by Rain Oxford
He had to stop by the bathroom, though. As soon as he stepped inside, his mind clouded over. The next thing he knew, he was standing in the dining room with everyone else.
He opened his eyes as I withdrew my magic. “I don’t know what happened,” he said, confused. “I don’t remember what happened after I went to the bathroom.”
“Who is your third-hour teacher?”
“Kubota-sensei.”
“So I would have been your sub. You didn’t come to class.”
He blanched. “Maybe I did write the letter. I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to! I don’t remember doing it!”
“Calm down,” I said gently. “I believe you. Someone else might have made you do it, but that’s not your fault and you’re not going to get blamed for it.”
“Really? You believe me?”
“Of course.”
He put his face in his hands. “Thank you.”
“Go get some lunch and I’ll talk to you later. You aren’t to blame, but you might have been targeted because of something you’ve said or seen. After your last class, come to my office.”
He nodded and left. I explained what I saw to Remington. “That means he did it,” Murphy said.
“But he wasn’t in control of himself,” Remington said.
I nodded. “He also wasn’t there this morning. I did meet with my uncle, though,” I admitted. They both looked at me. “My uncle is a member of the old council, but he resigned because they were corrupt,” I told Murphy.
“Can he get in through the shadow pass?” Remington asked.
“What’s that?” Murphy asked.
“He can’t ‘land’ inside the ward. I think it’s because of the sigils.”
“I thought your intuition warns you if you’re being watched,” Remington said.
“Not if it’s someone I trust.”
“How could someone make him write and post letters without him remembering?” Murphy asked.
“It’s a long explanation, and I don’t quite know.”
“Could it be the twins?” Remington asked.
I shook my head. “They have their own problems.” I decided not to tell her about my vision of Tazmyn until we were alone.
She looked at me strangely for a moment, as if she knew I had more to say. “In that case, thank you for your help, James. I need to get back to my office. Devon, I know you’re subbing for Mr. Kubota, but I need you to sign some paperwork before you go.”
“Okay.” We left Murphy’s office and went to Remington’s. Darwin and Henry were already waiting there. “Where are your students?” I asked Henry.
“It’s advanced algebra. I put a bunch of problems on the board; they won’t even realize I’m gone.”
Once the door was closed, Remy sat in her chair. I sat across from her, not wanting to tax my heart any more than I had already. “Is Dr. Martin okay?”
“He’s fine— doesn’t even have a headache, but he doesn’t know who hit him.”
“So, yesterday was less successful than I’d hoped,” I said. I told them what I felt from the unbalance but left out the part about Alice. I didn’t need to look like a nut job and was half sure it was just a dream.
“From our side, everything went according to plan until everyone lost their bloody minds,” Darwin said.
“How so.”
“People started seeing monsters, ghosts, zombies, bugs… everything. They lost focus and scattered like ants. When Remington tried to break the ward, the elementals attacked her, and then they attacked everyone. Maybe it was the curse protecting itself.”
“No. I think whoever made the curse is messing with us.” Once again, I felt Darwin pushing against my mind. I let him in.
“What about your condition?” he asked.
“I have a few more days.” He scowled at me when I didn’t explain until Remington inadvertently changed the subject.
“What do you need to tell me?” she asked.
“That vision I had about the girl who wanted her mother…”
“Chris’s daughter?”
“Yes. Her name is Tazmyn. I had another vision of her last night. She’s John’s daughter. Based on that, I’m afraid all of the children from my visions might be John’s children.”
Her eyes widened. “Then you think he really was building an army?”
I realized I probably told her too much, but she had never betrayed me and since I was honest with her, I never had to worry about keeping track of what she did and didn’t know. I preferred it that way. “I do. Henry woke me up this morning because Vincent was at the perimeter. I told him, and he said he would come back tomorrow at sunset. He didn’t know what’s happening with us, and neither did your father.”
“Maybe something happened to Dani. At least that explains why you got up so early. I’m usually the early riser.”
“I’ve noticed you like to sleep in on colder mornings. Not this morning, though.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. “You got up before me.”
“No, I didn’t. You were already gone when Henry woke me up.”
“Unless you were invisible and on the floor, then you were gone when I woke up. The bed was cold.”
“We slept in my room last night, right?” I asked.
She nodded and said, “And I woke alone in your bed about eight-fifteen.”
“I got up before six, but you weren’t there,” I argued.
“You weren’t there when I arrived this morning,” Henry agreed.
“Did you go to the bathroom in the early morning, come back after I left, and forget?”
“That has never happened before, but I guess it makes more sense than that one of us was invisible.”
“Can I check?”
After a moment, she nodded. I invaded her mind as she recalled waking up. The sun was already up and the clock said that it was after eight in the morning. She’d thought it was strange, but she knew she needed the sleep. She got up, dressed, and ate breakfast.
I picked up the chair, set it next to her, and sat. “I am going to go backwards in your memory,” I said. “It might be uncomfortable and strange, but go with it if you can.”
