30. Without A Trace
Without A Trace
Ididn’t have to go to the hospital.
A hard, pounding, nearly vicious knock shook Jolie and Miranda’s door about a half-hour after I got there, loud enough I heard it from my old bedroom. I heard the faraway rumble of voices, including Miranda’s, then a few minutes later, I heard the door squeak as it got pulled wider open.
A rustle of heavy cloth got me to turn, and start to sit up on the bed.
Corvid Blackstone stood there, evaluating me with a faint hint of distaste in the set of his narrow lips.
He didn’t look worried, or concerned about my condition, or even vaguely sympathetic.
His stared at me with his ghostly white and blue-tinted eyes, his gaze impenetrable.
His inhumanly high cheekbones accented an already-angular face.
As usual, he looked annoyed the instant he met my gaze.
All that said, he walked in immediately after that brief pause to stare.
It wasn’t until he began to walk that I realized he’d brought his full satchel with him.
The bottles inside the heavy black case clinked as he walked.
I knew that case only ever left his laboratory when he expected to be working.
Once, while bored watching him pour molten metal into molds, I’d peered inside the open flap and buckle straps, and found it filled with potions and amulets and his talismans and a crystal ball.
Once he’d seen me looking, he’d dropped everything he was doing, marched all the way across the room, and snatched the case off the stool where he’d left it. He shoved it into a cupboard on the table where he’d been working and glowered at me from across the room.
He wasn’t much friendlier tonight.
“Everyone out,” he growled, when he was halfway to my old bed.
Jolie, who still sat next to me, jumped.
So did Draken, who still sat cross-legged on the other side. Luc and Nyx, who’d been talking over by my bedroom fireplace, looked over with equally surprised expressions.
Then, every one of them followed Blackstone’s orders without protest and began to file out of the room.
Blackstone didn’t watch them go. His eyes remained on me as he finished crossing the space in his dark blue suit.
He reached the edge of my bed, flipped the edge of his long robe out of the way, and sat down next to me, right where Jolie had been sitting.
Inside my magic, Bones seethed.
Ask him where the fuck he was, Bones growled. Ask him where he and the rest of that fucking useless Golden Sun was, and why they just sat and watched while you were being murdered on their doorstep––
“Kindly tell Mr. Bones to calm down,” Blackstone said, exhaling in obvious irritation. “If he cannot control himself, I will banish him from the room.”
I’d love to see the prick try––
“Drink this,” Blackstone said, either not hearing Bones’s answer, or deliberately ignoring it. He plucked a bottle out of his heavy satchel and held it out in my direction. He didn’t try to put it in my hand, but waited. “Do you need my help to sit up?” he asked tersely.
I could tell he very much did not want to help me with that.
I shook my head.
I was pretty sure I could do it.
Blackstone just sat there, holding the blue-tinted bottle in one hand as I used my elbows and hands to shove myself backward so I could lean against my old pillows and headboard.
I grimaced as I flexed the muscles of my arms, pushing down on the mattress to drag myself up.
I winced again when I used my legs to push the rest of me myself across the mattress.
My head pounded by the end, and my arms and ribs were screaming at me, but I managed to get myself more or less upright on my own.
I leaned carefully against the goose-down and wood, and exhaled.
“Okay,” I said.
Every muscle in my body hurt, which was a sad testament to just how much worse I’d felt before Jolie and the others spent the last half-hour working on me.
Blackstone offered me the blue-tinted bottle a second time.
I took it from his hand, uncorked it, and drank it down without being prompted. I knew he’d never give me the whole thing unless he meant me to down all of it.
Where was he? Bones repeated coldly.
I finished the last of the potion off with a gasp.
Heat flowed through my limbs, making them twitch and prickle but leaving them warm and significantly more supple after the wave of magic passed through.
I took my first full lungful of breath in over an hour and let it out, and it didn’t even hurt.
My headache didn’t disappear entirely in those first few seconds, but already I felt a lot better.
“Thanks,” I said to Blackstone, handing back the bottle.
I meant it.
“I have more for you,” the professor muttered, pulling out an ornate silver box and placing it on the bed. “A few things I’ve been working on myself––”
Where the FUCK was he?
“I was in London,” Blackstone snapped, looking up, but not glaring at me.
He stared somewhere above my head, his angular jaw set in a scowl.
“So was Headmaster Forsooth. We came as soon as we could, but as there are no longer charmed travel mirrors set up permanently anywhere in the school, since your dear father attacked the campus.”
His eyes fell back to his satchel as he rooted around, his voice cold.
“We were forced to land in Bonescastle,” he continued. “At the Magister’s office downtown. From there, we caught the first carriage we could arrange and had it bring us straight here, via the gates.”
He seemed to fine what he wanted in the bag, and paused, his voice and eyes murderous.
“Satisfied?” he snapped, pulling out another vial, and what looked like a small, gold-dipped seashell. “May I get back to what I came here to do? Or would you rather scold me than have me repair any damage to your…”
He glanced at me and trailed, not finishing that thought.
Bones didn’t speak to either of us for a few seconds, but I could still feel him seething somewhere in my magic.
Blackstone set down the shell and the vial on the duvet, and flipped open the silver box. He pulled out something that looked like a hard, sugar-sprinkled candy. He held it out, waited for me to proffer my hand, and set it in the center of my palm.
“Suck on that until it’s gone,” he said.
Where was Quicksilver? Bones asked next. Was he with Forsooth and Blackstone?
