"I've been dosed with something," I whimpered. My head spun as people melted and reformed in front of my eyes. Monsters crawled along the ceiling, sinuous multi-jointed things. The carpeting on the flooring shifted color and the patterns twisted, making my stomach churn.
"What did you give her?" Honey demanded.
"She's smart," Brittney said. "She'll figure it out."
Anger roared through my system, even as Brittney's figure swam in front of my eyes. Magic began to leak from my pores.
Trixie's hand tightened on my arm and she leaned over to urgently whisper in my ear. "Do not, Harmony. I don't know what you are, but you don't want anyone else to know it either. These people are not your friends. Control it."
I bowed my head and gritted my teeth. My magic rose around me, purple and black smoke. My hair lifted from my shoulders even as I desperately tried to squash it down.
Brittney's eyes widened in fear and I smiled at her. "You do not know who you've messed with," I growled. Inside, I wanted to cry. I couldn't control anything. All I wanted was to destroy her. I reached over and touched her forehead with my index finger.
"Reveal," I whispered, unable to help as my magic penetrated the essence of this girl.
A man's face swam in my mind's eye, bitter and angry. Brittney cowered as the man screamed at her. Guilt flooded me at this rampant invasion of her privacy, but I couldn't stop it. Events flooded me from her life, and I could only assume this man was either her father or her step-father.
A woman who looked just like Brittney did nothing to stop it and several times she blamed Brittney for it. I sucked in all of this knowledge and watched as Brittney, powerless to stop me from rifling through her mind, sank to her knees.
"Harmony!" Honey screamed, trying her best to pull me away. Even with her shifter strength, she couldn't stop my magic.
Trixie muttered something I couldn't make out. I gritted my teeth, tears streaming down my face, as I tried to break our bond, but whatever she'd dosed me with made my magic out of control.
I felt the illusion slipping from me, coalescing into something that would only seem real to her. Crying out, I tried to step away only to find myself stuck. I couldn't do both. I could only watch in horror as Brittney finally broke away from me only to find herself face to face with the man in her thoughts.
She shrank back from him and stumbled. The man laughed.
Quiet fell around the room as uncomfortable murmurs started from the students. Brittney started to cry. I turned away, the hallucinations still vivid in my mind. Honey's face morphed from beast to girl and Trixie ... something black floated around her. Black and powerful. I reached out with my fingers to touch it and she flinched away from me.
"Harmony?"
"You," I whispered and locked gazes with her. "You are not who you pretend to be."
Trixie's gaze shuttered immediately and her jaw tightened. "Come on," she said, unceremoniously dragging me away.
"I have to stop it," I wailed.
Trixie stopped abruptly. "Stop what?"
I pointed at the man. "Him."
Her eyes scanned the area and then landed on me. "There's no one there," she said, but her tone was concerned.
"Then why is Brittney on the ground crying?" I asked.
"Good question," Trixie growled. "Whatever you did, no one else can see."
Thank the gods. I sagged in relief. "I can't stop it." I rubbed my eyes. "I can't make it stop." The golden haired boy appeared again, this time with his face intact. I broke away from Honey and ran to him.
He turned and disappeared through a door toward the back of the room.
"Harmony!" she shouted.
I wished for myself to be unnoticeable. An illusion to cover my tracks. Even as the room tilted around me, the magic obeyed.
I heard Trixie gasp from behind me. "Harmony?" She muttered an unflattering curse word and began to walk toward me. I took one step to the left, stumbled, but righted myself. Trixie walked right past me.
I smiled.
I had a golden-haired boy to catch.
I stumbled through the room and slipped through the door the boy had gone through. Cold air hit me immediately, shocking the breath right out of me. I jerked myself upright and shivered. My breath came out in plumes of mist.
"Hello?" I called. The room was gently lit with a single taper candle. Golden light covered the room with a glow, and as I looked around, I frowned. There was a single bed with a threadbare blanket and several bookshelves filled to the brim.
"You're going to die," a warm voice whispered in my ear. I spun around, but there was no one there.
"Who are you?" I called to the empty room.
"You're a snoop," it said. The voice chuckled and a shiver ran down my spine at the honeyed sound. "And you will die if you don't get help soon."
I thought about walking back out and finding Honey, but this seemed more important. The room had finally stopped spinning.
"My name is Harmony," I said and took another step into the room.
"Liar," the voice said. "Your name is Luna and your magic is deceptive and dangerous."
I gasped in surprise. How could he have known that? I squeezed my eyes shut and reopened them, but I was still in the same room.
"My name is Harmony," I said again.
A door slammed. I spun, seeing the golden glow of a door built into the wall. "Follow me, and I will satisfy your curiosity," it said.
I followed.
The next room was a small kitchen. A pot of soup bubbled merrily on the stove and my stomach growled. I stepped closer to the stove and leaned over to smell it.
"It's a bisque," the voice said close to my ear.
I jerked and looked to my right. He stood there, his face so perfect it took my breath away.
"Lobster, to be exact," he said. The boy took a long wooden spoon and stirred the mixture. "It used to be my favorite before she passed away."
