Chapter 9
CHAPTER 9
“What’s that?” I asked, confused.
Aiden grabbed the kitten from Rhiannon, as if he could hide it if she wasn’t holding it.
Professor Wright pointed a shaking finger at Moonbeam, staying a few feet away. “A blight on magic-kind!” he shouted. “It’ll drain you of your magic until you’re human!”
“Yes, you said that,” I said impatiently. “And there are several things wrong with that, the first of which is that being human isn’t this terrible thing you’re making it out to be.”
“You’re focusing on the wrong thing,” Professor Wright said with a scowl. “Imagine living the rest of your life without your right arm. You keep trying to do things with it, but it’s gone .”
“That’s ableist,” I said, frowning. “People can get along very well with only one arm, just like humans get along just fine without magic.”
Professor Wright angrily waved away my words and grabbed Rhiannon by the arm. “Come on, we’re all going to the headmistress’s office.”
Bruce got to his feet. “I’d better come, too,” he said.
“You may be Blackthorn in name, but you’re not in charge here,” Professor Wright sneered.
“I’ll make allowances for your attitude,” Bruce said quietly. “You’re scared right now. But you’d do well to remember that this school is only here because of myself and my wife. We are coming with you.”
“Thanks, man,” Aiden said with a weak smile. He petted his kitten, drawing comfort from her. “Let’s go.” He started toward the professor, who quickly backed out of the way, leaving a healthy distance between them.
I sighed. “He still hasn’t explained what a manducare is ,” I muttered.
“I’m guessing a cat-like creature with purple markings,” Clarissa whispered, linking our arms. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. Moonbeam is such a sweetheart. She wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
Maybe not intentionally .
I mentally pictured Moonbeam as we had found her, going from person to person in the mess, licking fingers and getting pets.
She’s been licking Aiden since we got her, and his magic has been all over the place!
I swallowed hard.
Is she draining him?
What can we do about it if she is?
By the time I’d mentally made all the connections, we’d reached Headmistress Blackthorn’s office, and I was certain that Professor Wright was at least partially right about Moonbeam.
Professor Wright ranted about the manducare to the headmistress while the rest of us took seats quietly in front of her desk. She listened to him patiently before turning to us. “Tell me about how you found this creature.”
Aiden and I explained that we’d found the dead mother in the forest after following the blood trail we’d found in Care of Magical Creatures, and then enlisted Rhiannon’s help in caring for the baby.
Professor Wright’s eyes bugged out of his head. “The mother dying is probably the reason the ley lines are gone! She drew on them so heavily to protect herself and then give birth to the creature that she drained them completely! The ley lines’ magic is in that !” He pointed at Moonbeam. “We need to kill it to release the magic!”
Headmistress Blackthorn raised her hand to silence him. “That is a huge leap of logic, Professor. We don’t kill innocent animals. Do you have proof?”
“Not yet, but I’ll get it,” the professor snapped.
“But that’s not how the ley lines work!” I protested. “You can’t drain them by using the magic within them. They’ll refill, like a river.”
Professor Wright spread his arms wide. “Obviously not!”
“Thank you, Professor, I’ll take it from here,” Headmistress Blackthorn said firmly. “You may go.”
Professor Wright left the room, stomping his feet like a petulant child. I was shaken to see the normally easy-going professor so unhinged.
Fear is a powerful motivator, I thought to myself sadly.
“You’ll need to return the baby to the forest,” the headmistress was saying.
“No!” I cried along with my friends.
“She’s just a baby, Headmistress,” Rhiannon pleaded. “She’ll die on her own!”
“It might be better that way,” the headmistress replied softly.
“How can you say that?” Bruce demanded. “You just finished telling us innocent until proven guilty!”
I bit my tongue, not wanting to bring up my theories of why Aiden’s magic was reacting so erratically. It would only lead to heartbreak.
“It is a wild animal,” Headmistress Blackthorn said. “It belongs in the forest with the rest of its kind.”
“I’ve never heard of a manducare before,” Rhiannon said. “Why all the secrecy?”
“It’s practically a mythological creature,” the headmistress replied. “Like a boogeyman or Krampus.”
“Both of which exist,” I pointed out.
“As does the manducare. I thought they’d all died out.” She shook her head. “I’ve never seen one, only heard them described in fairy tales. They are dangerous creatures and shouldn’t be kept near magical people.”
“Fairy tales are hardly ever right,” I began, but Aiden interrupted me by getting to his feet.
“I understand, Headmistress. If we may go?”
