Chapter Thirteen

"Came back? Did he…is that your blood?" I swept my gaze over Ramsey, but I didn't see any wounds.

"It's his. He was stabbed. The dampener affected the academy’s healer—"

"So, you need my help.”

"Yes." He glanced at Seph, still asleep, and Nebbles, who swished her tail and glared at us. "We need to go right now. It’s bad. Really bad."

I studied him carefully, reading every inch of his pinched lips, the tightened corners of his eyes, the worry etched deeply across his forehead. And I believed him. This wasn't a trick. This was really Ramsey in need of my help.

“But I can’t leave Seph. There’s no way.”

“I brought five Diabolicals with me. They’ll stand guard.”

I looked to Seph, still sound asleep, and I couldn’t leave her. Not tonight. Not after the vision I’d had during the séance. Yet the natural healer in me was screaming to run and help the professor. I could save a life and be back in here before Nebbles fell asleep on Seph’s head again.

“Solve fasciculos.” The knot unwound from around my ankle. I shot toward Seph, frantically scooping up the rope that had bound me to her along the way. After I tied her to her bed, I whispered, “Colligationem.”

The knots became unbreakable.

"One minute and I’ll be right back.” I knelt to kiss her on the forehead, and despite Nebbles’s look of fury, kissed hers too. "Watch her, Nebbles. I'm counting on you."

She hissed as I shoved my feet into my boots. I shut the door behind me, then quickly scrawled a protection symbol on the wood. As Ramsey had said, five Diabolicals stood out in the hall, their gazes trained everywhere but on me in my nightgown. It revealed quite a bit of my chest, and because the visiting mages had made the academy warm again, I didn’t care enough to go grab my cloak.

“Guard her with your lives,” I said, jabbing my finger at the Diabolicals. “And no funny business.”

Ramsey turned from halfway down the hall already. “You can trust them, Dawn. Hurry.”

When I caught up with him, I asked, “Stabbed by who?”

“He’s in no condition to say. He stumbled up to the gate in the blizzard, and the mages standing guard there found him and recognized him. I was headed back from stone duty when they brought him inside.” Ramsey glanced down at himself and winced as if only now realizing he was covered in blood. As we rushed down the hallway, he peeled off his shirt, wiped himself down with it, then tossed it to the floor.

“It’s an awfully big coincidence he shows up tonight.”

“I know, but he’s a professor. We couldn’t just leave him out there to bleed to death in the cold.”

We glanced at each other, noting our states of undress with a slide of our eyes, and then quickly looked away. Now wasn’t the time for modesty.

We took to the stairs, and down in the entryway, tension thrummed as tightly as a turned screw. The headmistress stood inside the closed and locked front doors. Her brunette hair, usually swept up on her head, fell around her cloaked shoulders in frizzy waves. Her lips were all but invisible as she spoke to several professors, who then scattered off in different directions. To find the person who’d stabbed Professor Wadluck? I didn’t know.

I caught the headmistress’s eye as we passed, and she gave a nod, her expression softening some.

“Please help him, Dawn. He’s beloved by many,” she said. 

"I will." But I still couldn't really believe this was happening. His return seemed so sudden. So…planned. Like everyone was running around like chickens with their heads cut off as a distraction. And with the skin-walker and shadow-walker likely among them, things could go from bad to worse.

"This doesn't feel right," I muttered to Ramsey.

He nodded, his mouth a firm line as he held the classroom wing door open. "I know."

The infirmary was the first door on the left, and as we walked in, I realized I’d never been in here before. A man with a long scraggly beard and hair lay unconscious on the center table with a plump woman pressing cloths to not just one but several stab wounds across his stomach.

“Oh, thank the gods,” she said when she saw me.

I rushed forward, and she moved the cloths aside. The sight sickened me. I’d never seen so much blood or such brutal wounds.

“I’ll wash up and be back to help you however I can.” She bustled from the room.

