Digital Magic (Academy of Modern Magic Book 1), page 1
Digital Magic
Maggie Alabaster
Copyright © 2019 by Maggie Alabaster
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover by Ryn Katryn digital art
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by Maggie Alabaster
1
"This is it," I said.
Some people think when you get told you've been admitted to a magical academy, an owl drops off a letter to your door. Or maybe a giant tracks you down to inform you of some latent magic ability.
Of course, that only happens in fiction. In reality, they tell you by text message.
"Well, what are you waiting for? Read it." That was my best friend, Jess, her eager brown eyes a stark contrast to her bleached blonde hair.
"What if I don't get in anywhere?" I asked. My heart raced so hard I was sure the whole coffee shop heard it. I tapped on my phone screen with my fingernail.
"You won't know if you don't look," she reasoned. "If you don't, I'm going to look for you." She made to grab the device from me.
I moved it out of her reach. "Hey, no you won't!" She would do it too, but I needed to see for myself first. "Fine, I'll look."
I waited another minute or two, took a deep breath and tapped the home button. The screen lit up. I selected "messages" and opened the text.
It read:
Ms Peyton Jane Chapel,
We are delighted to inform you of your acceptance to the Academy of Modern Magic.
Semester 1 commences on March 13.
Regards,
AMM administration.
My heart sank.
"You didn't get in?" Jess asked. "I'm so sorry. At least you can come to school with me."
I showed her my phone.
"Oh." She frowned. "Is that bad?"
"Well—"
I had wanted to attend the University of Arcana, or even the College of Advanced Magical Education. The Academy of Modern Magic was a fine school, but the others had offered education in all things paranormal for over five hundred years. In the paranormal community, as with most things in the world, prestige was everything.
Unlike the rest of the world, you can't apply to a magical tertiary institution. They choose the witch, wizard or shifter and their decision is final. Take it or leave it.
"Leaving it," meant going to a human university and learning ordinary subjects.
"It's not my first choice," I admitted. I put my phone down on the table and picked up my tea for a sip.
"But it's still a paranormal university." I didn't miss the note of envy in her tone. It jerked me out of my self-pity. In spite of being born into a magical family, Jess hadn't inherited a drop of ability. Nor was she a shifter. As paranormals went, she was normal.
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't be an ungrateful ass," I said.
"Yes, at least be a grateful ass," she replied.
I snorted a laugh. "I haven't decided to go yet. I could still study accounting."
"Pfft." She waved a hand and almost smacked her enormous costume jewellery ring on the table. "You would be bored out of your fucking mind. You're going to accept, you know you are. You're the daughter of the great Lucinda Knight-Chapel."
"All the more reason not to go," I grumbled. My mother was a prodigy. The first witch to graduate from the University of Arcana at the tender age of fifteen. Having grown up amidst adults who admired and feared her, she had never wanted, nor related to, her only child. I was an apology to my father for her always being so busy and rarely spending two consecutive nights under the same roof.
Jess shook her head and grinned.
"What?" I asked.
"I can't imagine you as an accountant, but if you go that way, can you do my taxes?"
"Fuck off," I said. I swatted her on the arm, then forced myself to be serious, at least for a while. "You really think I should accept, don't you?" I asked. This was the rest of my life we were talking about. My future in the human world, or the paranormal one. If I chose the human world, I would have to hide my ability to use magic. That would make tax time so much more tedious.
Jess put a hand over mine. "Peyton, I would have loved to go to university with you. We could have skipped lectures and gotten blind drunk together, talked about the guys and girls we screwed, and all that stuff. The truth is, I don't have your ability."
She raised a finger before I could respond. "I'm okay with that, I swear. I've had to deal with it for eighteen years. For a long time I wished I'd inherited my parent's magic, but it is what it is. Meanwhile, you have skills. You should learn how to use them."
She sat back and smiled. "We can always hang out on the weekends, right?"
My lips moved for a moment, but the words were hard to say. "AMA is in Sydney. It's too far to come back here to Melbourne for a weekend." I sighed with regret. "There's always text and video chat." We would probably see each other more than we did now.
"See, there you go." She nodded and picked up her coffee. "We'll be tired of each other in no time."
I laughed. "I'll never be tired of you." I would miss her terribly.
"What you going to tell Lex?" she asked.
I shrugged with one shoulder. I hadn't even thought about him until now. "I'll just tell him I'm going away to study. It's not like we're committed anyway." We were friends, fuck buddies, but that was all. He had made it clear he didn't want more and neither did I.
Jess nodded. "Imagine the hot paras you'll meet at AMA." She licked her lips. "Save one or two for me."
