by Rain Oxford
When I saw the note, it suddenly made a lot more sense.
Dear Devon,
There is a way through for you now. I must be brief, for we are out of time. From a place where boundaries bleed and fears fester, I have realized the flaw in my alliance. You must not trust your eyes, not even your Sight. The answers are clear solely in the absence of light. You are the only one who can make this journey, and you must do it alone.
I am afraid this may be the end for me, and I find myself with a single regret; you should have been my son. Farewell, nephew.
Sincerely,
Your Uncle
I had seen that letter before. Ghost looked up at Vincent. “What did you see?” Although the cat’s words were in Vincent’s head, it was still startling to hear his gravelly voice so clearly in my mind.
“I saw Keigan pulling me into the fourth door of the tower. I can’t figure out why or how because Keigan shrouded his decision with misdirection. I also saw you injured and… the injury is just a smokescreen though. Someone is going to poison you and then cut you so that Devon can’t see the real danger. I’m hiding a potion because I don’t know who will poison you. Give this letter to Devon and make sure he finds the potion before you get poisoned.”
“What about you? The letter does not describe how to save you.”
“Don’t worry about me. With me out of the way, Devon has a better chance of defeating Krechea. If he loses me, maybe he won’t lose what’s most precious to him.”
“And what happens to me after you are gone? My magic and life is tethered to yours.”
“I won’t be dead, just gone. You’ll be fine as long as Devon gets this potion to you. Do you understand?”
I could feel the familiar’s irritation. “I am not a fool. Of course I understand. I understand that you are an idiot.”
Vincent turned and left. The cat hesitantly put his paw on the note as worry overcame him. He hid it, but he cared about Vincent very much. Unfortunately, that was when shadows reached out across the room.
I was shoved out of the vision and back to the classroom just as Remington burst in the room with water and a few cloths. “What the hell happened to you?” she asked.
I wiped sweat from my forehead. “He was poisoned.” I gently prodded Ghost’s neck until he opened his eyes. “Where is the potion Vincent hid? I moved those books and there wasn’t a potion there. What happened to it?”
I pushed the closest feeling I had to vitality through the mental link; I focused on adrenalin. Finally, I got a fuzzy, half-faded, dark picture of the potion sitting on my coffee table at home.
Of course it’s there. I turned to Remington. “Make sure he holds on. I’ll be back as soon as I can be.”
“Where are you going?”
“Hopefully, I’ll bring back the antidote.” I focused on my symbol and home simultaneously. My instincts warned me of danger, but I knew the shadow pass was dangerous. All I cared about was that I had to save Ghost. The damned cat had been through so much.
It felt like I was only in the shadow pass for a blink of an eye. My living room was well lit from the windows, which made it harder to appear somewhere from the shadow pass, so I appeared in my dim hallway. Placed right in the middle of my coffee table was the potion. Ghost must have left it there right after I went to the school.
I reached for it, only to be shot with something from behind. As I collapsed on the ground, unable to move, I realized my instincts had been warning me of the danger here, not in the shadow pass. The assailant roughly tied a blindfold over my eyes. I tried to kick him, but my limbs weren’t obeying my brain.
I concentrated on the presence of my familiar to summon him. I felt the gargoyle respond an instant before I heard someone being slammed against the wall, so I assumed it was my familiar here to protect me. Instead, when the blindfold was removed, it was Vincent who stood over me. He helped me stand and I felt a sort of electrical current run over my skin. “Is that better?” he asked.
I failed to flex my fingers, but my legs held and I was able to move my arms. The more I flexed them, the looser my muscles became. “Yes. Thanks. Was that the shadow man?”
“No, that was just one of his followers.”
“I thought they weren’t supposed to be attacking me.”
“This one probably thought he could steal your key for himself.”
“How did you find me?”
“I was looking for you. You said you would meet with me.”
“I know. I looked for you and found Ghost. He was poisoned.” Vincent groaned. I picked up the potion. “It’s okay, we can save him. He showed me the potion and letter you prepared for him.”
“I see. I will help Ghost. Rosin is looking for you.”
“I think saving Ghost is more important than whatever Alpha Flagstone wants.”
“Of course it is, but I can help Ghost.”
He had a point. “I don’t care what Flagstone has to say; if I can help Ghost at all, I will.”
He considered it for a second before nodding. “In that case, I welcome your help. I’ve been going back and forth all day and you know how tiring that is.”
“If you want, I think I can do it for both of us.”
“I would appreciate it.”
I slipped the potion into my pocket, grasped his arm, and focused on my symbol. It was more of a strain on my energy and took longer because the room was so light, but after about half a minute, shadows reached across the floor and enveloped us in complete darkness. The air grew stale and cold. When I focused on Ghost, a sense of direction came over me. I didn’t have a clue which direction I was going in, but I was moving anyway.
