Necromancer Academy: Book 1

by Lindsey R. Loucks

  Professor Woolery plopped down in the chair, the frigid air curling off of her penetrating through my cloak all over again. Her glossy chestnut waves fell past her shoulders, spiraling towards the large red buttons fastening her cloak. Our History of Cautionary Tales instructor seemed to be the queen of large buttons.

  "Honestly? Me too, but I’ve heard you get used to it, but that by the time you do, it's summer and time to go home." She took a long draw from her glass and then set it down, her gaze casting sideways at the map in front of me. "Wow, this one's old."

  "Is it?" I hadn't even noticed a date on it.

  She nodded and leaned closer to it. "It doesn't even include the women's wing. It was only in the last two hundred years that the school decided to enroll female students."

  "Whoa. Really?" Seph asked.

  The professor brushed a few windblown hairs back from her face. "Thanks to Headmaster Pollygar. He was a forward-thinking man for an archaic school like Necromancer Academy, but very gradually, the school came around to his way of thinking." She brought her cup to her mouth again and muttered, "It still has quite a ways to go."

  I wondered what she meant by that, but decided not to press it to save time. Gender equality was a sore topic for me, one I used to rant about for hours to Leo, who’d decided to humor me and listen for some reason. I had bigger issues at the moment though.

  "Do you know what this room is?" I asked her, pointing.

  "Let’s see." The longer she studied it, the deeper the crease between her eyebrows went. "It looks like it's the back wall of the gym, but the school has been renovated several times since this map was drawn. It could've been something at one time, but now it's likely just part of the gym. I’m a bit of a history nut, so I’ve studied this school in depth."

  “And the history of cautionary tales,” Seph added. “You know all the little details and make it so interesting.”

  Professor Woolery beamed.

  Here wasn't the place to talk to her more about the gym and why Seph's subconscious was obsessed with it, which was okay since I had a dozen more questions.

  I leaned toward her. "Have you ever heard of the Diabolicals?"

  She cut her gaze to me, a sharpness to her that hadn't been there before. "Where did you hear that name?"

  "I overheard it on the way to class,” I said, shrugging. “Does it mean something?"

  "Yes, it means something." She took another drink, her movements slow and careful. "It's a fraternity of students and staff that's been around since the school was established."

  "Since they're a fraternity, I suppose they shun females." Seph rolled her eyes to the ceiling. "Do they do anything else?"

  "I really couldn't say since I'm not a member," she said.

  "Do you know what they have to do with the onyx stone?" I asked.

  She sputtered and coughed so hard that she drew stares from the surrounding tables. Seph patted her on the back while the professor batted the tears from her red-stained cheeks and composed herself.

  "Who told you they were connected?" she asked when she’d caught her breath.

  "No one,” I said. “I saw it in a couple books' indexes in the library, except the pages that explained it were all ripped out."

  She heaved a sigh and leaned back in her seat, a slight tremble in her hand as she snaked it back across the table and into her lap. "You've heard of the Stones of Amaria."

  "Six stones spread across six lands in Amaria," Seph said, not missing a beat. "When the stones are activated, bad things happen. That’s all I know."

  Professor Woolery frowned. "There's a bit more to it than that. Long ago, a man named Ryze ruled all of Amaria.”

  Seph and I shared a look. “Ryze,” we both said. The only guy in history who could successfully raise humans from the dead.

  “Shouldn’t he be dead if it was long ago?” Seph asked.

  “He was beyond cruel,” the professor continued, ignoring the question. “He practiced enslavement and torture. Upon his demise, he used magic to preserve his soul across six stones.”

  Seph nodded. “He saw his death coming and took precautions.”

  “Exactly. So that someday in the future, he could come back,” Professor Woolery said and then lowered her voice. “The rumor going around Amaria is that strange things are happening where the stones are kept. There's even rumors that some have been activated already. But if all six stones are somehow activated, his soul will be unleashed and he could very well come back.”

