Not wanting to waste any more time, he sprinted from the room with the satchel bouncing against his hip. He ducked into doorways and crouched in the shadows whenever somebody passed, feeling as if he were on a gameshow of some sort, until he reached the doorway, his pulse racing with nervous excitement. Reaching out for the lock, he stopped the threads of his anti-magic just in time, as he heard the rise of voices coming from within the room beyond.
Squatting, he peered through the keyhole to see whom he had almost revealed himself to. The Headmistress was standing behind the desk, speaking animatedly with the auburn-haired Master Demeter. Whatever they were discussing, Alypia wasn’t happy with Demeter. She was gesturing wildly, her peculiar eyes glowering at the cowed figure of Alex’s tutor. Their conversation had something to do with information that Master Demeter had failed to provide, but that wasn’t what drew Alex’s attention.
Standing to the side of the two heated speakers, Alex was shocked to see the ghostly, raggedy specter of Renmark, watching the Headmistress and the teacher intently, a strange expression on his ghoulish, foul face. Glancing back at Alypia and Demeter, Alex wondered if they even knew the phantom figure was there. Were they like him, able to see Finder-like beings, or were they like the others, blissfully unaware of their ghastly, gray presence?
He didn’t want to stay around to find out, nor did he want to get caught and blow his chance for the others to escape. He returned the way he had come, slipping unseen back into the bright lights of his bedroom. As he sank down on the edge of the bed, reality dawned. He had missed his chance. He had lost the opportunity to take some bottles and destroy the rest.
Pacing the room, he had nothing to do but wait for Helena to arrive, to take them to the portal and far away from here. As he moved, the empty satchel still slung across his body taunted him, devoid of the promised bottles. The frustration he felt at their loss crawled beneath his skin, tugging at his nerves, making him feel twisted up inside. But there was nothing he could do about it now.
Chapter 38
Helena appeared, as promised, at the stroke of midnight.
The others had gathered in Alex’s room, awaiting her arrival, though nobody felt much like talking. Alex was still in a sour mood, and it seemed to have spread among the congregated individuals, though he didn’t feel like telling his friends why he felt so low. It physically pained him, to realize how close he had come to achieving the other part of his plan, only to have it fall away at the very last moment.
They looked up as knuckles rapped against the door.
“Is everyone ready?” asked Helena, popping her head around.
Alex nodded. “Ready as we’re ever likely to be,” he replied glibly as he stood to follow the others out, bringing up the rear.
The school was eerily still as they moved in single file through the hallways, catching glimpses of the glittering stars outside the windows. The torches flickered in their brackets, casting frightening shadows against the walls—wispy creatures that seemed to creep after the would-be escapees, playing out a frieze against the pale stone. More than once, Alex heard one of the others gasp in fright, mistaking a shadowy shape for a real person as they turned a corner or tripped over a band of darkness, splayed out on the flagstones at their feet.
Alex took in as much of the view as he could, knowing they might never return to this place. Regardless of the magic that hung in the air, he couldn’t deny that Stillwater House was a thing of dark beauty. It looked like something torn from the pages of a luxury vacation brochure, where elegant, fashionable ladies in oversized sunglasses sipped espresso and talked rapidly in a foreign language he couldn’t understand.
Even at night, the villa was beautiful. Lamps and delicate strings of hanging lights lit up the courtyards, mirroring the stunning glitter of the cosmos above and shedding a soft glow upon the flowers and statues, giving them an otherworldly aura in the twilight hours. At some point, he figured, somebody must go around turning them all off, because he hadn’t been able to see the lights from the lighthouse—he wondered whose job that was, conjuring up the image of the toady Siren Mave. She seemed to do anything and everything and yet was never anywhere at all. He settled on believing it was her task to put out the lights, as they continued on through the lengthy labyrinth of corridors.
