Quiet was gone. The water was anyway, but the hole where it had been was still there, stacked nearly to ground level with skulls and bones.
“Um,” I started, “does this happen often?”
“No.” Jon gulped. “Never.”
From the other side of the empty pond, something unseen barreled toward us, snapping branches and roots. Something big enough to make the tops of the trees quake.
Echo took Jon’s shovel and hurtled over the gate. “Right. We’re done here.”
“What is it?” I squeaked, panic clawing up my throat.
“Let’s not find out.” Jon whipped around to the back of my wheelchair and lunged toward a new path.
“I don’t know where this leads,” Echo hissed over her shoulder, trotting ahead. “We need to go back the way we came.”
The crashing came louder, closer. We weren’t going back the way we came.
I twisted to see around Jon behind us. Through the breaks in the trees, a huge shape hurtled toward what was left of the pond. It took several seconds to realize I was staring at a woman, naked and old, with massive antlers springing from the top of her head. What was she doing here? She crouched on a pile of bones in the empty pond and opened her mouth, and her jaw unhinged to open even farther. A horrified squawk choked up my throat, and the woman’s red eyes snapped up to meet mine. Out of her wide-open mouth came a wail that stampeded across every one of my nerves and crushed them.
Then she bounded toward us.
“Faster.” I whipped back around, clutching the arms of the chair. Cold sweat beaded across my skin. Violent tremors ripped up and down my back. “Jon, faster!”
The wheels protested loudly as he raced after Echo up the path that was hardly a path at all. The chair bumped and leaped and teetered, threatening to spill me to the ground so the woman could snatch me up. I grasped the hands on my lap tightly to keep hold of them and gripped the chair too.
Jon groaned. “Don’t look back.”
I didn’t have to. She pounded after us, her steps shaking the ground.
Ahead, dead branches sagged to the ground where the roots curled up, and they formed a wall. Echo burst through anyway, and—oh shit!—Jon followed. My chair ripped through and brought wooden rain down on my head. We burst onto the main path that led to the academy, somehow from the other side we’d ventured. How had we managed that?
Jon and Echo poured on speed toward the front doors. Another ear-splitting wail pierced the air behind us. Ramsey stood on top of the steps, his mess of dark hair blowing atop his head.
The world wobbled and then tipped. A wheel must’ve caught on a loose stone in the path or something, and the ground came up to meet the side of my chair, and then the side of my head. The seat belt kept me from sprawling, but the dead man’s hands danced out of my lap and clicked across the ground before rolling to a stop.
“Dawn!” Ramsey burst out the front doors and ran down the steps to meet us.
Jon knelt next to me, wincing, and held his arms out toward me. “Are you all right?”
“Great,” I groaned.
Echo closed in behind me, her gaze set on the forest, her stance protective. But nothing was coming. The woman had vanished.
Ramsey knelt on my other side and gently touched my elbow. He scanned me for injuries from head to toe, his brows drawn in a deep V. “What happened?”
“We were being chased,” Echo said between pants.
“And Quiet...left,” Jon added.
“What are you doing out here, Dawn?” Ramsey asked, concern radiating out of him.
Blood trickled from my chin, and every part of me ached. No more pretending I could bounce back fast after mage’s oblivion. Or outrun naked women who could likely eat my whole skull in one snap.
I pointed to the skeletal digits a few feet away since that was all the moving I could do. “Thought I’d give you a hand.”
Chapter Four
SOMEONE WAS SCREAMING.
Two days later, early on a Monday morning, I pushed through the door of the freshmen girls' wing, finally freed from my infirmary room and upright on my own. My heart pitched into my throat at the awful sound. Who was that? And why wasn't anyone doing anything about it? A few girls wandered from the bathroom at the end of the hall and breezed toward me without batting an eye. Did they not hear that? It was so loud and anguished.
One freshman—Bernie, I think—waved awkwardly on her way past. "Hey, Dawn. Glad you're still with us."
"Yeah, same, but..."
She'd gone out the door before I could ask.
