Chapter Four

"Seph!" I crouched next to her and shook her then gently slapped her cheek. "Seph, wake up."

A crowd started to gather around us.

"Someone fainted," a guy called.

"There's always one on the first day," someone muttered as they walked on past.

"Give me some room," I shouted to the students pressing in to gawk.

They did.

“Bind thee in health, Protect mind and soul too, Boost vigor and happiness, Make it all renew.” I snapped my fingers to direct my healing magic to my fingertips, and the students took yet another step back at the brightness of it.

White magic, but it certainly didn’t look it. It was gray, made darker every time I used the dead man’s hand in my pocket, but still bright.

A presence appeared at my back, hovering and foreboding. Him. My bones rattled at his nearness, every hair on my body shooting straight up in alarm.

"What happened? Is she all right?" he asked.

I slammed my back teeth together at the sound of his voice, so concerned, so fake. He hadn't said a word when I'd found him standing over Leo's body, but I'd always wondered if he’d said anything to Leo before slitting his throat. 

I had to get Seph away from him, but first I needed to wake her up. I drew healing circles around her face without touching her, the gray sparks on my fingertips leaping toward her tattooed skin. Apparently, I could put black magic in me, but I couldn't take the natural healer out.

"Do you need the nurse in the infirmary?" Ramsey asked.

"No," I bit out. 

This would be so much easier without an audience, without him here. This would be so much easier with my healing charms and herbs. Healing charms echoed a healer’s magic so the healer wouldn’t have to drain their magic.

Like I was starting to now.

My healing magic spread over her face in a sort of glowing spider web, and I picked up the center of it. The ends held to her face, so I pulled more, more, until they popped free. She drew in a great, heaving breath. Her eyes fluttered, and she quaked violently like she had before she'd fainted.

It was Ramsey. It had to be, but I didn't want to draw attention and hiss at him to leave. I needed to get Seph away from him. She must've been sensitive to who he really was somehow, was triggered by his close proximity and could now see behind his golden-boy mask to the monster within.

I bent low toward her ear and drew up my hood as I did. "Keep your eyes closed, Seph. I'll take you to our room. Ready?"

She gave a faint nod, and I helped her to her feet. I kept my back to Ramsey, my hood secured tightly around my head as Seph and I drifted through the crowd.

Jon, the bag of sticks guy from Death, Dying, and Reliving class, trotted up next to us. "Are you sure you don't need the nurse?"

I pinned him with the darkest look I could muster, and he backed off, his hands up. 

"What is it…about us…that makes him think we're unsure about everything?" Seph asked between the clattering of her teeth. Her eyes were still squeezed tight as I led her through the doors into the entryway.

I groaned, not wanting to get into Jon right now after using all that healing magic had sapped my strength. "You can open your eyes now. He's gone."

"I don't care that he's gone."

"No, I meant the person you sensed behind the wall of the gym." Ramsey. Was he the P.P.E. teacher even though he was just a student? He’d been standing behind the desk, not in front of it. After I got Seph settled, I'd have to go back in there and face him because that was my next class, and act like absolutely nothing was wrong. 

But this time I'd go in prepared.

When we made it to our dorm room, Seph collapsed on her bed, and Nebbles leaped up on top of her and gave me the stink eye as if I’d hurt her beloved human.

I backed away when the fur along her spine bristled. “Do you want me to take you to the nurse? Has anything like this happened before?"

"No," she said. "I'll just take it easy here…but Dawn, what did you see? When you looked inside the gym, you gasped."

I chewed the inside of my cheek, stalling. Thinking. Same thing, really. "Remember the guy in the Gathering Room?"

“He was there, huh?” She nodded and then sighed. "If that's the case, I don't think you should go back there. Whatever he was doing, some kind of repelling spell or whatever, it only seemed to affect me, but what if he does it to you?"

"I already know what he's capable of." The words came out as a choked whisper.

Her dark eyes flicked over my face. "Which is what?"

"I…I'd rather not get into it right now." I balled my hands into fists, tight enough to crack my knuckles. "Besides, if I go where he is, I can make sure he doesn't hurt anyone else."

