by K M Charron
Sydney’s blood ran cold. Before all this, she’d never heard of supernatural creatures that couldn’t die. Even ghosts could be terminated in a way, at least so they couldn’t interact on the human plane any longer.
“They dragged the shifter, in Saskia’s likeness, to the entrance of the room. Fighting, it grabbed a man who had come to the coven’s aid. Unfortunately, the shifter would not break its grip on the middling, so Saskia was forced to lock him inside with the entity.”
Sydney covered her mouth in horror. Her mind went back to the darkened room and the bones on the ground. That was why a skeleton remained.
“The villagers were not satisfied with simply locking the entity away. They didn’t understand that the binding was strong enough to keep them safe from what they were sure was a demon. They were terrified, never having witnessed anything like that before. The villagers discussed other ways to kill it and planned on returning the next day. Saskia knew the entity was too strong and that all the villagers would succeed in doing would be releasing it upon opening the door. She’d never witnessed that creature’s level of power and dark magic before and couldn’t allow the villagers to free it. In the dead of night, she snuck down to the room and cast a shrouding spell over the area so that no one, witch or middling, could ever find it again.” Oswald slumped back in the chair. His face had paled noticeably. “I can’t believe the myths are true.”
Sydney had wanted answers. She’d been desperate for them. But now that she was getting them, she didn’t know what to do with the information. Her mind cycled back to the various ways the villagers had tried to destroy it. “So, the false Saskia—the shifter version—couldn’t be killed. I wonder if that’s because the image it takes on isn’t its true form.”
Oswald looked up at her, his face slowly registering what she was saying. “What happened, exactly, when you opened the door?”
“A thick fog swirled out. It made me pass out, and I threw up after I came to.”
“The fog could be—”
“It’s true form,” Sydney interrupted. “That’s why it couldn’t be killed. The human form it takes on is simply a shell to house the mist. The mist is the shifter’s life force. That’s why it can’t be killed, why it had to be locked away. The single skeleton inside belonged to the trapped middling.” Sydney's voice became a whisper, “Saskia was right all along.”
“And now it’s out again.” The old man seemed to age ten years in front of her.
Sydney’s guilt clutched at her throat. She swallowed hard, trying to keep focus. “How long ago did this happen?”
“The stories I heard claimed it was 1633.”
Her breath caught. “So, this immortal shapeshifting entity was bound inside that room for nearly four-hundred years?” Her chest had tightened to the point that she had to stifle a coughing fit. She thought of imposter Max’s dead gaze and her vision spotted, darkness threatening to overtake her. She had no idea what it was capable of or what it planned on doing.
Oswald stood on unsteady legs. “Three-hundred and eighty-six years, to be exact.” He let out a long exhale. “If it were me, I’d want revenge.”
She knew he was right. She’d thought the same thing and felt its truth in every cell.
Oswald’s panicked eyes widened further, the knuckles of his clasped hands turned whiter.
Sydney understood his visceral fear. “It does want revenge,” she stated, “just not on middlings.” Dread surged through her. “It’ll go after witches.”
Chapter 17
Ainsley
Witches and magic were real—like really actually real—and she couldn’t talk about it to anyone. Harper sat feet from her in the caf eating a brownie with no memory that there’d been a murder at the dance or that Darren’s body was God-knows-where. Everyone thought he was out of town and alive. Were his sister and parents playing along with this lie, or had they been Persuaded to believe Darren was fine? Did they think he was off traveling or in an exchange program? Could they be spelled to forget he ever existed? She had no idea how far the coven’s power went or what they could do with it. Her stomach curdled.
How was she supposed to keep facing Harper day in and day out and not let her expression scream that she was keeping secrets? She already worried that her face showed every ounce of guilt when she lied to those she cared about, and now she had the added worry that her roommate might not actually be her roommate. What if the shapeshifter took on Harper’s identity? The crater that was her stomach objected to the idea and hollowed out further.
