Page 25 of Bonds of Magic (Vesperwood Academy: Incubus #3)

Ash laughed, but it was short and brittle. He really was on edge. “Like I’d let you have all the fun. Come here.” He motioned me closer, then took my hand. “Hold still and let me work.”

He took Felix’s hand too, then closed his eyes and began muttering in a language I couldn’t decipher.

Immediately, Ash and Felix began to change shape.

Ash went through a sped-up growth spurt, gaining eight inches in height, his hair becoming a dark, curly brown and lengthening, his body turning into Valeria’s before my eyes.

Felix’s shoulders broadened, his hair and skin growing much paler as he shifted into Talmadge Hastings, Valeria’s friend.

“Holy shit,” I whispered. “I knew you could change some things about us, but I never expected…” I trailed off. Ash’s earlier demonstration of his powers hadn’t gone this far.

“You said you wanted me to glamor you,” Ash-as-Valeria said with a shrug. His voice was higher and more mellifluous than normal. “And if you think we look different, you should see yourself.”

I looked down and gasped. I’d been so busy paying attention to my friends’ transformations that I’d completely missed my own. My feet looked two sizes smaller than they normally did, and I was wearing a plaid skirt over wool tights—clothing I definitely didn’t own.

It was the strangest thing. I could see the outward charges, but I didn’t feel any different. Judging from the size of my feet and the length of my legs, I looked shorter, but I didn’t feel like I’d shrunk at all.

“Who did you turn me into?” I asked—and almost jumped at the sound of my voice. It wasn’t mine anymore. It was much higher and softer.

“Evelyn, Valeria’s other Hexer friend.” Ash looked between me and Felix.

“I’m going to let go of your hands now, but you guys have to stay close to me.

Within five feet, or the glamor will start to flicker.

And let me do the talking if we run into anyone.

Using someone else’s voice takes a minute to get used to. ”

I nodded. These changes were deeply disconcerting, and I didn’t trust myself not to give us away. When Felix nodded too, Ash set off down the hall, the two of us trailing behind him like ducklings after their mother.

The hall twisted and turned at various places, crossing with other corridors and passing many doors, all closed and forbidding looking.

I hadn’t seen a window once since we’d entered the haven, and I wondered how the Hunters felt, having to live in all this oppressive darkness.

I was about to ask about that when we turned another corner and pulled up short.

A student I’d never seen before was standing in the middle of the hall, in front of another ornately carved wooden door with the crossed axe and arrow of Hunt.

He was tall, with the broadest shoulders I’d ever seen, and would probably have looked good in a Superman costume.

He had the barrel chest and dark hair and everything.

We all stared at each other for a moment before Ash said, “They’re with me.”

He jerked his thumb towards Felix and me. There was a husky note to his voice. Was that how Valeria normally sounded? I had no idea. But the guard at the door frowned.

“Is there a problem?” Ash asked.

Superman looked confused. “You just went in ten minutes ago. Nobody’s left since then. How did you end up back out here?”

“Are you really going to make me explain it to you?” Ash’s tone was combative and dismissive at the same time.

I had no idea if that was how Valeria usually talked, but it clearly made Superman feel like an idiot.

“Uh—no, no, it’s fine.” Two spots of red bloomed on his cheeks. “But I thought the meeting was Hunters only.”

“You thought wrong.”

Superman swallowed. “But you said this morning that—”

“Look, I appreciate what you’re doing,” Ash said. “It’s important to be careful. But some things are on a need-to-know basis. It’s safer for you that way.”

He sounded so condescending, but also kind. Whether or not it was a good imitation of Valeria, it was freakishly close to how Dean Mansur sounded when he talked to me. I wondered if Ash had been on the receiving end of his lectures as well.

“Right.” Superman shook his head and smiled ingratiatingly. “Sure. Yeah. Go on in.”

He pushed the door open to let us pass, then closed it behind us. The room we stood in was tiny, no more than eight by eight square feet. More a vestibule than a room proper, since there was another heavily carved wooden door on the far side. God, this place was like a labyrinth.

“Well, that wasn’t so bad,” Ash said brightly.

