Chapter Twelve

As soon as Ramsey saw me coming down the stairs still shaken from the séance, he paled. He sealed his mouth shut, though, until the front door closed behind us.  The wintry air slammed into my face and stole my breaths. It was a total white-out with huge snowflakes falling sideways in the blustery wind and the snow already piled to my thighs.

Ducking his head to shield his face, he took my hand and led me down the steps and into the cover of trees. They blocked some of the wind and snow, but not the deep chill that had little to do with the blizzard.

"What happened?" he shouted over the wind.

"Vickie told us to run. That's it. That's all she had time for before the spirits started to drag us through the door and before I…" I shook my head and swallowed hard. "Before I saw a vision of Seph."

He took my shoulders and dipped down to look at me, his face tight with concern and his flinty-gray eyes intense. "What vision?"

"She had blood all over her, and she was…floating down our hallway. She…we have to get out of here. She and I could go to the village, stay somewhere just until tomorrow."

"There wouldn't be anyone to protect you in the village, remember? Magic doesn't work outside the academy gates."

"It doesn’t work inside, either," I argued.

"Except for the mages brought in by Headmistress Millington. You've seen them. They're taking shifts guarding the inside of the gate and the rest of the school just like the Diabolicals. Those mages can use magic because they weren’t here when the dampener activated, and they can fight. Even if you made it to the village in this weather, which would take you hours, you'd be safer here. You can trust me on at least that much, can't you?"

I screwed my eyes shut against the sting of tears. He might be right. Besides, I still had my magic. I could still help protect Seph and the onyx stone, but if I left here, I would be defenseless without magic. Leo had told me to guard the stone, but I couldn't do that if I wasn't here.

"My nerves are shot." I shivered hard and wrapped my cloak tighter around myself, allowing myself to take comfort in the heat from Ramsey's hands on my shoulders. How could he be so warm during a snowstorm? "What do you say I use magic to clear the path and we go find Vickie's diary again for anything we might've missed?"

Though the corners of his eyes were still tight with worry, he smiled. "I'd say that's a damn fine plan."

We went quickly back to the path, and I bent to touch my hands to the giant snowdrift covering it. "Bind thee in health, Protect mind and soul too, Boost vigor and happiness, Make it all renew."

Magic slipped from my fingertips and spread over the snow like gray diamonds. It followed the path toward the gate and up the steps, melting the snow away completely until there was nothing but wet stone.

“A healing spell?” he shouted over the wind.

I shrugged, and we started up the steps. “It worked, didn’t it?”

"You're really good at white magic too."

"Lots of practice as a healer.” Especially today. I’d healed Jon, Seph, and Morrissey after the séance, though most of their wounds were the kind that couldn’t be healed. When I’d left, Jon had still been comforting Seph.

Ramsey opened the door, peered inside, and then held it for me. "What if you had gone to White Magic Academy? You could've been an excellent white mage."

"I guess we'll never know."

We hustled through the crowded entryway, which was mostly filled with strangers performing spells. Some sat in circles, and some sat off to the sides by themselves. White magic sparkled up out of one old mage’s book he held, and whatever he saw in the glimmers and winks made him snap the book shut and march out the front door.

I shivered as I watched him over my shoulder.

Ramsey led the way into the classroom wing, both of us keeping an eye out for the headmistress and stopped in front of her office door. He knocked and waited a beat. Peering up and down the empty hall first, he plugged his key into the door and pushed it open. A lit gas lamp on her desk flickered shadows across the paintings on the walls, bringing them to life. Past headmasters stared at us in fierce judgement.

"What happens if we get caught in here?" I whispered as Ramsey gently closed the door behind us.

“Very bad things, I'm sure."

"And yet you've done it before. Lots of times if you have a key."

"Yep." He crossed the room to a large wooden cupboard against the left wall with a big lock on it.

"Because you want to find your staff."

"Also, yep." Instead of pulling out another key, he pressed his back flat to the wall and felt behind the cupboard.

"But you don't want the headmistress to know about it? She could help. She probably knows about hidden places in the school no one else does."

"The fact that the staff’s missing in the first place isn't something I want to announce to everyone."

"But you did to Jon, Seph, and me."

He pulled out the hidden key and dangled the keyring from his finger as if to show it off. "Sometimes you can tell who can keep a secret and won't judge you for it. Yes, even a girl who tried to kill me."

He’d kept my secrets, too, I realized. Even gone far out of his way to keep them secret.

"Why are you doing this?" I demanded.

He glanced over his shoulder as he stuck the key in the lock. "Uh, because we need Vickie's diary?"

"No. All of this. Helping me…and trusting me."

"For the same reason you've started to trust me.” He opened the cupboard and tilted his head back to peer inside. “Because you know we're on the same side in all this."

I did trust him. Didn't I? I wouldn't be here if I didn't, and he'd given me no reason not to. So, when had I decided that he didn't kill my brother? Because this Ramsey, the one who'd slowly earned my trust and knew almost as much about me as Seph did, wasn't capable of murder. He helped too freely, gave much more than he took, and someone like that would never cut someone else's life short.