I gaped at him and reached out with a finger to touch his shoulder. "I'm perfectly real," he assured me, "though I do think you should know you are right in the throes of an intense hallucination."
I dropped my finger. "If it's a hallucination, then it isn't real."
A smile formed on his face that stole the breath from my lungs. "That is where you're wrong and if you knew your magic, you would know it."
I bristled. "I do know my magic."
He shook his head as he took two bowls down from the cabinet above the stove. "You don't know all of your magic. How could you? You were just a child when your parents sent you away."
"How could you know?" I whispered. My heart pounded inside of my chest. "There is no way for you to know."
He smiled patiently. "I'm an oneiromancer. I know the darkest secrets and dreams of everyone's heart." The boy poured out two bowls of bisque and added a crusty piece of bread inside of it. He walked over to a scarred wooden table that appeared out of thin air. I blinked a couple of times before I sat down.
He pushed a bowl over to me and snapped his fingers to reveal a spoon. I took it from him, staring at him warily.
"You walk through people's dreams," I accused.
He shrugged and spooned some of the soup into his mouth. "Not everyone's," he said after a moment. "Just people I find ... interesting." He smiled at me then, and I couldn't help but be charmed by it.
"Are you a student?" I asked as I took a bite. The sweet sherry and the taste of lobster melted in my mouth and I stifled a groan at how good it was.
"Much like you, my friend, people are fearful of me. I live here, yes, but I am no student. Mr. Mago tolerates me and I do not interfere with his dreaming."
"Where are your parents?" I didn't realize how hungry I was until I started eating.
He flicked a dismissive hand. "Gone. They abandoned me as soon I revealed what I could do."
Hurt for him filled my heart.
"Do not," he cautioned. "Guard your heart in this place for they will surely find a way to crush it." He
tore off a piece of his bread. "Tell me, Rook, how did you find your way to this soul crushing place?"
I told him about Mannix.
"The tricky shapeshifter." He sighed. "He dreams in vivid color and heartbreak. Do not give your heart to him for he is beholden to someone else."
I blinked. "Like a soulmate?"
Laughter spilled from him like aged wine and I wanted to soak it in and drink him up. "Like blackmail," he clarified. "He will betray you for a lap of attention from his family."
"Oh," I said quietly. "I pretty much knew that." I looked around. "Where are we?"
"Your dreams," he offered. "Everywhere and nowhere." He reached over and tapped my wrist. "Your pulse is slowing. If you don't go back soon, they won't be able to help you. The shifter dosed you with a lethal amount of Datura."
"That bitch!" I exclaimed. "I knew she'd stolen some from class!"
"That she did," he agreed. "She's been dreaming about revenge every day."
I thumped my head down on the table. "I hate this place," I grumbled.
"This place needs you," he said ominously. "There are secrets here, Rook. Secrets bigger than you and me, but only you can walk in shadow and expose their lies."
"How do you know that?" I asked as I scooped up the last of my soup hallucination.
"Because I walk in dreams and places that exist beyond our consciousness." He snapped his fingers and our bowls disappeared. I groaned in annoyance as the spoon clattered to the table. "Find the secrets and you will find your freedom."
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Easton." The boy touched my hair. "You must go, Rook."
I didn't want to leave him. "Where did you learn to play such beautiful music?" I asked, a desperate attempt to stay with him.
"When you are alone, you take up hobbies," he said. He touched my forehead and whispered a word.
My body flew away. A scream tore from my throat as I flew through the air. Darkness pressed in on me from all sides until my eyes fluttered shut and I could sense nothing at all.
16
"Someone spiked her drink!" a voice yelled. "I don't know with what!"
A student, I think, gently slapped my cheeks. “Harmony, wake up.”
I moaned and winced as the sound made my head feel like it was splitting wide open.
“Don’t move,” a voice said. “Do you know what you were given?”
“Datura,” I whispered. My eyes fluttered, but I couldn’t open them.
A shocked inhalation came from above me. “Get me charcoal and bring in Mr. Mago,”: the voice said. “It might be too late.”
A warm hand took mine and squeezed. “You’re going to be okay.”
Trixie. I squeezed back and drifted away.
A few weeks later
A dress appeared in my room the morning of prom after I’d already decided not to go. My recovery took a while, so long they weren’t sure I’d recover. I’d spent two weeks in the infirmary, receiving care from the best magical and non-magical medical personnel in Ravenscliffe.
It wasn’t all bad. During my downtime, I slept a lot and Easton visited me. We’d formed a tentative friendship and as soon as I woke up, I tried to find him again, but I couldn’t. When I mentioned it to him during one of my dreams, he’d shut down and would only say we were both safer if we weren’t seen together.
He was strange, but I found him fascinating.
I touched the silk of the blue dress, but I wouldn’t be able to wear it without exposing my tattoos. I chewed on my lip.
Unless I used magic to hide them.
With renewed vigor, I pulled the dress off the hanger and held it up to my body. There was no note this time. When Mannix’s parents sent me anything, they always sent me a note. I hadn’t received a thing since my poisoning, but I didn’t think it was over.
