I needed to do something.
Sitting in the library and researching wasn’t going to cut it. I needed to do something that would actually help me. Something to aid me in getting all my nervous energy out and putting it to good work.
I remembered the camp in the forest that Cress and I had come across on our run. Perhaps there might be some new clues there.
Maybe I’d even stumble across the witch from the Nightshade Coven. She might still have been lurking in the forest.
It was time to find out.
Chapter 12
The forest surrounding Shadow Academy was vast and dense. The few trails that had been made over time were the only sure ways to not get totally lost.
I found the trail Cress and I had used for our run and tried to remember which way we took at every fork in the road. I had largely been following Cress as I tried to keep up with her. It was her who had made all the directional decisions.
To everyone else, the trees probably all looked the same. However, as a daughter of a witch and warlock, I knew to see them differently. Every part of nature had its own unique presence. Instead of following the trail and hoping I found the place, I let the trees lead me. They were something I had been paying attention to on our run.
I hurried along as I tried to find the camp before the sun went down. I had no intention of still wandering around in the forest in the darkness of night. I may have loved everything about nature, but I wasn’t entirely stupid. I could still get completely turned around and lost.
My feet stumbled over pebbles and fallen branches until I finally reached the clearing. The camp was almost the same as it had been earlier. Yet there were little things that had changed.
The backpack had moved to sit closer to the tent. The firepit held more ash and partly-burned twigs. Someone else had been there in the last few days. Animals wouldn’t have made changes like that.
I found a hiding place behind some tall bushes and settled myself in for a wait. Darkness of nighttime was coming, but just waiting for a little while couldn’t hurt anything. If someone was living at the camp, perhaps they would be returning soon.
It was easy to stay still and quiet in amongst the trees and foliage. Occasionally there would be some rustling of leaves but it always turned out to be a squirrel or bird. I kept my focus on the camp and studied every little detail as I committed it to memory.
Half an hour passed.
Then another half hour.
I was about to give up and head back when I heard the rustling of footsteps nearby. They were surer than that of an animal, heavier too. They were unmistakably human. I was about to see who lived at the camp.
Crouched in the bushes, I was certain nobody would be able to see me there. Even so, my heart beat wildly against my ribcage. One little movement and I could have given away my presence and location.
The footsteps were getting closer.
I breathed too loudly. How could I stop my breaths from sounding so damn loud?
They were coming. It sounded like only one set. That was good. I might have been able to win a fight if it was one-on-one. Although…not if magic was involved.
If the person that lived in that camp was the one I suspected it was, they would be able to knock me out with a flick of their hand. One little spell and I would be at their mercy.
The bush behind me rustled. I quickly turned around to see what it was and jumped out of my skin. There was a person there.
Staring at me.
My hand move instinctively to cover my heart. The damn thing nearly shot right out of my chest from the shock.
“You scared me to death,” I said as Liam laughed. I stood up, still feeling like a fight with all the adrenalin pumping through me.
“I’m sorry, I thought you would have heard me coming,” he replied. The look on my face must have been warning enough as he stopped laughing.
“Did it look like I was expecting you?”
“I guess not.” He still had an adorable smile wiped across his face. Maybe if he was anyone else, I would have stomped off and vowed to curse them. Liam was lucky he was cute.
“What are you doing out here anyway?” I demanded. I was still conscious of remaining quiet so I lowered my voice to a whisper.
Liam followed suit. “I was going for a walk to clear my head when I saw you sitting here. I thought you might like some company.”
“You didn’t think to say my name before you jumped out of the bushes at me?”
“I said I’m sorry, Eden.”
With my heartbeat slowing down again, I could forgive him. He did seem genuinely sorry. “Fine. Apology accepted. Just don’t scare me next time, okay? I have a lot going on and people I need to hide from.”
He gestured to the camp behind me. “What’s all this doing out here?”
“It’s a camp. I found it a few days ago and can’t get it out of my mind.”
Liam made to move toward the tent but I stopped him by placing my hand on his arm.
“We need to stay away from it,” I said. “I think one of the witches that placed the curse on me is staying here. I was watching to see whether she would return tonight or not.”
“One of the witches from the Nightshade Coven?” he asked.
I shivered every time I heard that name. “Yes. The same witch that ran out of the forest the other day and you told me to avoid her.”
“Oh, her.”
“Do you think she could be camping out here to be close to the academy?”
“It’s possible,” he agreed. “What were you planning to do in the event she returns here tonight?”
I pursed my lips while I thought. “I don’t know. I guess I would just watch and see if I find out anything. Maybe she writes everything down in a journal that I could steal or something.”
To say I was grasping at straws was an understatement. I really hadn’t thought through the plan too well. All I knew was that I had to do something. I couldn’t sit idly by and let my future be destroyed.
