by Lucia Ashta
Why can’t you do this with the others? Why does it have to be me? As soon as I asked the questions, I felt guilty. It wasn’t that I wanted Nando, Marie, or Walt to go through this instead, it was just that I really wasn’t handling it well. I still haven’t recovered from portaling here, I said with my thoughts, as if Count Vabu wouldn’t know that. My head only just stopped spinning... and this doesn’t feel good.
The count sighed—I think—and said, You’re right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it like this. I’m just... desperate, but that’s no excuse for not stopping to consider that it might bother you.
That’s right. I was firm.
Please forgive me. I forgot myself in my concern for Priscilla. She’s my baby sister, you see, and our parents passed so long ago that I practically raised her. So when I realized she was in grave and immediate danger, I didn’t deliberate; I acted.
He wasn’t trying to convince me anymore. He was simply being remorseful, honest about his intentions. His revelations exposed a vulnerability I suspected he wouldn’t have allowed had he been thinking clearly.
I’ll leave now, he said, and suddenly I was unsettled in a whole new way, beyond having a roommate in my mind.
He started pulling away. I sensed the tendrils that linked his existence to mine unlocking, one by one, lessening his presence.
He was fading. I experienced a relief in pressure in the center of my chest, and I began to relax into my space again, the one that should always be reserved for just me.
What a relief. He was going. I could barely feel him anymore. He’d become little more than a whisper in my mind, as if he himself were a memory.
Despite my palpable relief, my heart betrayed my mind. Before I could properly think, a part of me was crying out, Wait!
He hovered at the edge of my consciousness, an impression with no greater definition than a passing breeze. He wasn’t attempting to reinsert himself; he was still leaving. He was honoring what he’d said he’d do.
I’ll help you, I felt myself say. And even though I still didn’t want to do it, my heart seemed to accept it was the right thing to do. I’ll help you save Priscilla.
There was no going back now.
Chapter 7
Count Vabu’s presence gradually grew, until he manifested himself as strongly as he had before. I was on board with his plan now, although I had to work hard to overcome my instincts, which continued to resist him.
Are you sure you’re all right with doing this?
Now that I’d agreed, he was giving me the out—ironic. No, I’m not all right with this. I’m not even a little bit all right with this.
Then I’ll go.
Wait! No. I was just thinking. I wasn’t trying to speak to you. I huffed. This was confusing. He apparently read my thoughts whether I intended them for him or not.
I decided to be frank. I feel very uncomfortable with all of this, but if it gives you a chance to save your sister, then I’ll persist and overcome my discomfort.
Count Vabu didn’t answer immediately. I assumed he was deliberating, but since I couldn’t see him, I wasn’t sure. Communicating with him while not seeing him was nearly as odd as talking to him with my thoughts.
Finally, he said, Thank you, and I’m sorry.
Hey, it was more than I’d expected.
Suddenly I was in a hurry. Every moment that passed might be Priscilla’s last. Let’s do this now. What do you need from me?
More of what you were already doing. Picture what it was like to be in that dungeon. Don’t pay attention to what everyone was doing, only what the physical place felt like to you.
Fine. I can do that. I was about to relive what it felt like to be at the mercy of someone so unhinged as Miranda, though the idea terrified me.
Before I could hesitate, I dove right in, and I sensed Count Vabu trailing along with me.
There I was again, in the dark, dank, oppressive space. This time I was alone. Nando wasn’t there to keep me safe. Walt and Marie weren’t on my side. But Miranda was. I couldn’t see her yet, but I could feel her, as if her wicked laughter constantly snaked out to caress my skin.
The dungeon was just as wet and cold as before. This time I wasn’t bound to a supporting column, but it didn’t matter. I felt helpless, certain that I wouldn’t have enough strength or magic to fight back.
That’s when I sensed a surge of foreign support, and I realized it was Vabu. He must have felt my fear and offered some of his courage. Good, I needed it.
The space was so dark that it took a long time to begin making out the details. The smell of mildew filled the air. The moisture was so thick in the dirt walls that it condensed along their surface. The sound of a train echoed far away.
I realized these were more specific details than I’d noticed before. I guess a part of my mind had been registering facts while the rest of me freaked out about our fate.
Keep going, Vabu said, but his voice was faint in my mind, sounding out in the back somewhere.
Keep going, I encouraged myself. The room was cold, though there was a current of heat coming from somewhere—the house above the dungeon maybe. It wafted across my face at complete odds with the cold of the dungeon that raised goose pimples on my arms and threatened to make me shiver.
My feet settled on uneven ground. The floor was hard-packed dirt, but rough. Then came the sound of metal tools clanking from the floor above me, and thin rays of light, no greater than slivers, shining through cracks at the edges of the dungeon’s ceiling.
I didn’t think this minutia would help Count Vabu, but I was stuck remembering, perceiving everything, more than I wanted to.
I heard another sound, not the clinking of metal on metal, but... wood on metal. Yes, that’s what it was. Maybe it was Miranda stirring her potion in a cauldron with a wooden spoon. A pronounced shiver ran through my body.
