CHAPTER THIRTY
I’ve felt my power increasing with each session I’ve spent with Damien, but this time it’s more than an abstract, distant sensation I have to search for. This time it’s like I can run my hand over my skin and physically feel the shadows prickling for attention, begging to be unleashed.
All that agony I have endured, the frustration and pain, and yes, pleasure… They’re helping me put aside the weak witchling who stepped off that plane what feels like a lifetime ago.
My relationship with Damien has also deepened. He’s exposed parts of himself to me I’m sure have never seen the light of day. Our connection, fraught as it may be, has shifted into something new and profound.
Still, there’s a killer at large within the castle walls, one that almost took out Ava. Now I have the power to stop them. Of that, I am sure. But as for who Mortis is? That’s still a mystery and precisely why Ava has called this impromptu meeting tonight.
We promised to stick together, so there’s a certain sense of guilt about crisscrossing the halls of the Academy alone, but I’m no longer nervous, because the power within me now? It’s fucking ridiculous.
He wants me tonight, and what then? What could possibly top our last session?
I haven’t even reached Ava’s room before I hear the arguing.
I push the door open and enter, closing it behind me. “Dare I ask?”
They’re both standing in the middle of the room facing each other with their arms crossed.
Lily nods towards Ava. “I just don’t like the idea of anyone creeping around in my head.”
Ava rolls her eyes. “I’d be in and out. I don’t want to sit there dwelling on your many fucked-up sexual fantasies,” she looks towards me, “or hers.”
I’m not sure if either of them have forgiven me for the whole Cassandra bathroom thing, but we seem to have reached a kind of numb equilibrium on the matter.
I raise my hands, stepping closer. “Hey, hey, what’s going on here?”
I spot a grimoire on Ava’s bed, open. It’s about the same size as Gran’s, though bound in crimson leather.
Lily points to it. “Ava found some trippy spell in her family fuckbook and wants to try it out on us.”
“A spell?” I ask.
Ava turns towards me, her expression the closest to glee I’ve seen it, which is to say somewhere between a sad circus clown and axe murderer. “It’s old, seriously old, but it will let me comb through your memories, see if we missed anything about Mortis. After all, you were there right after that second murder, right?”
“Right,” I say carefully, “but I don’t know. Sounds a bit hardcore, and you think you can pull off this spell?”
Ava shrugs. “Either it works or, I don’t know, your brain explodes out of your ears.”
“Great,” Lily laughs.
I look at Lily. “I mean, I get it, but like Lily I’m not so sure I want someone going through the many skeletons in my closet.”
Ava sits on the bed, arms uncrossing and hands pressing down on the mattress. “If you’re talking about your kinky love life with the Professor, I couldn’t give a flying fuck, honestly. I just want to find Mortis before they decide to show up again and finish the job—if you know what I mean.”
And there, right there, is genuine fear scrawled all over her face.
I throw my hands up. “Fuck it, why not? We’ve shared enough already, haven’t we?”
Lily puts her hands on her hips, looking down and shaking her head. “Fine, fine, but I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this.”
“I was right there too,” Ava goes on, “but every time I try to picture what I saw under that hood, it’s scrambled. Maybe this will help.”
I nod. “Okay. Tell us what to do.”
There’s more preparation than I expected, but it’s nothing I haven’t seen before—candles, sitting in a circle… Looking in, you’d think this was a séance, but the only ghosts about to be rattled here are the ones inside my head.
We sit in a circle holding hands, faces lit only by the collection of candles between us, the grimoire sitting open before Ava, who seems surprisingly nervous, which is not exactly what you want when someone is about to run through a spell like this.
Ava looks between us. “Everyone ready?”
“You said you’d be combing through our memories, right? It’s a pleasant thing, like a memory spa day?” Lily says.
“Mmm,” Ava starts, tilting her head and her lips twisting, “the spell kind of translates to ‘Scour through memories,’ so maybe not?”
Lily shakes her head again. “Fuck me. Seriously?”
I squeeze Lily’s hand. “Come on, we trust Ava, right?”
“Let’s just get it over with,” says Lily, breathing out and closing her eyes.
Ava speaks the incantation: “Memoriam Perscrutare.”
I don’t know what I expected, but I feel, well, nothing.
I open one eye, Lily doing exactly the same thing and the two of us looking at each other perplexed before we both look to Ava and find her decidedly unrelaxed. She’s shaking hard, eyes rolled into the back of her head so all that’s left is bone white. She lets go of our hands and falls onto her back, flopping on the floor, teeth chattering away and a low murmur of agony running between her lips. It’s like she’s having a seizure.
