The Culling Trials 3 (Shadowspell Academy #3)(31)

“What is the deal with this trial?” I asked as Ethan chose a table to his right and sat in the single empty chair. A distant roar permeated the walls and shook the bottles against the mirror behind the bar. That creature did not belong in the Old West. I knew that much.

“Pick a table, and best the dealer, who’ll use magic to try and confuse you,” Ethan said, determination in his voice. “They use mind tricks. Persuasion. It’s a test of your strength of mind. You need to be able to throw off the magic. Or you can choose the bar. See if you can do the same with the potion you ingest.”

Orin drifted to the bar. “It is rare the House of Wonder can concoct a poison that can befuddle a vampire. That ability is usually limited to the House of Shade, poisoners of the highest calibre.”

“It really doesn’t make sense that two houses would rely on the same craft when the House of Wonder thinks so little of Shades,” I said, wandering through the tables.

“Two sides of the same coin,” Orin said. “The same result, but different methods. Anyone from the House of Wonder would consider it an insult to create a potion without magic.”

“Snobs,” I said.

Something else was at work here. I could feel it. Something...not right. Much as I wanted to believe this trial wouldn’t be rigged after the last disaster, I didn’t trust it.

“It is the same craft, but with different intentions,” Orin said.

“One has no morals,” Ethan added, but without any heat, placing his elbows on the green velvet of the card table.

“So, then…” Wally pulled out an empty chair, but the players at the table weren’t looking at her. They were all looking at me.

My head pounded. My heart thudded. My sense of warning, slower to develop than usual, flared, so intense it nearly made me scream.

The man in the wizarding hat jumped up from behind the bar, wand out, and blasted me before I could dive to the side. The spell wrapped around my body, holding me in place as Pete shed his clothes and changed shape.

Orin turned from the bar with a sour face, an empty glass held between his fingers, his eyes on the bare bottom. “Shade,” he said in a strangled release. The glass fell from his suddenly lifeless fingers. He grabbed at his throat, eyes bulging, and took two staggering steps. “The Shade…infiltrated….”

“What’s he saying?” Wally yelled.

The Shade had infiltrated the House of Wonder. They were coming for me. Sideburns was finally making his move.

Almost as the thought formed, a man in black burst from behind the group of women in the corner. Limbs and skirts went flying.

Anxiety riding me like an unbroken horse, I forced myself to calm down and focus. The throb in my head drifted into the background. My intense desire to break free surged, firing hot through my blood.

The spell holding me cracked like an egg.

I snapped my eyes open and yanked out my knife. A split second later the man was on me, his own knife already slashing for my face.

I dodged to the side and slapped at his hand, using his momentum to knock him off balance. My blade parted black fabric. He turned and thrust, slower than I would expect, clearly not the best of his House. I knocked my forearm against his before ripping it down, following with my blade. It slashed against his wrist and over the top of his gloved hand. Red welled up in the cut and he jerked back.

People jumped up from chairs, wands or weapons raised. Wally grabbed the edge of the table and flung it, overturning everything. Money and cards rained down as she charged forward, a little alley cat of power. I could see the pink of her magic lighting her up. I wasn’t sure what good it would do against the living, but she was embracing it.

Honey badger Pete snarled and dove under the heavy green skirt of a woman with a hard expression and a poised throwing knife. Another dagger thudded to the ground from under her skirts, followed by a small hand-gun—her hidden weapons. She gasped and kicked out before staggering to the side in an effort to dislodge the honey badger latched onto her legs.

“We gotta get out of here,” I called as a glint of metal flew through the air, end over end. There was too much going on, too fast. I couldn’t keep up with it all.

A knife, the blade gleaming in the saloon light, sped toward my chest. I dropped and rolled before popping up again and grabbing a shocked trial worker who clearly hadn’t gotten the memo regarding the change in plans, and shoved him in front of me as a human shield.

“Ethan, shrug it off,” I yelled, seeing him frozen in his seat, his eyes dodging all around but his body still. “Don’t let the panic rule you. You rule you. Shrug it off. We need you!”

“Raaaaahhhhh,” I heard before a body went flying. Wally straightened, a strange glowing sheen around her, and I took a moment to marvel that a little chick like her had just thrown a grown man across the room. Something in me said that the spells they were trying to use on her were being deflected by her magic.

A spell tore at me from the bar. I swung my human shield around, and he raised his wand to deflect the assault.

“Good choice in shields,” I murmured, marching him forward.

Another spell hit his legs from the side. His legs stopped moving, frozen stiff. I continued pushing him forward anyway, his heels skidding along the wooden floor, hoping his brain and muscle memory would override the spell.

They didn’t.