Home > Year of the Chameleon, Book 2(6)

Year of the Chameleon, Book 2(6)
Author: Shannon Mayer

Gregory came over to us, reluctantly. He didn’t touch Ethan, but he put a hand on my arm. “So looking at it, it’s a matter of unweaving the spell, not breaking it.”

Ethan shot him a quick glance. “Apparently.”

“So unweave it. Go slow. You have four extra pairs of eyes watching.”

Rory was the last to join us, and as he brushed up against me a zing shot through to the rest of the group. “There, that black tail piece, start with it,” he said.

It was not lost on me that Rory shouldn’t have been able to see the magic—he wasn’t part of our crew. And yet here he was, doing the impossible.

The other guys just watched Ethan, but it was Rory who spoke up. “You said you didn’t want to let her down, so don’t.”

Ouch. But the verbal push did the trick.

Ethan’s hand closed over the key and he pulled his wand from its pouch. “I’ll go slow.”

And slow he went. He flicked the tip of his wand against the key until it stuck to the tail end of the magic, catching it. Sweat already slipped down the sides of his face. Of course he was sick, how could I have forgotten that?

“Ethan, maybe—”

“Too late,” he growled. “I can’t stop now or it will break the key into pieces.” He rolled the wand almost like he was winding spaghetti.

“There,” Orin pointed, “under that piece.”

Ethan slid his wand through a loop of magic and hissed as it touched his fingers, and through the connection I felt a flare of pain. But he didn’t let go.

He kept working through the spell. Gregory pointed out a dead end and Ethan avoided it, sliding his wand around another loop that could barely be seen.

“Like a magic maze,” Rory said. “There’s the end of it.”

“But not yet,” Ethan said, a low tremor working through his body. I lifted my hand a little more, pressing my palm against the back of his hand.

“You got this, Ethan.”

He didn’t look at me as he worked through the last loop of the spell and the key appeared. Ethan slumped, going to his knees. “Holy shit.”

Rory caught the key and turned it over in his palm. “It’s different than before. It never looked like this to me.”

I wondered what Wild had seen when she’d looked at the key. Had she seen through the spells? I had a feeling that was exactly the case. The key had been meant for her or Tommy, no one else.

“Rory, what does the key look like?”

He held it out to me and the second I flipped it over, I gasped.

“It’s a death key,” I said, marveling at the detail in the skull. “Do you know what that means?”

Everyone shook their heads, including Orin. But, of course, this was nothing any of them would understand. “Only necromancers are privy to this information, and even then, it’s only necromancers who’ve passed a certain number of tests. But it was wrapped in a spell from the House of Wonder.”

“Then how do you know?” Ethan asked from his spot on the ground. “Seeing as you’ve been very clear about how little your family thinks of you.”

I glanced at him. “I’ve never said that to you.”

He shrugged. “Everyone knows.” He obviously wasn’t in the least bothered by telling me that I was the center of gossip.

That wasn’t true. Not at all. I pointed the key at him. “I know about this key because my father has a similar key. Yes, it unlocks a safe, but the safe is wound up in spells that only a necromancer could open. Which makes no sense. Why give a key like this to a Shade?”

Only . . . maybe it did make sense. I clutched the key, feeling the connection between it and Wild. No, that wasn’t quite right. I closed my eyes and pinned the key between my palms. Between me and Wild’s . . . bloodline?

“What is it?” Pete asked. “You’ve thought of something.”

I nodded. “What if . . . what if Wild’s mom knew that one of her kids would be a Chameleon? More than that, what if she knew it would be one of her children? What was it her mom said?” I tapped the key against my hand.

“Whose mom said what?”

“What is she talking about?”

Of course, they hadn’t been part of that conversation. They hadn’t seen Wild’s mom; only I had.

I spoke slowly, thinking out loud. “If Wild’s mom somehow knew that one of her daughters would be a Chameleon, she’d know that they’d probably have a crew. And if they had a crew, there was a decent chance a necromancer would be in it.” She might have even known it was Wild from the beginning.

Tommy stepped up beside me. “Then why did she give me the key? I wasn’t a Chameleon.”

“Then why did she give Tommy the key?” Rory echoed the question of his dead best friend, and I smiled.

“If Tommy survived the trials, she knew he’d give it to the next person to come through.”

The two friends—one dead, one alive—spoke at the same time. “Wild.”

“And then if Wild hadn’t needed it, then she would have passed it on to Sam.” Rory nodded. “Genius. Only Lexi wasn’t thinking that Tommy would die. It was just luck that I saw it on Tommy and gave it to Wild after he was gone.”

I doubted that. Despite the fact that he’d hurt Wild, and he wasn’t technically in her crew like us, there were ties between Wild and Rory. Ties that ran as deep as any family member. The fact that he’d been able to stand there with us and see through the magic was a testament to that.

“Don’t underestimate what you mean to all of us,” I said.

A pulse of energy tugged on my palm, between me and the key, stopping me from thinking on it further. I took a step, then another and another. “Guys.”

They were talking behind me, trying to figure out what the key went to. And how to divvy up the sections of the broken and still-smoking rubble.

“Guys?” I called again as I was drawn toward the blasted-out building.

I didn’t know what it was inside of the demolished building that called to me, not right away. My eyes closed as my feet drifted toward the rubble. A song started playing quietly, just a few notes at first, but it swelled with each step I took.

A song of hope.

My eyes pricked with tears.

“Don’t,” Tommy’s voice whispered. “That isn’t what you think it is. You need to stop. It isn’t safe. She’s doing this to capture you, and through you, Wild! Necromancer, you have to snap out of it!”

The song, though, the song pulled at me, promising me something more than this place should have had to offer. My heart gave a ragged thump, and I felt the pang of something more than pain. A song of death.

Little queen, watch your step. That whisper on the wind came from Death himself.

I blinked, and there was the head of the House of Night, Jasmina. “Well, well. I wondered if I would find you here, daughter of Theo.”

I cringed at the use of my father’s name, as if my own was of so little importance. “Director Jasmina.” I didn’t curtsey, but stared hard at her, the song that had called to me fading and leaving me sweating and . . . afraid. She’d tried to lull me into a coma, and if she’d kept going after she could have killed me.

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