Chapter Seven

Headmistress Millington came by late that night with a sleeping potion mixed into a tea designed to knock Seph out and help her stay out. A side effect of such a powerful potion was thinking the previous night had been a dream. The potion would last until I gave her the antidote but making her think she’d dreamed last night was permanent. I couldn’t decide if that was good or bad since it kind of felt like tricking her.

“No more than two drops of the antidote,” the headmistress insisted. “Any more than that and she’ll be licking the walls."

Was…was that a bad thing? If the walls tasted like bread or pancakes or sticky rolls, I'd be licking them too.

When I woke the next morning, Seph was still snoring lightly with Nebbles curled up by her neck, and a roll of parchment had been scooted under our door. I got up to look and then sawed my teeth over my bottom lip when I saw it had my name on it. I knew that handwriting. This couldn’t be good. As quiet as I could, I unrolled the parchment.

Dear Dawn, Your letter about Family Weekend at White Magic Academy must not have arrived. We’ll be there Saturday morning.

Much love, Dad No. No, please, no.

I hadn't even thought my parents would bother to visit me since they were still drowning in misery. I'd have to write them back, beg them not to come for…reasons. Too much homework maybe. They'd probably thought their raven was flying to White Magic Academy with their letter to me but hadn't watched it fly in the opposite direction.  How had they even heard about Family Weekend? It didn't matter. I wouldn’t be there, and they couldn't know that.

Quickly, I scrawled a letter back, the scratch of the quill much louder than Seph's snores. I rolled the parchment, stepped into my boots without tying them, threw on my cloak, and then stopped. She’d be okay for a few seconds, right? I’d zip downstairs for a raven to deliver my letter and then back up again, no problem. Just in case, though, I slipped the antidote into my pocket and left the room.

Our door had been neatly painted over—or spelled over—with no sign of the scratch marks from yesterday. Headmistress Millington, I presumed. After making sure the door was firmly shut behind me, I drew another protection symbol on it and then went in search of a raven.

A few students were already trickling into the Gathering Room for breakfast where the smells of rich syrup, butter, and pancakes beckoned me. In the middle of the entryway, I waved my arm for a bird, and one fluttered down and gently landed on my outstretched arm.

"Take this to Mr. and Mrs. Fred Cleohold, please," I told it and stuck the rolled parchment in its slightly opened beak.

It winged up to the ceiling again and then vanished like a puff of smoke. My letter should arrive within seconds. Hopefully they actually read it and absolutely did not go to the school I wasn't even at.

"Nice to see you trying this morning, Dawn. Love what you've done to your face," a voice with bitter edges said behind me.

I half turned. It was the redhead who’d called me a freshman freak, looking pristine and gorgeous as ever, her curls bouncing as she stepped gracefully off the last stair into the entryway. She had an entourage of girls with her, all wearing a similar judgmental sneer, but none of them pulling it off as well as she did. She'd had practice. Lots of it.

"Huh?" I hadn't even had coffee yet, and it was much too early to be picked apart like a piece of meat.

"Did you stick your head in a fireplace, or did you borrow some face tattoo ink from your creepy roommate?" she asked.

"Ink…What?" Oh. Shit. The coal I'd rubbed into my hair to turn my hair black…I'd bet several coins I had it smeared all over my face from when I was sleeping. Lovely. Just lovely.

She flicked her judgmental stare down to my feet and back again. "And your cloak is inside out, and your boots are untied. Was your first day so bad that it turned you into a vagrant?"

Her friends snickered at that.

She leaned in, her blue eyes flashing with cruel humor. "Are you sure you can handle yourself here?"

"I’ve got everything under control," I said with a shrug.

She tilted her head, faking skepticism. Also faking that she ever possessed a human quality in her life. "Really?"

"Yeah. Really," I said, then waved my fingers at her. "Toodle-oo."

As I turned, she and her friends' glares cut down my back. So maybe I did look like a hot mess—hello, I was a hot mess—but that didn't mean I had to let that or them bug me.

I raced back up the stairs to my room to rouse Seph and breathed a sigh of relief when I found her and Nebbles still snoring. One drop, then two of the antidote hit the inside of Seph’s mouth, and less than five seconds later, her eyes popped open.

"Hungry for wall?" I asked, sitting next to her.

She blinked "Huh?"

Nebbles blinked, too, but mostly decided she couldn’t be bothered and fell back asleep.

Seph had been asleep for the wall-licking part since the headmistress wanted to test the dosage of the sleeping potion first.

Now, she regarded me strangely. Damn it, because I still had coal on my face. I scrubbed it hard and probably made it ten times worse.

"Are…you hungry for wall?" she asked.

"Always." I reached for her cloak hanging from the bedpost and handed it to her. "Do you know where the library is? I'd like to go there before our classes start."