  “Does any of this have to do with Professor Wadluck?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.” Tears shone in her eyes, and a look of desperation twisted her features. “The staff has been looking, but he’s just...gone without a trace. He’s a good man, almost like a father to me, and I think he was part of the reason I got this job as a first-year professor.”

  “You said some students and staff were Diabolicals...” Seph began. “Was he?”

  “Possibly.” She smoothed her hands over the map and winced. “Which would make sense, because I think they guard the onyx stone here on Eerie Island. The stone might even be at the school, but that part of history is very hush-hush."

  "So the Diabolicals would be like the stone’s keepers," Seph said, her eyes wide.

  But then that would make the Diabolicals the good guys, right? But certainly not all of them. Maybe the Diabolicals had started their little group as fierce protectors of the onyx stone for the good of Amaria, but now they were compromised. A cold-blooded killer lurked among them.

  Could Ramsey be helping Ryze? Possibly... Was Seph needed to somehow activate the stone? Maybe... All I had right now were threads, none of which were connected in a way that I could see.

  But if someone were helping to activate the six stones of Amaria, all of us, not just Eerie Island, were officially screwed.

  Chapter Eleven

  That night, a light thud reached through the edges of my dreams. Wisps of my dorm room blinked into focus, but sleep clung to me and dragged me back down. Then it came again. Thud.

  And a whispered voice.

  "He's here."

  My eyes snapped open. Torchlight danced crazy shadows over the ceiling and walls, making the room come alive with movement when there shouldn't be any. A smell like burning wood stung my nose. I turned toward Seph's bed. Empty except for Nebbles, her reflective green eyes aimed at the door. Seph stood facing it, her head jerking this way and that as if trying to catch sight of a firefly. She held her arms up in front of her, bent at the elbow, and kept walking into the door.

  Thud. Thud.

  I untangled myself from my blankets and placed my bare feet on the ground. Pain sliced up through flesh and bone, and I jerked back with a loud hiss. The floor was freezing cold, so cold it burned. Cramps twisted through my foot muscles and brought tears to my eyes with how much they hurt. Like the insides of my feet were coiling over every single nerve. I grabbed them tightly, pulling them closer to me on the bed to warm and massage the cramps from them.

  "Hush now,” she whispered. “It will all be over soon."

  Alarms blared inside my skull. What was she talking about? "Seph. No."

  It was then that I realized what she was doing. Not just walking into the door but...melting it. That was what I smelled. A hole the size of a fist had been singed through it, right where I’d drawn another protection symbol earlier in the week. She was burning the door somehow while the rest of the room froze into a chunk of ice. She wasn't wearing shoes, just a thin red nightgown that fluttered around her ankles. Her breath caught in the air in front of her, and she shivered uncontrollably despite the melting door.

  "He's here. I have to go get it to give it to him. He'll be so proud of me." With the protection symbol now missing a large chunk, she opened the door and stepped out into the hall.

  "No, come back here," I called after her. "Seph!"

  Nebbles crouched down on the bed, the hair on her back bristling.

  I massaged my feet har
der, but it still felt like my toes had corkscrewed together. There was no more time to deal with them. My boots lay on top of my trunk, which sat impossibly far away from the foot of my bed. Too far. Like someone had moved it.

  The thought sucked the air from my lungs. Had Seph done that too? Or had someone been in here with us to rouse Seph from her tea-induced sleep? I spotted the elixir on top of my desk. Had someone used it on her? From this distance, I couldn't be sure.

  Ignoring the shooting pains in my feet, I stretched from the safety of my bed to the trunk for my boots. It was just out of reach, set there on purpose. Gritting my teeth, I stretched farther, finally setting one cramped foot down on the floor, which was now blanketed in frost. Invisible icicles shoved up through my flesh. I cried out, the pain so bad that inky blotches crowded into my vision.

  No, I couldn't pass out. I had to get to Seph before she went too far.

  I grabbed for my boots and yanked myself back onto my bed, gasping and shivering. The tears on my cheeks turned hard and cracked, the sharp edges stabbing into my skin. Everything was freezing. I had to get out of here, find Seph, and go to the headmistress.

