Teddy's Boys: The Bad Boys of Bevington College, #1

By EJ Frost

Three boys.
Two murders.
One terrible choice.

Twelve years ago, my mother climbed into a limo with a fae stranger and left without looking back. Seven years ago, my magic came in, marking me as an Earth-witch, the Element most feared by other mages. One month ago, my father exiled me to college in another country.

I may be a stranger in a strange land, but no one will keep me down.

Charlie, Gabe, and Darwin.
Three boys who are more than my match.
My best friend. My new love. My worst enemy.

Are they also killers?

When a fellow student is murdered, the finger of suspicion points at my boys.
Can I prove their innocence?

Or will I be their next victim?

Meet the Bad Boys of Bevington …

Publisher's Note: Teddy's Boys is a college-aged, MMFM, whychoose romance. Books 1 and 2 end on cliffhangers. This book is intended for mature readers only.

• Language: English
• Publisher: EJ Frost
• Release date: Oct 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9798987079232

Book preview

Chapter 1

A Manc in Yankland

What do you get when you make a Manchester girl relocate to the dank backwoods of Massachusetts?

A pissed-off Manc is what.

I hammer another cross-uppercut-elbow combination into the pads Charlie’s holding for me. Years of graft, I snarl as I go in with a straight knee which he barely blocks. For nowt. Da ships me off to the arse-end of nowhere and then orders me to have tea with these wankers like they’re the fucking royals!

Ease off a little, Teddy, Charlie huffs as a kick drives him back a step.

C’mon, big boy, I tease, propping my gloves on my hips.

Charlie is a big boy since his last growth spurt: six-two and eighty-six kilos. Or a hundred and ninety pounds if you think in old money. He’s a good size. Tall enough to prop his chin on my head. Heavy enough to crush me under him. If I thought of Charlie like that. Which I don’t. He’s been my bezzie-mate since we were kids. He came over to America two years ago and I’ve missed him to the Nine Hells. Being reunited with him is the only good thing about my exile.

Everything else just pisses me off.

He raises the pads again and I hammer combinations into them for another half-hour until I’m sweaty and panting and my anger’s mostly spent. Charlie and I switch so I have the pads and he pounds away on them for less than half the time. His heart’s clearly not in it.

As we wipe down the pads and gloves, which we’ve brought with us but clearly didn’t need to because this posh school’s posher gym has everything, I elbow him. What’s wrong with you?

Nothing. I’m excited to have you around. What’s wrong with that? Why are you so angry about us being back together?

I’m not. I elbow him again. As long as you spar with me every day.

Charlie groans. I can’t.

I cluck my tongue at him the way I know he hates.

I really can’t, he says. I’ve got practice four days a week. I’m all yours the other three.

Charlie plays lacrosse. He’s good enough to go pro, if magi could play professional sports, which we can’t. I know that’s a restriction that’s eating at him. He was heavily recruited out of high school and chose to come to Massachusetts instead of staying in England, which I’ve just about forgiven him for. I love watching him play, not that I’d ever admit that to him. His matches are as close as I come to school sports. Charlie’s the team player, not me.

I’ll hold you to that. Tell me again what the school’s like.

Registration isn’t until tomorrow when our dorms and most of the campus buildings also open. Charlie’s been here for over a month at lacrosse camp. I joined him three days ago and claimed a spot on the couch of the room he’s been renting. We’ve walked around the campus quite a bit since I arrived, but with most buildings still closed, it’s just pretty architecture.

Since Charlie has access to the gym for training, we’ve spent our evenings sparring. It’s helped hugely with the jetlag, which was ferocious at first but yesterday I woke up at a normal time and didn’t spend three hours staring at the ceiling before I was able to sleep, so I think my body’s starting to adjust.

Yanks think it’s old.

I chuckle. Charlie and I have different ideas about what’s old than people who live in a country about to celebrate its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary. There are new buildings in England older than this whole country.

Some of the teachers are older than the school, Charlie says, which draws another chuckle out of me.

And you fancy the Parabio teacher? I say, grinning when the pink of exertion in Charlie’s cheeks darkens to red. I could tell from talking to him last year that he had a thing for the pretty prof, and he was buzzing when he found out she’d be one of the teachers coming to Bevington as the upper forth of his old school, Addlestone, combined with Bevington to create a co-ed college.

