Chapter Ten

We were being followed. 

Outside Necromancer Academy on our first full weekend, Seph and I strolled through the gates toward town. The blustery wind whipped at our cloaks, tossed my hair into my eyes and mouth, and deceived us into thinking we were alone since we could barely hear over its whistles and howls.

Up to this point, the rest of the week had been fairly normal with no more threats or bullies. Seph and I ate. Professor Wadluck was still missing. Ramsey seemed to be avoiding me. And the dead man’s hand had remained stubbornly closed.

Oh, and Seph had transferred out of P.P.E. to take History of Defense, which was right next door. I would've transferred, too, but I wanted to explore the gym, peek into its nooks and crevices and see why it affected Seph the way it did. I'd found a hairy pickle stuffed down inside one of the racks of equipment where the rope ladders were kept, but that wasn't exactly what nightmares were made of.

Speaking of which, Seph hadn't sleepwalked since that one night. Headmistress Millington's nightly tea was working, and a part of me couldn't decide if that was a good or a bad thing. I mean obviously good, but was her week-long clock still ticking? I hoped to find out when we got to town. The headmistress had assured us that she’d spoken to those who could help and that they were helping…somehow.

But now, multiple icy glares pricked up and down my back like I was one of Seph's cloth dolls and the students behind us were the needles. I risked a look and immediately regretted it. A whole flock of cloaked figures swarmed after us about fifty feet away. I wasn't naive enough to think they just happened to be headed in the same direction. The air shivered too much between us, and their faces were completely covered by their hoods.

The Diabolicals. I was sure of it.

Seph leaned in close so I could hear. "I could get some of their hair."

I nodded. Or I could turn around and petrify them. But all of them? They’d likely sling a spell at me as soon as I made a move. I gripped Seph’s arm and sped our pace. Outside the academy gates, our magic would be muted by the rest of Eerie Island anyway. Which could be both a blessing and a curse.

"Do you think they can hear us?" she asked.

"I don't know.” I looked over my shoulder again. They were only about thirty feet away from us now even though we were walking faster. “Why?"

"Because you haven't told me about Ramsey." She lowered her voice even more, and I had to lean in to hear over the wind and our footsteps crackling over the dead leaves on our path. "About why you hate him."

We'd been so busy with classes and homework and staying one step ahead of the Diabolicals that I'd almost thought she'd forgotten. Or had decided she was better off not knowing. Silly me for underestimating her. 

And if Ramsey overheard me…Well, he already knew what he did.

The gates loomed up ahead. The wind kicked up and scattered more leaves, completely blanketing all other sounds. Including footsteps. A tremor of unease licked up my back as I glanced left, then right. Too many black cloaks billowed around us, pressing in from behind. I felt their presence a breath’s distance from the back of my neck like a thousand dark threats.

My heart stuttered. My breaths came too short. Should I fight? Should I run? I couldn’t take on all of them and protect Seph at the same time.

Tightening my grip on her, we shot for the gate and yanked it open. We zipped through. The wind slammed it closed behind us, and we turned back.

No one. No one was there.

Seph and I shared a look, breathing hard. Some of the tension slithered from my shoulders, but certainly not all of it. Now they were playing with us, like Nebbles batting at Seph’s cloak strings in our dorm.

She positioned her hood farther over her bald head. “Bastards always bastard everything right up. They’re obviously miserable to be such bullies, so I wish them all long, miserable lives so they’ll suffer even longer.”

“Damn, Princess. Glad I’m on your side.”

Grinning, she hooked her arm through mine again. “And I wish you a happy sex life.”

I snorted. I doubted I’d have much of a sex life since most guys preferred girls who didn’t think about murder all the time. Pretty sure anyway. The closest I’d come to sex was a hot kiss with Walton Banks in the library at White Magic High.

We started walking again, though still wary. After a stretch of silence in which I made sure we were alone, I opened my mouth and then shut it again. Then, finally:

"Ramsey killed my brother."

There. I'd outed him as the murderer he was. It felt so much more complicated than that, all the emotions and memories that it stirred up. Saying it left me feeling cold and hollow.

The news must've knocked into Seph with a forceful blow because she stumbled sideways into the edge of the path through the woods, staring at me in pure horror. "He what?"

Sawing my teeth across my bottom lip, I decided to skip to the end since I didn’t want to explain the sleepwalking and undo Headmistress Millington’s tea effects on her.

"One night last May, I woke up,” I began slowly. “It was late, still dark out, and I can't be sure what woke me. A sound, maybe. Or worry that something was wrong. I got up and found my brother, Leo—" I broke off then, the image of him lying there seared into my memory so clearly that it was as if I was reliving it. I was sure I'd stopped breathing when I saw him. I wasn't sure I'd started up again since.