She tossed her cloak to the bed and gently detached herself from Nebbles so she could sit up. "Look at you going for top student on day two." 

"Not really." While she rubbed the sleep from her eyes, I rose, capping the antidote vial, and then placed it on my desk. "Mostly I just want to do some research on a few things I can't shake from my head."

She stretched her arms up high and yawned. "I have a whole lot of cobwebs up in my head. I think I slept too good for an embarrassing chunk of the day."

"Don't rub it in or anything." I sat down next to her and nudged her shoulder, so she'd know I was kidding. "Do you feel good?"

"Oh, I'm sure panic over yesterday’s fainting spell will set in real soon." She drooped then, her shoulders and mouth and spirit all slumping, so I quickly diverted to my dad's letter and what had happened downstairs with the redhead while we both made ourselves presentable.

At least she didn’t seem to remember last night.

Together, we made our way back down to breakfast before we hit the library. 

"You know…I have a way I can make her leave you alone," Seph muttered to me as we stepped off the final stair into the entryway.

“Her who?”

“The curly redhead,” she said. “Vickie’s her name. I don't like to do what I have in mind, but that doesn't mean I won't."

I frowned, considering, but then I stepped over the threshold into the Gathering Room. A heated prickle zeroed in on me from the left, and I immediately knew why. I stopped and Seph rammed into my back.

"Oh, sorry. Speaking of walls…" she said, but I wasn't really listening.

He was sitting at the junior table, surrounded by his friends as usual, and slicing me up with his furious glare. Was he mad I shadowed him up to his room last night? Or was he mad because I'd interfered with whatever he was trying to do to Seph last night by making her act like my brother before he killed him? Likely both. Either way, he wasn't hiding his rage at all, so I did my best to mask mine. No sense in drawing attention to myself like he was. His friends kept casting glances my way.

"Seph,” I said, turning. “Can you wait here while I go in?" After yesterday, I didn’t want her anywhere near Ramsey. "I'll grab us some food, and we can head to the library." I winced, hoping she'd take the hint, but she was too busy popping up on her tiptoes to search in the direction of the freshmen table behind me. "This is the part where you give me money to pay."

"Oh, I know.” She grinned and then pressed two coins into my palm. “I just like to watch you squirm."

I chuckled, but it sounded hollow. I really needed to figure out a way to make my own money. "Thanks. Stay here, okay?"

I left her where I could still see her over my shoulder, and I could feel every cut of Ramsey's glare raining down my back like cold blood. Keeping Seph in my sights, I flipped the coins onto the table and then loaded two plates with stacks of pancakes, mounds of butter, sweet, sweet syrup, and several helpings of eggs, bacon, and sausage. There was no way the library would let us eat and flip through books at the same time, so I grabbed several napkins too.

When I happened to glance up, Ramsey had sliced his glare toward Seph—who looked like she was about to tip over fast asleep.

No. What the hell was he doing to her?

I threw one of the serving spoons down on the table, hitting it with a burst of magic at the same time. It landed with a thunderous clatter. Students nearest me jumped, and silence stole over the whole room as all eyes swiveled toward me. Even Seph's, wide and awake. Even Ramsey. I pinned him with a warning look, one that boiled out of me with hot fury. 

If it was a fight over Seph he wanted, I'd give him one. And then I'd make him wish he was never born.

Grabbing up some cutlery and our plates, I marched away from the table and pretended like I was headed straight for his, holding his gaze the whole time. I would do about anything to keep his attention on me instead of Seph so he couldn't hurt her. The whole room followed me with their eyes, and several professors at the head table strode toward me down the aisles like they expected me to start a fight.

And I would, just not right now.

At the last second, I cut out the door and swept past Seph with a nod to follow.

"Are you okay?" I hissed when she bounded up next to me. "You looked like you were about to fall asleep."

"I just have cobwebs in my head, none of which are important." She reached over and took one of the plates from me, eyeballing it closely. "Now, what the hell was that all about? Are you ever going to explain how you know that guy? You looked like you were about to kill him."

Oh, very much so.

"We have…bad blood between us." I looked over my shoulder to see if he or any of the professors were following. So far, no one was, but I ducked through the classroom wing doors quickly anyway. "Where are we going? Where’s the library?"

She pointed with her plate to the very end of the hall. "This way."

When I opened the single door at the end of the hall, my breath stuck in my throat. Like most everything else at this school, it was completely not what I expected. All around the walls of the large circular room, the bookcases were set inside live trees that rose four floors to the domed ceiling above. Ravens soared overhead or flitted from tree to tree, and I ducked my head since I stood right underneath them with my precious food. Like the entryway, though, the whole library was immaculately bird-poop free.

