A Spell for Shadows: Rosewilde Academy of Magical Arts

by Marie Robinson

  I could only imagine what that was about. He had to have told Nathan about Sadie, at least. I’d bet Laura’s house that Nathan thought I killed her. I’m sure the year was going to be full of suspicions like that from him.

  “Heads up,” Isaac Whispered. “To your left…”

  I looked and felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Nathan was headed toward me, past the rest of our class, with obvious intent. Of course—he was in my class. I’d somehow managed to forget. He put his plate down near me, with one seat between us. “I understand you had something of a difficult time last night.”

  “Me?” I asked.

  He picked up his fork and eyed me sideways. “Sadie Chapman?”

  So, Hunter had told him enough that he knew I was there. Great. Thanks, Hunter. “Um, yeah… I found her.”

  “Remarkable, isn’t it?” he mused.

  “I guess,” I admitted. “Last year, we had a whole class of elementalists burned up in their midterm. I know it happens; I just thought it would at least take until—”

  “No, no,” he said, chuckling softly as he waved a piece of omelette in the air over his plate. “I mean that you’d be so unfortunate. First Sinclaire, now this. It’s as if terrible things just… follow you around. Wouldn’t you say?”

  “Like a curse,” Pete said. Had he touched his plate at all?

  I frowned at my roommate and tried to ignore him. Clearly, engaging had been a mistake. “I don’t think it had anything to do with me. Hunter said Sadie’s family had enemies.”

  Nathan chewed thoughtfully. “I suppose that’s true. But do you really believe it?”

  “Are you okay?” Lucas’s Whisper reached me just as I started to answer and I clacked my teeth shut from the surprise of his words in my ears. I nodded, hoping he could still see me.

  “I’m sure we’ll find out what happened eventually,” I told Nathan. I started to cut into my own omelette but my appetite had disappeared and the thought of eating any more didn’t appeal.

  “Yes,” Nathan muttered. “I imagine we will.”

  “The Egyptians have some curses like that,” Pete said, as if he were delivering a eulogy. “Instead of making bad things happen to the victim, they spread out and happen to the people around them. It could be a curse like that. Harder to detect. Very hard to lift.”

  “I am not cursed,” I snipped, and stood from my seat.

  Nathan looked up at me. “Now, is that entirely accurate, though?”

  I refused to dignify that with an answer and stalked away from the table, into the courtyard, to try and get myself focused for classes. Because Nathan was trying to rattle me—I knew it, I could feel it in how he looked at me.

  The thing was, he wasn’t entirely wrong, and I knew it.

  My first class was magical anatomy, which was mostly lectures and a few specialized revelation spells meant for examination of the six non-physical bodies that each person had. Learning those spells didn’t seem like it would be that difficult; I already knew the seven levels of basic revelations and these were just modifications. None of the boys were in that class with me; they’d all taken it last year. All my classmates were too busy focusing on the spells to stare at me.

  Second period for the day was History, and I did have that class with Lucas. We sat next to one another, which mostly just seemed like a simple comfort at first. It was with Professor Harlan, who I hadn’t seen last year, and no one could have designed a more appropriate history teacher, complete with a knitted pullover and corduroy slacks. He had a way of lecturing—which he started only five minutes into a two-and-a-half-hour class—that was almost hypnotically sleep-inducing. Within half an hour I felt my eyelids drooping.

  “There will be a quiz,” Lucas murmured. “Better stay awake.”

  I sniffed as I forced my eyes open and nudged him with my elbow on the bench seat. The girl next to me glanced sideways with pure judgment in her eyes. “Sorry,” I whispered.

  If she cared, she didn’t show it.