I touched my hands to the professor’s chest as Ramsey came around to watch. “Bind thee in health, Protect mind and soul too, Boost vigor and happiness, Make it all renew.” My gray magic spread across his body, and slowly, the deep cuts in his stomach sealed themselves shut.

 With a gust of hard wind, every single torch in the room puffed out. Complete and total darkness pressed in and stifled my next breath.

A loud crash sounded from somewhere in the school, followed by a shriek—that choked off into silence.

My fingers trembling, I snapped, and gray magic erupted in the palm of my hand. It lit the professor and Ramsey, who held tight to the edge of the table. I snapped it to the wall torches.

"What was that?" I asked.

He stared hard at the door, his whole body tense. "I don't know."

More screams echoed, closer than the first. Like whatever was coming was headed right toward us. Toward the gym, which was just down the hall from us. My pulse spiked sharp and high, and goose bumps skipped up the back of my neck.

Ramsey dodged around the table and reached for my free hand. "We need to go."

I took a single step, and that was as far as I made it. Something punctured up into my heel. I sucked in a long breath as the pain registered, fierce and bright, and then crumpled to the floor.

“Dawn!” Ramsey knelt at my side and then reeled back at what my light revealed. Green tendrils snaked underneath my skin up my leg, and I could feel them curling toward my toes. “What in seven hells did you step on?”

Shining my light at the bottom of my boot, a glowing green worm-like thing pulsed. I had no idea what it was, but when I tried to remove my boot, I cried out in pain. Stiffening my spine, I took hold of the worm and yanked. Pain sliced through my foot once again, and I chucked the worm with a loud hiss. It landed with a sickening splat on the floor.

I blinked up at Ramsey as tears started to fall and as blood leaked from my boot. "I should’ve never left her."

His shoulders drooped with agony.

Outside the infirmary, the door to the hallway banged open.

"Run!" someone shouted.

“Heal yourself.” Ramsey surged upward and tore through the infirmary like a graceful tornado while he collected bandages and antiseptics. “Quickly.”

I did and then I did again. The blood kept seeping, and the green tendrils climbed toward my knee, even without the worm. Whatever I’d stepped on was somehow immune from healing, and I’d never seen or felt anything like it. It burned and ached and twisted through my foot and leg muscles.

Footsteps pounded outside the door. Controlled chaos organized by whoever was pulling the strings. Pulling Seph’s strings. The vision of her dripping blood while in our hallway…that hadn’t been my blood. That was Diabolical blood, I’d bet, as they tried to stop her.

She was coming for the stone.

Ramsey dropped down next to me, his face washed of all color while he ripped off my boot and wrapped my foot in bandages.

"She's my roommate, my best friend," I said, my voice cracking. "What if this ends with her…" Like how it had with Leo, but I couldn't even say it. Could hardly stand to think it.

Ramsey took hold of my arms and met my eyes with his stormy ones. "We don’t even know what’s happening out there." He glanced behind him at the door. "Which is why I'm going to check."

"But…I…what if you get…" I wasn’t sure what I was trying to say since all my thoughts were jumbled. All I knew was that I didn't want him to go out there. Not without me. Not at all. Yet at the same time, he needed to go help guard the stone.

"What is this?" He tipped my chin up with his thumb, his gaze searching. "Is this what Dawn Cleohold looks like when's she's worried about me?"

"I…" How to answer that?

"I'm a Diabolical. Protecting the stone and all of Amaria comes first." He grazed his fingers up my cheek and smoothed my hair behind my ear. "But as long as I know you're safe, I will come back for you."

I gazed up at him and shook my head. "Are you broken? I tried to kill you, Ramsey."

"Well, what can I say?" he asked and sighed heavily. "I like a girl with fire and heart who would sooner kill me than giggle at every dumb thing I say."

"I don't giggle."

He threw his hands in the air. "I know that. You challenge me, and you're the most beautiful and real girl I've ever met."