Seph stroked Nebbles between the ears. “Should we tell someone what happened?”

“If you want to, sure.”

Why her though? Out of all the students bustling to classes, why was she the only one who’d fainted when she’d come too close? She didn’t act like she knew Ramsey, but did he know her? Was he targeting her for some reason, like he had Leo? Was she in danger of having her throat slit? If that was the case, then this needed to end. Very soon.

“I don’t know,” Seph said. “Maybe it was just first-day jitters that caused my face to kiss the floor.”

“Maybe.” Frowning, I crossed to my trunk at the foot of the bed. From underneath a pile of black dresses, I fished out the engraved dagger protected in its brown leather sheath. Leo gave it to me for my eighteenth birthday, and it had Biscuit etched in perfect script along the blade. His nickname for me.

“Remember when you weren’t such a weirdo for carbs, Biscuit? Those were the good old day.”

Day, singular, because apparently, I wasn’t a weirdo for carbs for a very short amount of time. That was just his saying. He was the one who was a weirdo, always teasing me, always trying to make me laugh with how much of a dork he was.

Crafted from the sharpest steel, the dagger cut like everything was made from hot butter, and it was small enough to fit snugly inside my boot. I also took a few death charms and stuffed them in my—

Oh. The dead man’s hand was still closed in my pocket, but that was okay. We’d already be in the same room together, and after class, when we were all alone, could be perfect. I could slip a death charm in his pocket at the very least, which was a circular black pendant with a square cut through the middle. Written around the edge were the words: Propius Mors Est. Death comes closer. I’d already scratched his initials into every single pendant: RS. Ramsey Sullivan. If he had it on him, it invited death to come closer.

"Wait." Seph pointed to the desk next to her bed. "Second drawer. Take some money from the top there for lunch."

My jaw fell open. "I can't do that."

"You can and you will,” Seph said, jabbing the air with her finger for emphasis, “and you'll bring me something too. I would still be passed out if not for you, so take it. Please."

I heaved a short sigh and then did as she asked, scooping up two coins that lay next to a couple of small cloth dolls. I couldn't keep having her pay for my food though.

"I'll come back to check on you with lunch, all right?" I said, crossing to the door. “One hour.”

She nodded. "Be careful, Dawn. I mean it."

"You too."

Outside in the empty hallway, I hovered by the closed door, hesitating. Unease prickled up my back like hungry flies. I didn’t want to leave her alone. I recalled one of the protective symbols I'd drawn that morning and traced it on the door with my finger. As I did so, the drawing stayed there, like I’d burned it into the wood. Then I turned on my heel and headed back to class. Back to Ramsey.

A grin spread across my face, one that kept growing as wide and fathomless as the hole in my heart. If this was my first and last day here, I’d call it a major victory.

When I entered the gym, Ramsey stood in the middle of a sort of square coliseum with stone bleachers rising up the walls. The freshmen sat on the benches while he talked to them. Taught them. I kept my hood drawn tight, my eyes cast downward, his presence like sand raking against my skin.

"Everything all right now?" he called. The fake friendly note in his deep, smooth-like-honey voice made me crash my back teeth together so I wouldn’t scream.

I gave a slight nod as I headed up toward the back row of students.

"So, as I was saying," he said, "I need a volunteer to show you some basic defensive moves. Then Professor Wadluck wanted you to pair off to practice. Anyone volunteer?"

Professor Wadluck…so, Ramsey wasn't the teacher but was filling in? Then where was Professor Wadluck?

Missing. My stomach jerked at the realization, and my steps stalled to a halt. Was I right? Why else would a professor not be able to teach his class on the first day? Kind of strange, then, that Ramsey would take over…

"How about you since you're already standing?" he asked.

I flicked my gaze to my left at the other freshmen, none of whom were standing. Well, shit. I didn't want to be anywhere near him in front of all the students, not with the dagger tucked into my boot and murder in my heart. Both would be too easy to see.

"I have bubonic plague," I announced and started toward the back row.