She nodded and closed her eyes. The same memory started to play again, and it gave me a moment to get better control over it. Once I focused on slowing it down, the scene became unclear. Going backwards in someone’s memory wasn’t as simple as hitting reverse on a VCR.
Her dream before she woke was full of spiders and John ordering her to stay on a bed. She remembered his voice better than I did. Remington started shaking, so I did my best to send her peace without corrupting the memory. When that had virtually no effect, I moved on.
Her dream was so twisted and painful for Remy that I almost gave up… until something changed. I stopped the memory for a second before letting it play out. She was awake next to me in bed, and I heard from her mind that she hadn’t been able to sleep for an hour. She was having trouble sleeping because of her dreams, but she was also worried about the school. She thought it was strange that Dani hadn’t contacted her father yet.
She looked at the clock, saw that it was five-thirty, and decided to do some research. She got up and dressed, careful not to wake me. I always assumed she was only with me because she couldn’t be with Flagstone, but I felt her genuine and deep affection for me at that moment.
She left the room and started down the hallway when she sensed someone watching her. She stopped and turned, spotting someone standing in front of my door. Without the lamps, she couldn’t make the person out, so she raised her hand towards the lamp closest to my room. At the last second, however, she remembered that she couldn’t risk using magic.
She did, however, realize that it was a student, even though she couldn’t tell who it was. “Are you okay?” she asked. “Do you need help?”
The student said nothing. Even though she didn’t have my intuition, the situation made her skin crawl. Then I felt her mind cloud over. The girl said something, but Rem
y’s memory was too corrupted to make it out.
I withdrew my magic and Remy’s eyes widened. “I did get up this morning.”
“And then you were forced to forget. We need to find out where you’ve been between then and when you woke up the second time.”
She grimaced. “I know a spell, but there are many ways it can go wrong with the elementals on the fritz.”
“What spell?”
“A ‘retrace your steps’ spell. It’s not considered elemental-based, even though all magic is created by elementals, so maybe it won’t go wrong. I suppose I can just grab another pair if they burst into flames.”
“Pair of what?” I didn’t like the sound of that. Besides, the owls weren’t elemental-based, either, and that spell went to shit.
She took off her boots.
“Wait, wait, wait. You plan to enchant your shoes to retrace your steps.”
She nodded. “I’ve done this spell since I was five.”
“Think about the owls. This could cause all the shoes on the school grounds to start retracing their steps.”
“That would cause panic,” Darwin agreed.
Remy sighed. “You’re right. We have to fix this and get our magic back, but we can’t do that without our magic.”
“You’re forgetting that I was a private investigator for years before learning that I was a wizard. I still have my intuition. I’ll figure this out, stop the person responsible, and get us out of here. I just need you to trust me.”
She nodded. “I do.”
I hoped so, because I had a few suspects in mind, and that wasn’t going to go over well with the teachers.
* * *
I was clearly dealing with someone who could mess with people’s minds. Between that and learning I might have more siblings than I knew of, my first thought was that there was someone else here who had John’s powers. However, I was jumping to conclusions.
Mind control came naturally to me because of John’s unique abilities, but it wasn’t unheard of in the paranormal community. In fact, they had a couple of fae students in the past who would do it, and pretty much every vampire could to some degree. In fact, a long-dead wizard/cult leader was able to influence and control six students, and he had nothing to do with John.
It was more likely that vampires were involved than that John was, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was personal. Maybe I’m not over what John did any more than Remy is.
I ended up finishing the day as Kubota’s substitute and used the opportunity to skim the minds of the students for missing moments. It was easier said than done, but since I knew what to look for, it was doable. I came up with five students who passed through my classes that had missing memories in the past week.
Kita, Rosa, Bryan, Oscar, and David were all pretty typical students. They weren’t leaders in any clubs, exceptional in any classes, or trouble makers. There was no obvious advantage to going after them, except that no one would suspect them of doing something wrong.
Then I examined their minds closer for any contact with Mandy, Benny, Leesa, and Nancy. I didn’t have enough evidence to blame those for students, but I had to start somewhere. While they didn’t all have much contact with my four suspects, they did see them regularly.
I pushed further back, and that was where it got weird. They all knew these four students. They knew that Mandy, Benny, Leesa, and Nancy had been students at the school for years and had never done anything unusual.
However, while I could easily get glimpses of them and overhear conversations with them from the minds of other students, I didn’t see a single memory of them before November. The students knew them, but couldn’t actually recall seeing them before November, let alone talking to them.
I refused to condemn them just yet, however. Things in the paranormal community were rarely that cut and dry, and my intuition told me there was more to the story. By the time I released my last class of the day, I had a plan to find out for sure if those four students were guilty or just distractions.
* * *
I went to Dr. Martin first to make sure he had what I needed to pull my plan off. “I don’t have that many sleeping potions on hand, but it would be easy enough to make them.”
