Shadow Demons

by Sarra Cannon

  “Does this mean you’re going to throw a fireball at me now?”

  Zara laughed. “I’ll let you practice your shield a couple of times first,” she said. “Let me know when you think you’ve got it.”

  Both nervous and excited, I took my stance. I connected to my core power deep inside, then imagined it flowing down through my arms and out into my palms. I thrust my hands forward, then felt a cool rush of energy as a small shield extended out in front of me.

  I laughed and pulled back, staring at my hands. The shield had been completely transparent, but shimmery. It looked like a type of flat force-field that formed a perfect circle around my hands.

  I took my stance again, and concentrated more power through my hands, creating a larger shield in front of my body. I could tell what Zara meant about it being an energy drain. To hold a shield like that for a long time would take enormous power and concentration.

  Just when I thought I couldn’t hold it much longer, I saw Zara conjure a white ball of bright light. I had no idea whether the light would hurt or even what it was made of, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I kept the shield up with everything I had as she threw the light toward me. I flinched as the light zoomed toward my head, but watched in amazement as it struck my shield and dissipated.

  What Zara had said about the energy of the other person’s spell being absorbed into your own body made more sense now. A pulsing adrenaline rushed through my hands and into my body. I could feel the impact of the ball of light long after it had disappeared.

  I let the shield drop and took a deep breath. I felt like I needed to sit down for a minute. It wasn’t so much that I was physically tired. It was just that I felt drained and slightly light-headed.

  “Beautiful shield for a first timer,” Zara said.

  I plopped down onto the dry, crunchy leaves. “I see what you mean about it being hard to sustain, though.”

  “You’ll get better at it,” she said. Instead of sitting next to me on the ground, Zara sat down in mid-air, like a little floating genie. Her long white-blonde hair blew back as a gust of wind rushed into the clearing. Zara lifted her face toward the wind and closed her eyes. She looked so beautiful and peaceful.

  “I can feel your energy inside of me,” I said. “It’s like a little hum or something.”

  She smiled. “It only lasts a little while, but it’s kind of funny, isn’t it? It’s like getting to see a side of a person you’d never normally see.”

  I immediately thought of Jackson. I wondered what it would feel like to absorb some of his magical energy. I had a feeling it wouldn’t be nearly as light and happy as Zara’s.

  “What was it you threw at me, anyway?”

  “Just light,” she said. “Totally harmless, of course.”

  “What if it had been a fireball or something dangerous?” I asked. “Would it have hurt at all?”

  “What you would feel wouldn’t exactly be pain,” she said. She looked off to the left, as if trying to figure out the words to describe it. “It’s more like an uneasiness that comes over you. Like your body knows that energy now flowing through your hands was meant to harm you. It’s hard to explain.”

  “Can we try one?”

  “A fireball?” She looked at me like I’d lost my marbles. “Absolutely not. This is only your first day of learning to shield. I’m not going to risk hurting you and having the entire local council freak out on me.”

  I laughed and rolled my eyes. “Fine. What are some of the other ways to defend myself, then?”

  For the rest of the afternoon, Zara taught me various types of shields and protection spells. She taught me ways to deflect dangerous magic and to detect when someone was close by hiding in the shadows. By the time darkness came, I was utterly exhausted.

  No Other Sign

  When I got up to my room, I plopped down on my bed, ready to fall into a deep sleep. Something hard dug into my back, and I reached around to pull it out from under me.

  I gasped and dropped my cell phone down onto the comforter.

  How did this get here? I thought it had been stolen from me.

  Frantic, I got up from the bed and searched my room to make sure nothing was missing. Everything looked to be in place. So who had been in my bedroom?

  The windows were closed and locked and there was no other sign of anyone having been in the room. I walked out into the hallway and questioned both Mary Anne and Courtney, but neither of them had seen anyone in my room.

  Downstairs, I could hear Ella Mae cleaning up some of the dishes from dinner. I ran down the stairs as fast as I could.

  “Ella Mae?”

  “Yes?” she asked, turning around. She had a white plate and a dish towel in her hand. “Everything okay? Why are you so out of breath?”

  “I ran down the stairs,” I said. “Did someone come visit me today? I mean, was anyone up in my room or anything?”

  She set the plate down and walked toward me, concern on her face. “Not that I know of, why?”

  “I just thought I lost my cell phone at the gym last night,” I said. “And then when I got back from training, it was there on my bed.”

  Ella Mae’s face broke out into a sweet smile. “It must have been there all along,” she said. “I bet you left it there yesterday morning and just thought you took it with you.”

  She picked up the white plate again and went back to drying.

  I bit my lip. I knew I hadn’t left it there when I left home yesterday. I distinctly remembered having both the phone and my necklace with me in the locker room. “You’re sure no one came by today?” I asked.

  “I’ve been here all day,” she said. “And the only visitor we’ve had is Zara.”

  “Thanks,” I said, heading back up the stairs.

  Someone had definitely been in my room, but who? I had a feeling it was the same person who’d been sending illusions to scare me. Would Brooke be capable of something like this? Maybe she was trying to make me look bad by making me paranoid.

