The Secret of Spellshadow Manor 4 by Bella Forrest (life books to read TXT) 📕

Elias’s words suddenly gave Alex an idea, far better than his previous one. In order to smoke out a predator, bait was needed, and the perfect thing was just beginning to take shape in Alex’s mind. He would just need to check the logistics with one of Kingstone Keep’s long-term occupants first.

He had been planning to thank Elias for the seed of a plan, but the shadow-man had descended into a strange sort of reverie, his impossible eyes glancing at the walls around him. Alex held his tongue as the misty creature spoke again.

“They wanted to send me here, to Kingstone, you know, but that skeleton-faced idiot listened to the weasels who were whispering in his ears, telling him all sorts of tales. He tried to keep me to himself instead… He misjudged me,” Elias said. “I would never have allowed my essence to be taken by anyone else, not with the power I had brimming inside me, once upon a time. Now, it is all I can do to keep myself from evaporating back into the ether, but I was a threat to him back then, Alex—I knew things about him and what he could do. I was a force to be reckoned with. I knew things, and he hated me for it. They all hated me for it, and they knew I would have—”

His words were interrupted by the sudden shifting of his unstable face, as it scrunched into an expression of pain, a hiss escaping from between his shadowed lips. Twists of black mist twirled away from him, disappearing into the air with a startling snap.

Alex jerked back in surprise. He had seen Elias make all kinds of dramatic exits, but this was something entirely different; it felt wrong, somehow. Elias simply watched as the strands of himself evaporated into the darkness, his galactic eyes following them with a look of half-hearted regret. Swiftly, his expression changed, as if shaking off a dark thought, and he turned back toward Alex.

“You are in grave danger, Alex. More danger than you know,” he said hurriedly, though Alex wasn’t sure why. This wasn’t exactly new information to him.

He frowned. “I know.”

Elias waved his head from side to side in a slow, wispy shake, the vapor of his form trailing sluggishly after each movement.

“There is more to it than you realize—more to it than you can possibly comprehend. There are so many who have been looking for one like you, for such a long time. The thing is, now they’ve all seen the finish line, they’re squabbling to cross it first… They don’t understand. They don’t get it. It is not their—” He trailed off, his voice snatched sharply from the air. A crackle of bright light burst from within him, shattering the shadows of his being, dispersing them faster than he could put himself back together.

When the blinding light died down, Elias was gone.

“Elias?” Alex whispered, trying to keep the worry out of his voice. He didn’t know if Elias could even come back from what he had just witnessed. He had never seen Elias do anything like that before, but it hadn’t looked particularly good for the shadow-man.

Fear prickled the hairs on the back of Alex’s neck. Given the extent of what had just happened, whatever it was abruptly silencing his shadow-guide, Alex couldn’t help but wonder what Elias had been about to say.

Chapter 8

Rushing through the hallways, Alex arrived at the tower, still hoping to catch the others before they left to scope out Caius’s favorite spots. His mind was buzzing with the idea Elias had planted there. It was better than any idea he’d had so far, and he was desperate to inform his friends, in the hopes it might bolster their optimism.

The others stood in a group, preparing to leave with Vincent, as Alex burst through the door. Their immediate reaction to him was stiff, given their last exchange, but their apprehension was short-lived, as they saw his excited expression—which he was sure seemed out of place alongside the exhaustion upon his features and the dark circles around his eyes.

“Change of plan! And you’re going to like it,” Alex announced. He skidded to a stop in front of Aamir. “But first, I’m sorry for acting like a complete and utter asshole.”

“It’s okay,” Aamir said quietly. “I won’t hold your words against you; they were spoken from a place of pain. I, of all people, know what it is like to feel out of control, and the crazy things that can make you do.” The shadow of a smile crossed the older boy’s lips, and he brought Alex in for a firm hug.

“So, uh, you have good news?” Natalie asked, eyeing him warily but managing to smile.

“We need to come up with a way of luring Caius out of his hiding place,” Alex said. “It won’t do us any good to wait around, hoping he’ll appear—we have to give him a reason to come to us. We have to do something so big, so crazy, that he can’t ignore it.”

His friends’ expressions turned doubtful.

“And what did you have in mind?” Vincent asked, his eerie voice cutting through the nervous silence.

“I hadn’t really gotten that far—I’m still thinking about it myself and was hoping you guys might have some ideas.”

“An explosion,” Jari declared, an evil grin twisting his face.

“It’s always explosions with you,” Aamir grumbled.

“Explosions aren’t easy to ignore,” Jari retorted.

“That’s true,” Alex said, thinking. “But what could we blow up?”

“It will have to be something he will notice, no matter how far away from the keep he is,” Natalie mused. “If he’s beyond the walls, it needs to be something that will trigger him to return… An alarm or something?”

A lightbulb went off in Alex’s head. “Vincent, do you know what those golden cylinders are, the ones that seem to be stuck on lots of the walls in the keep?”

Vincent smiled. “I do