What was he doing? Now was hardly the time for this.

He pointed at Professor Wadluck. "Now watch him. Hold the bandages to your foot. And don't you dare leave this room."

I stared after him as he strode confidently toward the door, and then he whirled back around as if struck by a sudden thought.

“If I’m going to die, then screw it.” His thunderstorm eyes flashed with heat as he stalked closer, knelt by my side, wound his fist into my hair, and claimed my mouth with his.

I gasped at how easily he could turn everything on its head. He kissed me hard and deep, thoroughly scrambling my thoughts. My body wanted to both wrench away and sink closer into the heat from his bare chest. His lips were the right combination of soft and firm, the same as his skin as I trailed my fingers down his muscled arm.

No, not the right combination. Nothing about this was right because I still saw him in my memories over Leo’s body.

I shoved him away from me, my pulse racing much too fast. “You’re broken, Ramsey.”

“Because you broke me.” His victorious grin was there and then gone, his shoulders heaving and his cheeks and chest flushing pink. “You’re going to kill me for that?”

“Yes.”

“Definitely worth it.” Nodding, he hurried out the door and closed it behind him without a glance back.

Gritting my teeth, I flopped onto the floor to catch my breath and think, and not about Ramsey Sullivan. We could never do that again. I couldn’t be with him because my memory wasn’t lying. I could never erase what I saw even if he wasn’t a murderer. That moment in time had shaped and molded me with immovable parts, and it couldn’t be undone.

I squeezed my eyes shut. Now that the king of distractions had left, everything had come flooding back. The worry, the unbelievable pain in my foot. Frustration scraped over my skin. I wanted to help, to do something, but I doubted I’d be able to walk.

Eerie silence pressed in around me. It was too quiet. I should’ve heard breathing other than my own.

I hauled myself back up into a sitting position. Professor Wadluck’s thinning brown hair streamed out around his head on the table. The torchlight and shadows moved over him, but I couldn’t tell if he was doing any moving himself.

"Professor?" I whispered and dragged myself closer, every inch torture on my foot. "Professor Wadluck?"

The flickering light made it near impossible to tell if he was breathing or not, so I hauled myself up, leaning heavily on the table, and placed my hand above his nose and mouth to feel for any puffs of air. Nothing. My heart skipping, I slid my fingers along his blood-covered throat for a pulse. Faint, but there.

While I was still leaning over him, he jerked. A split-second after, something seared into my back. I cried out at the pain, at the sudden gush of warmth. Professor Wadluck's eyes met mine, wild and filled with menace.

Stunned, I tore myself away from him and crumpled to the floor. I clawed at my back where my fingertips brushed a knife's blade.

He'd stabbed me. He'd stabbed me in the back.

He sat up and stood, towering over me. "Make her say it," he shouted, spittle flying from his mouth.

Oh gods. His voice. I knew that voice because I’d heard it before. In the gym with Seph.

I’ve read that some mages who are unconscious, but not coma unconsciousness like mage’s oblivion, have sometimes reported that their spirits have separated from their bodies, Ramsey had said. It’s rare, though, and they’d have to be skilled enough to enter another’s body.

It was him. Professor Wadluck was making Seph sleepwalk.

"Make her say it right now,” he shouted.

Make me say what? What was happening here? Shock numbed my brain and spun it in an endless loop. A professor had stabbed me. Why? Why?

The pain in my back and foot grew excruciating. I scooted away from him, leaving a trail of blood along the floor. My breaths scraped from my lungs loudly, too fast.

I looked around in a blind panic for my options, my hand flailing to get a grip on the knife in my back to pull it out. Finally, I did and dropped it, and it slid across the floor.

Movement outside the door caught my eye. Two, long thin shadows were visible underneath the crack, like someone was standing there. Waiting.

"Seph? Ramsey?" I said, but I couldn't get enough air behind it.