“Maybe we should head back,” Liam said. “It’s almost dark and I’m pretty sure if that witch found us, she could destroy us in an instant. I don’t know about you, but I don’t really feel like dying tonight. Not when the dining hall has tacos tomorrow.”
He made it sound like the right move and I wouldn’t have to admit my plan was a disaster. “Yeah, let’s get back. I could use something to eat.”
We turned back in the quickly-fading light. It was too dangerous to run so we took our time. I tried to at least get some information out of Liam while I had his undivided attention.
“So how much about my curse do you know?” I asked.
“I know you don’t have any magic.”
“Did Vice Principal Chandler see that in her vision too?”
“No, that one I worked out for myself.”
That was a worry. I thought I had been hiding my inability to do any magic pretty well. “How did I give myself away?”
“In our first Spells and Incantations class. You tried hard but there was no way you were making any magic happen.” He gave me a smile to soften the blow.
I just hoped that it wasn’t so obvious to everyone else. Maybe Liam only paid extra attention because of what Vice Principal Chandler saw. Other students were hopefully too wrapped up in themselves to notice anything I did or didn’t do.
My mind went back to that class. “But I did do something magical. Was that you that did it for me?” Someone had, if it wasn’t Liam then somebody else knew about my problem too.
Another smile. He was just full of secrets. “Yeah. I saw you trying and I just couldn’t let you flounder. You were too cute to fail on your first attempt.”
I didn’t let the compliment go unnoticed. I liked the way Liam would drop little things into the conversation like that. It was sweet and I hadn’t done anything to deserve it. Nor had I given him any indication of how I was feeling about his love declaration.
I could, however, thank him. “You di
dn’t need to do that but I’m grateful that you did. You’ve been helping me in class all semester, haven’t you?”
“Guilty as charged.”
“Thank you. It’s probably only because of you that I’ve been able to make it this far. That group project would have broken me.”
We walked for a while in mutual silence. It was nice knowing he was looking out for me. In amongst all the turmoil I’d experienced since my eighteenth birthday, he was like a happy beacon.
But there was still things I needed to know before I even came close to trusting anybody. “What have you been working on with your dad? You said you were helping him today.”
Liam stuffed his hands in his pockets. He seemed to do that when he didn’t want to talk about something. “The school is bleeding money. Funds are just disappearing and the books don’t add up.”
“So you’ve been doing accounting for him?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine Liam sitting in a room and going through bank statements and receipts. Surely they had a more suitable person for that on the payroll.
“Not quite. He thinks one of his staff members are stealing the cash. He wanted me to do a few little spells to work things out.”
“Why couldn’t he do them himself? He’s quite powerful, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, but he’s not allowed to cast any spells on the staff. If someone found out, they could report him to the council and he’d lose his job. There would probably be charges brought against him too,” Liam explained.
“Couldn’t you get in trouble too?”
“Yeah, but he could deny any knowledge of it. The council wouldn’t come at a young warlock not even finished with school like they would him.”
I didn’t like the idea of Liam doing his father’s dirty work for him. It seemed like he was just passing the buck to his son.
But I also knew Liam and his dad had a strained relationship. Maybe this was Liam’s way of proving himself valuable. I wouldn’t question that. I could actually understand where he was coming from.
“Did you find out anything useful?” I asked. I hoped for something positive to come from his risky behavior.
“Maybe. I don’t know. I told my dad what I found out and it’s up to him to work out what needs to be done.”
Silence settled over us again. We walked for a bit longer before the threatening note popped into my mind again. While Liam and I were talking so openly, maybe it was time to discuss that with him too.
“You remember that threatening note someone left me?” I blurted out, like I was ripping off a Band-Aid. “I got a second one last night.”
“You should have told me about that. When exactly did you get the first one?”
“When I first came to Shadow Academy.”
“What did the second note say?”
I gave him the abridged version. “It said I had three days before they were going to turn me in.”
His jaw clamped down for a moment before he spoke. “And that was yesterday?”
“Yeah.”
“So you really only have two days.”
“I guess so,” I admitted. Two days and my whole world could be over. Everything I’d tried so damn hard to protect this year would be done with. Liam was just one of those things.
I listened to the sound of our footsteps as our shoes crunched on the fallen leaves. It was completely dark now. We were only guided by the flashlight on Liam’s cell phone.
“Do you have any idea who could be writing them?” he asked.
“None. The first one was left in my locker and last night’s note was in the computer research lab in the library.”
“Typed or handwritten?”
“The first was handwritten, as you’ve seen. The second was typed on the computer screen.”
“And the writing, you didn’t recognize it from anyone’s handwriting?”
“No.” I’d already explored all these things in my head and discounted all possible clues. Short of having the FBI test for fingerprints or DNA, there was nothing I was going to get from the notes themselves.
“I can cast a spell for you.”
