by K M Charron
Ainsley noticed how startled Langston looked.
“Did you say Sydney attacked Ainsley?”
This was her chance to take advantage of the situation, to make Langston understand the kind of monster he was dating. But if she did, Langston might never look at Sydney the same way again, and Ainsley couldn’t take that away from him. Not after everything else he’d already lost. “It wasn’t that big of a deal—more of a misunderstanding.”
Justin gawked at her, shocked that she hadn’t tied-off the opportunity presented to her in a nice, little bow.
Langston didn’t press further. He nodded, relief relaxing his features.
Pulling out his phone, Justin said, “It’s 10:45, which means we have fifteen minutes before last check.”
Khourtney beamed. “If magic doesn’t work on her, then we can use my room, and I’ll spell the two of you invisible.” The guys gaped at her. “What?” She feigned offense. “I have my moments.”
As they walked, Ainsley wondered if the shifter would be able to see the guys despite the spell. It wasn’t a middling. And now it had Langston’s and Jake’s magic inside of it. If it siphoned any more, she wasn’t sure they’d be able to beat it. And then a thought occurred to her, “Hey, wait a minute. If Langston’s magic is gone, how can he still see Khourtney? Shouldn’t she be invisible to him now, too?”
They all stopped in their tracks, looking at her in astonishment.
“Let’s deal with that later,” Langston said, but Ainsley couldn’t ignore the hopeful glow in his eyes.
Sydney
Sneaking in and out of the Nest was getting tiresome, but Sydney didn’t trust anyone else to do it. Besides, she was the only one who could talk to Oswald. She peered around the corner and ran down the hall toward his office, praying to the Ancestors that he’d be there.
Her stomach jumped into her throat when she saw his light on. She pushed the door open and called out, “Oswald, you in here?”
Sliding inside, she closed the door behind her. Oswald sat on the sofa, his head lolled to the side, his eyes closed. Heart quickening, Syd crept over to him. His chest didn’t look like it was moving, and his skin seemed paler than usual. Her attention went to the orange tabby curled on his lap.
She stepped closer and called again in a soft tone.
He didn’t move, not even the smallest flicker of the eyelids. Holy crap, is he dead? Goosebumps trailed down her arms and back in a full-body shiver. She’d never seen a dead body before.
A snorting sounded and then a groan as Oswald appeared to have startled himself awake.
“Oh, thank God,” Sydney said, letting out the breath she’d been holding.
“Ms. Lockwood, what are you doing here?” He didn’t wait for an answer as he regained his bearings. “Darn it, I must’ve fallen asleep.” He gently lifted the tabby and placed her on the seat beside him before standing. The cat curled back up and went back to sleep.
“Sorry to disturb you, but I need your help.”
“I assumed as much. It’s not like you visit for social pleasantries.” He turned to collect a few books on the arm of the sofa.
“Maybe I’ll start once we catch the shapeshifter, but for that, I need your help. Do you know where the villagers buried Saskia?”
Oswald stopped cold, his shoulders stiffening before he turned. “Why would you need to know that?” His tone was even and measured.
“The less you know, the better. Please, trust me. I know I’ve said that a lot, but I know what I’m doing now. It’s going to be okay.”
“It’s not safe out there with the shifter, especially for a witch. You must know that.” He narrowed his gaze. “You shouldn’t be out and about on the grounds or in the woods.”
“I promise I’ll be okay, and if we want everyone else in the coven to be okay, then you need to tell me where they buried Saskia.”
He regarded her, and she swore she could see a change in his eyes. “I suspect you’re not doing this alone then.”
Syd shook her head.
“Your mother will have my head.”
“Mother will never know.”
He grunted before hobbling over to his desk. He slid a piece of paper from a folder and grabbed a pen from his drawer. “I suppose I can’t stop you or talk you out of it?” He smiled ruefully.
She shook her head.
He turned back to his paper. “I can only give you the resting spot told through the legend.”
“Thank you, Oswald. Anything helps.”
