Urban Mystic Academy: Graduation (A Supernatural Academy Series Book 6)

by Jennifer Rose McMahon

  If you like fantasy adventure with time-travel and a hint of romance, think Outlander meets Tomb Raider, you will love this series.

  MYSTIC COVEN - FIRE FESTIVAL

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  www.jenniferrosemcmahon.com

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  Jennifer Rose McMahon is a USA Today Bestselling Author who has been creating her stories since her college days abroad in Ireland. Her passion for urban legends, ancient cemeteries, abandoned asylums, and medieval ghost stories has fueled her adventurous storytelling, while her husband’s decadent brogue carries her imagination through the centuries. When she’s not writing about castles and curses, she can be found near Boston in a local coffee shop, yoga studio, or at the beach… most often answering to the name ‘Mom’ by her fab children four.

  www.jenniferrosemcmahon.com

  jenniferrosemcmahon@gmail.com

  Also by Jennifer Rose McMahon

  URBAN MYSTIC ACADEMY SERIES

  Urban Mystic Academy: First Project

  Urban Mystic Academy: Second Project

  Urban Mystic Academy: Third Project

  Urban Mystic Academy: Fourth Project

  Urban Mystic Academy: Final Project

  Urban Mystic Academy: Graduation

  MYSTIC COVEN SERIES

  Mystic Coven: Fire Festival

  Mystic Coven: Winter Wiccan

  Mystic Coven: Pagan Prophecy

  Mystic Coven: Solstice Summoning

  ASYLUM SAVANT SERIES

  The Shuttered Ward, Book One

  The Excited Ward, Book Two

  The Forgotten Ward, Book Three

  IRISH MYSTIC LEGENDS SERIES

  Legend Hunter, Book One

  Curse Raider, Book Two

  Truth Seer, Book Three

  PIRATE QUEEN SERIES

  Bohermore, Book One

  Inish Clare, Book Two

  Ballycroy, Book Three

  Rockfleet, Prequel (best read as Book 2.5)

  Sample of Legend Hunter

  It was somewhere right around here that I lost sight of her as she was pulled away into the howling mist.

  Kicking at loose chunks of gravel, I rubbed my unbelieving eyes to clear the crushing reality of the event. It had been mere seconds since she disappeared, but it already weighed on me like a tortured eternity.

  The thick, whirling fog had come out of nowhere and strong gusts blinded me for the few short moments before it took her. I crouched down, fearing it had come for me too. But when I opened my eyes, the assailing wind dissipated, creeping through the grass and out to sea…and she was gone.

  Blinking into the bright light of mid-day, I watched the blurred greens and blues of the rolling hills and the Irish sea separating into their own vivid dimensions. I shook my head, clearing the dream-like quality from the historical surroundings of the ancient castle ruin before me.

  My face dropped into my hands as my knotted stomach churned. It was the curse—the haunting visions that lurked in every shadow. I’d always feared them, but now their danger was more real to me.

  Maeve was gone. Vanished into thin air. And I could be next.

  My eyes squeezed shut as I pictured my classmates back at school, sitting in uniform rows with glazed stares plastered across their faces. That was where I was supposed to be, where my grandmother wanted me to be. And yet again, because of these crazy visions, I was here at the ruins of Doona Castle instead.

  As my clouded senses cleared and returned to sharper focus, I turned with squinted eyes, searching for the others who were with me. Had they seen the same thing--the disappearance? Or was it an abduction? Their reactions would prove to me what was real and what was maybe a dream.

  It was only when the distorted ringing in my ears had died down that I heard their painful cries. They searched for her in every direction and their incessant calling of her name shattered me with terror. I pressed my hands over my ears to stop the tormented sound and crouched down to protect myself from the chaos.

  Rocking, tight as a ball, I isolated myself while the shocking wails faded out beyond me. Pictures of lush green fields and meandering stone walls filled my mind as I tried to lull myself into tranquility. The vibrating hum of my voice reverberated through my skull though, rising to an unsettling moan as my voice grew louder in my throat.