A caustic scent, like singed hair, tickled at my nostrils. The potion, it had to be. Well, no, really it doesn’t have to be that. With a wicked sorceress, it could be anything. But it seemed like the potion she meant to take out the Magical Arts Academy with.
There was more to the smell, though I couldn’t decipher its components. Burnt fabric? Charred... something? Oh. Oh no. Burnt flesh... of some sort.
Terrified that this Miranda might be crazy enough to burn Priscilla, I knocked aside the smells and sensations that ran across my skin. I needed something bigger, something more significant, whatever it was that would allow Count Vabu to follow the trail.
Frantic, taking shallow breaths to avoid the smell of burnt flesh, I turned my head every which way, scouring for clues I might have missed the first time around. But there was just dark, icky dungeon everywhere I looked.
Just break it down, piece by piece, Count Vabu said. There’ll be something.
All right. I could do this. I had to do this.
I breathed in deeply to settle myself. Then I looked around again, honing every one of my senses. I picked up the sound of trickling water, so far away that I shouldn’t be able to hear it. But it was as if I could feel the water, almost as if I were flowing along with it.
The sensations were so foreign that I wanted to pull away from them, but the memory of Priscilla’s haunted face, when she realized she’d have to remain behind alone to face Miranda, pushed me forward.
I floated along the water like a leaf, shed from a tree above and swept away by the current. I bobbed around rocks in the water and continued my lazy progress.
Then I passed a town. It was small but populated, and the lamps were just coming on in anticipation of twilight.
A light illuminated a wooden placard at the entry point of town. And a single word was burned into the sign.
Timout. Mordecai had gone there when he’d left to recruit Marie and Walt, hadn’t he? Was that where he’d said he’d seen signs of Albacus? He’d never shared the story with Nando or me.
Whatever the connection to Mordecai, one thing was clear. Miranda’s dungeon
was just beyond the boundaries of this village Timout.
Now Count Vabu could find it.
Chapter 8
Count Vabu was in a hurry now. I sensed him already partially disengaging, with the proverbial foot out the door. The name of the village and my memories, combined with his own magical skills, would be enough for him to locate his sister. With a great amount of luck, he’d arrive in time to save her life.
But that was all on him. I’d done what he’d expected of me, and now I was free to return to the comfort and relative safety of the chaise lounge in the parlor of the Acquaine estate.
My snapping nerves began to relax in anticipation of returning to my brother. He’d watch out for me while I rested, when I finally gave in to the aftermath of the amount of energy—and magic!—I’d expended to deliver us from Miranda’s dungeon to safety.
I nearly sighed in relief. My job was over. I’d achieved portal magic, something I would have sworn I wasn’t capable of. There was no denying I’d done it now, and it suggested great things about my potential. I’d learn magic and become a true part of this team of magicians pledging their lives and honor to resist the destructive aims of the Sorcerers for Magical Supremacy.
But... not now. I didn’t have to do a single other thing right now.
Good luck, I whispered to Count Vabu, who was still disengaging from my mind.
The sense of thousands of little spiders latched to my mind diminished by the second.
Thank you, Isa. I’ll never forget what you did for Priscilla.
This was a softer side of the vampire, one I hadn’t seen before. Outside of my mind, he was all square shoulders, perfect posture, and trim lines.
He started to fade completely. I began to pull in deep, filling breaths, knowing my body was finally all mine again. Ahh. My thoughts are all my own.
Count Vabu disconnected the last strand that held me to him.
That’s it, I thought.
But it turned out not to be that way at all.
I didn’t even panic for the first several seconds because I didn’t comprehend what was happening. I was steady in my own body, in my own mind... and next I was swirling as if I were stuck at the bottom of an emptying drain.
I couldn’t tell if my body was moving, or just my mind, but I was definitely moving. And I didn’t want to.
Vabu! I garbled.
But no reply arrived. The irony hit me hard. I’d wanted nothing but to be free of him. Now that I was, I desperately wanted him back.
What’s going on? Vabu! I whisper shouted through my thoughts, just in case.
Again there was no answer. He was truly gone.
I swirled, and bit down on my bottom lip—hard—to do something—anything—to keep the swell of nausea at bay. Really, how much of this kind of thing could a girl be expected to endure in one day? The magicians at the academy had more or less warned me of the dangers the SMS posed. But this? Danger from the inside? Feelings within myself that I couldn’t control? They’d never warned me of any of this, and this was more terrifying than any external threat.
Ugh. My head spun, but even as it did, I realized I hadn’t let go of the impressions of Miranda’s basement. As my world spun, images popped in and out of my awareness. The plain, damp walls, mired in darkness. The slivers of light sifting in from the floor above, flashing here and there as everything within me moved.
The tinkering sounds from above. The wooden spoon against the cauldron. The hoot of a faraway train.
And that sign, the one that said Timout, spun in and out of view.
There was no more distinguished vampire with the dark eyes. There was no more rescue mission. Only that blasted sign and the urge to vomit or pass out or some horrific mixture of the two.
