“You know, it’ll probably grow back really quickly.”

“Yeah,” I said quietly, “it probably will.”

She stuck close to me all the way to the dining hall, but didn’t say anything else. When we entered the large room, the conversation died instantly and I could feel a hundred pairs of eyes on me, both teenager and adult. I took a quick glance around, noting with some relief that the room had been put back into order and looked exactly as it had the day before, prior to my tantrum. I strove hard to ignore the stares, and helped myself to the coffee, drinking it quickly and scalding my tongue so that I could get out of there as quickly as possible. Once I was done, Mary nodded and jerked her head to the door.

When we were back outside, she spoke again. “You have Kinesis first. The mages have decided that you will have private lessons, seeing as how you are, like, so new and, well, you know.”

Unfortunately, I did know. I trailed after her along various narrow cobbled pathways, from either side of which loomed different buildings of all manner of shapes and sizes. I hadn’t fully appreciated just how large the academy’s complex was until this point. We eventually ended up in a smallish room at the far end of a squat structure that seemed to be some considerable distance away from the main building that housed the cafeteria and dorms. Waiting inside was a rather nervous looking mage of about thirty years old. I didn’t envy him this task, I had to admit. Who would want to teach the psycho bitch to move things around with her mind? Mary stated that she would be back in two hours’ time to take me to my next lesson. I tried to give her a warm smile of gratitude, but she was already turning back to the door to leave.

The nervous looking mage stuck out his hand, and then thought better of it, suddenly withdrawing his palm before I could even begin to reach for it. My soul sank an inch inside as he hastily introduced himself as Mage Slocombe, and then immediately positioned his slumped body at the opposite end of the room, as far away from me as he could possibly get. I tried hard not to let it affect me, and straightened my posture and lifted my chin.

In the centre of the room, inside a small chalk circle, lay a tiny little pebble. Mage Slocombe instructed me in a small reedy voice to sit down and watch the stone. I did as he bade, hunkering down cross-legged on the floor, and awaited my next instructions. No more were forthcoming, however. I stared at that damn pebble for the whole two hours, all the while wondering if I was supposed to be doing something to make it move. My eyes smarted and my legs were so numb when Mary returned to pick me up that it took me several moments to be able to stand properly and move. I thanked the mage quietly for his teaching, trying so very hard not to acknowledge the shaft of pain that ran through me at the look of sheer relief on his face that the session was over, and then we left.

“A bit of good old stone staring, huh?” Mary was clearly feeling a bit more talkative now.

Relieved that her naturally bubbly personality was reasserting itself, I nodded vigorously. “Yeah, what on earth is that all about? Is something supposed to happen?”

She grinned, cute dimples appearing in her cheeks as she did so. “Perhaps. You’ll just have to wait and see. Some initiates spend months with the staring thing, and others pick it up in, like, just a few hours.”

“You know I’m not actually a mage though, right?”

“I guess you’ll be doing a lot of staring, then,” she giggled a bit, leaving me feeling no better at all whatsoever, and depositing my unhappy self outside a shiny aluminum looking door that appeared completely out of place in this old building. Apparently, this was for Evocation.

Once inside, the mage, who seemed even more nervous – if that were possible – than Slocombe had been, warned me very carefully that I could only perform Evocation magic inside one of the specially proofed rooms. Should I choose to attempt it anywhere else, then there was the danger that I would summon some kind of spirit that would wreak all kinds of havoc before it could be contained. It quickly became clear, however, that I was a long way off summoning anything at all. I was given a quick demonstration with some kind of water sprite, but even though I followed the mage’s instructions to the letter, when I tried it for myself absolutely nothing happened. By the end of the lesson, sweat was dripping off my face and seeping through my robe, and I had accomplished nothing whatsoever. The mage shrugged and then almost pushed me back out of the door.

Mary was waiting outside with a grin on her face. “How did it go?”

“This magic stuff is as hard as it looks,” I commented, wiping my brow with my sleeve.

“Ah, you’ll get the hang of it in no time. You’ve got a bit of time now to grab a bite to eat, and then you need to hit the library.”

“Library? Thank God – maybe this is something I can do.”

