A Spell for Shadows: Rosewilde Academy of Magical Arts

by Marie Robinson

  I stopped and let him pass me by a couple of steps. He spun, eyes narrowed, and cocked his head. “Something I said?”

  “What did Mara say?” I asked. If she’d gone down and taken a look through time to see what happened, she had to have exonerated me. Security hadn’t come for me for more questioning, after all. I suspected Nathan was talking out his ass—and beginning to wonder if he ever talked out of anything else.

  He pursed his lips slightly, looking me over and clearly unimpressed by what he saw. “She saw nothing,” he said. “Just black. Between the nearby distortion of Plato’s Prism, and the nature of the magic used… there was nothing. Just a big black stain on time, conveniently obscuring what happened. Strange that. Wouldn’t you say?”

  I had to admit, it was; but I didn’t have to admit it out loud. “So someone covered their tracks,” I said instead. “But you could ask anyone in school that’s had a class with me and they’ll tell you—that kind of magic is way beyond me.”

  “Beyond you, maybe,” he admitted. “But then, you’re more than you, aren’t you, Amelia?”

  I sighed and started to walk past him. “I have to get to class.”

  Nathan stepped in front of me, one hand up, and leaned in close to my face. “You know,” he said softly. “I know you do. I had to pick and choose what I… kept from that place. But I kept what was important. And I know you went there—that you saw the truth. You know where you came from. Do yourself and the rest of creation a favor. Next chance you get… go back. Go back before it’s too late. Before you can’t make any choices, and we have to send you back, do you understand me?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t. I’ve got free will, and I’m using it. Lucas and Isaac and Hunter all understand what it means to me to be… to be what I am. Talk to them.”

  His smile was slow, and cruel, even as it was sympathetic. “You poor, poor thing,” he muttered. “You think what’s between your legs is enough to keep them from seeing the truth. Trust me—if they’ve got to choose between you and all of creation? I know exactly what they’ll choose. And it isn’t pink.”

  That was the extent of what I could put up with. The sliver of boiling anger in my chest overflowed the little place I’d forced it into and spread out until I clutched my books tight to my chest and jerked forward with my shoulder to check Nathan hard. He staggered a little as I shoved past him and stormed off to my next class before I did something much worse and regretted it.

  “It’s only a matter of time, Amelia,” he called after me. “I’ll be watching. Every hour of every day.”

  “I need you to teach me the privacy wards you used on our room last year,” I told Hunter as we left Percy’s—that is, Professor Turner’s—frankly bland class on Abyssal magic and Outsider Cults. Day one had been a discussion of the syllabus, and then a lengthy discussion of his excessive resume, as if a single student in the room somehow doubted that he knew what he was talking about or how he’d gotten the job. That, or he just liked talking about himself. Which was a possibility. I adored Lucas, but… it was possibly something of a family trait.

  “Why?” Hunter asked. “Plans to get into something?”

  The last thing I wanted was to pit Hunter against Nathan or play them off one another. I shook my head. “Just concerned about privacy, is all. Everyone seems to have one idea or another about what I did last year and why. I have a feeling they’re… you know, looking in on me, hoping to find out if I’m planning to give destroying the world a second go. Or something, I don’t know, just—can you teach me, or not? Or at least tell me what book to look into.”

  “Are you sure now is a good time for that?” he asked.

  I looked up at him, frowning. “What’s that mean?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “I just think… probably, security is keeping an eye on you, even though we all know you didn’t… do it. But if you start warding your room up it could look like you’re trying to hide something.”

  “I am not—”

  “Which, you of course aren’t,” he said quickly, “but still. The Magician’s Court doesn’t convict on circumstantial evidence, but it could still be a problem. If they have sufficient cause, they could bring you in, have an expert perform a deep dive, and I think we both know there are things you don’t want them finding out?”

  I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall of the hallway, next to the door where Percy’s class took place. “Shit,” I murmured to myself, more so than to Hunter. “Why do I never hear these things until they’re relevant? Isn’t there a guide book or something?”

  Hunter snorted and waved around at the Academy. “You’re living in it. I’ll teach you the spells this weekend. Just wait until you’re cleared before you use them.”

