Ablaze - Book 4 Read online

  “Debra comes from Isabella’s bloodline too.”

  “Yeah, I know, but somebody lured you here, all the way to Scotland. It’s too much of a coincidence that you just happened to show up at a castle your family lived in generations ago. It was all part of some scheme, some plan. More than any of us, you were brought here for a reason. We’re dealing with ghosts and spells and a sketchy principal, and that puts you in harm’s way, no matter which world you’re in.”

  “If the principal’s so dangerous, why hasn’t he acted?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m sure there’s a reason that he’s biding his time. He didn’t bring you all the way here not to get his hands on you, and we’re set to graduate soon. The clock is ticking, and I don’t think time is on our side. I say we snatch that Harley.”

  “I know they say love conquers all, Hunter, but we can’t exactly bike across an ocean.”

  “Well, we can get far away from here, for starters.”

  “Just let me think about it, okay? There has to be a way to make everyone happy.”

  He sighed. “You’re so stubborn,” he said.

  “You love it,” I answered, grinning up at him.

  He smiled sheepishly down at me and brushed another stray hair out of my face. “You’re right. I do.”

  “Gosh. Get a room, you two,” Pam said. “Wait. You have rooms…and they’re haunted.”

  Hunter smiled. “Since my royal girlfriend insists, let’s just free those spirits and get outta here ASAP. I don’t care about any stupid cap and gown. Besides, we’ll be eighteen in July and August, legal adults. Then we can do what we want, with no one to bully us around.”

  “So many emotions are running through my mind,” I admitted. “I love you and want to be with you. I’m scared and want to leave just as bad as you do, but I can’t just ditch those spirits. It would be…too selfish.”

  “I know. We’ll help them, then leave.”

  We locked eyes again, and in that moment, I realized just how much I loved him. In spite of Pam’s disdain over our PDA, his lips brushed across mine. Again, I could hear my heart fluttering in my chest, albeit in a far different way than it did around King Geoffrey.

  “Mmm. That was nice,” I said, my lips still tingling.

  “Well, there’s plenty more where that came from,” he said.

  He pushed me against the stone wall that stood behind us. His tongue ran across my bottom lip, and I opened my mouth to let him explore my mouth, ignoring our friends who kept clearing their throats in great annoyance. He ran his hands through my hair and wrapped his arms around my waist. Hunter’s kiss was so sensual, so slow, so loving, so intimate. I couldn’t deny the electricity flowing through me. His lips softly nibbled on my ear, then down the curve of my neck, trailing wet kisses along my shoulder. Every time we made out, he drove me wild, and all my troubles seemed to melt away in the love I felt for him.

  Chapter 7

  I met Debra out in the courtyard, Mr. Geo’s girlfriend and some sort of distant relative of mine and Isabella’s. I’d stolen the medallion from her at a charity dance, and I’d also met her when she was dressed up as a fortune teller at another charity event. Now, I hoped she could give me some insight as to what was going on in that crazy, enchanted castle.

  Pretty peacocks strolled past us. One flapped its colorful wings and landed on the iron bench across from us. Finally, winter had given way to the first signs of spring, with rain-fresh air and tiny buds forming on the trees and shrubs, with a few bees buzzing about, and it felt good to get out.

  “We’ve been studying as hard as we can, trying to figure out how to free the spirits,” she said. “We know your arrival at the castle was the first step, because you’re of her blood and own the necklace. It is mentioned in an ancient script multiple times, so I know that’s part of it somehow.”

  “What about the medallion and sapphire?”

  “They are obviously crucial too. We’ve gathered that if Mr. Rowens is trying to complete some sort of immortality spell, he’ll have to do it during the first full moon in June, the only time of year when it will work. We’ve also learned that you have to be connected to the magic in this castle for nine months. We think that’s why he drummed up the idea of this special school, because it would guarantee you’d be here at least that long.”

  “I guess that was better than kidnapping me and keeping me locked up here for that long.”

