Chapter 23 Raven #2
Adelina is insistent. “I am telling you, Mary. Creation, real creation, is possible. The magicians who made Arches, they materialized it out of thin air. But we can do more than that. I can do more.”
“You need to sleep,” Mary says. “Look at this place. Please. This obsession of yours is going to make you sick.”
“Chaos is the key. The creation of the universe from nothing. If we can harness the primordial essence, bend it to our will, just like any of the other elements they teach us about in class, we can do the impossible! I just want to borrow the wand, just for a little bit. You can get it for me from Old Bones, I know you can. Please, just do it for me.”
Mary rubs her forehead. “What are you rambling about?”
“Life, Mary! I can create life!”
The room fades to black, and the vision shifts again.
—
We’re in the Rosette. It hasn’t changed. Even after a hundred years, it’s as if it’s been kept in a time capsule. The same bookcases, the identical marble floor and stained-glass window.
Adelina sits at a table, awash in the red light of the colored glass, hunched over her journal. Several books lie open on the table in front of her, and I recognize one. It’s the tome we stole from the archive: Evocations and Invocations in Theory.
A boy carrying a stack of books arrives at her table, smiling shyly.
He’s slender, handsome in a soft way, with a kind smile.
His hair is brown, slicked back, and parted on the side.
He even wears suspenders over his white button-down shirt.
There’s a small ink stain on his sleeve, and more on his hands. He’s an archivist.
“Here you go, Adelina,” he says, setting the books on her table. “The spells you asked for.”
She jumps from her seat and rushes to him, kissing him passionately. He stumbles when she embraces him, but he doesn’t pull away. Are they dating? When she breaks the kiss, her eyes sparkle with energy. “I did it. I solved it, Henri,” she says, breathless, wild. “The spell, it will work.”
“Th-that’s great!” Henri says, still smiling. “I knew you’d figure it out.”
She kisses him again, clutching his shirt tightly, and he kisses her back.
He draws her into a hug, and Dorian’s fingers twitch around mine.
His expression is strained, his mouth pressed into a worried line.
When he locks eyes with me, a frightened look creeps into his features. What’s wrong with him?
Adelina pulls away, and when she looks at Henri, there’s a frantic energy in her eyes. It makes my stomach drop.
“We should celebrate,” she says. “Meet me in my workshop, below Arches. At midnight.”
The scene fades once more into murky darkness.
—
Then we’re in the tunnels beneath Arches. We’re in that same large room where we found the cage, but in this time, there’s no cage. The room looks as if it is new, the marble floors are polished, and hundreds of lit candles illuminate the space.
Adelina clutches a wand with mother-of-pearl inlay. Her black robes are disheveled, hanging off one shoulder. She circles the room, smiling with her head thrown back, as if she’s enjoying a spring shower.
There’s a body on the floor.
It’s Henri.
He’s laid out on a pentagram drawn in blood. A steady stream of red drips from his forehead. His eyes are closed, and he’s barely breathing. His chest rises and falls in fits and starts.
Dorian flinches.
This is his vision. This is what he saw on his first day at the museum.
He’s frantic, glancing around, knowing, perhaps, what comes next, and dreading it with every ounce of his being.
I want to say something to him, to remind him that this isn’t real, this is just a memory, but I can’t.
This has already happened, and I can’t do anything to stop it.
Adelina lets out a little sigh. She’s so happy and so relieved, like a weight has been lifted from her shoulders. She stares at Henri’s body on the ground with a smile so twisted, it looks like she’s holding the corners of her lips up with her fingers.
Then I notice something: Tears glisten on her cheeks.
“Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you.”
Hurried footsteps echo down the secret passage. Mary emerges, cheeks flushed and hair wild. She ran all the way here. And when Adelina sees her, she is delighted. “Mary! You came!”
Mary sees Henri.
“Adelina, what are you doing?” she cries, and runs to Henri’s side. “What happened to him?” She kneels down, and her hands begin to glow. She’s trying to heal the boy.
“I just needed a little blood, that’s all,” Adelina says.
