Past Tense (Schooled in Magic Book 10) (25 page)

“You need to watch your lips,” she teased. “You’ve been kissing.”

Bernard didn’t rise to the bait. “Where’s Robin?”

Emily hesitated. “He decided to go off on his own,” she said, finally. Robin wouldn’t thank her if she told his friend the truth. “I thought I should stay with you.”

“Silly bastard,” Bernard said. He peered into the forest, looking for Robin. “I’ll get after him if you two start hunting for herbs.”

Julianne caught his arm. “Should you be alone?”

“
He
shouldn’t be alone,” Bernard said. “And if his master
catches
him alone, out here, he’ll regret it.”

He strode off before Emily could point out that Master Chambers was likely to be busy—Whitehall would probably be telling him about the planned school—leaving Emily and Julianne behind. Emily glanced at Julianne and frowned, inwardly, at the odd little smile crossing Julianne’s face. She looked like the cat that drank the cream ... her face flushed, her shirt rumpled, and her short hair in disarray. Whitehall wouldn’t have any trouble noticing that she’d been ...
intimate
... even if he
was
blind.

She leaned forward. “Are you all right?”

“Just feeling a little strange,” Julianne said. She touched the space between her breasts thoughtfully. “Is that normal?”

Emily shrugged. She knew that some of her friends—male and female—bragged about their conquests, but it wasn’t something she intended to do. Besides, she was very far from
normal.

“He made me feel so good,” Julianne burbled. Emily couldn’t help wondering if she was a little high. There was so much potent magic in the air that it had to be having
some
effect on them. “I never wanted him to stop.”

She looked up, suddenly. “Robin tried to kiss you, didn’t he?”

“He did kiss me,” Emily said. She touched her lips, feeling a pang of guilt. Her boyfriend might be nearly a thousand years in the future, but she still loved him. Caleb would be heartbroken if he knew Robin had kissed her and, just for a moment, she’d kissed him back. “This place ... it has that effect on people.”

Julianne shrugged. “He’s definitely interested in you,” she said. “But if you don’t want him, make that clear. You have no protector.”

“I don’t need a protector,” Emily said, stiffly.

“No,” Julianne said, after a moment. There was a wistful note in her voice. “I don’t suppose you do.”

She picked up one of the baskets as they heard the sound of approaching footsteps, then motioned for Emily to start picking herbs. Emily did as she was told, keeping her eyes down as Bernard and Robin rejoined them. Bernard gave her a thoughtful look; Robin, behind him, refused to meet her eyes at all. Emily wondered, rather darkly, just what he might have told his best friend about her. That she’d led him on? Or that the kiss had gone badly wrong?

Don’t worry about it
, she told herself firmly.
Nothing is going to happen between you and him
.

“Make sure you leave the seeds behind,” Julianne said. She glanced into Emily’s basket and frowned. “They’ll grow the next crop of herbs.”

Robin looked up, still refusing to look directly at Emily. “What can you do with these herbs?”

“Brewed into a tea, you can put someone to sleep,” Julianne said, briskly. “Boiled together with four other herbs and plenty of water, you can keep someone awake for hours.”

“That will be very helpful,” Emily said.

“It catches up with you,” Julianne said. “I once drank a potion to stay awake for several days—there was a particularly difficult childbirth—and afterwards I was completely out of it for three days. My tutor had to pour water into my mouth just so I would have something to drink.”

“Everything has a price,” Robin muttered.

Emily
looked
at him. “What do you pay for each demonic spell?”

Robin’s eyes flashed. “None of your business, you ...”

He caught himself. “I beg your pardon, Lady Emily,” he said. He made a visible effort to calm himself. “This place brings out the best and the worst in people.”

Emily shrugged as they moved to the next clearing and began harvesting a bundle of moon flowers. Professor Thande used them in several potions, yet—from what she recalled—there were several other herbs that could be used in their place. Moon flowers weren’t actively poisonous, he’d said, but they did have irritating side effects. Julianne, she assumed, didn’t know about their replacements yet.

