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

by S. W. Clarke

There was only one question I had left to answer to complete my enshroudment training with Umbra, and it had nothing to do with William Rathmore. I nodded. “I’m certain.”

  It was during this all-day meeting that the question at the back of my mind was finally answered: Why was the Guardians’ Council working with the academy, anyway? Surely they had better options.

  Turned out, we weren’t just college kids. Umbra’s academy had a history of turning out the most capable mages on the continent, if not the world. Guardians were regularly recruited on leaving the academy. And not just recruited—sought after. Even so, it was still a shock when Nissa looked up at the group of us when we’d finished planning out our mission and said, “We couldn’t do this without you. Thank you.”

  It wasn’t just that we were good. The world’s guardians were stretched thin, and had been for a few decades. It didn’t help that so many mages had been lost to kidnappings, abductions.

  So we weren’t just the most capable mages. We were what was left of those determined to beat back the Shade. Most of the world’s mages lived with their heads down, trying to avoid what was coming. And, as I learned for the first time, mages were only a tiny fraction of the world’s population. “Maybe one percent left,” Nissa said offhandedly. Which, with seven billion people, meant only seventy-eight million mages still roamed the Earth.

  Which seemed like a lot, but that wasn’t even a third of the population of my home country.

  “And before the kidnappings?” I’d cut in.

  “More,” Nissa said. “A lot more.”

  I also wondered whether it would be better for Eva to stay behind on this one. If her mother or father got into trouble in Inverness, she might do something irrational. And I wouldn’t even blame her.

  But Eva had been adamant, her eyes narrowed to slits as they shifted between her mother, father, and me. “Don’t even start on that. I’m the least irrational person of this bunch, I’m a fantastic healer, and I’m also a godsdamn good set of eyes. You need me, and I’m going.”

  She wasn’t wrong. So we didn’t argue further. But I did see her walking the grounds with her parents that evening, and the three of them eating together at the dining hall, like it might be a last walk, a last meal.

  Stop thinking that way, Clem, I instructed myself. But commands had never worked on me, and they didn’t now, either.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  We left in the night, just after the witching hour. It was the time when we hoped Rathmore would be deepest asleep, groggy and armorless when we yanked him out of bed.

  As Eva and Loki and I passed through Umbra’s part in the veil and stepped onto the still-dark Inverness city street with my enshroudment around the three of us, I said to her, “How you doing, sister?”

  “Sister?”

  “It’s an expression. But it doesn’t have to be.”

  She glanced at me, her severe expression softening as my enshroudment flickered around her. The two of us had already started walking down the street toward Rathmore’s home, just as we had years ago. But back then, we had been a team of two.

  Now, we were the first set of eyes.

  “I’m good,” she said. “I’m ready.”

  I nodded as we came to Haugh Road. She turned the corner of a building, tossed me her cloak as she did. Her wings came revealed, beautiful and gauzy under the moonlight, and in a moment, she’d flicked away and up to the rooftop.

  “Smell anything, Loki?” I said down to him.

  His nose rose, eyes half-closing as he scented the air. “Nothing except bread and fish.”

  I got the fish part—Inverness was right on a body of water. But bread? Then I followed Loki’s eyes and glanced left. We were standing next to a bakery.

  “Helpful as always, oh cat of mine.”

  What do you see up there? I said into Eva’s head.

  Nada, she said at once. No movement at all.

  Good. I stepped away from the alley and toward the still-open part in the veil, the academy’s grounds visible on the other side. I said into Nissa Whitewillow’s head, We’re clear.

  Seconds later, Eva’s parents stepped through and into my enshroudment. In the intervening months I’d learned how to enshroud two other people and Loki, but that was as far as I could stretch the magic for now.

  So that was how many I ferried at a time. First the Whitewillows, who also took to the rooftops, and then the other academy fae. Last of all were the human guardians—Maise and Mishka and Akelan and Paxton—whom I brought to the start of their route they’d take through yards and past darkened fences all the way to Rathmore’s home.

