Second Breath Academy 2: How To Kill A Shadow (A Necromancer Academy)

by Leigh Kelsey

  Kati wasn’t too surprised to see that her spells class had got her the highest mark with eighty-nine—she had an unnaturally good ability at death magic—or that she’d passed history, health & safety, P.E., and magic theory. She’d scraped by with a fifty-two in potions and poisons—not her strong suit despite Rahmi’s best efforts to tutor her—and got a thirty-six from Mrs Hale, who taught necromancy and had a personal vendetta against Kati for having the audacity to, as far as she could figure, be born.

  “I passed,” she said. “Barely.”

  “What?” Iain’s eyes flew wide in outrage. “Who marked you so low?” He snatched the paper and scanned it. “I see.” His mouth thinned; Hale wasn’t his biggest fan either.

  “It might have helped if she’d bothered to teach us half the stuff on our exam.” And even better, this second term would end with a practical exam, which meant Kati would be watched like a hawk while she raised someone from the dead. “It’s fine, I got over thirty-five, that’s all I needed.”

  Iain was still raging on her behalf. “But you only got one point more. I’ll tutor you this term.”

  Kati snorted. “You’re a reaper. What do you know about necromancy?”

  “More than you, apparently,” he replied dryly, taking a sip of his tea. Earl grey, she knew.

  “Harsh,” she muttered, lightly kicking him beneath the table. “I passed. We’re all good. I get to stay.”

  But convincing her parents to let her return was going to be another matter.

  First I Was Afraid, I Was Petrified

  Because Iain was Iain, he walked Kati to the train station, bundled up in his thick coat and proudly wearing his new scarf. It was a Caribbean blue tartan that matched his eyes, because yes, Kati was that stupidly sappy. She’d put her athame back in its fancy box and placed it in her bag, along with her exam results and a second piece of the chocolate cake in a white paper box, because yes, Iain was that ridiculously sweet.

  The closer they got to the train station, the tenser Iain became, until he was so tightly wound that he was walking as if carrying an injury as they crossed the bridge over the River Ouse, following the curve of the road toward a main road populated with cars, taxis, and—mostly—coaches full of tourists. Most of them would be here to see Hadrian’s Wall, the Roman wall still mostly intact, or to explore York’s Viking history, but a few of them were probably supernatural tourists, come to gawk at the petrified form of Lady LaVoire on display outside the York Museum of Darke Magic.

  Oh.

  Shit.

  Kati squeezed Iain’s hand. Their trajectory was going to bring them past the statue, the museum right beside the train station.

  She pulled him out of the stream of people, leaning against a wrought iron fence as she said, “We can say goodbye here. You don’t have to walk me to the station.”

  “Kati,” Iain sighed, his eyes heavy with sadness. “I want to.”

  She frowned. “But you’ll have to walk past…”

  “I know,” he replied, running a hand through his floppy brown hair. “But I’ve seen her before. In stone form, I mean. I’ll be fine.” He gave her a winning smile but Kati didn’t believe it for a second. She ran her thumb over his knuckles, but when she opened her mouth to again suggest he not walk past the petrified form of his aunt—Lady LaVoire, former tyrant of the UK’s supernatural community, renowned for turning people into blood puppets, creating armies of the dead, and unleashing hundreds of soul-sucking wraiths upon the populace—Iain cut her off.

  “I’ll be fine. Come on, I’m putting you on your train.” There was so much stubbornness in his voice, in the tilt of his chin. Kati sighed, knowing she was unlikely to win this.

  “I’m only on it one stop,” she murmured, but she allowed herself to be towed along the road. She kept stroking the back of his hand as they drew near to the museum, and then she could see her. Lady LaVoire. Kati had walked past this statue a hundred times before, but it had never held so much meaning for her before. She’d never had feelings for the psychopath’s innocent nephew before.

  Before, when she’d looked at the formidable aging woman turned to stone, she’d seen a reminder of the Black Years her parents had lived through, and she’d seen the victory of the gentry over Lady LaVoire’s followers, the Black Brooms.

