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

by S. W. Clarke

  I couldn’t stop staring as the woman’s semi-translucent hand slid along the floor not eight inches from where the toe of my boot ended, leaving a small smear of blood behind.

  “Can you even kill a ghost?” I whispered down to Loki.

  “Either that or she’s doing a bang-up job of pretending,” he said.

  The man and his body disappeared back into the darkness, and I was left standing against the wall, my lungs feeling inadequate for the job.

  So this was what Milonakis had seen. This was what had driven her a little insane.

  “They can’t see us,” Loki said. “Not in the enshroudment.”

  “I know,” I breathed. And I didn’t say what I wanted to say: If it’s going to be a fight, we won’t have the enshroudment. My words to Aidan in the dorm room came back to me, unbidden and unwanted: “When isn’t it?”

  I shut my eyes for a second. The valerian; I had the valerian in me, and a second vial in my cloak.

  Keep moving, Clem, the rational voice in my head said. I forced myself to turn back into the hallway, to start my feet moving. You’re not nearly done yet.

  As Loki and I walked, the ghosts multiplied. We passed a woman leaning against the curved entryway to a room beyond, one foot hiked up along the stone, her hands clasped behind her to press her chest out. She kept repeating a phrase I didn’t know—it sounded like, “One’ll do you?”—and tilting her head from one side to the other, hair falling over her face.

  Beyond her, the sounds of coins clinked from somewhere nearby, men shuffling, laughing, one of them singing somewhere.

  “They’re living out illusions,” Loki said as someone shouted ahead, and what sounded like a table scraped and upturned. “Illusions of their lives.”

  I kept the flame and the weapon up before me, eyes darting. “And what joyful lives.”

  We came to the end of the hallway, turned left to an open doorway, and then…

  Growling. Low, wary growling.

  I remained in stasis directly outside the room. “Loki, tell me what species that is.”

  “Human,” he said with the vaguest tremor in his voice. “Definitely human.”

  In my experience, humans only growled for two reasons: they were very sick, or very horny. Neither of which I wanted.

  Soul Trap #1 was on the other side of this room. I had to go through this room to get to it.

  But I didn’t move. And the growling didn’t stop.

  I just needed to build up—

  “I’ll go ahead,” Loki offered, and before I could object, he slipped past my peripheral vision and into the darkness ahead.

  Without him beside me, touching me, or at least goading me, the darkness weighed in. Pressing, pressing, like fingers feathering over my skin. No, that was just goosebumps. That was a shiver going up my arms.

  Ahead, the growling lurched to a stop, then started again with renewed anger. Hotter. Louder.

  “Loki?” I whispered.

  Silence. I was about to call his name again when his green eyes opened up in my vision, as perfect and unmarred as ever. “Follow me. Whatever you do, keep the flame steady.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He didn’t answer, which was worse than if he had. More answers meant less unknown. Less unknown meant my mind couldn’t imagine the worst. Which meant whatever was in this room was the worst I could imagine.

  The green eyes disappeared as he turned, his tail flicking as he passed into the void of darkness. I followed, and he reappeared, trotting ahead of me. I kept my eyes precisely on him, watching my cat, doing my best to drown out the growling that reverberated in my head, in my chest.

  The worst, the worst, the worst.

  I’d always hated the dark. Now, since I’d become a witch, I had justifiable reasons. I’d been kidnapped in the darkness. Ghosts lurked there. The Shade probably did, too.

  At one point the growling was loudest, directly left of me—maybe two or three feet away. And though I knew they were ghosts and they couldn’t attack me the way a living person could, my body didn’t.

  The flame danced, the chain tinkling as my hands shook with a rare, cold adrenaline. This wasn’t fight—it was all flight. It was knowing the supernatural was beyond my understanding, beyond my world, and that I couldn’t control it.

  I knew if I lost my shit and ran, I’d probably knock myself out on one of these walls. Tomorrow, one of the tour groups would find me bleeding and concussed. That didn’t sound so bad. But when they saw my white, milky eyes? When they saw the madness in them? Not ideal.

