It breaks between my teeth, the glass instantly vanishing as the liquid dribbles down the back of my throat, sweet as honey.
Warlock Wright goes straight for the kill. “How long have you known you’re a Dark Witch?”
“Just now,” I say, so quickly I don’t even feel the thought form before I speak. I glance up at the judge who just handed me the truth serum. “Am I really a Dark Witch?”
“Careful now, stay focused,” she says quietly.
It’s not easy. Thoughts are shooting around my head faster than I can catch them. They want to spill out of me in a tumble—a disorganized heap of admissions and questions about everything from why the sky is blue to what’s going to happen to me next.
With tremendous effort, I keep them in and wait for the next question inevitably directed at me.
Warlock Wright leans closer. “I’ll ask again—how long have you known you’re a Dark Witch.”
I look him in the eyes and tell him exactly what I told him before. “One minute and fifteen seconds,” I say, “since you told me the first time.”
I still don’t quite believe it myself. Part of me, the larger part of me, is becoming convinced this is some kind of twisted, messed-up dream I’m about to wake up from. My answer doesn’t fully satisfy him, however, because he’s started pacing.
“This can’t be. This sort of thing . . . it just doesn’t happen.”
There’s a rustling from behind where they stand, and all the figures surrounding me turn to look.
“What is it?” I blurt, unable to keep the words from spilling out of my mouth. “Are you going to kill me? Am I going to get burned at the stake?”
Cressida shoots me a look. “No dear, nothing like that. We just need to figure out what’s going on.”
The newcomer stops just outside the circle of light, so I can’t make him out. “She’s gone,” he says, his voice strained. “And there’s something else.”
Warlock Wright throws up his arms. “Just like that?” He whirls around to face me.
I look from him, to Cressida, to the figure still trying to get our attention outside the circle.
“Sir—”
“Not now, Bones!” Wright snaps at him, turning back to me. “Tell me the truth, damn it.”
I want to scream. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Who’s gone?”
That part isn’t completely true. I think I know who it is before he tells me.
“Your mother, that’s who.” Wright straightens up and runs a hand over his balding head. “Fled at the first sign of trouble. Typical of a traitor.”
Wright picks up speed as he paces from one side of the circle to the other. “You had to have known. To think, all these years, we were harboring a Dark Witch among us. No, actually . . . make that two.”
He looks at me again, but he doesn’t look like he’s expecting much, “And let me guess, you’re going to say you didn’t know that either?”
I blink once, feeling the truth serum growing thin in my veins. But apparently there’s still enough for one last admission.
“Maybe.” The words surprise even myself. In true truth-serum fashion, my tongue unleashes enough words to choke on. “She . . . she said she didn’t do the rites herself. She was sick.”
I try to shake my head, to clear it. I don’t really think my own mother’s secretly a Dark Witch, do I?
Of course not. I know her. I’ve seen her every day of my life.
I would’ve known if she was secretly summoning demons and casting curses and . . . well . . . whatever else it is that Dark Witches do. She’s the furthest thing from a Dark Witch, but the damage is already done.
Warlock Wright points an accusatorial finger in my face. “Aha! And here you are, playing innocent.”
“But . . . but . . .” I falter for words, the serum still clearing from my mind. At last, a thought occurs to me. “But her aura!”
Like all Highborne Witches, her aura has always glowed bright around her.
Wright just waves me away. “A small matter.”
Cressida’s not so quick to agree, however. She steps over and rests a hand on his arm.
“It’s a fair point. We really have to consider—”
But Wright seems determined to believe my mother’s secretly a Dark Witch, and that I’ve somehow known all along. He puffs himself up, his chest filling with air as he prepares to pronounce some judgment or other.
“I really have to tell you—” the witch who entered just a moment ago, Bones, calls out from the edge of the circle again. He’s wringing his hands and keeps anxiously looking over his shoulder at the door.
“Not now!” Warlock Wright flings the words at him, before turning back to the surrounding council members. “This sort of deviance can’t be allowed. Whatever this girl claims,” and here he points his gnarled finger at me again, “Witch Law is clear where her kind’s concerned. Her kind is not allowed in our villages. She’s an abomination and must be treated as such.”
“Harsh words, even from you, Warlock Wright.”
There, in the doorway where Bones kept nervously glancing, stands a man I recognize—even though I still can’t see his face.
I don’t have to see it. I recognize him from the way he stands, from his height that towers above all the rest, and from the pitch-black aura streaming out behind him. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.
The circle parts as he strides forward determinately. Without uttering another word, I know this is a true Dark Witch . . . and a very powerful one at that. He raises one hand to point at Warlock Wright.
“I’ve come to collect what’s rightfully mine.”
At long last, Wright is speechless. His hands shake as he reaches for his wand, his lips stuttering to form a reply. Even Cressida looks taken aback.
“Abacus,” she says, “this is highly irregular.”
This Dark Witch, Abacus, shoots her a look from beneath his hood. I still can’t make out anything of his face other than a slightly stubbly jaw and lips pressed to form a thin, angry line.
