The Chain (The Secret of Spellshadow Manor #3)

“Yeah. I was sent back shortly after the new rules were put in place, so there were, maybe, two weeks when he didn’t have anyone watching over the manor. Except Siren Mave, who checked in from time to time, I believe. She’s always flitting about, though, by all accounts. He could never get hold of her when he needed her. So I suppose he relied on your fear—the students’ fear—and it failed him.” He shrugged.

Not for the first time, Alex pondered the curious entity that was Siren Mave. This strange being that seemed to be everywhere, able to move easily from place to place, not really belonging to the faculty but not belonging to any one school either. She seemed to be a law unto herself, and it made Alex endlessly curious to know more—though, if what Aamir was saying was true, he wasn’t sure how he’d be able to pin her down to ask. Like Elias, she never appeared when you wanted to see her; she simply showed up when she felt like it.

“What about once we discovered you? Did that get you in trouble?” mused Alex, feeling slightly sorry for the extra drama they had put Aamir through.

He nodded. “As soon as you realized somebody was in the manor, watching over things, I had to travel back to the Head and explain what had happened. I didn’t want to. I’d have been quite happy for you to discover me, but the combination of the golden band on my wrist and the mask on my face drove me to do it. Besides, thanks to the mask, he already knew I’d been detected.”

“What do you mean?” Alex frowned, puzzled. He had thought the mask was there simply to cover Aamir’s true identity, but it appeared there was more to it than he had first thought.

“The band and the mask were both used to control me, meaning I pretty much always had to tell the Head what I had seen or done. But through the mask’s eyes, he could see everything I did—like a camera, almost. When it broke on the ground, it severed the connection, I suppose; he couldn’t see anything anymore,” Aamir elaborated.

That made sense to Alex; it would explain why the Head hadn’t known there was an uprising going on until it was much too late. “Wait a minute. How did you travel to the Head, to tell him you’d been discovered? I mean, you showed up the next day—how did you get from the manor, to the Head, and back again so fast?”

“Magical travel. Once you’re outside the manor walls, the magic barriers preventing it don’t work anymore,” he said, gesturing to the air above them. It made Alex thoughtful, wondering, as he had on the lakeshore, if the crackling magic in the air here had the same effect as those barriers.

“So, you flew off to see him?”

Aamir nodded. “Yes, I zipped off and explained what had happened—he gave me that poor kid he’d found, told me to put a spell on him to make him compliant and take him back to the manor under the ruse that I was some new professor, here to take over Deputy Head duties, while the Head continued his search. He told me he’d be back in a week or so, once he’d tried to acquire some more magical recruits. I think your uprising put a wrench in the works there, though, seeing as he came back empty-handed.” He grinned, his eyes glittering with merriment.

Alex almost didn’t want to ruin it with his most pressing question—the one that still bugged him. “And the offer you made me?” he said, as lightly as he could.

A strained silence stretched between the two young men.

Eventually, Aamir sighed, breaking it. “I’ve had the chance to think long and hard about this… and I believe it was something the Head asked me to do, though I have no idea why. I can’t come up with a reasonable explanation behind it, and I know for certain the Head would never have told me his reasoning for it. I only know that it was him who made me do it. I wouldn’t have been able to, with the band on my wrist. I know that now, and I’m sorry for any pain it caused you. I can only imagine—being offered that freedom, only to have it snatched away.” He gulped, trying to clear his throat.

It was exactly as Alex had imagined, and to finally hear it said brought him a strange sense of peace. At least this way, there had never been a hope of seeing his mother. It had been a cruel jest, or something more sinister, perhaps, but it had never been real.

“What about the notes? Was that you?” Alex ventured, recalling the clockwork mouse, still in his pocket, and the warning messages the little creature had delivered in the dead of night. He still had not found the culprit, and had long thought it to be Elias, but with Elias’s admission to having little control over his faculties, Alex had begun to think otherwise. There was only one other culprit, as far as he was concerned.

“I thought you might have forgotten about those,” said Aamir quietly.

“So, they were you?” Alex breathed.

“Those, I know for certain I was responsible for,” he said sadly. “They were my way around the mask and the band.”

“But why?” Alex’s brow creased in disbelief. “Some of the things they said—why would you say that?”

Aamir ran an anxious hand through his hair. “Too many people were finding things out about you—you needed to be more careful, but you didn’t seem worried. A secret is only a secret if one person knows it. After it spreads beyond one person, it becomes a liability, and that’s what you were becoming.” He coughed nervously, catching sight of Alex’s disapproving glare. “Despite what you might think of me and what I did, I was only trying to protect you. I didn’t want the Head finding out what you were, fully. I knew he’d try and use you for his own purposes, if he discovered the truth, and you were making it so difficult to keep your secret hidden.” He looked down into his lap, his shoulders slumped in remorse.

This wasn’t the first time Alex had heard such a phrase spoken, and he hoped his friend might be able to shed some more light on it, in a way nobody else seemed willing or able to.

“It has been said before, that others might try and use me—what do they mean?” he pressed. “Do you know what it means?”

Aamir lifted his gaze. “I’m not sure. All I know is there is a myth surrounding Spellbreakers and the Great Evil, but it was never elaborated upon. It was just that—a myth, the details forgotten.” He shrugged apologetically.

While this frustrated Alex, he could see the honesty on Aamir’s face. The older boy was telling him all he knew, at long last. But there was one question left, conjured by the last words from Elias as he had disappeared into the shadows.

“Aamir—have you been here before? To Stillwater House?”

A flash of panic glittered in Aamir’s eyes. “I don’t think so,” he replied, a touch too quickly.

In that moment, Alex knew his friend was lying. After almost believing every word, he was back to square one again on the trust board, but he could not understand why Aamir was being so cagey about having visited Stillwater before. What wasn’t Aamir telling him?

“I should be going,” said Alex, standing swiftly. “I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah, see you later.”

“And, Aamir?”

Aamir nodded.

“Thank you for being so honest,” Alex spoke, keeping his voice as even as possible.