Page 38 of Phoenix Academy: Mayhem

After all, the only civilization nearby is the cabin in the woods where I was stabbed to death.

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Ever since becoming a phoenix, I've thought of my life as two sides to a coin: the Before and the After. The Ari who died wasn't the same as the Ari who was brought back to life. I threw myself into my new world, full of new people, classes, and a campus teeming with life. Even my feral magic going wild and making shifters mad distracted from what I never truly confronted: the fact that my own father, soulless and full of rage, killed me, my mother, and my sister.

My life as a phoenix has been one distraction after another. Even now, I have one: if I don't figure out how to get across the country to the hidden door that leads to Phoenix Academy, I have no idea how my spirit will return to my body.

Experimentally, I try leaping into the air and punching the sky with one fist. Nope—no flying here. Whatever kind of spirit I am, it's the walking-on-the-ground type. Not the hovering type.

I try summoning my blue phoenix fire a few times, just a little bit, but it also doesn't work in this form. Only my witch magic, the spiritual kind tied to my essence, works. Being a phoenix must be some indelible part of my body—and while it worked in Hell, where I had no body at all, now that my soul has returned the fire has gone back to my flesh. Until I've reunited with the meat-and-bones me, I won't be able to call its blue flames.

At least, that's what I reason, based on my knowledge of magic and limited understanding of being a phoenix. It makes sense. Something changed in me as we passed over—a part of me shifted. Whatever led my spirit to being a physical form in the Spirit Realm and Hell, it's just a murky invisible ghost here.

I wish I was like Dani's demons at least. She could see them, even when no one else could. Unfortunately I'm just a boring regular ghost.

As I follow the guys through the woods, retracing the path I walked—or more accurately, was forcibly dragged down—I try to see if they can at least sense that they're being haunted. Racing through the trees, I kick up leaves and make ghost-like sounds.

"Hooo-hoooo!"

"Gaaaah, oh no, boo!"

"I'm a little girl." I whisper this in Xavier's ear. "And I want my mommy, or I'm going to... kill you!"

I spin and jump. Run and scream. Try to concentrate very hard on pinching them. At one point David glances towards me and frowns, but his eyes don't quite connect. It's possibly the biggest disappointment of my life.

It does at least distract me from where we're going until it's too late to ignore it.

The cabin rises in the distance, in a clearing between trees.

Yellow police tape is strung around its boundary. Webs of it criss-cross the back porch and block off every entrance. There's dirt and torn bits of plastic mingled in with the leaf matter, making it very clear that this case, at least, isn't getting the local rural police department's full attention.

"Whoa." Reggie stops and stares ahead, then frowns, sniffing the air. "I smell blood."

"Old blood," Xavier clarifies, his eyes glowing yellow as he prowls near the tape. "Dried old blood. A lot of it—more than one person died here."

Thinking of the tourists who were staying in this house before the Heretic and his followers brought us here, I glance around to see if they're haunting the place. But however violently they died, they moved on.

Thankfully, it seems, so did the men I killed. Or at least, I think I killed them—I was too frightened to stick around and check. My wild magic took out one, my newborn flames the other. Either way, they haven't gone poltergeist, or I would sense them in the air as I unfurl my naturalistic senses around me.

This place feels empty and hollow. It reeks of death. Even wildlife is cautious around this much human blood. And one death that happened here is stronger in the air than others, full of tainted magic and power: my death burning on the pyre and coming back different. The birds, chipmunks, squirrels, and raccoons all cringe away from the magical aura the charred remains have left behind. They don't want to be anywhere near where I was reborn.

I don't blame them.

"Wait." David looks around, eyes narrowed. "This place... it feels familiar..."

Moving past him, I walk through the caution tape—another thing my spirit body can't interact with—and towards the cabin. We're facing the front porch; I was killed inside, and reborn on the pyre out back. Just seeing the cabin again sends a horrified shudder down my back.

As I draw closer to the cabin, the guys fade away from my awareness. All I am is the girl who ran. The girl who turned to fight. The girl who, in the end, wasn't able to save herself or anyone she loved.

I take the steps up towards the cabin door and pass through it to the inside.

The sharp scent of blood hits my nose all at once. It seems odd, that I can smell in this form, but somehow it fits. Of course I can touch and smell and see the world, but not interact with or change it at all. No wonder spirits go insane after years of being forced to observe a world that never observes them back.

Walking through the front entryway and kitchen of the cabin, I'm brought back to that day. The fear that ran through me. Making eye contact with Mom in the hopes she had a plan. Trying to keep myself calm and collected for Lizzy's benefit.

His dark, soulless eyes.

The rope on my skin. How Lizzy fought and cried and thrashed as they tied Mom to the ground and the Heretic pulled out his knives. There it is—through the hall to the dining room. The table and chairs are still discarded in the corner to make space for what he did.

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