A Spell for Shadows: Rosewilde Academy of Magical Arts

by Marie Robinson

  I made my way up from the dining room, to the hallway that connected the freshman and sophomore dorms, checked the sigils that marked each door until I reached mine, and opened the door. Maybe I was lucky this year, and had the room to myself. That would certainly make spending time with the boys a bit—

  The room was dark, but there was someone inside. I could feel it. I slapped at the light switch with one hand, the other already crooked into the first gesture of a defensive spell. “Conteg—uh…” I dropped my casting hand when I saw the slender, pale… boy?... in my room. He sat on the edge of his bed, staring at me. Or through me. He had shaggy black hair that partially covered his eyes and looked like he might not have seen the sun recently.

  “Hi,” he said, his voice monotone. “I’m Pete. I guess I’m your roommate. Sorry.”

  “Uh, no,” I said quickly. “No, it’s fine. I knew it would probably be someone. I’m Amelia.”

  “I know,” he said. “Everyone knows you, I think.”

  I went the rest of the way into the room and closed the door behind me. “I guess that’s fair. You ah… were just sitting here in the dark?”

  “I like the dark,” he said. He hadn’t moved a hair since I turned the light on. I waited for more but… nope, that was it.

  “I don’t think I’ve seen you around,” I said casually as I took a seat on the edge of my bed. “Are you a freshman? I dormed with a sophomore last year; it happens sometimes if the system—”

  “I’m not,” Pete said. “I’m a sophomore. I transferred. From Goldhaven.”

  I frowned. “The… sort of alternative school?”

  He shrugged his thin shoulders and nodded. “My parents made some kind of a deal with the Court. Now I’m here.”

  “Well,” I said hesitantly, unsure whether he thought that was a good thing or not, “welcome to Rosewilde. I’m pretty beat, so…”

  He sighed, and laid back on his bed, his legs still hanging off the edge. “You can turn the light off. Don’t mind me. I don’t… sleep much.”

  I watched him for a little while longer before I gathered my nightclothes and raised a privacy spell between our sides of the room to change. I considered leaving it up even after I turned the light off, and I certainly didn’t have an easy time falling asleep.

  So far this year a student had died, I was on the list of suspects, the man I’d save from the Abyss hated me, the whole school thought I was some kind of disaster about to strike, one of three men I had feelings for seemed to have moved on, and now I had a creepy roommate.

  It wasn’t even day one yet.

  Sophomore year was going to suck.

  Hunter

  “Nathan left before Amelia did,” Lucas said, as soon as Amelia was inside and we could see that she was far enough away from the door she wouldn’t hear us.

  I tore my eyes away and nodded. “I know.”

  “As in, almost right before,” Isaac pressed. “You’ve been with him. Is he… stable? I mean, given the circumstances?”

  I knew what they were both implying, and had to unclench my fists as I reasoned out why they would even think of suggesting it. “He’s got some understandable anxiety issues, and hasn’t laid out everything he saw in the Abyss that he remembers—probably because of the psychic and spiritual trauma—but he’s not murderous if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “We weren’t,” Lucas said quickly, casting a cautionary look at Isaac as he put his hands up. “Just… I didn’t mention it to security. Did you?”

  I shook my head. Isaac did the same.

  “Right,” Lucas breathed. “Maybe we should just… well, I guess it would be better if just Hunter found out what he did after he left. Not to check his story; just to see if he saw anything.”

  “I can ask him,” I said. “But the two most likely explanations are plain. Either Sadie Chapman was messing with stuff she shouldn’t have been, or she was targeted for political reasons. Plenty of people have motive for that.”

  “Any of them would have to have gotten into Rosewilde,” Isaac pointed out. He scanned the dimly lit courtyard briefly. “That would be a task.”

  “Not necessarily.” When they looked at me like I was claiming I could break in if I wanted, I rolled my eyes and waved at the dorm wing. “There are something like eighty new students. They do teach specialized magic at Blackthorne. If someone wanted to sneak in an assassin, they’d just have them accepted as a student and it wouldn’t be that hard if you had the money and connections. How do you think Serena got a spot? The Venturos are loaded.”

