The Chain (The Secret of Spellshadow Manor #3)

Helena paused, her mouth moving silently as she counted the doors, pointing toward one midway down the hall. She stopped beside it, gesturing for the others to do the same. Alex felt nerves clawing at his insides as he watched the girl reach out for the handle and pull it open with startling force. She stepped over the threshold, and the others moved to go in after her, following suit, but the blood-curdling scream that erupted from the girl’s lungs stopped them dead in their tracks.

Beyond the door, Alypia was waiting with a menacing grin and a team of armed guards.

Helena turned, her golden eyes wide in desperation. “Run!” she cried.

In a mess of confusion, Alex tried to urge his friends toward an exit, only to find that they had all been blocked. Guards had appeared along the length of the corridor, standing ominously in front of the entrances to every hallway. There was no way out.

They had been betrayed.

Alex’s eyes snapped toward Helena, but she looked just as horrified as he was. She ran toward a row of guards, trying to force her way past them. Golden, fierce energy crackled from her palms, but they were ready for her, as several guards at a time sent up shields of superior strength to block her magic. Helena roared, sending spears that thrummed with life directly at their heads, only for the missiles to shatter into a thousand glittering pieces, falling harmlessly to the floor.

The guards moved inward with their gleaming shields, forcing Alex and his friends into the center, where they could not break free. Although they all tried to use their magic, there wasn’t enough room to forge anything potent, the bolts and streams of gold and silvery black getting lost in a mist of confused energies, until nobody could tell what belonged to whom. In the fracas, Alex couldn’t think straight, struggling to get his mind to focus clearly enough to conjure something useful. The surprise had robbed him of his skill, and the guards edged ever closer.

Once they had been pushed back in front of the door, the guards shoved them roughly into the chamber beyond it, pinning their arms behind their backs.

“I didn’t do this!” Helena cried to the others, her eyes glimmering with furious tears as she looked upon her mother with such palpable hatred that the guards standing beside Alypia had to lower their gazes, uncomfortable beneath the ferocity of it. “Please believe me—I didn’t do this!”

Alypia smiled, her voice cold and calculating. “Of course this wasn’t my daughter, though I can see why you might have mistrusted her. You don’t seem to like me very much, so it only seems natural you’d find her deplorable by association.” Her mouth curved into a vicious grin. “No, no. You have been betrayed by someone much closer to home.”

Alex struggled against the guard holding him, and the sight made Alypia chuckle icily, her eyes glittering with malice.

“Oh, you’re going to find this one very hard to stomach, Alex Webber,” she purred. “She only did it for you, Alex—she only came to me, whispering secrets, to save your life. Isn’t that right, Ellabell?”

Alex turned to Ellabell, a look of bewilderment on his face, but Ellabell’s expression showed nothing but rage as she tried to struggle free of her guard, wanting to lash out at Alypia. There was no shame, no guilt, just pure fury from the fiery, bespectacled girl as their eyes met.

“Liar! If you’re going to tell tales, at least make them believable!” Ellabell smirked, her eyes burning brightly. “Alypia threatened to kill you if I didn’t feed her little tidbits about your powers and secrets,” she explained, turning from Alex back to Alypia, “but I knew it was a load of garbage! I would never betray him like that. You needed him too much! I knew you’d never lay a finger on him. It was all smoke and mirrors, and I’m not stupid enough to fall for a stupid trick like that. At least do your research if you’re going to try and blackmail a person.”

Jari looked at her with understanding, and Alex realized they must have been offered the same thing. Though Ellabell had taken the offer, it was clear she hadn’t complied with what Alypia wanted.

“Yeah—you want to turn Alex against her. That’s all this is!” yelled Jari. “None of us would betray him or anyone like this. You can try and pin it on any one of us, and we’ll tell you the same thing—piss off!” He grinned triumphantly.

Ellabell leveled her gaze at Alex, but he didn’t need any further assurance. He could see the truth in her strength as she defied Alypia’s words, her face showing she would not be broken as she turned back toward Alypia, her mouth set in a grim line.

Alex looked slowly over his shoulder, seeing something strange out of the corner of his eye. Skulking behind the intimidating group of guards, a trail of frayed gray robes flashed between the gaps in the guards’ bodies. Alex caught the glint of smug satisfaction in the black, dead eyes of the ghostly Renmark as his foul face appeared over the shoulders of the oblivious Stillwater soldiers. It was not Ellabell, or Helena, or Natalie, or Aamir, or Jari.

Renmark was the mole.

Alex realized he must have missed the phantom’s presence, with Renmark managing to hide away, unseen, overhearing all of their conversations and watching their movements, witnessing everything and scurrying back to impart his knowledge to Alypia. At least that answered Alex’s question about whether or not Alypia could see Finder-like creatures. It turned out she could not only see them, but she could use them for her own dastardly purposes.

And this Finder seemed uniquely designed to find Alex.

As understanding dawned on him, he found himself thinking back to the moments, so often recently, when he had felt his skin crawling with the heat of unseen eyes on him, prickling the hairs on his arms and shivering up the back of his neck. He thought back to the ransacked cottage, when he had simply shrugged the feeling off as a guard having seen him and passed on information. Having forgotten about it, he had not remembered the peculiar sensation it had made him feel, of how it didn’t add up. He realized now that it must have been Renmark, in his phantom state, having arrived at Stillwater already—before Alex first saw him with the group from Spellshadow. Perhaps he had tipped off the guards to search the place. It could have been Renmark’s first offering of inside information, gifted to Alypia, to make himself valuable to her.

Alex knew then that he had not been cautious enough. He had allowed himself to feel invincible, and that was the most dangerous, vulnerable place to be. Perhaps, Alex thought, in addition to being able to see him, Renmark had added skills to those of the previous Finder, Malachi Grey—something that made Renmark less visible to Alex. Or perhaps Alex just hadn’t been looking hard enough.

All Alex knew was that he wanted to apologize to Helena with everything he had, for not trusting her. She had not been involved, that much was evident now. This affected her as much as any of them, if not more so; her chance to escape had been stolen too, by the ghostly espionage of Renmark.

Alypia had turned her attention to her daughter, the disappointment evident in her noble eyes as she glowered in the girl’s direction.

“Take them away!” commanded Alypia.

“No! This was my fault—they had nothing to do with this!” pleaded Helena, her eyes gleaming with fear.