Mary grimaced. “Yeah, perhaps. You’ll need to start with all the Level One reading to match your practical skill sets in the different disciplines. Everyone starts at one. There are five levels to get through and, believe me, it gets harder as you go along. At your level right now, most of it is pretty dry. It’s a lot of background knowledge, history, that kind of thing.”

I felt relieved. At least I knew that I could read. “Sounds right up my alley. When do I start the other disciplines?

“You’ll begin Illusion and Divination tomorrow.”

“And Protection?” I tried – and failed – to keep the hope out of my voice.

Mary’s expression, however, was rueful. “Sorry. The trainers have decided that you’ve already passed Level One in Protection, even though you can’t throw a basic ward yet. I guess they want you to focus on the other disciplines rather than the stuff that might, you know, kill people.”

Fuck. That had been the only discipline that I felt I really needed to learn something in to help me control myself a bit. Not only that, but it was definitely the only discipline that appeared I’d have any hope of mastering.

“So,” I began, not entirely sure I wanted to hear the answer, “I need to pass Level One in all disciplines before I can move up to Level Two?”

“Yeah. And then you need to achieve Level Two in all disciplines also, although after that you can specialise in just the one or two that you’re particularly talented in.”

Great. Forget this taking five years, it was more likely to take me five hundred. That is if I didn’t get thrown out beforehand. I wasn’t a quitter, however. I wouldn’t let myself become defeated after just one morning.

“Forget the food,” I said decisively. “Show me where the library is.”

Mary looked surprised, but shrugged and nodded acquiescence, and we headed off.

I hadn’t quite been prepared for the grandeur that the training academy’s library was going to suggest was on offer. Up until now, the rooms had looked much like those of any other institution, strange metal surrounding the Evocation room aside, of course. However, even on approach, the doors of the library proclaimed both style as well as substance. They were vast creatures of construction: heavy oak panels with carved designs of different flora and fauna expertly inlaid into them. I couldn’t help but trace my fingers over them in awe, coming to rest at the edge of a dragon’s tail that curved its way across one of the panels.

“Wouldn’t it be cool if, like, dragons really did exist?” commented Mary, wistfully.

I looked at her sharply but she didn’t really seem to notice. “Well, they do exist,” I said, trying to aim for a matter of fact air.

Her brow furrowed for a moment, then cleared. “Oh, you mean the wyverns, right? But they’re not really dragons, are they? They’re more like dragon-lite.”

“They’re apparently distant cousins,” I said absently, still running the tip of my finger over the dragon’s body.

“Of creatures that don’t exist any more though.”

I made a non-committal noise. This probably really wasn’t the time to be getting into chats about dragons.

“Have you ever seen one?” Mary asked suddenly.

“What? A dragon?” Only every time I look in the mirror, I thought. “Um…,” God, I was useless liar.

“No, silly – a wyvern.”

“Oh, yeah, sure. I had to take lots down when I lived in Cornwall.” Funny how those memories were now so precious. I smiled to myself. “There was this one wyvern that was so brightly coloured blue and with such a loud shriek that we were sure that the villagers nearby were going to either hear or see it and come and investigate. You know us shifters don’t have skills like you do. We can’t just wave our hands in the air and make things appear to be different to what they are. It’s a lot more complicated for us to hide the otherworld from humans than it is for you.”

Mary was staring at me. “What?” I asked.

“You said ‘us shifters’.”

I squirmed, suddenly embarrassed. “Oh. I didn’t mean that. I’m not a shifter, I just…I just spent a lot of time around them that’s all. I grew up with them.”

“Are they not a bit scary? I mean, we hear stories that they, like, eat their young and that kind of thing.”

I gazed at Mary in astonishment. Surely she had to be pulling my leg. The sincerity in her eyes suggested differently, however. “Fuck, no. Where on earth did you hear that? All mages can’t think that, can they?” I thought of Alex. He hadn’t seemed to ever think that the shifters were cannibalistic. Why on earth would any mage agree to work with them if they believed that tripe?

“Well, I don’t know. The trainers say it’s not true, but you kind of hear some stories now and then, you know?”

“No, Mary, I don’t know. Shifters are the most trustworthy, loyal and friendly people you could ever meet. They would never do anything as awful as that.” A little voice poked inside me, suggesting that I’d thought some pretty terrible things about the Brethren, who were technically the Shifters, with a capital ‘s’, of the shapeshifter world.