Academy of the Fateful (Cursed Studies Book 3) Read online

  Violet was silent for a long moment. Her gaze had gone distant. She shifted her limbs under the covers. “I don’t know. Maybe… maybe if something like that is coming for me, I should have to face it.”

  Despite her snarky remarks about Trix, the thought of leaving anyone alone up here made my chest clench up. “We could carry you down, if you need that.”

  She grimaced. “No, thank you. If I feel up to it later… Don’t worry about me. I’ll look after myself.”

  “If you change your mind, give us a shout,” Elias said.

  Hopefully one of us would be close enough to hear.

  By the time we made it back to the second floor, a small crowd was already gathering near the banister overlooking the grand staircase. Maybe a dozen of our fellow students circulated restlessly outside the classroom doors.

  As we reached them, another of the ghostly wraiths came floating up the stairs. Someone at the back of the group inhaled sharply. They must have recognized the stern-looking woman.

  Elias stepped forward to intercept the ghost. It glided around him as if it’d barely noticed he was there. It hadn’t gone right through him, though.

  “Whoever that one’s after, stick close to the rest of us,” I suggested, raising my voice to carry. “Everyone else, keep moving. Get in front of it, don’t give it any openings.”

  The others murmured in unsettled tones. “I don’t want that thing getting anywhere near me,” someone said under their breath.

  “They won’t do anything to you if it’s not you they’re here for,” Elias said, but that didn’t ease the uneasy energy that hung in the air.

  Most of the crowd did at least attempt to follow my idea. They shifted this way and that as the ghost approached—and she drifted between them even where people stood shoulder to shoulder, not seeming to touch them, just squeezing through some impossibly small space in an instant to appear on the other side.

  Her target obviously realized we weren’t going to offer much protection. He swore and took off, dashing around the bannister and then down the stairs the way the ghost had come. It swiveled and followed, skimming across the ground faster now.

  “We’re not enough to put them off on our own,” I said to Elias. “What now?”

  He was frowning. “They’re connected to the rosebush outside somehow, aren’t they? The mist is coming off of that, and they’re forming from the mist. We didn’t see any of them in the basement when we were down there. I wonder how they’d react to the other bush, the one that was holding all the staff’s energy.”

  “The one Trix destroyed.” Would they be drawn to it? Horrified by it? Any effect we could get at all might make a difference. “Let’s find out.”

  “Try to stay calm and to do what you can to defend each other,” Elias instructed the crowd with his teacherly air. “We’ll be back soon with a plan that might make that easier.”

  I hustled after him as he strode down the stairs. The flashes of light we’d seen in the foyer on our way up had either faded away or traveled elsewhere. As we descended into the basement, a wary prickling ran down my spine, but nothing horrifying met us there. Well, nothing more horrifying than the dank, blood-stained room scattered with the crumbled bits of that eerie rosebush, which we’d seen before.

  There weren’t any ghosts lurking around down there, but then, there weren’t any students around for them to have followed. Elias stooped and gathered handfuls of the broken brambles to shove into his suit pockets. I gazed over the mess in the flickering light. A glimmer of inspiration lit in my head: a picture of how this could come together. But we’d need more than a few scoops.

  “Take your jacket right off,” I said. “We can use it to carry a lot more that way.”

  Elias raised his eyebrows at me. “Are you sure we need a lot?”

  I suspected he wasn’t totally comfortable taking off any part of his suit. I’d never seen him in anything other than a suit even before he’d started teaching Roseborne’s impossible math class. It was tied up in his sense of identity somehow.

  I gestured to the mess on the floor. “Might as well bring as much as we can upstairs, right? Either it’ll help somehow, in which case it’ll be good to have plenty, or it won’t do anything, in which case it won’t hurt that we brought a bunch. This bush obviously isn’t attracting the things, or some of them would have come down here.”

  “Fair enough.” He balked a second longer and then peeled off the suit jacket. As soon as he laid it out on the floor, I started scooping up the brambles and tossing them onto the fabric. A thorny edge pricked my thumb; another scratched across my palm. I ignored the slivers of pain and kept adding to the heap.

  More energy came into Elias’s movements as he moved alongside me. Getting down to work had rejuvenated him at least a little more. I felt more energized, even without knowing whether this effort would accomplish anything.

  I’d brought more light and hope into Trix’s life by standing by her, even if those brighter emotions only shone dully inside me thanks to the college’s curse. I’d started to see that I could make a difference for other students here too. Why wouldn’t that also apply to the guys I’d ended up the most closely connected with?

  I didn’t want us to turn our mutual relationship with Trix into some kind of competition. It’d be better for all of us if we collaborated in every possible way rather than fighting each other, wouldn’t it?

  It hadn’t taken long for us to heap all we could into the jacket. Elias bundled the edges over the brambles and lifted it.

  “Are you good with that?” I asked him. “I can carry it.”

  He waved me off. “They’re pretty light. I’m not an invalid.”

  “No, definitely not.” I shot him a quick smile as we passed through the gap in the wall that Trix had managed to open up with her unexpected power. “You know, as messed up as this situation has gotten—even more messed up than it was before—I’m glad we can tackle it together. Roseborne spends a huge amount of time encouraging us to focus on our own flaws and everyone else’s, doesn’t it?”