She’s okay, he grumbles. Better than the pyromancy head. You’ll be meeting with him, I expect. Right tosser.

I sigh and push the sweaty strands of my fringe out of my eyes. Great. And the miss? Have you met her?

He nods. "She came and spoke at Addlestone about a million times last year. For one, don’t call her miss. Yanks are fussy about that. It’s professor or for her, dean. She seems okay, but I hear she’s salty about having to share the head with Dean Gravka. Try not to provoke either of them."

I roll my eyes at him. Me?

Don’t do it, bean. The house won’t appreciate the demerits and I don’t want to go to the lame harvest bonfire thing without you if you get suspended.

Only Charlie would call me the nickname my mother called me before she abandoned us. And if anyone else called me bean, I’d put them on their arse. But it’s Charlie, so I just shake my head at him.

I can’t believe I’m back in a house. So middle school.

Told you. They think it’s bloody Hogwarts West.

I laugh and slap at his stomach with a towel. His round boy-tummy has given way to a man’s six-pack in the last few years. Not that I’ve noticed. At all.

I’ve got you covered, though, he continues. You’re in Phoenix House with me and on the girl’s side of the quad.

I haven’t seen our dorms yet, because the whole quad: dining hall, dorms, and rec center, is closed off for some summer theater program until tomorrow. Charlie tells me the accommodations are posh, nicer than our old schools. But I roll my eyes at the idea of segregated housing. Having spent the last two years at an all-girl’s school, and having hated every minute of it, I don’t understand the point of having the boys and girls in separate dorms. Do they think it’s going to keep us from having sex? That’s not gonna happen.

Also, Phoenix House is not the right place for me. I can guarantee it’ll be full of Fire mages, the little pyros. But since I already know I’m the only Earth mage in my year, they’re not going to make a house just for me, so I guess I’m in with the firestarters.

Thanks for having my back, Chuck. I wink at him.

He laughs at my use of the American nickname and tosses me a bag of gloves and pads to carry back to his junker of a car.

Chapter 2

Tea with the Deans

Tea with the heads of my new school is a yawner until the end. They yap about how it’s a new era for Bevington College of Magickal Instruction with the merger of two ancient institutions. Dean Quinn goes on about how happy they are to have us all. Dean Gravka smiles a not-very-nice smile and says how highly my uncle Brendan speaks of me. All of this over tea that smells like perfume and isn’t half as nice as a good builder’s cuppa with little sandwiches so dry they crumble between my fingers.

I know Dean Gravka’s words are as false as his smile. My distribution network was stretching all the way south to Birmingham and that threatened Brendan’s patch, so Brendan got me exiled. I have to give him points for that, sly fucker. If he thinks shipping me off to Yankland is going to stop my expansion, he has another thing coming. I’ll Earth-Walk each shipment right onto his front lawn if I have to. Brendan convincing Da to send me Stateside for Uni isn’t going to derail my plans. Four years and I’ll be the premier supplier of enchanted stones from Edinburgh to Brighton. That’s the plan, it’s what I’ve been working toward for three years, and my petty uncle isn’t going to get in my way. If anything, sending me to America will open new supply lines and markets. I’ll make sure of that.

There are five other students at this tea with the Deans purgatory. I immediately dismiss three of them. They talk posh and look up their own arses. The other two intrigue me: a girl with more piercings in her face than I have, which is saying something, and a boy who sits slouched in his chair, drowning in an oversized hoodie, never lifting his head so I can’t see anything beyond the tumble of his dark hair. Neither of them say much. Posh wankers fill the conversation with posh shite. I miss the boy’s name and neither the Deans nor the other students speak to him after the initial round of introductions. The pierced girl’s name is Rachel. We make eye contact several times after Professor Quinn says we’re both taking Advanced Necromancy and she expects great things from us. That tells me Rachel is an Air Mage since neither Water nor Fire have much affinity for the dead. While the posh twats yap, I write my new American number on a scrap of paper and slide it under the table to her. She takes it without even looking and a few minutes later, my phone buzzes in my pocket. I give her a small smile as the tea starts wrapping up and she returns it.

