Witchy Sour(41)

“I’m telling you everything, but I need to clarify. The school creates great and powerful wizards. However, great and powerful is not synonymous with good.”

“It’s evil?”

Liam shook his head and spoke sharply. “The school itself is not inherently good or evil. I don’t believe things or places have the power to be good or evil, but the people who inhabit them do.”

“And the people who inhabit Cretan...”

“Have a complicated track record.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I won’t share any details.”

Liam glanced to his left. The two cloaked figures had only ordered water. They sat deep in conversation, their heads leaned close together, seemingly oblivious to everything else going on around them. “It’s rumored that half the barrel of apples is good, and half is bad when they leave that school.”

“That is a lot of bad.”

“It’s also a lot of good,” Liam said. “As one might imagine, it is a very touchy subject.”

“Understandably.”

“There has been talk on more than one occasion about completely shutting the school down.”

“In order to prevent the bad?”

Liam nodded. “But it’s never gotten past the discussion stages. Without the good coming from that school, we’d be ages behind The Faction in terms of technology. You’ve heard of The Faction?”

I nodded.

“The argument is that it’d be easier to maintain balance in our universe if the school was shut down completely. The less-than-honorable wizards would have to find other ways to receive an education—”

“—but they’d do it anyway,” I said. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

“That’s exactly what the Board agreed upon.” Liam smiled. “You might be new, but you catch on quickly. The Board members agreed that in the end, it’s better to keep an eye on the students than have them running wild, completely off of our radar.”

“Do the less-than-honorable wizards leaving the school join up with The Faction?”

“Some of them, but not all. The Faction certainly tries to recruit hard there, but Cretan is a bit different that way. It’s...the Ivy League. You know the Ivy League?”

“Harvard, you mean? Yale, all of those schools?”

“Yes. Cretan is more along those lines. It takes money to get in. A lot of money. Our coins that is, not human dollars. Many of the wizards who graduate from the school—both good and bad—consider themselves to be ‘above’ the rest of us. They waltz around in their cloaks, their heads freshly full of knowledge. They have big plans. Big dreams. Bigger than The Faction— at least to them.”

“Bigger than The Faction? I thought The Faction was the biggest dream of all. The largest threat.”

“Oh, they are the largest threat, but you must remember that fighting for The Faction means fighting for a cause. Those Faction wizards believe in something, even if it’s an evil something. Most Cretan wizards aren’t interested in causes. The overwhelming majority are, hmm. How do I put this?”

“Selfish?”

“That’s a good word to describe it.” Liam gave a tight smile. “Let’s just say most of the wizards would rather be famous for coming up with a new potion or a cure. They want the fame and the glory. Fighting for a cause is not always about fame and glory, now, is it?”

“I suppose not.”

“To fight for a cause—good or evil—is still to fight for something. It is not, by nature, a selfish act.”

I considered all of this for a moment. “How do you tell a good wizard from a bad one?”

“How do you tell a good person from a bad one?” Liam shrugged. “Difficult, isn’t it?”

I sighed.

“Now you see our dilemma.”

I glanced over at the two figures still deep in discussion, wondering if they were good or bad, or any number of places in between. “What do the colorful ribbons mean?”

“They signify the highest level of study achieved by a wizard at school.”

I turned my attention back to Liam. “Sort of like a bachelor’s degree versus a PhD?”

“In a sense. But this goes much further, much deeper than that. It’s not only a class they took or the level of achievement; it’s their mastery of skills.”

“Is red or orange more prestigious?”

Liam raised an eyebrow at me. “That is the wrong question, my dear.”

“Then what is the right one?”

“The answer you are looking for is Black,” he said with a low, almost reverent tone. “The guest you had at the bungalow today had obtained the highest level of mastery that a witch or wizard could ever hope to achieve.”