“But how could the shifter have attacked them, when I saw him on campus looking like Professor Winslow?” Ainsley asked, confused. She looked around at all of them, her face falling. Softly she asked, “Why isn’t Langston here? Is he going to be all right? Please tell me he is.”
No one answered, and their silence hung heavy and tense in the air.
Sydney felt sucker-punched, but she had to be the one to answer. “The attack on Jake was serious. The shifter disguised itself as Kai.”
Ainsley shook her head and focused on Jax. “The guy from the fountain?”
Jax nodded, biting his lower lip.
“He approached Langston, dropped his human form, and attacked. It attacked both of them when Jake tried to help Langston,” Sydney said. “They’re still alive, but the mist did something to them.” Her throat thickened with grief. She wasn’t sure she was capable of saying the next words.
“Oh my God! Are they okay?” Ainsley asked again, her face a mask of disbelief and horror.
“Are you not fucking listening? No, Ainsley, they’re not okay!” Sydney lashed out, her fists clenched at her sides. A wave of fury bowled her over, and it took every ounce of effort she had not to haul off and punch this most hated of middlings. “You had to open that fucking door, and now Langston’s magic is gone!”
Ainsley looked like Sydney had hauled off and punched her anyway.
“That’s enough! Fuck, Sydney, this isn’t helping anyone," Justin said. “If you can’t get your emotions in check, we’ll deal with this without you.”
“Always swooping in to rescue her, huh. You’re supposed to be my best friend. Mine. Or doesn’t that mean anything to you anymore? God, what’s happened to you? I don’t even recognize you anymore.”
Justin hung his head at the accusation, but he still looked angry.
Ava put a tentative arm around Sydney, and Syd allowed it. She knew she should brush her off. Show no weakness. Hold her head high with righteous indignation. But she was at wit’s end.
“What does she mean, “Ainsley asked in a near whisper, turning to Jax, the only one looking in her direction anymore, “that Langston’s magic is gone? Can that happen?”
Jax closed the distance between himself and Ainsley, his tone melancholy, “The shifter was able to siphon Langston and Jake’s magic from their bodies somehow.”
Sydney stepped forward, hands on her hips, and stared Ainsley straight in the face. “The shifter is stronger than ever with the addition of their magic, while they’re both left in excruciating pain. We have no idea if they’re ever going to get their magic back. They might never be whole again. That’s what we did when we opened that door, and I can’t live with that. We need to fix this. We need to find the shifter tonight before it attacks and adds the strength of yet another witch’s power. Before no one can ever stop it.”
Chapter 6
Ainsley
It would have hurt less if they’d struck Ainsley in the chest with a baseball bat. Poor Langston. She replayed her part in this mess for the hundredth time, especially the way she’d goaded Sydney into opening the underground room’s door. She could only have felt more horrible if she’d ripped the magic out of Langston herself.
Justin stared at Sydney with a level of defiance Ainsley had never seen on his face. “You think it’ll be that easy? We just ‘find’ the shifter? It could be hiding in plain sight, anywhere on campus. It could be anyone. Last night it wore Kai and Winslow’s bodies.”
“All the more reason to end this now,” Sydney said with a confidence Ainsley knew she couldn’t possibly possess. While the Queen Bee of Ashcroft could get practically anything she wanted, this was something out of Her Royal Highness’ reach.
He focused on Ainsley. “What time did you see it on campus?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, maybe around nine.”
Jax ran his hand over his chin. “That fucker had enough energy to attack Langston and Jake, fight off a group of Elder witches, and then morph into Winslow for an evening stroll? Holy shit.”
Ava’s eyes widened. “Maybe sucking out their magic wasn’t enough for it. What if it was out hunting last night, looking for another witch to attack? Think about it, what’s more innocuous than being an Ashcroft professor? No student would worry about Winslow.”
Ainsley fought to ignore the news about Langston and the noise from the party. Not one of the revelers had the slightest inkling about what lurked in these woods. She ran yesterday’s events through her mind and what she’d learned of the way it dropped its form to attack.
