Chapter 25
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
EMBER
The Familiar will compensate for what the Allwitch lacks.
— Charley Starvos, Echelon to the
School of Creation Magic
We landed directly on the portstop, and Leland quickly hauled us off.
This strategy — I assumed — was to prevent anyone passing by from seeing us suddenly appear out of thin air, or by Teleportation, a quantum magic spell that Leland shouldn’t have.
He walked me to the hatch at the end of the pedestal, opening it for me before leaving to report to Jaxan.
I went straight to my room and sent Skye a message.
Belinda’s gone, she said. Another Shadowrealm attack.
Skye returned an hour later, and an hour after that, Rayne knocked on our door, bouncing Pepper on her hip to soothe her crying.
“Who wants to bunk?” Rayne asked.
Skye pointed at me without hesitation.
Rayne transformed my queen-size bed into a tall bunk bed, ignoring all my protests that she didn’t have to stay. I could guess why she was here. Leland didn’t want me falling asleep without a Shield.
“I want to,” she said. “I don’t want to be alone tonight, and I owe Leland a favor.” Her mouth twitched. “He told me that would be the easiest way to persuade you.”
“She’s persuaded!” Skye yelled.
My head ached and I hardly slept. Pepper cried all night.
Belinda was gone. The Shadowrealm took Belinda from the patio where I’d been sitting, where she only went because she’d come to check on me.
Me, whose last thoughts about her were — too high energy, we don’t connect.
Belinda was gone, and it was my fault, my responsibility.
I decided then that I was going to get her back — just as soon as I figured out how to do it without jeopardizing Leland.
* * *
Leland was gone the entire next day, the reason unknown to me until I sat down at the first-year table for dinner and opened the paper.
Half Witch Summons Shadowrealm in Creatus.
He must have been stuck in meetings with the Echelons, perhaps being tapped for information on me and my Shadow-summoning powers, which would lead nowhere because the real Shadowrealm was sitting on the Council’s bench. Not that they would listen.
Still weighed down by guilt over Belinda, I’d tried asking Skye if she knew anything from her dad, but, busy making dolphin noises and feeding Nova tuna treats, she’d told me to go eat with Rayne.
Leland had reported to Jaxan almost immediately after the Shadowrealm attack.
Surely he knew Jaxan was responsible? They worked closely together.
How could he not recognize the same footsteps I did?
It’s not the wind, he’d said into my head, moments before the Shadowcurrent struck.
Sort of like he’d said, meeting’s not going to go well. How did he know that?
Rayne’s blue eyes studied me as I read the paper.
“No one believes Farrah Prolix,” she said, softly spoken.
“I might not have summoned it, but it is my fault,” I said. “She wouldn’t be gone if I hadn’t been on the patio. I’m responsible for this.”
Her high, half-ponytail bobbed as she dipped her head.
“You aren’t.” She leaned forward and eased the paper out of my hands, then cast a creation spell that folded it into an origami lotus flower.
Our eyes connected, her striking, bronze eyeshadow fanning out to her temples and deepening her eye color to piercing indigo, making her look like a beautiful warrior.
“Have you seen Lee?” she asked. “He’s back now. ”
Rayne and Leland were close, as close as Leland could be with the little free time he had. Rayne’s room had a laboratory in it, and sometimes, when I passed her room on my way up the spiral, her door was open, venting steam, and through the cloudy haze, I’d catch them brewing potions together.
“I haven’t,” I said, just before I felt him enter the cafeteria. Holding Vyra’s hand.
I knew I shouldn’t care. My blood didn’t accept that.
Vyra led him across the smooth stone floor in a hurry, strutting for the buffet with every intention of blowing past our table. Leland let go of her hand and dropped down beside me.
For a moment, my veins unclenched, and my body stopped screaming.
“Hi, Ember,” he said, unexplainably looking like he was holding back a smile, his mouth tilted wryly.
Rayne arched her eyebrow.
“Hi.” I reeked of moonale, and my voice was scarred from not sleeping.
Vyra backtracked, the glamorous waves of her thick, brown hair springing as she bounced our direction, showering the air with her fragrant cotton candy perfume.
My blood pounded for me to leave. Sutter, Vyra’s mosquito, buzzed out from behind her and hung threateningly in the air in front of my face. Then she dropped out of view.
