Page 38 of Phoenix Academy: Madness

He trails off, and Xavier finishes the sentence. "If our mom died we'd probably go live in the woods as panthers for months, because we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves."

"Yeah." Reggie reaches out and grabs my shoulder, fingers curling around me, and I feel a surge of embarrassed attraction shoot through me like lightning. "We totally get it. Just like... don't do that again, okay? At least not until that mage dude says it's fine."

"Mage Auerbach," Xavier corrects him. "Maybe he'll figure out some other way for you to see your mom's spirit without the ghouls attacking. I could research it in the library."

"Thank you," I tell him. "That's sweet. But I don't think you'll find anything on the spirit realm, just like you didn't find anything on familiars. Witch magic tends to be... secretive. We're not really the writing-things-down type. I'll just have to resign myself to the fact that I'm never gonna see her again."

A cold nose nudges my hand, and I glance down in surprise to see that David is looking up at me with something like sympathy in his wolf face. It's hard to tell, but I give him a little scratch on the nose, and he doesn't growl at me. I decide to take it as a win.

"Let's go." Tearing my eyes away from the spirit rune, I wipe my face off with my sleeve and tell myself I'll be okay. "We've all got class in the morning, and there's no reason why you guys should be as tired as I'm probably gonna be when my alarm goes off tomorrow."

* * *

Sleep drags me down.

But it doesn't bring me peace.

Instead I dream—and not the good dreams that I want, where my family is back together and the Heretic is a thing of the past, a demon we don't worry about anymore.

No, these dreams aren't here to comfort me. And they don't intend to ever let my out of their grip.

I feel my dream go wrong, feel the darkness of its pull as I'm dragged into them, but I can't resist. The dream wraps around me and steals the breath from my lungs.

First all around me is nothing but blackness. Not the kind that comes from the oblivion of dark, gentle, cocoon-like sleep. No, this is a blackness that weighs heavy in the air around me, undeniably hostile and unwelcoming. I try to take a step forward, to escape it, but my feet slip into a deep sticky tar-like substance beneath me. Opening my mouth to scream, I find that nothing comes out.

Panic fills me. My mind scrambles as I try to remember a spell that will help me out of this horror. A spell to run as a rabbit runs. One to clear a dense overgrowth. One to empty a full container. But none of them fit, and none of them will spill from my lips, which are frozen in horror.

In the distance, the darkness splits open. Light enters the horror that is my dream. A soft, warm glow hits the side of my cheek.

But I'm far from comforted.

Just in front of the light is a monstrous silhouette that looms over me. Faceless and formless, it's a hulking behemoth made of the same terrible ichor that's rising from my feet to my calves. It takes a giant step towards me, and the ground beneath us shudders from its weight.

There's no escape.

I'm trapped.

This time, when I open my mouth, a scream comes out. Terrified, I find my voice long enough to speak one spell, a small, simple one that I shout into the still air, my voice a thousand times louder than a whisper.

It's a spell for help in dire times.

For comrades and allies.

A spell to rally the hordes.

The moment it leaves my lips, I feel the earth tremble. The ooze trapping me rises up, over my knees, towards my thighs, sucking me down into its warm embrace.

Help doesn't come.

Instead the terrible oozing ichor fills the space of my dreams completely. It grows and grows, consuming me from head to toe, its foul stench pouring into my mouth and ears and even my eyes. The creature is gone, and there's nothing but darkness and horror.

Then, all at once, I'm somewhere else.

In the next dream.

All white, where there was darkness. The air is still. I can still taste the ooze on my tongue, although it's gone. There's no sign of it, just a white tile floor beneath my feet and white walls all around me.

And again I'm not alone.

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