Shadowspell Academy: The Culling Trials, Book 3

by Breene, K. F.

  “I heard Ethel was approached after the trial yesterday,” Colt said, slowing before looking back the way we’d come. His eyebrows lowered, and it occurred to me that he didn’t know how many portables separated us from Adam.

  I stepped around him, taking over, and resumed the jog, albeit slower. We didn’t have far to go.

  “I thought you guys must’ve heard about that,” he continued. “The guys in my dorm were talking about it last night. Robby’s girlfriend heard it from her friend Sarah, who heard it from Ethel first hand. She got asked to skip the rest of the trials and asked everyone’s advice.”

  “Is she daft?” I frowned as a slight tingle of warning washed through my blood. Here we go.

  I lowered my voice to a whisper, working on those light steps that Colt had seemed to master. Why was I so far behind on that? “People who get asked to skip disappear. Surely one of her friends would’ve told her that.”

  “That’s the thing about being mediocre,” Ethan whispered. “You take any hand up you can get. You’re happy just to get noticed. At least, that’s what I assume, anyway. You’d know best, Wild.”

  “I wasn’t the one using my daddy to cheat, Einstein. But keep throwing rocks in that glass house.”

  Colt muffled a laugh. “I don’t think anyone else has put it together, that the missing kids were all offered a leg up.”

  I held up my hand for quiet as I peered around the corner of the portable, not feeling the pressure of danger thickening the air. Not yet. Adam had to be inside.

  Soft laughter floated by, along with a female voice, gay and light. Another voice joined the first, two people up the way probably headed out to enjoy the soft sunshine in this rare break between trials.

  Tightly drawn curtains shielded the back window of the portable, so I led the others down the narrow gap between portables to the front, racking my brain for a plan.

  A thought occurred to me. Out of all the portables in this row, of which there were tons, why would Colt assume that Adam was choosing Ethel’s? Did he already know, or was it a blind assumption?

  Metal jingled, a handle being grabbed. I paused, breath trapped in my lungs. A warning signal prickled down my spine.

  Colt clutched my shoulder, but neither of the guys made a sound. I nodded to show I’d heard it. A tiny squeak was the only indication that the door had swung open. Boots tapped against the wood of the porch, soft sounds but not up to par for a Shade. He wasn’t an assassin—at least not a good one. The door clicked into place a moment later.

  If he took off across the lawn toward the mansion and glanced back, there was a good chance he’d see us, three people stooped in stalker mode between the portables. His suspicion would likely compel him to take a closer look...unless what he saw embarrassed or disgusted him.

  Moving quickly, I pushed in between the guys. Colt’s hand came out to steady me, low on my hip. Ethan grunted and tried to move away, but I stopped him with a hand on his pec. The muscle popped against my palm and he froze, his eyes widening.

  “What are you doing?” he asked in a release of breath, his gaze heating and dipping to my lips. Maybe he hated me, but it was clear his brain had just shut off.

  “Pretending, you moron,” I ground out, leaning heavily against Colt and feeling his hand slide across my stomach. “Play the part in case he looks. Only a voyeur will stop to gawk, and it won’t be out of criminal suspicion.”

  A shape passed by with a swing of a large arm. I recognized his crew cut and caught something in his opposite hand that I couldn’t make out. His face turned, and I caught a glimpse of nose before his figure disappeared. Steamy versus stalky—if he saw three people stuffed in the gap, he would take a second to look if he thought they were making out. It worked, he didn’t. That had to be a good sign.

  “Come on,” I said as Ethan’s large hand touched down on my hip and Colt’s hand headed south to my butt. Heavy breathing and shifting bodies said I was the only one pretending, and I was suddenly encompassed in a circle of muscle and handsomeness most women would dream of.

  I wasn’t most women.

  “All right, show’s over.” I flicked Ethan’s crotch, jerking a little at the hardness but immediately gratified when he jolted away. He thunked his head against the portable wall and scowled, reality seeping through the burning gaze from a moment before. “Really? You hate me, but you’d do me, anyway?”