Mannix avoided me like the plague, and I hadn’t seen Brittney since the incident in the shifter dorm. When I asked Trixie and Honey about it, they clammed up and said they would tell me later.
Whatever that meant.
I slipped the dress on and sighed in contentment as I looked in the mirror.
It was beautiful.
I drew my hair up into a loose bun and whispered a word. My tattoos shimmered and disappeared under a thin coat of magic. I looked like a normal girl. A normal magician.
It was a lie, but one I knew I had to live with in order to survive.
Easton’s words came back to me. Find the secrets of the Merlin Academy.
I couldn’t do anything right now, as I was still a little weak from my ordeal. But one thing I could do and that I was good at, was exposing lies. I would have to be careful, and I would have to be discreet, but I could help Easton.
And then I could help myself. I decided in that moment to soak up everything I could learn here, education-wise and whatever I could find out about this place. It operated in shadow, supposedly under the guidance of the council, but some of their practices seemed shady.
If students couldn’t visit their family … that made it seem more like a prison than anything.
My head jerked up and I stared at myself in the mirror.
Was that where we were?
I looked around the room, squinting hard at the walls. I could see through most illusions; it was part of my power. But maybe … just maybe, this was something I couldn’t see through because I hadn’t looked hard enough.
I walked over to the wall and placed my hand against it. It felt cool, like stone. I pressed a trickle of magic into it and felt the moment it hit resistance.
I pulled back and studied the wall again. It seemed normal, but now that I had that idea stuck in my head, I couldn’t quite shake it.
I gathered my magic quietly, sending my senses out to the doors beyond to make sure the coast was clear. Everyone appeared to be out getting ready for prom. I was supposed to help set up, but after the incident, Trixie and Honey told me all I needed to do was recover. I’d been going stir crazy for a week now.
When I held as much magic as I could without giving myself away, I allowed it to soak into the walls. I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated.
“Reveal,” I whispered.
At first, nothing happened. I pushed a hair more magic into it, knowing if I made any more of an effort, the administration might sense it.
I opened my eyes and the walls fell away. I gasped and took a step back, blinking in shock at the sight around me.
Bars. Everywhere. Our rooms were cells. I spun around and saw a window that hadn’t been there the entire time I lived in here. I scrambled over to my bed and pushed it against the wall so I could climb on top and peer out of it.
The illusions had fallen away to my eyes. We were on top of a massive mountain, capped with snow below us. I couldn’t even see the ground or tell how high we were up.
My heart pounded as the realization struck me. The Merlin Academy for Delinquent Paranormals wasn’t a reform school. Not exactly.
It was a prison.
I carefully got off the bed and pushed it back into the corner. Concentrating, I took my magic back. The illusions appeared as suddenly as they had left, but I could now see the telltale shimmer of the magic at work.
I slid down to the floor, my hand pressed against my mouth. Why were we here? What had we done to get locked up?
The bigger question was did Mannix know this? Is this why he betrayed me?
If so, was he working for the Council or against them?
A deep sigh escaped me as I rose, brushing off my dress.
There was a lot of work to do. I slid on a pair of jeweled sandals that had come with the dress and walked out of my room.
The prom was in the main downstairs area of the school. I made my way carefully down, searching for Trixie and Honey. They were the only two people besides Easton I felt like I could trust. I wanted to tell them. I wanted to tell everyone, but I wouldn’t. We had to work from the inside to figure this out.
We needed to be quick a
nd careful and figure out the whole point of this. I didn’t deserve to be in prison and neither did my friends, but someone thought we did.
There had to be a reason why. Something we all had in common.
Until we figured that out, we would have to tread carefully.
The Commitment Ceremony loomed over my thoughts as it had since I’d first gotten in here. That wasn’t too far away and I still wasn’t sure how I’d beat it.
All I knew was that I had to. A feeling settled inside me and told me I was right where I was supposed to be. For whatever reason, I’d been placed here, on the inside.
A cool touch across my shoulders forced me out of my thoughts. I was alone on the staircase, but I could hear the murmur of voices downstairs. Prom had just started and I, of course, was late.
“Luna.”
I jerked and carefully turned to look behind me. My mother stood there, a floating apparition. Tears sprang to my eyes.
“You figured it out,” she said. “That is the first step. You must stay here, investigate, and figure out why the students here have been selected.”
“I’m not sure what I’m doing here, Mom.”
A smile wavered on her lips. She reached over and touched me, but her fingers misted through my skin. “Darling, haven’t you figured it out? You’re here to save us all.”
She misted away, leaving me standing on the stairs dumbfounded.
I was no hero.
Shaken, I carefully made my way down the stairs into the common area, immediately spotting Honey’s blonde head. I waved and her eyes lit up. She picked up the hem of her dress and rushed over to me. Honey was dressed in a mermaid style, red lace gown. Her tan skin almost glowed as she rushed over.
“Oh my gosh! You look so beautiful.” She reached out and touched my dress. “Where in the world did you get this? Was it Mannix again?”
I looked back up to where my mother appeared to me. “I - I don’t think so,” I said. I took her by the arm and led her over to a dark corner. “Listen,” I said in a low voice. “I have so many things I need to tell you.”
Prom Fright Page 13