  I had exactly two doses of valerian and as much time as they afforded me to do what I had to do.

  You’re safe in the enshroudment. So quit holding your breath and follow the cat, Rational Clem snapped.

  Safe. I was safe.

  I sucked in air, kept staring at Loki, and within ten steps, the growling was behind us. Another arched doorway appeared, and as it did, the weapon took on a new shade in my hand.

  A faint, unmistakable green.

  We were near the blade. Within thirty feet of it.

  “This is it, Loki.” I passed through the doorway, eyes on the Backbiter in my hand. “This is—”

  “Clem!” he yelled.

  My eyes lifted as a shadow darted into the cone of flame. It materialized as tread on a shoe, and in the instant I realized it was a black boot, it had already connected with my chest.

  The kick was powerful, precise. It got me in the solar plexus, and I slammed against the edge of the stone doorway. I caught a second glimpse of the boot rising, twisting as it approached my head, and then my face was knocked to the side. First the boot rattled my brain, and then the stone rattled back.

  My body went limp. And then true darkness fell over me.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  When I woke, it was to throbbing. My head, my lip, the sounds of two people breathing hard and fast. My eyes opened and I saw an ancient ceiling above me, the stones dark-gray in a dim, dim light.

  Not my light. Not my flame.

  The breathing quickened, became louder. Somewhere nearby, two people were having a much better time than me.

  Nearby, a young woman’s voice—ringing and only vaguely Scottish-accented—demanded: “Get up, witch.”

  I knew that voice—somehow, somewhere. Apparently it knew me, too.

  Witch. That was me. Though my head swam and I had trouble focusing on one thought, I knew I was the witch. And I knew I was being told to stand.

  Oh. I’m not standing.

  I lay on cold stone, my limbs at awkward angles. My eyes rolled toward the voice, but I couldn’t see anyone. Just more ceiling. My breath came shallow, like I couldn’t get enough air.

  Glasses clinked against one another, and a woman giggled high and sharp. Three, four voices had joined together in a faint, drunk chorus of some song I didn’t know.

  Where was I?

  My mind searched, hurting all the while, trying to understand everything I heard around me, and finally settled on one thing: Loki. I was with Loki.

  Wasn’t I?

  “Ora knew you’d hide behind your magic,” the voice said.

  I knew that voice. I knew it.

  And then her words came to me: Ora. Ora Frostwish. This was dangerous. I had to fight.

  Get up, Clem. Get up now.

  I gritted my teeth, my lips pulling and stinging where the bottom one had split, and forced myself up to an elbow. My breath came a little slower, a little deeper, and the ache in my solar plexus reminded me I’d been kicked. In the gut.

  Then, with that clue delivered, it all unraveled.

  Loki yelling my name. The boot appearing from the darkness, kicking me in the chest and then the head. My head hitting the stone, and now I did have a concussion after all.

  I was in the vaults. I was surrounded by ghosts.

  The screwing couple crescendoed, the man’s breathing turning almost pained as he came. And though I couldn’t see them, there was a hel
l of a lot to see.

  Around me, a long, large room was lit by just two candles at the far end. They were half-melted and as real as the young woman standing with her feet apart, blond hair in a bun, the veil over half her face, the hem of her cloak floating just at the lip of her black boots.

  Rathmore’s bodyguard.

  To her left, the trio of singing men swayed around a table, and I could partly see through them and the table to the bare wall. I could see through the young women pacing through the room in their revealing, haggard dresses, their hair long and bountiful. Through the seated or standing men leering at them with crossed arms or their hands on their knees. Through the man who’d cornered a girl and stood over her, one unwanted finger tracing the length of her face to her chin.

  They’d drive me crazy, if I let them.

  So my eyes traveled, seeking, seeking. The only real things in the room were Rathmore’s bodyguard and the candles she’d lit.

  Where was Loki?

  “If you’re too weak to get up,” her voice came a third time, “I could always kill you where you lay.”

  My gaze sharpened on her, and suddenly it was easy to rise to a seat. It was something about the way she’d said the word “weak.” It was all her words, but when she’d arrived at that one, it came clear to me.

