Improbable Ally (Magical Arts Academy Book 4)

by Lucia Ashta

  “I don’t, but it works better that way. If their magic isn’t bound, then my compulsion interacts with it and is even more forceful. It becomes a temptation they can’t avoid.”

  Temptation seemed like an odd word choice. She wasn’t going to be tempting us with anything. She was going to be forcing us.

  Everything about this situation made me uncomfortable, and it didn’t help that I couldn’t see what was going on. I was the only one facing away from the action, and I hated it. I was desperate to look at Nando, not that I could do anything to help him, but just seeing him alive would be better than this.

  “Untie them if you must,” Miranda said. “I don’t think they’ll give you any problems. I suspect they were only beginning pupils of the academy of those foolish magicians who oppose us.” She laughed. “They have no idea how strong we are already.”

  “No, they don’t,” Sinter said, sounding like a brownnoser. The more he said, the more I disliked him. “They have no idea what the Sorcerers for Magical Supremacy are capable of.”

  “They certainly don’t.” Miranda played along, though she didn’t sound happy that Sinter had spoken at all. She addressed this Batty again. “As I was saying, I don’t think you’ll have any problems. But you should be capable enough to deal with any that arise, right, Priscilla?” Miranda’s tone was condescending again, and I realized she’d called Priscilla ‘Batty’ behind her back.

  If all the sorcerers of the SMS were like this, then the sooner we contained them, the better.

  “Of course I can deal with these beginning magicians,” Priscilla said, though she didn’t sound offended, more like she was above the witch’s taunts. “Go do whatever you need to do. I have this well under control.”

  “Good. I need you to find out whatever they know of the academy and the magicians there. And find out how much magic they have. It won’t be enough to do anything to hurt us, I’m certain of that already, but it’ll be good to understand who we’re dealing with anyway.”

  I waited for Priscilla’s response, but none came. Apparently she didn’t cater to Miranda’s whims the way the others did.

  “Hmmhm.” Then Miranda said “Come on, boys” to the full-grown men. “You’re helping me gather the ingredients for my spell. We need enough of it to take them all down at once.”

  ‘Take them all down’? Was she referring to us or to everyone at the academy?

  Three sets of footsteps retreated from the room, and the second the door closed behind them, Priscilla sprang into action.

  I heard the words of a mumbled spell, and then flashes of lights, sizzling and sparking louder than Priscilla’s words, behind me. Nando and Walt grunted, almost at the same time, sounding like they were in pain.

  “No!” I screamed, pulling at my bindings with all my strength. I had to help Nando before Priscilla could harm him anymore. I just had to!

  “Stop pulling,” Marie said. “You’re hurting me.”

  Who cared if I was hurting her? Priscilla was about to do who-knew-what to my brother. She might even kill him. I gulped at the thought and yanked harder. I dug my slippers into the floor, wedging my heels at the base of the column, and allowed my weight to completely fall forward. Maybe all of my weight would snap our bindings.

  “Stop. Pulling,” Marie ground out. “I can’t. Breathe.”

  “She’s going to kill our brothers,” I growled.

  “No. She’s not. She’s... freeing them.”

  What? I stopped pulling and leaned back against the column. Marie gulped loudly, pulling in breaths. I realized I was lacking air too, and did the same.

  “What do you mean she’s freeing them?” I whispered.

  “You don’t need to whisper,” Priscilla said. She sounded so close that my knees buckled at the fright. “I’m right here. I can hear everything you’re saying.”

  “Don’t hurt them. Please, don’t hurt them.”

  “Shush, foolish girl. I’m trying to help you. If you keep calling out like this, that nasty witch will be down here in a flash and then we’ll all be dead.”

  I snapped my mouth shut. What on earth is going on?

  In the next moment, Priscilla slid between the wall and me. I stared at her without saying a word. There was something incredibly familiar about her, though I couldn’t imagine what. It’s not like I knew witches or the world of magic.