  "Noooo. No. No!" The pounding words shot out of me, tightening my clamp around my head. How could she have been taken away? The irrational thought of her disappearing terrified me.

  Helplessness washed through me, draining my inner strength, and then my shoulder shook as I was yanked up to standing.

  "Get up, Izzy! Ya need to get out of here.” Declan commanded me, lifting me like a weightless doll. “Isobel!”

  Pulling me away from the crumbled castle walls, we stumbled along the uneven ground, racing toward the car. Michelle followed, with a hand on his elbow as she kept her eyes fixed on the desperate scene behind us. She was Maeve’s best friend but judging by the lost gaze on her mystified face, she had no idea what was happening.

  The other two in our group stayed behind, searching the castle ruin with faraway stares, voices hoarse from calling her name again and again. The one in a black leather jacket barreled around the corner of what was left of its stony walls, scouting every direction with wide-eyed bewilderment. His voice broke through the salty breeze and carried a sharp ring of shock laced with stinging guilt. His fists pounded at the open air, cursing as if it had betrayed him.

  But the other—the more refined of the two, the professor—his response was different. He remained frozen in the same original spot as his scratching voice called her name over and over in shattered disbelief. The desperate sound of misery haunted me. His shoulders slumped with the weight of centuries and his eyes scanned the horizon in broken anguish.

  I pulled against Declan. "We can't leave them!"

  "We have to. It's not safe for you here!” His grip tightened on my arm as he hurried me to the car. “Do you want to be next?”

  My eyes caught Michelle's and within them I found the same despair that coursed through me. Her unblinking stare of loss shot her terror into me and I sent the same back to her. In our eye-lock, we confirmed the truth of the events that had unfolded—and my silent promise to her to one day make it right.

  That day haunted me like a train wreck I couldn't turn away from. It defined my every waking moment, leaving me without direction, thinking I could disappear and be whisked away at any turn. Maeve had had visions, just like I did, and they’d been the end of her. What happened that day could happen to me, without warning, and the uncertainty of my safety ate away at me every minute. My ragged cuticles and chewed nails were clear proof of it.

  So I kept returning to this location at Doona Castle, in hopes of finding clues to where she went or maybe even finding her. Anything to bring balance back to my upside-down life. My own visions were growing worse now, reminding me of everything that didn’t fit right in my life. The not knowing if they would take me, too, was enough to drive me mad.

  A breeze tickled across my face making me flinch. My eyes widened and I looked all around me. Only I would have such a paranoid response to a little wind. My eyes narrowed then as I looked at Doona and its familiar looming shadow.

  My regular visits to the castle had accumulated to the point where I could measure my growth against the sidewall of the stronghold. I had been nearly twelve when Maeve disappeared and now six years later, the top of my head reached the arch of the gothic-framed entryway. Though I was still petite in comparison to my peers, I could at least see in through the windows now.

  But it was the steadily growing pile of flowers, dry stems, and tattered ribbons hidden in the clearing high above that I measured the true passage of time with. Its mystery intrigued me as much as the mystical qualities of the cle
aring itself.

  I moved along the stony wall of the castle, running my hand across the cold, rough exterior. A shiver ran up my arm, heightening my senses, attuning them to the details around me. My clear recollection of that frightful day remembered a crumbling ruin—broken from battle and time, only the corner remaining of a once glorious stronghold. But that was no longer true. The castle remains stood strong and proud now, all walls intact, defying time's crushing blows.

  I rubbed my eyes to ward off the migraine that always came when I tried to rationalize how at one moment, the castle had been a devastated ruin, and the next, it stood in its full form. Something shifted when Maeve went away. Something changed. And only we knew—those who were there that day.

