The Secret of Spellshadow Manor by Bella Forrest (classic english novels txt) 📗

bottle. So much for being in here alone, or this place being secret. He was getting the unnerving impression that you couldn’t really be alone at Spellshadow, no matter where you went.

“You have calmed a great deal,” the cat remarked.

Wondering whether it was wise to engage with the thing, Alex just put his hands in his pockets and narrowed his eyes at it. He was no less wary of it now than he had been at their first meeting. Perhaps even more so.

“Too good to talk to me,” said the cat, sounding hurt. “And here I came all this way just to give you a warning.”

“What?” asked Alex, too apprehensive to resist. “I’ve already had a warning tonight.”

“Oh yes, I know,” it purred lowly, flicking its tail. “And very interesting it was. But did it occur to you that there are many things in this place, seen and unseen, of which you should be warned?” A laugh that didn’t fit the little animal burbled out into the room, seeping into every corner. “And I know you now. I couldn’t place you at first, but now I recognize you.”

Alex pulled at his coat, feeling unsettled and even more chilled than before. It was so cold down in the cellar; he could feel it slipping down his fingertips like frost curling over a fresh blade of grass. He stared at the cat, waiting for it to continue, but it said nothing more, instead licking a paw and sending a spray of shadowy mist flicking off the tip of one long claw.

“What are you?” Alex finally asked. “What do you want?”

“Haven’t we already established that I may as well be a cat? As for what I want”—its ears swiveled—“I want nothing much. Mostly just to watch. I did want to tell you, though: do be careful. The professors…” It made a noise somewhere between a growl and a cackle. “They are not half as stupid as they might appear. And that goes double for the Head.”

Alex stared.

“This is no place for one such as you,” the cat continued. “So be careful, won’t you? I wouldn’t want you to graduate too soon.”

Alex wet his lower lip. “Graduate?”

The cat let out a low hiss of dissatisfaction. “Haven’t you figured it out yet?”

Alex looked up at the sound of voices and approaching footsteps above.

“I hear one of the old professors used to tend this place,” came Jari’s high voice. “Real green thumb.”

“What happened?” asked Natalie.

“She left, like all the rest,” said Jari. “Got replaced. Here we are! And down we go.”

When Alex glanced back, the cat was gone.

Chapter 16

Once Jari left them to head back to the manor, telling them with a wink that he would return in an hour, Alex and Natalie found themselves alone in the small, cold cellar. Hopefully alone.

Natalie looked tense and excited, her eyes shining. “Now we will escape, yes?”

“We’re going to try,” Alex replied. “I was thinking we should start simple, with the gates. That’s why I wanted to come out here. Well, that, and so we could talk with more privacy.”

She nodded, her hair gleaming warmly in the torchlight. “It’s a good start.”

They climbed back up the wooden ladder and headed across the devastated garden, picking their way around heaps of rubble and long-dead trees.

“It’s so creepy here,” Natalie said as they walked, holding her arms around herself. “It’s even worse than inside.”

“I don’t know,” Alex replied as he held back a leafless branch so she could pass. “At least the gardens aren’t trying to hide what they are. Inside, it’s pretending to be a school, but it’s not really, is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the teachers here aren’t really teaching much, are they? They only ever cover focus and control.” He paused, hesitant to scare her with all he had heard tonight. She probably didn’t need to know about the dark crater in the garden, or Aamir’s deep-seated fear, or the cat-creature. “And nobody seems to know what it means to graduate, but it doesn’t sound good,” he finished.

“You’re right. And it does not feel very much like a school. The students are strange and quiet, and it’s hard to make friends. Maybe everyone is scared.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.” He remembered something he’d been meaning to talk to her about. “Hey, do you remember me asking you about a gray man in rags?”

“In Professor Derhin’s classroom?”

“I mean before that. In the nurse’s office at Middledale High.”

“No…I don’t remember very much from that time,” she said, sounding rueful.

“Well, I’m thinking that must be ‘Finder’. He finds magical people and enchants them to come here. That’s another creepy thing about this so-called school.”

“But he’s supposed to be invisible, isn’t he?”

Alex paused, and she nearly bumped into him. “Is he?”

“That’s what the girls in my dorm said. He’s supposed to be invisible, and nobody has ever seen him.”

They started walking again, Alex mulling this over. What did this mean?

“Alex,” Natalie said, stopping suddenly on a chunk of cracked pavement. “If we find a way to escape, if we succeed…We can’t just leave the other students here, can we? Haven’t they all been taken from their homes too?”

He sighed. He hadn’t yet asked Aamir or Jari for details about their personal history, though she was probably right. But a mass escape? How would they pull that off?

“Let’s just focus on how to escape at all first,” he said as they approached the gates.

The great gates of the manor were much as Alex remembered them. Rusting bars of iron as thick as his arm, covered in so much ivy that he couldn’t even see the world beyond through the slits. On either side, tall brick walls rose high above the garden, topped with treacherous curves of barbed metal.

He strode over and reached through the ivy, seizing one of the bars with both hands. It was strong, immovable, and freezing cold. Thinking to climb up it, he steadied his grip, but the cold intensified, shooting down his arms, sinking