She’s already halfway to inventing the alchemical method
, Emily told herself. Julianne had taken to the concept like a duck to water.
She doesn’t need any more help
.

The air suddenly blew cold, so cold she shivered as she straightened up. Julianne’s eyes were wide with fear, while the two boys—their disagreements forgotten—were glancing from side to side, their hands held up in casting gestures. Emily stared at them as the temperature continued to drop, sensing the magic field flickering and changing. She could
feel
it.

Something was coming ...

“Stay very quiet,” Bernard hissed. Emily shivered, again. She could hear the fear in his voice. He was absolutely terrified, too terrified to try to hide it. “And start inching back towards the castle ...”

Emily glanced towards the other side of the clearing, just in time to see the trees part, as if something had pushed them aside ...

... And then a monstrous creature scuttled into the clearing.

E
MILY FOUGHT THE URGE TO INCH
backwards as the creature slowly advanced on them. It was hard, so hard, to get a clear idea of what it
was
. There was something about it that her mind refused to grasp, as if there were parts of it that existed in other dimensions. And it was faintly translucent, as if it wasn’t truly solid; she could see trees and bushes
though
it, if she peered carefully. She found herself catching impressions of teeth and claws, long spider-like legs and flickering eyeballs ... oddly, the trees were bending
around
the creature, rather than being broken or pushed aside by its bulk. She couldn’t help thinking that the creature was being
pushed
into her reality, rather than being native to the Nameless World. There was something about its multidimensional nature that made it very alien.

She tried to look closer, but her head started to pound. The creature seemed to draw her thoughts towards it, tugging at her mind; it was a compulsion, she realized dully, every bit as dangerous as subtle magic. She bit her lip hard, using the pain to focus her thoughts, then poked Bernard in the back. He jerked, then elbowed Robin while Emily did the same to Julianne. They’d been entranced so thoroughly that they hadn’t even noticed!

And yet, her rune was still. There was no burning sensation in her chest.

Whatever that creature is
, Emily thought,
it isn’t natural
.

The boys motioned for Julianne and Emily to slip backwards while they blocked the creature’s path. A typical giant spider could be killed by a sword, if magic wasn’t available, but the creature in front of them was no true spider. Her mind, she realized numbly, was trying desperately to match the morass of impressions to something she could accept. And yet, the more she looked at it, the harder it was to escape the idea of a dozen spiders melded together and turned into a single entity.

“Get ready to run,” Bernard hissed. He never took his eyes off the creature. “Go straight back to the castle. Don’t worry about us.”

Robin glanced at him. “If it found us here, it could follow us back to the castle,” he objected, bluntly. “We can’t let it find the others.”

Emily swallowed, hard. If the spider-
thing
was one of the creatures hunting the magicians ... no wonder no one had ever been able to give her a good description. There was something about it that slipped from her mind, the moment she looked away. It was wrapped in a power that concealed it, she suspected, a spell that was
very
like subtle magic, in that it stole thoughts and memories without the victim ever suspecting they were gone. If they escaped, they might even forget what had happened and slip back to the castle, unaware that they were being followed. And then the castle itself would be invaded.

“No,” she agreed. Her throat was very dry. “We can’t lead it back to the castle.”

The creature moved forward in eerie silence. Even the birds and insects were still. Emily saw the grass bending around the creature, as if it wasn’t really there, as if reality itself was being parted to allow the creature to exist. Bernard swore savagely and hurled a fireball right at the creature, only to see the fireball flicker out of existence long before it reached its target. The local magic field was shifting, Emily realized, as the creature picked up speed, flowing towards them with all the inevitability of a tidal wave. It was drifting towards the creature ...

“Go,” Bernard ordered. “Go, you ...”

He pushed Julianne back, throwing a stream of fire towards the creature as he ran away from the girls. Emily thought, just for a second, that he was running away and abandoning them; then she saw the creature shift, turning to chase him. He was leading it away from them.