  I sighed and went back up to my room. I barely slept all night. Every few hours, I got up just to make sure my window was still closed.

  Magic

  A ball of fire flew across the meadow and a rose bush erupted in flames.

  “Crap.” I grimaced. “Sorry.”

  Zara doused the bush with a small wave of water from the lake. “I didn’t expect you to throw it,” she said with a giggle. “I just wanted you to create the fire and hold it in your hand.”

  “I know,” I said. “I didn’t mean to, it just sort of flew off.”

  Zara had only been back in Peachville three days and already, she was putting me through training hell. I was exhausted. She woke me up every morning at six for an hour of morning practice and meditation. Then, after cheerleading practice, she drilled me for another two hours before dinner. A couple of nights, she’d even assigned homework.

  I hadn’t had a spare second to even see Jackson this week. It was getting to the point where I wanted to tell her I never planned on actually becoming the Prima, so why make me learn all this anyway? But I knew I couldn’t tell her that.

  “Now you understand the purpose of our morning meditations,” she said. She held out her right hand and a perfect ball of orange and red flames formed over her palm. “The more focused you are on the inside, the more the magic obeys you on the outside.”

  She nodded her head at me. I closed my eyes for a moment, concentrating on the blackness in my mind and a single blue butterfly. When I was certain I’d connected to my own power, I opened my eyes and lifted my palm out in front of me. A matching ball of flames formed in my hand, and I smiled.

  “Good,” she said. “Now, instead of setting the flowers on fire, why don’t you try sending the flame toward the water? Pick a specific target and aim.”

  I looked out over the lake. Brighton Lake. We were close to the special spot where Jackson and I had shared our first official date. I sighed. I missed him. And I felt terrible about snapping at
him so much back at the gym when I thought I’d lost my necklace. With my new training schedule, I hadn’t had any time to talk to him since that night in front of the gym. He didn’t even know someone had returned my cell phone.

  “Watch it,” Zara said. “You’re losing it.”

  I brought my attention back to the ball of flame. It had dwindled to a tiny round flame the size of a golf ball. I steadied my breathing and cleared my mind. I glanced up at the water, my eyes landing on a piece of dead wood floating just on the surface about fifty feet away. In my mind’s eye, I pictured the ball of flame rocketing toward the piece of wood, hitting exactly on the edge where a cluster of brown leaves had gotten trapped. I breathed in, then quickly let the air out as the fireball shot forward, hitting the wood exactly where I’d imagined. The flame exploded in a red burst, then fell into the water and went out.

  “Good,” Zara said, clapping. “See? You can do anything you set your mind to if you just concentrate and breathe.”

  I smiled, full of pride. She was right. So far, I’d been able to master just about everything she’d shown me.

  “What’s next?” I asked.

  “Next, I’m going to teach you how to turn one object into another,” she said.

  “Like a glamour?” I asked.

  “Not exactly,” she said. She leaned down and picked up a small grey stone. “With a glamour, you’re merely changing the outer appearance of something. The change is temporary.”

  Zara ran her delicate white hand over the top of the stone and turned it a bright color of pink. When she ran it back over the top, the stone turned grey again.

  “With transfiguration, you’re actually changing the item from the inside out,” she said. She cupped her hands together, and I waited impatiently to see what the rock would become. When she moved her hand, a small green tree frog jumped off into the grass.

  My eyes widened. “You’re kidding me,” I said. “Did you just actually turn that rock into a frog?”

  Zara giggled. “Catch him and find out,” she said.

  I stood and chased the tiny green frog across the meadow, finally catching up with him before he disappeared into the woods. I picked him up gently and studied its tiny body. Definitely a frog.

  “How does it work?”

  “Magic,” Zara said with a wink.

  The Hall of Doorways

  Zara pushed open the door to the hidden passageway and revealed the narrow staircase leading up to the secret third floor of Shadowford. “This,” she said, “is something you should have been introduced to a long time ago.”

  I swallowed. Should I tell her I had already found this place on my own?

  “Come on,” she said. “I want to show you how I got here so fast from D.C.”

  Confused, I followed her up the stairs to the third floor, past the familiar circular room with its five doors, and into the long hallway.

  “I’ve been here before,” I said softly.

  She turned to look at me curiously. For a moment, her face was so still and expressionless, I thought maybe she was going to be angry with me. Then, a small smile tugged at her lips. “You are a rebel, aren’t you?”

  “Sometimes,” I said, returning her smile. “Can I ask you something?”

  “You can ask me anything,” she said. “That’s what I’m here for. I’m here to be your trainer and your guide. You should have been given a trainer the second the Order here confirmed your identity. You are royalty for our kind, Harper. Your blood line should secure you respect and reverence in this community. Instead, your coming here has been shrouded in secrets and lies. From now on, you can trust me. You can ask me anything and I will answer you honestly.”

  I paused, trying to decide what I wanted to ask her. I liked Zara and doubted she would really lie to me, but at the same time, I didn’t trust that she would always choose to tell me the truth either.