  “I suppose so,” Elias said. “That seems to be the point.”

  “Both to punish us and to make sure we don’t work together, I’d bet. But we’ve all got strengths too, even if this place wants us to forget that. We’ve got things we can contribute. And we can do a heck of a lot more when we join forces.”

  “Are you going somewhere with this?”

  I didn’t let his skeptical tone rankle me. “I’m just saying… Even with all the shit Roseborne has put us through, I can recognize what’s good in you. You saw the potential benefits in gathering the students in greater numbers. You thought of seeing if we can use the bush. I’ll do my best to pitch in too.”

  I couldn’t tell if my words really sank in. As we tramped up the stairs, Elias didn’t look particularly more confident or pleased than before. Well, I was glad I’d said it anyway. We spent enough time here being beat up or beating up ourselves emotionally. It was about time we shared some praise instead.

  The crowd on the second floor had thinned some in our absence, but a few people had noticed our purposeful path through the foyer and followed us up, so I figured our numbers had about evened out overall.

  “What’s all that for?” someone demanded as Elias set down the jacket.

  “We’re about to find that out,” he replied.

  Quite literally. Another ghost was flitting up the staircase after us. I bent over to grab a couple of the bramble shards and tossed them at the thing.

  The hazy figure flinched. The brambles that fell to the floor in front of it didn’t stop it completely, but it wavered for a moment with a faint tremor through its glow before it dodged them. The hint of inspiration that had hit me in the basement flared up with renewed intensity.

  “The art room,” I said to Elias, and loped to the door without waiting to see if he agreed with my idea.

  The door opened at my twist of the knob. I ducked inside and ran to the ca
binet at the far end of the room where Professor Filch kept the canvases. As I grabbed several of the larger ones, a little taller and wider than my torso, Elias joined me.

  “This doesn’t seem like a good time to be painting pictures.”

  “That’s not what we’re doing with these.” I tipped my head toward a few more stacked at the back of the cabinet. “Grab those other ones there.”

  I hurried back out and set the canvases on the floor. My fingers working faster than I’d pushed them in ages, I snatched up one broken bramble and another and poked the sharp edges into the fabric that was stretched across the wooden frame. By the time Elias had followed me back to the crowd, I’d constructed a ring of shattered rosebush around the edge of the canvas and dotted the white surface with several more twigs across the middle.

  “Shields,” I said by way of explanation, and hefted that one up by the frame. “If a bunch of us hold them, we might be able to keep the ghost-things away completely.”

  The muttering around us faded as our classmates looked on with interest. “What are you waiting for?” someone said. “Let’s get more of them, then.”

  I dove back into the task, a few of the others taking canvases of their own and copying my initial pattern. I had no idea whether the specific shape I’d used made any difference, but it looked more shield-like, and maybe that was important.

  Within a matter of minutes, we had seven of the makeshift shields. I grasped one, Elias another, and five volunteers took up the others. We formed a protective circle around the rest of the group.

  Our activities seemed to have caught the attention of more of the wraiths. Two more were drifting through the hall, another climbing the stairs. As they approached, we moved closer together, Elias’s shoulder brushing the wall beside him.

  The ghosts might not have been intimidated by us standing together unequipped, but the bramble shields made them think twice. One spun away from us with a shudder. Its companion swung close but continued on in its wobbly arc rather than trying to push past us.

  Someone behind me let out a laugh of relief. I couldn’t help grinning at Elias when our eyes met. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  Finally, an answering smile crossed his face. “Yeah,” he said. “It looks that way. Good thinking.”

  “Couldn’t have done it without your thinking first.”

  He looked as if he might have said something else, but as he opened his mouth, a ghost that must have been prowling through the classrooms glided through the wall right behind him, its hands grasping.

  “Elias!” I said like a warning, not fast enough. Elias started to jerk around, and the wraith plunged its hands into his back.

  Chapter Six

  Trix

  I stopped at the edge of the woods and knelt down to take a look at my calf in the moonlight. Cade’s monstrous claws had sliced through my leggings. The edges of the slashes in the fabric had gone soppy with blood, my flesh raw red beneath. The initial razor-like sting of the wound had expanded into a dull throbbing that ran from my ankle to my knee. My throat constricted, taking in the damage.

  Why had he attacked me like that? Because I’d told him I was sticking with the other guys? Because I’d resisted his attempt to direct the conversation and my emotions? Or maybe he hadn’t been aware enough of any of that once he’d fallen back into beast form—maybe all that had lingered was whatever burst of anger our conversation and his confrontation with his dad had stirred up. I didn’t even know if he’d realized who he was attacking.

  There wasn’t much I could do about the injury now. Back in the school, I could find a clean kitchen towel or something to wrap it with. Squaring my shoulders, I straightened up and set off across the lawn with a slight limp.

  As I walked, I scanned the area around the school for Jenson’s tall, slim frame. Was he still out here searching for a safer stronghold? He might have been caught by another ghost from his past. I didn’t see any sign of him.