  “Yeah, it was really a brilliant idea. With all the tours, they wouldn’t have been able to keep you prisoner without someone finding out. This is really the perfect cover, and the authorities and public don’t suspect a thing. In fact, they’d think you were nuts if you tried to tell them what’s really going on here.”

  “Well, when I received that brochure, I fell for it hook, line, and sinker.”

  “I know. He let Miss Shila choose the other students because he really didn’t care. He just wanted you here at all costs, and she took full advantage of that to fulfill her own greedy agenda.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it.”

  “At least we don’t have to worry about her anymore. Our biggest worry now is how to keep you from being, uh…well, sacrificed.”

  I swallowed hard. “Sacrificed?”

  “Yes. That is what the immortality spell requires.”

  “Wow. And here I thought it couldn’t get any worse than spirits possessing me.”

  “It won’t. There’s no way we’ll let that bloody ceremony happen.”

  “Good. That’s a step in the right direction, I guess.”

  “We know they need lots of energy for the ceremony to work. Based on what we’ve read, we assume the medallion is some sort of buffer that will protect humans around that kind of energy. When they read the spell during the first full moon in June, and perform the sacrifice, the stone would provide the energy, and the medallion will keep Mr. Rowens safe during the process, along with anyone in the vicinity. You would be killed, while he would become immortal. The spell would even grant him optimum health, de-aging him back to about thirty.”

  “Great. So I’m some dying man’s way to avoid a severe mid-life crisis,” I said. “He really planned this out.”

  “Yeah. His prognosis from the doctors gives him three years, so he’s somewhat in a hurry.”

  “I wonder why immortality crossed his mind.”

  “He learned about it on a trip to Haiti.”

  “Haiti?”

  “Yes. Black magic is common there, and a witch told him about Isabella. That led him here, to this castle. He’s a wealthy man, so he had no trouble gaining access to it and setting up the school as a ruse. He met Miss Shila at some sort of psychic seminar. She probably jumped at the chance to help run the school and gather young, naïve psychics for her project.”

  “At least she was only trying to get rich by stealing art and music. Hard to believe she was the lesser of the evils. It’s crazy how this was all thrown together for the sole purpose of killing me. What an intricate murder plot.”

  “None of us knew. We were connected with the castle, learning how to free the spirits. When we were told they were going to open a school here, Mr. Geo and I applied, but I was rejected. I think it was because Miss Shila didn’t want another psychic on the property, at least not one she’d have no control over. She was probably worried I would figure out what she was up to, which I would have in time if she hadn’t blown her cover by trying to shoot Hunter. We suspected something was amiss, so when they hired Mr. Geo, he pretended not to know me. It was an easy way for him to get into the castle to hunt for The Lady of the Lake. Of course, at that time, we had no idea what we were looking for.”

  “I wish I would’ve trusted him from the start,” I said. “I just didn’t know.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. Rowens and Shila are to blame for this whole sordid mess, as well as all those evil ones from centuries past. There is so much bloodlust lurking in the history of these old walls. Now, let’s just get those spirits
freed, and get you the heck out of here, so you can start making wedding plans with that Harley-stealing hunk of yours,” she said with a wink. “Maybe Mr. Geo will walk me down the aisle at some point too.”

  I giggled shyly. “We’re only seventeen. No wedding plans yet.”

  “Honey,” Debra says, “I’m family…and family sees things. That boy is part of your future.”

  “I guess we are kind of related,” I said.

  She smiled. “Yes, and like you, I want nothing more than to free my ancestors. We can’t rewrite history, but we can sure put a Band-Aid on it.”