I look at Lily. “What do we do?”
Lily looks just as clueless as I am. She points to the grimoire. “What does it say in there?”
The moaning gets louder as I reach for the grimoire, almost dropping it into the candles before scanning over the spell as quick as I can but finding nothing useful about how to reverse or even stop it.
The moan becomes a broken scream, Lily moving over to where Ava is and pinning her down while she shakes and buckles. “Well?”
I keep reading. “I don’t know…”
“Fuck.”
And then Ava stops. She stops shaking, moving, making sound… She sits up, eyes returning to their regular non-fucked-up position, and gives a light cough before looking towards me and laughing. “You, my friend,” she whistles, “you and Darkwood? That’s some shit right there.”
I just can’t fathom how she’s perfectly okay when a moment ago I was about to dial up an exorcist. “You’re okay?”
She shrugs. “Never better.”
“Did you find anything?” Lily asks.
She pokes herself in the chest. “Me? No. I still couldn’t see under that hood. And you,” she points to Lily, “I’ve heard the term airhead, but wow.”
Lily gives her a push. “Oh, fuck off.”
“But no,” Ava goes on, her attention moving to me. “Ana here, however, she’s an interesting one.”
I swallowed, wondering what she saw.
Ava nods. “Someone put a lock on you.”
“A what?”
“It’s pretty archaic stuff,” Ava says, “and totally illegal, but it’s there alright. Someone has locked one of your memories—a sliver. The signature is there, and it’s not Darkwood. I won’t even get started on all the kinky control spells he’s tied you up with, because that’s your thing, but this is something else.”
I look down, thinking.
A lock? I’ve never heard of such a thing.
It seems Ava’s still in my head, because she replies, “It was originally a way to make people forget—a kindness. We’re talking way back in the Age of Renewal, but it was unpredictable. You didn’t know if you were going to get a locked memory or a lobotomy.”
“Now you tell us,” Lily says, incredulous. “How do you even know about this?”
“Call it a family secret.”
Ava blows out a punctuated breath. “I’d prefer something a little more vanilla, like incest or a pervy uncle.”
“Can you undo it?” I ask, more concerned with myself. “The lock?”
“I can try,” says Ava, “but this isn’t really my area.”
I reach for her hand. “Give it a go.”
She breathes in. “Okay, but you asked for it.”
“Wait…” Lily says, but Ava’s already whispered the spell.
There’s a twinge somewhere inside my head, like something snapping. Instinctively, I reach for my head.
The hell just happened?
“Well?” Lily demands.
An image comes to the front of my mind, clear as day—a flash of color in a hallway, the hallway I was moving past just before I discovered the second murder.
But no, not green, emerald.
A very specific shade of emerald, of fabric.
“Holy shit,” I say aloud.
“What?” Lily and Ava ask in unison.
“The Headmistress. I saw her, or her robe at least, in the hallway, before the second murder.”
“You’re sure?” Ava asks.
“I saw a flash of green, could have been the Incredible fucking Hulk, but no, I’m sure.”
Ava stands. “Shit.”
“The Headmistress,” Lily echoes. “I mean, she’s kind of a bitch. Makes sense.”
“It does make her look very suspicious,” Ava says, her voice returning to its normal. “Nevertheless, we can’t verify she’s Mortis, can we? We can’t ask her directly, ‘Hey, are you a cold-blooded murderer looking to take over the world?’”
“No, but we could break into her office,” I suggest, my eyes glinting with mischief.
“And have her cut us to pieces?” Lily laughs. “No, thanks. We don’t even know if it’s her. Maybe she was just creeping around the castle that night looking for her lost dildo.”
“Maybe not,” I suggest.
Ava’s eyeing me.
I wonder what she saw in my head, exactly how much she knows about my sessions with Darkwood, my powers, but it doesn’t matter. There are bigger things at play here. “We have to,” I tell them. “We need evidence. So, who’s with me?”
“And if we’re caught?” Lily asks.
“We won’t be,” I smile.
“Should we bring Leo in on this?” asks Lily.
“Why?” Ava questions.
Lily shrugs. “I don’t know. Muscle?”
Ava eyes me again. “I think we have all the muscle we need.”
“Whatever,” I say. “We going or not?”
Lily nods. “Alright. Let’s fucking do this, bitches.”
*
This confidence is lost when we navigate through what seem like especially dark hallways towards the far end of the castle.
Ava seems especially on edge, keeping to the walls, head swinging around like one of those fairground clowns you pop ping-pong balls into.