She swiped her cell open and looked through the Insider and her email, but there was nothing from Justin. She hadn’t expected the others to reach out, certainly not Sydney, but she and Justin seemed to have a real connection. She’d been sure he liked her.
“You’re not even making a dent in your brownie. Are you feeling okay?” Harper asked with concern.
Ainsley looked up at Harper’s doe-like stare and back at her bowl. Her brownie was a hunk of chocolate floating in a melted sea of vanilla. “I, uh, like it like this. I wait for the ice cream to melt, and then I eat it.” Smiling, she scooped a mushy mess onto her spoon and shoved it in her mouth. It was surprisingly good.
“Now, are you going to tell me what you were babbling on about in the gym? You weren’t making much sense.” She tilted her head and pursed her lips. “Is this about Justin? Did things not go well last night, and you just didn’t want to tell me? I mean, I couldn’t find you, and you didn’t answer my texts.”
The sound of Harper’s spoon grating across the bottom of the bowl vibrated through Ainsley’s teeth and into her skull. “I wasn’t babbling, and Justin’s fine. There’s nothing to tell. What about you, did you get to dance with Jax?” she asked, playing dumb. She pushed the guilt aside—figuring out what lies the entire student body had been brain-washed with was important.
“I wish! But I did dance with a few friends from my Women in STEM group and with one of the guys from my calculus class.” She smiled joyfully.
Ainsley didn’t want to take that joy away, but she needed answers. “Did you happen to see Darren last night? I wanted to ask him something, but I couldn’t find him.” She watched Harper’s face and body for any tension or a sign that she’d remembered something, that she knew something was wrong.
Scrunching up her face, Harper asked with a trace of annoyance, “What's with you? Darren wasn’t there last night. He went back home a few days ago. I told you that an hour ago.” She put her spoon down. “Are you sure you’re okay? You’re acting weird.”
Ainsley forced a laugh. “I’m exhausted. I was practically asleep in the gym this morning. Remind me why we were summoned to the gym so early on our day off?”
In a patronizingly slow voice, Harper said, “So Headmistress Chambers could tell us that we raised our goal of twenty thousand dollars for charity. It’s a huge accomplishment, and she wanted to congratulate us.” She beamed before taking a sip of coffee.
“Oh, right.” She fixed her gaze on Harper. "What was the charity again?”
Harper’s smile faded, her eyebrows furrowed, and she seemed to be concentrating. “I can’t remember. How strange! I’m sure it’ll come back to me.”
Ainsley couldn’t believe this was happening, although she supposed it could be a blessing in disguise.
The way Harper had looked in the gym, with no memory of Darren’s death, was still unimaginable. Ainsley had no idea why she was immune to Persuasion, but she was grateful. None of her schoolmates had the slightest inkling that Chambers had messed with their minds or that they couldn’t trust their memories. And that was the least freaky thing that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.
“That brownie was delicious.” Harper pushed her bowl away and wiped her already clean mouth with a paper napkin. “Your turn to talk. You disappeared last night, and I looked everywhere in the gym for you, where’d you go?” And then Harper got that face—the excited and love-struck one. “Did you go off with
Justin?” She perked up, her cheeks round from a huge smile, eyes wide and dreamy. This was a nightmare.
Ainsley hated to keep lying to her. Maybe leaving out some details wasn’t so bad. “I was outside, with him and Sydney.”
Harper slammed her cup on the table, spraying coffee out of the lid opening.
“Shit!” Grabbing a napkin, she wiped up the small pool. “Why would you go anywhere with that viper?”
“Change of heart?” Ainsley teased. “What happened to reveling in Sydney Lockwood’s queen bee status?”
Harper narrowed her eyes. “I never reveled. It was just fascination, with maybe some fear. And don’t change the subject. How did she crash your date, and why did you let her?”
“There was no date,” Ainsley insisted. She needed a convincing lie. “I wasn’t feeling well, so I went out back to get some air, and Justin followed to make sure I was okay. Sydney saw us leave and made it her business to find out what we were doing. She’s made it no secret she doesn’t want me near her friends.”