They passed doors and empty hallways, always listening for the sound of footsteps. The only sound Alex could hear was the anxious whisper of their collective breath as they followed Helena, who led the way. In the dim light, her hair seemed to glow ethereally, creating a halo around her head as it swung side to side with the rhythm of her movements. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to have her around, he thought. Everyone seemed to like her, including him, and it would definitely improve Jari’s mood, he mused. Plus, she was incredibly strong, which was definitely an asset for whatever hardship might lie ahead.
If only I could get rid of this doubt, he thought to himself, watching Helena more closely than he realized. It was only when he caught sight of Ellabell watching him that he quickly dropped his gaze, which had been lingering a moment too long, perhaps. Sneaking a glance at Ellabell, he saw a subtle look of dismay on her face, which he desperately wanted to wipe away. He hadn’t been looking at Helena because he was attracted to her, although she was undeniably beautiful, and now he was worried Ellabell might have gotten the wrong impression. Indecision plagued him—if he tried to reassure her he wasn’t looking at Helena, it would no doubt confirm her suspicions. If he left it unmentioned, she’d probably think that anyway.
When he turned to speak to her, deciding to go with reassurance, she had already moved on ahead, whispering companionably with Natalie, who was leaning in to hear better. He wished he could hear what they were saying, as he heard the tinkle of a hushed giggle, echoing through the air toward him.
With his mind so distracted by the whisperings of the two girls, Alex didn’t realize they had entered one of the many parts of the villa he had never seen before. They were in a narrow corridor, leading down beneath the earth. They treaded carefully on the stone steps as they descended, coming out into a long, rubble-strewn corridor, with peeling doors tucked away all along the length of it.
Helena paused, her mouth moving silently as she counted the doors, pointing toward one midway down the hall. She stopped beside it, gesturing for the others to do the same. Alex felt nerves clawing at his insides as he watched the girl reach out for the handle and pull it open with startling force. She stepped over the threshold, and the others moved to go in after her, following suit, but the blood-curdling scream that erupted from the girl’s lungs stopped them dead in their tracks.
Beyond the door, Alypia was waiting with a menacing grin and a team of armed guards.
Helena turned, her golden eyes wide in desperation. “Run!” she cried.
In a mess of confusion, Alex tried to urge his friends toward an exit, only to find that they had all been blocked. Guards had appeared along the length of the corridor, standing ominously in front of the entrances to every hallway. There was no way out.
They had been betrayed.
Alex’s eyes snapped toward Helena, but she looked just as horrified as he was. She ran toward a row of guards, trying to force her way past them. Golden, fierce energy crackled from her palms, but they were ready for her, as several guards at a time sent up shields of superior strength to block her magic. Helena roared, sending spears that thrummed with life directly at their heads, only for the missiles to shatter into a thousand glittering pieces, falling harmlessly to the floor.
The guards moved inward with their gleaming shields, forcing Alex and his friends into the center, where they could not break free. Although they all tried to use their magic, there wasn’t enough room to forge anything potent, the bolts and streams of gold and silvery black getting lost in a mist of confused energies, until nobody could tell what belonged to whom. In the fracas, Alex couldn’t think straight, struggling to get his mind to focus clearly enough to conjure some
thing useful. The surprise had robbed him of his skill, and the guards edged ever closer.
Once they had been pushed back in front of the door, the guards shoved them roughly into the chamber beyond it, pinning their arms behind their backs.
“I didn’t do this!” Helena cried to the others, her eyes glimmering with furious tears as she looked upon her mother with such palpable hatred that the guards standing beside Alypia had to lower their gazes, uncomfortable beneath the ferocity of it. “Please believe me—I didn’t do this!”
Alypia smiled, her voice cold and calculating. “Of course this wasn’t my daughter, though I can see why you might have mistrusted her. You don’t seem to like me very much, so it only seems natural you’d find her deplorable by association.” Her mouth curved into a vicious grin. “No, no. You have been betrayed by someone much closer to home.”
Alex struggled against the guard holding him, and the sight made Alypia chuckle icily, her eyes glittering with malice.
“Oh, you’re going to find this one very hard to stomach, Alex Webber,” she purred. “She only did it for you, Alex—she only came to me, whispering secrets, to save your life. Isn’t that right, Ellabell?”
