Nothing happened for a moment, and then a gust of wind extinguished some of the candles. The air smelled like lemons. It had to be her, but I needed to make sure.
"Vickie, if it’s really you, we'll need you to prove it,” I said. “I’m going to ask you a question that only you'll know the answer to. If you spell it out for us with our talking board, we'll know if it's really you or not. What does it say underneath your dog’s name on his gravestone?”
The glass moved by itself and slid over the napkin to the letters.
I put the letters the glass paused on into words. “Very good boy.”
“It’s her?” Seph asked.
I nodded. Now to ask the important questions, and fast since the spirit door was open.
But I didn’t get the chance. The glass began to whip back and forth across the letters.
RUN. NOW. GO.
Seph and I shared a horrified look.
“Wait, Vickie, slow down. What do you want us to run from?” I asked.
The wind howled and blew out more than half of what was left of the lit candles.
THEM. RYZE.
Them. So there was more than one person helping to bring back Ryze.
“Who, Vickie? I need names,” I shouted over the screaming wind.
The flames on the remaining candles lengthened like the fire was being stretched. Then the flames flickered to gray, the exact same color as my magic. And Vickie’s magic.
The glass flung itself over the napkin wildly without settling on any letters. The wind tossed my hair into my face with a mighty howl.
“Vickie, who?” I demanded.
The glass tore itself through the air and shattered against Seph’s desk, spraying broken pieces everywhere. In the next instant, the remaining candles and torches died all at once. Total darkness lowered over us with chilling quiet. The wind had stilled. The lemon scent in the air faded fast.
I dragged in a slow breath, the cold air stinging my lungs. I couldn’t break the circle to snap my light magic to the candles, so I whispered, “Here, there will be light,” a simple white magic spell.
All of them flared to life with a loud crackle, but a bitterly cold wind snuffed them all out almost immediately.
“Here, there will be light,” I said again with more force.
The candles burst into flame again. The next second, they went out. A wintery chill crept across the room and peppered my body with goose bumps. Morrissey’s hand trembled in mine, and someone’s teeth chattered loudly.
“Say goodbye, Dawn,” Seph whispered, her voice shaking. “Close the spirit—”
She gave a sharp gasp, and then her hand was no longer in mine. Not yanked away, just simply not there anymore.
“Seph?” I reached out blindly for her, rising panic constricting everything inside me. “Seph!”
She’d broken the circle. Or something had broken it for her, making each one of us extremely vulnerable to whatever might be coming through the spirit door, and making it impossible to close the spirit door without her.
“Where did she go?” Jon demanded.
With my free hand, I snapped gray light into my palm and blinked. But I didn’t understand what I was seeing. It was as if we’d moved out into the hallway, but when I swung my light back to Morrissey’s and Jon’s pale, terrified faces, we were still in our room. When I looked at Seph, though, it was as if I was seeing a vision of her from out in the hallway. A result of the black moon’s unpredictable power? The hallway stretched behind her, and she stood in the middle, head bent to stare at the ground, barefoot, and dressed in her red nightgown. But she’d been wearing her black cloak and boots seconds ago. She stumbled as she took a step toward us.
“Seph?” Jon rasped. “What’s wrong?”
She came closer. Her legs nearly gave out like they could no longer support her, but an invisible force caught her. Her ankles rolled, and the force lifted her from the ground so only her toes touched the floor. She kept coming, dragged by something unseen.
Two realizations struck me at once. A rope trailed behind her from her ankle. My rope, the one I used to tie her to me at night with an unbreakable knot. And she wasn’t wearing her red nightgown. It was her white one with the long sleeves and drenched with what looked like blood. It dribbled down her ankles and plinked onto the floor.
The sight of her cleaved the breaths from my lungs. What was I seeing? How was this happening? Whose blood was that?
What would happen when she and the force gripping her reached our broken circle?
“Jon,” I said, barely a whisper. “You’re going to have to take her hand when she gets close enough so I can close the spirit door.”
