Good Witches Don't Steal (Academy of Shadowed Magic Book 4)

by S. W. Clarke

  Years ago, they had called me Shadowend, told me I’d returned to the ancient place. They had protected me. And they had given me a key.

  Now, as I lowered my shaking hand and the brightness receded, I saw them: six will-o-wisps. The Shade’s creations, bound to her power and to the Backbiter. That was what I’d heard from so far away. Now that the Backbiter was whole again, they were drawn to it.

  To its wielder. To me.

  They raced in through the doorway and over my head. When my eyes tracked left and then up in an arc, I found them arrayed behind me like a halo. They held their distance from one another, hovering, waiting.

  And in my hand, the Backbiter’s energy shifted. It still simmered with flame, but now it glowed blue in the wisps’ light. When I lifted the weapon, staring at it, the colors were scintillating, perfect.

  Its power had changed. Grown. And the wisps were key to that. They were part of the weapon.

  What do you wish? they whispered to me.

  What did I wish? My mind raced, and settled on one word: escape. I wanted simply to escape.

  Loki began backing up, his eyes still on the doorway, back arched. The metal clanked louder, nearer.

  Then escape, came the wisps’ reply. Simple, effortless, unconcerned. But with it came the knowledge in my mind’s eye, as though they were showing me exactly what I needed to do.

  And it was simple.

  My fingers tightened on the Backbiter. “Loki,” I whispered, “come here.”

  He must have heard the tone in my voice, even if it sounded distant to my ears, because he turned and came to my side, pressed against me and still facing the doorway. A low growl escaped him as he faced off against what was coming. Obeying and prepared to die.

  I gripped the Backbiter, lifted it with the energy I had left. The wisps rushed toward it, encircling it, their glow growing as they danced around the rod, up the chain, toward the blade.

  With gritted teeth and one palm to the ground, I pressed my way to my feet, swaying as I took the rod in both hands, swung the chain with the energy I had left.

  The blade, blue with the encircled wisps, flashed through the air, swooped down toward the floor. As it did, it cut a jagged, uneven rift in the veil. It was crooked and crude, but it was enough.

  On the other side, I could see the forest outside the academy.

  “Go, Loki.” I threw the Backbiter through the parting, where it landed—still flaming—on the grass. Loki darted through, stood staring at me from the other side. The wisps left the blade, flew through the parting back into the vaults, where they hovered around my head.

  They were mine. Not the weapon’s, but mine to command.

  Hide us, I thought, or maybe I just wanted it. I just wanted to be hidden.

  I slid my hands under Callum’s armpits, my blood dripping onto him, and a throbbing head and a yell boring its way up my throat, I pulled. I pulled and pulled and moved him an inch, and then a few inches, my boots sliding over the stone.

  The wisps raced through the room, circling, circling, glowing brighter. Their glow growing to encompass the two of us in a shimmering veil of blue-red magic. I could feel them tapping into the magic inside me, using my knowledge to act as an extension of my desires.

  They had cast an enshroudment before the doorway, hiding Callum and me. Keeping us safe, even as the horned helmet appeared in the hallway. Even as those eyes—familiar to me now—fixed on the broken chains on the wall, the blood on the floor.

  I can’t, I thought, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t; it was the only way. I kept pulling until he was halfway onto the grass, and then it became easier to slide him over the fallen leaves and needles. And with a final scream and a tug, his bare feet were through the veil as William Rathmore stepped into the room, penetrating the wisps enshroudment.

  His gaze fixed on me and Callum, and he surged forward, striding hard and loud.

  I could only stare back and hold onto Callum as the wisps flew through the veil, and it was already reseaming, the hole shrinking. But I could still see Rathmore’s face as it got closer. Closer. I could have sworn I saw a shadow pass through the veil ahead of him, but the rest became fuzzy, faraway, remote.

  “Witch,” he hissed, and then the parting had closed, the vaults disappearing and leaving only dark woods and me clutching Callum, the two of us alone with Loki and the wisps.