  “You can’t do it tonight?” I asked. “I’ll need time to practice; you know how I get with new… oh. Right, I guess you’re…”

  “It’s just until he’s better,” Hunter said apologetically. “I don’t really want to leave him alone right now.”

  I rolled my eyes as I pushed off the wall. There was a stupid amount of reading to get done before I could sleep. Or even eat, maybe. “Don’t suppose you could retake Thaumaturgy 200? That’s where he is from about ten forty-five to one fifteen each day for the next nine weeks.”

  “I don’t want to take 300,” Hunter muttered, and followed me as I started off toward the sophomore dorms. “Wait… you’ve got class with him? He was supposed to be in anatomy for second period. Are you sure?”

  I groaned. “Obviously, I’m sure, Hunter. He sat right next to me. And…”

  There just wasn’t a way around it. I moved off to the side, toward the stairwell at the end of the hall and out of the way of anyone trying to get past us. Hunter’s face was a mask of concern. “What is it?”

  I steeled myself. I’d been rehearsing all day but didn’t think I’d work up the nerve. “Look… I know that you love him, Hunter, and that he’s been through a lot but… today, he was just… vicious. I’m trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he said some terrible things. I don’t want to get between the two of you, but can you at least just talk to him? About me? Tell him that I hate my”—I glanced around for any prying eyes or listening ears; the ones I could actually see, anyway—”the… circumstances of my early childhood. He thinks I’m a monster. Or that I will be, eventually, no matter what I do. You know what all that means to me, how I feel about it. Can you just ask him to back off me?”

  “I have,” he said. “Amelia, I promise I have spoken to him, I—but, I will talk to him again. And again, as many times as it takes. I know Nathan’s sharp side; believe me, that’s not all new. But he has good parts, too, more than the others. You believe me, right?”

  Honestly, I wasn’t sure I did. But I also knew what it felt like to not be believed. For his benefit, I changed the subject, forcing myself to smile. “Will I see you after dinner?”

  He clearly tried to smile but it didn’t work. I shook my head before he could make an excuse. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll be in the courtyard, I’m sure. At least for a little while. I’ll see you in class if I don’t see you before then.”

  “You will,” Hunter said.

  There was that awkward, stiff pause. My body tried to twitch toward him, like I might give him a kiss on the cheek as we parted. His shoulder gave the slightest shift as well, like he felt the same thing. For a few heartbeats, if felt like we were supposed to say something, but we must have both swallowed the words. Once the awkwardness reached its peak, we settled on an exchange of faint, sad smiles before I went to the stairwell and Hunter—who needed the stairs as well—walked down to the other set in a clear effort to keep from making it worse.

  I carried that awkwardness with me all the way to my room where I tossed the books on my desk and thanked whatever deity happened to be looking my way that I had the room to myself for a moment.

  Or at least, I thought I did.

  The air grew c
hill, and the light seemed to dim just a little. I looked up at them and started to cast one of the adjustment spells I’d learned from Hunter last year. Before I could, I caught movement just at the edge of my vision. When I turned toward it, I couldn’t even scream as fear paralyzed me.

  “Well if it isn’t Miss ‘I almost destroyed the world’,” Sadie mocked, her eyes, nose, and mouth all marked with a trickle of black. “I guess you and I are stuck together, aren’t we? Maybe you should have thought about that before you murdered me, you low-class bitch.”

  Amelia

  Sadie took a menacing step toward me. I staggered back, hit the edge of the bed and dropped onto it. “I-I didn’t,” I stammered. “I didn’t kill you, Sadie, I promise, I never would have—”

  “Blah blah blah,” she spat. “All I hear is ‘Boo hoo, I never thought the vengeful spirit of my victim would come back to haunt me, wah.’ You can’t lie to me, Amelia—I was there when you did it!”

  Banishing spells. I knew at least three from Sinclaire’s lessons, and the seven basic ones from last year. I moved my hands through the first one and rattled off the Latin as Sadie began to pace the room.