“Even with the elementals out of whack?”
“I am not human. I cannot use elemental magic, so everything I do is unaffected by elementals.” Wizards were not considered humans by paranormals. However, Dothra wizards called wizards of Earth humans, similar to how we called them demons instead of wizards.
“Great. Then I need you to make those and help me set a trap.”
I used my power to contact Remington, Henry, and Darwin, and had them meet us in the infirmary. Once we were all together, I told them that I had four suspects who were students, but not who they were. I didn’t want to influence how they treated anyone. Then I explained the plan.
“Do you have the power to create the trap?” Remington asked Dr. Martin.
“I may not be the strongest of my kind, but I am still more than strong enough to handle a simple trap.”
“But not powerful enough to break the curse?”
“My magic conflicts with elementals, and I can’t fight them all on my own. You need someone who can control the elementals.”
“Which is impossible,” Darwin said.
“Possibly.”
“If there was a wizard on Earth who could do that, we would all know about him.”
“Unless he is reclusive, or not on Earth,” Dr. Martin argued. “Someone that powerful is one of two types of people; either he wants to completely take over the world or he wants to hide his powers and avoid ever seeing people.”
“Let’s not worry about that right now. If we can stop the culprits who are messing with us, maybe we can redo Darwin’s spell and get out of here.”
“Yeah, we can pull the ingredients out of our arses,” Darwin said.
“One step at a time.”
“Does everyone understand their part of the plan?”
They all nodded. “Does anyone have any questions?”
“Not a question so much as a comment,” Henry said. “If I’m going to be bait, I need to hide Scott. Addison isn’t around anymore to watch him.”
“Good point. Send him to my office, along with Jason and Jamie. I can’t have Rocky guard them, but at least the twins can protect him.”
“I don’t trust the twins.”
“Neither do I, but the rest of us are going to be occupied.”
“Amelia can guard them. She might not be much in a physical fight, but she can make someone have an emotional breakdown. Also, we can stash them in a hidden room,” Darwin said.
“There aren’t that many hidden rooms in this school.”
“What about under the library?” Remington asked.
“It’s flooded,” I said automatically. “Hang on…” I considered it. “It was flooded when I last checked, but I also saw the lake empty. I should check again.”
“And if it’s still flooded, we should put Kubota down there,” Darwin suggested. “How cool would it be to have a shark to throw bad guys to? We could attach a laser to his head.”
“Do you know what kind of shark he shifts into?” Remington asked.
Darwin smirked. “Yeah.”
“What is he?” I asked.
“You don’t want to know.”
* * *
We all got to work while the students and teachers were distracted with dinner. Thanks to Darwin’s profound ability to slip rumors, the teachers all heard that Remington and Henry knew who was responsible for the curse. Within an hour, the news hit the West and spread like wildfire. When they heard it from each other, it was more credible. They came up with their own theories for how Remington and Henry caught the person responsible. Before dinner was over with, all of them thought it was a matter of minutes until we were freed.
Meanwhile, Remington, Henry, and I cleared the East of any stragglers so that we could be sure no one g
ot hurt. Dr. Martin set up the library for the trap.
Once Darwin was sure the rumor had run its course, Henry went to the west to announce to the teachers (in front of students) that Remington needed to meet them in the center in two hours. He revealed that the culprits who cursed us were not locked up yet. He explained that it was a team effort and that Remington was gathering proof in the library for the meeting. The students are all to stay in the North and West. I wanted to be there for this, but my presence could have been too suspicious. Furthermore, I had another assignment.
First, I checked the hidden passageway in the library. It was no longer flooded, so I had to assume that the person who made the lake appear empty also knew about the underground rooms. Unfortunately, we didn’t have many options.
I went to the North and found Scott and the twins playing in their room with Amelia. Although Henry hated letting Scott stay in the North during the day because of the curse, he didn’t have anyone to watch Scott since Addison left.
“I heard you caught the person who cursed us,” Amelia said. When Jamie snatched some of Scott’s markers, she calmly took them from him, not paying him any attention, and handed them back to Scott. Jamie snarled at her, which she also ignored.
I nodded. “That’s true enough, but the culprit hasn’t been caught yet. Scott and the twins aren’t safe here.”
She stood. “Where are we going?” Jason started helping Scott pick up his papers and markers, despite Jamie’s scowl.
I skimmed her mind first, just to make sure she hadn’t been targeted, and didn’t sense any missing time or false memories. “I’ll show you.”
Jamie was suspicious, but he didn’t argue. I took them to the library and had them hide in the underground hallway. That way, they could listen to the situation unfold upstairs and either hide or escape at a moment’s notice.
Henry and Remy stayed in the library with Darwin’s notebook and a stack of books to make it appear legit. Dr. Martin and I hid and waited. Cy was outside the library, hiding somewhere so that he could warn us when we had company. The rest of the plan was simple.