She finished with an infectious burst of laughter, which most of the class echoed. Even me. It sounded so strange, but it felt nice not to be rotting from the inside out from hatred for a few seconds.
"What I'd like you to do now is to use the quill and ink pots on your tables and write the spell on yourself for the rest of class.” The professor waved her hand, and the spell appeared over all our heads in golden, sparkly letters. “See how long it takes you to turn yourself invisible. Get help from your classmates if you need to. To erase the spell, rub some lemon juice over yourself, which is in the bowls at the ends of your tables."
Seph glanced at me with a wide grin as she dipped her quill into her ink pot. "Yet another thing I wasn't expecting for my first class. Necromancer Academy is definitely keeping me on my toes."
Nodding, I took up my quill and rolled it between my fingers. "Just make sure you don't have any cuts on your skin before you apply lemon juice."
"Oh, good thinking."
We got to work then, gradually turning ourselves invisible. It was so strange seeing the table through my arm but at the same time feeling how solid my flesh and bones still were, and feeling my arms still attached to my body. This was definitely to be used only for a last resort or impressive party tricks, though. In reality, timing was everything, and this was taking too damn long to be useful to me.
Jon from the second row turned around, most of his arm already vanished. "Might I be of assistance, ladies?"
"No thanks," Seph sing-songed.
"Are you sure? I can..." His jaw dropped the longer he stared at Seph, and a dreamy haze shuttered his blue eyes. “I can help.”
Seph just smiled and shook her head, completely oblivious to casting her spell over him.
And what a spell it was because the guy was a goner after that, turning to look at Seph like she’d plucked his heart right out of his chest. It was pretty darn cute to witness.
Before the end of class, Professor Woolery instructed us to make ourselves reappear with the lemon juice. Smelling especially citrusy, we wandered into the Symbology room on the first floor, which took my breath away. It was enormous, about twice the size of our previous classroom with small rustic brown stones making up the entirety of the floor, walls, and ceiling. A whole array of symbols were carved into the stones, some fairly simplistic and others with incredible detail. It was beautiful in here.
"No professor in this class?" Seph asked as we took our seats at a middle table.
"That or they ran out of lemon juice," I said.
After all the freshmen had wandered in and taken their seats, an old man in a brown cloak shuffled toward the front of the room. His back hunched over, and his head stuck out from the rest of his body like a turtle. A single tuft of white hair fluttered over the top of his bald head as he moved...so, so slowly. We'd all be dead by the time he got to the front of the room.
"Parchment, quill, and ink," he rasped, his voice like air squeezing between two rough stones.
A stack of parchment appeared on everyone's tables, as well as quills and brimming pots of ink. I jerked in my seat, not expecting the suddenness from someone who moved at his speed.
He kept shuffling, only an eighth of the way into the room, and lifted a gnarled finger toward the left wall. "Those are protection symbols you can draw anywhere. On you. On your door. On your lover. On your homework so your dog doesn't eat it. You can draw them with ink or using your finger."
The class leaned toward him, like we were all struggling to catch what he was saying with his raspy voice.
"Pick twenty of those, draw them freehand exactly, with ink, twice each, and turn one copy in on my desk before you leave. The other you keep. Do not, I repeat, do not, try to do a rubbing with your parchment on the symbol. Instant F and I will have. Your. Head."
Behind him the door closed with a thunderous boom. All of us leaped into the air. This professor hadn't even told us his name yet, but I already decided I liked him. He had a certain dramatic flair despite his quiet appearance that made me want to pay attention.
Even though there were about thirty of us in here, it never felt like we were climbing over each other to find wall space. None of us pressed our parchment to the symbols, but we spread out on the floor and looked back and forth between our chosen symbols and our drawings while we worked. I picked twenty that were all completely different, some with circles within circles or letter-like symbols I'd never seen before. As I drew, I briefly wondered what the symbols on the other walls were, but I was sure we'd get to that. Eventually. Just like Professor Turtle to his desk. When I went to turn in his copies of my twenty drawings, he sat behind it snoring loudly.
