Chapter Nine

Outside Vickie's second bedroom, the one she actually slept in, I paused. The last time I'd been in here, the school had been bustling with life and movement. Now, long after the dark hour, while the school held still and silent and very dark, it felt different. Less of a good idea. I could do this another time and bring Seph with me. Or…someone else. But too much curiosity burned underneath my skin. This was all connected to Leo and the stone somehow. I knew it; I just needed to know how, and I wouldn't stop until I had the answers.

I opened the door and stepped inside. The faint smell of lemons brushed my nose again like a hint, like a reminder. Maybe she’d written something on the walls in lemon juice like the inside cover of her diary. After closing the door behind me, I swept my light around the room—and found all sorts of things only visible with direct magic light. A large, complicated symbol had been drawn in the center of her floor with Latin phrases and runes. I didn’t recognize it from Symbology, but that didn’t mean anything. There were thousands of symbols I didn’t know.

Against the wall, there were worn places on the floor where the desk legs had once been. The desk had been moved, maybe an inch or so. I grasped its edge and moved it to the side, and there on the wall was a message written in lemon juice:

ME KEEPS COMING. TELL MY PARENTS I—

She'd never finished. Her message just ended, with the “I” swooping a little at the bottom as if she'd been startled by something.

ME. As in a skin-walker that looked like Vickie? Or were those initials? ME…Marjorie Effman, the dead, dark professor buried in the creepy little graveyard? But if she “kept coming,” then obviously she was no longer dead.

But that wasn't all. To the left of the ME part of her message, there was a bell hanging from a tiny nail in the wall. A bell eerily similar to the one missing from the graveyard. Vickie had it. But why? Had it followed her up the steps outside like the one I’d had?

I moved the desk back into place and looked around the room again. There had to be more here. More clues as to what the heck Vickie was talking about. I hefted the bed out from the wall and discovered something else—written down the side of the wooden support beam were a series of numbers. All of them in lemon juice and all of them crossed out except 1212, the last one. Not particularly helpful, so I kept searching, but that was it.

1212. What did that mean?

A sound came from behind the desk. A sound that froze the blood in my veins and shriveled my flesh to my bones.  The bell that came from the graveyard. The bell that indicated a reliving person was near. 

It was ringing.

A deep tremble chased from my neck down to my toes. I stopped breathing. My heart thundered so wildly it nearly drowned out the sound of the bell. 

And the sound coming from the hallway—an unsteady thud-thud, thud.

Vickie. Or Marjorie Effman from the graveyard. Someone was out there. Someone dead.

I turned toward the door, my body shaking the light in my palm. The school was now magic-less and defenseless. Anyone, dead or alive, could potentially walk right on in. But the dead were harder to deal with. They were murderous, insane, and couldn't be controlled unless your name happened to be Ryze.

Thud. Thud-thud.

My thoughts scrambled as my knees crashed together harder.

The lever on the door began to move.

Instinct took over. The urgent need to flee. I squeezed my fist to put my light out and then threw myself under the bed. 

The door swung open on silent hinges revealing nothing but darkness and the smell of rotten death. The bell continued, even louder now.

A single thud entered the room.

I held my breath, my fingernails scraping the stone floor as my body coiled tight. If it—she—came in farther, I would run. I still had my magic. I could quickly draw a protection spell to keep her inside and then go tell someone.

Another thud. My heart hammered against the floor and ricocheted a full-body tremor through me. I squeezed my eyes shut briefly, hardening my will, and then shot out from underneath the bed.

I didn't want to see. I did not want to see what I was sprinting toward, so I ran blind in the darkness. My leg brushed against something, but the smell of rot choked my scream. I crashed into the doorframe and then swung myself out of it into the hallway, fumbling my hands over the door to slam it closed. Then I drew the circle and symbols within it for protection, and with my pulse thrashing between my ears, I turned to flee.

And crashed right into a body, lit a sickly orange from a lantern.

I yelped and scrambled away, nearly tripping over the hem of my cloak in my rush. Only then did I realize who it was and that he was speaking over the roar of my blood.

"What happened? What's in there?" Ramsey reached toward me as if to calm a wild animal trapped in a cage. Then his eyes went wider than they already were. "Why do I hear ringing?"

"It's…It's…" I couldn't squeeze the words out, so I just nodded. Yes, it was exactly what he thought it was. 