Seph patiently waited for me to continue, her mouth pressed together in a solemn line.

"He was clearly dead," I continued. "Ramsey stood over him with a bloody knife, and…I remember everything so vividly, every grisly detail, but especially the sharp cut of Ramsey's smile. It was him. No question."

Seph sighed up at the bare branches stabbing at the overcast sky. "Then what happened?"

"Ramsey rushed outside into the meadow behind our house. I ran toward Leo to see if there was any way I could heal him…even though I knew it was too late. My parents woke to my screaming, the Ministry of Law Enforcement was called to investigate, and…there was no sign that Ramsey was even there. Had ever been there. I didn't know his name at the time, but I described him—his height, his build, the natural arch of his right eyebrow. But it was just my word to the Ministry who kept telling me to calm down, to not get hysterical even though he was my brother."

My hero. My whole world.

A growl rumbled overhead, and I thought I heard Seph echo it. She cursed in a language I didn't understand, but with her harsh tone, I could sure guess. "How did you find Ramsey if you didn't know his name?"

I loosened a breath to try to stay calm. "Magic. I was never any good with locator spells, so I went to another mage for help. She found him in Pyr, so I sent a raven to one of my friends there with his description. She got back to me within a couple days with his name and that he would start his junior year at Necromancer Academy in the fall."

Seph looked at me for a long moment as we neared the sandy beach. Ahead, huge waves crashed violently onto shore, mimicking the roiling sky. The icy wind that blew off the water froze my lungs together. Other than us and a few dark specks in the distance that might’ve been students, we were alone. Even the dock was empty.

"How are you not screaming right now?” Seph asked. “Or popping off people's heads just to get to him? I would be completely losing it if I knew my brother's killer went to the same school I did."

"Patience,” I admitted, “though I’m running out fast. I had all summer to plan exactly how I would do it. Every hour I could, I dedicated to learning the blackest magic I could find in the Book of Black Shadows."

She eyed me closely. "But not torture?"

"Huh?" I said, frowning.

"What you did in the library was a petrification spell. What I did with the doll was a form of torture.” She shrugged. “I guess I was wondering why you didn’t learn a torture spell."

I opened my mouth with a protest balanced on my tongue, but I forced it down with a hard swallow. "I want him to know it's me who kills him and why. I want him dead. A life for a life…A cut throat like he did to my brother. That's all."

She plucked at my elbow to catch my eye, her gaze sincere. "It wasn't a judgement. I'm not judging you at all."

"I didn't take it that way. I just…" Should I want him to suffer? Of course. But that wasn't why I was doing this. I wanted him gone, cut from Amaria with a single swipe of a blade across his neck. The end. Which, at least I hoped in Leo's case, was a swift death.

Ahead, the little fishing village came into view around the edge of the forest about forty feet away. Fresh laundry snapped on the line at the side of a house, and a woman frantically took it down while throwing worried glances at the growling sky.

"Why though?" Seph asked, glancing over at me. "Why did he kill your brother? Did he know him?"

"That’s what I'm still working out. I don't have any idea. Leo came to Necromancer Academy for a job interview as a professor last spring and ended up turning their offer down. It's possible Ramsey saw him then and…decided he needed to murder him?" I kicked at a stray weed shooting up through the sand. "I don't know."

"He went out of his way to do it,” she said quietly, and I had to strain to hear. “He came all the way to your house in Maraday." Frowning, she shook her head and tightened her arm around mine. "From an outsider’s perspective, what if you're looking at this from the wrong angle? We deal in magic, some much darker than others. Now, Ramsey has proven himself no better than a pool of stagnant water bobbing with dead fish, but there's quite a leap between turning two freshmen girls' lunches into bugs and murder."

I was shaking my head violently before she'd even finished. "It was him, Seph. Please, have a little faith in me that I thought about the possibility of an evil twin or a skin-walker or any other explanation."

“No, that's not what I'm saying.” She pressed her forehead to my shoulder briefly, like a show of solidarity even though I wasn’t mad. Not at her. “I have all the faith in the world in you. But did you get a good look at his eyes?"

“Gray, not a ring of red around the outer edges at all. So not possessed by a demon. The Ministry of Law Enforcement found no traces of magic left behind or on Leo himself. But I do appreciate you trying to look at this from all sides. It helps me feel less…" I shook my head, unable to squeeze the words out. Alone. Alone with my grief. Alone with my rage. A dangerous combination.

Seph walked in silence for a while, contemplative. "Have you…thought about asking your brother why he was murdered with a séance? I could help if you want."

“Yeah, I tried one by myself,” I said.

