The Culling Trials 3 (Shadowspell Academy #3)(23)

I turned and shoved Ethan in front of me.

“Heed my warning,” Adam said, the words trailing after me like tin cans.

“Make yourself useful, and catch whoever is stealing kids and threatening my life, or do your reflexes only work when teenagers are sneaking after you?”

Silence stretched as we distanced ourselves from Adam. I didn’t look back.

Finally, faintly, delivered directly to my ear, I heard, “I’m working on the kidnapping. There’s nothing I can do about the other. It’s beyond me, now.”

I stopped and spun, taken aback. Emptiness greeted me.

“I hate this place. Everyone always disappears,” I said, wanting to run back. To chase Adam around the corner and beg for answers.

“Come on.” Ethan plucked at my sleeve. “We have to let him go for now and pick him up somewhere else. He probably smelled your arousal earlier. That’s how he knew we were around.”

“Gross. I don’t even have a comeback, I’m too busy trying not to gag.”

He huffed out a laugh. “Nice way to step up back there. Perfect. I couldn’t have coached you better. You might not be completely useless, for a Shade.”

“Way to step up?”

“Pulling me away before I had to threaten something I might not be able to deliver. I can let the director know what he did, easy. Getting him fired, on the other hand…”

It dawned on me what he was saying, and surprise flitted through me. “You were playing a part,” I said with a grin. “I wondered how one person could be so entitled. I was thinking about getting you a cape.”

“I’m always playing a part. How do you think my family maintains status? But I might have overdone it a bit that time. That guy…”

Another shiver crawled up my spine. I nodded, unable to form words. That guy was more of a feeling than something to be explained.

“What is he?” I asked, still feeling the intuition tugging at me.

“Shade, obviously.”

“No, couldn’t be. There’s no way he could be an assassin. He’s much too loud.” I pointed toward the trees, feeling the need to head back there. To follow the trail I should’ve followed the other day instead of dallying with Colt and getting caught by Rory. To sit down and cry until I couldn’t breathe.

“It’s not just assassins in the House of Shade.” He huffed. “All of them are low-level grunts, as far as magical society goes, but still highly useful in situations the civilized world doesn’t like to speak of. Some of them specialize in getting information out of people the hard way, some of them are poison masters, some excellent thieves, and some, like him, are adept bodyguards, able to read people and threats. The good ones can mask their whereabouts, like a shadow. The great ones can mask themselves and others. Often, a Shade is brought in to protect someone against a fellow Shade.”

I slowed as we neared the trees I’d hidden in the other night. My mind shifted to Rory. To the way he’d covered me with his body, slowed my heart rate, and masked us from danger. Saved us. Me.

“Why would a Shade go against their own people?”

He shrugged. “Why would a magical person go against another magical person? A human against a human? The world is complex, the magical world more complex.”

“Still, why do you think Adam’s playing detective? Is he actually working for the director or himself?” I walked around the trees and surveyed the direction in which Gregory had been carried off.

“No way to know for sure. But did you see what he had with him?” Ethan asked. “He’d set it next to the fence. A memory ball.”

“What’s that?”

He scoffed. “Under what crusty rock were you living before you came here?”

And just like that, helpful Ethan vanished, and douche Ethan resurfaced. An act, my butt.

“A memory ball is a magical photo album, but instead of pictures, it records feelings, sounds, smells, images… It’s the whole memory, not just a flat version of it.”

“He’s probably planning to go through it for clues. If she’s gone, maybe she took a…memory selfie right before it happened.”

“Do you realize how dumb you sound?” He shook his head, waiting while I took in the landscape. “Besides, if she has disappeared, he’ll never get it open.”

This side of the mansion had more trees with the woods creeping up within fifty yards of the building. A few benches dotted the way, a couple horseshoe pits sat off to the side, and a green wooden shed with the door closed pushed up against the wall down the way.

Ethan’s last words filtered in through my head, taking a second to register.

“How do they open?”

“With a matching retina. Memory balls are connected to the user. He’d need her eyeball.”

I turned to him slowly, my own eyes widening. “Can you magically bypass it?”

“Only if she died, and only then if you were the registered next of kin. Memory balls are personal. Like phones.”

I clutched his arm. “Maybe he has her eyeball.”

“I thought about that. We can work back around to him. Finding him again shouldn’t be a problem. He’s a blunt instrument. No wonder the director is always one or more steps behind.”

Once again, I had to ask, “Why? What do you mean?”