“Really, Leland?” said Vyra as she folded herself in the chair next to Rayne’s. “We haven’t sat at this table in years. It’s for first years. I honestly can’t think of one good reason to go back to it.”
“I can.” He said it so calmly, I could’ve swooned.
I noticed his brown hair was dark and drying from a recent shower, and Vyra’s lip gloss was smooth and shining, as if recently applied, like she’d gotten ready at the same time as him.
In their denim jeans and white tees, they looked like they’d coordinated their outfits too.
I couldn’t stop picturing them together.
In violent flashes. Leland, rough and tender, contemplative and laughing.
I really had to go before I started etherizing.
I already felt my skin getting warm, and, without the cuffs I’d burned through, there was nothing to stop me from flickering right before their eyes, fading away until I became fully translucent.
To make matters worse, etherizing seemed to be happening faster now.
When I’d caught Leland with Vyra, outside the bookshop, I’d had at least five minutes.
Last night, when I saw him with Case, I hadn’t even had time to run.
I’d spent long days in the library, researching what was happening to me and trying to figure out why.
Leland was right. Only the Goddess etherized like this. There were Invisibility spells cast by Enchantresses, but not like this. Invisibility spells were sudden. The slow fading of my corporeal form, as if sucked away on a gasp of wind, was what the Goddess did to shed Her witchness.
Only She hadn’t been seen on land in three hundred years, because after the last Curse, the Witch’s Limit, Her magic stopped being strong enough for Her to transition.
She’d been trapped in the clouds ever since.
It didn’t make sense that I could etherize when She couldn’t, and there was no doubt in my mind that if I ever went fully into the ether, She wouldn’t be happy to see me there.
Something tickled my ankles.
Rayne and Leland were talking, but I didn’t hear.
I couldn’t move my feet. My shoes were connected, and furiously trying to kick my feet apart wasn’t doing anything to loosen them.
I hoped it was the effort of trying to stand and not the burn of jealousy that was rapidly heating my skin and making me drip sweat on the table.
“Everything okay?” Leland asked.
I shook my head abruptly as Vyra glared at him. “I’m burning. I . . . I think I’m going to — ”
I stopped myself before I said too much, then glanced below the table to see if I could figure out what was staying my feet.
I frantically inspected my running shoes, but as far as I could tell, they looked the same as they had earlier.
No obstructions. No zip ties fastened to bind my feet together.
If they’d been tampered with, no trace was left behind.
Clumsily, I swung my legs up on an empty seat and started pulling at them.
“I can’t move my feet,” I said, short of breath. Streaks of sweat ran down my chest as I frantically clawed at my laces. I needed to move my feet or I was going to disappear in front of everyone in the full, bright light of the cafeteria.
“Vyra, let her go,” Leland said.
At her laugh of delight, my ears rang, my blood urging me to rip out her throat and throw it back at her.
“What?” she asked. “If she can’t handle this, she’ll never survive first year. The only witch at an academy with no spellcasting magic — what a joke.”
“Vyra,” Leland warned.
Sutter buzzed back to her.
My feet sprang apart, and I ran.
Flames roared through me as I propelled myself out of the cafeteria, fixing my sights on the massive spiral as I sprinted through what felt like an entire convention center.
I glanced at my arm and panic ripped through me.
It had diminished to near colorlessness.
The etherizing had already started. I was fading.
There was no explaining this to anyone who caught me in this state. No saying it was a trick of the light or a game of shadows. It was me. Flickering. Flickering. Flickering.
I was at the base of the spiral when I could no longer feel my legs. My breaths were gasps. I hurled my hand at the first doorknob I saw, and it slipped through my fingers — the transparent nothingness of them.
I slammed myself into the door to force it open — and as subtle as still air — I passed through the obstruction.
This wasn’t flickering. This wasn’t translucence. This was worse.
I was gone.
* * *
Leland’s room.
I floated to the foot of his bed as soft music with the staticky sound of an old radio pulsed from his sound bar. There weren’t words, only a slow rhythm that made me think of thick raindrops sliding down my window.
Moments later, someone was on the other side of his door. I heard the knob turn, the door creaking open, then softly closing.
“Ember?” he called out tentatively.
I couldn’t answer. I was ether.