Headmistress Millington narrowed her eyes, like she was searching through a memory. "He was here..."
"Yes, I know," I said absently, tightening my grip on Seph.
The headmistress shook her head. "No, I mean after his interview. He came back and said he was hearing...voices."
My breaths stalled. He'd never said a word about that to me. Why? Why, when I could've tried to help him before it was too late? What else had he not told me?
"What kinds of voices?" I whispered.
"He wouldn't say, but he asked for help.” She squeezed her eyes shut briefly. “Help that I couldn't give to him."
"Why not?" My voice shook with fury and heartache, so familiar to me now, I wasn't sure I could ever feel anything else.
"It wasn't that I didn't want to,” she said calmly. “It was that I couldn't, so I took his problem to those who could help him, and when I didn't hear from him again, I thought he... I thought the problem had gone."
"How did he die, Dawn?" Seph asked, so low I almost didn't hear.
I opened my mouth to speak, but the bitter words clung to my tongue.
"How, Dawn?" she pleaded.
"Murder," I finally pushed out, but I bit down firmly on all the rest. Ramsey was mine to deal with, my secret to bear.
“Oh gods...” The headmistress surged to her feet and turned away from the table, a hard shudder rustling down her cloak.
Seph nodded, her eyes flooding, and slipped her hand out of mine like I'd wronged her by telling her the truth. And I had. A heavy, rotten ball of guilt pricked its thorns into the bottom of my gut and stuck there, festering. She didn't deserve this, and I would do everything in my power to keep her far away from Ramsey.
But the question still hung above my head, deadly and sharp: Why? Why Leo? Why Seph? Why was this happening?
Headmistress Millington spun around to face us. "Ladies, I need you to go to your dorm room. Right away. Sepharalotta, try not to fall asleep until I get there in a few minutes. Don't speak to anyone about this."
"What are you going to do?" I asked.
"I need to go," she tossed over her shoulder on the way to the doors.
"Go where? To help? The last time someone came to you for help—" I broke off, the cruel words dying in my throat. It wasn't her fault Leo was dead.
She stopped suddenly in the doorway, and tension vibrated across her shoulders. She turned, a hardness to her usually kind eyes. "The last time someone came to me for help, I tried, which is exactly what I'm going to do now.” She opened the doors and pointed. “To your room. Now." She disappeared into the entryway.
Seph rose like the weight of the world rested on her shoulders, and I'd put it there.
“Hey,” I said to her while we headed for the stairs. "You aren't alone in this. Okay? I go where you go until we figure this out and stop it, and we will. No question."
"I shouldn't even really be here. I come from a long line of royal necromancers, talented, powerful ones who can raise plants with hardly a thought. But guess who the first person is who couldn’t successfully raise anything in my family's entire history?" She looked at me, helplessness shining bright in her eyes, and it struck me deep. "Me. And now this...this whatever is happening? My parents are already disgusted I'm here because my necromancy hasn’t come naturally to me like it did to the rest of my family. They’d never say it, but it shows, and if they get even a single hint of trouble here, they'll pull me out. Then I'll just be a stain on the family name. The outcast, even more than I already am."
"We won't let that happen. I promise," I told her as we started the climb to our room.
"How?” she pleaded. “No offense, but what are you going to do?"
Murder. Before Ramsey got to Seph, I'd kill him. If this played out exactly like my brother's last week of his life, then I had less than that to get it done. I would. I had to. I touched the dead man’s hand in my pocket. Closed. So tomorrow at our training session in the gym could be my next chance if we were alone. I’d demand answers of him first.
And then I’d have my revenge.
The thought filled me with such cold, wicked joy that I looked away to hide my smile. "Can you just trust me for now and find out later?"
"If by later, you mean soon,"—with a big, shaky sigh, Seph looped her arm in mine—"then yes, I trust you."