  “I wanted to ask you how it’s even possible to have this many doors in the upstairs of this house,” I said. “I mean, I know it has to be some kind of magic, but where do all these doors go to?”

  “I take it you didn’t explore too far last time you were in here?”

  “I spent most of my time in the room where they keep the spell books,” I said. “Trying to get my memory back.”

  Zara closed her eyes briefly, a pained look crossed her face. “I still can’t believe you had to go through that,” she said. “The Peachville Order’s behavior is completely unacceptable.”

  It was nice to have someone apologize for that, but it would have meant more coming from the leaders of the local Order.

  “So, about the hallway,” I started.

  “Of course,” she said. “This hallway is a type of portal magic. Similar to the magic that opens a portal from our world to the shadow world. We call this the Hall of Doorways. This exact hallway exists in over one hundred places around the world. In fact, right now, just by standing in this hallway, we’ve already left Shadowford Home.”

  I gasped. I mean, I figured the doors led somewhere cool, but I thought they were hidden here inside this house. I had no idea it was a portal of some kind. “So where are we?”

  “Where we are now does not matter,” Zara said. “What matters is where we are going. Let me show you.”

  She led me down the long hallway. Each door had a picture engraved on the surface of the wood. A dragon. A snake. A deer. We passed at least twenty doorways before Zara stopped in front of a door with a butterfly engraved on it.

  My eyes widened. The butterfly was the animal all of Zara’s family could shape-shift into. The same way that Mary Anne’s family all could shift into crows, Zara’s family became butterflies. “Is this your home?” I asked.

  Instead of answering me with words, Zara opened the heavy wooden door. Inside was a room almost identical to the circular room at Shadowford. Four other doors besides the one we were standing in front of.

  “This is just like Shadowford,” I said. “Do you have a library here? And a potion room?”

  Zara nodded.

  “Cool.”

  When she shut the door, I noticed that this side of the door had the same demon carved on it. This room could have been the identical twin of the room in Shadowford.

  “Are we in your house?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Would you like to say hello to my sister Honora?”

  I nodded. “Awesome,” I said. I was in shock. I’d spent hours wondering what was behind those doors. I imagined torture chambers, weird creatures kept in cages, all sorts of things.

  “We don’t have much time before your ritual ceremony is scheduled to begin,” she said. “As you can imagine, my mother’s life is very busy.”

  I froze. “The Heritage Ritual is today?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Didn’t we talk about this?”

  “You never said when it would be for sure.” I looked down at my tattered jeans and t-shirt. “I don’t think I’m dressed right.”

  Zara giggled. “Don’t worry,” she said. “My mother has something here for you to wear.”

  The door leading down to Zara’s family home was on our left. She opened it to reveal a much larger staircase than the one I was used to at Shadowford. We still had to pass through a secret passageway to get into the main part of the house.

  “Why are these stairways hidden if these are homes that stay in the Prima family?”

  “Sometimes guests come over,” she said. “Or if someone in a hostile group broke into our home, they wouldn’t be able to pass through this door.”

  “Is there some kind of spell on it to prevent people from going through?” I thought of the secret passage down to the cheerleading room.

  “Almost every secret doorway like this has some kind of magic granting access to only certain people,” she said. “It’s basic magic to seal a doorway or even a home with that type of restriction.”

  I was suddenly reminded of my visit to the crow village. There had been a magical barrier hiding the
crow’s entire town from view.

  “What about a town?” I asked. “Or a neighborhood? Could you seal off a large area like that?”

  Zara nodded. “Yes, but it would take a very powerful spell to pull it off,” she said.

  “Are the seals easy to break? I mean, say another witch was trying to get past this doorway? How hard would it be for her to break through your seal?”

  “Why all these questions about seals?” Zara asked, tilting her head to the side.

  I cleared my throat. “I’m just curious,” I said, trying to make my tone more casual.

  “If you’re worried that you’re in danger at Shadowford, you really shouldn’t be concerned,” she said.

  I didn’t want to tell her that I felt I was in danger pretty much everywhere I went.

  “What about a blood oath?” I asked, remembering Mary Anne’s words. “What if a seal was bound by blood? How hard would that be to break?”

  Zara’s features darkened. “This is very serious magic you are talking about,” she said. “A normal seal is difficult to break unless you know the special words that were said when it was first created. Like a code of sorts. But a blood oath is almost impossible to break.”

  Chills ran up and down my spine. There had been so much going on lately, I hadn’t had time to sit and think about the spell books that were stolen from the crow village, but now I felt afraid all over again. Whoever had taken the crow’s books on dark magic had somehow had a blood oath with them. It was the only explanation. But who? Had someone in Peachville been working with the crows all along?

  “Come,” Zara said, her face softening. “There’s nothing to worry about. This is a very important day for you. Let’s be happy.”

  Zara led me into her home. I was amazed by the sheer size of it. We came out at the end of a long hallway decorated with plush carpet and expensive wallpaper with gold and off-white tones. The furniture in this place probably cost more than all the furniture in all the foster homes I’d stayed in combined.