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

He became increasingly reclusive throughout his rule, and few details remain concerning the events at Spellshadow Manor during his residence there. It is certain, however, that he killed several known Spellbreakers, including Loran Steele and Ellen Forte. He married Loraine Brune of Stillwater House, and she bore him a single son, Malachi.

Alex flipped through the pages, hungry for more, but that was it. There was nothing else on the family; it was like they had simply stopped existing after that. However, he’d learned from Finder that sometime later, young Malachi had taken up his father’s mantle. Later still, the Head had come to Spellshadow, and its lord had apparently offered his body and soul, his eternal servitude, to the man’s twisted designs.

“Why?” Alex muttered to himself, frowning. What could have motivated Malachi to sacrifice himself like that? He was missing something. Something big.

All the same, he had found what he was searching for. Another quick search yielded a tidy stack of books, and he tromped back down the stairs to where Natalie was studying away in her corner. She looked up as he dropped his literary heap on the table, her face breaking into a weary smile.

“You have found many books, I see,” she all but whispered, her voice cracking.

“Yep,” Alex declared with satisfaction. “But hang on, there’s still some reading I have to do.”

He opened the first book. It contained details of the life of Ellen Forte, a woman described as having a wicked demeanor and a savage temper, who had been involved in “anti-magical resistance”. It only took a few pages before he found the word he was looking for.

Spellbreaker.

After that, it was easy to find more. Spellbreaker blood, he learned, was a rare genetic strand that gave a person the inherent ability to resist the negative effects of magic. The body, he learned, somehow transmuted the magic into cold, leaving the user frigid under prolonged exposure.

I bet you’ve been so cold, Finder had said.

He continued to read, his eyes growing wider, his hands toying with the tips of the pages in his haste to dig through what was in front of him. An answer. A real, complete answer.

“Natalie,” Alex said, his voice fairly quivering.

She looked up, her movement slow. “Yes?”

Alex reached out, putting his hand palm up on the table.

“Burn me,” he said.

Natalie gave him a worried, uncertain look. “Alex?”

“Just try it, please? If I’m right, it won’t hurt me. Go on.”

Natalie appeared too tired to argue, though she looked extremely disconcerted. She flexed her power, managing to form a ball of flame. Alex frowned at the deep red veins that lined it—and the way her hand shook at the effort.

He put his worries aside the instant she bounced the little ball down into his hand. Cold burst from the spot it had hit, a sharp, numbing pop that made him wince and grit his teeth. But the pain was worth it. He watched triumphantly as little whirls of frost rose around the spot, feeling the fire pushing against him, hot and cruel, before melting away.

Natalie stared at where a little piece of ice lay in the center of Alex’s palm. She looked between him and it, then back to him, her face dumbfounded.

“Um,” she said eventually. “I know I’m sick, but that is weird, yes?”

Alex grinned, tipping his hand and letting the little piece of glassy ice shatter against the table.

It was more than weird.

It was the best kind of weird possible.

For that afternoon, Natalie gave up on necromancy. After Alex explained his Spellbreaker theory, the two of them set about testing his powers. In her weakened state, Natalie wasn’t able to push Alex’s limits very far. She did, however, almost give him a case of frostbite from all the ice that was coating his arm by the time they took a break—it seemed that being able to resist magic and being able to resist cold were two very separate things.

By the evening, however, they had fallen back into their usual pattern. Natalie was curled up with her book propped against her knees, and Alex was reading an anthology of Spellbreaker histories while growing increasingly worried. It seemed that if there was one thing the Head would be less happy to find in his school than a non-magical person, it was a Spellbreaker. Their supposed extinction had been no accident: they had been hunted until none remained.

Or at least, that was how it seemed. That was the strange thing about every book that Alex read: past a certain point, they all cut off. Huge sections of books were filled with empty pages, as unmarked as though all the words had been sucked straight off of them.

“History? That’s what you do with your spare time?”

Alex nearly toppled out of his chair as Jari appeared at his shoulder. Natalie had slammed the cover of her book shut with wide eyes, staring at where their friend seemed to have appeared out of thin air.

“At least you have the good sense to look guilty about it,” Jari continued.

“What do you want?” Alex asked, annoyed at the rude interruption.

“You.”

“Do you need me to leave?” Natalie asked feebly from her corner.

Jari laughed, but his heart wasn’t in it. “I was just hoping…you know.”

Alex had some idea, and closed his book immediately.

“Aamir?”

Jari nodded.

Aamir had been growing even bolder in his disregard for their lessons of late, going as far as to stop showing up to class. Their professors had begun to shoot dark looks toward his empty chair, and there was something in their eyes that went well beyond the disappointment of a disrespected teacher.

“I know he thinks class is pointless,” Jari said, “but he’s standing out. Can you come talk to him with me?”

Alex looked over at Natalie, who waved a hand.

“Go,” she said with a cough.

Alex gathered his books, depositing them into his shoulder bag before leaving the library with Jari.

Life at Spellshadow had changed, Alex realized as they walked. Jari no longer continued