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  I thought of them hovering over the carpet, skin on fire. Whatever "stuff" they'd tried, it had clearly worked.

  Jenna started sniffling. I felt sorry for her, but I couldn't stop thinking about that look I'd seen on her face before.

  It was hunger.

  I pushed the thought away and stepped closer to her. "Screw them."

  Except I didn't say "screw." There are certain times when only really bad words will work, and this was one of them. Jenna's eyes got huge, and relief visibly flowed through her. "Damn straight." She agreed with such a strong nod that we both burst into giggles.

  As we made our way to the dining hall, I looked over at Jenna, who was now babbling about how awesome the pecan pie was. I thought about those three girls, how wrong they'd been; there was no way Jenna could hurt anyone.

  But even as I laughed at her rapturous descriptions of pie, I felt a small shiver at the base of my spine, thinking about her eyes as she'd watched my blood drip to the carpet.

  CHAPTER 6

  The dining hall was completely bizarre. After hearing that it was a converted ballroom, I'd expected something fancy: crystal chandeliers, shiny dark wood floors, a wall of mirrors . . . the full-on fairy-tale ballroom.

  Instead, it had the same decayed feeling as the rest of the house. Oh sure, there were chandeliers, but they were covered with what looked to be big trash bags. And there was a wall of mirrors, but it was covered from floor to ceiling in big sheets of canvas.

  The dining hall was a jumble of tables of all sizes and shapes shoved into the massive room. There was a huge oval oak table right next to a

  Formica and steel table that looked like it had been stolen from a diner. I even thought I spotted a picnic bench. Wasn't this school run by witches?

  Was there not, like, a furniture-creating spell or something?

  But then I caught sight of the long low table that held all the food: big heaping silver bowls of shrimp, steaming pans full of roasted chicken, vats of gooey macaroni and cheese.

  I gaped at the towering chocolate cake, easily three feet tall, covered in dark creamy frosting and dotted with thick red strawberries.

  "This is a first-night spread only," Jenna warned.

  Once I had piled my plate high, Jenna and I looked around for a place to sit. I saw Elodie, Chaston, and Anna sitting at a glass-top table near the end of the room, so I immediately started to look for a table far away from them. There were a couple of empty spots available at nearly every table, and I could hear my mom saying, "Now, Sophie, please make an effort to meet new people."

  But Mom wasn't here, and I could see that Jenna wasn't really in the mood to socialize either. Then I spotted a small white table near the doors, and pointed it out to Jenna.

  It looked like it had once been used for some little girl's tea party, but it was the only table for two, so, you know, beggars, choosers, and all that.

  I sat in one of the little white chairs. My knees thwacked into the edge of the table, causing Jenna to snort with laughter.

  While I devoured the delicious food on my plate, I asked Jenna questions about various people in the dining hall. I started with the huge ebony table that sat on a raised platform at one end of the room. It was clearly the teachers' table, since not only was it the nicest, it was also the biggest. Besides Mrs. Casnoff picking at her salad at the head of the table, there were five other adults--two men and three women. The faerie teacher was easy to spot, what with the wings, and Jenna told me that the big man next to her was Mr. Ferguson, a shifter.

  On his right was a young woman with bright, nearly purple hair and thick-framed glasses like Jenna's. She was so fair-skinned I guessed she was the vampire Mrs. Casnoff had mentioned earlier, but Jenna said she was actually Ms. East, a white witch.

  "The guy next to her, he's the vamp," Jenna said through a mouthful of pie. She pointed to a really good-looking guy in his thirties with black curly hair. "Lord Byron."

  I snorted. "Oh God, how angsty can you be, naming yourself after a dead poet?"

  But Jenna just looked at me. "No, he's the real Lord Byron."

  Now it was my turn to stare. "No freaking way! Like, 'She Walks in

  Beauty' and all that? He's a vampire?"

  "Yup," Jenna confirmed. "One of them turned him while he was dying in Greece. The Council actually held him prisoner for a really long time since he's kind of conspicuous. Kept wanting to go back to England and turn everybody into vampires. When they opened this place, they sentenced him to be a teacher here."

