by Lucia Ashta
I won’t be long. I only need a minute or two to get a sense of what Miranda’s dungeon is like, and then I’ll leave you be.
At the mention of Miranda, I unwillingly felt myself pulled back to her dungeon, the one it seemed I’d never really vacated. I wasn’t sure if Count Vabu directed me there, or if I just couldn’t help myself, pulled by the traumatic memories.
Just like that, the vampire said. Yes, just feel and remember.
I don’t want to remember! I want to forget.
I want you to forget too. Real compassion seemed to lace his voice, but was I even hearing his real voice if it was in my mind?
Oh, that’s where my noodle really got kinked up in an unwieldy knot. Was Count Vabu really speaking with me in my mind? Or was it all a product of my imagination? After all, I was supposed to be the only one to control my own mind.
Don’t bother trying to figure it out. We’re wasting time. I’m real in here, that’s all you need to know. This is very advanced magic, something hardly any magician can do. I’m not even that good at it, and I’m a vampire.
Nothing about what he just said was reassuring, even though I was pretty sure that’s what he’d intended. He was failing splendidly. At the reminder that I had a vampire—a vampire!—in my mind, I wanted to run away as fast as I could and never look back.
But he was in my mind... exactly where he didn’t belong.
Get out. Please. I’d wanted to speak from a place of strength, but it’d come out as a whimper. Please leave me alone.
Isa, you’re taking this all wrong.
I tried to glare at him behind closed eyelids and in my brain, but I didn’t figure out how to do that. How could I be ‘taking this all wrong’ when he’d invaded my mind without my consent? His intentions to save his sister might be good, but still... my brain, my awful memories.
I’m not going to harm you in any way. I just need to understand where to portal to save my sister.
I wanted him to save Priscilla, I really did. After all, without her help, we’d be dead. I didn’t want to think about it, but it was true. Miranda would have poured that potion on us, or whatever else she might have done, and it would have been ugly, painful, and final.
But even though I wanted Priscilla to live, assuming there was any chance of her survival after I’d last seen her in a dungeon with a Miranda livid at her betrayal, I wasn’t comfortable with what Count Vabu was doing. I barely knew the man, and I still understood next to nothing about what it meant to be a vampire.
If Uncle could see me now.... He’d believed witches and wizards the Devil’s pawns, deserving of a painful death. What would he think of a vampire inside my head?
He wouldn’t believe me, preferring to think I was making up lies.
Isa, please.
I wouldn’t have thought the vampire could plead, but he was.
I promise I just want a glance at your memories of Miranda’s dungeon, and only so I can rescue my sister.
I was listening, and he, of course, could tell. I wondered for a second if he could sense every one of my thoughts, but didn’t like the idea, so quickly abandoned the exploration.
Why can’t you do this with the others? Why does it have to be me? As soon as I asked the questions, I felt guilty. It wasn’t that I wanted Nando, Marie, or Walt to go through this instead, it was just that I really wasn’t handling it well. I still haven’t recovered from portaling here, I said with my thoughts, as if Count Vabu wouldn’t know that. My head only just stopped spinning... and this doesn’t feel good.
The count sighed—I think—and said, You’re right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it like this. I’m just... desperate, but that’s no excuse for not stopping to consider that it might bother you.
That’s right. I was firm.
Please forgive me. I forgot myself in my concern for Priscilla. She’s my baby sister, you see, and our parents passed so long ago that I practically raised her. So when I realized she was in grave and immediate danger, I didn’t deliberate; I acted.
He wasn’t trying to convince me anymore. He was simply being remorseful, honest about his intentions. His revelations exposed a vulnerability I suspected he wouldn’t have allowed had he been thinking clearly.
I’ll leave now, he said, and suddenly I was unsettled in a whole new way, beyond having a roommate in my mind.
He started pulling away. I sensed the tendrils that linked his existence to mine unlocking, one by one, lessening his presence.
He was fading. I experienced a relief in pressure in the center of my chest, and I began to relax into my space again, the one that should always be reserved for just me.
What a relief. He was going. I could barely feel him anymore. He’d become little more than a whisper in my mind, as if he himself were a memory.
Despite my palpable relief, my heart betrayed my mind. Before I could properly think, a part of me was crying out, Wait!
He hovered at the edge of my consciousness, an impression with no greater definition than a passing breeze. He wasn’t attempting to reinsert himself; he was still leaving. He was honoring what he’d said he’d do.
I’ll help you, I felt myself say. And even though I still didn’t want to do it, my heart seemed to accept it was the right thing to do. I’ll help you save Priscilla.
There was no going back now.
Chapter 7
Count Vabu’s presence gradually grew, until he manifested himself as strongly as he had before. I was on board with his plan now, although I had to work hard to overcome my instincts, which continued to resist him.
Are you sure you’re all right with doing this?
Now that I’d agreed, he was giving me the out—ironic. No, I’m not all right with this. I’m not even a little bit all right with this.
Then I’ll go.
Wait! No. I was just thinking. I wasn’t trying to speak to you. I huffed. This was confusing. He apparently read my thoughts whether I intended them for him or not.
