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

and so both of them had day jobs) with the intent to take her prisoner—or worse. She’d pinned the hand of the first Shadow-Warrior to the table with a handy fork (silver-plated steel, of course), pulled out the aforementioned Soul-Blade and stabbed the second in the gut with it, and then made a run for the bathroom. Once there, using only what was in the bathroom, she’d built a Nine-fold Sphere of Protection that had held until her parents got home and finished the invaders off.
    Try explaining something like that to your school counselor when she wanted to know why you showed up at school the next day looking like you’d fallen down a flight of stairs. Backwards. It was only because the folks had had the smarts to file a breaking-entering-and-assault report with the cops that she’d kept them from getting hauled in as child-abusers. She was just glad she wasn’t the one who’d had to come up with the story for the cops.
    But at St. Rhia’s, not only did VeeVee not have to come up with a convincing explanation for mysterious bumps and bruises that wouldn’t involve anyone thinking her parents were abusing her, she was safe. Because the entire school was Warded in every possible way—psionically, magically—with shields that, well, if something could actually get through them, they all had problems that were a lot bigger than just whether something had decided to show up to eat her.
    She went up the steps of the main building and into the foyer. An enormous staircase led up to the second floor, and on the right, massive oak doors led into a large parlor where a lot of the interviews with new students and their parents were held. A long hallway led to the back of the building, where more staff offices were. The regular-sized door at the left was Ms. Clifford’s office. VeeVee went over to it and knocked, although the door was already ajar.
    “Come,” Ms. Clifford said.
    Now, given how the rest of the school was tricked out, it would be reasonable to expect that the Counselor’s office would be done up like something out of a 50s health-and-hygiene movie, with white walls with charts and rah-rah posters on them, a big wooden desk, and uncompromising chairs.
    Reasonable, but wrong.
    VeeVee had seen less-welcoming living rooms. It was exactly the kind of room to encourage a kid to just flop down, relax and talk. It had walls of a color between brown and gold, with funky art on them, mostly folk-art alternating with framed rock posters from the 60s. There were three sofas and three chairs, all of the kind of cushy-casual style that encouraged hanging your legs over the arm and staring up at the ceiling—which was painted with the night sky around Beltane. VeeVee knew it was that time of year—though Ms Clifford referred to it as “May Day”—because she thought she had recognized the star patterns and asked the last time she’d been here. Ms Clifford was a big fan of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, and May First at Oxford was apparently something of an occasion.
    For the rest, there were lots of bookcases, lots of books, a good stereo that was always playing something interesting—VeeVee had only been in here once before, but Ms. Clifford’s door was usually open, and VeeVee often stopped outside to listen. There was a fish-tank made up as a kind of water-scape in miniature, a waterfall with plants growing around it and little fish in the shallow water at the bottom of the tank, and a tiny green lizard that lived on the “cliff” part, which fascinated VeeVee.
    Ms. Clifford was on the phone. She waved vaguely in the direction of the chairs, and VeeVee flopped down into the one nearest the fish-tank to watch the lizard. So, this wasn’t anything about her. Nor was it about any emergency at home. But now VeeVee was curious: just what was this all about? Ms. Clifford really was a psychiatric pro, specializing in the traumas of the Gifted and Talented. A conservative estimate was that about half of the kids