  By now, he might have gone back to Elias and Ryo to make further plans. Whether Cade ended up joining us or not was up to my brother. I’d helped him, warned him, and offered all the support I could. As much as I hated to leave him behind, I needed to make sure the other people I’d come to care about here made it through the night—and whatever awaited us after.

  A trail of glowing light whipped across the lawn ahead of me, scattering a small cluster of nervous students in its wake. I made out a glimpse of a boyish face and a burgundy school uniform within the glow before it swept back around toward a few other patches of light that were skimming along the outside of the school building. Apparently the former staff had gotten bored with harassing the students inside.

  Did it look as if their energy had dwindled at all? As far as I could tell, they shone just as brightly as when they’d first absorbed the energy from the rosebush. How much were they controlling the other horrors happening around us?

  My instinct was to give them a wide berth, but what progress I’d made toward getting us free hadn’t happened by avoiding conflict. Instead, I strode straight up to them, staying tensed to defend myself or make a run for it if I felt I needed to.

  “You’re not going to teach us much like this, are you?” I hollered at the glowing spots. They paused to hover above me like spotlights. “How much longer do you really think you can keep any of this up before you run out of juice?”

  The four of them slunk down the building, and three more rippled across the grass to join the group. As they drew closer, it was easier to pick out the human features half-swallowed by the energy wrapped around them. The spirit boy who stopped directly in front of me, with messy black hair over deep-set eyes and a prominent nose, had once presented himself as the school’s dean. From the faded memories I’d glimpsed of the school’s distant past, he’d led this toxic group back then too.

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “Hello, Dean Wainhouse. Or I guess I should just call you Oscar now.”

  The light around the boy’s form twitched. His lips curled with a sneer. The figures flanking him were equally familiar from the portraits in the school hall, the photographs in the old yearbook I’d found, and those memories that weren’t mine but those of the eighth of their number—Winston, the one who’d left. The one I was increasingly sure had been my great-grandfather.

  At my right, the dark-haired girl with a flying bird necklace tucked under the collar of her shirt was Mildred Christoph—Professor Hubert in her college staff guise. She was the only member of the group I thought I might have gotten through to at all, however much my conversations with her would matter now. She peered at me intently, her expression difficult to read. From the photographs she’d kept in her office, she’d had a particular interest in Winston. Did she know how connected to him I was?

  Oscar’s voice came out sounding younger but just as dry as it had in his dean persona, clear despite the haziness of the light around him. “You seem to think you know a lot, Miss Corbyn. We still hold the power here.”

  “Do you? If you could have held it all inside you to begin with, I’m not sure why you needed some monster of a rosebush in the basement.”

  “It was convenient to our ends. We’re nothing if not adaptable.”

  Flickers of the fragmented memories I recognized as Winston’s rather than my own passed through my head: Oscar standing at the front of an otherwise empty classroom, looking down his nose as he announced, If we’re going to do this, we need to be all in. You’re either with us or you’re the enemy. It’s up to you. Then Mildred and one of the other girls stalking across the lawn toward the pool ahead of me, the other girl swiping at a bloody nose. Mildred’s shirt showed a damp blotch of a stain—tea or maybe coffee. We’ll show them. This school belongs to us just as much.

  “Isn’t it about time you let go of old grudges?” I asked. “No one here now ever hurt any of you. Why don’t you adapt to that? You’ve punished them plenty—you’ve killed masses of them. Isn’t that enough? Let them out of here, a
nd you can find something better to do with your time.” The former staff might not be conjuring our ghosts, but I had no doubt that they decided whether the gate stayed locked.

  “They’re just like the miscreants who used to lord it over us back in the day,” one of the other guys rasped out. “Only thinking about themselves, how they can get what they want, even better if they can stomp on someone else along the way. Everything they’ve been through here, they deserve.”

  “They won’t stop deserving it until they’re finished paying,” Mildred added.

  “From what I’ve seen, you were pretty awful to the people you hated back then too,” I said.

  Oscar shifted his stance, drawing himself up even taller. In that moment, a dark current flitted through the energy glowing around him like a waft of smoke. Something about its intensity and its snakelike motion sent a chill straight through my bones. The erratic pulse that radiated from him in that moment reminded me of the demented power I’d felt from the basement rosebush.

  “We paid them back only a small portion of the abuse they heaped on us,” he said. “They took and took and took from us, and we only stole back what we were owed. We paid to make this school ours, a thousand times over.”

  Another memory: out by the gazebo in the sparser northern woods, Oscar and a few of the others, shadows stretching with the descending evening. Is it even going to work? I—or rather, Winston—asked.

  It doesn’t matter, Oscar replied. We have to see it through to the end, or where do you think we’ll end up? We prove how committed we are, we prove what we stand for, and the rest… I tell you, the rest will come together.

  It had, clearly. But they hadn’t all stayed in agreement about whether that was worth it.

  “Winston didn’t feel that way,” I said. “He thought you’d gone far enough, or he would have come back.”

  The icy darkness inside Oscar flashed in and out of view again. I caught a glimmer of the same impression in the eyes of the boy next to him. Mildred’s lips tightened.