  "Wow," I breathed softly, watching the guy I'd written a paper about last year boldly scowl at all of us. "How bad would that suck to be immortal and have to spend eternity here?"

  Then I remembered who I was talking to. "Sorry," I said, looking at my food.

  "Don't be," Jenna said, shoving a forkful of pie into her mouth. "I don't plan on spending the rest of my very long life at Hecate, trust me."

  I wanted to ask Jenna some more questions about what it was like to know you'd live forever. I mean, vamps are the only Prodigium that get to do that. Even faeries will blink out eventually, and witches and shifters don't live any longer than regular people.

  Instead I gestured to the tall woman with curly brown hair who was sitting across the table from Mrs. Casnoff.

  "Who's that?"

  Jenna rolled her eyes and groaned. "Ugh. Ms. Vanderlyden. Or the

  Vandy as we all call her. Not to her face," she quickly added. "Do that and you'll never get out of detention. She's a dark witch, or at least she was. The

  Council stripped her of her powers years ago. Now she's kind of like our dorm mother or something, and she teaches P.E. or what passes for it at Hex.

  She's in charge of making sure we follow the rules and stuff. She's also totally evil."

  "She's wearing a scrunchie," I said. I had rocked some scrunchies in my day, but that had been when I was, like, seven. The thought of wearing one as a grown woman was just tragic.

  "I know." Jenna shook her head. "We have this theory that it's her

  Portable Portal to hell. You know, she just stretches it out and steps through whenever she needs to recharge her evilness."

  I laughed, even as I wondered if Jenna was actually being serious.

  "There's also a groundskeeper," Jenna added. "Callahan, but we all call him Cal. I don't see him tonight."

  We moved on to the students. I noticed that Archer was sitting at a table with a bunch of other guys. They were laughing at something Archer was saying. I really hoped it wasn't the "Bad Dog" story. "What about that guy?" I asked with forced casualness.

  "Archer Cross, resident bad boy and total heartthrob. Warlock. Every girl here is at least, like, half in love with him. Crushing on Archer Cross might as well be a class."

  "What about you?" I asked. "You have a crush on him?"

  Jenna studied me for a moment before saying, "He's not really my type."

  "What, you don't do tall, dark, and handsome?"

  "No," she said lightly. "I don't do guys."

  "Oh," was all I could say to that. I'd never had a gay friend. Then again, I'd never really had a lot of friends.

  Still looking at Archer, I said, "Yeah, well, I attempted to kill him earlier."

  After Jenna recovered from the sweet tea that nearly shot out of her nose, I filled her in on the actual story.

  "Mrs. Casnoff didn't seem very impressed with him," I said.

  "She wouldn't be. Archer was always in trouble last year. Then he left in the middle of the school year for almost a month, and there were all these rumors about him. People thought he went to London."

  "Why? So he could ride one of those double-decker buses?"

  Jenna gave me a funny look. "No, London is where Council headquarters is. Everybody thought he'd gone through the Removal."

  I'd read something about that in one of Mom's books. It was this really intense ritual that took away magical powers. But something like one in a hundred Prodigium survive it
. I'd never heard of anyone going through it voluntarily.

  "Why would he do that?" I asked.

  She pushed her food around on her plate. "He and Holly were . . . really close, and he was in a bad place after she died. A couple of people said they heard him telling Casnoff that he hated what he was, wanted to be normal, stuff like that."

  "Huh," I said. "So he and Holly were a couple?"

  "You could say that."

  I clearly wasn't going to get any more out of Jenna about that, so I said, "Well, apparently he didn't go through the Removal. He's still got powers."

  "Yeah, powers over your pants," Jenna said with a giggle.

  I threw a roll at her, but before she could retaliate, Mrs. Casnoff rose from her seat. She raised her hands over her head and the room fell quiet so quickly, you would have thought she'd just cast a silencing spell.

  "Students," she drawled. "Dinner is now concluded. If this is not your first night at Hecate, please exit the dining hall. The rest of you are to remain seated."

  Jenna gave me a sympathetic look and cleared our empty plates.

  "Sorry in advance for what you're about to see."