Lily’s falling back.
I wave her forward. “Come on, we should stay together,” I whisper.
We climb the stairs, the only sound our light footsteps on the marble. Another turn and we stand before the twin doors of the Headmistress’s office. I consider whether there are special wards here, some sort of magical protection.
“No,” Ava looks to me, oddly inside my head again, “which means she doesn’t have anything to hide or she’s lax.”
I doubt that.
“What now?” Lily whispers.
“I know a lockpicking spell,” I suggest.
“No,” says Ava, reaching to remove hairpins, “we’ll go old-school.”
Lily looks surprised. “You as well? Am I the only one who doesn’t know how to pick a lock here?”
“Shh, already,” whispers Ava, crouching down with me. “Give me some light.”
Lily takes out her cell, switching the flashlight on and holding it near the lock.
Ava bends the metal of the hairpins and twists them apart, pushing them into the lock and twisting. The lock is old, easily giving way with a satisfying ‘click.’
The door swings open.
I take a breath. “Shall we?”
Lily goes first with the light, holding it aloft and illuminating the interior of the office.
It’s a lot more sinister by night.
I close the door softly behind us. “Let’s make it quick. Spread out.”
Lily goes left, Ava goes right, and I go for the desk.
There are stacks of papers, parchment, but they don’t seem to offer much insight beyond attendance records and potential students—poor bastards.
A rush of excitement overcomes me when my fingers touch leather in the first desk drawer. A grimoire! A journal! But no, it’s just full of senseless scrawlings about budgets and staff meetings.
“Over here,” whispers Ava.
The three of us move over to where Ava’s managed to swing out a painting. There’s a small room beyond.
“You’ve got a real knack for finding hidden places, huh?” I whisper.
“I could feel air coming out around the frame,” Ava whispers back.
“Look at Sherlock Fucking Holmes here,” snorts Lily, which earns her a solid shushing from the both of us.
Squished shoulder to shoulder in the small space, Lily’s light swinging up, it becomes clear why the Headmistress keeps this particular room out of sight.
There are shelves, floor to ceiling, full of jars, and inside those jars? Parts.
Body parts.
“The…fuck,” says Lily, peering into a jar that appears to hold two sets of eyeballs. “So these are all the murder victims?”
“No,” says Ava.
We both turn to her.
“What do you mean ‘no’?” laughs Lily. “A closet full of body parts seems pretty damning.”
Ava reaches up to touch a jar. “They’re not human.”
“How the fuck would you know, Dr. Dolittle?” asks Lily.
“I grew up on a farm, remember?”
“Commune,” corrects Lily, “but okay, you’re sure?”
Ava nods. “This kind of collection is actually pretty common in ritual alchemy. Not exactly kosher in a legal sense, but I mean it’s not uncommon. Mother has a collection like this.”
“Explains a lot,” laughs Lily.
I hold up my hand. “I think I heard something.”
We all stiffen, dead silent.
Heavy footsteps are sounding from somewhere outside—heels.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” I suggest.
We move quickly, Ava swinging the painting back into position behind us.
On our way towards the door I pass the Headmistress’s emerald robe. I don’t know why, but I reach out to touch it. The moment I do, something passes through me—a darkness so deep and fathomless it’s like being buried alive.
The shadows inside me go wild.
It’s her, I realize. It has to be.
Ava grabs my wrist, tugging me towards the door and severing the connection. “Come on.”
We make it out the door, a dim glow coming up the stairs to match the increasing volume of the footsteps.
“This way,” whispers Ava, leading us down the hall in the opposite direction, but it’s only when we’re back down on the student accommodation level I breathe.
We make it inside Ava’s room. I realize I’ve never been in here before. It’s as stark as my own save for the singular 2001: A Space Odyssey poster above her bed.
“Someone closed the door, right?” I ask, still thinking about that sensation I felt touching Isadora’s robe.
“No, I thought we’d leave it open, air the place out a bit,” Lily says, seeing the expression on my face. “Of course I fucking closed the door, but we got nothing, did we? Bar a secret room and a bunch of creepy animal parts.”
“It’s not exactly conclusive, and not enough to go to Darkwood with,” says Ava, sitting on her bed.
The Professor.
Shit. It’s almost midnight and I should be at his chambers as instructed.
“What is it?” Lily asks.
I point to the door. “I’ve got to go.”
“Where?”
I back up to the door, reaching for the knob. “I just…sorry. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
I close the door to Lily’s protest, quickly making my way back down the hall towards my own room.
I’ll need my coat, after all.