  She started mumbling, swirling her hands in front of her, building up light and magic that sparked across the palms of her hands. She flung it straight at my body, but I didn’t follow her movements. I didn’t stare in awe as the bindings of light that had swirled around my body fully disintegrated into nothing, there one moment, gone the next.

  My attention was trained on the witch’s face. Her hair was nearly as dark as coal, her features distinguished, with an air of sophistication I’d only seen one place before. She stood tall, very tall for a woman, though her height didn’t detract from her elegance. Her body was slim, yet strong, but what impressed me the most were her eyes.

  They were nearly as dark as her hair, teaming with intelligence. Her eyes were of a woman who didn’t ruffle, because she always knew what was best to do in a situation.

  And she wasn’t a witch—not exactly. She was a vampire.

  I didn’t think vampirism ran in families, though if legends were to be believed, the trait could be passed on through a bite.

  The only other vampire I knew was Count Vladimir Vabu. And this vampire looked just like him, in female form. She appeared to be close in age to the count, though if legends were to be believed, vampires didn’t age, neither did they die of natural causes. If I was right, she could have been his mother or even grandmother.

  But I was getting a feeling about this....

  “You’re Count Vladimir Vabu’s sister, aren’t you?” My arms fell to my sides, limp as they tingled and ached with renewed blood flow.

  “I see you’re not nearly as stupid as Miranda believes you to be. But that’s not surprising.” Her voice was slow and steady, mesmerizing in its own way. Just listening to her was making me feel calm despite the urgency of our situation. “She thinks everyone but her is stupid.”

  Priscilla stepped back. “That’s why she underestimated me.” She walked toward the others, and I whirled to see behind me. I had to lean against the column when the sudden movement made me dizzy. My limbs still weren’t working normally, though the sensation was returning to them rapidly.

  Walt and Marie flanked Priscilla, and Nando moved to my side.

  “We don’t have a lot of time,” Priscilla said.

  “A lot of time for what?” Marie asked, her voice suspicious.

  “To break you out of here of course.”

  Chapter 9

  “Now, please tell me one of you knows how to create a portal,” Priscilla said as Walt, Marie, Nando, and I gathered around her. She was an unlikely ally. Not only was she a vampire, she was an unknown one. If she hadn’t looked so much like her brother, I would have distrusted everything she said. But Count Vabu was on our side, and she was turning out to be some kind of double agent.

  Beyond that, the greatest reason I was willing to trust her with our safety was the simple reason that we had no other choice. Beggars can’t be choosers, and we were definitely fitting quite nicely in the beggar category.

  “We don’t know how to create portals,” Marie said, signaling to Walt and herself.

  “Have you ever tried?”

  “No.”

  “So you don’t know whether or not you’re capable of performing portal magic.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “We’re beyond the point of meekness, children,” Priscilla said, her gaze fierce. “That witch might return at any time. She pretends that she trusts me, but when someone is so untrustworthy herself, she’s suspicious of others. She’ll come back to check on me and my work with you sooner that we want.”

  Priscilla pinned eyes dark as coal on Nando and me. “And you? Can you create a p
ortal?”

  “No,” he and I answered at once. “We have no magic,” he added.

  “Then what are you doing at an academy for the magical arts?”

  The SMS, which I assumed was the organization holding us captive, sure seemed to know a lot about our academy—the one that was supposed to be a complete secret.

  “This wizard Mordecai recruited us,” Nando explained.

  “Oh, then you most definitely have magical abilities.”

  “I don’t think we do. We’ve never—”

  “Did Mordecai use his runes to get to you?”

  “Yes.” Nando drew the word out, like whatever she was saying wouldn’t guarantee that we had any kind of magical powers. I agreed with him.

  “Then you have magic.”

  Nando opened his mouth to argue the point. She cut him off with one look. “Trust me. You have magic. But do you have portal magic?” She sounded like she was pondering the issue, which meant she’d completely ignored what Nando and I had told her.