The screaming didn't end, and it ripped at my soul with how sorrowful it was. I charged down the hall, noting that it grew louder the closer I drew to my room. Oh gods. It couldn't be...
I opened the door. There, in the middle of the room, sat Nebbles the Undertaker, crying her head off. Not screaming. Just mourning the loss of her Princess Sepharalotta. For three long months.
A sharp ache speared through my chest and stole my breath. I stumbled toward her, and she whipped her furry gray head around to glare with her one orange eye. Her hatred of me won out over her grief, it seemed, because she hissed.
"I'm sorry," I whispered. "I'm so sorry."
My gaze landed on Seph's bed, stripped completely of all the bedding like she wasn't expected to return. Her ribbons had come loose from the circus-tent design over her bed, no longer as colorful as they once had been, and unraveling at the ends. Same as me.
A sob wrenched from my throat, and I slapped both hands over my mouth. If I hadn't, I would've shattered all over the floor into too many pieces. I'd failed Seph. I'd left her in this room all alone that night, and she might never come back. Even though she held the onyx, the onyx held her more, and there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing anyone could do. Seph and all those deaths... Ryze's return... It was all on me. Even Nebbles knew it.
My body jerked with more sobs until my legs gave out and I sank to the floor.
Footsteps thudded outside the open door. "Hey, I was coming by to see if you— Oh."
It was Echo. I was too wrecked to care that she saw me like this. I wasn't the mastermind leader she wanted me to be anyway. I invited death and devastation everywhere I went.
"Dawn," she said softly. “We kept giving her toys and mice, but...” She came up behind me, knelt, and rubbed my back like Seph used to do when I was upset. "It will be okay."
I wasn't so sure. My tears seemed to agree because they kept coming and would not stop. We stayed there for who knows how long while Echo smoothed my hair back from my wet face. Nebbles regarded the both of us coolly, her head tilted to the right. I felt so bad for her, and I wondered if a visit to Seph would be good or would just confuse her since she couldn't sleep on Seph's face what with the floating.
"I'm sorry," I said as soon as I could force the words out. I had a feeling I'd be saying that a lot to everyone I’d let down.
ECHO AND I WERE ALREADY late to Death, Dying, and Reliving, so we pocketed breakfast from the Gathering Room, said the food safety spell, and smashed it into our faces on the way to the classroom. Well, I did the smashing. I was ravenous.
As if she could smell our tardiness, Headmistress Millington opened the door to her office as we were about to pass by.
"Oh, there you are, Dawn,” she said. “Could I see you for a moment?"
"Sure." I nodded to Echo so she'd go on to class without me. If I was in trouble, I deserved a lengthy lecture and more, maybe even snow shoveling with Ramsey despite there being no snow.
I joined the headmistress in her office and sat when she gestured to the chair in front of her huge desk. Past headmasters glared out from their portraits on the walls, harsh judgements in their frowns.
But the headmistress smiled softly, though her brown eyes appeared sad. "I wanted to apologize, Dawn."
I blinked at her. "Why?"
"I had no idea Professor Wadluck was anything but a Psycho-Physical Education teacher. I've worked with him
for years. Several professors have, and none of us saw this coming. When he went missing, we thought something happened to him, not that he was helping with Ryze’s return."
I frowned at my lap. "Where was he?"
"He told the Ministry he hid on top of a tower, here, at the academy. He buried himself just below the dirt there, unconscious but with enough air to breathe with a contraption he made himself. He said he was waiting for a signal, from Morrissey he said, that the time had come.” She placed her hands on her desk and sighed. “His words."
"Was this tower..." I swallowed hard and touched the bell hanging from my neck. I’d found it on top of my trunk in my room after I’d calmed down, the same bell I’d found in Vickie’s room that only rang when someone reliving was near. "Was this tower next to the one with a familiars' cemetery on top?"
"Well, yes.” The headmistress leaned forward slightly. “You've been to that tower?"
I nodded. I'd been there after the dark hour, and Professor Wadluck had been underneath my feet the whole time. Perhaps that was why a shadowy person had snuck behind me up the stairs and distracted me by putting the bell at the top of the steps. So I wouldn't look too carefully and see a body buried there.