I wanted it all to stop with such great desperation that I latched onto the only thing I could in the moment. Had I possessed the wherewithal to actually think, I would have pictured the Magical Arts Academy.
But I didn’t. I reached out with the tendrils of my mind and held onto that sign as if my sanity depended on it. The burnt, bold letters that spelled out Timout swung wildly in my grip, as if they had a life of their own and were trying to break free.
I tightened my hold on the sign, to the town, to the one real thing that might bring an end to this overwhelming feeling.
It vibrated in my grasp. The letters shivered, making me even dizzier just looking at them. I still didn’t let go.
I held on tighter, and let go of any thought of the Acquaine estate, the parlor with its comfortable chaise lounge, and my brother waiting for me next to it.
I released everything but the thought of that one destination, the one I’d never seen with my own eyes, only through... what? I didn’t even know. I’d followed a flowing body of water from Miranda’s dungeon to this town. My physical body had never been there, but I was seeing it as if I were physically standing there, hugging the placard to death.
None of it made any sense. Count? I tried again, my call for him little more than a whimper.
He was gone. I was all on my own, with no idea how to get out of there. It seemed that my choices were to return to Miranda’s dungeon or to this town.
My choice was obvious. I’d have to figure out the rest once I got there.
I merged my thoughts with that one image most salient in my mind. Timout. Timout, I chanted. I want to go to Timout.
With zero understanding of what I was doing, or how I was doing it, I simultaneously let go of my real world and latched on to the imaginary one—without chanting a spell.
As fast as a blink, I tumbled into the wooden placard. Ow. I crashed into the sign, banging my forehead and elbow against it.
I rubbed at them. Timout was very real, and I was in it.
Oh boy.
Chapter 9
Night was coming. That realization alone brought with it a rush of fresh panic. I was in Timout, and not a single person who’d want to help me was aware of it.
Was my body still in that parlor? No, I didn’t think so. This felt too real... but then again, so did nightmares, and this most definitely was like one of those.
I looked all around me. There was no one nearby, and for that I was so grateful that an audible whoosh of relief left my lips.
I was able to make out the sounds of people farther into the town—muted conversations and the usual kind of scuffling.
My options were clear. I could move farther into the town and ask for assistance, or I could walk the path along the waterway until I found Count Vabu. If he came here too, which I considered very likely, then he wouldn’t be that far ahead of me. He’d only left my consciousness at most a couple of minutes before I... uh, what? Portaled here? No, this was very different from the portal I’d created in Miranda’s dungeon. For one, there were no swirling, flashing lights, no muttered spell. But what else could it be?
Vabu would likely be close, but he’d be heading toward Miranda. No matter, surely he’d portal me back to the school before rescuing his sister. He’d understand that I needed to get back immediately, before I terrified myself any more with the random things I was doing.
Never had I wanted to learn magic as much as I did then—anything to understand what the heck was going on with me, and how on earth I could have been in Acquaine one moment, and in Timout the next.
I stared into the heart of the town. It looked relatively small, and though lights were starting to flash on across the little village, it was difficult to tell whether it was safe for me or not.
Uncle was fond of telling stories of bandits and swindlers and every other kind of lowlife scoundrel, as he’d call them. I was a young girl, on my own. The residents of Timout might be lovely, but it was unlikely that all of them were. It was possible I’d run right into the rotten apples. No one would know where I was or what had happened to me.
It’s too risky. Travel as an unescorted young woman was too dangerous, I’d decided. I turned my back on the town, squeezed the placard for good luck,
and started out in the direction I hoped my supposed protector had traveled.
My first thought was to find the water that had guided me to the town in the first place. It connected Miranda’s place with Timout, and it was the route a logical man like Vabu would take, especially since I’d given him little more to go on.
But as I put distance between the town and me, I didn’t see the water. I didn’t even hear it.
You can do this, Isa. I forced myself to relax. Freaking out about how very alone I was and how crazy impossible my circumstances were would achieve nothing good. You found the water before, all you have to do is find it again.
All right. I would do this. I stopped moving entirely and closed my eyes. I unclenched my fists and my shoulders and focused on the breaths I pulled through my nose and moved deep into my stomach.
Then I listened. I really listened, just as I had when I was in my memories, able to notice things beyond my average awareness.
At first I observed nothing except for the rustling of leaves and the fast beating of my heart. But before long, I heard it: the trickling sound of flowing water.
I squealed in my excitement, popped open my eyes, and walked toward the water as quickly as I could in the fading light over unknown territory.
The water would guide me to the academy’s protector, I just knew it. He’d get me back home, which I realized with a start was exactly what I was starting to consider the academy.
I tripped over a tree root, but kept going. I wouldn’t be discouraged. The vampire couldn’t be too far ahead. “Count Vabu?” I called out, confident now that the villagers wouldn’t hear me. “Are you here?”
The water wasn’t far away. Its rushing was growing louder.
“Count Vabu? Can you hear me?”
The dusk took hold of my surroundings. I had to work to keep fear at bay. I’d long understood fear only made things worse, and it certainly wouldn’t help me in this situation.