Alex turned to Ellabell, a look of bewilderment on his face, but Ellabell’s expression showed nothing but rage as she tried to struggle free of her guard, wanting to lash out at Alypia. There was no shame, no guilt, just pure fury from the fiery, bespectacled girl as their eyes met.
“Liar! If you’re going to tell tales, at least make them believable!” Ellabell smirked, her eyes burning brightly. “Alypia threatened to kill you if I didn’t feed her little tidbits about your powers and secrets,” she explained, turning from Alex back to Alypia, “but I knew it was a load of garbage! I would never betray him like that. You needed him too much! I knew you’d never lay a finger on him. It was all smoke and mirrors, and I’m not stupid enough to fall for a stupid trick like that. At least do your research if you’re going to try and blackmail a person.”
Jari looked at her with understanding, and Alex realized they must have been offered the same thing. Though Ellabell had taken the offer, it was clear she hadn’t complied with what Alypia wanted.
“Yeah—you want to turn Alex against her. That’s all this is!” yelled Jari. “None of us would betray him or anyone like this. You can try and pin it on any one of us, and we’ll tell you the same thing—piss off!” He grinned triumphantly.
Ellabell leveled her gaze at Alex, but he didn’t need any further assurance. He could see the truth in her strength as she defied Alypia’s words, her face showing she would not be broken as she turned back toward Alypia, her mouth set in a grim line.
Alex looked slowly over his shoulder, seeing something strange out of the corner of his eye. Skulking behind the intimidating group of guards, a trail of frayed gray robes flashed between the gaps in the guards’ bodies. Alex caught the glint of smug satisfaction in the black, dead eyes of the ghostly Renmark as his foul face appeared over the shoulders of the oblivious Stillwater soldiers. It was not Ellabell, or Helena, or Natalie, or Aamir, or Jari.
Renmark was the mole.
Alex realized he must have missed the phantom’s presence, with Renmark managing to hide away, unseen, overhearing all of their conversations and watching their movements, witnessing everything and scurrying back to impart his knowledge to Alypia. At least that answered Alex’s question about whether or not Alypia could see Finder-like creatures. It turned out she could not only see them, but she could use them for her own dastardly purposes.
And this Finder seemed uniquely designed to find Alex.
As understanding dawned on him, he found himself thinking back to the moments, so often recently, when he had felt his skin crawling with the heat of unseen eyes on him, prickling the hairs on his arms and shivering up the back of his neck. He thought back to the ransacked cottage, when he had simply shrugged the feeling off as a guard having seen him and passed on information. Having forgotten about it, he had not remembered the peculiar sensation it had made him feel, of how it didn’t add up. He realized now that it must have been Renmark, in his phantom state, having arrived at Stillwater already—before Alex first saw him with the group from Spellshadow. Perhaps he had tipped off the guards to search the place. It could have been Renmark’s first offering of inside information, gifted to Alypia, to make himself valuable to her.
Alex knew then that he had not been cautious enough. He had allowed himself to feel invincible, and that was the most dangerous, vulnerable place to be. Perhaps, Alex thought, in addition to being able to see him, Renmark had added skills to those of the previous Finder, Malachi Grey—something that made Renmark less visible to Alex. Or perhaps Alex just hadn’t been looking hard enough.
All Alex knew was that he wanted to apologize to Helena with everything he had, for not trusting her. She had not been involved, that much was evident now. This affected her as much as any of them, if not more so; her chance to escape had been stolen too, by the ghostly espionage of Renmark.
Alypia had turned her attention to her daughter, the disappointment evident in her noble eyes as she glowered in the girl’s direction.
“Take them away!” commanded Alypia.
“No! This was my fault—they had nothing to do with this!” pleaded Helena, her eyes gleaming with fear.
“Silence!” Alypia roared, her voice shaking the ground. “You have done quite enough.”
