Darkness Watching (Darkworld #1) (30 page)

The next thing I was aware of was someone yelling, “Ash? Ash? Are you okay?”

“Of course she’s not okay, she’s passed out on the floor!” said Alex to Sarah. The two bent over me, concern etched on their faces.

“I’m fine,” I mumbled. The glare of the fluorescent light hurt my eyes. I felt dizzy, and my head throbbed. Had I really passed out in the hallway?

“Jesus, what were you drinking last night?” said Alex.

“Nothing,” I said—though, truth be told, my memories of the previous night were a little hazy. I remembered something about a nightclub. But I hadn’t gone out. I’d just gone straight to bed, right?

“I must have been really tired. Guess I’ve been overworking.” I got to my feet, trying to gather my dignity.

“You’re telling me,” said Alex. “I haven’t even started that bloody essay yet.”

Relieved at having diverted attention from my mysterious appearance in the hallway, I joined in with bemoaning the difficulty of referencing, whilst wondering what the hell happened last night. Something was missing, but my head hurt when I tried to think back to the last part I remembered. I’d spent the evening with my friends after the last cryptic conversation with the fortune-teller, then got an early night. I remembered drawing the curtains and falling into bed… and that was it. Had I sleepwalked into the corridor? Unease crept along my skin, and I felt like I was missing a vital clue. I trusted my own memory, right? I must have come here myself and fallen asleep on the floor. No other explanation made sense.

Again, that feeling of
wrongness
, like something important was missing.

So now I had memory loss to add to the list of weird things happening around me. I wondered what Claudia would say to that.

Claudia. How could I have forgotten? She’d told me to be careful, and I’d just gone and fallen asleep on the floor. David could have done anything to me while I was lying there. Even knowing he’d apparently faced some moral conflict over whether to report me to his bosses, I knew I could never trust him again. He’d lied to me; there was no getting around it.

For now, I’d just avoid him.

y plan worked surprisingly well. Over the next few weeks, I rarely saw David, which would have perhaps been strange in other circumstances, given that the two of us lived in the same flat. But he seemed to be avoiding me, too. I did glimpse him occasionally from the flat window, and sometimes on campus, but, for the most part, we acted like strangers. Just one of six thousand students, albeit one who, whether I admitted it or not, still set my heart racing whenever I saw him. But I made sure to control this irritating involuntary reaction and didn’t even make eye contact with him, even though it cost me a twinge of regret every single time. If I admitted it, I missed talking to him, but my memories were tainted by the fact that, all the time I’d known him, he’d been spying on me.

I was busy, anyway. Our first spate of deadlines was upon us, and often Alex, Sarah, and I stayed awake until the early hours of the morning, chatting in the kitchen whilst procrastinating or finishing our essays. Occasionally, we saw Pete walk past in relentless pursuit of Danielle. He’d wait at the bottom of the flat stairs, then pounce on her as she entered the building. Whilst this behaviour was undeniably creepy, it was also rather amusing to watch, since she invariably spurned him and left him standing forlorn, clutching a handful of drooping flowers he’d obviously picked from a nearby field. Then he’d shake it off and head to the student bar to get hammered.

“Someone,” said Alex, “needs to get a life.”

According to Claudia, David spent a lot of time at the student bar, too. She seemed to think I wanted an update every time he did anything, which began to get irritating, especially since he was apparently always surrounded by a group of girls.

“If you ask me,” she said, “you had a lucky escape.
Venators
always cheat on you in the end. Well, that’s what I’ve heard.”

“Did Howard tell you that, by any chance?” I said. We sat in the meeting room waiting for the others to arrive.

“Maybe.” She shrugged. “My motto is, don’t get involved with sorcerers.”

“What about Cyrus? And Leo?”

“Nah. They’re not my type. Cyrus is leaving this year, anyway, and Leo… I don’t know. He’s a bit too arrogant for me. And childish. You know, he and Howard thought it would be funny to try and shoot down a few harpies the other day, in the middle of the courtyard. I mean, not to be a killjoy, but it was right out in the open!”

“That’s kinda stupid,” I said.

“Anyway, I’d avoid it, if you can. Love,” she said, in answer to my puzzled look. “It ruins your life. Especially if you love someone who doesn’t deserve it.”

I didn’t know what to say to this. It seemed a rather bleak way of looking at it. I didn’t quite get Claudia, sometimes. I’d thought she was a bit of a wild card. The number of guys she’d hooked up with this term alone seemed to suggest so, anyway. Often she’d act so ditzy I’d think she was a bit dim, but then she’d randomly come out with insightful advice that was exactly what I needed to hear. Like what she said next.

