Ocean of Sapphires: Jewel Academy, #4

By Jami Klein

Ghouls. Why did it have to be ghouls?

Mindbender Lola Bragg and her two friends, were-lion Stefan and vampire Andrei, are given the gross job of cleaning the bottom floors of the Jewel Academy's library from packs of rampaging ghouls. Meanwhile they're missing out on their class's field trip to Faulkner's Island.

Lola hates being stuck in the Jewel Academy. It's a cross between a special magical school and juvie. She'd do anything to sneak out and join her class, but before she could launch a plan, the entire Junior class of the Jewel Academy has been kidnapped by merfolk. Divided into two categories, slaves or food, the students are forced by the mermen to loot the hoard of a blue dragon and keep it contained behind a magical barrier so it doesn't extract revenge on them for stealing his sapphires.

It's up to Lola, Stefan, and Andrei to save the day. But deep in the ocean, who's going to save them when things go horribly wrong?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jamie K. Schmidt
• Release date: Jan 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9798224292738

Book preview

Chapter One

W

hen we landed back from Ireland with a triumphant third-place win, Andrei, Stefan, and I thought we would have a target or two on our backs. After denying the blood mage who killed my father his most prized and most desired object, the blood of the ruby, we expected to be in danger until we reached the Jewel Academy.

The good news was, we were never in danger for a moment. The bad news was that waiting in the airport for us was Andrei’s scary librarian mom, Headmistress I’m a vampire Magee, a pissed off FBMI agent, and my mother. Well, my not-mother.

The drive home from the airport was an exercise in walking on eggshells. Me and my two friends had just survived a harrowing week competing in the Sigil games. Stefan, Andrei, and I were in about as much deep trouble as we could be in, even though a wish had protected us from the stricter punishments.

I could have been labeled a black witch. Stefan could have been classified as feral and shot on sight. And Andrei could have been staked. As it was, Andrei was at the tender mercies of his mother, who was none-too-pleased that her son broke a federal blockade and traveled to another country without her permission.

Stefan didn’t get off any easier, although he was with Headmistress Magee crammed into her little red smart car. I’m sure he was getting an earful too about how dangerous it had been to escape from the Jewel Academy. And how she didn’t care for the fact that we pretty much escaped from her establishment. Vampires hated being outsmarted.

Me? I was in the car with my estranged mother and Federal Bureau of Magical Investigation mindbender Agent Fines. Agent Fines and I have a history together. She was the agent who put me in magical shackles that suppressed my ability to use my magic and sent me off to the Jewel Academy, which was part reform school, part high school for dangerous and gifted witches, supernaturals, and vampires. Being without powers had made me a target, and I had to find alliances wherever I could.

Stefan was a damaged werelion. He had been my first connection, even though I thought he might rip me apart and eat me, because that was what everyone at the school said he did to my cousin Delia. It turned out to be a lie, or at least a misconception. Although Stefan was known to rip people’s limbs off when they annoyed him.

Andrei, on the other hand, was my partner in crime—as long as I gave him my blood. We managed to keep the condition hidden from my mother, his mother, and the headmistress. Hopefully it would remain a secret, since I only had one more month to be a blood donor, and then our contract would be over.

Agent Fines and my mother drove me back to the Jewel Academy. Her car fit nicely between Andrei’s mother’s Humvee and Headmistress Magee’s cute little red smart car.

I had been hoping my mother would continue to give me the silent treatment that she had been keeping up since she had originally kicked me out of the house and into the Jewel Academy. But that was too much to hope for.

Lola, she said, starting off in full lecture rant mode once we hit the highway, are you out of your mind, putting yourself in danger like that?

I didn’t know what to say or how to approach my mother. Had I not been sentenced to the Jewel Academy and she laid into me like that, I would’ve hung my head, apologized, and accepted whatever punishment she decided to give me. Usually that would be a grounding or something along those lines.

After my father died, I lost my way and had tried to manipulate her mind to not punish me when I had played hooky from school. That was part of the reason why I was in the Jewel Academy, for bad use of my magical talents. But now that I had been in the Jewel Academy for a couple of months and my mother hadn’t bothered to return my phone calls or even touch base with me, I decided that she no longer had the right to act like she cared.

Agent Fines had seemed content enough to just listen in. She was the one I was worried about because I had been sort of dating her son.

My mother had glared at me in the rearview mirror, waiting for an answer, so I said to her, I had reasons for going to the Sigil games and breaking the FBMI blockade. It wasn’t a joyride or a thrill. I was on a mission.

A mission? And, of course, now I had Agent Fines’s full attention.

Who sent you on this mission? my mother asked.

I rolled my eyes. Nobody sent me on this mission...Melinda.

She flinched and snarled back at me, You will call me Mom or Mother, not by my first name.

I snapped, totally lost my temper. I got sick of all the lies and the half-truths that led me to being put in the Jewel Academy, where I found out I had a dead cousin and a whole side of the family I had never heard of. Not to mention that my birth mother had been a raven shifter, and no one ever told me that I might be a shapeshifter too. But the icing on the lie cake was that my father hadn’t been an insurance agent, but a secret agent who had been murdered instead of dying in a plane crash. All of which I had realized my not-mother still thought I was in the dark about. So the gloves came off and I let her have it.

Why? You’re not my mother.

She blanched, and her fingers went white-knuckled on the steering wheel.

"And if I had any doubt of that, my mother would have called me at least once during the past three months that I’ve been at the Jewel Academy. You didn’t call me. You didn’t return my phone calls."

Headmistress Magee thought that was for the best.

Stop lying to me, I said.

She shrieked as my magic slammed into the shields that Agent Fines had set up.

Watch it, Agent Fines warned, and I felt a tongue of fire as her magic flared up.

I wasn’t trying to compel her, I said.