“Of course. You have my permission to enter the forest to return the creature.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. “Thanks.” He pivoted and left the room abruptly.
“I’m not happy about this,” I said, scowling at the headmistress. “You’re acting rashly with no proof and that little baby will pay for it.” I followed Aiden out of the room.
He was already halfway down the hall to the kitchens before I caught up to him. “You’re not really bringing her back to the forest, are you?” I said, gasping for breath a little at the run I’d had to do in order to catch up to him.
“Of course not,” he scoffed. “But I have to make it look like I am.”
“She really is eating magic, you know,” I whispered.
Aiden stopped and stared at me. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
“You want me to leave her out there?” His face turned pale.
“No!” I shouted, then lowered my voice. “Definitely not. She wouldn’t survive. But we need to come up with a way for her to eat magic that isn’t tied to us .”
“Thank you.” Aiden sighed with relief. “I know we’ll figure something out.” He continued walking. “You think she’s why my magic is all over the place, don’t you?”
“It makes sense.”
“It does.”
“I bet she ate the locking magic on your door, and that’s how she got out,” I added.
Aiden rolled his eyes. “Ugh, you’re probably right. How do we keep her away from the professors if we can’t keep her locked in my room?”
“We’ll just have to check in on her in between classes, and bring her more food.”
We slipped into the kitchen, avoiding the cleaners as we headed for the back door.
“Does she even eat food?” I wondered aloud. “Or rather, does she need food?”
Aiden scratched Moonbeam under her chin and she started purring. “I think the food is needed for nutrients, but the magic is needed to help her mature.”
“So, both,” I muttered, holding the kitchen door open for Aiden. “I think we should ask Rhiannon if we can graduate her to solid food. She’s getting so big so quickly.”
“No licking,” Aiden said firmly to the kitten. “We’ll get you an amulet or something to snack on.”
“How about the magic generators?” I suggested. I still had a few of them in my purse, so I pulled one out and manufactured a string to attach to it.
The night was dark, with only a sliver of a new moon visible in the sky high over the academy’s rooftop. A brisk winter breeze blew, ruffling Aiden’s hair and blowing mine into my face as we both shivered. The forest groaned like a living creature, as if it was hungry and way past its mealtime.
“Perfect,” Aiden said, taking the device and holding it so it dangled in front of Moonbeam’s face. Her eyes tracked the swinging pendulum for a moment before one paw darted out and grabbed it, her claws snagging the string. She sniffed at it delicately, twisting her head around to get every angle. “Are you going to taste it or what?” Aiden asked her, amused.
Her little pink tongue flicked out, and she chirped. Then she rolled onto her back in Aiden’s arms, holding the ball between both paws as she lapped at it, like a baby with a bottle.
“I think she likes it,” I said with a chuckle. “That’s good news. We can hide some around your room for her to find. Should keep her occupied. I wonder if Rhiannon knows how to make them so we can make more.”
Aiden glanced up at me, his eyes twinkling. “As if you haven’t analyzed them already so that you can reverse-engineer them!”
My jaw dropped. “Hey! I haven’t had time to do that yet! I’ve been a bit busy, helping Professor Akhtar with the whole ley lines vanishing mystery.” We entered the edge of the forest, and I cast a night-sight spell on my eyes, not wanting to trip over anything.
“I know, babe. If Rhiannon doesn’t know, why don’t you ask Professor Reynolds to go over it in class?”
“You don’t think he’d suspect that we’re up to something?” I bit my lip worriedly.
“Why would he? His favorite student asks him how to analyze a spell, one that she’d used in Care of Magical Creatures? I think he’d be happy to teach the class how to work backward from a physical object that had been spelled.”
“These devices are supposed to decompose, right?” I said. “Can we reinforce these so that they last a little longer and then we could reuse them?”
“‘Decompose’ means they’re probably plants. We can ask Hazel to make more,” Aiden said.
“Hazel for the ball itself, Professor Reynolds to teach us what the spell is,” I listed on my fingers. “And then we need to engineer some tricky animal games so she doesn’t eat them all at once.”
“But not too tricky,” Aiden cautioned. “We don’t want her to get bored and leave again.”
“I think we need to get all our friends in on this,” I said. “It’s going to be a lot of work. I don’t want her to overeat magic and grow too big. She’s hard enough to hide at this size! What’s going to happen once she grows wings?”
“Yeah, I’m not sure that your grandfather would like to have a manducare on his property.”
When I frowned and opened my mouth to protest, Aiden shook his head.
