Flynn Nightsider and the Edge of Evil

by Mary Fan

  Someone let the anarchists in? Flynn wondered who at the Academy could possibly be in league with them. But as much as he yearned to know, did Everett have to talk about it now?

  The other person responded, but again, Flynn couldn’t make out any words.

  “How dare you!” Everett evidently didn’t like what that person had said. “I’ll interrogate every member of the faculty, staff, and student body until I find out who the traitor is. I’ll have the Triumvirate send in a damn psychic if I must!”

  A burst of gold light lit the corridor. One of the people outside—probably Everett—must have vanished. Brax once again moved forward, and Flynn grabbed his shoulder.

  Brax shot Flynn an annoyed look and opened his mouth to speak. Flynn pulled a hand across his mouth to say, “zip it!” and then held up two fingers. There’s two of them!

  A heavy sigh floated through the corridor, and then a second burst of light lit the hallway. Whoever it was had also goldlighted away.

  Flynn switched on the flashlight and threw Brax an irritated look. “Now the coast is clear.”

  Brax grimaced. “Shut up.”

  Stepping out into the corridor, Flynn swept the flashlight across the dark stones. A black opening gaped at the end of the hallway—the entrance to the stairwell. Everett’s office was on the top floor. Each step Flynn took toward the doorway sounded thunderous to him, though he did his best to tiptoe. Even if he could quiet his feet, the anxious drumming of his heart would probably give him away. Forget invisibility. He wished he could wrap himself in a cloak of silence.

  Brax followed him into the stairwell. Step by step, they moved upward. Scarcely more than shadow and stone were visible under the faint flashlight. As Flynn neared the top, his nervousness gave way to a sense of excitement that urged him forward. The answers he sought were ahead. He quickened his pace.

  He’d almost reached the top step when Brax grabbed his arm. Footsteps rang through the corridor ahead. Alarmed, Flynn stepped back. His foot missed the stair below, and his whole body teetered. Desperate to regain his balance, he groped for anything to hold on to. His flailing hands found the railing, but as he seized it, the flashlight slipped from his grip. He reached for it half a second too late, and the device smashed onto the stone steps, sending a loud series of clangs echoing against the walls.

  The footsteps stopped. Flynn mentally cursed himself, and sweat beaded his forehead. How could I have been so stupid?

  Without the flashlight, Brax was barely more than a shadow in the darkness, but Flynn could make out enough of a silhouette to tell that his friend had his arms crossed. His stance seemed to say, Nice going, idiot.

  Flynn’s mind whirled. Maybe if he and Brax made a run for it, they could reach their hiding spot before anyone saw their faces.

  Before he could make a move, the footsteps rang out again—heading away. And they were fast. Whoever it was had to be running.

  They’re leaving. He let out a breath, though anxiety kept its iron grip around his heart. Maybe it’s a student here for no good, and I spooked them. Whoever was out there seemed to be as fearful of getting caught as Flynn, since the footsteps faded into the distance.

  Flynn turned to Brax. “That was close.”

  “You think?” Brax shook his head. “C’mon, let’s finish this thing before anything else goes wrong.”

  “Who do you think that was?”

  “Probably some Scholar trying to steal test answers or something.”

  “Yeah, probably.” Flynn exited the stairwell and looked down the hallway. Seeing Everett’s office at the end, he sped toward it. When he arrived at the door, he looked it up and down, straining his eyes in the dark. All he saw was an austere plank of dark wood with “Principal Klaus Everett” engraved on a brass plate. It certainly didn’t look enchanted. Still, its appearance didn’t mean there weren’t dangerous protector spells waiting to turn his skin to stone if he tried opening it. He hoped he wouldn’t find out firsthand what those enchantments actually did.

  He reached into his bag and pulled out Connor’s notebook. This had better work.

  “Here.” Brax handed him the potion vial.

