Phoenix Academy - Lucy Auburn Page 0,33

his eyes flat. It's clear he doesn't think I'll come back for them—even if I can.

How did things get this muddled? Did we really spend all that time together, laughing and bonding and growing close physically, all for it to mean nothing? I don't understand how that can be possible. Even without the fog of magic, it meant everything to me. I was truly myself with them in that lake. There was nothing to stop me from finally letting go.

Now, though, I wonder if they meant what they said to me. Their words of love may have been nothing but an illusion. My heart breaks all over again, into what feels like a thousand slivers.

"I won't leave you guys behind," I tell them, even as I feel the open, emotional part of me die off, my feelings buried beneath an instinctive protective wall. "I'll find another way. I just have to get in touch with the right people. Nehamae... whatever you're doing, if it won't open the door for my familiars, don't bother. I'm going to dream walk."

She raises a thin, delicate brow at me. "This hardly seems like the time or place."

"Dream walk?" Reggie shoots me a confused look. "What's that?"

"It's a witch's way of dreaming while waking," I tell him, hoping against hope that this will work. "I'm going to... speak to some people in my dreams. It sounds nuts I know, but they're the only ones I can think of who have answers."

Then I sit down on the golden path, cross my legs beneath my skirt, and place my hands on my knees, relaxing them. I sit up straight and take a deep breath in. Let it out slowly. And bit by bit, let the world fade around me.

I ignore Nehamae's grumbling about my foolishness.

Try not to feel David's bitter blue eyes on me.

Or hear Xavier and Reggie walks back down the path a distance and talk to each other in low voices.

I'm going to find a way to get them out of here with me. It's the only thing I can think of to show them how I feel. I just hope that we still have a home together on the other side of Hell.

As my mind settles and my naturalistic senses turn inwards, I feel it. Emptiness. Nothingness. And deep within me, the world of dreams.

I didn't know if they would come. They didn't seem like the type to be summoned. And truth be told, the last time I saw them they were far from helpful. All they left me with was impotent rage.

But I know that we're tied together. And their wisdom, as frustrating as it is, might be the only thing to help me right now.

Into the empty fog of my dreamworld, four women appear, dressed in ancient clothing, with unnatural blue hair growing straight from their scalp. They're old, each of them with lines on their faces—though the witch from Salem Massachusetts couldn't be older than her mid-forties despite being quite firmly dead.

As they appear before me, I sense the heavy weight of judgment in their eyes. The first, eldest Blue Phoenix says reproachfully, "You have done nothing about the heavy hand keeping the restless dead from moving on."

"Well, you didn't exactly give me any details," I point out, frustration sharp inside me. It's all I can do to keep my temper at bay, reminding myself that feral magic accompanies my anger these days. "Maybe if you'd included a description of this faceless enemy I would've been able to do something."

The second says, "Not faceless."

"Soulless," adds the third.

I inhale sharply. "You mean the Heretic."

"He has many names," says the Salem witch. "His is a power that must be stopped. For the dead to walk the earth without a tether to their spirits, immutable laws must be violated. He has broken them all. His continued presence disturbs the Spirit Realm and leashes the dead to their eternal pain and fury."

Suddenly I'm at a loss. It never occurred to me that the mysterious presence the Blue Phoenix warned me about in my dreams was him. I assumed it was the trickster demon or something else completely disconnected from my past.

My father has been many things to me: the monster who gave me nightmares, the shadow in the dark, the reason why Mom moved me and Lizzy around so often, and eventually the Heretic, the name I've thought of him as the most.

"You want me to fight him? To... to kill him?"

The eldest Blue Phoenix