Chapter Fifty-Two
FIFTY-TWO
I’m in the fourth aisle, scanning shelves as quickly as I can as I know we’re running out of time before everyone will go to start the real Imber Stellarum celebration.
The party. The towers will slowly start to fill with students and faculty again, making it more difficult for us to get out.
I’m about to tell Tilly that I can’t bloody find this black leather-bound book, when I spot a shelf that has clearly been disturbed recently.
Enough for the dust to have streaks through it that look eerily similar to fingers.
The black book resting atop the shelf sits alone.
It’s on its side, with the end pages facing me.
I feel something inside of me curl up, as if it wants to hide from whatever might be within, and that is how I know, before I reach up and pluck it from the shelf, that this is the book I’m looking for.
Sure enough, etched into the cracked leather, are the words Mortes Nex Magia.
I open my mouth to call for Tilly, to let her know I found it, but no sound comes out.
Just a whisper of a breath as I sink to the floor and rest the thick tome on my knees.
With shaking hands and a racing heart, I carefully open the book.
My brows dip as I flick through dry pages that make a scratchy sound as they turn, because I’m not quite sure what I’m looking at.
There are pages and pages of names and dates. Dates that go back so far my eyes bulge, unable to comprehend how long ago these must have been written. That my fingers trace over ink that dried hundreds and hundreds of years ago, written by people long dead.
The earliest entry is around four hundred and fifty years ago.
There are four names listed, and beside each of their names is a black mark.
The next entry is sixty-five years later, again, four names, each with a black mark beside them.
Sixty-five years again. Four names. Fifty-seven years, four names.
Fifty-three … Forty-nine … thirty-nine …
I flip another page and scroll as the time stamps shorten until I get to the second to last entry.
It was less than twenty years ago and the names – in particular the surnames, they’re familiar for some reason.
I flip to the last page, the last entry in the book and my blood runs cold.
My hands start to shake so badly that the fluid script written on the page starts to blur.
It isn’t until a fat tear drop hits the bottom corner of the page that I realise I’m crying.
The last and final entry was written several months ago.
The names beside it …
Regina Abbott. Black mark.
Daymon Davis. Black mark.
Luca Finch. Black mark.
Oliver Marst. Black mark.
Lukas Nocthare.
Lukas.
‘Lu—’ I gasp, choking on a sob. ‘Lukas.’
Black. Mark.
Dead. All these people are dead.
My body bows with the force of the pain that spears through me, and a mournful cry falls past my lips.
‘Aria?’ Tilly’s concerned voice comes from the other side of the aisle.
I can barely hear her hurried footsteps through the loud thudding in my ears as she makes her way toward me.
‘Oh Stars,’ she whispers when she reaches my side, dropping to her knees beside me to wrap her arms around my shoulders.
‘He – he’s in this. His name,’ I breathe. ‘They’re all in here. All of them.’ I shove the book into her lap, needing to get it away from me. ‘Look.’ I use the backs of my hands to wipe at my tears.
Tilly nods and starts to scan the page. Her lips purse together tightly as she flips backward to the beginning. ‘Oh.’
Her expression grows grave the more she reads, until she gets to the final page and ever so slowly lifts her eyes to mine. ‘There … shouldn’t be five of them.’
‘W-what?’
‘Five, Aria!’ She stabs the page with a finger.
‘Abbott, Davis, Finch, Marst and your brother. That makes five. Every other entry had four names and look …’ She reaches beside her to where a brown dusty book is sprawled open at her feet.
As if she dropped it in her haste to wrap me in her warmth.
She picks it up and flicks through it, turning frantically until she gets to her destination.
Tilly places the open book down on the cold stone floor.
Its yellowed pages are filled with nearly unidentifiable scribbles of ink, though I make out several words.
Possession. Soul. Death. Sacrifice. Host.
‘Magia Malefica,’ Tilly points out. ‘Black Magic. This spell is ancient, used when one desires to inhabit another’s body. To kill another’s soul essentially and use their body as a vessel for their own.’
My eyes drop to the page, where a diagram is scribbled at the bottom corner. A five-pointed star with the word ‘host’ written at the top of the star. The word ‘sacrifice’ is written on the other four.
Four sacrifices.
The dots start to connect as I look between the two books, connecting the names written in mine, to the diagram written in hers. ‘If these two books coincide, it means this has been happening for hundreds of years.’
‘If that’s true, this is proof that your brother is innocent and what happened to those students last year is part of something that’s been happening long before any of us were here.’
‘L-Lukas couldn’t have performed a spell this intricate either.’ I tell her what Professor Fern and Jed confessed to me. ‘I have a theory,’ I whisper.
‘What is it?’