“Dawn.” She stopped and stared at me with her jaw hanging open.

I shrugged. “It didn’t work.”

“Well, yeah, it didn’t work,” she said, her voice rising to hysterical. “There are four sides to the spirit door, not one. You need four people, not one. You could’ve left it wide open for any of the spirits to drag you through to your death. Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?”

The woman collecting her laundry whipped around at the mention of a spirit door, and I’d never seen anyone scurry away back inside as fast as she did.

I frowned after her. “I don’t think I opened it period. I’m sorry. But okay. I’d love your help.”

"Yeah?" Seph asked, a hopeful note in her voice.

I nodded.

“Tomorrow, then.” She grinned one of her signature Princess Sepharalotta grins I hadn’t seen in a while.

But then it froze. Ahead, a black-cloaked figure with its hood drawn up leaned against the general store where we were headed. I couldn’t see their face, but I knew they were staring. Watching.

“Pretend you didn’t see them,” I muttered.

We breezed past and entered the store. They did, too, right behind, so close they bumped my shoulder. They were following us.

We zipped around a corner past a display of quills and ink pots, casting glances behind us. Our shadow was gone.

“Stay close,” I told Seph as we strode toward the books.

“Why aren’t they doing anything?” she asked. “Saying anything?”

“To scare us,” I whispered. “But it’s not working, is it?”

She snorted. “Speak for yourself.”

I chuckled in spite of myself. “Help me find a map?”

Her gaze was aimed at our shadow, who had crossed the store and seemed much too intent on the bins of dried herbs there. “A map of?”

“Necromancer Aca—”

But she was already handing me one.

“How did you do that?” I asked, incredulous.

She grinned. “I can’t necromance, but I do enjoy impressing people with my other talents.”

“Show-off.” I took the map from her, and after studying it for several minutes, it was just as I thought. According to the map, there was a room behind the gym, unlabeled, and no doors I could see anywhere that might lead inside. As I envisioned it, that was right where Seph had stopped during her sleepwalking outside the academy.

I can’t go in there, she’d whispered. But why?

Something was in that secret room, and whatever it was, it bothered Seph, even when she was asleep. Had it bothered Leo too?

Seph paid for the map and quite a few candles for our séance, and when we turned around, our shadow was gone.

And three more were waiting outside. Shit.

We ducked inside a pub a few buildings down—a rustic but cozy place called Eerie Spirits. It was crowded and loud, but not enough to drown the two panting students who'd just burst through the doors. We threw back our hoods to see better, and that turned out to be a mistake. Everyone turned to stare, the whole pub growing quiet.

Seph gave an awkward wave, and when I dragged her across the space to the nearest empty table, stepping on toes as I went, the stares turned into glowers as they took us in. None of them wore black cloaks or had face tattoos which marked us—especially Seph—as different.

Honestly, why were people so obsessed with first appearances when they were so often wrong? That was climbing higher on my very short list of things that could cause me to get stabby.

"Nice place," Seph muttered through gritted teeth. 

The barkeep crossed over to us and practically threw two glasses of water onto the table before scurrying off.

"And the people are just delightful." When people's attention slowly returned back to their own business, I fished the map out of my cloak and laid it flat on the grimy table so Seph could see. Light blue threads of magic sparked in the corners to keep it flat. "How well do you know the school's layout?"

"About as well as can be expected for a freshman at the end of her first week. Excellent, obviously." She whispered her food cleansing spell and then chugged back several gulps of water. "Why?"

I pointed to the mystery room. "What do you suppose is in here?"

She looked closely at it and frowned. "No label. I have no—" She smashed her finger into the nearby graveyard and blinked up at me, her mouth falling open. "I remember seeing this in my dream. I walked right by it, saw two angel statues over graves with cages over them, because I was looking for…"

This room.

"What was I looking for in my dream? It felt important." She heaved a frustrated groan, drawing disgusted stares at her once more. "It's right on the tip of my tongue."

Just then, Professor Margo Woolery strolled in, her chin held high and her red cloak fluttering behind her. People stared at her, too, but with a lot less disdain, possibly because she blended in a little better and was gorgeous.

When the barkeep handed her a glass of mead with a shy smile and a hint of a blush, the professor spotted us and waved. "Good to see you two had enough sense to come somewhere warm. It's freezing out there."

"It is," Seph said, scooting her chair over so the professor could join us. "When I heard the academy was near a beach, I automatically assumed warm sand I could sink my toes into, not…this."

Professor Woolery plopped down in the chair, the frigid air curling off of her penetrating through my cloak all over again. Her glossy chestnut waves fell past her shoulders, spiraling towards the large red buttons fastening her cloak. Our History of Cautionary Tales instructor seemed to be the queen of large buttons.

