Page 47 of Soulbound Shadows: Part 2

Besides, things were sort of under control. I had a fallback. I probably wouldn’t explode. Being able to teleport again without worrying meant it would be simple to get to the school. Simple, that is, as long as I could find it. I’d never teleported to a specific location without having been there before.

Luckily, Marcus’s secret project was supposed to help with that. “Behold,” he said, pulling a sheet away from the table he and Isabella had been working on. “A ley line map!”

“Behold?” Isabella mouthed behind him, rolling her eyes. The thing on the table did kind of deserve to be beheld, though. The twists of wire and odd trinkets had come together in a sprawling map of Eldoria and its surrounding area. The buildings were uncannily accurate, to the point that when I bent in close, I spotted a tiny version of Chanel the size of my pinkie nail. Lines of light twisted through the wire shapes of the buildings, glowing brightly where they intersected. Those were the spots where I could leave the stream of magic. It reminded me of a subway map, but unfortunately, the actual version with wiggly lines and a weird layout instead of the smoothed out, streamlined version they put on the signs. Still, it was better than going by intuition and luck.

The school barely fit onto the map, hidden all the way at the end of the table. Trees made out of Q-tips had been cut in half, stuck cotton-side up, and painted green surrounded it. The incredible artistry of the tiny wire building was somehow only made more impressive by the grade school level arts and crafts forest.

“What’s that?” Gabriel asked, pointing at a plastic spider half-hidden between some of the cotton trees. “Does that indicate some sort of defense mechanism at the school, or an enemy?” He studied the map with childlike wonder, and it was adorable to see.

“That? Oh, no, that’s just a plastic spider,” Marcus said, picking it up and pocketing it. “I wondered where I’d left that.”

Once I knew exactly where we were going, getting to the school was just a question of dipping into the stream of magic and counting the crossroads we passed. It had been simple to slide Gabriel and myself down into the key line, and I’d pulled us back up into reality in exactly the right spot. It felt like we were deep in the woods, although in Eldoria’s forests, that could happen with just a few trees between you and the city. We’d reappeared on a wide gravel drive that led up to a sprawling building, the sort of brick structure brisling with square towers that always popped into my head when I thought about college buildings. The place was overgrown with moss and vines, and several of the windows were broken. I could barely read the carving above the door that said, in imposing all caps: WRAITHWOOD SCHOOL. Below that, carved in smaller letters, was the motto: Creare Inopinatum.

“What does it say?” I asked Gabriel. He’d been weirdly quiet all day, and I was too caught up in my own stuff to dig it out of him. Still, it struck me as kind of odd that he hadn’t found something catty to say about the architecture. Gabriel loved being catty about architecture.

“Create the unexpected,” he said. “Which, I have to admit, isn’t reassuring to read before entering an abandoned building to search for leads.”

“Let’s hope that anything unexpected the students created is long gone,” I said.

There were no signs of anyone, but tracks could be covered. In unspoken agreement, Gabriel and I avoided the huge front doors. There were plenty of other entrances, although most of them seemed to have been tacked on as an afterthought. We found a nice big broken window, and Gabriel, ever the gentleman, cleaned out the last of the broken glass from the frame before we ventured inside.

The inside was cold and dark, like the light from the broken windows was being swallowed up before it could actually illuminate anything. There was rustling down the hall, and I froze, but Gabriel cocked his head to the side and then shook it.

“Rats,” he said. “I don’t hear anything larger.”

We picked our way through the building. I’d been in plenty of abandoned places before—hazard of the job—but it usually felt different. The school seemed to have been tidied for summer break and then someone had locked the door and never come back. Chairs were stacked against the walls, and the chalkboards still had the dusty traces of lessons scribbled on them. We passed a corkboard in the hallway where a yellowed flyer for the school’s play was still pinned. They’d been doing Hamlet, which struck me as a little ambitious.

Gabriel suddenly went very still, eyes going unfocused. I could practically see his ears pricking up. “There’s something below us,” he murmured eventually. “Someone. I hear a voice.”

“Let’s check it out.”

We found a stairwell behind a thick wooden door that spiraled down into the darkness. I didn’t want to risk floating up some lights for us. I had no idea who Gabriel had heard, but I was absolutely goddamn sure I wanted to have surprise on my side when we found them.

We made it a few steps down when the door at the top of the stairs slammed shut behind us. I jumped, and Gabriel twitched as well.

“Do you see anyone?” I whispered.

“I can barely see the top of the stairs.”

“God, I fucking hate this,” I said.

“Give me your hand,” Gabriel murmured. With my hand in his, he took the lead, using his vampiric vision to lead us down the stairs. It was oddly nerve-wracking, even after all of the shit I’d faced. Trusting someone else to make sure I didn’t tumble down the steep stairs made me feel incredibly vulnerable. The fact that the someone else in question was Gabriel helped, but I wasn’t exactly enjoying myself.

We picked our way carefully down the stairs. And down. And down. Frowning, I tugged Gabriel to a stop.

“Can you hear anyone in here with us?” I asked.

“No.”

I cast a little light charm, starting it off dim so it wouldn’t hurt our eyes. At first, it threw a little circle of light around us. I could see a few steps on either side of us, the mildewed wall, and a splintered wooden handrail on the other side. I brightened the light slowly until I could see the landings above and below us. The door we’d come through was barely a dozen steps away.

“I thought Theo said this place was drained of magic,” Gabriel said.

“They did,” I replied grimly. “But you can cast new spells on an old building.”

“Let’s keep moving,” Gabriel said. “I don’t like this.”

We kept walking. It was faster going now we could both see, which was a relief. We got to a landing, kept moving down. Another landing, which completed the circuit. This one had a door on it. The stairs kept going down, spiraling off into the darkness below us.

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