I might have found a friend.

I’m in sore need of them. Charlie’s the only soul I know at this school of four thousand students and a quarter as many staff. Back home, I had a crew. Twelve kids I’ve known since I was in gingham and trust with my life. I had my old school locked down. I knew everyone who was anyone—staff and students—their secrets and how to supply their fixes of choice. Here, it’s me against the world, and even though I know Charlie will always have my back, he’s never been in the game like I am. His family’s from Mottram, right across the road from Hattersley, but on the right side of the tracks in every sense. He's the straight to my curve, the white to my black. I love him, but he doesn’t get me, not like my crew did. I’m alone here, and I don’t like it a single fucking bit.

As we’re finishing, milling around, and shaking hands, Dean Gravka herds me a little away from the group. I don’t like this, either. He turns so his broad body’s blocking me from the room. My eyes dart around, seeking an escape route. Punching or kicking my way out will get me expelled before I even attend my first class; using magic against my teacher will land me in front of America’s mage council, the Aedis Astrum. But this feels all kinds of bad and I never ignore my instinct for danger.

My hand finds the wall at my back. As soon as my palm flattens against the cool, painted plaster, I feel the tug of the Earth. It’s an exterior, structural wall with its footings sunk deep in my Element. I can Earth-Walk out of here before the Dean can blink.

Having a way out, I relax a fraction and eye up the Dean.

Your uncle mentioned certain unfortunate activities you’d gotten up to at your old school, Miss Nowak, he says to me, his voice so low I don’t think even the Air mage can hear us. We won’t be having a repeat of that here.

Students can supply other students with spell constituents so long as they’re of their own making, I respond, quoting the student handbook. And, yes, I’ve read it cover to cover.

That’s just the thing, he says, his dark eyes cold above deeply grooved cheeks that have seen too much sun. Sunblock, mate, sunblock. I could supply him with some of the best if he wasn’t threatening me. They’re not of your making, are they, Theodora? Your uncle provided me with some of your stones and some of the stones your fellow students claim you sold them. The auras are distinctly different. I know you didn’t make them. If you try your tricks here, I’ll make sure it comes to the attention of the review board. Such a shame for the first Earth-Nowak to attend this school to be expelled for academic dishonesty.

Now, I know this is two thousand percent bullshite. I’ve never sold a single thing that wasn’t my own Work. But my cheeks flame with adrenaline and the Dean takes it as guilt.

Excellent, he says. I’m glad we understand each other.

I understand he’s my uncle’s fucking patsy.

We do, sir, I say with a sneer. Be sure that everything I sell my fellow students will be my own Work, just like it was back home.

His mouth pinches unpleasantly. Is he trying to smile, or does he just have indigestion? Probably the latter, what with that manky tea.

Students here are fully equipped with everything they need, Miss Nowak, officially, through the Student Union. We don’t need any new suppliers on campus. Do I make myself clear?

You do, sir. I’m more than happy to sell off-campus. I’ve used my time in town wisely and made contact with the two local hedgewitches who have shops in the small town that surrounds the school. They’ve both accepted samples of my Work and said they’d get back to me. I’ll just have to push a little harder to make sure at least one of them’s willing to sell my line. Worst-worst, I can hit the internet, but I learned long ago that my product shifts best from a storefront.

Knowing he can’t do anything to stop me selling off-campus, I give him a vicious grin. He curls his lip and steps back. I move around him, keeping him in my sights, as I edge out of the room.

Back in the safety of my new dorm, I sit and stare at my phone while I consider who to call. Da won’t back me. I’m not one of his lads and I’m an Earth-witch, worse than useless in his eyes. If anything, he’ll tell me to stop making trouble. After checking the time to make sure it’s not after midnight in the UK, I pick up my phone and call Elliot. He’s one of my Twelve and is spearheading the southern distribution. He should know about the steps Brendan’s taking against us.

He answers immediately and carries his phone out of a loud, pink and white strobing space into a quiet, dark room. He doesn’t turn on a light and the blue glare off his phone makes him look like a ghoul.

Heya, our kid. All good over there in Yankland?

I shake my head and quickly fill him in. His frown fills the screen.

I know he’s your uncle, Tedz, but this kinda disrespect? He tugs on his sponge twists. We look weak if we let it pass.