  Lucas apparently hadn’t considered that possibility. He rubbed his jaw, staring up at the dorm windows above us. “I guess that’s possible…”

  “But?” I wondered. It was evident that he wasn’t sold.

  He sighed, dropping his gaze to look at me, and then Isaac. “Maybe I’m just being overprotective,” he admitted, “but between the kind of magic they think is involved and the timing… Amelia just got back. If someone wanted to take out Sadie Chapman because of her family, there were much easier places to do that.”

  “Except that students at Rosewilde die all the time,” Isaac said. “There are a million ways magic can kill you, or go wrong and kill someone nearby. You have to admit, it makes for a reasonable cover.”

  “So you think it’s completely coincidental, then.” Lucas snorted, shaking his head slowly. “I’m just not ready to accept that and let my guard down.”

  “No one’s saying they are,” Isaac countered quickly. “And the possibility that it was an assassin, who needed to get suspicion focused on someone else is out there, too. I just think we can’t jump to any conclusions. Not about Nathan, not about… just not about anything. I’ve got a class with Amelia this year. You’ve got a history credit to make up and will be in that class with her.” He gestured at me. “Aren’t you in Percy’s class? Abyssal magic and Outsider Cults?”

  I nodded. “For my evening elective.”

  “Great,” Isaac said. “I’m sure Amelia’s interested, and it can’t be filled up. We can have eyes on her most of the day, and after class make sure we stick close. If it was an assassination, it’ll be one and done and we can all move on and let the big families fuck each other over however they want. If not—we’ll be at hand if something happens.”

  I hated that the ‘something’ that might happen could involve Nathan. I really didn’t think he had anything to do with Sadie Chapman’s death, but whether he might go after Amelia or not… that I was less certain about. More than that, if he really wanted to, I wasn’t positive the three of us and Amelia could keep him from doing it. Nathan was scary smart, and could cast faster than anyone I knew, including most of the faculty.

  “That sounds like a decent plan,” I muttered. I went to the door and pulled it open for the three of us. “I should check on Nathan.”

  Lucas and Isaac went in ahead of me, and I followed them as far as the junction to the sophomore dorms. Part of me wanted to hug them, touch them, let them know I did care about them but… it felt like that would just complicate things more. I was already tangled up between Nathan and Amelia. Four directions? I’d be quartered before the first term was up. We said our goodnights, and they went off to the junior dorm wing as I padded down the sophomore hallway looking for Nathan’s room.

  He’d been given his own space for the year, so there was that. Already, when I approached his door, I could feel the taut silence around it. Nathan didn’t go in for invasions of his privacy. I knocked carefully, just in case he’d gone the extra mile and put wards on his door that had a bite to them. Technically against the rules, but then, Nathan barely ever seemed to acknowledge there were any.

  The door swung open quietly. His light was still on. He was at his desk with a leather bound tome and a notebook. “How was the rest of the party?” He didn’t look up from what he was reading.

  “Not great,” I said. “Sadie Chapman was… found, outside the Cabin. Dead.”

  Now, he
looked up, brow pinched. “By what means?”

  I shrugged as I sank onto the edge of the bed nearest to him. “They aren’t sure yet. Looks… potentially Abyssal. Black ooze around her lips, nose, ears, eyes—”

  “Was Amelia with her before she died?” Nathan asked. “Sadie went after Lucas—and you—with quite a fervor, and The Harbinger is—”

  “Amelia,” I corrected. “And she found her, but she doesn’t have magic like that.”

  “You’re certain?” Nathan wondered. He put his pen down and swiveled in his seat to cross his arms over his chest as he regarded me curiously. “Didn’t she study with Sinclaire for months last year? He had access to that sort of magic. It was his duty to see to it that Amelia served her purpose. She would have needed that kind of magic to summon Az-Harad, or bring me back.”