  Chapter 8

  For the next few nights, it seemed I’d be cursed with insomnia forever. I had no ghostly visitors, but I still tossed and turned all the same, thinking obsessively of the book and its contents. I know cancer is a death sentence, and it must be frightening, but how could desperation so easily lead a person—a freaking school principal—to do such a thing, to be willing to kill a teenage girl? It was horrific, the most selfish thing I’d ever heard, but the longer I thought about it, the more I realized how sad and pathetic it truly was. He had to be truly desperate to go to the trouble of seeking an antique book of magic spells and trust them enough to try something as ludicrous as human sacrifice. Desperate times call for desperate homicide, I guess, I finally surmised. Discovering the answers to all my questions was the first step in solving the problem, but not all of the answers were forthcoming, even with the help of ancient scrolls and books and the ghosts themselves.

  After a few more days, I began to recover from the emotional shock of it all. I was resolved to find out more. There was no easy way to know exactly how I might go about doing that, but it seemed that the newfound powers of my necklace were as good a place to start as any.

  A lot of Western folks tried to make meditation out to be some sort of hokum, but I knew it really wasn’t. I had learned that it was really just about clearing my mind, and it was incredibly important to someone like me, a sensitive person who could receive messages from the spirit realm. That kind of clarity allowed my mind to make connections it could not make when it was busier, and once I fell into a decent flow of meditation, it became much easier for me to feel or sense the inherent powers of the things and beings around me. Perhaps it wasn’t as much a sense as it was a connection; in clearing my mind, I managed to open myself up more to the influence of the necklace. I could feel its power thrumming through me like a pulse, but I still couldn’t quite define how I might utilize it. That information would eventually come to me by accident.

  I meditated often when I was with Hunter; since he had a greater need to study our class material than I did, while he hit the books, I just fell into my mind. The power of the necklace washed over me, and I could see it even from behind the lids of my closed eyes, every facet of its cold blue teardrop rendered in perfect detail. It seemed to glow in my mind as it had when I entered the spirit realm. I focused on that glow, and as I did, I heard Hunter’s thoughts, as if he was speaking them audibly: She’s just so pretty, though, isn’t she? What does she see in me? Sometimes I wonder… Oh, c’mon, Hunter. Focus! You’ve got an exam Friday.

  I opened my eyes and laughed a little.

  He looked up, startled and a bit dumbfounded, and I only realized he hadn’t actually been speaking when he said, “What’s so funny, babe?”

  “Oh, uh…nothing. I just thought of this corny joke.” I laughed a little at myself, first taking it to be my imagination, but as I fell silent, he picked right back up with it again.

  I have to quit thinking about my beautiful girlfriend and study. What’s a centrifuge anyway? he thought before his consciousness was overtaken with the droning of his science textbook.

  I was baffled by the powers of the necklace, and I couldn’t believe I actually heard his thoughts in my own head. Why didn’t someone write some sort of owner’s manual for this stupid thing? I thought. I took a deep, quivering breath and leaned back in my seat, lifting my hand to grasp the mysterious pendant. It was incredible what the thing could do, and I knew I’d only touched the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I would have to exercise its power very carefully, because such amazing abilities could backfire in an instant. I also knew that any high magical output would attract unwanted attention in one form or another, especially from the spirit world and from sinister spirits like those who insisted on hounding me.

  * * *

  I could feel Geoffrey lurking around every corner, like some sort of supernatural bogeyman. Every now and then, I’d glimpse his shadow out of the corner of my eye, sometimes while applying makeup in the morning before class. I even saw him in my dreams, chasing me endlessly. More than anything, I felt him, like a malignant presence searing the back of my skull with that unspeakable dread carried by all nightmare monsters. I felt his hatred and was bowled over by it, exhausted every morning since he insisted on haunting me even during sleeping hours.

  When I finally met with Mr. Geo on Friday, I was as tired as I’d been when I’d first delivered the book. The only difference was that he now had a similar fatigued appearance.

  He tapped his finger on the foreign text of the page before rubbing the purplish luggage beneath his eyes, a matching set to my own sleepy Samsonite. “This text reveals a few key ingredients for the ritual, secrets deeper than that of the human blood.”