"Honestly? Me too, but I’ve heard you get used to it, but that by the time you do, it's summer and time to go home." She took a long draw from her glass and then set it down, her gaze casting sideways at the map in front of me. "Wow, this one's old."

"Is it?" I hadn't even noticed a date on it.

She nodded and leaned closer to it. "It doesn't even include the women's wing. It was only in the last two hundred years that the school decided to enroll female students."

"Whoa. Really?" Seph asked.

The professor brushed a few windblown hairs back from her face. "Thanks to Headmaster Pollygar. He was a forward-thinking man for an archaic school like Necromancer Academy, but very gradually, the school came around to his way of thinking." She brought her cup to her mouth again and muttered, "It still has quite a ways to go."

I wondered what she meant by that but decided not to press it to save time. Gender equality was a sore topic for me, one I used to rant about for hours to Leo, who’d decided to humor me and listen for some reason. I had bigger issues at the moment though.

"Do you know what this room is?" I asked her, pointing.

"Let’s see." The longer she studied it, the deeper the crease between her eyebrows went. "It looks like it's the back wall of the gym, but the school has been renovated several times since this map was drawn. It could've been something at one time, but now it's likely just part of the gym. I’m a bit of a history nut, so I’ve studied this school in depth."

“And the history of cautionary tales,” Seph added. “You know all the little details and make it so interesting.”

Professor Woolery beamed.

Here wasn't the place to talk to her more about the gym and why Seph's subconscious was obsessed with it, which was okay since I had a dozen more questions. 

I leaned toward her. "Have you ever heard of the Diabolicals?"

She cut her gaze to me, a sharpness to her that hadn't been there before. "Where did you hear that name?"

"I overheard it on the way to class,” I said, shrugging. “Does it mean something?"

"Yes, it means something." She took another drink, her movements slow and careful. "It's a fraternity of students and staff that's been around since the school was established."

"Since they're a fraternity, I suppose they shun females." Seph rolled her eyes to the ceiling. "Do they do anything else?"

"I really couldn't say since I'm not a member," she said.

"Do you know what they have to do with the onyx stone?" I asked.

She sputtered and coughed so hard that she drew stares from the surrounding tables. Seph patted her on the back while the professor batted the tears from her red-stained cheeks and composed herself.

"Who told you they were connected?" she asked when she’d caught her breath.

"No one,” I said. “I saw it in a couple books' indexes in the library, except the pages that explained it were all ripped out."

She heaved a sigh and leaned back in her seat, a slight tremble in her hand as she snaked it back across the table and into her lap. "You've heard of the Stones of Amaria."

"Six stones spread across six lands in Amaria," Seph said, not missing a beat. "When the stones are activated, bad things happen. That’s all I know."

Professor Woolery frowned. "There's a bit more to it than that. Long ago, a man named Ryze ruled all of Amaria.”

Seph and I shared a look. “Ryze,” we both said. The only guy in history who could successfully raise humans from the dead.

“Shouldn’t he be dead if it was long ago?” Seph asked.

“He was beyond cruel,” the professor continued, ignoring the question. “He practiced enslavement and torture. Upon his demise, he used magic to preserve his soul across six stones.”

Seph nodded. “He saw his death coming and took precautions.”

“Exactly. So that someday in the future, he could come back,” Professor Woolery said and then lowered her voice. “The rumor going around Amaria is that strange things are happening where the stones are kept. There are even rumors that some have been activated already. But if all six stones are somehow activated, his soul will be unleashed, and he could very well come back.”

“Does any of this have to do with Professor Wadluck?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” Tears shone in her eyes, and a look of desperation twisted her features. “The staff has been looking, but he’s just…gone without a trace. He’s a good man, almost like a father to me, and I think he was part of the reason I got this job as a first-year professor.”

“You said some students and staff were Diabolicals…” Seph began. “Was he?”

“Possibly.” She smoothed her hands over the map and winced. “Which would make sense because I think they guard the onyx stone here on Eerie Island. The stone might even be at the school, but that part of history is very hush-hush."

"So, the Diabolicals would be like the stone’s keepers," Seph said, her eyes wide.

But then that would make the Diabolicals the good guys, right? But certainly not all of them. Maybe the Diabolicals had started their little group as fierce protectors of the onyx stone for the good of Amaria, but now they were compromised. A cold-blooded killer lurked among them.

Could Ramsey be helping Ryze? Possibly…was Seph needed to somehow activate the stone? Maybe…all I had right now were threads, none of which were connected in a way that I could see.

But if someone were helping to activate the six stones of Amaria, all of us, not just Eerie Island, were officially screwed.