  Now … all Kati could think about was that this tyrant was Iain’s family, and she couldn’t help wondering how his aunt had treated him. While she knew Lady LaVoire had never tortured him or turned him into a puppet, Kati got the sense he was scared of her. Terrified.

  “I came across a spell in a book I was reading yesterday,” Kati said to distract him. “Well, in a book Naia got me as an early Christmas present so I could get a headstart on next term’s work.”

  Iain laughed under his breath, facing her. Good. At least he wasn’t looking at his statue-bound aunt. Was she alive in there, or was she insentient? What if she was still making dark plans to take over the world and enslave everyone, even while she was turned to stone?

  “It’s a type of radius spell, but one that allows you to sense magic, not just people.”

  “Oh,” Iain said, brightening. “You’ll be learning that in your second year. The energy radius spell?”

  “Yeah,” Kati agreed, “that.”

  But they were right below the statue now, and even Kati’s stomach tightened with unease. There was a tiny voice in the back of her mind that wanted to know what Theo, Bo Chen, and Colen Greensmith had called through the sigil circle that day Colen died. Alexandra had said she needed a sacrifice to break through the veil, and then refused to elaborate.

  But Lady Lavoire was right there, locked in stone, powerless. It couldn’t have been her.

  No matter how scared and paranoid Iain was that the attack on Lavellian in the Stolen Tower was linked to her. No matter that he’d wrapped a powerful protection spell around Kati, bound to the strength talisman he’d also given her, which hung around her neck.

  One more step and they were past her. Just one more.

  Kati held her breath, Iain seeming to do the same.

  He gasped when they were past her, clutching his ribs, and Kati panicked, her hands fluttering over him. “What is it? Iain?”

  “Fine,” he replied, strained. “Just a bit of stitch. We’ve been walking a lot.”

  But the knot in Kati’s stomach wound tighter. She didn’t believe him. “You’d tell me,” she asked, “if something was wrong, right?”

  “It’s just stitch,” he reiterated stronger, and Kati hesitated to push him on this. She squeezed his hand and didn’t prod at his vulnerabilities again as they made their way to the train station.

  But she couldn’t shake off the sense that, stone or not, Lady LaVoire had struck out at Iain.

  But that wasn’t possible. She was stripped of all her power. She was a statue.

  Kati shook her head at herself and edged closer to Iain, scrounging around in her coat pocket for her train ticket. She was just being jumpy. Iain was fine. The Black Years were over.

  Just Decide My Future For Me, It’s Fine

  Kati had a serious case of Active Bitch Face. Not resting. Active. The newspaper her dad normally spent most of tea reading had been set on the dining table, its headline—Juneau Back After Eight Day Disappearance—sopping up the gravy on his plate of half-eaten roast beef as he and her mum argued back and forth about Kati’s future.

  She couldn’t get a word in edgeways. The only person who seemed even remotely willing to listen to Kati was her nan, who kept interjecting a few words here and there on her behalf. Not that Kati’s mum and dad were listening. Her dad had decided that Kati would intern with him for the rest of the year, while her mum was pushing for her to transfer to Thackrey’s School of The Dead. In Manchester.

  Not. Happening.

  Not only was Kati not commuting an hour and half every morning and evening—because Thackrey’s wasn’t a boarding academy like SBA, but more of a college-style institute—no way was she
abandoning the friends she’d made at Second Breath Academy. Never mind that she’d never see Iain. And who, exactly, was going to pay for her season ticket on the train? It was five grand. No way. Not happening. That was half the bloody tuition she’d paid SBA for three whole years of education. Her dad, as she could have predicted, was firmly against anything that involved the words five and thousand and pounds in one sentence.

  “But if she stops her education now, she’ll never get a necromancer’s license, Phillip.” Not Phil, as her mum called him everyday. Phillip. This was some serious shit. “You know how much Kati wants a career in reanimation.”

  I can bite their ankles for you if you like, Dolly offered from where she was curled up on the carpet at Kati’s feet.

  I doubt they’d notice, Kati replied. Over the past few weeks, she’d figured out how to respond psychically, rather than having to speak out loud. It made secret bitching sessions possible, although it did mean Kati laughed out loud at inopportune moments. During assembly, for example.