Vines and leaves wound around several wooden spiral staircases around the room, and in the middle were several tables of all shapes and sizes also cut from trees but not yet finished. Or maybe they were artistically finished, since several grew out from the trunks with thick roots making up the seats. Some tables even had a canopy of green leaves fluttering from their branches that half hid the students sitting there. Leaves that had been spelled to shimmer and twinkle rained from up high and whispered at our feet when they landed, setting the volume of the place. The library was crowded for this early, and I could tell why. It was addictively magical.

"Well, no one's screaming at us yet about our food. Let's get a table," Seph whispered and crossed to the nearest one.

I didn't see anyone who looked like a librarian, but what did a necromancer librarian look like? 

A light squawk came from a raven that sat in the middle of the table Seph headed toward and then flew away. 

"Are…are the ravens the librarians here?" I asked as I sat opposite her.

She chuckled as she looked around the space, her brown eyes glittering with excitement. "I don't think so, but can you believe this place? I think I'm in love."

I smiled. "Are you trying to say you're as big a fan as I am of books?"

"Maybe more. Since I was no good at necromancy, I read everything, whether it had to do with black magic or not." She spread her napkin over her lap. "Quarum sacra fero revelare."

I repeated the spell, and when I got the all-clear, I dug in, so famished I was beginning to shake.

"I think I'm going to look up a few books about dreams,” Seph said after she swallowed a mouthful of pancakes. “See what mine were all about last night. They were too vivid, too real."

My last bite of pancake sank like a stone. The sleeping potion the headmistress gave her felt like trickery, and I hated it for that reason, but if it helped keep her safe, and not sleepwalk, I had to go with it. Still, it felt like I was lying to her by not telling her the truth about last night.

We finished our food quickly, and when we still hadn't spotted a librarian, Seph waved down a bird.

"Show me the books about dreams, please,” she told it.

It hopped away from her a few feet and then looked back, its head cocked like it was waiting for her to follow.

She laughed incredulously. "Maybe they are the librarian?”

"No idea,” I said, wiping my mouth on a napkin, “but meet back at our table when you’re done?"

"You got it." She followed the raven as it skipped across the floor to one of the bookcases.

Once she was far enough away to not hear me, I waved down a bird.

"I'd like to see books on the Diabolicals," I told it, my voice low.

It fluttered toward the nearest spiral staircase, and I ended up climbing all the way to the fourth story. My breakfast weighed heavily in my gut, and I panted loudly as I neared the final few steps. This wasn't my smartest moment. I should've done this first. Live and learn, I guess, and hopefully not throw up.

The raven led me toward a shelf on the bottom row along the rounded wall and pecked gently against three thick ancient-looking books. 

"Thanks, uh…librarian raven." 

It squawked loudly, flew away, and emitted another loud squawk like I'd offended it.

Shrugging, I knelt and plucked the three books from the shelf. They were so worn, I couldn't read their titles on the spines or covers. The inside of the first book read Amaria: A History in an elegant scrawl, and I immediately flipped to the back. Some ancient texts included indexes, but most authors of that time didn't bother. This one, however, did. 

Diabolicals, see Stones of Amaria: Onyx - p. 255

Stones of Amaria…I'd read about those somewhere. There were six stones in total, and…that's about all I remembered. So, what did these stones, or the onyx in particular, have to do with Ramsey and the Diabolicals? Did it have to do with Leo too? 

I turned to the corresponding page, but— Well, that was weird. Page 255 didn't exist, and neither did pages 256 through 261. Long jagged lines cut down the length of the book where the pages used to be. Someone had torn them out.

Same with the second and third books. All the information about the Diabolicals had been ripped from existence. Here in the library, anyway. But why? To hide the Diabolicals since one of them had resorted to murder and were possibly connected to the missing professor? Maybe that was why Leo had been killed. Because he'd found them out, either through the voices he'd heard while sleepwalking or otherwise.

I gathered the books to my chest and stood, then looked out over the rest of the library. I needed more information from a librarian raven…or whatever. Seph was walking carefully back to our table while peering over the huge stack of books in her arms. Several students were trickling out the doors to head to classes, but I didn't see even a hint of a librarian without wings.

On my way down the staircase with the three books, the door to the library opened once more.

In walked Ramsey with a stack of books. And he was headed straight to Seph who was on a direct path toward him without even realizing it.

Shit. My muscles locked in place as I stared down at the two of them, getting closer and closer, before I finally found my voice.

"Seph!" I called. "Stop right there!"

She slowed and cast her gaze upward, confusion drawn across her forehead. Ramsey also whipped his head up and narrowed his steely gray eyes. But he didn't slow.

"Get away from him, Seph." I flew down the stairs as fast as I could, my boots catching several times in the hem of my dress and cloak and threatening to spill me down. The spiral steps kept me from keeping an eye on every single one of Ramsey's movements as I wound my way down. Was he carrying a knife in the folds of his robe? Like he had been when he caught me shadow-walking up to his room?

