Chapter 6

"I'm Sepharalotta." She thrust out her hand. "But you can call me Seph."

I reached for it tentatively and shook it. "Dawn."

"Hi, Dawn." She grinned, lighting up the whole room. No windows needed.

Something about her was infectious, and her joy came as a complete surprise in a place like this. It almost made me forget why I was here. But not quite.

"Can you believe this?" She waved her arms around our room. "Necromancer Academy? I never believed I'd be here."

The more she spoke, the more of an accent I picked up, but I couldn't place it. More singsong rather than clipped like we sounded in Maraday.

"Yeah, it's... It's something else." No matter what I said, I could never match her enthusiasm since I wouldn't be staying.

"Let's not get too excited, Dawn." She snorted, but it was light and not at all mocking.

Nodding, I made my way over to my bed and plunked down on it, suddenly exhausted. "I'll try my best."

"I like a girl who can keep up with my sarcasm." She gestured to the parchment in my hand. "Is your schedule the very definition of insanity like mine is? I mean Psycho-Physical Education? It's supposed to be like P.E., but with more psycho tossed in to make it a literal nightmare, I guess."

"So P.P.E. Why am I picturing balls being thrown at my head like in high school?" I'd loved everything at White Magic High in Maraday except that. I'd been too soft, an easy target.

Seph gave a sympathetic frown. "You too, huh?"

"Yeah." My stomach growled low, a reminder I hadn't eaten in several hours. "Did they serve supper earlier?"

She batted that question away like a pesky fly. "That was ages ago."

It looked like I'd be eating wet bread and cheese tonight, slowly, to make my only food last until it turned moldy. As appetizing as that sounded, now I didn't feel nearly as hungry as I had.

"So tell me how you got into the academy." Seph bounced down onto her bed across from mine. "Are your family necromancers?"

"Uh, no. My parents are healers back in Maraday, and my brother..." I almost started to say was, but then that would bring about too many unwanted questions. "My brother is a professor at Graystone Academy."

Or he was supposed to be anyway. Graystone Academy was located in Plosh, just outside Maraday, and before he was hired as a teacher there, he'd graduated from the college with honors. Graystone was where black and white magic mixed, where the two sides of the coin balanced on a single edge. Growing up, he was one of those strange types of people who knew exactly who and what they wanted to be. He had a passion for teaching, and he would beam every time he was explaining a new spell to me while sitting on our favorite bench on the rim of the meadow in the back of our house, or a new herb I'd never heard of.  I absorbed all of it because the knowledge came from him. He was my idol, my hero in every way possible. He was other people's idol, too, especially the girls, but he'd often ignore them to spend time with me. I'd thought I was the luckiest little sister alive.

"Graystone, huh? And yet you ended up here, the darkest of the dark academies?" Seph asked, leaning over to collect her fallen black cloak from the floor.

"It's funny how life works out sometimes," I said, skirting the question.

Leo actually had come here for a job interview. That was last spring, shortly before I'd found him murdered. Since then, I'd imagined him meeting Ramsey, and what could've possibly transpired between my sweet brother and him for Ramsey to murder him in such a short amount of time. When Leo had come back, I asked him how the interview went.

"I don't know," he'd said with his teasing grin. "There was so much dark magic there, I couldn't see anything."

That had earned him a massive eye roll and a groan from me.

"My family are all necromancers." Seph hung her cloak up on the corner of her bedpost. "I'm excluding myself, though, since I've never, uh, necromanced anything. Ever hear of hoodoo?"

I shook my head.

"It's one of the oldest religions that still practices necromancy. My religion, but if you happen to be worried I'll try to convert you, don't be. I won't." She pointed to the door, which was slowly opening. "But she will."

A grouchy-looking gray cat slithered through, one orange eye sealed shut and a fang poking out from its slightly off-center mouth.

Instantly, my insides turned to goo. If this cat wanted to convert me, I might say yes.

"That's Nebuchadnezzar, The Undertaker. Nebbles for short, though," Seph said as the cat hopped up on the bed next to her and glared at me. "I guess you could say she's my familiar, or you could say she's a slut."

Nebbles growled at me.

"Hey, I'm not the one who said it," I said with a laugh.

Seph shook her head and stroked the cat's back. "She always denies, denies, denies."

I'd always wanted a familiar, but healers didn't typically have them. Neither did necromancers who were usually solitary creatures.

Seph yawned loudly and lay back on her bed to stare at the circus tent she'd made with ribbons above her. "You might hear more about hoodoo in our Death, Dying, and Reliving class if you're interested. I wish we'd met our professors so I kind of know what to expect tomorrow."

"Do you have any idea why we didn't?" I asked, toeing off my soaked boots. I didn't dare touch my cloak yet for fear my hair had lost its coal dye that had turned my blonde locks black.

She turned her head so quickly toward me, I jumped. "I think I might. Can you keep a secret?"

"Oh yes." I crossed to the space between my bed and a little desk where a torch burned then set my boots below it so they could dry faster. "For about as long as I can hold a grudge."

"So, forever?" She popped back up again into a sitting position, her dark eyes shining bright. 

"Definitely."

She grinned. "You might be my favorite new roommate. Okay, when I got here earlier, a group of who I think were professors were whispering frantically near the Gathering Room."

"What were they saying?"

"A professor is missing. Has been since early this morning, and no locator spell can find him." The ominous note in her voice triggered my heartbeat to thud faster. "Some fear he might be dead."