A few students snickered. Some actually scooted away from me as I sat down.

"Ah," Ramsey said. "Someone less…contagious, then?"

A girl who I’d seen in my earlier classes with straight blonde hair, a perpetual sneer on her face, and fine embroidery on her black cloak stood up a few seats from me. "I had rabies once, but I'm better now. I'll fight you."

Ramsey crossed his arms over his cloak, a smug smile on his mouth. "This isn't a fight."

“Oh?” The girl winged up an eyebrow as she passed by me to get to the aisle.

I grinned even though she wasn't looking at me. I liked this girl already. 

"What's your name?" Ramsey asked her.

"Echo," she said.

When she made it to the middle area, he pointed at where he wanted her to stand. "Echo and I will show you some defensive moves you can use in case someone attacks you." 

Here we go again with the defensive. Did this school actually teach necromancy, or were they teaching us how to fight in a war?

He aimed his thunderstorm gaze at Echo. "Attack."

She shrugged, then she ran at him with her fist raised, her lips peeled back in a snarl. Her cloak billowed behind her, making her double in size and look twice as threatening. He grabbed her fist with both hands and wrenched it down, but she came at him with her other one. Maybe this girl had some rage issues too. Whatever her deal, I definitely wanted her in my corner.

Before her fist could connect, he hooked his arm into her elbow, stepped into her at an angle so one of his feet was behind her, and shoved her backward to trip her over his foot. Except he didn't trip her. He grabbed her by the arms before she went down.

"You're good. Where'd you learn to fight?" Ramsey asked, making sure she had her balance before he stepped back.

Echo puffed the stray hairs out of her face. "Childhood, basically. I grew up with five brothers."

"Think you can block?"

She smirked. "I never block."

He tipped up his chin in acknowledgement, the action as arrogant as his stupid arched eyebrow. "Humor me. You might need to block someday." 

"I doubt it."

"Echo's going to block using the same techniques I just did," he announced to the class, his tone light but final at the same time.

He started to turn away, but then launched himself at her.

She didn't even flinch, just widened her stance. He raised his fist, and she grabbed it from the air and dragged it downward. He swung up with his other hand, and she stepped into him to try and trip him. He spun away just in time. Neither of them appeared winded, but I was, my breaths snagging with frustration. Ramsey could fight, could defend himself against oncoming attacks.

Against me.

Things had just gotten ten times harder.

"When you see a fist coming at you,” he said to the class, “grab it with both hands and pull it down. Your attacker won't see that coming, and they’ll hesitate. You’ll feel it. That’s when you counterattack."

Someone near the front raised their hand. "Um, but now they will see that coming since you told everyone."

Ramsey leveled the freshman with a smug smile. "Not everyone. Just the underclassmen who think they're so smart." He looked out at the rest of us. "Pair up. I want you practicing without the intent to actually strike your opponent or lay them flat on the mats. Understood? This will all be on your semester exam."

Shit. I still had my dagger in my boot. One wrong move and it could fall out in front of everyone, including him. The last thing I wanted to do was reveal my murder weapon before I had the chance to use it.

I flicked my gaze across the students near me and zeroed in on a girl a lot smaller than me one row ahead. She looked like she could fall over at any second if someone sneezed. I rose with the other freshmen and elbowed my way toward her.

"Hey," I said, putting my hand on her shoulder. "Let's be partners."

She nodded, staring up at me with the blackest eyes I'd ever seen. She had long black hair that skimmed her waist with short blunt cut bangs, and was held back from her face with a black scarf and what looked an awful lot like human teeth sewn into it.

Oh yeah. Those were definitely teeth.

We found an empty space on the mats, as far away from Ramsey as we could get, and I let her go first. She thrust her small fist into my face with the force of a lazy breeze, but I caught it in both my hands and forced it down. Her skin was bitter cold, and I wrenched my hands away and shook the sting from them. She didn't say a word as we practiced, and I didn't, either, focusing mostly on keeping my back to Ramsey.

