into the Vampire House dorm.

A lot of children, including Alice, witnessed the taunting. Alice knew she ought to run after Nancy, but then she remembered how Nancy had snubbed her, called her Unlucky Alice, and tried to turn Milly against her.

She was turn with indecision.

But her conscience won in the end. She couldn’t let those Swiss Academy snots get away with insulting one of her fellow students like that. So she squared her shoulders and marched up to the five sniggering vampire youths, most of whom were taller and older than her. “Hey, Eurotrash! That’s no way to talk to Nancy Gordon! She can’t help the way she looks, but you can certainly help being a bunch of rude, brainless gits!”

The boys gaped at Alice, surprised that such a willowy beauty had come to the defence of that nerd-girl. “Now now, we didn’t mean anything by it!” The tallest of the boys gave a brilliant white smile that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the cover of a magazine. He had shimmering black hair that shone like obsidian and looked like he’d been poured into his school uniform. “We were just having a little fun.”

But Alice wasn’t giving him an inch. She poked him in the chest with a long, pointy vampire claw she hadn’t even realised she’d extended. “Running off in tears is fun, is it? Would you like me to send you running off in tears? One good knee in between the uprights will certainly do that to you!”

“Ooooh,” the boy’s friends chorused.

Alice straightened up. She’d heard about what happened to the other kids. She didn’t want to end up on scullery duty either. So she lifted one hand and let off a flare of purple Magickal fire. “I’m on level four. How about you?”

The boys’ bravado died. A few were old enough to learn Magick, and one or two had mastered some First and Second Circle enchantments. But Fourth Circle? That was second year uni Magick!

“Rubbish,” declared the first boy, still sticking to his bravado. “You can’t possibly be that far along!”

“If you don’t apologise to Nancy, you will find out.” Alice forced herself to turn and march off to the sound of the vampire youths snickering. But they no longer sounded so brave and full of themselves. She doubted they would say sorry, but putting those overblown egos in their place had made her feel so good.

Alice managed to get permission from Mr Pham to fetch Nancy down from the dorm. She raced up to Vampire House and into the girls’ room, running all the way in to where the Year 10s were now staying. Nancy’s bed was next to Milly’s, and the curtains were drawn. Loud sobbing and sniffing noises were coming from behind them.

“Nancy?” Alice called.

“Go away, Dribble!” shouted Nancy.

Alice stepped forward and yanked the curtain aside. Nancy sat on her bed, her hair now a frightful curly mess of red and black. Her make-up was smeared, her eyes were red and her uniform was winkled. She looked terrible!

“I said ‘go away’!” Nancy shouted at Alice, and she tried to grab her curtain.

“I told those goons off, Nancy.”

Nancy stared, her next retort dying in her throat. “You did what?” she gasped.

“I walked right up to those stuffed shirts and told them to apologise.”

Nancy stared. “But … but why, Alice? I’ve been so perfectly horrible to you!”

Alice shrugged. “Those snobs have to learn they can’t pick on us Aussies like that.”

Nancy burst into tears again. “Oh Alice, you didn’t have to do that! I certainly didn’t deserve it! I’m nothing.”

Alice reached in and pulled Nancy off her bed. “You’re not nothing, Nancy! You’re one of the smartest kids in our form! You’re great at Tooth and Claw and anyone who thinks you’re anything less simply because of your appearance can go jump in the Brooke River.” She shook her. “You really should have put your name down for the Nightmare Games.”

Nancy dragged a sleeve across her red nose. “No way. I’m perfectly happy to watch from the sidelines, thank you!”

“Are you coming to class?”

Nancy gulped. “I can’t face those horrible boys again. Not after my harebrained attempt to look like Delilah.”

“Wash your face, clean your specs, straighten your clothes. Then put your hair up like you usually do, in two bunches, and walk downstairs with your head up. Don’t show them you care. You can’t. If anyone does make a comment, I’ll give them the evil eye.” She didn’t add that the Evil Eye was actually a new spell she’d just mastered that really jinxed people!

Nancy sniffed. “I wish I didn’t care.”

“You’re a vampire, Nancy. You can’t change your appearance like a human can. You’ll just regenerate back into your old shape. Count your blessings. You’ll never get fat or unhealthy. You’ll never grow grey hairs or wrinkles. And there’s nothing wrong with freckles. Have you seen my brother? He has them all over his cheeks and he has thick curly hair like yours! But people think he’s cute.”

“But he’s so tall and muscular…” Nancy sighed wistfully. “Alright Alice.” She washed her face, combed her hair and put it up, and straightened her clothes.

She followed Alice out of the dormitory.

 

That morning at dinner, the vampire youths from the Swiss Academy collected at a table in the middle. When Nancy and her friends appeared and took their seats, they started to snigger and point – until Alice turned to glare at them. Her dark blue eyes flashed.

“I’m in the Games, lads,” she told them. “Make sure you apologise to Nancy before they start, or you just might take some friendly fire in the arena.”

By the end of dinner, four out of five of the boys had mumbled sorry to Nancy. The only one who refrained was the one whom Alice had threatened to kick in the pants. He remained in his seat, and glowered at the tall, dark-haired vampire girl.

His eyes were dark and cruel.

“Wow Alice, did you really tell off those Swiss Academy seniors?” Toby gave a long, low whistle. “You are growing quite a pair of-”

“Hey Alice, nice job!” approved Jamie the wererat as he walked past with a thumbs-up. “It’s only day one and some of those foreigners have already worn out their welcome!” He sat down with Grizzer and Lucinda, who were both looking miserable at the prospect of Scullery Duty.

“You are getting quite lippy, Alice,” Carla agreed.

Alice reddened. “Too much hanging around Professor Abbacus, I guess.”

“If that’s the case you should be swearing as well!” Milly giggled. “I’ve never heard such a potty mouth.”

“You used to be such a quiet, well-spoken girl,” Carla sighed.

“Maybe those snobby visitors are bringing the worst out of me,” Alice suggested.

“Some aren’t so bad. I actually spoke to that Russian boy Nikolai today.”

“Yeah, and I talked to a tree girl who was really nice,” put in Milly.

They began swapping stories, and dinner was served.

 

* * * * *