At the end of class, even though he was still sleeping, the door of the room squeaked open, and all of us took that as our sign that we were free to go.
On our way to P.P.E. in the gym, Seph fell back a little, her ebony face paling behind all of her swirly tattoos.
"Seph? Are you all right?"
"Yeah, just...” She swallowed thickly. “I feel strange."
"Strange how?"
"Strange..."
Well, that didn't really clear anything up for me, but I stayed close to her side to keep an eye on her.
And then I felt strange, too, but only because something had clicked loudly in my head. We'd just learned how to turn ourselves invisible and draw symbols of protection. All defensive things. What was it about the darkest academy in all of Amaria that had the freshmen learning nothing but defense from day one? Did it have anything to do with the missing professor? Or was it because we were freshmen, ripe for the slaughter by upperclassmen, namely Ramsey? Possibly a combination of both.
"Dawn." Seph blew out a slow breath as we stopped in front of the gym. "I can't go in there."
I blinked at the doorway across the wide hall from us and then at her. "Why? Are you allergic to the hairy pickles we might find in there?"
"Something..." She clutched at her chest, her knuckles going white. Her shoulders rose faster as she breathed harder, and she shook her head. "Something's not right in there. I can feel it...just on the other side of that wall."
I dragged my gaze away from her distraught face to the room behind me again. Black mats lay out on the floor, and in the far corner hung various equipment I didn't know the names of plus a few swords. Nothing that looked particularly out of the ordinary for a gym, I guessed, but I took a step closer to peer farther inside. Voices carried from within, a few students talking about their day so far.
"Dawn, please don't go in there," Seph pleaded, and the tremor in her voice slithered up my back.
I turned toward her again, my muscles clenched because I had no idea what was going on here. She pushed her lips together and stood frozen to the spot, shaking violently. Terrified.
I had to know. I had to know what was going on. Sweat broke out along my forehead as I turned and stepped closer to the gym, and my heartbeat ricocheted in a steady hum between my ears. I gasped.
Something's not right in there...just on the other side of that wall, she’d said.
It was Ramsey. Standing behind the teacher's desk.
"Dawn..."
I turned back to Seph in time to see her drop in a dead faint.
Chapter Four
"Seph!" I crouched next to her and shook her then gently slapped her cheek. "Seph, wake up."
A crowd started to gather around us.
"Someone fainted," a guy called.
"There's always one on the first day," someone muttered as they walked on past.
"Give me some room," I shouted to the students pressing in to gawk.
They did.
“Bind thee in health, Protect mind and soul too, Boost vigor and happiness, Make it all renew.” I snapped my fingers to direct my healing magic to my fingertips, and the students took yet another step back at the brightness of it.
White magic, but it certainly didn’t look it. It was gray, made darker every time I used the dead man’s hand in
my pocket, but still bright.
A presence appeared at my back, hovering and foreboding. Him. My bones rattled at his nearness, every hair on my body shooting straight up in alarm.
"What happened? Is she all right?" he asked.
I slammed my back teeth together at the sound of his voice, so concerned, so fake. He hadn't said a word when I'd found him standing over Leo's body, but I'd always wondered if he’d said anything to Leo before slitting his throat.
I had to get Seph away from him, but first I needed to wake her up. I drew healing circles around her face without touching her, the gray sparks on my fingertips leaping toward her tattooed skin. Apparently I could put black magic in me, but I couldn't take the natural healer out.
"Do you need the nurse in the infirmary?" Ramsey asked.
"No," I bit out.
This would be so much easier without an audience, without him here. This would be so much easier with my healing charms and herbs. Healing charms echoed a healer’s magic so the healer wouldn’t have to drain their magic.
Like I was starting to now.