  He doesn’t know where I am, came the desperate, delirious thought. Even if he can part the veil, he doesn’t know where this place is.

  Then came the far-off sound of Eva’s voice. “Clem? It’s Clementine!”

  I dropped to a seat, and then my head found the ground.

  The next parts were a waking dream. I was being dragged and then lifted as voices sounded around me. Eva, Aidan, Liara, Loki, and another voice. Jags of pain shot through me, bringing me closer to consciousness. Some time later a needle pricked my arm, coldness seeped into it, and then I was truly asleep.

  When I woke, it was still nighttime. Or maybe the day had passed and it was nighttime again. I could hear the nighttime breeze rustling the trees. Around me the smells were the same: cool, Eastern European air, that woodsy spring aerosol.

  One thing was different: Loki was sitting on my chest.

  My hand went out automatically, came to rest on his head. And as it did, pain shot through my arm. My fingers moved stiffly, and I realized I was bandaged from the shoulder on down. My fingers were puffy, like I’d had an infection.

  It began to come back. First in dribs and drabs—the blade, the vaults…then Tamzin.

  Tamzin.

  Callum.

  My head lifted, eyes opening. I wasn’t outside. I lay in a bed in the infirmary, but the lights were off, and the main door was open to the night. Nurse Neverwink would never leave it open; she was particular about this place being closed off, sanitary.

  Around me, I saw the blue glow of the wisps. When my eyes lifted, I found them hovering near the ceiling above my bed, erratic like a group of fireflies. They weren’t talking to me now, and they didn’t provide enough light to see much past my nose.

  “Loki.” My voice grated like sandpaper. I reached out for the magical lamp beside the bed, and it flickered to life as my hand neared.

  He came illuminated in the half-light, green eyes cracked. “About time.”

  Before anything else, I found myself searching for it. I couldn’t tell whether the impulse inside me was me or the Spitfire, because right now they felt one and the same. My hand ran over the end table, into the shelf below. I half rose, ignoring the pain and Loki, who dropped to a seat on the bed beside me.

  “It’s by your feet,” he said, recognizing my franticness like an enabler would do a junkie.

  My eyes shot to the end of the bed, where the Backbiter lay as neatly as it ever had in its reassembled life: the rod perpendicular to my body, the chain laid in a neat pattern with the blade resting at the center like the head of a snake.

  I reached out, took hold of it. Once it was in my hand, I could let out a breath. The world felt at least a little right. “Who brought this here?”

  “Eva,” Loki said, half-lazy, half-unconcerned. “She carried it.”

  “Did anyone else see it?”

  “I don’t think you’ll care once you step outside.”

  “What?” And then, my second concern: “Callum. Where is he?”

  Loki’s head turned. “Behind that curtain.”

  When I slid my legs out from the covers and onto the cold floor, I realized how long I’d been out. More than a day. Days, at least, because I didn’t trust my feet right away. The bandages were on more than just my arm—they were across my head, my chest, elsewhere below.

  Neverwink’s healing magic should have been enough. I shouldn’t have to need bandages.

  I had more questions, but first I had to see him.

  When I found my balance, I crossed to the curtained bed, the Backbiter’s rod and chain bound up in one hand. I pulled the curtain aside
and found him there, eyes closed, black hair smoothed away from his face. Someone had brushed it, and he lay asleep with his hands clasped over his chest.

  Callum was alive. He was real.

  “He’s not here,” a voice said from behind me.

  I jerked around, my eyes lowering. It was Thom, his arms crossed high up, still as ghostlike as ever. “Where did you…”

  “I followed you into the woods,” he said. “That night, I followed you here.”

  So he was the shadow. It was him I’d seen pass through the veil with us.

  “I destroyed the labyrinth,” I whispered. “You can…ascend, Thom.”

  “Or descend,” Loki murmured, still seated on my bed.

  I shot him a glare.

  “What?” Loki said. “I’m not judging.”

  Thom shook his head. “Back in the vaults, I vowed I would help you.”