  Flynn uncorked it and poured the glowing green liquid onto the book’s gold cover. He waited, expecting sparks to start shooting out or some similarly spectacular hocus-pocus. Instead, the liquid simply lost its glow as it slid off the cover and splashed onto the ground.

  Flynn looked quizzically at the book. That’s it? He didn’t know enough about magic to check whether the apparent lack of reaction was because the potion had failed or if that was simply how it worked. The only way to find out if he’d succeeded was to try opening the door and let whatever happened happen.

  He gripped the doorknob and twisted. The door swung open, and Flynn braced himself, expecting something bad to happen.

  Nothing.

  Surprised, he looked around the doorframe but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, just… a wooden doorframe. He stepped into the office, but from the lack of magic, he might as well have opened the door to another storage closet.

  “That was… easy,” he muttered uncomfortably.

  “Hey, chill.” Brax followed Flynn into the office. “The plan went as it was supposed to. The door thought you were Connor Salvator and let you open it—simple as that. If something went wrong with the essence-borrowing thing, we would’ve felt it by now.” He sounded as though he was trying to convince himself rather than Flynn.

  Flynn took in his surroundings. Everett’s office had the shape of a large octagon, with shelves covering every wall except the one at the back, where a large window stood with the Academy’s insignia—the letters ASD with a dagger and a wand crossed beneath it—stained across the top. The only light came from a sliver of moon outside, and it was nearly impossible to make out anything but the indistinct outlines of dark objects. Man, I wish I hadn’t broken the flashlight.

  He noticed a flickering light and glanced back. Brax stood near one of the shelves, holding a lit candle. He grabbed another from Everett’s shelf and handed it to Flynn. “Here. And you’ll need this too.”

  Flynn caught the lighter Brax tossed him. “Where’d you get that?”

  “Stole it from one of the potions classrooms. I couldn’t get my hands on a flashlight, and figured it’d be better than nothing if we needed a little illumination.”

  Flynn flicked his thumb over the lighter’s wheel uselessly a few times before getting enough of a grip to strike up a flame. Ignoring Brax’s snickers, he lit the candle. Only then did he realize it was shaped like several dark-blue skulls stacked on top of each other. It occurred to him that the kinds of candles Everett kept were probably intended for more than decorative illumination. For all he knew, he might be summoning spirits from beyond the grave by lighting one.

  If magic were that easy, there’d be no need for the Academy, he reminded himself. It’s just a candle until someone chants something or waves a wand, and I don’t have any magical abilities anyway.

  He glanced around, curious to see what kinds of artifacts the first White Triumvir had bequeathed Everett. Most of the shelves contained little, odd-looking magical devices, like the three stuck-together spheres Everett had used in the auditorium. No glowing crystal balls, no ancient runes—only things that looked more like art projects than mystical items. But nothing that looks like a report. That was the only item in this office that mattered.

  Flynn’s gaze fell on Everett’s desk. Figuring its drawers were as good a place as any to start looking, he approached. “I’ll go through the desk.”

  Brax walked up to a shelf full of thick, leather-bound binders. “I’ll check these out.”

  Flynn set Connor’s notebook down on the desk’s mahogany surface. With only the flickering candle to see by, he opened the top drawer and flipped through its contents. Nothing but budgets and schedules. Frus
trated, he shoved the drawer shut and pulled open the next one.

  More papers greeted him, and as he shuffled through them, the brief snatches of writing he caught indicated that they were personal correspondences with the Triumvirs. He was tempted to pull out a few and read them in case they contained something important—maybe even something about the Lord of the Underworld. But there were so many, and going through them would take more time than he had. Warning himself not to get sidetracked, he swatted away the temptation and kept looking for the report. He had to get it and get out—and fast—before anyone caught them.

  With each piece of paper that turned out not to be the report, his impatience grew. If Everett goldlighted in, they’d be caught red-handed with no way to escape.

