Ritual of Magic (Academy of the Damned Book 2) Read online

  “It’s how I feel. I think it might be time for me and Mama to go our separate ways.”

  Justin goes quiet. I probably sound unreasonable, but he can’t possibly know the extent of what Mama put me through. And with the whole witch aspect that I can’t share… Well, I suppose I’m just wondering if I need to forget about my mundane life, my mundane family, and focus on building a life with my own people.

  “I do family counseling too,” he says finally, pushing away from the door and stepping one foot into his office. “I know you aren’t ready for that. But if you change your mind and want a chance at a future with your mom in it, let me know.”

  I nod. “I will,” I say, even though right now I am pretty sure that’s never going to happen.

  I slip out of the clinic and rush to Mama’s car, deftly avoiding the activity room so Mama doesn’t know I was here.

  Twenty minutes later, I’m back in my room in La Voisin. Good thing Zoey unlocked the mirror so I could travel through it again.

  I grab my books and head to class. Ivy, Krista, and Jaxon are already there, and I take a seat next to them. We spend a few minutes chatting, getting caught up. Before I know it, it’s been ten minutes.

  I look at the clock on the wall. “Mr. Stewart is late.”

  “Hmm, weird,” Jaxon says. “Oh well. I’ll give him another five minutes before bugging out to go for a run around the track.”

  “That sounds like a good idea,” Krista says. “I could go for a nice run. What about you guys?”

  “Ugh.” I slouch in my chair. “I’d rather take a nap than go for a run.”

  “Agreed,” Ivy says. “But you two have fun sweating. Eww.”

  Jaxon messes with his watch, setting the timer for five minutes.

  “Is that a school rule or something?” I ask. “We can leave if teachers are late?”

  “No idea,” Jaxon says as a couple of other students slip out of the room. “Guess we could go now.”

  “I don’t know.” I fan the pages of my textbook. “Mr. Stewart seems the type to blow his top if we aren’t here when he does show up.”

  We wait a few more minutes. Once Jaxon’s watch beeps, though, everyone who has waited seems to take that as the official teacher tardy bell. and we all stand to leave. When we exit the classroom, we all go our separate ways, and mine just happens to take me past Mr. Stewart’s office.

  The door is cracked open, and mumbling come from inside. I look around, but everyone else is already gone. I turn back to the door. The indiscernible mutterings continue.

  I focus my listening. Air witches can pick up on sound waves in the air better than most people. But strain as I might, I still can’t quite make the words out. All I know for sure is that Mr. Stewart is in his office. But if he’s in there, why didn’t he hold class? I’ve never known him to skip a class before.

  I finally shake my head and knock on the door like a normal person instead of trying to listen through it like a creep. “Mr. Stewart?”

  A chair scrapes on the floor, and heavy footsteps thud closer. Mr. Stewart cracks the door open, the perpetual frown on his face.

  “What do ye need?” he asks in his Scottish brogue.

  “Umm...you missed class? I just wanted to let you know everyone took off. Sorry.”

  “What?” he asks as he looks at his watch. “Well, they should have waited. That’ll be a zero fer everyone today. Thanks for letting me know.”

  He moves to shut the door, but I put my hand out to stop it.

  “Well, to be fair, we waited fifteen minutes. Is everything all right?”

  “No,” he says with surprising candor. “But I suppose ye know that more than most.”

  I take a step back, not sure I want to talk about this with him. At one point, I had been sure that he killed my last roommate, Giselle. I had caught him burning her notebook with the strange writing. Once again, I have a missing roommate and am confronting Mr. Stewart.

  “Sorry to bother you,” I say, taking another step back, about to turn and walk away.

  “Wait.” He sighs and removes his glasses. “I know yer worried about wee Zoey. But it is best if ye just put her out of yer mind.”

  “How can you say that?” I throw my hands out to the sides, anger flashing through me in an instant. “She’s missing. She’s a child. We should be doing everything to find her.”

  “I’d like to put yer mind at ease, lass,” he says. “But I’m afraid there’s naught I can say that’ll do that. Just forget her and move on.”

