Magic Within: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 1) Read online

  AHAVA TRIVEDI

  COPYRIGHT

  Magic Within

  Bloodline Academy: Book One

  Copyright © 2019 Ahava Trivedi

  www.ahavatrivedi.com

  All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author, except for brief quotations in a book review. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and co-incidental.

  ABOUT MAGIC WITHIN

  Light Magic, dark blood, never the two shall mix…until now.

  My name is Katrina Snow Quartz. I’m a Crystal Witch, a special type of witches with magic to bring light to the world. At least I thought I was until about two minutes ago, when I found out that lo and behold, I’m also a vampire.

  Tough decisions needed to be made and they didn’t involve me. My magic had barely started to reveal itself when my coven swiftly decided to hand me over to Bloodline Academy, a notorious school for vampires and werewolves.

  Suddenly, I’m surrounded by vamps, most of whom are instant enemies. Even the ones that want to be friends, have a slight hankering…for my blood.

  There’s also the rather annoying problem that I’m beginning to fall for the same arrogant, brooding, ridiculously handsome werewolf who basically kidnapped me and brought me to Bloodline Academy. And of course, he sees me as nothing more than an obligation. Or does he?

  As I avoid all that could so easily be my downfall, there is only on thing I want: I’m desperately trying to develop my inner witch to strengthen my own magic and protect myself from my classmates.

  However, a new vampire threat begins to emerge from within the academy, one that could lead to the ruin of all other supernatural beings and mortals. Beginning with Crystal Witches.

  Just as my own vampire bloodline starts to come alive, all the signs point to me facing off with some seriously dark vamps, to save light magic. Whether I like it or not, I’m about to find out what it takes to survive in a world where both sides want me dead.

  To my beautiful little one, by coming into my life, you’ve given me the courage to truly Be.

  Chapter 1

  I awoke with a sense of dread circling in my stomach. It had been slowly building up all week and even through my disturbed sleep, my body knew that the day had come. Light streamed in from the worn, clumsily closed curtains in the room and a golden strip of sun played on my face, giving me a molten screen behind my closed eyes. I stretched, trying to dissolve some of the nerves. In the warmth that covered me, for a split-second, I managed to suspend the urgency that a single reading in a few hours time, would shape not just the next few years but the tract my whole life might take from now on.

  I got out of bed quietly, not wanting to wake my three roommates who were all fans of those black, silken eye-masks and hence never awoken by the blaze of the Louisiana sun. Not that I’d ever been bothered by it. In fact, I quite enjoyed my daily little ritual of being stirred from sleep this way. I scanned the three other beds and upon seeing each one empty, I felt a more intense knot of anxiety take hold. In keeping with the tradition of our coven, the other girls had already gone downstairs, in wait for me. I’d hoped they’d forgotten.

  “Happy birthday, lady!” called my best friend Safi, startling me as I heard a brief pop and from out of nowhere, she enthusiastically materialized in our bedroom.

  “Thanks,” I smiled, my nerves feeling even more frayed, “but do you have to do that when I’m still half-asleep?” I yawned and walked past her to draw the curtains.

  “Miss Lorna told me not to overdo it but how else will I get better, if I don’t practice?” Safi smiled, victoriously. As always, she looked gorgeous with her voluminously tight, ebony curls that cascaded down her back. Her mocha skin glowed, complimenting her eyes which glistened like a fresh forest after a downpour. She looked so put together, that I felt like I’d accidently slept in until mid-day, although it couldn’t have been past seven in the morning.

  “Miss Lorna?” I laughed, stretching again to no avail, all of my nervous energy was trapped firmly in my abdomen.

  “Yep, she sure acts like she runs the place,” Safi frowned slightly.

  “She kind of does run it,” I said as Safi tutted and tossed my pillow at me. It narrowly missed and hit the floor with a gentle thud, landing at my feet. Of all the girls in our coven, I’d been in the care of Lorna and Babette, our two High Priestesses, for the longest time. I wouldn’t have minded staying on, not in the slightest. Compared to where so many other witches and even supernatural folk came from, our coven had generally acquired a reputation for being a little slice of paradise. Firstly, what stood us apart was that unlike other covens, we had not one but two High Priestesses, which was almost unheard of in the whole of North America. Despite Safi’s feelings towards Lorna, ours was actually quite a democratic household and we often took a vote on important issues that concerned us.

  “Run it right into the ground,” mumbled Safi, loud enough so I could hear.

  “Come on, you know it’s not that bad,” I retorted, taking it a little personally, “we’ve all heard from the witches of the Circle of Jasper.” Afterall, Lorna and Babette were legally my adoptive parents. The Jasper Coven had some serious problems and was probably a more extreme example of dysfunction but the point was, other covens were organized more like hives with one main witch – the reigning queen. Lorna had always been strongly opposed to that bullshit and although she was technically the more powerful witch due to the strength of her knowledge with spells and transfiguration, Babette easily had the most potent inner magic and a deep connection to the crystal after which we got our name. To me, that wasn’t what made us special. It was that Lorna and Babette loved and cared for each of us like we were their own and not just some teen witch, there as a subordinate to follow orders. Both of these women had been the closest I’d ever come to having a family.