  He shrugged, wiping the edge of his mouth with the back of his hand. “Why not? Not like I’d call you in the morning.”

  I shook my head and turned to elbow Colt in the stomach, but he was already moving away.

  “Sorry. I was caught off guard. Stopped thinking.” Colt gave me a mouth-watering smile. “I’d definitely call.”

  I couldn’t hold a grudge against his disarming wink.

  “Whatever,” I said, “come on. He’s getting away.”

  At the edge of the portable, I caught the figure again, standing in the middle of the grass, facing the mansion. Sticking out like a sore thumb. Eyes found him, stuck for a moment, then darted away, no one wanting to spend too long gawking at an authority figure.

  He stared down into his hands for a moment in what seemed like contemplation, then dropped them again and looked around.

  “Can you see what he’s holding?” I asked, no idea why I was whispering.

  “No,” Ethan said, pushing in close so he could see around the corner, and jabbing me with a part of his body that would’ve been strapped down by the right underwear.

  This time I did throw an elbow, forcing him back. “We need to see if it really is Ethel’s room, and maybe figure out what he took. Or at least where he took it from.” I dragged my teeth over my lip. “But if we do that, we’ll lose him.”

  Even as I said it, Adam pivoted and pushed forward, walking in the opposite direction of where Gregory had been taken. If he was looking for the lost kids, he was either on the wrong track or going the roundabout way.

  “I’ll look,” Colt said, slipping by me. “I know what she looks like, and I’ve rooted around in other people’s things a few times in my life.” He smirked, and I knew we were both thinking of Ethan’s cheat sheets. “I’ll meet you guys back at the dorm.”

  “Okay, sounds good. Let’s go.” I plucked at Ethan’s sleeve and hurried forward before he could, without shame, poke me with his anatomy again. Too much confidence clearly wasn’t always a good thing.

  “What are we going to do when we catch him?” Ethan asked. The heat had thankfully cooled from his voice, but it was obvious the blood hadn’t yet made it back to his brain.

  “We’re not going to catch him. He’d bash our heads together. We’re going to stalk him. See where he goes, and what he does with whatever he grabbed.”

  Adam cut another diagonal, this time to the corner of the mansion, clearly intending to go around. Something was still clutched tightly in the hand swinging at his side. A small black object. He wasn’t doing anything to hide its presence.

  “I didn’t hear any names announced this morning, did you?” I asked Ethan, ignoring the pull to follow Gregory’s trail off toward the trees. I’d been interrupted twice so far. I needed to follow it through. The answers lay that way. I felt it in my gut.

  But Adam looked like a concrete lead at this point. It would be foolish to ignore him.

  “No. I was listening for them too,” Ethan replied.

  “So if Ethel got asked, she didn’t get taken.”

  “Not yet, unless they just didn’t announce it.”

  Intuition churned my gut now, and my feet slowed without my direction.

  “Hurry up, what are you doing?” Ethan grabbed my arm and hurried me forward.

  “Maybe we can stop her from getting taken.”

  He yanked me harder, and I couldn’t help but go with him, logic telling me this was right. That Adam knew something, had something, and was going somewhere we needed to know. But my intuition…

  “Maybe she was already taken, and they w
ant some info before they make the announcement.”

  “If Colt’s roommate’s girlfriend is such a gossip, wouldn’t he know all that and have told us?”

  “If Colt didn’t have such a jonesing hard on for you, he might have waited around for his roommate to invite his girl over. Then maybe he would, yes.”

  At the corner of the mansion, Ethan pushed me against the wall, flattened, and peeked around. A hand came out of nowhere. Thick fingers wrapped around Ethan’s neck. Muscles pulled, and Ethan went airborne.

  Chapter 9

  “Holy sh—” I stepped forward before launching myself without thought, punching out and connecting with a cheek, then wrapping my arms around the assailant’s neck and using my momentum to rip him around.

  He had no choice but to go, his grip slipping from Ethan’s neck. Ethan’s feet hit the ground and he dropped, gasping and coughing.

