Page 56 of Monster's Delight

“See you soon,” I whispered to Hazel and hung up the call. “You canfly?” I hissed at Aiden, swinging my foot up onto the sill.

He took my hand and helped me stand. I was grateful for the giant windows in the teacher’s wing.

“Not at all,” he said with a chuckle. “But you trust me, right?”

I swallowed hard. It was pitch dark below us. I tore my gaze away from the nothingness and focused on his brown eyes, illuminated by the soft light in the professor’s office. “Yes.”

“Great.” He pulled me onto his back and I grabbed him tightly around his neck, my thighs gripping his hips hard. “Hang on,” he added needlessly.

Aiden stepped out onto one of the ridges that decorated the sides of the castle. Then he whispered a spell to close the window. Closing it plunged us completely into darkness. The cold November wind buffeted us. I squeaked a little and buried my face in the back of his neck.

“I’ve got you.” His calm confidence lifted my spirits, although there was no way I would raise my head, even if I couldn’t see my hands in front of my face at the moment.

A feeling of warmth moved through me, and I recognized the effects of a warming spell. “Thanks,” I whispered.

His muscles shifted against me as he made his way along the outside of the building.

“And there we go.” He stopped moving.

I opened my eyes, but we were still in darkness. “Where are we?”

“I’m going to jump now.”

My fingers tightened convulsively in his shirt collar.

“I thought you trusted me,” he said teasingly.

“That was before you said you were going to jump off the fifth storey of a building,” I squeaked.

“Are you sure about that? Where is Professor Dunlop’s office located?”

I opened my mouth and then snapped it shut sheepishly. “The main floor.”

“Exactly. We just had to move away from the magical effect of walking out of the fifth storey window and poof, we’re on the main floor. Ready?”

“Ready.”

The drop to the ground was a short one, and soon Aiden was crouched in a superhero landing to soften the blow to his knees.

“Tada,” he said, bowing with a flourish once I was on my own two feet again.

“Thank you. Now let’s sneak back in.” I was already heading for the kitchen’s back door when Aiden caught my arm.

“Not yet. We need to talk about what we saw in the mirror.”

My vision adjusted to the darkness. Although there was no moon tonight, the starlight lit up the night sky and cast enough light down to Earth that I could make out his expression. He looked upset.

“Yeah, okay.” I drew a privacy bubble around us in case we raised our voices. The warming spell he had cast on the wall was still going strong. “Something went wrong. He must have messed up the spell; said or did the wrong thing.”

“It had to have been that exact spell, otherwise the spell we used to see it wouldn’t have worked,” Aiden reasoned. “Maybe it just didn’t do what they wanted it to do.” He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “The spell hit the salt barrier and kind of, I don’t know, exploded? Based on what we read, what was expected to happen was for the energy to enter her, mingle with her soul, and sever the bond. But that didn’t happen. As far as I could see, the spell didn’t even touch her.”

“So how did she die?” I asked, confused. “That makes no sense.”

“I don’t know. I don’t understand the disjunction branch of magic very well. It’s not taught in any depth in school because of how dangerous it is.” Aiden sighed, defeated.

“Is disjunction magic a stronger form of cutting? I know they teach spells for separating, cutting, and tearing in Una’s tailoring classes. I understand why our grandparents thought that they would need disjunction, because a soul is intangible. I wonder if that’s the difference? Tangible versus intangible magic, and it reacts differently because of what it’s reactingto.” My mind was spinning with new ideas, how to approach the mystery next.

Aiden’s chuckles interrupted my thoughts.

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