“Wait,” Ainsley paused until she had everyone’s attention, “if the shifter changed into its mist form to attack, and then immediately found a new person to imitate, it must be hunting.”
“We’ve figured that part out,” Sydney snapped. “Now, how do we stop it?” She looked paler than usual, her violet eyes dark and sunken.
Ainsley looked around to make sure no one at the party was paying them any attention. “What I mean is that maybe the shifter is strongest when it’s in fog-form. If we can attack it when it's in human form, we stand a better chance.” The inflection in Ainsley’s voice made it sound like a question.
Sydney stormed in front of her, pointing her index finger in Ainsley’s face, making Ainsley flinch and back up. “First, you have zero clues about whether the shifter’s supernatural energy is the same, depending on what form it’s in. Second, there is no we. You’re not a witch, in case you’ve somehow forgotten.”
Justin gently moved Ainsley out of the way and stood in her place, face-to-face with Sydney. “Back off with the us-against-her shit, will you? If you want my help, then you will start treating Ainsley with the respect she deserves. Not only has she kept everything a secret, but she’s shown up for us time and again, even with no magic to protect her. I know you, Syd. You’re better than this.”
He squared his shoulders in defiance, but Sydney didn’t back down. Sydney narrowed her gaze on him. “Fine, but when she crosses us, I reserve the right to deal with her my way.”
“Great, now that we’re all squared away, can we go?” Jax asked, looking over all of the players in this drama triangle.
Khourtney sauntered back to the group. “I pawned Harper off on a few middlings. What did I miss?” she asked, her voice akin to one leading a pep rally.
“You’re just in time,” Sydney said before letting her eyes fall on each person’s face. With a half-smile, she said, “Follow me, we’re going on a shifter hunt—with one of you as bait.”
Ainsley knew she was the bait. Rather, if the shifter wasn’t determined to go after another witch tonight, she would be, especially since it had already made a point of making contact with her disguised as Winslow. “Where to then, Sydney?” She had zero doubt Sydney would throw her at the shifter like a piece of raw meat to a pack of starving dogs, without even blinking an eye.
“We are going to break apart from the party. Maybe then we can lure the shifter out. How can it resist five witches all wrapped up in a nice little bow?” With that, Sydney stormed off into the blackness of the forest, away from the party.
The laughing and music grew less distinct as they followed behind her like a pack of lemmings, including Ainsley.
“I know I missed a lot,” Khourtney said, “but how is this a good idea? We’re not exactly prepared if this thing comes at us.”
Ainsley was grateful she didn’t have to be the one to protest.
“It’s better to draw it away from the rest of the students here,” Sydney said.
Ava, who had barely uttered a word, spoke up, “The Elders know something is here. Máthair Bello told everyone to be on guard. Maybe Syd’s right, and we should at least see if it’s here. If we can observe it, we can get a better sense of how to handle it.”
“Coming out here was a bad idea,” Justin said, rubbing the bridge of his nose between his fingers.
Jax clapped him hard on the back, making him jerk forward. “Being in a g
roup is the safest thing we can do. There are six of us. It won’t attack us with these numbers. And if it tries, it won’t succeed.” His confidence was noticeably exaggerated.
“The truth remains,” Ainsley said, unable to keep silent any longer, “we don’t know what it will or won’t do or what it is or isn't capable of. We’re all guessing here,” She wrapped her arms around herself. Despite the layers she wore, the cold chilled her to the bone. It seemed unseasonably cold for Massachusetts, but it was still warmer than Maine. Winters there were miserable.
“Can we stop with all this bloody banter and get on with something? Anything? That or I’m going back for a beer,” Jax said in a dry, bored tone.
“I’m sorry if I’ve never lured a supernatural entity before. I don’t quite know the perfect method for tracking one yet,” Sydney snapped.
Khourtney put her hands up. “Why don’t we go back to the party. We can split up into pairs and walk around, looking for doubles? Then we’ll at least know it’s here, masquerading as someone.”