The darkness dispersed and left us in the classroom with Remington and Ghost… only, the room wasn’t as I left it. Every single desk was on the far side of the room in a big pile, broken glass littered the floor, and Ghost was wrapped up in the towel in Remy’s arms. She was sitting against the door with a gun and a bloody knife on the floor at her side. I looked up and realized where the glass had come from; the ceiling had a skylight, which was now just a hole. “What happened?” I felt like I had asked the question a million times since that day John walked into my office.
“One of the wizards attacked, but I stabbed him and he didn’t seem to even feel it. Your gargoyle showed up and helped.”
“One of the wizards that your father invited to stay here?”
She nodded. “And I’d really like to know why.” She gave me an accusing glare.
“I don’t know.” I absolutely hated lying to her, so because she didn’t know anything about the keys, I just avoided her after I got mine. This time, I legitimately didn’t know. “Are you hurt?” She shook her head. “Then let’s worry about Ghost right now.”
I took him and pulled the bottle out of my pocket. Although he had lost weight since the last time he pounced on my chest, he was still heavy. Despite the cat’s weight, I managed to get the lid off the bottle. Fortunately, it was a dropper type. I squeezed the rubber cap to fill the glass tube and Vincent took the bottle from me. When I put it to his mouth, he didn’t respond. He wasn’t breathing.
“Fuck. Wake up! Come on! Vincent, can’t you do something?”
“I’m not very good at encouragement.”
I forced open the cat’s mouth, stuck the tip of the dropper down his throat, and squeezed. I had no idea if I was helping or hurting him, but I didn’t have any other ideas. Darwin probably knew how to do CPR on animals, but I didn’t even have time to ask him and I highly doubted it would help anyway without the potion.
Once I was sure the potion wasn’t coming back up, I took him over to one of the desks, tipped it back onto its legs, and laid him on it. He still wasn’t breathing, so I placed my finger over his heart. No heartbeat. I wasn’t going to settle for that. Guided by my instincts, I focused on all four elements at once.
Water was healing, trust, and emotion; earth was strength and endurance; fire was purification and courage; and air
was wisdom. I would heal him because I had mastered the four elements and that was what life was. Life was made up of the five elements, the fifth one being the soul. I didn’t understand the fifth element yet because I hadn’t started my final semester, but I knew Ghost had enough life in him every time I saw him. It was why he didn’t die when a wizard summoned him too early and made every day of his life a struggle. He didn’t die when that wizard was killed by Vincent. It was why he wasn’t going to die this time.
Somehow, the aspects of the elements solidified inside me, flowed down my arm, and struck him like a static shock. He popped up, claws slashing, fur bristling, and hit the ground on his feet. Then the little bastard just vanished.
“Does that mean he’s okay?” Remy asked.
“I think so. Now, do you know the name of the wizard who attacked you?”
“No.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing.”
“Not even why he attacked you?”
She shrugged. “It’s obviously because I’m a way to get at my father.”
“What is it you wanted to talk to me about?” I asked Vincent.
He shook his head. “It’s about Keigan, but we should discuss it in private.” With that, he turned and walked out.
“Did he seem a little apathetic to you?” I asked Remington.
She shrugged. “I don’t know him too well. He’s my father’s friend, but he rarely visited and they both worked hard to pretend not to be close because they didn’t want the council to suspect Vincent of anything.”
“I really don’t know him that much either.” Even if everyone was wrong and he was my father instead of John, that didn’t automatically make him someone I could trust. When he started teaching me to control my visions, I started to trust him without realizing it. My instincts had never warned me I was in danger around him. “Anyway, I’ll deal with that later. Let’s go find your attacker.”
After three hours of searching the castle, we decided to wait until everyone was gathered for dinner, because there were hundreds of dorm rooms. I spent another half hour looking for Vincent before I gave up and returned to my room. Henry was gone, probably with Scott, and Darwin was on the floor with a dozen books spread out around him.
“How is the translating going?”
“Not easily. Got a plan on how to stop the remaining shadow walkers?”
“I’m working on it.” I sat down at my desk and, for some reason, suddenly decided to write some notes on the case. Automatically, I opened my top drawer for my pen and notebook, only to remember that I had emptied it because we were getting a different room for our final semester. Thus, I was very surprised to see a small, dark blue, glass ball inside. I picked it up. “Maybe I actually lost this instead of it disappearing for some weird, magic reason.”
“Most things happen for some weird, magic reason around here,” Darwin said. “That’s why I love it; it’s not always logical.”
I pulled Langril’s ball out of my pocket. “Maybe you can figure out why this ball is so important to Langril.” I tossed it at him.
He studied it for a minute before setting it on the floor. “I’ll see what I can come up with.”
I picked up the glass ball. Hunt had created it for me, saying that if I needed guidance, I could break it and it would help me, but he wouldn’t be able to make another for me. It was a one-time-deal.
And I needed to use it to save Astrid. Ghost appeared on my desk, knocking the glass ball out of my hand. “No!” I saw it fall, but I couldn’t catch it in time.
Darwin did.
