“Mama gift,” she says. “When you have kids, you’ll learn. You don’t have to be a witch to know when something is bothering your youngins’. So, fess up. What’s wrong? Do I need to come down there and have a talking to with someone?”
“No,” I say. “Don’t you dare come down here.” I had been pacing, but now I flop down onto the bed. “Just…I’m missing home, I guess. A simpler time.” She stays quiet, so I go on. “My roommate… My first roommate had an accident and…died.”
“Oh! I’m so sorry to hear that,” she says. “That must have been so upsetting after all you’ve been through.”
“Yeah,” I say. “And then my second roommate…she went missing.”
“Missing?” Mama asks. “How?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Just gone in the middle of the night.”
Mama is quiet for a long time, and I can’t help but wonder if we lost connection. “Mama? You there?”
“Yeah. Just thinking,” she says. “Your teachers must have spells they can do to find her. What’s it called? Divining?”
“Scrying,” I say. “They tried that. No answers.”
“This sounds dangerous,” Mama says. “If even a witch can’t find her, you know what that means, right?”
“That she must be dead?” I say, my stomach twisting at the thought.
“That is a possibility,” Mama says. “I want you to come home.”
“I can’t.”
“Honey, it’s not safe there,” she says. Her voice is so…strong. Clear. Almost as if her southern drawl is gone. Her voice is…powerful.
“Mama?” I say. “Are you okay?”
“No,” she says. “You need to leave that place. Use the nearest mirror and get out of there.”
Her tone sends chills racing along my arms. Krista looks at me, a curious expression on her face, and I realize my own face feels tight with worry. I’m not sure if she can hear me or if she is just reading my body language, but I turn around and lower my voice.
“I can’t,” I say again. “I…I have to stay. I need to find out what happened.”
“Madison Whitaker,” Mama says, “don’t you dare put yourself in danger for those witches.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“They didn’t want you there in the first place,” Mama says. “Don’t think you owe them anything. If there is some killer or…supernatural kidnapper running loose...I want you to come home.”
“But you aren’t home,” I say. “I’d be more alone there than I am now. It’s safer if I stay here, among my own kind.”
“Was it safe for Giselle?” she asks. “Or Zoey?”
I nearly jump. “Did…did I tell you their names?”
“Of course you did,” she says. “At the start of the semester.”
Did I?
“I mean it,” Mama continues. “My only purpose in life has been to keep you safe. It’s why I did everything that I did. Listen to me—you aren’t safe there.”
I sigh and run through the options in my brain. I have wondered if I am safe. If I should go home. But I really don’t think I will be better off alone in that house. And I don’t want Mama to quit her sobriety program to be with me. And I need answers. In a way I can’t explain, I need to know what’s really going on at La Voisin.
“Sorry, Mama,” I say. “You need to stay at the rehabilitation center, and I need to stay here.”
“Madison—”
“No!” I interrupt. “It is best for both of us to stay where we are.”
“Then why did you call?” Mama asks. “If you are scared but won’t let me help you, why get me all worried?”
“I…I don’t know.” I twist my hands together. “I just…needed someone to talk to. But I guess this was a mistake.”
“Oh, no, honey, don’t say that,” Mama says, her tone softening. “I…I’m sorry. That was just the mama grizzly in me coming out to protect her cub. I’m calming down now. I promise.”
“Thanks,” I say. “So, what else can I do?”
“Call the police?” she says.
I scoff. “Yeah, right. Ms. Brewster would have a heart attack. We take care of our own here, she says.”
“Hmm, she would say that,” Mama says, unimpressed. “Well, do you think the death of your first roommate and the disappearance of the second one are connected?”
“I don’t think so,” I say. “But that’s a good question. I haven’t really considered that.”
“If you can find a connection,” Mama says, “that might lead you to your answer.”
“How’d you learn so much about solving a crime?” I ask her, and she laughs. I miss her laughter.