I was about to answer when a shadow moved past the corner of my eye. I turned to look, but nothing was there.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
I frowned and shook my head. "I thought I saw something scurry past. It was probably just an animal. I guess it moved too quickly for me to catch it."
She raised her eyebrows. "I didn't see anything." She leaned over the edge of the table. "It was probably a bird on the lookout for crumbs."
"It seemed bigger than a bird," I said slowly, then shook my head. "Maybe I imagined it. All this talk of going away has me on edge." In spite of that, I scanned the area. All I saw was people drinking their coffee and talking or staring at their phones. Nothing strange or out of place. Certainly no cats or dogs. Not even any children.
"It could be what you're drinking," Jess commented. "What self-respecting witch isn't addicted to coffee?"
I snorted at that. "Me. The stuff is terrible. Give me a good cup of tea any day." I picked up mine and sipped, but wrinkled my nose because it was too cool.
"See?" she said, "coffee still tastes good cold." She downed the rest of hers in a gulp.
"It still doesn't." I put down my mug at the same time a shadow passed on the other side of us. "Tell me you saw it that time?" I stood so fast my chair scraped on the floor underneath it.
Jess looked up at me, then down at the ground. "I didn't see anything. Maybe it's a," she lowered her voice, "magical thing."
I sat down with a plop and almost missed the chair. "It's possible," I whispered. Because whispering and looking around me wasn't suspicious behaviour at all.
I shook my head and sat up, as if I hadn't just been acting strangely. "I'm sure it's nothing to worry about," I said firmly.
A woman at the next table over gave me a funny look. I smiled back and did my best to seem like an innocent undergraduate on her summer vacation. Which I was… sort of.
She gave me a side-eye and looked away.
Jess choked back a laugh. "Smooth, Peyton, very smooth," she told me.
I rolled my eyes. "I try," I said. I pushed my dark hair back off my face and gave her a wry smile. "So, we were talking about hot university students?"
"Way to change the subject," she said approvingly. "You'll have to give me all the details."
"All of them?" I asked.
"Every. Juicy. One." She gave me a sly smile. "Come on, you know I'd do the same for you."
I barked a laugh, a little louder than I had intended. "No, you wouldn't. Please don't start now. I love you to bits, but I'm happy for your juicy details to remain private."
"As long as they stay juicy." She stuck her finger in her mouth and made a loud sucking noise.
I made a face. "It's like listening to my sister's sex life."
She pulled her finger out noisily. "You don't have a sister."
"Just you," I said warmly.
"Awww." She tilted her head. "I prefer you to any of mine." As the youngest of eight, Jess was lucky she wasn't
"For one thing," she added, "you're not as noisy as they are. Well, most of the time." She winked at me.
"When am I ever as noisy as seven other people?" I asked. I held up a finger before she could answer. "Never mind, I can guess. That was one time."
She grinned. "Sure it was. I bet you scream like that every time."
"I—" The table rattled and interrupted my train of thought. "You felt that this time, didn't you?"
Her face paled. "I think everyone did."
The table rattled harder. Patrons leapt from their chairs and hurried toward the door.
The ground shifted underneath me when I stood. I put out my arm to keep my balance and grabbed my phone before it slid off onto the ground.
"We should get outside." Jess handed me my bag and swung hers onto her back.
"We're perfectly safe," I told her.
She gave me a meaningful look and headed toward the door.
I sighed and followed. She was right, of course. I could save us from a falling building with my magic, but not without people seeing it. What was the point of having magic if you couldn't save the people you care about? That didn't mean I wasn't ready if I needed to be. I wouldn't let us die to hide what I was. No one would believe magic was involved anyway, if I was careful.
As I stepped out into the sunlight, a shadow scuttled past me. At least as tall as me, and as wide, it flashed by before I made out what it was. I knew I hadn't imagined it this time; it made a breeze with its passing. The cool air would have been relief from this hot day, had it not given me chills up and down my spine.
The wind was followed closely by a snort, which I suspected only I heard. It sounded male, but I couldn't be sure. If it was and I caught him, he'd get a kick in the nuts for this. Fucking around with normals, and causing earthquakes made us paranormals look bad. Or it would if the normals knew we existed in their midst.
Jess was apparently oblivious to his passing. She had her phone out and was filming the tables still rattling inside the cafe, and the sign which swung back and forth outside the hamburger place next door. A car alarm went off nearby. She turned her phone toward it.
If any of the cafe's customers saw or heard anything but the earth tremor, they gave no sign. They huddled together in small groups, held each other and talked in low, frantic voices.
The ground stopped shaking after a minute or two, but my heart raced for much longer after that.
2
The Academy of Modern Magic building looked like most of those on the street. Grey stone, wide windows, a glass doorway. The root of a stunted tree cracked the sidewalk in front of it.