  I glanced up the green slopes of the surrounding hills, tempted to make the trek up to the clearing. My head turned back toward Gram's vintage BMW, calling for me to hop in and drive home to safety, but the pull from the clearing was even stronger. And more insistent. Every time.

  Salty mist pulled through my hair and I looked up the hillside. Echoes filled the gusts that moved past me, causing my arm hairs to bristle. I could swear I heard tin whistles, and sounds of an ancient language laced throughout the undulations of the breeze. My imagination played with me again as I surveyed all around, chewing the inside of my cheek.

  My lips pressed to the side as I thought of the stagnant classroom I was supposed to be confined in versus the dangers that might lurk ahead of me. I always felt like a criminal when I skipped school, but the urge to come back to this place was stronger than the pull to my final year of monotonous high school classes. Plus, the judgmental stares from my peers, and the incessant whispering, it was to the point of being unbearable.

  Not only did I look different, with my slight frame and wispy white-blonde hair—like an imp my brother Declan always said—but the visions…they made me weird in their eyes. They'd caught me in my trance-like state enough times to actually be afraid of me. And fear of the unknown or the unusual always led to brutal exclusion.

  I'd rather be here anyway, in the open air by the sea and rolling green hills. They called to me in every salty breeze, like there was something bigger for me, something waiting…waiting for me to take the next step. And it hid just out of my reach.

  My body turned, as if by habit, and I climbed the steep incline toward the clearing. With each step, the wind grew stronger, sometimes pushing me along, other times brushing me off my course or slowing me. It carried a warning, though, something that unhinged my joints and quickened my heart rate.

  Smells of molten iron and steaming deer stew had filled Maeve’s tales of her visions, and sounds of trilling tin whistles and echoing drums completed the five-hundred-year-old legends. But it was the forceful energy of clan resistance against the crown that consumed my senses now as determined gusts tracked my every move.

  I stared up toward the clearing and took a deep breath. It was crazy to go there alone. Strange things had happened there before, unexplainable things, and the incessant gusts in my face slapped me with repeated warning—which I ignored. My feet moved me forward with a mind of their own while my eyes remained fixed on the car behind me, attempting to pull me back to its safety.

  Answers. I needed answers.

  Gram said I had to ignore the visions and get on with my life but I knew I never could. I needed to learn the ways of the visions if I was to ever stop cowering and hiding from my own existence.

  I climbed higher, looking over my shoulder as the wild Atlantic view expanded all around me. My gaze travelled out to sea to the high peak on Clare Island, then all around across the vast green landscape. The wind continued to swipe at me from all directions, reminding me of its awareness of my curious presence. I welcomed its companionship and continued to follow the familiar carved path of the trickling stream that led me toward the clearing once again.

  Damp mist coated my face as rain threatened to come. It always did. But the tingle I felt in my bones as I got closer to the mystical clearing proved something else was coming too.

  Something strange and unnerving.

  Chapter Two

  Every nerve in my body twitched as I entered the hallowed space. My eyes fell while I fought back the notion that, on the contrary, it was damned. And I carried its curse—one that spanned time and fused within my every breath.

  A dark shroud of mystery blanketed the silent clearing as it dangled an ancient secret from its medieval past just out of my reach. My eyes moved around the circle of huge boulders that surrounded it and I envisioned Maeve’s stories of the whipping post that once stood in the center and the unfortunate prisoners held by rival clans. But now, I hoped the spot held different possibilities for me.

  Maeve never realized how much I had absorbed of her myths and her side conversations with Paul, her Celtic history professor. But he had been more than that to her. They had a mystical connection that spanned hundreds of years. It was like they were meant to be. Destined. And their stories wove magic through every word.

  I walked to the middle of the clearing, remembering her larger-than-life tales of the pirate queen and her rescued lover as a warm smile turned up the edges of my mouth. A new, fresh breeze tickled my hair across my face and I turned to it, allowing it to sweep my hair behind me.

