"Want to go look?" He'd stopped right behind me, leaning casually against his shovel while he mopped the sweat and snow from his brow with the sleeve of his cloak.
"At the graveyard?"
"That, too, if you want, but I meant to find the thing that was moving." He looked up at the darkening sky. "I have a little time before my shift."
It took me a second to figure out what he was talking about. “Your shift to guard the stone.”
He nodded. “With the rest of the five stones activated, the Diabolicals are pulling double duty to guard it.”
I had to tell him about the dampener. Didn’t I? Guard the stone, Leo had told me. I had to help. I had to do everything I could to protect the onyx stone from being activated and bringing Ryze back. If I didn’t, he would be sure to make all of Amaria suffer. This was so much bigger than whatever issues I had with Ramsey.
“Do you know about the stolen magic dampener?” I blurted before I talked myself out of it.
“From White Magic Academy? Yeah. No locator spell can find it, same as Professor Wadluck, but Headmistress Millington is already on it. She’s asked mages to help spell the entire school with even stronger protections so the dampener can’t be activated.”
Dad had said it was powerful though. What if it was already here, waiting for just the right time to activate it and then the onyx?
“Do you know what it looks like?” I asked.
“Small. Shaped like a pea and colored like one, too, supposedly.”
I heaved a shaky breath. “A needle in a haystack.”
He nodded, scanning my face. “How do you know about it?”
“I just do,” I said, shrugging.
“Simple as that, huh?” Rolling his eyes, he sighed and waved toward the dead, gnarled trees. “Are we going or not?”
Swallowing hard, I searched the darkening shadows in the forest. It could've been Seph out there. It wasn't, though, because she was fine. But I did need to find out who was buried in that graveyard so I could research if they’d murdered anyone before stealing their hand.
“Let’s go,” I said. "But I'm bringing my shovel just in case."
He laughed suddenly, full and hearty, and it transformed his whole face, revealing twin dimples. Even the haughty angle of his eyebrow relaxed, but I wouldn’t be deceived by his golden-boy looks. "I'll bring mine, too, then. Just in case."
I gestured with the end of my shovel. "You first."
"Isn't it usually ladies first? But just this once, I'll humor you." He gave me his back, trusting me completely, and stepped off the path into the trees.
Gripping my shovel tightly, I followed.
Chapter Four
“Why aren't you worried?" I asked, trailing after Ramsey. The dead, warped trees seemed to swallow up the remaining daylight and drenched the forest with darkness.
"About what?"
"About me. I tried to kill you, remember?" I kept my voice low since admitting it was proof of my guilt despite what the Ministry said.
"Oh, I remember," he said, glancing back with a smirk. "But you won't try it again because you know I'm innocent."
I went silent, the sound of our footsteps over dirt, scattered bones, and fallen branches the only sound. There wasn’t much snow here since the trees grew so close together, the leafless upper branches catching most of it. The bitter wind had no trouble breaking through, though, its howls sometimes sounding like screams.
Ramsey came to a stop and turned slowly, staring at me with exasperation. "Because you looked at Tylvia's vision in the crystal ball I gave you. Right?"
"It's...” I sawed my teeth over my bottom lip. “No."
His jaw tight, he swung back around and barreled ahead, leaving me scrambling to catch up.
"Look," I ground out, "It's not quite so simple as you're making it out to be. If there is a skin-walker who doesn't need magic, then it's going to be a lot harder to find justice for my brother."
"So it's still easier to blame me." He threw a withering look over his shoulder. "Is that right?"
"It's just that... I've hated you for so long, and it's not like a switch I can just turn off." Why was I explaining? It didn’t matter that he understood where I was coming from.
"It is literally a switch you can turn off if you look at the evidence right in front of you," he called.
"Why does it matter to you? Why are you so mad right now that I haven't looked at the crystal ball? This doesn't affect you."
He whirled, anger storming in his eyes. "Doesn't affect me? You tried to kill me."