“Everything about this is irregular, but you know the rules.” Here, he turns to me. Though I can’t see his face, I feel his eyes bore into me. “The girl’s a Dark Witch. Therefore, she belongs with me.”
There’s a sort of hissing sound as the other members of the circle turn and whisper to one another, their words melding together into one angry noise.
Wright, of course, steps forward—barring the intruder’s path to me. “We don’t know that for sure. There will have to be a proper trial.”
Of course, now he’s not sure. Now that it suits him.
“I saw the pool, I saw the wand. What other proof do you need?” Abacus too steps forward, so close that the edges of his cloak—much too heavy and dark to be comfortable this time of year—brushes the base of Wright’s shoes. “And as for a trial . . . there’s no need. It’s my understanding that simply being a Dark Witch is not a crime.”
“Well, no . . .” Wright stutters, trying to straighten himself up against Abacus’ considerable height. “Not in and of itself. But it is against the laws for her to be here, in one of our cities, without a permit.”
“Then allow me to rectify that,” Abacus says. He sweeps one arm to the side, and with it, Wright is whisked several steps away with a sudden gust of hot air.
I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing, but I know staying here isn’t going to solve any problems. I leap from my chair and grab my wand. The rest of the circle scurries back a bit as Abacus spins on his heel and marches to the door—with me following close behind.
“I hope you know what you’re doing.” Warlock Wright’s warning is evident in his voice. Abacus stops at the door, and I nearly run into him.
I don’t know which of us he’s addressing, but it’s Abacus who answers.
“The real question here, I think, is do you?” He stares forward a moment, then slowly turns his head to the side. “The world is not so simple as it used to be,
nor is it as black and white. I didn’t think I had to remind you of that, of all people. Tread carefully, Wright, or soon you’ll find yourself surrounded by enemies on all sides.”
Wright splutters in the corner as the rest of the council shifts uncomfortably. “Is that a threat?”
“No.” Abacus is firm when he speaks. “But next time,” and here he finally turns to look the old council member in the eye, “it will be.”
He leaves with those words and sweeps me out with him.
The door leads us out into another long hallway, this one sloping gently upward. For the first time I hear the sound of footsteps overhead—and realize we must be in the basement below the theater.
I struggle to keep up the pace with Abacus’ long strides. I have to take two for every one of his.
“Hey,” I say. When he doesn’t make any sign that he heard me, I break into a jog and run ahead to try to get a little ahead of him. “Hey! What was all that about? I’m not really a Dark Witch, I hope you know that.”
He ignores my question, brushing past me to take a sharp left turn at the end of the hall. I can hear footsteps coming from both sides now—both overhead and from the basement we just escaped.
I have to stop for a second to catch my breath before hurrying after him again. “This is all a mistake.”
“Whether it’s a mistake or not, you’re not safe here anymore. That much should be obvious, even to you.”
Stinging, but fair.
I keep close to the back of his heels. “Will you at least say where you’re taking me?”
“There’ll be a car on the other side. I want you to get into it,” he says, without answering. He doesn’t stop until we’ve rounded a final corner and come to a thick cement door set into the wall.
True to his word, when he throws it open there’s a sleek black car waiting outside.
Witches from inside the theater spot us immediately and start shouting. A crowd starts gathering, even as Abacus leans forward and tugs open the door to the back seat. Somewhere in the outskirts of the crowd, I swear I see red and white capes flutter.
I really have no choice.
I have to go wherever it is he’s taking me.
Abacus shoves me inside the car rather unceremoniously, barely leaving me time to turn in my seat and look up into the shadowed hood of my savior.
I ask him once more. “Where am I going?”
“Where all young Dark Witches go, of course,” he says. He slams the door in my face and the car peels off with a squeal of tires and the scent of burning rubber.
I frantically scrabble at the buttons inside the car until I get the window to roll down enough to stick my head outside. “And where’s that?” I yell, my voice lost in the roar of the engine.
But I can’t see him. The car turns a corner violently and I’m thrown back into my seat. The black leather squelches against my exposed thighs and tugs at tendrils of my hair, now damp with sweat.
The driver, on the other side of a partition so dark I can still barely make out his silhouette, acts as if nothing happened.
It doesn’t matter. As much as I want to be in denial, I know where I’m going.
For a Highborn Witch, it’s a place of nightmares. But for me, I guess, it’s about to become my new home.
It’s where all young Dark Witches go.
There’s only one place he can mean.
I’m headed for The Academy of the Dark Arts.
Chapter Five
I sit in silence, watching the last remnants of the life I know flash by the windows outside. The familiar streets, the plein air market bustling with human and witch vendors alike, the crooked chimney of my house peeking out over the neighbor’s roofs—they become a blurry caricature of the place I grew up.
The place I was ready to leave but never imagined I’d be forbidden ever to return to.
Because that’s the truth now, isn’t it? Dark Witches aren’t allowed in our villages. And I’m a Dark Witch now, right? And it isn’t my village. Not anymore.
