Read Online The Alchemists Academy Book 2: Elemental Explosions by Kailin Gow - Free Book Online Page A

scholarship student in a school that had so little money to spare? After all, he had seen the figures when he snuck into Urlando Roth’s office last year, and heard the management board discussing the problems. Would Ender Paine finally decide that keeping Wirt around wasn’t worth the money?
                Wirt simply didn’t know. More than that, he didn’t know how far he would go to claim a place. He really, really didn’t want to have to leave the school just yet. He didn’t want to be left without a home again. Because that was what the giant tree had become, despite all its weirdness. Home.
                Yet would he be prepared to play hyper-leap for that last place if it came down to it? Would he really be willing to put his life on the line for just one more year there? Would he be willing to kill another student? Wirt couldn’t shake off that question, and it was obvious, as he and the others made their way down to the cafeteria for the evening meal, that it was clinging to the thoughts of more than a few of his classmates. Wirt suspected that it was meant to.
                For the next few days, things were remarkably quiet around the academy, except for the inevitable explosions from Mr. Fowler’s alchemy classes. People got on with their lessons, and put in extra work wherever they could. Wirt saw Spencer and Alana in classes, but there was hardly time to talk to them much. Alana, in particular, always seemed to be busy either with Priscilla or Roland, spending plenty of time with the new boy and obviously liking him. Whenever Wirt saw them together, he couldn’t help feeling a quick pang of jealousy, but compared to the harsh stares Spencer shot their way, it was nothing. Or at least, nothing he couldn’t bury under the need to do more work before the end of the year.
    Some people were prepared to try other methods of getting into the elite class. Wirt overheard a couple of girls wondering aloud whether there would be any quests this term, apparently unconcerned by the way Wirt, Alana and Spencer had almost died in the last one. He also got the sense that, in spite of the obvious futility of it, students were attempting to find ways to suck up to the teachers. He found a couple of students clearing leaves from Ms. Lake’s watery home, while others cleaned Sir Percival’s armor for him with wire wool, or helped to polish Ms. Genovia’s extensive collection of frog figurines.
                Wirt did his best to keep out of it. Doing a few odd jobs, even very odd ones, for teachers wouldn’t earn a recommendation. Instead, he tried to concentrate on his classes, because making sure he got the best possible grades seemed like his best way into the elite class. He spent more time than he had before in the academy’s library, getting to the stage where he hardly flinched as the bespectacled green blob of a librarian shot tentacles right past his head to retrieve books from the pocket dimensions where they were stored.
                He studied as hard as he could, but even so, Wirt couldn’t escape the feeling that something wasn’t quite right. Maybe it was just that he felt tired. For the past couple of days, he’d been having dreams that veered between the disturbing and the merely strange. The one with King Arthur on the slab made a comeback, but there were others too. Ones where he was surrounded by the tentacled and many-clawed forms of the school’s governors, staring down at Wirt as though he were a bug trapped in a glass jar. Ones that consisted of little more than darkness with things whispering in it, right on the edge of hearing.
                There were even a few where Wirt was standing in the great arena that served as one of the school’s gymnasia, playing hyper-leap against figures he couldn’t identify at first. He’d spin the quantum ball up to speed, and throw it with a sense of satisfaction that the other person