My healing magic spread over her face in a sort of glowing spider web, and I picked up the center of it. The ends held to her face, so I pulled more, more, until they popped free. She drew in a great, heaving breath. Her eyes fluttered, and she quaked violently like she had before she'd fainted.
It was Ramsey. It had to be, but I didn't want to draw attention and hiss at him to leave. I needed to get Seph away from him. She must've been sensitive to who he really was somehow, was triggered by his close proximity and could now see behind his golden-boy mask to the monster within.
I bent low toward her ear and drew up my hood as I did. "Keep your eyes closed, Seph. I'll take you to our room. Ready?"
She gave a faint nod, and I helped her to her feet. I kept my back to Ramsey, my hood secured tightly around my head as Seph and I drifted through the crowd.
Jon, the bag of sticks guy from Death, Dying, and Reliving class, trotted up next to us. "Are you sure you don't need the nurse?"
I pinned him with the darkest look I could muster, and he backed off, his hands up.
"What is it...about us...that makes him think we're unsure about everything?" Seph asked between the clattering of her teeth. Her eyes were still squeezed tight as I led her through the doors into the entryway.
I groaned, not wanting to get into Jon right now after using all that healing magic had sapped my strength. "You can open your eyes now. He's gone."
"I don't care that he's gone."
"No, I meant the person you sensed behind the wall of the gym." Ramsey. Was he the P.P.E. teacher even though he was just a student? He’d been standing behind the desk, not in front of it. After I got Seph settled, I'd have to go back in there and face him because that was my next class, and act like absolutely nothing was wrong.
But this time I'd go in prepared.
When we made it to our dorm room, Seph collapsed on her bed, and Nebbles leaped up on top of her and gave me the stink eye as if I’d hurt her beloved human.
I backed away when the fur along her spine bristled. “Do you want me to take you to the nurse? Has anything like this happened before?"
"No," she said. "I'll just take it easy here...but Dawn, what did you see? When you looked inside the gym, you gasped."
I chewed the inside of my cheek, stalling. Thinking. Same thing, really. "Remember the guy in the Gathering Room?"
“He was there, huh?” She nodded and then sighed. "If that's the case, I don't think you should go back there. Whatever he was doing, some kind of repelling spell or whatever, it only seemed to affect me, but what if he does it to you?"
"I already know what he's capable of." The words came out as a choked whisper.
Her dark eyes flicked over my face. "Which is what?"
"I... I'd rather not get into it right now." I balled my hands into fists, tight enough to crack my knuckles. "Besides, if I go where he is, I can make sure he doesn't hurt anyone else."
Seph stroked Nebbles between the ears. “Should we tell someone what happened?”
“If you want to, sure.”
Why her though? Out of all the students bustling to classes, why was she the only one who’d fainted when she’d come too close? She didn’t act like she knew Ramsey, but did he know her? Was he targeting her for some reason, like he had Leo? Was she in danger of having her throat slit? If that was the case, then this needed to end. Very soon.
“I don’t know,” Seph said. “Maybe it was just fist-day jitters that caused my face to kiss the floor.”
“Maybe.” Frowning, I crossed to my trunk at the foot of the bed. From underneath a pile of black dresses, I fished out the engraved dagger protected in its brown leather sheath. Leo gave it to me for my eighteenth birthday, and it had Biscuit etched in perfect script along the blade. His nickname for me.
“Remember when you weren’t such a weirdo for carbs, Biscuit? Those were the good old day.”
Day, singular, because apparently I wasn’t a weirdo for carbs for a very short amount of time. That was just his saying. He was the one who was a weirdo, always teasing me, always trying to make me laugh with how much of a dork he was.
Crafted from the sharpest steel, the dagger cut like everything was made from hot butter, and it was small enough to fit snugly inside my boot. I also took a few death charms and stuffed them in my—
Oh. The dead man’s hand was still closed in my pocket, but that was okay. We’d already be in the same room together, and after class, when we were all alone, could be perfect. I could slip a death charm in his pocket at the very least, which was a circular black pendant with a square cut through the middle. Written around the edge were the words: Propius Mors Est. Death comes closer. I’d already scratched into every single one of mine his initials: RS. Ramsey Sullivan. If he had it on him, it invited death to come closer.
