The raven led me toward a shelf on the bottom row along the rounded wall and pecked gently against three thick ancient-looking books.
"Thanks, uh...librarian raven."
It squawked loudly, flew away, and emitted another loud squawk like I'd offended it.
Shrugging, I knelt and plucked the three books from the shelf. They were so worn, I couldn't read their titles on the spines or covers. The inside of the first book read Amaria: A History in an elegant scrawl, and I immediately flipped to the back. Some ancient texts included indexes, but most authors of that time didn't bother. This one, however, did.
Diabolicals, see Stones of Amaria: Onyx - p. 255
Stones of Amaria... I'd read about those somewhere. There were six stones in total, and...that's about all I remembered. So what did these stones, or the onyx in particular, have to do with Ramsey and the Diabolicals? Did it have to do with Leo too?
I turned to the corresponding page, but— Well, that was weird. Page 255 didn't exist, and neither did pages 256 through 261. Long jagged lines cut down the length of the book where the pages used to be. Someone had torn them out.
Same with the second and third books. All the information about the Diabolicals had been ripped from existence. Here in the library, anyway. But why? To hide the Diabolicals since one of them had resorted to murder and were possibly connected to the missing professor? Maybe that was why Leo had been killed. Because he'd found them out, either through the voices he'd heard while sleepwalking or otherwise.
I gathered the books to my chest and stood, then looked out over the rest of the library. I needed more information from a librarian raven...or whatever. Seph was walking carefully back to our table while peering over the huge stack of books in her arms. Several students were trickling out the doors to head to classes, but I didn't see even a hint of a librarian without wings.
On my way down the staircase with the three books, the door to the library opened once more.
In walked Ramsey with a stack of books. And he was headed straight to Seph who was on a direct path toward him without even realizing it.
Shit. My muscles locked in place as I stared down at the two of them, getting closer and closer, before I finally found my voice.
"Seph!" I called. "Stop right there!"
She slowed and cast her gaze upward, confusion drawn across her forehead. Ramsey also whipped his head up and narrowed his steely gray eyes. But he didn't slow.
"Get away from him, Seph." I flew down the stairs as fast as I could, my boots catching several times in the hem of my dress and cloak and threatening to spill me down. The spiral steps kept me from keeping an eye on every single one of Ramsey's movements as I wound my way down. Was he carrying a knife in the folds of his robe? Like he had been when he caught me shadow-walking up to his room?
I called upon my magic, let it spread through me, like thickened mud at first and then thinning for sharper precision.
Seph backed away from him.
But Ramsey kept approaching, his long strides eating up the distance between them, and his free hand disappeared into his cloak.
What was he doing? Was he going to make her faint again? An animalistic growl tore from my throat as I poured on speed down the last few steps.
"Obrigesunt!" The petrify spell burst from my palm as a sparking gray ball of light and sailed directly toward his head.
He raised one of the books as a shield without slowing, and my magic ripped a fist-sized hole right through it. Then he jerked to a stop and stared at what I'd done. Smoke twisted up from the glowing orange hole in the book, and the edges blackened and curled like a portal to hell. Some of the pages drifted down as ash around his feet.
That spell had never been quite that powerful before, but I was just getting started.
Ramsey flicked his thunderstorm eyes to me, a look of pure fury written in the sharp angles of his face. "What did you do that for? You could’ve blown off my head."
"That was kind of the point.” Violent rage shook through me. I would kill him right now. Right here. "Obrigesunt." I hurled another blast at him.
“Gods damn it,” he shouted as he dove behind the nearest table to dodge it.
I fisted my hand, which stopped the sparking gray light in midair, and then jerked my hand toward him. My magic singed through several falling leaves as it blasted toward him.
He easily evaded again, and then he was running toward me at full speed, his face twisted with malice. Before I could get another shot, he tackled me to the stairs. My books went flying. My back crashed into the hard edges of the steps behind me. My breath funneled out of my lungs. Everything hurt. But I didn't care. I didn't care about anything but hurting him.