The creature sprang forward. Robin let out an oath and threw a spell of his own, striking the creature in the chest. The creature stopped and spun around, flickering impressions of malicious eyes focusing on Robin. It lunged forward, the ground shifting rapidly as it advanced, only to stop again when Bernard hit it with a fireball. Emily pulled Julianne back—the younger girl was staring in horror—as her mind worked desperately, trying to think of an angle. The creature seemed immune to spells, all spells. And yet it was only going after the boys. Didn’t it realize that Bernard and Robin were probably faster on their feet than Emily and Julianne?

Not that it matters
, Emily thought, as the creature flowed forward.
At that speed, it won’t have any difficulty catching any of us
.

She reached what she devoutly hoped was a safe distance, then turned to stare as the creature sprang forward, lashing out with translucent legs—or tentacles—towards Robin. Robin was picked up and thrown across the entire clearing by
something
, landing badly and hitting the ground. He snapped a word Emily didn’t recognize, releasing one of his demons. For a long, chilling second, there were two utterly inhuman creatures in the clearing ... and then the demon flickered out of existence, as if it had never been there at all. Robin stared in disbelief, his mouth dropping open as the creature reached for him. And then Bernard threw a fireball into the creature, drawing it back towards him.

It banished a demon
, Emily thought, stunned. Beside her, Julianne seemed no less astonished. From what little she recalled, a demon released in such a manner had to defend its master before returning to the darkness. But Robin’s demon had lost, spectacularly.
The ... the creature just kicked its ass out of our world
.

“That’s not possible,” Julianne breathed.

Emily was just as shocked. It clearly
was
possible, even though she had no idea how it had been done—or why. Perhaps the creature ate magic. The spells Bernard and Robin were hurling into the semi-translucent monster, draining their power at a terrifying rate, didn’t even seem to be
touching
it. Instead, they were breaking up and fading back into the ether. The creature didn’t even seem to have
noticed
Emily and Julianne.

“It hunts by using magic,” she mused. Bernard and Robin had made it clear that the hunters—whatever they were—had gone after the master magicians first. They were the ones covered with sloppy magic, the most tempting targets. “Perhaps it can’t
see
people without magic.”

Julianne yelped in horror as Bernard was thrown back against a tree. The creature advanced slowly, opening its mouth as it reached out for Bernard.

Emily pushed Julianne away as hard as she could, then carefully cast a fireball of her own, trying to minimize the magic traces that would point directly to her. The fireball struck the creature’s rear and it whirled around, eyes searching for the caster, but it didn’t seem to see her. Emily held her breath, silently praying that Bernard would have the wit to crawl away while the creature was distracted. Her spell was weaker than the fireballs Bernard and Robin had been hurling about, but it should still be strong enough to blind the creature to Bernard’s presence.

If, of course, she was right.

The creature advanced forward. She couldn’t help thinking that it was sniffing the air, looking for traces of her magic. The world had to look very different to a magic-hunter, she thought; Bernard and Robin had to be bright, easy to see, while Emily and Julianne were barely even visible. She sensed the magical field shifting around the creature, flickers of raw magic flowing towards the translucent bulk and flickering out of existence. Could it be, she asked herself, that the creatures had
drained
the ambient magic field until it was too weak to support them? Did they explain why she’d never seen or heard anything like them in her own time? Or ...

She staggered as the memory struck her. There had been ...
something
... in the tunnels below Whitehall, something they’d seen just before encountering the statue. And there had been warnings of spider-like creatures carved into the walls ... was she looking at one of those creatures in the flesh? Or whatever it had that passed for flesh? And then there was the statue, the vanishing statue ...

Dear God
, she thought.
The statue
!

The creature sprang forward. She recoiled in shock—she saw a whole series of flickering impressions of tentacles, claws, teeth and a stomach that went all the way to infinity—and then screamed in pain as ...
something
... lashed across her face. She’d been hurt before, more times than she cared to imagine, but this was different. The pain slashed all the way to the very core of her being, tearing at her, and ...