  “That’s just not possible right now,” her dad was replying.

  Kati scowled harder, wishing she could burn holes into her parents. Nice of them to talk about her like she wasn’t sat at the table with them.

  The offer’s still there, Dolly said, sounding both sweet and eager to draw blood.

  “You might as well have some extra sweet potato,” Nan said over the argument, passing Kati a ceramic dish. “I’ve already had three portions of beef; souls know these two are never gonna stop going at it.”

  Kati snorted and happily piled extra sweet potato onto her plate, stirring in a chunk of butter. “I’m going back to SBA,” she told her nan quietly.

  “No, you are not,” her dad replied instead, his nostrils flaring and ruffling his sandy mustache. He looked like a very angry walrus right now, with his straw-coloured hair, his bald spot, and his bulging eyes. Kati knew he was just trying to keep her safe, and it couldn’t have been easy having one kid involved in a ritual murder and the other nearly killed by a poltergeist last term.

  But still.

  “I’m a grown adult,” Kati snarled, her own nostrils flaring. “Legally, you can’t tell me what to do.”

  “Atta girl,” Nan said quietly.

  “Mother,” Kati’s mum sighed, massaging her forehead. “Can you not encourage her, please?”

  “Sure, Deirdra,” Nan replied amiably. “When you start listening to your daughter, I’ll stop being the only one bothering to hear her voice.”

  Kati didn’t pause her staring match with her dad, but she did gulp at the sight of her mum’s mouth pressing thin in the corner of her vision. Nan crossed her arms over her chest, a stubborn expression on her face and her chin cocked out. She might have been wearing a baby pink cardigan and matching tabard, but Kati would not have messed with her if she were her mum.

  “She can’t go back to that academy,” Mum said, but slightly less argumentative, running a hand through her red hair. “It’s too dangerous. Souls know what’ll happen to her this term. Demons escaping through a portal into her history classroom? Soulwraiths on the levby pitch? No, that place is far too dangerous.”

  Nan rolled her eyes but said nothing.

  “It’s not as bad as you’re making out,” Kati tried, but sighed at the heated scowl her mum swung on her. “Fine.” She shoved back from the table, her extra portion of sweet potato neglected. “Fine. You win.”

  Let’s go, Kati said to Dolly.

  Are we breaking out?

  Not yet.

  Dolly huffed through her nose but she stretched with a groan and got to her feet.

  “You’re not going to Thackrey’s, Katriona,” her dad said firmly. “It’s too far away. If you’re worried about what’s happening to her in York, Deirdra, just imagine what could happen when she’s miles and miles away.”

  “It’s only the other side of the North, you big baby,” Nan muttered.

  Kati was too angry to even snicker at that, turning on her heel and feeling like a stroppy teenager as she thundered up the stairs and enclosed herself in her room. At least she didn’t slam the door. Or put Nirvana on at full blast.

  It was tempting, though.

  Her dad wouldn’t let her go back to school—any school—when huge sums of money were involved, and her mum wouldn’t let her intern at her dad’s work. Or return to SBA. Which left Kati with a future of what…? Job searching for the rest of her life? Or running a dangerous private necromancy firm without the backing of an agency? Oh, and without the proper education of how to actually reanimate a corpse. If Hale had taught her anything worthwhile in their first term, Kati’s career prospects might not look quite so bleak. But she hadn’t, either because she was such a shitty teacher or because she’d punished the whole class just so Kati would fail.

  I’ll leave them presents on their bedroom carpet overnight, Dolly promised, making Kati laugh. Nice yellow stains.

  That’ll just get me in more shit.

  Dolly grunted and jumped onto Kati’s bed, her scrunched-in face and bulging eyes somehow managing to convey total disdain and sympathy all at once.

  Kati stalked over to her little window and sighed, staring out and poking the sharp leaves of the cactus Theo had given her. Theo … Kati wasn’t quite sure how she felt about her brother, lately. Sure, she didn’t think he was a murderer. Not intentionally anyway. But she’d learned a lot of things she didn’t like about him. That he wanted to bring back a crippling curse, for example. And he was pro-torture. And he’d tried to impress a bunch of bigots and bastards called the Old Academy, who wanted the good ol’ days of brutality and torment to be brought back to the educational system. As if carving up an innocent to get an extra boost of power for your homework was normal.