Chapter Seven
Headmistress Millington came by late that night with a sleeping potion mixed into a tea designed to knock Seph out and help her stay out. A side effect of such a powerful potion was thinking the previous night had been a dream. The potion would last until I gave her the antidote, but making her think she’d dreamed last night was permanent. I couldn’t decide if that was good or bad since it kind of felt like tricking her.
“No more than two drops of the antidote,” the headmistress insisted. “Any more than that and she’ll be licking the walls."
Was...was that a bad thing? If the walls tasted like bread or pancakes or sticky rolls, I'd be licking them too.
When I woke the next morning, Seph was still snoring lightly with Nebbles curled up by her neck, and a roll of parchment had been scooted under our door. I got up to look and then sawed my teeth over my bottom lip when I saw it had my name on it. I knew that handwriting. This couldn’t be good. As quiet as I could, I unrolled the parchment.
Dear Dawn,
Your letter about Family Weekend at White Magic Academy must not have arrived. We’ll be there Saturday morning.
Much love,
Dad
No. No, please, no.
I hadn't even thought my parents would bother to visit me since they were still drowning in misery. I'd have to write them back, beg them not to come for...reasons. Too much homework maybe. They'd probably thought their raven was flying to White Magic Academy with their letter to me but hadn't watched it fly in the opposite direction. How had they even heard about Family Weekend? It didn't matter. I wouldn’t be there, and they couldn't know that.
Quickly, I scrawled a letter back, the scratch of the quill much louder than Seph's snores. I rolled the parchment, stepped into my boots without tying them, threw on my cloak, and then stopped. She’d be okay for a few seconds, right? I’d zip downstairs for a raven to deliver my letter and then back up again, no problem. Just in case, though, I slipped the antidote into my pocket and left the room.
Our door had been neatly painted over—or spelled over—with no sign of the scratch marks from yesterday. Headmistress Millington, I presumed. After making sure the door was firmly shut behind me, I drew another protection symbol on it and then went in search of a raven.
A few students were already trickling into the Gathering Room for breakfast where the smells of rich syrup, butter, and pancakes beckoned me. In the middle of the entryway, I waved my arm for a bird, and one fluttered down and gently landed on my outstretched arm.
"Take this to Mr. and Mrs. Fred Cleohold, please," I told it and stuck the rolled parchment in its slightly opened beak.
It winged up to the ceiling again and then vanished like a puff of smoke. My letter should arrive within seconds. Hopefully they actually read it and absolutely did not go to the school I wasn't even at.
"Nice to see you trying this morning, Dawn. Love what you've done to your face," a voice with bitter edges said behind me.
I half turned. It was the redhead who’d called me a freshman freak, looking pristine and gorgeous as ever, her curls bouncing as she stepped gracefully off the last stair into the entryway. She had an entourage of girls with her, all wearing a similar judgmental sneer, but none of them pulling it off as well as she did. She'd had practice. Lots of it.
"Huh?" I hadn't even had coffee yet, and it was much too early to be picked apart like a piece of meat.
"Did you stick your head in a fireplace, or did you borrow some face tattoo ink from your creepy roommate?" she asked.
"Ink... What?" Oh. Shit. The coal I'd rubbed into my hair to turn my hair black... I'd bet several coins I
had it smeared all over my face from when I was sleeping. Lovely. Just lovely.
She flicked her judgmental stare down to my feet and back again. "And your cloak is inside out and your boots are untied. Was your first day so bad that it turned you into a vagrant?"
Her friends snickered at that.
She leaned in, her blue eyes flashing with cruel humor. "Are you sure you can handle yourself here?"
"I’ve got everything under control," I said with a shrug.
She tilted her head, faking skepticism. Also faking that she ever possessed a human quality in her life. "Really?"
"Yeah. Really," I said, then waved my fingers at her. "Toodle-oo."
As I turned, she and her friends' glares cut down my back. So maybe I did look like a hot mess—hello, I was a hot mess—but that didn't mean I had to let that or them bug me.
I raced back up the stairs to my room to rouse Seph and breathed a sigh of relief when I found her and Nebbles still snoring. One drop, then two of the antidote, hit the inside of Seph’s mouth, and less than five seconds later, her eyes popped open.
