Page 21

CHAPTER 21

“They’re containment bubbles,” the guard said incredulously. “No power goes in, no power comes out.”

“Well, that’s a big help.” I sighed. “I can’t feel for Aiden’s energy, I can barely remember what happened... How am I supposed to figure out which one is which?”

Professor Reynolds returned from his walk around the foyer. All the fires were out and he seemed much happier. “Wouldn’t it be nice if you were a witch who could re-watch your memories? Too bad you aren’t.”

I chuckled. “Point taken. Do I have the time?” I asked the guard.

“I’m being paid. Take all the time you need.”

I took a deep breath. “I don’t want to make a mistake. I’m going to do this properly.” I hesitated. “Are you sure you can’t release one of them so I can watch his memories instead?”

The guard shook his head. “One of the things that makes this shapeshifter so dangerous is that if he shifts into a person, he becomes that person, right down to their memories.”

I blanched. “So he would have the memories of this fight from both his own and Aiden’s perspectives?”

“Precisely.”

“How do you stop him from shifting into people?”

“His cuffs are power dampening.”

“But we saw him, back before school started. He shifted to look like his guard.”

“Entirely?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Did he do an entire shift, down to the freckles on the skin?”

I shrugged. “I don’t think so. I think it was just the face.”

“The cuffs prevent a full shift. He has to perform a full shift in order to get the memories, too.”

“How does he learn so much about a person in order to get the full shift?” I asked anxiously. “That seems like a lot.”

“He has to get to know the person very well indeed.”

“But...” I frowned. “Are you sure he’s fully shifted into Aiden? There’s no way he could know everything about him!”

“He must be. He’s casting demon shifter spells. Look at him. He wouldn’t be able to maintain that form if he hadn’t managed a full shift.” The guard gestured at the bubbles.

So he would have two cocks then .

I flushed. “Hang on, all his memories?” I hissed.

The guard winced. “Yeah.”

“That’s sick.”

“There’s a lot of reasons we locked him up.”

I tried to banish the uncomfortable feeling of the shifter knowing what I looked like when I was intimate with Aiden, with mixed results.

“I need to sit down,” I muttered.

“Allow me,” Professor Reynolds said excitedly. He took a pen from his pocket and transfigured it into a chair.

When I raised my eyebrows at him, he grinned. “I can do magic again, and it’s such a relief!”

“I can’t imagine not being able to access my magic,” I said, sitting in it. “I’m sorry you had to experience that, and I look forward to hearing the full story after I figure out which one is Aiden.”

“I will tell you everything,” the professor promised.

I breathed in and out slowly, trying to stay calm. So much information had just been thrown at me that it was difficult at first, but eventually, I sank into my mind palace.

I had been in a few others’ brains here at school, hunting for suppressed memories. Everyone was different. There had been a girl who had memory stones at the bottom of a lake. My favorite had been Clarissa’s, which had been a forest, with each tree representing a memory.

Mine was a library.

I had gotten the idea from the school’s librarian, Mr. Brecken, the previous year, when he’d shown me how to watch a book replay its contents.

My library, on the outside, looked like Blackthorn Academy. On the inside, nearly every available space was filled with books.

Each day was an individual book, and every night, I could come into the library and organize my thoughts; copying spells, potions, and events into separate books for each. I had books on each of my friends, too, with conversations we’d had within their pages.

I hadn’t organized my thoughts in a while, though. Not since the beginning of the school year. I’d been so caught up with the Magical Olympics and taking care of a baby that I’d fallen asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

I didn’t have to go far for the recent events. I knew exactly where to look, and opened the book I chose on the podium that appeared beside me. I started at the end of the book, flipping back a few pages to when I was at the top of the stairs, and the description within the book came to life above the pages.

I watched the fight again, but it was even more difficult in miniature.

“I’m going to try something else,” I murmured out loud.

“You’re doing just fine.” Professor Reynolds’s voice filtered into my subconscious.

It was nice to have his confidence bolstering me.

“I’m going to get my memory to recreate the scene for me,” I said, picking up the book in my mind and taking it with me into a new room I created in the middle of the foyer wall.

One of the benefits of this library not existing in real life was that I wasn’t bound by the constraints of physics. The rooms could overlap if I wanted the space.

This new room was completely empty.