  “Fine, fair enough,” said Safi in the background, in a tone that signalled she’d lost interest. Not wanting to delay the inevitable, I pulled on a pair of pastel lounging shorts and a white t-shirt, went into the shared bathroom and brushed my teeth. Safi hummed in the background as I got ready, surveying the bathroom. Upon seeing that all was as I’d left it when I’d cleaned up the night before, I wondered if my roommates, including Safi, had come up at all. If they had, they must have crept out of bed and used a different bathroom not to have woken me. Unlike me, none of them were obsessive-compulsive types by nature and had they been here this morning, the space would have been in disarray. If and when the spirit took them to tidy up after themselves, they mostly resorted to grumbling or using magic. Often it was a bit of both.

  Although the bones of our large, antebellum mansion were laid in what now seemed like almost ancient history, the place had been renovated into modernity. In keeping with this, the bathrooms were all a combination of marble and glass. I frowned as I caught a glimpse of myself in the large mirror laminated over the sink. A pair of bewildered eyes stared back at me. Babette had always told me that my eyes reminded her of the deepest midnight sky when all the stars were out. I did an automatic eye-roll as I surveyed my hair, basically a mess of brunette waves with streaks of silver, doing its own thing as usual. I stood there, lost in the feeling of nerves pulsing inside me as I wondered what my fate held.

  Woul
d I stay in this coven until I was ready to boast a century or two worth of living or would I be shipped off to attend the prestigious Superno Academy? It made me sound ungrateful but I was excited by even the slightest prospect that I might be accepted into the school. Safi’s older brother, Aviar, an imposing and decidedly handsome warlock, whom I had a serious crush on, went there too. It was the place to be. It opened all kinds of doors, not just in the witching world but in all avenues, supernatural. I reigned myself in. For her age and experience, Safi was the most advanced I knew. The girl was already in the league of any High Priestess in training. And she hadn’t gotten into Superno. She was to stay on at our coven. I didn’t stand a chance. I told myself to stop fixating on the impossible and being so silly. Of course, I’d be staying at our coven. Apart from turning seventeen and getting a standard reading from Babette and some cake from Lorna if I was lucky, I really had nothing to fear or celebrate. And yet, I couldn’t help feeling uneasy.

  Our coven, the Circle of Quartz, was situated in the boondocks outside the city of Lafayette. It was a teaching coven which meant there was a decent chance that I’d be selected to remain in it and continue to develop my powers as a Crystal Witch. Black magic amongst witches had been outlawed and was strictly forbidden in the mortal realm. There were thousands of different kinds of covens, and new ones were being started everyday. Each had to prove to the Supernatural Light Alliance, or the S.L.A., an organization of supernatural councils and police forces, that at least on the surface, all that was practiced within was white magic that contributed positively to supernatural causes as well as to human society. Witches of the Crystal Covens traced themselves back to faery blood and generally practiced magic as white as it got. For this reason, our coven and the others like it were particularly vulnerable to attacks. The High Priestess of each, had had to put in place, some powerful spells and enchantments to ensure that no malevolent supernatural beings or dark entities could invade us, especially at nighttime. Lorna and Babette were so strict about the magic that protected our coven, that they didn’t even let us keep any witch familiars. This was a lesson learned too late by our sister coven, the Circle of Citrine which had once been ravaged from inside out by a cat-shifter who’d been allied with a clan of vampires. Thanks to our fae blood, we were like candy to vampires and other dark-blooded creatures and our magic was the most sought after by their kind than any other magical being.

  “What are you thinking?” asked Safi, appearing in the bathroom behind me. She confidently checked herself out in the mirror and dazzled me with her arm which glowed brightly in the reflection, making me stare at it although for the sake of my vision, I wanted to look away. Upon becoming an initiated witch of the Circle of Quartz, every member also received a silver ‘blooming’ upon the arm of her predominant hand, which was sort of like a magical sleeve tattoo, imparted by Babette as a blessing and protective talisman of our coven. I’d had mine exactly a year and with time, noticed the bloomings were a handy gauge of not just the witch’s mood but also how powerful the magic was that she was summoning. Any extreme shifts of energy, caused the magical tattoo to shine like the most pristinely polished silverware. Sometimes the sheen even came through our clothes.

  “Put that thing away!” I joked, “And nothing, I was just wondering what might happen today,” I mumbled while trying to apply a dab of frosted peach lip-gloss.

  I felt muted in my friend’s self-assured presence and not just because her blooming was competing with the brightness of the sun. I wasn’t from Louisiana and didn’t have the exotic looks that were so common in witches from these parts. I’d only come to live in the south upon being adopted a few years earlier, from Canada. And that hadn’t been my first home either.

  Apparently, I was from somewhere in central Europe, presumed an orphan but no one actually knew. I’d been sent away for a better life but there had been so much missing or lost information by the time Lorna and Babette found me that the only thing they knew for sure, was that my date of birth and that my name was Katrina. Neither of them had had the heart to change it after, so they’d added names as I’d grown and been officially initiated into the coven. Lorna had named me Katrina Snow Quartz.

