Demon Accords 8: College Arcane (11 page)

“You keep talking about
your
double
D’s and you be really confusing people’s imaginations,” Zuzanna
said with a grin.

“Yeah, good point,” I said, now only slightly
embarrassed. “Let’s get out of here; I’ve already got homework from
my real college classes.”

Kids were chattering excitedly in small
clumps, texting each other with idea after idea as we all began to
scatter.

Outside the classroom, Caeco was leaning
against a wall, arms crossed, waiting for me but looking sideways
across the hall at another person.

“Ashley,” that person called out.

Both Ariel and Ashley, who were just behind
me, turned to look at the woman leaning against the other wall. It
was the tough-looking platinum blonde from Gina’s apartment, and
she was eyeing us all pretty hard.

Caeco pushed off the wall, arms coming
uncrossed, and the blonde mirrored her. I started to pull power, as
it looked like something was about to go down.

“Oh, Neeve,” Ashley said, pushing past me.
The blonde continued to watch Caeco although I was pretty sure she
was aware of me as well, but Ashley’s obvious familiarity took most
of the tension down several notches. Ashley flashed us all an
apologetic glance, then headed down the hall, speaking quietly with
the dangerous-looking woman at her side.

The twins pushed past me, Ryanne, Jael,
Michelle, and Paige all following. “Thanks for sharing your double
D’s, Declan,” Erika called to me with her eyes on Caeco.

Eyebrows arched, Caeco just looked at me.

“Let’s get a snack and I’ll explain,” I said,
leading her into the dining room.

Chapter 10

A single buffet table was set up with cheese,
fruit, crackers, and bowls of different chips. We filled paper
plates and chose a table. The werewolf boys were at another table,
powering through plateloads of snacks. Delwood glanced our way,
nodded a sharpish nod at Caeco, and went back to his food.

“What’s up with that?” I asked.

“We have an understanding. Now, don’t stall.
Tell me what the witch bitches meant and why they’re so suddenly
friendly to you,” she said.

I explained the last hour and a half to
her.

“Dirt dudes? Double D’s? Seriously, Declan?”
she asked.

“I was eight flipping years old. I had no
idea why my aunt snickered when I said it,” I said.

“Show me,” she commanded, a funny look in her
eyes.

There wasn’t any dirt nearby, but she had a
whole pile of orange fish-shaped crackers on her plate so I
assembled them into a two-legged figure and walked it around the
table.

“Cracker people?” Ariel asked as she pulled
up a chair, T.J. coming along behind her with an entire bowl of
potato chips.

“Cool, we could eat the losers,” he said as
he took a seat.

“I was explaining class,” I said.

“It’s going to be amazing,” T.J. said.

“Plus you pulled Miss Berg’s ass out of the
fire,” Ariel said.

“What do you mean?” Caeco asked. I was pretty
interested in her answer too.

“Well I don’t know if you realized this, but
she didn’t seem to have much of an idea of how to teach class. She
just sorta had us teach each other, then when your idea caught the
entire class’s attention, she glommed onto it for a major part of
the curriculum. She has no idea what she’s doing,” Ariel said.

“Other than insulting me at every turn,” I
said.

“Well, from what I’ve overheard the witch
pack saying, apparently just about every known warlock is a male
slut. Comes from all the witches throwing themselves at them for…
well… having witch babies, I guess,” Ariel said with a grimace.

“Dude, look what you have to look forward
to,” T.J. said. Caeco’s gaze settled on him and he put both hands
up. “Whoa, just joking,” he said, but when she looked away, he
shook his head at me, grinning and silently mouthing, “No I’m
not.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that,” I said to Ariel,
ignoring T.J. and wondering how it was possible that I knew so
little about my own people. “But then, I’ve never met another
warlock before.”

Ariel looked shocked. “Why not?”