I set the book down in the center, and made the image expand to fill the space around me. Now, I was standing in the middle of the action. I could get up close to the two Aidens, examine their facial expressions at close quarters.

Once they started throwing spells around, I had to pause the action and slow it down, though.

That helped, thankfully.

Originally, I had thought that the Aiden at the doorway was the real one; that he was stopping the fake one from leaving.

But I had never seen such a cruel expression of anger on Aiden’s face.

Even with his family, when he’d been nearly livid with anger, he hadn’t twisted his features up into this vicious mask.

I shivered.

“This must be the shapeshifter,” I said.

I had to continue watching, to make absolutely certain.

I now noticed more differences between the two. They had both been casting spells furiously, but with the speed slowed down, I could see that the doorway-Aiden was primarily casting offensive spells, and dangerous ones at that. The Aiden in the middle of the room was defending, preventing spells from doing damage or redirecting them away from me. Every once in a while, he would send a spell at the door-Aiden, but it was always a containment spell, not an attacking one.

I was even more certain of my decision by this point, but they moved, and I hadn’t seen which was which.

Or had I?

It was possible my subconscious had seen their movement while my main focus had been on getting down the stairs.

Door-Aiden cast the fireball that had nearly hit me, just as I remembered. The Aiden in the middle managed to deflect it just enough that it zoomed over my head. I rubbed my arms to flatten the goosebumps that erupted from how close that call had been.

The memory faded, the guys vanishing from my sight as I focused on the stairs.

“Nonono,” I muttered, squatting down on my haunches as if that would help me to see.

When the guys reappeared, they were already in their new positions in front of the office and the mess hall.

I had to start over from scratch.

“Expression of anger and offensive versus defensive spells,” I said to myself.

But the shapeshifter must have realized that I would be able to do something like this, because his expression mirrored Aiden’s nearly exactly.

On top of that, both Aidens were casting similar spells now, the shapeshifter having switched to containment spells like the real Aiden had been doing before.

“Fuck!” I exclaimed.

“Everything all right?” Professor Reynolds’s voice came from far away.

“They moved and I’m not sure who is who now,” I said.

“I might have an idea,” he said.

“I’m going to finish this memory. Maybe something else will jump out at me,” I said.

“Okay.”

I refocused on the fighting pair. It was coming close to the end of the fight at this point.

The guard appeared and cast the containment bubbles around the two Aidens, and the fight was over.

I slumped, disappointed.

The Aiden near the mess hall tried to cast a spell, and the bubble ate it. My eyes widened.

“Why didn’t this one,” I indicated the Aiden near the office, “try to cast a spell? He must have already known that casting a spell wouldn’t work within the bubble.”

I picked up the book of my memory and closed it.

Before I left my library, I put the book back in its spot. Then I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, preparing my mind to return to the real world.

“I’m nearly one hundred percent sure I know which one is Aiden,” I told my professor. “What was your idea?”

Instead of answering me, he turned to the guard, who was standing nearby and looking bored. “Excuse me,” he said. “Are these containment bubbles soundproof?”

“They can hear us and we can hear them,” the guard said.

The professor turned back to me. “When you said that you weren’t sure which one was which, one of them looked smug, and the other looked worried.”

“That sounds pretty conclusive to me,” I said, looking between the bubbles. “You remember which did what?”

He nodded.

“I think my Aiden is the one near the mess,” I whispered behind my hand. “Because he didn’t know that the bubble wouldn’t allow a spell.”

Professor Reynolds’s eyebrows rose. “Or perhaps the real one didn’t cast a spell because he didn’t need to deflect any more spells.”

“Oh fuck,” I muttered. “I hadn’t thought of that. My memory wasn’t helpful once they moved to this position. Before this, the one at the door was definitely not mine.”

“I don’t think it matters which one you release. It’ll be pretty obvious from their reactions.”

“Which one looked smug?” I asked.

“The mess hall.”

I nodded. “I have a plan.” I stood and the professor vanished the chair. “My Aiden is...” I walked over to the one near the office, keeping my gaze fixed on his face.

It morphed into one of pure happiness, a recognizable expression to me. I smiled and pivoted to face the rest of the room.

The other Aiden near the mess had his hands on the side of the bubble as if he were reaching out to me, an expression of pure longing on his face.