  I caught movement in the corner of my eye and looked to see Lucas’s fingers under the edge of the desk, moving through some spell I didn’t recognize. Not Gamberly’s Living Ink, which currently turned the vague scribbles I managed to scratch out on my note paper into words as I tried to absorb at least a little of what Harlan was saying about the magicians of the San tribe of South Africa. “…believed that the first magicians practiced a form of animism not vastly different than our current conception of theurgy, though of course it would be more than ten thousand years before the first traces of what we consider modern ritual practices to arise. Little is known of the San tribe’s original magical practices but it can be observed that…”

  The ink on my paper twisted into a little knot as something feathery brushed the inside of my thigh. I reached down automatically to swat away what I imagined to be a bug. It quickly traveled up my thigh before I could, and then circled around my clit.

  I froze to keep from making any reaction and was momentarily panicked until Lucas’s fingers brushed my hand. His free hand twitched in tiny, delicate motions as if tugging the strings of an invisible marionette. There was a glint in his eye as he kept his attention apparently riveted on Harlan at the head of the lecture hall.

  “What are you—” I started to whisper as the phantom touch twitched over me again.

  I shivered, and Lucas turned his head a little toward me, casually, as if I’d asked him a relevant question. He winked, and the corner of his lip turned up in that smug, shit-eating grin I had come to love on him. “Careful of your notes,” he murmured softly, and dipped his chin at my notebook.

  “…holy fuck how does he do that to me…” the ink had begun to write.

  I threw my hands over my notepaper, my cheeks turning to fire, and with an effort of will turned that line to garbled scribbles before I put my pen to the paper and did my best to focus on Harlan’s words. Lucas’s teasing didn’t make it easy, but I managed to control my thoughts enough that I could take down what he was saying as particular bits stuck out. It didn’t help when Harlan wrote and circled a phrase on the board.

  “Sex Magic,” he declared. “The San tribe were the originators of this early, primordial form of evocation which was, at the time, intimately tied to their understanding of…”

  I had to bite my lip as Lucas’s phantom fingers gave my clit a playful pinch and then manipulated me the way he did with his thumb, making slow, agonizing circles. Probably I should have told him to stop but… well, Harlan’s lecture really was so boring, and droning, and also, I certainly wasn’t falling asleep anymore. I was going to demand that Lucas teach me that spell, though. It wasn’t fair.

  He tortured me like that all through class until I was sweating, but always with the same finesse he managed in bed—like he always knew exactly how close I was to coming and understood just how to keep me on this side of it.

  When class was finally finished, I was frustrated and embarrassed but somehow practically bursting with energy. I didn’t think I’d be sleeping anytime soon. Not until I made him make good on his ethereal promises. I ribbed him with a knuckle when we left the lecture hall. “You’re the devil himself, you know that?”

  “Oh, it’s a title I wear with pride,” he chuckled, pressing a kiss to my hair. “Didn’t you know that yet?”

  “You had all summer to teach me that,” I said as I let him pull me close.

  He kissed me slow and sweet, and I could feel him getting hard. Well, Lucas did like an audience. I didn’t particularly care for one myself, but he also had a way of kissing me that made it hard to remember anyone else was around. When he finally let my lips go, he pressed his forehead to mine. “I can’t just pour my bag of tricks out all at once,” he purred. “Wouldn’t want you getting bored with me.”

  “One of these days,” I purred back at him, “I’m going to have my sweet revenge. You won’t know when, or where, or how—but it’s coming.”

  “I look forward to it,” he la
ughed. “So. You’re headed to, what, Thaumaturgy 2 next?”

  I sighed. “Yes, I am. Wardwell. Again.”

  “He is the foremost authority on the continent,” Lucas said as he held his arm out. “Get used to him. I’ve got his 300 level for fourth. You’ll be seeing him until you graduate. I’ll walk you there?”

  I slipped my arm into his. “I think I’ve got an enchantment class with Isaac for third, right?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Scripting; it’s sort of the base level enchantment craft. I took it last year instead of history—for obvious reasons. Isaac has ideas about mixing enchantment and alchemy, but has been putting it off. He’s terrible with invested magic. You’re taking Percy’s class, yeah?”

  “Of course,” I muttered. “How could I not? For all I know it’s more like a genealogy course for me.”