I called upon my magic, let it spread through me, like thickened mud at first and then thinning for sharper precision.

Seph backed away from him.

But Ramsey kept approaching, his long strides eating up the distance between them, and his free hand disappeared into his cloak.

What was he doing? Was he going to make her faint again? An animalistic growl tore from my throat as I poured on speed down the last few steps.

"Obrigesunt!" The petrify spell burst from my palm as a sparking gray ball of light and sailed directly toward his head. 

He raised one of the books as a shield without slowing, and my magic ripped a fist-sized hole right through it. Then he jerked to a stop and stared at what I'd done. Smoke twisted up from the glowing orange hole in the book, and the edges blackened and curled like a portal to hell. Some of the pages drifted down as ash around his feet.

That spell had never been quite that powerful before, but I was just getting started.

Ramsey flicked his thunderstorm eyes to me, a look of pure fury written in the sharp angles of his face. "What did you do that for? You could’ve blown off my head."

"That was kind of the point.” Violent rage shook through me. I would kill him right now. Right here. "Obrigesunt." I hurled another blast at him.

“Gods damn it,” he shouted as he dove behind the nearest table to dodge it.

I fisted my hand, which stopped the sparking gray light in midair, and then jerked my hand toward him. My magic singed through several falling leaves as it blasted toward him.

He easily evaded again, and then he was running toward me at full speed, his face twisted with malice. Before I could get another shot, he tackled me to the stairs. My books went flying. My back crashed into the hard edges of the steps behind me. My breath funneled out of my lungs. Everything hurt. But I didn't care. I didn't care about anything but hurting him.

"Get off!" I twisted and bucked wildly to throw him off, but he used his full weight to pin me down beneath him.

He clenched his hands around both my wrists and slammed them into the stairs. I cried out in pain, at the sickening crack of bone on wood. His face was so close to mine, I could smell the syrup on his breath, so disgustingly sweet that it turned my stomach.

Through my blinding rage and pain and panic, I saw Seph creeping up behind Ramsey’s back. But I made my gaze never waver from his face. Whatever she had in mind, I wouldn't give her away, but what if her nearness to him made her faint again?

"Why do you hate me so much that you're trying to petrify me?" he demanded. “That you shadow-walked up to my dorm and lied about needing training?”

"You know exactly why, you monster." I spit at him, right in his face, and he closed his eyes against it, his jaw clenched furiously.

He didn't bother to let me go long enough to wipe it away.

Over his shoulder, Seph paused on the step behind his head, took a lock of his longish hair, and yanked. Quick as a gasp, she pulled away and ran. Whatever that was about, I hoped she wasn’t finished.

Ramsey hissed and whipped his head around for her. “What in seven hells was that for?” He returned his hard glare to me and then ticked his gaze to the books spilled across the steps. "Why are you checking out books about the Stones of Amaria? What do you know?"

"I know that all the pages about the Diabolicals are ripped out," I fired back. 

His eyes flashed. "What else did you hear when you were stalking m—" He cried out suddenly, his whole body stiffening, and he threw himself off of me and crumpled to his back on the floor. His cries turned into agonized shouts of pain.

Shocked, I pulled myself up into a sitting position. He lay near me, his back arched off the ground, writhing and shouting in pain.

The darkest part of my soul smiled. His suffering was music to my ears.

"I, Princess Sepharalotta, and the night goddess, Hecate, require something of you to make the pain stop." Seph’s skeletal face was set in fierce determination while she panted heavily. She held a cloth doll in her hand with a brown lock of hair tied around its head with black ribbon. And poking from the doll's back was a silver needle. "We require you to swear you'll never harm Dawn."

I blinked up at her, trying to separate Ramsey's continued screams with what she'd just said. She was a princess?

"And you,” I added. “He has to swear he won't harm you again too."

She looked to me and nodded. "We also require you to swear you'll never harm me either. Do you swear it?"

"I…swear…" he croaked.

Seph pulled the needle out of the doll, and Ramsey crumpled to the floor, panting heavily and with sweat glistening across his face. In a useless puddle like he was now, he wasn't nearly as terrifying. I wanted to have a turn myself with Seph's strange doll to continue his torture but letting him stew in his shameful defeat against two freshmen girls seemed much more fun at the moment.

Grinning, I turned to Seph, who wore a wicked little smile. “Are you all right?”

She pointed at Ramsey. “Currently better than he is.”

"Bad semantics." Ramsey laughed—actually laughed—and then climbed slowly to his feet. "You said I can’t hurt you two, but not the rest of the school." He smiled, so hateful and menacing that I almost took a step away from him. Almost. "Ah, well. Too late to change it now. Evanescet.”

He blinked out of existence, leaving Seph and I alone with his very clear threat hanging over our heads.

That had sure sounded like a declaration of war.