The Alchemists Academy: Stones to Ashes Book 1 by Kailin Gow

out to be ectoplasm, when the two teachers tested it. Mr. Fowler did so with a test tube and something similar to litmus paper, while Ms. Genovia achieved the same results by the simple expedient of sticking her finger in the stuff and tasting it.
    “Not so much thumb action next time, I think. Try again.”
    After a couple of false starts, Spencer was the first to manage actual footwear, though Ms. Genovia was actually harder on his effort than Alana’s. Presumably, she felt that ballet slippers were in some sense even further from the boots she wanted than ectoplasm was. Spencer had turned a shade of red, seemly embarrassed to have produced them.
    Nobody succeeded in producing exactly what was required by the end of the class, and Ms. Genovia dismissed them with an exhortation to practice hard when they got a chance.
    Lunch inevitably brought things back to discussions of where the missing chalice might be. The three of them sat in a corner of the canteen, eating what the dryads’ crystal ball had decided they really wanted, or at least swapping it around until they each had something that they actually liked.
    “I think,” Wirt said, “that now we know more about Ervana, we need to find out if anybody here has some connection to her.”
    “And how do we do that?” Alana asked him. “Look through all the student records until we find something?”
    “Sounds like fun,” Spencer said. Wirt saw Alana wince good-naturedly.
    “The really depressing thing, Spencer, is that you actually mean that, don’t you? I can just imagine you sitting among stacks of files with a big grin on your face.”
    “It’s not my fault if I’m just naturally organized.”
    “Naturally geeky, more like,” Alana said, though she smiled as she said it. Wirt found himself smiling too. There was something comfortable about the banter between the two of them, and it was strangely nice to be a part of something like that for once. To fit in. “Seriously though, do you think that people here would even let you look through the school records?”
    “Who said that we had to ask?” Wirt said. The others gave him a worried look. “What? How hard can it be to sneak a look at a couple of files?”
    “What if we got caught?” Spencer asked. “My father would kill me.”
    “We’d be expelled,” Alana said. “I can’t afford to risk that.”
    Wirt saw that they were serious. He shook his head. “All right then, we won’t do anything like that. I’ll bet that there are plenty of records that are publicly available though. There’s nothing to stop us looking through some of them to see if we can come up with a connection. If we can, then someone else will probably want to look deeper.”
    That, the others agreed, was a good idea.
    “So we’ll head to the library after lunch?” Spencer suggested.
    Wirt shook his head. “I’ve got another Transportation lesson.”
    Spencer frowned. “But I don’t remember that from your class schedule.”
    “This is an extra one. Special tuition.”
    If that didn’t completely satisfy Spencer, at least he didn’t argue. Alana gave Wirt a long look before declaring that she would try asking Priscilla’s mirror for information, as silly as it sounded. They were in a magical school, after all, which happened to be a giant tree.
    Wirt left too, though he did not head for the Transportation classroom. Instead, he rode the transport tubes, looking for the office of the harassed-looking board member with the briefcase, Urlando Roth.
    Wirt arrived in a hallway so dingy that it seemed to Wirt that no one would possibly have had their office there if they had any kind of choice in the matter. A single office door stood at the end of it, opposite what appeared to be a laundry room. There was a glass section in the door, with the words “U. Roth” painted on in peeling black paint.  Wirt peered inside. No one. The room was spartanly furnished, with a desk, a chair, a large bouquet of flowers sitting in a