It’s blood.
“Something happened. I think something happened to Atticus,” she says.
Searching for answers, I take off my glove and place my palm on the door.
The vision comes to me, fast and strong, like a punch to the gut.
Atticus. The journal. Professor White and the malum. The scene plays out in front of me. In the vision, the malum envelops Atticus as Professor White cackles.
I lurch out of the vision. “We were wrong,” I tell Raven. “It’s not Warden Stone. It’s Professor White who’s controlling the malum.”
“Professor White? His mentor?” Raven is aghast.
“She took Atticus,” I say. “They’re in the tunnels.”
“But where? They’re hundreds of miles long.”
“I don’t know,” I say. Desperation tastes like acid in my mouth. I don’t want to believe that it’s too late, but I don’t know if Atticus is alive or dead. I don’t know how we’re supposed to help.
“Why would Professor White take him, unless…”
We stare at each other, the same thought running through our heads.
We bolt for Professor White’s office, finding her name stenciled on a door. It’s locked, but that doesn’t stop me. I throw myself against the door, smashing it from the frame. My shoulder throbs, but I ignore the pain. The office walls are painted with strange sigils. Arcane summoning circles cover every surface.
The place bristles with magic. Pages ripped from grimoires are tacked haphazardly among the sigils. This is the work of an unhinged genius, the desperate scrawl of someone who’s obsessed with the chaos…and she’s taken Atticus.
“These are the same markings we saw in Adelina Ward’s cell,” says Raven, studying the symbols. “Oh God, Dorian. She’s practicing chaos magic. She wants to continue Ward’s work.”
On her desk is the brochure for Old Bones, and an advertisement for the exhibit.
The revelation hits me like lightning.
“Sheisgoing to finish what Adelina Ward started,” I say. “She’s going to do it again, but White needs Hecate’swand.”
Part Three
Omne trium perfectum.
(Every set of three is complete.)
—Latinmaxim
34
Atticus
We learn from failure, not from success!
—Bram Stoker,Dracula
Everything hurts. Evenmy eyelids ache. I try to open them, but it’s like they’re glued shut. My mouth is dry; my tongue tastes like iron. I try to swallow, but I can’t.
I don’t know where I am. I’m on my back, lying on something hard and cold. A chill rakes through me like tiny daggers. My shoulder throbs, a low, heavy pulse.Ba-dump, ba-dump,faster and faster. I try to touch it, but I can’t. I manage to open my eyes to see why. My arms, they’re raised over my head, and when I try to move them, a rattle echoes in the chamber. Something cold and hard binds my wrists. I move to wriggle free, but the iron cuts my skin when I struggle to pull my hands from it. I’m chained up. My legs are bound. The freezing cuffs clutching my ankles are like vises, holding me down.
I don’t know what happened. One minute I was with Professor White; the next…
Everything comes back to me. My eyes snap open.
