Tarot Academy 1: Spells of Iron and Bone Read online

  Tarot Academy 1: Spells of Iron and Bone

  Copyright © 2019 by Sarah Piper

  SarahPiperBooks.com

  All rights reserved. With the exception of brief quotations used for promotional or review purposes, no part of this book may be recorded, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the express permission of the author. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, businesses, organizations, brands, media, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

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  Contents

  Also by Sarah Piper

  Get Connected!

  About Spells of Iron and Bone

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Shadow Kissed Excerpt

  About Sarah Piper

  Also by Sarah Piper

  Tarot Academy

  Spells of Iron and Bone

  Spells of Breath and Blade

  The Witch’s Rebels

  Shadow Kissed

  Darkness Bound

  Demon Sworn

  Blood Cursed

  Death Untold

  Rebel Reborn

  Get Connected!

  I love connecting with readers! There are a few different ways you can get in touch:

  Email! Send me a note at [email protected]

  Facebook group! Love chatting about witchy, sexy books? Want the inside scoop on my works in progress, current obsessions, Tarot draws, and other fun stuff? Come hang out with me at Sarah Piper’s Sassy Witches.

  Newsletter! Never miss a new release! Sign up for the VIP Readers Club: https://sarahpiperbooks.com/readers-club.html

  About Spells of Iron and Bone

  “Forget magick, Stevie. It’s a curse.”

  Since my parents’ deaths, I’ve done my best to fly under the magickal radar, just like they always wanted. But when a rogue mage sets me up for murder, securing my freedom means making a deal with the world’s most powerful witches:

  Arcana Academy of the Arts.

  Two decades ago, they branded my mother a heretic. Now, the Academy believes Mom’s cryptic old Tarot prophecies hold the key to stopping unspeakable horrors—and they need me to decipher them.

  To betray my mother’s memory… or rot in prison. My choice.

  Spoiler alert: Your girl’s going to magick school. To a forbidden world of potions, prophecies, parties… not to mention brutal classes, a mean-girl coven that puts the psycho in psychic, and four infuriating mages:

  Kirin, my sexy, brainy research assistant.

  Baz, whose dangerous smolder could make the devil blush.

  Ansel, the adventurous golden boy.

  Dr. Devane, the naughty professor who makes me long for a spanking.

  The scoundrels insist they’re Team Stevie, but I don’t need divination lessons to know they’re hiding something. And if I’m right about Mom’s prophecies, well… Ever see the Tower card? Fire, brimstone, everybody screaming? Downright party compared to the chaos headed our way.

  So grab your grimoires, girls. It’s time to witch up… or die trying.

  One

  STEVIE

  There’s no problem a proper cup of tea can’t fix.

  It says so right on my work apron, just beneath the Kettle Black logo Mom designed decades ago, back when the café only existed in her dreams and sketchbooks. It says so on our menus and the shirts we sell to tourists. And it says so on the Mother’s Day mug I painted when I was six—a black-and-gold one that sits next to the cash register, holding all the pens.

  There used to be a plaque on the wall, too, but that came down years ago, buried in a box with the ashes of Connor and Melissa Milan, resting beneath a granite headstone in Los Pinones Cemetery.

  Devoted parents and friends

  May their eternal light shine as a beacon for all who loved them…

  If you squint at that part of the wall now, you can still make out the square of plum-colored wallpaper, slightly darker where the plaque used to hang.

  Anyway, as far as truisms go, the tea thing always felt like a good one. For the first eighteen years of my life, the simple brew healed all manner of wounds, from scraped knees to bruised egos, from mean-girl dramas to the fathomless ache of unrequited love.

  And later, when I lost my beloved parents, when even the shrinks and social workers had given up on me, when my days turned so dark I feared Death himself would come and snatch me right out of my bed, two things brought me back from the abyss:

  My best friend Jessa Velasquez and some good, hot, life-affirming tea.

  There’s no problem a proper cup of tea can’t fix, my mother’s voice echoes again now.

  It’s funny how badly I still want to believe it.

  But there’s another truism—bigger, all-encompassing—one my parents forgot to mention before the river swept them down the Lost Canyons of Arizona, dashing their skulls against the rocks before the water could even finish drowning them:

  There’s nothing the universe loves more than a chance to show us how truly breakable we really are.

