Ignoring Jon and Echo's apprehensive stares, I lined up the six rocks from Ramsey's forehead down to his heart like how the Book had explained.
Staring down at his serene, handsome face, I took several deep breaths. This could split my own soul apart, and since I wasn't dead already, that could kill me. But it was Ramsey. The guy I'd tried to kill. The guy who'd strolled as gracefully into my heart as he moved everywhere else. The guy I'd somehow fallen in love with. I couldn’t live through another death anyway. If he crossed through the spirit door, he'd take too much of me with him. Just like with Leo.
“Expelle decretum meam."
Jon bowed his head into his hands. "Seven hells, this is so bad."
"Scinditur in ea seax."
The rocks began to glow a stark white color, blinding like the lightning crawling over the sky. Ramsey’s soul, and it was as beautiful as he was.
I choked on another sob as I stared down at it, and my chest twisted. A sharp pain speared into my heart and twirled it like a top. Sweat drenched down my face and mixed with my tears. Something was wrong. It felt like my own soul was trying to leap from my body and join his. Excruciating pain ripped down my insides. I cried out as I tipped sideways, hugging my arms close to keep myself intact.
"Dawn!" Echo shouted, tears streaking her face. "Stop this! It’s killing you!"
One more line. One more line would do it. I could finish it. I could do this.
A violent shudder gripped my spine and wouldn’t let go.
"Tenere in seax."
The rocks shook on top of Ramsey, jumped into the air an inch, and held there while they vibrated with his bright soul. A second later, they dropped again, and the light faded. Had I done it? How could I tell?
I groaned, my entire body wrecked, but I fastened my gaze on the rocks.
Jon stared down at Ramsey, too, his hand covering his mouth.
Hesitantly, Echo lowered her finger to one of the rocks and touched it.
"Did I—" A violent cough shredded my throat and splattered the ground in front of me with blood. My blood. Whatever I'd done, whether it had worked or not, I was not in good shape. I needed to heal myself. I couldn’t return Ramsey's soul to his body and bring him back from the dead because the rocks now needed to be activated like the stones, and the only person I knew who could do that...was Seph.
Gods, what had I done? Seph wasn’t even awake yet.
A trickle ran from my nose and traced downward across my upper lip. Wetness also leaked from my ears. I touched my finger to it, and it came away red. I was bleeding sideways.
I gasped, fumbling my hands toward my pockets, but then I realized my cloak still covered the professor. "Jon, I need my cloak."
His wide eyes snapped to mine. When he saw the blood leaking across my face, he scrubbed a hand down his face and sighed. Then he replaced my cloak with his over Professor Woolery’s body and then handed it to me. I found the vial and then collected my sideways-leaking blood.
“Dawn...” Jon started, his face pained.
"Don't," I begged, my voice hoarse and broken. "Don't try to talk me out of it. Please. Just go get the healer for me. Take Echo with you and find someone to tell about what happened here." I glanced at the rocks on top of Ramsey. "But not everything that happened here. Okay?"
He wobbled to his feet and blinked down at me. "Can you just remember one thing? Seph still needs you."
"I know." And I still needed her too. For so many reasons.
"Echo, let's go find the healer."
She shook her head, her lips pursed. "I'm not leaving her here alone to poison herself. You go get the healer, and I'll stay with her to induce vomiting."
"Y-you're not trying to talk me out of it?" I asked.
"Because that worked so well last time?” she snapped. “I'm starting to think you're insane, Dawn."
"Just driven to desperation." I stared at Ramsey's still chest, my eyes burning. "Again and again and again."
There would be another first dark-hour storm of the season in June, but I couldn't wait. This was reckless, and in the back of my mind, I knew that, but after what had just happened, after seeing another loved one die in front of me, I wasn't thinking clearly. I'd been waiting for months to find out who to unleash my wrath on. As soon as I crossed their name off my list, I’d go after Ryze and Ramsey’s staff and whoever else I needed to stop this from ever happening again.
I hauled myself into a sitting position, and one by one, I collected Ramsey’s rocks and deposited them into my empty pocket. Then I plucked the petals off the lilywort flower, ground them up with another, larger rock, and added them to the vial with the two other ingredients. All of them frothed together and made a thick-looking gray paste.
After taking a deep breath that hurt my whole body, I recited the simple gray magic spell: "Explode the memory grenade to the night my brother died."
With a trembling hand, I tipped the vial's contents into my mouth.
Chapter Eleven
MY STOMACH SPASMED violently. I flipped onto my back and screamed toward the lightning.
Echo was at my side in an instant, her face tight with panic.
This was stupid, and I’d known it and did it anyway. My limbs seemed to separate from my body and crawled backward through my memories. My mind followed reluctantly to that night everything changed.
The inside of my house looked crystal clear as if I were really there wandering out of my bedroom into the hall because I thought I'd heard a sound. There was my dad's empty glass of mead he'd left by the side table next to his favorite chair. There was one of my mom's slippers sticking out from underneath the couch. Just one of them. The other had probably been underneath. And spreading over the living room floor was so much blood.
My brain scratched. I couldn't do this. Why had I thought I could relive this? Somewhere far away from here, someone gripped my hand tightly, and I held on for dear life. I had to keep going. I had to see who killed Leo.
In my memory, I heard the terrified sounds I made as I went farther into the living room, felt every gasp and tremble—and then pure torture at what lay in the middle of the floor. My brother. Dead. An ugly gash in his throat and the fading light in his eyes that shouldn't have ever gone out. And over him with a blood knife stood Ramsey. But his face was warped and wrong. That wasn't him. His image shimmered, and then as if wiping steam from a mirror, the skin-walker's true form revealed itself. I stared at it, not comprehending at all. I stood frozen in shocked terror. My body, the one in real time, bucked and crashed against the ground, and whoever's grip on my hand turned painful. I could taste my tears, then and now.
The skin-walker grinned and raced toward the open back door, and as my memory zeroed in on my dead brother, the me in the now registered something for the first time. The skin-walker took something that had been leaning against the back of the house, something long and slender like a staff. The Staff of Sullivan. The staff that had been stolen from its family and hidden at Necromancer Academy where the onyx stone had been kept.
Could it also block all magic to make it appear Ramsey really had murdered my brother? But why set him up like that unless...they wanted Ramsey to get caught so he'd never find the Staff of Sullivan?
I didn't know the answers, but I had one of them. The most important one. I knew who really killed Leo. The darkness of revenge and punishment eclipsed all pain, and I drew it closer to feed on it and give me strength.
When I opened my eyes again, I stared up into Echo's face, strained with worry.
"Are you all right?” she asked breathlessly. “What did you see?"
My body had been wrung out. I was exhausted, both emotionally and physically. My magic reserves ran dangerously low, but one face pulled me up into a sitting position. One thought drove me to my feet, and I turned to face the open doors of Necromancer Academy.
"Dawn?" Echo peered at me closely.
“Stay with him, will you?” I touched my hand to my pocket where I kept Ramsey�
�s soul. Still there. Still safe. Then I stepped past Professor Margo Woolery and started up the bloodied steps that were sure to get a lot bloodier. "The skin-walker... It’s Headmistress Millington."
Good thing I didn't need magic to commit a murder.
The End of Book 3
Necromancer Uprising is coming February 13th!
About the Author
LINDSEY R. LOUCKS IS a former school librarian living in rural Kansas. When she's not discussing books with anyone who will listen, she's dreaming up her own stories. Eventually her brain gives out, and she'll play hide and seek with her cat, put herself in a chocolate-induced coma, or watch scary movies alone in the dark to re-energize.
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Necromancer Revealed: Book 3 Page 11