A sign on the wall beside the door read, "Academy of Modern Technology." If you google, you'll find a whole website listing classes which aren't held here, and no way to apply. All the links redirect to a school for normals. I know, because Jess and I looked before I left home.
I headed up the front steps and through the glass door. I half expected it to look like something out of a movie—moving staircases and weird creatures lurking here and there.
Instead, I stood in a normal-looking foyer, with signs for self-defence, protective magic, shifter training and toilets. As for weird creatures, well I saw a few of those. I assumed they were shifters. To the untrained eye, they seemed like nothing more than ordinary cats, dogs and a bird or two. To someone who had grown up knowing paranormals existed, they looked like animals, but the way they stopped to look at me suggested they were something more.
"Dyson Gill," a voice shouted, "it's rude to shift in the middle of the corridor. Put some clothes on!"
I followed the trail of giggles to a guy who stood in the corridor leading to shifter training. He was naked except for the unapologetic grin on his face. He had dark hair, shaggy on the front, and abs which made my ovaries sit up and take notice. I couldn't resist letting my eyes wander a little lower to peek at his cock.
Yep, that sent my ovaries into a happy dance all of their own.
I forced my eyes up until he met my gaze. Oh shit, he'd caught me looking. Oops. My face turned red.
His grin widened until another guy stepped up to give him a poke on the shoulder. He winked at me before he turned away.
"Hey, sorry Kane." Dyson didn't sounds sorry at all. "Just trying to keep everyone entertained."
His friend—I assumed—had a redder face than I did.
"Yeah, yeah, just put that thing away, okay?" Kane waved at him.
Dyson wiggled his brows, but then shifted. Where a guy had stood, was now a shaggy dog of some kind. Gods only knew what breed he might have been.
"I'm sorry about him." Kane spoke to me before I realised he knew I was watching. "My brother was always the exhibitionist of the family."
"Oh, he's your brother," I said. In spite of the fading red in his face, I supposed there was a resemblance. They both had the same squarish jaw and blue eyes. That was where it ended though.
"Twins," Kane said wearily. "Not identical."
Dyson stuck his tongue out and panted.
"Are you a shifter too?" I asked without thinking. Some paranormals liked to keep what they were a secret. Fair enough, since normals might hunt and kill us if they knew. It never hurt to be careful.
"Yeah." Kane's face reddened again. He stuck out his hand. "Kane Gill."
"Peyton Chapel." I shook his hand.
He did a double take. "Chapel? As in—"
I sighed. "Yes, my mother is Lucinda Knight-Chapel."
He looked confused. "No, I was wondering if you're related to the footballer."
I gave him a blank look. What I knew about football would fit on a grain of rice. With room left over.
"Gavin Chapel," Kane said. His face lit up. "He's brilliant."
"Um, okay." I shrugged.
Kane's face fell. "Yeah, well, it doesn't matter." He eyed my suitcase. "You're new here?"
Dyson panted, but it sounded a lot like a laugh.
"Yes," I replied ruefully. "I'm not sure which way to go."
"Oh." Kane brightened again. "I can show you. Um, if you like."
I was starting to realise blushing was his thing. His face went pink again. I found it strangely endearing. I wasn't inexperienced in dealing with guys, but they didn't usually go red around me. They were usually—well—more like Dyson. Outgoing, obnoxious and sexy. Kane's shyness was adorable. And yes, he was sexy in his own way.
"That would be nice, thank you." I grabbed the handle of my suitcase and gestured for him to lead on.
He licked his lips and said, "Dyson, you should probably go and get some clothes on."
Dyson shook his head and walked at Kane's heels instead.
Yep, obnoxious. I sure can pick it. All right, standing naked in a corridor full of people was probably a giveaway. I have nothing against body confidence, don't get me wrong. The gods know I'd like more of it myself, but walking around in the nude for attention, that was something else. Bold. Very bold. Admirable even. Poor Kane. I didn't envy him being shy and awkward with a brother like that.
"Have you been assigned a room?" Kane asked.
I pulled out my phone and checked the information package I'd received a couple of days ago. That was just after the conversation in which my mother had looked disapproving that I was coming here, while my father looked proud. Given that was their standard responses to everything I'd ever done, I put it out of my mind.
"I'm on the third level," I replied, "room 68." So close to sixty-nine.
The way his eyes were wide, I guessed he too was thinking about mutual blow jobs. I knew how big Dyson was, but was Kane as big? Bigger maybe?
"Ah, we can take the elevator up, unless you prefer the stairs," Kane said. "Um, some witches prefer to levitate their cases."
I licked my lips and cleared my throat. "The lift is fine. I'm not a huge fan of stairs." Wow, I sounded lazy as fuck. Thanks mouth, for shooting off before my brain could catch up.