I shook my head. "You could've fought back a lot harder than you did. You know you could’ve. All I got were a few bruises when you could've easily cut me down in self-defense."
His shoulders slouched some like I'd just dropped a weight on his back. He looked away toward the roots of two twisted trees that had burst through the ground and had grown toward each other. Then he pinched the bridge of his nose while he screwed his eyes shut.
"I didn't want to hurt you even more than you already were," he said, so low I barely heard him.
Memories flashed in my head of when I’d shadow-walked into his bedroom, all the times he'd had plenty of opportunity to hurt me permanently, but he hadn't taken them. He'd been on the defense mostly, and then—
"You turned my knife to rubber. The one Leo gave to me for my birthday," I added, even though it wasn’t important. To him, anyway.
He turned to look at me, his brows drawn together tightly. "You would've been arrested for assault with a deadly weapon if I hadn't."
I should've thanked him, maybe even apologized, but the words tasted sour on my tongue. It was too soon for that, and maybe that was petty and stupid of me, but he was wrong. There was no switch to turn off my hatred of him. Maybe my feelings would change over time. Maybe they wouldn't, and that was the best I could do for now after imagining his murder thousands of times. Besides, it was still his face I saw while he stood over my dead brother. I couldn’t change that.
"I can help you a lot easier if you trust me," he said, taking a step toward me.
"Can you help me find the familiars’ cemetery?"
He blinked. "The what?"
Something chimed then, in a slight break when the wind wasn’t shrieking through the naked branches. Like tinkling bells from the direction of the little graveyard. The same bells that hung from statues' hands that stood guard over it?
Ramsey and I shared a wide-eyed look.
"Those shouldn’t be ringing," he whispered.
His alarm brought goose bumps to my skin. “Why not?”
“They only ring if someone reliving is nearby. Advanced Necromancy was over hours ago, time enough to break the spell and bury the dead again.” He hurried in the graveyard’s direction. "Come on."
I scrambled after Ramsey, dodging deformed tree limbs snagging at my cloak like bony fingers. I’d never actually seen anyone reliving, but I thought I’d steeled myself for the possibility when I enrolled. Now, though, every inch of me squirmed.
The deeper through the trees we went, the gloomier it got until it became so dark I could barely see five feet in front of me. The only thing of Ramsey I saw were his hands peeking out from the sleeves of his cloak and the back of his neck as he raced along.
Then the bells stopped, and a prickle of apprehension tiptoed up my back. If the bells only rang when someone reliving was nearby, what about the metal cages? Had someone been necromanced out of one of those? I sure hoped not, because I imagined the cages were there for a reason.
I searched the dark forest, my eyes feeling too large for my head. Every shift in the branches, every moving shadow out of the corner of my eye crawled along my skin and hitched my breaths.
Ahead, Ramsey stopped, and as I neared, headstones appeared behind him. With my heart in my throat, my steps slowed and stuttered.
But everything looked normal, the cages in place, none of the five graves disturbed. That didn’t make me feel any better.
"Could someone else have rung them?” I asked.
Ramsey blew out a slow breath, studying each grave carefully. "The bells only ring for the reliving. The living can try to ring them, but the bells keep silent when they do. It’s like an alarm for us since the reliving are so unpredictable...and sometimes violent."
I turned in a slow circle, searching through the skeletal trees. Now more than ever, I held my snow shovel like a weapon, and my chest pinched with how tense I was. “So where are they?”
“Well, the bells stopped,” he said and started back the way we came, “but they couldn’t have gone far since the school’s gates are locked. Let’s go find them.”
When my gaze landed on the graveyard again, I stepped forward, squinting at one of the statues. “Wait. That statue’s bell is gone.”
He stopped and strode up next to me. “Probably rang too hard and slipped through the bars of the cage. I’ll hang it back up.”
With the ease of flowing water, he posted his hand on the low iron fence and vaulted himself over. Carefully, he picked his way between the graves to the one on the far end.