I agree. Get the word out. He’s not family anymore. None of his crew are family. No more courtesies. No discounts. Nothing. We don’t sell to them. Anyone who deals with my uncle and his people, gets nothing from us.

Elliot nods approvingly. When are you back? I got some soft, posh boys want to meet you.

Like I don’t have enough of those here, El. What do they want?

Your dark line. Smoky quartz. Dead-tongue. Dead-hand. Dead-foot. As much as you can make.

I sigh. Of course, they would want the product that takes the longest to enchant and takes the most out of me. But buyers are buyers, and soft, posh boys is Elliot-speak for southerners, so this is probably a forward step into a toehold in the south.

Right. Set it up. Any night my time and I’ll be there. Needs to be somewhere I can Earth-Walk to.

Salamander Sam’s? he suggests.

Yeah, that’s good. Wednesday night, when the bar’s closed. Ask Sam to be there, too. Gives us a little back-up and I have some stones for her.

Solid. Any problems with the last order?

I shake my head. I’ve been able to find everything I need in Massachusetts, despite the school being in the butt-crack of nowhere.

Anything you can’t get, text me a list. I’ll have it ready to take back with you.

Thanks, El.

My pleasure. I miss you, he says gruffly.

I miss you, too. Ask Rose and Sash to come down if they’ve got time. I can’t believe I haven’t seen the three of you in a whole week. Feels like fucking years.

He chuckles. Elliot’s two years older than me and most of our crew. He was more my older brother’s friend than mine until Danny moved to Blackpool to run shite for Da. Danny left Elliot behind. His loss, my gain. In the three years since then, barely a day’s gone by that I haven’t seen Elliot, Rose, Sasha, and the rest of my crew. I miss them like I’d miss a fucking organ.

See you Wednesday. You need anything between then and now, call.

I will. Stay safe, mate. Brendan’s not gonna roll over and take this. He’ll hit back. Any hint of trouble, call me. New phone’s always on.

You got it, our kid.

He waves and I wave back and try to ignore the cold crawl up my spine. I don’t have any of the precognition Charlie’s family is blessed with, so what I’m feeling is just the natural trepidation of going against the older generation of my family. Still, it’s not a very good feeling.

Chapter 3

Death of a Townie

There is serious money at Bevvy.

I don’t come from money. Grandma and Grandda Nowak had nothing more than a Council house and a broken marriage. I was born in the same three-bedroom, end terrace as my Da. Da and his four brothers, including Brendan-the-Territorial-Tosser, formed a powerhouse crew in the nineties for the collection and distribution of fae mushrooms native to some of the seedier part of Manchester.

Da’d amassed enough dosh to buy his way out of Hattersley by the time I started secondary school, which is how I ended up at Shipton’s Royal Grammar School for Witches, worthless girl that I am. After shipping me off to boarding school, Da bought a McMansion in Altrincham so he could rub elbows with the Jaguar-owning bastards at their golf clubs. He made sure I had the gear to fit in: clothes and phones and shite, until I started running metal through my face and tattoos down my arms and became too much of an embarrassment to even have home on school holidays.

So even though I know what it’s like to be so poor there was nothing but tinned beans on toast five nights a week, I also know what money looks like and it is all around me at Bevvy. From the cars in the campus car parks—and some of the models in the student car parks are even more swish than the models in the staff lots—to the designer gear most of the students are flashing. I get that Yanks don’t wear school uniforms, and I wouldn’t have worn them once I started Uni anyway, but it’s still something of a slap to my eye to see kids wearing Gucci and Chanel to class instead of school uniforms or trackies. Way too many of the boys are wearing Rolexes and too many of the girls have Louis Vuitton bags slung over their arms. I brought one nice bag: a Kate Spade that was a Yule gift from my crew. Seeing all these posh birds with their bags, I’ve shoved the Kate Spade and the few designer pieces I have to the back of my closet and pulled my trackies, crop tops, hoodies, and chunky sneakers, along with a leather backpack I bought off Etsy that has more pockets than anything I’ve ever owned, right to the front. I plan to wear the fuck out of them.

