Chapter 18
I woke up with a headache.
Lilia and I had stayed up way too late the night before, chatting and giving each other mini makeovers. I’d missed doing that with my girlfriends and hadn’t even realized it.
I reached behind me to poke my friend awake. We were back-to-back in my bed, not wanting or caring to separate after the late night—early morning?—and cuddled up together, missing our boyfriends.
“Can you do that headache remover spell thingy?” I asked, gesturing at my head with my eyes closed.
“Do it yourself,” Lilia groaned. “I’m so tired I can barely see straight.”
“We’re a mess,” I said. “Okay, give me a moment.” I rolled out of bed, used the toilet, and pulled out my grimoire. I had marked a rejuvenation spell last year, and used it often. “There. Feel better?”
Lilia sat up in bed. “Much. What did you do?”
“It’s a spell that gives you the equivalent of a full night’s sleep,” I said. “My headache?”
“Wow, that sounds amazing! What’s the catch?” Lilia cast the spell and my head stopped throbbing.
“You can only use it once a week and you’ll need to sleep a full eight hours tonight,” I told her, snapping the book closed.
“Not bad at all. Thanks.”
We got dressed and grabbed our books before heading to breakfast.
“I missed my Brommy so much!” Lilia said, peering down the hall to the boy’s wing at the top of the stairs.
“Did you want to wake him up and meet us at the cafeteria?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Great idea. Catch you later!” She was off down the hall like a shot, her pink-streaked hair bouncing against her back.
I glanced down the other hall to where Aiden’s room was, but shook my head decisively. “I’ll see him soon enough. I should eat.”
Bruce was already sitting at our usual table, a bowl of oatmeal and an open book in front of him. By the time I joined him, he had closed the book. “Morning. Where’s Aiden?”
I blinked at him. “I assumed he was with you.”
“No.” Bruce frowned. “We hung out last night, but he was gone before I woke up. I assumed he’d given in and gone to your room in the middle of the night.”
I shook my head. “We were up until an embarrassingly early time, and nobody knocked on our door.”
“What time?” Bruce grinned. “One? Two?”
“Four,” I whispered.
“Wow. Lots to catch up on, I guess,” Bruce teased. “I woke up not much later than that.”
I stuck my tongue out at him. “Maybe Aiden went to his workout room. I’ll go check.”
“Great idea. I’ll check the library. We’ll meet in class.”
He got to his feet and I hurried to finish my cereal before running out the door.
Aiden’s workout room was in the basement, hidden down a corridor behind a tapestry near the regular gym. He’d brought me there the first time we’d had sex, and I understood why; it was the best place to test out how his fire affected me. He’d since realized that he didn’t actually burn anyone or anything unless he wanted to, which was a weight off his mind. Personally, I had never been concerned. I was his soulmate.
What kind of soulmate couldn’t be touched by their partner’s fire?
The corridor behind the tapestry was dark, but I didn’t need light to know where I was going. I could, and had, navigated the narrow hall with my eyes closed. Fortunately, Aiden had added me to his unlocking mechanism, and I was able to access his room.
Invisible lighting flared to life around the room. Everything was neat and tidy, and I could tell at a quick glance that the room was empty.
“Fuck,” I muttered, anxiety building inside me.
There was still a chance that Bruce had found him in the library, so I closed the door and hurried back down the corridor to the main hall.
I didn’t bother wasting time seeing if Bruce was still in the library; class was about to start.
I entered Professor Akhtar’s class with a few minutes to spare, scanning the faces of the students that were already present.
No Bruce.
He slipped in just as the professor was closing the door, his face grim.
My heart sank to my toes. Aiden was gone. I knew it.
The only hope I could hold onto was that he might be one of the students who returned near the end of the day.
Bruce sat beside me and leaned close to whisper, “No sign of him. Maybe he’s in your study room?”
It was possible. I’d keyed him into my room last year. “I’ll check after class,” I whispered back.
