The Secret of Spellshadow Manor 4 by Bella Forrest (best e book reader android TXT) 📗

altogether recognize. Where once torches had flickered on the walls, now they had sputtered out, and Alex knew it had not been caused by a chance gust of wind.

Without warning, Jari sprang from the shadows and jumped onto Alex’s back. Alex cried out, grasping for Jari’s arms and throwing his friend to the floor with a hefty thud. Undeterred, Jari sprang again, dragging Alex down onto the flagstones. Alex winced as a hard punch caught him square on the cheek, followed by another vicious blow to the gut that made his eyes water, but he fought back just as hard, clawing for Jari’s arms. As Alex caught his friend with a lucky upper-cut to the jaw, he felt Jari go still for a moment, giving Alex the window of opportunity he had been waiting for. But Jari was quicker than that—the boy leapt straight back into the action, ducking out of Alex’s range.

Frustrated, Alex fired a shield in the direction of the darkest shadows, where he could hear Jari creeping. The boy yelped as the shield found him, and Alex could hear the muffled sound of his indignation. The glowing barrier kept Jari from doing harm as Alex pushed his hands through the shield and rested them on either side of Jari’s head.

As he removed the fog and paranoia with his silvery strands of anti-magic, Alex saw flashes of Jari’s life that made him smile. It was like watching a slideshow of highlights from Spellshadow Manor. An image of the Christmas they had all spent together popped into the spotlight—the great tree erupting from the ground, all of them standing to watch the lights and ornaments, the fleeting joy they had felt. He saw moments between Jari and Aamir, seen through Jari’s eyes, in the days before he and Natalie had arrived. They were laughing at something, stretched out on the grass, the sun beating down upon their grinning faces. Alex could almost feel the sunlight on his skin.

Among the memories of Spellshadow, there were brief glimpses of Jari’s family life, his dad cracking jokes around the dinner table, an array of bright, beautiful paintings adorning the wall behind. Alex remembered something about Jari’s mother being an artist, and wondered if the paintings were hers.

If they were, he thought, she was very talented.

Another set of images flickered into Jari’s mind, showing Alex a hazy, heavily filtered montage of Helena, all the times she had looked at him with her piercing golden eyes, tossing her long silver hair. In Jari’s view of her, she looked like a forties movie star, everything heightened and smoothed out, seen the way he wanted to see her. It made Alex grin; he was truly seeing things through Jari’s eyes. It was tempting to Alex to search farther into his friend’s mind, but he quickly recoiled, confident the paranoia had gone. He realized just how close he was to deliberately invading Jari’s privacy. It wasn’t what he had learned mind control for, and such intrusion was exactly what he had promised himself he wouldn’t do.

Meanwhile, Jari was snapping back to reality. “Whoa—what happened?” he asked unsteadily.

“The wall thing happened again,” Alex explained. “You all locked me up and ran off, thinking you were being chased by monsters. I’m in the process of trying to find everyone so I can remove the fog and we can find Alypia and get her locked up. At the moment, she’s roaming free, and it’s making me more than a little nervous.”

Jari frowned. “Were you just in my head?”

“I had to get the fog out,” Alex admitted.

“When did you learn to do that?” he asked suspiciously.

“I made Demeter teach me,” said Alex.

Jari made a low noise of displeasure. “You didn’t think to say something?”

Alex sighed. “I didn’t think I’d have to use it on my friends.”

“Well, I hope you didn’t go snooping,” Jari remarked, his tone wary.

Alex shook his head. “Never.”

“Hang on, did I hit you? I remember hitting something, though I think I thought it was a massive lizard.” Jari flashed a curious glance at Alex.

Alex nodded. “You got a few good punches in. I managed one decent one,” he said, feeling for the tender skin of his cheek, where a nasty welt was slowly appearing.

“That must be why my jaw is clicking,” Jari mused.

“Well, glad you’re back in the land of the living, but we need to get going,” Alex said, once again pushing away the creeping weariness that slithered through his bones. There was no time for a breather with three more people to track down. “You coming?”

They set off through the darkness into the next corridor, which, thankfully, still had working torches. Alex was glad of Jari’s company. At least with another person by his side, the thought of Alypia springing out wasn’t quite as bad. Still terrifying, but not quite as terrifying.

As they headed into the deepest part of the keep, only a couple of floors above the entrance to Caius’s frightening pit room, they turned down an unfamiliar hallway and stumbled upon an indoor courtyard, littered with dead plants and a fountain that no longer spewed anything but lichen. Standing at the far side, lighting up the room with a very real, magical sword, was Ellabell, fending off imaginary beasts with the fearsome golden weapon, the blade glinting sharply. She let out a sudden, blood-curdling scream, thrashing the sword around in the air before her in a frenzied manner. She looked petrified, and the sight of her in such distress tore at Alex’s heart. He flashed a conspiratorial look at Jari.

“We need a pincer movement—I’ll go around one side, you go around the other,” Alex whispered. “Sneak up on her and hold her steady so I can put my hands on her temples.”

Jari nodded. “Aye, aye, Captain!”

They skirted around the room, approaching Ellabell on both sides. Jari reached her first, almost losing his head as Ellabell swung her sword at the last moment, missing him by a hair’s breadth. In a fit of panic, the