I found it interesting he didn’t aim his ire at Luc, Jolie, or Alaric.
They couldn’t hear you, Bones thought at me.
Maybe sensing my surprise and puzzlement, he added, Even Alaric, who I thought might hear you, couldn’t. I think you were so high up in your primal by then, most of the students wouldn’t have heard anything, no matter how loud you screamed.
His mental voice grew almost gentle.
I’m not criticizing you, he thought at me, softer. It was instinct for you to go there… a good instinct, one that likely saved your life in the end, if I’m reading your magic correctly. But it worked against you when it came calling for aid from your friends.
I thought about that, frowning.
“He’s right,” Blackstone said in his deep voice, pulling my eyes to his. Like Bones, his tone had noticeably subdued. “It did save your life.” Irritation sharpened his words. “And I don’t know where Professor Quicksilver was. He was not with us in London.”
I couldn’t tell if the irritation was aimed at Bones, me, or Quicksilver.
I studied Blackstone’s face as he waved a hand over the amulet, murmuring another spell over it that made it glow a dark red.
“What was it that helped me?” I asked.
I aimed the question at Blackstone, but I really meant it for both of them.
Blackstone’s lips pinched slightly. He reached back into his bag, and pulled out something that I realized was a bronze chain. He ran it through the metal loop on the amulet and then hooked the ends together. He nodded towards where he’d left it on the bed.
“Wear this,” he said. “It won’t help you against incursions into your magic. But it will grow warm and glow when you are physically near anyone who’s taken the loyalty oath to Dark Cathedral. It should give you some advanced warning, at least.”
I picked it up off the top of the duvet, a little surprised.
“Thanks,” I said.
Picking it up, I unhooked the latch, wound the chain around my neck, then re-connected the ends.
I looked at Blackstone, somehow embarrassed by the gift.
He wouldn’t look at me, either. I felt conflict on Bones, like he was caught between annoyed, faintly distrustful, and grateful that Blackstone had given it to me.
I cleared my throat.
“Had all of them done that, then?” I asked Blackstone. “Taken the oath? Voltaire. Mordopast. Panzen? The rest of them?”
Mordopast had, Bones answered, before Blackstone could respond. So had Voltaire. I’m not sure about Orrin or Pants. I wouldn’t be surprised if Scar did with Voltaire.
When I glanced at Blackstone, he again looked annoyed.
“All five of them had,” he said, correcting Bones.
I felt a little sick. What were they even doing in school, then?
Neither Bones nor Blackstone answered me, but I didn’t really need them to. I’d always had my doubts Pants and Orrin were smart enough to have gotten into Malcroix on merit in the first place. They’d been legacies, there purely for their family names.
I felt my throat close as I thought about the question I really wanted to ask both of them, but hadn’t yet dared.
“We don’t know where they went,” Blackstone said calmly.
He turned his gaze back on mine, his dead-looking irises empty.
“The amount of blood we found at the site makes it highly questionable whether they got there alive, but without bodies, and no way to track them, there is no means of officially declaring them deceased.” He cleared his throat, adjusting his outer robe over the expensive-looking blue and green suit.
“Forsooth thought it made sense for us to collect samples of the evidence, and then clear the scene before any students might happen upon it.”
I frowned, watching him stare at me without expression.
“He’s calling Bonescastle law enforcement, surely?” I said.
“For what purpose?” Blackstone asked, his deep voice flat.
“What purpose?” I scoffed, mostly in disbelief. “Aren’t their parents going to come looking for them? Won’t they want to know what happened, when they do?”
Blackstone shrugged. “We do not know what happened to them, Ms. Shadow. They are adult wizards. All we know for certain is that they are no longer on school grounds. As we did not restrict them to school grounds, that is hardly an emergency requiring law enforcement intervention.” His narrow lips twitched as his voice grew bored.
“They were free to come and go as they pleased. Moreover, it is Saturday. It is quite normal for our university students to leave the grounds on Saturdays.”
Bones laughed somewhere in my magic.
Blackstone cleared his throat, adjusting the sleeves of his long-sleeved green shirt under the blue silk jacket. “If they are declared missing at some later point,” he added, his voice still bored. “How, exactly, is that the school’s responsibility? In your view?”
I let out my own humorless laugh.
I genuinely wasn’t sure how I felt about that, given everything.
Relieved? I mean, yes, mostly relieved.
But it also made me nervous.
“Right,” I said finally. “So if they ask me about it?”
Blackstone turned to stare at me. “Do you know where they are, Ms. Shadow?” he asked, his voice a touch sharper.
I thought about that, and exhaled, shaking my head.
“I don’t,” I confessed.
“Then I shouldn’t worry about their whereabouts, as it’s none of your concern.
” Blackstone continued to stare at me with those piercing eyes.
“If you fear being falsely accused of wrongdoing, rest assured, you cannot forced by magic to tell the truth on something for which you have no concrete knowledge.”
Blackstone looked towards the tall window, his pale eyes glowing faintly in the sunlight. “Whatever happened, I suspect it occurred too far out of their sight for any probes they might attempt to be effective.”
I only looked at him for a few seconds, turning over his words.
“Right,” I said again, quieter.
Blackstone didn’t think anyone in the Central Authority would be able to see the presence that saved my life. I could only hope that he was right.
Either way, it still didn’t answer the most important question.
I still had no idea who or what had helped me.
I also had no idea what I owed it in return.