I tried to make out the worn names on the headstones but couldn’t read them. Behind the graves, a black marble plaque hung from the inside of the iron fence that read: Magica nigra et sunt mortua: non omiserunt his claustris aut surgere. Not a clue what that meant. After three months of forgetting, my Latin was even rustier than it was before.
"Who's buried here anyway?"
"A bunch of old professors.” He knelt next to the far grave, peeled off his gloves, and pocketed them. “This one’s Marjorie Effman, who was supposed to have used very dark magic. I heard she went a little nuts."
"That explains the cage." I swept my gaze briefly over my shoulder, a vague sense of being watched tapping at my awareness. “And the plaque? What does it say?”
“Roughly, it translates to ‘Black magic shall not loose these cages or wake these darkest dead.’ Some people you just don’t want coming back.”
Like Ryze. Maybe black magic couldn’t raise him either. Which left white magic, but white magic and necromancy didn’t mix.
Ramsey side-eyed me as he rolled up his robe’s sleeve and the black shirt underneath to reveal his muscled forearm. "I know what you're thinking."
"That this would be the perfect place to bury your body?” I said absently, still searching our surroundings.
"You want another dead man's hand."
"That obvious?"
"A little bit, yeah." He inched his arm through a hole in the cage, his teeth gritted with concentration. "Shadow-walking... It's too dangerous, Dawn."
"Says the guy who wanted me to teach him."
"That's...different." He hooked his finger to collect the fallen bell, but the angle of his arm prevented him from reaching it. “Shit.”
Goose bumps surged up the back of my neck. There was no one here but us, except for the doubt sinking into my gut that we weren't alone. The second bell on the other statue would ring if a reliving person found us, though, but not the living. I didn’t trust either of them—the reliving or the living—though.
I swallowed thickly. "So it's too dangerous for me to do it but not you?"
"Basically." He pulled his arm back and drew a little closer to the top of the cage where the holes were a lot smaller.
"That's a sexist comment if I've ever heard one," I said, gripping my shovel tighter.
He scowled as he adjusted his sleeve again. "It's not meant to be sexist. I can probably help you find a familiars’ cemetery without shadow-walking."
"Then why do you need to learn how to do it?"
His stormy gray eyes flicked up to meet mine. "That's not up for discussion."
My gods, this one grated my nerves into cheese. "But you will help me find it?"
He inched his arm through again. "If you'll trust me."
"But you're not telling me everything."
"Well, you're not either." Grimacing, he pulled his arm back and shook it out. “Damn. The hole’s too small. If only there was someone here with spindly little arms to help.”
“Spindly?” I huffed an incredulous breath and kicked my leg up over the fence. "I’ve been in a dungeon for almost three months, remember?"
“How could I forget?” He dragged his hand over his face, looking suddenly ill, and then glanced up. "Don't walk over the graves."
"I know that," I shot back in a whisper.
As I wound my way carefully toward him, a terrible sense of foreboding hit me like a stone wall. I stopped, suddenly short of breath. The air tasted too stale here, too choked with darkness to drag anything more than a sliver into my lungs.
"What is that?" I asked, stashing my gloves in my pockets.
Ramsey glanced up, sweat glistening across his forehead. "That's them. That's Marjorie Effman and the others’ magic."
I forced myself forward while that feeling battled its way into my body with jagged spikes. It was even more intense the closer I moved to her grave, and I desperately wanted to go back. Professor Marjorie was too dark, even for me, a shadow-walker. My body shuddering violently, I knelt on the other side of Ramsey, rolled up my sleeve, and reached a shaky hand through the bars of the cage. This close to it, I now saw it was covered in needlelike barbs.
"Careful, Dawn."
I nodded. When my fingers touched the cool metal of the bell, the tips of my nails dragged against the soil. Even the dirt felt wrong, cold and somehow slimy even though it was dry as a bone. Slowly, I withdrew my hand, the bell on its red ribbon dangling from my fingers, and then I handed it to Ramsey.