“Well, we do get to watch TV sometimes. But seems like the only thing we can all ever agree on is CSI or Law and Order,” she says.
“They are good shows,” I say. We both go quiet again for a bit. “Well, thanks for talking to me.”
“Yeah,” she says. “Thanks for calling. I miss you so much.”
It takes me a minute to get the words out, but finally, I follow up with, “Yeah, I miss you too.”
“I’m out of phone time,” Mama says. “But, honey, you take care of yourself. If you think you are in even the smallest bit of danger, you get out of there, okay?”
“Okay, Mama,” I say.
“Promise me,” she nearly shouts.
“I promise.”
“Thanks,” she says. “Call me again soon, okay?”
“I will,” I say, and I wait until she hangs up her phone first before I end the call. As soon as I do, Krista removes her headphones.
“So, did that help?” she asks me.
“Yeah,” I say. “It did…surprisingly.”
“What did she say?” Krista asks, putting her books aside and sitting on the edge of her bed.
“Well, she wants me to come home.”
“Of course,” Krista says. “She’s worried about you. I can’t believe you went into the details you did.”
I look at her sharply. “I thought you had your headphones on so you wouldn’t be eavesdropping.”
“Did I?” she asks as she sticks her finger into one of her ears and moves like she is cleaning it out. “Weird. Anyway, what else did she say?”
“She said that we should find out what Giselle and Zoey had in common. That might give us a lead as to who might have been out to get both of them.”
“That’s a good idea,” Krista says. “Sounds like what the detectives on TV would do.”
“That’s what I said,” I say.
“Right.” Krista pulls a piece of paper from her notebook and moves to Zoey’s desk with a pen. “So, what did they have in common?”
I blow out a puff of air as I try to think.
“Both air witches,” Krista says, jotting it down.
“As am I,” I say. I pull a chair up next to her. “Maybe we should make another column for me.”
“Yes,” Krista says. “That might help us deduce if the killer is going to come for you next.”
“That’s not where I was going with that, but thanks for thinking I’m gonna die,” I say. I had only meant to see if there was a connection to me, not if I was a potential target. “I mean, I spend a lot of nights here alone. If the guy was going to come for me, I think he would have by now.”
“If it’s a guy,” Krista says. “We can’t rule anyone out.”
“Okay, what else?” I ask, looking at our pathetic list. “We’re all female.”
“Try to think more specific,” Krista says. “Zoey was an orphan. And you are…kind of an orphan. You’re at least on your own.”
“But Giselle wasn’t,” I say. “She not only had parents but came from a pretty powerful clan from what I remember.”
“Right,” Krista says, making a new area for differences. “You and Giselle were about the same age, but Zoey was only twelve.”
“Thirteen,” I say.
“Dang,” Krista mumbles. “This is getting us nowhere.”
“Let’s not give up yet,” I say. “Umm…Giselle was black, Zoey Asian, and I’m white. So, nothing there.”
“Let’s focus on witchy stuff,” Krista says. “I mean, there has to be a reason why two girls at a witch school would get targeted, right?”
“Well, Ms. Boucher killed Giselle,” I say. “Could she have come back and taken Zoey? She was the air mentor. She never met Zoey as far as I know, but maybe there is something there.”
“Why Zoey?” Krista says. “If Ms. Boucher came back, why wouldn’t she take you instead?”
I shudder at the thought but have to admit it’s a good point. I was the one who found out that Ms. Boucher killed Giselle. If she was going to come back for anyone, it would be me.
“Giselle was powerful,” I say. “Because of her family ties. And so was Zoey, but I think she was just a prodigy. Zoey could just sense if someone was a witch. If she had stayed here, I can’t imagine what she might have accomplished.”
“They were both more powerful than you,” Krista says casually. “Unless…”
“What?” I ask. “I mean, yeah, I agree they were more powerful than me.”