“Well until a few months ago, I’d never met
another witch, either. Aunt Ash kept me pretty isolated. Talked to
a few on the phone and by email when they ordered supplies from our
website, but never met one face-to-face until that night here with
my friends,” I said. Both T.J. and Ariel shot me curious looks so I
continued. “We won a free dinner and band night at the local Irish
restaurant. Ryanne and her sisters were playing. Afterward, I found
out they were witches.”

“Oh, that explains why she’s so friendly with
you,” T.J. said, blithely stuffing his face with chips and
completely missing how Caeco’s deadly gaze was now centered on
me.

“We’re acquaintances. That’s all,” I said as
nonchalantly as possible.

“I’d love to be acquaintances with a hot rock
star witch with a cool Irish accent,” T.J. said. Ariel smacked him
and I gave her a nod of thanks.

“Anyway, I don’t have any experience with
other witches,” I said.

“But you have mad skills with witchcraft,”
Ariel stated firmly.

“How do you figure?” I asked.

“Oh come on. I’m not stupid, ya know… I saw
Miss Berg’s face when you made the first dirt person and later when
you ran both a mini-fire bird and the dirt guy at the same time.
She was bugging, and so were the weeotches,” she said.

“Showing off, were we?” Caeco asked.

“No,” I replied firmly. “The teacher as much
as called me a liar for claiming dual affinities, so I chose a very
minor form of magic to prove myself. Hardly anything at all. She
still insulted me after everything, so she can’t be too
impressed.”

“So if that was nothing, you must really be
something, huh?” Ariel asked. T.J. stopped chewing chips and looked
from her to me as her logic struck him.

“I thought warlocks were weak?” he asked.

“As a rule, they are. But as with any bell
curve, there are exceptions at either end of the population. Huh,
Declan?” Ariel asked.

“He is exceptional in many ways, Ariel. Let’s
just leave it at that,” Caeco said. “Now, who was that N-eev
person?”

Eyes narrowed in a way that told me she
wouldn’t be forgetting our discussion anytime soon, Ariel finally
turned her attention to Caeco’s strategic question.

“She’s responsible for Ashley’s safety.
Probably checking in to see how her first day went.”

“So she’s like a bodyguard? Secret service
type?” T.J. asked.

“No, she’s pretty important herself. She’s
basically a princess.”

“A princess from where?” he asked,
baffled.

“Not from here,” she said, looking
uncomfortable.

“How important is Ashley in
not here
?”
I asked.

“I don’t know. I just met her a couple of
days ago,” Ariel said, looking down and away.

“Hmmpf,” Caeco said, making her opinion of
that statement blatantly obvious.

“Yeah, well, I’ve got homework of my own to
get done. See you guys tomorrow,” Ariel said, picking up her tray
and heading for the exit.

“Okay, that was strange. Listen, I’m rolling
out, too. Catch ya later,” T.J. said, looking like he was going to
follow Ariel. From all the glances he’d been giving Ashley the last
few days, I was pretty sure he had a crush on Ariel’s mysterious
roommate.

“Wytchwar?” Caeco asked.

“It’ll probably amount to nothing,” I said,
making one of the most grossly mistaken statements of my life.

I said goodnight to Caeco and went to my room
to get a start on my math homework.

Mack looked up from his smartphone as I
entered. “Hey what’s this game you’ve got everyone talking about?”
he asked.

I explained the last two hours of my life as
well as the early years of it, complete with a demonstration. I had
his excited attention.

“Dude, that’s better than any video game I
ever saw,” he said. “Listen, you oughta write an email to everyone,
explaining your personal vision of it.”

“That’s actually my homework for the class.
But I also have Calc homework and I need to start looking at this
coding assignment for Programming. Man, college seems to be ninety
percent homework and ten percent everything else.”

“Yeah, no shit. Gotta read three chapters of
Economics and I also have math homework.”

We both got busy, me with my nemesis,
calculus, although it seemed to be making sense, and Mack with a
thick book on Macro Economics. I knocked off my list of problems
and decided to take Mack’s suggestion, spending the next hour
organizing my thoughts and writing an email about Wytchwar.

