Good Witches Don't Steal (Academy of Shadowed Magic Book 4)

by S. W. Clarke

  I shook my head, eyes on the ground. “That man on the train. Whatever he was…he led the creatures.”

  “Yes,” Umbra said. “You encountered William Rathmore.”

  Of course. That was why he seemed so familiar.

  He was Callum Rathmore’s father.

  And then it clicked—for both Loki and me.

  “He’s retaken the mantle,” Loki said by my side. “He’s retaken it from Callum. He’s Lucian now, isn’t it?”

  I glanced down at Loki, back over at Umbra. “What’s happened to Callum?”

  We had reached her office now, though I didn’t even remember walking through the grounds. Umbra stopped, her hand on the door, and turned to me. A soft sadness entered her eyes, and the hand left the door and fell on my cheek.

  “Don’t tell me he’s dead,” I breathed.

  “No,” Umbra whispered. “I don’t imagine he is. He is too important, too powerful to his father and the Shade be wasted so soon. But if he betrayed her on the tundra, as you said, with Ora Frostwish as witness, then his father would have hunted him down.”

  “And what?”

  “Retaken the title and captured his son. I imagine Callum now resides in a prison cell in Edinburgh. He’s likely being indoctrinated back into serving her. Maybe worse.”

  A band tightened around my chest. “We can’t let him stay there.”

  Umbra sighed. “Child, I can see in your eyes there’s nothing I can say to prevent you from venturing into Edinburgh after him. But I will say this: give me time. Allow me to make you into the witch who could topple that city at its foundations.”

  A chill went through me. “You could do that?”

  She nodded at me. “You could do that. My only role is to guide you to your true power.”

  Time. She needed time.

  When Umbra left me standing outside her office, she asked for my promise not to leave the grounds until the leyline was secured. She had work to do to bring the rest of the student body here safely.

  And I couldn’t do anything for Callum Rathmore in the meantime, except to learn. To grow in power, as I had been doing.

  I turned to Loki, who stared up at me. “Way to kick off our fourth year,” he said.

  Chapter Five

  That afternoon, the stables were empty of people and full of horses. Just the way I liked it.

  When I came in through the half-door, I already knew Quartermistress Farrow was away; Umbra had told me she was retrieving students somewhere in Canada. But what Umbra hadn’t told me was how Farrow could keep the stables running without anyone here to run them.

  She’d only said, “I’ve enchanted the place a little in the quartermistress’s absence.”

  I got a proper answer when I stepped into the aisleway.

  A sturdy broom swept past me, pushing bits of hay and detritus from one end of the aisle out into the paddock. It didn’t have an owner. Or, I should say, its owner wasn’t anywhere nearby.

  Maeve Umbra would never deign to sweep. In fairness, who would, if you could animate a broom?

  A flake of alfalfa flew from the hay room and into a stall, landing with a soft thump on the bedding. A second, then a third, a fourth went out, all flying to different stalls of their own volition.

  When I stepped forward, I found Siren with her head in the alfalfa, eating away. But no one was around to have fed her. Also Umbra’s doing. In fact, all the horses were having their afternoon meal.

  Loki slipped through the door, cat-leapt two feet in the air as the broom rushed toward him in its mindless cleaning. “Gods, you could have warned me.”

  I glanced over at him. “You’re a cat.”

  “Fair.” He leapt onto the half-door of Siren’s stall, watching with catlike intensity as the broom moved. “A bit strange, isn’t it?”

  “The broom, the hay, or the fact that, all this time, I mucked stalls and cleaned horses when Umbra could have used her magic to make it happen?”

  “Bitter much?”

  “Only a little.” I turned away from Siren’s stall, approached Noir’s. As I did, his head swung out over the half-door, black eyes finding mine. He was as magnificent as ever. And thoroughly my horse; his knee kicked the door just a second later, and the whole thing shuddered against its latch. “I’m guessing Farrow would say the work builds character, or that she prefers to do it herself.”