“But you flew,” Krista says. “That’s really rare. Ms. Boucher could fly. But only like one out of a dozen air students can fly before graduation. No one else here now can fly. What if you are more powerful than you think?”
I lean back, wondering how much I should tell her. I don’t want to scare her, but this seems important.
“I have to tell you something,” I say. She looks at me expectantly and waves me on before I finally rush out, all in one breath, “I’ve flown since then.”
“Shut the hell up!” Her mouth drops open as she slams the pen back to the table. “Are you serious?”
“Twice,” I say. “Once on the day of the storm. It’s… It’s a long story. But I ended up in the woods and was chased by a wolf. I flew to get away from it.”
“What?” Krista nearly screams. “Why didn’t you tell us? What wolf? What happened?”
“O-okay, I’ll tell you later when Ivy is here,” I stutter. “I don’t want to tell the story twice. But the important thing is that I flew.”
“Okay, we are definitely coming back to that, but, yeah, that’s really relevant,” Krista says. “When was the second time?”
“Last night,” I say carefully.
“What?” She jumps from her chair. “How? Why? Where? Does Ivy know?”
“Shh!” I say, pulling her back down to her chair. “Your voice really carries, you know.”
“Sorry, but what happened?”
“I heard laughter, like from a little girl,” I say. “I think it might have been Zoey’s voice. I tried to wake Ivy up, but she was dead to the world.”
Krista gasps, and her hands go to her mouth. “I wonder if the ghost put, like, an enchantment on her to keep her asleep.”
“That would make sense actually. I really tried to wake her up, but when she didn’t, I followed the ghost to the grotto. While I was there…I flew. Well, more like floated. Or hovered.”
“Why?” Krista asks.
“I got mad,” I say, and I pull the paper out of my pocket. “Because the statue left this for me.”
Chapter 21
“Are you sure we don’t want Jaxon here?” Ivy asks as she tosses her hair over her shoulder and sits down across from Krista and me.
We are sitting in the dining room, but it’s the middle of the afternoon and no one else is here. It’s also a wide-open area, so we should be able to see if anyone gets close enough to hear us talking.
I shake my head at Ivy’s question. “I don’t know where we stand,” I say. “I mean, I’d like to say we’re still friends, but I’m still mad about what happened. And his attitude in general.”
“This is why I don’t date men,” Krista says as she sips at a bottle of water she smuggled into the library in her bag. “Too arrogant. They think they know everything. And by the time they figure out they don’t, they are too old and set in their ways.”
I can’t help but chuckle at that. “Well, I haven’t written off men in general. I just need space from Jaxon for a bit.”
“I understand,” Ivy says, “but don’t give him the silent treatment for too long if you want to salvage your friendship. He tends to wall himself off in a way that can be impossible to break through.”
I shrug. I’d rather see him do the work of repairing our friendship, but I don’t want to worry about that right now. I have bigger problems.
I hand the note from the statue to Ivy. She opens it and furrows her brow as if trying to make heads or tails of it.
“What does it say?” she asks as she hands it to Krista. Krista has already seen it, but she takes it and looks it over again.
I motion toward the writing. “It says, ‘help me, help Zoey.’”
“Where did you find it?” Ivy asks.
I let out a sigh before I launch into the long story of the statues and why I think they are alive. “There is a small grotto I sometimes go to when I need to be alone on campus,” I say. “There’s a statue in there, like there are everywhere, but this one, I’ve had a lot of time to observe it, and I am sure that it’s…alive somehow.”
Ivy sits quietly, as though waiting for me to continue. When I don’t, she sputters a laugh.
“What?” she asks. “That’s crazy! You’re kidding, right?”
“I don’t think she is,” Krista says. I’ve already told her some of this, so maybe it sounds less crazy the second time around.
I pull out my cell phone and hand it to Ivy. “These two pictures I took of the same statue a few days apart,” I say. Then I flip through some of the other images that show changes in the statues.
