Senior Witch, Fall Semester

by Ingrid Seymour

  “Anama!” I crawled over to her, and put my hand on her arm. She was ice cold.

  In a panic, I conjured healing spells, pushing everything I could into her as I murmured, “It’s not real. None of this is real,” over and over.

  Slowly, the warmth returned to her body. She gasped, her eyes fluttering open.

  “Thank God,” I said, leaning back on my knees.

  Seeing me, Anama reeled, crashing into the wall behind her. “Stay away!”

  “It’s okay,” I said, holding my hands up to show I meant no harm. “You’re safe. The spider is gone. It’s just me.”

  She glanced from me to the empty room and back again. “What happened?”

  Before I could answer, a body fell from the ceiling and landed between us. Cruise thrashed, gasping for air.

  I crawled to him, doing the same thing I’d done to Anama. Soon, he was also blinking up at me with surprise.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  Anama was quick to answer. “None of it was real. We’re not dead.”

  Cruise glanced at his body as if to make sure it was really there. “The door was... in the spider. Clever.”

  “And horrible,” I said, standing up. “How do we tell the others?”

  We tried pounding on the wall and shouting, but our voices bounced back to us, as did communication spells. Nothing we did seemed to leave the small, dim room.

  “But now we’re stuck,” Anama said. Her confidence seemed to have shrunk since being eaten by a giant spider. Her spear had gotten lost in the fight and her war paint had smudged. It reminded me how small she actually was. But fierce, like her father.

  “There has to be a way out,” I said. “Just like the waterfall and the spider. Something we wouldn’t expect.”

  Cruise nodded, smiling slightly. He was enjoying these sadistic games far too much. There was something wrong with that boy.

  “Both the other tests have required you to think outside the box or already know the secret,” he said.

  “Yeah, it would’ve helped a lot if we’d known to just let the hairy spider eat us in the first place.” I thought of my friends and hoped they were okay. I supposed the worst thing that could happen to them was to be eaten and be brought in here, so I tried not to worry or think of Bridget’s unconscious shape. We had little time and had yet to find Nyquist’s prisoners.

  Cruise walked around the room, running his hands along the walls. “This room is so boring. Very un-dreamscape-like.”

  Anama nodded. “This is nothing like I’d seen when I was being held last year.”

  “Seen,” Cruise repeated, snapping his fingers. “Maybe we aren’t supposed to see.”

  “What?” I asked.

  Cruise pushed a lock of hair back from his bruised face as an expression of understanding dawned on it. “Our teachers, the ones the male students have this year, they’re always talking about feeling our way through magic. They drone on and on about how great wizards don’t need to memorize spells or do intricate finger work. They can just feel magic.”

  He closed his eyes.

  Anama snorted, but I wondered if Cruise was onto something. My cuffs were a sort of magic detector. They’d saved my bacon tons of times with that very ability. Maybe it was an advanced skill I’d only stumbled into because such a powerful item had chosen me Freshman Year.

  “Why would Nyquist do this?” Anama asked, seeming frustrated. “Why not just chain them in a dungeon and put a hundred guards in front of them?”

  Cruise’s answer came quick. “Nyquist loves advanced wizards and he loves testing us, making us try out new spells, sharpening the skills of his ‘young warlocks.’” He made air quotes. “Some of these levels might have been created by my classmates as tests. He probably got a real kick out of some of them. No one asked me to create one, though. Funny.” He sounded as though he thought it was anything but funny, and I wondered, once again, what had happened to him?

  Anama sneered. It was a pretty awful thought—using students to create a magical dungeon for you—but seemed to fit right in Nyquist’s playbook.

  There was only one thing to do to stop this from happening again. We had to continue down his rabbit trail. We had to keep fighting and end this once and for all.

  As Cruise tried to feel his way toward magic, I did the same.

  Slowly, like a warm current in a cold pool, I felt it. The magic was a thin trickle at first, but as I moved forward, it grew by degrees. Bumping into Cruise, we glanced at each other and continued to follow the magical signature until our extended hands collided into the far wall.