"Get off!" I twisted and bucked wildly to throw him off, but he used his full weight to pin me down beneath him.
He clenched his hands around both my wrists and slammed them into the stairs. I cried out in pain, at the sickening crack of bone on wood. His face was so close to mine, I could smell the syrup on his breath, so disgustingly sweet that it turned my stomach.
Through my blinding rage and pain and panic, I saw Seph creeping up behind Ramsey’s back. But I made my gaze never waver from his face. Whatever she had in mind, I wouldn't give her away, but what if her nearness to him made her faint again?
"Why do you hate me so much that you're trying to petrify me?" he demanded. “That you shadow-walked up to my dorm and lied about needing training?”
"You know exactly why, you monster." I spit at him, right in his face, and he closed his eyes against it, his jaw clenched furiously.
He didn't bother to let me go long enough to wipe it away.
Over his shoulder, Seph paused on the step behind his head, took a lock of his longish hair, and yanked. Quick as a gasp, she pulled away and ran. Whatever that was about, I hoped she wasn’t finished.
Ramsey hissed and whipped his head around for her. “What in seven hells was that for?” He returned his hard glare to me and then ticked his gaze to the books spilled across the steps. "Why are you checking out books about the Stones of Amaria? What do you know?"
"I know that all the pages about the Diabolicals are ripped out," I fired back.
His eyes flashed. "What else did you hear when you were stalking m—" He cried out suddenly, his whole body stiffening, and he threw himself off of me and crumpled to his back on the floor. His cries turned into agonized shouts of pain.
Shocked, I pulled myself up into a sitting position. He lay near me, his back arched off the ground, writhing and shouting in pain.
The darkest part of my soul smiled. His suffering was music to my ears.
"I, Princess Sepharalotta, and the night goddess, Hecate, require something of you to make the pain stop." Seph’s skeletal face was set in fierce determination while she panted heavily. She held a cloth doll in her hand with a brown lock of hair tied around its head with black ribbon. And poking from the doll's back was a silver needle. "We require you to swear you'll never harm Dawn."
I blinked up at her, trying to separate Ramsey's continued screams with what she'd just said. She was a princess?
"And you,” I added. “He has to swear he won't harm you again too."
She looked to me and nodded. "We also require you to swear you'll never harm me either. Do you swear it?"
"I...swear..." he croaked.
Seph pulled the needle out of the doll, and Ramsey crumpled to the floor, panting heavily and with sweat glistening across his face. In a useless puddle like he was now, he wasn't nearly as terrifying. I wanted to have a turn myself with Seph's strange doll to continue his torture, but letting him stew in his shameful defeat against two freshmen girls seemed much more fun at the moment.
Grinning, I turned to Seph, who wore a wicked little smile. “Are you all right?”
She pointed at Ramsey. “Currently better than he is.”
"Bad semantics." Ramsey laughed—actually laughed—and then climbed slowly to his feet. "You said I can’t hu
rt you two, but not the rest of the school." He smiled, so hateful and menacing that I almost took a step away from him. Almost. "Ah, well. Too late to change it now. Evanescet.”
He blinked out of existence, leaving Seph and I alone with his very clear threat hanging over our heads.
That had sure sounded like a declaration of war.
Chapter Eight
Morning classes passed in a blur of more defensive lessons, good-luck-with-being-a-necromancer lectures, and cramps in my hand from taking so many notes.
And then it was time for Psycho-Physical Education with Ramsey. This should go well. We hadn’t officially cancelled our training session today, but because of what had happened this morning, that was pretty much a given.
His threat in the library flared sharply in some of the upperclassmen we passed in the hallway between classes, their glares hard, but no one tried anything. Yet. A good thing since my magic reserves were near empty after this morning. If I used up all of it, I ran the risk of mage’s oblivion, which was a deep coma.
