The Culling Trials (Shadowspell Academy #2)(43)

Ethan sat there, shaking. He held out his hand. “Give it back to me.”

This was not like him, but then I had just yanked his most precious item away from him and threatened to destroy it.

I narrowed my eyes. “Do you understand? Even with your skull as thick as a brick crap house? Do you get it?”

“I understand,” he said, his jaw ticking with barely suppressed anger. “Now give it back to me.”

I dropped the wand and he caught it midair and scooted over to the far side of the seat. I sat and faced the front only to see Colt watching us with eyes nearly as wide as Ethan’s.

I tugged my hat down and slumped in my seat as if I were sleeping too. I wasn’t.

Which meant I heard everything whispered between Pete and Wally.

“The odds of him being able to touch his wand without having a bad reaction are one in a thousand. More, actually, if you take into consideration the fact that he took it from him by force,” Wally said.

“You mean if he’d handed it to him—”

“Yes, wands are tied to their owners, and while you can get a new one, if you touch someone else’s, you’re likely to get a burn, shock, or worse.”

I swallowed hard and tried not to think about what that meant. That I was some sort of freakshow? Wally had said that you could have two abilities. Maybe I had more magic in me than even Dad and Mom thought. It was possible, I supposed.

I slowed my breathing. I’d absorbed the troll’s magic and sent it back to him. I’d felt the stones like Gregory had. I’d connected with alicorns with a rare ease. I could understand Pete in his honey badger form, even if no one else realized it.

The whole concept of magic was still foreign to me, but I was no fool. I couldn’t ignore what was happening in front of my face. Magic was what I’d been feeling all along. My ability to fight and track and all that came from growing up on the farm. From fighting with Rory and Tommy, living in a school of hard knocks and quick reflexes. Maybe I wasn’t a Shade at all… Because there was no explaining away the weird things I’d been able to do. The magical things. I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter. Even if I was some kind of magical freak, the stakes remained the same for me. I was here fighting for Billy and Sam and my dad. Keeping them safe was the only thing that mattered.

Orin’s voice tugged at my ears. “Sometimes when a wand doesn’t like its user, it will be more lenient about outsiders touching it in the hopes that someone else will take it away. Perhaps that is the case here.”

Pete sucked in a breath. “Really? You mean Wild could actually be a mage? Wow, that would be awesome.”

I should have been excited about the possibility of having magic—real, honest-to-God magic. Even a week ago, if you’d told me I could wave a wand and make things explode, or use it to save people, I would have been over-the-moon excited. But…I’d gotten used to the idea of being a Shade.

It fit me in a way I hadn’t expected.

So what would happen if I got stuck into another house, one with all the snobby highbrow bastards?

The bus jerked to a halt and everyone peeled out. Everyone but me, which meant that Ethan wasn’t moving either.

“Get out of my way, Johnson.” He growled, but there was very little heat in it. I lifted my head and tipped the brow of my hat up. The bus was empty—even the driver had left, and the two of us were completely alone.

I turned to Ethan, hating that I needed him to answer a question when I trusted him about as far as I could send him with a single kick to the butt.

“What are the chances that I’m being groomed for the wrong house?” I asked.

His eyes narrowed to the look of irritation he always bestowed on me. “What do you mean?”

“I held your wand,” I shook my head. “And keep your mind out of the gutter, you know what I mean. I didn’t explode. I didn’t get more than a tingle. Could it be…that I’m being groomed for the wrong house?”

For the first time in our short, fraught acquaintance, I saw Ethan really listen to me, really consider what I was asking. A minute ticked by. His hand drifted to his pouch, and then he shrugged. “It is possible. As much as a filthy farm hand like you wouldn’t deserve to be part of the House of Wonder…it is possible. A lot of what you’ve done so far—”

“Could be learned behavior,” I said softly. I swallowed hard, suddenly needing to figure this out. “Who would be able to tell me?”

Ethan laughed and shook his head. “That’s what you’re here for. To be tested. You won’t know for sure until you hit the final test, I guess. Until you face the House of Wonder.”

I stood and started down the center aisle, my head spinning. My nametag on that first day had identified me as a Shade. A master of shadows and death. A killer in the making.

Now here I was doubting, wondering if there was more to me than even my father knew.

More than he or my mom, or even I could ever dream.

And it terrified the crap right out of me.





Chapter 17





“If you are still here, congratulations. You have survived the first three Culling Trials. You will now have a single day of rest. Be aware, curfew is now at ten p.m. If you see any of the following students, immediately contact one of the academy supervisors, or Director Frost.”