“Your star charts from the field trip to Easter Island are due tomorrow, so if you have any questions, there will be time at the end of class for you to compare your findings with your classmates and ask me any questions you might have,” the professor said, his hands moving sinuously at the same time as his speech. “The rest of the class will be dedicated to practicing Aquan sign language.”
I realized that he had been signing every word to us. Well, not every word, as Aquan didn’t have signs for the little words like prepositions and things.
“Get into groups of two or three and talk using only Aquan,” the professor said.
Bruce nodded at me and we put our heads together, hoping that nobody else would want to join us.
“After class, I’ll go check my study room,” I signed. “Where can you look?”
“I thought I might go to the office and see whether he went to the medical wing,” Bruce signed back.
“Great idea. I’ll also check with Professor Dunlop,” I spelled out his name, “and see if Aiden was caught out of bed after hours. He should know that Aiden’s missing anyway.”
Bruce agreed. “And what if we don’t find him?” He chewed on his lower lip. “How long can he be away from you?”
“He was struggling after a couple of months this summer, but we had video calls. I don’t know how long he can handle without regular contact.”
Bruce put his hand over mine and squeezed before signing, “We’ll find him. We’ve got to.”
I took courage from him and nodded.
The class felt longer than usual. After practicing more Aquan, we compared our star charts. I swallowed down my tears when I saw Aiden’s precise handwriting marking out the complex mathematics that covered our chart.
Bruce whistled. “He really knows his math, doesn’t he?”
I appreciated the present tense.
“I assume so. Physics is really not my strong suit. I’m not entirely sure where he was going with this one, and we didn’t have time to finish it and then write it up.”
“It’s okay. Here, he’s calculating using the horizon and Sigma Octantis.”
I wrinkled my nose. “That sounds weird. I’m so used to using the North Star in my charts.”
Bruce chuckled. “As are all we northerners. As for the write up, just focus on the differences between now and then and word-vomit onto the page.”
It was my turn to chuckle, although it didn’t sound very cheerful to my ears. “Thanks, Bruce. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“You’d be fine,” Bruce said, brushing off my compliment.
After class was over, and I’d managed to finish the star chart report with a lot of help from Bruce, we walked slowly behind our classmates to the main floor.
“See you in the cafeteria?” Bruce asked. “You’ve got a bit more to cover than me.”
“Yeah, although if you happen to see Professor Dunlop in the office, you can talk to him instead.”
Bruce nodded. “We got this.”
I trotted down the stairs to the basement again, this time entering the library and heading straight for the restricted section. I was once again relieved that I had the pass as a TA that let me into the banned area without any trouble. I heard nothing in between the stacks on my way to the hidden corridor that housed my study room.
“Hi, Darragh,” I called out to the portrait when I entered. “Have you seen Aiden?”
“Not without you,” Darragh replied.
It was a fair enough answer. It wasn’t like the portrait had any concept of the passage of time.
But it still hurt. I hadn’t realized how much I had pinned my hopes on finding Aiden here.
I sank into the desk chair and burst into tears.
“Hey, now,” Darragh said soothingly. “This isn’t like you. Why did you think Aiden might be here?”
Through my sobs, I managed to convey the entire story to him, including my fears that Aiden had been kidnapped like the other beasts.
Darragh kept silent through my explanation. “It does sound bad,” he allowed. “But you must keep faith. Whoever is taking these people seems to be a decent sort, returning the ones that aren’t needed. Maybe Aiden will be one of those.”
“And what if he isn’t?” I demanded. “What then?”
“You’ll have to go find him.”
“I’ve tried!”
“No, you’ve tried to find your friend and other students. Have you tried to find your soulmate?”
I opened and closed my mouth a couple times. “Are you saying that there’s a way of tracking my bond with Aiden?”
Darragh shrugged. “Might be. You’d have to search Declan’s notes about his soul bond. Maybe look into the spells of beasts, who would have a reason to track a soul bond. We witches don’t have that sort of thing.”