“Anyway, perspective. You’ve loads of time to think, to live life. Nothing is ever set in stone. There’s no point in fixing your mind on something because everything changes.”

That was true. I’d let myself get so caught up in everything, I’d forgotten I had a choice. I’d chosen to take on this double life, to learn more about what I could do, and, although I’d entertained dropping it for a while, something always brought me back to the meeting room every Wednesday afternoon.

I still didn’t feel entirely at ease around the rest of the group. Howard was always liable to randomly snap at someone or throw something, and Berenice still regarded me as if I was some kind of novelty the others had dragged in for her entertainment. Strangely, her snide comments never triggered a reaction in me the way David had. Really, if there was anyone who deserved to be frozen into a block of ice for a while, it was Berenice.

Claudia suggested doubtfully that joining a self-defence class might help me to unlock my hidden anger―as Leo put it―but I didn’t think that was the problem. Magic wasn’t working for me the way it used to, compared to a few weeks ago, when it always hovered underneath the surface. I could still lower the temperature, still summon ice to my fingertips, but the response from the Darkworld always felt oddly muted, as if I called through a glass wall. I couldn’t fathom why, and none of the others could either. Cyrus suggested asking the fortune-teller, but, when we arrived at the stall-packed town square, we found her tent absent.

“That’s odd,” Cyrus remarked. “She’s always here, even when the other stalls aren’t around.”

We searched high and low, but there was no sign of the black tent. Leo disappeared for a few minutes, and, when he emerged from the alleyway between the cathedral and the museum, he clutched a piece of paper.

“This was on the Blackstone Memorial,” he said. “Not exactly respecting the dead!”

He held up the paper. The handwriting was so looped and elaborate that I had difficulty making out the words.

“Gone travelling, by the looks of it,” said Cyrus.

“Seems random,” said Leo.

“Maybe she’s gone away for the holidays?” Cyrus said, frowning. “Never happened before, though.”

“Maybe the Venantium were on to her, and she had to scarper,” said Howard.

“You
would
bring them into it,” said Leo.

“Well, maybe it’s true,” said Berenice.

I rolled my eyes.
Here we go again.

“Come along, children,” said Cyrus. “I’m freezing. Let’s go back.”

The fortune-teller’s absence made me uneasy, though I didn’t know why. No shadow-beast had attacked any of us since the incident at Satan’s Pit, and no demons had spoken to me, either. They were still there; I saw them every time I went outside the area, lurking, but I no longer felt their eyes on me constantly. Why
that
should feel unsettling, I had no idea. I’d hated the feeling of a thousand penetrating eyes studying me all the time, but, in its absence, I felt oddly exposed.

Whilst the fear that I’d get attacked again never quite left my mind, I refused to stay confined to campus. I even went hiking with Alex and Sarah. Nothing took my mind off stress quite like scaling a colossal mountain in below-freezing temperatures, trying to keep up with our far-too-enthusiastic leaders.

In my spare time, such as it was, I read books on magic. Claudia lent me the
Seven Princes
book; I was right in thinking that Howard had liberated it from the Venantium’s library. The old-fashioned language was a little confusing, but I was an English Literature student for a reason. Something about the book intrigued me. I wanted to learn more about magic, of course, but I couldn’t deny demons fascinated me, and I seized the chance to study them. I wanted to make sense of their behaviour around me. Surely this comprehensive guide to demons would have answers?

A good third of the book was devoted to these so-called Seven Princes. According to popular belief, there were seven demons more powerful than any others, who had abilities beyond any other magic-user, demon or human. Able to take on human form, they were largely blamed for the rise of forbidden magic users, since it was believed that whilst disguised in human form they could mate with humans and pass on their abilities to their offspring. These children were human in all aspects, apart from their magical abilities, which were generally more geared toward demonic magic.

The legend said that whenever a demon took a human lover, the demon entrusted the lover with its demon heart, which was held by the family and passed down through the generations, serving as the repository of the family’s stored magic.

Something told me this ought to be resonating with me, but why, I didn’t know. I often skimmed through the book when I was bored, when Berenice was being annoying, or when Howard was trying to start a fight. Sometimes, getting another look at the book was my only motivation for attending meetings.

I learned about the other demonic creatures, incubi and succubae, now mostly eradicated. Both were able to take on human form for a short time in order to seduce humans, both male and female. The Seven Princes were apparently androgynous, taking on whatever form they pleased in order to spread the demonic gene amongst mortals.