  She snorted as I finished the spell. “Your Latin puts a whole new spin on the term ‘vulgate’. So, not an illusion then. Care to try another?”

  Constructs. Banishment level two. I muttered the Greek as I twisted my fingers together and split them apart.

  “Strike two,” Sadie mused. “Is she a ghost? Or a shade? Or a revenant? What if I’m a zombie? How do you banish that?” She leaned and waved her hand through the desk, then straightened and shrugged. “Not a zombie. Too bad, you could just kill me again.”

  One of Sinclaire’s banishing spells, then. I didn’t have a great grasp of Etruscan but I stumbled my way through it, standing up to work the more complicated full-body movements. When I finally thrust my hands out at Sadie’s… apparition, though, she didn’t so much as flinch, much less dissipate.

  “What do you want?” I demanded. “Sadie, if that’s you… if it’s really you then you know I didn’t do this.”

  She cackled and wiped a black tear from the corner of her eye. It smeared over her cheek-bone like tar. “That’s rich,” she chuckled and jabbed a finger at me. “One day, when someone murders you, you’ll know the last thing you see before you die is some asshole standing over your body and let me tell you what, bitch—you don’t forget what they look like. You know what? I must be a revenant after all, because I’ve got a strong urge to get some vengeance for my untimely demise. How about I reach into that C-cup chest of yours and rip that black heart out of it? That sounds like the kind of vengeance that’s appropriate. Hold still—this will hurt a lot and take a long time.”

  I wasn’t about to stand still for shit. She reached for me, and I bolted for the door, fumbled with the handle, and then went stumbling through it in such a panic that I hit the wall across the hall from my room and turned, already a third of the way through the strongest banishing spell I knew.

  The words died in my mouth when Sadie wasn’t behind me. The light in the room was back to normal. A cluster of students at one end of the hall were all staring at me.

  Worse, the door next to me opened, and a round-faced girl with bags under her eyes glared at me from around the doorframe. “What the fuck is going on. Why are you pounding on the wall?”

  “Sorry,” I rasped, “sorry, I… I just… I… tripped.”

  She closed her eyes, shook her head in disgust, and slammed the door as she disappeared behind it.

  My heart was racing, and I could barely catch my breath. I swallowed several times to try and get my throat wet, and combed my hair behind my ears with my fingers as I tried to cover up whatever signs of anxiety might be obvious. Each step back toward my door was torture, but I made it and raised my hands to peer through revelation after revelation, looking for traces of leftover magic. It hadn’t been Sadie. It couldn’t have been. I hadn’t killed her, I knew it—I could see that night as clear as if it were happening all over again. I had left the Cabin, stood outside the door for a moment to keep from crying, then worried about being in the way if someone came through behind me so I walked away from the entrance, went around the corner, and tried to calm down.

  I’d noticed something a little way off the path, and realized it was a shoe. I’d approached, thought it looked familiar, and then saw a little way off a leg—attached to Sadie. It all took maybe three minutes? Five? And then the boys had come out and found me. There were no gaps in my memory. I hadn’t sensed anything, hadn’t seen anything except her body.

  None of the revelation spells showed anything. But not all magic left traces and it wasn’t that complicated to clean up behind yourself if you tried. A talented astral projector could change their appearance, for example, and that wouldn’t leave…

  Nathan. Son of a bitch. He was determined to fuck with me. I flicked my fingers furiously through a Whisper spell to Hunter. “Are you with Nathan?”

  Just a second later, his response came to my ear. “Can you not shout in my ear, please? I’m with Nathan, yes. What is it?”

  I didn’t respond. If it wasn’t Nathan, then…

  The cruel thought occurred that maybe Hunter was somehow in on it. That was ridiculous, of course. Hunter would never do something like this. But that didn’t leave a ton of options. Security? Was it a tactic to get me to confess? Some friend of Sadie’s who’d heard what happened and thought I was responsible?

  There were too many things I didn’t know to be able to reason it out. I closed the door, almost put a few lock spells on it before I remembered I had a roommate, and then went the long way around to the dining hall to keep from going past the students down the hall.