  Quartermistress Farrow was the only mage I’d met who used her magic so little it was easy to think she didn’t have any at all. It wasn’t until she’d placed the magical corks in Noir’s shoes last May that I’d remembered: Yes, Farrow has magic just like the rest of them.

  But she preferred calluses on her hands. And she almost never left her world here, which meant every professor was needed to escort students.

  Noir nickered as my hand went up to stroke his face. Every summer I missed this horse, missed the feel of riding him. But this past summer had been exceptional, because I had never felt more vulnerable.

  And I realized now, being with him again, that he brought me a sense of security. Stability. Safety. Just like Loki, he was for me, and I was for him, and now that we had ridden over a lake together, unfreezing it as one, I didn’t want to go away from him for months again.

  I needed—wanted—him with me in whatever I faced.

  “Isn’t it curious, though,” Loki said, “that Umbra has never animated anything else on the grounds?”

  I scratched Noir’s jaw. “Maybe she does, at night or in the summertime when the students are gone, and we don’t know it.”

  “I’ve prowled these entire grounds at night, and during the summer we stayed here,” he said. “Trust me, nothing was animated.”

  He must be right; he was, after all, out every night since we’d arrived at the academy. I turned. “Loki, do you remember what happened for us to pass through the veil from that train platform?”

  “Sure.” His tail swished. “Umbra used her staff to part it.”

  “But we weren’t near a point of power.”

  “No, we weren’t.”

  Noir nudged me with his head, and I went on scratching under his chin. “How did she do it, then?”

  “That was the exact question on my mind. Well, beneath my abject fear and actively attempt not to piss myself.”

  The broom swept down the aisle between us, and we both watched it.

  Somehow, Maeve Umbra could maintain the enchantment over miles of academy grounds, over her family’s home outside Zurich, part the veil without a nearby point of power, then go on to secure the corrupted leyline, and animate the stables as she did so.

  She seemed awfully powerful. Maybe she had never properly shown her hand before, or maybe...

  “You know,” Loki said, “the scent of her magic has changed from when we first met her.”

  I focused on him. “How?”

  “Hard to explain. Deepened, grown more complex. Like cooking garlic on a pan.”

  “You’re saying Maeve Umbra smells like garlic?”

  “It’s an analogy, pleb. She smells more like…bread. Before she was white bread, and now she’s sourdough.”

  “Sourdough, right.” I paused. “What does that mean?”

  “She’s grown more powerful.” He gave me a slow-blink. “Just like you have.”

  I didn’t want to know what my magic smelled like to him. He’d probably say farts, and then I’d spend the rest of my life carrying that around like tiny, unforgettable millstone.

  “Interesting,” I said. When my hand lowered, Noir slung his head over my shoulder as though he was listening in on the conversation. “When Milonakis explained parting the veil in our first year, she never even said it was possible to do so without a point of power nearby. It wasn’t even an option.”

  “It isn’t supposed to be,” Loki said.

  “But Umbra can do it. Why?”

  “That’s a question for your favorite egghead.”

  He was right; this was the kind of puzzle Aidan North w
ould dive into with undivided gusto.

  But North wasn’t here yet. It was just Umbra, me, Loki, and the horses.

  Which left one option.

  I glanced at Noir. “It’s been too long since you and I have jumped the paddock fence together.”

  It took Maeve Umbra three days to secure the leyline, during which our lessons together were put on hold. She wouldn’t allow any of the other students to return to the grounds until the work was done. And she refused to let me outside the grounds to witness her magic, but at the end of each day, she returned haggard. Exhausted.

  One night, on her way back to her home, I asked her, “What does it matter if you secure the leyline if the Shade knows where we are?”

  “It matters,” she said with thin patience, “because we cannot be caught in that dark place if the leyline belongs to us. You know from what you saw there that few would escape her realm.”

  “Could she ever take the academy now that she knows where it is?”