“I don’t mean because she’s dangerous. I mean because she’ll eat all the spells on Doyle Manor.”
I chuckled. “Okay, yeah, that could be bad.” I ducked under a low hanging tree branch. “So how long do we have to wait in here before we can slip back into the castle?”
“I was thinking that we should go back to the scene of the crime and see if we missed any clues,” Aiden said. “Can you find your way?”
“It wasn’t too far in. I think I see some of the blood,” I said, pointing out a black smear on a damaged tree. “What kind of clue?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t have to go and look,” Aiden said with a chuckle.
Moonbeam growled, catching my attention, and I watched her curl up to scratch at the little device with her back paws as well.
“I can kinda understand why Professor Wright freaked out,” I said slowly. “The mother was easily eight times our size. But so are dragons. I’ve heard from Rhiannon that he’s cooed over venomous creatures and all sorts of other dangerous beings. I feel like his mind made leaps of logic that don’t make any sense. The manducare might eat magic, but if they’ve lived for so long, why haven’t they drained the ley lines before this? I can’t imagine that this is the first time that one was attacked, and the ley lines haven’t been drained in a thousand years. It makes no sense.”
I saw the clearing where we’d found Moonbeam ahead of us. “Should we bring her into range of her mother?” I asked. “We don’t want her to get upset.”
“I don’t think she’d realize it was her mother,” Aiden said thoughtfully. “Rhiannon said she’d imprinted on me, remember.”
“Be ready to deal with a possible scratching if she gets upset,” I warned him.
“Noted,” he replied dryly.
But when we entered the clearing, there was no sign of either the mother or the wolf.
“What happened?” I asked, turning in a circle. “There’s nothing here!”
“I think I know,” Aiden said grimly. “Professor Wright left the office earlier than us by just enough time to get here and clear the bodies away.”
“Either that or other animals took care of them,” I said.
Aiden shook his head. “Unlikely. It’s only been about a week. Scavenged, sure, but not a whole carcass.”
I felt a little sick. “What could he want with it?”
“Potion ingredients?” Aiden suggested. “Proof?”
The nauseous feeling in my stomach got worse. “That’s terrible.”
“We should still check around for clues... Anything we might have missed.”
We avoided the blackened areas as we scouted around, knowing the ground was saturated with blood. In the spring, those would be rich with life, but in the dead of winter, nothing was growing yet.
“Nothing,” I said at last.
“I hate to agree with you.”
“No, you don’t,” I teased.
Aiden chuckled. “Normally, I love to agree with you. This time, though...” He let his sentence hang in the air between us. “We should get Moonbeam back to the castle.”
“What’s the plan? Invisibility spell?”
“She’d probably just eat it,” Aiden said, shaking his head.
“Not if I’m holding the charm. And we’ll give her another ball.”
The one we’d rigged up was almost gone, both magically and physically. Moonbeam was curled up in Aiden’s arms, her eyelids slowly closing.
“Or she might sleep her way through it,” Aiden said hopefully.
“But what if—” I cut myself off with a little shriek as Aiden tripped over a tree root and fell, twisting in mid-air to take the brunt of his fall on his back to protect the kitten. “Are you okay?” I asked, hurrying over to help him up.
He winced, sitting up stiffly. “I’m going to feel that in the morning.” He rubbed the back of his head and grimaced, pulling his hand away.
His hand was dark with something, and I swallowed my fear, removing my nightsight and calling a low light into existence.
I almost laughed in relief when I saw that it was dark with mud, not blood.
The light illuminated the area, showing that Aiden had managed to land at the base of a tree where the ground wasn’t frozen solid.
“There must have been a bit of a thaw recently,” I said.
“Must have been,” Aiden grumbled.
“You could have seriously hurt yourself if there hadn’t been,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, instead, I need a shower.” Aiden’s humor sparkled in his eyes. “You could join me.”
“I’m not getting in that mud!” I stepped back in case he planned on pulling me in.
“You’re dirty enough.” Aiden slowly climbed to his feet, protecting Moonbeam from jostling. She hadn’t woken up from the sudden fall, so I doubted she’d wake now. He wiped his hand on the front of his jeans before placing it on the curve of my hip. “Let’s remove that plug from your ass,” he whispered in my ear.
I had completely forgotten that it was there, but his words brought it back to the forefront of my attention, and suddenly it was almost unbearable. “Okay,” I said, more breathlessly than I’d like.
Aiden smirked at me and walked ahead, showing off the dark mud that coated his entire back.