  I ate by myself, in silence, and quickly. Lucas, Isaac, and Serena did the same. I didn’t see Hunter and Nathan, maybe they had come down right after classes or maybe they would come later. Maybe they were skipping dinner. I didn’t know, but as soon as I was done I stood and caught Lucas’s eye before I went out to the courtyard.

  They joined me in a few minutes, probably rushing to catch up with me.

  “How was class?” Isaac asked as he swept around from behind me and brushed his lips across my cheek in a fleeting kiss. “Lucas tells me you—oh. What’s happened?”

  Lucas circled around to join him, frowning as reached for me. “Hey, are you alright?”

  “No,” I said as Serena came out from behind me, “I’m not okay. I saw…”

  No. I couldn’t say it. Not that I saw Sadie, that she’d claimed I killed her. They had all agreed to keep me from becoming the monster I worried about. If I had some dark impulse, they’d remind me who I was. But if they thought I really had killed someone?

  “What?” Serena pressed. “A really bad weave?”

  I wish I could have laughed. It wasn’t in me. “Someone, I think, sent a… something, to my room. I don’t know what. I couldn’t find any traces of magic left behind. It freaked me out. I thought maybe it was Nathan, honestly, he was horrible today, but—”

  “Nathan was?” Lucas interrupted. “What did he do? When did you see him? I’ll have words—”

  I put hand up and he threaded his fingers between mine as I slowed him down. “Hunter is talking to him,” I said, “and the last thing I want is some kind of pile-up. It wasn’t Nathan. I just… do you know how to look for things like astral… traces? Some sign that a person projected into a room? Maybe a disturbance in the local etheric field? Something like that?”

  Isaac frowned, nodding slowly. “I suppose,” he said. “Sure. What exactly did you see? It might give us some clues how to look.”

  I struggled for words that were specific enough to make them useful but vague enough that I wouldn’t have to face their doubts in me. “Um… it didn’t have a very solid shape,” I said. “Kind of hazy. The room did get cold, just before, and the light didn’t go out but it got dim.”

  “Not an illusion, then,” Serena said. “Unle
ss that was all part of it. Was it actually cold or did it just seem cold? Did your nipples get hard?”

  “What?” I scrunched my eyes at her. “I don’t know if my nipples got hard or not, Serena; I was terrified.”

  “So it was frightening,” Lucas said. “Temperature and light… it could have been a construct of some kind, was it solid?”

  “No,” I told him, “and I tried the second banishment. It didn’t do anything.”

  Isaac winced. “You’re certain you did it… you know… correctly?”

  That was a fair question, so I didn’t snap at him. I took a slow breath to make sure of it. “After last year, I spent the whole summer mastering those spells,” I said. “I worked it correctly, yes. The first through third, and then one that I learned from Sinclaire in case it was summoned. Nothing worked.”

  Serena whistled. “No illusion, no construct, no psychic projection and no… whatever you banish with Sinclaire’s godforsaken claptrap. Heat and light—both affected by some types of ghosts.”

  Lucas grimaced as he pulled me close. “That must be it,” he breathed. “Rosewilde has a few of them; they’re normally bound tight but perhaps something about last year disrupted their containment.”

  The Academy was just chock full of secrets. I was wide-eyed as Lucas hugged me. “There are ghosts locked up somewhere?”

  “Sublevels,” Isaac said. “But the wards are all laid in metal in the floors and walls where they’re kept. The chances the ritual last year set any of them free…”

  “Still,” Lucas said as he caught my chin with his finger and tilted my face up to his, “I’ll report it to Yakovich so he can have a look.”

  Yakovich was the dean of necromancy. I supposed it made sense. Maybe he would find something wrong down there, and ‘Sadie’ the ghost was just some cruel trick by an angry spirit. “Can ghosts look like… well, I don’t know. Other people? Or things. Not that it looked like someone specific, or anything…”

  “Sure,” Isaac said. “The older ones, anyway, and the ones in the sublevel are pretty old. And they’ve had nothing to do but practice. There are six, as far as anyone knows. Used to be more, but the others were sent off years ago. The ones left are the particularly persistent ones. Did it say anything?”