  Wincing, I pushed my hurt feet into my boots and stood. That was better. No pain other than what I already felt. But when I lifted my foot to take a step, I couldn't. My boots had already frozen to the floor. Damn it, this was a brilliant spell, meant to slow me down so Seph would have a massive head start. I had no idea what a counter-spell would even look like.

  Wait, though. Maybe I did. A healing spell could work. A spell meant for people, not floors, but I'd try anything.

  I knelt where I stood and hovered my fingertips over the floor. “Bind thee in health, Protect mind and soul too, Boost vigor and happiness, Make it all renew.”

  Gray sparks zipped from my fingers and floated over the frost toward the door. I just needed a pathway out, but the sparks hung there, neither melting nor moving much like they were unsure what to do.

  Great plan.

  “Bind thee in health, Protect mind and soul too, Boost vigor and happiness, Make it all renew.” This time, I touched my boots, refusing to give up yet. The sparks clung to my boots like a dusting of gray stars, and then a powerful burst of warmth seeped into my bones. When I found I could take a step, and then another, I shot out of the room after Seph, grabbing my cloak from the bedpost along the way.

  “Stay right there, Nebbles,” I called.

  As I suspected, the hallway was deserted, so I poured on speed toward the stairway door. Complete silence met me outside of it, not even the slightest slap of bare feet. She'd raced out the door and likely had a huge lead on me by now.

  I started down the steps, my ears burning for any sound. Seph had said, "He's here." Ryze? Where? Given the rising prickle up my back, the dark sense of dread sliding into my awareness, my imagination placed him right behind me. But he wasn't. No one was.

  When I got to the front doors of the school, I found them closed and still locked. Last time this had happened, she'd left them wide open and I'd closed them. I turned to the double doors opposite me and the classrooms that lay beyond. The floor and walls crawled with shadows, and the prickling sensation at my nape grew more intense by the second.

  He's here.

  I'd never been afraid of the dark, had never really thought much about it. But now, facing the unknown while searching alone through a creepy school, I was terrified. My jaw ached at how tightly I clenched it. My muscles pinched together so much it took every effort to peel myself away from the door and cross the entryway.

  Grasping the handle of the classroom hallway door, I swallowed down my heart and then pulled the door open. A sliver of moonlight shined through the stained glass dome above. It was better than being completely blind, and soon, I found the gym—with the door opened wide.

  "Seph," I whispered, hardly an exhale.

  A faint scratching sounded from inside the darkness. And voices. Two of them, echoing from the far wall.

  I stopped to listen and bent to pull my dagger from my boot, just in case.

  "A little farther, a little more." That was Seph, her voice trembling. "I know I can do it."

  "Patience," another voice said, deeper, that swept goose bumps all over me.

  That wasn’t Ramsey. That wasn't anyone I knew. Ryze? If so, I was in way over my head.

  Panic squeezed through the darkness, pressed between my ribs, and shallowed my breaths. But I had to put a stop to this. There was no time to call for help, and besides, I couldn’t leave Seph.

  I bit down on my tongue until I tasted blood. Gathering up every ounce of courage, I held up my hand to bring light—when a circle of fire suddenly engulfed the far wall of the gym. And in the middle of it stood a red door that had never been there before.

  Seph stood silhouetted in front of it. Seph and no one else.

  She glowed in the firelight, her red nightgown billowing behind her. She was already crossing toward the door and reaching toward the knob as flames licked all around her, beckoning her closer.

  "Seph, stop!" I sprinted toward her, panic slamming a hole through my chest.

  She was going to burn herself if she got any closer, and she might not even care.

  As I ran, I flicked my gaze to the dark corners of the gym, but my main focus was her.

  She stepped closer, reaching, reaching. The smell of burning skin tainted the air, and I wretched but didn't slow. The flames pulled her closer like fingers, scalding the top of her bald head and burning her nightgown so it hung from one shoulder.