  “She knows the academy is near, but she cannot as yet penetrate my magic. If we are careful not to travel during our nighttime, and a bit lucky, we shall evade her until the right time.”

  The right time.

  I didn’t know whether Umbra meant the second Battle of the Ages, or when I would take the Backbiter down to Hell to confront the Shade.

  Maybe they were one and the same.

  On the third day, when Umbra’s work was finished, she allowed the other students and professors to return. Soon, the academy grounds were brimming. A large crop of first-years had arrived, at least twice the size of my class.

  With the uncertainty in the world, Shadow’s End Academy had become a haven for young mages. So many had wanted to enroll, some had to be turned away for lack of places to house them. Even then, some classrooms had been repurposed as dorms. It couldn’t have been an easy decision for Umbra, but I found it heartening.

  In the face of so much darkness, here we were.

  The students arrived in groups, led by professors. Aidan traveled with Professor Goodbarrel and a gaggle of first-years, the two of them leading the group. When the group arrived, I watched them from the landing of my dorm. And seeing Aidan’s brown hair, I came down and met him in the clearing.

  “North,” I called out, and he broke off from the group. “Good to see you with your head still attached.”

  A wry smile appeared. “And why wouldn’t it be?”

  I came up to him with folded arms. “Haven’t you heard? The world’s going to hell.”

  “I’ve done more than heard.” The wryness disappeared. “The United Kingdom’s gone into nighttime lockdown. Too many kidnappings.”

  My eyebrows went up. “I hadn’t heard that.”

  “You wouldn’t have. The Mages’ Council didn’t want it known—Edinburgh wants to give the impression of sturdiness in the face of what’s happening.”

  “By which you mean the formalists in Scotland.”

  He shrugged. “They’re one and the same. They remind me of my primary school maths teacher—never bowing to anyone, and never, never wrong.”

  My eyes trailed to the group of students Goodbarrel was now giving an impromptu grounds tour to. “And the council allowed you to leave?”

  “Most certainly not. We went carefully, using human transportation. At one point a double-decker bus was involved.” He nodded at me. “What about you?”

  “Oh, you know. Umbra and I were chased down a train platform by Lucian the prince and his minions, and then she managed to part the veil nowhere near a point of power, and then I got stuck inside a corrupted veil and talked to the Shade herself.”

  Aidan just blinked at me. Then began laughing. “And when Umbra parted the veil in the middle of nowhere, did she say any magical words?”

  “Actually, Mr. North,” Umbra said from behind me, jerking me out of my cross-armed casualness, “I said much in my head. Most of it involved clipped, desperate iterations of, ‘Godsdamn,’ and ‘Bollocks.’ Those seemed to be magical enough.”

  I spun. Umbra didn’t stop on her course past us, sweeping toward the first-years with outstretched arms and a loud, carrying welcome.

  Aidan straightened. Stepped closer to my side. “She’s serious?” Then he stared at me. “You were serious?”

  I patted his shoulder. “Always.” Though, as I watched Umbra talk to the students, I wondered again how she’d done what she did without a point of power anywhere to be seen.

  “Bloody hell,” Aidan said. “What was she like?”

  I kept my eyes on the group. “I couldn’t see her in the darkness. We only talked briefly.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She asked who I was. I told her.”

  “And how did you escape her—the Shade?”

  I pulled in air through my nose. “She told me if I wanted to pass, I should part the veil. And so I did.” No mention of the Spitfire. Even now I feared thinking of it. The way it had moved of its own volition, risen inside me, overtaken me with such ease. How different I had felt when it parted the veil on its own, full of the kind of high-octane emotions I’d only felt in moments of real anger. When I’d needed them.

  Until the Spitfire had taken control, I had felt fear. Trepidation. Desperation. But not anger. And once it had, Rational Clem felt small and inconsequential. The Spitfire’s emotions had overtaken me.

  What was the difference this time?

  The answer came at once: the Shade knew it was inside me. She knew it lived, it desired agency, and it had power.

