The Breaker (The Secret of Spellshadow Manor #2)(84)

“Elias?” asked Jari, his eyebrow raised in suspicion.

“The shadow creature?” echoed Ellabell.

The truth had caught up with Alex at last. “Elias is a strange friend of mine,” he began. It felt odd to say Elias’s name out loud. With the others finally seeing the shadow-man, the invisible restraint binding Alex’s tongue seemed to have faded away. “It’s a very long story, and right now we don’t have time for it, but I promise I’ll tell you all about him later, when we’re…” He trailed off, as realization gripped his heart in a vise. He didn’t know if there would be a later.

Alex had so many questions for Elias, having heard the exchange between the shadow-man and the Head. He wanted to know what Derhin had done and how the Head had come to have only a piece of Elias’s essence. Where was the rest of it? He wanted to know what Elias had been before, when he was powerful and human and not a shadowy substance flitting from there to here and back again. He wanted to know what the Head had meant when he said Elias could have been vital, and what Elias had meant when he said they could have fought together in a different way. He wanted to know so many things, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever get the chance to find out any more than what he already knew.

Their hope was a very weak flame now, moments from going out. The understanding settled in a cloud of melancholy around the small group.

“We can still get through this. All of us,” whispered Alex. “Once we’re in the Head’s office, we’re going to ransack the place for anything and everything we can use. We will find something, and we will make it out of this,” he said, trying to comfort the despondent faces of his friends. “There might be something in those rare books we can use against him.”

Natalie and Ellabell nodded silently. A smile grew across Jari’s face, and Alex knew he was thinking the same thing.

Knowledge was power, and they were going to find it.





Chapter 31





Alex led the way as they ran up the remainder of the corridor toward the Head’s office and burst into the room. Moving quickly, knowing they didn’t have much time, Alex instructed the others to set the still-unconscious Aamir up against the gnarled tree trunk that sat in the well of the fireplace. It was easily viewed from all areas of the room, in case Aamir awoke and still felt bound to the Head in some deep, disturbed way and tried to lash out at them. Who knew what side Aamir would be on. Even now, Alex wasn’t sure how much Aamir was responsible for and how much the golden band was responsible for. He had so many questions for the unconscious young man that would have to wait for an answer.

Like those notes, warning him in the middle of the night; Alex still didn’t know if it was Aamir who had sent them or someone else entirely. Then there was the mystery of his presence in the Head’s quarters that night, now so long ago. Why had he been there, only to appear soon after through the gate with the new boy Felipe? Had the Head called him somehow? How had he moved so quickly from one place to another? Alex’s mind flitted momentarily to the illfated magical travel attempts he and Natalie had made, wondering if that was how Aamir had done it, and if he had permission to move freely outside the manor’s restraints.

Shaking his head, Alex returned his attention to the room and how to defend it. There would be time to ask those questions later, if they made it out alive. Secretly, Alex hoped Aamir would stay unconscious; he couldn’t focus on that, too, with everything else he had to worry about.

With the others joining in, Alex blocked the door to the office with a few heavy chairs and a bookshelf laid diagonally across it. He knew it was a silly thing to do—it wouldn’t hold the Head for more than a second if he came for them—but there was comfort in the practical action of keeping the skeletal figure out.

With the door barred and Aamir somewhere safe, Alex turned to the red-lined bookshelf. Jari was already sitting on the Head’s desk, swinging his legs with an irreverent grin on his face. It cheered Alex to see his dear friend still smiling, when there was so little left to smile about.

Alex knelt on the cold, hard floor, careful not to get in the way of Jari’s swinging legs as he took out the anti-magical knife and touched it gently to the red line that glowed from within the ancient wooden structure.

Nothing happened.

Alex tried it again, but the knife did nothing. It could not cut through the red barrier.

Alex realized the knife must only have specific abilities. The knowledge was a little disappointing as he slid it back into his belt, but he wasn’t defeated yet. Already grimacing, he moved his palms toward the thrumming red line and touched his anti-magic against it. Pain tore through his body, white-hot and searing through every cell, seemingly gripping at every organ and trying to crush every bone beneath his skin. It bit and twisted and ripped, leaving Alex bent double on the floor with his arms wrapped around himself, trying to hold the burning pieces of his body together.

Jari jumped down from the desk as Ellabell rushed to his side, asking if she could help, but Alex was in too much pain to speak properly. His jaw felt as if it had fallen away, and his teeth throbbed and stung around a swollen tongue. With whatever resilience he had left, he tried to focus his anti-magic in a last-ditch attempt to control the agony that shredded through every nerve.

Ellabell reached to grab his hand, but he pulled it sharply away.