"Hungry for wall?" I asked, sitting next to her.
She blinked "Huh?"
Nebbles blinked, too, but mostly decided he couldn’t be bothered and fell back asleep.
Seph had been asleep for the wall-licking part since the headmistress wanted to test the dosage of the sleeping potion first.
Now, she regarded me strangely. Damn it, because I still had coal on my face. I scrubbed it hard and probably made it ten times worse.
"Are...you hungry for wall?" she asked.
"Always." I reached for her cloak hanging from the bedpost and handed it to her. "Do you know where the library is? I'd like to go there before our classes start."
She tossed her cloak to the bed and gently detached herself from Nebbles so she could sit up. "Look at you going for top student on day two."
"Not really." While she rubbed the sleep from her eyes, I rose, capping the antidote vial, and then placed it on my desk. "Mostly I just want to do some research on a few things I can't shake from my head."
She stretched her arms up high and yawned. "I have a whole lot of cobwebs up in my head. I think I slept too good for an embarrassing chunk of the day."
"Don't rub it in or anything." I sat down next to her and nudged her shoulder so she'd know I was kidding. "Do you feel good?"
"Oh, I'm sure panic over yesterday’s fainting spell will set in real soon." She drooped then, her shoulders and mouth and spirit all slumping, so I quickly diverted to my dad's letter and what had happened downstairs with the redhead while we both made ourselves presentable.
At least she didn’t seem to remember last night.
Together, we made our way back down to breakfast before we hit the library.
"You know...I have a way I can make her leave you alone," Seph muttered to me as we stepped off the final stair into the entryway.
“Her who?”
“The curly redhead,” she said. “Vickie’s her name. I don't like to do what I have in mind, but that doesn't mean I won't."
I frowned, considering, but then I stepped over the threshold into the Gathering Room. A heated prickle zeroed in on me from the left, and I immediately knew why. I stopped and Seph rammed into my back.
"Oh, sorry. Speaking of walls..." she said, but I wasn't really listening.
He was sitting at the junior table, surrounded by his friends as usual, and slicing me up with his furious glare. Was he mad I shadowed him up to his room last night? Or was he mad because I'd interfered with whatever he was trying to do to Seph last night by making her act like my brother before he killed him? Likely both. Either way, he wasn't hiding his rage at all, so I did my best to mask mine. No sense in drawing attention to myself like he was. His friends kept casting glances my way.
"Seph,” I said, turning. “Can you wait here while I go in?" After yesterday, I didn’t want her anywhere near Ramsey. "I'll grab us some food, and we can head to the library." I winced, hoping she'd take the hint, but she was too busy popping up on her tiptoes to search in the direction of the freshmen table behind me. "This is the part where you give me money to pay."
"Oh, I know.” She grinned and then pressed two coins into my palm. “I just like to watch you squirm."
I chuckled, but it sounded hollow. I really needed to figure out a way to make my own money. "Thanks. Stay here, okay?"
I left her where I could still see her over my shoulder, and I could feel every cut of Ramsey's glare raining down my back like cold blood. Keeping Seph in my sights, I flipped the coins onto the table and then loaded two plates with stacks of pancakes, mounds of butter, sweet, sweet syrup, and several helpings of eggs, bacon, and sausage. There was no way the library would let us eat and flip through books at the same time, so I grabbed several napkins too.
When I happened to glance up, Ramsey had sliced his glare toward Seph—who looked like she was about to tip over fast asleep.
No. What the hell was he doing to her?
I threw one of the serving spoons down on the table, hitting it with a burst of magic at the same time. It landed with a thunderous clatter. Students nearest me jumped, and silence stole over the whole room as all eyes swiveled toward me. Even Seph's, wide and awake. Even Ramsey. I pinned him with a warning look, one that boiled out of me with hot fury.
If it was a fight over Seph he wanted, I'd give him one. And then I'd make him wish he was never born.