  It was only when we were all in position and converging on Rathmore’s house that I really understood how well Nissa and Florian had planned this all out. Though we’d split into groups, we kept in communication the whole way. And we all arrived outside his grand old home at the same time.

  It was perfection.

  So given my luck, the rest of the night was bound to be hell.

  First, Loki slipped between the gates of Rathmore’s yard, moving like a slip against the high, overgrown brick wall around the perimeter until he reached the farthest corner of the yard, where he had a vantage of the backside of the house.

  I moved in my enshroudment along the wall, standing on the opposite side from Loki. From where I stood, I could hardly glimpse the second story over the greenery. After a minute, he leapt up, landing with silent grace amidst the leaves.

  “See anything?” I whispered up to him.

  “Nothing,” he said. “All the blinds and curtains are drawn.”

  “On every window?”

  “On every window.”

  That was no surprise; after all the missions we’d conducted in Edinburgh, the man would at least draw his curtains at night. Or even for the simple reason that he was, and long had been, Lucian the prince, a half-demon.

  But drawn curtains were a small price to pay for all the progress we had made over the past few months sabotaging the formalists’ work in Edinburgh.

  I nodded. Then, to Nissa, No movement.

  We’ll head in, she said. Keep on your toes.

  My eyes lifted as I glimpsed movement above me. In this dark, cloudy night, it was hard to make out the fae dressed all in black, but sometimes their wings caught a streetlamp just right.

  One, two, three, four, five passed over, landed on the roof of the house. Nissa, Florian, Elijah, Isaiah, Liara—all the fae except for Eva and Keene, who had moved from rooftop to rooftop to arrive at the peaks of Rathmore’s neighbors’ homes, where they would be our eyes. And, of course, Eva was our medic if things went sideways. She was the only one with healing magic anywhere close to Neverwink’s prowess.

  The faintest footsteps sounded in the darkness behind me. Akelan, whose form I recognized. He was the only non-fae who’d be coming this close to the house; the others—Maise, Mishka, and Paxton—waited at their nearby spots for the moment we would bring Rathmore out into the night.

  I dropped my enshroudment for a few seconds to show Akelan where I was standing, and he nodded. Then I wrapped it back around me and said to him, Show me what you got, earth mage.

  His hands went out, channeling. A second later, the earth shifted beneath me until a square of it gently, gently dislodged itself from the ground. I rose two, three, four feet until I was high enough to climb onto the top of the wall next to Loki. From there, I dropped down into Rathmore’s yard.

  I’m in, I said to Nissa.

  Good. We’re in place.

  I moved quickly toward the window to the living room. No one would see me—I was invisible and silent, after all—but a lifetime of being the redhead meant I still snuck around like I used to.

  When I arrived at the side door to the kitchen, I stood at the edge of it with one extended finger and the tiniest flame. With aching care, I drew a smoldering circle in the glass large enough for a fae to stick their hand through. The cut was so buttery smooth, so precise, that when I said
up to Keene, Ready for you, and he flew down to my side, it only took the tiniest pull of air magic for the circle of glass to drop into his hand.

  Inside the house, I couldn’t hear a thing. No footsteps, no snoring, no TV—nothing. It was dead silent. So I stepped aside. Do your thing.

  One thing Florian had discovered while scouting Rathmore’s Inverness home: you couldn’t even open a window without setting off his alarm system. With Keene’s savvy, we’d decided the best way forward was to disable it entirely.

  Keene twirled a hand, and though I couldn’t properly see it in the night, I knew air magic flowed around it. His hand entered the hole in the glass, though only up to the wrist. I’ve found the alarm system, he said to me, by which he meant his air magic proxy-hand had found it. Typical dross technology. Disabling it is stupidly simple. All I have to do is—

  I tuned the rest out. God knew I would never find time in my life to learn how to disable Scottish alarm systems. Mostly, I listened for sounds inside the house. Or outside.

  He had two bodyguards in there, somewhere. We were counting on them being asleep.