"And Morrissey...” the headmistress continued. “I knew her Effman family name, but dark ancestors don't mean the entire family is corrupted. Still, I should've kept a closer eye on her. I've made a lot of mistakes in the past year."
"I've made a lot of mistakes my whole life, so..." I shrugged.
"I doubt that very much," she said with a kind smile. "You’ve had unimaginable hardships.”
I squirmed in my seat and decided it was a good time to redirect. “Has Quiet been found?”
“No,” she sighed. “Ryze’s return has fuddled magic, so we’ve sent for the best water diviners to help us search for the pond. You’d think an entire pond would be easy to find, but it just vanished.”
“And the woman?” We’d told her everything that had happened outside, except for the part about stealing two hands from a dead man. Mine was safely tucked away in my pocket, a comforting weight, but I hadn’t yet turned my hair coal-colored. I would, though, as soon as I had time.
Before the headmistress could answer, the door burst open behind me and made me spring out of my chair.
Professor Blumgart, the Latin teacher, stood there, looking harried and out of breath. "Quiet's in the gym."
"With students?" the headmistress screeched. She leaped from behind the desk and crossed to the door.
"No, thankfully,” he said. “No one can stand to go in there anymore..."
They both rushed down the hallway, leaving me alone. So I guess that was it, then. I closed the door behind me and shoved myself against it as professors and other mages zipped toward the gym.
All the way at the end of the hallway, I spotted the naked old woman with antlers. She was alone down there, no one else in sight. She pushed through the library door. What was she up to? I followed, at the very least to ask her if she knew she was naked. Just kidding. I had no idea what my plan was, but I had a hunch she really shouldn’t be inside the academy, let alone the library.
When I entered, my breath stalled. With the dampener's effects gone, the library had been put back together again, transformed from nightmare to magic. Glittery leaves floated down from live trees, their canopies forming the ceiling four floors up and their trunks the shelves. Several hollowed-out trees formed tables that dotted the spacious, circular room, and in the center rose a winding staircase.
But the library was empty except Mrs. Tentorville, the librarian with purple curls and a purple dress. She stood behind a hollowed-out trunk on its side while stacking books on top.
I crossed the hundred feet or so toward her. "Mrs. Tentorville, did you see anyone come in here just a second ago? Right before me?"
Stopping her stacking, she looked up with a frown and peered across the library toward the door. "No, just you."
"Oh." I looked over my shoulder, searching the tables and the floors above, just in case. I realized I had a track record with things I'd seen with my own eyes being false, but I wasn't crazy. Not in the hallucinatory sense anyway. The naked old woman been plenty real when she’d chased Echo, Jon, and me.
"Is there anything else I can help you with?" she asked.
I turned back to her stacks of books, and underneath the closest pile, I found a scroll that read Now Hiring! at the top.
"Who's hiring?" I gently pulled the parchment out so I could read it, and as soon as I did, another one magically appeared under the stack, so I pulled that one out, too, and then another and another because I don't know when to stop. My collection curled up in my hands so I couldn't read any of them. Sonofabitch.
"Um, who's hiring?" I asked again.
Chuckling, Mrs. Tentorville placed her hand over yet another scroll I hadn't snatched up yet and tilted it so I could see. "I am. With some of the mages living here now to protect the school, they have nothing but time to read about Ryze, which is keeping me extra busy. Would you be interested?"
"Very much so." I could also research Ryze while being in the one place where it was nearly impossible to feel sadness and remorse—the library. Plus, if she paid, I could actually buy my own meals for once. "How much..."
Across the library, the door creaked open, and I turned to look. Someone was leaving. Glossy purple curls bounced down the back of a purple dress and then were gone.
It was her. It was Mrs. Tentorville leaving, but...
I spun back around, and my heart launched into my throat. No one was there. Mrs. Tentorville was gone. Both of them.
Skin-walker.