I detailed its early days and described some
of the different ways it could be played. Obstacle course, capture
the flag, war for territory, two teams, three teams, or maybe even
four. One of the rules my mother laid down for me was that I
couldn’t just change the course with magic as I wanted. My Craft
had to be kept focused on my avatar, but I could build multiple
spells into it or carry spelled objects. To keep me honest, she had
warded the course with her own runes and I suggested that any
course we built at the school should be built the same way. I threw
in some ideas of how different abilities or affinities could be
employed in the game, put Miss Berg’s name in the address box, and
copied it to the class email group. Noting the midnight witching
hour had come and gone, I packed up my MacBook and crawled into
bed, seeing that my roomie was already sound asleep. The first day
of college was officially in the books.

Chapter 11

I slept in till almost nine the next morning,
as my first class, Intro to Websites, was scheduled for ten AM.
After a quick shower, some fresh clothes, and two breakfast
sandwiches from the dining room, I piled into the Beast, shivering
as I waited for the engine to start delivering much-needed heat.
January in upstate Vermont stays mostly way below freezing and
often below zero, and Tuesday was no exception.

Finding parking was an issue, but I made it
to class with about two minutes to spare. The professor spent the
first quarter of class impressing upon us how seriously we needed
to take the material. I think he was trying to set the tone,
attempting to kill off any complacency before it could start. From
the conversations around me before class, most of my fellow
students already had experience with designing and administering
websites. I had built, rebuilt, upgraded, and improved my aunt’s
restaurant and occult supply websites many times over the years, so
I felt this would be an easy class. Ninety minutes later, I still
held that attitude but was anticipating learning a whole bunch of
updated skills, as we were each to build our own website over the
course of the class.

My second class wasn’t till twelve-thirty, so
I headed to the Student Center and grabbed lunch. My non-standard
student ID caused a minor issue as the checkout lady didn’t
recognize it and had to check with her boss before suspiciously
scanning it into her register. The line behind me had built up and
I was glad when she grouchily waved me through.

“ARC? Never heard of it?” a voice behind me
questioned. The rest of UVM’s student body carried a CATcard, named
for the school mascot, the Catamount or mountain lion. Behind me, a
girl and guy were staring curiously at me.

“New program… experimental. Kind of a local
collaboration among the colleges here,” I said, moving to an open
table.

They followed me and sat down uninvited. It
was a big table and I didn’t own it, so what the hell. Plus, the
girl was friggin’ beautiful. Tanned and blonde with super bright
green eyes and white teeth and a rocking figure displayed to
excellent advantage by a clingy green sweater, charcoal tights, and
fur-topped Sorel boots. The blonde guy with her matched her hair
and eye color so close that he must have been related. He carried a
tray of food in one hand and two heavy winter jackets in his
other.

She plucked a bottle of fruit juice off the
tray and turned to me with a brilliant smile.

I automatically smiled back before looking
down at my beef barley soup, deliberately keeping my eyes off her.
Warning bells were going off in my head and I tried to focus my
thoughts.

“So an experimental program, huh? What kind
of experiments?” she asked in a bright, clear voice.

I felt pressured to answer… to help her
understand. It would be the right thing to do, to help her with
anything she might need, kind of like the blond guy who was waiting
on her with food and clothing.

And that was just wrong. She was hot, but UVM
has thirteen thousand college kids, more than half of them female,
and there were plenty of really hot girls on campus. It was
something more than that, and now, with my attention focused on my
bowl, the awful pressure had lessened.

“Oh, you know. New kinds of education
methods, organically focused degree majors, unconventional
curriculum methodologies,” I babbled, spewing whatever bullshit
flowed into my swirling mind. Not looking at her helped. So did
breathing deep and activating my mental shields, the ones drilled
into me by my aunt and mother.