  At the edge, along the base of one of the boulders, a yellow ribbon flickered in the airflow, dancing to its own mystical rhythm. The bright contrast of color drew me in and I moved closer to its inviting flutter.

  I reached down to touch it and its silky sheen tempted me to tug. I pulled on the ribbon and it resisted, holding tight to its dried stems, wedged far into a dark gap between two boulders. I tugged and jimmied the dead bouquet from its crevice and watched the crisp, brown petals crumble and blow away on the wind. I looked back into the space between the boulders. It overflowed with stacked piles of dry bouquets.

  My eyes widened as I gasped at the sheer volume, stepping away from the strange hiding place of someone’s obsession. The wind picked up and blew me further from the spot as I continued to stare into the darkness of the hidden space.

  Someone had been coming here, leaving flowers.

  Time and time again.

  For years.

  And I couldn’t help but feel the wind surrounding this place was protective of the hoard, somehow. Sheltering its secrets. Or enticing me closer.

  Ignoring the nagging flight response that twitched in my muscles, I reached into the crevice without hesitation like a moth to a flame, and pulled on another bunch. This one still held color in its drying green leaves and the pale shades of pink hidden within the wilted edges of the rose petals. The white ribbon was gray and blotched from water stains and mildew. Only a knot remained on what once must have been a lovely bow.

  As I ran my fingertips along the length of the fabric, my spine straightened and my eyes shot wide open. A low hum filled my ears and rose to a high pitched buzz within seconds. I knew the sensation well. The wind had been warning me, and I resented not listening to it. Before I could snap myself out of it, my peripheral vision darkened as my pupils constricted to pin pricks, focusing on a single point in front of me.

  My vision.

  It had turned.

  Turned to my alternate sight, the one that saw things that weren't there. Things that confused me and scared me, from times that had passed or maybe even events yet to come. My breath stopped short as my hands curled into tight fists and I prepared for the frightening disturbance that was about to unravel me.

  The wind continued its dizzying dance, blurring my vision while my foot tapped, willing it to go away. All of my energy focused on hanging onto reality, keeping in touch with the moment. My stomach turned as I feared losing myself to my visions again and I fought harder to stay alert and grounded.

  The dream-like trances never seemed to last long, but I wished for it to hurry and pass anyway. I wasn’t safe here in the clearing. Alone. And I just wanted it to be over with already.

&nbs
p; Scrunching my eyes closed, I willed it away and shook with resistance. Then, before I spent another second fruitlessly trying to stop the onset, I disconnected from myself and weightlessness took me over.

  Hurdling through a blur of sound and color, my jaw clenched as terror filled me. With no idea of where I might land or what I might see, I gasped for air that was impossible to breath. Then, in a shocking instant, my senses shifted to fresh focus and I gazed around me.

  I followed my line of vision along a cold, lonely road and stepped forward. A black lake ran alongside me as I travelled down the dark lane. With each step, the scenery passed by me quicker and quicker, like I was moving at the speed of a car although remaining on foot.

  The bleak roadway turned away from the lake and moved into a secluded area sheltered by heavy tree growth. My eyes darted around me, looking for anything recognizable, when a break in the trees opened up a landscape of sculpted shrubs and manicured lawn.

  A sprawling manor stood proud with its floor-to-ceiling windows and ivy-covered stonework. My eyes pulled to the one object out of place. It didn't belong on the grounds of such a regal estate, just off to the side of the majestic stairs that led to the enormous front entry. A massive black pot, like a caldron the size of a hot tub, sat on the terrace waiting for its next use.

  A famine pot.

  I'd seen one before and knew its purpose in an instant. Starving people at the time of the Great Famine would line up with their cup or bowl, desperate for a scoop of life-giving sustenance.

  My gaze travelled up to the stately front door, intimidating to any commoner, and my head tipped in recognition. I'd been here before, as a kid. But it wasn't alive like this. It had stopped breathing. When I last visited, it was untouchable, for viewing only. It was a museum of Irish history called Westport House.