My heart ricocheted against my ribs as we neared the gym. "Anything?" I asked Seph.
"Not yet." She didn’t look pale or close to fainting. Of course, she hadn’t fainted near Ramsey in the library this morning, but I wanted to make sure.
We stopped along the opposite wall several paces back from the gym’s entrance.
"I'll poke my head in and see if he's there,” I said. “If he is, fake like you’re sick."
Seph stared at me with wide eyes. "And you too? I don't know the story between you, but after this morning, I really don't think you should be anywhere around him." She leaned in and lowered her voice. "What is the story anyway? Were you trying to take off his head?"
I pushed my lips together tightly. It had been stupid to attack him like that, right out in the open in front of Seph. Of course I'd needed to protect her, but still. I hadn’t meant for my petrification spell to be quite so powerful and nearly blow a hole through his head. I needed to get control over my rage when he was around, or otherwise this could turn out much messier than it needed to be. I'd been reckless when I'd needed to be smart.
"I'll see if he's in there." I strode across the rapidly emptying hallway as sweat rolled down my back. I could picture him in there with his smug smile as he chose Seph and me to stand before the entire class and punish us.
But he wasn't in there. Some woman I'd never seen before stood behind the desk, her hair a patchwork of different shades of purple spiraling in perfect curls past her shoulders. No older than her forties, she wore a long fitted black dress with a high collar. Still not the missing Professor Wadluck, unless he'd undergone a gender-changing spell. Unlikely, which meant he was still missing.
I gestured for Seph to follow me. "We’re clear."
She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and marched forward. Then slammed to a stop. Instantly, the ebony color of her skin drained at least three shades paler.
"Nope." Her mouth parted, and she clenched her middle and doubled over like she'd been struck. "Nope nope nope."
"Okay. Just breathe." I rushed to her side and pushed her firmly away from the gym toward the direction of our dorm.
"It’s the gym, isn’t it?" she asked, her voice—all of her—trembling. She wiped at the sweat running down her face with the corner of her cloak.
I gazed over my shoulder. "I guess so."
But why? No one else seemed to be affected but her. No one else had been sleepwalking last night, at least that I'd seen. When Leo was here for his interview, had he reacted this same way if he’d gone anywhere near the gym? It was about to drive me mad that I only had more questions instead of answers.
"I'll go in and tell her that I'm taking you to our room." I leaned her against the hallway wall. "Promise not to pass out?"
"Uh, sure?" She squeezed her eyes shut, her breaths too rough.
I popped into the gym again as the professor—or whoever she was—circled around the desk to address the class. "Excuse me, Professor," I whispered.
She turned, her pretty hazel eyes dancing in the torchlight. "Yes?"
"My roommate isn’t feeling well. Can I take her to the infirmary, please?"
Not where we were going, but she didn’t need to know that.
She gave me a sympathetic smile. "Of course. I'll catch you up as soon as you come back, Dawn."
"Thank you." I spun around and then realized halfway to the door that she knew my name without my ever giving it.
"Hello, class,” she said, her voice drifting behind me. “I'm the librarian, Mrs. Tentorville, and I'm filling in today for Professor Wadluck."
Ah, so that's why I hadn't been able to find her in the library. She didn't appear to know what had happened in there earlier this morning. Yet, anyway. Hopefully she didn't have a spell to make the ravens speak about attempted murders, strange cloth dolls, and outright threats.
Outside the classroom, I found Seph still conscious and led her to our room.
"So tell me," she said as we pushed into the entryway.
"Tell you what?"
"What happened between you and Ramsey."
"It's...long and complicated."
"Have you seen how slow I'm walking?” She smiled, though it was faint and wobbly. “I've got time for long and complicated."
"Not now. Not out in the open like this..." My gaze flitted up the steps to our room, and unease slithered through my chest.
Seph tensed next to me.
An older guy—a senior I thought—sat casually on the banister. Just sitting, waiting, and staring expectantly at us.