Felix shook his head. “I don’t like this. We have no idea what this meeting is about, but clearly it’s important enough that they’ve posted a guard on the door. Whether or not this is where Sean and Tim went, there’s a huge chance of us getting exposed if we…”

But I’d stopped listening again, because I could hear sounds coming from behind the other door. They weren’t loud, but as I moved closer, I could catch some of what was being said.

“There’s no way the official explanation is true,” a woman on the other side of the second door said. Was that Valeria? The real one? She sounded heated. “I can’t believe they expect us to believe that.”

I turned back to Ash and Felix, but they seemed to be arguing with each other instead of listening. I knew Felix was right about the danger, but I wanted to know what this was all about.

“He’s obviously lying,” said another voice, male this time. “They’re clearly covering something up.”

Covering what up, I wondered. It was hard to tell, because the next minute was filled with various people talking loudly, and someone repeatedly calling for order. Just how many people were there on the other side of that door?

When the crowd finally quieted down, the next person to take the floor was a softer speaker. I had to step closer to the door to hear them.

“He doesn’t want us to ask any questions,” the voice said. I thought it belonged to a woman. “But he was there . He probably started concocting the story the minute Erika died. We have to find some way to force him to tell the truth.”

Erika . Fuck. The official story they were talking about was the one the dean had put out about her accident. And it sounded like the majority of Hunt didn’t believe a word of it.

“So we force it out of him,” said a new voice.

My stomach dropped. That voice belonged to Sean. Which meant we’d found where he and Tim had disappeared to. But he wasn’t officially a member of Hunt yet. Why would anyone listen to him? And how the hell did he think they could force the truth out of the dean?

“No,” said the first woman. Her voice dropped lower, and I leaned in even farther. “No force unless we have to. That’s a last resort.”

“He knows the truth about Erika,” said the earlier male voice. “How can you be so calm?”

“You think I’m calm?” hissed the woman. “You think I’m calm about my sister’s death?”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Oh, I think that’s exactly what you meant,” Valeria said.

It had to be her. “Because that’s always your answer, isn’t it?

Fists first, questions later. But until your little sister is murdered, Cal, I’m the one in charge of this investigation.

And I say we’re going to try to avoid rushing into violence. There are subtler methods we can use.”

Her voice dropped even lower, and I pressed myself up against the door—then jumped back with a yelp of pain. I felt like I’d been electrocuted. Bolts of lightning shot out from the door, and thunder filled the room. One of the bolts caught me in the stomach, and I yelled again at the burn of it.

Ash’s head whipped around. “What the—”

“Run!” I gasped. “Now!”

I lurched across the room and threw Superman’s door open. He stumbled backwards as it slammed into him, but I didn’t have time to feel bad. I was much more concerned with the door behind us, and who might be coming through it. I was surprised it hadn’t opened yet.

“Go, go!” I shouted at Felix and Ash, waving for them to come through after me. “We need to go now!”

They’d just run past me when the other door burst open, but I didn’t stop to see who was coming after us. I turned and ran. My stomach burned where the lightning bolt had seared it, but I couldn’t worry about that now.

“Was that Evelyn?” shouted a voice behind me. “How did she get in? Val, you said this was off-limits except for Hunters.”

Confusion to my enemies , I thought, still running after Ash and Felix. Anything that slowed them down was good. I wanted to make it out of Hunt alive.

Luckily, Ash seemed to have kept track of all the twists and turns we’d taken, because we made it back to the entry room with the chandelier of bones. I could hear footsteps pounding behind us and lunged for the door. My entire body felt like it was on fire.

Ash and Felix darted through the door, and I swung it shut behind me, following them out into the corridor we’d been in earlier. I thought they were headed for the refectory, and I was so focused on getting away that I didn’t notice they’d stopped until Felix snagged my arm and pulled me back.

“What are you—” I asked, but Felix cut me off with a sharp, “Shhh.”

He tugged me and Ash into the corner where the hall made a left for the refectory. What the hell was he doing? Didn’t he realize we needed to keep moving?

I turned to ask him exactly that—and the light around us abruptly disappeared, plunging our corner of the hallway into pitch black. I couldn’t see a thing—not Felix, not Ash, and definitely not the door to Hunt Haven at the other end of the hall.

