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“Wait, didn’t she work for Trinity in Connecticut like five years ago? I know she fired half the staff, cut the number of Chairs in half, and…” Jen Rovington’s voice broke with something akin to fear.
“She started at Rodante Academy, it’s where she made a name for herself. Then went to St. Mary in Boston before Trinity. Decimated that school. Just tore it to shreds,” Joanne whispered, her apprehension palpable.
“I’m getting confused. Can we all go back to David’s question? What’s the relationship between this fancy-pants Lord Timothy something-or-other and Magdalene Nox?” Rovington wiped her suddenly pale face and reached for the bottle Orla handed her after she’d poured a generous drop of whiskey into her own coffee.
“He’s her husband, he is.” Ruth’s squeak drew all heads to the hearth, where she peeped at them from her cozy recliner and pulled the comforter tighter around herself.
“Magdalene wasn’t a Nox when she started,” Joanne’s voice was quiet, her tone steady, belying the concerned expression on her face. “She married into that family when she was Deputy Headmistress at Rodante Academy. Then she took over that school and, through years of reforming the old institution, came up with her infamous approach. I think she wrote her Doctorate thesis about it.”
“So the husband of the inventor of the Nox Method, the most ruthless reformer of private schools in the US, just became a trustee on our Board? Did I get that right?” Rovington gulped down whatever was left of her brew and poured more whiskey into her cup. The Headmistress just nodded and offered the bottle to Joanne, who accepted with a grim shrug. To Joanne’s right, Sam refused, but Orla polished off the remainder of the booze, shaking every last drop into her mug.
“Seems about right, dear.” Orla made a face after taking a sip. “I honestly don’t know much. I actually met Magdalene Nox some years ago, when the Board was still paying for me to attend all sorts of conferences and represent the school.” She paused, either for effect or to carefully consider her thoughts, Sam did not know.
“Well, don’t keep us all on tenterhooks now, Orla!” The whiskey was clearly making Rovington braver.
“Let’s just say, if we get out of this with no more than having a Nox on the Board and nothing else, we will have dodged an enormous bullet. Because if Magdalene Nox follows her husband and somehow sets her sights on Dragons, she will ruin us all, my dears. She will ruin this school and everything we hold dear.”
Sam’s heart stuttered in her chest as Orla threw back her mug and choked on the dregs of coffee and whiskey, coughing. Rovington jumped to her feet to pound her on the back, and Joanne was rummaging in her purse and producing a tissue, but Sam could barely see or hear their scrambling or the cacophony of sounds surrounding her. Her thoughts running wild from all the revelations coming her way, Sam glanced to her left and her heart stopped beating altogether.
Right there, in the massive oaken doors to the Mess Hall, stood a tall, willowy figure and observed the situation unfolding in front of her from behind large aviator glasses. Her head was slightly tilted to the side as if she was paying close attention to the less-than-dignified scene playing out in front of her, but the corners of her mouth were curled in a disdainful smirk, showing exactly what she thought about what she was witnessing. Finally, when Orla’s cough was reduced to an occasional wheeze, the figure stepped into the light, her four-inch, red-soled heels the only speck of color aside from her flaming red hair. Her steps produced a loud clacking noise that penetrated the chaos in an instant.
Sam’s mouth was dry, and as the woman took off the large glasses with a flourish, she couldn’t help but gape. She knew she probably looked ridiculous, like a total rube, but in that moment there was absolutely nothing else for her to do but stare at the newcomer. Sam felt rooted to the spot, completely bewitched, and helpless to move or say anything. It was a familiar feeling. Hell, she had just been reminiscing about that very state of helpless abandon delivered by those same long, perfectly manicured fingers that were now holding the clearly expensive glasses.
“Well, this is cozy, Doctor Fenway. I can see why the school is millions in debt and dead last in all the state and regional classifications. With its faculty gossiping and imbibing second rate alcohol at…” She paused dramatically and raised her hand to look at a stylish large watch that was hanging off her slim wrist. “Ah, 10:30 AM. Isn’t drinking on school grounds against the school charter, my dears?” The velvety voice practically spat the last words, clearly mocking Orla’s customary term of endearment that she’d used just minutes ago. Which to Sam meant only one thing. She must have been standing in the doorway long enough to hear Orla talk about her. To hear them all talk about her.
With the black dress hugging all her lithe curves, the woman took several more strides into the Mess Hall, each step sounding like a gunshot. Out of the corner of her eye, Sam could see Willoughby stand up, stretch, take in his surroundings and vacate the premises to proceed to his next sunspot. Sam had a distinct sensation that most of the people in the room would have followed him, given half a chance.
“My name is Magdalene Nox. I am the new Headmistress of Three Dragons. And you are all fired.”
