Phoenix Academy - Lucy Auburn Page 0,37

the lake—the Ari who let herself say and do things I never thought I'd say or do—is the Ari I want to be from now on.

My power seeps out with my intentions. It feels every grooved line of the oak doors beneath my fingers and wriggles its way between the boards. There's ancient history here. I can sense the mages who built this door, who did unspeakable things. So many sacrifices, so much death, just to go places they didn't belong.

Mages always think they're too good for the rules of nature.

They pervert magic with their power and their choices.

But this door shouldn't exist. It should never have been here for the trickster demon to open—and it shouldn't have required the sacrifice of four demonic lives to close.

I can sense what happened when they made this door. Every pathway to and from our world, every place where the Spirit Realm brushed up against ours and ghosts lingered, became concentrated. They're all sucked towards the single doorway and its relentless path. A path mages once ruthlessly controlled, that's now used by Grims and other dark things to raise the dead into perverted beings like the Risen and my own father the Heretic.

It shouldn't be this way. Instead the realms of the living and the dead should go back to what they once were: four separate realms that nevertheless brush up against each other.

My feral magic lashes out of me. It fills the crevices of this doorway and its mirror in the Spirit Realm. I let it expand and run wild, aching with the desire to destroy it and return to the way things once were before the mages changed it all.

"That magic!" Nehamae flits near my head and shoulders, her wings brushing against my skin. "It's too powerful—you're going to destroy the door. The pathway will be erased. All the power in it will surge out."

"Yes." I feel satisfaction at her words. More and more power spills out of me. "Let it."

"But the changes that will happen—magic will run wild and free!" She tugs at my blue hair and tries to pry my fingers from the door; beside me, David growls, and I feel his support and the support of the twins at my back. "Witches will be born all across the mortal realm. Spirits will cross over in places where the boundaries are thing. Many mages will lose the ability to channel magic. Grims will be given license to summon untold things—please, you cannot, the danger is too great—"

"I won't let these three die," I tell her firmly, batting her away with a hand full of wild-toothed magic. She spins in the air for a moment before righting herself with her wings. "The realms were around before mages built the door. They'll be around long after the doors are gone."

Reggie quietly asks me, "Are you sure about this?"

"I am." I nod resolutely, feeling the energy of the seven immortals channel through me. "As soon as the door is gone, the pathway will be open. I don't know for how long—its magic will spread out and splinter away, like the fairy said. So we'll have to go through quickly."

"We're ready," David says. After a pause, he adds, "Your mom..."

My heart aches. "There won't be the chance to stop in the Spirit Realm. But maybe... maybe once the natural order of things is set right she'll be able to visit me before she moves on to the Great Beyond."

Nehamae hisses, "You will regret doing this."

"It's likely," I admit, "but not as much as I would regret not doing it."

I feel the power of the immortals inside me. They were around long before ruthless mages built a doorway between Hell and the mortal realm, and their ancient energy invigorates me. Whether it's my affection for the guys that makes me want to do this, or spite for the mages who made opening and closing this door possible, I don't know. All I know is that I want it gone.

The wild magic inside me obeys my desires.

It shakes the supports from the frame of the door. Shivers its boards apart. Pries loose the sacrificial magic that holds it together. I shudder as blood seeps from the wood and magic loosens itself in the air.

Whatever the mages who built this door did, it involved far more than just drawing a few runes and summoning elemental magic. It churns my stomach to sense it even long after the door was built. Maybe once it's destroyed, those lost