“But... But how are we seeing her if she’s in the hallway and we’re in here?”
“It’s a vision. Just take her hand.”
In my periphery, he jerked his head in a nod.
Morrissey shifted and whimpered next to me. When I ripped my gaze away from Seph, I froze. The three of us sat in the middle of a large symbol that definitely hadn’t been here before. It was a similar symbol that Vickie had drawn in her room with lemon juice. But this one was glowing orange and pulsing, and had a thin trail of blood snaking over it that came from my boot.
I wrenched my leg up, but I didn’t feel any pain. No actual blood. Which meant that this was also a vision. Of when though? And of what exactly?
Morrissey squeezed my hand with a whimper. Over her shoulder, a vague outline of a warped face hovered. A rush of cold dread licked down my back. My stomach clenched at where Morrissey’s eyes were aimed—behind Jon. He had his eyes squeezed shut. His neck muscles strained, and he gritted his teeth, seeming to battle something I couldn’t see in the shadows beyond my light.
To my left, Seph drew closer, floating down the hallway past open rooms. Faint, desperate screams sounded around her. Something tugged at my memory as I watched her. Something important. Something about that hallway, but I didn’t have time to remember.
Jon flew backward out of Morrissey’s grip and slammed into Seph’s desk behind him.
“Jon!” I cried.
Morrissey yelped and tightened her hold on me, her black eyes filled with horror.
He dropped to the floor and lay there, unmoving. A pit of swarming, screaming shadows opened up on the floor next to him, and something unseen began to drag him toward it.
Morrissey started to pull away from me to reach for him.
“No, don’t,” I shouted. “Don’t break the circle. Use your black salt.”
She fumbled for it inside her cloak pocket.
I scooted away from Morrissey as far as our clasped hands would allow and reached for Seph. “Come on, Seph, take my hand. Hurry.”
If this was a vision, would my hand pass right through hers? I reached farther, straining to keep a grip on Morrissey.
Until a frigid touch grasped both sides of my head. Time slowed as I stared at nothing, a scream welling at the back of my throat. The spirit started to haul me toward the same howling shadows Jon was being dragged toward.
Like hells I would let that happen.
I wrenched my hand away from Morrissey, grabbed the vial of black salt from my pocket, and flung a handful. The thing immediately released me, and I launched myself at Seph. We landed hard in a pile on the floor. Normal Seph, not vision Seph. Not a trace of blood on her. Only giant tears as she looked up at me, her face twisted in a horrified, silent scream that broke my heart and then broke it again.
“What was that?” she cried.
“Get to the circle!” I hauled myself off her, only dimly aware that the large symbol had faded from the floor. I raced toward Jon, black salt at the ready.
Morrissey’s hand trembled violently as she tried to get her vial open.
I flung a handful at Jon. A distant wail sounded, something from the other side of the spirit door. Morrissey jumped up to help me, and with my heart beating like crazy, we dragged Jon back to the circle where Morrissey propped him up. He gro
aned and blinked himself into consciousness.
When I rejoined them in my spot, the four of us clasped hands, Morrissey and Seph taking Jon’s.
"Goodbye," I shouted. "I banish the spirits who've crossed through the spirit door. Go back!"
Silence except for the raging blizzard outside shaking through the academy walls. We sat there panting, crying, not daring to move. I wanted to so badly though. To take Seph far away from here and never look back.
Vickie had told us to run. But with the weather outside, there was nowhere to go.
Chapter Twelve
As soon as Ramsey saw me coming down the stairs still shaken from the séance, he paled. He sealed his mouth shut, though, until the front door closed behind us. The wintry air slammed into my face and stole my breaths. It was a total white-out with huge snowflakes falling sideways in the blustery wind and the snow already piled to my thighs.
Ducking his head to shield his face, he took my hand and led me down the steps and into the cover of trees. They blocked some of the wind and snow, but not the deep chill that had little to do with the blizzard.
