The Secret of Spellshadow Manor 2 by Bella Forrest (top ten ebook reader .TXT) 📗

the motion making a thudding sound that quaked through the ground, as his starry eyes rolled in dramatic exasperation.

“Now what?” Elias taunted.

“I have to figure out a way of reading it?” Alex shrugged, feeling victimized. It was like a flashback to middle school—the teacher asking him an exceptionally difficult question he didn’t know the answer to and watching him squirm regardless.

Elias gave another sarcastic clap of his wispy hands, and Alex glowered at him. The shadow-man only seemed amused by Alex’s annoyance as he swooped as close as he dared to the edge of the sunlight’s boundaries.

“How might you unravel such a puzzling mystery?” Elias whispered.

“It’s a code,” said Alex suddenly, the markings making sense. He still couldn’t read them, but he had an idea what they were. It was obvious, thought Alex. If a Spellbreaker wanted to write notes or secret entries, it was only natural they’d want to use a cipher of some sort. A code only another Spellbreaker could crack…

Elias grinned. “Now you’re getting it,” purred the rippling figure, his expression twisting into one of glee.

“A code,” mused Alex.

“I’m certain you’ll figure it out,” whispered Elias as he reached for the edges of his cloak. “And perhaps there will be a reward. There are so many other books, Alex. Books you could not even dream of,” he said euphorically. “Oh, such rare tomes, filled with spells nobody should see… spells that helped me, long ago,” he breathed, the last part barely audible as the air bristled with mystery, Elias seeming to withdraw into himself as he spoke the words.

“Wait! You’re not going yet, are you?” said Alex, not finished with the shadow-man. There were questions he wanted answers to, that nobody else seemed able to answer. The time was now.

“Why should I stay?” Elias shrugged the cloaked slopes where shoulders should have been.

“I have questions for you.”

Elias’s face crumpled into a frown. “I’m not sure I can help,” he said simply, “but go on.”

A thousand thoughts raced through Alex’s mind as he tried to figure out what to ask first. This was his opportunity, and he did not want to blow it. Elias was rarely so openly amenable, but Alex found he could not quite focus once the spotlight was on him. It was hard to find the question he wanted answered the most when he wanted them all answered.

“Who are you?” asked Alex, finally settling on a line of inquiry. There was a niggle in the back of Alex’s mind that had been there almost since the first moment they met—a curiosity to know more about the peculiar, impossible being that made up Elias. He had always wondered what Elias might have been before he was the shadowy homunculus. There was undeniable humanity in the way he spoke, and in the fluid mannerisms of his apparent limbs, until he turned into a cat and Alex’s whole understanding of him went out the window.

“Elias made me, and I am Elias,” came the rehearsed sentence from between Elias’s lips; Alex had heard it before, in the early days at the manor.

“But who was Elias before this?” Alex pressed, gesturing at the shadowy form. “Did somebody do this to you?”

“In a way,” replied Elias cryptically, his voice colored with something Alex couldn’t put his finger on. A tightening of what would have been Elias’s throat, lacing the words with emotion.

“Did somebody hurt you? How long ago was this done to you? Where do you keep finding all these books?” Alex fired questions at Elias, watching as the shadow-guide’s face turned even darker than it already was, discomfort looming over his shifting form. Alex didn’t want to push Elias too far, but the opportunity to ask everything was overwhelmingly tempting.

“You misunderstand,” was all Elias was willing to say. “And these books, I find them where they are left,” he replied.

“How did you end up like this?” Alex ventured, waggling his arms to try to emphasize what he meant.

“Elias made me, and I am Elias,” hissed the shadowy figure, the tone in his voice a warning to Alex. Elias smirked, flashing inky teeth. “Though you should not be so fixated on my state, considering your own position. You have read the book on the great battles; you have been told almost all there is to know about the Fields of Sorrow. Surely, you are beginning to understand?” he breathed, the whisper of it pricking the hairs on the back of Alex’s neck.

Alex shook his head uncertainly.

“They hate your kind. Mages—they hate you. If they knew… Perhaps you should be a little less trusting with whom you share your information,” growled Elias. “You think you are safe so long as your secret is unspoken, but you will never be safe, Spellbreaker. You will spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder,” he warned, a tense trace of pity in his words.

“Is that the great evil?” asked Alex, remembering the line from the essay Ellabell had spoken of. “Their hatred of my kind? Is that it?” he added, thinking he had hit upon something.

Elias released a low, bitter laugh that chilled Alex’s blood. “A great evil was indeed set free that day, but it is nothing as insignificant as their hatred of your kind. It is far worse.” His starry eyes took on a distant look that unnerved Alex. “Their hatred was the cause, but not the result. They left a void behind that day, and voids must be filled,” he said vaguely, a sudden sadness appearing in the black, glittering depths of his piercing eyes. “Just remember, Spellbreaker: a desperate Mage will do anything to win a battle.”

“What do you mean?” asked Alex.

“The specifics do not matter, Spellbreaker. They are all the same. Desperate wizards do desperate things. Just look at what desperation made your friend Aamir do, pummeling the face of poor Professor Derhin.” Elias lowered his voice, a strangely joyful note to his words. “Some will even resort to life magic. You saw for yourself.” The cheerful glint