The Culling Trials 3 (Shadowspell Academy #3)(30)
“I know. But I can’t…” I gritted my teeth. “There is a hole in my memory.”
“But he knows? Ethan knows you can’t remember?”
“Yeah. He knows, but he’s not talking.”
Orin stared at the ornate gate in front of us. He nodded silently as Pete dropped in on my other side, and Wally stepped up beside him. “We’ll just have to get the truth out of him.”
“Yes,” I said, cracking my knuckles. “We will.”
“But after the trial. We’ll need him for this trial,” Pete said. Orin and Wally bobbed their heads in agreement. They weren’t wrong.
I took a deep breath, calming the frustration and the anger and the fear of what had happened in that black space in my memory. “Right. After this trial.” I palmed my head as we caught up with Ethan. “We need to check with Colt, too. See if there was anything else missing from Ethel’s room.” I glanced around, looking for his crew.
The others exchanged pointed looks. It was Ethan who broke it to me.
“He’s gone. Missing. He never met us in our dorm, and he didn’t show up to his.” He didn’t look at me as he said it. “There’s nothing we can do about it. We need to get through this trial and get on with our lives.”
Chapter 12
I wondered if I’d have a stress fracture in my jaw from clenching my teeth so hard. Something was seriously wrong with Ethan. He seemed...defeated, somehow. Like the wind had been stolen from his sails. His pompous arrogance was gone, replaced with hollow indifference. Whatever had him spooked, he didn’t plan to fight back. And that dug into me almost more than the missing memories. It wasn’t like him.
“What happened?” I asked softly, needing more info so I could fight back for him. I wasn’t the type to say die, even when I was obviously being thrown into the deep end with weights around my ankles. “And why would Colt get taken while we ended up in the infirmary with knives sticking out of us? Shade knives, did you say?”
The beautiful woman strode along the top of the gates, just as she’d done with the first three trials. I wondered if her failure to appear the other day had anything to do with how badly our trip through the House of Night had gone. She waved a hand forward as she stood to the side of the gates. “Good luck to you all. Have fun.”
Fun.
We walked through the gates, Ethan leading the way, and a shiver cascaded over me as a magical wall slid behind us, closing us off from turning around and running for the exit. The timing was not surprising. A roar boomed through the air as soon as the wall descended, the sound vibrating through my body. I remembered it from that first day, when Wally had spouted off T-rex statistics, and everyone around us shifted and practically danced in fearful anticipation.
Thoughts of the day before fled. I was sure blood left my face in a rapid flood, if the numbing of my lips was any indication.
“Is there a reason the only magical worker among us waited to do this trial last?” My boot crunched against the brittle grass one moment and thudded against the rustic wooden floor of a saloon the next. Wooden walls had sprung up around us. An old-timey piano played in the corner, the keys pressing down and lifting again in a creepy mime without fingers to propel them. A long bar sat in front of us with a bartender behind it, one hand wrapped around the neck of a bottle of whiskey, and the other resting behind five shot glasses.
The man grinned from under his long gray mustache that curled up at the corners in twin perfect swoops. His leather vest hung flat on his stomach and his long, pointed wizard hat indicated he wasn’t great at putting together a costume.
“Welcome,” the man said, his voice gruff, like I’d expect, but with a lilting sort of accent that spoke of posh England, which I wouldn’t expect. “Pick your poison, my young friends.”
“Should be pick yer poison, if you’re going for the Old West vibe,” I glanced around at the establishment we’d found ourselves in. Card tables filled the space, each partially occupied. Men hunched over their cards with drinks by their elbows and ladies in fancy dresses and corsets by their sides. The dealers opposite them wore pointed wizard hats, like the bartender, and each had a little chest of gold by his stack of cards.
We were the only crew present.
“This is the most important trial for him,” Orin said, at my elbow, looking around as I was doing. “He’ll need to impress daddy and all his peers to make it in his world. A failure here could mean his entire future comes crashing down. Society gives guys like him a lot of leeway, except when it comes to living up to expectations. I would go so far as to say that he will have the hardest trial of all of us. For us, there were no expectations, per se. For him…all of them.”
“Shut up,” Ethan said, the truth of what Orin was saying evident in the tightness of his voice.
“That’s good.” I blew out a breath, trying to ignore the throbbing of my head and the warning shivers coating my body. “I was worried it would be harder, somehow.”
“That, too,” Orin said.
A shadow zipped by in my peripheral vision and I swung my gaze that way. My vision dizzied for a moment before I saw a group of women in the corner, their breasts heaving out of the tops of their gowns to the point where I struggled to understand how their nipples stayed covered. Poofy skirts flared out from their corseted waists. They stared at me, one and all, some with knowing looks, others with expectant expressions. One laughed suggestively.