Then he crossed toward us, slowly making his rounds to watch everyone. I stiffened. I couldn't help it as I followed his movement from my periphery. The black-eyed girl's gaze ticked back and forth between us, and then she shifted closer to me, as if she could somehow hear my flesh slink up my bones to get away from him.

"I see the bubonic plague hasn't slowed you down much," he said, stopping a little way from us with his arms crossed.

I bowed my head deeper into my hood, hating the smoothness to his voice, how it sounded as though he didn't have a care in all of Amaria. The weight of the dagger hugged my ankle. A tremble ripped through me at how badly I wanted to grab it and lunge at his throat. Rage unfurled inside me, searing and blistering everything in its path. Blurry red splotches edged into my vision, and my hands were so tightly fisted that my fingernails cut into my palms.

"Hello?" he said.

I could end this. Right now. Screw the witnesses.

Someone cried out on the other side of the gym.

"I said no contact," Ramsey snapped and marched across the room.

Something soft tucked its way into my fist. A tissue, I realized. A tissue for the hot tears pouring down my face. I hadn't even realized I'd been crying. After I dabbed some of them away, I saw my partner standing in front of me. I followed her gaze to the freshman across the room who sported a bloody nose.

"Was…was that you?" I asked her, pointing to the bloodied student.

She didn't say a word.

Regardless, I needed to somehow rein in my feelings while around Ramsey, try to act naturally. I thought I would be able to remove myself from the loss of my brother and seeing Ramsey again in order to get revenge, but I'd been wrong. That wouldn't stop me, though. It would just mean I'd need to go about this a different way. I'd have to stop pretending I could be a cold-blooded killer and instead let my emotions fester until I blew. Like they almost had seconds ago. But somewhere else while alone, somewhere empty where I could sneak up behind him.

Obviously not in front of witnesses. Geez, what had I been thinking?

"That's it for today, everyone," he ordered, his voice tense as he watched the student with the bloody nose run out the door. "Go eat."

"Thank you," I told the girl with the teeth.

Her black eyes shone like beetle wings, and she turned on her heel to join the others for lunch.

In the Gathering Room, I looked for her as I rolled Seph's coins onto the table, but I didn't see her. I quickly piled mini loaves of golden bread topped with seeds and grains onto two plates, along with sliced meats and cheeses, pickled eggs, orange cubes that looked like some sort of melon, and chocolate cookies about the size of my head.

As I turned to go back to the dorm, someone at the senior table sprinted out the double doors, his face an ugly shade of green. Poison? I was beginning to count myself luckier and luckier I'd befriended Seph.

She was asleep, though, when I got to our room, so I cast her poison-detection spell and then dug into my lunch while sitting at my desk. The rest of the afternoon was terribly boring with more defensive lessons in almost every single class. Psychic protection in Divination class, where the safety equipment was in Undead Botany, and in Latin class…well, it had made me long for white magic, which didn’t require speaking a dead, dark language.

After classes, I went to check on Seph. Still asleep, though she had picked at her lunch. Feeling like a rotten thief, I took two more coins from her second drawer and then went to dinner with every intention of grabbing her a plate.

When I got to the Gathering Room, loud shrieks erupted from the sophomore table.

“They’re alive,” someone shouted. “What do we do?”

I sucked in a breath as I stared. The chicken legs and wings we were having for dinner had come alive on their table. Someone had tied several pairs of legs together, attached wings to the backs, and given each of the birds apple heads. The things moved jerkily, twitching all over the table in fast motion. The entirety of the sophomore table fled the room, attempting to look innocent. Those at the surrounding tables dove out of the way, some yelping, others laughing their heads off. 

A few professors at the head table muttered a few words, and the chickens dropped dead again.

“Honestly," Echo said to the black-eyed girl from P.P.E. on their way out, "with chicken on the menu at Necromancer Academy, it sure seems obvious this would happen."

She was right. The chefs were surely having fun with us.

"To your dorms. Everyone," Professor Lipskin shouted angrily, his bald head shining in the torchlight. He was even balder than Seph. “If there’s one thing I hate, it’s insufferable students who ruin a perfectly nice meal.”