I wiped my tears from my cheeks. “Careful, your prejudice is showing.”
“Not at all, my dear. Just stating a fact.”
“I’ll ask Professor Dunlop about it.”
Darragh nodded his approval. “That’s an excellent idea.”
I left my study room feeling a little bit better. Rather than going to find Bruce, I went to the office and knocked on the professor’s door.
“Come in.”
The professor was staring out the window, looking older than usual.
“Are you okay?” I asked, concerned.
“Very tired,” he replied with a sigh. He turned away from the window and gestured at the empty chair across his desk, taking his seat in the large one opposite. “I assume you’re here about Aiden.”
“Bruce came to ask you—”
“If he’d been caught out of bed, yes. He did.” The professor took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I’m not up all night, keeping track of students in the hallways. Curfew is a stupid rule. You’re all adults. But with the disappearances over the past few days, all the teachers have been patrolling. None of us saw anything.”
“What about invisibility spells?” I asked, leaning forward eagerly. “And what about that spell that would notify you if someone was forced to leave the castle?”
Professor Dunlop shook his head. “Nobody was forced to leave the castle last night. The spells are all in place and not tampered with. We can’t see through invisibility spells, obviously, but there are ways of seeing the space around them, by looking for magic, you know. Nobody saw anything last night.” He put his glasses back on.
“Shit,” I cursed, sitting back in the chair.
“Language, Miss Doyle, but yes, I agree with your sentiment.”
“I’d like to talk about potentially tracking him through our soul bond.”
The professor’s bushy eyebrows rose in surprise. “That is certainly a possibility. I hadn’t considered that.”
“The thing that makes it so dangerous to be apart might be the thing that works to bring us together,” I said poetically.
“I need to do some research. Come find me tonight; I should have found something that will help by then.” Professor Dunlop swiveled on his chair to look at the low bookcases behind him. “Seven o’clock sharp, mind.”
“I’ll bring Bruce with me. He’s worried, too.”
“The more the merrier,” the professor said absentmindedly. He traced his fingers along spines and muttered under his breath.
I left the office, feeling confident in our chances to solve the mystery now that we had a solid plan of action, and ran across the foyer to the cafeteria.
I collapsed into a seat next to my friends and swiped an apple from Una’s tray. Bruce handed me half a sandwich and I smiled at him gratefully. “We have a lead,” I declared triumphantly.
“That’s amazing!”
“What is it?”
“Don’t leave us in suspense!”
“We’re going to track Aiden via my soul bond,” I said.
Bruce whooped, a grin on his face. “I was going to suggest that when I saw you next. There are a couple cool spells that only beasts can perform, and fewer still that can be performed by soulmates. Have you ever been to a soul bond wedding?”
Brom nodded, but the rest of us shook our heads.
“The bond is strengthened magically at the time of the ceremony. Only another soul bound beast can perform the spell, so it’s extremely rare. The effects are quite dazzling.” Bruce smiled at the memory. “I was young, and only a witch, but it had a deep and profound effect on me.”
I blinked, wondering why Aiden hadn’t mentioned it to me before this. Maybe he wasn’t aware of the ritual, if it was so rare.
“Do you have the tracking spell? Can we do it now?” Bruce asked.
I shook my head. “No, Professor Dunlop still has to find it. But he was optimistic, and told me to meet him tonight at seven. He also said ‘the more the merrier,’ so you’re all welcome to join me.” I took a large bite of my sandwich, chewing quickly.
“Can’t wait!”
My friends left for their next class slowly, giving me encouraging words as they parted, until it was just Bruce and I left at the table.
“I’m glad we’re in this together,” I confided in him. “All of us, really, but you’ve been there from the beginning, standing by me when Hazel was falsely accused. I didn’t get to know you well last year, and I’m sorry.”
“Hey, no problem. You’re Aiden’s soulmate. He’s my friend. I’ll do anything to help you.” Bruce patted my shoulder. “I’ve got study hall. I’ll see you at dinner?”
“Sounds good.”