  I spread my hands. “In that case, you would have needed that kind of magic to get there in the first place. I’ve seen your research, Nathan. We managed to unravel a lot of it.”

  “Fair point,” he conceded. “Except, I didn’t kill Sadie, and that narrows down the list of possible suspects considerably, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Percy is an expert,” I offered. “One of the faculty may have a background. The new Headmistress is an unknown variable.”

  Nathan pursed his lips, nodding. “Yes. All possibilities. And then there’s the other.”

  “Which is?”

  He glanced at the book and closed it, pushing it to the back end of the desk with the spine facing away so that he could rest his elbow there, fingers clasped. He propped one ankle up on his knee, and was pensive for a moment. “When I saw Amelia before,” he said slowly, “at the Cabin… I saw something. Like an aura but more substantial. A shadow that seemed to loom over her. Something alive, but out of phase. I don’t think I would have seen if it I hadn’t spent time in the Abyss, but it was clearly something dark. Something… possibly from that place.”

  “I didn’t see anything,” I said. “Are you sure it isn’t just—”

  “Obviously I’m not sure of anything, Hunter,” he snapped. His jaw muscles flexed as he grit his teeth and briefly closed his eyes. “I’m… I don’t believe it was an artifact of my mental condition. I can’t be certain. I can say that I saw nothing similar in the course of the evening. Not before, not after.”

  He was going to know why I was asking. I braced myself for another outburst as I formed the words and forced myself to ask. I had to, if only for my own peace of mind. “You left in kind of a hurry,” I said softly. “I should have gone with you, seen you back to your room. Were you alright, after you left? What happened?”

  Nathan’s expression smoothed. He narrowed his eyes, but not at me—he seemed to be thinking carefully. “I suspect,” he said finally, “that the effects of Plato’s Prism may have disoriented my recently fragile sense of time and space. If I had given it a moment’s thought, I might have predicted it and avoided my… episode. Once I left the Cabin, though, I… reoriented myself immediately. I came back up to the room to get some privacy and do a bit of light reading, set the room up, establish my privacy spells. I’ll just avoid any spatial distortions in the future.”

  “Sure,” I said. “That sounds good. But you didn’t see anything when you left? Sadie wasn’t… I mean, you didn’t see her body.”

  He looked up from his hands, still totally neutral, his expression betraying no real reaction at all. “Obviously not. I would have summoned security. After I applied my own analysis, of course. Lucas’s brother isn’t the only expert in the field. I’d warrant I know at least as much about the workings of the Abyss as he does.”

  “I know you probably do,” I agreed. Nathan always believed he was the smartest person in the room.

  “Are you asking because you wonder if I killed her myself?” he asked.

  I rubbed my temple. “No, Nathan, of course not. I just wanted to know if you were okay. And if you didn’t see her, it means someone killed her between when you left and when Amelia did.”

  “Provided it wasn’t her,” he said. Casually, as if I’d just forgotten that was a possibility. Anger tried to flare inside me, but I was already getting exhausted of this emotional tug of war I felt between them.

  There was no point trying to convince him she wasn’t a possibility. I didn’t believe it for a second, though. “Sure,” I agreed. “Assuming it wasn’t. That’s not a very big window, which means that—if Amelia didn’t do it—then whoever or whatever did… it was right there when you left. It could have…” I swallowed past the sudden lump.

  Nathan leaned toward me and laid a hand on my knee. “Hunter, I’m fine. And the fact that I am means that however Sadie Chapman died, it was meant for her, not a random person. Right? So, you don’t need to worry about me.”

  Tentatively, I put my hand on his. It lasted three or four seconds. In those couple of heartbeats, I thought this might be the time he finally reached out, pulled me to him, kissed me. Asked me to make love to him. Like we used to. My mind leapt to Amelia and my heart leapt into my throat. I didn’t want to choose between them.

