“You have magic in your blood, too, Mary. Just like Henri. Just like me.” She holds out her hand, showing a cut in her palm, fresh blood spilled. “It just needs a little,” she says. “Just a little more.”
The malum towers over Mary, slowly descending as it hisses with pleasure. I don’t want to look, but I can’t turn away. She’s frozen with terror, eyes wide. No one can help.
Then the shadow envelops her, consuming her in darkness.
Her screams echo around the chamber. And all Adelina does is laugh.
—
This dream endsand another begins, but the sound of Mary’s screams still reverberates in my mind. Dorian is shaking, so is Atticus, and so am I. Henri and Mary, they’re dead. The shadow took their lives, feeding off the magic in their blood.
I want to run. I want to leave these memories, but I can’t.
We’re back in the large chamber where we found the cage, though everything is different. There’s no pentagram, no candles, no bodies, and we’reinsidethe cage. Adelina sits on the marble floor, wearing nothing but rags. She’s got her knees tucked up toher chin, her arms wrapped around her legs. She rocks back and forth, muttering to herself, as a man with a ruby earring stands at the entrance to the tunnel, watching her. It’s the same ruby earring that Warden Stone wears.
Men in dark robes move about the room, summoning iron bars and sigils, and sealing away all the entrances.
They’re imprisoning her in the cage.
They’re building the prison beneath Arches.
Adelina doesn’t seem to notice. Her gaze is distant, like she’s living in some dream.
“Two students are dead because of you,” the warden says.
Adelina makes no indication that she’s listening.
“That malum is no longer a threat. It is imprisoned in these walls like all of the other spirits,” the warden continues. “Your possessions have been confiscated. Your life is forfeit.”
Still, Adelina mutters to herself.
“No sorcerer like you will ever set foot on these grounds again. No one will be allowed to do what you have done.”
With that, he turns, departing the chamber. The door slams closed with a hollow clang, and the lock slides into place.
Adelina stares at the door from behind a curtain of hair, matted and dirty. The warden disappears down the passage with the men in darkened robes, and Adelina is left to rot in the cell. Her head drops to her knees. Her shoulders bounce, and her laughter echoes.
The vision ends, and we’re thrown back into the present.
Atticus nearly falls to his knees. Catching himself on his hands, he pants, gasping for breath as if he had just sprinted a mile. My thoughts are spinning.
Dorian puts his hands on the top of his head and paces. “It was the wand! She used Hecate’s wand! I saw it that day!”
Atticus leaps to his feet and grabs Dorian by the shoulders, steadying him.
“I saw it, I saw it,” Dorian repeats, eyes glistening. Atticus doesn’t let him go.
I look down on the bones, at the skeleton. “After what Adelina did,” I say, thinking out loud, “they turned this place into her prison and closed it off from the rest of the school, hiding what happened. And she died here, trapped in the base of the tower with her creation, the malum.”
“But the tower was destroyed,” says Atticus. “If this building was a kind of prison, a place where spirits were held, what happened when the tower fell?”
It hits me. I know what he’s thinking.
I look over at Dorian, whose hands are still shaking. He gets it, too.
We all sense it, but I’m the only one who says it aloud. “The creature from the vision…It’s alive.”
24