  As Flynn reached the end of the papers, his eyes snagged on the word “Firedragon” written several times in the last letter. Seeing that this particular correspondence was from the Gold Triumvir, he wondered why the man who controlled the nation’s law enforcement would care about a Norm girl, even if she had been the Academy’s star Cadet. But that wasn’t what he’d come here to find out, so he closed the drawer and moved on to the last.

  Please be in here. He pulled it open. To his surprise, the words “From the Bureau of Security—Confidential” and the date of the Gold Triumvir’s speech were splashed in black letters across a gray folder sitting on top of the other files. That’s it! He picked it up, scarcely able to believe that he’d actually succeeded.

  “Brax! I got it!” Flynn put his candle on the desk and tore open the folder, gripping it with both hands. The summary on top of the thin stack of papers within the folder described how someone had removed the enchantments from one of the Academy’s gates, allowing members of an anarchist group called the Defiants to enter. A dark-magic-wielding Enchanter named Tydeus Storm had led them.

  Tydeus Storm—so that’s what Low Voice is really called. A feeling of recognition hit Flynn. Where have I heard that name before?

  A memory flashed through his mind, and a realization hit him so hard, he felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. Mom spoke that name once…

  “Say it again,” she’d said when Flynn was about three.

  “Tydeus Storm, Tydeus Storm, Tydeus Storm,” Flynn had repeated.

  “If Mommy doesn’t come home one night, who do you look for?”

  “Tydeus Storm.”

  “If Mommy isn’t around anymore, who’s the only person you should trust?”

  “Tydeus Storm.”

  She’d drummed the name into his memory, only to tell him a few months later that it no longer mattered.

  “If Mommy doesn’t come home one night, I want you to wait until morning, then find the nearest patrolman, understand?” she’d said.

  “But what about Tydeus Storm?”

  “I was wrong about him. Nothing’s going to happen, Flynn, but just in case, I want you to know that the Triumvirate always takes care of its children.”

  “But Mommy, you said—”

  “Mommy was wrong about a lot of things.” She’d spoken with a strange sadness that had struck Flynn as odd even as a little kid. “I’m sorry I confused you. Always think for yourself, Flynn, but follow the rules, or you’ll put yourself in danger. Mommy doesn’t want anything to happen to you.”

  Had failing to follow rules been what got her killed? She’d known a man who led anarchists—been close with him, even, since she’d meant for him to take care of her son if anything happened to her. Had this association somehow led to her death?

  Flynn wracked his mind, trying to recall more, but the memory had taken place so long ago, it might have been lost if that name hadn’t dragged the recollection to the surface. He wished he could remember those moments more clearly, but he only knew the determination with which she’d made him remember the name “Tydeus Storm” and then the strange sorrow that surrounded her when she’d told him to forget it.

  He must have gone rogue after she made me memorize his name, and she had to cut ties with him. But then why would she sneak out to see him again years later? And how did she befriend someone with magic in the first place?

  One thing was certain: the man who’d broken into the Academy was a man his mother had once trusted.

  Flynn flipped to the next page in the folder. A photo of Storm, a square-faced man with a clove complexion that hinted at African lineage, stared up at him with intense black eyes. A wide mouth pressed into a hard grimace beneath a broad nose, and Storm’s shaved head and powerful cheekbones added severity to his expression. Flynn briefly wondered why a Sentinel’s report contained an ordinary photo instead of one of those three-dimensional portraits Enchanters usually used.

  Brax peered over his shoulder. “Who’s that?”

  “Leader of an anarchist group called the Defiants.” Flynn picked up the picture and read Storm’s profile on the page below it. According to the Bureau of Security, Storm had been a respected Sentinel—one who actually fought the supernatural rather than just holding an office of importance—until he’d disappeared twenty years back. He’d been presumed dead but had resurfaced six years later with no memory of what had happened to him or where he had been.

  A year after that, he’d stolen an Eye Stone and broadcast a treasonous message across the Triumvirate, then left and formed the Defiants.