I took several deep breaths so I could speak again, but they snagged in my lungs at the sound coming from behind the door. Slow scratching down the length of it. Each one sent a chill along my spine.

Ramsey reached for the handle, but I grabbed his hand before he could open it.

"What are you doing?" I hissed.

"I just want to know what we're dealing with."

"That's not a good enough reason." I pulled on his hand even harder.

"If we know what it is," he said softly, "then we'll know what spell is needed to send it back to the grave."

"You mean me. I'll have to send it back since I still have my magic."

"I mean you or another mage who happened to be outside like the Diabolicals.” Gently, he released his hand from my iron grip. “Just a quick look, okay?"

Reluctantly, I stepped back, snapping my light into my palm. I'd come to Necromancer Academy to kill, not have anything to do with the already dead. But since my plans had been flipped, maybe it was time to act like a real necromancer. It didn’t mean I was excited about it though.

He opened the door a crack, and we both shined our lights through it. On the other side stood a dog, medium-sized and black with a lot of gray and white around its ears and chin. It looked old, not dead, but the stink rolling off it said otherwise. Around its neck hung a red collar decorated with beads and charms, and the shiny metal part was etched with the name Max. Vickie's dog. She'd brought her dog back to life.

When it bared its teeth and bristled its fur along the spine, Ramsey quickly shut the door again, his face drained of color. "Well. That explains the bell we heard outside too."

"How did anyone not know?" I asked, my voice trembling.

"His collar had charms all over it. She probably used magic to keep him, and his smell hidden, and the dampener undid it." He gestured down the hallway with his lantern, and we started down it.

"But how did he get inside without anyone noticing?"

"There's a laundry chute in the junior girl's bathroom that leads outside. It's cramped, but for a dog, it would be no problem if they were trained. I imagine he was so he could go outside and take a piss whenever he needed, when he was alive anyway.”

My mind jumped to Nebbles. Surely Seph had some kind of system in place for her bathroom needs. But my mind skipped past that for now, and how Ramsey knew about the laundry chute in the junior girls' bathroom.

“When he died,” Ramsey continued, “she must've used a lot of magic to bring him back and keep it a secret. Since she died, he's probably been wandering around looking for her."

My chest squeezed for the dog, and strangely, for Vickie too. She obviously loved her familiar. "That's so sad."

He nodded. “I always saw her with him before he died at the end of the last school year. They were inseparable.”

So, Vickie was capable of being good. I wished I’d gotten a chance to know that when she was alive, so I could’ve…I don’t know. Not be dangled off the stairs by her? It sounded like she’d just needed someone to talk to—and might’ve been murdered to prevent that from happening.

"There were all sorts of things written in lemon juice in there,” I said. “A huge symbol in the middle of the floor and a message on the wall that said ME KEEPS COMING. TELL MY PARENTS I, and that's it."

"ME. As in the skin-walker in her skin?"

"Maybe. Or initials." I blinked at him, and when he didn't seem to get it, I helped him out. "Marjorie Effman."

He cut his gaze to me as he opened the door to the stairs. "She's dead."

“We’re at Necromancer Academy.” I shrugged. "We thought the dog was dead too. Sometimes things appear one way, and they're completely opposite."

"Spoken like someone who has plenty of experience finding that out," he said with a devious grin. “Guess who hasn't threatened to kill me in the past several minutes?"

Rolling my eyes, I started down the steps. "Don't push your luck."

"Ah, but it's so fun." He was watching my face again, his shoulder bumping mine since he was so close.

I cleared my throat and scooted away on the steps as much as I could. "Can we go back to Vickie? What did she want someone to tell her parents?"

"About the dog maybe. Or that she had the dampener hidden in her diary if that’s really the case. Or that ME kept coming. Coming to what?"

"Or that she knew where Professor Wadluck is. This is all connected somehow. I just can't see it yet, and I feel like we're running out of time."

Ramsey looked at me sharply. "Why do you say that?"

"Twelve, twelve. Another message in Vickie's room. Does that mean anything to you?"

He shook his head. "Should it?"

"A date? A time, maybe?" 

“December twelfth.” He came to a stop, his body tensing and the edges of his face growing sharper, more severe when he dropped the lantern to his side. “That’s tomorrow."