The Secret of Spellshadow Manor (Spellshadow Manor #1)

Aamir drew in a deep breath, then turned to Alex, a wavering smile plastered to his face.

“I just meant that I wouldn’t beat him too fast,” he said with forced nonchalance.

He looked over at Natalie. “I think we know who is cursing you now, at least.”

Her eyes widened, and he thought he saw her pale ever so slightly. “You don’t mean…But why?”

Aamir was staring at the ladder. “Because he does not want the students to be too powerful,” he said wonderingly. “He does not want them to thrive. If they do, they might grow strong. And if they grow stronger than him…”

“They could cast him out,” Alex finished, nodding. “So he gets rid of his enemies before they have a chance to know their foe.”

The group sat in silence, absorbing the information. The whole room felt cramped. It was as though there were something else in the cellar with them, slithering around them, slowly wrapping its coils tighter until it crushed the life right out of them.





Chapter 36





It seemed impossible to even imagine how complacent they had been. Alex thought about the days spent sitting by the fire, reading the Historica Magica or researching some other, more insignificant topic. He thought of Natalie reading her leather-bound tome of necromancy, the curse paling her face by the light of their candles. He thought of his training with Aamir, never too fast, never too rough.

Everything had changed now. Jari had seized Aamir by the shoulders at the news of the duel and dragged him away. When Aamir had asked where they were going, Jari had responded: “Training your stupid self.”

The two hadn’t been in class since. It had been two days, and Alex had only seen them when they came back to the room, exhausted and covered in mud. Their living space had begun to smell like a sty, but none of them really noticed. Alex woke once during the night to see Jari lying with his eyes open, staring at the ceiling. When he noticed Alex’s stare, he rolled away, his shoulders forming a small but solid wall.

If Jari blamed Alex for what had happened, Alex couldn’t fault him. Every time he thought of Aamir, his gut twisted. If he had been more careful, maybe they would have noticed Derhin before he saw them brawling and talked their way out of things. If he hadn’t agreed to train with Aamir, maybe it could have turned out differently. If he had just taken Jari’s side and told his friend to lay low and go to class, he wondered if he would still need to feel like this.

Unable to focus, Alex took to sitting with Natalie in the library as she pored over her book. He had taken her notes and perused them, occasionally asking a clarifying question or requesting help with her flowy handwriting. His thoughts were mostly on Aamir, though, and he wished more than anything that he could be of some help to him.

“Do you know what a ‘source’ is?” he asked, pushing a page toward Natalie.

She glanced up, pinning the page Alex was looking at under one finger and pulling it toward her. She frowned, shooting him a disbelieving glance.

“It is explained on the page you just read,” she said, pointing.

Alex looked, then sighed. It was indeed. He was finding it so hard to focus.

Source: a central item used as a focus for a spiritual summoning. Usually, but not always, the corpse of the deceased.

“Can’t believe I missed that,” he muttered.

“Neither can I,” Natalie replied, her eyebrows drawn in concern.

He sensed she was about to ask how he was feeling, so before she could, he said, “So it sounds like we might need Finder’s body. Where do you think it is?”

“I don’t know,” she murmured, looking a little panicked. “We should have had more time to look!” she burst out, and rubbed the bridge of her nose with both hands, calming herself.

“Well, his body wasn’t at the altar,” Alex said. “The Head might have it in his wing.”

Natalie nodded, then stopped.

“No, I do not think so. Necromantic sources give off distorting waves of magic.” She raised her arms, wiggling her fingers in the air, presumably to illustrate distorting waves. “Little things, like that mouse I made, would not be too bad. But something big, like Finder’s source, would really mess up anything around it. I do not think the Head would keep it anywhere it could interfere with someone’s magic. If he had it in his office, someone would notice.”

Alex stroked his chin. “That leaves us with…”

“Everywhere else, yes,” said Natalie with a hopeless sigh.

“But the only place that’s far enough away from everyone and has a protective golden line,” said Alex, realization hitting him, “is the crypt.”

“But we didn’t see a body there. Unless…”

Alex remembered the three-eyed skull. “Unless it’s actually beneath the statue…It must be the skull.”

They stared at each other.

“But of course it is the skull,” Natalie breathed. “What else could it be?”

As Alex considered her question, his optimism ebbed. It could be any number of things, actually. It could be buried anywhere else, even somewhere far from the manor, protected by something they weren’t familiar with…He rubbed his face. With Aamir’s predicament playing incessantly at the back of his mind, he was finding it so difficult to think in a straight line. His brain felt foggy, crowded.

He rose to his feet. “I need some fresh air,” he told Natalie. “Just give me a few minutes.”

“Okay,” she murmured. She gave him a worried frown, then sunk her head back down to her book.

Alex gathered his things and left the library. He drew several stares as he walked through the manor, but nobody thought to stop him. It was common knowledge by now that his friend had been called to a duel by Professor Derhin, and whispers gathered in his wake.

“…They were caught fighting…”

“…Probably encouraged him…”

“…Idiot rookie…”