The moment the car leaves the city limits, the scene outside the windows changes. We’re picking up speed, turning the landscape into a stretched-out, streaky version of itself. The driver, who I can still only see the outline of through the tinted partition, stretches out his fingers in their black leather gloves to get a better grip on the steering wheel. A second later, the car jerks a bit and a dark fog starts to pool out of the front of the vehicle. It grows to encase us, rising until it blocks out the windows and billows out behind us in a cloud.
That landscape quickens, streaming out around us so quickly that I’m soon unable to recognize anything other than the occasional flash of a tree or the flicker of a tunnel. From the inside of the car, there’s no indication that we’re driving any faster than the other cars on the road. But from the way the scenery flashes past, in just minutes we’ve already driven further away from my home than I’ve ever been before.
And the longer we drive, the darker that scenery becomes.
Soon we’re no longer passing cities and villages. The houses grow sparse and are replaced by barren stretches of land.
The trees, once full of foliage, darken and grow barren. The grassy hillsides turn from green to brown, the grass receding to leave only dust and rock behind. Mountains grow in the distance and rise up to meet us.
There’s no way to tell how much time’s passed. It could be minutes, it could be hours.
I’m sure that this is it—that somewhere here in this barren landscape is the hell-hole I’m going to have to spend the next god-knows-how-many-years.
But just like the rest of it, the barren landscape eventually falls away too.
The car passes between the tallest of two mountains, their sheer cliff walls rising up above us on either side like massive tsunamis of rock. Two huge figures are carved into the boulders at the end of the pass, easily a hundred feet tall and with stone faces glaring down at me with a lifelike furiosity.
As we pass by, the car shudders. I feel a palpable shift in the air, as if for one brief second we’re suspended in an in-between place. It’s like me—not quite one thing or the other. And then, with a jolt, we’ve passed the great stone guardians and plunged into the heart of a bustling city.
The fog that’s encapsulated us begins to dissipate, and I find myself pressing my face to the glass to peer outside as the slate walls of buildings fly by on either side. I catch glimpses down alleyways packed with cauldrons and wand shops. I see the car reflected in the window of a necromancer’s funeral parlor with the slogan “death is just the beginning” printed in peeling letters across the top of the glass. Most curious, however, is that everywhere I look Dark Witches are out in plain sight.
Just standing there, in the streets, glowering with sour faces.
Well, they might not be glowering. I can’t actually see their faces from where I’m seated, but that’s how I imagine them.
It seems here they don’t hide their magic. Here, in this strange place, all the oddities of their world are displayed for any wandering eye to see.
I know, without asking, that I won’t run into any humans here . . . or Highborne Witches looking for a thrill. They wouldn’t dare.
Not when every Dark Witch in sight walks with their wands at the ready, unburdened by the blight of secrecy. In a world where darkness and evil are embraced, I guess there’s no need to hide.
The car takes another turn and the shopfronts are replaced by high gray brick walls. At long last it begins to slow.
The wall is at least twelve feet high, with barbed iron spikes at the top. Above that, a ripple in the air marks an invisible barrier meant to keep wayward souls out.
Or in, I think, as the car finally pulls to a complete stop in front of a gate.
The door pops open of its own accord, nearly knocking a passer-by on the sidewalk off his feet. He swears and smacks the top of the car with one hand as I shrink back in my seat.
“What the goddamned hell—” He
starts leaning in to peer at who dared assault him with the car door, when he suddenly stops—his eyes landing on something in the seat behind me.
There’s a soft rustle of fabric and the crackle of blue light as Abacus appears in the seat of the car beside me.
The appearance of the Dark Witch sends the man on the sidewalk stumbling backward, muttering hastily apologies. Abacus doesn’t so much as look at him as he runs off, shooting terrified glances back in our direction.
“Took you longer than expected to get here,” Abacus says matter-of-factly, checking a watch on his wrist. I try to lean closer to see, but I don’t quite catch the time.
Here in his home territory, Abacus finally lets his hood drop back. The face beneath it is surprisingly young—at least for a man that would inspire the kind of fear I witnessed today. His hair is long and dark, slicked back with some sort of oil to keep it out of his face. He’s not bad-looking. He might be handsome, even, if it weren’t for the eyes.
I’ve never seen eyes so black. One glance into them, and I’m afraid they’ll swallow me whole.
He isn’t even looking at me. He reaches to tap on the glass behind the driver and there’s a series of clicks as the partition that’s separated us rolls down.
“Hold on Arachna, this will only take a minute.”
To my horror, the driver finally turns back to look at us—revealing the eight eyes in the place where he should only have two.
I’ve never moved so fast in my life.
With a strangled cry, I shoot out of the car and tumble out onto the sidewalk. My feet skitter out underneath me, nearly betraying me and sending me face-first into the ground. I don’t even care. I’d rather end up scraped head-to-toe than spend one last second in that car with some sort of spider-human hybrid.
From inside the car issues a horrible noise like a bow run the wrong way up violin strings. It takes me a minute, until Abacus’s own throaty chuckle joins in, to realize that they’re laughing at me.
Dark Witch: A Paranormal Academy Romance (Academy of the Dark Arts Book 1) Page 4
