Diamond in The Rough: Jewel Academy, #1

By Jami Klein

You got sent to the Jewel Academy when you were too magically dangerous to go to reform school and too young to go to prison.

Lola Bragg didn't belong there. She belonged at the Coven School for Girls. Except that she was born with a Tootsie roll pop in her mouth, instead of a silver spoon. Lola blew any chance of a scholarship when she convinced her mom's pervy boss to keep his hands to himself—and while he was at it, buy them a new car and give her mom a raise. 

Stefan Harte belonged in prison. Rumor had it, he killed a boy for making fun of him. And the grapevine said he had terrorized his own family so badly, they made the Jewel Academy board him year-round. Stefan isn't confirming or denying. He doesn't speak. He communicates through his artwork or his fists. He would have been a talented painter, if he wasn't a werelion that everyone expected to go crazy before his next birthday.

If Lola is going to survive the cliques, the course work, and the dangers of Jewel Academy with the mind magic blocker the court put on her wrist, she's going to need a bodyguard. If you're going to rent a thug, you rent the biggest one you can find. Only Stefan doesn't want money, doesn't want anything except to be left alone. But when outside forces come to the Jewel Academy, there's safety in numbers—even if you're a half grey witch and a half-feral lion shifter

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jamie K. Schmidt
• Release date: Sep 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9798224291724

Book preview

Chapter One

I

considered jumping out of the car at the traffic light. A few things stopped me. One, I had anti-magic bracelets on my wrists, which prevent me from casting all but the most baby-level spells. Two, I was locked in the back seat of a Federal Bureau of Magical Investigation car, and I was pretty sure the two agents in the front seat could outspell me, even if I wasn’t shackled magically. And three, my mother was sitting right next to me, alternating between worry and fear.

It’s going to be okay, I said to her in a low voice, hoping not to draw the agents’ attention.

Mom gave me a tight nod and wrapped her arms around herself. It seemed like she had aged twenty years in the three months since Dad had died. And now she was going to lose me too. At least until Yule break.

I was being escorted to the Jewel Academy for crimes I absolutely committed and would do again. Hence the anti-magic bracelets. I caught Agent Jackson looking at me in the rearview mirror. He was the good cop. His partner, Agent Fines, was the bad cop. She was currently driving exactly the speed limit and stopping a full three seconds at every stop sign.

I don’t suppose we could turn the car around and I could do a few years of community service? I asked, already knowing the answer, but having to try anyway.

Lola, you’re lucky you’re not doing a few years in prison, Agent Fines said, without taking her eyes off the road. And that you’re only sixteen. Two more years and you would have been neutered.

I frowned at her. I’m not a feral cat.

Is that right? she drawled.

I had to have misheard that because it sounded like perfect Agent Fines had stooped to sarcasm. I should know; I was fluent in sarcasm. Being magically neutered meant that they’d come for me and burn out the section in my brain that allowed me to do magic. I was supposed to feel grateful that they jammed these bangles from hell on my wrists instead. For the thousandth time, I tried to ease them over my hand, tucking my thumb to my palm to make it smaller. No luck. The stupid things automatically resized.

The null magic gave me a headache if I touched the bracelet for too long. Or looked at it. Or thought about it.

I sighed and considered running for it again. But we were literally in the middle of nowhere Connecticut. I was a city girl. Born and raised in New Haven. Pizza. Italian ices. Yale University. The Coven School.

Civilization.

The Jewel Academy was in the deep woods in the farthest corner of the state. Ticks. Snakes. Haunted caverns. No Wi-Fi!

It wasn’t fair. He deserved it, I said, meeting Agent Jackson’s eyes in the mirror again. The sympathy in them made me want to cry. But I never cry. Not even when they told me my dad died in a plane crash. Not even when I researched the crash and found out there wasn’t a crash that day.

My dad was still dead, though.

I read the funeral director’s thoughts to make sure.

There are things you can never unsee.

Don’t ever read a mortician’s mind.

But if he hadn’t died in a plane crash, how had he died? My mother refused to talk about it and everyone else just ignored my questions. The police said denial was a natural step in the grief process. And no minds I peeked into believed that there was a conspiracy. As far as anyone local had been concerned, it had been a tragic accident, and if there wasn’t record of the crash, well, that must have been a clerical error.

It was no clerical error. That, I was sure of.

I think it was something my dad had been working on. But what? He had a job in an insurance company. He’d occasionally have to go to trade shows around the country and sometimes overseas. Who would want to kill a salesman? Unless they thought he was fiddling with their minds to buy more stock or insurance. But that wasn’t my dad at all. He barely used his powers. He was paranoid about using his mind magic. Only his boss and a few others knew he was magically gifted. He had always told me to keep the full truth of what I could do hidden until I was eighteen. When I was legally an adult, the FBMI couldn’t take me away from Mom and Dad and put me in a government facility to be groomed to be a federal drone like Agent Fines.