  We obviously didn’t have portal magic because we didn’t have magic. At all. None.

  But Priscilla wasn’t listening to reason. The woman—vampire, witch, whatever she was—who’d maintained an enviably calm demeanor, was beginning to look a little distressed. She continually shot looks up the stairs to the door.

  “Look, if Miranda comes in here unexpectedly, I need you all to act as if you’re under my compulsion. We can’t afford to reveal my duplicitous alliances right now. Not unless we can escape.”

  “We can escape?” I asked, at the same time as Marie asked, “How should we behave? What would we normally do if we were under your compulsion?”

  Priscilla chose to ignore my question, along with my theory that maybe she was somehow Miranda’s captive as well. “If you were under my compulsion, your eyes would look vacant, as if there were nobody home. You’d behave as if you were my puppet, answering any question without emotion. You’d do whatever I wanted you to do. You’d share whatever secret I ordered you to.”

  “Whoa,” I said. That was a shocking amount of power to have over a person. “Can all vampires do this?”

  Like her brother had back at Acquaine Manor, she appeared to bristle at my use of the word ‘vampire’. That’s when I realized how much of her behavior when she was around Miranda was an act. She hadn’t reacted at all when the wicked witch had referred to her in the same way.

  “First of all,” she began slowly, “there are very few of us left. And secondly, no, not all of us can force compulsion upon another. Like regular magicians, we each have a different set of skills. There is some overlap, but for the most part, every skill set is completely unique.”

  She stared at me and I fought the urge to retreat.

  “I think we have more pressing things to do now than chat, don’t you?” It wasn’t a question that required a response. We all waited for her to take charge and move us forward, hopefully in the direction of escape, even though her asking us if we could set up the escape route wasn’t encouraging.

  She looked to Nando and me. “So you two don’t think you have magic.” She faced Marie and Walt. “And you two have never tried portal magic. That’s just great.” She stared at the back wall as if considering what she’d done to be stuck with such incompetent magicians.

  I cleared my throat. “Uh, why don’t you have portal magic? You’re obviously an accomplished, uh, magician.”

  Her gaze was almost dreamy, and I thought she hadn’t heard me at first, but then she said, “Not all magicians have the skill of portal magic. It isn’t exactly rare, but it’s not common either. I can’t do it; my brother can.” She shrugged. “But I thought surely one of you must be able to.”

  “Why would you think that?” I couldn’t help myself. “We’re beginning students.”

  “Because I didn’t figure anyone, not even a beginning student, would be foolish enough to step through an unknown portal, following an unknown witch, without having an escape route.”

  “She enchanted us!” I protested.

  She shrugged. “Regardless, it was foolish. I’d never follow into a portal without knowing where it ended up, no matter how alluring the witch seemed. But if I had portal magic, I suppose I might consider it.”

  There was obviously no point in arguing for our understandable mistake. “So what are we going to do now?”

  “You’re going to tell me some things about the academy so that if Miranda comes in before we’re ready, I can offer her something that will show her that I’ve been working my compulsion power on you. After that, I’m going to teach you how to portal, and we’re going to hope like desperate people that one of you can do it.”

  I gulped. She didn’t even bother sounding hopeful that we were going to get out of here in one piece.

  “What are you waiting for?” She glared at all of us. “Unless you want Miranda to come down here and catch us all before you’ve shared your secrets. Then she’ll know I’m betraying her, and you’ll never leave this place.”

  I shared looks with the other three, wondering if they were thinking the same thing I was. If Priscilla wasn’t on our side like she claimed to be, and if she didn’t actually possess the power of compulsion, then this was exactly the kind of ruse that would get us to share our secrets with her.

  I could tell that the others shared my suspicions. We’d already landed ourselves in this situation because we believed one act and followed Miranda through the portal. Priscilla’s story conveniently required us to share intelligence on the staff and setup of the Magical Arts Academy.