  But I didn’t know how she knew. And that bothered me even more.

  I pushed it to the back of my mind. Aidan North was here, and I had a puzzle for him. “Hey, North”—I nodded toward the library with a wink—”bet you’ve been missing our little tea-and-cookie chats.”

  Aidan drew a hand down his face. “Why does that make me nervous?”

  “Don’t worry.” I hooked his arm, and we started walking. “You can trust the witch.”

  Chapter Six

  We came into the empty library, the entryway of which lit up on sensing our presence. A magical flame came to life in the lantern hanging from the ceiling, and it was strange to see Milonakis’s circulation desk empty.

  But it was conspicuously clean.

  We pressed our way into the main room, and Aidan stopped hard when a feather duster swam by his head toward a row of books. It began a meticulous swiping at each spine.

  He adjusted his glasses, staring after it. “Umbra’s animated this place.”

  “Yeah, and basically everywhere else on the grounds while the professors and staff have been away.”

  “Makes sense.” He stepped into the room, and two magical lanterns came to life around us. “But I do find one thing curious.”

  I came forward with him. “And what’s that?”

  “This branch of enchanting…it isn’t taught here.”

  I swicked a finger across a table, found it clean of dust. When I raised my finger for his inspection, I said, “Why? Because all us mages would grow fat and lazy?”

  He glanced at my finger, then my face. “Because it’s a dead art. Few mages in history have ever been taught enchantments, and even fewer progressed to animation. So few, in fact, it hasn’t been taught for decades.”

  “But Umbra was taught it.”

  “I suppose. Except there’s something wrong with that.”

  “Which is?”

  His eyes darted around the library, narrowed and thoughtful. Then he strode toward the Room of the Ancients. “Be back in a moment.”

  That was so like him; he always wanted to confirm his suspicions before he voiced them.

  I crossed the empty library, sparing one look up at the ceiling full of wisps, then mounted the staircase to arrive at our favorite table. When I snapped my fingers, tea and steaming fae rolls appeared. I came to lean over the railing, clasping my hands as Aidan appeared from the Room of the Ancients with a big tome in hand. “So, what’s up
with Umbra?”

  “Probably more than we’ll ever know.”

  When he joined me at the table, sitting across from me, I could see it in his eyes: the gusto. The little machinery working in his head, click-click-clicking away. He set the book down—from the title, I could see it was a book on schools of magic—flipping it open to the table of contents and then to a specific section. Finally, he stabbed the page. “Ufeus Caligari died in 1916.”

  “Who’s Ufeus Caligari?” I said around a mouthful of fae roll.

  His eyes met mine. “The last mage to ever master animations.”

  I nodded at a broom sweeping over the floor on the first story. “Does it take mastery to do that?”

  “Very nearly.” Aidan didn’t even look away from me. “Clem, to animate an object without even being in the same room…that’s something you only see in ancient, eternal enchantments.”

  “Like at the Kowloon Library,” I said, remembering the way the books had flown through the air in the Singaporean library, reshelving themselves.

  “Exactly like that. You won’t find one mage creating new animations like this.”

  “So why now?” I said. “Umbra never animated anything like this in our first three years.”

  “And how does she know a dead art?” he added. “She isn’t old enough to have learned it from Caligari. Is she?”

  We both paused. Was she?

  “She’d have to be over a hundred years old,” I said. “She looks old, but…”

  “Not that old,” Aidan finished. He sat back, hands sliding over the armrests of his chair. “I don’t know. I need to think about it.”

  “Loki told me the smell of her magic has changed since we first met her. ‘Grown more complex,’ he said.”

  “Huh.”

  “Which explains what she managed to do on the platform, and the animations, and uncorrupting the leyline. Right?”

  “Sure, except I don’t understand why,” he said. “Why more complex? Why now?”

  My fingers drummed on the table. “She’s teaching me one-on-one this year. Everything she knows, apparently.” I half-smiled. “Which means I’ll get lots of chances to fish for clues.”