My chest ached, constricted by an overwhelming sense of guilt. What if I had gone ahead and killed him, an innocent man while the real killer went unpunished? Could I have lived with myself? The old me would've buckled under the guilt. I hadn't realized just how much the old me was still very much a part of this new, darker version of myself until I'd come here to Necromancer Academy and was forced to take a good hard look at my choices. The new me would've surely been crushed, too, if I'd murdered him.

"I'm sorry I tried to kill you, Ramsey." The words seemed so flimsy given everything that had happened, but that was all I had.

"I forgave you as soon as it happened." He took the diary off a high shelf and handed it to me, his fingers grazing mine.

I nodded, but that didn't ease my guilt one bit. If he wouldn't hate me, I would hate myself for an eternity. 

"Hey.” He reached out and trailed his finger along my jaw to gently tilt my head up. “You were tricked. You thought it was me and decided to do something about it. You can't beat yourself up over it."

"I can and I will. My self guilt knows no bounds."

He laughed, a sudden, comforting sound, and while he enjoyed his favorite pastime of memorizing my face, I studied his too. Not once since I’d gotten out of the dungeon had I looked at him and saw the same Ramsey I had standing over Leo’s dead body. He wasn’t the same person. He was someone else entirely with his own struggles and problems.

“We’ll make it through this, okay?” he said. “Whatever happens, we’ll handle it.”

It wasn’t until he pulled away that I realized he’d been cupping my cheek the entire time. One whole half of my face tingled with warmth, and I touched it to both keep it there and rub it away. I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure about so many things lately.

“Say, ‘exemplum,’” he said.

“Exemplum?” Suddenly I was holding two copies of Vickie’s diary.

He slipped one slowly from my hands, all the while watching me with a slight smile. “We should go.”

He placed the copy diary in the cupboard, closed it, and locked it again, and then we slinked out of the headmistress’s office like two thieves. So, did that make us thick as thieves? What did that even mean?

I crushed the diary close to my chest since I’d sewn up my pockets, covering it with both arms in case we ran into the headmistress. We passed a few stranger mages who were deep in conversation.

“Admit it,” Ramsey muttered and gave me a devious side-eye. “You want to read the juicy parts Vickie wrote about me.”

“Yeah. You caught me. It’s all about you and not the onyx.”

“It was a joke. Well, a half joke.”

“It was a non-joke.”

He clutched his heart. “Ouch. Just trying to make you smile, is all. It’s so rare, but when you do…”

“Yeah, yeah. My face is awesome.” I lurched to a stop as he kept going, saying something I couldn’t hear over the crash of my pulse. Slowly, I turned my head to the left, toward what I’d seen in the corner of my eye.

Through the open doors of the gym stood Seph staring at the far wall again.

“Ramsey!” I dropped the diary to slam my palms over my eyes because I couldn’t do this again. Couldn’t see things that weren’t there, or worse, were there.

“What?” He touched my shoulders, my wrists, gently trying to pry them away from my face. “What is it?”

“Is she in there? Seph?” My voice came out deranged and hysterical, and I didn’t care.

“No. No one’s in there.”

“Are you looking?”

“Yes, I’m looking. The gym’s empty.”

I peeled my hands away to look for myself, and he was right. The gym was empty, lit with non-magical torches, more than usual so there were hardly any shadows to lurk in.

“I’m not going crazy,” I said, clutching to the shoulders of his robe. “I’m not. I saw her, and I’m terrified.”

“I believe you.” He glided his hand down the side of my hair to cup my cheek again, and I leaned hard into it, needing as much comfort and intense warmth as he could possibly give. “And I’m scared too.”

My head jerked in a nod as tears stung the backs of my eyes. “I have to get back to her.”

And I’d lay down my life to protect her.

***

Consciousness filtered in, and I blinked into the darkness of my room. Then I crushed my back teeth together in frustration. How in seven hells had I fallen asleep?

I turned on my side to face Seph, trying to go back to sleep. She and Nebbles snored softly from her bed, so what had awakened me? Maybe nothing. Hopefully nothing.

The slightest whisper of movement snapped my eyes wide. It had come from the direction of the door, bathed in shadows since the single lit torch didn't reach that far.

A creak sounded from the middle of the floor. 

I froze in absolute terror. Was it the skin-walker, coming to stare down at me? I strained to see. My heart pounded a warning in my ears. My palms grew slick as I bunched the covers around me.

"Who's there?" I whispered.

Seph stirred in her bed.

Another low creak on the floor. Moving toward me, not Seph. Dread plunged down to my trembling knees. I’d hidden my dagger underneath my mattress for easy access. I could lunge for it, and hope I was faster. I had to try.

I reached for it, my blood shrieking between my ears for me to hurry.

"Dawn." A panicked whisper cut through the darkness.

I whipped my head up, my alarm lodged in my throat. "Ramsey?"

He stepped into the flickering torchlight, and the sight of him buckled my stomach. He wore only pants and a black shirt, unbuttoned to reveal he was covered in blood. His chest. His hands. But that wasn't the worst of it. His face had drained of all color, and nothing but stark horror blazed in his eyes.

"What happened to you?" I whispered. "Are you all right?"

"I need you to come with me." He reached out his hand for me, and it trembled violently. "Professor Wadluck came back."