The Academy of Mortal Mysteries – by Pamela DuMond #5
“Allow me to introduce myself,” he said, extending his hand.
I did not take it.
“Remy DuBois. I’m a visitor to your fair city, Madeline Blackford.”
He knew my name.
“Work or pleasure?” I asked.
“Whatever life throws my way,” he said.
How did he know my name?
When the migraine’s aura stage hit like a semi-truck, I realized this was going to be a bad one. Nausea piled high in my throat, and I dropped my head in my hands. “I'm sorry. I don’t know what you're talking about.”
“I’m talking about alliances, Madeline. The future of the tribes: Messengers, Hunters, Seekers, let alone the ones you don’t even know about.”
The pain was dull, like a rusty old ax carving into my skull. I wish I hadn’t been stupid enough to believe that this time it was low blood sugar or stress. My headaches were a warning that my senses were doing what they needed to do: pick up on signs that danger approached.
This danger was the handsome blond with the dagger who had saluted me earlier. What an idiot I was for ignoring the signs: blondie was a Hunter.
I pulled out my phone, my hands shaking, to send Samuel an SOS, but Remy reached across the table and plucked it from me.
“No need to text the boyfriend right now. Your Samuel is a gentle soul. I ran across his incarnation when Rome burned in 64 AD. He was a young, idealistic soldier who believed he could help save the city.”
“He was?” I asked, blinking. I’d never met Samuel in that lifetime.
He nodded. “Oui. Sadly, he was wrong.”
“Fascinating. Give me back my phone,” I said, reaching a hand toward him, snapping my fingers.
He ignored me. “In time. Also, I believe you meant to say ‘asshole’ instead of fascinating. You discovered you were half Messenger, half Hunter. Now you believe you are a Seeker. A hybrid, elevated to teaching the tribes how to take advantage of their strengths, to learn their abilities, and calm a fractured world instead of disrupting it.”
“How do you know this?”
“Ma belle,” Remy said with the hint of a smile.
“I’ve been following you for centuries. I lurked in the background at King Philip’s encampment in 1675, when you convinced him to release his prisoner.
I spotted you at the coronation of the very dead Queen Inez in 1355, and kissed her rotting, skeletal hand.
If memory serves me right, I think you did too. ”
“What do you want from me?” I choked back the bile that threatened to explode from my mouth as I descended into a full-blown migraine.
“I want to give you a unique opportunity to use your powers as a Seeker. There are rumors that the Academy of Mortal Mysteries is re-opening. If you attended, you would be not only a student at the highest echelon, but also a mentor to those still discovering their abilities.”
“I don’t know this Academy,” I said, gritting my teeth.
“Because almost no one knows it, belle. It hides in the mountains, obscured by a fold of time, only visible when the stars align.”
“How come I’ve never heard of it?”
“The Ancients decided the program needed to be discontinued hundreds of years ago, after a tragedy occurred. So many people were butchered. Despite all the efforts to stay in the background, despite all the safety nets meant to keep those like us relatively safe, not even the savviest travelers or the most powerful among us saw that grand deception coming.”
“Program?” I raked my nails across my scalp, trying to find relief, trying to ground.
“I’m a little shocked that your mentors haven’t clued you in on this information yet. Are they being too precious with you? Preventing you from knowing the truth? Or just dropping the ball? Best to be careful with them,” he said.
“My mentors are not the problem,” I said, my head throbbing. “Right now, you’re the problem.”
“I’ve been told that one before. Do me a favor and keep my secret safe. In our line of work, one never really knows who would hold that against me.”
“Tell me about the Academy,” I said.
“The Ancients built a university, an Academy, to train the best, brightest, and most gifted from all tribes.”
“You mean Hunters, Messengers, Healers, and Seekers,” I said, taking a long, slow breath in and an even slower one out. I needed to move. Fast.
“As well as the others,” he said.
“There are others?”
He nodded. “Fringe tribes.”
“Aha.” I shot my hand across the table and grabbed my phone before he could stop me.
I scraped my chair back from the table and stood.
A wave of dizziness hit, and I swayed. “Thanks for the opportunity. I’m not interested.
” Right now, all I wanted was to lie down in a dark corner, shade my eyes from the sun, and pray I didn’t throw up.
“Best of luck.” I picked up my purse, slung it over my shoulder, and lurched a few steps away from him.
He latched onto my arm. “Please, mademoiselle. Just visit the Academy before you decide. After all, it’s part of your legacy.”