  “That’s horrible!” I point my finger at him. “You should be ashamed! I’ll never give up.”

  “Ye will,” he says, looking at me sternly. “If ye don’t, it will go badly for ye, I can promise ye that.”

  “Are you threatening me?” I’m stunned by the strength in my words. I’m not usually one to challenge authority, but when it comes to Zoey, I can’t help but feel a protective tiger rear up in me.

  Mr. Stweart laughs. “Never. Ye’ve got enough of yer own secrets, lass. I can’t help but wonder what yer really up to.”

  “I’m not up to anything.” I narrow my eyes at the man. “I just want to find Zoey.”

  “She’s gone.” He lumbers away from the open door and takes a seat back at his desk. “It’s a damn shame, but there’s no point in carrying on about it.”

  “If you know what happened to Zoey, why don’t you tell me?” I ask. “Why don’t you tell Ms. Brewster? How can you let someone get away with taking her? Possibly hurting her?”

  “Ye dinnae know what yer talking about,” he says. “What you are getting into. I ken ye won’t believe me, but I’m trying to help ye. Protect ye. The lot of ye.”

  “Am I going to have to call the police?” I ask, stomping my foot. “If you know something, you should admit it! We have to find her!”

  “Yer as stubborn as a mule,” he says, ignoring me and going back to his what he’d been reading when I came in.

  I want to scream. To rant and rave. To make threats against him. Against La Voisin.

  But I don’t. I control myself and shut the door. If I make an enemy out of Duncan Stewart, I’ll never learn the truth. I’ll just have to wait and watch.

  Eventually, he will slip up. And when he does, I’ll be there to catch him.

  Chapter 10

  Outside my bedroom window, the lawn below is lush and green, the trees tall and strong. The hedgerow flows along the border. From here, it looks like a well-pruned rosebush. The brambles are so tight you can’t see through, but it is perfectly square.

  Strangely, I’ve never seen a groundskeeper. Does Ms. Keen—Jaxon’s mom and the resident earth witch mentor—keep the lawn green and the bushes trimmed? It’s hard to believe there are vicious beasts living inside the hedgerow patrolling the border. I shudder at the very thought.

  Thinking back to the few times I’ve been inside the brambles, I remember that there are a variety of statues within the hedgerow. What are they doing there? Why would anybody put statues inside the brambles? Or were they already there and the brambles grew up around them?

  Dotted throughout the school lawn are more statues. They seem haphazardly positioned, as though there is no order to their placement. I pull out my phone and take a picture of the lawn from my vantage point.

  Whatever Giselle was working on, it had to do with the statues. Perhaps there’s some pattern or some logic to their placement that I don’t understand. Some hidden meaning right in front of me.

  As I turn to leave the room, my eyes fall on Zoey’s bed, specifically on a purple teddy bear. Even though she has been gone for more than a week, all of her stuff is still here. I don’t know what to think about that. If Ms. Brewster thinks there’s still a chance Zoey might return, it makes sense to leave her belongings alone. But am I holding on to false hope? Is there something morbid about leaving all of Zoey’s things here?

  I shake my head, pick up the teddy bear, and gasp as a massive pain in my head grips me, like someone
squeezing my brain. I fall to my knees as the room starts to spin. My vision goes dark except for flashes of light like lightning strikes.

  Then I hear the screaming.

  “No!” Zoey says. “Please! Leave me alone! Help!”

  My heart races as Zoey’s fear courses through me. I look up and see a dark presence, like a human made of shadow, approach me, a clawed hand outstretched. The eyes glow a bright red. I try to scoot away from the creature, but there is nowhere to go.

  I clutch my head with both hands and fall to my side.

  The room stops spinning, and everything returns to normal. The pain, the voices, the creature—it’s all gone. Sitting up, I realize I dropped the bear. I reach toward it to place it back on the bed, but before I even touch it, I sense the darkness, the fear, reaching for me.