3
Of Chaos & Thrust Upon Responsibility
They were on each other the moment the door closed behind them. The first taste of her mouth took Sam’s breath and reason away. She knew she was drowning and hazily thought that breathing was perhaps overrated when the feeling of soft, skilled lips was the best thing she had ever experienced. Those lips nipped and caressed, demanding yet patient, rushed yet gentle, hungry yet languid. And the little moans that occasionally escaped her… Like Sam was the best thing she had ever tasted, like she wanted to keep kissing Sam forever. Those moans were enough to make Sam press her harder against the door and hike that ridiculous and amazing, tight-fitting skirt all the way up those ridiculous and amazing thighs and cup her through the crimson satin of the most seductive panties Sam had ever seen. God, you couldn’t even call them underwear, or panties really. This work of art was lingerie, and Sam dropped to her knees to see it up close. As her breath caressed the now damp gusset of the beautiful craftsmanship, she heard her lover’s head fall gently back against the door.
“Please…” The voice, that low, gravelly, commanding one, the one that had bewitched Sam at the bar, wrapped itself around her now, like a caress. But the commanding note was gone, and instead, it was laced with a desperation that did unspeakable things to Sam’s mind and the gusset of her own panties. To have this woman up against the door, wet and pleading… Sam wondered if a person could come just from sheer awe. But before she leaned in and put her mouth on the tantalizingly wet satin, she looked up.
“I… ah… Under the circumstances… Damn it, I’m Sam, by the way, and I’m clean, if you’re wondering…” Sam cursed her own lack of social graces and her inability to speak cogently in the presence of a beautiful woman.
The woman smiled slowly before raising her hand and tangling long slender fingers in Sam’s certainly disheveled-by-now braid.
“I am clean, as well. And no names, darling. Names are not what this is about.” The words stung just a little bit, but the eyes, which were of an indecipherable color in the dim light of the room, scorched her, and the fingers tightened in Sam’s hair directing her where she craved to be most. At the first taste, Sam forgot that little sting.
* * *
Well, now Sam certainly knew her name. Magdalene Nox. Magdalene Fucking Nox. Which was all sorts of appropriate, since Magdalene Nox had done a lot of fucking three months ago. Sam had done a lot of the aforementioned fucking too, if she said so herself. In fact, she was pretty proud that she had probably done quantitatively more of said fucking. The fact that she made the ice maven who was currently standing in front of the whole faculty come three times, pleased Sam greatly. Actually, it had pleased both of them greatly. Sam could still remember the dazed and utterly satisfied look on that angular face as Sam had risen from between her legs, licking Magdalene Fucking Nox off her lips and fingers. That look had turned ravenous on a dime, and Sam found herself on her back yet again, but not before a husky, “How can I still be hungry for you when you’ve sated me so many times?” reached her dazed consciousness.
It had been said with a bewildered sort of expression, almost as an afterthought. Magdalene certainly didn’t think she spoke it out loud since she occupied herself immediately with thoroughly debauching Sam all over again. But the words had stayed with Sam. They kept her warm at night. And perhaps those words were what allowed her to lift her face and look Magdalene Nox straight in the eye as she stood across from her in the Mess Hall.
But the other woman did not falter, and Sam thought perhaps she didn’t even recognize her at all. It had been dark in the establishment where they’d first seen each other, and where Sam had had just enough guts to send a glass of Glenmorangie to the beautiful woman sitting alone at the other end of the bar. It had also been extremely dark in the elevator they got stuck in on their way up, and Sam never did get around to turning on the light once the elevator has been up in motion again an hour later and they’d finally made it to her small room.
The thought had not occurred to Sam before, but here she was having a stare-down match with the woman in front of whom she’d gotten down on her knees, whose panties she’d torn to shreds, shreds she’d have probably kept if she hadn’t felt it was the single most creepy thing she could have done. She’d wanted to, but perhaps her deeply religious upbringing, which occasionally raised its puritanical head, or her own rather narrow-minded view on the propriety of certain things, made her carefully place the torn little scraps of satin inside the bin instead. Plus, with Sam being so deeply in the closet, surely pocketing a stranger’s underwear was ill-advised. And maybe, just maybe, her one-night stand, which had featured in all her dreams ever since in full Technicolor and Dolby Surround, did not remember her.
The thought stung. Maybe even worse than the fact that Magdalene Fucking Nox had not considered her worthy of telling her her name. Well, she knew it now. And the bearer of said name had just fired her and all the people most dear to her. Orla, Joanne, Ruth. As her thoughts finally started to return to the actually important things, Sam felt that legendary temper of hers, the temper that had gotten Orla to call her the Fourth Dragon, raise its head within her.
“Are we to simply assume you have the power to fire the entire faculty, Mrs. Nox?”
Sam’s inflection on the title was on purpose. She tucked the thought that she had slept with a married woman aside, but she let it be known here and now that the simple fact that Magdalene Nox was someone’s wife did not mean they owed her any respect or obedience. Not yet. Not until the Board proclaimed her the new Headmistress. And then what? Sam didn’t know, but she took a page out of the words that had been drilled into her by Reverend Sanderson all those years ago—faith was the substance of things hoped for and evidence of things not seen. As she leaped, throwing all her sass, all her contrariness into the indignant query, Sam held some hope that she’d land on her feet somehow. She had nothing to lose anyway if they had indeed all been fired.