I decided to be frank. I feel very uncomfortable with all of this, but if it gives you a chance to save your sister, then I’ll persist and overcome my discomfort.
Count Vabu didn’t answer immediately. I assumed he was deliberating, but since I couldn’t see him, I wasn’t sure. Communicating with him while not seeing him was nearly as odd as talking to him with my thoughts.
Finally, he said, Thank you, and I’m sorry.
Hey, it was more than I’d expected.
Suddenly I was in a hurry. Every moment that passed might be Priscilla’s last. Let’s do this now. What do you need from me?
More of what you were already doing. Picture what it was like to be in that dungeon. Don’t pay attention to what everyone was doing, only what the physical place felt like to you.
Fine. I can do that. I was about to relive what it felt like to be at the mercy of someone so unhinged as Miranda, though the idea terrified me.
Before I could hesitate, I dove right in, and I sensed Count Vabu trailing along with me.
There I was again, in the dark, dank, oppressive space. This time I was alone. Nando wasn’t there to keep me safe. Walt and Marie weren’t on my side. But Miranda was. I couldn’t see her yet, but I could feel her, as if her wicked laughter constantly snaked out to caress my skin.
The dungeon was just as wet and cold as before. This time I wasn’t bound to a supporting column, but it didn’t matter. I felt helpless, certain that I wouldn’t have enough strength or magic to fight back.
That’s when I sensed a surge of foreign support, and I realized it was Vabu. He must have felt my fear and offered some of his courage. Good, I needed it.
The space was so dark that it took a long time to begin making out the details. The smell of mildew filled the air. The moisture was so thick in the dirt walls that it condensed along their surface. The sound of a train echoed far away.
I realized these were more specific details than I’d noticed before. I guess a part of my mind had been registerin
g facts while the rest of me freaked out about our fate.
Keep going, Vabu said, but his voice was faint in my mind, sounding out in the back somewhere.
Keep going, I encouraged myself. The room was cold, though there was a current of heat coming from somewhere—the house above the dungeon maybe. It wafted across my face at complete odds with the cold of the dungeon that raised goose pimples on my arms and threatened to make me shiver.
My feet settled on uneven ground. The floor was hard-packed dirt, but rough. Then came the sound of metal tools clanking from the floor above me, and thin rays of light, no greater than slivers, shining through cracks at the edges of the dungeon’s ceiling.
I didn’t think this minutia would help Count Vabu, but I was stuck remembering, perceiving everything, more than I wanted to.
I heard another sound, not the clinking of metal on metal, but... wood on metal. Yes, that’s what it was. Maybe it was Miranda stirring her potion in a cauldron with a wooden spoon. A pronounced shiver ran through my body.
A caustic scent, like singed hair, tickled at my nostrils. The potion, it had to be. Well, no, really it doesn’t have to be that. With a wicked sorceress, it could be anything. But it seemed like the potion she meant to take out the Magical Arts Academy with.
There was more to the smell, though I couldn’t decipher its components. Burnt fabric? Charred... something? Oh. Oh no. Burnt flesh... of some sort.
Terrified that this Miranda might be crazy enough to burn Priscilla, I knocked aside the smells and sensations that ran across my skin. I needed something bigger, something more significant, whatever it was that would allow Count Vabu to follow the trail.
Frantic, taking shallow breaths to avoid the smell of burnt flesh, I turned my head every which way, scouring for clues I might have missed the first time around. But there was just dark, icky dungeon everywhere I looked.
Just break it down, piece by piece, Count Vabu said. There’ll be something.
All right. I could do this. I had to do this.
I breathed in deeply to settle myself. Then I looked around again, honing every one of my senses. I picked up the sound of trickling water, so far away that I shouldn’t be able to hear it. But it was as if I could feel the water, almost as if I were flowing along with it.
The sensations were so foreign that I wanted to pull away from them, but the memory of Priscilla’s haunted face, when she realized she’d have to remain behind alone to face Miranda, pushed me forward.
I floated along the water like a leaf, shed from a tree above and swept away by the current. I bobbed around rocks in the water and continued my lazy progress.
Then I passed a town. It was small but populated, and the lamps were just coming on in anticipation of twilight.
A light illuminated a wooden placard at the entry point of town. And a single word was burned into the sign.
Timout. Mordecai had gone there when he’d left to recruit Marie and Walt, hadn’t he? Was that where he’d said he’d seen signs of Albacus? He’d never shared the story with Nando or me.
Whatever the connection to Mordecai, one thing was clear. Miranda’s dungeon was just beyond the boundaries of this village Timout.
Now Count Vabu could find it.
Chapter 8
Count Vabu was in a hurry now. I sensed him already partially disengaging, with the proverbial foot out the door. The name of the village and my memories, combined with his own magical skills, would be enough for him to locate his sister. With a great amount of luck, he’d arrive in time to save her life.
But that was all on him. I’d done what he’d expected of me, and now I was free to return to the comfort and relative safety of the chaise lounge in the parlor of the Acquaine estate.
My snapping nerves began to relax in anticipation of returning to my brother. He’d watch out for me while I rested, when I finally gave in to the aftermath of the amount of energy—and magic!—I’d expended to deliver us from Miranda’s dungeon to safety.