Then a wooden trunk suddenly appeared in front of the door, making me jump. Oh…gods. Maybe not a trunk, but a coffin.

Professor Wadluck stalked toward me, and I tore my gaze away from the coffin and tried to drag myself away faster. My shoulders hit the wall behind me.

His face split with a mad grin. "Say. It."

I shook my head. I had no idea what he wanted me to say, but…sinister awareness raised every hair on my body in alarm. I had to say a healing spell. It might not work for my foot, but it could for my back. Was that what he meant? What would happen if I did? I knew what would happen if I didn't. Blood started to pool around my fingers, and already, unconsciousness crept its dark edges into my head. I would bleed out if I didn't heal myself, and soon.

Professor Wadluck knew this. He crouched down like a wild animal in front of me, ready to spring.

“Bind thee in health," I started, but those weren’t the words that came out of my mouth. Latin. A dark magic spell, as well as a gust of green smoke that tasted so bitter, I gagged. It took several precious seconds for my woozy mind to catch up and replay it.

O mors ego eieci te. Something about death, I was sure of it.

I sucked in ragged breaths and shook my head hard. A scream erupted out of my mouth for Seph, for Ramsey, for whoever stood outside that door.

That was the wrong thing to do.

Professor Wadluck charged at me, brandishing another knife. He stuck the blade to my throat and brought his leering face within inches of mine. "Black magic shall not wake the darkest dead. But guess whose magic is a loophole? Yours with your gray magic, not too black, not too white. A perfect balance ensured by the shadow-walker who kept trying to hurt you just so you’d heal yourself with white magic. Turn that darkness inside of you a teensy bit brighter."

The death charm in my pocket. The attack in the Gathering Room. The shadow-walker hadn’t been trying to kill me, just balance my power out to bring me here.

The professor tapped his head, his insane grin growing impossibly wider. "No one ever thought about the uses of gray magic, did they?" 

"Where have you been?" I blurted and then slapped a hand over my mouth. More Latin and green gas fell out. Liga corpus et animam.

A symbol that hadn’t been there before formed all across the floor and pulsed a deep-orange color. A symbol similar to the one in Vickie’s room, and the exact same one I’d seen in my vision during the séance.

Professor Wadluck nodded, his eyes sparking with madness as he glanced behind him at the coffin. "Better keep going."

No. No, I would not. I looked to the coffin, too, and thought I was going to be sick. Ryze was in there. I’d bet my life on it.

I couldn't say a word, but I couldn’t keep quiet, either, if I wanted to survive this. If his loophole theory was right, it would come down to my life or all of Amaria. I chose Amaria, hands down, except the professor would just choose someone else with gray magic. First Vickie. Then me. Surely there were more of us who balanced on that very thin line.

"Say it now," he shouted into my face. His blade nicked my flesh.

I had no doubt he'd kill me.

Even though I clung to the hope that he was wrong with the same urgency I clung to life, I couldn't let Ryze come back. I refused to be that person who brought on Amaria's downfall. So, let the professor kill me. At least I'd get to see Leo.

The professor must've seen the acceptance on my face, the peace with my decision, because he screamed. Raised his knife over his head for the killing blow.

The door slammed open with enough force to quake the entire room and rattle my bones painfully. Professor Wadluck froze and stared. Instead of the presence standing outside, though, there was nothing, nothing but a cold, dark energy that slithered closer among the shadows and over the coffin. So close I cringed back and turned my head away at the awfulness bearing down on me. The professor stumbled away from it. Wintery air needled into my face as pressure squeezed my head, my jaw, pressing me farther into the wall at my back and making my stab wound scream. Pressing, pressing. A crack sounded, and then more of that bitter green gas wafted from my mouth.

Words poured out, the rest of the spell: Ut benedicat tibi terram hanc iuxta spiritum, Ad te redi vitae theloneo.

No. No.

The professor whirled on the coffin and stared.

