The Chain (The Secret of Spellshadow Manor #3)

“There are some questions I need answered, Aamir. I hate to do this to you, but I can’t leave this room without asking them,” muttered Alex.

Aamir rolled his eyes as if to say “not again,” but Alex wasn’t going to let it go this time. Elias’s words had given him a renewed desire to dig into the wells of Aamir’s untapped, hidden knowledge. But that made Alex wonder at Elias’s motivations for telling him about Aamir in the first place. Had he even been telling the truth? Ellabell’s warning flashed in his mind: “You shouldn’t trust him.” Alex knew he was about to see how far Elias could be trusted.

“When were you taken to Spellshadow Manor?” he asked, not wanting to jump in with the big queries. There was still a lot he didn’t know about Aamir, he realized, glancing at the older boy with his copper skin and dark hair.

Aamir seemed surprised. “What?”

“When were you taken to Spellshadow Manor?” he repeated.

Aamir frowned. “I must have been fifteen, maybe,” he replied after a long, thoughtful silence. “It seems so long ago, now.”

“Do you remember it?”

Aamir smiled sadly. “Some of it. I remember being out in the garden. It was hot, and the sprinklers were on. I’d been reading, I think, and I heard something. There was a fence behind the trees, where the garden backed onto a field. Perhaps it was a whisper—I can’t remember, I just know something distracted me and I put down my book and went to investigate. I remember my grandmother calling to me from the veranda, but I was already in the shade of the trees, trying to find whatever it was… That was the last thing I remember before the manor. My grandmother’s voice calling me and the sound of sprinklers. Funny, the things you remember.”

“Do you miss it?” Alex wondered, trying to picture Aamir’s world before Spellshadow.

“Of course I do,” he breathed, as if there were a great weight upon him. “I miss it every day, but if you think about it all the time, it will drive you mad. I tried that once—it was more painful to remember than to forget.”

“I hear that,” agreed Alex grimly. “Who’s waiting for you, back home?”

“My grandparents, my parents, my little sister,” he replied.

“You have a sister?” Alex hadn’t known about a sister. It reminded him of the promise he’d made to Natalie’s little sister, to get her back safely. He was still determined to make good on that promise, no matter how long it took.

Aamir smiled. “Samaira. She was only five when I disappeared. I doubt she even remembers me.”

“I’m sure she remembers you, Aamir. She’d definitely want you back home, where you belong,” Alex encouraged.

“You really believe we’re going to get out, don’t you?” he remarked kindly, though there was uncertainty in his eyes.

“I have to. Don’t you want to get back to them?” Alex asked, wanting to gauge Aamir’s reaction. When Aamir said nothing, Alex pressed him. “The thing is, I need to know who I’m taking with me, when I figure out a way back. I need to know if that includes you.”

Aamir sighed heavily. “I’m up for leaving… Of course I’m up for leaving this place. Home is all I have ever wanted, though it has long seemed impossible,” he replied quietly, with such emotion in his words that Alex half-believed him.

Talk of family seemed to have relaxed Aamir somewhat, though he kept glancing anxiously around, speaking only in a hushed, whisper-like voice, as if they might be overheard. Seeing this shift in Aamir’s manner, Alex seized his opportunity, though he almost regretted having to; he was enjoying hearing about Aamir’s past and the people from Aamir’s reality, outside in the non-magical world.

“What did they do to you, back at Spellshadow? When you became a teacher, what happened?” ventured Alex.

“It’s like I said, there are gaps in my memory, and there are things I was never told. The teachers certainly know more than the students, but they are still not told everything. Some things are reserved solely for those in charge,” he explained, no longer seeming disdainful of Alex’s line of questioning. He almost appeared eager to answer him. “What I do know is, the Head wanted me to be the new Finder—he wanted to turn me into some magic-seeking specter, but it turned out I didn’t have the natural knack he needed, for seeking out magical talent in the outside world.” He smiled bleakly.

The idea still horrified Alex, making him wonder how things might have turned out, if they had not reached Aamir in time. Perhaps the Head would have tried anyway, doing to Aamir what he had done to Malachi Grey, all those years ago, in the garden of Spellshadow Manor. He shivered at the thought of that day in the tombs when he had touched Finder’s gaping skull.

“Is that why you came back?” asked Alex, recalling the night in the manor when the dark-cloaked figure of Aamir, then Professor Escher, had chased them. “Why you were in the manor that night, when you came after us?”

“I had been sent back, that much is true, but I chased you because I caught Jari searching for a book on necromancy—a very dangerous, awful book. I wanted to stop him, so I pretended to be someone I wasn’t and ran after him, forcing him to abandon his search,” he explained.

Alex frowned. The tale was deeply reminiscent of Elias’s, in which he had tried to prevent Ellabell from reaching out for a particular book, hidden away in the depths of the Head’s library. He wondered if the incidents were somehow related, but shrugged it off for the moment as he turned back to what Aamir was saying.

“I realized then that you had come on with your powers. You gave me quite the shock with your snowy barricade,” he chuckled softly.

Alex smiled. “Sorry about that.”

“No apology necessary. I threatened you; no doubt I deserved it.”

“What were you doing at the manor? I mean, nobody knew you were there—we all thought you’d gone with the Head,” said Alex, remembering the terror he had felt when he heard the heavy footsteps on the flagstones, running after them.

Aamir nodded. “The Head had sent me back to guard the school in his absence, after realizing I was truly useless at magic-finding, but I wasn’t supposed to make myself known to anyone. I think he hoped the students would believe he was still in the manor, somehow—an omnipresent being, that could be both away and there, at the same time. He’s not, if you were curious. He can appear quickly, if he wants to, but he can’t be in two places at once,” he assured Alex with a wry smile.

“So, was there ever a time he didn’t have eyes on the place?” Alex asked curiously.