I pulled Seph to a stop, angling myself in front of her the best I could.
"Ladies," he said, flicking his blond bangs to the side of his face.
Maybe it was nothing. Maybe he was sitting on the girls' steps during classes for a perfectly good reason, but Ramsey's threat rattled inside my skull. Was this guy a member of the Diabolicals? Was he a murderer like Ramsey? If we slipped by him up the stairs...would he shove us down them? Or worse?
We could head to the infirmary instead, but that felt like running away. I lifted my chin and stared him dead in the eyes, pulling Seph along behind me.
"Something we can help you with?" Seph straightened and pulled away from me, settling her boot on the bottom step.
"I've always liked the stillness this time of day, the quiet." He pinned us with a dark, menacing look. "The lack of nosy freshmen girls with sticks up their asses and something to prove."
I started up the steps with Seph, keeping close to her side, but she was positioned so she'd brush right past him. "We don't need to prove anything."
"Is that right?” he said, his voice dripping with hostility. “Even when there's no one around to hear you scream?"
I nodded, wiping my sweaty palms on my cloak. "Even then."
My knife was tucked inside my boot. Its weight gave me a hint of comfort as we glided closer and hardened my resolve to steel. I’d slash his throat if I had to, if he so much as blinked wrong.
"Especially then," Seph added.
From the corner of my eye, I saw her dip her hand into her cloak pocket. For her cloth doll, I guessed, but she’d need his hair. I had my knife and the fury burning way down deep that Ramsey still drew breath while Leo didn’t.
We neared the guy, were just about to him, and he only stared, a sneer curling his mouth. My muscles coiled, ready to spring at the slightest movement. Awareness skidded along every tight nerve as we passed him, and he quickly turned to follow, his presence lifting every hair on the back of my neck.
"We don't need an escort," I told him. "You may go now."
He gave a low chuckle as we pushed through the door that led to our dorm. "We're not going anywhere."
My heart dropped like a stone. “We” was right. Ten feet in front of us stood several large cloaked figures, their hoods drawn up over their heads. They blocked us from going any farther, and now we were surrounded. By Diabolicals? It sure seemed
that way.
With Seph’s doll as our only source of defense, no hair, and my dagger, we didn't stand a chance against all of them.
Time for another approach.
"Gentlemen," I said, taking an educated guess. None of them appeared to be women, anyway. "If you'll just step aside, you can stop this embarrassing display of vagina envy and go about your business in a more manly fashion."
The Diabolical in front swirled his hand, and a bright red, pulsing orb enveloped his fingers. Smoky black sparks shot out of it that smelled like sulfur and rot and seemed to ooze with a slimy feeling that coated my tongue. The power radiating from it kicked the breath from my lungs, but I refused to let it show.
Heat flared behind us, no doubt from the blond Diabolical from the stairs who’d followed us.
I called on my magic, searched for every last spark, but there was hardly anything left.
I didn’t want to use more and risk mage’s oblivion and go into a coma at a time like this.
Sonofabitch.
Chapter Nine
"We're about to make life a living hell for the two of you," the Diabolical in front of us growled. "Mess with the Diabolicals, and it's payback for eternity."
"Great. Can't wait." Seph narrowed her eyes down the hallway past them, at our door that had opened a crack.
If that were Nebbles, I still didn’t see how—
Between us and them, another door slammed open.
The blonde girl made of muscle and brawn with a permanent sneer that Ramsey had sparred with yesterday stepped out of her room. Echo, that was her name. Without even looking, she spread out both her arms and shouted, “Impetro rid.”
A powerful gale spinning with off-white light sparks barreled toward both ends of the hallway. All of the Diabolicals vanished, just like Ramsey had in the library. Only us, the girl, and Nebbles, who sat cleaning her gray paw, remained in the hallway, completely untouched by her magic. That was a powerful spell.
I stared, open-mouthed like a dead fish, while relief washed through me.
Necromancer Academy: Book 1 Page 8