  Keene’s hand slipped out from the hole, and he said, Got it. The house is disarmed.

  Well, that had been completely soundless. So far, so good. I relayed as much to Nissa, and she said, Stand alongside the house and drop your enshroudment. We’ll bring you up.

  As Keene flew off to a nearby rooftop to keep watch, I pressed myself up against the side of the house, and for a second I clung to the enshroudment—my safety—before I slowly allowed it to drop away, exposing me to the world. It was chillier than I had realized, and breezier.

  A second later, two fae dropped down in front of me. Nissa and Florian.

  Ready? he said.

  I raised my arms. Let’s do it.

  Together, they picked me up and flew me to the rooftop, setting me gently—and directly—above William Rathmore’s bedroom.

  I met eyes with the five fae, then turned toward Eva, who still crouched at the peak of the next-door rooftop.

  No movement, she said.

  Let’s not waste any time, Nissa said, and I nodded.

  I wrapped the enshroudment around me once more and dropped to my knees as Florian grabbed and held the back of my shirt, lowering me along the edge of the rooftop until I was half-dangling over one of the windows of Rathmore’s bedroom.

  When I drew a hole with my fingertip in the glass, cutting it away with a soldering iron’s heat and precision, this time it was Nissa who appeared in the glass’s reflection, tugging the glass away with her air magic until she caught it in her hand.

  Then it was just a matter of reaching inside and flicking the window’s lock, and we would have access to the bedroom of the last man I ever wanted to see in his pajamas.

  I pressed the window up, and it slid with silent certainty like a modern window in a well-kept house. Rathmore would have been better served by something old and creaky, but as Florian dropped me down onto the sill, where I gently lifted the blinds and ducked my head inside, past the curtains, I understood the reason for the window’s quiet hinges.

  Admist the nighttime grays and blacks of Rathmore’s bedroom, I saw luxury. Modernity. A big-ass bed whose four posters speared toward the cupola ceiling, and in the center of it, the half-demon himself. All alone. If he’d been snoring, I would have been thrilled; when I saw the Shade, I could have taunted her about her half-demon’s sleep apnea.

  His mouth was open, though silent, his arms spread wide as though he’d never had to make space for anyone.

  For a second, my mind flicked to why he was alone. And then I remembered: this was Callum’s father. His mother had died decades ago, and his father had never remarried. I wondered if she had ever slept in this bed. I wondered if she had ever known what her husband was.

  And then the thought passed, and I moved forward. It took so much care to avoid flicking the blinds that a minute must have passed before I’d finally gotten my feet on the carpet and stood there against the wall, properly taking in the smells of the place.

  Mahogany, pipe smoke, a tangy spice I didn’t recognize.

  Beside me stood an armoire taller than I was, and beneath the far window, an armchair and a small table. I spotted the door to the ensuite bathroom and another to the closet, and finally, the largest of them—the one to the hallway—was shut.

  A closed door makes for an easy abduction.

  My eyes passed over Rathmore once more, and I was about to pull aside the curtains and lift the blinds for the others when I backtracked, fixating on something massive on the wall above his bed. It was shrouded in darkness, so I stepped closer, squinting. Then closer, until finally my eyes and the angle allowed me to view it with the tiniest gleam of streetlight through the blinds.

  It shone silver.

  I stopped, straightening, staring down the length of it from one end to the other.

  That was a broadsword. Some five feet long, just under a foot wide, exactly like the one I’d first seen Callum holding that night so long ago, before I’d known who the man in armor was, or Lucian the prince, or even the Rathmores.

  Uh, Nissa, I said. There’s a real, real big sword on the wall about two feet above the half-demon’s head.

  Florian mentioned it to me when he scouted the house, she said at once. If this goes right, it won’t matter.

  Well, she was optimistic.

  I backed away until I was touching the wall again—my safety, my home base. Then I tore my eyes off the sword, began moving aside the curtains. When I pulled up the blinds, I did so gently, inch by inch, until the window was fully exposed to the night.