He was my Undead Botany professor, and he'd lectured about all the other things he hated this afternoon before launching into safety equipment. The sounds of breathing, smiles, sparkly things, and movement of any kind, he'd said. "If I see or hear any of those, I will make sure you never do it again." So, we'd pretty much held our breaths the rest of class and didn't even blink. Fun times, especially for a whole hour.

Grumbling, all the students began to file out of the Gathering Room. I quickly paid the table and then loaded two plates before I followed after them, and wouldn’t you know, I ended up right behind Ramsey. He was surrounded on both sides by his group of friends, both girls and guys.

I needed to know if he’d be alone soon. Juggling my two plates, I fished inside my pocket. The dead man’s hand was spread wide. And I still had my dagger. A dark spark lit inside me.

I wanted to know where his room was, who his roommate was, needed to know how many steps it took him to get there as well as his entire day's schedule to find the one second when he’d be alone.

Hopefully it would be tonight.

Hanging back a little in the entryway, I watched him as he climbed up the male stairs while I looked for somewhere to hide my two plates of food. There, behind the staircase, a perfect place beyond the reach of the flickering torches. After I set the plates down, I pressed myself into the shadows between the torches.

I reached into my pocket, gripped the dead man’s hand, and whispered, “Umbra deambulatio.”

The dead murderer’s hand led me into the shadows, and the shadows absorbed me into them. This was a powerful invisibility spell, but it wasn't just speaking the words and becoming a shadow-walker. This was big magic, dark magic, and few could even get through speaking the words themselves. It had taken a lot of practice, and I’d had to make some sacrifices. One being the dead man’s hand in my pocket I’d dug up and lobbed off myself after finding the deadest, darkest murderer I could find in one of Maraday’s cemeteries. And two being my natural white-blonde hair, which had been too shimmery to become a shadow, hence the coal dye I now used.

Shadows clung to darkness, which seemed obvious in the literal sense, but it was also true in the figurative sense. The shadows took some of my essence to darken them around me. The essence I gave to the shadows I would never get back, and it could weaken me the longer I did it. But perhaps the biggest drawback was that the essence I gave was my light, the good in me, the part inside me that had earned me a spot at White Magic Academy. The reason why I got this spell to work—I think, anyway—was my volatile rage, always simmering, always fueled by my need for revenge after Leo’s murder. It had almost eclipsed my light and colored my magic gray.

I slunk from shadow to shadow, passing easily by students on my way to the staircase. Then, as quick as a murder, I crept up the stairs after Ramsey. 

He and his friends climbed higher and higher to the fourth floor.

"Diabolicals tomorrow," one of them said, his voice low. "We need to do something about Professor Wadluck."

The others nodded, seeming to know exactly what all that meant. Professor Wadluck was missing, so did that mean they knew where he was? Because they'd put him there, or another, less ominous reason?

One of the guys opened the door to their wing, and the rest followed him through. 

"Oh shit, I forgot something," Ramsey announced. "Be right back."

He turned and came down the steps toward me, his hand fishing through a pocket in his cloak. Where could he be off to all by himself after dinner? Trying to get in a little murder before bedtime?

Was he going after Seph? Whatever he’d done earlier had made her faint, after all.

He cast his gaze across the empty darkness of the entryway below toward the women's staircase. 

Even as a shadow, my heartbeat banged a warning between my ears. Absolutely no way I'd let him get that far. This was it. Time to end him as soon as he passed by me, and I'd be at his back. The staircase was otherwise deserted.

I peeled myself away from the shadows slightly, edging out onto the steps in front of him where he wasn't even looking. Readying myself to turn corporeal, grab my dagger, and pounce.

At the last second, he took his hand from his pocket and flung the contents at me. The shadows dripped off of me instantly, turning me corporeal once again. He slammed his forearm against my chest and crushed me against the wall hard enough to flip my hood back. Cold steel pressed against my throat.

A knife.

He had a knife.

And he wore the exact same menacing grin as he had when he'd stood over my dead brother.