  “No!” I was almost there, also reaching, the fiery heat blasting over my cheeks to the tips of my ears. Too much closer, and it would be my flesh burning to a crisp along with hers.

  I caught her by the back of her nightgown and yanked.

  She fought like a rabid dog against me, but I dug in my heels and kept pulling with all my might. With another heave, I hauled her out of the fire's reach. Instantly, it blinked out without so much as a puff of smoke, crowding the room with inky darkness and roaring silence yet again.

  Then Seph let out an agonized wail, so loud and piercing and haunted that it split open my heart. On instinct, I put my hand to her shoulder to soothe her, and melted, sticky flesh oozed between my fingers.

  Oh. Gods.

  My stomach revolted, but before I could focus on throwing up, she fainted in my arms. Gods, please only a faint. I couldn’t handle anything beyond that. Not now. Not ever. Not with anyone else I cared about, or it would break me even more.

  Balancing her weight carefully, I laid her down on the floor. "Bind thee in health. Protect mind and soul too. Boost vigor and happiness. Make it all renew."

  A web of gray light formed over her skin, and I had to look away from the damage. A sob crawled up my throat, bringing the threat of bile, but I forced both back down. She hardly looked like the same Seph I knew in the faint light of my magic, and I honestly had no idea if I could heal her.

  A sound came from the hallway behind me—a footstep followed by the click of the door closing on us. Sealing us in.

  I whipped my head around, sealing my lips tight to silence my breaths. My heartbeat echoed to every corner of my body. Had someone come in? Or had someone gone out? The healing glow around Seph was fading, so I snapped my fingers to spark a light. Hardly enough to see a foot in front of me, but plenty to guide someone toward us.

  We had to get out of here.

  I turned back to Seph to see that my healing had worked pretty well, but patches of shiny, angry flesh still blotted her otherwise flawless ebony skin. As gently as I could, I grabbed the back of her nightgown at her neck and dragged her across the floor, my other arm outstretched to light the darkness. My muscles shook with the effort. This would take forever, but I didn't exactly have a choice.

  The darkness beyond the faint glow in my palm swarmed with movement all around us. I tried fueling more magic into it, but after the big healing spell I'd just done, I was spent.

  A puff o
f air gusted past the side of my cheek like an exhale. I whipped around but saw no one there.

  "Who's there?" I demanded, my voice much harder than I felt. The rest of me trembled violently.

  I had very little magic left in my reserves, and we were not alone. I could feel the presence as real as the darkness itself, creeping closer, just out of reach of the light. Every one of my steps plucked at my nerves relentlessly, but I had no idea if I was headed in the right direction toward the door. The radius I could see through all looked the same, and I had the sudden terrifying thought of wandering the gym all night looking for the exit.

  Because my light was shrinking. The dying flame brought the darkness closer and choked it down my throat. I suddenly couldn't breathe and had to stop, readjust my grip on Seph, and center myself enough to focus. Focus on getting us out.

  I started up again, seeming to move even slower than I had been. My muscles ached with the effort to drag Seph along, and my boots kept catching on the hem of my cloak, which dragged on the ground from the extra weight.

  Seph jerked.

  Or something jerked her.

  My grip slipped, but I caught her again, barely. Alarm spiked the hairs on my neck. I swung my light around her to search the darkness again, my eyes feeling so wide they could eclipse my head. My heart drummed between my ears, a sharp, uneven sound like the slice of my breaths.

  My light died even more.

  "You don’t get to have her," I said, my voice warbling. "I won't let you. Do you hear me?"

  I gritted my teeth against the silence and kept going. Soon, I found a wall but no door, so I followed the length of it until there, finally, stood the door. Pushing with my back, I opened it and dragged Seph out into the hallway. Since it was lit faintly by moonlight through the glass ceiling, I huffed out the spark in my palm—and then froze.

  Every door in the hallway stood open. On the second floor too. They hadn't before. I was sure of it. As the gym door swung shut, so did they with loud slams that reverberated down the hallway and rattled my teeth together.