Henri doesn’t wake. Mary looks up at Adelina, angry tears swimming in her eyes. “What did you do?”
“I did it. I created life. Like I said I could.”
“Stop this, Adelina.”
“It’s already done. The malum is free.”
A shadow flickers in the candlelit room.
Mary whips around, horrified. “A malum?” she asks.
Something moves in the dark. No. It is the dark that moves.
“Everything they taught us was a lie, they said it was impossible,” Adelina says.
“Please. Adelina. No. Don’t do this.” Mary stumbles back, hands up.
“My creation needs more magic, I think,” she says absently, ignoring Mary’s plea. “It needs to feed, like all of us do. It wants to live.”
Mary lets out a sob as the shadow approaches. It moves like liquid smoke, melting over the ground, taking shape, growing tall. Arms, legs, head, a warped humanoid.
“You have magic in your blood, too, Mary. Just like Henri. Just like me.” She holds out her hand, showing a cut in her palm, fresh blood spilled. “It just needs a little,” she says. “Just a little more.”
The malum towers over Mary, slowly descending as it hisses with pleasure. I don’t want to look, but I can’t turn away. She’s frozen with terror, eyes wide. No one can help.
Then the shadow envelops her, consuming her in darkness.
Her screams echo around the chamber. And all Adelina does is laugh.
—
This dream ends and another begins, but the sound of Mary’s screams still reverberates in my mind. Dorian is shaking, so is Atticus, and so am I. Henri and Mary, they’re dead. The shadow took their lives, feeding off the magic in their blood.
I want to run. I want to leave these memories, but I can’t.
We’re back in the large chamber where we found the cage, though everything is different.
There’s no pentagram, no candles, no bodies, and we’re inside the cage.
Adelina sits on the marble floor, wearing nothing but rags.
She’s got her knees tucked up to her chin, her arms wrapped around her legs.
She rocks back and forth, muttering to herself, as a man with a ruby earring stands at the entrance to the tunnel, watching her.
It’s the same ruby earring that Warden Stone wears.
Men in dark robes move about the room, summoning iron bars and sigils, and sealing away all the entrances.
They’re imprisoning her in the cage.
They’re building the prison beneath Arches.
Adelina doesn’t seem to notice. Her gaze is distant, like she’s living in some dream.
“Two students are dead because of you,” the warden says.
Adelina makes no indication that she’s listening.
“That malum is no longer a threat. It is imprisoned in these walls like all of the other spirits,” the warden continues. “Your possessions have been confiscated. Your life is forfeit.”
Still, Adelina mutters to herself.
“No sorcerer like you will ever set foot on these grounds again. No one will be allowed to do what you have done.”
With that, he turns, departing the chamber. The door slams closed with a hollow clang, and the lock slides into place.
Adelina stares at the door from behind a curtain of hair, matted and dirty. The warden disappears down the passage with the men in darkened robes, and Adelina is left to rot in the cell. Her head drops to her knees. Her shoulders bounce, and her laughter echoes.
The vision ends, and we’re thrown back into the present.
Atticus nearly falls to his knees. Catching himself on his hands, he pants, gasping for breath as if he had just sprinted a mile. My thoughts are spinning.
Dorian puts his hands on the top of his head and paces. “It was the wand! She used Hecate’s wand! I saw it that day!”
Atticus leaps to his feet and grabs Dorian by the shoulders, steadying him.
“I saw it, I saw it,” Dorian repeats, eyes glistening. Atticus doesn’t let him go.
I look down on the bones, at the skeleton. “After what Adelina did,” I say, thinking out loud, “they turned this place into her prison and closed it off from the rest of the school, hiding what happened. And she died here, trapped in the base of the tower with her creation, the malum.”
“But the tower was destroyed,” says Atticus. “If this building was a kind of prison, a place where spirits were held, what happened when the tower fell?”
It hits me. I know what he’s thinking.
I look over at Dorian, whose hands are still shaking. He gets it, too.
We all sense it, but I’m the only one who says it aloud. “The creature from the vision…It’s alive.”