  Flynn wished the profile had more details about this treasonous message and what Storm’s intentions had been. Why would Storm turn against the Triumvirate in the first place? As a Sentinel, he must have had a pretty comfortable life.

  The thought left Flynn’s mind when his gaze fell on the profile’s last paragraph:

  Storm is highly dangerous due to his disregard for the line between proper enchantments and illicit dark magic. He is known to have created and controlled several draugar, including the one that infiltrated the Capital’s perimeter on the 87th Day of Glory.

  Tydeus Storm created the draugr that killed Mom. The thought hit Flynn so hard, it knocked away all the other thoughts. How had he never suspected that before? He crushed the photo in his hand. Tydeus Storm had known Vivian Nightsider, and Tydeus Storm had created the monster that killed her. That couldn’t have been a coincidence.

  “It was him,” Flynn said softly. “Tydeus Storm—he was her friend, but then… he killed her.”

  The pieces to the puzzle came together in his mind. His mom had been no admirer of the Triumvirate, but she would never have agreed with using dark magic to fight the government, which was exactly what Storm and his band of anarchists had done. She must have known what Storm was doing and tried to stop him the night of the 87th Day of Glory. And he’d sent a draugr to kill her.

  Wrath swelled in Flynn’s chest, and his hand shook with rage around the crumpled picture of Storm. He wished it were the real Storm, and he could crush the murderer’s skull in his fist. Like the Lord and all his monsters, practitioners of dark magic drew their power from the Underworld. That made them no better than the supernaturals and just as deadly. Vivian Nightsider had always valued life. All those secretive nighttime missions—she must have been seeking out Storm, trying to stop him from killing anyone, even in the name of fighting the Triumvirate. She’d probably hoped to use her previous friendship with Storm to convince him to abandon his evil ways, but in the end, her determination had gotten her killed.

  Flynn felt a nudge from Brax. “What?”

  “You’ve gotta relax.” Brax creased his brow with concern. “It’s not like this Storm character got away with what he did. The Triumvirate’s all over him, remember? They’ll catch him any day now.”

  “I was in the same room as him… If I’d known, I would’ve—”

  “You would’ve what? That man got past all those patrolmen and Sentinels. What the hell could you have done?”

  That kind of reasoning did little to defuse Flynn’s rage. He felt ready explode. Hat
ing his own helplessness, he flung the crushed photo of Storm at Everett’s desk.

  As soon as he released it, a haze appeared around it and took the form of a full-length three-dimensional portrait of Storm. The balled-up picture caught a spark from one of the skull candles, catching fire midair.

  Suddenly, the candle’s blaze shot upward, forming a wide column of bright flames.

  Startled, Flynn jumped back, dropping the report. He looked around wildly, searching for anything he could use to kill the blaze, which rapidly spread across the desk, catching Connor’s notebook with its fiery fingers. The towering inferno seemed ready to consume the ceiling.

  An explosion flooded his senses with blinding light and a deafening BOOM.

  Chapter 6

  Black-Bagged

  “Brax!” Flynn rushed to his friend’s side, scarcely aware of the shrieking alarm or the thick yellow smoke filling the room.

  Brax lay unconscious amid the charred contents of Everett’s office and the broken glass from the shattered window, red burns splotching his skin.

  Flynn shook him. “Dammit, Brax, wake up!”

  What the hell happened? All he’d done was throw a picture that happened to catch a candle’s flame. How could that have blown up Everett’s whole office?

  Flynn suddenly recalled someone telling him once that a person should never mix different kinds of magic without knowing what he was dealing with. The candle, the picture, the notebook… they were all enchanted, and something about the combination must have caused this disaster.

  “Brax!” Flynn shook Brax again.

  Panic swirled through his head. He’d closed his eyes against the blinding explosion and felt the scorching heat of the flames, and when he’d opened his eyes again, he’d found the office in its current destroyed state with his friend lying unconscious and injured. As far as he could tell, he was all right—no burns or anything. How had he made it through untouched while Brax had been hurt so badly?