  This was it.

  Ready, I said, and stepped back.

  The five fae dropped in with more fluid grace than my cat, their bodies angling so perfectly through the window and dropping with such soundless ease onto the carpet that they seemed almost like specters, like dreams. First Nissa, then Florian, then Liara, and finally Elijah and Isaiah, who carried Mishka up to the window’s ledge.

  Mishka stepped down from the sill with soft, slow carefulness as the fae spread out around Rathmore’s bed.

  We would need to time this perfectly.

  Nissa nodded at Mishka, who remained standing by the open window. Her hands went up before her, lifting with the palms facing up, and outside the window a globe of water the size of a basketball congealed from the moisture in the air. As her hands moved, she shaped it until it had the consistency and looseness of taffy, and then she gestured it in through the window, where she split it into two equal parts that hovered before her.

  My fingertips lit with flame as I stood at the corner of Rathmore’s bed, and across from me, Liara was ready with her lightning. The other fae took up position at intervals between us.

  We had three elements present. Nissa had Florian had insisted that would be enough.

  Nissa’s slender fingers went up in the darkness, and my chest held, waiting for her signal. When they lowered, she was already sweeping air in a circular motion so fluid, so fast, I could barely see her hands. And it converged around William Rathmore’s head, sucking out all oxygen, starving him of air.

  Mishka shot the water at Rathmore’s hands, where it enveloped them like fat mittens, covering his fingers and palms and wrists. Then freezing, hardening—cutting off his fire magic.

  Liara’s lightning sizzled from her hands down to the half-demon, forming a flickering ropetie that pinned his arms to his body.

  By now the man’s eyes had opened. He’d half-started from the bed, but that was when Liara’s lightning had pressed him back down. And though he’d lifted his hands at the elbow, they were useless and fat with the earthen shackles.

  I reluctantly waited, kept hidden from view, fire tickling my fingers. Someone, Nissa had argued, had to provide the element of surprise in case things got bad. “And who better than the feisty, capable fire witch?” she’d said with a wink.

  Elijah, Isaiah, Nissa said now. Lift him.


  Nissa’s magic continued swirling around Rathmore’s head, cutting off his oxygen; we had to get him out of the house before he passed out from lack of air.

  Elijah and Isaiah stepped forward at either side of the bed, each grabbing Rathmore by an arm. And it was only when they were near him like that I fully grasped that this man was Lucian the prince. Even in his mid-fifties, he was musclebound, enormous.

  The sheer size of William Rathmore, half-demon, put the twins to shame when he stood upright.

  Still, they managed to drag him off the bed and to his feet, where he stood at least half a foot taller than them. Rathmore refused to open his mouth, though his nostrils widened as his eyes passed over the others. When they fell on Nissa, they darkened. Then the tiniest, self-satisfied smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

  The man would pass out from lack of oxygen in two minutes, but he was smiling.

  That was when I knew for certain we’d vastly underestimated him.

  Eva, I said to the fae outside, I’ve got a feeling something bad’s about to happen.

  Chapter Thirty

  Elijah and Isaiah had begun walking Rathmore around the bed when I said into Nissa’s head: This isn’t going to go like we’d planned.

  She registered what I’d said with a twitch of the muscle in her jaw; I saw it in a band of light from the window. That was all she had time to do.

  With a bang, the shards of ice around Rathmore’s hands shattered, bits of ice flying everywhere. Beneath them, flames surged.

  I ducked in time to avoid the ice; others weren’t so quick. I heard a familiar fae yell, and caught a glimpse of Eva on the windowsill, something glimmering and unnatural in her chest, and then she dropped from sight onto the carpet. When I looked up, glinting shards stuck in the walls, and I definitely saw one lodged in one of the twins’ shoulders.

  Rathmore’s hands rose, yanking at the lightning ropetie, pulling it away from his body like a garden snake. He held it in one flaming hand and, with one swing, shot it out at Liara, who caught it just before it hit her in the face.