“That was close.” I flinched away when I felt Ghost nudge against my arm before I realized he wasn’t trying to scratch me. I turned to him and he hopped into my lap. If there wasn’t dried blood on his fur, I would have thought it was a different cat altogether.
He looked about ten years younger. He no longer had bald or gray spots. His fur ranged from light brown on his chest and legs to dark brown on his back with a black tail, black ears, and a silver patch on his chest. He still had a scar on his face and his eyes were still mismatched in color, but he wasn’t scowling.
“What did you do to him?” Darwin asked.
“I gave him a healing potion that Vincent made for him.” As I explained the events of my day and what I learned about John from my mother, Ghost purred and rubbed his head against my chest. When I looked back at Darwin, his face was ashen. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I just realized how your magic works.”
“But you know how it works.”
“I know how magic in general works. Elemental, psychic, illusion, and such are all branches of magic that every wizard can do to some degree. I just thought your psychic magic was normal psychic magic. Okay, think of it this way. A wizard is a person with an ability to control magic, but throughout all of history, there have been humans with proclaimed psychic abilities. With me so far?”
“Well, I thought they were either undiscovered wizards or just really intuitive.”
“In most cases, yes. However, there are people with supernatural intuition or dreams of the future. Some can even read minds. Wizards can learn this kind of psychic magic but, like humans, there are some who just do it naturally. I thought that was what you were, because psychic magic is one of the most difficult types of magic to do. Then you developed visions and I thought there had to be a reason it came so naturally to you. I figured your grandmother was fae.”
“But I just found that out.”
“Confirming my hypothesis.”
“But that’s the reason John and Vincent didn’t have all three psychic powers.”
Darwin shook his head. “No, I think that’s wrong. I think that’s what your grandfather told Hunt. I think Arthur Knight picked the woman he did because of her magic.”
“He had all three powers and Vincent and John didn’t. What part of this am I missing?”
“The part where Arthur Knight wasn’t a wizard,” he said. I gaped. “I did a lot of research on the man after you told me what you learned about Vincent. Everyone thought he was a wizard because he put that thought into their heads. Never once did I find a single piece of evidence that he had any magic other than his psychic powers. I believe your grandmother was a very powerful fairy.”
“Fairies are a type of fae that does magic like wizards, right?”
“Pretty much, except they have it a lot easier and harder in different ways. They are like all types of fae rolled into one, which includes weaknesses. Most of them are so set in their traditions, that no outsider has ever seen them. That’s why most people think they’re tiny. Well, that, and because they can appear as small as some magical creatures. They live in forests typically, which is why I didn’t suggest it to you before.”
“Wait, so you do or you don’t think my grandmother was fae?”
He sighed. “I think you aren’t what you were supposed to be.”
“No, stop jumping around.”
“Okay, let me run a scenario. Let’s say Arthur was human with psychic powers. He wanted a child with a paranormal to create even more powerful children so he could use his children. Since he’s human, he doesn’t expect a throwback, because that’s only a ten percent chance. Vincent and John are born, both throwbacks. Why?”
“Because he miscalculated?”
“After all the work he put into it? Doubtful. What’s more likely?”
I thought about it. “Maybe there was something he couldn’t have accounted for. Maybe she wasn’t full fae.”
“No, forget the fae, she was most definitely a top-notch example of her kind.”
“Then I don’t follow.”
He rolled his eyes. “Arthur was designing another kind of paranormal! Vincent and John were meant to be throwbacks so that they could carry on very particular paranormal genes to their offspring.”
“How is that designing, though? Doesn’t that just make me fae?”
He rolled his eyes so hard I thought he
was going to hurt himself. “Bloody hell, are you always this thick? You’re a wizard!”
“I know that!”
“So how do you cross a psychic human with a fae and get a wizard with extra fae powers?!”
“I don’t know! Stop yelling!”
He clenched his hands in his hair and took a few deep breaths. “Gods, how do you people even know how to brush your teeth in the morning?” He let go of his hair. “Your grandfather created a wizard, whether he meant to or not, using fae genes. That means all those wizards of Dothra are descended from the fae of Draumr.”
“Seriously?”
He nodded. “Furthermore, with only the information about Dothra that I’ve gotten from you, I would go so far as to say they were designed.”
“Wizards were designed? By who?”
“You have no idea how much I want to find that out.”
I didn’t like that look on his face, like he was very close to becoming one of those mad scientists. “Um… how do you plan on doing that?”
“With the only lead I have; Vincent’s and your blood.”
“But Vincent and I need our blood.”
He smiled reassuringly and patted my knee. “Don’t worry; I won’t take much. If you’d like, I can take it while you’re sleeping so you won’t even know it’s gone.”
“Don’t ever touch me while I’m sleeping.” As if I would ever get to sleep around him again. “How sure are you about this?”
“I’m sixty-seven percent certain.”
“That’s barely more than fifty-fifty. Until you have proof, I’m just going to side with John and Vincent in thinking that Arthur was a wizard, and you don’t get to touch my blood.”