He began sketching, and she couldn’t help but watch the way his wrinkled and spotted hand glided over the page. He must have been a brilliant artist once.
He didn’t stop the pen when he said, “You’re going to try to raise Saskia’s spirit to talk to her, to learn how she trapped the shifter. Smart, but dangerous.”
Sydney’s stomach lurched as she attempted to convince herself she’d heard him wrong. “What?”
“There’s no point in denying it, Ms. Lockwood. There aren’t many reasons you’d need to know where Saskia is laid to rest.” His eyes didn’t move from the map he was quickly constructing.
Sydney could lie, but what would be the point? He’d see right through it, besides he was her ally. He was drawing her the map, after all. “Yes,” she admitted.
“And you must also know that conjuring a spirit—necromancy of any sort—is strictly forbidden.” His tone was flat; it wasn’t a question.
“It’s the risk we have to take. I need to fix this.” She swallowed hard, keeping her eyes trained on him.
He surveyed his work and finally passed her the paper. “Your secret is safe with me. I’m trusting you, Ms. Lockwood. Don’t make me regret it.”
Sydney practically ran out of the Nest and up the back stairs. She texted the others on the way out and told them to meet her in the spot behind the rowing building. They had a map and, hopefully, a translated spell. This was really happening.
It was just after eleven when everyone arrived, unlatching the dorm doors magically and masking everyone but Ainsley in a temporary invisibility spell. Sydney was pleased to see they looked as eager as she felt. They were making progress—actual steps toward capturing this thing and not just talking about it. Her heart hammered as though she’d raced around campus twenty times.
Langston still had the grimoire clutched in his hands. “Could you interpret everything for the spell?” The last thing she wanted was for him to think she doubted him, but the grimoire was pretty old, and the language might be different than the Latin or Gaelic they studied.
“It was standard, so no problem.” His chest puffed out slightly, and Syd was thankful to see a small glimmer of his old self again. The shifter hadn’t taken everything.
“Um, I helped,” Ainsley said.
Sydney gave her a round of snarky applause.
“Were you able to find where they buried Saskia?” Ava asked wearily. They’d been going non-stop for hours.
Sydney patted her coat pocket. “I have a map. Jax, do you have all the supplies?”
He nodded, and she noted a definite twinkle in his eye. He was going to get to practice actual Black magic and was practically busting at the seams. “We’re ready,” he pronounced.
Justin, in typical brooding fashion, said, “Unless this gets us all killed, or it rips our magic from us. Don’t know about everyone else, but neither sounds fun to me.”
Jax gripped Justin by the shoulders. “Look, I know this is shitty, but we can do this. There are seven of us. We outnumber it. We’ll get the symbols, recreate the room, and lure it there. If the witches did it four-hundred years ago, then we can do it now. Our spells and power have only gotten stronger over the centuries.”
“First of all, there are five of us, not seven,” Khourtney said, appearing as shaken as Justin, “unless Ainsley has secret powers that she’s not telling us about, and,” she turned to Langston momentarily, “no disrespect, but Langston isn’t able to fight right now either.”
/> “None taken, Khourt,” Langston said without emotion. “It’s true. We have to remember it also has my magic and Jake’s. It’s stronger now than it probably ever has been. Don’t underestimate it.”
Syd wasn’t about to allow them to psych themselves out now. “I agree with Jax. We can do this. We’ll be careful.” The memory of attempting to subdue the shifter with Jeremy and three Elder witches gave Sydney pause, but she didn’t dare say anything that would plant any more doubt in anyone’s mind. They had to be smart, and part of being smart meant being extra cautious.
“After we trap this thing, we can get their magic back, right?” Ava asked.
Sydney took a beat, not sure what to say.
Justin leaped in, ever ready to point out the holes in her plan, as if reading her mind. “Assuming it still possesses it somehow,” he noted. “We have no idea how the shifter siphoned it away, but we need to consider all the possibilities. If this thing was already so powerful that it took two of you and three Master witches to get it to back down, imagine what it can do now if it’s able to use the additional magic.”