  He tugged me closer. “Don’t say that. Hunter will be there. I was going to take it myself but if I don’t get my 300 Thaumaturgy I’ll be doubling up on Wardwell at some point and I’m not sure I can take it. Plus, I don’t think I can called Percy ‘Professor Turner’ to his face. I’d never hear the end of it.”

  I sensed a pattern here. “So… of my four classes this term, one of you are in three of them with me?”

  “I guess so,” he mused. “That’s lucky, hm?”

  Luck wasn’t the word I would have used. “Did you three plan it that way?”

  He only shrugged before he pointed to the familiar door of Wardwell’s classroom. “There you are. Don’t want to be late.”

  I turned to face him. “I’ve got fifteen minutes before class starts,” I reminded him.

  “Quickie in the bathroom?” he asked, grinning. “I must have done a number on you.”

  “You did,” I agreed, “and you and Isaac are going to make good on that later… but, I’m more concerned that the three of you are rearranging your schedules to keep an eye on me.”

  “And if we were?” he asked.

  I couldn’t exactly be upset with them. Not just from that. It was touching that they’d gone out of their way to be near me. Still. “I’d tell you I’m a big girl, Lucas, and I can look out for myself. You don’t have to throw your class schedules off course just to stand watch. And… you know, it’s hard to know if you’re watching over me or…”

  “Hey,” he said gently as he rested a hand on the side of my neck, his fingers warm and soft as they tugged me into another kiss. It was a distraction, and it worked for a moment. “We’re not worried about you going off the rails. I promise. After last year, we just want to be sure you’re okay, is all. Not just from mysterious shadow beings, ancient unnamable horrors, or insane faculty, either. Let us worry and watch. It makes us feel useful.”

  “If you want to feel useful,” I said as I dug my fingers into his sides a little, the way I did when I rode him, “you just have to say so.”

  He groaned softly and nuzzled my nose with his. “To think, you were such a shy beauty only a year ago. We’ve corrupted you, I fear.”

  I chuckled and gave him a gentle shove. “Maybe a little. Go to class, leave me alone. I get one period in the day to myself and I’m taking it. I’ll see you after classes?”

  “Always,” he agreed. “Have fun with Wardwell. He’s got a great sense of humor when you get to know him.”

  I snorted at that. “Really?”

  Lucas shook his head as he backed away. “No. Not really. But he’s vindictive so if you think he’s making a joke, better laugh just in case. Loudly.”

  As he turned away to head to his own class he twitched the fingers of his casting hand and I realized as his phantom touch slid over my backside that he’d never actually released the spell. I managed to at least keep from yelping in surprise right in the middle of the hall and promised myself I was going to think up something truly special as vengeance. I turned, shaking my head and smiling to myself as I went into Wardwell’s lecture hall and found a seat near the back of class. Right up front, and I was easy pickings for him. All the way back and it looked like I was avoiding his attention. About three fourths of the way, and I figured I was in a kind of safe zone where he might not notice last year’s dunce back again for more abuse.

  I took my notebook out, cast Gamberly’s Living Ink on my pen again to make sure the spell would hold through class, and tried not to let my mind wander too far out of line thinking about Lucas and Isaac—and, because it was in my own imagination, adding Hunter to the mix as well.

  The seat next to me shifted as someone slipped into it, even though the room was barely a quarter of the way full. “Look at this,” Nathan said as I turned automatically to see who it was. “Seems we’ll be spending some time together this term. Won’t that be nice?”

  Amelia

  “…which necessitates an equal exchange of forces,” Wardwell was saying about the first law of thaumaturgy. “Take for example, a simple spell no doubt beloved by all students, Gamberly’s Living Ink. What is the exchange of forces implicit in the structure of that spell?”

  A few hands went up. I would have put mine up but my body was rigid next to Nathan, who seemed less interested in Wardwell’s lecture and more interested in tormenting me. As Wardwell pointed and a student began to answer him about exchanging potential energy for heat, Nathan leaned toward me, his voice a low, harsh whisper. “The first law only really applies to terrestrial magic, of course. You must know by now it doesn’t govern Abyssal forces.”