  “Oh come on already,” Priscilla said in a huff. “Do you want me to help you get out of here or not?”

  She took our wary expressions in. “Oh I see. You don’t trust me now, even though I’ve already unbound you all, freeing your magic so you could escape.”

  She’d unbound us, yes. But our magic, whatever our group had, was proving useless. And it was precisely the thing someone trying to trick us would say, all the while reminding us that we had to make our choice now or never.

  The sound of approaching footsteps filtered through the ceiling.

  “Your hesitation might’ve gotten us all killed.” Priscilla’s face revealed true panic. But was it because we hadn’t followed her plan, or because Miranda would be angry at her for not carrying out the ruse? “Give me something, anything to share with her. Now, quickly.”

  I looked to Nando, but he didn’t appear to know what to do any more than I did. So we both looked to Marie and Walt. At least they were raised in the magical world. They’d have a better idea than us whether to trust Priscilla or not, and what we could afford to share with her without endangering the Magical Arts Academy any more than necessary.

  But Marie and Walt seemed undecided as well. “How do we know we can trust you?” Walt asked in a whisper. The footsteps above were drawing closer.

  Priscilla’s eyes roved in a continual circuit between us and the door. “You don’t. There’s nothing I can do that will prove it to you.” She breathed out and settled herself, and then stared evenly at Walt. “But I can promise you that I am telling you the truth. I give you my word.”

  Whatever Walt saw in those coal eyes must have convinced him, because he rattled off some quick facts, which sounded so innocuous that I had no idea how the information would help Miranda.

  That’s all there was time for before the door at the top of the landing clicked open.

  “Remember,” Priscilla whispered furiously, so softly that I had to strain my ears to hear her. “Act as if your entire personality is gone. You’re wholly under my control.”

  I’d never been good at acting, but I had plenty of motivation to give it all my effort. I schooled my features into a limp nothingness... and waited.

  Chapter 10

  “Did you manage to compel them?” Miranda asked Priscilla, standing too close to us for comfort. I resisted the urge to twitch or allow my features to reveal my disgust at her proximity.
>
  “See for yourself.”

  No! Don’t see for yourself. But now that we’d trusted Priscilla this far, we had no choice but to continue. She must know how best to handle Miranda to get her to believe our theatrics.

  I watched Miranda from the corner of my eye as she stared first into Walt’s eyes and then Marie’s. When she moved to Nando, who stood right beside me, I brought my gaze forward. I was experiencing full-blown panic inside.

  Don’t react. Don’t let her see any emotion. Pretend like you’re dead inside.

  It wasn’t going to be easy. I was sure of that already. My heart started beating faster, and my body wanted to pull in quicker breaths. I wouldn’t let it.

  All too soon Miranda moved right in front of me, so close to me that I could feel her breath against the skin of my face.

  Oh no. I can’t do this. I can’t not react to her.

  I swallowed nervously, and then immediately after hoped like heck she wouldn’t notice I had.

  She stared at me with evil, flat eyes, and I was sure she’d been staring at me for longer than she had the others. Her eyes were those of a predator, and she clearly considered me her prey.

  A single drop of sweat broke loose and trickled down the curve of my back, moving agonizingly slowly, a tickle that wove its way all down my spine. I urged my body to remain rigid, my muscles loose though they wanted nothing more than to tense in this fight for my life.

  Oh no. Sweat was starting to bead at my forehead. I could feel it! If she noticed it, she’d realize something was amiss. Vacuous puppets don’t sweat from nerves.

  “Hunh,” she said, and took a step closer to me. She was so close to me I could make out the different specks of color dotting her irises.

  I’m in a nightmare.

  I stared right through the woman with the wild silver hair and the equally wild eyes.

  You’re just looking at the wall. Just the wall.

  I was seriously going to cry and scream at the top of my lungs to release this horrid tension—if we survived this.