Finally, a reasonable suggestion. “I’m with Khourtney,” Ainsley said. “For all we know, while we’re out here plotting, that thing could be attacking another witch somewhere.”
A piercing scream cut through the night, and they had no time to discuss it further..
Sydney and Justin took off running first. Ainsley saw Ava, Khourtney, and Jax nod in unison before sprinting with the others. She wasn’t going to be left alone. With her heart hammering in her chest, Ainsley forced herself to bolt back to the party. She caught up to the others in no time—adrenaline working like a miracle drug. She had no clue what she'd do when they got there.
The group darted between trees, jumped over exposed roots, and dodged jutting rocks. She tried to land carefully and not roll an ankle. She knew no one could stop to help her under the circumstances.
The screams intensified, all too reminiscent of the night Darren’s body was discovered. Ainsley prayed this wasn’t another murder. She didn’t feel emotionally equipped to handle all of this.
Students dashed by her, running in the opposite direction. If she were smart, she’d turn around and run with them, away from whatever had everyone in a panic. As more students passed her, she saw the path opened into a small clearing. Ainsley braced herself. Justin appeared by her side, his hand on her back, steadying her.
A girl from Ainsley’s drama class was hanging before her, suspended in mid-air. A gasp escaped her lips, and she covered her mouth with a gloved hand.
“Shit. Get everyone away from here,” Sydney commanded.
Justin, Jax, and Ava began shooing people away, waving their hands over the student’s faces and mumbling. Suddenly, the students' anguish was gone. They nodded, walking off as if nothing had happened. They’d clearly all Persuaded people before. It was like second nature to them.
She looked on in awe as they spelled the students right in front of her! It was both incredible and appallingly invasive. But it worked. The area cleared out in less than a minute, leaving the six of them alone with the floating girl. How was this happening?
Ainsley gaped at the girl, hanging in the air as though suspended in water. Her white-blonde hair billowed around her, her eyes glassy and vacant, her mouth open in a silent scream.
The air in Ainsley’s lungs seemed to evaporate, and she gasped for breath. Her pulse raced, pumping her blood through her ears at such speed that her hearing muffled.
“Get her down!” Sydney commanded, looking wildly from Ava to Justin, Jax, and Khourtney, all of them slack-jawed and unmoving.
Why wasn’t Sydney doing something? Ainsley wondered. Wasn’t she always going on about what a great and powerful witch she was?
Sydney finally moved, pushing past Ava and Jax, her hands splayed out in front of her. She commanded something in Latin, but the girl didn’t come down. Instead, the student was flung aggressively back and forth through the air, stopping suddenly with a jerk.
Ainsley yelped, unable to help herself. She trained her gaze on the girl, holding her breath and praying it would be over soon.
A gurgling sound started coming from the girl’s throat.
“What’s happening to her?” Ainsley desperately wanted someone to make the sound stop.
Ava pointed, “She’s choking.”
Ainsley followed Ava’s finger back to the blonde and saw white, bubbling foam sputtering from her mouth. She wanted to cover her eyes but couldn’t. She just stood there, frozen.
The temperature seemed to drop all around them. An icy chill burrowed down into Ainsley’s body. Suddenly, the girl whipped through the air again. Back and forth. Over and over.
“Do something,” Ainsley screamed. Even if she’d tried to jump toward the girl, she was too high up. Ainsley wouldn’t be able to reach her.
“Now!” She motioned to Sydney.
A determined look on her face, Sydney performed another spell, the girl continuing to thrash ten feet in the air. Sydney swayed, unsteady on her feet. “A little help here!” she yelled to the others.
Justin snapped out of his shock first, and the others followed. They all raised open palms toward the girl and, in unison, muttered something incomprehensible to Ainsley.
Dull light seemed to emanate from their fingertips, wrapping around the girl.
Ainsley’s heartbeat quickened, her body quaking as she watched the girl lower slowly to the ground, collapsing on her side. Her eyes and mouth were closed, her body still. She looked like she was sleeping, and Ainsley hoped it was true. She prayed the girl wasn’t dead.