"Wait." Seph pointed to the desk next to her bed. "Second drawer. Take some money from the top there for lunch."
My jaw fell open. "I can't do that."
"You can and you will,” Seph said, jabbing the air with her finger for emphasis, “and you'll bring me something too. I would still be passed out if not for you, so take it. Please."
I heaved a short sigh and then did as she asked, scooping up two coins that lay next to a couple of small cloth dolls. I couldn't keep having her pay for my food though.
"I'll come back to check on you with lunch, all right?" I said, crossing to the door. “One hour.”
She nodded. "Be careful, Dawn. I mean it."
"You too."
Outside in the empty hallway, I hovered by the closed door, hesitating. Unease prickled up my back like hungry flies. I didn’t want to leave her alone. I recalled one of the protective symbols I'd drawn that morning and traced it on the door with my finger. As I did so, the drawing stayed there, like I’d burned it into the wood. Then I turned on my heel and headed back to class. Back to Ramsey.
A grin spread across my face, one that kept growing as wide and fathomless as the hole in my heart. If this was my first and last day here, I’d call it a major victory.
When I entered the gym, Ramsey stood in the middle of a sort of square coliseum with stone bleachers rising up the walls. The freshmen sat on the benches while he talked to them. Taught them. I kept my hood drawn tight, my eyes cast downward, his presence like sand raking against my skin.
"Everything all right now?" he called. The fake friendly note in his deep, smooth-like-honey voice made me crash my back teeth together so I wouldn’t scream.
I gave a slight nod as I headed up toward the back row of students.
"So as I was saying," he said, "I need a volunteer to show you some basic defensive moves. Then Professor Wadluck wanted you to pair off to practice. Anyone volunteer?"
Professor Wadluck... So Ramsey wasn't the teacher but was filling in? Then where was Professor Wadluck?
Missing. My stomach jerked at the realization, and my steps
stalled to a halt. Was I right? Why else would a professor not be able to teach his class on the first day? Kind of strange, then, that Ramsey would take over...
"How about you since you're already standing?" he asked.
I flicked my gaze to my left at the other freshmen, none of whom were standing. Well, shit. I didn't want to be anywhere near him in front of all of the students, not with the dagger tucked into my boot and murder in my heart. Both would be too easy to see.
"I have bubonic plague," I announced and started up again toward the back row.
A few students snickered. Some actually scooted away from me as I sat down.
"Ah," Ramsey said. "Someone less...contagious, then?"
A girl who I’d seen in my earlier classes with straight blonde hair, a perpetual sneer on her face, and fine embroidery on her black cloak stood from down a few seats from me. "I had rabies once, but I'm better now. I'll fight you."
Ramsey crossed his arms over his cloak, a smug smile on his mouth. "This isn't a fight."
“Oh?” The girl winged up an eyebrow as she passed by me to get to the aisle.
I grinned even though she wasn't looking at me. I liked this girl already.
"What's your name?" Ramsey asked her.
"Echo," she said.
When she made it to the middle area, he pointed at where he wanted her to stand. "Echo and I will show you some defensive moves you can use in case someone attacks you."
Here we go again with the defensive. Did this school actually teach necromancy, or were they teaching us how to fight in a war?
He aimed his thunderstorm gaze at Echo. "Attack."
She shrugged, then she ran at him with her fist raised, her lips peeled back in a snarl. Her cloak billowed behind her, making her double in size and look twice as threatening. He grabbed her fist with both hands and wrenched it down, but she came at him with her other one. Maybe this girl had some rage issues too. Whatever her deal, I definitely wanted her in my corner.
Necromancer Academy: Book 1 Page 4