“My Aiden is,” I repeated to be clear, “that one.” I pointed at the Aiden near the mess, who collapsed into a puddle of relief, shifting back into human form in the blink of an eye.

“No!” shouted the Aiden in the bubble beside me. “Don’t you recognize me? Please, Siobhan! You know me. You have to!”

The second guard left the office and murmured to the first one.

“Are you sure?” the first guard asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Step away from the bubble, miss.”

I headed for the other Aiden, sure I’d made the correct choice. The bubble popped before I got there, and I threw myself into his arms, wrapping mine around his neck as I curled up in his lap.

“Thank you,” he whispered in my neck. “I was so scared.”

“Why did he stop trying to leave?”

“Because I saw him as me. He knew I’d raise a fuss and he wouldn’t be able to leave without someone stopping him. You can’t teleport off this island, and I could contact the docks and stop the ferries from leaving before he could make it there himself.”

“Did he tell you all that before I got here?” I asked, even more sure that I’d made the right decision.

“What?”

“How do you know the shapeshifter’s plan?” I asked. I finished the spell I’d been working behind his head, and he froze rigidly.

“What?” he repeated through a clenched jaw, unable to move his lips.

His form shimmered and melted, revealing a stranger.

I pushed to my feet. “You’re not as good as you think you are,” I spat. “You may have been able to copy Aiden’s mannerisms, but deep down, all you are is a weak facsimile. You don’t have the emotional maturity needed.”

The guards had released Aiden and quickly took charge of the immobile shapeshifter.

I ran to Aiden’s arms, and he buried his face in my hair. “I thought I’d lost you,” he admitted, his voice hoarse. He squeezed me tightly. “When you chose him—” His tone cracked and he stopped talking.

“I didn’t choose him, though,” I said. “I wasn’t one hundred percent sure until I saw his expression of victory, but I needed to be absolutely sure. That’s why I pretended to choose him. I needed to get close to him, and I needed him to not be shifted when I did. He had to let down his guard and believe that I chose him, or else he would have noticed that I had tricked him.”

“You are brilliant, but I’m not sure my heart can take another panic attack like that,” Aiden said, inhaling deeply in the crook of my neck. He licked over my pulse point. “I seriously thought I was going to die in jail because you chose him.”

I pulled back slightly and cupped his face in my hands. “Even if I had made the mistake of choosing the shapeshifter, there is no way he would have been able to keep up the facade over an extended period of time. He’s not as brilliant as you are, and your thesis would have floundered in his hands.”

Aiden frowned. “But he was able to copy me entirely.”

Professor Reynolds spoke up, “Excuse me for interrupting, but not entirely. Your form, yes. And he studied your mannerisms. He is quite a good mimic. He also would gain access to your memories over time, but that doesn’t mean he is capable of drawing the same conclusions. It’s like the difference between rote memorization and understanding concepts,” he explained. “If you memorize, you can regurgitate, but if you understand, you can apply what you’ve learned to a new concept. He wouldn’t have been able to do that, and Miss Doyle is correct, your thesis would have shown his true self.”

Aiden nodded in understanding, hugging me close again.

“Besides,” I teased. “There’s no way he could have fucked me the way you do.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” Aiden growled. To the professor, who was pretending he hadn’t heard what I’d said, he asked, “Does he remember what I’ve seen now?”

“Now that he isn’t you? No,” the professor replied. “If he were to transform fully into you again, some of the more recent memories would surface.”

“He doesn’t remember the memories when he’s become himself?” I asked, understanding what Aiden was getting at.

Does the shapeshifter remember me naked because Aiden does?

“No, not from what the head guard was able to explain to me,” Professor Reynolds replied, flushing slightly.

I winced and patted his hand. “I’m sorry you were in jail for so long. I promise, we had absolutely no idea that you weren’t here.”

“Ah, well, that’s all part of the story that I have to tell.”

The guards had removed my immobilization spell and hauled the shapeshifter to his feet.

“Time to go back to your cell,” one guard said.

“And your punishment years have increased,” the other added.

“I didn’t escape!” the shapeshifter protested. “It was all a misunderstanding!”

“Turning into a student on purpose and misleading his mate was a misunderstanding?” the first guard asked.

“He was the only one I knew well enough,” the shapeshifter pouted.

“Tell that to the judge,” the second guard said, pulling the shapeshifter along.

They left the school with barely a glance back.