Mysteria Nights

eyes.

The boy’s eyes flitted from the scowling woman to Summer, and back to the scowler again.

“Mr. Rom? Isn’t that your name?” asked the slender woman in a no-nonsense voice.

The boy nodded nervously.

“And what is it you wished to bother Miss Smith with?”

The boy’s mouth opened, closed, and then opened again. “I have my journals to turn in. The ones that were due yesterday,” he finally blurted.

The amber-eyed woman glanced down at Summer. “Do you take late work, Miss Smith?”

Summer swallowed. “No. I mean, isn’t that the English Department’s policy?”

“Of course it is.” The slender woman raised one arched brow at the boy and trapped him with her sharp gaze. “No. Late. Work. Means no late work. Now, go away, child, before you truly anger me.”

“Y-yes ma’am!” the boy’s voice broke as he backed hastily from the room and then scampered away.

“How in the world did you do that?” Summer said, gaping at the tall, young woman.

She smiled and held out her hand. “I’m Jenny Sullivan, your across-the-hall neighbor and fellow English teacher, as well as a Certified Discipline Nymph. Sorry, I would have introduced myself last week at the beginning of the semester, but I was on that delicious staff development trip to Santa Fe.” Summer blinked blankly at her, so Jenny hurried on. “You know, Discipline in the Desert 101. Goddess! There are just so many applications for desert discipline in the high school classroom.” She shook herself. “Anyhoodles, just got back today and heard that you’d taken your sister, Candy Cox’s, place on our staff, and thought I better welcome you.” She paused and glanced at the closing door after the student. “I see I arrived just in time.”

“What’s the thing that starts with a W?” Summer asked.

“Whips?” Jenny said hopefully.

“Whips? We can use whips here? Candy never told me that.”

“Wait—wait. I think we’re having a communication difficulty. You asked me for a W word and, naturally, I thought of whips.”

“Okay, no. Let’s start over. You said foolishness and something that starts with a W make us great teachers.”

“Oh!” Jenny brightened. “Sadly, the answer to that is not whips, though it should be,” she finished under her breath.

“Then it’s . . .” Summer prompted.

“Whatever.”

“Pardon?”

“The other thing. It’s the Whatever Factor. Honey, I can already tell that your problem is you give a shit too much about what the hormones and germs are thinking.”

“The hormones and germs?”

“Aka teenagers.”

“Oh.”

“Darling Summer, you need to understand that teenagers rarely think.” Jenny patted her arm. “Come on, let’s lock up, and then I’ll treat you to a drink at Knight Caps.”

Summer started to grab her keys and her purse, then her eyes flitted to the clock on the wall. “Uh, Jenny. It’s barely three. Isn’t that too early to drink?”

Jenny hooked her arm through Summer’s and pulled her toward the door. “When you teach high school, it’s never too early to drink. Plus, rumor has it you ate lunch in the vomitorium. You’ll need a good healthy dose of martini to cleanse your system of those toxins.”

“Vomitorium?” Summer asked as Jenny took her hand and led her toward the door.

“Just another word for the cafeteria. And, yes. You should be afraid. Very afraid.”

“Wow. Teaching is so not like I imaged when I was in college.”

“Darling, nothing is like you imaged in college. This is the real world,” Jenny paused and then snorted. “Okay, well, Mysteria isn’t actually part of the real world in the reality sense, but you know what I mean. College is college. Work is work. Teaching is work.”

Summer sipped her sour apple martini contemplatively. “Teenagers are a lot more disgusting than I thought they’d be.”

“Preaching to the choir here,” Jenny said.

“I mean, Candy told me to change my major to anything that didn’t involve teaching, and I just thought she was, well . . .” she trailed off, obviously not wanting to speak badly about her sister.

“Here, let me help you. You thought Candy was just old, burned-out, and disgruntled. And that you, being twenty-some-odd years younger and ready to take on the world, would have an altogether different experience with touching the future.” Jenny said the last three words with exaggerated drama while she clutched her bosom (with the hand that wasn’t clutching her martini).

“Yeah, sadly, that’s almost exactly what I thought.”

“Until your first day of real teaching?”

“Yep.”

“And now you want to run shrieking for the hills?”

“Yep again.”

Jenny laughed. “Don’t worry. A few short lessons in discipline from an expert—that would be moi, by the by—and another martini or two, mixed with one of Hunter’s excellent five- meat pizzas, which I’ll split with you, will fix you right up.”

“Okay, except I never have more than one martini, and, well, I’m a vegetarian.”

“One martini? Sounds like you’re a little tightly wrapped, girlfriend.”

“I like to think of it as maintaining a healthy control.”

Jenny rolled her amber eyes. “In my professional Discipline Nymph opinion, I might mention that ‘healthy control’ is often an oxymoron. And you’re a vegetarian? Really?”

Summer chose to ignore Jenny’s comment about control and said, “I’m really a vegetarian. I don’t eat anything that had a face. Makes me want to throw up a little in the back of my throat even to think about it. So get my half with cheese and veggies.”

“Cheese and veggies on your half it is.” She motioned for one of the fairies to come take their order and then frowned when the pink-haired, scantily clad waitress ignored her and instead giggled musically at something a werewolf at the bar had said. Jenny lifted one perfectly manicured finger and started swirling it around in the air. “Looks like girlfriend over there needs a little discipline lesson. She needs to learn it’s best not to ignore me when I—”

Summer grabbed Jenny’s finger. “Do. Not. Use. Magic!”

Jenny yelped in surprise and put her finger away. “What gives?”

“Did Candy never mention what kind of, ur, magic I have?”

Jenny’s frown deepened. “Well, no. Candy didn’t have any magic, or at least she didn’t until she hooked up with that handsome werewolf of hers. I think she felt kinda weird that everyone else had some sort of magic, so she didn’t talk much about it. Plus, you know school’s supposed to be a Magic Free Zone. There was no need to go into it much. Why? What’s your magic?”

“Opposite.”

“Huh?”

Summer sighed. “My magic is opposite magic. Any spell worked around me instantly turns opposite, or at the very least becomes totally messed-up and twisted around. That’s another reason I decided to teach.”

“To really fuck with the teenage mind by screwing up all the furtive little magics they attempt at school?”

“No, though that does sound like it might be a fun by-product. The truth is that I wanted to get a job back home in Mysteria. I really like it here. While I was in college, I missed . . .” She hesitated, trying to decide how much to say. “Ur, I uh, missed the people who live here,” she finally decided on. And it was true. She had missed the people—some of them more than others. Actually, one of them more than others. “Anyway, I wanted to live in Mysteria, but I didn’t want to constantly be messing up people’s magic.”