  Was Zoey holding the bear when she was taken? It’s as if the terror she felt in that moment imprinted on the bear. I gently nudge it under the bed, afraid to touch it again.

  Of course, according to La Voisin’s teachings, it would be impossible for me to have a vision of what happened to Zoey. That would be a form of psychic energy, and witches can’t harness that. Or we aren’t supposed to harness it. I still haven’t gotten a straight answer from anyone regarding that. It seems to be a subject people would rather avoid altogether.

  But I know something terrible happened here, and I need to find out what it was. The vision with the bear was too erratic, too frightening. I need more control over what I see.

  What was it Ms. Brewster said about listening to my powers? To find them deep inside of me?

  I close my eyes and take a deep breath, grounding myself. Show me what happened here, I say in my mind as though I am talking to my powers. I empty my thoughts, slow my heart rate. I concentrate on the task I want to accomplish.

  I want to see. Show me.

  The room darkens again, but not in a painful, frightening way like before. It’s night. The night Zoey was taken. I can’t see anything, but I know I’m not alone.

  “Who’s there?” I ask, but it’s not my voice. It’s Zoey’s. I’m Zoey. I’m in bed, the teddy bear clutched in my arm.

  The door to the room creaks as it opens. I strain to see who is entering the room, but I can’t see anything. It’s pitch black. It shouldn’t be like that. There is a streetlamp nearby that always offers at least a little light. And there should be light from the hallway if the door is open. So why is it so dark?

  I hear a sparking noise, and then footsteps. I’m enveloped in glowing purple tendrils, and I can feel the energy pouring off of them. It’s like...pure magic. Whoever is here is an extremely powerful witch. They must be using their powers to dampen the light so I can’t see.

  The tendrils tighten around me. “No!” I say. “Please! Leave me alone! Help!”

  The presence advances, the same shadow monster I saw before. And once again, I’m terrified. Petrified. The creature raises a hand, its claws outstretched.

  I gasp, the fear too much for me to handle. I open my eyes, and I’m back in my room, back to myself, daylight streaming in.

  “What was that?” I ask out loud.

  I lean against my desk, my heart racing. I suppose all I learned is that Zoey was definitely taken by a magical person. Not a mundane or a mortal. And not just any magical person, but someone with phenomenal powers. If only I was any closer to finding out who that person is. What if the person comes back? What if he—or she—comes for me? Am I in danger?

  I shake myself, trying to rid the last tugs of fear away. No. The magical being took Zoey because she was small. Helpless. A child. Whoever that person is, they’re a coward. They won’t come for me.

  “Look out!” someone shouts, and there is a crashing sound from the yard below.

  I turn and look out the window to see that one of the guys has run into a statue and is now lying on the ground. A group gathers around him. I grab my phone, stuffing it into my pocket, and head down to see what happened.

  When I arrive, I see the guy is back on his feet, but he’s rubbing his chest. I remember him from my history class. Brian, I think.

  “You’re lucky you didn’t get run through,” someone says.

  “Man, wouldn’t that be my luck? Impaled by statue?” Brian asks with a laugh.

  “One that is standing completely still, too,” another guy says, and a few more people break out into laughter.

  I look at the statue and see that it is standing with its hand outstretched, as though it is—or was—pointing toward the hedge. The finger that should be there is now gone; it must have broken off when Brian ran into it.

  “Found it!” someone else says, holding up the missing stone digit triumphantly.

  “Hand it here,” Brian says. “I’m taking that as a trophy.”

  “Wait,” I say. “We should give it to Ms. Brewster. Maybe the statue can be repaired.”

  “Don’t you dare tell Ms. Brewster,” Brian says. “She’ll be pissed. If we don’t say anything, she probably won’t even notice.”

  I grimace but say nothing else as everyone takes Brian’s side. I don’t see what the big deal is. Yeah, he was careless, but it was an accident. And it’s wrong to leave the statue damaged. But in many ways, I still feel like an outlier at La Voisin, so I keep my opinions to myself.