As he hung it from the statue's fingers behind him, frigid air closed in at my back and sent a violent tremor down my spine. But of course when I looked, nothing was there. And I meant that in a couple different ways.
Behind me, the second statue’s bell was gone. Had it been there when I passed by or not?
“Ramsey...”
He swallowed loudly. “I felt it too.”
“No, but look. That statue had a bell.” Still on my knees, I turned to face him. “Where is—”
My knee slipped. I dove headfirst into the cage's needle-covered bars.
"Dawn!"
Instinct flashed out my hand to the grave to catch myself. And just underneath my right eye were several one-inch spikes pointing straight up.
"Sonofabitch," I rasped. "That was close."
"No shit. Are you all— What’s that?"
Bent over as I was with one hand on a grave, something had spilled from my pocket. I’d felt it as it happened, and as I stared down at it where it lay just outside the cage, it locked tighter and tighter around my heart until I was sure it had stopped beating.
A death charm, or a circular black pendant with a square cut through the middle. They were meant to invite death closer. All of mine had gone missing from my dorm room, and every single one of them had Ramsey’s initials carved into them: RS. On this one, I could still see those letters just underneath bold new ones: DC. Dawn Cleohold.
Someone really, really wanted me dead.
I scooped it up, ignoring the rattling alarms in my skull, then chucked it into the trees.
Ramsey stared at me, his eyes churning with intensity. "You don't think I—"
"I don't know what to think anymore." I got out of that graveyard, my whole body brimming with contained terror.
Chapter Five
So someone wanted me dead.
Was I a threat? To whom, though? It could be anyone, really, since I'd made my fair share of enemies in the short amount of time I’d been here. Lots of people had the opportunity to slip the death charm into my pocket through a sleight of hand or magic without me realizing. Death charms were light and quiet for a reason, after all.
All through the next day's classes, I hugged my cloak pockets close to my body, staring at everyone suspiciously. They stared suspiciously right back. To them, I was a killer. To me, they were the ones who all wanted me dead.
Call it a hunch, but I didn’t think it was Ramsey. Sure, he’d had plenty of opportunity, but...I just wasn’t sure about him. Especially after finally gathering the courage to look into the crystal ball.
It showed him sound asleep in a rocking chair between two beds, an open children’s book propped against his chest. Two little girls occupied the beds, and except for their sickly pallor, they looked just like him. This was supposedly where he was the night Leo was murdered, but it didn’t prove anything. There’d been no date marking it, so it could’ve happened any time. It didn’t disprove anything, either. Still, I wondered why the girls looked so ill.
On my way down the stairs for more snowy punishment outside, I stalled on the steps. The headmistress and Ramsey weren't at the front door yet, so I had a little time for snooping. By habit, I slipped my hand in my pocket for the dead man's hand. Damn it. It would just have to be me, then, showing my face on the junior floor to find Vickie's room. I didn't know what I hoped to find exactly. Some kind of clue. A reason why she’d died, and if it was at all related to the reason someone wanted me dead.
I raced back up the steps two at a time and then tried to act like I had every right to be here before entering her floor. A short-haired brunette spotted me in the hallway, coming from the direction of the bathroom. I recognized her as one of Vickie's friends, and the poor girl appeared eternally bored and didn’t seem to care I was there.
"Do you know where Vickie's room is?" I asked.
She gestured behind her and to the right. "But she didn't sleep in there."
"Why not?"
She shrugged. "Just because I was friends with her doesn't mean I liked her enough to care."
Oh. Pretty sure the definition of friendship had floated right over her head. "So where did she sleep?"
She jerked her head to the door on my right. "Her stuff's all gone though. Her parents came and took it."
My heart squeezed for them and what they must be going through. I'd seen it firsthand with my parents.
Necromancer Unleashed: Book 2 Page 4
