The Secret of Spellshadow Manor (Spellshadow Manor #1)

“Now what?”


He looked down. “You need to fix the idea of heat in your mind. Of burning. Of everything that is fire. Then, you need to fill your magic with that.”

Natalie tilted her head, staring at the ball. Nothing happened.

“It won’t work,” she said.

“Let’s try something else,” he replied, picking up another book. Reading about Spellshadow’s history would have to wait.

They went through the next half hour with Alex gathering tip after tip from the books arrayed before them. Natalie, in turn, practiced her control while she waited for further instruction. Before long, she had three little balls going at once, her brow wrinkled in concentration.

Alex paused in his research, looking up at the three spheres.

“Nice!” he said. “You’re multitasking really well.”

She smiled faintly, her eyes fixed on her magic. “It is strange,” she said. “In class, it felt so easy, but just making three of these is difficult now.”

Alex nodded, tapping one of his books. “That’s called having range, but not focus.”

Natalie nodded, a little disappointed.

“Then we will practice focus next. Anything else?”

Alex referenced yet another book. Making fire was supposedly the simplest technique that destruction magic had to offer, but something was holding Natalie back.

“But I don’t understand,” she muttered. “I had four balls in my room earlier, and it wasn’t nearly this hard.” She looked at him. “Perhaps it is because I feel monitored.”

“Just pretend I’m not here,” he said absently, scanning the book in front of him. “Now, new tip. This one says you should be trying to make the fire come from within the magic. Picture your power like an egg, then hatch it with your mind.”

Natalie raised her eyebrows, then looked at the rightmost ball of her trio. She frowned, then made a sharp little motion with her finger.

The ball cracked up the center, and Alex stared in awe as little flashes of red and orange crackled along the line. Then, in a puff of crimson, the ball ignited, burst, and vanished. He sat back in his chair, his face feeling hot from the detonation. Natalie only stared at the place where smoke was now rising from thin air. Her other two spheres winked out of existence.

“That…” she said, “was so cool!”

Alex smiled. “Let’s see if you can make it stay next time.”

Natalie pursed her lips, held out her hand, and tried again. The flickering orange light bounced off the great window of the library, reflecting up the columns and into the rafters high above. The distant city lights sparkled, unchanged.





Chapter 18





The regular tedium of class was interrupted the next afternoon when Professor Derhin strode into the classroom with a slightly vexed expression on his face. He looked around at his silent, attentive class and actually gave a small huff of annoyance.

“I’ve been informed,” he said, “that today will be spent reviewing student policy. Apparently, we need to touch base on school rules for the newcomers. So. Let’s get that out of the way, and then we can do some actual learning, eh?”

In spite of his protests, Derhin’s attempts to ‘get that out of the way’ seemed anything but hasty. He started with the smallest, most minute rules and worked his way forward, with a sort of enraptured glee, in what Alex quickly realized was alphabetical order. Aamir’s head sunk lower and lower until his brow was pressed against his desk.

“And that covers proper use of lighting during curfew hours,” Derhin said, rolling his knuckles along his desk. “Moving right along, you may have noticed that there are certain colored lines throughout the school. Blue and gold. Given that we haven’t had any trouble from the new students, I would imagine you were properly warned, but do not, under any circumstances, cross either. The blue marks where student territory ends and teacher territory begins. The gold lines, on the other hand, are only to be crossed by the administrative staff, which is to say the two heads of the academy or Siren Mave.”

Two heads? Alex’s eyebrows rose, but he refrained from raising his hand. Asking Derhin a question would likely get him a thirty-minute answer that would cause the lecture to bleed over into their other classes. Instead, Alex leaned forward and tapped Jari on the shoulder. The boy turned, looking bored, and it occurred to Alex that this wouldn’t be the first time that he had heard this lecture.

“What’s up?” Jari whispered.

Alex gestured at where Derhin’s nasal drone was flooding the front of the room. “Two heads of the academy?” he said. “I thought there was only the one.”

“Yeah,” said Jari. “You might know him as the invisible force that compelled you to come here.”

“Finder?”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

In all the time he had been at Spellshadow, Alex hadn’t seen so much as a hint of the man, though he was sometimes mentioned. Whereas the Head’s influence was visible at every turn, Finder seemed a reclusive sort. It was strange to Alex to hear them mentioned on equal footing.

He weighed his options, finally deciding that any information he could gather might be worth the risk. “He wasn’t invisible to me.”

Jari froze, his mouth half open. For the first time since Alex had met him, the boy seemed truly at a loss for words. “You…Excuse me?”

“I could see him,” Alex repeated, wondering whether he had just made a grave mistake.

Aamir glanced over at them. “What’s going on?”

“Alex saw Finder.”

The two exchanged a look.

“Let’s talk after class,” said Aamir.



When they met in the dining hall after class, Aamir’s interrogation was thorough.

Jari, while also interested, seemed perfectly content to let Aamir do the grilling, leaning back in his chair with a fascinated expression. Natalie had also opted to join them.