Ivy takes the phone and flips through the images herself. She finally puts her hand to her mouth in shock, shaking her head. Tears form in her eyes. “I…I thought I was seeing things.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, taking my phone back.
“There’s a statue below my window that I have a clear view of,” she says. “I’ve been in the same room for three years. I’m certain it’s moved over the years, closer to the hedgerow. Like, if I’m standing at my window, the statue used to be below the middle pane. Now, it’s well above it. And the arms are in another position. I thought maybe the groundskeepers had moved it for some reason, but I couldn’t explain the arms. I thought I must be wrong, but something inside was nagging at me that I wasn’t.”
I nod. “It does sound crazy to say out loud. But my photos prove that they are moving.”
“So you think they’re alive?” Krista asks.
“I don’t know.” I spread my hands. “I don’t know if they are humans trapped in an enchantment or statues come to life or something else altogether. Do you know of any fae that can change to stone?”
“Earth witches can manipulate stone,” Krista says, “and marble. I assume they could cause a statue to change its shape or position.”
I want to smack myself on the forehead. “I didn’t even think about that!” I exclaim. “I knew that earth witches could create statues from marble in the first place. The school text says that the creator of the statues was an earth witch. But I didn’t think about a witch being able to manipulate the stone after the statue is complete. I’m such a dunce!”
“We should have brought Jaxon,” Ivy says. “As an earth witch, he could explain their capabilities in this area.”
I nod. She’s right. “We…should probably bring him back into the fold when we get back to the school. I can’t believe I was making something out of nothing for so long!”
“What do you mean?” Krista asks. “Just because an earth witch can manipulate stone doesn’t mean that you are wrong about the statues moving. I mean, why would an earth witch cause the statues to move? And so subtly? I mean, if it was one statue and they were moving it all around campus as a prank or something, that would make sense. But there are dozens, if not hundreds of statues. And you hav
e evidence of several of them moving in very small ways. It would be crazy for someone to be doing that.”
“Maybe they were counting on the subtlety to make those who did notice it feel crazy,” I offer.
Ivy purses her lips. “Possible, but I think what Krista says makes more sense.” Then quickly she adds, “But that doesn’t mean an earth witch isn’t involved.”
“This is getting complicated,” I say with a sigh. “More complicated, anyway.” It was already pretty complicated, to be honest.
“How long have you been looking into this?” Ivy asks.
“Since Giselle’s death. Her notebook and the runes… Everything she was doing was connected to the statues in some way. She kept telling me to help them. I think she was referring to the statues.”
“So, she didn’t want you to find out who killed her?” Krista asks.
“I don’t know for sure,” I say. “But she never asked for help for herself, only for ‘them,’ whoever they are. Finding out that Ms. Boucher killed her was pretty much an accident.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have solved her murder,” Ivy says. “Then she wouldn’t have crossed over and she would still be here to help you.”
I shake my head and scoff. “Wouldn’t that be my luck?”
“Well, let’s go find Jaxon,” Krista says. “Might as well get his hot take.”
I slowly follow behind the girls, not exactly sure what I’m going to say to him. But I don’t have long to think about it. We find him in the indoor pool room, swimming laps. Ms. Brewster ordered that the grating over the tunnel be welded shut, which ticked off a lot of the water witch students because they seem to think that swimming in the tunnel is better practice for them than in the pool. And they might be right about that. “Real-world practice” and all that. But having the tunnel sealed is safer for everyone. Still, I haven’t been able to bring myself to return to the pool. I don’t want to take a chance on the selkies breaking through.
Krista calls out for Jaxon, and he swims to the edge with ease, then lifts himself out of the pool, the water running down his chest and abs… Why did I not notice before how fit he is? His body is completely smooth, not a single body hair…that I can see. His arms and chest are nearly bulging, and his stomach is narrow with washboard ridges. I guess it’s just been a long time since I took the opportunity to appreciate the male specimen.
Ritual of Magic (Academy of the Damned Book 2) Page 18