  When I opened my eyes, it was just that, a wall. No door or exit to be found.

  “Dammit,” I said, but Cruise shook his head. Using his hands, he reached up, gripped something invisible and pulled. As I watched, he began to climb an invisible ladder.

  When he was halfway up the wall, he stopped and glanced back. “You have to feel the ladder’s magic or it isn’t there. Give it a try.”

  Closing my eyes, I was able to get it right away, the magical rungs that solidified in my hands and under my feet as I moved up the wall. Glancing back, I found Anama standing beside the wall, staring up with a frown.

  “You have to feel it,” I said to her, but she shook her head.

  “I don’t feel anything.”

  Shit. Fae magic was so different from human magic that she might never understand how to find the ladder even if I spent hours explaining it. But I couldn’t leave her here.

  I started to descend, but she shook her head. “Go. We don’t have time. Save my mother.”

  She was right, we were running out of time. The guards would wake up soon. Who knew how long we had before everything came crashing down on us.

  Cruise and I had to keep going. If we did, we might be able to release Tempest, Kiana, and the Loopers. Then we could come back for everyone else. But if we stayed inside that little room…

  My hope would die.

  “We’ll come back for you,” I said, giving Anama a last wave. She gave me a fae salute, holding out the first and last fingers of each hand. It was a gesture I’d seen fae soldiers give each other. Did this mean she finally trusted me? Or was she secretly giving me the finger?

  I decided on the former and continued my climb.

  Cruise and I labored upward. Soon, we were climbing through a swirling mist that stung my nose and burned my eyes. My cuffs throbbed, letting me know we were crossing through a membrane of intense magic, a sign we were on the right track. Above me, only Cruise’s legs were visible, then even those disappeared into the misty swirl.

  I was all alone as the cloud enveloped me. I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear. The only choice was to continue upward with my heart pounding in my ears.

  Then, my head popped through the clouds.

  It was a room above the sky. The floor was made of fluffy white clouds, but there was no ceiling or walls as if the whole thing hovered in the heavens. Yet, when Cruise pulled up and walked forward, he didn’t sink through and fall to his death.

  Ahead of him, two figures floated, suspended in midair.

  Kiana and Tempest.

  We’d done it.

  I glanced around, searching for the Loopers, but they weren’t here.

  When I glanced back, Cruise was reaching out to touch Tempest’s foot.

  “Don’t,” I said, but it was too late.

  The moment his fingers brushed her, the room shook. Suddenly, the air chilled and the ground, if there was any, trembled. Red light began replacing the blue sky until the whole scene looked like a horror movie.

  This was wrong. All wrong.

  “Cruise!” I called.

  He whirled toward me, but his eyes landed on something behind my head. When I craned my neck, I saw him.

  Nyquist, glowing just as he had when he’d accessed the Looper’s powers, stepped out of the clouds and shot a ball of fire right at Cruise’s chest.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

&n
bsp; FALL SEMESTER

  LATE OCTOBER

  I ran to Cruise, who was prone on the cloudy ground, and immediately blasted a healing spell at his chest while I kept my eyes on Nyquist’s glowing figure. Why he didn’t blast me, I didn’t know. Maybe he still thought I was on his side after all this.

  “What did you do to him?” I demanded.

  Nyquist didn’t answer. He just looked at me with curious eyes, tilting his head to one side. He looked younger, more virile, not like the crippled old man he portrayed so well on campus. Powerful energy emanated off him, letting me know that if I tried to take him on, it would be one hell of a battle.

  Kneeling by his head, I pressed two fingers to Cruise’s jugular vein and a faint heartbeat quivered under my fingertips. He was alive, but barely.

  “They warned me about you,” Nyquist said after a moment. “But I didn’t want to believe them. I said, ‘Charlie is one of us.’ Yet, here you are. Maybe I wanted to believe the cuffs would choose someone who was more than a worthless street rat, but I guess not.”