I nearly sighed in relief. My job was over. I’d achieved portal magic, something I would have sworn I wasn’t capable of. There was no denying I’d done it now, and it suggested great things about my potential. I’d learn magic and become a true part of this team of magicians pledging their lives and honor to resist the destructive aims of the Sorcerers for Magical Supremacy.
But... not now. I didn’t have to do a single other thing right now.
Good luck, I whispered to Count Vabu, who was still disengaging from my mind.
The sense of thousands of little spiders latched to my mind diminished by the second.
Thank you, Isa. I’ll never forget what you did for Priscilla.
This was a softer side of the vampire, one I hadn’t seen before. Outside of my mind, he was all square shoulders, perfect posture, and trim lines.
He started to fade completely. I began to pull in deep, filling breaths, knowing my body was finally all mine again. Ahh. My thoughts are all my own.
Count Vabu disconnected the last strand that held me to him.
That’s it, I thought.
But it turned out not to be that way at all.
I didn’t even panic for the first several seconds because I didn’t comprehend what was happening. I was steady in my own body, in my own mind... and next I was swirling as if I were stuck at the bottom of an emptying drain.
I couldn’t tell if my body was moving, or just my mind, but I was definitely moving. And I didn’t want to.
Vabu! I garbled.
But no reply arrived. The irony hit me hard. I’d wanted nothing but to be free of him. Now that I was, I desperately wanted him back.
What’s going on? Vabu! I whisper shouted through my thoughts, just in case.
Again there was no answer. He was truly gone.
I swirled, and bit down on my bottom lip—hard—to do something—anything—to keep the swell of nausea at bay. Really, how much of this kind of thing could a girl be expected to endure in one day? The magicians at the academy had more or less warned me of the dangers the SMS posed. But this? Danger from the inside? Feelings within myself that I couldn’t control? They’d never warned me of any of this, and this was more terrifying than any external threat.
Ugh. My head spun, but even as it did, I realized I hadn’t let go of the impressions of Miranda’s basement. As my world spun, images popped in and out of my awareness. The plain, damp walls, mired in darkness. The slivers of light sifting in from the floor above, flashing here and there as everything within me moved.
The tinkering sounds from above. The wooden spoon against the cauldron. The hoot of a faraway train.
And that sign, the one that said Timout, spun in and out of view.
There was no more distinguished vampire with the dark eyes. There was no more rescue mission. Only that blasted sign and the urge to vomit or pass out or some horrific mixture of the two.
I wanted it all to stop with such great desperation that I latched onto the only thing I could in the moment. Had I possessed the wherewithal to actually think, I would have pictured the Magical Arts Academy.
But I didn’t. I reached out with the tendrils of my mind and held onto that sign as if my sanity depended on it. The burnt, bold letters that spelled out Timout swung wildly in my grip, as if they had a life of their own and were trying to break free.
I tightened my hold on the sign, to the town, to the one real thing that might bring an end to this overwhelming feeling.
It vibrated in my grasp. The letters shivered, making me even dizzier just looking at them. I still didn’t let go.
I held on tighter, and let go of any thought of the Acquaine estate, the parlor with its comfortable chaise lounge, and my brother waiting for me next to it.
I released everything but the thought of that one destination, the one I’d never seen with my own eyes, only through... what? I didn’t even know. I’d followed a flowing body of water from Miranda’s dungeon to this town. My physical body had never been there,
but I was seeing it as if I were physically standing there, hugging the placard to death.
None of it made any sense. Count? I tried again, my call for him little more than a whimper.
He was gone. I was all on my own, with no idea how to get out of there. It seemed that my choices were to return to Miranda’s dungeon or to this town.
My choice was obvious. I’d have to figure out the rest once I got there.
I merged my thoughts with that one image most salient in my mind. Timout. Timout, I chanted. I want to go to Timout.
With zero understanding of what I was doing, or how I was doing it, I simultaneously let go of my real world and latched on to the imaginary one—without chanting a spell.
As fast as a blink, I tumbled into the wooden placard. Ow. I crashed into the sign, banging my forehead and elbow against it.
I rubbed at them. Timout was very real, and I was in it.
Oh boy.
Chapter 9
Night was coming. That realization alone brought with it a rush of fresh panic. I was in Timout, and not a single person who’d want to help me was aware of it.
Was my body still in that parlor? No, I didn’t think so. This felt too real... but then again, so did nightmares, and this most definitely was like one of those.
I looked all around me. There was no one nearby, and for that I was so grateful that an audible whoosh of relief left my lips.
I was able to make out the sounds of people farther into the town—muted conversations and the usual kind of scuffling.
My options were clear. I could move farther into the town and ask for assistance, or I could walk the path along the waterway until I found Count Vabu. If he came here too, which I considered very likely, then he wouldn’t be that far ahead of me. He’d only left my consciousness at most a couple of minutes before I... uh, what? Portaled here? No, this was very different from the portal I’d created in Miranda’s dungeon. For one, there were no swirling, flashing lights, no muttered spell. But what else could it be?