  Her accent was only vaguely Scottish because she wasn’t Scottish. Not for long, at least. Not to start.

  The way she’d said “weak,” I knew. I knew it.

  She was American. Like me.

  “Now the feet, witch.” Her voice had lowered with her chin. “The valerian won’t last forever, and I’ve been waiting far too long to lose you to madness.”

  Yes. Yes, I knew her. The general thought crystallized, hardening in my center until it felt hard to breathe, my mind racing toward a name, a name that was very important to me. The most important.

  When the neurons finally lit along just the right path, my vision blurred. I swiped the moisture away with the back of my hand, keeping her face clear. Unobscured.

  I loved that face.

  The stinging in my lip had shifted elsewhere—to somewhere in my chest—when my lips parted. The word wouldn’t come out, my mouth struggling to configure, my tongue working to shape, until finally, in a stammer:

  “Tam?”

  The bodyguard’s hand went up, gripping the clasp of her cloak at her neck as the brothel-goers broke into a fresh chorus. With a click, the cloak dropped to her feet. She wore black, form-fitted clothes—a long-sleeved shirt and pants. At her hip, a leather belt offered a sheath for her nightstick, which hung in pretty silver etchings almost to her knee.

  She started forward. A steady, even walk straight toward me. “I’ve been waiting for you to call me that.” She pressed up her veil, and when her blue eyes came clear, I let out a sob.

  It was my sister. Not the ten-year-old; she’d leapt through time, and now here she was at twenty, beautiful and confident and ready to kill me. Her voice had taken on a gravelly quality, as though at one point she’d screamed all the color out and made do with the hoarseness that was left.

  “Pick up the weapon,” she whispered, and I realized in a haze that the Backbiter lay not a foot away from me, exactly where I’d dropped it. “Pick it up before I get there, or you’re already dead.”

  “Tamzin—”

  “Pick it up.”

  One thing hadn’t changed: when my sister was deadly serious, even as a ten-year-old, her voice took on a particular unignorable quality. Like she was making a promise, a vow.

  My head throbbed as I pulled my feet under me, set my fingers to the ground. My cheek felt sticky under the fetid air; I’d probably been bleeding. Still, I didn’t go for the weapon. I just kept my eyes on her, lifting, lifting as she got closer, her face higher over me. “Please.”

  Her blue eyes held hatred. I’d never seen her with hatred before. “I’ve waited so many years to make you beg. But I never expected you to do it at the start.”

  And with a scrape and a swipe, the nightstick was out of its sheath and arcing toward me. She moved like a snake, almost not at all and then all at once she was striking at me—at the center of my head, like she would split it in two.

  Instinct carried me, even through my concussion. I ducked away, shifted my weight left, toward the weapon. My hand went out, missed it by a few inches as I rolled away. As I came up, my world swam and my stomach bottomed out.

  “Look at this, then,” a man’s voice said, breaking off from the illusion of revelry. “Fight between the lassies. Watch it!”

  My face darted around, and I found Tamzin swinging sidelong at the back of my head. It was only the ghost’s warning that made me brace in time to drop low, both hands on the stone, as the nightstick whiffed through the air above me.

  Around us, cheers erupted.

  When I reached for the Backbiter, this time my fingers closed around it. “Tamzin,” I said, even as the nightstick reversed course, a backhand aiming right for my throat.

  She was fast. Maybe faster than me when I wasn’t concussed.

  I brought the Backbiter up with both hands in time to catch the nightstick, the two weapons perpendicular. When my eyes flashed up to her, she stood over me with a snarl, letting off the pressure with a flick, striking lower.

  I dropped the rod to meet the blow meant for my chest, then struck one of my legs out to sweep her.

  The nightstick flashed away as she leapt back, and I could finally rise, lowering the Backbiter with both hands still clasping the rod, the chain hanging to the floor. Around us, the men hooted and hollered. The women laughed. Someone said, “Show ‘em what for, lass.”