Syd’s blood pressure rose, her nausea intensified, and it felt like the lining of her stomach was blistering. She didn’t have the option of disbelief—the others were looking to her for guidance. She needed to dig deep and step up, not choke as she did in the testings. There were no do-overs here. “That was before we knew what it was and what it could do. We know what to look for now. We won’t let it get the jump on us.”
Ainsley held up a hand as if she were in class. “Remember when we talked about the shifter being strongest when it’s in mist form?”
“That was your theory, if I recall,” Sydney spat.
Ainsley continued as though Syd hadn’t said anything, “If we attack when it’s in human form, we might stand a better chance.”
“She’s right,” Langston said. “The mist is fast. It swooped in and attacked me before I had any chance to ready myself. If it’s in human form, it might be slower. You might be on more of an equal footing.”
Sydney grunted. Ugh. Why are they even listening to her? “First, we don’t know if the shifter’s supernatural energy is different based on what form it’s in. Second, there is no we, Ainsley. You can’t help; you have no magic.”
Langston gently moved Ainsley out of the way and stood face-to-face with Syd. “I don’t have magic anymore either, but I’m still going to do whatever I can. And so will Ainsley, so just fucking get off her back for once.”
Sydney narrowed her gaze at him; he’d never spoken like that to her before. “The minute she screws up, I’m throwing it in your face.”
“Great,” Jax said, clapping his hands with finality. “Now that we’re all squared away, can we go?”
Syd led them into the forest’s blackness, hoping the shifter didn’t show up. They needed this win. Once they had Saskia’s spells and the symbols, everything would be okay.
Langston turned his phone’s flashlight app on.
Syd grabbed his phone and turned it off. “No, the light might draw the shifter.”
Langston snatched it back. “You have a witch’s superior eyesight. Ainsley and I don’t.”
“Stay close and follow our steps. Your eyes will adjust to the moonlight soon.” Syd forged ahead, not waiting for a rebuttal.
They’d only walked for twenty minutes when Khourtney started complaining. “How much farther is it?” She hated anything active and considered moving from one end of the hot tub to the other a bonafide workout.
Sydney stared at her map. It shouldn’t be too far now. “We go straight until we see a large boulder. After that, we walk until there’s a break in the trees. There should be a fork in the path where we veer right and then a small clearing. Oswald said to look for headstones—large rocks actually. They have names and dates carved into them. Hers should be there somewhere.”
“Wow, this map sounds super accurate,” Justin retorted.
“It’s accurate,” Sydney snapped. She had no idea if it was. Oswald was going on lore passed down through the ages. Neither he nor she knew if any of it was true, if Saskia had ever really existed, or if she was buried in the forest. But they had no choice but to proceed as directed.
Ainsley hadn’t uttered a peep during the entire hike. The middling had to be scared shitless. They all were.
A fork appeared in the path in front of them.
“What's that?” Justin asked in a panicked tone.
Syd stopped short, her breath seizing in her throat. She stiffened, listening. “What?” she asked, doing her best to downplay her own alarm. The trees rustling around them sounded like static in her ears. Then she saw the deer’s carcass. Its black eyes stared out at them, a splattering of fresh blood on its cheek.
“Its chest has been ripped open!” Khourtney cried before covering her eyes and turning away. Syd realized it was the first time Khourt had seen one of the corpses.
To her surprise, Ainsley walked closer, even kneeling next to the eviscerated animal. “All the organs are gone, just like the others.” She put her sleeve over her nose and grabbed a nearby stick, proceeding to lift a flap of skin away from the animal’s chest. Ainsley lowered the skin and tossed the stick aside before standing back up. “I don’t think it’s been dead long. The blood is still wet, and the poor thing still has its eyes, which means the other animals and insects haven’t had a chance to get to it yet.”
“Or something interrupted the shifter before it finished eating,” Jax said. “Like us.”