"What happened?" he shouted over the wind.
"Vickie told us to run. That's it. That's all she had time for before the spirits started to drag us through the door and before I..." I shook my head and swallowed hard. "Before I saw a vision of Seph."
He took my shoulders and dipped down to look at me, his face tight with concern and his flinty-gray eyes intense. "What vision?"
"She had blood all over her, and she was...floating down our hallway. She... We have to get out of here. She and I could go to the village, stay somewhere just until tomorrow."
"There wouldn't be anyone to protect you in the village, remember? Magic doesn't work outside the academy gates."
"It doesn’t work inside, either," I argued.
"Except for the mages brought in by Headmistress Millington. You've seen them. They're taking shifts guarding the inside of the gate and the rest of the school just like the Diabolicals. Those mages can use magic because they weren’t here when the dampener activated, and they can fight. Even if you made it to the village in this weather, which would take you hours, you'd be safer here. You can trust me on at least that much, can't you?"
I screwed my eyes shut against the sting of tears. He might be right. Besides, I still had my magic. I could still help protect Seph and the onyx stone, but if I left here, I would be defenseless without magic. Leo had told me to guard the stone, but I couldn't do that if I wasn't here.
"My nerves are shot." I shivered hard and wrapped my cloak tighter around myself, allowing myself to take comfort in the heat from Ramsey's hands on my shoulders. How could he be so warm during a snowstorm? "What do you say I use magic to clear the path and we go find Vickie's diary again for anything we might've missed?"
Though the corners of his eyes were still tight with worry, he smiled. "I'd say that's a damn fine plan."
We went quickly back to the path, and I bent to touch my hands to the giant snowdrift covering it. "Bind thee in health, Protect mind and soul too, Boost vigor and happiness, Make it all renew."
Magic slipped from my fingertips and spread over the snow like gray diamonds. It followed the path toward the gate and up the steps, melting the snow away completely until there was nothing but wet stone.
“A healing spell?” he shouted over the wind.
I shrugged, and we started up the steps. “It worked, didn’t it?”
"You're really good at white magic too."
"Lots of practice as a healer.” Especially today. I’d healed Jon, Seph, and Morrissey after the séance, though most of their wounds were the kind that couldn’t be healed. When I’d left, Jon had still been comforting Seph.
Ramsey opened the door, peered inside, and then held it for me. "What if you had gone to White Magic Academy? You could've been an excellent white mage."
"I guess we'll never know."
We hustled through the crowded entryway, which was mostly filled with strangers performing spells. Some sat in circles and some sat off to the sides by themselves. White magic sparkled up out of one old mage’s book he held, and whatever he saw in the glimmers and winks made him snap the book shut and march out the front door.
I shivered as I watched him over my shoulder.
Ramsey led the way into the classroom wing, both of us keeping an eye out for the headmistress, and stopped in front of her office door. He knocked and waited a beat. Peering up and down the empty hall first, he plugged his key into the door and pushed it open. A lit gas lamp on her desk flickered shadows across the paintings on the walls, bringing them to life. Past headmasters stared at us in fierce judgement.
"What happens if we get caught in here?" I whispered as Ramsey gently closed the door behind us.
“Very bad things, I'm sure."
"And yet you've done it before. Lots of times if you have a key."
"Yep." He crossed the room to a large wooden cupboard against the left wall with a big lock on it.
"Because you want to find your staff."
"Also yep." Instead of pulling out another key, he pressed his back flat to the wall and felt behind the cupboard.
"But you don't want the headmistress to know about it? She could help. She probably knows about hidden places in the school no one else does."
"The fact that the staff’s missing in the first place isn't something I want to announce to everyone."
"But you did to Jon, Seph, and me."
He pulled out the hidden key and dangled the keyring from his finger as if to show it off. "Sometimes you can tell who can keep a secret and won't judge you for it. Yes, even a girl who tried to kill me."
He’d kept my secrets, too, I realized. Even gone far out of his way to keep them secret.