“There are no spells for finding the author of a letter,” I pointed out. He may have been a very good warlock, but I’d had eighteen years of preparation from my parents. I was all over the limitations of spells.
“Not for that, no,” Liam replied as his excitement grew. “I can cast a protection spell over you. It might be strong enough to offset any of their actions against you.”
I tried to recall all the protection spells I knew. There were hundreds of them—with everything from protecting against acne to making someone bulletproof. Protection spells were all the rage throughout all of the centuries.
“What kind of protection spell would work in this situation?” I asked. I was already trying to choose one in my head. More were being discarded than those deemed plausible.
“I can protect you against third-party interference. Or perhaps even protection from gossip. Would talking about your position be deemed gossip?”
“I think it’s probably more fact-based than merely gossip. It is true, after all. Not the roach thing, but the non-magical part of it.”
I didn’t want the spell to fail because of a technicality. Spells were notorious for that. They had to be specific and exact or anything could happen.
Liam stopped in his tracks. “Third-party interference it is, then. I can do it right now before we get back to campus. This is the perfect place for it.”
“Don’t you need a book for the incantation?”
He shook his head. “I remember it.”
His memory was seriously good if he could remember an entire spell without looking it up first. Even the best warlocks and witches needed their grimoire from time to time.
“Okay, let’s do it,” I said.
Chapter 13
Liam made a circle out of stones. It was just big enough for us to both squeeze into. I held his cell phone up so we could see each other in the moonlight.
He picked up some of the earth and held it in his hand. Some of the finer dirt slipped between his fingers and drifted down to the ground.
His lips moved but I could only hear a very quiet whisper. It wasn’t loud enough for me to make out any of the words.
Liam had his eyes closed as he gestured with one hand and held the earth up over my head. As he continued, he allowed some of it to fall onto my hair. I closed my eyelids so I didn’t get any of the grit in my eyes.
I knew the spell was coming to an end as I felt the familiar spark of magic around me. It was like being draped in a blanket on a freezing cold day. It was comforting and warm, heavy in a pleasant way. It was always wonderous to feel it tingle along my skin.
Liam finished the spell by blowing the remaining pieces of earth from his hand. He opened his eyes slowly, almost dreamily. He had gone to a happy place in his mind to do the spell and was now just waking up from it.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Don’t mention it. Happy to help,” he replied as we started to walk back to campus again.
The air around us had changed. It was charged with magic now. I could feel every part of Liam’s protection spell which was impressive. Only a strong witch or warlock could perform an incantation with little more than whispered words and a bit of dirt.
“How long have you been studying magic for?” I asked. We were required to learn from age eighteen. But some people started much younger if they were motivated enough. They couldn’t do magic until their powers came in, but they could learn and practice, ready for the real thing.
“My father gave me my mother’s grimoire when I was six years old.”
I almost choked with surprise. “You’ve been studying since you were six years old?”
He shrugged one shoulder, completely nonchalant. “It had rhymes in it, I enjoyed reading the spells. Plus, my father told me I’d better be a better warlock than she was a witch because my life had to mean something since I took hers away.”<
br />
I didn’t know what to say. “He probably didn’t mean it.”
“Oh, he did. Trust me, he did.”
The silence was a bit awkward after that. I wanted to say something comforting but I doubted anything I said would have that effect. A few pleasantries couldn’t make up for a lifetime of pressure from his father.
We finally reached the girls’ dormitories and Liam insisted on walking me to my door. At least this time I could actually go inside room 396 without Rosa yelling at me for trespassing.
I had my hand on the doorknob, ready to turn it when Liam placed his hand over mine.
“Please call me if anything happens,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what time it is. I can be here in a few minutes if there’s trouble.”
“Thank you.” I didn’t know how to tell him just how grateful I was. Any help was appreciated. I loved Cress with my whole heart, but she wasn’t a witch. Having a warlock on my team was a big deal.
Our eyes locked for a moment as something unspoken passed between us. Perhaps we were still affected by the magic. Maybe it was something else.
We leaned into one another as our lips met. The kiss started off so sweet and delicate but soon became something much, much more passionate. His hand slipped into my hair and cradled my head. I felt his heart beating through my hand on his chest.
I quickly became breathless as we were caught up in one another. My whole body burned for him and all I could think about was how much I wanted more of him.
More of those lingering glances.
More of those roaming hands.
More of the kisses that sent my stomach into flips.
My cheeks flushed with warmth as I felt myself melt against him. He was the sun and I was just caught up in his atmosphere. Nothing could burn greater than what I felt in that moment.
The door opened and broke the spell. Rosa stood there, shaking her head and tsk-ing. We quickly pulled apart and I missed his warmth against me.
Of course, Rosa couldn’t keep her mouth shut. “I’ve seen the future and it’s not good for you guys. You should both leave now and save the rest of us from your drama.”
Magic Bound (Shadow Academy Book 2) Page 9