Read Novel - Arcanum 101 (with Rosemary Edghill) for Free Online

have a slightly different approach to this than any of her other teachers, past and present. For another, this was filling part of her Art and Lit requirement. For a third—if she was ever made a Knight-Mage Underhill—one of her ambitions—she’d have to have mastered three of the Arts as well as combat-magic and swordsmanship. And for a fourth, well—Eric Banyon was hawt.
    So it was with annoyance that she sensed one of the headmaster’s runners just outside the door, waiting for Banyon to pause before making an entrance. “Sensed,” rather than saw, because of course the door was closed and quite solid, but VeeVee had been able to see magical auras since she was six, and the runners were all magical constructs. They looked like students, but that was part of the whole ruse of making St. Rhia’s look like an ordinary boarding school—even to some of the other students.
    Eric could, without a doubt, sense the runner too. He gave no sign he had, but the fact that he wrapped up the discussion of “The Wife of Usher’s Well” pretty quickly after the runner first appeared was pretty much a giveaway.
    A couple of the other students sensed the runner as well; VeeVee could tell by the way they shifted in their chairs and looked quizzically at the door. None of them were nearly as far along in their studies of the Arts Arcane as VeeVee was, but then, most of them had been born into Mundane households and had found their way here by just about every means possible other than the straightforward one.
    But when your mother was a Finnish Witch who could whistle up storms, and your father was a hereditary German vampire hunter descended from the Van Helsings, you tended to get your Gifts and Talents ID’d pretty early in life.
    And when both of them were Guardians to boot, when someone started up a school specifically created to train the Gifted and Talented safely away from the prying eyes of the Mundanes, you could bet you’d probably find yourself enrolled faster than you could say “athame.”
    The runner tapped once on the door as soon as Eric stopped speaking and opened it. There were two “models” of runner; this one was the cute-and-sassy schoolgirl in a plaid skirt, knee socks and white shirt. The other was the bespectacled-and-studious, but darkly handsome, boy in dark pants and a blazer. Both of them looked pretty familiar if you were into anime—and VeeVee suspected St. Rhia’s headmaster, Inigo Moonlight, watched a lot more Cartoon Channel than he was willing to admit.
    The runner whispered in Eric’s ear and departed. Eric looked at her, and crooked a finger. Obediently she rose and came up to the front of the class.
    “School Counselor wants to see you,” he said, and one elegant auburn eyebrow rose. “No, I wasn’t told why. Except to say don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong at home.”
    Well that did quell the moment of panic. VeeVee hadn’t seen Sarah Clifford except at her intake interview—the school counselor saved her time for people with real problems, and VeeVee was one of the few, the lucky, who came from a stable home with understanding parents, even if they were freaking old-fashioned about some things. In fact, the more she saw of other peoples’ parents, the more VeeVee appreciated her own.
    “Get your things, and report in, VeeVee,” Eric continued. “The rest of the class is going to be on “Tam Lin” anyway, and I doubt there’s anything about that ballad you don’t already know.”
    She nodded, and went back to her seat to get her backpack and stow her books. Eric was right. “Tam Lin” was a staple teaching element with all the teachers she’d had. She must have mined it for information a dozen times all told.
    The Counselor’s office was in the Main Building. The Main Building was the only one that didn’t have bars on the windows—well, except for the little cottages where the resident doctors had once lived with their families. The teachers lived in those