"Why are you doing this?" I demanded.
He glanced over his shoulder as he stuck the key in the lock. "Uh, because we need Vickie's diary?"
"No. All of this. Helping me...and trusting me."
"For the same reason you've started to trust me.” He opened the cupboard and tilted his head back to peer inside. “Because you know we're on the same side in all this."
I did trust him. Didn't I? I wouldn't be here if I didn't, and he'd given me no reason not to. So when had I decided that he didn't kill my brother? Because this Ramsey, the one who'd slowly earned my trust and knew almost as much about me as Seph did, wasn't capable of murder. He helped too freely, gave much more than he took, and someone like that would never cut someone else's life short.
My chest ached, constricted by an overwhelming sense of guilt. What if I had gone ahead and killed him, an innocent man while the real killer went unpunished? Could I have lived with myself? The old me would've buckled under the guilt. I hadn't realized just how much the old me was still very much a part of this new, darker version of myself until I'd come here to Necromancer Academy and was forced to take a good hard look at my choices. The new me would've surely been crushed, too, if I'd murdered him.
"I'm sorry I tried to kill you, Ramsey." The words seemed so flimsy given everything that had happened, but that was all I had.
"I forgave you as soon as it happened." He took the diary off a high shelf and handed it to me, his fingers grazing mine.
I nodded, but that didn't ease my guilt one bit. If he wouldn't hate me, I would hate myself for an eternity.
"Hey.” He reached out and trailed his finger along my jaw to gently tilt my head up. “You were tricked. You thought it was me and decided to do something about it. You can't beat yourself up over it."
"I can and I will. My self guilt knows no bounds."
He laughed, a sudden, comforting sound, and while he enjoyed his favorite pastime of memorizing my face, I studied his too. Not once since I’d gotten out of the dungeon had I looked at him and saw the same Ramsey I had standing over Leo’s dead body. He wasn’t the same person. He was someone else entirely with his own struggles and problems.
“We’ll
make it through this, okay?” he said. “Whatever happens, we’ll handle it.”
It wasn’t until he pulled away that I realized he’d been cupping my cheek the entire time. One whole half of my face tingled with warmth, and I touched it to both keep it there and rub it away. I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure about so many things lately.
“Say, ‘exemplum,’” he said.
“Exemplum?” Suddenly I was holding two copies of Vickie’s diary.
He slipped one slowly from my hands, all the while watching me with a slight smile. “We should go.”
He placed the copy diary in the cupboard, closed it, and locked it again, and then we slinked out of the headmistress’s office like two thieves. So did that make us thick as thieves? What did that even mean?
I crushed the diary close to my chest since I’d sewn up my pockets, covering it with both arms in case we ran into the headmistress. We passed a few stranger mages who were deep in conversation.
“Admit it,” Ramsey muttered and gave me a devious side-eye. “You want to read the juicy parts Vickie wrote about me.”
“Yeah. You caught me. It’s all about you and not the onyx.”
“It was a joke. Well, a half joke.”
“It was a non-joke.”
He clutched his heart. “Ouch. Just trying to make you smile, is all. It’s so rare, but when you do...”
“Yeah, yeah. My face is awesome.” I lurched to a stop as he kept going, saying something I couldn’t hear over the crash of my pulse. Slowly, I turned my head to the left, toward what I’d seen in the corner of my eye.
Through the open doors of the gym stood Seph staring at the far wall again.
“Ramsey!” I dropped the diary to slam my palms over my eyes because I couldn’t do this again. Couldn’t see things that weren’t there, or worse, were there.
“What?” He touched my shoulders, my wrists, gently trying to pry them away from my face. “What is it?”
“Is she in there? Seph?” My voice came out deranged and hysterical, and I didn’t care.
“No. No one’s in there.”
“Are you looking?”
“Yes, I’m looking. The gym’s empty.”
Necromancer Unleashed: Book 2 Page 12