  "What?" I asked as the dining hall began to empty. "What's going to happen?"

  Jenna shook her head. "Let's just say you may regret that second piece of cake."

  Oh my God. Regret cake? Whatever was about to happen must be truly evil.

  Everyone was filing out when Mrs. Casnoff's voice rang out. "Mr.

  Cross? Where are you going?"

  Archer was only a few feet from me and about to head out the door. I also noticed that he was holding hands with Elodie. Interesting. Of course it made total sense that the two people who already seemed to dislike me the most would be dating.

  Archer stared down the length of the ballroom at Mrs. Casnoff. "This isn't my first year," he said. The line out the door had frozen, everyone's curious faces turned toward Archer. Elodie placed her other hand--the one that wasn't clutching Archer's like he was a prize she'd won at a carnival--on his shoulder.

  "I've seen all this crap before," he insisted.

  The shifter teacher, Mr. Ferguson, rose to his feet. "Language!" he bellowed.

  But Archer's eyes were on Mrs. Casnoff, who looked calm and cool.

  "And yet I don't believe it has sunk in," she told Archer. She gestured to the Jenna's now-empty chair. "Kindly have a seat."

  I'm pretty sure he muttered an even worse string of words as he grabbed the chair across from me. "Hey there, Soph ie."

  I gritted my teeth. "Hi. So what is this?"

  Archer settled into his seat, a grim look on his face. "Oh, you'll see."

  And then everything went black.

  CHAPTER 7

  As soon as the lights went out, I expected that usual thing that happens when a teacher turns off the lights: laughter, oooohs, and the rustling of clothing and squeaking of chairs that tells you people are scooting closer together, probably to make out. Instead the room was silent. Of course, there were only about twenty of us in there.

  Next to me, I heard Archer sigh. It always feels weird to sit next to a guy in the dark, even if it was a guy I didn't like. Because I couldn't see him, I was very aware of him breathing, shifting in his chair, even the way he smelled (which, admittedly, was clean and soapy).

  I was about to ask him again just what I was in for when a tiny square of light appeared at the front of the room next to Mrs. Casnoff. The square grew larger and larger until it was roughly the size of a movie screen. It hovered there, blank and glowing, until, very slowly, an image began to appear, like a photo developing. It was a black-and-white painting of a group of stern-faced men wearing the black suits and big hats of Puritans.

  "In 1692, two witches in Salem, Massachusetts, came into their powers and created a panic that left eighteen innocent humans dead," Mrs.

  Casnoff began. "A group of warlocks from nearby Boston wrote to the warlocks and witches in London and created the Council. It was hoped that with structure and resources, the Council could better control magical activity and prevent other tragedies like this from occurring."

  The picture faded and morphed into a portrait of a redheaded woman in a green satin dress with a huge hoop skirt.

  "This is Jessica Prentiss," Mrs. Casnoff continued, her voice filling the huge room. "She was an enormously powerful white witch from New

  Orleans. In 1876, after her younger sister, Margaret, perished while having her powers stripped by the Council, Miss Prentiss proposed the idea of a safe house of sorts, a place where witches whose powers were potentially harmful could live in peace."

  The portrait faded and the old photograph that I'd seen earlier, the one of the school in 1903, appeared.

  "It took almost thirty years, but her dream was realized in 1903," Mrs.

  Casnoff continued. "In 1923, the Council granted shapeshifters and fae the right to come to Hecate as well."

  No mention of vamps, of course.

  "This isn't so bad," I whispered to Archer. "Just a history lecture."

  He shook his head slightly. "Just wait."

  "In 1967, the Council realized that it needed a place to train and mold young Prodigium who were using their powers without the proper level of discretion. A school where they would learn more about the history of

  Prodigium, and of the dreadful consequences of exposing their abilities to humans. And so Hecate Hall was born."

  "Juvie for monsters," I muttered under my breath, earning me a low laugh from Archer.

  "Miss Mercer," Mrs. Casnoff said, making me jump. I was afraid she was going to bust me for talking, but instead she asked, "Can you tell us who

  Hecate is?"

  "Um, yeah. She's the Greek goddess of witchcraft."