My new roommate, Serena, who has more than one Louis Vuitton bag of her own, does not approve of my fashion sense. She never emerges from her bedroom into our shared common room in anything less than couture and stilettos, even when we’re just going to meet Charlie in the dining hall. She looks down her nose, which is too perfect to be natural, at my gear, but she’s not nasty about it, at least not so far. She’s also a fucking beg all over Charlie from the moment she spots his biceps, which is mildly annoying. Charlie ignores her blatant ogling and she’s not the only girl falling all over him, so I push my irritation down to the bottom of my mind where all thoughts of Charlie’s abs and pecs and biceps dwell.

Serena has a bunch of Fire-witch friends she hangs with that she knows from her prep school, Wydlins. They sport deep, summer tans on skin that’s clearly never known a spot and universally wear their sleek, straightened hair in Ariana Grande high ponies. But either Serena’s bored after going to school with them for several years or Charlie’s biceps are her kryptonite because she eats every meal with us after our first day in the dorms. Her friends, an interchangeable deck of Bethys, Beckys, and Skyes, join us, probably drawn by the lure of Charlie’s biceps. They don’t talk much to me, either seeing me as competition for said biceps or irrelevant since I don’t spend my time enchanting Flame gems and summoning Fire Serpents, which is all they gab about.

Charlie joins some of these conversations, which makes sense as he’s a Fire mage himself. I don’t try to follow them, since I’ll never be able to do any of the things they’re talking about. Instead, as we all sit at dinner—which the Yanks call lunch—two days after tea with the Deans and the day before classes start, I let my mind drift over the things I need to do to get the shipment together. After talking with Elliot, I spoke to the two hedgewitches. One of them agreed to shift my product out of her shop and, even better, offered me the shop’s storeroom to use as a workspace in exchange for me manning the counter on Sunday afternoons. Charlie helped me reorganize her shite after his millionth lacrosse practice yesterday. Now I’ve got a permanent circle laid and all my spell ingredients neatly tucked into wooden shelving I bought for a dollar from the local charity shop.

Most types of stone are available in the UK with international shipping, but some of them, like turquoise, agate, and opal, are so much cheaper here it’s a crime not to use them. And because they’re relatively rare in England, they’ll command higher prices, as long as I can convince British magi they’re even better than what they’re already using. I’m turning over ways to market enchanted Yank stone when Serena grabs my hand.

We have to go to Old Chapel beach this afternoon!

I slant a glance at Charlie to help a girl out. I don’t know Yank geography all that well, but I’m fairly sure we’re at least a hundred miles from any beach.

The steps of the Old Chapel in Hardesty Quad. Everyone calls it Old Chapel beach and lies out on sunny afternoons. He gives a little snort on each old, and I grin at him.

Sounds like fun, I agree.

Serena claps and a bunch of the Ariana Grande-lookalikes clap along with her. Charlie rubs his hand over his mouth; I think he’s trying not to laugh at them. Bunch of right begs.

Charlie eats twice as much as the rest of us—than any mortal I’ve met, actually, I think he might be part troll—and, of course, none of the girls want to leave until he does, so I’m trapped at the table with them until he finishes the Mt. Everest of grilled salmon he’s scranning. I listen to them plan their outfits for the beach—and they can all get fucked if they think I’m wearing a bikini in September in northern Massachusetts to lie on marble stairs—with half an ear until one of them, Becky or Bethy, I can’t remember, says, I feel like I should wear a burka. You know, they haven’t caught anyone yet.

Since I’m bezzies with several girls who wear burkas, I open my mouth to slam Becky or Bethy for being a racist twat, when another of the clones gasps, Really? I can’t believe there’s a murderer still on the loose.

Murderer? This is the first I’ve heard of it.

Who was murdered? I ask the clone herd.

Serena answers me while the clones launch back into comparing this season’s swimwear.

Her name was Jade, Serena says quietly. She was a townie.

I glance at Charlie but his mouth’s too full of salmon to answer my speaking look.

What’s a townie? I ask Serena.

"Someone who’s a student at Bevvy but actually comes from the town. You must have noticed that most of the students are not from here."

I hadn’t given much thought to where the Bevvy students are from. They’re all Yanks.

Right, so?

Well, they’re not really Bevvy, are they? Becky or Bethy cuts in.