Everything went to Hades when he died.

Everything.

You are not a judge, Agent Fines said. You don’t get to mete out punishment as you see fit. That’s why we have a court system. Your mother could have pressed charges against her boss.

Yeah. I snorted. It was her word against his. No one would have believed her. She would have gotten fired, and that creep would have done it to someone else. I bet he’ll think twice before he makes unwanted advances on the maid again.

Lola, stop, my mother said, putting a hand on my arm. Then she snatched it back, as if the contact burned her.

I frowned at her reaction. Look, no one got hurt. I’ll pay back the money. There’s no need to rip me out of my high school.

Which one? Agent Fines asked. Hillhouse or Coven?

Coven? I said hopefully.

They rescinded your enrollment once they found out you stole the tuition money.

I didn’t steal it. Mr. Hannigan paid for it. Of course, Mr. Hannigan had been magically coerced by yours truly. As I said, he deserved it.

The same way he paid for a brand-new Mustang convertible for you?

Goddess, that had been a sweet ride. It was candy apple red, but they should have called the paint job pull me over red instead. Because I hadn’t had that car a day before I got pinched in a speed trap. And that was what started the whole line of awkward questions that led to my arrest.

He was a creep, I muttered.

That’s not illegal, Agent Fines said.

Well, it should be. I made him give my mother a raise and leave her alone. And that would have been the end of it. But then he decided to perv on me and that was all she wrote.

You’ll like it at Jewel Academy, my mother said. There are more people like you there.

Yeah, and they lock them in so they can’t escape.

It’s for everyone’s safety, she murmured.

What about my safety? I jiggled the bracelets. I’ll be a sitting duck with these on. I won’t be able to defend myself.

You shouldn’t have to defend yourself, Agent Jackson said, half-turning in his seat so he could face me. I know the headmistress. She’s tough, but fair.

That was usually a euphemism for witch on wheels.

This is a school, not a prison. Yes, there are extra precautions and there is a rough element, but you’re going to be fine.

How do you know I’ll be fine? I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him.

Because you’re used to being a big fish in a little pond. Now, you’re still going to be a big fish, but you’re going to be in an ocean. Don’t make waves.

I snorted in disgust. How long did it take you to come up with that?

Lola, don’t be rude, Mom said.

If my father were still alive, this would have never happened. He would have continued homeschooling me in my mind magic, while I went to a normal high school. My mother wouldn’t have had to get a second job cleaning hotel rooms to pay our property taxes. We never would have met Mr. Hannigan, and my mother wouldn’t be afraid of me.

I could tell she was trying to hide it, but she was curled up against the door as far away from me as she could get. When I was a baby and my talent of listening in on other people’s thoughts emerged, my father was thrilled. He had mapped out my entire life. I was going to work in espionage like he had wanted to. But he hadn’t been powerful enough, so he poured all his energies into me fulfilling his lifelong dream.

When I got older, I hated that I could see the lies that people told me. Not as much as they hated it, though. We had to move a few times because mundanes called me a freak and wanted me locked up. Hey, I wasn’t the one cheating on their wives or cooking the books.

No one likes a snitch, my father said. Keep the information to yourself until you need to use it.

He basically told me to hide my mind magic and only use it in an emergency. Which totally blew, because I was only mediocre at all the other disciplines. The first time I saw a mage turn a tornado away from a trailer park and into an empty field, I was so jealous. I wanted to be a weather witch, but my talent with the elements is almost null. I could run between the raindrops, but that was about it.

Then I saw a combat mage shoot lightning out his fingers and electrify a runaway car, short-circuiting every power cell in it. The most elemental power I could muster was lighting a campfire with a snap.

I couldn’t transform rock into mud, metal into liquid, or—the ever-popular party trick—water into wine. I could, however, make your lemonade too tart or your burrito extra spicy. Neither of which ’impressed anyone, but I was fun at parties.

I could always hear thoughts if someone was thinking loudly enough or not shielding their mind. Of course, right now I couldn’t hear an elephant fart with these bracelets on—if the elephant farted in his mind.

Dad had been worried that I was outgrowing his ability to teach. He was looking to get me transferred to the Coven School for Girls, but it was hella expensive. New powers had started to emerge this year, though, and I found I could convince people to change their minds. Before he went away on his business trip, my father had caught me gently guiding my mother into letting me stay out past curfew with my friends. That hadn’t gone over well. My father gave my mother a brooch of protection. It would only stop low-level spells, but it would vibrate whenever anyone was actively casting.

My