  “I wouldn’t know, actually,” I murmured back. “I’m trying to concentrate on the lecture.”

  “It’s all in the books,” Nathan said. “And besides, how much could you possibly care about all this? You managed Sadie Chapman just fine.”

  A cold knot of fear in my stomach made it hard to breathe. I glanced around at the nearby students, wondering if any of them heard him, and if they agreed with him. “I didn’t kill Sadie,” I hissed back. “You weren’t even there, you didn’t see… just leave me alone.”

  “Not a chance,” Nathan breathed. “I’ve seen what you do, you know. In the Abyss. A million different timelines. Infinite outcomes, but they all lead to the same place. You. In the thrall of your mistress, doing her bidding. Swaddling the world in a darkness that devours everything. Lucas, Isaac, Hunter—even me. You will bring ruin to everything, Amelia. The Harbinger of Az-Harad. You can feel it, I bet. That hunger in the very core of you, craving something you can’t even define, but it drives you anyway. To devour. To sate an appetite that will never know a—”

  “My dear Mister Crowley,” Wardwell snapped. Nathan barely reacted, smiling effortlessly at the professor as he sat up.

  “My apologies, Professor,” Nathan replied. “Miss Cresswin here is just a little behind. I was explaining the first law. I understand last year was a bit of a mess for her; it seems she didn’t quite retain your lessons.”

  Wardwell’s flat, judgey eyes moved from Nathan to me, and I could see that he believed it. And why not? I’d struggled in Wardwell’s class last year, and he knew what had happened. All the faculty did, even if not all the students were entirely certain what the story was. “Yes,” he said, “well, you can do that after class if you’re so inclined. Miss Cresswin—do try to keep up, please. It’s unfair to the other students that we should slow down to accommodate your shortcomings, yes?”

  “Yes, Professor,” I croaked. What was it about Wardwell’s class that made me want to shrink away to nothing? Ah, yes—the crushing sense of inadequacy and ignorance. That was it. Did I know a spell to shrink myself? Not off hand.

  Nathan was smiling, self-satisfied as he cut his eyes at me.

  I hated him, I realized. It probably wasn’t fair. He’d been through so much. And at some point or another the boys had seen something in him that must have been good and kind. That, or there was some other attraction I didn’t understand. It didn’t change the fact that my chest burned and I wanted to plunge my pen into his stupid eyeball, or at least tell him to go fuck himself and leave me alone.<
br />
  Worse than all that, though, was that his words stuck with me. They echoed around in my skull. He’d seen it, he said? Me, ending the world? Or worse. I didn’t know enough about the Abyss to know if what he said was possible or not, but I did know that it was a place without space, or time, and I knew enough about both of those things to imagine what this world must look like from that perspective. All of it laid out bare, raw, everything from start to finish in its many permutations. It would be senior year before I took classes, but there were discussions on the spatial and temporal implications of interacting with the Abyss in some of the theory books we’d used last year.

  I looked at Nathan out of the corner of my eye and tried to muster sympathy. If he’d really seen all that, it was no wonder he came back like… this. But if I knew anything with certainty, it was that there was not one timeline. There were an infinite number, and he’d admitted as much. So whatever he saw, whatever he thought he knew—he could be wrong.

  Wardwell dismissed the class a painful hour later, and I gathered my books without a word to Nathan before I stood and stalked out of the room in the middle of a flood of students all doing the same. A few of them cast me familiar nasty looks—some of the same from last year, in fact. They all knew about my stupid questions that should have been answered at a primary academy, about my struggle with the dozen or so dead languages Wardwell often cited to illuminate one point or another, and the fact that I couldn’t cast the simplest spell for my first month of school.

  It was even worse now. All that work, and I still hadn’t caught up? Poor Amelia. Poor stupid, insufficient Amelia, who’d always be a shitty, third-rate magician assuming she even graduated.

  “Not so fast,” Nathan said as he caught up to me and fell into step to my left. “I’m quite curious, you see, what sort of spell did you use on poor Sadie? Because I dropped by the library this morning to speak with the librarian and she says—”