Nobody manhandled Helena as the guards stepped forward to take the others away, sharing one prisoner between two guards to prevent them from wriggling free. It was evident that Alypia would be having private words with her daughter, away from the prying eyes of the guards and the would-be escapees. There would be no prison cell for the princess, though Alex knew he’d much prefer one to the wrath Helena was likely to face.
Once they had been dragged back through the belly of the school, Alex was thrown into a dingy, bleak cell, with Ellabell thrown in straight after. For a long while, she was very quiet, huddled against the far wall. But she wore a look of grim determination, even though Alex wasn’t sure there was much hope left for them. He knew the terms of the offer he’d agreed to, and he was pretty sure attempted escape was a big breach in those provisos, if not the biggest breach they could have achieved.
He sat beside Ellabell, placing his arm around her as she leaned into the hollow of his shoulder. Looking up into his eyes, she smiled sadly.
“You know I’d never do anything like that, right?” she whispered, her face so close to his.
He nodded, resting his cheek against the top of her head. “Of course,” he said softly, mumbling into her hair.
“What do we do now?” she asked, wrapping her arm around Alex’s waist as she held him tighter.
“I don’t know,” he breathed, trying to tamp down the hopeless feeling that was threatening to swallow up his voice. “What did you tell Alypia?” he asked, curious.
She smiled against his shoulder. “I just told her useless information whenever I was called in—Alex prefers milk in his tea, instead of lemon. Alex likes to eat his cereal soggy. Alex doesn’t like bell peppers. It was mostly food related."
He chuckled, holding her tightly. “Very observant.”
“No, it’s just weird,” she giggled.
Tentatively, he placed the lightest of kisses on the top of her forehead, realizing that if this was the end of the road, he wanted her to at least have some inclination as to his feelings. He felt her smile again, against his t-shirt.
Anger trembled through him as he thought of everything the school, the Head, the Headmistress, Malachi Grey, Renmark, and all those magical forces had taken from him. Soon, they would take Ellabell and his friends too, and with them any hope he had left of returning home to his mother and a normal, teenage existence.
Even as a ghost, Renmark had managed to crush them.
Chapter 39
Alex wasn’t sure of the time or the day when the guards came for him.
r /> Ellabell was asleep in his arms when they threw open the cell door and demanded he follow them. Lifting his finger sharply to his lips, Alex was amused to see the guards stop mid-sentence, putting on a silent display of charades as he gently extricated himself from Ellabell’s arms and lay her carefully down on the floor. She stirred, but did not wake, much to Alex’s bittersweet contentment. It would be easier this way.
He followed them dutifully, keeping his head down and his thoughts sharp as he traipsed through now-familiar paths and hallways to the underbelly of the villa. To his surprise, he realized the guards weren’t taking him to the glass-ceilinged office, but toward the gloomier, more desolate part of the school. It was strange to admit, but he felt a pang of disappointment; he would have liked to have seen that room again, with the heady scent of citrus and flowers and the warmth of it enveloping like a comforting embrace. Funnily enough, he found he also had a desire to see the lake one last time, to say a goodbye of sorts to the ethereal specters beneath the water, knowing he would soon be joining them. He wondered morbidly if that was where Alypia would put him, once she had used him for whatever grim purpose she had in mind. Part of him hoped so.
Turning past an instantly recognizable corner, he understood he was being taken to the windowless study, with the grisly antechamber next door. Pausing beside it, one of the guards pushed open the door and gestured for Alex to step inside. There was no pushing, no shoving, just a civilized walk into the room.
Alypia sat in her chair behind the desk, impatiently tapping her long fingers against the sleek surface. The way she was sitting looked almost constructed, her body draped languorously, as if she had spent a long while trying to look as dramatic as possible. The idea made Alex smirk, causing a flash of irritation to spark across Alypia’s eyes as she saw the insolent look, which only served to widen his discourteous smile. For a moment, the mask slipped, as Alex saw Alypia’s beauty turn ugly, revealing the true, twisted face beneath. It was as Alex had suspected all along: her beauty hid a rotten core.