I shuddered, overcome with a sudden realization as I gazed down at my palm. Because something else had come out of my mouth too. A tiny round green ball, smaller than the size of a pea. The dampener. It hadn’t affected me, but now it seemed there was a lot more to it than that. It hadn’t affected me so I could do what I’d just done.

Slowly, slowly, I prodded the empty space where a tooth should’ve been with my tongue.

Then, as if with a loud click, everything made sense. And it gutted me to the core.

“Morrissey,” I whispered.

The thing that had been tugging at my memory about the freshmen hallway. The room in the hallway where I’d first seen Seph sleepwalk…The room she’d come out of was Morrissey’s. I hadn’t remembered, never realized that might be important. Until now.

Morrissey had put the dampener inside of me contained within a tooth with a green gas that changed my words.

Jon’s bones had told me the dampener was inside. Inside me.

ME, the person who kept coming to visit Vickie.

“What’s your full name?” I ground out.

The shadows recoiled away from me toward the doorway and coalesced into a human shape. Before the shape could fully form, the shadows seemed to suck it back in like they weren’t willing to let it go. That happened to me, too, as a shadow-walker, slowly becoming more and more immersed in the dark.

But then the shape pulled away from the shadows’ grasp and stared at me with cold beetle-black eyes through a curtain of long black hair decorated with a headband full of teeth.

“Morrissey Effman,” she said, her voice low and dangerous.

A relation of Marjorie Effman, the professor buried in the graveyard who’d filled me with foreboding.

“Why?” I choked out. “Why are you doing this?”

The door slammed on me, on what I’d thought was a great friendship, and then she was gone.

Leaving me alone with a hole in my heart, Professor Wadluck, and the coffin.

The bell around my neck I hadn’t bothered to take off began to ring. The reliving was near.

The professor crept across the pulsing symbol closer to the coffin and wrung his hands.

I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my hands to my ears to block it all out. What had I done? Gods, what had I done?

I had to stop this. Unless something else came pouring out of my mouth when I did a spell, I could kill Ryze. The knife the professor had stabbed me with lay just beyond my fingertips.

Slowly, I opened my eyes, and immediately wished I hadn’t.

Slipping out from the lid of the coffin were long, pale fingers.

Professor Wadluck heaved a shaky breath, started toward the coffin, then seemed to think better of it as he covered his mouth with both hands. His back was turned, his attention riveted.

Now was my chance. I began to crawl toward the knife, inch by painful inch. Moving made the blood gush faster, the pain grow more intense.

The hand gripped the bottom of the coffin’s lid and hefted it upward with a long creak. I expected to smell death like I had Vickie’s dog, but all I smelled was musty age.

I gripped the knife covered in my own blood. Now all I had to do was use it. Using the table the professor had been lying on, I slowly hauled myself to my feet.

At the same time, Ryze rose up out of the coffin. Our gazes locked. Even though I’d never seen him before, I knew it was him. His power radiated out of him in dark waves. His eyes were as black as Morrissey’s, and a long scar ran down his left cheek to his scruffy jaw. Dark brown hair fell to his shoulders. His clothes were an old-fashioned style of fitted black pants and a black shirt with ruffled sleeves and collar. He didn’t look like he’d died and come back. Far from it.

Professor Wadluck threw himself at the base of the coffin and bowed his head to the floor. “Master, we did it.”

“Who’s the girl?” Ryze asked, his voice husky yet smooth, his gaze never leaving mine.

“Dawn,” I spat.

“You have a great dislike for me, Dawn.”

“You killed my brother,” I gritted out.

He held up his hands innocently. “I’ve only just arrived after a thousand-year hiatus. I haven’t killed anyone. Yet.”

“It’s because of you my brother is dead.”

He nodded slowly and then shrugged. “So?”

That was the wrong thing to say to a girl with a knife. I didn’t care who he was. A merciless scream ripped from my mouth as I charged at him, all my pains and wounds forgotten. He laughed, not even trying to defend himself, which only cemented my rage deeper into my soul.