  He was trying to bait me, but I wouldn’t bite. I stood up slowly, eyes darting all around as I weighed my options. Nyquist was here. This was my chance to kill him, but would I be strong enough? He was glowing with the immense power from a Looper. Would he freeze me in time if I tried something? Could I be faster than him if we both cast at the same time?

  I thought I could be faster. I was younger and had better reflexes, but then again… he’d been waiting for this. That much was clear. Maybe he had separated our team to make destroying each of us that much easier. It would be foolish not to suspect he had something up his sleeve. I had to be careful.

  “You would risk yourself for these Lessers?” he asked, gesturing with disdain toward Kiana and Tempest who still hung in the reddish sky, unconscious.

  I stared at them, my heart pounding. One was the person I had betrayed. The other was the one I had tortured.

  Of course, I would risk myself. There was no doubt in my mind.

  I would risk my life for them and hope to make up for what I’d been forced to do. I would do it for them and for everyone Nyquist had hurt.

  “It was you and Fedorov last time, wasn’t it?” he asked. “You were with him, helped him break into my dreamscape. Or was it the other way around? The poor fellow isn’t very clever, after all.”

  “Yes, I was with him,” I said, hatred making my voice quaver. “And he’s twice the warlock and man you will ever be.”

  “Pfft.” He waved a hand dismissively. “Don’t make me laugh,” he added without the hint of a smile. “He led me straight to Lynssa. They are both my prisoners now.”

  “No, that’s not true,” I said, even as I understood this was the reason Lynssa and Fedorov hadn’t come to help us. My blood turned to ice as I thought of the things Nyquist might have done to them.

  “Tell me something, Charlie,” Nyquist said, smoothly strolling in front of me on the unseen ground as clouds swirled around his ankles.

  I watched him closely, the way he moved, one foot carefully in front of the other. I frowned. The way he was moving wasn’t like him. Had he taken some sort of rejuvenation potion? Would that even work on his soggy ass?

  “Why be on the losing side?” he asked. “Why not join me? You’re young. You can’t possibly think your inexperience and misguided morals are the answer to fixing what’s wrong with this world. Yes, you’re female, but there can still be a place for you.”

  “Maybe the world isn’t perfect,” I said, sidestepping, moving away from Cruise through the vast heaven-like space. “But no brand of hatred can fix what’s broken, and that’s all you have to offer. Hate and fear.”

  He chuckled coldly. “I don’t fear anything, dear girl.”

  Nyquist and I circled each other. I watched his every move, letting my awareness of our surroundings and of him fill my senses. Something was wrong. Nothing in this place was really what it appeared to be. I had to remember that. I had to feel the magic like Cruise said.

  “In order for things to work, there must be rules,” he said. “Look what had become of our Academy without proper leadership. Lessers everywhere.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Lessers that you don’t mind exploiting. You hypocrite.”

  “Everyone has a purpose. Let me show you,” he said, lifting a hand and wiggling his once-arthritic fingers.

  The air before him trembled slightly. A point of light appeared above his head, then slowly dropped toward the ground like a drop of water sliding down the side of a glass. As it did, the air before me split open as if a zipper was parting to reveal what lay behind the fabric.

  Beyond my reality, another world shimmered.

  Through the wavering hole, I could see it all. A hot, bright sun beat on an expansive field. The prolonged call of bugs filled the air as they begged for rain. The sky was blue and dotted with fluffy clouds. Familiar rows of root vegetables with red-veined leaves lined the ground. I knew this place.

  Irmagard’s beet farm.

  In the distance, between two rows of beets, something moved, wavering in the heat. As I watched, it came closer and closer and resolved into the shape of a young girl. A mud-stained dress blew around her. Her run morphed into a silly gallop. Two braids bounced on her shoulders and a huge smile spread her lips.

  A knot formed in my throat. It was Lynssa as a child. The same age as I had seen her in Nyquist’s memory.

  I was so enthralled by the scene that I didn’t notice when Nyquist stuck a hand through the rip in the fabric and waved his fingers in a spell.