  Instead, he took his hand away and turned slowly back to his notebook. “I’ve got a lot to do before tomorrow,” he said. “A few things I need to get caught up on before classes. I’ll be in Percy Turner’s class. I suppose I’ll have to call him Professor Turner. He’ll enjoy that far too much. I’ll see you in the morning, Hunter.”

  “All right,” I said. I stood, and, though I wasn’t sure he wanted it or that it would mean the same thing to him that it used to, I kissed the top of his head. “Don’t forget to sleep.”

  “I doubt I will,” he said, “but I do think I’ve likely slept enough lately to tide me over for a few years.”

  I left him like that, immersed in his study just like he always used to be. Of course, the last time he spent all his hours buried in books and hiding the spines from us it was before he opened a hole in the world and was dragged through it. Surely, he wouldn’t make the same mistake a second time, but I made a mental note to see if Mara would tell me what book he’d checked out. She might, given the circumstances.

  As I closed his door and felt the privacy spells snap back into place around it, however, I had a more pressing kind of concern.

  It was impossible to say why, or what it meant—Nathan could be utterly inscrutable if he chose—but I knew for certain that when I asked what happened after the Cabin, that sudden flatness in Nathan’s eyes was a clear tell, one I was intimately familiar with.

  Nathan had lied to me.

  Amelia

  Maybe it was the privacy screen I’d erected, or maybe Pete was just particularly sneaky, but either way he was gone when I woke up. That was just as well, but it did make me wonder if he actually didn’t sleep at all the night before. It was only six in the morning.

  Which meant it was the official first day of school.

  I kept seeing Sadie’s body as I went about my morning routine, or at least what would eventually become my morning routine again if I did it long enough. I wrapped myself in a towel, went to the showers, washed up, dried myself off with magic to save time, came back and dressed in the privacy of a room that had no actual evidence in it that anyone shared it with me, and scurried down the hallway to the stairs down to the dining room.

  On the way, I tried not to look too carefully at corners. It’s going to sound crazy, but something told me Sadie wasn’t the last person who was going to die that way. Or, maybe it actually was crazy. Either way, I kept expecting to see someone else. And honestly, I half expected a trail of bodies leading to my own room. Like some cat leaving trophies to get my attention. Why I should think something like that, I had no idea.

  There was a plate already set for me at the sophomore’s table, and at the far end if it I did see my roommate. Pete was sitting by himself, with most of my class from the year before crowded along the other half. I didn’t know much about Goldhaven—only the little that Lucas had told me in passing—but I u
nderstood it was a rough place. I’d failed Sadie, made the tour short and made almost no effort to try and make friends with her. If I had, maybe she wouldn’t have been alone. Maybe the two of us could have fought off whoever attacked her. I guess that, and the fact I was something of a pariah at the moment with the rest of the student body—or at least an object of curiosity that I didn’t particularly like being—was what made me take my plate and walk past the cluster of sophomores at the courtyard pointing end of the table to settle in across from Pete.

  He didn’t look up when I sat down.

  “Did you sleep all right?” I asked.

  Pete shrugged. “Not sure.”

  “I hope I didn’t keep you up,” I offered. “Um… so, what classes do you have?”

  “Magic classes,” he answered. “It’s a school for magic, after all.”

  I took that as my cue that Pete didn’t particularly want to socialize. But I had gone to the trouble of moving all the way down here so I stuck to my guns and ate quickly as I scanned the junior table for the boys.

  “We’re here,” Lucas Whispered, and I caught him and Isaac both smiling at me. Hunter wasn’t with them.

  “Hunter okay?” I Whispered back. After the first term, we could eat together, but Rosewilde had some strange rules at times, and one of them was that members of each class ate together for the first part of school. Supposedly to foster relationships or something. By the time the first term was over, though, everyone would just clump together in their little cliques and tribes, just like any other school.

  Until then, I had to ignore the stares I felt boring into me. I knew how fast news spread at the school. With security all over campus last night, everyone had to know about Sadie.

  “Probably had a rough night,” Lucas answered. “Think he had a talk with Nathan.”