“Not interested.” I shook him off me, tempted to puke on his shoe. “Thank you.”
“Grant me this small favor. Then decide.”
“I can’t,” I said. “A time travel is coming on. I don’t feel well. Please, leave me alone. Contact me in a couple of weeks about your Academy and I’ll reconsider your request.”
“This time travel you’re feeling coming on?” He latched onto my arm again. “It’s the one you’re supposed to take with me . The one where you visit the Academy.”
“No,” I said, but my neck prickled with heat and my breath came faster, in short little gasps.
“Stop fighting, Madeline. It’s already happening.” He clutched my arm tighter.
“But I don’t want to travel,” I said, scrunching my brows, a low hum in my ears, my head spinning. “I am not going to travel.” And my consciousness slipped away.
NOT CHICAGO – NOT PRESENT DAY
I woke moments, minutes, hours later—God knows how long—reclining on a cold slab of stone.
I ran a hand through my hair. I was dizzy, but miraculously, my headache was gone.
Remy sat on my right, cross-legged on the frozen ground, munching on a vibrant red apple.
The fruit and his flushed cheeks were the only elements of color in this desolate, gray location.
“How long was I out for?” I glanced around, saw tombstones, and realized I’d come to in a cemetery, collapsed on someone’s grave. I swiveled, peered at the headstone, and said a silent apology to the bones of Lili Blanchet, the woman whose weather-worn name was still visible on the marker.
“Not that long.” Remy sat beneath the figurine of an angel with an impressive wingspan but missing one eye.
“Ah, the lovely Lili. I was hoping you would walk into the body of one of her descendants. Looking at you now, I see the family resemblance: big eyes, high cheekbones, creamy skin, and those very full, bitable lips.”
I shrank back, feeling uncomfortable. I thought he was hitting on me.
“I suspect you’ve slipped into the body of one of Lili’s descendants. Very delicious. You’ll have to be careful around me, Madeline. I try to contain my urges, but I get attached to the incarnations I’ve met in past lives. My mentor made me promise not to tarnish you if this ever happened?—”
“What happened?”
“If I ran into you in a past life and you had walked into the body of one of my former paramours.”
“That’s gross,” I said.
He shrugged. “It’s reality. I shouldn’t engage with you, but I might not be able to resist.” He offered the apple. “Want a bite?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Just one, ma belle. Undoubtedly, you’re dehydrated after that trip.”
I took the apple and bit. Sweet. Tangy. I took another bite, then handed it back to him.
He took it, stood, and held out a hand. “Ready to see the Academy?”
I shivered but allowed him to haul me to my feet and glanced around.
We stood high on a mountain plateau leading to stunning drop-offs to deep valleys below.
The world was a sea of gray—the tombstones, the land, the skies above—its winds swirling around us, ruffling our hair.
A few hawks rode the currents overhead, circling with patient vigilance as they scanned for prey.
In the near distance, a giant mausoleum loomed.
It, too, was gray, half its windows shattered, spikes of glass teetering precariously in rotting frames.
“Let's go,” he said, striding toward massive, foreboding black doors, and I followed him. The closer we got, those doors looked like they hadn’t been opened in centuries, their iron hinges rusted and thickened with time.
“Are we even going to be able to get in?” I asked.
He shrugged. "We'll never know unless we try."
I surveyed our surroundings one more time. This place was desolation itself, cut off from the world below. The wind picked up, driving thin sheets of snow across the plateau, particles striking my face like pellets from a BB gun, each one stinging cold.
Remy lifted the latch on the door and pulled on the handle. It creaked open with an octogenarian’s yawn. “Shall we?” he asked.
“How many years back in time did I travel to be here?” I asked.
“If I tell you that, it will spoil the mystery,” he said. “Brr, it’s cold. Let’s go inside.”
THE ACADEMY OF MORTAL MYSTERIES: DECIDEDLY NOT PRESENT DAY – DECIDEDLY NOT CHICAGO
At first glance, the cavernous room appeared like an ancient, abandoned library—though not any library I’d ever seen.
Towering bookcases lined half the walls, stretching toward the vaulted ceiling.
Alongside them were rows of stone compartments—crypts holding the remains of the long departed—their marble facings etched with names and dates.
Late afternoon winter light filtered through tall arched windows, their fractured panes providing no barrier against the outdoor chill.
The gray stone interior absorbed the little sunlight that ventured in, casting the room and its contents in a ghostly blue-gray pallor that reminded me of the fluorescent-lit hallways of my high school, Preston Academy.