  Two

  STEVIE

  I’ve never seen a sky as wicked as the one that just blew in over Tres Búhos.

  It’s a mean one alright, full of ire and vengeance. And while I love a bone-rattling Arizona storm as much as the next witch, I’d rather not be sitting on top of the tallest rock in the desert when Mother Nature goes balls-out ballistic.

  She’s kind of an asshole sometimes.

  I’d also rather not be dressed like a human lightning rod, but considering I can’t make the two-hundred-foot descent without some serious hardware, looks like that dream’s dead on the vine too.

  I glare up at the sky. All morning it was clear and calm, the perfect day for a climb. But the second I get settled on top, light the palo santo, and whisper a few words of my mother’s magick…

  “Message received,” I grumble, keeping the asshole bit to myself.

 
In response, the oil-black clouds flicker with a preview of what’s to come, and a burst of hot, gritty wind rifles through the old grimoire on my lap. The faint smolder of palo santo dies, its sweet fragrance replaced with the scent of ozone.

  That sky is ready to burst.

  I close the spellbook, resigned. My attempt at magick—if you can even call it that—was destined to flame out anyway. Sure, I can sense people’s energies, and my body has an uncanny ability to heal itself quicker than most, but as far as active powers? Other than casting witchfire, my magick is basically nonexistent, just like my parents wanted it to be.

  Just like I promised to keep it.

  Guilt surges anew, making my skin itch.

  “Forget magick, Stevie. It’s a curse…”

  They weren’t Mom’s literal last words—those would come in the hours that followed, high-pitched and panicked and mostly incoherent—but they’re the ones that stand out now. The ones that twist a hot blade in my gut every time I open the forbidden grimoire, searching for a clue about her past. Our past. This unknowable thing inside me, crackling with a wild, potential energy that simultaneously terrifies and fascinates me.

  The forest-green leather is warm beneath my palm, and I try to pick up a sense of Mom’s gentle touch, her laugh, the scent of frankincense that always trailed in her wake…

  Nothing comes.

  Nothing ever comes.

  They say time heals all wounds, but next week marks five years since I buried my parents, and I still wake up every morning to the suffocating press of grief on my heart. As far as I can tell, the only thing time does is march onward; all that’s left for the living to do is try not to get trampled beneath it.

  Another gust of wind buffets the rock, and a spiny lizard skitters across my blanket, smartly tucking himself into a crevice. Tamping down the simmering guilt, I slip the book into my daypack with the rest of my stuff, hop to my feet, and gear up for the drop.

  Climbing shoes. Harness. Ropes. Chalk bag. Knife. Carabiners and hexes and cams… Check, check, check.

  Tightening my fingerless gloves, I blow out a breath and step to the edge.

  Darkness smothers everything in sight, casting shadows as far down as I can see. A strange, gray mist blankets the desert floor, the tops of the saguaros floating like the masts of a hundred haunted ships.

  It’s a long way down. A lot longer than it’s ever felt before.

  El Búho Grande—the big owl—is the largest of the three owl-shaped sandstone formations that tower over the Santa Clarita Desert, marking the southern border of their namesake town—Tres Búhos, Arizona. Three Owls. It’s the only place I’ve ever called home.

  The other two “búhitos” flanking me are significantly smaller—and much steeper, thanks to the protection of the big guy. But here on the Grande, where time has worn the top of the owl’s head into a slab the size of an Olympic swimming pool, I can see my death coming from miles away.

  Off in the misty distance, a streak of lightning splits the sky. I count to five before I hear the thunder—still a ways off, but not for long.

  Goddess, let me be on the ground before the rain starts…

  But even that’s too much to ask, and as the first few drops darken the dusty red rock to a deep brown, I shoulder my pack, triple-check my knots, and begin the descent.

  The ropes and anchors I set on the climb up are still in place, and at first, I make good progress. But it’s not long before the rain picks up, soaking me to the bone and making everything I touch impossibly slick. Ignoring the drumbeat of encroaching thunder, I focus on my footing, wishing for once I hadn’t ignored the NO CLIMBING signs posted at the bottom.

  Fifty feet down, slow and steady. Sixty. Seventy-five. Another bolt of lightning flickers in my peripheral vision, the crack of thunder right on its heels, echoing across the eerie desert.

  I need to hurry.