I backed away, the hairs on the back of my neck spiking high. A chill skated goose bumps down my arms. I'd been talking to the skin-walker. It had a habit of disappearing if you looked too close, like it had when I’d spotted Seph in the gym when she hadn’t been sleepwalking. But why had it been in here? Had it been looking for something specific in the stacks of books?
Hesitantly, I stepped toward them as if they'd spew venom from their pages any second. I thumbed through some of them, but I had no idea what the skin-walker could've been looking for. I'd talked to it, my own brother's killer, and I hadn't even known. Nausea coiled in my stomach, and my eyes burned with tears.
It had seemed normal. Granted, I'd been distracted, but my theory of being able to tell exactly who I was talking to had crumbled before my eyes. Unless I was wrong, and that had been the real Mrs. Tentorville I’d been speaking to.
I waved down a raven swooping overhead, and once it landed at my feet, I rolled one of the job advertisements up and stuck it in his open beak. "Deliver that to Mrs. Tentorville," I whispered to it.
It flew toward the library exit and vanished before it hit the closed door. That confirmed the real librarian had left. So was the skin-walker in here with me, staying hidden?
I knelt to retrieve the dagger inside my boot, my eyes bugging out of their sockets to see everything at once. From behind me, something grazed my hair. My heartbeat slamming, I whipped around, but it was just a glittery leaf fluttering to the ground.
A crackling noise came from one of the floors above, but from my angle, I didn't see anything strange. Was it the skin-walker or the naked woman? Or were they one and the same?
A prickly sensation drilled into my back. Whoever was in here with me was watching me very carefully.
Feeling like a fly buzzing too close to a web, I inched toward the exit—just in time to see a skeletal leg plummet from the second floor. It landed a few yards away, bits of sinew and flesh dangling from it. My stomach dipped and rolled as I stared in horror, then flicked my gaze upward. The old naked woman stood on the second-floor landing, facing away from me. Her antlers scraped across the bookshelves as she bent forward, but I couldn’t see what she was doing. Or who she was doing it to.
Another leaf breezed past my hair.
I swatted at it. But that was no leaf. My fingers touched
flesh and bone. I spun around, my heart tripping, and stared at my reflection. Only there was no mirror in the library. I was looking at myself, an exact replica from the roots of my blonde hair to my scuffed boots, except for the hand dropping to her side empty of a dagger like mine. Except for the slow, sinister grin curling her mouth.
The skin-walker was me.
Rage boiled up through my veins, thick and hot. I gripped my dagger tight, so consumed with thoughts of murder they shook every nerve.
A flood of bitter hatred flooded my tongue, but I swallowed past it to say, "You started a war with me the night you killed my brother. A war you won't win."
Her blue eyes flashed with darkness and secrets. Just like mine.
Without a word, she turned and ran to the door.
"Coward," I snapped, and shot after her.
The door opened before she got there, though. Echo's stocky body blocked the way out. Her gaze connected to the skin-walker.
“Hey, are you coming—”
“Stop her!" I shouted.
"What?" Echo flicked her wide eyes back and forth between us, but her hesitation cost her.
The skin-walker flung her out of the way like she was made of nothing more than sticks and stones. As Echo was falling, she reached back before the skin-walker could escape out the door, grabbed a handful of black cloak, and threw the skin-walker down. Then Echo pounced, her strength brutal and quick. They became a rolling storm cloud of punches, and I followed their path along the floor with my arm outstretched, the petrify spell on the tip of my tongue.
If I got the skin-walker, it would be helpless against me. I could learn who it was and then slice it from existence.
Right then was my chance. Echo straddled her and smashed her fist against her jaw, the same as she had me.
"Obrigesunt." A ball of sparking dark gray burst from my palm.
The skin-walker grabbed Echo by the throat and flipped her over into my spell's path. Damn it! Echo dropped hard, her whole body slowly swept up in my spell, petrified. Her skin sucked inward and turned gray, and jagged fissures formed and seeped blood. Her eyes were vacant and cracked-looking. My gut sank like a rock.
Necromancer Revealed: Book 3 Page 4