  Brian takes the finger and tosses it into the air before catching it and stuffing it into his pocket. Then he motions with his head that it’s time for all of them to leave. I have a feeling he’s not including me.

  When they all leave, I inspect the statue again.

  “I’m sorry you lost your finger,” I mumble to her.

  I look up at her face, and I can’t help but notice that her features seem tight. Strained. As though she is in pain. I look back at her finger and gasp as I see something dark pool and then drip from her damaged hand.

  I take a step back. It can’t be possible that the statue is...bleeding. But that’s exactly what it looks like. Blood that has darkened after being exposed to the air for a long time. But just to be sure, I pull a napkin from my pocket and dab it to the liquid. Sure enough, when I look at the spot on the napkin, it’s red.

  I grab my phone and take a picture of the damage and the bloody liquid. I then take a picture of her face. After a moment, the “bleeding” stops.

  “That was too weird,” I say as I flip back through my images, looking at the bloody stump for a moment.

  There’s something strange going on with the statues. I come across the picture of the man in the grotto and remember my plan to take more pictures to compare over time to see if he moves. I need to follow up on that.

  As I cross the lawn toward the grotto, I take pictures of all the statues I pass along the way. I try to stand in a place that will be easy for me to remember so that when I take a picture of the statue again, I’ll have the same angle. I take pictures of each statue, including their nameplates if they have one. Many of them don’t, which again is so weird.

  The statues are so lifelike, like people frozen in stone. The thought makes a shiver run down my back. When I was at the Peabody Essex Museum the other day with Ivy and Krista, I didn’t stop to look at the statutes, but I remember seeing some from a distance. None of them were as well detailed as the statues here at the school.

  It must’ve taken somebody countless hours to carve each one, and there are dozens of statues. I can’t even count them all because I could never find them all. There are statues on the lawn that I can see, but I have no idea how many are in the bramble. I would never go in there alone to try to find out. One encounter with the hedge beasts was more than enough for me. I don’t care what Jaxon says; I don’t trust those creatures.

  Then there’s the statue in the grotto. I don’t think anybody but me knows that one is even there. I’ve never seen any evidence of another person visiting the grotto. There are probably many nooks and crannies around the school campus I don’t know about. There could be statues in those hidden places as well.


  I don’t understand how the statues could be so important and yet not seem to matter at all. There’s hardly any information about them. Nobody seems to know who made them or why. Yet the other kids seem worried about getting in trouble for accidentally damaging one.

  Part of me misses Ms. Boucher. She was a competent history teacher. And even if she didn’t know the answer to something, she would encourage me to find it. I wanted to focus on Native American magical traditions, but the more time I spend with the statues, the more I want to know about them as well. Not just my statue man in the grotto, but all of them.

  I photograph as many statues as I can, taking photos from various angles. I photograph their full lengths, and then I zoom in on their faces. None of them look happy. They seem scared, confused, lost. All seem to be in a sense of motion, as though they are running away from something.

  Or someone?

  Almost all of them have their backs to the main La Voisin house. Some are looking back, but they are all heading toward the hedgerow.

  I shudder again. Did they know the beasts were there? What did they think would happen if they made it to the other side?

  A story starts to form in my mind about the statues, about what happened the night they turned to stone. It’s a Gothic novel in the making. I’ll have to write it down. Maybe it will be a bestseller.

  When I finally make it to the grotto, I freeze. I can see a piece of paper on the ground. I sigh as I stare at it. This is not the first note I have found here. I’ve lost track of how many I have found. I step into the grotto and look up at the statue.

  “Why can’t you just tell me whatever it is you want me to know?” I know it seems crazy. Impossible. There is no way the statue is trying to communicate with me. But at the same time, there is no other explanation. There’s no sign that any other person has ever been here, yet I keep finding strange messages. I reach down and pick up the paper.

  Help me, the paper says

  I shudder, my hands shaking. Before now, the statue seemed to have been sending me warnings or helpful messages. Things to help me puzzle out whatever I was working on. This is the first time the statue has asked me for help. But what does it want? What can I do?