I brought the knife back and plunged it forward, aiming for his heart.

He caught my wrist easily and crushed it with his fingers. The bones ground together in my hand, forcing me to drop the knife, but I refused to cry out, to admit defeat.

“Bow down, little girl,” he snarled, his cruel eyes flashing. “You’re wasting my time when I need to go see about those dragons.”

“I’ll…kill you.” It was a vow I’d take to my grave.

“How many times have I heard that before? And yet, here I am.” My fist still crushed within his, he looked to the professor, who was still bowing low. “Good work, Wadchum.”

“Wadluck,” he corrected.

“Whatever.” With one last dismissive look at me, he said, “Evanescet.”

He disappeared, now set loose upon Amaria because of me. My bell stopped ringing.

I could only guess at what would happen next, but one thing was for sure: 

"Obrigesunt." Sparkling gray light blasted out of my palm and hit the professor.

His next few movements shot loud cracks through the air as he slowly petrified. His skin shriveled closer to his bones, drying out and turning gray as stone. It split here and there from the force of my spell and dripped thin trails of blood to the floor.

I slumped against the table. “Bind thee in health, Protect mind and soul too, Boost vigor and happiness, Make it all renew.”

Nothing happened. I repeated it, and still, nothing. My magic reserves were all dried up, and I’d already lost so much blood. My head spun and shadows edged into the corners of my eyes as I tried to focus across the room. I’d have to staunch the flow in my back myself and then go and find help.

Tell everyone what had happened because of me.

But my body wasn’t cooperating, and I couldn’t even stand. I knocked over several glass bottles and other supplies as I searched for more bandages, and my mind kept teetering on unconsciousness. I feared I might be slipping into mage’s oblivion since I’d used so much magic. Necromancy itself was a huge suck to my reserves, and then to try to survive, I’d kept using my magic. I was drained. I was beyond drained, and mage’s oblivion could last months, unless I was Professor Wadluck apparently. Amaria didn’t have months.

Eventually I dragged myself out the door, limping and holding myself up with the wall.

Distant screams sharpened my awareness and hooked around my heart, tugging me farther down the hallway and away from passing out.

“Seph!” It came out as both a cry and a frustrated growl.

I was too late. She’d already activated the stone if I was already able to bring Ryze back, which meant I’d completely failed her. I hadn’t stayed by her side. I hadn’t protected her even when I’d had a gut feeling that the stone had never stopped whispering to her. Those truths dragged down the inside of my skin with devastatingly sharp barbs.

But was she okay?

When I turned the corner into the gym, the sight struck me hard. It dropped me to my knees and seared itself into the darkest corners of my memory forever. Blood splattered to every corner. Bodies lay in twisted lumps. Close to twenty of them. Diabolicals and other mages who’d tried to guard the stone and failed just like me.

But the worst soared above the gruesome floor above the wide-open red door. Floating high in the air, held by an invisible grip to her lower back, was Seph. She spun slowly, her legs, arms, and head hanging limp. Her white nightgown had turned red with blood, and my rope dangled uselessly from her ankle. And in her hand pulsed the black onyx stone, its dark glow twisting her face tattoo into something monstrous.

Jon’s bones had said she’d find herself ‘up’ in the future. They were right.

Sounds ripped from the back of my throat until they coalesced into one long scream, the sound of my breaking heart.

“Dawn!” a familiar voice shouted from across the gym. Ramsey. He came running.

I had to do something. I had to help Seph and stop Ryze and interrogate Morrissey. Find out who killed my brother and destroy them. I vowed to do it all, and I would not quit. For Seph. For Leo. For all of Amaria.

But my body was buckling. I collapsed to the gym floor.

“No! No, no, stay with me, Dawn!”

Ramsey’s panicked face was the last thing I saw. With one last broken gasp, I slid past unconsciousness and into the inky dark of mage’s oblivion.