  Oh yeah, and Theo and his buddies had gone into the forest around SBA, cast a magic circle, and tried to summon a demon. To unleash upon non-legacies—those with humans in their family line.

  Colen Greensmith, his best mate, had died. And Bo Chen … whatever he’d seen, whatever they’d done, he couldn’t live with it. He committed suicide. But he’d spoken about what had happened that day in the woods to his sister, Alexandra Chen, and Kati wanted to know every word he’d said. Alexandra had cut off her explanation to Kati, saying Bo had stopped making sense, that what he said couldn’t be true. But just because it sounded impossible didn’t mean it wasn’t real.

  Kati really hoped her hunch and Iain’s fear were both wrong—and Alexandra was the only person who could give her confirmation that someone else had come through the portal that day. It wasn’t Lady LaVoire. Kati didn’t have to worry about the bitch coming after her boyfriend.

  But getting those answers meant going back to SBA. Returning also meant completing her education, eventually getting her certificate, reuniting with her friends, and spending time with Iain. All plus points. Not to mention Kati had started to consider the gothic castle home, from its dome of multi colored diamonds to its endless tapestries and suits of armour, to the four-poster bed in Kati’s dorm room with its heavy drapery.

  She didn’t just need to go back to find out what had happened with Theo; she wanted to go back.

  Kati groaned, resting her forehead against the cool glass window, staring out at the row of houses across the street. Each as square and neat and perfect as her own.

  She had to go back. She wouldn’t let her mum and dad dictate her future. But if she was going to stand a chance of getting onto SBA grounds for her second term, she was going to have to sneak out of home.

  She was going to need a spell.

  And inside help.

  And The Oscar Goes To…

  Kati spent most of the next fortnight on Skype with Rahmi and Naia, secretly planning her prison break, or that was how it felt, at least. She knew a basic invisibility charm—she’d been using it to sneak off to make out with Iain the last few weeks of term—but she needed a way to unlock the back door. Her parents knew her well, and they’d taken precautions
. But Kati had taken precautions too, and she had a nan who’d foregone a career in necromancy to be on the stage in the West End.

  Already invisible, Kati went over the word and wand movement of the shattering spell she’d use in her mind one final time, hoisted her backpack over her shoulder just before dawn, and sent a text to her nan’s Doro mobile. She knew the giant white phone would have lit up green after a few seconds and she held her breath, waiting for the reply.

  A minute later, her nan’s response came in.

  We’re on. Prepare yourself for the best work of my life.

  Kati stifled a laugh, just picturing the delight in her nan’s eyes, both at the acting and the mischief. Kati and Theo had learned their best rulebreaking from her.

  Kati waited by the door, her ears strained, and she jumped as a thump went through the silent house, followed by a very convincing cry. If Kati hadn’t spent a good hour going over the plan with her nan, she’d have rushed down the hall and into her room to check on her.

  “Mum!” Kati’s mum slammed open her bedroom door, footsteps rushing towards the room on the end.

  “Glenda, you alright in there?” her dad asked.

  “I can’t get up,” Nan moaned. “Oh, my hip! I think I landed on it wrong.”

  I love that woman, Dolly sighed in awe, trundling around Kati’s ankles in impatience. If she was sixty years younger, and a male dog, I’d be all over that.

  Kati snorted quietly.

  “Mum, it’s alright,” Deirdre said, panic clear in her voice. Guilt wound through Kati, but her mum would get over it when she realised Nan was fine.

  “Let’s get you up, Glenda,” Kati’s dad said calmly. “You’ll be right as rain, it’s just a little bump.”

  “Call an ambulance,” Kati’s mum said urgently.

  Kati cracked open her door and peered down the hall. Both her mum and dad were bending, helping her nan get up, visible through the open door. Nan caught sight of Kati in the process of being lifted and gave her a wink. Kati shook her head in disbelief and crept towards the stairs, moving quickly and skipping the ones that creaked.