Inside, the damage looked a lot worse in the light of day. Last night I’d thought Max had just stomped on the paving, but now I saw his feet had broken them completely. All over the garden there were footprints gouged into the bricks. Where he’d stepped on the beds, the dirt had compacted into massive holes. As a low-magic user, I’d never been one to condone the way the high-magic users waved their hands to clean up their messes. But just looking at all the snapped branches and squashed produce had me reconsidering.
“Bit of a sight, isn’t it?” Peter said. He came up behind me wearing his usual denim coveralls. His grey hair was tousled. There was a dirt stain on his cheek. The only one of the teachers who was human, Peter was a kindred spirit. Today the grim line of his lips made me deflated.“I’m so sorry.”
He patted my shoulder. “Not your fault. I’m kind of proud that you were being chased by a rogue shifter and remembered that wolfsbane is their kryptonite.” He scratched at his head. “By rights, both and Charles and Max Thompson should be here too. But I have a feeling that would be more trouble than it’s worth. Those boys don’t know the meaning of the word levity.” He shook his head. I could see how two lion shifters would have no patience for anything Herbology-related. Even if it was annoying that I got detention and they were getting off scot-free.
“I don’t even know where to start,” Peter said. “We had to move our lessons to the Fae forest for the rest of the week.” He scratched at his stubble. The flutter of incandescent wings broke through his reverie. A figure in an elegant green dress that touched her ankles approached us. Thalia’s wood-brown hair brushed her shoulders. She retracted her green wings and smiled at me. Of all the professors, Peter and Thalia were the only ones who insisted on not being addressed by their titles. I wasn’t sure why Thalia had opted to teach low-magic Herbology as opposed to the Green Magic of her Fae brethren. All I knew was that my guilt doubled every second she was kind to me.
“I’ve just spoken to Jacqueline,” she said. “We’ve got permission to incorporate the reconstruction of the garden into our lessons for the week. The kids aren’t going to love it but it’s desperate times.”
Peter grinned. He had a jolly grandfatherly smile. He just patted my back when I tried to apologise again. “Why don’t you see if you can scour the beds for any seedlings that might have escaped being trampled?”
For the next hour, I methodically went over every bed for signs of survivors. I winced at every broken stem. While I worked, Peter and Thalia moved back and forth with wheelbarrows of new compost. As each bed was cleared, they dumped the compost onto it and filled in Max’s footprint potholes.
Thinking about him made my stomach hurt. Shifters possessed superhuman healing. Some of the stronger ones could heal a broken bone in a few days. That he was still recovering said a lot about the burns he’d sustained. I would know from the gossip mill if he was out of the infirmary.
I fisted my dirt-caked hands. Mama was right. I never should have cast that spell. Reason had me accepting that I would have died if I hadn’t come up with something. But logic didn’t really help the queasiness in my gut. When detention was done for the day, I made a decision to go and see him.
Most alpha shifters were fuelled by aggression. There was every likelihood that he would try to take my head off if he saw me. But I wasn’t going to meekly pretend nothing had happened last night. I had my pride too.
“Any chance I can raid the supplies?” I asked Peter on my way out. It was pushing my luck a little, but you didn’t visit a sick shifter empty-handed.
“Go right ahead.” He pointed to the cold cellar attached to the back of the dining hall kitchen. “Try and salvage some of the produce damaged last night if you can.”
Twenty minutes later, loaded up with a basket of ingredients, I pushed open the door to the Potions lab. I did a double-take when I saw Professor McKenna hunched over a cauldron on her desk. A floating blue flame heated the base of the cauldron. The scent of sulphur hung in the air. I coughed. She turned her head and nodded at me.
“Bit late, Sophie.” Her gaze dropped to the basket in my hands. Her cheek puckered like she was biting the inside of it to keep from smiling. Most of the professors were aware that I cooked and ate my own food. After the tenth snide remark about what I was eating and whether it contained any supernatural body parts, I lost my appetite for sharing meals with my classmates. Early on, Peter had given me permission to use the cold storage in the back of the kitchen garden. I was that pathetic. “Have you seen the flyers asking for a kitchen hand?”
I nodded. “My interview is tomorrow night. Do you mind if I use my cauldron to cook something?” It was a familiar request. She blinked slowly.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Don’t mind the stench coming from up here. I’m just trying to work out why the water in the billabong is turning red.”
“I thought we’d decided it was because of an unhealthy PH level?”
She pursed her lips. “That might be the case if we weren’t living inside