Chapter 7
Sydney
Cassidy Jerome looked dead. Sydney rushed over, closed her eyes, and knelt next to the girl, before extending her arms across the limp body, palms down. Terror, dizziness, and nausea rose up within her as she took in the body’s most recent feelings and attempted to read the condition of Cassidy’s body. She tried to push aside the fear that her magic wouldn’t work, that her friends had actually lowered Cassidy down, that she hadn’t had any effect at all, and that she was a shitty witch with no business casting so much as a fishing line, let alone a powerful spell.
Syd shook her head, closed her eyes, and concentrated on Cassidy. Sydney felt the girl’s life force humming inside her body, but it wasn’t normal. It had been distorted by so much magic. It wasn’t normal for middlings to carry magic inside them like this. Sure, the Wildes used spells on them sometimes, but that caused only a small vibration of magic that didn’t linger. This was different. Cassidy’s body was overrun by it.
“I think the shifter did this. I can feel that there’s something wrong with her internally. She doesn’t feel energetically normal for a middling. There’s magical energy bouncing around all over inside of her.” Sydney ran her hands over the length of Cassidy’s body without touching her. “Middling bodies aren’t made to handle this amount of concentrated magic. She could die.”
“Oh my God,” Ainsley moaned, pacing while her fingers rubbed her temples.
“I don’t get it. Why would it go after a middling?” Khourtney asked.
Sydney wished she knew for sure. “Maybe this is some sort of warning. It could’ve tried to get to a witch but was unable to. Maybe it got angry and did this to send us a message to stop looking for it.”
“We have no idea what it’s capable of, or what it’s willing to do,” Justin said. Sydney recognized the fear in his voice.
“Will she wake up?” Ainsley asked, almost in a whisper. “She needs to wake up. Can’t you do something?”
Fuck, why is she always around?
When no one answered, Ainsley asked again more loudly.
“We don’t know!” Sydney took to her feet and began pacing.
Jax approached Cassidy and placed his fingers gently on either side of her face. He closed his eyes and recited an advanced Black magic spell that Sydney didn’t recognize. He exhaled and drew back. His expression told her it wasn’t good news. “I think she’s in a coma.”
> “What?” Ainsley shrieked.
His words struck Sydney with force. A coma. Visions of her father, lying in his hospital bed day after day, month after month, year after year, filled her with an ache that dropped her to her knees.
“Are you okay, Syd?” Jax asked.
“Can someone get her out of here?” Sydney said, motioning to Ainsley. “I can’t think with all of her dramatics.” How long was she going to have to deal with her?
Ainsley looked stricken, but she shut up.
Syd tried to think. They had to get help for Cassidy, but it needed to look like something normal had happened to her. But what?
“We can’t tell the Elders about this,” she began, “not on top of everything else.”
“I hate to say it,” Ava said, “but we have to. They’re the only ones who can figure out what’s wrong with Cassidy and heal her.”
Khourtney paced inside the small clearing, not looking at anyone. Her anxiety was infectious.
“Why would the shifter go after a middling and not a witch?” Jax mused. “It can’t siphon anything from them.”
He looked at Ainsley. “Wait, you said it knew you weren’t a witch, but also that you were different from a normal middling somehow. That means the shifter can tell who is human and who's a witch.”
“Which means the shifter did this to Cassidy on purpose,” Ava added. “This wasn’t an accidental attack from the shifter thinking Cassidy was possibly a witch.”
“How do you all know this was the shifter and not,” Ainsley stopped, catching her words before they were out. She gazed around cautiously and said, “How do you know it wasn’t a witch that did this?”
Sydney barked out a laugh. “Because we all take an oath, idiot. No Wilde would attack a middling unprovoked like this, and we certainly don’t use magic in front of them.” She crossed her arms before adding, “You’re the rare exception, thanks to Justin,” in her snarkiest tone. “Besides, all the other apprentices are inside the dorms right now. We're the only witches out.”
Wilde Abandon (Ashcroft Academy Book 3) Page 4