  I twisted and ripped again before letting go, forcefully directing the falling body to the grass. The ground came up too fast and my foot hit it wrong, sending me rolling. Ethan was already up, his wand out and pointed.

  “What the hell are you kids doing?” Adam rose from the ground like a cage fighter ready to get even, juiced up with power and strength and grisly know-how. Whatever type of magical he was, he’d gotten those muscles from violence and experience.

  Tingles of terror blazed out through my bloodstream, giving me the jitters like a triple espresso. I either needed to run or throw another punch— standing there chatting was not in my wheelhouse at the moment. Thankfully, Ethan had a better weapon at his disposal. Entitlement.

  “You’d better have a damn good explanation for grabbing me,” he berated, his wand hand steady and his shoulders squared, an elite member of the magical society talking down to a lesser one, no matter their relative size. “We were walking around the building on our day off, perfectly within the rules.”

  Adam’s weight shifted, a small movement. Almost imperceptible. It spoke volumes.

  “Let’s go.” I grabbed Ethan’s arm urgently and tugged him back the way we’d come. Adam didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d bow down to arrogant pricks, no matter how influential. This pause was the best we’d get.

  “No.” Ethan dug in his heels, his chin raised and his indignation firing on all cylinders. “I want to hear an explanation.”

  Adam stared him down, fire glimmering in his eyes.

  “Come on.” I yanked Ethan again. “We can go to that other spot.”

  “Your superiors will be hearing about this,” Ethan said, finally allowing me to pull him away.

  “Best watch yourself,” I heard, low and rough and spreading shivers up my spine. Adam’s gaze had shifted to me, piercing, locking me in so that I couldn’t look away. “Your number is up, and your protection is dead. Best thing you can do is run. Get out of the trials and don’t come back. Run.”

  Pain welled up at his mention of Rory’s death. Tears clouded my vision. A laugh bubbled up, out of nowhere.

  “Then what?” I asked, rage quickly replacing the sorrow. I shook with it. “Run and hide? Cower in the shadows?” I spat, something I despised, but it really got the point across. “That’s not my style.”

  I turned and shoved Ethan in front of me.

  “Heed my warning,” Adam said, the words trailing after me like tin cans.

  “Make yourself useful, and catch whoever is stealing kids and threatening my life, or do your reflexes only work when teenagers are sneaking after you?”

  Silence stretched as we distanced ourselves from Adam. I didn’t look back.

  Finally, faintly, delivered directly to my ear, I heard, “I’m working on the kidnapping. There’s nothing I can do about the other. It’s beyond me, now.”

  I stopped and spun, taken aback. Emptiness greeted me.

  “I hate this place. Everyone always disappears,” I said, wanting to run back. To chase Adam around the corner and beg for answers.

  “Come on.” Ethan plucked at my sleeve. “We have to let him go for now and pick him up somewhere else. He probably smelled your arousal earlier. That’s how he knew we were around.”

  “Gross. I don’t even have a comeback, I’m too busy trying not to gag.”

  He huffed out a laugh. “Nice way to step up back there. Perfect. I couldn’t have coached you better. You might not be completely useless, for a Shade.”

  “Way to step up?”

  “Pulling me away before I had to threaten something I might not be able to deliver. I can let the director know what he did, easy. Getting him fired, on the other hand…”

  It dawned on me what he was saying, and surprise flitted through me. “You were playing a part,” I said with a grin. “I wondered how one person could be so entitled. I was thinking about getting you a cape.”

  “I’m always playing a part. How do you think my family maintains status? But I might have overdone it a bit that time. That guy…”

  Another shiver crawled up my spine. I nodded, unable to form words. That guy was more of a feeling than something to be explained.

  “What is he?” I asked, still feeling the intuition tugging at me.

  “Shade, obviously.”

  “No, couldn’t be. There’s no way he could be an assassin. He’s much too loud.” I pointed toward the trees, feeling the need to head back there. To follow the trail I should’ve followed the other day instead of dallying with Colt and getting caught by Rory. To sit down and cry until I couldn’t breathe.