Grabbing up some cutlery and our plates, I marched away from the table and pretended like I was headed straight for his, holding his gaze the whole time. I would do about anything to keep his attention on me instead of Seph so he couldn't hurt her. The whole room followed me with their eyes, and several professors at the head table strode toward me down the aisles like they expected me to start a fight.
And I would, just not right now.
At the last second, I cut out the door and swept past Seph with a nod to follow.
"Are you okay?" I hissed when she bounded up next to me. "You looked like you were about to fall asleep."
"I just have cobwebs in my head, none of which are important." She reached over and took one of the plates from me, eyeballing it closely. "Now, what the hell was that all about? Are you ever going to explain how you know that guy? You looked like you were about to kill him."
Oh, very much so.
"We have...bad blood between us." I looked over my shoulder to see if he or any of the professors were following. So far, no one was, but I ducked through the classroom wing doors quickly anyway. "Where are we going? Where’s the library?"
She pointed with her plate to the very end of the hall. "This way."
When I opened the single door at the end of the hall, my breath stuck in my throat. Like most everything else at this school, it was completely not what I expected. All around the walls of the large circular room, the bookcases were set inside live trees that rose four floors to the domed ceiling above. Ravens soared overhead or flitted from tree to tree, and I ducked my head since I stood right underneath them with my precious food. Like the entryway, though, the whole library was immaculately bird-poop free.
Vines and leaves wound around several wooden spiral staircases around the room, and in the middle were several tables of all shapes and sizes also cut from trees but not yet finished. Or maybe they were artistically finished, since several grew out from the trunks with thick roots making up the seats. Some tables even had a canopy of green leaves fluttering from their branches that half hid the students sitting there. Leaves that had been spelled to shimmer and twinkle rained from up high and whispered at our feet when they landed, setting the volume of the place. The library was crowded for this early, and I could tell why. It was addictively magical.
"Well, no one's screaming at us yet about our food. Let's get a table," Seph whispered and crossed to the nearest one.
I didn't see anyone who looked like a librarian, but what did a necromancer librarian look lik
e?
A light squawk came from a raven that sat in the middle of the table Seph headed toward and then flew away.
"Are...are the ravens the librarians here?" I asked as I sat opposite her.
She chuckled as she looked around the space, her brown eyes glittering with excitement. "I don't think so, but can you believe this place? I think I'm in love."
I smiled. "Are you trying to say you're as big a fan as I am of books?"
"Maybe more. Since I was no good at necromancy, I read everything, whether it had to do with black magic or not." She spread her napkin over her lap. "Quarum sacra fero revelare."
I repeated the spell, and when I got the all-clear, I dug in, so famished I was beginning to shake.
"I think I'm going to look up a few books about dreams,” Seph said after she swallowed a mouthful of pancakes. “See what mine were all about last night. They were too vivid, too real."
My last bite of pancake sank like a stone. The sleeping potion the headmistress gave her felt like trickery, and I hated it for that reason, but if it helped keep her safe, and not sleepwalk, I had to go with it. Still, it felt like I was lying to her by not telling her the truth about last night.
We finished our food quickly, and when we still hadn't spotted a librarian, Seph waved down a bird.
"Show me the books about dreams, please,” she told it.
It hopped away from her a few feet and then looked back, its head cocked like it was waiting for her to follow.
She laughed incredulously. "Maybe they are the librarian?”
"No idea,” I said, wiping my mouth on a napkin, “but meet back at our table when you’re done?"
"You got it." She followed the raven as it skipped across the floor to one of the bookcases.
Once she was far enough away to not hear me, I waved down a bird.
"I'd like to see books on the Diabolicals," I told it, my voice low.
It fluttered toward the nearest spiral staircase, and I ended up climbing all the way to the fourth story. My breakfast weighed heavily in my gut, and I panted loudly as I neared the final few steps. This wasn't my smartest moment. I should've done this first. Live and learn, I guess, and hopefully not throw up.
Necromancer Academy: Book 1 Page 7