  I laughed, but there was no humor in it; it was more of a giddy, defeated, nonsensical chuckle, as I was far too tired and angry to be amused. “What could possibly be a darker secret than human sacrifice, Teach?”

  “Something they coveted,” he said, glancing down at the page. “There are references upon references to a holy gemstone hidden somewhere in the castle. I’ve studied it before, looked for it myself.”

  “The conduit you’ve mentioned?” I asked, remembering what William had said.

  “Yes,” he continued wearily. “This book explains that many have lost their lives or descended into madness trying to find it, all fruitless quests. Every possible secret passageway and crevice of this castle and the grounds has been searched, every last brick investigated for a false façade, but no one has ever found anything, and many have lost all devoting themselves to the search.”

  I glanced up at Mr. Geo and asked, “What kind of gemstone is it?”

  “Not surprisingly, the details aren’t very clear. There is mention of a sapphire, but there are many different kinds of those. Not only that, it is only speculation, because the word translates roughly from the original language. Really, it could be any gemstone that even slightly resembles a sapphire.”

  I bit my lip hard. I didn’t want him to know I had it just yet, and I wouldn’t pull out that ace in the hole till I absolutely had to, if ever. For the time being, it was safely stashed in Eric’s room. I couldn’t take any chances when it came to Isabella, and from the way our conversation was going, she hadn’t revealed anything to him. Like me, she held to the theory that the less people knew, the better for us all.

  “How long has the sapphire been hidden in the castle?” I asked. “Where did it come from?”

  “For centuries,” he answered. “Allegedly, it’s been here since Isabella was executed. There is a curse upon it, but it is difficult to discern what it is. The text is vague, and no one has seen it for centuries, certainly not since books of this sort were being written.”

  “A curse?” I asked, swallowing hard.

  “Yes. It seems it will affect anyone who touches it beyond the boundaries of Tiker Castle.”

  I sighed in relief, recalling that my friends and I had all been on the property when we’d touched it. I glanced down at the book. Though William had given me a rough idea of what the language was, I wanted to know more. “What language is this?”

  “It is the word of those who fancy themselves warlocks,” Mr. Geo said, absently flipping through the pages. “Necromancers, if you will, a language for those who want to talk to the dead.”

  I scooted forward a little. “But the dea
d speak to mediums. Is this just for people who don’t have that ability?”

  “No, no. It is for…ghosts who don’t speak, corrupted spirits, and the demon-possessed. It is allegedly a language spoken by the spirits of Hell.”

  With a deep breath and ominous thoughts of King Geoffrey, I asked, “Could you teach me how to speak this language, Mr. Geo?”

  A bit uneasy, he closed the book and glanced up at me, resting one hand on the old cover. “The human mind is not equipped to handle all knowledge, Zoey. It could be dangerous.”

  “Yes, but… Look, I have to figure out who’s doing this stuff. I have my suspicions, but like you said before, we need evidence, solid answers. I have to find some way.”

  Sighing, Mr. Geo slid his glasses from his eyes and glanced at the closed book. Slowly, he pulled his eyes back up to mine. “We still have about a quarter left. That’s enough time for independent study if you’re willing to spend your lunch hours with me.”

  “Gee. Will I get extra credit?” I asked with a smile.

  “Very funny,” he said. “I’ll register you tomorrow, under independent language study, so it won’t look suspicious on your transcripts. You need to take it as seriously as any of your other classes though. If we’re both sacrificing our lunch breaks, I expect you to focus on actual learning.”

  “I promise I will.”

  “All right,” he said. “I’m not sure what to do with this book, but I don’t want to keep it in my office for much longer. I have a feeling it makes me somewhat of a target.”

  “I’ll return it,” I fibbed. Instead, I squirreled it away between the mattress and box spring of my bed, feeling it all through that night like the princess cursed with trying to sleep on a pea. I lay awake, grateful to know that the next day would mark the start of a much-needed weekend. I could sleep in, as long as I wanted, and when the sun came up, I hoped I’d feel some semblance of warmth and security.