The thought that it could be close, maybe even watching them, made the fine hairs on the back of Sydney’s neck and arms stand up. She couldn’t help but look over at Langston. His mouth twisted in a near grimace, his fists ready at his sides. She wondered if the others noticed the slight quaking in his legs.
“It was here not long ago,” Ainsley said softly.
“We have to keep going; we’re very close. It won’t be so stupid as to attack all of us,” Sydney said, although it was all bravado and hope.
“Unless it wants me—to finish what it started.” Langston stared down at the corpse.
“It’s not getting anyone,” Jax said, his tone authoritative.
“Come on,” Justin said. “Hanging out around its kill is dangerous. We need to keep moving.”
They trudged on, Syd reminding herself that it wouldn’t be long now. Just a little farther. Her insides fluttered as she scanned the pathway, praying they wouldn’t stumble over anything else. She’d seen enough mutilated animals for ten lifetimes.
She glanced down at her map one last time. “It should be up here, to the right.”
No one spoke. Since finding the deer, there had been no more mention of how tired anyone was. No one asked how much farther they had to walk. Sydney guessed that no one wanted the shifter to hear them.
A row of medium-sized boulders stretched across the ground in front of them. “Those must be the headstones.” Sydney picked up speed, her belly turning over slightly as she got closer. “Quick, everyone check names.”
The only way to see the worn etchings was going to be by using their flashlight apps. Time and the elements had weathered the stones to the point that the writing was indecipherable in places. “Do it as fast as possible, and then turn them off,” Syd directed as she crouched in front of the first headstones. She saw a Michael, a Jonathon, a Mary, and someone with the last name of Pearson, whose first name was unreadable.
She saw Ainsley out of the corner of her eye, bending down and wiping a thin deposit of snow from the front of a broken headstone. “I think I’ve got something,” she called out.
“Of course,” Sydney muttered, “the middling to the rescue again.” But Syd raced over with the others, anyway. Her legs, sluggish from the combination of cold, the long walk, and her exhaustion protested.
“Did you know Saskia’s last name?” Ainsley asked with a bewildered note to her voice. She was kneeling on the snowy ground, her fingers tracing the poorly
etched name. Getting no reply, she turned to face Sydney. “It says Lockwood. Is Saskia your ancestor?” Her voice was equal measures of shock and dismay.
Syd felt the blood drain from her face, and the clearing begin to spin. “Lockwood?” she asked in disbelief. Her intuition felt six pairs of eyes on her at once. She hadn’t known this. Oswald had failed to mention this rather gigantic detail—unless he hadn’t known either.
“What’s going on, Sydney?” Justin asked impatiently. “What’s the deal?”
“I don’t know. Nothing. I mean, I had no idea what her last name was. Oswald just said her name was Saskia.” She crouched down next to Ainsley, getting as close as possible to the tombstone. “Are you sure?” She inspected the letters and saw it illuminated under her flashlight’s beam:
Saskia Lockwood Born 1556 Died 1593
Beloved daughter, wife and mother
Syd dropped further onto the cold, hard ground. Her vision darkened until she saw nothing but a blur.
Langston’s voice came from behind her. “Maybe we should keep checking, look at every stone, just to be sure.”
“Yeah, I bet Saskia was a really popular name back then,” Jax quipped.
“There’s got to be a mistake,” Justin said. “We should keep looking.”
Sydney wheeled around in her seated position, facing him with clenched fists. “Is it so impossible for you to believe that I descend from a powerful witch? My mother is High Priestess if you’ve forgotten. I already come from greatness. This is just more evidence.” The words flew bitter off her tongue.
Sydney knew she sounded like a bitch, full of fear and insecurity, but she was sick of being undermined—especially by Justin. He was supposed to be her best friend, but he’d begun to feel like her adversary.
“Nobody is saying you’re not a great witch, Syd,” Langston said. His words pulled her back. Despite what she’d done to him, he was still protecting her, still making sure she was okay. He squatted down and put his arm around her, rubbing her back in small circular motions.