“She has Langston, why the hell does she need to worry about who Justin hangs out with? Creepy, incestuous freaks,” Harper snarled, reaching for her backpack and retrieving her laptop. Opening it, she began typing, her fingers whizzing across the keyboard. Turning it around, so Ainsley could see the screen, she scrolled through picture after picture. “Look at this. I could show you any of their Instagram accounts because they all look like this. It’s just the six of them, over and over again. There are over twelve-hundred students here, but it’s like they live in a bubble where no one else exists." She paused, “At least it was until you arrived.”
Heat filled Ainsley’s cheeks. Harper thought the clique was accepting her. If only she could tell Harper that there was nothing to be jealous of. “Not quite. Justin and I are friends—well, friendly—but Sydney hates me as much as ever, and the others aren’t exactly fans either.”
“I think you need to be careful. Remember, things with them are never what they seem.”
“Yeah. I’m starting to believe you.”
Chapter 18
Sydney
Sydney decided to use the back way into the Nest. Rounding the corner of the professors’ offices, she caught a slight hint of the now familiar smell. Freezing in place, Syd felt her heart begin to pound and her legs quiver. She forced her body to move closer despite the urge to run in the opposite direction. The rotting smell intensified the nearer she crept, making her stomach fall. Visions of the ravens and Simon waited behind her eyes.
She brought her jacket sleeve up over her nose and mouth. It was late afternoon, the sun blocked by heavy clouds. The treetops blotted out a fair amount of light, but she could see well enough. Scanning the ground, she was careful with each foot placement. The neatly trimmed grass held nothing more than scattered leaves. She kept moving until she reached the forest edge, where the sickening smell intensified. Every muscle fought forward movement. What if it had slaughtered more of the Wildes’ familiars, leaving only their rotting bodies behind?
Sydney was fifteen feet past the tree line, skimming the forest floor for wherever the poor animal was decaying. It didn’t take long for her to find the gutted body of a deer poking partway out of the ferns. Her breath caught, and she buried her nose deeper into her jacket sleeve.
Is the shifter nearby?
She turned in every direction, looking for any sign of it, but she saw nothing except the forest. Calming her mind was a challenge. What if it was watching her? What if this was a trap to lure her out? Her temples throbbed in time with her beating heart, and her legs itched to run. She wanted to scream for help. Oswald’s story played out in her mind, followed by images of the shifter ambushing her, choking her, stabbing her, and taking her physical form.
She fought to remain calm. “No. Do not panic,” she mumbled under her breath. “Get a hold of yourself. You’re a powerful witch, a Lockwood, damn it.” She swiveled her body, checking behind tree trunks and bunches of ferns for the shifter. But if it could look like anyone, how would she know? A bang sounded nearby. Was that the sound of something falling? Someone getting clubbed to death? She wasn’t going to wait around to find out. Syd bolted, running out of the woods at full speed, praying nothing was following her. Her legs were heavy, and she feared they’d give out any second.
The sense that someone was after her took hold. Her intuition was on alert, but she couldn’t bring herself to look back. She pushed her legs harder, stopping only when she was safely through the Nest’s door and at the bottom of the stairs. Collapsing on the bottom step, she closed her eyes and tried to calm her breathing. She couldn’t shake the vision of the deer’s half-eaten remains, the body ripped open at the chest, or its lungs spread like an empty cage. The rancid smell clung to her nose.
“What are you doing?” a voice said.
Putting her best game face on, Sydney gazed up at the concerned expression of her fellow apprentice, Corey Brighton.
“Just taking a second. I went for a little jog and tweaked my ankle.”
“Do you need any help? I can get one of the Lords if you—”
She cut him off, “No, I’m fine. Thanks anyway.” Damn it, why did Corey have to be so nice.
“Really, Syd. It looks like it hurts. Want me to try a healing spell?”
She felt like a monster doing it, but she needed Corey to go away, so she looked him up and down as if judging him. “As if I would ever allow a second rate witch to spell me,” she laughed without humor. She gave him an unfriendly smirk and willed him to walk away.