‘I know this might sound crazy, but what if whoever started this all those years ago is the same person who did it here?’ I touch the most recent date, my finger tracing delicately over my brother’s name.
My heart squeezes at the sight of the black mark beside it; it feels like a stain on his memory.
Like the book is taunting me. He’s gone. Look, here is proof.
‘What if they started something back then and realised they could live forever, continuously inhabiting other bodies, therefore prolonging their life?’
Tilly shakes her head in disbelief. ‘That amount of black magic over such a long period of time … it would destroy a person’s soul. Xavier told us that much the night by the cliff.’
‘I know. But look at this.’ I flip back to the beginning of the book and point at the first entry then flip to another and back again.
‘See the way the G’s and Y’s all curl into perfect little loops?
It’s constant throughout the entire book.
Every entry has the same handwriting. Till, this must be the same person. ’
She visibly pales, and I think she’s finally seeing what I’m seeing here.
A pool of dread starts to rise up in my stomach as if someone else agreeing with me makes the horrifying discovery real.
Part of me was almost hoping she’d argue against it.
It might halt the fear currently stretching out to sink its teeth into my bones.
‘We need to get out of here,’ I say, picking up the book and holding it to my chest. This is it.
I did it. This book and the spell in the one Tilly found is the proof I needed to stake my claim for Lukas’s innocence.
Not only that, but we’ve also discovered there is also someone among us who has been living a lie, who has been murdering students every few decades over the course of centuries.
‘And do what? We can’t take these with us. They could be enchanted for all we know, And even if they aren’t, then what? We just walk out of here with two giant books and hide them under our cloaks?’
She has a point.
I frown. ‘Okay, fine. We leave them here, exactly where we found them. As soon as we’re out, we need to find Professor Nicks and tell him what we read. He’ll help us.’
‘How do you know that? What if it’s him?’
‘It’s not.’ I give a firm shake of my head. ‘And he will.’
‘Why him? We should take this to the headmaster.’
‘No. Not him. It has to be Nicks.’
Tilly gives me a long look. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’
I swallow, then walk over to the shelf I took the book from and place it right in the empty square of dust it has previously sat in, in among the fingerprints where it was touched last. Then I turn back to my friend and lightly squeeze her shoulders.
‘I need you to trust me on this, Till. I don’t know why, but my gut is telling me to go to Nicks and that he will be the one to help us.’ I try to convey how important this is through my eyes, through the seriousness in my voice.
She nods. ‘If you trust him, then I trust him.’
We move in unison, running around to her side of the imposing shelves and putting her book back in its place before sprinting down the aisle to the door. The second we yank it open, I hold a finger to my lips, reminding her to be quiet as we step out into open space.
The door closes behind us, and the thick wave of magic I felt before we entered reemerges, sealing itself over the door once more.
I shiver, then take Tilly’s hand and lead her back the way we came, constantly listening for the soft shuffling of feet and peeking around corners before we turn.
We’re what I assume is around halfway through when on our next turn, my face slams into a hard chest, knocking me backward into Tilly.
I almost yelp in fright, but a warm hand covers my mouth to muffle the noise.
Xavier’s wide blue eyes flare, warning me to be quiet.
Mine flare back upon seeing him down here, telling him with a glaring look that he just scared the living crap out of me.
I feel Tilly sag against me in relief. Unfortunately, I don’t share the sentiment because his presence means we’re out of time.
He came to find us because we took too long.
My head cranes back, my eyes rising to the low hanging beams of the ceiling as if I can see right through it to the Grand Hall. When my eyes meet Xavier’s, I give him a questioning look. He nods solemnly.
They’re back. How the hell are we supposed to get out of here now?
His chin juts, gesturing for us to follow him.
I really hope he has a plan because there’s no way we can walk out of the door that led us down here. It would lead us right into the common room right outside Headmaster Zain’s office, which is potentially filled filled with Agate students.
Tilly and I follow Xavier through the tunnels, not bothering to scan the map he drew me because I assume he knows where he’s going, but when we turn in what I am positive is the wrong direction, I tug on his arm. He spins, raising a brow so I point behind us hoping he’ll understand what I mean.
When he shakes his head and points ahead, mouthing, ‘This way,’ my brows dip. I look over my shoulder at Tilly who seems just as confused.
‘You sure?’ I mouth back to Xavier who just nods, a small tick pulsating in his jaw, seeming annoyed by my interference.
I swallow my uncertainty, because maybe I’m wrong, and continue walking behind him. Though when we get to a fork in the path that I’m certain we never passed through, I stop and reach in my pocket for the map to show him, because he must have forgotten the way.
The sigh he lets out is filled with frustration and far too loud. As is Tilly’s shriek, which echoes down the tunnel when Xavier’s fist collides with my face, sending me to the ground.