  “It’s not just assassins in the House of Shade.” He huffed. “All of them are low-level grunts, as far as magical society goes, but still highly useful in situations the civilized world doesn’t like to speak of. Some of them specialize in getting information out of people the hard way, some of them are poison masters, some excellent thieves, and some, like him, are adept bodyguards, able to read people and threats. The good ones can mask their whereabouts, like a shadow. The great ones can mask themselves and others. Often, a Shade is brought in to protect someone against a fellow Shade.”

  I slowed as we neared the trees I’d hidden in the other night. My mind shifted to Rory. To the way he’d covered me with his body, slowed my heart rate, and masked us from danger. Saved us. Me.

  “Why would a Shade go against their own people?”

  He shrugged. “Why would a magical person go against another magical person? A human against a human? The world is complex, the magical world more complex.”

  “Still, why do you think Adam’s playing detective? Is he actually working for the director or himself?” I walked around the trees and surveyed the direction in which Gregory had been carried off.

  “No way to know for sure. But did you see what he had with him?” Ethan asked. “He’d set it next to the fence. A memory ball.”

  “What’s that?”

  He scoffed. “Under what crusty rock were you living before you came here?”

  And just like that, helpful Ethan vanished, and douche Ethan resurfaced. An act, my butt.

  “A memory ball is a magical photo album, but instead of pictures, it records feelings, sounds, smells, images… It’s the whole memory, not just a flat version of it.”

  “He’s probably planning to go through it for clues. If she’s gone, maybe she took a…memory selfie right before it happened.”

  “Do you realize how dumb you sound?” He shook his head, waiting while I took in the landscape. “Besides, if she has disappeared, he’ll never get it open.”

  This side of the mansion had more trees with the woods creeping up within fifty yards of the building. A few benches dotted the way, a couple horseshoe pits sat off to the side, and a green wooden shed with the door closed pushed up against the wall down the way.

  Ethan’s last words filtered in through my head, taking a second to register.

  “How do they open?”

  “With a matching retina. Memory balls are connected to the user. He’d need her eyeball.”

  I turned to him slowl
y, my own eyes widening. “Can you magically bypass it?”

  “Only if she died, and only then if you were the registered next of kin. Memory balls are personal. Like phones.”

  I clutched his arm. “Maybe he has her eyeball.”

  “I thought about that. We can work back around to him. Finding him again shouldn’t be a problem. He’s a blunt instrument. No wonder the director is always one or more steps behind.”

  Once again, I had to ask, “Why? What do you mean?”

  “He’s a bodyguard, not a detective. It’s like giving a garbage man a chemistry set and saying, ‘here, make…’” His example tapered off.

  “Do you know how dumb you sound right now?” I asked.

  He scowled.

  I started forward, not really knowing where I was going, just feeling things out. I wasn’t a detective, either, but when the fox got into the henhouse, you found the threat, or you went hungry. I’d spent my whole life rooting out threats, large and small. That wasn’t about to change now.

  Windows lined this side of the mansion, all four floors of it.

  “Screaming would draw people to the windows.” I pointed up at them, imagining the darkness pressing in from all sides as the guys jogged the kicking and yelling Gregory through the lane of grass. Sound would bounce off those glass panes, and it hadn’t been quite late enough for the attack to go unnoticed.

  But then, I’d only heard the two shouts. Was that because Rory had knocked me down and dragged me into the trees? Or maybe they’d knocked Gregory out?

  I scanned the tree line across the expanse of small clearing.

  Or could it be because they were nearly at their destination?

  “Come on,” I said, jogging left.

  Trees welcomed us into their shade, the air cooling immediately and the sun’s potency reducing down to a warm glow.

  “Why not have a place near campus?” I said to myself, feeling excitement unfurl in my gut. I was close, I could tell. My intuition was practically vibrating through me. “You can take kids at your leisure. Draw them out to chat, then snatch them when everyone else is headed back to their dorms. If all went to plan, no one would be the wiser.”