“Well, now that that’s settled,” he muttered, shaking his head and walking away. “Always nice to see you too, Sydney.”
She released a pent-up breath and stood. The others were supposed to meet her in the Elemental classroom on the south end of the Nest. It had a huge skylight and a state of the art drainage system, so any conjured rain and snow was forced out, protecting the Nest from flooding. It was also wind- and fire-proof.
Pushing the heavy double doors open, she saw her friends chattering away like nothing was wrong. She cleared her throat. “I just found a dead deer in the woods by the back entrance. It didn’t die of natural causes.” She closed her eyes and counted to five. “It’s feeding on bigger prey. It must be getting stronger—and bolder. The carcass is only fifteen feet off campus.”
That broke the party up nicely.
She filled them in on what Oswald had told her about Saskia, Mathias, and the villagers locking a middling inside with it. She relayed that it couldn’t be killed, how long it had been trapped inside that room, and that it wanted revenge on witches. They gathered in a circle, sitting on the floor with stricken looks on their faces.
“There’s got to be a way to kill it,” Ava said. “Maybe their magic wasn’t as strong as ours back then.”
“I hope that’s the case. Oswald seems to think otherwise. I know it’s hard to accept, but we’re not helpless.” Sydney punctuated each word.
“Except that we don’t have near the level of skill or the slightest clue about how to take this thing on,” Khourtney said. She appeared drained. She’d never had the constitution for stress, certainly not the life and death kind. She'd nearly had a full-blown panic attack during last year’s defensive skills test because she was afraid of hurting someone.
“I really don’t want to die before senior year,” Ava quipped. She closed her eyes and sucked in a slow breath. She opened them again, focusing on Sydney’s face. “You’re sure it’s after us? Why is it taking the form of middlings then?”
Justin cleared his throat. “It’s using them to sniff us out. It’s trying to figure out who’s a witch and who's a middling—spying while hiding in plain sight.”
“You’re saying that this thing isn’t interested in hurting middlings? It’s only after witches? It’s looking for revenge?” Khourt pulled her knees into her chest, wrapping her arms around them before continuing, “When I cozied up to Tiana and Max today, they had no idea an
ything was up. No one had mentioned seeing their doubles. I’m telling you, they have no idea that something was walking around with their faces.”
Ava made a show of trying to shake off the heebie-jeebies. “It’s only a matter of time before it finds one of us. Thirty-seven apprentices is a drop in the bucket at a school this size, but, eventually, it will succeed.” Her voice quivered although she tried to hide it. Just like Sydney, she despised showing weakness. It was part of the reason they got on so well.
Khourtney hopped to her feet and began pacing the length of the huge room. “But none of us ever did anything to this shifter. How can it justify coming after us?”
“I don’t think you can reason appropriate revenge with a pissed off supernatural entity that’s been locked away for nearly four-hundred years,” Sydney snapped. “We’re not getting anywhere like this,” she said, throwing her hands in the air.
“Well, let’s hear it then,” Jax demanded. “What’s the plan if you’re so brilliant?”
“Clearly, we need to go to the Elders," Khourtney said. “This is too much for us to take on. My grandmother hadn’t even heard of this thing, and we have no clue how to stop it. I’m sure if we go back to her, she’ll help us—”
“No! We can’t,” Sydney broke in, “not yet. We’ll only get into trouble for not coming forward sooner.” She sighed, exhausted. “I have a plan, but we’ll need to conjure Saskia’s spirit. She knows how to immobilize this thing since she’s locked it up once already. She’s the only one who can help us lure it back to the room or recreate the necessary binding symbols to hold it somewhere else.”
Justin’s face paled, and he wasted no time bowling over the idea. “No. We can’t. We’re forbidden to use that kind of magic, and you know why!”
Jax, ignoring Justin’s bout of conscience, said, “That’s some powerful Black magic. Lucky for us, I’ve been studying like crazy.”