  Tamzin stood wide-footed, the nightstick long at her side, her whole body tensed and ready for my move. She had the speed, but I had the range. When her eyes flicked to the Backbiter, I knew she was waiting for me to lash out with the chain.

  I didn’t move. “I know you guard the blade.”

  “From you,” she spat, one hand sliding behind her back. “I knew you’d come for it.”

  “Because I need it, Tamzin. To—”

  “Of course you do.” Her hand reappeared, flashing with silver. In a quarter second she’d launched three tiny projectiles at my face, and I had no choice: I couldn’t dodge them, couldn’t raise the weapon fast enough to block them.

  I let the Spitfire respond, and my body erupted in flame. The metal hissed as it met the heat, dropped clinking to the floor in front of me.

  Knives. They were tiny, angular knives she’d launched at me.

  “There she is,” Tamzin whispered. “There’s the witch’s flame.”

  I stared at her wavering image. “You say that like you aren’t one, too.”

  Her eyes narrowed for a moment—was that confusion I saw?—before she snarled, launched herself into a series of arcing swipes with her nightstick as she closed the distance between us.

  With the Spitfire half in control, my blood was up. I lashed out, shooting fire from one hand and then the other.

  In both cases, she raised her nightstick in an elegant motion, sending the fire in a concentric arc up and over her, around her, and the moment before she absorbed it into her weapon, I saw it.

  For a split-second, the fire formed a sphere around her, enclosing her. She didn’t take my magic—she controlled it. Imprisoned it. Neutralized it.

  And something told me this was only a drop of her real power.

  Then she was on me. As the nightstick descended to slice me from cheek to kidney, I brought the Backbiter up to meet it, and the two weapons clanged against each other. One foot rose automatically, and I front-kicked her in the chest.

  She grabbed my foot with her free hand as she staggered back, pulling me with her. The flames should have burned her at once, but they didn’t. Wherever she touched, the flames receded. Just like she’d pushed away my enshroudment back in the Mages’ Council Building.

  This had something to do with Ora Frostwish. She could see through my en
shroudment. She could repulse my fire. Like she’d been trained to fight me.

  She twisted my foot, urging me sidelong. I had no choice but to go with my momentum, dropping the Backbiter as I braced my shoulder to hit the floor. When I did, I reached out, grabbing her ankle and yanking.

  She began falling backward, caught herself with one hand and dropped the nightstick. She swept around, regaining her feet, and I rolled away to a crouch.

  We turned toward each other, both rising unarmed, and she was on me before I could part my lips to speak. She had a boxer’s bounce on her toes, and when her fist came toward my mouth, she swung from her hips.

  Tamzin wanted to break my face.

  Chapter Forty

  Someone had taught my sister to fight like a hellcat.

  I ducked right, backing up as Tamzin advanced. She swung again, this time at my ribs, and I protected with my forearms over my core, all my training from my combat classes, my duels with Eva in the meadow coming back to me through the dullness of my concussion.

  With the next two swings, I knew Tamzin liked to be on the offensive. She kept coming forward, backing me up, as light on her feet as she was a quick strike. I managed to kick at her shin once, but she raised her foot, deflected it with preternatural quickness.

  We fought around the room, trading punches and kicks, ducking, weaving, she always keeping me on the back foot. I couldn’t keep my breath and speak at the same time, couldn’t reason with her.

  I could only defend myself.

  The next time she struck out with the nightstick, I angled my body away, kicked sidelong at her wrist. The nightstick fell, rolling away, and she was after it before I could advance on her. Not like I wanted to.

  “Tam,” I breathed, “I need to talk to you.”

  Her eyes never left me as she knelt, retrieving her weapon. And the second I was outside the cone of power, she came at me with new ferociousness. “You lost that chance a long time ago.”

  And then she was on me again.

  I tried to evade, but she was vicious in her approach and the swing of her nightstick. It blazed with flames as it whistled through the air in my wake, and then on the backswing it rushed toward the tender bundle of nerves on the side of my thigh. During my first year, Torsten had taught our combat class about the sciatic nerve. “Never let anyone get you in the thigh,” he’d said. “Not there, at least.”