  “You vowed?” I said.

  “Sure. Just like I vowed I would protect the others, and now they’re free.”

  “The other kids, you mean?”

  He nodded once.

  So the kids were free. They had escaped.

  “You did help us,” I said. “We only made it because of you.”

  He jerked his chin at Callum. “He didn’t. And he’s your family—I can tell.”

  My eyes drifted between the two of them. I ignored his question. “You said he’s not here.”

  “That’s right. But he’s somewhere, because his body’s sleeping.”

  I took another step toward Callum, touched his fingers. They were warm. “So you’re saying he’s alive somewhere.”

  The boy nodded. “Lost and wandering.”

  My fingers remained on Callum’s hand. “Do you think he’s still in Edinburgh?”

  “I saw the spirits of those others who were chained wandering the vaults,” Thom said. “But not him. Never him. He’s somewhere else.”

  My eyes shut, my fingers tightening on the Backbiter. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

  The boy’s voice sounded closer. When I looked down, he was standing beside the bed, too. “So I’ll find him.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s too…”

  “Dangerous?” Loki offered. “He’s a ghost. He can’t get hurt.”

  Thom sensed what I meant. A smile broke out on his face. “After so long stuck under the earth, you think I’ll mind spending some time seeing the sky?”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Except, “How will you know where to look?”

  “Oh, I heard lots of stories,” Thom said. “There’s places where we go in the world when we can’t pass on.”

  I turned fully to Thom, dropped to a crouch in front of him, my whole body protesting as I did. “Promise me one thing.”

  He waited, arms still crossed.

  “When you find him, your vow to me will be fulfilled.”

  “When we bring him back to his own body,” the boy said, “and his eyes open. Only when they open.”

  I sensed this was about more than me or a vow to me. As I studied him, I realized the boy also had black hair. He may have grown tall and broad like Callum one day. But Thom’s eyes had closed when he was nine or ten and never reopened.

  “Okay,” I said. “It’s a deal.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  “I’ll find him,” Thom said. “I swear it.”

  Before I could respond, he disappeared through the wall of the infirmary, and I remained kneeling, staring after him.

  On the bed, Loki said, “Your first deal with the dead.”

  My eyes tracked to him. “Think it was a mistake?”

  “Probably not.” He raised his paw instinctively, licked it once. “Even if it was, the consequences couldn’t be much worse than the hell you’ve already been through.”

  I would have smiled if I wasn’t in so much pain. Not just physical, but psychic, emotional—everything hurt. When I stood again and turned back to Callum, I wondered what I would say to Umbra.

  Umbra.

  My fingers tightened on the weapon. She was keeping…a thing under her office. A thing that looked like me. I had managed to put it out of my mind until now.

  It was time for the headmistress and I to have a talk.

  I approached Callum’s bed, stroked his forearm. His face remained as expressionless as ever. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ve got a nine-year-old ghost on the case of your soul.”

  “I’m sure that brings him such comfort.” Loki leapt to the floor, landing lightly. “Clem, there’s something you need to see.”

  I turned, watching him trot toward the open door of the infirmary, feeling a strange foreboding. When I followed him to the doorway, I stood with my hand on it, looking out into the night. Usually I could hear students’ voices, the sounds of people walking or chattering, but nobody was out. I didn’t hear anyone.

  “Where’s Neverwink?” I murmured down to Loki.

  “Probably with all the other faculty,” he said. “Meeting in Umbra’s office.”

  “At this time of night?”

  Before Loki could answer, a voice called out: “Clem!” And then, in a flutter of wings, Eva landed right in front of me, pulling me in with her arms around my neck. “You’re awake. Just in time.”

  “For what?” I said, muffled by her hair.

  She leaned back, and even in this light, I saw it written on her face. Something bad had happened.

  My eyes drifted past her, and I realized far fewer lights were on around the academy grounds. The place was uncommonly dark.

  “Umbra,” I said. “Where’s Umbra?”