  Once initiated, every witch in the coven carried the name of the coven as her surname in the supernatural world and would only ever change it if she started a coven of her own. The ‘Snow’ part was because Lorna thought she had a sense of humour and chose it given that I was a white witch coming to live with them from the Great White North. She thought it was genius while I found it lame. Lame was the story of my life.

  But things were different for Safi. She was someone who knew her place in the world. She knew she was staying on at the coven because she’d likely head it someday. Even if she ever left, with her brother at Superno and her mother both, a professor there and in great standing as an honorary member at the Supernatural Light Alliance, the world of magic was Safi’s oyster.

  “Oh, you’ll be fine! And count yourself lucky that your birthday falls within the induction week of all the schools. Anyway, Babette loves you more than any of us,” Safi winked.

  “Not true. Besides, you’re the superstar – you’re the youngest witch ever to be able to do the whole teleportation thing!”

  “Oh, stop,” protested Safi, playfully waving her hand to dismiss my complement, “and FYI, it’s called re-apparition but that aside, trust me you have nothing to worry about. This is your home. And it always will be even if you ditch us for Superno. You’ll always have a place here.

  “I know but…”

  “You’re not worried that you’ll be sent to live with humans to attend some two-bit state university, are you?”

  “Not until you just said it. Why – does that happen a lot?” That was worrying. If anyone would be sent away with no good reason, it would be me. The girl with no past may not have a future.

  “I’m just teasing. It does happen but it’s rare. My mom says it’s normally if you’ve done something to really misuse your powers, so far. Think of it like juvie for supernaturals.” Safi didn’t look the slightest bit concerned.

  Until I’d come to live in the Circle of Quartz, I’d been nothing more than a misunderstood ward of the human state which was why the prospect of going back into that society was something I couldn’t joke about. Though Canadians were apparently more tolerant of diversity than those south of the border, the humans there had still gawked, open-mouthed and utterly speechless for many years, at the news that supernatural beings existed. The government charged with looking after me, had been only too quick and happy to hand me over to two supernatural southern belles who’d shown an interest in my different ‘abilities’. And these had yet to impress.

  I’d always been able to loosely read human – and a few supernatural – minds and I could telepathically send messages to those who knew how to catch them and wanted to. This wasn’t a big deal for a witch. In fact, any sensitive human could learn to do it and I routinely doubted my abilities had anything super about them. When I saw what the others in our coven could do so easily, on occasion I had even wondered if I was supernatural at all. But on the night of the initiation, my touch had lit up the huge, icy quartz crystal in our reading room, just like every other witch who’d ever been initiated and my blooming had appeared. Babette had assured me there was no way that could have happened if I wasn’t a witch of our particular ilk, so I took her word for it. Most days.

  “She’s here!” announced Safi as we made our way downstairs. Her announcement made the others stop their banter around the dining table and turn to look at me. I hated being the centre of attention, especially on this occasion.

  “Thanks,” I replied, self-consciously.

  “So, do you think you’ll be staying here or get an invite to that fancy, schmancy, supe school?” asked Quinn, one of my quirkier roommates. She was petite by frame and features and the only person I knew who could rock her platinum pixie-cut more than, well, a pixie.

  �
�Easy tiger!” said Safi, pulling out a chair for herself.

  “Well I…I really have no idea,” I said, not wanting to say in earshot of our High Priestesses what I’d previously been thinking, which was that I’d obviously be staying put. Besides, it didn’t feel that obvious anymore. What if magic was a use it or lose it deal? That, if I hadn’t truly come into my own just yet, now that I was seventeen, I’d no longer be allowed to try? Could they really send me back to live with humans, after all these years?

  “Okay, which would you prefer?” asked Nina, my other roommate who was quite shy most of the time but generally became bolder in Quinn’s presence.

  “Why don’t you girls have something to eat first? We’ll have lots of time to speculate, later,” said Babette coming through with a plate piled high with pancakes in one hand and syrup in the other. Her silver hair was elegantly twirled into a big bun atop her head, making her look fabulous at forty rather than the centenarian she really was.

  “Ooh, those look yummy!” announced Quinn. The seven other teen witches who lived with us and shared two different rooms between them, sat huddled in their little groups around the table and smiled politely enough to show some vague interest in my birthday. Though they too, seemed as allured as Quinn at the prospect of breakfast. Most of them hadn’t been with us that long and hadn’t yet turned seventeen. They were the next wave of apprentice witches for the large turnover that had happened in the last two years as their predecessors had moved out to attend Superno or as Quinn called it, Supe School.

  “Hands off, the birthday girl gets the first one,” said Safi trying to swat at Quinn. Lorna joined us with a pot of coffee and a grin.

  “All right, that’s quite enough, girls. Happy birthday, my dear,” she said, coming over and giving me a quick peck on the cheek. Her edgy golden, bob, with the same silver highlights as the rest of us, brushed against my face as she hugged me.