  Shit. I hate the idea of leaving gear behind, especially since most of this stuff belonged to my parents—some of the few possessions I wasn’t forced to sell after they died—but Mother Nature clearly wants me off this rock, and I don’t have time to remove everything as I go. I’ll have to come back tomorrow, hope that some bored park ranger doesn’t take it down first.

  Right now, it’s all I can do to clip in and work my way down without slipping and smashing my face.

  Wedging my toes into a horizontal crack, I release the slippery rock and reach behind me for the chalk bag, knowing I’ll find a pasty mess, hoping it’ll help my grip anyway. But I don’t even find any paste—just a small, thin card, completely out of place.

  It’s a Tarot card. I know it before I even look at it.

  Fear prickles across my scalp.

  I’ve never had my own deck, but Mom did—one of the few things she kept from her old life. Before I sold our house, I nearly tore up the floorboards searching for it, eventually concluding she had it with her on that fateful day, losing it in the tumult of the rushing water. But on the one-year anniversary of their death, the cards started appearing to me at random like this. Under my pillow, tucked into the spokes on my bicycle wheel, hidden in an old shoe. Last week the King of Cups dropped out of my sealed electric bill. Yesterday I emptied the washing machine and found the Fool prancing around at the bottom, bright and undamaged.

  I can’t say for sure it’s Mom, but the cards always bring me a message, and they’re never wrong.

  I hold it up to my face now, blinking away the stinging mix of rain, sweat, and sunscreen.

  The Tower.

  At the center of the ominous image, a stone tower rises from a rocky outcropping at the edge of the sea. A bolt of lightning decimates half the structure and sends two people jumping out the highest windows, presumably to their deaths.

  Not the most encouraging visual, given the circumstances.

  I try to feel into the energy, to decipher whatever message is trying to come through. Usually I pick up on an impression, a general feeling. But this time the message feels more sinister, more urgent. I sense it in the tightening of my muscles, hear it like a whisper on the wind, straining to reach me through the rain.

  Danger ahead, Stevie. Trouble and treachery. You’re not alone…

  Seconds later, the card vanishes from my grasp, lost beneath the clatter of some new threat. The prickling across my scalp turns at once to sharp, stinging pain.

  Rockslide.

  Instinctively I haul my pack over my head, shove one hand into a crevice, and tuck in close to the rock, toes still balanced in the crack. Dressed in a tank top and a pair of cargo shorts, I’ve got zero protection against the assault of tiny stones biting my bare shoulders and arms.

  Stones? Scratch that.

  Hail.

  Lightning flickers behind me, making my shadow dance against the rock face as the wind surges with renewed force, whipping icy pellets at me from all directions. They clatter like gunfire.

  Adrenaline shoots through my veins, my heart pounding so hard it hurts. Rappelling in this weather is much too dangerous, but I can’t stay here. I’m totally exposed, and the storm is parked right on top of me now. It’s only a matter of time before lightning zaps me like a bug, or a chunk of rock bashes my head, or my rope breaks and sends me careening into oblivion…

  Come on, girl. Think. Think!

  It’s almost impossible not to picture the poor souls in that Tarot card, but I do my best to shove them out of my mind, refocusing on my own precarious predicament. I can’t go back up—I’d be even more exposed up top. I’m better off descending, but I can’t protect my head and manage the ropes and gear placements and mind my hand- and footholds. I can barely see a few inches in front of me.

  I need shelter. And up here, there’s only one possibility.

  El Ala—The Wing.

  It’s a secondary route about twenty feet to my left and fifteen down, skirting the edge of the owl’s “wing.” It’s the most dangerous route by far, but still bolted from when people used to climb here legally,
back before a huge chunk of rock cracked off and killed three climbers in the early nineties.

  Just inside the wing lies a deep fissure in the rock, big enough you can see it from the dirt road leading into town.

  Big enough I can fit inside and wait out the storm.

  Another bolt of lightning.

  Another crack of thunder.

  The hail intensifies, pinging off my pack. That shit’s the size of gumballs now, their stinging bite turning into a bruising wallop.

  El Ala? Here I come.

  I re-settle the pack on my shoulders and lean back, propping my feet against the wall as the harness takes the bulk of my weight, providing momentary relief for my calves. My head and arms are prime targets for the hail and debris shooting down from above, but if I can’t make the twenty-foot traverse climb to that cave, I’ll have much bigger problems.