  Mrs. Casnoff nodded. "Indeed. But she is also the goddess of the crossroads. And that is where all of you children now find yourselves. And now"--Mrs. Casnoff's voice rang out--"a demonstration."

  "Here we go," Archer murmured.

  Once again, a small speck of light sparkled in the front of the room, but this time, no screen appeared. Instead, the light took the form of an old man, maybe around seventy. He would have looked completely real if it hadn't been for the slight shimmer that clung to him, making him glow in the dark room. He was dressed in overalls and a plaid shirt, and a brown hat was pulled low over his eyes. A scythe dangled from his right hand. For a moment he was totally motionless, but then he turned and began swinging the scythe near the ground, like he was cutting grass that wasn't there. It was . . . eerie. It was like we were watching a movie, but the action was happening live.

  "This is Charles Walton," Mrs. Casnoff announced. "He was a white warlock from a village in England called Lower Quinton. He kept to himself and earned one pitiful shilling an hour as a hedge cutter for a local farmer. In addition to that, he performed simple spells for the people of Lower

  Quinton: potions for gout, the occasional love spell . . . simple harmless things. But then, in 1945, the village had a bad harvest." As she spoke, more figures began to materialize behind the man. There were four of them in all: normal-looking people in cardigans and sensible shoes. Two of them had their backs to me, but I could see a short, squat woman with a rosy face and steel gray hair, and a skinny guy wearing a deep burgundy hat with earflaps.

  They looked like they should be on a box of shortbread. Both also wore stark, scary expressions on their faces, and the skinny guy was holding a pitchfork.

  "The people of Lower Quinton decided that Charles must have been to blame for their crops failing, and . . . well, you can see the rest."

  The man with the pitchfork darted forward and grabbed the old man by the elbow, whirling him around. The old man looked terrified, and even though I knew what was coming, I couldn't turn away. Instead I watched as three people, people who looked like they should be baking pies or sipping tea, forced the old man to the ground, and the skinny man drove the pitchfork through his neck.

  I thought for sur
e someone would scream; that someone in the room would cry out or even faint. But it seemed like everyone was as frozen as I was. Even Archer had stopped slouching in his seat. Now he was leaning forward, his elbows on his thighs, hands clenched.

  The sweet grandmotherly woman knelt down next to the body and picked up the scythe, and just as I was thinking that I really did regret that cake, the scene in front of us shimmered and vanished.

  Mrs. Casnoff filled us in on what we hadn't seen. "After stabbing him, the villagers went on to carve symbols on Mr. Walton's body, which they hoped would ward off his 'evil' magic. After five decades of trying to help his fellow villagers, this is how Charles Walton was repaid by humans."

  And suddenly the room was full of images and sounds. Just behind

  Mrs. Casnoff, a family of vampires were staked by a group of men in black suits. I could actually hear the horrible wet sound, almost like a loud kiss, as the wooden stakes pierced their chests.

  From the left I heard the sharp rattle of gunfire, and I instinctively ducked as a werewolf collapsed, riddled with silver bullets fired by an old woman in, of all things, a pink housecoat.

  It was like being thrust into a horror movie, and it was everywhere. In the center of the room, I now saw two faeries, both with translucent gray wings, forced to their knees by three men in brown robes. As the faeries screamed, their wrists were shackled in iron that immediately seared their flesh, filling the room with a smell that was disturbingly like barbecue.

  My mouth went so dry I could feel my lips sticking to my teeth. That's why I couldn't even gasp when a gallows full of hanged witches sprung up right next to me.

  Instead of fading in as the other pictures had done, this one shot straight up from the ground like a jack-in-the-box. Their bodies actually jolted and started spinning on their nooses, their faces purple, tongues protruding from swollen lips. I could hear faint screaming, but I wasn't sure if it was from my fellow students or the images themselves. I wanted to cover my face, but my hands felt heavy and clammy, my heart stuck in my throat.

  Something warm settled on the back of my hand. I tore my eyes away from those dangling bodies and saw that Archer had covered my hand with his. He was staring straight at the witches, and I realized they weren't just women. There were warlocks hanging too. Without really thinking, I curled my fingers around his.