  Suddenly, the girl tripped and fell, crushing a section of beet leaves. Her face scrunched up in pain, but she didn’t cry. She stood, dusted her dress, then stared at her hands which had braced her fall.

  With a snap of Nyquist’s fingers, my perspective of the scene changed, then I was staring at Lynssa’s hands as if through her eyes. Small rocks had embedded themselves into her palms. I watched from behind her eyes as she removed them one by one. When she was done, blood dribbled from a few ruby-red cuts.

  “Ouch.” The little voice rang inside my head as if it were my own.

  A tremor went through the field, then I snapped back into my body. The rip in the air slowly closed, the drop of light climbing back up and zipping the fabric shut again.

  He had done it. He had figured out how to use the Loopers’ powers to affect time, to go to the past and twist it to his will.

  Fear, like a claw, gripped my heart. I stared up at him in horror.

  “Like I said,” Nyquist smiled, “everyone has a purpose. Loopers have a special power that can be quite useful. That was a small demonstration, but soon, I’ll be able to utilize it to its full potential, and the world will change for the better.”

  I took a step back, shaking my head. I could not let this happen.

  “You don’t have to be afraid,” he said with a condescending smirk. “If you join me,” he glanced at my cuffs then back into my eyes, “I will save your mother from that terrible car accident that killed her.”

  My heart stopped and clenched so tightly my chest began to ache.

  “Then your father would never become an alcoholic,” he continued, his words stripping me raw, exposing all the pain that, despite all my effort to forget, still lived very much at the surface of who I was.

  My parents. Could I really have them back?

  I stood trembling with confusion, which slowly turned to fury. My life hadn’t been the best, but it had shaped me, made me strong. He had no right to use my pain as a weapon against me. What I’d gone through with my family was part of my life, and he was seriously deluded if he thought I would allow the likes of him to meddle with it.

  Plus, he’d never give me what I wanted anyway. It was all a ruse.

  Taking a deep breath to steady myself, I glanced down at Nyquist’s casual stance, telling myself the hunch that had hit me when the old man first began strolling around the room was not only a hunch. It was the truth. />
  I knew him.

  I’d seen him amble and shuffle around his office enough times to know better. He didn’t move like this, and no rejuvenation spell could make such a drastic change. I also knew he was a coward. He’d tried to escape Tempest during Dean McIntosh’s memorial, and, even with all his cronies behind him, he had cowered under the pressure of Sinasre’s father. It also explained why he wasn’t attacking. He was talking to keep me busy.

  “So what do you think, Charlie?” he asked. “Will you take me up on my generous offer?”

  I stared at the ground and took a few steps closer to Kiana and Tempest as I pretended to ponder his generous offer.

  I thought of the way I’d found the ladder, simply sensing its magic. I thought of all the times my cuffs had seemed to know exactly what to do. Had it truly been them? Or me? Was I capable of casting without weaving? Of spellcasting without spoken words?

  Yes, you are, Charlie, I reassured myself. You climbed an invisible ladder. You felt it.

  What other proof did I need?

  I made up my mind.

  “You know what I think,” I said, focusing my magic, feeling it build within my chest while I purposefully curled my fingers into fists to keep them still. “I think that on top of being a racist and a sexist old fart, you are also vain as hell.”

  His eyes opened wide at the insults. He was used to respect from me. It had been fake, but he had bought it.

  “And, in the end, it will be your vanity and cowardice that will cause your downfall,” I said. “Do you know how I know that?”

  He narrowed his eyes, anger building.

  “Because I can tell you’re not really here, strutting around like a twenty-year-old spring chicken,” I spat.

  Without a warning or the smallest flick of a finger to give me away, I unleashed two spells.

  The first one filled the space with smoke so thick it was impossible to see two inches past my nose.

  The second cut Tempest and Kiana from their invisible restraints at the same time that I rolled over the ground like a ninja. Blindly, I reached Cruise just as the two bodies fell to the ground with a bone-breaking thud. I cringed at the sound. If we made it out of here, I would have to tell Tempest and Kiana that their headaches were my fault.