But I could hear it open, and hear the Hunters who poured through it a moment later. My heart pounded as their footsteps came down the hall and turned the corner to the refectory. But no one seemed to notice the giant shadow they were running past.

Finally, I heard Valeria’s voice. “Whoever they were, they must have gone upstairs. Let’s spread out and keep looking.”

Footsteps flowed through the corridor once again, then disappeared up the stairs to the main level of the manor. My heart was still beating fast, and my stomach hurt more than ever. I don’t even think I breathed until Felix said, “Okay, they’re gone,” and I could suddenly see again.

The hallway was empty except for us—and we looked like ourselves again. I didn’t know if Ash had stopped the glamor intentionally, or if it had broken in our mad dash out of Hunt, but it felt good to be back in my own skin.

“Come on,” Felix said, heading towards the refectory. “We should get away from here.”

“But wait, what was that?” I asked, following after him and Ash. “What did you do?”

“Nephilim have power over light and darkness,” he said. “I showed you that before, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, in my room, but I still don’t understand how it worked. Why didn’t the Hunters come and investigate the huge black cloud that was suddenly inhabiting this corner of the hallway? And how come you were sure the hallway was empty just now? I couldn’t see anything in that blackness.”

“Because the magic doesn’t affect me the same way it does you,” Felix said as we stopped in front of the doors to the refectory.

“And the shadow encouraged them to look away. It’s hard to see when you’re inside it, but from the outside, shadow and light can manipulate your thinking a bit.

” He made a face. “To be honest, we’re lucky that manipulation didn’t count as harm.

I had to take an oath that I wouldn’t use my powers against anyone at Vesperwood when I was accepted. ”

“Jesus, we could have been sitting ducks down there,” Ash grumbled.

“But we weren’t. That’s what counts.”

Ash looked at him, disgusted. “First Cory, now you. I’m supposed to be the reckless one, you guys. You’re stealing my whole thing.”

“Well, you’re being very reckless by continuing to have this conversation in a spot we shouldn’t be standing in,” Felix said, heading up the broad stairs that led to the main level. “We really ought to split up now and head back to our rooms.”

“What?” Ash squawked. “I still don’t even know what happened back there. Where did that lightning come from? And Cory, what did you hear on the other side of that—”

He broke off as a group of juniors passed in front of us, and Felix shot him a warning look.

“Like I said, it’s safest if we split up. We can talk about it more tomorrow, but right now, all of Hunt is looking for a group of three students who broke into their haven. Let’s not give them any reason to think it was us.”

Felix had a point, which was how I found myself back in my room, examining the skin of my abdomen in the mirror on the back of the door.

The lightning bolt had burnt a hole through my sweater, and my skin was covered in angry red blisters.

It still hurt, but I didn’t want to risk a trip to the bathroom to rinse it with cold water.

Felix was right. We couldn’t afford to look out of the ordinary right now.

I grimaced, replaying our flight from Hunt Haven in my mind. I wished I had a knife or a sword or something. Sure, it wouldn’t have helped against lightning bolts, but I was sick of always running away. I didn’t like feeling like a coward.

For now, though, all I wanted to do was sleep. The pain of the burn was sapping whatever energy I had left after our escape. Gingerly, I sat on the edge of my bed and pulled my sweater off so the fabric wouldn’t touch my skin anymore. Then I lay back against my pillow.

I would just lie here and rest my eyes for a minute. Then I’d get up and go to the bathroom, after things had calmed down a bit. Clean the burn, find a way to bandage it. Maybe tomorrow I could concoct a story about an accident and go see Cinda. But for now, I’d close my eyes and…

A loud pounding on my door woke me up with a start, and I sat bolt upright in bed. I immediately pressed a hand to my stomach. The sudden movement hurt my skin. I hadn’t even realized I’d fallen asleep.

Who would be banging on my door? Shit, could it be Valeria and her Hunter friends? What if they’d somehow figured out it was us?

“Who is it?” I called, forcing myself to stand.

I braced for the door to slam inwards, but it didn’t. Instead, Noah’s voice sounded from the other side.

“It’s me. Come on, you’ve got a lesson.”