  “That’s just it, Clem,” Eva said. “She’s…”

  Footsteps sounded off to my left, and Aidan materialized from the darkness. “We don’t know where she is.”

  I eyed the two of them in turn. A smile found its way onto my face, disappeared just as quickly when they didn’t return it. “She’s holed up in her office again?”

  Eva shook her head.

  “So she’s somewhere else on the grounds.”

  “Nobody’s seen her since the day you left,” Aidan said, his voice low and serious. “We don’t even think she’s at the academy.”

  “You’ve searched for her?”

  “Everyone has,” Eva said. “Even the woods all around. She didn’t leave a note, no word, nothing.”

  That wasn’t the Umbra I knew. Hell, Milonakis had just gotten done telling me the woman was an agoraphobe. She didn’t leave the grounds unless it was to see her family, and that was once or twice a year.

  And not without word.

  My fingers rubbed over the doorframe. The infirmary had been left open to the night, which meant even Neverwink wasn’t thinking. People were anxious. Afraid. I could hear it in Eva and Aidan’s voices.

  “William Rathmore has been hunting for her,” I said. “For a long time.”

  “You think he took her?” Eva said.

  “I don’t know.” My eyes tracked over the grounds beyond Eva, as though Umbra would simply appear, her staff tapping over the path. “Whatever happened, she left suddenly.”

  “Agreed,” Aidan said. “The faculty has spent the past few days trying to figure out what to do. Who to appoint as interim head.”

  Days. Days.

  I stared up into the canopy. “And the enchantment over the grounds?”

  “It’s still there,” Eva said.

  “So she’s not dead,” I said.

  “Probably not,” Loki said by my feet. “But who knows about tomorrow?”

  My morbid cat. But he was right—we didn’t know what would happen tomorrow. If Umbra had been gone for days without a note or any word, then she was unlikely to return tomorrow. Something had happened.

  The Backbiter clinked as I shifted its grip in my hand. The academy had to be protected—and I knew what I had to do to keep the students and faculty here safe.

  I had to leave.

  After all, I had the weapon. If I was going to destroy t
he Shade, it wouldn’t be from Shadow’s End.

  I straightened, my hand leaving the doorframe. “It’s time for me to go.”

  My two friends went still, a palpable silence descending between us. And then, in a small voice, Eva said, “You’re going…?” Her finger pointed straight down.

  I couldn’t help a grim smile. “I guess I am. You’d think it would be easy enough to get to Hell.”

  “But you don’t have any idea where to go,” Aidan said.

  “No clue,” I said.

  Of course, over the years I had read the fables about the entrances to Hell. The ways into the underworld. But there was no place definitive, no route I could google.

  I would figure it out. I had to.

  Aidan gave a quick exhale, then nodded. “I’ll get my stuff.”

  Eva glanced over at him. “Don’t forget the healing book I asked for.”

  “Got it,” he called back.

  I stared between them as Aidan disappeared into the night.

  “It sounds like they’ve been planning this,” Loki said, as surprised as I should have been. But I wasn’t—not deep down.

  “Yeah,” I murmured. “It does.” My eyes shifted to Eva, and my lips parted to speak.

  She raised a finger. “Don’t start in on a talk-me-out-of-it speech. I’m sick of being on the sidelines, taking all the licks and not getting in any of the hits, especially after our last blowout of a mission. Besides, I’m the only one who spent all year tangibly manipulating a tent, so unless you want to sleep on the ground every night—and I know you’re a city girl—I’m coming.”

  “Ooh,” Loki said. “I’ve missed a good tangibly manipulated tent.”

  I blinked. “Do you mean that olive-green thing you were working on every free moment?”

  “Yes,” she said, half-sullen. “I mean ‘that olive-green thing.’”

  Emotion prickled in my chest, behind my eyes. That was what Eva had been working on all year. And that was why Aidan had been stealing books from the library. They had been preparing. They knew I’d need to leave, and they were preparing to come with me.

  A certainty crystallized in my chest after four years. I had been building toward this for four years, and now I finally accepted a new truth of my life: